I think talking about the importance of diversity from a productivity perspective was very interesting. I believe that diversity can increase productivity as shown in the NASA example; however, the only problem with this system is that all the people participating must be open to working in a diverse group. We spent some time trying to separate the moral aspect of diversity from the productive one, but I think it is impossible to separate them completely. People will only be productive in a diverse group if they all appreciate one another. If a racist man was supposed to work with someone he thought was inferior this pair would probably be less productive than either man alone since they would probably spend more time fighting than problem solving. This leads to the difficult question of why there is racism to begin with and what causes some people to hate diversity while others embrace it. Until this question can be answered and everyone can learn to accept people who are different it won’t matter if diversity is more productive because nobody will work together.

Another thing which I found particularly thought provoking was how our discussion shifted to eugenics and designer babies as a way of our society trying to limit diversity. I think there is a very fine line between preventing illness and trying to limit diversity. While I believe it is a parent’s right to screen pregnancies for certain severe defects, I don’t think it is necessary to screen for others. Although limiting defects is a way of limiting diversity I think it is acceptable in the situation where the parents would be unable to take care of a disabled child. However, this is where I personally draw the line and I recognize that it is different for everyone. This is an important discussion to have because it is happening right now and I recognize that it could be easy to move from severe genetic defects to smaller less important ones and then to “designer babies.”

Similarly, we talked about the hypothetical problem of developing into two different species if designer babies were allowed, specifically between the upper and lower classes. However, if a rich person says that they would never consider dating or marrying someone of the lower class and also would never come into contact with someone from a lower class in some ways they are already different “species;” if you consider the definition of the same species organisms which will produce offspring. To bring this back to my initial thoughts, this shows the importance of recognizing the morals behind appreciating diversity because without that people could be much closer to being different species than we think.