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This is a false choice. Society would almost certainly benefit from a larger proportion of highly intelligent people, and doubly so if they were also engineered

This is a false choice. Society would almost certainly benefit from a larger proportion of highly intelligent people, and doubly so if they were also engineered with a genetic predisposition toward cooperation and prosocial behavior.

JoeAltmaier 9y ago
Almost certainly not. That gives us 'politically correct police states'. Put everybody in a rubber room and make sure they are nice to one another. A recipe for the downfall of society, collapse of the economy, end of social evolution. Its complicated to nation-build. Any that work now, do so because of competition and selection. Remove that with 'intelligent design' and all adaptation stops. Fitness plummets.
- mr_overalls 9y ago
  I suppose the devil is in the details. I'm not thinking of something like the genetically engineered humans of Brave New World, where docility is hard-wired into the lower classes. I'm thinking more along the lines of attenuating certain (hypothetical) genetic contributors to antisocial personality disorder, violent psychosis, etc. Not engineering docile perfection, just less of the obviously really bad stuff. Edit: I do share your concerns about stopping Darwinian selection, though. Choosing local optima for cooperation might come back to bite us in the coming TransNeptunian War of 2217, e.g., when psychopathic, ruthless strategy is all that saves the human race from the conflict of first alien contact.
  - Danihan 9y ago
    >choosing local optima for cooperation might come back to bite us in the coming TransNeptunian War of 2217, e.g., when psychopathic, ruthless strategy is all that saves the human race from the conflict of first alien contact. lol, that's a great line.
  - ansible 9y ago
    ...in the coming TransNeptunian War of 2217... If we don't achieve a technological singularity in the next couple decades, I doubt that an alien invasion will be a worry a couple centuries from now. I say this because of impending ecological collapse, which will end human civilization as we know it... if not humanity in total. And I'll save for another time a rant about how expensive it is for anything to cross interstellar distances. At most we'll see a self-replicating probe that tries to subsume all matter in the solar system, the "invaders" won't physically travel here.
    - JoeAltmaier 9y ago
      ...unless the probes reconstitute them upon arrival?
      - ansible 9y ago
        That could happen, but I judge it more likely they'd just live as software instead of physically instantiating into something you'd see on a SF TV show. And even as software, I predict that new colonists would likely arrive by communications laser, well after the local infrastructure has been built. Why bother coming over during the boring building phase?
- jly 9y ago
  I disagree, although obviously this kind of manipulation and even ultimately what is being manipulated is going to be complex and fraught with false steps and unknowns. While you may be right that our current genetic state, attained through generations of ruthless competition and selective pressures, is optimal for some things, it is harmful for others. Notably, the health of biosphere and many millions/billions of other humans. What good does nation-building do if our actions destroy each other through war or create an ecosystem unable to sustain advanced life? I would rather engineer for increased prosocial behavior and take our chances down that route than where we are headed now.
drzaiusapelord 9y ago
>Society would almost certainly benefit from a larger proportion of highly intelligent people Why would it? Don't we have enough smart people? Smarts come at a cost. Its usually tied with anxiety disorders, neuroticism, poor ability to develop social skills, limited emotional expression, lack of empathy, autism, etc. We are also discounting things like emotional intelligence and other types of intelligences we may not fully understand yet or even recognize! I'm not sure if the world needs a bunch of cold and emotionally stunted people taking the place of more well-rounded people. I think its questionable to think evolution didn't account for the diversity of personality types needed for a successful human society. Claiming "This type one here, this is the only good one, so we'll make everyone like this," seems foolish if not disastrous. Personally, I'd gladly shave off more than a few IQ points to be more empathic and social. Not to mention, society already tried this with eugenics fairly recently. Its not "smart" to repeat the mistakes of history.
- Danihan 9y ago
  You can have both. Not everyone intelligent is neurotic, and personality traits like baseless anxiety may be things that can be adjusted to some extent as well. >Not to mention, society already tried this with eugenics fairly recently. Its not "smart" to repeat the mistakes of history. When did we "try this" with eugenics "fairly recently"? I'm almost certain you're referring to Nazism. But was Hitler really killing all the Jews for some sort of eugenics experiment? No, I don't think so. Were his actions genuinely scientific at all? Nope. He believed that raw power conquered all and that anyone weak should be murdered. That's different than eugenics. We need to get past this kneejerk reaction comparing doing anything beneficial within the human genome to Nazi eugenics. It's a completely absurd comparison, especially considering that the average intelligence of Jews is very high. Hitler was evil because he was a mass murderer, it's as simple as that. I really shouldn't have to clarify this on YC of all places.
  - makomk 9y ago
    The US had eugenics programs up until I think as late as the 60s, as did some other countries. Look up for example Buck vs. Bell. The Nazis were inspired by the existing US eugenics programs, not the other way around.

JoeAltmaier 9y ago

Almost certainly not. That gives us 'politically correct police states'. Put everybody in a rubber room and make sure they are nice to one another. A recipe for the downfall of society, collapse of the economy, end of social evolution. Its complicated to nation-build. Any that work now, do so because of competition and selection. Remove that with 'intelligent design' and all adaptation stops. Fitness plummets.

mr_overalls 9y ago
I suppose the devil is in the details. I'm not thinking of something like the genetically engineered humans of Brave New World, where docility is hard-wired into the lower classes. I'm thinking more along the lines of attenuating certain (hypothetical) genetic contributors to antisocial personality disorder, violent psychosis, etc. Not engineering docile perfection, just less of the obviously really bad stuff. Edit: I do share your concerns about stopping Darwinian selection, though. Choosing local optima for cooperation might come back to bite us in the coming TransNeptunian War of 2217, e.g., when psychopathic, ruthless strategy is all that saves the human race from the conflict of first alien contact.
- Danihan 9y ago
  >choosing local optima for cooperation might come back to bite us in the coming TransNeptunian War of 2217, e.g., when psychopathic, ruthless strategy is all that saves the human race from the conflict of first alien contact. lol, that's a great line.
- ansible 9y ago
  ...in the coming TransNeptunian War of 2217... If we don't achieve a technological singularity in the next couple decades, I doubt that an alien invasion will be a worry a couple centuries from now. I say this because of impending ecological collapse, which will end human civilization as we know it... if not humanity in total. And I'll save for another time a rant about how expensive it is for anything to cross interstellar distances. At most we'll see a self-replicating probe that tries to subsume all matter in the solar system, the "invaders" won't physically travel here.
  - JoeAltmaier 9y ago
    ...unless the probes reconstitute them upon arrival?
    - ansible 9y ago
      That could happen, but I judge it more likely they'd just live as software instead of physically instantiating into something you'd see on a SF TV show. And even as software, I predict that new colonists would likely arrive by communications laser, well after the local infrastructure has been built. Why bother coming over during the boring building phase?
jly 9y ago
I disagree, although obviously this kind of manipulation and even ultimately what is being manipulated is going to be complex and fraught with false steps and unknowns. While you may be right that our current genetic state, attained through generations of ruthless competition and selective pressures, is optimal for some things, it is harmful for others. Notably, the health of biosphere and many millions/billions of other humans. What good does nation-building do if our actions destroy each other through war or create an ecosystem unable to sustain advanced life? I would rather engineer for increased prosocial behavior and take our chances down that route than where we are headed now.

drzaiusapelord 9y ago

>Society would almost certainly benefit from a larger proportion of highly intelligent people Why would it? Don't we have enough smart people? Smarts come at a cost. Its usually tied with anxiety disorders, neuroticism, poor ability to develop social skills, limited emotional expression, lack of empathy, autism, etc. We are also discounting things like emotional intelligence and other types of intelligences we may not fully understand yet or even recognize! I'm not sure if the world needs a bunch of cold and emotionally stunted people taking the place of more well-rounded people. I think its questionable to think evolution didn't account for the diversity of personality types needed for a successful human society. Claiming "This type one here, this is the only good one, so we'll make everyone like this," seems foolish if not disastrous. Personally, I'd gladly shave off more than a few IQ points to be more empathic and social. Not to mention, society already tried this with eugenics fairly recently. Its not "smart" to repeat the mistakes of history.

Danihan 9y ago
You can have both. Not everyone intelligent is neurotic, and personality traits like baseless anxiety may be things that can be adjusted to some extent as well. >Not to mention, society already tried this with eugenics fairly recently. Its not "smart" to repeat the mistakes of history. When did we "try this" with eugenics "fairly recently"? I'm almost certain you're referring to Nazism. But was Hitler really killing all the Jews for some sort of eugenics experiment? No, I don't think so. Were his actions genuinely scientific at all? Nope. He believed that raw power conquered all and that anyone weak should be murdered. That's different than eugenics. We need to get past this kneejerk reaction comparing doing anything beneficial within the human genome to Nazi eugenics. It's a completely absurd comparison, especially considering that the average intelligence of Jews is very high. Hitler was evil because he was a mass murderer, it's as simple as that. I really shouldn't have to clarify this on YC of all places.
- makomk 9y ago
  The US had eugenics programs up until I think as late as the 60s, as did some other countries. Look up for example Buck vs. Bell. The Nazis were inspired by the existing US eugenics programs, not the other way around.