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"Given the Mendelian genetic lottery, the kids produced by any one couple typically differ by 5 to 15 IQ points. So this method of "preimplantation embryo selec
by pcnonpc 9y ago
"Given the Mendelian genetic lottery, the kids produced by any one couple typically differ by 5 to 15 IQ points. So this method of "preimplantation embryo selection" might allow IQ within every Chinese family to increase by 5 to 15 IQ points per generation. After a couple of generations, it would be game over for Western global competitiveness.
...."
https://www.edge.org/response-detail/23838 https://www.edge.org/response-detail/23838
- xkcd-sucks 9y agoThe flip side is most people smart/rich enough to get out of China, or get their family members out of China, usually do it
- tormeh 9y agoEssentially we would do what others do now in the west: Immigrate to China and do sucky work.
- nsxwolf 9y agoOr it could mean millions of high IQ Chinese people doing menial jobs while suffering feelings of existential dread at a higher rate than their lower IQ peers.
- pcnonpc 9y agoOr they could build billions of robots with thousands of variations to make everyone live like a king. And they will have high enough IQ to maintain and improve them as they wish. Without say IQ of 100 or more maintenance of advanced robots could be problematic.
- HowardMei 9y agoYep, since the booming of Conficius, generations of Chinese has been wasting their IQ and suffering from rationality-reality inconsistence. Increasing IQ without reforming the culture is just a mean to crush opponents in Chinese social darwin scheme.
- magic_beans 9y agoI'm very interested by this. What is it about Chinese culture that is oppressive to people with high IQs?
- HowardMei 9y agoTurn any rational debate into a moral debate [good people vs. bad people] and appeal to authority/majority [to get the good people tag].
- jpttsn 9y agoThat math seems off. The gain should average 2.5-7.5 points surely?
- pcnonpc 9y agoSource? or calculation? The guy giving the figure is an evolutionary psychologist.
- jpttsn 9y agoIf the difference between "best case" and "worst case" ranges from 5--15, then that's the average best-worst difference. So the range is (x-2.5, x+2.5) to (x-7.5, x+7.5). Given it's a "lottery," the average person would expect x and could improve to x+2.5--x+7.5. But I'm certainly not a psychologist.
- yorwba 9y agoCalculation: Kids differ by 5 to 15 IQ points on average. Assuming a symmetric distribution, that means that the smartest kid would be 2.5 to 7.5 IQ points smarter than the average kid, while the dumbest would be the same amount dumber than the average. Actually, I'm not sure whether "5 to 15" isn't meant to describe the standard deviation, in which case screening lots of embryos might even produce much higher gains.
- thinkcontext 9y ago" ... every Chinese family ..." This is overstated. Plain IVF today in the US costs tens of thousands of dollars. As a result in 2014 it was around 1.5% of births. Some insurance will cover IVF but is more expensive and there are generally caps. Its only accessible to the relatively well off and that's unlikely to change in the short and medium term. So even if development of embryo selection technology proceeds rapidly it would only be available to the super rich for quite some time.
- fvdessen 9y agoIf the expected benefits of the eugenic selection over the lifetime of the child are more than the cost of the medical procedure then we could expect bank/insurance/state to finance the operation.
- thinkcontext 9y agoInteresting idea. But it seems difficult in practice, mainly because it would be more than 20 years before there's any chance that the child could start paying the loan back. There are other issues, like, would it be fair to saddle an unborn child with debt who had no opportunity to choose?