4 ms·

Well, you'll have to wait for the genetics to catch up -- we know nearly nothing about the effects of variation on complex traits like intelligence or athletic

Well, you'll have to wait for the genetics to catch up -- we know nearly nothing about the effects of variation on complex traits like intelligence or athletic performance. Even in known 'cancer genes' like BRCA1, we know what only a few of the thousands of single-base changes do. Without this information, things are going to be limited to known disease variants (a good thing)

quotemstr 9y ago
So what? How are we going to learn unless we experiment? I detest the precautionary principle. If we'd followed it in prehistory, we'd have never left the trees: who knows what might be down there?
- komali2 9y ago
  It is fair that caution is needed - otherwise we're just a bunch of Qyburns, right?
  - quotemstr 9y ago
    GRRM framed Qyburn negatively. You could view him from a positive angle instead: he's a brilliant scientist who left the scientific community so he could pursue groundbreaking research without being slowed by obsolete and conventional ideas. That's a heroic narrative, not a sinister one. ASOIF is fiction. We live in reality. The problem is far more often that we're held by obsolete and suffocating rules than that we're moving too fast. I'd rather try new things than hunker down in fear of the unknown.
    - dragonwriter 9y ago
      > GRRM framed Qyburn negatively. You could view him from a positive angle instead: he's a brilliant scientist who left the scientific community so he could pursue groundbreaking research without being slowed by obsolete and conventional ideas. I think GRRM very carefully made by both the positive and negative parts key to the framing of Qyburn; he's quite clearly both a brilliant scientist who rebelled against obsolete and conventional ideas which did not work, and, a monster who is utterly indifferent (or so nearly so as makes no difference in practice) to the suffering inflicted on the pursuit of his research, either directly or in his efforts to maintain the support he needs to continue his work. GRRM tends not to make unidimensionally good or evil characters in ASOIAF (there's a few that seem that way on the evil side, but they are mostly also ones we don't know as much about.)
      - quotemstr 9y ago
        There are multiple ways to interpret fiction. I'm reminded of that Russian fanfic that cast Sauron as a heroic industrialist doing his best to drag Middle Earth into an industrial revolution, all the while being hampered by superstitious people from the steppes constantly raiding his cities.
        tantanel 9y ago
        The Last Ringbearer by Kirill Eskov in case anyone's interested. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Ringbearer https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Ringbearer
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
    - simplify 9y ago
      It's easy to say you'd like to "try new things" when you're not the one being experimented on.
- Zigurd 9y ago
  How would you like to be born a mistake in such experimentation. That's why the ethical issues are serious. If it's not safe, the mistakes will be paid for by utterly innocent and unwilling participants.
  - civilian 9y ago
    How would you like to be born with Huntington's disease, knowing that your parents could have taken an unknown risk to save you from it? We are all utterly innocent and unwilling participants in being born. You can either take the random cards that nature deals you, or we can try to act to have better outcomes. Just because you refuse to take action doesn't absolve you from taking a suboptimal action.
    - seanp2k2 9y ago
      This could also easily turn into a larger discussion about the ethical considerations of procreation when one is not in a favorable position (e.g. poor, homeless, addicted to drugs, mentally ill). What's OK and what's not? Who decides for everyone? Is that the best way? Should people be allowed to decide for their future children?
      - zo1 9y ago
        That larger topic is indeed a touchy one. I tend to have a controversial stance in that discussion, so I do get plenty of down votes on it. Somehow, people feel very strongly about about adults' "rights" to procreate. Even if that right results in the involvement of an unwitting participant who then leads a very short life of struggling. It's actually very saddening to watch a completely avoidable & preventable problem, whose N-amount of obvious solutions end up being shoved under the rug because we refuse to draw the line.
      - Noos 9y ago
        the end goal in this is a class of priest-like experts to decide, obviously. I'm surprised no one realizes the tyranny of being forced to justify your right to procreate at all, let alone unguided by scientific experts with their own clear ideals of what should be done with your child. Very few people are honest with themselves and admit the end goal is not making better, its making more controllable/more in aim with how the rulers want their population to be.
- jimbokun 9y ago
  Experiment on who, exactly? How do you get consent from an embryo for the life it will have to live as a result of what you're about to do to it? "I detest the precautionary principle." Sometimes, a little bit of caution is what keeps someone alive long enough to reproduce. Plenty of Darwin Award winners could have used a little more caution.
  - zo1 9y ago
    It will start off very slowly. I'd argue we're already doing "genetic engineering" on a small scale with IVF. At some point, the IVF clinics will start offering "screening" for incrementally less harmful diseases, disorders and traits. And then it's a small step from that to simply picking "the best" embryos. E.g. They'll "filter-out" all the embryos that will end up being very short. Then they'll filter out all the embryos that are "most-likely" to be below-average in intelligence, or most-likely to be mentally challenged, etc. Even if it isn't down-right engineering/splicing/etc, and using only the parents' egg/sperm combinations, they can still offer to "move our society" forward at a snail pace. I personally see no reason to be against it, as it's the logical extension of natural evolution. It's just more refined, scientific, guided, and devoid of some of the randomness or trial-by-error properties that are inherent with natural evolution.
  - BurningFrog 9y ago
    I completely agree that a little bit of caution is important. That's not at all what the precautionary principle is. It says that before you do something, you must first prove that it's harmless. This kind of proof is of course impossible, and in practice it means "never do anything". The fun thing about is that people only advocate applying it to things they don't want to do, never on their own favorite projects
thriftwy 9y ago
I'm pretty sure that if we threw a lot of genomes, healthy and defective, to a neural network, and then showed it a genome and told "make it healthy", it would. So it happens that genetics doesn't have to catch up - we can have this knowledge without knowing it. And also. People will question genetists' judgement. Some of the changes they're proposing have never passed statistically significant testing. But nobody ever questions neural network.
- komali2 9y ago
  That's an interesting idea, but with my limited knowledge of neural networks and deep learning, don't these things usually need to know when they are "successful?" (i.e. the distance gone right in a mario game or something). How do they not only suss out various options for genomes, then test the effects?
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
- computerex 9y ago
  Dear lord, this is exactly why everyone thinks neural networks are AGI about to take over the world. Neural networks are not magic. > I'm pretty sure that if we threw a lot of genomes, healthy and defective, to a neural network, and then showed it a genome and told "make it healthy", it would. It's not quite that simple.
- crusso 9y ago
  I'm sure that machine learning will come into play at some point, but we aren't able to model complex organic molecules in order to understand or evaluate "healthy" on silicon. In order to use ML on actual organisms, you'd need a way to try a lot of different modifications and then evaluate them after actual growth. Doing that kind of experimentation with human embryos, fetuses, and beyond has huge ethical minefields as well as many biological engineering challenges.
- arrosenberg 9y ago
  Sorry, but this is kind of laughable and shows a lack of familiarity. The data and existing knowledge base in biology is nowhere near sufficient to train a model like the one you described. Our genomes and the molecular biology it powers is astoundingly complex and small, it will take decades still to begin to understand how all the pieces work together.
moyix 9y ago
> we know nearly nothing about the effects of variation on complex traits like intelligence This is changing at an astonishing rate, though. The development of GWAS combined with huge genetic datasets and associated IQ test information has opened the floodgates to finding more and more genes that predict the variation in IQ. Of course, it's still an open question whether these have other effects, and whether their effects are additive (linear), but the field does seem to be making extremely rapid progress... 'gwern has put together some links on genetic associations with IQ: https://www.gwern.net/Mistakes#intelligence https://www.gwern.net/Mistakes#intelligence

quotemstr 9y ago

So what? How are we going to learn unless we experiment? I detest the precautionary principle. If we'd followed it in prehistory, we'd have never left the trees: who knows what might be down there?

komali2 9y ago
It is fair that caution is needed - otherwise we're just a bunch of Qyburns, right?
- quotemstr 9y ago
  GRRM framed Qyburn negatively. You could view him from a positive angle instead: he's a brilliant scientist who left the scientific community so he could pursue groundbreaking research without being slowed by obsolete and conventional ideas. That's a heroic narrative, not a sinister one. ASOIF is fiction. We live in reality. The problem is far more often that we're held by obsolete and suffocating rules than that we're moving too fast. I'd rather try new things than hunker down in fear of the unknown.
  - dragonwriter 9y ago
    > GRRM framed Qyburn negatively. You could view him from a positive angle instead: he's a brilliant scientist who left the scientific community so he could pursue groundbreaking research without being slowed by obsolete and conventional ideas. I think GRRM very carefully made by both the positive and negative parts key to the framing of Qyburn; he's quite clearly both a brilliant scientist who rebelled against obsolete and conventional ideas which did not work, and, a monster who is utterly indifferent (or so nearly so as makes no difference in practice) to the suffering inflicted on the pursuit of his research, either directly or in his efforts to maintain the support he needs to continue his work. GRRM tends not to make unidimensionally good or evil characters in ASOIAF (there's a few that seem that way on the evil side, but they are mostly also ones we don't know as much about.)
    - quotemstr 9y ago
      There are multiple ways to interpret fiction. I'm reminded of that Russian fanfic that cast Sauron as a heroic industrialist doing his best to drag Middle Earth into an industrial revolution, all the while being hampered by superstitious people from the steppes constantly raiding his cities.
      - tantanel 9y ago
        The Last Ringbearer by Kirill Eskov in case anyone's interested. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Ringbearer https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Ringbearer
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - simplify 9y ago
    It's easy to say you'd like to "try new things" when you're not the one being experimented on.
Zigurd 9y ago
How would you like to be born a mistake in such experimentation. That's why the ethical issues are serious. If it's not safe, the mistakes will be paid for by utterly innocent and unwilling participants.
- civilian 9y ago
  How would you like to be born with Huntington's disease, knowing that your parents could have taken an unknown risk to save you from it? We are all utterly innocent and unwilling participants in being born. You can either take the random cards that nature deals you, or we can try to act to have better outcomes. Just because you refuse to take action doesn't absolve you from taking a suboptimal action.
  - seanp2k2 9y ago
    This could also easily turn into a larger discussion about the ethical considerations of procreation when one is not in a favorable position (e.g. poor, homeless, addicted to drugs, mentally ill). What's OK and what's not? Who decides for everyone? Is that the best way? Should people be allowed to decide for their future children?
    - zo1 9y ago
      That larger topic is indeed a touchy one. I tend to have a controversial stance in that discussion, so I do get plenty of down votes on it. Somehow, people feel very strongly about about adults' "rights" to procreate. Even if that right results in the involvement of an unwitting participant who then leads a very short life of struggling. It's actually very saddening to watch a completely avoidable & preventable problem, whose N-amount of obvious solutions end up being shoved under the rug because we refuse to draw the line.
    - Noos 9y ago
      the end goal in this is a class of priest-like experts to decide, obviously. I'm surprised no one realizes the tyranny of being forced to justify your right to procreate at all, let alone unguided by scientific experts with their own clear ideals of what should be done with your child. Very few people are honest with themselves and admit the end goal is not making better, its making more controllable/more in aim with how the rulers want their population to be.
jimbokun 9y ago
Experiment on who, exactly? How do you get consent from an embryo for the life it will have to live as a result of what you're about to do to it? "I detest the precautionary principle." Sometimes, a little bit of caution is what keeps someone alive long enough to reproduce. Plenty of Darwin Award winners could have used a little more caution.
- zo1 9y ago
  It will start off very slowly. I'd argue we're already doing "genetic engineering" on a small scale with IVF. At some point, the IVF clinics will start offering "screening" for incrementally less harmful diseases, disorders and traits. And then it's a small step from that to simply picking "the best" embryos. E.g. They'll "filter-out" all the embryos that will end up being very short. Then they'll filter out all the embryos that are "most-likely" to be below-average in intelligence, or most-likely to be mentally challenged, etc. Even if it isn't down-right engineering/splicing/etc, and using only the parents' egg/sperm combinations, they can still offer to "move our society" forward at a snail pace. I personally see no reason to be against it, as it's the logical extension of natural evolution. It's just more refined, scientific, guided, and devoid of some of the randomness or trial-by-error properties that are inherent with natural evolution.
- BurningFrog 9y ago
  I completely agree that a little bit of caution is important. That's not at all what the precautionary principle is. It says that before you do something, you must first prove that it's harmless. This kind of proof is of course impossible, and in practice it means "never do anything". The fun thing about is that people only advocate applying it to things they don't want to do, never on their own favorite projects

thriftwy 9y ago

I'm pretty sure that if we threw a lot of genomes, healthy and defective, to a neural network, and then showed it a genome and told "make it healthy", it would. So it happens that genetics doesn't have to catch up - we can have this knowledge without knowing it. And also. People will question genetists' judgement. Some of the changes they're proposing have never passed statistically significant testing. But nobody ever questions neural network.

komali2 9y ago
That's an interesting idea, but with my limited knowledge of neural networks and deep learning, don't these things usually need to know when they are "successful?" (i.e. the distance gone right in a mario game or something). How do they not only suss out various options for genomes, then test the effects?
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
computerex 9y ago
Dear lord, this is exactly why everyone thinks neural networks are AGI about to take over the world. Neural networks are not magic. > I'm pretty sure that if we threw a lot of genomes, healthy and defective, to a neural network, and then showed it a genome and told "make it healthy", it would. It's not quite that simple.
crusso 9y ago
I'm sure that machine learning will come into play at some point, but we aren't able to model complex organic molecules in order to understand or evaluate "healthy" on silicon. In order to use ML on actual organisms, you'd need a way to try a lot of different modifications and then evaluate them after actual growth. Doing that kind of experimentation with human embryos, fetuses, and beyond has huge ethical minefields as well as many biological engineering challenges.
arrosenberg 9y ago
Sorry, but this is kind of laughable and shows a lack of familiarity. The data and existing knowledge base in biology is nowhere near sufficient to train a model like the one you described. Our genomes and the molecular biology it powers is astoundingly complex and small, it will take decades still to begin to understand how all the pieces work together.

moyix 9y ago

> we know nearly nothing about the effects of variation on complex traits like intelligence This is changing at an astonishing rate, though. The development of GWAS combined with huge genetic datasets and associated IQ test information has opened the floodgates to finding more and more genes that predict the variation in IQ. Of course, it's still an open question whether these have other effects, and whether their effects are additive (linear), but the field does seem to be making extremely rapid progress... 'gwern has put together some links on genetic associations with IQ: https://www.gwern.net/Mistakes#intelligence https://www.gwern.net/Mistakes#intelligence