6 ms·

Why would anyone prefer having less intelligent people to having more smart people for the sake of eqality is beyond me.

DuskStar 8y ago
Especially since regulations won't meaningfully impact the very richest - they'll travel to Thailand or wherever to have their kid's embryo edited and implanted. What it will do is prevent those innovations from coming into the reach of the rest of us.
- sho 8y ago
  Assuming nation states don't hoard what could be considered to be a long term strategic advantage. My fear would be that the West, in paroxysms of misguided equal-outcomes ideology, ban genetic improvements - whereas China mandates it, and bans its availability to outsiders, setting themselves up for a long-term fundamental advantage which we might never be able to overcome. In a sense, it doesn't matter what the West "decides". If China et al have this technology - and they do - and if they decide to exploit it - and they will - we have no real choice but to follow, or face our inevitable and profound outcompetition in the medium to long term.
- ben_w 8y ago
  Hm. Depends how you do it. Given how much it costs childbirth costs in the USA, I’m surprised there isn’t already health tourism from the USA to literally anywhere else. The cost of genetic modification will probably be small compared to the cost of childbirth, if the current existence and price of amateur CRISPR bio-hacking kits is anything to go by[1]. Could this be overcome by requiring all newly registered children to have full genome DNA tests, along with their parents, and prosecute on the basis of clear genetic modification? Or is that likely to get too many false positives? [1] http://www.the-odin.com/bacterial-crispr-and-fluorescent-yeast-combo-kit/ http://www.the-odin.com/bacterial-crispr-and-fluorescent-yea...
  - iguy 8y ago
    Indeed, there is some health tourism, but much less than I would expect given the prices. I can't imagine that setting up a "Department Of Prosecuting New Parents" would go down well. Or even be possible. For example, most first-world countries today have millions of residents with no legal right to be there, most of whom the state does not prosecute/deport/fine. I think both for the lack of capacity to do so, and for lack of popular support for doing this at full scale. And deciding where someone was born (and who their parents are) is much much easier than deciding whether they got 100% of their DNA the old-fashioned way.
keiferski 8y ago
The entire history in Europe of the past 2,000 years is precisely this - the preference for equality over excellence. See: Beyond Good and Evil, Nietzsche.
- identity-haver 8y ago
  I'm not really sure where to start here. There was more "excellence" in the Roman Republic and prior times than the following 2000 years of European history? This is a familiar critique that seems to conflate the modern self-esteem craze, communism, and the utopian "equality of outcome" with the traditional religiously based idea of equality, which is that every soul is made in the image of and has equal responsibility before God and that's it. The Lockean idea of human rights is cladistically derived from this.
  - keiferski 8y ago
    Nietzschean philosophy is a bit too complex for me to explain in a HN comment, but I was referring more to the Master-Slave Morality concept. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Master–slave_morality https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Master–slave_morality
    - identity-haver 8y ago
      Oh I know what it is, I just think it’s completely wrong to apply to Europe pre WWI. How a culture that explored and conquered almost the entire world had a “slave morality” because of the beatitudes or something was always baffling. What would be interesting is applying it to today’s secular Europe.
dmitriid 8y ago
Governments in general would prefer less intelligent people in the populace for the sake of power and control.

DuskStar 8y ago

Especially since regulations won't meaningfully impact the very richest - they'll travel to Thailand or wherever to have their kid's embryo edited and implanted. What it will do is prevent those innovations from coming into the reach of the rest of us.

sho 8y ago
Assuming nation states don't hoard what could be considered to be a long term strategic advantage. My fear would be that the West, in paroxysms of misguided equal-outcomes ideology, ban genetic improvements - whereas China mandates it, and bans its availability to outsiders, setting themselves up for a long-term fundamental advantage which we might never be able to overcome. In a sense, it doesn't matter what the West "decides". If China et al have this technology - and they do - and if they decide to exploit it - and they will - we have no real choice but to follow, or face our inevitable and profound outcompetition in the medium to long term.
ben_w 8y ago
Hm. Depends how you do it. Given how much it costs childbirth costs in the USA, I’m surprised there isn’t already health tourism from the USA to literally anywhere else. The cost of genetic modification will probably be small compared to the cost of childbirth, if the current existence and price of amateur CRISPR bio-hacking kits is anything to go by[1]. Could this be overcome by requiring all newly registered children to have full genome DNA tests, along with their parents, and prosecute on the basis of clear genetic modification? Or is that likely to get too many false positives? [1] http://www.the-odin.com/bacterial-crispr-and-fluorescent-yeast-combo-kit/ http://www.the-odin.com/bacterial-crispr-and-fluorescent-yea...
- iguy 8y ago
  Indeed, there is some health tourism, but much less than I would expect given the prices. I can't imagine that setting up a "Department Of Prosecuting New Parents" would go down well. Or even be possible. For example, most first-world countries today have millions of residents with no legal right to be there, most of whom the state does not prosecute/deport/fine. I think both for the lack of capacity to do so, and for lack of popular support for doing this at full scale. And deciding where someone was born (and who their parents are) is much much easier than deciding whether they got 100% of their DNA the old-fashioned way.

keiferski 8y ago

The entire history in Europe of the past 2,000 years is precisely this - the preference for equality over excellence. See: Beyond Good and Evil, Nietzsche.

identity-haver 8y ago
I'm not really sure where to start here. There was more "excellence" in the Roman Republic and prior times than the following 2000 years of European history? This is a familiar critique that seems to conflate the modern self-esteem craze, communism, and the utopian "equality of outcome" with the traditional religiously based idea of equality, which is that every soul is made in the image of and has equal responsibility before God and that's it. The Lockean idea of human rights is cladistically derived from this.
- keiferski 8y ago
  Nietzschean philosophy is a bit too complex for me to explain in a HN comment, but I was referring more to the Master-Slave Morality concept. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Master–slave_morality https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Master–slave_morality
  - identity-haver 8y ago
    Oh I know what it is, I just think it’s completely wrong to apply to Europe pre WWI. How a culture that explored and conquered almost the entire world had a “slave morality” because of the beatitudes or something was always baffling. What would be interesting is applying it to today’s secular Europe.

dmitriid 8y ago

Governments in general would prefer less intelligent people in the populace for the sake of power and control.