4 ms·

I can't help but find this incredibly condescending. You would take away a technological advantage from majorities and minorities alike because their choices m

I can't help but find this incredibly condescending. You would take away a technological advantage from majorities and minorities alike because their choices might not lead to your ideal of diversity utopia.

iguy 8y ago
Here's a different take, on a different sort of diversity: Suppose it turns out that extremely high-achievers are gambles on the part of nature, which have some chance of going wrong. For example, suppose that every birth of a potential future Nobelist comes with a 10% chance of serious disabling autism. (I stress, I'm not claiming that this is true, just setting up a thought experiment.) Many parents would decline this gamble: 10% is quite a high chance of devoting the rest of your life to care, for a tiny chance of having a world-class star in the family, who will anyway have very little personal gain from his contributions. But if the whole society decides never to gamble, we will (in my scenario!) miss out on major advances.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- chr1 8y ago
  If we get to the point where we can distinguish genes that cause autism to be able to remove them, we'll also be able to distinguish 10% Nobelist case. But even if that was not the case, with gene editing some parents who did not have a chance to make that gamble, will be able to make it intentionally.
  - iguy 8y ago
    The point of my thought experiment is to imagine that these are the same genes. Remember that about half of population variation is "unshared environment" meaning noise in the translation of DNA into an adult: genes will never allow perfect prediction. I guess I believe that very few parents would make this gamble, because the risks are very personal and the benefits are mostly to others. But I could be wrong. One real live example is that there's been very little push-back against eliminating Tay-Sachs via testing.
    - chr1 8y ago
      In your thought experiment, even if very few parents made the gamble, it would be enough to keep the gene around until we figured out what in the environment caused autism, after which the many more would want to have it. For the Tay-Sachs example what would be the reason to push-back against eliminating it? And who should have pushed back? people who had that gene, or people who didn't? IMO the solution is to simply have more people, if we have 1000 billions on earth (which is possible with seasteading and terraforming deserts), 10 billion on moon 100 billion on mars we'll have enough place to try out all kinds of solutions, for people to decide how much to edit or not to edit their own genes, and many new random mutations arising simply because there are more new people than were in all of the history combined.
      - iguy 8y ago
        Other thought experiments are certainly possible, but mine is about the stated gamble, in which you cannot predict. That's what's meant by "unshared environment", it's poorly named, the environment you talk of is "shared environment". As I said, I don't know that this is true in the real world, but I don't think it wildly implausible. (Maybe tortured mad artists are a better example than nerds.) Tay-Sachs is the first example I know about, of some genetic strain of humans being deliberately bred out of existence. Phrased like that I think the idea would alarm many people. But it has not. (I should remind myself more of the details of this story.) Thought experiments aside, note that it's not obvious we need a single new mutation to make much smarter people. We just need the shuffling of the deck to place more of the existing + variants into one body. This will obviously be the goal of embryo selection, and I think would also be the goal of explicit editing. I'd wager that many more of the Nobel-sized brains alive at the end of this century (and the next) will owe their existence to one of these kinds of engineering, than to population growth.
ben_w 8y ago
Monocultures are fragile. They are fragile in agriculture, they are fragile in software development, and they are fragile in political thought. There is no reason to expect we would not be equally fragile if we all changed our genomes to be the “same race”, especially given that “The concept of race has no genetic or scientific basis” [1], and therefore can be expected to continue to find it easy discriminate against each other for being different right up until the supermajority[2] are all identical. [1] https://genomebiology.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/gb-2000-1-5-comment2004 https://genomebiology.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/gb-... [2] I was going to say ‘entire population’, then I remembered one of our differences includes a desire to be different; how different we get to be depends on social rules, which is why the number of furries who had themselves surgically altered to look like (say) cats is a small non-zero number.
- chr1 8y ago
  Sure monocultures are bad but talking about banning gene editing to avoid monoculture at this point is the equivalent of proposing to ban people who already own cars to buy teslas to avoid electric car monoculture. Because we are not anywhere near a monoculture, and for some traits monoculture is ok (do we miss the old design of vocal tract that gave us ability to not talk?). Also we won't have a monoculture for whole genome any time soon, because that would mean for everyone to raise someone elses kid which people tend to not like. There is a possibility that some people will try to make changes to appearance eye/skin/hair color, shape of nose. But that doesn't have that much effect on survivability of human kind (balancing higher rate of skin cancer vs vitamin D deficiency has other methods now) and banning gene editing to prevent that would be the same as banning all surgery to simply not allow plastic surgery.
Emma_Goldman 8y ago
'You would take away a technological advantage.' This begs the question. Whether this is an advantage or not is exactly what is at issue. 'Might not lead to your ideal of diversity utopia.' One of the defining traits of humans is that they are acutely aware of their relative social status. A significant group of those perceived advantages are based upon appearance. The attempt to imitate and supersede others in a toxic battle for recognition creates all sorts of harms. Opening up our germline to that battle seems extremely dangerous. Your comment reads like pure political reaction.
luma 8y ago
I feel like the comments here have some beef with "diversity" as used in this context. The impact of genetic diversity within a species is extremely widely studied and there is little doubt to the benefits nor is it a matter of personal politics. It applies to algea as much as it does sapiens.
chrischen 8y ago
Yes, so it should be highly regulated. While technology also allows for plastic, surgery, one can argue that it is purely useless from a practical point of view and only wanted as a result of flawed reasoning and social pressures. It’s relatively harmless to the rest of society, but gene editing (especially if you can also permanently alter your reproductive genes), can have devastating societal effects if people are allowed to shoot themselves in the foot this way. We have always had laws designed to manipulate society to help prevent people from shooting themselves in the foot (see qualified investor requirements, minimum drinking ages, mandatory car insurance, etc). For gene editing it’s particularly kmportant for the long-term survivability of the human race if we do not regulate our own use.

iguy 8y ago

Here's a different take, on a different sort of diversity: Suppose it turns out that extremely high-achievers are gambles on the part of nature, which have some chance of going wrong. For example, suppose that every birth of a potential future Nobelist comes with a 10% chance of serious disabling autism. (I stress, I'm not claiming that this is true, just setting up a thought experiment.) Many parents would decline this gamble: 10% is quite a high chance of devoting the rest of your life to care, for a tiny chance of having a world-class star in the family, who will anyway have very little personal gain from his contributions. But if the whole society decides never to gamble, we will (in my scenario!) miss out on major advances.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
chr1 8y ago
If we get to the point where we can distinguish genes that cause autism to be able to remove them, we'll also be able to distinguish 10% Nobelist case. But even if that was not the case, with gene editing some parents who did not have a chance to make that gamble, will be able to make it intentionally.
- iguy 8y ago
  The point of my thought experiment is to imagine that these are the same genes. Remember that about half of population variation is "unshared environment" meaning noise in the translation of DNA into an adult: genes will never allow perfect prediction. I guess I believe that very few parents would make this gamble, because the risks are very personal and the benefits are mostly to others. But I could be wrong. One real live example is that there's been very little push-back against eliminating Tay-Sachs via testing.
  - chr1 8y ago
    In your thought experiment, even if very few parents made the gamble, it would be enough to keep the gene around until we figured out what in the environment caused autism, after which the many more would want to have it. For the Tay-Sachs example what would be the reason to push-back against eliminating it? And who should have pushed back? people who had that gene, or people who didn't? IMO the solution is to simply have more people, if we have 1000 billions on earth (which is possible with seasteading and terraforming deserts), 10 billion on moon 100 billion on mars we'll have enough place to try out all kinds of solutions, for people to decide how much to edit or not to edit their own genes, and many new random mutations arising simply because there are more new people than were in all of the history combined.
    - iguy 8y ago
      Other thought experiments are certainly possible, but mine is about the stated gamble, in which you cannot predict. That's what's meant by "unshared environment", it's poorly named, the environment you talk of is "shared environment". As I said, I don't know that this is true in the real world, but I don't think it wildly implausible. (Maybe tortured mad artists are a better example than nerds.) Tay-Sachs is the first example I know about, of some genetic strain of humans being deliberately bred out of existence. Phrased like that I think the idea would alarm many people. But it has not. (I should remind myself more of the details of this story.) Thought experiments aside, note that it's not obvious we need a single new mutation to make much smarter people. We just need the shuffling of the deck to place more of the existing + variants into one body. This will obviously be the goal of embryo selection, and I think would also be the goal of explicit editing. I'd wager that many more of the Nobel-sized brains alive at the end of this century (and the next) will owe their existence to one of these kinds of engineering, than to population growth.

ben_w 8y ago

Monocultures are fragile. They are fragile in agriculture, they are fragile in software development, and they are fragile in political thought. There is no reason to expect we would not be equally fragile if we all changed our genomes to be the “same race”, especially given that “The concept of race has no genetic or scientific basis” [1], and therefore can be expected to continue to find it easy discriminate against each other for being different right up until the supermajority[2] are all identical. [1] https://genomebiology.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/gb-2000-1-5-comment2004 https://genomebiology.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/gb-... [2] I was going to say ‘entire population’, then I remembered one of our differences includes a desire to be different; how different we get to be depends on social rules, which is why the number of furries who had themselves surgically altered to look like (say) cats is a small non-zero number.

chr1 8y ago
Sure monocultures are bad but talking about banning gene editing to avoid monoculture at this point is the equivalent of proposing to ban people who already own cars to buy teslas to avoid electric car monoculture. Because we are not anywhere near a monoculture, and for some traits monoculture is ok (do we miss the old design of vocal tract that gave us ability to not talk?). Also we won't have a monoculture for whole genome any time soon, because that would mean for everyone to raise someone elses kid which people tend to not like. There is a possibility that some people will try to make changes to appearance eye/skin/hair color, shape of nose. But that doesn't have that much effect on survivability of human kind (balancing higher rate of skin cancer vs vitamin D deficiency has other methods now) and banning gene editing to prevent that would be the same as banning all surgery to simply not allow plastic surgery.

Emma_Goldman 8y ago

'You would take away a technological advantage.' This begs the question. Whether this is an advantage or not is exactly what is at issue. 'Might not lead to your ideal of diversity utopia.' One of the defining traits of humans is that they are acutely aware of their relative social status. A significant group of those perceived advantages are based upon appearance. The attempt to imitate and supersede others in a toxic battle for recognition creates all sorts of harms. Opening up our germline to that battle seems extremely dangerous. Your comment reads like pure political reaction.

luma 8y ago

I feel like the comments here have some beef with "diversity" as used in this context. The impact of genetic diversity within a species is extremely widely studied and there is little doubt to the benefits nor is it a matter of personal politics. It applies to algea as much as it does sapiens.

chrischen 8y ago

Yes, so it should be highly regulated. While technology also allows for plastic, surgery, one can argue that it is purely useless from a practical point of view and only wanted as a result of flawed reasoning and social pressures. It’s relatively harmless to the rest of society, but gene editing (especially if you can also permanently alter your reproductive genes), can have devastating societal effects if people are allowed to shoot themselves in the foot this way. We have always had laws designed to manipulate society to help prevent people from shooting themselves in the foot (see qualified investor requirements, minimum drinking ages, mandatory car insurance, etc). For gene editing it’s particularly kmportant for the long-term survivability of the human race if we do not regulate our own use.