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The tourism angle mentioned is the real deal killer for these regulations. If you outlaw this, people like me (who think inflicting stupidly and ill-health on
by ZhuanXia 7y ago
The tourism angle mentioned is the real deal killer for these regulations.
If you outlaw this, people like me (who think inflicting stupidly and ill-health on their children by withholding these technologies is morally wrong) will just fly to Singapore. Even if you could enforce this, not every country will. 5+ standard deviation increases in many traits is on the table: https://www.gwern.net/Embryo-selection#iterated-embryo-selection https://www.gwern.net/Embryo-selection#iterated-embryo-selec...
If we make this illegal here, we will be as children compared to those in China or Singapore.
The potential increase in IQ is so high that any country that defects from a global ban, even a smallish one like Iran say, would quickly be producing the vast majority of all genius-level intellects.
A global ban is just is not a stable equilibrium.
From a balance-of-power perspective, we would expect huge shifts in future power to those countries that embrace the technology. An absence of taboos against human enhancement may be a more important factor in this than current scientific achievement for predicting global leadership in the next couple generations.
In islamic culture, traditional scholarship places the point of ensoulment anywhere between 40 and 120 days after conception. Our western taboos around this topic, likely even our western secular taboos, derive from a belief in ensoulment at conception.
This simple doctrinal dispute may end up having huge consequences. And may allow islamic cultures to return to a position of scientific power, likely shared with China and other Asian countries who similarly do not share our taboos.
- doctorpangloss 7y ago> 5+ standard deviation increases in many traits is on the table... Sure dude, go ahead and subject your kid to experimental genetic modification in Singapore to chase this compelling evidence.
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- bufferoverflow 7y agoIt's not a genetic modification of a kid. This is embryonic preselection.
- ikeboy 7y agoIn what world is Iran a small country?
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- Veedrac 7y agoMost of the world lives in countries about twice the size of Iran or greater.
- coldtea 7y agoAnd most (over 80%) of countries are way smaller, so there's that...
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- Zanni 7y agoInteresting. My gut instinct is that Iran is a small country, but apparently my gut is wrong. It's in the top 10% by population and by area. [1] Of course "large" and "small" aren't well-defined. You could make a case that there are only two "large" countries (China, India) and all the rest are "small." [1] https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/population-by-country/ https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/population-by...
- OscarCunningham 7y agoCountry size is a heavy tailed distribution. Every country aside from China, India and maybe the US is small.
- smnrchrds 7y agoEven by size, Iran is relatively huge. Iran is larger than France, Germany, and UK combined. For a more visual indicator, see this: https://thetruesize.com/#?borders=1~!MTQ5Mzg4NTQ.MTIxMTA4MzE*MjI2NzY3NDA(MTQzMTM5NDc~!IR*NDMwMDY1Nw.MTI5NzU2Mjg)NA https://thetruesize.com/#?borders=1~!MTQ5Mzg4NTQ.MTIxMTA4MzE...
- flycaliguy 7y agoI hope your balance of power theory has been mulled over at the pentagon. We need the best propagandists we’ve got keeping that taboo as strong as possible.
- ZhuanXia 7y agoThey are welcome to try. But it seems unlikely to work on China. If I was trying to maximize Chinese future influence I would do my best to support the unscientific Lysenkoism of the mind that is so fashionable in the west and so completely out of fashion in China.
- marmaduke 7y ago> unscientific Lysenkoism of the mind that is so fashionable in the west I hadn't heard of this guy before, https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/the-imprinted-brain/201401/the-lasting-lesson-lysenko https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/the-imprinted-brai... but I still don't understand the relevance
- ZhuanXia 7y agoThe current fashion among the right-thinking in the west is to assume all characteristics are genetically heritable save for mental traits like intelligence, hand waving the twin studies which proved pretty conclusively that a huge portion of intelligence is genetically heritable. Darwin won the body, Lysenko the mind. Cognitive genomics is already heightening the contradictions of this view. Eventually it will collapse.
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- lanstin 7y agoYou understand that the difference in intelligence between humans and chimps could well be 100% genetic and the difference in intelligence between a poor town and a rich town could be 100% environmental, yeah?
- marmaduke 7y agoYour citation is quite critical of IES as a profitable enterprise along the lines of traditional tech companies. Concretely there are enormous challenges before it is applicable to humans and could be sold as a service. Instead it seems likely that large groups would federate to share process etc, eg at the level of EU to ensure that broad economic community benefits and not just the 1%.
- aphextron 7y agoI think you're placing far too much faith in genetic determinism. Intelligence is a highly fluid concept with no widely accepted defining characteristics. To think that geneticists can just "pick and choose" genes to add to an embryo that will reliably result in genius level intellects is absurd. The human mind is not a tomato plant or a wheat kernel. It's a highly complex system that requires a multitude of biological and environmental factors to flourish into an above average intelligence.
- faitswulff 7y agoReminds me of this quote: "I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein’s brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops." - Jay Gould
- lanstin 7y agoThat is Stephen Jay Gould and I just reread the Mismeasure of Man, an excellent inoculation against essentialist beliefs about the incarnation of intelligence.
- ZhuanXia 7y agoI am afraid Paul Krugman's take on Gould is pretty accurate: "Now it is not very hard to find out, if you spend a little while reading in evolution, that Gould is the John Kenneth Galbraith of his subject. That is, he is a wonderful writer who is bevolved by literary intellectuals and lionized by the media because he does not use algebra or difficult jargon. Unfortunately, it appears that he avoids these sins not because he has transcended his colleagues but because he does does not seem to understand what they have to say; and his own descriptions of what the field is about - not just the answers, but even the questions - are consistently misleading." He certainly misrepresented data in Mismeasure of Man:https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.1001071 https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/jou... I do find it amusing how people who claim intelligence is 100% environment are also terrified of letting others select for intelligence. It is almost like they know, deep down, that it will work. That intelligence, like almost every other trait we have measured, has a very large heritable component: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heritability_of_IQ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heritability_of_IQ
- kartan 7y ago> The potential increase in IQ is so high that any country that defects from a global ban, even a smallish one like Iran say, would quickly be producing the vast majority of all genius-level intellects. I do not know if this is even true. But, I do not see the USA rushing to give good education to its population. The geniuses are already there in crowded classrooms and underfunded schools. And, a good education pays off even for less gifted people. Their lives are better, they contribute more to the economy and less to crime. If that race is one, the USA (and Europe also) are already trailing.
- ZhuanXia 7y agoEducation is more a filtering mechanism than an enrichment mechanism. Panning does not create gold. Regardless, 5 standard deviations is enormously huge. Every person born would be as smart as the most elite scientists today. The most elite scientists in the future will be far smarter than anyone who ever lived. This has enormous military consequences, much larger than squeezing the dry rag of education.
- ddingus 7y agoIt's too good to be true. There will be a catch of some sort. Color me ultra critical. And "dry rag" very seriously devalues people. Maybe doing that is the catch itself. One does wonder. Good education is more than a filter. Great people are a combination of nature and nurture.
- ZhuanXia 7y agoWhatever your normative beliefs, we do not live in unipolar world. Our options are constrained by our competition. If the west makes this technology illegal, we will eventually be in conflict in a technological landscape we are too dull to comprehend. After which our laws, traditions and values will enter the history books.
- igor47 7y agoThis argument can be used to create and justify a race to the bottom in any field. Whatever your normative beliefs, those people over there are barbarians and will destroy everything you care about unless you destroy it first. How do we break the cycle?
- pcrh 7y ago>The potential increase in IQ is so high Not really, at least with the current state of knowledge. There are very few genes where one can predict that altering them will increase intelligence.
- gwern 7y agoThere are hundreds, they don't need to be confidently predicted they just need to increase on average, and even if there weren't, all you need is a PGS for selection since a small predictive power is enough when iterated repeatedly.
- derekja 7y agoI agree. Although the tech isn't there yet, it's rapidly coming. Whether the breakthroughs are two years away, or ten, or fifty they are coming. And discovery is accelerated by AI in looking for the solutions in biology. China is making far more investments in this area than is the US at the moment. A decent read from a few days ago: https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/2174815/china-pins-its-hopes-beating-us-race-bio-intelligence-supremacy https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/2174815/chin...
- Emma_Goldman 7y agoI agree that when the genetic markers of intelligence become better understood and gene-editing becomes cheaper, balance-of-power considerations will tend over time to push states to sanction gene-editing. Two other options though: (i) states will realise that a global competition in human enhancement is collectively irrational, and proscribe it through a robust international convention, e.g. as they have with chemical weapons, and nuclear weapons through the non-proliferation treaty (ii) states will sanction, pressure - and even attack - those who launch mass human enhancement programmes, e.g. as they sometimes do with countries breaking out of the non-proliferation regime
- landryraccoon 7y agoIf genetic engineering is outlawed, that will make AI automation even more disruptive for human workers. Automation won’t be outlawed simply because it’s too economically advantageous. China is going all in on AI already.
- ZhuanXia 7y agoi) states will realise that a global competition in human enhancement is collectively irrational, and proscribe it through a robust international convention, e.g. as they have with chemical weapons, and nuclear weapons through the non-proliferation treaty (ii) states will sanction, pressure - and even attack - those who launch mass human enhancement programmes, e.g. as they sometimes do with countries breaking out of the non-proliferation regime Possible, but I think this will be very hard, as it is ultimately a knowledge problem. Biology is like software in a way. In the limit, I think we will know the causal variants (which we don't know now it is not necessary for selection but is for genetic engineering) and then it will be difficult to contain such information or capabilities. Regardless, China does not appear to be interested in playing that game. As long as this is the case, the point is moot.
- Emma_Goldman 7y ago>"It will be difficult to contain such information or capabilities." But it is not the information that would be proscribed. The information by itself is harmless. A state-sanctioned human enhancement programme would be a huge health and infrastructural commitment. There is no way that a state could do this on a large scale and evade detection.
- noneckbeard 7y agoThere was a good meta analysis of the impact IQ has on outcomes estimating that, while statistically significant, IQ was not much better of a predictor of success than parent’s socioeconomic status or education, and high IQ people still have a wide variance in outcomes. So while you may get a bump, achieving Gattica-style world domination through gene editing seems a little far fetched. https://www.gwern.net/docs/iq/2007-strenze.pdf https://www.gwern.net/docs/iq/2007-strenze.pdf
- quotemstr 7y ago> IQ was not much better of a predictor of success than parent’s socioeconomic status or education Where do you think socioeconomic status and educational attainment come from? Divine right?
- danmaz74 7y agoSocioeconomic status comes primarily from your family's money.
- quotemstr 7y agoNo, it doesn't. There are lots of self-made people. A pure inheritance model is both defeatist and inaccurate.
- chantelles 7y ago"over 60 percent of the Forbes richest 400 Americans grew up in substantial privilege" (wikipedia) and add in race and gender rigging of the system and IQ is a factor among others.
- danmaz74 7y agoPrimarily doesn't mean only. Of course there are self made people, but the number of those who come from money if much higher.
- bayesian_horse 7y ago
- kurthr 7y agoLife at conception is a relatively new concept even in the catholic church. Up into the 70s many US priests taught that "the quickening" was the point of ensoulment. That changed with the legalization of abortion by the supreme court and the modern pro-life movement. Biblically, it is even more confused and the protestant (and southern Baptist) incorporation is similarly recent. https://embryo.asu.edu/pages/roman-catholic-church-quickening https://embryo.asu.edu/pages/roman-catholic-church-quickenin... http://www.bpnews.net/44055/how-southern-baptists-became-prolife http://www.bpnews.net/44055/how-southern-baptists-became-pro...
- jobigoud 7y ago> even a smallish one like Iran say, would quickly be producing the vast majority of all genius-level intellects. Wait, by this logic China and India should be currently producing the majority of genius-level intellects. Are there really 5 times more geniuses in China than in the US? If not it means education and infrastructure plays a part.
- pixelbash 7y agoEven if they were doing that now, won't it be around 20 years before it started having a large impact?
- jobigoud 7y agoThe population ratio were already the same. Assuming the average human IQ is the same, that would mean for the topmost 10 000 brilliant American geniuses, you would have about 50 000 Chinese geniuses of the same caliber. Or that there are as many people in China that are in the top IQ percentile as there are people in the US that are in the 5th percentile. I have no idea if this is true or if it has a sensible impact.
- buboard 7y agoGenetic modifications will go beyond human traits and variances relatively soon after they become available with relative safety. There is no reason people will not choose e.g. memory-enhancing modifications or huge life-extending ones. It will only take a few first experiments to have a new global "arms race". The fear of loss of power will easily silence most ethical concerns. In that respect western countries seem to have locked in the best scientists for that. There is no doubt that it will be a pivotal moment in the history of the human race (and probably the end of it)
- quotemstr 7y agoYou're right. But denial is a strong force, and in big parts of the west, values that contract to biology have become socially sacred and impossible to contradict. Whatever communities think like this will cling to blank-slateism even as they lose political power, economic power, and ultimately, their standard of living --- because the alternative is, to many people, literally unthinkable. It's tragic, especially because the stakes are high and advance permanent and self-reinforcing. How likely do you think it'll be that countries are able to catch to the newly-140-IQ first movers establish a lead?
- mherdeg 7y agoFor the reasons you suggest it's likely that any safe useful embyronic editing will make it to the global mainstream within a generation or so. This will have some interesting consequences for the future of our species. Greg Bear's "Sisters" (collected in "Just Over the Horizon") took a compelling angle on a world with ubiquitous genetic editing of embryos. He made a few predictions: (1) People whose parents opt out of the process will, indeed, have worse social lives, worse careers, and worse lives overall -- they will get sicker, die younger, and be less prepared for exceptional performances. Bear uses the lens of high school where everyone feels like they don't fit in but convincingly suggests that non-edited people would feel worse. (2) Most "pre-planned children" (those subject to embyronic editing) will get a combination of a handful of known safe "packages" which will probably be iterated annually by the companies who offer them. This means in practice that most people born in the same year will have many similar traits and quirks. (3) People will not, by and large, physically resemble their parents; desirable traits will include appearance. They will, however, all kind of look like one another. (4) People who opt out of the practice despite having enough money will be seen as quirky anachronisms from another era. (5) Inevitably someone will mess up and some trait will enter the mainstream which causes widespread calamity -- for example, 50% of people aged 15-16 who was built in a certain batch will suddenly die from a previously undiscovered anomaly. This will be treatable with CRISPR-style technologies and folks will rush to build a treatment the first time it happens. These mass deaths will come as a surprise because, while in some sense we know we are doing something different by imposing relatively few features on a relatively large population and by bypassing tens of generations of random mutation, we don't really understand what we're "losing" by skipping the normal process that selects for viable individuals. Bear theorizes that it's going to be important in a few decades to remember that everyone, both the pre-planned people and the unedited people, is human and deserves equal dignity as a person. He tries to end the story in an upbeat way when his protagonist addresses the surviving half of her graduating high school class: "" "This has been a bad time for all of us," she began, voice high and scratchy. She cleared her throat. "I've lost a lot of friends, and so have you. Maybe you've lost sons and daughters. I think, even from there, looking at me, you can tell I'm not ... designed. I'm natural. I don't have to wonder about whether I'll get sick and die. But I ..." She cleared her throat again. It wasn't getting easier. "I thought someone like me could tell you something important." "People have made mistakes, bad mistakes. But you are not a mistake. I mean ... they weren't mistaken to make you. I can only dream about doing some of the things you'll do. Some of you are made to live in space for a long time, and I can't do that. Some of you will think things I can't, and go places I won't ... travel to see the stars. We're different in a lot of ways, but I just thought it was important to tell you..." She wasn't following the prepared speech. She couldn't. "I love you. I don't care what the others say. We love you. You are very important. Please don't forget that." "" Not really sure what the broader lesson is, but the story stuck with me and there are a couple of specific predictions in there that will be interesting to see tested out in the next few decades.
- Simon_says 7y ago> 5+ standard deviation increases in many traits is on the table Interesting way to put it. The same absolute increase will not be 5 standard deviations for long.
- ppod 7y agoI agree with you, and I think it is telling of how warped this debate is by normative viewpoints that such a high percentage of reference sources and arguments come from one highly independent and active source (gwern). Aside from the detail of the argument, if you're observing a debate as an outsider, and you're interested in how the world actually is, it is often useful to kind of subtract an estimate of how people would like the world to be from the consensus.
- Gatsky 7y agoCountries which aren't run by tyrants will not engage in these sorts of experiments. Any free-thinking scientific community knows the risks vastly outweigh the benefits, and will continue to do so for a long time. Surely you can see the biggest problem is that IQ is a surrogate of what we actually want, and if you start editing to achieve that, you could easily end up with people that are world class at guessing the most obvious next number in a sequence, but will never discover anything. What is likely to happen is that somewhere like North Korea could start trying it. If they get far enough into it, they will probably realise super-intelligent people don't want to hang around in totalatarian regimes run by fools, or swallow propaganda. Either they will find a way to make super-intelligent psychopaths who are naturally gratified by participating in world-denomination skullduggery, or they will engineer them to be somehow dependent on the regime, perhaps introducing a disease that needs some hard to acquire maintenance therapy.
- hackingthenews 7y ago> Islamic culture, traditional scholarship places the point of ensoulment anywhere between 40 and 120 days after conception. Our western taboos around this topic, likely even our western secular taboos, derive from a belief in ensoulment at conception. Changing the creations of God is still very much considered forbidden in the religion. Also many scholars would still consider e.g. abortion without valid reason before ensoulment as forbidden. Personally I think the Islamic world would wrestle much more with this than any other.
- rick22 7y agoYou spoke valid points and after that you brought islam without any context. How does the reference to islam is coherent with your previous points?
- gumby 7y agoEvolution is a massive parallel computation system using heavily bummed code. Nobody really has any idea the value of any gene (much less how it interacts environmentally) on a systemic level. The cost of wiping out depression could be a lack of creativity. Which will be more valuable in a society 30 years hence? Nobody has any idea of course; that's the value of evolution: it continually run a set of multivariate experiments. Good luck to you and your kids; I honestly hope it works out well for you all. But based on centuries of fad "engineering" mostly at the environmental level (teaching, nutrition fads) it all below the noise floor.
- mellosouls 7y agopeople like me (who think inflicting stupidly and ill-health on their children by withholding these technologies is morally wrong The argument is not simply about "withholding" these technologies, but (as the article title explicitly says) restricting them to the rich. These are complicated ethical issues (that judging by some of your comments in the thread you are very able to debate clearly, knowledgeabley and intelligently) that are not served in discussion by misdirecting the question.