9 ms·
Interesting. I still roll to disbelieve on China shunning human enhancement. The gains are just too great, the fruit too low hanging. Several standard deviation
by ZhuanXia 7y ago
Interesting. I still roll to disbelieve on China shunning human enhancement. The gains are just too great, the fruit too low hanging. Several standard deviation increases in polygenic traits are on the table, including the most important economic trait, intellectual ability: https://www.gwern.net/Embryo-selection https://www.gwern.net/Embryo-selection
Given China’s almost unique state capacity to think long term, history of eugenic policies in sport, an ironically less Lysenkoist population than America, and a cultural focus on educational achievement and competition, this seems overdetermined.
In fact, animal breeders are getting very keen on iterated embryo selection. So the technology will get investment even in environments where it is illegal for humans.
We live in interesting times. Even a 2 standard deviation increase would allow a small population to produce the vast majority of genius-level intellects. 2 standard deviations is on the way low end of what iterated embryo selection offers. Should we find the causal variants, direct editing offers vastly more.
A world-wide ban on this technology is not on the table. Plan accordingly.
- JoeAltmaier 7y agoWow those are optimistic numbers. Considering we have NO idea what genes select for most features (if any).
- ZhuanXia 7y agoWe don’t need the causal variants for embryo selection, just the predictive variants. We have this for height now. The only reason we don’t have this for IQ now is everyone doing GWAS studies are too chicken to put an IQ test in with their other measures. As the cost of a sequence declines, this will not last. Obviously, this is not an issue if there is state involvement.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- pcrh 7y agoPeople have done IQ vs genetic variation in GWAS. They find that there is almost no impact of common variants on IQ. Example: >A genome-wide polygenic score constructed from the GWA results accounted for 1.6% of the variance of intelligence in the normal range in an unselected sample of 3414 individuals, which is comparable to the variance explained by GWA studies of intelligence with substantially larger sample sizes. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29731509 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29731509
- ZhuanXia 7y agoYes. For polygenic traits like IQ we need millions of samples tagged with IQ. 3000 is a really small sample.
- mlyle 7y agoThe linked study uses ~1200 very high IQ individuals (4 sigma out), so it has the same population of very high IQ individuals as you'd have in a random sample of tens of millions. There's also been large studies that have used years of educational attainment as a moderately-correlated proxy for IQ.
- ZhuanXia 7y agothe enriched population does not help as high IQ is not caused by rare variants. Rather it is the proportion of common variants that increase IQ to common variants that decrease it. This is why we need millions of samples.
- corporate_shi11 7y agoWe have already identified variants than can account for over 10% of variation in intelligence. Researchers have gotten around the lack of GWAS IQ test results by using years of educational attainment as a reliable proxy. These results have been achieved in less than 2 years and the science is rapidly progressing. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5985927/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5985927/
- stanfordkid 7y agoPolygenic scores for IQ are correlated with other traits that are less desirable (schizophrenia for example). I think the lift in IQ you get from embryo selection is counteracted by a lot of other (negative) factors. It is also unclear to what degree epigenetic inheritance plays in IQ. My opinion is the 8-10 IQ point boost is less than variance from unknown factors relating to doing IVF versus natural birth. In other words I would still go with natural birth (which has been time tested by evolution)
- ZhuanXia 7y ago>Polygenic scores for IQ are correlated with other traits that are less desirable (schizophrenia for example). Nope. IQ is negatively correlated with most mental illness. It is certainly not positively correlated with schizophrenia: https://www.gwern.net/iq https://www.gwern.net/iq
- mlyle 7y agoThis has positively nothing to do with what he said.
- ZhuanXia 7y agoRead it again. It clearly does.
- mlyle 7y agoI read it again, it clearly doesn't. ;) As it turns out, we have multiple contradictory findings about whether high IQ is positively or negatively correlated with mental illness. But even if you believe there's a negative correlation, it doesn't mean that many predictive SNPs can't predict both. E.g. cloud cover is predictive both for rainfall and heavy snow. However, heavy snow is negatively correlated with rainfall. The latter doesn't negate the former.
- stanfordkid 7y agoThis is certainly not something that can be answered with a simple Yes or No. I am by no means saying that the underlying traits are casually related — only that metrics which predict one may also predict the other. The human brain is a complex system and IQ itself is a very simplistic way to characterize it. Think of it this way: imagine IQ is like electricity powering a city. Different city configurations have very different power and load requirements. You might find that, in general, cities with more power function better. But perhaps the well functioning cities also had better transmission infrastructure. If you applied the rule of “more power is better” to a city without that infrastructure it would blow fuses everywhere and cause chaos. With this example aside, In fact the science does say that there is a relationship: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41380-018-0332-x?WT.feed_name=subjects_neuroscience https://www.nature.com/articles/s41380-018-0332-x?WT.feed_na...
- frgtpsswrdlame 7y agoThere are plenty of GWASs on IQ, they just struggle to replicate each other.
- buboard 7y agoHe targeted CCR5 which does have some (pretty striking) effect in mouse learning and synaptic turnover in particular. He was aware of that study. https://elifesciences.org/articles/20985 https://elifesciences.org/articles/20985
- nkkollaw 7y agoDoesn't it seem a little insensitive to experiment on human beings..? Given China's complete disregard for human life, I don't find it odd that they're the ones doing it, but we should not praise the effort.
- stoopidmurcan 7y agoYes and it's so telling to me that you are downvoted for pointing this out. HN is full of CCP apologists.
- hutzlibu 7y agoWell, if human gene editing really would work, than china (and others) would not only select for intellect, but also for obedience. Which is scary. Apart from that I do believe, that in the future human gene editing makes sense. Once it is actually understood. (until then volunteers are allright with me, but experimenting with babys ... is a bit off) Because we are successfully eliminating natural selection in various ways. But evolving works naturally through selection. Degeneration would be the long term effect, unless we find other ways. And improving our genes as we see fit ... seems to be a solution.
- ZhuanXia 7y agoYes. I am a little worried about genetic engineering in the very very long term, as it seems to make eusocial organization possible, which I find pretty abhorrent. In the short term though, it seems like a good idea. Regardless, in a multipolar world we don’t have much choice in the matter.
- 420basteit 7y agoWhy do you find eusociality abhorrent?
- seanmcdirmid 7y agoI think most of us find it uncomfortable, if not abhorrent. Do we really want to become the Borg and give up our individuality?
- buboard 7y agogenetically coded conformism is against freedom
- r00fus 7y agoThere was recently a story about a "Paean to Alpha Centauri", so I'll leave you with an appropriate quote: "My gift to industry is the genetically engineered worker, or Genejack. Specially designed for labor, the Genejack's muscles and nerves are ideal for his task, and the cerebral cortex has been atrophied so that he can desire nothing except to perform his duties. Tyranny, you say? How can you tyrannize someone who cannot feel pain?" - Chairman Sheng-ji Yang, "Essays on Mind and Matter" I have no idea how you'd manufacture both a loyal and genius breed - what/whom are they loyal to?
- thoughtstheseus 7y agoChina already has many highly “intellectual” people and is not a small population.
- ZhuanXia 7y agoYes, do to their large population and slightly higher average quantitative abilities (at least if you trust their PISA scores), they have roughly 20x more 4 sigma people than America. Chinese technological dominance seems likely even ignoring embryo selection. This will likely be amplified by better agglomeration in cities. Were western institutions capable of thinking long-term, this would add to their desire for human enhancement.
- seanmcdirmid 7y agoThe PISA scores they’ve done so far have been limited to Shanghai (the richest city) and then I think Zhejiang or Jiangsu (the richest provinces). It isn’t really a good sample of the entire country. I’ll be convinced when they release the scores for Henan :). Western institutions biggest advantage is the ability to easily leverage worldwide talent, which is incidentally China’s biggest deficiency. A lot of China’s human capital, for example, has helped with the success of America’s tech industry. Humans can be enhanced in other ways that don’t involve messing so finely with Mother Nature. We can simply develop and use better tools, for example.
- stoopidmurcan 7y agoGreat so China has no human rights, an autocratic leader, an ideology that places their ethnic race at the top and declares it should rule the world and now we're basically discussing -- essentially -- scientific experimentation on human beings and eugenics. Truman should've let General MacArthur take out Mao after we finished off the Japanese fascists. Now we have nuclear armed fascists with a much larger population. Cool cool cool cool
- thoughtstheseus 7y agoI don’t agree with this. Population size has not been the driving factor for technology development historically.
- StuffedParrot 7y agoI would imagine complacency is far more economically valuable than intelligence.
- JumpCrisscross 7y ago> Given China’s almost unique state capacity to think long term Beijing is presently a dictatorship. It is making the classic short-term decisions associated with placing personal political survival over national imperatives. (It made terrific capital investments between Xiaoping and Jintao. But the incentives changed with Xi for life.) What makes China uniquely positioned with respect to human genetic engineering is its willingness to treat its population as test subjects. That’s a huge advantage, albeit one with the predictable downsides.
- buboard 7y ago> still roll to disbelieve on China It's either for show, or perhaps to punish/keep him for publicizing the national superhuman program