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Not via selective breeding. At least, not very successfully; there have been attempts, but fortunately most eugenicists let their “I wanna hurt the Inferior Peo

Not via selective breeding. At least, not very successfully; there have been attempts, but fortunately most eugenicists let their “I wanna hurt the Inferior People™ – err, Not-People™” rule over actually doing eugenics properly, so we merely got atrocities. And even if they had, you can't get much eugenics done in a handful of generations; I'm not aware of any eugenics campaign longer than ten generations, and even the longest of those are mostly just slow-motion genocides. In fact, we've mostly neutered evolutionary pressures on ourselves. In ten thousand years, this might be a minor problem, but we'll probably have figured out a way of doing genetic modification without being monsters by then.

praptak 5y ago
Getting mauled by a wild animal isn't the only kind of evolutionary pressure. As long as you die without having offspring, the pressure got you.
wyager 5y ago
> Not via selective breeding Yes via selective breeding. Look into Landian analysis of urban centers as “IQ shredders”. Cities attract the smartest people and then tank their birth rate. > we've mostly neutered evolutionary pressures on ourselves. In ten thousand years, this might be a minor problem It’s going to be a problem much sooner than that. Look into Yudkowsky’s analysis of evolutionary error correction bandwidth.
- wizzwizz4 5y ago
  > Cities attract the smartest people and then tank their birth rate. That's pretty simplified – but even if it wasn't, we're not going to run out of “clever genes” because it's not as simple as that. (But even if it were, the selection isn't strong enough for that to happen.) > It’s going to be a problem much sooner than that. If our artificial selection pressures remain the same. Which they won't. Two hundred years ago, our society's “artificial selection” was completely different; in two hundred years, it'll be completely different again.
  - wyager 5y ago
    > the selection isn't strong enough for that to happen Your model is busted - the Flynn effect has already reversed and intelligence is decreasing again. You’re right that it’s “not as simple” as my one-sentence summary but my claim is directionally correct. > it’ll be completely different again The risk has nothing to do with what the concrete pressures are, but how much error correction bandwidth we have vs background mutation load rate.
    - TameAntelope 5y ago
      It's far from a conclusion that the Flynn effect has certainly reversed, for what it's worth. The 2018 study most often cited is on a small group of military aptitude tests from families in Norway and hasn't been replicated since.
    - wizzwizz4 5y ago
      > Your model is busted - the Flynn effect has already reversed and intelligence is decreasing again. Which metric are we using to measure intelligence this time? How do you know it gives meaningful results for what you're trying to use it to measure? (Please don't say IQ.) And has the study been replicated? > The risk has nothing to do with what the concrete pressures are, but how much error correction bandwidth we have vs background mutation load rate. But the selection effects you've described are all local and weak. Worst-case scenario – absolute worst-case scenario – the city Americans marry rural Africans and the problem goes away. But it won't get to that point. Eliezer Yudkowsky knows a lot about philosophy of thought, and AI theory, but he hasn't put as much effort into learning about genetics. If the average geneticist isn't worried, chances are that he's made a mistake in his reasoning (or that you're misunderstood his concerns) – and I haven't heard anybody in a biological field worrying about this. --- Wait, are you talking about his “in the absence of selection pressure, we'll get mutations that aren't filtered out”? If so… that's a hundreds of generations kind of problem, and I'm confident that stuff like IVF embryo selection (selecting against the genes for known genetic conditions) is already counteracting that effect. (Yes, this is technically eugenics, yes it could get dystopian if we're not careful, no it doesn't justify what the word “eugenics” makes you think of, no I shouldn't feel the need to write this parenthetical, yes this is the internet we're talking about.) Transposons are likely to be a bigger issue. I read that they've started duplicating themselves more recently, and we don't really know why. But imagine the human genome (for some unidentified reason that hasn't happened in the last thousand years) starts degrading across the entire world, so we only have a hundred years left before no human fœtuses are viable. We could just GM a human embryo to be the genetic child of modern-day humans (whose genome we've already sequenced), and we roll-back any mysterious genetic problems that far-future humans might develop. There is an upper bound to how bad things can get, even imagining something out of a sci-fi novel, so I am highly suspicious of the motives of people who get loudly concerned about the “decline of the human genome”.
- krapht 5y ago
  I'm pretty sure the future is going to look more like Gattaca than Idiocracy. I wouldn't bet against genetic engineering.
  - wyager 5y ago
    This is one possible way of artificially boosting error correction capacity. I hope you are right.
jerf 5y ago
"In fact, we've mostly neutered evolutionary pressures on ourselves." No, we haven't. We've merely changed them, quite significantly. But there's still selection processes ongoing. Since people tend to hear "Racism!" when this sort of thing gets said, the pressures I'm discussion includes things like being able to survive the civilization's schooling system (teen suicides don't have offspring) and the different ways of attracting and being a good mate than one would pursue in an agrarian or hunter-gather society, such as being a visibly wealthy nerd. There's a lot of things still affecting and shaping civilization through who has how many children with who and how they treat them, and I haven't got a personal list of "good" or "bad" such effects, because it's not really about "good" or "bad", they just are, no matter what labels you put on them. Another example is the hypothesis that a significant part of why "autism" is on the rise is "assortative mating", or, to put it another way, that there are evolutionary pressures in modern society creating couples who end up essentially breeding for traits that, when overexpressed, may be called "autism". I'm not making a claim that is necessarily true, but it's an example of an evolutionary theory applying in the here & now.
- TameAntelope 5y ago
  You can't breed humans because you can't isolate or consistently provide for an environment for long enough, considering how long it takes humans to mature. Anyone trying to sell you on selective evolution is either ignorant or has an ulterior motive. There's a reason people tend to hear, "Racism!" when this sort of thing gets said -- it's not based at all in science, so what else would it be based in?
  - jerf 5y ago
    I'm not talking about "breeding" humans as a deliberate process; I used the term in the passive sense that evolution ever "breeds" anything. I'm saying, evolution is still functioning. Who has children and what happens to those children is not uniform simply because some illnesses that used to kill us are now survivable. That was never the only effect on our evolution anyhow, merely a particularly visible one. Many other effects are still in play. It's a myth that evolution has been shut down just because one particular mechanism has been partially blunted. Certainly the net effect has been a population explosion of late, but that's still only on a short evolutionary time frame (and we kinda already know that it can't continue much longer, re: climate change and such), but that doesn't mean every fertilized egg is surviving completely undifferentiated from any other, nor that there are any other selection processes in play.

praptak 5y ago

Getting mauled by a wild animal isn't the only kind of evolutionary pressure. As long as you die without having offspring, the pressure got you.

wyager 5y ago

> Not via selective breeding Yes via selective breeding. Look into Landian analysis of urban centers as “IQ shredders”. Cities attract the smartest people and then tank their birth rate. > we've mostly neutered evolutionary pressures on ourselves. In ten thousand years, this might be a minor problem It’s going to be a problem much sooner than that. Look into Yudkowsky’s analysis of evolutionary error correction bandwidth.

wizzwizz4 5y ago
> Cities attract the smartest people and then tank their birth rate. That's pretty simplified – but even if it wasn't, we're not going to run out of “clever genes” because it's not as simple as that. (But even if it were, the selection isn't strong enough for that to happen.) > It’s going to be a problem much sooner than that. If our artificial selection pressures remain the same. Which they won't. Two hundred years ago, our society's “artificial selection” was completely different; in two hundred years, it'll be completely different again.
- wyager 5y ago
  > the selection isn't strong enough for that to happen Your model is busted - the Flynn effect has already reversed and intelligence is decreasing again. You’re right that it’s “not as simple” as my one-sentence summary but my claim is directionally correct. > it’ll be completely different again The risk has nothing to do with what the concrete pressures are, but how much error correction bandwidth we have vs background mutation load rate.
  - TameAntelope 5y ago
    It's far from a conclusion that the Flynn effect has certainly reversed, for what it's worth. The 2018 study most often cited is on a small group of military aptitude tests from families in Norway and hasn't been replicated since.
  - wizzwizz4 5y ago
    > Your model is busted - the Flynn effect has already reversed and intelligence is decreasing again. Which metric are we using to measure intelligence this time? How do you know it gives meaningful results for what you're trying to use it to measure? (Please don't say IQ.) And has the study been replicated? > The risk has nothing to do with what the concrete pressures are, but how much error correction bandwidth we have vs background mutation load rate. But the selection effects you've described are all local and weak. Worst-case scenario – absolute worst-case scenario – the city Americans marry rural Africans and the problem goes away. But it won't get to that point. Eliezer Yudkowsky knows a lot about philosophy of thought, and AI theory, but he hasn't put as much effort into learning about genetics. If the average geneticist isn't worried, chances are that he's made a mistake in his reasoning (or that you're misunderstood his concerns) – and I haven't heard anybody in a biological field worrying about this. --- Wait, are you talking about his “in the absence of selection pressure, we'll get mutations that aren't filtered out”? If so… that's a hundreds of generations kind of problem, and I'm confident that stuff like IVF embryo selection (selecting against the genes for known genetic conditions) is already counteracting that effect. (Yes, this is technically eugenics, yes it could get dystopian if we're not careful, no it doesn't justify what the word “eugenics” makes you think of, no I shouldn't feel the need to write this parenthetical, yes this is the internet we're talking about.) Transposons are likely to be a bigger issue. I read that they've started duplicating themselves more recently, and we don't really know why. But imagine the human genome (for some unidentified reason that hasn't happened in the last thousand years) starts degrading across the entire world, so we only have a hundred years left before no human fœtuses are viable. We could just GM a human embryo to be the genetic child of modern-day humans (whose genome we've already sequenced), and we roll-back any mysterious genetic problems that far-future humans might develop. There is an upper bound to how bad things can get, even imagining something out of a sci-fi novel, so I am highly suspicious of the motives of people who get loudly concerned about the “decline of the human genome”.
krapht 5y ago
I'm pretty sure the future is going to look more like Gattaca than Idiocracy. I wouldn't bet against genetic engineering.
- wyager 5y ago
  This is one possible way of artificially boosting error correction capacity. I hope you are right.

jerf 5y ago

"In fact, we've mostly neutered evolutionary pressures on ourselves." No, we haven't. We've merely changed them, quite significantly. But there's still selection processes ongoing. Since people tend to hear "Racism!" when this sort of thing gets said, the pressures I'm discussion includes things like being able to survive the civilization's schooling system (teen suicides don't have offspring) and the different ways of attracting and being a good mate than one would pursue in an agrarian or hunter-gather society, such as being a visibly wealthy nerd. There's a lot of things still affecting and shaping civilization through who has how many children with who and how they treat them, and I haven't got a personal list of "good" or "bad" such effects, because it's not really about "good" or "bad", they just are, no matter what labels you put on them. Another example is the hypothesis that a significant part of why "autism" is on the rise is "assortative mating", or, to put it another way, that there are evolutionary pressures in modern society creating couples who end up essentially breeding for traits that, when overexpressed, may be called "autism". I'm not making a claim that is necessarily true, but it's an example of an evolutionary theory applying in the here & now.

TameAntelope 5y ago
You can't breed humans because you can't isolate or consistently provide for an environment for long enough, considering how long it takes humans to mature. Anyone trying to sell you on selective evolution is either ignorant or has an ulterior motive. There's a reason people tend to hear, "Racism!" when this sort of thing gets said -- it's not based at all in science, so what else would it be based in?
- jerf 5y ago
  I'm not talking about "breeding" humans as a deliberate process; I used the term in the passive sense that evolution ever "breeds" anything. I'm saying, evolution is still functioning. Who has children and what happens to those children is not uniform simply because some illnesses that used to kill us are now survivable. That was never the only effect on our evolution anyhow, merely a particularly visible one. Many other effects are still in play. It's a myth that evolution has been shut down just because one particular mechanism has been partially blunted. Certainly the net effect has been a population explosion of late, but that's still only on a short evolutionary time frame (and we kinda already know that it can't continue much longer, re: climate change and such), but that doesn't mean every fertilized egg is surviving completely undifferentiated from any other, nor that there are any other selection processes in play.