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We haven't really attempted to genetically influence intelligence because the most obvious ways of doing so are horrendously evil. This doesn't mean it cannot o

We haven't really attempted to genetically influence intelligence because the most obvious ways of doing so are horrendously evil. This doesn't mean it cannot or should not be studied as the results could prove useful. E.g. let's say we discover that there's a common defect in a particular gene makes aurul learning harder, then we can raise awareness and get schools to check if struggling students might do better with pictorial learning. Knowing both that this mutation exists and how prevalent it is (and where!) is important for knowing if its worth expending limited school resources on alternative approaches.

woodruffw 4y ago
Virtually nobody has a problem with individualized genetic treatment. We already have gene therapy, even customized gene therapy. Treating a hearing disorder, even before birth, is not particularly controversial (at least, no more controversial than any hearing treatments). That’s discrete from eugenics as popularly understood, which involves large-scale engineering of the gene pool across generations. There’s general scientific consensus that the latter doesn’t even work, and near universal consensus that it’s unethical.
- concordDance 4y ago
  > There’s general scientific consensus that the latter doesn’t even work This is completely false to such an extent that I've read it several times to see if I've misunderstood. Humans have been breeding new varieties of plants and animals for millenia. Compare modern bananas to their ancient ancestors[1] or the modern chihuahua to its wolf ancestors. Heck, you can have substantial changes in just a dozen generations if your selective pressure is strong (or even one, if you sterilize every single light skinned person the next generation will be much darker skinned). [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wild_type#/media/File%3AInside_a_wild-type_banana.jpg https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wild_type#/media/File%3AInsi...
  - woodruffw 4y ago
    We’re talking about humans, not bananas. Similarly, the implication with eugenics is that we can somehow improve general human intelligence or other desirable traits, not fruit bearing capacity. The scientific consensus is that we don’t even know what general intelligence is, much less which complex of genes produce it. Edit: and, to be clear: the reason we can successfully breed bananas (or dogs) with desirable traits is because we aggressively cull the undesirable traits. I assume you understand what this would imply in human beings, and why this is unacceptable.
    - concordDance 4y ago
      "That doesn't work" and "that's unethical" are not the same thing. We can select for anything we can measure. E.g. if we did sperm harvesting from everyone who scored top marks in memory tests and sterilised the rest we'd get a population that's very good at memory tests (and probably also has better memory than today's average). In theory we could attempt to measure general intelligence using a battery of tests for everything we can think of and this would probably improve general intelligence. It would probably also give us all Tay-Sachs.
- inglor_cz 4y ago
  "There’s general scientific consensus that the latter doesn’t even work" Genetic counseling such as "when two people have the same recessive gene coding for a serious disease, they shouldn't have kids together" works very well and is used in many countries to suppress prevalence of various diseases. The first country to introduce a program to suppress Tay-Sachs this way was actually Israel, the home country of Holocaust survivors. If they can tolerate it, so can the rest of the world.
  - woodruffw 4y ago
    Testing and counseling for Tay-Sachs is not the same thing as attempting to breed abstract desirable traits, like general intelligence. Again: there is no major controversy over things like the former, and that’s not what’s popularly understood as eugenics. So it’s not clear how it rebuts the objection to what we’re actually talking about, which is the West matching the (potential) reactionary eugenics of China.
    - inglor_cz 4y ago
      It is not the same, but not that different either. There is a gap of 150 years and a lot of technological development between the relatively simple Tipu Sultan bamboo rockets that rained on the British in 1799 and ICBMs that can carry a nuclear warhead across the globe, but it is not really a difference of kind. They are both solid-propellant rockets working on the same principle. It is possible that future genetic and epigenetic manipulation will be much more subtle than whatever we can do today. Or perhaps you are addressing the categories. Well, "health" is, to some degree, socially defined. As is "disease". There were times when homosexuality was classified as a disease. Not that distant times. Alan Turing (in)famously committed suicide because of that. As of now, scientists working in the longevity field are pushing for aging itself to be redefined as a disease. Parents of heavily intellectually disabled kids would probably agree to any reasonably safe treatment that would help their kids, if such treatment existed. Not having enough general intelligence is a big obstacle in everyday life. HN gets an audience of mostly smart people; most of them cannot even begin to understand how cognitivelly loaded is contemporary world.

woodruffw 4y ago

Virtually nobody has a problem with individualized genetic treatment. We already have gene therapy, even customized gene therapy. Treating a hearing disorder, even before birth, is not particularly controversial (at least, no more controversial than any hearing treatments). That’s discrete from eugenics as popularly understood, which involves large-scale engineering of the gene pool across generations. There’s general scientific consensus that the latter doesn’t even work, and near universal consensus that it’s unethical.

concordDance 4y ago
> There’s general scientific consensus that the latter doesn’t even work This is completely false to such an extent that I've read it several times to see if I've misunderstood. Humans have been breeding new varieties of plants and animals for millenia. Compare modern bananas to their ancient ancestors[1] or the modern chihuahua to its wolf ancestors. Heck, you can have substantial changes in just a dozen generations if your selective pressure is strong (or even one, if you sterilize every single light skinned person the next generation will be much darker skinned). [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wild_type#/media/File%3AInside_a_wild-type_banana.jpg https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wild_type#/media/File%3AInsi...
- woodruffw 4y ago
  We’re talking about humans, not bananas. Similarly, the implication with eugenics is that we can somehow improve general human intelligence or other desirable traits, not fruit bearing capacity. The scientific consensus is that we don’t even know what general intelligence is, much less which complex of genes produce it. Edit: and, to be clear: the reason we can successfully breed bananas (or dogs) with desirable traits is because we aggressively cull the undesirable traits. I assume you understand what this would imply in human beings, and why this is unacceptable.
  - concordDance 4y ago
    "That doesn't work" and "that's unethical" are not the same thing. We can select for anything we can measure. E.g. if we did sperm harvesting from everyone who scored top marks in memory tests and sterilised the rest we'd get a population that's very good at memory tests (and probably also has better memory than today's average). In theory we could attempt to measure general intelligence using a battery of tests for everything we can think of and this would probably improve general intelligence. It would probably also give us all Tay-Sachs.
inglor_cz 4y ago
"There’s general scientific consensus that the latter doesn’t even work" Genetic counseling such as "when two people have the same recessive gene coding for a serious disease, they shouldn't have kids together" works very well and is used in many countries to suppress prevalence of various diseases. The first country to introduce a program to suppress Tay-Sachs this way was actually Israel, the home country of Holocaust survivors. If they can tolerate it, so can the rest of the world.
- woodruffw 4y ago
  Testing and counseling for Tay-Sachs is not the same thing as attempting to breed abstract desirable traits, like general intelligence. Again: there is no major controversy over things like the former, and that’s not what’s popularly understood as eugenics. So it’s not clear how it rebuts the objection to what we’re actually talking about, which is the West matching the (potential) reactionary eugenics of China.
  - inglor_cz 4y ago
    It is not the same, but not that different either. There is a gap of 150 years and a lot of technological development between the relatively simple Tipu Sultan bamboo rockets that rained on the British in 1799 and ICBMs that can carry a nuclear warhead across the globe, but it is not really a difference of kind. They are both solid-propellant rockets working on the same principle. It is possible that future genetic and epigenetic manipulation will be much more subtle than whatever we can do today. Or perhaps you are addressing the categories. Well, "health" is, to some degree, socially defined. As is "disease". There were times when homosexuality was classified as a disease. Not that distant times. Alan Turing (in)famously committed suicide because of that. As of now, scientists working in the longevity field are pushing for aging itself to be redefined as a disease. Parents of heavily intellectually disabled kids would probably agree to any reasonably safe treatment that would help their kids, if such treatment existed. Not having enough general intelligence is a big obstacle in everyday life. HN gets an audience of mostly smart people; most of them cannot even begin to understand how cognitivelly loaded is contemporary world.