My personal thesis is the US is probably doomed - it has enough people on both sides of the political aisle that are against genetic explanations and *definitely* against gengineering, that it's extremely unlikely to adopt broad-scale gengineering fast enough to compete with countries like Russia or China that will embrace it wholeheartedly.
I've always assumed I'd need to travel to Estonia or Thailand or Singapore (or maybe somewhere like Prospera) to get my kids gengineered. If I have to give up US citizenship to do it (which seems a fairly likely reactive bipartisan Schelling point to gengineering existing for the rich and being actually effective), I'll do that happily and with zero hesitation.
I mean, the problem is that aside from gengineering, "you can't fix stupid." Well, what if "stupid" outlaws gengineering? Whichever countries do that are going to lose on a massive economic and human capital scale over the next few decades.
It's also pretty screwed economically and research wise for the next 2-3 decades due to the war brain-drain-emigrating and directly eating such a large chunk of prime-economic-production age men within Russia, so yeah, maybe Russia isn't going to be on this trajectory.
You're exaggerating a lot. And this wouldn't be a problem if Russian leadership wanted, they could just invite scientists from places where their research is undesirable, and it could be relatively cheap. The problem is Russian leadership does not believe in genetic improvement and Russian public too.
Putin banned transfer of "biomaterials" from outside Russia as he's afraid of West designing selective bioweapon.
However like other social engineering experiments under totalitarianism, they’ll probably go enthusiastically and horribly awry with unintended consequences. So better to leave well enough alone. The coercion probably won’t work. Many young people in China do not want to have kids even with free ART
When embryo selection for health and IQ becomes more prevalent in Asia (and yes, it will happen there first because most people there actually believe in eugenics), the Western countries will be forced to offer this as well. So if you want to see this happen in the US/Europe sooner, you should try to popularize this in China first.
Let's say we do a bunch more GWAS and come up with a pretty definitive study that suggests the genetic inputs into intelligence, and there are thousands of genes involved. That's a pretty good chunk of the entire genome! And let's say for each of those genes there's considered to be one "good" allele. If we offer parents the chance to IQ-max through editing each of those genes in an embryo to the "good" allele, will they not generally choose to edit all of them to do so? And then, are we not a good chunk of the way down the path to cloning? Do not height and symmetry also involve huge numbers of genes? How about moral character? Does this not move us further down the path towards standardisation? I see a future where humans may vary by skin, hair and eye appearance, but are generally pretty similar. Is this the desired outcome, or do you think we need mechanisms to ensure greater diversity?
If it were demonstrated safe, then I think the move would be toward being as smart and healthy as possible. In some sense, this is a reduction in diversity. The other article I published yesterday (Creating Future People) dives into the collective action problems and how this can be difficult. But adoption to the point that these collective action problems matter a lot, will probably take a long time. And we can adapt as we see it unfolding. I think height, symmetry, and moral behavior are highly polygenic. Height definitely.
I think that now we have a possible means of doing something about it. Strong forms of hereditarianism comes off as somewhat defeatist. Now we have "genetic interventions." Not perfect for a lot of reasons (e.g., can't change adults...yet), but it provides something of a positive vision. A lot of the unpersuasiveness of this is about framing and feelings. It's depressing and disgusting to a lot of progressives. This is a positive vision for humanity which makes believing the empirical arguments easier. It's not supposed to work like that (you're not supposed to mix up emotions, morals, and science) but that's what happens.
The move towards a more individualistic/market based economy is a major reason why realistic discussion around heritability has been driven underground imo.
Hereditarianism is always going to be a difficult sell in a society with major inequality, and where personal traits have major effects on people's social status. The weaker the link between personal traits and social status the more relaxed and open discussion around the causes of those traits can be.
Eugenics would also be much more palatable if it could be framed as a benefit to society at as a whole and not just a way for elites to advantage their own kids.
The classical progressive position among many intellectuals before WW2 was planned economies + eugenics. There's probably no way something along those lines would be politically viable now, but it's probably be more viable than hereditarianism on its own. Being more conventionally progressive in other areas would definitely soften heridiatiism public image at least.
What’s your evidence for PGS in this role “polygenic embryo screening actually gives more control to the parent and facilitates better-informed reproductive decisions that produce children that live better lives.”
Using PGS makes the IVF couple more informed as opposed to not using it. If they do not use it, then they do not know about the polygenic traits of the embryo they are transferring. If you want to know more about the health benefits and validation, you can see here: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-022-22637-8
Thanks. I was thinking about the parents who accept the gamble of eg implanting a mosaic embryo at one end of the spectrum of information, and the vast majority who do not (and do not qualify) think of getting PGT-M even when having IVF, at the other.
It seems like the relevant timeframe in which to gather information on actual outcomes (which can be perfectly satisfactory even with a ploidal mosaic!) is too slender and general fertility decline will make it even harder.
Most government expenditures are based on the concept of ROI. Why does my district spend 24k/kid/year k-12? Supposedly it has high ROI.
If it doesn’t have high ROI then why are we doing it. Wouldn’t we just cut that out?
What exactly do the poor “deserve” if we cut it? Should we give them 24k in UBI per kid?
If some people are genetically pre-disposed to addiction, should better off people give up drugs so as not to tempt them?
What should immigration policy be in a country that acknowledges genetics?
If I were to design a eugenic egalitarian system from the bottom up, it would probably look like Singapore. There would be some safety net but Government would shrink overall and social policy would be based on order and realism.
Would most progressives accept Singapore? It’s Gini coefficient after taxes and transfers is around the us level, and much higher then the European socialist countries like Denmark or France. Still, the poor appear to have a good life.
>Why does my district spend 24k/kid/year k-12? Supposedly it has high ROI.
Definitely. It's totally backwards causation - rich districts with parents who care enough to research and buy houses in rich districts with good schools spend more on students, but the spending doesn't actually matter - they do much better on test scores etc due to better human capital and parental involvement. You could cut the spending in half (most of which is wasted on administrators), with basically zero effect on educational outcomes.
I've LONG thought that if you homeschool your kids, you should be able to tap into the ~$17k per student per year the US averages on k-12 spending. Because that figure is completely ridiculous, and at least 60% waste, and we should encourage more efficient allocation of those resources at a societal scale.
Above and beyond paying for a home school curriculum, if your kids are actually smart, think how many grad students you could hire as personalized 1-on-1 tutors in various disciplines for that $17k per annum.
You can have both belief in genetic influence on behavior and belief that socioeconomic differences are the product of the unjust treatment of marginalized people by the oppressor groups. You just blame rich people for being predisposed to predation and exploitation instead of poor people for being predisposed to laziness and high time preference. Honestly this isn't hypothetical to me either, I think "the most successful members of a predatory species engage in more/more effective intra species predation" is a no-brainer and probably accounts for a larger amount of social problems than the conservative evopsych takes. The people who have the most impact on society probably have the most negative impact as well. That also seems like a no-brainer.
I didn't either but it's a perspective which is actually politically incorrect by today's standards, and when you pair it with the slightly less politically incorrect alt-right belief in genetics you suspiciously get a lot of powerful forbidden explanations. But honestly I think any wealth that requires trade regulations, zoning regulations, laws about non harmful personal contact, laws enclosing or restricting the commons etc probably actually is predatory, as is much wealth made by information assymetry (not "I went to trade school to learn how to weld" but more like counting on people not knowing something sells for 80% less elsewhere type of deal). Most of what institutions do is predatory. It can have side benefits, and also there are competing acts of predation which can allow for a functional equilibrium that's actually better for most than alternative mechanisms of resource allocation, but an absolutely huge amount of civilization is predatory. Free market conservatives tend to view this stuff as just dead weight but it's not, it's all doing something, and I think anti government leftists are more cognizant of this and have fewer blind spots. And I do think this corresponds largely to genes.
I agree generally, but allowing belief in genetic influence on behavior reduces "that socioeconomic differences are the product of the unjust treatment" by 3-4 times, at least.
My personal thesis is the US is probably doomed - it has enough people on both sides of the political aisle that are against genetic explanations and *definitely* against gengineering, that it's extremely unlikely to adopt broad-scale gengineering fast enough to compete with countries like Russia or China that will embrace it wholeheartedly.
I've always assumed I'd need to travel to Estonia or Thailand or Singapore (or maybe somewhere like Prospera) to get my kids gengineered. If I have to give up US citizenship to do it (which seems a fairly likely reactive bipartisan Schelling point to gengineering existing for the rich and being actually effective), I'll do that happily and with zero hesitation.
I mean, the problem is that aside from gengineering, "you can't fix stupid." Well, what if "stupid" outlaws gengineering? Whichever countries do that are going to lose on a massive economic and human capital scale over the next few decades.
Russia is full of genetic denialists
It's also pretty screwed economically and research wise for the next 2-3 decades due to the war brain-drain-emigrating and directly eating such a large chunk of prime-economic-production age men within Russia, so yeah, maybe Russia isn't going to be on this trajectory.
You're exaggerating a lot. And this wouldn't be a problem if Russian leadership wanted, they could just invite scientists from places where their research is undesirable, and it could be relatively cheap. The problem is Russian leadership does not believe in genetic improvement and Russian public too.
Putin banned transfer of "biomaterials" from outside Russia as he's afraid of West designing selective bioweapon.
I’m thinking something similar with unscrupulous use of any artificial reproductive technologies.
However like other social engineering experiments under totalitarianism, they’ll probably go enthusiastically and horribly awry with unintended consequences. So better to leave well enough alone. The coercion probably won’t work. Many young people in China do not want to have kids even with free ART
Wonderful article! My view is basically compassionate or beneficentrist libertarian capitalism. https://rychappell.substack.com/p/beneficentrism
God bless all of us!
When embryo selection for health and IQ becomes more prevalent in Asia (and yes, it will happen there first because most people there actually believe in eugenics), the Western countries will be forced to offer this as well. So if you want to see this happen in the US/Europe sooner, you should try to popularize this in China first.
Let's say we do a bunch more GWAS and come up with a pretty definitive study that suggests the genetic inputs into intelligence, and there are thousands of genes involved. That's a pretty good chunk of the entire genome! And let's say for each of those genes there's considered to be one "good" allele. If we offer parents the chance to IQ-max through editing each of those genes in an embryo to the "good" allele, will they not generally choose to edit all of them to do so? And then, are we not a good chunk of the way down the path to cloning? Do not height and symmetry also involve huge numbers of genes? How about moral character? Does this not move us further down the path towards standardisation? I see a future where humans may vary by skin, hair and eye appearance, but are generally pretty similar. Is this the desired outcome, or do you think we need mechanisms to ensure greater diversity?
If it were demonstrated safe, then I think the move would be toward being as smart and healthy as possible. In some sense, this is a reduction in diversity. The other article I published yesterday (Creating Future People) dives into the collective action problems and how this can be difficult. But adoption to the point that these collective action problems matter a lot, will probably take a long time. And we can adapt as we see it unfolding. I think height, symmetry, and moral behavior are highly polygenic. Height definitely.
15 years and basically same "the case for liberal race realism" arguments that were being made by then.
Of course the main difference now is that technology will force the issue.
I think that now we have a possible means of doing something about it. Strong forms of hereditarianism comes off as somewhat defeatist. Now we have "genetic interventions." Not perfect for a lot of reasons (e.g., can't change adults...yet), but it provides something of a positive vision. A lot of the unpersuasiveness of this is about framing and feelings. It's depressing and disgusting to a lot of progressives. This is a positive vision for humanity which makes believing the empirical arguments easier. It's not supposed to work like that (you're not supposed to mix up emotions, morals, and science) but that's what happens.
The move towards a more individualistic/market based economy is a major reason why realistic discussion around heritability has been driven underground imo.
Hereditarianism is always going to be a difficult sell in a society with major inequality, and where personal traits have major effects on people's social status. The weaker the link between personal traits and social status the more relaxed and open discussion around the causes of those traits can be.
Eugenics would also be much more palatable if it could be framed as a benefit to society at as a whole and not just a way for elites to advantage their own kids.
The classical progressive position among many intellectuals before WW2 was planned economies + eugenics. There's probably no way something along those lines would be politically viable now, but it's probably be more viable than hereditarianism on its own. Being more conventionally progressive in other areas would definitely soften heridiatiism public image at least.
What’s your evidence for PGS in this role “polygenic embryo screening actually gives more control to the parent and facilitates better-informed reproductive decisions that produce children that live better lives.”
Using PGS makes the IVF couple more informed as opposed to not using it. If they do not use it, then they do not know about the polygenic traits of the embryo they are transferring. If you want to know more about the health benefits and validation, you can see here: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-022-22637-8
Thanks. I was thinking about the parents who accept the gamble of eg implanting a mosaic embryo at one end of the spectrum of information, and the vast majority who do not (and do not qualify) think of getting PGT-M even when having IVF, at the other.
It seems like the relevant timeframe in which to gather information on actual outcomes (which can be perfectly satisfactory even with a ploidal mosaic!) is too slender and general fertility decline will make it even harder.
Anyway, interesting to read your thoughts.
Most government expenditures are based on the concept of ROI. Why does my district spend 24k/kid/year k-12? Supposedly it has high ROI.
If it doesn’t have high ROI then why are we doing it. Wouldn’t we just cut that out?
What exactly do the poor “deserve” if we cut it? Should we give them 24k in UBI per kid?
If some people are genetically pre-disposed to addiction, should better off people give up drugs so as not to tempt them?
What should immigration policy be in a country that acknowledges genetics?
If I were to design a eugenic egalitarian system from the bottom up, it would probably look like Singapore. There would be some safety net but Government would shrink overall and social policy would be based on order and realism.
Would most progressives accept Singapore? It’s Gini coefficient after taxes and transfers is around the us level, and much higher then the European socialist countries like Denmark or France. Still, the poor appear to have a good life.
>Why does my district spend 24k/kid/year k-12? Supposedly it has high ROI.
Definitely. It's totally backwards causation - rich districts with parents who care enough to research and buy houses in rich districts with good schools spend more on students, but the spending doesn't actually matter - they do much better on test scores etc due to better human capital and parental involvement. You could cut the spending in half (most of which is wasted on administrators), with basically zero effect on educational outcomes.
I've LONG thought that if you homeschool your kids, you should be able to tap into the ~$17k per student per year the US averages on k-12 spending. Because that figure is completely ridiculous, and at least 60% waste, and we should encourage more efficient allocation of those resources at a societal scale.
Above and beyond paying for a home school curriculum, if your kids are actually smart, think how many grad students you could hire as personalized 1-on-1 tutors in various disciplines for that $17k per annum.
You can have both belief in genetic influence on behavior and belief that socioeconomic differences are the product of the unjust treatment of marginalized people by the oppressor groups. You just blame rich people for being predisposed to predation and exploitation instead of poor people for being predisposed to laziness and high time preference. Honestly this isn't hypothetical to me either, I think "the most successful members of a predatory species engage in more/more effective intra species predation" is a no-brainer and probably accounts for a larger amount of social problems than the conservative evopsych takes. The people who have the most impact on society probably have the most negative impact as well. That also seems like a no-brainer.
I don't' share the view that wealth (generally) is acquired through predation and exploitation, but I suppose that's one angle to the issue.
I didn't either but it's a perspective which is actually politically incorrect by today's standards, and when you pair it with the slightly less politically incorrect alt-right belief in genetics you suspiciously get a lot of powerful forbidden explanations. But honestly I think any wealth that requires trade regulations, zoning regulations, laws about non harmful personal contact, laws enclosing or restricting the commons etc probably actually is predatory, as is much wealth made by information assymetry (not "I went to trade school to learn how to weld" but more like counting on people not knowing something sells for 80% less elsewhere type of deal). Most of what institutions do is predatory. It can have side benefits, and also there are competing acts of predation which can allow for a functional equilibrium that's actually better for most than alternative mechanisms of resource allocation, but an absolutely huge amount of civilization is predatory. Free market conservatives tend to view this stuff as just dead weight but it's not, it's all doing something, and I think anti government leftists are more cognizant of this and have fewer blind spots. And I do think this corresponds largely to genes.
Very interesting. Thank you
I agree generally, but allowing belief in genetic influence on behavior reduces "that socioeconomic differences are the product of the unjust treatment" by 3-4 times, at least.
I just think if you're going to drink from that glass you need to drink all of it.