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PaperclipPerfector  4mo ago (text post)   27490 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 28, 2025

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While the Sweeney jeans add is clearly an overreaction to fake eugenics downthread, it does seem like real, hard, embryo selection eugenics is here, or at least right around the corner. Scott Alexander's article released yesterday, Suddenly, Trait-Based Embryo Selection, says:

In 2023, Orchid Health entered the field. Unlike Genomic Prediction, which tested only the most important genetic variants, Orchid offers whole genome sequencing, which can detect the de novo3 mutations involved in autism, developmental disorders, and certain other genetic diseases.

Critics accused GP and Orchid of offering “designer babies”, but this was only true in the weakest sense - customers couldn’t “design” a baby for anything other than slightly lower risk of genetic disease. These companies refused to offer selection on “traits” - the industry term for the really controversial stuff like height, IQ, or eye color. Still, these were trivial extensions of their technology, and everybody knew it was just a matter of time before someone took the plunge.

Last month, a startup called Nucleus took the plunge. They had previously offered 23andMe style genetic tests for adults. Now they announced a partnership with Genomic Prediction focusing on embryos. Although GP would continue to only test for health outcomes, you could forward the raw data from GP to Nucleus, and Nucleus would predict extra traits, including height, BMI, eye color, hair color, ADHD, IQ, and even handedness.

The gist of the article is that while the science is still in its infancy and there are a lot of challenges to overcome, these companies are not just selling vaporware. There's real embryo selection based on traits happening, that is going to be significant for babies being born now.

Of course this article is just another confirmation of science fiction becoming reality, but it's still shocking to see from my perspective. You'd think we would at least have a discussion as to whether this should be legal or not, but unfortunately given how crippled out legislative apparatus is, tech companies continue to just push ahead with zero fear of regulatory change. They're willing to take the risk.

Now I personally have religious reasons to oppose this sort of intervention, but even if you don't, it's not hard to imagine the insane societal consequences of allowing free for all designer babies. As one hyperbolic comment on the slate star subreddit says:

Yet another reason for people to not have kids.

This shit is so socially erosive. "Want a baby? Do you want a prole baby, made the old fashioned way? You don't know what you're going to get! It's like a loot box, could be pure crap. You should PAY US to make a cool designer baby, with a 34% increased chance of the ultra-rare and coveted phenotype High Functioning Autist. If you have a loot box baby, they're going to get crushed by Ultra-Rare HFA Baby"

Nuke it from orbit.

While this comment is pretty over the top, I still think there's a strong point here! Gattaca was a cautionary tale, not a user's manual. Then again, I suppose the general zeitgeist considers the prole class to be so whipped, and coddled with bread and circuses, that our materialistic transhumanist tech overlords can simply do whatever they want, even if it will end up condemning "natural-born" people to permanent servitude.

The culture war lines here would've been pretty clear a while ago, but now it's muddled. Will the religious right be able to turn their coalition against this? Will the left see this as inequality on steroids? Will an uneasy alliance be made to ban this technology from the light of day? Only time will tell.

These people will have South Korean tier fertility and they will not, actually, produce a race of super geniuses. They’ll produce photogenic phlegmatic types because that is what kids as luxury goods fill the need for. Docile and looks like a teddy bear.

I think low fertility is a real problem but like 70% of it is just resentful losers looking for the one thing they can say to feel superior to more successful people.

Yeah, I think we've seen this coming down the pipe for quite some time. The main limiting factor of the tech is that it relies on IVF, which is pretty unpleasant to use (from what I've heard) compared to the natural process, and is additionally quite expensive. For that reason I expect this particular enterprise to be a very slow burn. Perhaps costs come down over time, but I suspect that reduced costs will march right along with reduced quality, and the inevitable lawsuits for implanting the wrong couple's child are going to be very culture-warry.

That said, I'm of two minds on the overall concept of human genetic manipulation, or rather of one slightly more subtle mind that doesn't take a simple yes/no.

The great advantage of genetic manipulation is that it allows us to clean out bad mutations in the absolute gentlest way possible. For instance, Jews are absolutely loaded down with genetic disease, and currently have to do pre-mating genetic testing to find out if they're at risk. Nature's tender way of keeping the rates of the most serious disorders down is to kill the child, typically in a fairly slow and painful fashion. I would understand anyone who had a recessive gene for those disorders paying to make sure that their children carried none at all, to spare them the heartbreak of having to worry about their own children. To make it more personal, my own eyes are extremely bad and I am currently slowly going blind, although surgery should ameliorate the worst of it. If I could, with a wave of my hand, ensure that my eyes die with me and do not burden my children, then I would. Who would want to saddle their children with such burdens, save that they are (as of right now) unavoidable? Natural selection is a powerful force, but it is not a kind one, and one of man's duties is to rise above the worst of nature.

(For anyone personally opposed to IVF specifically on pro-life grounds, imagine that we develop superb gene-editing technology such that it's possible to replace selected genes in a naturally implanted embryo. Very sci-fi, I know, but I hope the thought experiment explains the above sentiment.)

On the other hand, what I expect the technology to be used for is stupid, arrogant decisions about who the child shall be. This seems to be what Nucleus is trying to offer: height, weight, and even down to eye color. These traits are obviously superficial, and reflect the desire of a parent for a "better" child while only looking at the very vague surface of what that means. But, as anyone here is likely to know, random traits are randomly distributed (often on a Gaussian scale), and the more you filter your results on one axis the more you'll have to tolerate imperfections on the others. So if you filter the child on height, BMI, eye color, you'll have to make some compromises on ADHD and IQ, most likely. Compounding this is the problem that extreme outliers in a given trait are increasingly likely to be compromised in other traits (as the height starts to undermine bodily integrity, say), and so anyone who just picks out the max IQ baby is likely to have some unfortunate genetic weaknesses. Personally, I also have my money on our understanding of many of these traits being much weaker than we think, and whatever we think we're getting is not going to be what we actually want, but that's a different argument.

My central objection to this kind of picking and choosing, however, is that much of the power of natural selection comes from its inherent randomness. Without prejudice (okay, maybe with a little prejudice in sexual selection and some genetic integrity mechanisms), a candidate is randomly assembled and evaluated. Their success is purely on the merits; there is no intelligent force with an axe to grind, there is no finger on the scales. Regardless of what anyone thinks, a given set of traits and genes does or does not work, and the next generation codifies that. When we step in, we are assuming knowledge over the entire enterprise. The feedback loop gets limited to what we think we want, not what works or doesn't. You see this time and time again in any situation where human guidance is put over some kind of development or evolution without external validation, where the decisions made get increasingly fashionable and decreasingly connected with real results. The classic example is military developments during peacetime, where illusions about (say) the efficacy of the bayonet charge or static artillery or the battleship get built up year over year until the actual test of war comes and shatters them. I suspect that human self-selection of traits is going to enter this same internal cycle of arrogance. The feedback cycle for success or failure is so slow that it exceeds the lives of the people responsible for the earlier decisions, and worse yet, the evaluative capacity of later generations is going to be shaped by those earlier generations. Don't get me wrong, feedback WILL come, nature WILL reassert herself, just as she will inevitably do for our current fertility crisis, but the longer the illusions hold the uglier it's going to get for everyone. And what's at the core of it, I believe, is the human intuition that we have reduced to a science a domain that is frankly beyond our analysis. We must be humble, and recognize that the best we have is heuristics, and that going further than that is arrogant and foolish.

This problem is, of course, only compounded by the fact that doctors will be regarded as the experts on human trait selection, when in fact they are only experts on identifying gene clusters and giving vague approximations of what they do. I hope people will not confuse the two, but based on how we confuse doctors' technical expertise for moral or strategic guidance already, I don't have high hopes for the future on that count.

But, as anyone here is likely to know, random traits are randomly distributed (often on a Gaussian scale), and the more you filter your results on one axis the more you'll have to tolerate imperfections on the others. So if you filter the child on height, BMI, eye color, you'll have to make some compromises on ADHD and IQ, most likely.

I'm not convinced. Humanity has a long and successful history of breeding for strict usefulness - which often ends up being the same as fitness.

Wild hogs interbreeding with escaped factory farming sows have led to feral hog sounders orders is magnitude more troublesome than wild hogs ever where in the past.

Pick any natural environment that ever had wild horses. You'll find a breed of domesticated horse that, when allowed to go feral, would outcompete the native wild horses, and quickly. Humans have made them larger/stronger/sturdier than nature ever could.

My fear is that selective breeding will allow humans to do the same to their children. And just like street dogs, which effortlessly outcompete coyotes and wolves in urban environments, those designer babies could end up strictly superior in the environment they are made for. As with the hogs, some interbreeding with the "wild" population might improve the end result significantly.

Now, with horses, hogs and dogs we need thousands of generations to get results. The question is how much this process is accelerated by direct gene selection.

Feral dogs are mostly a problem in places that don’t have wild boar(Americas, Australia). Mustangs have not outcompeted native wild horses for the simple reason that America doesn’t have any. And coyotes and wolves both outcompete feral dogs.

Theres interesting things going on with the evolution of feral cats, but in Australia and deserted islands, not the USA(which has bobcats).

I'm not convinced. Humanity has a long and successful history of breeding for strict usefulness - which often ends up being the same as fitness.

We also have a history of breeding fragility. Dogs are the usual example. As far as I know, wolves (or sometimes hybrids) remain more fit anywhere with their range, and a lot of dogs are useless (e.g. toy breeds) or damaged (e.g. overly-large German Shepherds with hip dysplasia). Ornamental plants, too. Sometimes they seed and "go wild", and typically later generations lose their showiness very quickly.

a lot of dogs are useless (e.g. toy breeds) or damaged (e.g. overly-large German Shepherds with hip dysplasia).

Come on, that's obviously only a side effect of our bored decadence. We made those long after we got good guard dogs, shepherds, rat terriers, badger chasers and a dozens of more useful specializations.

And sure, we might well fear a repeat of that tendency when we start selecting traits in our children, but in the end parents still want their kids to be successful, not ornamental. But yes, I hope for the sake of our grand daughters that chest size is not determined by a small number of genes.

but in the end parents still want their kids to be successful,

Be afraid of this. Be very afraid. Immoral Mazes reward psychopathy - mean chickens. Selecting for expected income would literally be one of the most destructive rubrics possible; at least if 5% of the new generation had penis noses it'd mostly just suck for that 5% rather than dragging everyone else down with them the way that 5% being genius psychopaths would.

From a consistently pro-life perspective, I think the gravest moral concern here is the potential to normalize and expand IVF.

In vitro fertilization involves creating more embryos than you intend to implant and then destroying the rest. If you are, as I am, a consistent prolifer, you recognize those embryos as people. IVF as practiced is therefore already a moral nightmare. If you were to fertilize one or two embryos and then implant them with a level of safety similar to natural conception, the moral valence of IVF would change dramatically.

Embryo selection does just the opposite. It doubles down on creating and destroying embryos – people – to select the one that seems to have the best genes.

As bad as current IVF practices are, they are mostly restricted to couples who cannot have children naturally. Embryo selection changes that dynamic. It encourages any couple who can afford it (at apparently less than a year’s college tuition!) to produce ten children and then slay nine of them. That’s why Scott’s reassurance rings hollow:

I think the strongest objection to selection would come from someone who is anti-abortion. If they think life begins at conception, then actual harm is done to a frozen embryo if it is not selected (and so probably eliminated).

But even this isn’t an argument against polygenic selection. It’s an argument against IVF in general, which usually involves production of more embryos than the couple intend to bring to term. …

In vitro fertilization involves creating more embryos than you intend to implant and then destroying the rest.

I share some of your ethical concerns around IVF. But the wilful misrepresentation of how IVF works does not help pro-life arguments. IVF superstimulates the ovary in order to collect many eggs in one go. Of these, only a proportion fertilize, and only a proportion of those start developing, and only a portion of those become embryos, and only a proportion of those are genetically viable. The 'many embryos used up to make one child!' faux-statistic is because of natural attrition, because human reproduction is dicey and inefficient. Not because someone arbitrarily decided to discard them. If there are any surplus embryos at the end of this gauntlet they would normally be frozen for later use.

I think you misunderstood me. Most of the concern in my post is directed at the unimplanted embryos at the end of the process. That is also where polygenic screening becomes a focus of discussion.

I do think that the post-fertilization attrition rate is morally relevant insofar as it compares unfavorably with natural conception, and I said so, but that's not what I meant by destruction.

I don’t really see why this is bad. You have to to put in perspective, which is that we are in a full blown race against genetic meltdown in the gene pool. Genetic mutational load is cumulative! That means deleterious mutations continue down the germ line! In layman’s terms: We are breeding people to be dumber and weaker and sicker at an alarmingly fast rate. Why shouldn’t we equip people to fight this trend? It’s like, our only effective tool at this point

Idk generally biodiversity is a strength for life and gene editing ourselves to be more similar and eliminate mutations opens up some long term danger. Even just monocultures without same genetics but same species clumped up too much in an area can end up wiped out.

Now with gene editing technology perhaps we'll avoid the issues because we can literally just edit ourselves to not die to a new disease, but that's gonna depend on how much we can do and how fast we can do it.

I think it's perfectly fair at least to worry that planned genetics might have an unexpected issue the same way planned economies did. Easy to think you outsmarted the greater systems of the world until it bites you in the ass.

I don’t think any genomes are being fully replaced. It’s just people selecting for the best traits in their future offspring, which retains vast majority of the diversity of current populations.

Relatedly, is this not already a current concern with drop in fertility rates? Perhaps certain populations outbreeding others is creating a monoculture, yet I never hear this as a concern. Curious!

Do the genes that code for immune system responses also tend to be the ones that have a big effect on polygenic scores for eg, intelligence? If not, I'm really not too worried about these selected embryos being dangerously similar to one another

Conversely, would a gene pool guided by culture (which is a lot more volatile) not be much more vulnerable to genetic catastrophe?

It's that one Asimov story again, we'd be saving ourselves from one form of entropy only to discover a new one.

Genetic catastrophe of what kind?

Extinction, what else?

That escalated quickly

Now I personally have religious reasons to oppose this sort of intervention

What are those reasons? Do you oppose IVF, in general?

Thomas is Orthodox. I believe there isn't a formal Orthodox dogma on this, in the same way as the Catholics, but it would be fair to say that there is a high degree of Orthodox skepticism around IVF and similar technologies. If that piece from 2008 is representative, the attitude seems to be very cautious. They would not support any process that involves destroying or discarding fertilised embryos, but assistive technology in principle is not forbidden. The whole article I linked includes a section noting that the embryo has the ethical rights to its unique human identity, to life, and to eternity and immortality. More pertinently to this subject, Metropolitan Nikolaos writes:

Preimplantation embryo testing is connected with the application of IVF (see e.g. Ehrich et al., 2008). When the aim of testing is therapeutic or preventive intervention, then it is compatible with classic medical perception. However, at present, not only are therapeutic cases very few, but they also carry all related IVF consequences. In fact, when the tests are positive – namely, when a genetic disorder has been diagnosed – the affected embryo will not be transferred. If no unaffected embryos are produced, then the chance of a pregnancy is prevented.

Moreover, preimplantation testing could eventually lead to selection of special traits (e.g. gender, colour of hair or eyes), or even to destruction of embryos bearing undesired traits; consequently, it may generate a eugenic perception of life.

Although preimplantation testing forms a modern diagnostic method that is very promising, the Church ought to maintain Her explicit reservations.

Though I am not Orthodox myself, I am happy to endorse the above position.

He goes on to write:

Undoubtedly, modern technology has greatly contributed to health research and promises even more achievements. This is considered an exceptional blessing from God. Nevertheless, its irrational use threatens to ‘desacralize’ man and treats him as a machine with spare parts and accessories.

Although man regulates technology, he could ultimately be governed by it, unless he is prudent. He may be easily enchanted by technological achievements and, consequently, may become subjugated by them. He risks destroying his own freedom in the name of the freedom of scientific and technological progress that aim at expanding human dominance over nature.

The use of technology and human intervention, to the extent that it safeguards and assists in the sacredness of human fertilization, is not only acceptable but also desirable and pleasing to God. However, technological progress is not considered successful when it imposes choices contrary to nature, affects family unity, interrupts the co-operation of spiritual and natural laws and replaces God. Success is not only the discovery of a new revolutionary technique within the wide context of genetic engineering; it is also the effective confrontation of numerous problems (genetic, psychological, social, ethical, financial, etc.) that emerge from an irrational practice, particularly in the field of invasive fertilization.

The Church is not afraid of changes, neither is She against novel discoveries. Nevertheless, She firmly rejects disrespect for creation and the human person as well as desecration of the institution of family. Fertilization forms the holy altar of life; therefore, entering inside it, requires respect and fear of God.

[...]

The Church embraces pain, illness and disability within the context of man’s fall. At the same time, however, She respects medicine. Although She blesses every ethically acceptable medical human attempt to restore health, She entrusts the final outcome in each different case to God’s love for every person separately. The epitome of Her mentality can be found in the Ecclesiasticus (Book of Sirach, 1952 edition): ‘My son, in thy sickness be not negligent: but pray unto the Lord, and he will thee whole’. She faces everything with patience, humility and faith. She does not differentiate trials from the love of God, but views them as opportunities for salvation and sanctification.

The Church avoids specific rules or excommunications when dealing with bioethical matters, including those concerning assisted reproduction. Basically, She leaves them open, while, at the same time, She indicates the direction and ethos of approaching each specific case. She does give a generalized definition of God’s will, but offers everyone the opportunity to detect it in his or her own life.

This seems well put to me. 17 years since have passed since that was written and today we might wish for a firmer statement, but I think the Catholics have shown the benefits but also the dangers of declaring too many explicit rules too swiftly. For most ethical issues I respect the approach of giving a general direction, and a clear ethical framework, but not presuming to declare the correct action in every individual circumstance.

Upper claaaes becoming a monoculture makes the revolution so much easier.

Insofar as they're able to maintain cohesion and will to power, the opposite is true.

Revolutions happen when elevated factions with higher internal cohesion than the ruling elite figure they'd be better off without their supposed betters. Unity of purpose in the ruling elite makes these conditions less likely to happen.

Nicolae Ceaușescu would dispute this. So would Stalin, for that matter; unless we're going to reduce the claim to a tautology, that the fact that all movements have leaders makes those leaders by definition "elevated factions" renders the possibility of an "uprising of the masses" defnitionally impossible.

The elite do not enforce their will by their own hand; that is done by the security state, whose ranks are filled from the very masses whose necks they are stepping on, and who stay loyal so long as they have faith that backing the elite is a better deal than the alternative. No amount of in-group cohesion will save the ruling elite if and when they decide "hey, why do we need all these lessers around," or elite incompetence erodes the secuirty apparatus' faith in the elite.

the fact that all movements have leaders makes those leaders by definition "elevated factions" renders the possibility of an "uprising of the masses" defnitionally impossible

This is correct. Masses are categorically incapable of mounting any deliberate action. All they can muster is panic and senseless violence. Any direction is given by leadership, which is incompatible with being a mass.

The elite do not enforce their will by their own hand; that is done by the security state, whose ranks are filled from the very masses whose necks they are stepping on

The necks of the baton wielders are not stepped on, or at least not enough as to make them ineffective. When that happens, they tend to turn the batons against their commanders in military coups, and become new elites; or break ranks and fail to defend their commanders against competitors.

No amount of in-group cohesion will save the ruling elite if [...] incompetence erodes the security apparatus' faith in the elite.

What you are describing is quite exactly the higher level of in-group cohesion of a counter-elite producing a circulation.

A gang of colonels decides they trust each other more than their commanders, and performs a military coup. A common story.

But a more common if less dramatic story is that the colonel is the friend of the general is the friend of the politician and that they all have more to lose by breaking ranks, so they all agree to preserve the system and keep their mouths shut.

Genetically engineered viruses don't give a fuck about internal cohesion of a part of the social strata.

If we're just going to make up fictitious weapons, I don't see why we can't make up fictitious countermeasures as well.

Warfare however does give a fuck about internal cohesion. Anybody that's ever done it will tell you that. And that holds even when it's making-FOXDIE tier biomedical spycraft.

It's times like this I wish I could toss myself into stasis for a decade or two for this technology to hit mainstream.

Not that I'd use it myself, but I really want to see what people's revealed preferences would be if they have the option to pick and choose their offspring's traits.

Based on sperm banks: hard eugenics.

Iirc danish sperm is the worlds most coveted.

We will all be Nikolaj Coster-Waldau and Scarlet johansen

I genuinely wonder if there's anyone so deep into wokeness and with enough disposable income that they would deliberately select for a gay son and/or thot daughter just to own the cons.

Check how many of Hollywood's elite kids are trans (fad of the day) and answer yourself

Well, as someone who is highly in favour of this technology being available, I can only hope that the entanglement between the Trump administration and the Thiel/Musk corner of the grey tribe is still strong enough that the Republicans will not be able to mount any coherent opposition to this.

Gattaca is ultimately still a movie, and it had to engage in significant narrative gymnastics to contrive a scenario in which the viewer would be primed to oppose the putative technology. Spoiler, the physical requirements manned spaceflight programmes impose on their astronauts are already unattainable for the vast majority of people. You could have written much of the same plot with no embryonic selection technology involved at all; the only role it plays in the movie is that it lends an element of alien scientific certainty to the judgement, like how people are more comfortable with "faceless bureaucrat rejected your application for credit after looking at your file for 10 seconds" than "AI rejected your application for credit".

Also the main character has a fatal heart condition and says he has a 99% chance of heart failure with a few years. He collapses clutching his chest partway through the film. He is entirely medically unqualified to go on a multiyear space program.

The central point of the film is the opposite of what was intended. They would be right to reject him.

This is just my head cannon (I think), but I always interpreted his terrible heart condition as just him having a normal human heart and not a eugenically selected überheart.

They explain given the state of his heart he probably won't live to see his 32nd birthday. I interpret that as a real issue.

What kind of eugenics does it take to get a head cannon?

I believe the term of art is "skull gun".

None, just mosey on down to the Leased Territories for some quick outpatient surgery.

No eugenics, but you need to write an email to Joseph Manderley.

I enjoy Gattaca but I also agree that 'Key member of a long spaceflight being at significant risk of heart failure' is something that'd disqualify you right now without looking at your genetic code. The plot would probably feel better if it were pure genemod-bias at play.

For all the hype of the selection process for the first astronaut class --- The Right Stuff is a fantastic movie --- I don't think the current process is anywhere near as physically rigorous. They're probably still fit relative to the populace, but it's no longer quite the standard of perfection they started with. Deke Slayton of the Mercury 7 was grounded at the time for a minor heart issue, but got to fly later, and John Glenn was pretty old (77) when he flew again on the Space Shuttle in 1998.

The original flights had to work, right? They were America's way of showing superiority to the Russians and to Communism. Now that it's just another tour of service, albeit an unusual one, I'm not surprised standards have been relaxed.

The combination of better automation, simpler missions (and in particular not going behind the Moon and therefore potentially having to carry out manoeuvres while out of comms with Earth) and more payload meant that the Shuttle could afford to carry passengers in a way that earlier missions could not.

Early space suits were very hard to work in because constant-volume flexible pressure vessels are hard. This has gotten better, but isn't a fully solved problem. In much the same way that early aircraft required large forces on the controls (flying a B-17 I'm told is an arm workout on a good day, doubly so when the trim settings are damaged). It doesn't take a serious bodybuilder to fly an Airbus today, though.

I’m genuinely curious as to what the Chinese Communist take on this will be.

On the one hand, this could very well be their golden ticket, not just out of their apparently terminal fertility/relationship-formation doom spiral, but to an entire population of superhuman Han Chinese who could utterly mog the rest of humanity in every single human endeavor—and if this race of Übermenschen is ushered in by the CCP, they will effectively have an eternal Mandate of Heaven. This has been every Chinese ruler’s wet dream since the time of Confucius, if not earlier.

On the other hand, the CCP has not looked too kindly on past attempts at human genetic engineering; see, for example, how they threw He Jiankui in prison for 3 years over his CRISPR experiments. And of course, the very idea that individuals may have innate differences that cannot be attributed to their environment is utter anathema to Marxist orthodoxy—whence Lysenkoism in the Stalin era. Now, my sense is that the (post-Mao) CCP wouldn’t force the scientific establishment to kowtow to politics the way Stalin did: they know that that way lies the ignominious end of China’s ascendancy on the global scientific stage. But at the same time, they really are true believers in Marx, Lenin, and Mao to an extent that most western commentators don’t fully appreciate.

but to an entire population of superhuman Han Chinese

Expecting this to be applied uniformly over an entire population is just entirely wrong. We already have a problem with the overproduction of elites now. There are societal benefits for having widespread high IQ, but the personal benefits are mainly from having a relative advantage. If the current elite class doesn't heavily restrict how proles can use this technology, then a out of the upcoming genetically enhanced generation, ambitious lower-class climbers will seize control of the governing apparatus and then shut the latter behind them. In the "best case" scenario (scare quotes because IVF involves abortion and abortion bad), this technology will be restricted to removing disease-causing variants from the population. (With "diseases" expanded to cover genes that cause aggression and ambition. "Testosterene-linked Psychopathy" or somesuch will be the new "Schizophrenia.") In the "worst" case, this technology will be illegal in a way that remains accessible for only the elites.

There is much weaker association between personal IQ and personal income, than between group IQ and group income.

That's an artifact of how we draw the groups. For example: america has pursued a strategy of making sure high-skill manufacturing and the production of prestigious goods happens internally while lower-skill manufacturing and production is exported elsewhere. But you can't do the former without the latter. Drawing the circle around our entire production chain would drop the average IQ and average wealth... and also make it obvious that the people on the higher-paying end of the chain benefit from having lower IQ people available to do more menial jobs.

Perhaps you mean something like, "Self-identified, self-organizing cultural group benefit from having a higher average IQ," but that's of minimal comfort because "American" (or for that matter "French" or "British" or "German") isn't and has never been the primary unifying cultural identity for all the people claiming it as a title. Individual subgroups-- whether ethnic, or religious, or ideological, or class-based, will look out for their own interests at the expense of others.

And of course, the very idea that individuals may have innate differences that cannot be attributed to their environment is utter anathema to Marxist orthodoxy—

This is a common point I see repeated about Communism, but in practice it's more promoted by liberals and Western Marxists then actual Communist regimes. Both the Soviet and Chinese education system are hugely based around finding talented students and elevating them through intense educations. The actual implementation of blank slate equity type programs and elimination of gifted tracks is an oddity of Western capitalist countries neither the Soviets or Chinese ever attempted to put anything like that into practice. And the leaders of both were willing to make statements about people groups that would make most Western leaders faint.

Your absolutely right that the Chinese and especially Xi Jinping are true believers in Marxism but it's a syncretized and Sinicized, Marxism full of Han chauvinism. Very few Chinese ascribe to blank slate ideology and I don't think the government particularly cares about promoting it or even subscribes to it themselves. I feel like trying to predict the CCP based on "Orthodox Marxism" Is like trying to predict the behavior of Evangelicals based on the Catechism Catholic Church, you might get some hits but it's not a useful way to go about it. For example the CCP is comfortable not suppressing theories about Chinese being a separate race of humans descended from a different ancestor, while these theories are not mainstream they aren't taboo either. The PRC is a national project for Chinese and nationalism and pride in China are off the charts, it's not a self hating liberal western country but neither is it a post national experiment like the Soviet Union. The CCP is out to benefit Chinese and justifies it's rule as a meritocratic rule of experts.

I agree the CCP reaction will be interesting and they may very well be hard against all this, but if they are it's not going to be against based on a slaveish adherence to blank state theories that they don't subscribe to and their entire society is organized in opposition to.

I confess I'm pessimistic here. If I had my way we would just declare this whole field a crime against humanity and end it there, but the human race has generally been pretty bad at putting genies back in bottles. We mostly managed the first time with eugenics, but we may not a second time.

I don't have a whole lot to say about the Scott Alexander article either other than that this is another of the sporadic posts that remind me that, while I like some of his writing, I occasionally need to remind myself that he is, for lack of a better term, a moral alien.

Why is that exactly? I'm genuinely quite curious.

Just to be clear--you're against gene editing for moral reasons, rather than "we don't know enough and shouldn't mess with it" reasons or something else, yes?

If so, we know of a good number of traits that are influenced by genetics, and generally cause people to live better lives. IQ, self-control, disease risk, general positive vs depressive temperament, etc. Even something like superficial beauty might be slightly positive for society overall. Wouldn't you rather these advantages be accessible to everyone, rather than just those lucky enough?

Editing and screening are two different things, though I'm not particularly supportive of either.

In principle I have no objection to genetic medicine. If we could alter somebody's genes so as to end or remove illnesses, that would be a good thing. However, the line between medicine and enhancement is, in practice, pretty murky. If we could use gene editing to genuinely cure Down syndrome, that would be good, but in practice I suspect that if we had that technology it would inevitably be used for enhancement - that is, in an attempt not to improve the lives of actually existing people, but to manufacture better people. I think the risks of instrumentalising human life that way are considerable.

Screening is a step beyond that, isn't it? Screening is the equivalent of aborting an infant with Down syndrome prior to birth, only quicker and more efficient. So all moral objections there would apply.

genetic screening doesn't make it available to anyone who otherwise had an issue. Those people just don't get to be alive.

I’m not convinced that it makes sense to count potential people as, well, people.

The eggs which are never fertilized don’t get to be living people, either.

That isn't really how people think about counterfactual people in other contexts. Relevant post from Scott:

Who Does Polygenic Selection Help?

This isn’t about counter factual people. You’re starting with the premise that’s under dispute.

Maybe.

It seems to me that this requires the belief that a person is defined by their DNA, either 1. axiomatically, or because 2. the soul exists, and is inextricably linked to one's DNA.

Counterpoint--in the aftermath of Chernobyl and the atomic blasts in Japan, we have empirically witnessed people with tremendous DNA damage survive for several hours or days. Many of them could still talk, express their memories, behave as they always had. Due to the alterations in their DNA, would it be accurate to say that these people were, in fact, entirely different people to what 'they' were before?

This analogy doesn’t make sense. We’re not talking about genetic manipulation, we’re talking about picking which embryo is selected.

I don't see how that relates? In fact, it seems like an instance of the same mistake?

Both genetic screening and treating someone differently after DNA modification seem like genetics-based discrimination. In both cases the correct approach is the same, which is to say that people or their worth cannot be reduced to genetics. Genetics do not encode personhood.

We've had screenings for things like Down's Syndrome for a while, and we do not (in general) oppose abortions in those cases. Even countries that ban elective abortions completely tend to allow it in cases of malformation, which Down's Syndrome would count as. And then you just try again. This doesn't seem too different in concept, just a lot easier and more flexible. In this case, too, the only people who don't do this are certain religious people. The genetic material is still coming from the parents, they're not actually making 'designer babies' or superhumans or anything of the sort.

We're not getting Gattaca. The problem there was that they put DNA tests everywhere in their society. That's the dystopian bit. And who would have anything to gain by doing that?

I don't think we are even functional enough as a society. If we're getting a dystopia, we're getting "Brazil". (With perhaps some shades of "Demolition Man".) We kind of already saw this during Covid with the half-working tracking apps and the like. Both in the fact that the government's attempt at oppression frequently hurt random strangers by accident while not even really dealing with the actual dissidents, and in the fact that the general populace mostly just shrugged about it all.

Who would have anything to gain by doing that?

Employers could hire people in the bottom fifth percentile for requiring sick days… and wanting vacations.

Political parties could put forward candidates with high empathy and cooperation scores, as determined by an AI, but with high loyalty to ensure they’d take care of their voters and not have a ton of affairs.

Every sport would become moneyball, even the Olympics.

Forget normal, the big money would go to edge cases. It would be meritocracy by caste.

That's completely orthogonal to embryo selection though. We don't magically gain the tech to accurately scan these things from your DNA.

And even if we had it, and decided to use it, we'd look at people's actual results, and we could do that with naturally born people in the same way. Even if they would in general end up performing worse than people born from selected embryos, you'd still not have Gattaca, even though it would be dystopian in its own way. There's no incentive to start discriminating specifically against natural-born people specifically and checking that everywhere.

We already rank people by their traits and abilities, we just do it in a more fuzzy way. For sports it's the easiest. We have them compete and see who's best. Even if we could perfectly predict this using their DNA, nothing would change.

You'd think we would at least have a discussion as to whether this should be legal or not

Fun fact: In New Jersey, cloning a human is in the same category (first-degree crime) as murder.

Yeah, but everything's illegal in New Jersey. And there's a loophole:

As used in this section, "cloning of a human being" means the replication of a human individual by cultivating a cell with genetic material through the egg, embryo, fetal and newborn stages into a new human individual.

Note the "and". If you can skip the egg stage, you can clone away.

That is a fun fact!!!! It should be EVEN MORE ILLEGAL THOUGH! Nah joking, but not surprised.

It is surprising to me that cloning has been more legislated than trait based embryo selection. I suppose the wedge was IVF and selecting against major health issues like sickle-cell anemia, and now that wedge is being used to just push things open to full blown selecting for IQ, height, hair color, etc.

It is surprising to me that cloning has been more legislated than trait based embryo selection.

One of primarily fears of human cloning is that clones would be used as a source of organs, which selection can't deliver in principle. The other is that it's possible to instantly clone 160 IQ people (whose clones might be lower than 160 but still closer to 160 than 100) instead of throwing dice between -3 and +3 points.

How much do you think the average prospective parents care about hair color, and coarsely, height? I assume for the latter it isn't "Will be 74 inches tall", and most parents aren't looking to start an NBA team accidentally. I see how it could happen, and why that's concerning, but it seems IMO likely that at least one of (1) nurture matters more than straight genetics here, (2) most parents only have strong preferences against major genetic ailments, and even (3) IQ-linked genes may have negative externalities when all selected for at once (many such debates around).

I think this also assumes ubiquitous IVF, as opposed to the "conceived in the Riviera" approach considered in Gattaca.

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