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PaperclipPerfector  8d ago (text post)   26032 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.

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.

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