parrhesia.substack.com
SS: I think that cognitive genetic enhancement is important for ensuring we have a better and lasting future. Many people have an intuitive dislike for the idea of using genetic enhancement to make a baby smarter but have little issue with in vitro fertilization (IVF). I try to build from a foundation of the acceptable practice of IVF to PGT-P for IQ.
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Notes -
Conversations in this grain tend to run short because it's a rare example of a political question where everyone acknowledges the disagreement exists at a values rather than empirical level.
The moment such enhancements become optional, they are de facto mandatory. De jure too, eventually. As a human conservationist, my values oppose embracing extinction on the grounds trans-homo sapiens sapiens will be smarter and more efficient than us. AGI will be incomparably smarter and more efficient than us. Would you extend your logic to be in favor of replacing us with it?
If you want people to accept this kind of logic, you're going to have to Straussian about it and pretend that slippery slope arguments about human modification are silly, rather than laying out the slippery slope in a seven point numbered list and then talking about how great it will be to have a society full of super-geniuses in the closing paragraph.
Other people will replace the currently existing people. I think it is good if the people that replace us are happy, healthy, and intelligent. If they are so much healthier, happier, and more intelligent than they are "posthuman," then so be it. When you say extinction, it elicits thoughts of everyone dying, which I explicitly want to avoid with the aid of superintelligent people.
Well, I am not Straussian, and I think the logic in my article is decent.
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