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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Thing is, this is going to be for middle-class and upwards of that. Nobody cares about making the kids of the underclass all IQ 120 at minimum, because they're still going to live in crappy single-parent homes in crime-riddled shitholes and go to schools where metal detectors and armed security guards are needed because the little darlings shoot each other (starting age six, I understand from this edifying story).
There's no point in educating these kids above their station, and why would you want them smart enough to recognise their shitty rung of the ladder, be dissatisfied and possibly able to organise to do something more effective than street protests and burning down police stations? They are always going to be at the bottom of the ladder, because great now you're IQ 120. Meanwhile, the rungs above you are making sure their embryos are selected to be IQ 130-140 before implantation in the hand-picked surrogate for gestation, and the classes above you will keep their grip on what they've already got. Before, identifying and recruiting any smart underlings was worth it in order to co-opt that productivity for your own benefit, but now that you can reliably be sure all your kids are smart enough for the new world, you don't need recruits that have to be taught how to be middle-class.
Any jobs the smart underlings can do will be automated/replaced by AI away, and holding on to the slots in the PMC are going to be more competitive as white collar jobs become vulnerable to replacement by AI. Why bother creating competition from below? Leave the masses dumb and ignorant as your children, and their children, pull further and further away, and throw sops to keeping the peace with bread and circuses and legalised drugs, until you can figure out a way to prevent them reproducing at all. Robots will be cheaper and better anyway.
So...they'd be in the same situation as a variety of Asian immigrant groups? High IQ children, poor parents, bad schools, sounds like the Hmong a generation ago. Recall that for a while, "what about the Hmong" was often used as an argument proving Asians aren't a model minority.
As of 2019, Hmong household income ($68k/year) was higher than average ($65.7k).
https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/fact-sheet/asian-americans-hmong-in-the-u-s/
If they have the same IQ as poor Asian kids, they might also have the same crime rate and out of wedlock birth rates as poor Asian kids. That would solve the problems of going to schools full of stabby kids pretty quickly and the problem of single parent homes in a generation or so.
Once you solve the problem of "poor people are terrible to be around" by raising their IQ, poverty in America isn't actually a big deal. If you disagree, try to name a good or service you think poor Americans lack.
You seem to be assuming that technology for embryo selection will develop along the lines of cars (where the 10x more expensive car is perhaps 2x as good as a Corolla) as opposed to along the lines of cell phones (where even Elon Musk uses an iPhone). Why do you believe this?
I can see one plausible story: regulators prevent poor parents from accessing the technology while the rich get it done in Macau.
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