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When genetic modification of humans is discussed, it is typically in the context of individual modification/augmentation. Whether in early embryonic stages or on fully developed people via gene therapy techniques, the goal is normally to modify outcomes for the specific individual in question.
Probably the reason we don’t discuss society-wide modification much (except in the context of huxly-esque dystopias) is that its proximity to eugenics makes it unpalatable to western society’s current ethics framework. But thinking in the longer term, I find it highly unlikely that future societies wouldn’t utilize this tool given the potential advantages it offers, especially in terms of group cohesion. This of course comes with the caveat that modeling the large scale implications of a small genetic change would be next to impossible. There would likely have to be a lot of trial and error, with some of the errors being quite horrific.
So in this context, I was thinking about what we could potentially modify that would have an out-sized impact on society with relatively little change on humans’ current genetic makeup. And the answer that seemed the most interesting is to modify the rate at which men are born relative to women. What would a society with far fewer men than women look like? As far as I can tell, there is very little data to go on (maybe USSR after ww2?). There are examples where there are fewer women than men (ex china), but I’ve struggled to find the opposite. Also, most scientific literature about “gender imbalances” is mostly just ideological fluff.
So anyway, the question I guess is what does this look like, and does it actually lead to a more stable/cohesive society.
Arguments in favor:
Arguments against:
-Susceptibility to military conquest by external groups with more balanced gender rations assuming this isn’t implemented everywhere.
Edit: Formatting
If we are thinking of crazy evopsych hacking, why don't we just make women ever so slightly less hypergamous/choosy and less neurotic and ever so slightly more horny?
I think significantly less men would be incels. Just do it enough that men don't entirely lose their drive to build and make things to impress hot chicks (progress civilization), but rather just ease the pressure just a little so it isn't straight up impossible like it is nowadays.
Wouldn't it just be easier (and less fraught) to decrease the use of hormonal contraceptives? My understanding is that they tend to increase neuroticism and at least for some women decrease libido.
Have you seen some of the hysteria over the restriction of abortion access? Then you want to make it more likely to get pregnant? That's the problem here: for abundant sexual access outside of marriage, you have to prevent pregnancy. To prevent pregnancy, you need contraception. If you decrease the use of hormonal contraceptives, then your alternative is "the woman who has had three or four abortions by the age of twenty-four", and using abortion as the main method of birth control isn't the greatest idea. Even medical abortion, because if you're going to be using drugs to provoke abortion, you may as well use drugs to stop conception in the first place.
But then, as you say, widespread use of hormonal contraceptives may decrease libido and so make sex less likely to happen. So it's which do you think is the lesser of two evils here: pregnancy prevention and less sex, or lots of sex and lots of unplanned pregnancies?
Anyone fucking around, please wear condoms. This pill or multiple abortions talk is really missing the king of birth control for people jumps from one partner to another.
I've thought that PrEP will usher a wave of increased STD rates as it gives gay guys an excuse to not use condoms. They are ignoring the fact that HIV is merely one STD among many.
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And if we nip the whole chain you lay out in the bud at this stage?
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That is probably the problem here. Most of the rest of the bind that your comment presents seems to go away.
Arguably, "solving" that "problem" is about an order of magnitude more difficult than developing the types of genetic engineering tech being talked about here. The latter is just technological progress. The former is a political revolution in a way that is basically intolerable to both women and to the men most positioned to make any sort of change in society.
Cultural progress is harder to predict, and can be much swifter than genetic or technological progress (at least historically; we are in an incredible moment of rapid technological progress, and it would be difficult to construct an explicit metric for this). Especially if genetic engineering is on the table, I don't see why it is necessarily impossibly more difficult to affect people's senses of "intolerability" either as an aside/effect or as a goal. Literally the original subcomment in this subthread is:
That's a fair point, that one could genetically engineer people's sense of "intolerability." I do think there would have to be some sort of significant political/religious will behind developing and executing that kind of genetic engineering at a population level which would also of course be required for things like making women less hypergamous, etc. or changing birth sex ratios. I suppose my belief is that the political/religious force required to develop and implement the genetic engineering to make women more tolerant of losing abundant sexual access outside of marriage would be significantly more than what's required to implement the genetic engineering to make them slightly more male-like in their sexuality.
But you are correct that accurately predicting cultural progression is very hard. My own belief is probably mostly informed by my own lifetime experience of noticing how cultural progression always seems to go. But that's anecdotal and should be valued as much.
If you think it's political/religious force that is important, then, stupid question here, but can't we just futz with that with our magic futzing machine? I was viewing some commentary on the recent paper claiming that there was a developing left/right divide between men/women, and one of the hypotheses was concerning the role of "religiosity", particularly among women. To the extent that we think we could plausibly target hypergamy/neuroticism/hornyness, plausibly one could hypothesize target "religiosity" or other factors that people associate with other cultural/political beliefs.
Moreover, the neuroscience literature has already identified plausible candidates for receptors and genes that relate to pair bonding, some of which even have animal analogs (e.g., there are two closely-related species of voles, one of which pair bonds strongly, and the other which doesn't nearly as much) or which seem to be correlated with measures of "relationship quality" in humans (it would take me a while to dig up some cites; I read this wayyy back in grad school). We could conceivably target something along these lines. Seems like we can think incredibly broadly; we really are considering quite a magic futzing machine.
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Well, how are you going to square the circle? You want women to be more sexually active, but sexual activity brings with it the possibility of pregnancy. If you don't want pregnancy, you need contraception. If you're using contraception, so the OP argument goes, then that decreases libido, so women are not as sexually active.
You have to make a choice: women who are horny enough to sleep with you, but they end up with ten babies because of that, or women who don't have ten babies but are not horny enough to sleep with you. Or the third possibility: no hormonal contraceptives, lots of sex, but also no pregnancy because abortion as birth control.
(I'm approaching this from a non-moralising stance because I'm not going to argue religion here, just plain secular modern attitudes where 'sex is fine, contraception is fine, abortion is regrettable but on the whole fine').
IUDs, condoms, etc. Anything but the pill really. An unusually easy to square circle.
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You could just ditch the whole modern set of sexual ethics, you know.
And I imagine this is precisely why Scott Alexander is fond of saying "society is fixed, biology is mutable." That "just" conceals a lot of the teeth-pulling involved with that course of action.
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That is a particular form of a moralized stance. You have chosen a specific set of morals to adopt. You also now make no mention of marriage, which was in your original comment.
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Here's my solution to whatever gender-angst people have:
make real estate cheaper (there's a correlation between Republican-voting areas and areas where young people can easily buy starter homes). Decrease building regulations as well
make having children easier by decreasing regulation : transform the Child Protection Services into an anti-nosy-senior-at-the-window enforcement force, somewhat in the spirit of the ACAB movement, stop regulating day-care businesses, get rid of carseat laws etc, and allow freedom of association. If the child dies he dies, but at least let them live a little.
get rid of sex discrimination laws as well. No more wasting 10 years in med school if you're only going to stick to being a doctor for 5 years, no more maternity leave, no more 'unsafe work environment'
relax domestic violence laws enforcement as well. Bring back some gravity to the concept of 'who you share a bed with', it's not other grown-ups' business to rescue you from all your bad choices
As a starting point (new platform for Mr 'Grab them'), mandate that any public figure or organization that publishes some kind of feminist statement, in general 'in support of women', for example this, should be labelled 'SIMP' for say a year (on their press release, any media, on their products, etc). Like a bud light halo. Any woman aspiring to some kind of important position should first be asked about her family and how she expects to continue being a mother or a grandmother while focusing on important position.
This is a weirdly-specific example. Why do you assume carseat laws have anything to do with people choosing whether or not to have kids?
Anything that would justify fining / arresting / causing trouble / calling CPS on parents is part of the environment that makes it harder for people to have children and more children when they already have 1.
I don't know what the ratio of calls to CPS / calls to CPS for parents who are actually abusive is but it is way too high in my opinion.
Anybody who has been around in a Western country in the past three years should know that governments will come up with crazy rules that make no sense and cause way more trouble to enforce than they actually help.
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It's become a meme, maybe originally from this study.
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I think the actual probable alternative to hormonal contraceptives is just...other contraceptives.
Not that I really think lots of sex and lots of unplanned pregnancies would be the end of the world – I'm fundamentally more of a "babies good" person, and I don't have any particular reason to want people to have abundant sexual access outside of marriage. But, realistically, I imagine that a random draconian ban of hormonal contraceptives tomorrow* would probably result in a slight uptick in babies and a large uptick in alternative methods of birth control. Copper IUDs, for instance, are much more effective than birth control pills, and other more temporary contraceptive methods are relatively reliable.
*to be quite clear, I'm not saying that would be a good idea. But perhaps a less bad idea than genetically modifying women.
Yeah, but hormonal contraception became popular because mechanical forms of contraception are often uncomfortable (I understand some men complain about condoms), ineffective, or even hazardous (the Dalkon Shield). Implants work well but they're hormonal. The female condom never really became popular. The Holy Grail is some form of contraceptive for men to take, but that's slow going and a different problem to blocking the female reproductive cycle.
Moi aussi, but we're dealing here with the modern problem of "Good God, I don't want to go back to the bad old days of having to marry the first woman who'd have me, just so I could have sex". People (men) want sex, they want it most when they're at their maximum horniest (young and full of hormones) and they don't want to 'save it for marriage' or 'only ever had one sexual partner, my spouse'. Porn also has a part to play in that, as does "what do you mean you only ever had vanilla missionary sex, you poor boob?" for both men and women is the attitude of the enlightened and liberated today. You have magazines teaching teenage girls how to have anal sex, we're not putting the genie of 'sexual liberation' back in the bottle of 'no sex outside of marriage'.
Why not? Sure, it wouldn't be easy, but I don't see it being impossible. If nothing else, a total collapse of industrial civilization and global reversion to pre-1700 technology levels would indeed put the proverbial genie right back; which establishes that it's at least possible. Sure, "turning back the clock" would probably require some pretty strong measures to pull off, but I figure a determined, non-democratic far-Right government could probably accomplish quite a lot toward this end.
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