Yeah, I don’t know if it makes much sense, and haven’t thought too much about it. A few points:
I don’t know if I actually care too much. Or rather, I think it would be awesome if +9 SD IQ just makes sense somehow, and also we can enable parents to choose that, and also it flows into more generally being insightful. But I think just having tons of people sample from a distribution with a mean of +6 SDs already makes the outlook for humanity significantly better on my view. It’s not remotely the case that every such person will be a great scientist or philosopher; people will have different interests, we shouldn’t be strongly conscripting GE children, and there are likely several other traits quite important for contributing to defending against humanity’s greatest threats (e.g. curiosity, bravery, freethink; attention, determination, drive; wisdom, reflectiveness).
Actually targeting +9 SDs on anything, especially IQ, is potentially quite dangerous and should either be done with great caution after further study, or not at all. See the bullet point “Traits outside the regime of adaptedness”.
But if I speculate:
Some genetic variants will be about “sand in the gears” of the brain. It doesn’t seem crazy to think that you can get a lot of performance by just removing an exceptionally large amount of this. But IDK how much there actually is; kman might have suggested that this isn’t actually much of the genetic variance in IQ.
Some genetic variants will be about “scaling up” (e.g. literally growing a bigger brain, or a more vascularized one, or one with a higher metabolic budget to spend on plasticity, or something like that, IDK). These seem like they plausibly could keep having meaningful effects past the human envelope, but on the other hand could easily hit limits discussed in “Traits outside...”.
Some genetic variants will be about, vaguely, budgeting resources between different neural algorithms. These could easily keep having effects outside the human envelope (e.g., let’s have AN EVEN BIGGER MATH BRAIN CHUNK EVEN THAN EINSTEIN, or what have you). On the other hand, you could very plausibly overshoot, and get some weird or dysfunctional result.
On a technical level, I think more speculating is good before we run the experiment, given that these people if born may very well end up the most powerful people in history. Even small differences in the details could lead to very different futures for humanity.
On a non-technical level, it might be worth writing a post about your stance on the morality and politics of this. So we can separate that whole discussion from the technical discussion.
Even small differences in the details could lead to very different futures for humanity.
I don’t super agree with this. But also, I’d view that as somewhat of a failure. Part of why I want the technology to be wideley available is that I think that decreases the path-dependence. Lots of diverse GE kids means a more universalist future, hopefully.
it might be worth writing a post about your stance on the morality and politics of this.
My view on this is that even when individuals and countries are not under tight “adapt or die” competition constraints such as during wartime or poverty, everyone faces incentive gradients. Free choices aren’t exactly free. For instance I was “free” to not learn software development and pick a lower paying job, but someone from the outside could still predict with high likelihood I was going to learn software anyway.
I take the general point that making this technology partially removes a barrier, where previously human influence on children is limited, and afterward there is at least somewhat more influence. E.g. this could lead to:
One point of comparison is the default. There is a human-evolution that is always happening. Do we like its results? Do we trust it?
Another thing to point out is that the barrier is only somewhat eroded. Except for whole genome synthesis, the amount of control that germline engineering is fairly small compared to the total genetic and phenotypic variation in humans. You and I have 5 or 10 million differing alleles between us; GV would have an effect that’s comparable to, say, 1000s of alleles. (This doesn’t directly make sense for selection, but morally speaking.) In terms of phenotypes, most of the variation would still be in uncontrolled genomic differences and non-genetic differences. Current IQ PGSes explain <20% of the variance in IQ. Now, to some extent I can’t have it both ways; either the benefits of GE are enormous because we’re controlling traits somewhat, or we aren’t controlling traits much and the benefits can’t be that big. But think, for example, of shifting the mean of your kid’s expected IQ, without much shifting the variance. (For some disease traits you can drive the probability of the disease far down, which is a lot of phenotypic control; but that seems not so bad!)
I would still encourage you to forecast what capabilities look like not just as of 2025, but after a trillion dollars of R&D enter this space. Mobilising a trillion dollars for a field of such importance is not difficult, once successful clinical results are out. All your claims about mean and variance, or about whole genome synthesis being possible, will no longer apply afaik.
Yeah, I don’t know if it makes much sense, and haven’t thought too much about it. A few points:
I don’t know if I actually care too much. Or rather, I think it would be awesome if +9 SD IQ just makes sense somehow, and also we can enable parents to choose that, and also it flows into more generally being insightful. But I think just having tons of people sample from a distribution with a mean of +6 SDs already makes the outlook for humanity significantly better on my view. It’s not remotely the case that every such person will be a great scientist or philosopher; people will have different interests, we shouldn’t be strongly conscripting GE children, and there are likely several other traits quite important for contributing to defending against humanity’s greatest threats (e.g. curiosity, bravery, freethink; attention, determination, drive; wisdom, reflectiveness).
Actually targeting +9 SDs on anything, especially IQ, is potentially quite dangerous and should either be done with great caution after further study, or not at all. See the bullet point “Traits outside the regime of adaptedness”.
But if I speculate:
Some genetic variants will be about “sand in the gears” of the brain. It doesn’t seem crazy to think that you can get a lot of performance by just removing an exceptionally large amount of this. But IDK how much there actually is; kman might have suggested that this isn’t actually much of the genetic variance in IQ.
Some genetic variants will be about “scaling up” (e.g. literally growing a bigger brain, or a more vascularized one, or one with a higher metabolic budget to spend on plasticity, or something like that, IDK). These seem like they plausibly could keep having meaningful effects past the human envelope, but on the other hand could easily hit limits discussed in “Traits outside...”.
Some genetic variants will be about, vaguely, budgeting resources between different neural algorithms. These could easily keep having effects outside the human envelope (e.g., let’s have AN EVEN BIGGER MATH BRAIN CHUNK EVEN THAN EINSTEIN, or what have you). On the other hand, you could very plausibly overshoot, and get some weird or dysfunctional result.
Cf. jimrandomh’s comment about hyperparameters and overshooting here: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/DfrSZaf3JC8vJdbZL/how-to-make-superbabies?commentId=C7MvCZHbFmeLdxyAk
Got it.
On a technical level, I think more speculating is good before we run the experiment, given that these people if born may very well end up the most powerful people in history. Even small differences in the details could lead to very different futures for humanity.
On a non-technical level, it might be worth writing a post about your stance on the morality and politics of this. So we can separate that whole discussion from the technical discussion.
I don’t super agree with this. But also, I’d view that as somewhat of a failure. Part of why I want the technology to be wideley available is that I think that decreases the path-dependence. Lots of diverse GE kids means a more universalist future, hopefully.
Yeah. I have several articles I want to write, though IDK which will become high-priority enough. Some thoughts on genomic liberty are here: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/DfrSZaf3JC8vJdbZL/how-to-make-superbabies?commentId=ZeranH3yDBGWNxZ7h
Cool!
Have you read meditations on moloch?
My view on this is that even when individuals and countries are not under tight “adapt or die” competition constraints such as during wartime or poverty, everyone faces incentive gradients. Free choices aren’t exactly free. For instance I was “free” to not learn software development and pick a lower paying job, but someone from the outside could still predict with high likelihood I was going to learn software anyway.
I have read it (long ago).
I take the general point that making this technology partially removes a barrier, where previously human influence on children is limited, and afterward there is at least somewhat more influence. E.g. this could lead to:
Sacrificing wellbeing for competitiveness
Social pressure / “soft eugenics”
Competitive selection (where I mentioned the Meditations)
One point of comparison is the default. There is a human-evolution that is always happening. Do we like its results? Do we trust it?
Another thing to point out is that the barrier is only somewhat eroded. Except for whole genome synthesis, the amount of control that germline engineering is fairly small compared to the total genetic and phenotypic variation in humans. You and I have 5 or 10 million differing alleles between us; GV would have an effect that’s comparable to, say, 1000s of alleles. (This doesn’t directly make sense for selection, but morally speaking.) In terms of phenotypes, most of the variation would still be in uncontrolled genomic differences and non-genetic differences. Current IQ PGSes explain <20% of the variance in IQ. Now, to some extent I can’t have it both ways; either the benefits of GE are enormous because we’re controlling traits somewhat, or we aren’t controlling traits much and the benefits can’t be that big. But think, for example, of shifting the mean of your kid’s expected IQ, without much shifting the variance. (For some disease traits you can drive the probability of the disease far down, which is a lot of phenotypic control; but that seems not so bad!)
I’m glad you’re thinking about it.
I would still encourage you to forecast what capabilities look like not just as of 2025, but after a trillion dollars of R&D enter this space. Mobilising a trillion dollars for a field of such importance is not difficult, once successful clinical results are out. All your claims about mean and variance, or about whole genome synthesis being possible, will no longer apply afaik.