While I think finding ways to make future generations healthier and smarter is a worthy goal, I don’t think we understand enough yet to do this without potentially severe unintended consequences, and I wouldn’t consider doing it myself with our current technology. It’s a good bet that many of the seemingly deleterious mutations we’d like to eliminate also offer some benefit we don’t understand- given that we have already discovered many instances of mutations with apparent intelligence/health tradeoffs, and disease resistance/health tradeoffs. If you’re selecting embryo populations for mutations correlated with specific desirable traits, you should also expect that you are selecting for worse outcomes in all other potentially desirable dimensions including those that are potentially even more important than those optimized for, but we have no clear concept of, or labels for. If you do this at scale, you’re also systematically selecting for a less diverse, less robust population.
Also, I think a lot of neurodivergent people (including myself, and probably quite a lot lot of other LWers) have become irrationally obsessed with their own childrens raw intelligence above all else, due to emotional trauma. Growing up and being labeled as gifted, but also having (at the time undiagnosed) ADHD, I strongly felt that the only thing people liked about me was my intelligence, and that without it I would be unworthy of love or friendships. The idea of my child not being exceptionally intelligent, and therefore suffering immensely was terrifying to me, and made me irrationally obsessed with something mostly outside my control. Indeed, I am a parent now, and my son is both exceptionally bright and neurodivergent, but I now understand now that neither I or him need to be exceptionally bright to be loved or accepted.… we just need to have boundaries, and choose to only associate with the (numerous) people that will accept or even like that we are different, rather than those that dislike it but tolerate us for what we can practically provide them. Moreover, what those people begrudgingly tolerated me for wasn’t even my actual intelligence, but my ability to accomplish difficult things for them with my intense ADHD hyperfocus. Of course intelligence is extremely useful and important, but shouldn’t be valued above all else out of a trauma derived sense of terror.
While I think finding ways to make future generations healthier and smarter is a worthy goal, I don’t think we understand enough yet to do this without potentially severe unintended consequences, and I wouldn’t consider doing it myself with our current technology. It’s a good bet that many of the seemingly deleterious mutations we’d like to eliminate also offer some benefit we don’t understand- given that we have already discovered many instances of mutations with apparent intelligence/health tradeoffs, and disease resistance/health tradeoffs. If you’re selecting embryo populations for mutations correlated with specific desirable traits, you should also expect that you are selecting for worse outcomes in all other potentially desirable dimensions including those that are potentially even more important than those optimized for, but we have no clear concept of, or labels for. If you do this at scale, you’re also systematically selecting for a less diverse, less robust population.
Also, I think a lot of neurodivergent people (including myself, and probably quite a lot lot of other LWers) have become irrationally obsessed with their own childrens raw intelligence above all else, due to emotional trauma. Growing up and being labeled as gifted, but also having (at the time undiagnosed) ADHD, I strongly felt that the only thing people liked about me was my intelligence, and that without it I would be unworthy of love or friendships. The idea of my child not being exceptionally intelligent, and therefore suffering immensely was terrifying to me, and made me irrationally obsessed with something mostly outside my control. Indeed, I am a parent now, and my son is both exceptionally bright and neurodivergent, but I now understand now that neither I or him need to be exceptionally bright to be loved or accepted.… we just need to have boundaries, and choose to only associate with the (numerous) people that will accept or even like that we are different, rather than those that dislike it but tolerate us for what we can practically provide them. Moreover, what those people begrudgingly tolerated me for wasn’t even my actual intelligence, but my ability to accomplish difficult things for them with my intense ADHD hyperfocus. Of course intelligence is extremely useful and important, but shouldn’t be valued above all else out of a trauma derived sense of terror.