I remain both skeptical some core claims in this post, and convinced of its importance. GeneSmith is one of few people with such a big-picture, fresh, wildly ambitious angle on beneficial biotechnology, and I’d love to see more of this genre.
One one hand on the object level, I basically don’t buy the argument that in-vivo editing could lead to substantial cognitive enhancement in adults. Brain development is incredibly important for adult cognition, and in the maybe 1%--20% residual you’re going well off-distribution for any predictors trained on unedited individuals. I too would prefer bets that pay off before my median AI timelines, but biology does not always allow us to have nice things.
On the other, gene therapy does indeed work in adults for some (much simpler) issues, and there might be valuable interventions which are narrower but still valuable. Plus, of course, there’s the nineteen-ish year pathway to adults, building on current practice. There’s no shortage of practical difficulties, but the strong or general objections I’ve seen seem ill-founded, and that makes me more optimistic about eventual feasibility of something drawing on this tech tree.
I’ve been paying closer attention to the space thanks to Gene’s posts, to the point of making some related investments, and look forward to watching how these ideas fare on contact with biological and engineering reality over the next few years.
I remain both skeptical some core claims in this post, and convinced of its importance. GeneSmith is one of few people with such a big-picture, fresh, wildly ambitious angle on beneficial biotechnology, and I’d love to see more of this genre.
One one hand on the object level, I basically don’t buy the argument that in-vivo editing could lead to substantial cognitive enhancement in adults. Brain development is incredibly important for adult cognition, and in the maybe 1%--20% residual you’re going well off-distribution for any predictors trained on unedited individuals. I too would prefer bets that pay off before my median AI timelines, but biology does not always allow us to have nice things.
On the other, gene therapy does indeed work in adults for some (much simpler) issues, and there might be valuable interventions which are narrower but still valuable. Plus, of course, there’s the nineteen-ish year pathway to adults, building on current practice. There’s no shortage of practical difficulties, but the strong or general objections I’ve seen seem ill-founded, and that makes me more optimistic about eventual feasibility of something drawing on this tech tree.
I’ve been paying closer attention to the space thanks to Gene’s posts, to the point of making some related investments, and look forward to watching how these ideas fare on contact with biological and engineering reality over the next few years.