I’d have to learn more, but many forms of these conditions (and therefore the condition simpliciter, prospectively) would probably prevent the child from expressing their state of wellbeing, through death or unsound mind. Therefore these would fall under the recognized permanent silencing exception to the principle of genomic liberty, and wouldn’t be protected forms of propagation. Further, my impression is that living to adulthood with Tay-Sachs is quite rare; most people with Tay-Sachs variants wouldn’t be passing on a phenotype. (I did say “right to propagate their own genes and their own traits”, but I debated including genes internally, and I could be suaded that the propagative liberty tentpole principle, specifically, should only apply to phenotypes.) Finally, if the parents in question are severely non compos mentis, their genomic liberty is also not necessarily protected by the principle.
Regarding blind/deaf/dwarf: I wonder if, in real life, talking to such a person who is describing their experience and values, you would then be able to bring yourself in good conscience to say “yes, the state should by force prevent your way of life”.
It is already illegal to blind your children after they are born, and this is a good thing imo.
I am quite certain that, even after thinking about it for years, I would still be against feeding children lead or genetically altering them to be less intelligent.
It sounds like your goal is to build a political coalition, and I am talking about my ideal policies. I would be happy to accept “the principle of genomic liberty” over status-quo, since it is reasonably likely that lawmakers will create far worse laws than that.
Is your position that at least one parent must be blind/deaf/dwarf in order to edit the child to be the same? If so, that is definitely an improvement over what I thought your position was.
I’m not sure what the difference is supposed to be between “blinding your children via editing their genes as an embryo” and “painlessly blinding your children with a chemical immediately after birth”. The outcome is exactly the same.
I would be happy to accept “the principle of genomic liberty” over status-quo, since it is reasonably likely that lawmakers will create far worse laws than that.
Ok. Then I’m not sure we even disagree, though we might. If we do, it would be about “ideal policies”. My post about Thurston (which was about as successful as I expected at making the point, which is to say, medium at best) is trying to strike some doubt in your heart about the ideal policy, because you don’t know what it’s like to be other people and you don’t know what sort of weird ways they might be thinking that you couldn’t anticipate. It’s a pretty abstract way of making the case; a more direct way would have been to find some blind/deaf/autistic/dwarf/trans/etc. people talking about valuing the special aspects of how they are, etc.
Mainly I want to strike a bit of doubt in your heart about the idea policy because I want you to not be committed to making that part of the practical policy about genomic engineering, but it sounds like we don’t necessarily have a conflict there.
Is your position that at least one parent must be blind/deaf/dwarf in order to edit the child to be the same? If so, that is definitely an improvement over what I thought your position was.
Sort of, though I’m not totally sure. To fall under the propagative liberty tentpole protection, yeah, at least one would have to be blind. (Well, if I’m changing propagative liberty to only apply to phenotypes.)
Two sighted parents wanting to make their child blind seems like a pretty weird case; who would do that?? (Ok fine maybe someone would do that.) The principle of genomic liberty leaves that in a sort of gray area. It’s neither protected under any of the tentpole principles, nor does it fall under any of the explicitly recognized exceptions to GL protection. So the weaker GL, which relies more on the tentpole principles, would say “ok, the state can make laws prohibiting this”. The strongest GL principle that fits my proposal would fight any case that doesn’t fall under the explicit exceptions, in order to make society consider the case carefully, including this case.
However, the non-intervention tentpole protection would allow parents to decline to use available technology to prevent their future child from being blind.
I’m not sure what the difference is supposed to be between “blinding your children via editing their genes as an embryo” and “painlessly blinding your children with a chemical immediately after birth”. The outcome is exactly the same.
Did you read the linked comment? It has political differences. The narrow causal outcome being the same isn’t the totality of the relevant considerations. Another difference would be that it’s more damaging to the parents’s souls to do the chemicals thing, as much as you want to wave your hands about how the philosophy proves it should be the same.
I think our disagreement over ideal policy spills over into practice as well. To you, “the principle of genomic liberty” is the best policy, while to me it is one of many policies that is less bad than status quo.
I think the future opinion of the gene-edited children is important. Suppose 99% of genetically deafened children are happy about being deaf as adults, but only 8% of genetically blinded children are happy about being blind. In that case, I would probably make the former legal and the latter illegal.
I did read the linked comment, and I agree that gouging a child’s eyes out is different. But I don’t see a difference between “immediately after birth, have the doctor feed your child a chemical that painlessly causes blindness” and gene editing. To me, both seem about the same level of soul-damaging. Many of the linked arguments don’t apply at all to the new scenario, and I didn’t find any of the rest remotely convincing, but I don’t feel like taking the time to create a point-by-point response.
To you, “the principle of genomic liberty” is the best policy
No! Happy to hear alternatives. But I do think it’s better than “prospectively ban genomic choices for traits that our cost-benefit analysis said are bad”. I think that’s genuinely unjust, partly because you shouldn’t be the judge of whether another person’s way of being should exist.
I think the future opinion of the gene-edited children is important. Suppose 99% of genetically deafened children are happy about being deaf as adults, but only 8% of genetically blinded children are happy about being blind. In that case, I would probably make the former legal and the latter illegal.
Right, so if you read my post on genomic liberty, you’ll see that I do put stock in what these children will say. But that’s strictly the responsibility of the next generation.
But I don’t see a difference between “immediately after birth, have the doctor feed your child a chemical that painlessly causes blindness” and gene editing.
Right, so fewer differences apply, but some do. An already-born child gets some legal protections that a 10-day fetus, or that an unfertilized egg, do not get. As a political matter, they are treated differently, and for good reason. (Maybe not for eternal reasons, like maybe a transhuman society would work out how to make things more continuous, but that’s not very practically relevant.)
By “best policy” I meant “current most preferred policy”.
“prospectively ban genomic choices for traits that our cost-benefit analysis said are bad” is not my position. My position is “ban genomic edits that cause traits that all reasonable cost-benefit analysis agree are bad”, where “reasonable” is defined in terms of near-universal human values. I say more about this here.
I skimmed the article earlier, and read through it more carefully now. I think “edited children will wish the edits had not been made” should be added to the list of exceptions. Also, if we can already predict with high confidence which changes will be regretted, why wait until the next generation to ban them?
Oh, I guess, why haven’t I said this already: If you would, consider some trait that:
you have, and
is a mixed blessing, and
that many / most people would consider a detriment, and
that is uncommon.
I’l go first:
In my case, besides being Jewish lol, I’m maybe a little schizoid, meaning I have trouble forming connections / I tend to not maintain friendships / I tend to keep people at a distance, in a systematic / intentional way, somewhat to my detriment. (If this is right, it’s sort of mild or doesn’t fully fit the wiki page, but still.) So let’s say I’m a little schizoid.
This is a substantively mixed blessing: I have few lasting relationships and feel lonely / disconnected / malnourished, and am sort of conflicted about that because a lot of my intuitions say this is better than any available alternative; but on the other hand, I am a free thinker, I can see things most others can’t see, I can pursue good things that most others won’t pursue.
Now, if someone reads the wiki page, they will most likely come away saying “hell no!”, and would want to nudge their child’s genome away from being like that. Fair enough. I wouldn’t argue against that. I might even do the same, I’m not sure; on the other hand, I do think I have a way of thinking that’s fairly uncommon and interesting and useful and in some ways more right than the default. Either way, there’s no fucking way that I want the state to be telling me which personality traits I can and can’t pass on to my child.
Ok now you:
E.g. do you have a neuroatypicality such as autism, ADHD, bipolar, dyslexia? Some sort of dysphoria or mental illness? A non-heterosexual orientation? Etc. (I’m curious, but obviously not expecting you to share; just asking you to think of it.)
If so, consider the prospect of the state saying that you can’t pass this trait on.
If not, well nevermind lol. There’s a bit more theory here, just in case it helps; specifically:
Beyond that, any phenotype at all will correspond to some kind of consciousness. Someone with insomnia, even if they acknowledge that having insomnia is almost entirely worse than not having insomnia, might still wish to have other people with insomnia to be friends with, simply because an insomniac has a somewhat different experience and way of being than a somniac and can therefore understand and relate specially to insomniacs. So removing any type of person is to some extent changing who humanity is.
Finally, a given type of person (so to speak) might view themselves as part of a “cross-sectional coalition”. In other words, even though a deaf person is not only a deaf person, and views zerself as part of the whole human collective, ze might also view zerself as being part of a narrower collective—deaf people—which has its own being, rights, authority, autonomy, instrumental value, and destiny.
I do not have autism/ADHD/bipolar/dyslexia/dysphoria or a non-heterosexual orientation. If I woke up tomorrow with one of those, I would very badly want it reverted.
However, it seems obvious to me that if being a little schizoid made you a free thinker, able to see things most others can’t see, able to pursue good things that most others won’t pursue, then it does not count as “unambiguous net harm” and the government should have no say in whether you can pass it on. That’s not even close to the line of what the government should be allowed to prohibit.
I think “edited children will wish the edits had not been made” should be added to the list of exceptions.
So to be clear, your proposal is for people who aren’t blind to decide what hypothetical future blind children will think of their parents’s decisions, and that judgement should override the judgement of the blind parents themselves? This seems wild to me.
… Ok possibly I could see some sort of scheme where all the blind people get to decide whether to regulate genomic choice to make blind children? Haven’t thought about this, but it seems pretty messy and weird. But maybe.
My position is “ban genomic edits that cause traits that all reasonable cost-benefit analysis agree are bad”, where “reasonable” is defined in terms of near-universal human values.
But it kinda sounds like your notion of “near-universal” ends up just being whatever your CBA said? I guess I’m not sure what would sway you. Suppose for example the following made-up hypothetical: there’s a child alive today whose blind parents intentionally selected an embryo that would be blind. Suppose that child says “Actually, I’m happy my parents made that choice. I feel close to them, part of a special community, where we share a special way of experiencing the world; we sense different things than other people, and consequently we have different tastes, and this gives us a bit of a different consciousness. Yes there are difficulties, but I love my life, and I wouldn’t want to have been sighted.”. In this case, do you update?
Maybe we’re at an impasse here. At some point I hope to set up convenient streaming / podcasting; if I’d already done so I’d invite you on to chat, which might go better.
Ok possibly I could see some sort of scheme where all the blind people get to decide whether to regulate genomic choice to make blind children?
Yes, blind people are the experts here. If 95% of blind people wish they weren’t blind, then (unless there is good reason to believe that a specific child will be in the 5%) gene editing for blindness should be illegal.
(Although we might overrule blind people if they claimed to be happy but had bad objective measures, like high rates of depression and suicide.)
Yes, blind people are the experts here. If 95% of blind people wish they weren’t blind, then (unless there is good reason to believe that a specific child will be in the 5%) gene editing for blindness should be illegal.
This is absolutely not what I’m suggesting. I’m suggesting (something in the genre of) the possibility of having that if 95% of blind people decide that gene editing for blindness should be illegal, then gene editing for blindness should be illegal. It’s their autonomy that’s at issue here.
Fair point, I glossed over the differences there. Although in practice I think very few blind people who wish they could see, would be in favor of gene editing for blindness being legal.
ASAN opposes germline gene editing in all cases. Germline gene editing is editing a person’s genes that they pass down to their children. We do not think scientists should be able to make gene edits that can be passed down to a person’s children. The practice could prevent future generations of people with any gene-related disability from being born. This is eugenics and a form of ableism.
ASAN opposes non-heritable gene editing for autism. This is when scientists edit a person’s genes in a way that can’t be passed down to their children. ASAN is against ever using this kind of gene editing for autism. We think it would be used to treat or “cure” autism. We do not want “cures” for autism. We want to continue being autistic. We want there to be rules saying people can’t use genetic research to find a “cure” for autism. We are setting this standard for autism and the autistic community because it is what most of our community members believe.
Not directly comparable, but related. (I disagree with their reasoning and conclusions, I think.)
Interestingly, they make the same suggestion I mentioned above:
Some disability communities might want non-heritable gene editing. For example, some people with epilepsy are okay with non-heritable gene editing for the genes that cause their seizures. We think it should be up to each disability community to decide if they are okay with nonheritable gene editing for their disability. Researchers and policymakers should listen to each disability community about how that community feels about non-heritable gene editing.
I’d have to learn more, but many forms of these conditions (and therefore the condition simpliciter, prospectively) would probably prevent the child from expressing their state of wellbeing, through death or unsound mind. Therefore these would fall under the recognized permanent silencing exception to the principle of genomic liberty, and wouldn’t be protected forms of propagation. Further, my impression is that living to adulthood with Tay-Sachs is quite rare; most people with Tay-Sachs variants wouldn’t be passing on a phenotype. (I did say “right to propagate their own genes and their own traits”, but I debated including genes internally, and I could be suaded that the propagative liberty tentpole principle, specifically, should only apply to phenotypes.) Finally, if the parents in question are severely non compos mentis, their genomic liberty is also not necessarily protected by the principle.
Regarding blind/deaf/dwarf: I wonder if, in real life, talking to such a person who is describing their experience and values, you would then be able to bring yourself in good conscience to say “yes, the state should by force prevent your way of life”.
Already living people are clearly different. You could argue the difference shouldn’t matter, but it would take more argument. Elaboration here: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/rxcGvPrQsqoCHndwG/the-principle-of-genomic-liberty?commentId=qnafba5dx6gwoFX4a
I think you might still be 100% percent missing my point. I’m not arguing for it being moral to do these things. I think it’s immoral. I’m trying to construct a political coalition, and I’m arguing that you shouldn’t be so confident in your judgements that you impose them on others, in this case. Elaboration here: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/rxcGvPrQsqoCHndwG/the-principle-of-genomic-liberty?commentId=PnBH5HHszc7G5FK5s
FYI, you’re strawmanning my position, in case you care about understanding it.
It sounds like your goal is to build a political coalition, and I am talking about my ideal policies. I would be happy to accept “the principle of genomic liberty” over status-quo, since it is reasonably likely that lawmakers will create far worse laws than that.
Is your position that at least one parent must be blind/deaf/dwarf in order to edit the child to be the same? If so, that is definitely an improvement over what I thought your position was.
I’m not sure what the difference is supposed to be between “blinding your children via editing their genes as an embryo” and “painlessly blinding your children with a chemical immediately after birth”. The outcome is exactly the same.
Ok. Then I’m not sure we even disagree, though we might. If we do, it would be about “ideal policies”. My post about Thurston (which was about as successful as I expected at making the point, which is to say, medium at best) is trying to strike some doubt in your heart about the ideal policy, because you don’t know what it’s like to be other people and you don’t know what sort of weird ways they might be thinking that you couldn’t anticipate. It’s a pretty abstract way of making the case; a more direct way would have been to find some blind/deaf/autistic/dwarf/trans/etc. people talking about valuing the special aspects of how they are, etc.
Mainly I want to strike a bit of doubt in your heart about the idea policy because I want you to not be committed to making that part of the practical policy about genomic engineering, but it sounds like we don’t necessarily have a conflict there.
Sort of, though I’m not totally sure. To fall under the propagative liberty tentpole protection, yeah, at least one would have to be blind. (Well, if I’m changing propagative liberty to only apply to phenotypes.)
Two sighted parents wanting to make their child blind seems like a pretty weird case; who would do that?? (Ok fine maybe someone would do that.) The principle of genomic liberty leaves that in a sort of gray area. It’s neither protected under any of the tentpole principles, nor does it fall under any of the explicitly recognized exceptions to GL protection. So the weaker GL, which relies more on the tentpole principles, would say “ok, the state can make laws prohibiting this”. The strongest GL principle that fits my proposal would fight any case that doesn’t fall under the explicit exceptions, in order to make society consider the case carefully, including this case.
However, the non-intervention tentpole protection would allow parents to decline to use available technology to prevent their future child from being blind.
Did you read the linked comment? It has political differences. The narrow causal outcome being the same isn’t the totality of the relevant considerations. Another difference would be that it’s more damaging to the parents’s souls to do the chemicals thing, as much as you want to wave your hands about how the philosophy proves it should be the same.
I think our disagreement over ideal policy spills over into practice as well. To you, “the principle of genomic liberty” is the best policy, while to me it is one of many policies that is less bad than status quo.
I think the future opinion of the gene-edited children is important. Suppose 99% of genetically deafened children are happy about being deaf as adults, but only 8% of genetically blinded children are happy about being blind. In that case, I would probably make the former legal and the latter illegal.
I did read the linked comment, and I agree that gouging a child’s eyes out is different. But I don’t see a difference between “immediately after birth, have the doctor feed your child a chemical that painlessly causes blindness” and gene editing. To me, both seem about the same level of soul-damaging. Many of the linked arguments don’t apply at all to the new scenario, and I didn’t find any of the rest remotely convincing, but I don’t feel like taking the time to create a point-by-point response.
No! Happy to hear alternatives. But I do think it’s better than “prospectively ban genomic choices for traits that our cost-benefit analysis said are bad”. I think that’s genuinely unjust, partly because you shouldn’t be the judge of whether another person’s way of being should exist.
Right, so if you read my post on genomic liberty, you’ll see that I do put stock in what these children will say. But that’s strictly the responsibility of the next generation.
Right, so fewer differences apply, but some do. An already-born child gets some legal protections that a 10-day fetus, or that an unfertilized egg, do not get. As a political matter, they are treated differently, and for good reason. (Maybe not for eternal reasons, like maybe a transhuman society would work out how to make things more continuous, but that’s not very practically relevant.)
By “best policy” I meant “current most preferred policy”.
“prospectively ban genomic choices for traits that our cost-benefit analysis said are bad” is not my position. My position is “ban genomic edits that cause traits that all reasonable cost-benefit analysis agree are bad”, where “reasonable” is defined in terms of near-universal human values. I say more about this here.
I skimmed the article earlier, and read through it more carefully now. I think “edited children will wish the edits had not been made” should be added to the list of exceptions. Also, if we can already predict with high confidence which changes will be regretted, why wait until the next generation to ban them?
Oh, I guess, why haven’t I said this already: If you would, consider some trait that:
you have, and
is a mixed blessing, and
that many / most people would consider a detriment, and
that is uncommon.
I’l go first:
In my case, besides being Jewish lol, I’m maybe a little schizoid, meaning I have trouble forming connections / I tend to not maintain friendships / I tend to keep people at a distance, in a systematic / intentional way, somewhat to my detriment. (If this is right, it’s sort of mild or doesn’t fully fit the wiki page, but still.) So let’s say I’m a little schizoid.
This is a substantively mixed blessing: I have few lasting relationships and feel lonely / disconnected / malnourished, and am sort of conflicted about that because a lot of my intuitions say this is better than any available alternative; but on the other hand, I am a free thinker, I can see things most others can’t see, I can pursue good things that most others won’t pursue.
Now, if someone reads the wiki page, they will most likely come away saying “hell no!”, and would want to nudge their child’s genome away from being like that. Fair enough. I wouldn’t argue against that. I might even do the same, I’m not sure; on the other hand, I do think I have a way of thinking that’s fairly uncommon and interesting and useful and in some ways more right than the default. Either way, there’s no fucking way that I want the state to be telling me which personality traits I can and can’t pass on to my child.
Ok now you:
E.g. do you have a neuroatypicality such as autism, ADHD, bipolar, dyslexia? Some sort of dysphoria or mental illness? A non-heterosexual orientation? Etc. (I’m curious, but obviously not expecting you to share; just asking you to think of it.)
If so, consider the prospect of the state saying that you can’t pass this trait on.
If not, well nevermind lol. There’s a bit more theory here, just in case it helps; specifically:
I do not have autism/ADHD/bipolar/dyslexia/dysphoria or a non-heterosexual orientation. If I woke up tomorrow with one of those, I would very badly want it reverted.
However, it seems obvious to me that if being a little schizoid made you a free thinker, able to see things most others can’t see, able to pursue good things that most others won’t pursue, then it does not count as “unambiguous net harm” and the government should have no say in whether you can pass it on. That’s not even close to the line of what the government should be allowed to prohibit.
So to be clear, your proposal is for people who aren’t blind to decide what hypothetical future blind children will think of their parents’s decisions, and that judgement should override the judgement of the blind parents themselves? This seems wild to me.
… Ok possibly I could see some sort of scheme where all the blind people get to decide whether to regulate genomic choice to make blind children? Haven’t thought about this, but it seems pretty messy and weird. But maybe.
But it kinda sounds like your notion of “near-universal” ends up just being whatever your CBA said? I guess I’m not sure what would sway you. Suppose for example the following made-up hypothetical: there’s a child alive today whose blind parents intentionally selected an embryo that would be blind. Suppose that child says “Actually, I’m happy my parents made that choice. I feel close to them, part of a special community, where we share a special way of experiencing the world; we sense different things than other people, and consequently we have different tastes, and this gives us a bit of a different consciousness. Yes there are difficulties, but I love my life, and I wouldn’t want to have been sighted.”. In this case, do you update?
Maybe we’re at an impasse here. At some point I hope to set up convenient streaming / podcasting; if I’d already done so I’d invite you on to chat, which might go better.
Yes, blind people are the experts here. If 95% of blind people wish they weren’t blind, then (unless there is good reason to believe that a specific child will be in the 5%) gene editing for blindness should be illegal.
(Although we might overrule blind people if they claimed to be happy but had bad objective measures, like high rates of depression and suicide.)
This is absolutely not what I’m suggesting. I’m suggesting (something in the genre of) the possibility of having that if 95% of blind people decide that gene editing for blindness should be illegal, then gene editing for blindness should be illegal. It’s their autonomy that’s at issue here.
Fair point, I glossed over the differences there. Although in practice I think very few blind people who wish they could see, would be in favor of gene editing for blindness being legal.
I’m genuinely unsure whether or not they would. Would be interesting to know.
One example, from “ASAN Statement on Genetic Research and Autism” https://autisticadvocacy.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/genetic-statement-recommendations.pdf :
Not directly comparable, but related. (I disagree with their reasoning and conclusions, I think.)
Interestingly, they make the same suggestion I mentioned above: