You propose several ways to “minimize designer baby drama”, but you have ignored the potential costs of these interventions.
I see a few large costs of your proposals:
1) Reducing the potential intelligence of a number of future individuals
In particular, maybe it’s possible to decrease the cost of gene editing/selection technologies while retarding advances in our knowledge of which genes contribute to intelligence.
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try to discover those genes before we discover genes for intelligence
2) Monetary cost and deadweight loss from taxes
extend the benefits of designer babies to everyone for free regardless of their social class
3) Parent preference frustration
mandatory birth control technology
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Require designer babies to possess genes for compassion, benevolence, and reflectiveness by law
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Regulate the modification of genes like height if game theory suggests allowing arbitrary modifications to them would be a bad idea.
Civil wars have been fought over class before, and I think different classes diverging into different species would massively raise the probability of this. I’m really not sure how to put a number to this, but I’d guess somewhere around 10% for the US, and around 90% for terrorism, but not tanks on the street.
The probability would be higher for less stable countries.
You propose several ways to “minimize designer baby drama”, but you have ignored the potential costs of these interventions.
I see a few large costs of your proposals:
1) Reducing the potential intelligence of a number of future individuals
...
2) Monetary cost and deadweight loss from taxes
3) Parent preference frustration
...
...
Still, probably better than civil war.
Better than what probability of civil war?
Civil wars have been fought over class before, and I think different classes diverging into different species would massively raise the probability of this. I’m really not sure how to put a number to this, but I’d guess somewhere around 10% for the US, and around 90% for terrorism, but not tanks on the street.
The probability would be higher for less stable countries.
The main thing I’m optimizing for is minimizing existential risk. I acknowledge the costs you describe are significant.