A few minor comparisons of the results of Genetic egineering and Natural selection
[feel free to tldr the intro]
Intro
The title should have been longer to be more accurate and perhaps less misleading but I hope the community will forgive that for sake of brevity as:
A few minor comparisons of the [probable] results of [relatively conservative] Genetic engineering and natural selection [as it acted in the ancestral environment and to a lesser extent today in a purely speculative manner, publicized only to clear and debug my own thinking as well as hear new ideas on the subject from trusted sources]
seemed a bit much.
First off I would like to pre-empt a comment launching a debate that some might find interesting and others tedious, I wish to emphasise that genetic engineering and all human activity is naturally well … natural (so one could say that natural selection is a bit of a misnomer). By saying that I also hope I implicitly clear up what is meant when I speak of “selective pressures”.
Much like Robin Hanson’s highly modified very economical sustenance level living ems, any analysis focusing on the intelligence enhancement aspect of genetic engineering will tend towards a similar shining “result” that might overshadow smaller insights. The only real appreciable difference seems to be the time-scales involved (the length of a human generations is on completely different orders of magnitude than say just copying ems). Both scenarios could be understood as a prophecy of ultimate victory of natural selection over any human attempt to limit its outcome according to most of the sets of values in valuspace that generally humans occupy (valuing survival and only survival, with survival defined as a specific kind of continuity, is of course a obvious exception, but few humans I think truly ascribe to it). The transition period to a neomalthusian world has some interesting dynamics but I’m not going to talk about that too much because it seems a classical accelerating returns event.
In addition for similar reasons (much like Eliezer’s story) this “impossible world” is going to ignore or more accuratley not touch the effects of AI and cybernetic IA. Sans the narrative I am basically making a story to flesh out how the new balance of selective pressures that are likley to exist in the early phases of genetic engineering may look like. This is done because:
I wish to see if any new factors, that haven’t been discussed yet or I haven’t thought of yet, will persist in shaping the balance of pressures into the later stages
Because I’m curious about what the balance will be even if it persists for such a short time as to have little effect on the overall course of (trans)human evolution.
Speculation
Now that that verbose intro is done with (felt it necessary to frame the debate I am interested in properly), let me get to the meat:
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Fisherian runaway seems much more likley for characteristics that send good status signals about us (characteristics that make us appear nice/moral/decent/prestigious/caring people regardless of actual usefulness or perhaps even harm).
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Energy requirements will be relaxed. The cost benefit comparison was much more important even in our very recent evolutionary past as is attested by say different maturation rates (age of menarche, average pregnancy length, dental and bone development, ect.) between different groups, than it will likley be in the near or perhaps medium view. After all to people likley to reproduce primarily by in vitro fertilisation, guaranteeing their child a caloric intake larger than norm by say 50% will not be a major expense.
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Adaptations that incur benefits and also (rare or not) emotionally troubling complications or small disadvantages that send bad status signals will be weeded out (seems a aspect of our adaptation to be loss averse). [note: I’d probably keep Tay-Sachs even if it perhaps gave my children some difficult choices about who to marry if it meant (as it seem likley) a IQ boost for them, but I don’t think Everyman would see it that way especially it meant risks for conditions like say Torison Dystonia]. This may or may not include the (by my values unfortunate) culling of some spaces of neurodiversity, depends on how large a fraction of humanity practices GE.
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Value divergence, people will wish their offspring to be similar to them in general ideological outlook, they will also seek to correct self-perceived personality “flaws”.
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Human self-domestication will continue at a faster pace or perhaps resume, depending on your perspective (I think we are likley to see a Fisherian runaway on some aspects of it).
Sexual dimorphism will increase as a side effect of the race for more attractive (not only physical beauty but behaviour as well) sons and more beautiful daughters (mostly just modification for physical beauty).Fisherian runaway again seems likley. Parents may have ideological compunctions against doing this, but it seems plausible that considering we will get used to at least some of the increase in average attractiveness, our tendency towards hypergamy and the many very real and significant ways in which being beautiful or at least not ugly helps one in life, I think most will cave in.
Note the above assumes assumes government interference will be limited to banning or making difficult giving “disabilities” on purpose (but leaving you the right to pass on the “disabilities” you already carry) and perhaps limiting transgenic efforts (perhaps banning any alleles not already found above a certain frequency in a existent human population). I don’t really care about the de jure status of any of the above as much as the de facto practice.
Note: I’m well aware the above paragraph would by some be considered a unacceptable limit on freedom and to others a overly libertarian approach, let me therefore emphasise that I’m not talking ethics here or making predictions on the probability of the extent of government regulation or its efficacy. I’m simply being honest with the backdrop against which I was thinking up the above points.
Once the number and quality of your offspring is based on your wealth and access to the latest biotech as opposed to your sexual partner(s), sexual selection becomes a lot weaker.
This is a very important point. Especially the development of the artificial uterus or a libertarian approach to surrogacy would change the game immensely.
That is a relief!
Ethics. Typo, fixed. I hope it was clear from the context what was meant.
Why was this topic downvoted?
While I’m uncertain why it was downvoted, I suspect that it was downvoted for four reasons:
1) It is extremely speculative.
2) The post makes a variety of implicit assumptions about what genetic modifications will and will not be possible.
3) The post makes assumptions based on current genetic hypotheses that don’t have strong data. In particular, while there is some evidence that the Tay-Sachs allele has benefits in the heterozygous case, the evidence is still weak.
4) The post is vaguely transhumanist yet not connected to rationality. This reason is probably made worse by the fact that most of the concern with advanced technologies on LW centers around the possible problems with AI, and that there is a perception among many that if strong AI does arise most details of genetic engineering will almost a sideshow (this seems plausible in the event that hard-takeoff occurs within a short time-span (say prior to 2025)).
Thank you for the feedback. I wish people who down voted would have commented why.
I was surprised that the article was at first upvoted but then then the balance changed later on. While not very relevant to the topic of this discussion this honestly feeds my curiosity and has had a nice side effect of motivating me to spend a few more hours working on the two projects I have that will hopefully give me (and perhaps the community) some solid empirical data about karma mining and dynamics.
Seems a valid reason to downvote.
All of the points described seem to me achievable just by using existent human genetic variation. However I didn’t specifically speculate on what is or isn’t possible. I simply tried to think of what seemed most probable people would desire and gravitate too.
Tay-Scahs was used as a example of the kind of trade off people might need to consider. Small risk of very bad disease that brings emotional suffering versus a likley advantage. The example itself can be changed to something else, but the idea that such trade off’s aren’t present in our genome would require a …. novell argument. It also seemed dust speck games where popular here.
For this reason I posted it in the discussion section.
As a downvoter I thought I’d make it clear why I did so. The article is extremely confusingly written, with a failure to establish what exactly it is saying, claiming to be a comparison between natural selection and genetic engineering but then switching to a list of bulleted predictions which use quite technical language without much explanation other than the occasional wiki link.
For example
“Energy requirements will be relaxed. The cost benefit comparison was much more important even in our very recent evolutionary past as is attested by say different maturation rates (age of menarche, average pregnancy length, dental and bone development, ect.) between different groups, than it will likley be in the near or perhaps medium view. After all to people likley to reproduce primarily by in vitro fertilisation, guaranteeing their child a caloric intake larger than norm by say 50% will not be a major expense.”
What exactly are you saying here? I actually wrote out a guess but I still do not know.
First of thank you very much for the criticism and response :)
Now I’ll try my best to use as little “technical language” as possible:
Food is cheap and will remain relatively cheap for humans who are likley to have most of their kids genetically enhanced. This is very different from our ancestral environment or even the environment a few centuries ago. Modifications that do desirable things but mean you can’t handle starving or prolonged malnutrition as well as a unmodified human or that you perhaps digest food slightly less efficiently or that you perhaps just simply have a faster metabolism and need to eat more are not likley to be things that parents will shun (except perhaps those with a “survivalist” mindset, but I think we’ll see few of those).
Now the list of features I first used (age of menarche, average pregnancy length, dental and bone development, ect.), is a list of features that are tied closely to the fact that brain development takes priority and that development needs to be paced. Some of these could be speed up with no ill effect on the development of the expensive brain by just upping the calorie and nutrient requirements of the organism.
Children being athletic and outpacing their peers in development seem things parents might want (even today some parents wait a extra year before enrolling their kids in school to basically ensure they have a edge in social interactions, imagine being able to buy the same physical advantage but not having to wait that extra year).
Well the proposed Tay-Sachs benefit is an example of a trade-off that probably isn’t present in our genome to as large an extent as was supposed during the hey day of the overdominance hypothesis. For heterozygote advantages to be a serious ethical issue would require the advantages they conferred to be difficult to obtain by other means, IQ I can see, but anyone rich enough to afford a designer baby probably isn’t going to bother giving it a sickle cell allele.
I’ve spoken about this in the intro:
It seems odd that if people down voted the post on those grounds they haven’t bothered to correct me or comment on the above line of thought.
I see I’ve been unsuccessful in fostering debate on this topic, especially since its implications (potentially) transcend the medium of genes.
But like I stated I mostly wrote this out for rationality checking and to order my thoughts properly. Debate was a secondary goal. Looking again at my list something strikes me as potentially an interesting aspect:
Self replicating ems need to worry about the status signalling of creating copies of a certain kind. This becomes very tricking if others have access to the source code.