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).
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).