I was assuming they had fast and accurate DNA printers. You have a more limited ability to brute force test things than evolution. (How many babies with mental disorders can you create before the project gets cancelled?)
Consider starting with any large modern software project, like open office. Suppose I wanted a piece of software like open office, except with a few changes of wording on the menu. I find the spot and change it. Suppose I want a game of chess. I am writing an entirely new program. In the first case, I will use the same programming language, in the second I might not.
The reason for this dynamic is that
1) The amount of effort is proportional to the amount of code changed (In a fixed language)
2) Some languages are easier than others, given your skillset.
3) Interaction penalties are substantial.
Now think about genetics as another programming language. One in which we have access to a variety of different programs.
1) and 3) hold. If genetics is a programming language, it’s not a nice one. Think about how hard it would be to do arithmetic in a biological system, compared to just about any programming language. How hard would it be to genetically modify a fruit fly brain so that its nerves took in two numbers, and added them together. Given current tech, I think this would take a major research project at least.
If you want a small tweak on human, that isn’t too hard to do in genes. If you want to radically change things, it would be easier to use computer code, not from difficulty getting the gene sequence you want, but the difficulty knowing which sequences work.
I was assuming they had fast and accurate DNA printers. You have a more limited ability to brute force test things than evolution. (How many babies with mental disorders can you create before the project gets cancelled?)
Consider starting with any large modern software project, like open office. Suppose I wanted a piece of software like open office, except with a few changes of wording on the menu. I find the spot and change it. Suppose I want a game of chess. I am writing an entirely new program. In the first case, I will use the same programming language, in the second I might not.
The reason for this dynamic is that
1) The amount of effort is proportional to the amount of code changed (In a fixed language)
2) Some languages are easier than others, given your skillset.
3) Interaction penalties are substantial.
Now think about genetics as another programming language. One in which we have access to a variety of different programs.
1) and 3) hold. If genetics is a programming language, it’s not a nice one. Think about how hard it would be to do arithmetic in a biological system, compared to just about any programming language. How hard would it be to genetically modify a fruit fly brain so that its nerves took in two numbers, and added them together. Given current tech, I think this would take a major research project at least.
If you want a small tweak on human, that isn’t too hard to do in genes. If you want to radically change things, it would be easier to use computer code, not from difficulty getting the gene sequence you want, but the difficulty knowing which sequences work.