Another objection is that improvements in biological intelligence will tend to feed into improvements in artificial intelligence. For example, maybe after a couple of generations of biological improvement, the modified humans will be able to design an AI that quickly FOOMs and overtakes the slow generation by generation biological progress.
(It seems likely that once you’ve picked the low hanging fruit like stuffing people’s genomes as full of intelligence-linked genes as possible without giving them genetic diseases, it will be much easier to implement any new intelligence improvements you can think of in code, rather than in proteins. The human brain is a much more sophisticated starting point than any current AI programs, but is probably much harder to modify significantly.)
>(It seems likely that once you’ve picked the low hanging fruit like stuffing people’s genomes as full of intelligence-linked genes as possible without giving them genetic diseases, it will be much easier to implement any new intelligence improvements you can think of in code, rather than in proteins. The human brain is a much more sophisticated starting point than any current AI programs, but is probably much harder to modify significantly.)
A lot of people make claims like this, and I think they’re underestimating the flexibility of living things. Dogs and livestock have been artificially selected to emphasize unnatural traits to the point that they might not appear in a trillion wolves or boars, yet people consistently predict that the limit for human intelligence without debilitating disorders is going to be just above whoever is the Terence Tao of the era.
Dogs and livestock have been artificially selected to emphasize unnatural traits to the point that they might not appear in a trillion wolves or boars
I think you’re overestimating biology. Living things are not flexible enough to accommodate for GHz clock speed or lightspeed signal transmission despite having had evolution tinkering on it for billions of years. One in a trillion is just 40 bits, not all that impressive, not to mention dogs and livestock took millennia of selective breeding; that’s not fast in our modern context.
Upon reflection, I think it’s pretty obvious that superhumans are going to find it easier to solve the problem of intelligence and then code it out, rather than continue to increase the intelligence of their children through genetic modification. But note that I’m not talking about “selective breeding” here; I’m looking more at something like iterated embryo selection, where many many generations are bred in a short timespan, and then after that possibly direct genetic engineering. Many more than just 40 bits of selection can be applied in a few generations by our descendants than we can by straightforward embryo selection.
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.
Another objection is that improvements in biological intelligence will tend to feed into improvements in artificial intelligence. For example, maybe after a couple of generations of biological improvement, the modified humans will be able to design an AI that quickly FOOMs and overtakes the slow generation by generation biological progress.
(It seems likely that once you’ve picked the low hanging fruit like stuffing people’s genomes as full of intelligence-linked genes as possible without giving them genetic diseases, it will be much easier to implement any new intelligence improvements you can think of in code, rather than in proteins. The human brain is a much more sophisticated starting point than any current AI programs, but is probably much harder to modify significantly.)
>(It seems likely that once you’ve picked the low hanging fruit like stuffing people’s genomes as full of intelligence-linked genes as possible without giving them genetic diseases, it will be much easier to implement any new intelligence improvements you can think of in code, rather than in proteins. The human brain is a much more sophisticated starting point than any current AI programs, but is probably much harder to modify significantly.)
A lot of people make claims like this, and I think they’re underestimating the flexibility of living things. Dogs and livestock have been artificially selected to emphasize unnatural traits to the point that they might not appear in a trillion wolves or boars, yet people consistently predict that the limit for human intelligence without debilitating disorders is going to be just above whoever is the Terence Tao of the era.
I think you’re overestimating biology. Living things are not flexible enough to accommodate for GHz clock speed or lightspeed signal transmission despite having had evolution tinkering on it for billions of years. One in a trillion is just 40 bits, not all that impressive, not to mention dogs and livestock took millennia of selective breeding; that’s not fast in our modern context.
Upon reflection, I think it’s pretty obvious that superhumans are going to find it easier to solve the problem of intelligence and then code it out, rather than continue to increase the intelligence of their children through genetic modification. But note that I’m not talking about “selective breeding” here; I’m looking more at something like iterated embryo selection, where many many generations are bred in a short timespan, and then after that possibly direct genetic engineering. Many more than just 40 bits of selection can be applied in a few generations by our descendants than we can by straightforward embryo selection.
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.