This is kind of at risk of becoming a blog post.
TLDR; No super babies, maybe ever. Better babies now, if you’re evil. Cyborgs easier. Large but shrinking problems with ‘failed attempts’ will probably always exist. Gattica plausible in near future to the unscrupulous. All subject to large uncertainties about how brains work.
Technology has been here for centuries. It just depends on your moral flexibility.
We know that intelligence is very heritable (this is actually a fairly complex concept resting on large assumptions that I recommend looking up, ‘additive’ heritability is a serious underestimate). Right now though, as with everything else, we only know a small fraction of the variants involved. This may change in a big way in the next, say, twenty, or it may turn out to require detailed understanding of the pathways involved, in which case it will take longer.
In any case, the situation right now is that while a clone of your would have an IQ similar to your own, reading a genome tells us only a small fraction of what that clone would tell us. So we can sequence embryos’ genomes and pick the good ones. That process will, over the next half century, become cheaper and effective, but is of course still bounded. We can only pick from the best genomes you and your mate could have created. If you are exceptionally intelligent your kids will probably still not be, as you represent a complex and fortuitous combination of alleles.
Or if you don’t care about them being yours, we can just pirate someone else’s genome. That’s doable right now, subject to massive ethical problems with ‘failed attempts’.
We can also, potentially, insert new variants. Blashimov is right in that this is a big uncertainty. For now any such process would create lots of failures, which is obviously unacceptable, even to a truly ruthless baby shopper, as they might only show their flaws later in development, after you’ve named the little dimwit. Improvement seems likely, however I would guess there’ll always be an ethical barrier posed by these . I would also guess we can pick some low hanging fruit and get to the upper percentiles of the human distribution quite quickly. Then it will become difficult. Evolution won’t have left too much free money on the table. Combining genome piracy and tinkering seems like it should yield even better results.
I expect human/machine interface to be a more promising,ethical, and rapid means of cognitive enhancement.
If people are interested I could do some research and a post on this.
Intelligent beyond removing very localized mutations that impair “normal” function? I’d be interested in a expert too, but only a little bit, as I would expect them to have very high uncertainty. We only know a little bit about the interaction between genes and intelligence. First we’d have to understand that, and then we might be able to have children pre-disposed to the current upper range of humanity. But if you mean really “super,” we’d have to understand a lot more about the algorithms for creativity, insight, etc. and then probably do a lot of redesign. Which might be the difference between breeding a better bird and building an airplane.
Off topic, but does anyone have information on when super-intelligent designer babies are likely to be here?
This is kind of at risk of becoming a blog post. TLDR; No super babies, maybe ever. Better babies now, if you’re evil. Cyborgs easier. Large but shrinking problems with ‘failed attempts’ will probably always exist. Gattica plausible in near future to the unscrupulous. All subject to large uncertainties about how brains work.
Technology has been here for centuries. It just depends on your moral flexibility.
We know that intelligence is very heritable (this is actually a fairly complex concept resting on large assumptions that I recommend looking up, ‘additive’ heritability is a serious underestimate). Right now though, as with everything else, we only know a small fraction of the variants involved. This may change in a big way in the next, say, twenty, or it may turn out to require detailed understanding of the pathways involved, in which case it will take longer.
In any case, the situation right now is that while a clone of your would have an IQ similar to your own, reading a genome tells us only a small fraction of what that clone would tell us. So we can sequence embryos’ genomes and pick the good ones. That process will, over the next half century, become cheaper and effective, but is of course still bounded. We can only pick from the best genomes you and your mate could have created. If you are exceptionally intelligent your kids will probably still not be, as you represent a complex and fortuitous combination of alleles.
Or if you don’t care about them being yours, we can just pirate someone else’s genome. That’s doable right now, subject to massive ethical problems with ‘failed attempts’.
We can also, potentially, insert new variants. Blashimov is right in that this is a big uncertainty. For now any such process would create lots of failures, which is obviously unacceptable, even to a truly ruthless baby shopper, as they might only show their flaws later in development, after you’ve named the little dimwit. Improvement seems likely, however I would guess there’ll always be an ethical barrier posed by these . I would also guess we can pick some low hanging fruit and get to the upper percentiles of the human distribution quite quickly. Then it will become difficult. Evolution won’t have left too much free money on the table. Combining genome piracy and tinkering seems like it should yield even better results.
I expect human/machine interface to be a more promising,ethical, and rapid means of cognitive enhancement.
If people are interested I could do some research and a post on this.
Thanks for the info! Could make a good discussion post.
Intelligent beyond removing very localized mutations that impair “normal” function? I’d be interested in a expert too, but only a little bit, as I would expect them to have very high uncertainty. We only know a little bit about the interaction between genes and intelligence. First we’d have to understand that, and then we might be able to have children pre-disposed to the current upper range of humanity. But if you mean really “super,” we’d have to understand a lot more about the algorithms for creativity, insight, etc. and then probably do a lot of redesign. Which might be the difference between breeding a better bird and building an airplane.