I think that effective altruists seriously undervalue or are unaware of the potential of genetic enhancement. In the case of animals, you could make cows that like their captivity like you mentioned. Maybe you could make them extremely happy and turn factory farming into some of the best things to ever exist. In the area of human genetic enhancement, we will be creating people who are way healthier and happier than any of their ancestors. The benefits to cognitive enhancement are enormous like AI, but smart people are better aligned. The downsides to widespread regulation on PGT-P are enormous. And this is under discussed. This seems like a highly important moment for enhancement that might be somewhat contingent. I’m working on an EA forum post on this. There is always one by a person named Galton but it didn’t seem to bring the idea to prominence among EAs. I know many of them know about it. Just odd to see the lack of discussion. I suppose the stigma is strong.
> Possibly, evolution for higher intelligence in the colder climates would have to be redone, and this process took about 50,000 years last time (time humans have been in Europe, and a lot of this was wasted in ice ages).
It would be much faster if you're doing this deliberately, and doing this deliberately really does not require extremely high intelligence and an O-ring economy. In 10-20 generations (which is two orders of magnitude faster than you suggest) of deliberate selection you should easily be able to create a substantial-sized subpopulation 1 sigma above what you started with, without big loss of variation. That would be enough to uplift Bangladeshi to build and sustain advanced technological civilization.
That said, to sustain 10-20 generations of deliberate selection, while rather easy from the technical standpoint, you need very strong and persistent cultural technology. In fact, subcontinent peoples with their caste systems seems to be quite well suited for that.
The predominant worldview will likely be whatever means one can control the unobservable universe will be the most morally correct thing to do. If sentient life has infinite desire, and infinite desire, willpower and intelligence can harness energy to do work to modify the parameters of the universe, the environment and all life itself, then necessarily so it will seek to be the greatest conceivable existence that can encapsulate the entirety of whatever medium it is residing in. Anything less would be extinction. Failure to transfer the patterns, mental abstractions, information to any next generation or time horizon means non existence. Assuming existence is preferable to non existence. Just as bacteria multiply until there is a limiting factor, humans do the same. Research output is nonlinear, and you need way better instruments, way more energy and way more universe-interacting objects, as well as much greater mental conceptual working memory to compute things on orders of magnitudes in terms of third and later higher order effects with high degrees of freedom which the human brain is simply not equipped to do. Would be nice to get a cortex for processing stuff .. dolphins get some for echolocation-spatial processing and complex social relations … camflouaging octopi get some for changing their skin features in real time. Maybe we can just parametize all living life functions and do real time transcranial magnetic induction of high specificity so we can alter our entire neural circuits to gain these great features. Who knows. Unfortunately playing to be god does come with its windfalls of eliminating all prior individuals before it because they take up the same niche equilibria. If you were an interplanetary space alien who is already in ownership of millions of stars we would comparatively see ourselves in same way as a bug on a grass field, not likely to care or notice. But there is eight billion of us and there are some highly idyosyncratic elites who would not mind wiping a sizable proportion of us to have a clean and pollutantless earth that is inhabited by their immortal progeny. I do share similar sentiments in the fact that so few people think it’s ok to augment a progeny’s intellect— if the average human being is too inconceivably stupid and dull to comprehend that their life choices from the time of conception has caused untold misery to their progeny and they are persuaded by authority for safety, why is it justifiable to even care about such individuals for such individuals have always existed every millennia and exist merely to serve the outputs of society in terms of additive increases to things in existence but not necessarily things that augment existence (I.e. factory drone worker 54, office worker drone 284) can make more of X PRODUCT OR SERVICE but not conceive of energy plant Y or math algo Z that translates into a greater threshold of availability for contingent existences which is intrinsically more valuable, not to mention the quality thereof.
I think that effective altruists seriously undervalue or are unaware of the potential of genetic enhancement. In the case of animals, you could make cows that like their captivity like you mentioned. Maybe you could make them extremely happy and turn factory farming into some of the best things to ever exist. In the area of human genetic enhancement, we will be creating people who are way healthier and happier than any of their ancestors. The benefits to cognitive enhancement are enormous like AI, but smart people are better aligned. The downsides to widespread regulation on PGT-P are enormous. And this is under discussed. This seems like a highly important moment for enhancement that might be somewhat contingent. I’m working on an EA forum post on this. There is always one by a person named Galton but it didn’t seem to bring the idea to prominence among EAs. I know many of them know about it. Just odd to see the lack of discussion. I suppose the stigma is strong.
> Possibly, evolution for higher intelligence in the colder climates would have to be redone, and this process took about 50,000 years last time (time humans have been in Europe, and a lot of this was wasted in ice ages).
It would be much faster if you're doing this deliberately, and doing this deliberately really does not require extremely high intelligence and an O-ring economy. In 10-20 generations (which is two orders of magnitude faster than you suggest) of deliberate selection you should easily be able to create a substantial-sized subpopulation 1 sigma above what you started with, without big loss of variation. That would be enough to uplift Bangladeshi to build and sustain advanced technological civilization.
That said, to sustain 10-20 generations of deliberate selection, while rather easy from the technical standpoint, you need very strong and persistent cultural technology. In fact, subcontinent peoples with their caste systems seems to be quite well suited for that.
The predominant worldview will likely be whatever means one can control the unobservable universe will be the most morally correct thing to do. If sentient life has infinite desire, and infinite desire, willpower and intelligence can harness energy to do work to modify the parameters of the universe, the environment and all life itself, then necessarily so it will seek to be the greatest conceivable existence that can encapsulate the entirety of whatever medium it is residing in. Anything less would be extinction. Failure to transfer the patterns, mental abstractions, information to any next generation or time horizon means non existence. Assuming existence is preferable to non existence. Just as bacteria multiply until there is a limiting factor, humans do the same. Research output is nonlinear, and you need way better instruments, way more energy and way more universe-interacting objects, as well as much greater mental conceptual working memory to compute things on orders of magnitudes in terms of third and later higher order effects with high degrees of freedom which the human brain is simply not equipped to do. Would be nice to get a cortex for processing stuff .. dolphins get some for echolocation-spatial processing and complex social relations … camflouaging octopi get some for changing their skin features in real time. Maybe we can just parametize all living life functions and do real time transcranial magnetic induction of high specificity so we can alter our entire neural circuits to gain these great features. Who knows. Unfortunately playing to be god does come with its windfalls of eliminating all prior individuals before it because they take up the same niche equilibria. If you were an interplanetary space alien who is already in ownership of millions of stars we would comparatively see ourselves in same way as a bug on a grass field, not likely to care or notice. But there is eight billion of us and there are some highly idyosyncratic elites who would not mind wiping a sizable proportion of us to have a clean and pollutantless earth that is inhabited by their immortal progeny. I do share similar sentiments in the fact that so few people think it’s ok to augment a progeny’s intellect— if the average human being is too inconceivably stupid and dull to comprehend that their life choices from the time of conception has caused untold misery to their progeny and they are persuaded by authority for safety, why is it justifiable to even care about such individuals for such individuals have always existed every millennia and exist merely to serve the outputs of society in terms of additive increases to things in existence but not necessarily things that augment existence (I.e. factory drone worker 54, office worker drone 284) can make more of X PRODUCT OR SERVICE but not conceive of energy plant Y or math algo Z that translates into a greater threshold of availability for contingent existences which is intrinsically more valuable, not to mention the quality thereof.