If we can get one or two of the major genetic enhancement technologies (e.g.human in vitro gametogenesis, cloning, iterated embryo selection, or multiplex gene editing ) to work and be affordable, we might see an extreme divergence with strange social/economic/political implications. The super-geniuses will rise to the top and probably find solutions to our problems, especially if they end up a decent portion of the population. AI is a huge wildcard too.
Doomers should consider research in this area the highest moral priority, especially over waging culture war over current events.
It's not sure what they think the real problems are, will align with what we think our problems are - most strongly differentiated groups cannot agree on what the actual problems are to begin with.
The people reading and commenting on this blog and others like it are a very small percentage of the population. We won't make a difference. Most people won't even think of doing IVF + embryo selection unless they have problem conceiving. And the fertility rate among the highly educated is quite low to begin with.
Elon Musk having 10 children will not change anything.
The only thing I see happening that might change the course of our dysgenic history is if China goes all in on IVF + Embryo selection and they get a lot of good results. That will prompt the west to wake up and finally start doing this in mass also.
Average middle-class John and Jane want every advantage possible for their children, and that's really all the push it takes. John and Jane don't need to be on the internet discussing IQ, that's completely irrelevant.
I do agree that competition from China will also be a motivator, especially for elites who will see the technology's obvious usefulness and will promote it while ignoring protests. China doesn't even need to apply the technology first, because the American elites already understand that they are at a disadvantage against China, just because of the size of the Chinese population.
Research in this area is happening as it stands. Leaving it non-salient to politics is by far the best outcome.
I personally entrust people I know that are of the right age to do something about it to do IVF/PGT-P.
We can walk and chew gum at the same time though. One can both encourage genetic engineering while not assuming it is a panacea that allows one to ignore demographic policy. It's unknown how long good genetic engineering will take or what the potential side effects are. Dysgenics in the meantime reduces time and resources to work that out with little upside (and many downsides).
So Dutton completely ignores embryo selection, an obvious and realistic solution to the problem he points to, fails to do the slightest investigation of the right-wing generation Zoomer meme, fails to demonstrate that America is getting more religious, and makes grandiose predictions that could be a parody of someone who likes to make grandiose predictions.
Well that's Dutton for you. A right-wing version of a gender theorist or white privilege scholar. In an earlier book, he posits that the West lost capacity to produce technology because the Concorde was discontinued, while ignoring that the last few decades have seen massive technological improvements in chips, genetics and medicine, among other areas.
This book seems like a strange mix of the perceptive and the delusional.
"Industrial Revolution. Darwinian selection massively weakened, meaning that, for the first time in history, the selfish, sick and stupid could survive and reproduce, undermining our religious, group-oriented culture. Now the West is scourged by an epidemic of narcissists, competing to signal their individuality and moral superiority. But their ‘fight for equality’ is really a fight for self-promotion."
Now that is a damned good characterisation! Characterisation of the havoc that its narcissistic 'highly educated' intelligentsia has wreaked upon the West.
So your only argument against this doomer worldview is Embryo Selection and we both know that this isn‘t going to be implemented on a wide enough scale
AI could massively speed up technological progress, making it moot that humans are losing some IQ points. For instance, if AI could do that, maybe one can just invent in vivo genetic engineering to make everybody much smarter, or use super powerful nootropics, or use brain implants, etc. AI is a wildcard.
1. Embryo selection is already happening, mostly for health reasons. A significant percentage of mothers in Denmark already use IVF. Right now IVF is usually for women with some difficulty conceiving, but the use of this technology to select for IQ must be conservatively 10 years out, and no, the world is not going to end in ten or even forty years. The fact that the US is still getting richer shows that there will be more than enough time for eugenic technologies to spread.
2. The US tends to be libertarian on these issues despite being relatively religious for the rich world, and this is especially so in blue states. See the market for surrogate mothers for an example. Of course, right now the US is getting less and not more religious, so this argument is really confusing. The point is, even if the US were getting more religious, which it isn't, US elites are not going to abandon eugenics while they are in competition with China, so they would just ignore the dumb masses.
3. That's a problem, but the smart bet is that smart leftists are going to be able to defeat the dumb ones, and they're going to just spin this technology as an instrument of social justice.
The bottom line is that embryo selection doesn't really change much about what to do today. If you think smart people should have more kids and we should try to encourage that, embryo selection is just one more thing they can do to have kids. If you think immigration is bad, embryo selection doesn't change that (maybe even makes it worse).
If we can get one or two of the major genetic enhancement technologies (e.g.human in vitro gametogenesis, cloning, iterated embryo selection, or multiplex gene editing ) to work and be affordable, we might see an extreme divergence with strange social/economic/political implications. The super-geniuses will rise to the top and probably find solutions to our problems, especially if they end up a decent portion of the population. AI is a huge wildcard too.
Doomers should consider research in this area the highest moral priority, especially over waging culture war over current events.
It's not sure what they think the real problems are, will align with what we think our problems are - most strongly differentiated groups cannot agree on what the actual problems are to begin with.
The people reading and commenting on this blog and others like it are a very small percentage of the population. We won't make a difference. Most people won't even think of doing IVF + embryo selection unless they have problem conceiving. And the fertility rate among the highly educated is quite low to begin with.
Elon Musk having 10 children will not change anything.
The only thing I see happening that might change the course of our dysgenic history is if China goes all in on IVF + Embryo selection and they get a lot of good results. That will prompt the west to wake up and finally start doing this in mass also.
Average middle-class John and Jane want every advantage possible for their children, and that's really all the push it takes. John and Jane don't need to be on the internet discussing IQ, that's completely irrelevant.
I do agree that competition from China will also be a motivator, especially for elites who will see the technology's obvious usefulness and will promote it while ignoring protests. China doesn't even need to apply the technology first, because the American elites already understand that they are at a disadvantage against China, just because of the size of the Chinese population.
Research in this area is happening as it stands. Leaving it non-salient to politics is by far the best outcome.
I personally entrust people I know that are of the right age to do something about it to do IVF/PGT-P.
We can walk and chew gum at the same time though. One can both encourage genetic engineering while not assuming it is a panacea that allows one to ignore demographic policy. It's unknown how long good genetic engineering will take or what the potential side effects are. Dysgenics in the meantime reduces time and resources to work that out with little upside (and many downsides).
damn, that was a very negative review of the book 💀💀💀
It‘s over for doomercels
never began
So Dutton completely ignores embryo selection, an obvious and realistic solution to the problem he points to, fails to do the slightest investigation of the right-wing generation Zoomer meme, fails to demonstrate that America is getting more religious, and makes grandiose predictions that could be a parody of someone who likes to make grandiose predictions.
Well that's Dutton for you. A right-wing version of a gender theorist or white privilege scholar. In an earlier book, he posits that the West lost capacity to produce technology because the Concorde was discontinued, while ignoring that the last few decades have seen massive technological improvements in chips, genetics and medicine, among other areas.
This book seems like a strange mix of the perceptive and the delusional.
"Industrial Revolution. Darwinian selection massively weakened, meaning that, for the first time in history, the selfish, sick and stupid could survive and reproduce, undermining our religious, group-oriented culture. Now the West is scourged by an epidemic of narcissists, competing to signal their individuality and moral superiority. But their ‘fight for equality’ is really a fight for self-promotion."
Now that is a damned good characterisation! Characterisation of the havoc that its narcissistic 'highly educated' intelligentsia has wreaked upon the West.
But as for smart-arsed predicting how the future will unfold? This is - and always has been - silly mind-games. Intellectual vanity. https://grahamcunningham.substack.com/p/invasion-of-the-virtue-signallers
So your only argument against this doomer worldview is Embryo Selection and we both know that this isn‘t going to be implemented on a wide enough scale
AI can do it too.
What does the “AI fixing it” scenario look like as opposed to embryo selection?
AI could massively speed up technological progress, making it moot that humans are losing some IQ points. For instance, if AI could do that, maybe one can just invent in vivo genetic engineering to make everybody much smarter, or use super powerful nootropics, or use brain implants, etc. AI is a wildcard.
Wildcard is the best analogy. Could be good, bad, neutral, or some unknown weird thing.
We should encourage these developments while not using them as an excuse not to fix problems in the present.
Embryo selection won‘t save us as:
1. It needs more research to be practical and affordable
2. The population gets dumber and more conservative/religious = strictly against messing with human life. God will fix it.
3. Still in a leftist influence who regard Eugnics as strictly nazi science
1. Embryo selection is already happening, mostly for health reasons. A significant percentage of mothers in Denmark already use IVF. Right now IVF is usually for women with some difficulty conceiving, but the use of this technology to select for IQ must be conservatively 10 years out, and no, the world is not going to end in ten or even forty years. The fact that the US is still getting richer shows that there will be more than enough time for eugenic technologies to spread.
2. The US tends to be libertarian on these issues despite being relatively religious for the rich world, and this is especially so in blue states. See the market for surrogate mothers for an example. Of course, right now the US is getting less and not more religious, so this argument is really confusing. The point is, even if the US were getting more religious, which it isn't, US elites are not going to abandon eugenics while they are in competition with China, so they would just ignore the dumb masses.
3. That's a problem, but the smart bet is that smart leftists are going to be able to defeat the dumb ones, and they're going to just spin this technology as an instrument of social justice.
Who knows?
The bottom line is that embryo selection doesn't really change much about what to do today. If you think smart people should have more kids and we should try to encourage that, embryo selection is just one more thing they can do to have kids. If you think immigration is bad, embryo selection doesn't change that (maybe even makes it worse).