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Comment by Moshe_Silnorin | Hacker News Reader

The patent system remains absurd.

I have mixed feeling about biotechnology, though. On one hand I'm a big fan of human genetic engineering for increased IQ which is looking extremely possible in the near future (hopefully something that will be available here in Singapore before I have kids), on the other hand as these techniques get cheaper and easier to use we may get to the point where any madman with an IQ over 145 could kill hundreds of millions. Nick Bostrom asks this question in his book: if building a nuclear bomb turned out to be trivial, like putting sand in a microwave, would human civilization have survived? We will find out if synthetic biology keeps advancing. Or maybe this is my nightmare and the patent system will slow down progress enough to save humanity.

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human genetic engineering for increased IQ which is looking extremely possible in the near future (hopefully something that will be available here in Singapore before I have kids)

I wouldn't hold your breath. Intelligence is not a single gene you can turn on or off. We don't know enough about what genes to modify (even if we could modify them).

It's polygenic, like height. People who I read in the space of cognitive genomics, such as Steve Hsu and Razib Khan, agree it's looking increasingly plausible. It would require modifying hundreds of alleles. Embryo selection is possible now, just not useful until we have a million genomes tagged with their donors' IQ. 1 of 10 embryo selection give you about 8 IQ points per generation. Hsu thinks Crispr will obsolete embryo selection before it's in wide use.

He also said the following:

>I think there is good evidence that existing genetic variants in the human population (i.e., alleles affecting intelligence that are found today in the collective world population, but not necessarily in a single person) can be combined to produce a phenotype which is far beyond anything yet seen in human history. This would not surprise an animal or plant breeder — experiments on corn, cows, chickens, drosophila, etc. have shifted population means by many standard deviations (e.g., +30 SD in the case of corn).

Or maybe if you put too many IQ-associated alleles in one person you wind up with a psychotic wreck. We don't know how these genes interact, if they do, nor by what mechanism they work. And unlike with corn, you can't just guess until something works; experimenting with actual humans would be a major ethical breach, and there's no animal models of human intelligence. Progress on that front is possible but unlikely in this century.

> Progress on that front is possible but unlikely in this century.

I agree in a way, but every time this comes up I point out that in East Germany they would have pounced on this technique and built a secret base in the wilderness to work on it. I say East Germany because it is a matter of historical record, what they put their athletes through.

So I'm saying that progress on that front is possible but unlikely in this country, where we consider a major ethical breach to be something to be avoided entirely, not just hidden.

You're talking about a country which prepared to biowarfare by dropping bacteria on its own civilian population (including San Francisco Bay Area[0]) to see what happens, without telling anyone. A country that has its own movie industry creating story after story of its military experimenting on people, to the point it's pretty much became a trope.

So no, I wouldn't be so sure this couldn't in principle happen in the US of A.

[0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Sea-Spray

> slow down progress enough to save humanity

The future is the same no matter how long it takes. Advancing slowly doesn't prevent the results of advancement. It just increases the likelihood that something else is advancing faster than you. We should rather humanity destroy itself than lose a fight to a more advanced civilization.

It may give our institutions time to figure our how to cope.

Something can be said for allowing "enough" time for wisdom to develop, instead of rushing forwards without adequate consideration.

How long is "enough" though, and what stimulus is needed for get that wisdom in place? Probably some form(s) of failure, though I've not thought on it further.

If we can slow down biology enough, the AIs will conquer us and keep us as pets. They'll keep us from destroying ourselves with genetic reprogramming the same way we keep dogs from nagging their own wounds: With a cone collar. But this will be some kind of virtual cone collar that blocks CRISPR research.

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