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Comment by plaidfuji | Hacker News Reader

I've seen most of these arguments for and against gene editing before, but the fact of the matter is that it will come down to the economic competitiveness of nations, as always.

What concerns me in the long term is that gene editing will cause human genomes to converge to a single gold standard with proven mental and physical benefits, thereby reducing our species' genetic diversity and leaving us more vulnerable to a mass extinction event. A "zero day exploit" that everyone missed in the popular new cancer-fighting edit.

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From an interview with Geoffrey Miller, an evolutionary psychologist:

"Q: What does that mean in human language? A: Any given couple could potentially have several eggs fertilized in the lab with the dad’s sperm and the mom’s eggs. Then you can test multiple embryos and analyze which one’s going to be the smartest. That kid would belong to that couple as if they had it naturally, but it would be the smartest a couple would be able to produce if they had 100 kids. It’s not genetic engineering or adding new genes, it’s the genes that couples already have.

Q: And over the course of several generations you’re able to exponentially multiply the population’s intelligence. A: Right. Even if it only boosts the average kid by five IQ points, that’s a huge difference in terms of economic productivity, the competitiveness of the country, how many patents they get, how their businesses are run, and how innovative their economy is.

Q: How does Western research in genetics compare to China’s? A: We’re pretty far behind. We have the same technical capabilities, the same statistical capabilities to analyze the data, but they’re collecting the data on a much larger scale and seem to be capable of transforming the scientific findings into government policy and consumer genetic testing much more easily than we are. Technically and scientifically we could be doing this, but we’re not.

Q: Why not? A: We have ideological biases that say, “Well, this could be troubling, we shouldn’t be meddling with nature, we shouldn’t be meddling with God.” I just attended a debate in New York a few weeks ago about whether or not we should outlaw genetic engineering in babies and the audience was pretty split. In China, 95 percent of an audience would say, “Obviously you should make babies genetically healthier, happier, and brighter!” There’s a big cultural difference.

https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/5gw8vn/chinas-taking-over...

" Q: Could it develop into something more sinister?

A: That same research does open up the door potentially to genetic engineering in the future. But that would take a lot longer to make practical.

===

Q: When do you think the embryo analysis might be implemented on a large scale?

A: Actual use of the technology to do embryo screening might take five to ten years, but it could be just a few years. It depends on how motivated they are.

......"

The "fertilizing many eggs and then picking the genetically 'best' ones" is literally a plot point in Gattaca.

"This child is still you, just the best of you."

I don't know if the "economic competitiveness" part will be a comforting argument if this ever comes to pass. What I mean is, it won't been seen as "look at how our economy could grow if we do this." That economy would just be viewed as the new standard. This technology will be seen as "do this or you will be left behind." I fear it will be coercive and alienating.

Modern advanced society already requires a high minimum intelligence for people to function in especially to hold a respectable job or be a respectable member of a community. The minimum is increasing when more automation is used for most kinds of automation.

If someone's children will likely have a lower than this minimum intelligence, which you can infer from parent's IQ and other measures, will you encourage or prohibit them to use either embryo selection or genetic engineering? What are the impact on the child's life for each option? Is the 'distaste' more important than giving a better opportunity for the newborns?

Also, what can you do? You cannot put regulations on China or other countries. On this issue, they will not agree on international agreement either. And there will be rich people who fly to other countries to have the procedures done. This will cause even more inequality than allowing it domestically.

Jordan Peterson IQ and Job Market https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fjs2gPa5sD0

If someone's children will likely have a lower than this minimum intelligence, which you can infer from parent's IQ and other measures...

Can it really be inferred? Not including conditions or syndromes of course. The parents' environment may have affected their intelligence and the child may turn out entirely different.

With a large number of DNA sequences, the genetic cause can be separated from environmental. That's why embryo selection is possible.

Getting parent's DNAs sequenced might be needed but it's affordable now. See gwern's answers and link for more info.

intelligence is 50-80% genetic, identical twin studies have shown this many times.

Yes, it can be inferred: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heritability_of_IQ.

The quote is accurate, but the plot point is not. In Gattaca, they pick the best of each gene to make an optimized embryo, which is far, far more meddlier than picking the best whole embryo.

I'd be against for two reasons

1) life isn't about being smart, far from that (that's national emergent feedback, and I often despise nations as a concept)

2) being smart isn't even needed, a culture of sharing and listening would be enough to uplift life by many points. A culture of recognizing ego and letting him shut down then appreciate everything as a whole. Most brains can do this, if people can pass this down.

I regularly remember how everything was beautiful before, even with flaws and limits.. a race for optimization, especially driven by national interest isn't something I'd like to see.

ps: I'd even say, "intelligence" is an emergency mode for our brains, and cultivating it was a normal response, but it's not supposed to be our main mode

"Even if it only boosts the average kid by five IQ points, that’s a huge difference in terms of economic productivity, the competitiveness of the country, how many patents they get, how their businesses are run, and how innovative their economy is."

IQ points? Hasn't IQ long ago been discredited as a measure of intelligence?

Don't think it is - do you have anything to back this up? I think IQ is pretty accepted as a measure of intelligence.

Maybe, but what is the definition of intelligence? And even if there is a usable definition is it something that warrants being optimized?

See my comment above. Some additional comments:

- Optimizing EQ is probably far more valuable for society.

- I am not sure that EQ can be optimized for in genetics as easily as IQ can.

- On an individual level, putting a child on the right side of their potential IQ curve will probably make their lives easier or better assuming that relatively few of their peers have this same advantage.

- If every child is on the right side of their potential IQ curve, then optimizing IQ will largely just be a different state for society rather than a noticeable improvement. Most (all?) improvements would likely be seen on the high end in terms of theoretical developments.

- Note that if this switch is somehow flipped in a society, I personally believe that there will be a huge EQ intergenerational crisis such that EQ will be valued even more.

Short answer: No, IQ has not been discredited as a measure of intelligence, but maybe there is more to the scope of intelligence than what it measures.

Long answer:

The g form of IQ is still valid. Based on context in which a test is taken, there may be some type 2 error (people scoring lower than actual IQ), but relatively little type 1 error (people scoring higher than actual IQ).

That said, many researchers have asked if g is the be all and end all of intelligence. Research suggests that g tends to focus on the analytic and verbal parts of our brains. Howard Gardner found through research on aphasia patients that there are areas of our brain that function largely outside of what g measures. Others have found that while IQ floors may exist for certain professions (e.g., 120 for lawyers), IQ is not always the strongest predictor for success -- things like EQ often have stronger predictive value.

Note that some of the derivative works of multiple intelligences, EQ, etc. are twisted interpretations of the original ideas, so be careful when reading the non-seminal works. Some people have co-opted the term "intelligence" in their derivative works in an effort to support a political agenda that may not necessarily be true to the original idea or even constructive.

From a purely functional, non-ethical standpoint, the problem here is that you can't select the smartest embryo from a pile. You can only select the embryo with the most genes identified as correlating with intelligence.

Even assuming that this works, when you do that, you immediately run into the same problem as every other eugenics program: you are reducing the diversity of the population to seek a local maximum. In the analogy for optimization problems of the cows in the field standing on hills and in valleys, you're having all the cows stand on a single hill. You improve the current fitness of the population, according to your metrics, at the cost of the future fitness - you'll never find higher hills to stand upon, and if the fitness function changes, your population will be less equipped to handle it.

well the answer of course is to let some greater intelligence decide this for you. Something greater than humans. AI? Let data and algorithms that aren't influenced by emotions decide?

I'm not denying science, and how it improves the human condition. But this is the point when it stops improving the human condition, and improves the controlled human condition. not the same thing.

Thing is, we are naturally not diverse at all (in part because our nearest ancestors with whom which we, at one time, did have reproduction compatibility with, are no longer here): https://www.ashg.org/education/pdf/geneticvariation.pdf

Specifically, modern humans have, on average, less than 0.1% of differences in their DNA amongst each other: "How diverse are we? Perhaps the most widely cited statistic about human genetic diversity is that any two humans differ, on average, at about 1 in 1,000 DNA base pairs (0.1%). Human genetic diversity is substantially lower than that of many other species, including our nearest evolutionary relative, the chimpanzee. Genetic diversity is a function of a population's "age" (i.e., the amount of time during which mutations accumulate to generate diversity) and its size. Our genetic homogeneity implies that anatomically modern humans arose relatively recently (perhaps 200,000 years ago) and that our population size was quite small at one time (perhaps 10,000 breeding individuals). To put the 0.1% genetic diversity estimate into perspective, it is useful to remember that humans have approximately 3 billion base pairs in a haploid cell. Thus, any pair of humans differs by approximately 3 million base pairs. These differences contain much useful information about the evolutionary history of our species. In addition, the small proportion of differences that occur within genes can lead to critical inferences about the effects of natural selection. "

This is definitely true, but all of these genes have been vetted by millions of years of evolution, so we know they're rock solid. The edits we're talking about will be happening on a time scale that won't be constrained by natural selection, so by the time a weakness is found in one of these new genes, it's likely that it will already be widely adopted. I guess what I'm saying is that it's hard to anticipate what natural selection will look like when we multiply the "mutation rate" by probably > 10 orders of magnitude.

Certain breeds of dog get hip dysplasia. Dalmations go deaf. Molosser breeds often have respiratory issues, particularly pugs. This has not stopped people from breeding dogs.

Natural selection will be out the window. It will be replaced entirely by intentional selection. We will certainly see new diseases rooted in human vanity and hubris, and they will become business opportunities for surgeons and pharmacists, just as our natural and lifestyle ailments have become moneymaking industries.

So the great-grandchildren of people that were gifted by their parents with then-fashionable gene mutations will have all new reasons to pay for health care.

And Sylvester McMonkey McBean simply unveils his star-off machine.

"...all of these genes have been vetted by millions of years of evolution, so we know they're rock solid."

You haven't talked with my knees recently, have you.

>This is definitely true, but all of these genes have been vetted by millions of years of evolution, so we know they're rock solid.

Evolution does not vet for anything except population-level viability. Once upon a time, our population bottlenecked. The return of large-scale genetic diversity is normal for an animal species, especially one that has spread to practically every environment on the planet.

Also, evolution is not a prescriptive standard. Oy.

Our genetic homogeneity implies that anatomically modern humans arose relatively recently (perhaps 200,000 years ago) and that our population size was quite small at one time (perhaps 10,000 breeding individuals).

-Another strongly supported hypothesis is that there was an near-extinction event that wiped out all but a pocket of human settlements from which we descended. - The diversity in other species that are about as old as ours is significantly far greater than ours suggesting that it is more likely an event like an unusually strong ice-age period that could've worsened our genetic diversity.

That sounds really interesting, does this hypothesis have a name so I can read up on it a bit more?

I'm not the OP, but the Toba catastrophe comes to mind. There were a few others.

As for what might explain the near-extinction humanity apparently once experienced, perhaps another kind of catastrophe, such as disease, hit the species. It may also be possible that such a disaster never happened in the first place — genetic research suggests modern humans descend from a single population of a few thousand survivors of a calamity, but another possible explanation is that modern humans descend from a few groups that left Africa at different times.

-It's unlikely that the Toba catastrophe was the root cause of the bottleneck as reasoned in this investigation:

https://www.livescience.com/29130-toba-supervolcano-effects....

- I wonder if the hypothesis of leaving Africa in small groups could be effectively tested.

0.1% difference is huge when talking about a ~6 billion character code. The OP is talking about the danger of moving to only a 0.001% difference (600M vs 6M).

That 0.1% is obviously enough to make a pretty huge difference when some people have 140 IQ and some have a 70 IQ.

Will it cause a convergence? Or, a divergence, as we engineer people for specificity? A dedicated military caste, intellectual caste, etc.

This would imply that you had to choose a specialization when the "designed" human could just be best suited for all of those things. Physical and mental perfection.

Hmm, true. But, can we design for perfection across all traits?

I always imagined it's a bit like the old Mage vs Warrior vs Ninja (or whatever) selections in fantasy games - you can maximize total area under the curve, or you can specialize in certain areas at the cost of others.

Edit/add - A convergence would also indicate there is global agreement on the "gold standard". Sure, maximizing intellect and longevity/health is easy. But, physical appearance?

> Mage vs Warrior vs Ninja (or whatever)

Canonically it's Thief/Rogue, analogous to the MMO trinity of "healing, tank, damage" aka "wisdom, strength, agility".

Those can also translate into a holistic way: You gotta have the wisdom to know when to retreat/heal, the strength to endure and the agility to hit/get to where it matters. They don't necessarily exclude each other.

I think divergence is more likely, simply because of tradeoffs required. For example, physical strength and mental capabilities compete with each other for energy.

Excess dietary energy is more of a problem than a limitation at the moment, especially amongst groups that can afford genetic engineering.

Perhaps the first changes would be to our dietary track to absorb more energy, so we can change more things!

The Monty Python sketch "Bicycle Repair Man" predicts that unusual variations will be highly valued when a particular "ideal" genotype becomes common.

How would you design a human to be the best as both a horse jockey and a basketball player?

Please tell me which of these bodies is superior to the others: http://mymodernmet.com/howard-schatz-beverly-ornstein-athlet...

I wouldn't worry too much about that, because I don't see the whole of humanity having access to this technology. Their will remain an underclass who, in general, won't be allowed to have access to this (more due to economics and politics that don't allow access instead of direct prohibition of access, think about how medical care is currently allotted). I think the interesting bit will between what happens between those who have regular access to this technology and those who don't. Could there end up being two human species resulting from this?

Also, as someone else pointed out, it would be more likely we edit different lines of humans. Two people having the best genes for a soldier and having the best genes for a scientist are likely to be better off than a single individual who has the best possible maximum of the two together. Optimizing multiple lines of humans each on a smaller set of traits is likely to produce far better result than optimizing one line on all traits.

I don't think we will converge that much. Most gene differences are insignificant. Is it better to have black, or white skin (or any other skin color)? There is a lot of baggage associated with that question, and some people will make a choice - but not everyone will make the same choice (in a culture I would expect everyone to make the same choice, but other cultures will choose differently), and many people won't care.

There are some genes that I expect to be edited out. I'd give a lot to have the gene causing my high cholesterol edited out, as would my insurance company - the drugs I'm taking are not cheap. There are a number of other conditions that are genetic (and still more that science believes are genetic even though the genes haven't been found). This convergence is good though as these are genes that if you have are known bad - just not bad enough to prevent reproduction.

> is that gene editing will cause human genomes to converge to a single gold standard.

I think reading plays a more important role than writing.

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