We have to evolve synthetically To avoid our doom | Hacker News Reader

We have to evolve synthetically To avoid our doom

semisentient.medium.com

15 pointsdocdot32 comments

This is a pretty poor article. First of all, the title has nothing really at all to do with the content. Second, its extremely short, and third, superficial with no real substance and lots of keyword stuffing and presuppositions. "If we develop AGI this is how it will be followed by this and then that"

Philosophical sophistication is rare, especially among those who get off on fantasy. Too many people in tech make utter fools of themselves in this regard without realizing it.

> Some researchers believe that humans will evolve or directly modify their biology so as to achieve radically greater intelligence.

As a technical matter, I don't think we know enough to go writing DNA libraries to start freebasing the code.

Then there are the barely-explored ethical vistas.

Patience. Think it through for a decade or three.

> I don't think we know enough to go writing DNA libraries to start freebasing the code.

True, but there's plenty of low-hanging fruit in areas like embryo selection, enough to increase population-level intelligence by several standard deviations.

Ah, yes, eugenics.

Considering that intelligence seems to be correlated with autism spectral disorders, and individuals with severe autism are in need of individual care for their entire lives, are you sure that's it's smart to optimize for raw intelligence?

I think you have nothing to fear. I'm all in favor of breeding genetic disorders out of the species and there's a whole bunch we can eliminate before we get into murky ethical territory. Religion can bite me on this one.

But also, take a look around you. The species isn't going to optimize for intelligence. It's going to optimize for looks. That's just how we're wired. And that will destroy a lot of plastic surgeon jobs.

Yeah, let's do what we can to reduce genetic diversity, weeding out the bits of code that we don't understand. Never mind the rapidly changing climate. Sounds like a great plan.

edit: the comment about plastic surgery is really weird. Do you think that 90% of humanity is going to stop breeding just because they aren't as attractive as the other 10%? And who's paying for plastic surgery? From my understanding, it's that vain 10%...

You really don't think a startup that promised to disrupt beauty at the genetic level wouldn't find customers? Are you even paying attention to the things people invest their discretionary time into?

Nope, there's a sucker born every minute, of course they'll pull money in hand over fist, damn the consequences. Do you actually think that it would put plastic surgeons out of business though? Do you think that people that fixated on their appearance will ever be satisfied?

You're right they will never be satisfied. And I can't wait for the Black Mirror episode about that very subject. Not that Nathaniel Hawthorne didn't cover that nearly two centuries ago.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Birth-Mark

I agree that there's a purpose to this diversity. Why do we assume that it is bad to have rank and uneven distributions of qualities in a species, among human beings? Like it's bad to have an IQ less than 180 now? A society is enriched by this diversity because various niches can be filled and concerns taken care of. One guy brings the pot roast and the spices, another brings the napkins. We don't all need to be equal and identical. Why are some people so afraid of someone being more than another? Pride, that's why.

But I would suggest we don't slander beautiful people. Vanity comes in all sorts of shapes and sizes and isn't the exclusive province of beautiful people. There's plenty of vanity in this thread alone, let along HN, much worse than the petty vanity of a 13 year old girl. Vanity affects all human beings.

(Also, those who spend on plastic surgery are either mentally ill (in the manner of bulimics) or probably not in those 10%. Otherwise, why the plastic surgery? Otherwise back to mental illness. Besides, plastic surgery doesn't actually make you beautiful, it can at best make you appear beautiful because it's fake, so you're being fraudulent because you are only simulating beauty at best.)

I'm not slandering beautiful people at all, I'm just slandering people who aspire to little more than being one of them. And that's my story and I'm sticking to it. The only thing worse is people catering to that urge. But I guess it's a market opportunity and that's how capitalism works, no?

As for genetic diversity, sure we need genetic diversity, but we also no longer need the gene that fights malaria in the heterozygous case but gives you sickle cell anemia in the homozygous case because we have treatment for malaria now. Lather rinse repeat for a whole bunch of genetic ailments that will eventually get filtered out of the genome by evolution because they no longer serve their purpose so what's your problem with us accelerating the schedule? Or do you see value in the BRCA gene for your unconceived potential daughter for some reason?

There's definitely a moral hazard beyond that and I admitted as much but there's plenty of runway before we get there. But also if we really need to reintroduce these genes down the road we have the technology to do so.

Who is "we"? Malaria still kills 400K people per year and the treatments aren't completely effective.

https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/malaria

https://www.cdc.gov/malaria/malaria_worldwide/reduction/drug...

And why is that happening? "We" certainly have the technology to fight it so I wonder why that hasn't happened already. Hmmmmmm...

https://www.dur.ac.uk/news/newsitem/?itemno=18104

"breeding out" is the horrible version of eugenics.

Gene editing is the less family destroying, individual abusing way to go. As long as it's more focused on disease removal and less about having thousands of [insert favorite movie star/model here] walking around.

Like klyrs said, we want some weird in the gene pool

Gene editing is also the only way we'll get offworld-hardy humans. The time it will take to naturally select, when throwing unfit after unfit is impractical. This is still the same concept as "thousands of [model here] walking around", but with a focus on different traits.

This is all far-future when we are more experienced and knowledgeable about genes in total, at least after having made loads of mistakes. That's worrying, but inevitable.

We're going to have to rewrite humanity from the ground up if we want to colonize space because these delicate eggshell bodies of ours are just not compatible with hard vacuum. Nor will they fare well in inhospitable planetary environments.

Which is why I roll my eyes realizing that none of that will happen for a very long time but if you could make 60-year-olds look like 30-year-olds with an mRNA treatment or something similar, you would make Bezos and Musk look like paupers. It wouldn't even have to make you young on the inside and you'd still die in a decade or two but at least you'd leave a beautiful corpse because that's all that matters in the end.

This is absolute nonsense. It’s accepted in science we select for biological traits like scent, and social standing; intelligence being a key component of a persons social standing.

Even when people find someone attractive it doesn’t mean they just get together. This is some high school level perspective way off base from a contemporary relationship.

Just because the words create a believable scenario does not mean you’re anywhere close to a probable one.

Have you checked out the plastic surgery fetishization of South Korea lately? Have you seen that guy who sued his wife because she got plastic surgery to become beautiful but then bore him an apparently ugly child? You overestimate humanity and underestimate their vanity.

https://kdvr.com/news/chinese-man-sues-wins-120000/

The story is a hoax

I did not know that but the real story is even weirder. Having been to China many times, the billboards for plastic surgery would be hilariously off color here so the story seemed plausible, doubly so combined with the culture of "leftover" women which is to say any woman over 30. My bad

Looks are just one factor. And good looks are a strong sign of good health (absent artificial enhancement).

Not to mention trustworthiness and integrity as well!

There's a whole lot of conjecture here, and it's hard to take seriously with the capitalization errors. What the author seems to be getting at is transhumanism on a surface level. I think most of this article tracks: Sure, we could find a way to manipulate our own biological processes, but what does that look like in practice? Would it exacerbate or rectify our current social systems? Would there be significant ideological opposition to it? What would the long-term effects of that be psychologically? How will people work together when they're no longer the same people?

There are so many interesting questions to explore here, that I feel like a simple "yes or no" response to this is entirely ignoring the interesting issues that could arise from that. Or maybe I've been reading too many Frank Herbert novels...

Didn't Steven Spielberg make a movie about this?

In order to avoid our doom, we must grow distributed food forests inside towns and cities. Here's how to start now: https://youtu.be/AJCv7wIolwM

Why would we want to grow our food on 2% of our most expensive land? Land that is already used for lots of other things?

Because you don't need energy, human or otherwise to ship food or material to where the people are. Because we stack functions through time and space. Because it solves the distribution problem. Because it's already working and all we need to do is expand. Because the sun's shines everywhere. Because polyculture allows for more variety and a single crop failure doesn't need to be insured. Because we could close loops naturally and avoid polluting, we would feed animals like chickens food scraps and compost locally in the gardens and forests. Because we can do better.

Transportation today is highly efficient and the energy required per ton-mile of food is tiny. But go ahead and grow your crops in the city if that's what you want. No one is stopping you.

That's total nonsense. Shipping food takes minimal energy. The distribution problem is already solved.

Think of the real estate value living near the food forest... Like central park in NYC, why don't we cut that in half and put up more high rises on our precious expensive land.

I cannot tell if you are trolling but central park is an oasis in a hellscape that is NYC.

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