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Culture War Roundup for the week of October 14, 2024

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Yeah, it pushes things forward very, very slightly.

Note that Orchid has already been offering genetic testing for other things for awhile now, and it has a very small number of users. (But among them, Elon Musk!)

But Gattaca this ain't. The number of IVF babies is ridiculously low. Only about 2.5% of babies in the US are conceived via IVF, almost all of whom are born to older mothers. If you want to have a high IQ baby, then conceiving naturally at 25 will give you far better odds than using this technology at age 38.

But in any case, let's say 10% of IVF babies use this service and the average IQ bump is 2 points.

This will result in 2.5% * 10% * 2 points = 0.005 points higher IQ among all babies. This doesn't even come close to offsetting the natural dysgenic trends from older mothers and low IQ people having more kids.

The reason for the low number of babies via IVF is because of the expense.

You'd have to decrease the cost of IVF to a large degree in order to see any real changes on a measurable scale.

You're typical minding. I predict that with cheap IVF there won't be a huge increase in IVF births because the people who will do this are strivers with .7 TFR that by its nature won't move the needle much.

That and, well, there's more kinds of expense than just the purely monetary -- IVF is inherently a somewhat invasive medical procedure (apparently involving a good amount of being poked with Big Honking Needles while the doctor watches on ultrasound to make sure that the right bit is being poked, as well as dosing with hormone treatments with occasional interesting side effects) and even without the current multi-thousand-dollar medical bills this is a "cost" that people may reasonably decide they don't want to pay.