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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   28234 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 14, 2024

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It's not. Choosing the best embryo out of a small handful won't move the needle, especially when only 2.5% of people in the US do IVF, and only a small percentage of those will do advanced genetic testing. And some hospitals are already refusing to work with similar services like Orchid.

I calculated below that this service, if widely implemented, will lead to a 0.005 rise in IQ per generation. So maybe IQs, instead of falling by 1 point per generation, will only fall 0.995 points.

Idiocracy, not Gattaca, is our current trajectory. On a population level, this does essentially nothing.

A lot more people will do IVF when it allows for genetic selection. The only reason to do IVF now, which is very expensive, is to deal with fertility problems. If you can make your children smarter, it pays for itself.

You can already do genetic selection with Orchid, and almost no one is doing it. And the things they are testing for are much higher stakes than a couple of IQ points here or there.

Why is no one using it?

  1. Public awareness is low

  2. People think it's "wrong" to want to have genetically normal children. Imagine how wrong they will think it is to boost IQ

  3. IVF is hard, slow, expensive, and frustrating.

  4. Genetic screening makes it harder, slower, and more expensive.

  5. Many hospitals won't even work with Orchid. Imagine trying to convince Woke State University to partner with your IQ testing service. So you will need to go out of state to specialty IVF clinics. Harder, slower, more expensive, more frustrating.

I'll eat my hat if more than 10,000 couples per year are using this in 5 years. Until we get gene editing the best way to get high IQ babies will be to choose an intelligent partner and to have children before the mother is 30 years old. This barely moves the needle.

Orchid is still extremely expensive and only offers very marginal benefits. The costs will go down and the benefits will increase.

Part of it is just people thinking it's weird. I know a couple doing IVF and I suggested they use a service like Orchid and they just kind of looked at me like I was crazy. They didn't give me any reason why they wouldn't do it. But people will gradually overcome that.

By the way, I didn't know having children when the mother was young affected the child's IQ. How big is that effect?

By the way, I didn't know having children when the mother was young affected the child's IQ. How big is that effect?

I am making an assumption. Mutational load is higher with advanced maternal age.

We'd assume that this would negatively impact IQ unless we could prove otherwise.

Yeah the breakthrough would be ease of use. Even for the rich IVF is a pain in the ass and typically only done if some major issue is expected.

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