parrhesia.substack.com
SS: I think that cognitive genetic enhancement is important for ensuring we have a better and lasting future. Many people have an intuitive dislike for the idea of using genetic enhancement to make a baby smarter but have little issue with in vitro fertilization (IVF). I try to build from a foundation of the acceptable practice of IVF to PGT-P for IQ.
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Notes -
Conversations in this grain tend to run short because it's a rare example of a political question where everyone acknowledges the disagreement exists at a values rather than empirical level.
The moment such enhancements become optional, they are de facto mandatory. De jure too, eventually. As a human conservationist, my values oppose embracing extinction on the grounds trans-homo sapiens sapiens will be smarter and more efficient than us. AGI will be incomparably smarter and more efficient than us. Would you extend your logic to be in favor of replacing us with it?
If you want people to accept this kind of logic, you're going to have to Straussian about it and pretend that slippery slope arguments about human modification are silly, rather than laying out the slippery slope in a seven point numbered list and then talking about how great it will be to have a society full of super-geniuses in the closing paragraph.
Let's say we ban gene editing entirely, and practice an older, simpler form of eugenics - freeze the sperm of the best, smartest, most honorable and strongest people in society, and have a significant portion of children come from them. And somehow everyone magically agrees this is good and not state-sponsored cuckoldry or anything. That's hardly 'transhumanism' or extinction-level. Would you oppose that?
This is an extension of the normal process of sexual selection that's been around with us as long as humans have been around. In practice, the society that does something like this will begin to resemble the many polygamous societies, which carries its own can of worms. (The padishah khan gets thousands of wives, his beys get dozens, his ghazi get two or three, and slave gets perhaps one if he's very lucky.) But I would not consider this transhumanism or autogenocide -- if perhaps unfair to the back half of the bell curve. Sexual selection is, on its own, a horror we have accustomed ourselves to to the point of not noticing -- but it is one that is intrinsic to our nature, much like eating brains is intrinsic to the botfly.
Gene editing for mental traits is an extremely obvious Schelling fence. It is hypothetically possible to do gene editing for certain mental traits that would not change the nature of humanity. However, I am confident if we take that step as a species, we will get Transhumanist-Gandhi, not 95%-Human-Gandhi.
What specific bad things will happen with 'transhumanism' that weren't already happening with natural gene editing, random mutation and combination of sequences? The genes that underlie biological functions were 'modified' - randomly mutating, duplicating, subsequences jumping from one place to another. And they are very useful!
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What could possibly go wrong?
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what do you mean by driving extinction..
Are you against the Flynn effect?
People nowadays have significantly higher IQs than past generious simply out of better acess to food and education.
past generations are being replaced and yet mankind is still dumb as a brick.
without talking about genetics or epigenetics, many people take nootropics that are cheap and mostly have benign or non existent side effects.
for example CDP-choline or racetams.
people that eat many eggs have transiently significantly better memory abilities than the ones that do not.
nicotine is a very potent nootropic agent, etc
Instead of virtue signaling about non-existent problems (the narrative than a newer generation of geniuses would make you appear subhuman is unrealistic, I consider myself to have considerably higher intelligence than my friends and yet we can still be friends and I respect them more than I respect my own self), you should try taking benign nootropics like low dose (200mg) CDP-choline daily it will midly improve your memory recall abilities and most importantly will slow down the ageing of your brain (via e.g. increased myelin production)
I define a human species, subspecies, "race", ethnicity, family group, etc by genotype of mental attributes. Higher IQ, more conscientiousness, different levels of neuroticism and openness to experience due to the environment (Flynn effect or drugs) falls under phenotype. A group of monkey living in Delhi does not go extinct if tourists train them to bow and solve puzzles for treats, making them smarter and leaving more time to groom themselves.
On the other hand, if you were to use artificial selection to eliminate people with a genotype that may articulate as having lower cortical volume or a more active limbic system, you have exterminated that group of humans.
I said at the very beginning this is a question of values. A value does not need to be justified by pragmatism. (Indeed, you have smuggled into your complaint the totally unjustified normative value that economic growth and a higher functioning society are worth developing, or that a smarter human is "better" than a dumber human.)
When the AGI congress of 2068 proposes a bill for neutering the economically useless welfare recipient humans and uploading their consciousnesses into a more efficient digital form that allows them to hold down a job — including getting rid of those pesky family instincts, high aggression, and ability to lie — I suspect you will object, too. Your objections will not be pragmatically justified.
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Other people will replace the currently existing people. I think it is good if the people that replace us are happy, healthy, and intelligent. If they are so much healthier, happier, and more intelligent than they are "posthuman," then so be it. When you say extinction, it elicits thoughts of everyone dying, which I explicitly want to avoid with the aid of superintelligent people.
Well, I am not Straussian, and I think the logic in my article is decent.
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