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parrhesia  1yr ago (parrhesia.substack.com)   2428 thread views

Making Cognitive Enhancement Palatable

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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I also worry about decoupling for narrow optimisations like IQ. I'm strongly in favor of general health and general success/competence selection, however. Both would imply some degree of IQ optimisation even if IQ itself is not explicitly represented. I wouldn't necessarily be opposed to adding explicit IQ selection in addition to the others, but a lot of the common objections fall apart if we simply leave that out and I think we will have the majority of the gains even without it anyway, so I'm tentatively against it for the moment.

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