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 -
This narrative is as applicable to AI, which can confer godlike power on an arbitrarily tiny elite class very soon, as it is inapplicable to genetics. Even the smartest naturally-occurring people begin substantially contributing at about 15 years of age at the earliest. This means the first generation of genetically augmented kids (or more realistically, clones of Terry Tao or John von Neumann, though we can't clone him right now) will create hype with their early performance many years before they can help advance reproductive technology beyond the level comprehensible for baseline humans, and upon maturation will be outpaced by the successive cohorts using better and, as it usually happens, cheaper tech stack. Their initial work will be public-facing too. When this whole batch begins to pay rent, literally and figuratively, access to enhancement will have proliferated way deeper than the top 0.01%.
Unless, of course, someone succeeds at banning it – for civilians, that is.
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