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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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We won't be limited to swapping in existing sequences forever. At some point down the line we'll have the capability to create entirely synthetic man made sequences that expand our capabilities beyond what any currently existing genes can provide.

The process of evolution directly involved randomly generated or modified 'entirely new sequences' that were tested by physics and nature. How is this different in some absolute sense? It's certainly dangerous, and possible to mess up, but

Again though AI will flip the table before we can do that much.

Random chance, undirected evolutionary shifts aren't the same as the top 0.1% of the human race self editing themselves into having 300 IQ and 500 year lifespans and leaving the rest of the human race in the dust. For anyone not part of that 0.1% I don't see it being a positive development. I'm sure AI will have fairly analogous effects too.

I don't see why it'd be only the top .1% though? Gene editing is very transferrable and benefits the bottom 10% much more than the top .1% in a relative sense, as the known good sequences from the top .1% can just be given to the middle and bottom, while to improve the top .1% one needs to somehow figure out better nonexistent sequences (or, more accurately the good sequences are the ones that the PGS finds, it's not like the top .1% are so because of super special top .1% genes, they have lots of small-effect good genes that the bottom 10% has some of but less of + various other stuff we don't understand). And good medical and nonmedical technologies are very quickly diffused from the rich to the middle-class in the modern era, both to make money and because most people are progressive.

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