I'm hoping embryo selection, especially for intelligence, becomes commercially viable and affordable before I have kids in say 3-5 years.
My girlfriend is reflexively against it and I'm not sure how to change her mind. I think it's a terrible thing to miss out on, and I'd do it for my kids because I wished my parents would have done the same for me.
Insert the mental gymnastics meme, as far as I'm concerned:
Health is good. Embryo selection improves health and other outcomes we care about. Ergo embryo selection is good.
Miss me with the luddite bullshit, I've seen it all before when IVF became a thing.
At the current state of technology, it appears that embryo selection won't publicly offer selection on intelligence anytime soon, and the projected gains (of 2.5 IQ above mean) are pretty low for so much effort. However, Gwern's calculation of 9 IQ points above mean would be much more worth it, but that supposes much better IQ GWASs than are currently known to exist.
I wouldn't wait for 3-5 years - I think at least 10 years would be required for a better IQ PGS and for it to become even minimally widely available. A lot depends on how young your girlfriend is - geriatric pregnancy (age >=35) isn't fun, probably involves ova of lower genetic quality, and is not guaranteed to succeed, even using IVF, so if she's in late 20s and up, it doesn't seem worth it to wait. If she's mid-20s and below and you're willing to wait 10 years, it might be okay.
My philosophy is, have kids now (assuming you're ready), and then if embryo selection matures, you can select a superbaby at that point. Kids are not really that ruinous as long as they don't get into real trouble, especially if you don't have to pay for their university.
That being said, I this is currently a lot of hassle (read the lesswrong article … quite some steps needed), needs a lot of money and is definitely not available in most jurisdictions. I am also not sure how well it would work.
So waiting 2-5 years would probably make things easier (or harder because it’s been outlawed).
Generally, a nation that wanted to go all-in on “IVF eugenics” could probably make a lot of progress just by sequencing and cognitive-ability-testing + disease cataloguing a large part of their population. AFAIK one thing holding the technology back is that there is no good large scale database of DNA sequences with cognitive ability scores (instead,“educational attainment” is often recorded, which might not be exactly what you care about).
GWAS underestimates effect. If we can fully sequences embryo's genome, we can also factor number of less rare mutations in selection, even without any GWAS; this will raise IQ, as rare mutations are much more likely to be harmful, that is why they are rare, though they are very difficult to discover (as human genome is approx same magnitude as number of humans)
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Notes -
I'm hoping embryo selection, especially for intelligence, becomes commercially viable and affordable before I have kids in say 3-5 years.
My girlfriend is reflexively against it and I'm not sure how to change her mind. I think it's a terrible thing to miss out on, and I'd do it for my kids because I wished my parents would have done the same for me.
Insert the mental gymnastics meme, as far as I'm concerned:
Health is good. Embryo selection improves health and other outcomes we care about. Ergo embryo selection is good.
Miss me with the luddite bullshit, I've seen it all before when IVF became a thing.
At the current state of technology, it appears that embryo selection won't publicly offer selection on intelligence anytime soon, and the projected gains (of 2.5 IQ above mean) are pretty low for so much effort. However, Gwern's calculation of 9 IQ points above mean would be much more worth it, but that supposes much better IQ GWASs than are currently known to exist.
I wouldn't wait for 3-5 years - I think at least 10 years would be required for a better IQ PGS and for it to become even minimally widely available. A lot depends on how young your girlfriend is - geriatric pregnancy (age >=35) isn't fun, probably involves ova of lower genetic quality, and is not guaranteed to succeed, even using IVF, so if she's in late 20s and up, it doesn't seem worth it to wait. If she's mid-20s and below and you're willing to wait 10 years, it might be okay.
My philosophy is, have kids now (assuming you're ready), and then if embryo selection matures, you can select a superbaby at that point. Kids are not really that ruinous as long as they don't get into real trouble, especially if you don't have to pay for their university.
According to the LessWrong writeup (https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/yT22RcWrxZcXyGjsA/how-to-have-polygenically-screened-children), one of the authors of OP article can fix you up with a startup that offers intelligence scores for embryo selection (Jonathan Anomaly…not sure how trustworthy someone with that last name is!).
That being said, I this is currently a lot of hassle (read the lesswrong article … quite some steps needed), needs a lot of money and is definitely not available in most jurisdictions. I am also not sure how well it would work.
So waiting 2-5 years would probably make things easier (or harder because it’s been outlawed).
Generally, a nation that wanted to go all-in on “IVF eugenics” could probably make a lot of progress just by sequencing and cognitive-ability-testing + disease cataloguing a large part of their population. AFAIK one thing holding the technology back is that there is no good large scale database of DNA sequences with cognitive ability scores (instead,“educational attainment” is often recorded, which might not be exactly what you care about).
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GWAS underestimates effect. If we can fully sequences embryo's genome, we can also factor number of less rare mutations in selection, even without any GWAS; this will raise IQ, as rare mutations are much more likely to be harmful, that is why they are rare, though they are very difficult to discover (as human genome is approx same magnitude as number of humans)
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