IVF is a difficult, painful, somewhat dangerous process which requires a lot of money, cooperation, and apparatus, while embryo selection doesn't sound like it would cost much more for higher levels of selection; if you're going to do it at all, it makes more sense to maximize bang for your buck by going for geniuses than settling for near-invisible increases in averages. If nothing else, where do you get all the gynecologists from? To do a nationwide program would require hundreds of thousands of specialists (at a minimum; China has 18 million babies a year).
if you're going to do it at all, it makes more sense to maximize bang for your buck by going for geniuses than settling for near-invisible increases in averages.
The problem is that no one knows how to go for geniuses. The first step has to be, essentially, large-scale experimentation which, I suspect, will start with just culling out "defects". China likely has the will and the ethics to do this, the West certainly does not.
I suggested recently that part of the problem with with LW was a lock of discussion posts which was caused by people not thinking of much to post about.
When I ask myself "what might be a good topic for a post?", my mind goes blank, but surely not everything that's worth saying that's related to rationality has been said.
So, is there something at the back of your mind which might be interesting? A topic which got some discussion in an open thread that could be worth pursuing?
If you've found anything which helps you generate useable ideas, please comment about it-- or possibly write a post on the subject.