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Vaniver comments on Stupid Questions, December 2015 - Less Wrong Discussion

5 Post author: polymathwannabe 01 December 2015 10:40PM

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Comment author: James_Miller 04 December 2015 03:03:38AM *  2 points [-]

I'm not a biologist, but am I right in thinking that Crispr could be the most important human innovation ever? This Wired article claims that a knowledgeable scientists thinks that the "off-target mutations are already a solved problem." Within a decade we should know a lot about the genetic basis of intelligence. Wouldn't it then probably be easy to create embryos that give birth to extremely smart people, far smarter than have ever existed?

Comment author: Vaniver 06 January 2016 09:20:41PM *  1 point [-]

I'm not a biologist, but am I right in thinking that Crispr could be the most important human innovation ever?

There are several competing techniques. People who use the other techniques think that CRISPR mostly has better PR, and is a fairly minor technical innovation. Gene editing, regardless of the technique involved, will be tremendously important for the next few decades.