= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
James_Miller comments on Open thread, December 7-13, 2015 - Less Wrong Discussion
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
= 783df68a0f980790206b9ea87794c5b6)
Loading…= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
Powered by Reddit
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d)
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (223)
I asked Steve Hsu (an expert) "How long do you think it will probably take for someone to create babies who will grow up to be significantly smarter than any non-genetically engineered human has ever been? Is the answer closer to 10 or 30 years?"
He said it might be technologically possible in 10 years but " who will have the guts to try it? There could easily be a decade or two lag between when it first becomes possible and when it is actually attempted."
In, say, five years someone should start a transhumanist dating service that matches people who want to genetically enhance the intelligence of their future children. Although this is certainly risky, my view is that the Fermi paradox implies we are in great danger and so should take the chance to increase the odds that we figure out a way through the great filter.
In so far as the Fermi paradox implies we're in great danger, it also suggests that exciting newly-possible things we might try could be more dangerous than they look. Perhaps some strange feedback loop involving intelligence enhancement is part of the danger. (The usual intelligence-enhancement feedback loop people worry about around here involves AI, of course, but perhaps that's not the only one that's scary.)
Hostile intelligences would presumably still create Dyson spheres/colonise the galaxy/emit radio waves/do something to alert other civilisations to their presence. The Fermi paradox has to be something like superweapons, not superintelllegnece.
How good do you think you'd be at raising a child who is a great deal smarter than any previous human?
Let's assume you're sane enough to not resent the child's superintelligence. Still, what does the child need?
Tentative suggestion: people who are interested in the project should aim for at least a dozen superintelligent children in the first generation so that at least they have some company.
I'm currently raising a child who is, age adjusted, considerably smarter than myself. It's challenging but fun. The danger for me isn't my resenting his intelligence, it's taking too much pride in it.
Just from his occasional post on LW, and your occasional mention of him, Alex reminds me of a real life version of Harry from HPMoR. :)
Edit: to avoid the possibility of future confusion, I'd like to emphasize that I meant this in an entirely positive way.
https://www.facebook.com/james.d.miller.104/videos/vb.5904551/10100196616850110/?type=2&theater
Smarter than you are is one thing, smarter than any previous person is another.
That starts to remind me of Ender's Game series, in particular Shadow of the Hegemon.
He's talking about using CRISPR to edit DNA. I would ask what's the timeline for germline selection, but when he says:
And I assume that getting the datasets is also the bottleneck for germline selection.
Incidentally, is this the sort of problem which can be significantly speeded up by money/publicity? And how much money? Is this the sort of thing which would be a good target for philanthropy?
Simpler idea: join okcupid, use #IWGEC (I want genetically enhanced children) as a hashtag to identify each other.
Of course, a dedicated niche dating site has advantages, in that the site can be tailored to the specific criteria, but its a lot harder to set up.
You would have that data if a country like Singapore decides to do DNA sequencing for it's entire population.
If you want to go in that direction in the US you would need to lobby for SAT scores being included in the digital health system created by Obamacare.
Apart from that the cost of genome sequencing is an important variable. Developing cheaper sequencing technology will increase the amount of people who have their DNA sequenced.
Ahem. A transhumanist woman wanting to have a genetically engineered baby would do well to start with a sperm bank where she can screen many donors for a good genetic baseline.
Sorry, males :-/
Let's assume that she has the typical desire to be married to the child's father.
Really see no reason to assume that an avantgarde transhumanist woman would stick to such traditional trappings of the old patriarchy :-P
Since the ratio of women/men willing to do this will be low, willing women will have lots of dating market power. It would be silly for them to not use this power to get a high quality mate/provider.
Why do you think so?
Provided she needs or wants one. And provided she wants a male one. I know lesbian families with lots of children.
Men are greater risk takers and are far more likely to be transhumanists.
And that her partner (if she in in a hetrosexual relationship) wants children, or at least does not want to be cuckolded.
In your scenario, a transhumanist man would do the same with egg banks, and then rent a healthy womb.
Also possible.
Actually, since we're genetically engineering anyway, we should be able to combine genetic material from two males or two females (or just clone, of course). And once an artificial womb gets developed you won't need to rent anything, um, living.
In any case, not too many prospects for dating :-/
You and me baby ain't nothin' but mammals, so let's do it like they do on the Discovery Channel suddenly acquires a whole new meaning X-D
Why? People want intimacy for a thousand reasons other than breeding.
Which is precisely why "let's genetically engineer our possible children" isn't a great start.
Let's start thinking about the appropriate lines now so in ten years time we'll (or those of you young enough to sill have children a decade hence) will have the skills to win over appropriate mates.
This should be a separate thread: Best Pickup Lines in a Transhumanist Bar :-)
Are you whole body or just head?
In a universe where you have people of both classifications, that could become mildly rude.
I want to grow old and not die with you.
/blinks
I don't want to grow old.
Yes, you should do this.
First, you should establish a Transhumanist Bar :-)
Want children in maybe ten years, might work on me.
That line might actually work on some people. It might work on me if I were more inclined to parent.
If we're assuming artificial wombs are widely used, humanity effectively becomes a eusocial species.
I don't know about that. I suspect that at this point things get really interesting and probably really unstable for a while :-/
Sperm banks simply do not cater to transhumanists. They first and foremost screen donors for sperm count (to insure that they can make the most money out of every stored sample). Sperm count isn't strongly correlated with intelligence.
After sperm count, important factors for sperm banks are: Physical health, height, and weight.
Plus, sperm donors are mostly a self-selected bunch, and I'd guess that men who are in no immediate need of money would not wake up in the morning thinking of donating sperm.
Finally, upbringing is probably a far more important factor than mere genetics; a wise mother would want to ensure availability of the father for childrearing.
There are man who want to "spread their DNA" and therefore donate sperm for reasons besides money.
Not that I've used them, but as far as I understand, sperm banks provide a fair amount of data on sperm donors including education. If you stick with Ph.Ds the baseline IQ level should be decent. Besides, sperm banks are a customer-oriented business. They will look for factors which women demand.
Exactly. Most women demand attributes that they themselves find attractive in mates e.g. height and other appearance-related factors. Transhumanists don't make up most of the female population.
Sure, but the great advantage of sperm banks is that you can easily filter a large number of possibilities.
At the lets-genetically-engineer-super-IQ level you'd probably want to start by paying the sperm bank for whole genome scans of several likely candidates.
I don't think we are at the point where we can adequately assess the risks involved. It's known that higher IQ is correlated with major depression, bipolar disorder, and schizophrenia. What use is having a super-intelligent child if they have to spend most of their teenage and early adult years away from society, in a medicated stupor?
There may also be other genetic side effects to increased intelligence, such as increased risk of alcohol dependence and substance abuse.
I think I remember a study saying that over an IQ of 130, there is no correlation between increased intelligence and success/happiness.
It would probably be far more worthwhile to focus on having children of moderate-to-high IQ score (120-130 range), and put more emphasis on better upbringing, instilling values such as the importance of socializing and putting effort into one's goals. The focus that some transhumanists seem to have on raw intelligence seems a bit childish and naive.
What are you optimizing for?
The optimal mix of intelligence and ability to make use of intelligence.
You just shifted all the meaning to the word "optimal".
Optimal when maximizing for what?
No I did not.
If James_Miller meant 'genetic basis of intelligence' (and I think he did) then I am pointing out that that may not be predictive of actual intelligence when measured in the real world after development. You could just as well say I'm 'optimizing for intelligence'. I am simply making it clear that I'm not optimizing for at-birth intelligence.
I still don't understand you.
Is there any measurable value that you are optimizing for? What is it?
What do you mean specifically with that sentence?
Nutrition, intellectually stimulating environments, presence of both parents, and existence of other children to play with have all been shown to be positively correlated with doing better at school, for one. I'm sure there are many other factors.
Another point, not directly related to your question, but related to OP's question, is that an IQ of, say, 130 may not be that high (and definitely not that high compared to the LW average) but it is 2 standard deviations above the mean... if everyone reached that average level of intelligence it would be a vast improvement in average intelligence over what it is now.
I agree, but this isn't actionable information for transhumanists. In contrast, a few transhumanist couples could, perhaps, in a decade create a biological super-intelligence. I would love to get an 18-year-old reader of LW to start thinking about doing this.
It's certainly possible to use simple selective breeding techniques to increase intelligence beyond what would ever likely occur naturally. Modern experience in selective breeding of, for example, cattle for milk production has resulted in herds of cows that produce far more milk than even the most extreme natural outlier ever produced. And furthermore there are statistical tools that can take as input various traits (various intelligence scores and also factors relating to general health and well-being) and produce, as outputs, pairings that would result in optimal intelligence increase. Going further, modern genomics techniques (like sperm sorting and prediction of traits from embryonic gene sequences) could make the process even more rapid.
But it could never be done in a decade. Modern techniques require a minimum of around ~5 generations to properly maximize traits beyond what would be found in the natural population (this varies hugely depending on the trait, of course, but 5 generations is a commonly-used ballpark estimate). Assuming impregnation starts as soon as reproductive viability is achieved, that gives a figure of 75 years.
The only thing that could shorten this would be designer baby technology. A simple method could be using embryonic stem cells to go directly to gametes without having to go through birth, development, and maturation. The downside to this is that prediction of intelligence based on just embryonic DNA is flimsy; much more generations would probably be required, and a few 'interim' individuals would probably have to at least reach school age for model calibration. Assuming, say, three interim stages, that gives 24 years. Even this would require a huge amount of resources - and not to mention the sacrifice and enormous ethical issues involved.
I can't see even modern genetics technology achieving biological superintelligence any shorter than that, unless you are willing to throw trillions of dollars at it.
We identify a bunch of genes that either increase or decrease intelligence and then use CRISPR to edit the genomes of embryos to create super-geniuses. Just eliminating mutational load from an embryo might do a lot.
The reason this approach won't work is that genes aren't linear factors that can added up together in that way. Even in something as simple as milk production, you need to do selection over multiple generations and evaluate each generation separately, building up small genetic changes over time.
If you could construct an actual model relating various genes to intelligence, in a way that took into account genetic interactions, then you could do what you propose in a single generation, but we are very very far from being able to construct such a model at present.
As it stands today, if you just carried out that naive approach you would end up with a non-viable embryo or, in the best-case scenario, a slightly-higher-than-average intelligence person. Not a super-genius.
When researching my book I was told by experts that the intelligence genes which vary throughout the human population probably are linear. Consider President Obama who has a very high IQ but who also has parents who are genetically very different from each other. If intelligence genes worked in a non-additive complex way people with such genetically diverse parents would almost always be very unintelligent. We don't observe this.
Evidence?
No, actually, genetic studies of both milk production and IQ show them to be mainly linear.
That selective breeding has to be done slowly has nothing to do with genetic structure.
What kind of study do you think shows IQ to be mainly linear?
I would guess that you confuse assumptions that the researchers behind a study make to reduce the amount of factors with finding of the study.
No, it was assumed that genes controlling milk production were linear, because it was much easier to study them that way, and unfortunately over time many people came to simply accept that fact as true, when it has never been proven (in fact it's been proven conclusively otherwise).
Simply put it on OkCupid as an additional question that's important to you.
I think civilisation is in danger even disregarding the Fermi paradox.
There's no need to wait five years to start a transhumanist dating service. Suppose you want to have genetically enhanced kids in ten years time, presumably you would still want to date now. If you are looking for a long-term relationship now, then you would want it to be with someone you could have kids with one day.
The biggest problem is that transhumanists are mostly male. I wonder if this will change, given that transhumanism is becoming increasingly mainstream?