= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
Lumifer 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)
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.
We do have both classifications. People who have whole body cryonics insurance and people who have head cryonics insurance.
I want to grow old and not die with you.
/blinks
I don't want to grow old.
Perhaps Calien takes "grow old" to mean "accumulate years and experience and memories" rather than "accumulate wear and tear and damage".
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.