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skeptical_lurker comments on Open thread, December 7-13, 2015 - Less Wrong Discussion
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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.
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.