Any improvement will be supported by good researchers but opposed by poor ones, the latter outnumber the former.

If we play our cards right, we may end up with researchers attempting to signal their ability by supporting the improvements.

That is very interesting. Why is that?

Well in Germany it was banned by the Nazis who wanted to make sure all kids were exposed to their propaganda, and the law in question has never been repealed.

What does being "impressed" have to do with anything? I'm talking about believing in someone's existence.

It has to do with computing P(our universe|God exists).

One interesting thing about eugenics, is that many of the people who supported the consensus on it while it was popular are still considered respectable whose support for eugenics is downplayed. Conversely, the people who opposed it while it was popular are still considered anti-science loons through the popular telling of misleading versions of history.

Well, technically OrphanWilde merely said that Pinochet increased utility on net, he didn't way he approved of him.

Foods that have been around long enough that we some idea, possibly simply hermeneuticly, about their effects.

I can imagine lots of ways in which the world would be different if a superpowerful superbeing was around with the ability and will to shape reality for whatever purpose

Looking at your examples, they all seem to boil down to "things that violate this-world!ArisKatsaris's intuitions about how the world works". If you lived in a world were any of the things you described in your comment occurred you wouldn't be impressed by them. To adapt the post I linked to: If you demand miracles, miracles won't convince you.

Well, the standard example is nutrition advice. Other reasonably well-known examples include whether post-menopausal women should take estrogen supplements, and how dangerous marijuana is. An example with a longer period is the whole issue with eugenics.

But Singer is acutely sensitive to the potential risks of any notion of lives not worth living.

I'm not sure what you mean by "sensitive", it certainly doesn't stop him from being at the cutting edge pushing in that direction.

Either way, the case for the expanding circle doesn't depend on an alleged growth in empathy per se. If, as I think quite likely, we eventually enlarge our sphere of concern to the well-being of all sentience, this outcome may owe as much to the trait of high-AQ hyper-systematising as any widening or deepening compassion.

By way of example, consider the work of Bill Gates in cost-effective investments in global health (vaccinations etc) and indeed in: http://www.thegatesnotes.com/Features/Future-of-Food ("the future of meat is vegan"). Not even his greatest admirers would describe Gates as unusually empathetic. But he is unusually rational - and the growth in secular scientific rationalism looks set to continue.

You seem to be confusing expanding the circle of beings we care for and being more efficient in providing that caring.

The biggest threat in such a situation is the possibility that more free will will be taken from you via the forcible administration of drugs. Sufficiently high status parents could easily get the child diagnosed with one of various mental disorders and given a cocktail of antipsychotics and antidepressants, reducing their ability to behave as proactive agent.

In my experience it's much more common for teachers and/or social workers to try to get the child medicated over the parents' objections than the other way around.