Haha, well, at least I changed your mind about something. 

Anyway thanks for engaging, I appreciate the contention and I found it helpful even though you're so RAWNG.

You are welcome. It has been fun inventing the PERFECT government policy and giving so many 100% CORRECT takes. 

(Also remember, even the best possible policy cannot survive execution by an incompetent and untrustworthy government. My policies are only good if they are actually followed.)

If we had ASI we could just let the children choose their own genes once they grow up. Problem solved. 

I do not have autism/ADHD/bipolar/dyslexia/dysphoria or a non-heterosexual orientation. If I woke up tomorrow with one of those, I would very badly want it reverted. 

However, it seems obvious to me that if being a little schizoid made you a free thinker, able to see things most others can't see, able to pursue good things that most others won't pursue, then it does not count as "unambiguous net harm" and the government should have no say in whether you can pass it on. That's not even close to the line of what the government should be allowed to prohibit. 

The question is if it really is their opinion. People often say things they don't believe as cope or as tribal signalling. If a non-trivial number of people who perceive themselves and their ingroup as intelligent, were to say they anti-value intelligence, that would update me.  

Under my system we can ask people with below-average IQ whether they are happy to be below-average intelligence. If they are unhappy, outlaw gene editing for low intelligence. If they are happy, then either allow it, or decide to overrule them. 

You want to be careful about overruling people. But intelligence is uniquely tricky because, if it is too low, people are not competent to decide what they want. Plus, people with low IQs have bad objective measures (e.g., significantly lower life expectancy). 

The topic has drifted from my initial point, which is that there exist some unambiguous "good" directions for genomes to go. After reading your proposed policy it looks like you concede this point, since you are happy to ban gene editing that causes severe mental disability, major depression, etc. Therefore, you seem to agree that going from "chronic severe depression" to "typical happiness set point" is an unambiguous good change. (Correct me if I am wrong here.)

I haven't thought through the policy questions at any great length. Actually, I made up all my policy positions on the fly while talking to you. And I haven't thought about the coalition-building aspect at all.  But my current position is that, if we had a highly competent government that could be trusted to reasonably interpret the rules, I would want them to enforce the following:

1. Don't allow unambiguous net harm. (Reasonable tradeoffs are fine. Err on the side of permissiveness.)
2. The best experts on whether "unambiguous net harm" was done are the people who were edited.
   1. Although in rare cases we may have to overrule them, such as the cult example above. This is especially the case if cult members have objectively bad outcomes (e.g., high rates of depression and suicide) despite claiming to be happy.
   2. If we have high confidence that the edited people will have regrets (e.g. based on observing existing people with the condition) we can prohibit the edits without running the experiment. Allowing "unambiguous net harm" edits to be performed for a generation has a high cost. 

In some cases I am more permissive than you are. I don't think we have enough evidence to determine that removing the emotion of fear is "unambiguous net harm", but it would be prohibited under your "no removing a core aspect of humanity" exception. (Perhaps a generation from now we would have enough data to justify banning it under my rules. But I suspect it has sufficient upside to remain legal.)

Brief reactions to things you said:

some even say they anti-value it [intelligence]

I think a lot of people who say they anti-value intelligence are coping (I am dumb therefore dumbness is a virtue) or being tribalistic (I hate nerdy people who wear glasses, they remind me of the outgroup). If they perceived their ingroup and themselves as being intelligent, I think they would change their tune.

Also, intelligent people strongly value intelligence. And since they are smarter, we should weight their opinions more heavily :P

There's a big injustice in imposing your will on others

In this case, we are preventing the parents from imposing their will on the future child. 

If the parent is compos mentis, then who the hell are you to say they can't have a child like themselves?

I am the Law, the Night Watchman State, the protector of innocents who cannot protect themselves. Your children cannot prevent you from editing their genes in a way that harms them, but the law can and should. 

Fair point, I glossed over the differences there. Although in practice I think very few blind people who wish they could see, would be in favor of gene editing for blindness being legal. 

Ok possibly I could see some sort of scheme where all the blind people get to decide whether to regulate genomic choice to make blind children?

Yes, blind people are the experts here. If 95% of blind people wish they weren't blind, then (unless there is good reason to believe that a specific child will be in the 5%) gene editing for blindness should be illegal. 

(Although we might overrule blind people if they claimed to be happy but had bad objective measures, like high rates of depression and suicide.)

By "best policy" I meant "current most preferred policy". 

"prospectively ban genomic choices for traits that our cost-benefit analysis said are bad" is not my position. My position is "ban genomic edits that cause traits that all reasonable cost-benefit analysis agree are bad", where "reasonable" is defined in terms of near-universal human values. I say more about this here.

I skimmed the article earlier, and read through it more carefully now. I think "edited children will wish the edits had not been made" should be added to the list of exceptions. Also, if we can already predict with high confidence which changes will be regretted, why wait until the next generation to ban them?

By "reasonable" I meant "is consistent with near-universal human values". For instance, humans near-universally value intelligence, happiness, and health. If an intervention decreases these, without corresponding benefits to other things humans value, then the intervention is unambiguously bad.

Instead of "the principle of genomic liberty", I would prefer a "do no harm" principle. If you don't want to do gene editing, that's fine. If you do gene editing, you cannot make edits that, on average, your children will be unhappy about. Take the following cases:
1. Parents want to genetically modify their child from an IQ of 130 to an IQ of 80.
2. Parents want to genetically modify their child to be blind.^[1]
3. Parents want to genetically modify their child to have persistent mild depression.^[2]

People generally prefer to be intelligent and happy and healthy. Most people who have low intelligence or are blind or depressed wish things were otherwise. Therefore, such edits would be illegal. 

(There may be some cases where "children are happy about the changes on net after the fact" is not restrictive enough. For instance, suppose a cult genetically engineers its children to be extremely religious and extremely obedient, and then tells them that disobedience will result in eternal torment in the afterlife. These children will be very happy that they were edited to be obedient.)

A concrete example of where I disagree with the "principle of genomic liberty": 
Down syndrome removes ~50 IQ points. The principle of genomic liberty would give a Down syndrome parent with an IQ of 90 the right to give a 140 IQ embryo Down syndrome, reducing the embryo's IQ to 90 (this is allowed because 90 IQ is not sufficient to render someone non compos mentis).

1. ^{^}

   Explicitly allowed by the principle of genomic liberty if one of the parents is blind.

2. ^{^}

   Major depression is explicitly not protected by the principle of genomic liberty.