The vision of Bill Thurston
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This reminds me of the Scott Alexander article, Against Against Autism Cures.
Would something be lost if autism were banished from the world? Probably. Autistic people have a unique way of looking at things that lets them solve problems differently from everyone else, and we all benefit from that insight. On the other hand, everyone always gives the same example of this: Temple Grandin. Temple Grandin is pretty great. But I am not sure that her existence alone justifies all of the institutionalizations and seizures and head-banging and everything else.
Imagine if a demon offered civilization the following deal: “One in every hundred of your children will be born different. They will feel ordinary sensations as exquisite tortures. Many will never learn to speak; most will never work or have friends or live independently. More than half will consider suicide. Forty percent will be institutionalized, then ceaselessly tyrannized and abused until they die. In exchange, your slaughterhouses will be significantly more efficient.”
I feel like Screwtape would facepalm, then force him into remedial Not-Sounding-Like-An-Obvious-Demon classes.
Even if we give Bill Thurston's vision problems credit for his mathematical insights, it's not clear that that makes up for the suffering caused by over 1% of people having strabismus. And even if we decide that the existence of strabismus is good on net, that doesn't justify the existence of other disabilities. Have blindness or deafness or dwarfism ever caused someone to have unique insights?
My intent with this lesson is to give some pause to those who think that there's an unambiguous universal "good" direction for genomes to go.
I predict any reasonable cost-benefit analysis will find that intelligence and health and high happiness-set-point are good, and blindness and dwarfism are bad[1].
I think good arguments for "protection of genomic liberty for all" exist, but I don't think "there are no unambiguous good directions for genomes to go" is one of them.
- ^
Deafness is probably also bad on net, but it does allow you to join the tightly knit deaf community. Such tight-knit communities are increasingly rare in our atomized society, so if you really want one deafness might be an acceptable price to pay.
I predict any reasonable cost-benefit analysis will find that intelligence and health and high happiness-set-point are good, and blindness and dwarfism are bad.
This is irrelevant to what I'm trying to communicate. I'm saying that you should doubt your valuations of other people's ways of being--NOT so much that you don't make choices for your own children based on your judgements about what would be good for them and for the world, or advocate for others to do similarly, but YES so much that you hesitate quite a lot (like years, or "I'd have to deeply investigate this from several angles") before deciding that we (the state) ought to use state force to impose our (some political coalition's) judgements about costs and benefits of traits on other people's reproduction.
I think good arguments for "protection of genomic liberty for all" exist, but I don't think "there are no unambiguous good directions for genomes to go" is one of them.
I think it is a good argument. Since it's ambiguous, and it's not an interpersonal conflict, and there are (at least potentially) people with a strong interest in both directions for their own children, the state should be involved as little as is reasonable. This is a policy about which I think it would be more truthful to say "a world following this policy ought to be desirable, or at least not terribly objectionable, to the great majority of citizens".
If you don't protect people's propagative liberty, some people will have good reason to strongly object to that world.
If you do protect people's propagative liberty, some other people might believe they have good reason to strongly object. I discuss at least one acknowledged exception to the proposed protection here: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/rxcGvPrQsqoCHndwG/the-principle-of-genomic-liberty#Propagative_liberty
But I'm arguing to those people that their objection should not be so strong that they ought to fight to prohibit, by law, this sort of propagative liberty.
Government intervention comes with risks, but if I had an iron-clad guarantee against slippery-slope dynamics I would not want it to be legal to genetically engineer a healthy embryo to be have Down syndrome, or Tay-Sachs disease, or be blind. It is already illegal to blind your children after they are born, and this is a good thing imo.
I don't think parents should be required to use genetic engineering to increase their children's intelligence, health, and happiness set point. However, I don't think parents should be allowed to harm their children along these axes. (Just like it is already illegal to feed your children lead in order to decrease their intelligence.)
I am quite certain that, even after thinking about it for years, I would still be against feeding children lead or genetically altering them to be less intelligent. That being the case, I don't think that this topic would be a good use of several years of thinking time.
For what it's worth, I agree that the state should be involved as little as is reasonable. But if it would be illegal to do something through non-gene-editing means, it should also be illegal to do through gene editing. "You cannot blind your children, unless you do it through gene editing, then it's totally fine" does not seem to me like a reasonable public policy.
Down syndrome, or Tay-Sachs disease
I'd have to learn more, but many forms of these conditions (and therefore the condition simpliciter, prospectively) would probably prevent the child from expressing their state of wellbeing, through death or unsound mind. Therefore these would fall under the recognized permanent silencing exception to the principle of genomic liberty, and wouldn't be protected forms of propagation. Further, my impression is that living to adulthood with Tay-Sachs is quite rare; most people with Tay-Sachs variants wouldn't be passing on a phenotype. (I did say "right to propagate their own genes and their own traits", but I debated including genes internally, and I could be suaded that the propagative liberty tentpole principle, specifically, should only apply to phenotypes.) Finally, if the parents in question are severely non compos mentis, their genomic liberty is also not necessarily protected by the principle.
Regarding blind/deaf/dwarf: I wonder if, in real life, talking to such a person who is describing their experience and values, you would then be able to bring yourself in good conscience to say "yes, the state should by force prevent your way of life".
It is already illegal to blind your children after they are born, and this is a good thing imo.
Already living people are clearly different. You could argue the difference shouldn't matter, but it would take more argument. Elaboration here: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/rxcGvPrQsqoCHndwG/the-principle-of-genomic-liberty?commentId=qnafba5dx6gwoFX4a
I am quite certain that, even after thinking about it for years, I would still be against feeding children lead or genetically altering them to be less intelligent.
I think you might still be 100% percent missing my point. I'm not arguing for it being moral to do these things. I think it's immoral. I'm trying to construct a political coalition, and I'm arguing that you shouldn't be so confident in your judgements that you impose them on others, in this case. Elaboration here: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/rxcGvPrQsqoCHndwG/the-principle-of-genomic-liberty?commentId=PnBH5HHszc7G5FK5s
"You cannot blind your children, unless you do it through gene editing, then it's totally fine"
FYI, you're strawmanning my position, in case you care about understanding it.
It sounds like your goal is to build a political coalition, and I am talking about my ideal policies. I would be happy to accept "the principle of genomic liberty" over status-quo, since it is reasonably likely that lawmakers will create far worse laws than that.
Is your position that at least one parent must be blind/deaf/dwarf in order to edit the child to be the same? If so, that is definitely an improvement over what I thought your position was.
I'm not sure what the difference is supposed to be between "blinding your children via editing their genes as an embryo" and "painlessly blinding your children with a chemical immediately after birth". The outcome is exactly the same.
I would be happy to accept "the principle of genomic liberty" over status-quo, since it is reasonably likely that lawmakers will create far worse laws than that.
Ok. Then I'm not sure we even disagree, though we might. If we do, it would be about "ideal policies". My post about Thurston (which was about as successful as I expected at making the point, which is to say, medium at best) is trying to strike some doubt in your heart about the ideal policy, because you don't know what it's like to be other people and you don't know what sort of weird ways they might be thinking that you couldn't anticipate. It's a pretty abstract way of making the case; a more direct way would have been to find some blind/deaf/autistic/dwarf/trans/etc. people talking about valuing the special aspects of how they are, etc.
Mainly I want to strike a bit of doubt in your heart about the idea policy because I want you to not be committed to making that part of the practical policy about genomic engineering, but it sounds like we don't necessarily have a conflict there.
Is your position that at least one parent must be blind/deaf/dwarf in order to edit the child to be the same? If so, that is definitely an improvement over what I thought your position was.
Sort of, though I'm not totally sure. To fall under the propagative liberty tentpole protection, yeah, at least one would have to be blind. (Well, if I'm changing propagative liberty to only apply to phenotypes.)
Two sighted parents wanting to make their child blind seems like a pretty weird case; who would do that?? (Ok fine maybe someone would do that.) The principle of genomic liberty leaves that in a sort of gray area. It's neither protected under any of the tentpole principles, nor does it fall under any of the explicitly recognized exceptions to GL protection. So the weaker GL, which relies more on the tentpole principles, would say "ok, the state can make laws prohibiting this". The strongest GL principle that fits my proposal would fight any case that doesn't fall under the explicit exceptions, in order to make society consider the case carefully, including this case.
However, the non-intervention tentpole protection would allow parents to decline to use available technology to prevent their future child from being blind.
I'm not sure what the difference is supposed to be between "blinding your children via editing their genes as an embryo" and "painlessly blinding your children with a chemical immediately after birth". The outcome is exactly the same.
Did you read the linked comment? It has political differences. The narrow causal outcome being the same isn't the totality of the relevant considerations. Another difference would be that it's more damaging to the parents's souls to do the chemicals thing, as much as you want to wave your hands about how the philosophy proves it should be the same.
I think our disagreement over ideal policy spills over into practice as well. To you, "the principle of genomic liberty" is the best policy, while to me it is one of many policies that is less bad than status quo.
I think the future opinion of the gene-edited children is important. Suppose 99% of genetically deafened children are happy about being deaf as adults, but only 8% of genetically blinded children are happy about being blind. In that case, I would probably make the former legal and the latter illegal.
I did read the linked comment, and I agree that gouging a child's eyes out is different. But I don't see a difference between "immediately after birth, have the doctor feed your child a chemical that painlessly causes blindness" and gene editing. To me, both seem about the same level of soul-damaging. Many of the linked arguments don't apply at all to the new scenario, and I didn't find any of the rest remotely convincing, but I don't feel like taking the time to create a point-by-point response.
To you, "the principle of genomic liberty" is the best policy
No! Happy to hear alternatives. But I do think it's better than "prospectively ban genomic choices for traits that our cost-benefit analysis said are bad". I think that's genuinely unjust, partly because you shouldn't be the judge of whether another person's way of being should exist.
I think the future opinion of the gene-edited children is important. Suppose 99% of genetically deafened children are happy about being deaf as adults, but only 8% of genetically blinded children are happy about being blind. In that case, I would probably make the former legal and the latter illegal.
Right, so if you read my post on genomic liberty, you'll see that I do put stock in what these children will say. But that's strictly the responsibility of the next generation.
But I don't see a difference between "immediately after birth, have the doctor feed your child a chemical that painlessly causes blindness" and gene editing.
Right, so fewer differences apply, but some do. An already-born child gets some legal protections that a 10-day fetus, or that an unfertilized egg, do not get. As a political matter, they are treated differently, and for good reason. (Maybe not for eternal reasons, like maybe a transhuman society would work out how to make things more continuous, but that's not very practically relevant.)
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?
Oh, I guess, why haven't I said this already: If you would, consider some trait that:
- you have, and
- is a mixed blessing, and
- that many / most people would consider a detriment, and
- that is uncommon.
I'l go first:
In my case, besides being Jewish lol, I'm maybe a little schizoid, meaning I have trouble forming connections / I tend to not maintain friendships / I tend to keep people at a distance, in a systematic / intentional way, somewhat to my detriment. (If this is right, it's sort of mild or doesn't fully fit the wiki page, but still.) So let's say I'm a little schizoid.
This is a substantively mixed blessing: I have few lasting relationships and feel lonely / disconnected / malnourished, and am sort of conflicted about that because a lot of my intuitions say this is better than any available alternative; but on the other hand, I am a free thinker, I can see things most others can't see, I can pursue good things that most others won't pursue.
Now, if someone reads the wiki page, they will most likely come away saying "hell no!", and would want to nudge their child's genome away from being like that. Fair enough. I wouldn't argue against that. I might even do the same, I'm not sure; on the other hand, I do think I have a way of thinking that's fairly uncommon and interesting and useful and in some ways more right than the default. Either way, there's no fucking way that I want the state to be telling me which personality traits I can and can't pass on to my child.
Ok now you:
E.g. do you have a neuroatypicality such as autism, ADHD, bipolar, dyslexia? Some sort of dysphoria or mental illness? A non-heterosexual orientation? Etc. (I'm curious, but obviously not expecting you to share; just asking you to think of it.)
If so, consider the prospect of the state saying that you can't pass this trait on.
If not, well nevermind lol. There's a bit more theory here, just in case it helps; specifically:
Beyond that, any phenotype at all will correspond to some kind of consciousness. Someone with insomnia, even if they acknowledge that having insomnia is almost entirely worse than not having insomnia, might still wish to have other people with insomnia to be friends with, simply because an insomniac has a somewhat different experience and way of being than a somniac and can therefore understand and relate specially to insomniacs. So removing any type of person is to some extent changing who humanity is.
Finally, a given type of person (so to speak) might view themselves as part of a “cross-sectional coalition”. In other words, even though a deaf person is not only a deaf person, and views zerself as part of the whole human collective, ze might also view zerself as being part of a narrower collective—deaf people—which has its own being, rights, authority, autonomy, instrumental value, and destiny.
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.
I think "edited children will wish the edits had not been made" should be added to the list of exceptions.
So to be clear, your proposal is for people who aren't blind to decide what hypothetical future blind children will think of their parents's decisions, and that judgement should override the judgement of the blind parents themselves? This seems wild to me.
... 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? Haven't thought about this, but it seems pretty messy and weird. But maybe.
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.
But it kinda sounds like your notion of "near-universal" ends up just being whatever your CBA said? I guess I'm not sure what would sway you. Suppose for example the following made-up hypothetical: there's a child alive today whose blind parents intentionally selected an embryo that would be blind. Suppose that child says "Actually, I'm happy my parents made that choice. I feel close to them, part of a special community, where we share a special way of experiencing the world; we sense different things than other people, and consequently we have different tastes, and this gives us a bit of a different consciousness. Yes there are difficulties, but I love my life, and I wouldn't want to have been sighted.". In this case, do you update?
Maybe we're at an impasse here. At some point I hope to set up convenient streaming / podcasting; if I'd already done so I'd invite you on to chat, which might go better.
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.)
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.
This is absolutely not what I'm suggesting. I'm suggesting (something in the genre of) the possibility of having that if 95% of blind people decide that gene editing for blindness should be illegal, then gene editing for blindness should be illegal. It's their autonomy that's at issue here.
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.
I'm genuinely unsure whether or not they would. Would be interesting to know.
One example, from "ASAN Statement on Genetic Research and Autism" https://autisticadvocacy.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/genetic-statement-recommendations.pdf :
ASAN opposes germline gene editing in all cases. Germline gene editing is editing a person’s genes that they pass down to their children. We do not think scientists should be able to make gene edits that can be passed down to a person’s children. The practice could prevent future generations of people with any gene-related disability from being born. This is eugenics and a form of ableism.
ASAN opposes non-heritable gene editing for autism. This is when scientists edit a person’s genes in a way that can’t be passed down to their children. ASAN is against ever using this kind of gene editing for autism. We think it would be used to treat or “cure” autism. We do not want “cures” for autism. We want to continue being autistic. We want there to be rules saying people can’t use genetic research to find a “cure” for autism. We are setting this standard for autism and the autistic community because it is what most of our community members believe.
Not directly comparable, but related. (I disagree with their reasoning and conclusions, I think.)
Interestingly, they make the same suggestion I mentioned above:
Some disability communities might want non-heritable gene editing. For example, some people with epilepsy are okay with non-heritable gene editing for the genes that cause their seizures. We think it should be up to each disability community to decide if they are okay with nonheritable gene editing for their disability. Researchers and policymakers should listen to each disability community about how that community feels about non-heritable gene editing.
I don't understand your position. My position is:
1. Higher intelligence and health and happiness-set-point are unambiguous good directions for the genome to go. Blindness and dwarfism are unambiguous bad directions for the genome to go.
2. Therefore, the statement "there are no unambiguous good directions for genomes to go" is false.
3. Since the statment is false, it is a bad argument.
Which step of this chain, specifically, do you disagree with? It sounds like you disagree with the first point.
But then you say the fact that "any reasonable cost-benefit analysis will find that intelligence and health and high happiness-set-point are good" is irrelevant to your argument.
So it seems your argument is "even if all reasonable cost-benefit analyses agree, things are still ambiguous". Is that really your position?
So it seems your argument is "even if all reasonable cost-benefit analyses agree, things are still ambiguous". Is that really your position?
Yeah. Well, we're being vague about "reasonable".
If by "reasonable" you mean "in practice, no one could, given a whole month of discussion, argue me into thinking otherwise", then I think it's still ambiguous even if all reasonable CBAs agree.
If by "reasonable" you mean "anyone of sound mind doing a CBA would come to this conclusion", then no, it wouldn't be ambiguous. But I also wouldn't say that it should be protected. Basically by assumption, what we're protecting is genomic liberty of parents; we're discussing the case where a blind parent of sound mind, having been well-informed by their clinic of the consequences and perhaps given an enforced period of reflection, and hopefully having consulting with their peers, has decided to make their child blind.
If there's no parent of sound mind making such a decision, then there's no question of policy that we have to resolve. If there is, then I'm saying in most cases (with some recognized exceptions) it's ambiguous.
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).
I would prefer a "do no harm" principle
I'm still unclear how much we're talking past each other. In this part, are you suggesting this as law enforced by the state? Note that this is NOT the same as
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.
because you could have an intervention that does result in less happiness on average, but also has some other real benefit; but isn't this doing some harm? Does it fall under "do no harm"?
And as always, the question here is, "Who decides what harm is?".
(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.)
Yes, I agree, and in fact specifically brought up (half of) this case in the exclusion for permanent silencing. Quoting:
For example, it could be acceptable to ban genomic choices that would make a future child supranormally obedient, to the point where they are very literally incapable of communicating something they have not been told to communicate. [...]
You write:
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).
In practice, my guess is that this would pose a quite significant risk of making the child non compos mentis, and therefore unable to sufficiently communicate their wellbeing; so it would be excluded from protection. But in theory, yes, we have a disagreement here. If the parent is compos mentis, then who the hell are you to say they can't have a child like themselves?
For instance, humans near-universally value intelligence,
How many people have you talked to about this topic? Lots of people I talk to value intelligence and would want to give their future kid intelligence; lots of people value it but say they wouldn't want to influence; some people say they don't value; and some even say they anti-value it (e.g. preferring their kid to be more normal).
I'm not sure how to communicate across a gap here... There's a thing that it seems like you don't understand, that you should understand, about law, the state, freedom, coercion, etc. There's a big injustice in imposing your will on others, and you don't seem to mind this. This principle of injustice is far from absolute; I endorse lots of impositions, e.g. no gouging out your child's eyes. But you seem to just not mind about being like "ok, hm, which ways of living are good, ok, this is good and this is good, this is bad and this is bad, OK GUYS I FIGURED IT OUT, you may do X and you may not do Y, that is the law, I have spoken". Maybe I'm missing you, but that's what it sounds like. And I just don't think this is how the law is supposed to work.
There is totally a genuine tough issue here, where the law should have some interest in protecting everyone, including young children from their parents, and yes to some extent even future children. But I feel our communication is dancing around this, where maybe you just don't agree that the law should be very reluctant to impose?
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:
- Don't allow unambiguous net harm. (Reasonable tradeoffs are fine. Err on the side of permissiveness.)
- The best experts on whether "unambiguous net harm" was done are the people who were edited.
- 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.
- 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.
if we had a highly competent government that could be trusted to reasonably interpret the rules,
Yeah, if this is the sort of thing you're imagining, we're just making a big different background assumption here.
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.
Yeah, on a methodological level, you're trying to do a naive straightforward utilitarian consequentialist thing, maybe? And I'm like, this isn't how justice and autonomy and the law work, it's not how politics and public policy works, it's not how society and cosmopolitanism work. (In this particular case, my justification about human dignity maybe doesn't immediately make sense to you, but I think that not understanding the justification is a failure on your part--the justification might ultimately be wrong, I'm not at all confident, but it's a real justification. See for example "What’s really wrong with genetice nhancement: a second look at our posthuman future".)
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.)
No, this is going too far. The exception there would be for a medium / high likelihood of really bad depression, like "I can't bring myself to work on anything for any sustained time, even stuff that's purely for fun, I think about killing myself all the time for years and years, I am suffering greatly every day, I take no joy in anything and have no hope", that kind of thing. Going from "once in a while gets pretty down for a few weeks, has to take a bit of time off work and be sad in bed" is probably fine, and probably has good aspects, even if it is net-bad / net-dispreferable for most people and is somewhat below typical happiness set-point. Mild high-functioning bipolar might be viewed by some people with that condition as important to who they are, and a source of strength and creativity. Or something, I don't know. Decreasing their rates of depressive episodes by getting rid of bipolar is not an unambiguous good by any stretch.
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.
That's all well and fine, but you're still doing that thing where you say "X is unambiguously good" and I'm like "But a bunch of people say that X is bad" and you're like "ha, well, you see, their opinion is bullshit, betcha didn't think of that" and I'm like, we're talking past each other lol.
Anyway thanks for engaging, I appreciate the contention and I found it helpful even though you're so RAWNG.
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.)
1The 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).
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.
I do think this is in interesting and important consideration here; possibly the crux is quite simply trust in the state, but maybe that's not a crux for me, not sure.
Thurston's case reminds me somwhat of this old LW comment by pdf23ds:
Take me for an example. On the WISC-III IQ test, my combined score is 145. There are two composite scores that the combined score is made up of, the verbal score (I got 155, the maximum possible on that test) and the performance score (I got 125). There are also a number of different individual capacity scores. On most, I scored above the 95 percentile. On two or three, I scored right in the middle, and in one (visual short term memory) I scored in the first percentile.
Let me repeat that. I scored in the first percentile for the capacity to keep visual information in my short-term memory. (I scored in the 97th for aural short term memory, and 99.9th for linguistic.) How does that change how I solve problems, how I think about the world? Well, I perform many tasks about twice as slowly (but just as accurately) as others with my composite IQ. I have to use other circuits than most people do to solve the same problems, circuits that aren't as efficient. Circuits that may even work slightly differently, giving me a different perspective on problems, which may be superior or inferior, I don't know (likely depending on the individual problem). I strongly suspect that this is a large part of the cause of my intense dislike of school.
At the individual level, I can't see myself ever choosing for my child to have >99.9th percentile linguistic ability and 1st(!!) percentile visual short-term memory, or really any such spectacularly uneven combination of abilities. (I'm not as extreme, but I remember this quote because I empathise with it: I'm high-math low-verbal, my childhood was the mirror of Scott's, right down to "I don't know which bothered me more, the praise from effortless success or the criticism from backbreaking toil to get Bs on my own native language's exams".)
At the societal level however, there does seem to be a lot of benefit to a cognitive diversity of minds (I'm thinking of Cosma Shalizi and Henry Farrell's cognitive democracy essay, and their referencing Lu Hong and Scott Page (2004)'s use of mathematical models to argue that "diversity of viewpoints helps groups find better solutions"). So I guess one direction this line of thinking could go is how we can get the society-level benefits of a cognitive diversity of minds without necessarily having cognitively-uneven kids grow up in pain.
So I guess one direction this line of thinking could go is how we can get the society-level benefits of a cognitive diversity of minds without necessarily having cognitively-uneven kids grow up in pain.
Absolutely, yeah. A sort of drop-dead basic thing, which I suppose is hard to implement for some reason, is just not putting so much pressure on kids--or more precisely, not acting as though everything ought to be easy for every kid. Better would be skill at teaching individual kids by paying attention to the individual's shape of cognition. That's difficult because it's labor-intensive and requires open-mindedness. I don't know anything about the economics of education and education reform, but yeah, it would be good to fix this... AI tutors could probably improve over the status quo in many cases, but would lack some important longer-term adaptation (like, actually learning how the kid thinks and what ze can and can't easily do).
I don't know either, but I think of Tracing Woodgrains' Center for Educational Progress and the growing Discord community around it as a step in this direction.
1I think this is a strong argument here for genetic diversity, but a very weak one for saying there isn't a unambiguous universal "good" direction for genes. So I agree that the case strongly implies part of your conclusion, that the state should not intervene to stop people from choosing "bad" genomes, but it might imply something much stronger; humanity has a widely shared benefit from genetic diversity - one which will be under-provided by freedom for everyone choosing what they think is best, and it should therefore be subsidized.
Yeah, cognitive diversity is one of those aspects that could be subject to some collapse. Anomaly et al.[1] discuss this, though ultimately suggest regulatory parsimony, which I'd take even further and enshrine as a right to genomic liberty.
I feel only sort-of worried about this, though. There's a few reasons (note: this is a biased list where I only list reasons I'm less worried; a better treatment would make the opposite case too, think about bad outcomes, investigate determinative facts, and then make judgements, etc.):
- Although I want the tech to be strong, inexpensive, and widely accessible, in practice it will of course have a long road of innovation and uptake; I think I should be surprised if, 15 years after strong germline engineering technology is first relatively inexpensive (say for $10k / baby), more than half of parents in the US are using the technology.
- Hopefully, many clinics would nudge parents to make a more reflective and personal choice, e.g. by asking "what about us do we want to see in our kids", rather than just asking "how do we make a normal person / elite person / etc.". (I'm not remotely confident clinics would do this, but.)
- For better or worse, there will be a long period of time (decades, probably, at least) in which many traits, including / especially many cognitive traits (subfactors of intelligence, wisdom, curiosity, determination, etc etc) will be only weakly or not at all genomically steerable. It's hard to define and measure many traits; and even if you can measure them, it's hard to collect enough genotype/phenotype data to find weak polygenic associations. So there will be a lot of cognitive variation that isn't subject to direct genomic vectoring. (Though they could be more weakly vectored if they correlate with traits, e.g. Big Five personality traits, that are studied and vectored.)
- I expect the gene pool to remain quite diverse for a long time.
- I expect many (most?) people to want to pass on their genes.
- (As a touchpoint, though I'm probably kinda weird in this, I have some value placed on passing on most of my DNA segments at least once--though I certainly also want to pass on "worse" segments much less frequently than "better" segments.)
- Most genomic vectoring methods (selection and editing) don't affect the actual genome very much. You and I differ at O(10^6.5) genetic loci; strong editing edits O(10^2.5) loci; selection... well I'm not sure about the math, but it would probably be something like O(10^3) changes in expectation. (This doesn't necessarily apply to whole genome synthesis, or to selection schemes that involve many donors, which could in theory hugely amplify some DNA segments in the next generation, though doing so to an extreme degree would be inadvisable.)
- I therefore expect there to remain a large amount of genetic diversity. This doesn't mean that there has to be trait-diversity, but it should imply that it would remain fairly easy (using germline engineering) to recover any previously-extant traits. In other words, even fairly extreme trait-diversity collapse would be not so hard to partially reverse (I mean, parents who want to buck the trend could do so).
- For most traits, especially cognitive traits, there's going to be lots variation that isn't controlled by GE. E.g. nurture effects, environmental / developmental randomness, and nonlinear and weak effects of genes that haven't been picked up in polygenic scores. This implies that, while in many cases you can significantly push the mean value of the trait among your possible future children, you can't greatly tighten the distribution of the trait. The exact shape of this depends on the trait (how much we understand the genetics, how much overall variation there is, what the distribution-tails of the trait imply in practice for behavior). My guess is that in practice this implies you still have lots of trait-variation.
- I expect that for lots of parents, for lots of traits, they just won't especially care to or choose to genomically vector that trait much (though maybe it would be more common to avoid extremes of the trait).
- For example, do I want to make my kid a bit uncommonly extraverted or introverted? Plausibly I'd develop some preference after thinking about it more, but I have less of an immediate preference compared to some other traits.
- I, and I suspect many other parents, would be somewhat suspicious of many supposed polygenic scores and trait constructs and measurements. Such parents would either not GV those traits, or GV them less strongly, or only GV them after investing more thinking (and therefore would make generally better decisions).
- I suspect many parents would specifically have a preference to not make genomic choices about e.g. personality traits.
- I weakly expect lots of parents would want kids with a variety of values of many given traits. I would. E.g. if there's a tradeoff between different subfactors of intelligence, I'd want one kid with a stronger genomic foundation for one of the subfactors, another with another, etc.; I might plausibly want a kid with slightly low conscientiousness (higher creativity, maybe) and another with slightly high conscientiousness (more industrious, maybe).
- I expect there's quite a lot of diversity in what parents view as desirable traits. Different parents will differently emphasize beneficence (wellbeing of the child), altruism (how the child contributes to helping others), or other criteria; and different parents will have different opinions about what traits contribute to those outcomes. I therefore suspect that collapsing all the way to just the traits that parents think they want in/for their future children, while that would plausibly be pretty bad, would still be quite far from total homongeneity.
- I suspect many parents would want to see themselves in their children, i.e. pass on some of their traits. (I would.) So diversity of parents is reflected somewhat in diversity of kids.
- In theory, in the medium-term (a couple generations), there should be socioeconomic feedback towards an equilibrium, where if a useful niche-strategy is undersupplied, then it's demanded more, and some parents eventually notice and respond by trying to fill that niche. (On the other hand, it could be that some niches collapse due to undersupply, which could be harder to reverse.)
- Even if the total envelope of trait-values decreases, that doesn't necessarily mean the desirable variation decreases. In fact, what I hope, and also somewhat expect, is that you get an increased "medium frontier" of humanity: fewer extreme spikes in some dimensions (e.g. maybe no one with disagreeableness quotient >160, or sometehing), but more total weirdness because lots of kids each have several traits on which they're 2 SDs away from the mean:
It would be interesting to poll parents to see what sorts of considerations they might take into account, and decisions they might make. One could also ask embryo screening companies.
Anomaly, Jonathan, Christopher Gyngell, and Julian Savulescu. ‘Great Minds Think Different: Preserving Cognitive Diversity in an Age of Gene Editing’. Bioethics 34, no. 1 (January 2020): 81–89. https://doi.org/10.1111/bioe.12585. ↩︎
