Well, there's all this is intelligence equivalent to doing well on IQ tests and different kinds of intelligence debate going on in the culture for the last decade or two, and then there does seem to be a history in the U.S at least of undervaluing some sorts of intelligence in some regions and so on and so forth so I'm thinking - yeah, there kind of are a lot of taboos around this subject!
Ask yourself this - is there anyone you have ever met that would be willing to let their kids be a little bit dumber if that meant they would have the genes to be a little bit better at being a quarterback? Because I have met a lot of those people.
There is a question of how Intelligence is measured and what the tests optimize, but certainly no prospective parent would want dumber children when speaking of intelligence in general. The parent post seemed hold that even this position is amoral.
You raise a good point of potential tradeoffs, and intelligence is not the only factor to optimize for. I imagine most parents would optimize for health and happiness above it.
That said, it is unclear to what degree tradeoffs are required. For example, smart quarterbacks certainly exist. To me, this is an argument for further research into the genetic basis of health, happiness, and intelligence.
I find it interesting that the subject sparks such visceral reactions in people, and how these reactions differ across countries and cultures. I think the subject of Steve HSU is a great an example of this which will be interesting to watch play out.[1] US critics were very quick to assume his research had racial motivations, while in China the subject research receives a $1.5B grant.
>The parent post seemed hold that even this position is amoral.
I supposed because our ways of measuring intelligence are faulty, if someone tells you they will gene optimize your kids for high intelligence they must be using some measurement for what that is.
on edit: as I believe most human qualities have at least some environmental component it could well be that you have a gene that increases the chance of getting a quarterback, decreases the chance of intelligence and still end up with
1. a dumb quarterback
2. a smart quarterback
3. an dumb non-quarterback
4. a smart non-quarterback
only with different percentile chances going in to the process. Although if someone is a parent increasing chances for a dumb quarterback I am betting smart result is unlikely (unless the kid hates parental authority and becomes smart to spite them, which is basically what I did)
Thanks for continuing to engage, but I'm not sure we are seeing eye to eye on the fundamental question.
Putting aside the challenges of defining and measuring general intelligence, is it amoral to desire or take action to bring about a smarter child?
It seems that some people hold that yes, it is, because this ranks and devalues dumb people.
What do you think about this?
I think that it is perfectly reasonable, and in fact standard practice. Parents Intentionally optimize for smart children over dumb ones all the time using non-genetic means.
If you agree here, do you think using genetics to increase intelligence is conceptually amoral for other reasons? Alternatively, is your point that the technology isn’t mature enough to be ethical. Or is it that it IS ethical, just not practical?
For what it is worth, at least one commercial service is already available in the USA to screen embryos for non-disease genes which are probabilisticlly linked to lower IQ, by whatever metric the companies use to measure and define IQ. I think they started testing embryos in 2018.
>Putting aside the challenges of defining and measuring general intelligence, is it amoral to desire or take action to bring about a smarter child?
Putting it aside - no. Having it in the equation, I don't necessarily think so but I can see how someone might because , as said, the way to define intelligence is not sure and someone is making the decision as to how it is being defined.
>For what it is worth, at least one commercial service is already available in the USA to screen embryos for non-disease genes which are probabilisticlly linked to lower IQ, by whatever metric the companies use to measure and define IQ
So, it might be bad this because obviously the parents are unlikely to have the resources to determine what measure to use, they just have to assume the company's measure is a good one. Just like the police have no way of determining if the face recognition algorithm in their new machine learning toolkit is a good one so they trust the company that tells them it will help catch criminals.
>s your point that the technology isn’t mature enough to be ethical. Or is it that it IS ethical, just not practical?
I think that it might have unethical results as a side effect - a la the machine learning facial recognition example, or less likely even unethical motivations (because who knows if a company doing this stuff can also have ulterior motives)
But returning to >is it amoral to desire or take action to bring about a smarter child?
As a general principle no - but no general principle ever exists, the principle needs an actual implementation. Many of the processes that have been done by parents over generations to attempt to bring about smarter children can be pointed to and decried, even considered immoral.
>Parents Intentionally optimize for smart children over dumb ones all the time using non-genetic means
Sure, and lots of the things that are done people point at and say that is awful! I'm not saying that maximizing genes for intelligence IS awful, only it might be, especially given we don't really know or agree overall what it is we're measuring.
It seems like we have a pretty similar assessment.
I was aware of the challenges around definition and implementation, but you raise a really good points about trust and transparency that I had not considered.
While parents can reasonably see and understand the cognitive impacts that health, nutrition, and environmental enrichment have on their kids, this is not the case for genetic modifications, and this could be a meaningful distinction.
