Strong genomic selection is almost feasible, and no one cares?
Strong genomic selection is the ability to create people who have genomes that are strongly selected--by several standard deviations--for some trait. Strong genomic selection would be a civilizational game-changer. For the price of a car, or less, according to my uncertain estimates, couples could have children who are exceptionally healthy (physiologically and mentally), long-lived, creative, intelligent, kind, and sane. The technological and scientific prerequisites for strong genomic selection are almost all in place. There are major obstacles, but not so major that they would require wild advances (as is the case with things like whole-brain emulation). But accelerating this capability is a cold-start problem: due to its taboo nature, biologists, funders, and other do-ers are skittish and unexcited, and don't have a group of people they could join to work on the problem. What to do?
Strong genomic selec (hidden)
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>>1355I see the opposite. Tons of people excited about it and multiple companies about to launch products or already privately launched. It will happen. At first it will be mostly a big nothing. In 50 years if it works it will be common sense and lead to some new weirdness, and if it doesn't work it will be quietly forgotten except for the lawsuits. It doesn't seem like the kind of thing you have to be early on. It also doesn't seem likely to work out its kinks super fast, given the cycle times and probable second order effects. You don't get equity in future trends by being a guinea pig.
But it's an interesting idea. What do you think is the implication for us?
I see the opposite. (hidden)
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We'll see. A lot of these technologies have been "almost feasible" for longer than I've been alive. I certainly intend to use the state of the art for my own future children, and if that ends up being as powerful as the stuff you're talking about here, then so much the better. But I'm not counting on that.
>What to do?
If you're a biologist, build it. If you're sitting on a quarter billion dollars, then fund it, and be willing to lose money to advance the science.
Less importantly, it wouldn't hurt to have some well-written science fiction that portrays healthy gene editing as good, and right, and part of a society worth living in. Some of Bujold's books have a little bit of that as a background detail, but more often it's portrayed as part of an authoritarian or nihilistic dystopia.
We'll see. A lot of (hidden)
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There are companies working on weak genomic selection via methods that won't scale to strong selection, such as embryo selection or small numbers of CRISPR edits. For strong genomic selection, there are a few fundamental scientific problems, the biggest one being some form of gametogenesis or similar (because you have to make an epigenomically healthy baby from your optimized stem cell). There are companies working on in vitro gametogenesis, but I'm not so optimistic about their chances. We don't know what epigenomic state is needed in gametes / zygotes for healthy development, and this is a science-flavored problem, not a startup-flavored problem.
What's this talk about "equity" and "being early on"? I'm talking about causing the technology to advance faster, which is a problem of directing technical and financial resources. The implication is that ideas are upstream of everything else, and if we have many more epochal geniuses, there will be many more good ideas.
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>>1358Ok I see you're interesting in discussing the more extreme ends of genetic engineering. Yeah that would be pretty interesting. I wrote a bit about this a while back, wherein I realized that with intelligent gene selection the most fundamental sphere of competition shifts from blood to ideological traditions. We're in for a crazy world, and as
>>1357 says we need a new generation of great optimistic science fiction to explore possible ways through it.
>What's this talk about "equity" and "being early on"?Sorry, I'm allergic to hype and most discussion I've seen on this topic has been breathless hype trying to FOMO people. It's a legitimately cool topic, I'm just pointing out that FOMO is inappropriate here.
Ok I see you're inte (hidden)
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