James Miller Interviews Razib Khan On Human Genetic Advances

Offspring genetic selection for IQ will come sooner than widespread adoption of electric cars. Razib thinks we'll know enough about the genetic structure of intelligence to start doing embryo selection for higher intelligence by 2020.

We will see people accept genetic research results by their own choices when they come to reproduce. Says Razib: "Revealed preferences do dictate history at the end of the day".

Say in the year 2021 we can select embryos for higher IQ. What will be the cost of testing a few dozen genomes well enough to select the ideal embryo? g

Razib says the rate of advance of CRISPR genetic editing on embryos will be practical in 5 years: "CRISPR is getting better and better and better and better". The ability to fix some bad genetic load mutations in an embryo would make embryo selection much easier. Got great stuff on one of your chromosomes mixed in with a few bad things? Fix the bad things. Give your kid only positives.

Parenthetically, after one recent series of dentist visits I've been taking notice of people's teeth. Some people have perfect gleaming white teeth with no cavities. Others like me are not so lucky. Lots of people like me would choose to give their kids better tooth genes if they had the choice. Other people have back problems or skin problems or food sensitivities that make their lives difficult. Why pass that along to your offspring if you can avoid it?

If (or, rather, when) we get more really smart people we will also get more super smart people like John von Neumann. Razib is a little scared at the idea of a substantial fraction of the population being as smart as John von Neumann (one of the smartest people to ever live). By 2030 people might be making babies of his intellectual caliber. So imagine these babies grow up and in 2055 a lot of active scientist operating at von Neumann's level, making many original contributions to many fields. What happens to the world then?

Razib thinks the Chinese will pressure the West to go faster on CRISPR and other genetic technology. Otherwise our geniuses will be far fewer and less able than their geniuses. Resistance will be overcome. I think the affluent will travel to other legal jurisdictions to start pregnancies if they can't get the biotech for super babies in their own country.

Razib thinks we will do genetic editing to create meat animals that are much dumber, unemotional, and pain free to reduce concerns about causing animals to suffer.

There's another aspect of cognitive differences and genetic engineering that Miller and Khan did not touch upon: cognitive attributes heavily influenced by genes that are not about intelligence level. My concern is that 50+ years from now we could have clashes between populations because different populations went in different directions with genetic choices that influence moral and social behavior. We could have groups of brilliant people with strong innate differences in moral reasoning style battling each other for domination within and between societies with an intensity that makes the last century's conflicts seem mild by comparison.