An irish elk/peacock type scenario is pretty implausible here for a few reasons.
Firstly people care about enough different traits that an obviously bad trade like attractiveness for intelligence wouldn’t be adopted by enough people to impact the overall population.
Secondly for traits like attractiveness low mutation load is far more important than any gene variants that could present major tradeoffs. So just selecting for less mutation load will improve most of the polygenetic traits people care about.
Ultimately the polygenetic nature of traits people care the most about just doesn’t create much need or incentive for the kinds of trade offs you propose. Such tradeoffs could only ever conceivably be worthwhile in order to reach superhuman levels of intelligence (nothing analogous exists for attractiveness) which would have obvious positive externalities.
Every time I read one of Scott Alexander’s posts I lament my own writing abilities. He’s said everything I want to say about the tradeoffs in genetic engineering with fewer words and in a more comprehensible manner.
I guess my ultimate aim in writing these posts is to convince myself and others that genetic engineering is not only desirable but possible in the near future. I guess maybe what I should be focusing on is less persuasive writing and more HOW to do it.
Though part of me despairs at the possibility of us ever pursuing such a path. Cloning is banned in nearly every country in the world in which it might be possible to create clones. This is ostensibly because cloned mammals have a much higher rate of birth defects, yet so far as I can tell there is no effort being made to reduce the likelihood of such errors. Instead it seems like the current technical problems are being used as an excuse to stop research on how to make cloning safer.
An irish elk/peacock type scenario is pretty implausible here for a few reasons.
Firstly people care about enough different traits that an obviously bad trade like attractiveness for intelligence wouldn’t be adopted by enough people to impact the overall population.
Secondly for traits like attractiveness low mutation load is far more important than any gene variants that could present major tradeoffs. So just selecting for less mutation load will improve most of the polygenetic traits people care about.
Ultimately the polygenetic nature of traits people care the most about just doesn’t create much need or incentive for the kinds of trade offs you propose. Such tradeoffs could only ever conceivably be worthwhile in order to reach superhuman levels of intelligence (nothing analogous exists for attractiveness) which would have obvious positive externalities.
https://slatestarcodex.com/2016/05/04/myers-race-car-versus-the-general-fitness-factor/
Every time I read one of Scott Alexander’s posts I lament my own writing abilities. He’s said everything I want to say about the tradeoffs in genetic engineering with fewer words and in a more comprehensible manner.
I guess my ultimate aim in writing these posts is to convince myself and others that genetic engineering is not only desirable but possible in the near future. I guess maybe what I should be focusing on is less persuasive writing and more HOW to do it.
Though part of me despairs at the possibility of us ever pursuing such a path. Cloning is banned in nearly every country in the world in which it might be possible to create clones. This is ostensibly because cloned mammals have a much higher rate of birth defects, yet so far as I can tell there is no effort being made to reduce the likelihood of such errors. Instead it seems like the current technical problems are being used as an excuse to stop research on how to make cloning safer.