I have only skimmed the paper, but I reject the claim in the abstract that these “rare” variants are due to mutation-selection balance (aka mutational load). That is the claim you are talking about, right?
Yes
Having a choice between targeting common variants and rare variants can only make things easier than not having a choice, but why do you think rare variants are easier?
Eliminating rare variants almost certainly won’t have negative side effects. If X and Y reduce my intelligence and X is a rare variant and Y a common one, then there is a much bigger chance that Y does something good for me than that X does.
Do you really expect that to be easy soon?
If we have solid evidence that CRISPR editing could result in super-geniuses I expect lots of resources (perhaps in China) to be devoted to the relevant practical problems.
Yes, super-rare variants have some advantages, but as I said, common variants have other advantages. It sounds to me that you have fixated on one approach, rather than considering tradeoffs. For that matter, consider the option of cloning, a mere engineering problem. It won’t get you “super-geniuses,” but that is an arbitrary threshold. It seems to me that you have imposed multiple arbitrary thresholds to isolate this one path.
Yes
Eliminating rare variants almost certainly won’t have negative side effects. If X and Y reduce my intelligence and X is a rare variant and Y a common one, then there is a much bigger chance that Y does something good for me than that X does.
If we have solid evidence that CRISPR editing could result in super-geniuses I expect lots of resources (perhaps in China) to be devoted to the relevant practical problems.
Yes, super-rare variants have some advantages, but as I said, common variants have other advantages. It sounds to me that you have fixated on one approach, rather than considering tradeoffs. For that matter, consider the option of cloning, a mere engineering problem. It won’t get you “super-geniuses,” but that is an arbitrary threshold. It seems to me that you have imposed multiple arbitrary thresholds to isolate this one path.