Any of these techniques would surely be available to only a small fraction of the world’s population.
Not true! This consideration is the main reason I included a “unit price” column. Germline engineering should be roughly comparable to IVF, i.e. available to middle class and up; and maybe cheaper given more scale; and certainly ought be subsidized, given the decreased lifetime healthcare costs alone.
greatly increase the distance between the haves and the have-nots
Eh, unless you can explain this more, I think you’ve been brainwashed by Gattaca or something. Gattaca conflates class with genetic endowment, which is fine because it’s a movie about class via a genetics metaphor, but don’t be confused that it’s about genetics. Did the invention of smart phones increase or decrease the distance? In general, some technologies scale with money, and other technologies scale by bodycount. Each person only gets one brain to receive implants and stuff. Elon Musk, famously extremely rich and baby-obsessed, has what… 12 kids? A peasant could have 12 kids if they wanted to! Germline engineering would therefore be extremely democratic, at least for middle class and up. The solution, of course, is to make the tech even cheaper and more widely available, not to inflict preventable disease and disempowerment on everyone’s kids.
Anecdotally, I think there’s somewhat of an inverse correlation between intelligence and empathy in humans.
Stats or GTFO.
Superintelligence will probably affect a person’s personality/values in ways we can’t predict. It could cause depression, psychopathic behavior, who knows.
First, the two specific things you listed are quite genetically heritable. Second, 7 SDs—which is the most extreme form that I advocate for—is only a little bit outside the Gaussian human distribution. It’s just not that extreme of a change. It seems quite strange to postulate that a highly polygenic trait, if pushed to 5350 out of 10000 trait-positive variants, would suddenly cause major psychological problems, whereas natural-born people with 5250 or 5300 out of 10000 trait-positive variants are fine.
Ok, I added some links to “Downside risks of genomic selection”.
Not true! This consideration is the main reason I included a “unit price” column. Germline engineering should be roughly comparable to IVF, i.e. available to middle class and up; and maybe cheaper given more scale; and certainly ought be subsidized, given the decreased lifetime healthcare costs alone.
Eh, unless you can explain this more, I think you’ve been brainwashed by Gattaca or something. Gattaca conflates class with genetic endowment, which is fine because it’s a movie about class via a genetics metaphor, but don’t be confused that it’s about genetics. Did the invention of smart phones increase or decrease the distance? In general, some technologies scale with money, and other technologies scale by bodycount. Each person only gets one brain to receive implants and stuff. Elon Musk, famously extremely rich and baby-obsessed, has what… 12 kids? A peasant could have 12 kids if they wanted to! Germline engineering would therefore be extremely democratic, at least for middle class and up. The solution, of course, is to make the tech even cheaper and more widely available, not to inflict preventable disease and disempowerment on everyone’s kids.
Stats or GTFO.
First, the two specific things you listed are quite genetically heritable. Second, 7 SDs—which is the most extreme form that I advocate for—is only a little bit outside the Gaussian human distribution. It’s just not that extreme of a change. It seems quite strange to postulate that a highly polygenic trait, if pushed to 5350 out of 10000 trait-positive variants, would suddenly cause major psychological problems, whereas natural-born people with 5250 or 5300 out of 10000 trait-positive variants are fine.