Thus it is unethical to knowingly select for higher intelligence, as you create unhappier offspring in expectation. It may benefit the society as a whole, and the offspring in question probably would not want to have been born “less intelligent”, but it does not change the argument.
So I agree with your general point that it is important to consider negative pleiotropy between traits. However in the specific case of happiness and intelligence, the first two studies I found from googling suggest that happiness and intelligence are positively correlated.12
Here’s a meta-analysis of 23 studies that found no correlation between intelligence and happiness at an individual level but a strong correlation at the country level.
So I think that unless you’re dealing with much stronger techniques than simple embryo selection, this is not a concern. However, if it was you could simply select for both genetic predisposition to happiness and genetic predisposition to high intelligence.
Well, I think we are in agreement, and it all comes down to evaluating expected happiness. Maybe one can select for both intelligence and happiness, But that does not seem to be covered in OP, which seems like a pretty big omission, just assuming that intelligence is an unquestionable positive on a personal scale.
Wait, it seems like those last two points would totally change the argument! Consider:
“It is unethical to donate to effective-altruist charities, since giving away money will mean that your life becomes less happy. It may benefit society as a whole and lead to greater happiness overall. But it does not change the argument: donations are unethical because the donation makes your own life worse.” This seems crazy to me?? If anything it seems like many would consider it unethical to keep the money for yourself.
Your logic would seem to go beyond “don’t use embryo selection to boost IQ, have kids the regular way instead”. It seems to extend all the way to “you should use embryo selection to deliberately hamstring IQ, in the hopes of birthing a smiling idiot”. Am I thus obligated to try and damage my child’s intelligence? (Perhaps for instance by binge-drinking during pregnancy, if I can’t afford IVF?)
It also seems like the child’s preferences would matter to this situation. For instance, personally, I am a reasonably happy guy; I wouldn’t mind sacrificing some of my personal life happiness in order to become more intelligent. (Actually, since I also consider myself a reasonably smart guy, what I would really like is to sacrifice some happiness in order to become more hardworking / conscientious / ambitious. A little more of a “Type-A” high-achieving neurotic… not too much, of course, but just a little in that direction. I think this would improve my material circumstances since I’d work harder, and it would also be better for the world since I’d be producing more societal value. Having a slightly more harried and tumultuous inner life seems like an acceptable price to pay; I know lots of people who are more Type-A than I am, and they seem alright.) I would hate for someone to paternalistically say to me: “Nope, you would be happier if you were even more of a lazy slacker, and had fewer IQ points. So you’re not allowed to trade away any happiness. In fact, I’m gonna turn these intelligence and conscientiousness dials down a few notches, for your own good!”
I guess this is just the classic conflict between preference utilitarianism vs hedonic utilitarianism. But in this situation, preference utilitarianism seems (to me) to be viscerally in the right, while hedonic utilitarianism seems to be doing something extremely cruel and confining.
To be clear, I also dispute the idea that more intelligence --> less happiness. You could probably find some narrowly-defined type of happiness which is anticorrelated with intelligence. But a lot of the meaning and happiness in my life seem like they would get better with more intelligence. Like my ability to understand my place in the world and live an independent life, planning my career/relationships/etc with lots of personal agency. Or my ability to appreciate the texture/experience of being alive—noticing sensations, taking time to “smell the roses”, and making meditative/spiritual/introspective progress of understanding my own mind. My ability to overcome emotional difficulties/setbacks by “working through them” and communicating well with the person I might be angry at. My material quality of life, enabled by my high-income job, which I couldn’t hold down if I wasn’t reasonably smart. My ability to appreciate art on a deep level (see my lecture series about the videogame “The Witness”, an intellectual pursuit which brings me great joy). And so forth.
“It is unethical to donate to effective-altruist charities, since giving away money will mean that your life becomes less happy.
Oh come on, this is an informed personal choice, not something your parents decided for you, why would you even put the two together.
Your logic would seem to go beyond “don’t use embryo selection to boost IQ, have kids the regular way instead”.
I said or implied nothing of the sort! Maybe you can select for both intelligence and emotional stability, I don’t know. Just don’t focus on one trait and assume it is an indisputable good.
It also seems like the child’s preferences would matter to this situation. For instance, personally, I am a reasonably happy guy; I wouldn’t mind sacrificing some of my personal life happiness in order to become more intelligent.
Yes, so would I! Again, when it is a personal informed choice, the situation is entirely different.
To be clear, I also dispute the idea that more intelligence --> less happiness.
May well be, I linked a study to that effect, it might be wrong, or not replicated. But you don’t get to discard evidence just because you do not like it.
Thanks for all these clarifications; sorry if I came off as too harsh.
“Yes, so would I! Again, when it is a personal informed choice, the situation is entirely different.” -- It seems to me like in the case of the child (who, having not been born yet, cannot decide either way), the best we can do is guess what their personal informed choice would be. To me it seems likely that the child might choose to trade off a bit of happiness in order to boost other stats (relative to my level of happiness and other stats, and depending of course on how much that lost happiness is buying). After all, that’s what I’d choose, and the child will share half my genes! To me, the fact that it’s not a personal choice is unfortunate, and I take your point—forcing /some random other person/ to donate to EA charities would seem unacceptably coercive. (Although I do support the idea of a government funded by taxes.) But since the child isn’t yet born, the situation is intermediate between “informed personal choice” vs coercing a random guy. In this intermediate situation, I think choosing based on my best guess of the unborn child’s future preferences is the best option. Especially since it’s unclear what the “default” choice should be—selecting for IQ, selecting against IQ, or leaving IQ alone (and going with whatever level of IQ and happiness is implied by the genes of me and my partner), all seem like they have an equal claim to being the default. Unless I thought that my current genes were shaped by evolution to be at the optimal tradeoff point already, which (considering how much natural variation there is among people, and the fact that evolution’s values are not my values) seems unlikely to me.
Agreed that it is possible that IQ --> less happiness, for most people / on average, even though that strikes me as unlikely. It would be great to see more research that tries to look at this more closely and in various ways.
And totally agreed that this would be a tough tradeoff to make either way; that selecting for emotional stability and happiness alongside IQ would be a high priority if I was doing this myself.
I agree with all these considerations and the choice not being straightforward. It gets even more complicated when one goes deeper into the weeds of the J.S. Mill’s version of utilitarianism. I guess my original point expressed less radically is that assuming that higher IQ is automatically better is far from obvious.
My guess is that intelligence is anti-correlated with happiness. Now, following the Achmiz’s law,
A Non-trivial Assertion without Examples Raises Specter of Said Achmiz Demanding Infinitely Many of Them
I point at dumb dogs, and that people with below-average IQ seem happier on average (study: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5486156/ )
Thus it is unethical to knowingly select for higher intelligence, as you create unhappier offspring in expectation. It may benefit the society as a whole, and the offspring in question probably would not want to have been born “less intelligent”, but it does not change the argument.
So I agree with your general point that it is important to consider negative pleiotropy between traits. However in the specific case of happiness and intelligence, the first two studies I found from googling suggest that happiness and intelligence are positively correlated.12
Here’s a meta-analysis of 23 studies that found no correlation between intelligence and happiness at an individual level but a strong correlation at the country level.
So I think that unless you’re dealing with much stronger techniques than simple embryo selection, this is not a concern. However, if it was you could simply select for both genetic predisposition to happiness and genetic predisposition to high intelligence.
Well, I think we are in agreement, and it all comes down to evaluating expected happiness. Maybe one can select for both intelligence and happiness, But that does not seem to be covered in OP, which seems like a pretty big omission, just assuming that intelligence is an unquestionable positive on a personal scale.
Wait, it seems like those last two points would totally change the argument! Consider:
“It is unethical to donate to effective-altruist charities, since giving away money will mean that your life becomes less happy. It may benefit society as a whole and lead to greater happiness overall. But it does not change the argument: donations are unethical because the donation makes your own life worse.” This seems crazy to me?? If anything it seems like many would consider it unethical to keep the money for yourself.
Your logic would seem to go beyond “don’t use embryo selection to boost IQ, have kids the regular way instead”. It seems to extend all the way to “you should use embryo selection to deliberately hamstring IQ, in the hopes of birthing a smiling idiot”. Am I thus obligated to try and damage my child’s intelligence? (Perhaps for instance by binge-drinking during pregnancy, if I can’t afford IVF?)
It also seems like the child’s preferences would matter to this situation. For instance, personally, I am a reasonably happy guy; I wouldn’t mind sacrificing some of my personal life happiness in order to become more intelligent. (Actually, since I also consider myself a reasonably smart guy, what I would really like is to sacrifice some happiness in order to become more hardworking / conscientious / ambitious. A little more of a “Type-A” high-achieving neurotic… not too much, of course, but just a little in that direction. I think this would improve my material circumstances since I’d work harder, and it would also be better for the world since I’d be producing more societal value. Having a slightly more harried and tumultuous inner life seems like an acceptable price to pay; I know lots of people who are more Type-A than I am, and they seem alright.) I would hate for someone to paternalistically say to me: “Nope, you would be happier if you were even more of a lazy slacker, and had fewer IQ points. So you’re not allowed to trade away any happiness. In fact, I’m gonna turn these intelligence and conscientiousness dials down a few notches, for your own good!”
I guess this is just the classic conflict between preference utilitarianism vs hedonic utilitarianism. But in this situation, preference utilitarianism seems (to me) to be viscerally in the right, while hedonic utilitarianism seems to be doing something extremely cruel and confining.
To be clear, I also dispute the idea that more intelligence --> less happiness. You could probably find some narrowly-defined type of happiness which is anticorrelated with intelligence. But a lot of the meaning and happiness in my life seem like they would get better with more intelligence. Like my ability to understand my place in the world and live an independent life, planning my career/relationships/etc with lots of personal agency. Or my ability to appreciate the texture/experience of being alive—noticing sensations, taking time to “smell the roses”, and making meditative/spiritual/introspective progress of understanding my own mind. My ability to overcome emotional difficulties/setbacks by “working through them” and communicating well with the person I might be angry at. My material quality of life, enabled by my high-income job, which I couldn’t hold down if I wasn’t reasonably smart. My ability to appreciate art on a deep level (see my lecture series about the videogame “The Witness”, an intellectual pursuit which brings me great joy). And so forth.
A few points:
Oh come on, this is an informed personal choice, not something your parents decided for you, why would you even put the two together.
I said or implied nothing of the sort! Maybe you can select for both intelligence and emotional stability, I don’t know. Just don’t focus on one trait and assume it is an indisputable good.
Yes, so would I! Again, when it is a personal informed choice, the situation is entirely different.
May well be, I linked a study to that effect, it might be wrong, or not replicated. But you don’t get to discard evidence just because you do not like it.
Thanks for all these clarifications; sorry if I came off as too harsh.
“Yes, so would I! Again, when it is a personal informed choice, the situation is entirely different.” -- It seems to me like in the case of the child (who, having not been born yet, cannot decide either way), the best we can do is guess what their personal informed choice would be. To me it seems likely that the child might choose to trade off a bit of happiness in order to boost other stats (relative to my level of happiness and other stats, and depending of course on how much that lost happiness is buying). After all, that’s what I’d choose, and the child will share half my genes! To me, the fact that it’s not a personal choice is unfortunate, and I take your point—forcing /some random other person/ to donate to EA charities would seem unacceptably coercive. (Although I do support the idea of a government funded by taxes.) But since the child isn’t yet born, the situation is intermediate between “informed personal choice” vs coercing a random guy. In this intermediate situation, I think choosing based on my best guess of the unborn child’s future preferences is the best option. Especially since it’s unclear what the “default” choice should be—selecting for IQ, selecting against IQ, or leaving IQ alone (and going with whatever level of IQ and happiness is implied by the genes of me and my partner), all seem like they have an equal claim to being the default. Unless I thought that my current genes were shaped by evolution to be at the optimal tradeoff point already, which (considering how much natural variation there is among people, and the fact that evolution’s values are not my values) seems unlikely to me.
Agreed that it is possible that IQ --> less happiness, for most people / on average, even though that strikes me as unlikely. It would be great to see more research that tries to look at this more closely and in various ways.
And totally agreed that this would be a tough tradeoff to make either way; that selecting for emotional stability and happiness alongside IQ would be a high priority if I was doing this myself.
I agree with all these considerations and the choice not being straightforward. It gets even more complicated when one goes deeper into the weeds of the J.S. Mill’s version of utilitarianism. I guess my original point expressed less radically is that assuming that higher IQ is automatically better is far from obvious.