Building Better People | Jonathan Anomaly & Richard Hanania
Building Better People | Jonathan Anomaly & Richard Hanania
Appears in this episode
Jonathan Anomaly is the academic director of a new philosophy, politics, and economics (PPE) program at La Universidad de las Americas in Ecuador, co-hosts the Ideas Sleep Furiously Podcast, and works in the startup world. He has taught in PPE programs around the US, including at the University of Pennsylvania, Duke, the University of North Carolina, and the University of Arizona. He joins the podcast to talk about his book Creating Future People: The Ethics of Genetic Enhancement. Topics covered include different technologies that may be used to change or select personality and cognitive traits, beauty enhancement, and addressing potential collective action problems that may arise from such technology.
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Building Better People | Jonathan Anomaly & Richard Hanania
I think that 20+ IQ points would be incredible. Think of the tens of thousands of dollars spent per pupil to inefficiently cram knowledge into kids heads which they eventually forget. Even if school did give an IQ advantage that didn't fade, embryo selection will soon be way more efficient. But I think once we figure out in vitro gametogenesis or gene editing and have a better understanding of the genetic architecture of intelligence, we'll get way past 20 points. The costs to blank slatism and stigmatizing research on intelligence are enormous. Researches like James Lee and Stuart Ritchie are blocked from using NIH datasets to study cognitive ability. An incredible waste.
There are enough gene variants to make people way smarter than anyone who was ever lived. The downstream positive effects are probably incomprehensible. [1]
[1] https://nautil.us/super_intelligent-humans-are-coming-rp-235109/
For more on the science and the current state of in vitro gametogenesis (creating gametes in a lab), here is a 2019 paper
1. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/andr.12726
For the possible returns to genetic cogntive enhancement
1. https://nickbostrom.com/papers/embryo.pdf
2. https://www.gwern.net/Embryo-selection (very good!)
For the present limitations
1. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31761530/
For Jonathan Anomaly's book (I recommend!)
1. https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/oa-mono/10.4324/9781003014805/creating-future-people-jonathan-anomaly
Some articles I wrote on genetic enhancement for those interested
1. https://parrhesia.substack.com/p/harmless-eugenics
2. https://parrhesia.substack.com/p/america-in-2072-a-society-stratified
3. https://parrhesia.substack.com/p/population-ethics-meets-genetic-enhancement