If we can eliminate any hereditary diseases then this is great. Do any of you complainers understand how much misery this could save? Have you ever had a family member with a terminal, congenital disease?
It's eugenics. The debate is familiar. It was an extremely contentious and well-tread topic of discussion for many decades from then end of the 19th century onward.
There are thoroughly developed arguments that highlight its conceivable benefits when applied in way that someone judges ethical, and thoroughly developed arguments that highlight its conceivable threats and horrors when applied in a way that someone judges unethical.
The application of eugenicist principles to justify ethnic genocide during WWII, and the public surfacing of eugenicist policies put towards economic and racial oppression by the West when it was openly self-reflecting during the 60's and 70's, pretty much tabled the public debate because it provided evidence that convinced many that the threats and horrors were inescapable.
So yes, many "complainers" probably do understand exactly what you wish they understood, but they also understand the counterarguments and find them more convincing. You don't have to agree with them, but don't underestimate their breadth of their understanding just because they don't agree with you.
If it's eugenics to choose, without coercion, certain traits for your child, then eugenics as a term is meaningless. Am i participating in eugenics when i don't have children with my sister? Am i doing eugenics when i take a test for cystic fibrosis and use that to decide to have children or not? The entire debate you are referring to centers around the use of force and coercion to control what others can do, and if they can reproduce or not. This is not that.
How do you measure IQ in this context? You can make some guesses based on the known population, but there’s no way you can capture the full range of possibilities. I worry that this type of tailoring might lead to an average of averages, and make human populations more susceptible to pandemics, or other issues due to reduced genetic diversity.
You don't. The claims are based on PGS correlations from things like biobank data.
Broken record: this is a brilliant product. It promises a marginal improvement in a volatile stat measured meaningfully only when the grown child applies for college. It's purchased exclusively by parents that were already going to fold space like a Guild Navigator to get their kids into selective universities. Heads: you take the credit for them getting in somewhere they were getting in anyways. Tails: there is no tails.
It's like a financial derivative product where the underlying is upper-class parental status anxiety. There should be a ticker symbol for it.
We already choose each other based on genetic diversity. Smell for example is a big factor, did you notice that people you’re not attracted to usually smell worse than those you’re attracted to? And I guess there are many other non-rational ways the body-mind chooses for us. As always we think that science can do better than evolution. We’ll see, but if I had to bet..
Previously PGT only got us to 9% accuracy in detecting predicted intelligence. The latest literature suggests they're now at 40-50%. The "missing heritability" has been solved.
I can’t put much stock in something that’s not peer-reviewed, nor something that’s not confirmed as reproducible. Herasight, the company, has a deep conflict of interest when publishing a paper like this, don’t you think? It’s like the tobacco industry publishing about the effects of smoking.
Two other issues: do the cognitive tests control for socioeconomic status? Otherwise you’re just measuring the effect of nurture, not nature.
Second, the UKB fluid intelligence test isn’t a rigorous or reliable measure to fully capture latent GCA.
Again a couple of thoughts occur: 1) you’re greatly discounting the effects of epigenetics on development and trait expressiveness, so even if you tailor for everything as you wish, you’re still only going to guarantee outcomes in a certain range, and 2) heritability is population-level, not individual level. So a figure like “80%” means that that much variation in intelligence in a given *population* is associated with genetic variation. This does NOT mean that 80% of a person’s intelligence comes from their genes. 3) you’re also completely neglecting the effects of genetic nuture, besides environmental effects.
Waiting for your child to come home from a particularly difficult day of kindergarten
"He tasks me. He tasks me and I shall have him! I'll chase him 'round the moons of Nibia and 'round the Antares Maelstrom and 'round perdition's flames before I give him up!"
No. The odds of you getting your "best genetic partner" is nil. At best, most people try to get the best of "what's available". Which is most definitely not the "best partner".
As a new dad, this is a really tone-deaf marketing campaign.
Babies aren't designer shoes and this is a gross way to talk about making them.
Have your best luck dealing with the backlash.
Insane that this is legal in the US.
I feel like if you are already getting IVF, then genetic selection of the best embryos is a no-brainer.
I can't think of a better gift for a child then an extra standard deviation of height, IQ, strength.
Well, let’s be clear: it’s not a “gift for a child,” but the selection of a child heuristically determined to be genetically superior to others.
If we can eliminate any hereditary diseases then this is great. Do any of you complainers understand how much misery this could save? Have you ever had a family member with a terminal, congenital disease?
It's eugenics. The debate is familiar. It was an extremely contentious and well-tread topic of discussion for many decades from then end of the 19th century onward.
There are thoroughly developed arguments that highlight its conceivable benefits when applied in way that someone judges ethical, and thoroughly developed arguments that highlight its conceivable threats and horrors when applied in a way that someone judges unethical.
The application of eugenicist principles to justify ethnic genocide during WWII, and the public surfacing of eugenicist policies put towards economic and racial oppression by the West when it was openly self-reflecting during the 60's and 70's, pretty much tabled the public debate because it provided evidence that convinced many that the threats and horrors were inescapable.
So yes, many "complainers" probably do understand exactly what you wish they understood, but they also understand the counterarguments and find them more convincing. You don't have to agree with them, but don't underestimate their breadth of their understanding just because they don't agree with you.
If it's eugenics to choose, without coercion, certain traits for your child, then eugenics as a term is meaningless. Am i participating in eugenics when i don't have children with my sister? Am i doing eugenics when i take a test for cystic fibrosis and use that to decide to have children or not? The entire debate you are referring to centers around the use of force and coercion to control what others can do, and if they can reproduce or not. This is not that.
How do you measure IQ in this context? You can make some guesses based on the known population, but there’s no way you can capture the full range of possibilities. I worry that this type of tailoring might lead to an average of averages, and make human populations more susceptible to pandemics, or other issues due to reduced genetic diversity.
You don't. The claims are based on PGS correlations from things like biobank data.
Broken record: this is a brilliant product. It promises a marginal improvement in a volatile stat measured meaningfully only when the grown child applies for college. It's purchased exclusively by parents that were already going to fold space like a Guild Navigator to get their kids into selective universities. Heads: you take the credit for them getting in somewhere they were getting in anyways. Tails: there is no tails.
It's like a financial derivative product where the underlying is upper-class parental status anxiety. There should be a ticker symbol for it.
We already choose each other based on genetic diversity. Smell for example is a big factor, did you notice that people you’re not attracted to usually smell worse than those you’re attracted to? And I guess there are many other non-rational ways the body-mind chooses for us. As always we think that science can do better than evolution. We’ll see, but if I had to bet..
Previously PGT only got us to 9% accuracy in detecting predicted intelligence. The latest literature suggests they're now at 40-50%. The "missing heritability" has been solved.
Your 40-50% variance range isn’t supported by recent literature, as far as I can tell.
Secondly, per my understanding you can only get a sense of embryonic PGS via PGT, and that doesn’t necessarily relate to intelligence.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8280022/
You shouldn't like papers from 2021 when people are talking about "recent". This stuff is moving very fast.
https://osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/jfhtu_v1
I can’t put much stock in something that’s not peer-reviewed, nor something that’s not confirmed as reproducible. Herasight, the company, has a deep conflict of interest when publishing a paper like this, don’t you think? It’s like the tobacco industry publishing about the effects of smoking.
Two other issues: do the cognitive tests control for socioeconomic status? Otherwise you’re just measuring the effect of nurture, not nature.
Second, the UKB fluid intelligence test isn’t a rigorous or reliable measure to fully capture latent GCA.
We already know from twin studies that g is 80% heritable, so the effect of nurture on intelligence is slim to none.
Again a couple of thoughts occur: 1) you’re greatly discounting the effects of epigenetics on development and trait expressiveness, so even if you tailor for everything as you wish, you’re still only going to guarantee outcomes in a certain range, and 2) heritability is population-level, not individual level. So a figure like “80%” means that that much variation in intelligence in a given *population* is associated with genetic variation. This does NOT mean that 80% of a person’s intelligence comes from their genes. 3) you’re also completely neglecting the effects of genetic nuture, besides environmental effects.
I’m changing my last name to Singh and naming my “best baby” Khan Noonien
Waiting for your child to come home from a particularly difficult day of kindergarten
"He tasks me. He tasks me and I shall have him! I'll chase him 'round the moons of Nibia and 'round the Antares Maelstrom and 'round perdition's flames before I give him up!"
Wouldn’t the best optimization for this be choosing the best partner?
No. The odds of you getting your "best genetic partner" is nil. At best, most people try to get the best of "what's available". Which is most definitely not the "best partner".
Yes and we have evolved to do so
Are they allowed to choose X vs Y?
Oh good, eugenics in 2025.
As a new dad, this is a really tone-deaf marketing campaign. Babies aren't designer shoes and this is a gross way to talk about making them. Have your best luck dealing with the backlash.