Live data from Hacker News

China Is Engineering Genius Babies (2013)

vice.com

31–40 of 150 posts

Re: China Is Engineering Genius Babies (2013)

#31
post #26

Here's a newer article on the results: https://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/24/health/chinese-scientists... The conclusion: technology is not ready for editing genes of human embryos yet.

What hope do us simpletons have with this technology? Will we be able to edit our DNA to raise our IQ? Learn more efficiently? Better Memory? Etc...

Re: China Is Engineering Genius Babies (2013)

#32
post #4

Here's the primary piece: > At BGI Shenzhen, scientists have collected DNA samples from 2,000 of the world’s smartest people and are sequencing their entire genomes in an attempt to identify the alleles which determine human intelligence. Apparently they’re not far from finding them, and when they do, embryo screening will allow parents to pick their brightest zygote and potentially bump up every generation's intelli…

A dictatorship that wants to shut down criticism but raise IQ ? That seems like contradiction 101.

Re: China Is Engineering Genius Babies (2013)

#33
post #26

Here's a newer article on the results: https://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/24/health/chinese-scientists... The conclusion: technology is not ready for editing genes of human embryos yet.

That paper was obsolete when it was done, even more obsolete when it was published, and totally obsolete now when even on the front page of HN, right now (presumably prompting this submission), there is an article about US researchers successfully editing human embryos with few or no off-targets.

Re: China Is Engineering Genius Babies (2013)

#34
post #29
post #4

Here's the primary piece: > At BGI Shenzhen, scientists have collected DNA samples from 2,000 of the world’s smartest people and are sequencing their entire genomes in an attempt to identify the alleles which determine human intelligence. Apparently they’re not far from finding them, and when they do, embryo screening will allow parents to pick their brightest zygote and potentially bump up every generation's intelli…

It's a little difficult to summarize what has happened since, since so much has happened. This is a golden age of human genetics which has no precedent, and major new findings are being uploaded to Biorxiv at an almost daily rate. I think the short version would be that the BGI project made a bad bet on a particular genetic architecture of intelligence (rare variants with large boosting effects) which would have impl…

Sounds like you're really plugged into this. Is there really a contingent out there that thinks Gattaca[1] is a desirable outcome?

Edit; citing the movie as a widely known example of a stratified society with both engineered and non engineered humans.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gattaca

Re: China Is Engineering Genius Babies (2013)

#35
post #4

Here's the primary piece: > At BGI Shenzhen, scientists have collected DNA samples from 2,000 of the world’s smartest people and are sequencing their entire genomes in an attempt to identify the alleles which determine human intelligence. Apparently they’re not far from finding them, and when they do, embryo screening will allow parents to pick their brightest zygote and potentially bump up every generation's intelli…

A dictatorship that wants to shut down criticism but raise IQ ? That seems like contradiction 101.

Is disobedience correlated with intelligence? Especially when the superiors are not less intelligent than the one who is receiving orders?

Re: China Is Engineering Genius Babies (2013)

#36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

is a high IQ enough to determine 'success'?

I think you could form an entire HN thread just on what it means to be successful. For example is Reddit a success despite not having IPOed? Are you a success if you have as many kids as possible? (Genghis Khan is probably the most successful persons of all time judging by that)

> Are you a success if you have as many kids as possible?

That's the usual yardstick. Hence the expression, success breeds success.

Re: China Is Engineering Genius Babies (2013)

#37
post #25
post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That math seems off. The gain should average 2.5-7.5 points surely?

Source? or calculation? The guy giving the figure is an evolutionary psychologist.

If the difference between "best case" and "worst case" ranges from 5--15, then that's the average best-worst difference. So the range is (x-2.5, x+2.5) to (x-7.5, x+7.5). Given it's a "lottery," the average person would expect x and could improve to x+2.5--x+7.5.

But I'm certainly not a psychologist.

Re: China Is Engineering Genius Babies (2013)

#38
post #25
post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That math seems off. The gain should average 2.5-7.5 points surely?

Source? or calculation? The guy giving the figure is an evolutionary psychologist.

Calculation: Kids differ by 5 to 15 IQ points on average. Assuming a symmetric distribution, that means that the smartest kid would be 2.5 to 7.5 IQ points smarter than the average kid, while the dumbest would be the same amount dumber than the average.

Actually, I'm not sure whether "5 to 15" isn't meant to describe the standard deviation, in which case screening lots of embryos might even produce much higher gains.

Re: China Is Engineering Genius Babies (2013)

#39
post #34
post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a little difficult to summarize what has happened since, since so much has happened. This is a golden age of human genetics which has no precedent, and major new findings are being uploaded to Biorxiv at an almost daily rate. I think the short version would be that the BGI project made a bad bet on a particular genetic architecture of intelligence (rare variants with large boosting effects) which would have impl…

Sounds like you're really plugged into this. Is there really a contingent out there that thinks Gattaca[1] is a desirable outcome? Edit; citing the movie as a widely known example of a stratified society with both engineered and non engineered humans. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gattaca

(Gattaca is a fictional movie, not a realistic outcome. What anyone thinks about it is irrelevant because it has not, will not, and could not happen, any more than Brave New World.) As far as making use of these techniques, certainly. Transhumanists, socialists, and 'liberal eugenicists' have always advocated 'seizing the means of reproduction', so to speak, but it's mostly been theoretical; modern behavioral genetics has fill in so many of the blanks that concrete discussions and analyses can be done, IVF embryo selection can be done right now, CRISPR can also be done now if you can find anything useful to do with it besides fixing rare genetic diseases, and IES and genome synthesis will be possible within the next 20 years.
Post reply on HN