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Turning stem cells into human eggs

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Re: Turning stem cells into human eggs

#71

Post by mcculley »

wyager wrote: post #63
mcculley wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You think pre-historic humans skipped generations?

More like the older people would probably be less likely to be out hunting elk or whatever physical activities and more likely to be watching the children. I doubt it would have been codified or anything.

I still don't understand the distinction you are making. At first I thought that you meant that literally a generation would not procreate. But now I think you are trying to say that young adults would not be doing child rearing. Are you suggesting that mothers would return to physical labor right after birth to defer child rearing to elders, or after breast-feeding? That mothers would somehow not be present as much as elders?

Re: Turning stem cells into human eggs

#72

Post by wyager »

mcculley wrote: post #71
wyager wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More like the older people would probably be less likely to be out hunting elk or whatever physical activities and more likely to be watching the children. I doubt it would have been codified or anything.

I still don't understand the distinction you are making. At first I thought that you meant that literally a generation would not procreate. But now I think you are trying to say that young adults would not be doing child rearing. Are you suggesting that mothers would return to physical labor right after birth to defer child rearing to elders, or after breast-feeding? That mothers would somehow not be present as much…

Correct - child bearing obviously continues as normal, but child rearing is delegated to the grandparents. This seems like an advantageous setup in both a pre-modern and post-modern context, where there’s significant value placed on women performing labor during the age of lowest-difficulty child-bearing.

Re: Turning stem cells into human eggs

#73

Post by [deleted] »

bradleyjg wrote: post #41

More realistically, because the technology could turn eggs into a manufactured resource, it could supercharge the path to designer children. If doctors can make a thousand eggs for a patient, they’ll also be able to fertilize all of them and test to find the best resulting embryos, scoring their genes for future health or intelligence. Better still you can do it iteratively. Take cells from one person and turn them i…

[deleted]

Re: Turning stem cells into human eggs

#74

Post by Bender »

anonporridge wrote: post #68
delecti wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always felt like Gattaca was unrealistically pessimistic. I'm unconvinced that the "best possible person" (if you grant such a thing even exists) is that much different from an average person. It seems more likely that we would just eliminate some genetic diseases and cancers, and vain/rich parents would select for taller children. Most other differences seem to be too weakly correlated with genes we've identified…

> I'm unconvinced that the "best possible person" (if you grant such a thing even exists) is that much different from an average person. This seems like an absurd thing to believe for anyone who has a solid grasp of how evolution by natural selection works. Or rather, it's absurd to believe that even a small improvement from the average isn't a HUGE advantage for a person's success in life and genetic legacy.

We bypass natural selection all the time. Some people are more vulnerable to certain pathogens. We give them medicine or vaccines to mitigate mortality. Natural selection would have us let nature take its course. Some people have religious beliefs that in fact route people towards nature or God determining mortality rather than medicine.

Re: Turning stem cells into human eggs

#75

Post by delecti »

anonporridge wrote: post #68
delecti wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always felt like Gattaca was unrealistically pessimistic. I'm unconvinced that the "best possible person" (if you grant such a thing even exists) is that much different from an average person. It seems more likely that we would just eliminate some genetic diseases and cancers, and vain/rich parents would select for taller children. Most other differences seem to be too weakly correlated with genes we've identified…

> I'm unconvinced that the "best possible person" (if you grant such a thing even exists) is that much different from an average person. This seems like an absurd thing to believe for anyone who has a solid grasp of how evolution by natural selection works. Or rather, it's absurd to believe that even a small improvement from the average isn't a HUGE advantage for a person's success in life and genetic legacy.

We aren't comparing the global average to the global "best person". We're comparing the typical outcome of a pair of parents with the best possible child those parents could have. Any effects on the outcomes of that child's life based on their genetics will be completely outstripped by how they're raised.

We also aren't discussing selective breeding, the same distribution of people would be pairing and having children.

After several hundred years I could plausibly see a stratification happening among those with the earliest and most advanced access to a technology like this. But given all of the above limitations, I think it would still be fairly limited.

Re: Turning stem cells into human eggs

#76

Post by anonporridge »

delecti wrote: post #75
anonporridge wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm unconvinced that the "best possible person" (if you grant such a thing even exists) is that much different from an average person. This seems like an absurd thing to believe for anyone who has a solid grasp of how evolution by natural selection works. Or rather, it's absurd to believe that even a small improvement from the average isn't a HUGE advantage for a person's success in life and genetic legacy.

We aren't comparing the global average to the global "best person". We're comparing the typical outcome of a pair of parents with the best possible child those parents could have. Any effects on the outcomes of that child's life based on their genetics will be completely outstripped by how they're raised. We also aren't discussing selective breeding, the same distribution of people would be pairing and having childre…

> We're comparing the typical outcome of a pair of parents with the best possible child those parents could have.

I'm still not sure I agree with this. There's huge variability between the reproductive fitness of siblings, even excluding genetic illnesses and deformities. Might be intelligence, body type, attractiveness, etc.

The real problem I see is that qualifying the "best" traits might be impossible, because what's best is highly subjective to the environment and the environment that we all live in is constantly shifting and seems to be doing so at an accelerating rate.

The film Gattaca actually gives an interesting take on how this drive for "best" might play out. Those born into the privilege of having the "best traits" a) don't feel as strong of a need to struggle and overcome adversity, b) dismiss people who are "lesser" than they are, and end up surprised and unable to compete when they fall behind, and c) people who are "lesser" are filled with motivation and drive to prove themselves. I could even see some parents intentionally giving their child a minor disability to give them an edge over their "perfect" peers who all flit their lives away thinking everything will be handed to them on silver platter. Similar to how some parents are starting to realize how damaging massive trust funds and inheritances can be to people that receive them.

Re: Turning stem cells into human eggs

#77

Post by anonporridge »

Bender wrote: post #74
anonporridge wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm unconvinced that the "best possible person" (if you grant such a thing even exists) is that much different from an average person. This seems like an absurd thing to believe for anyone who has a solid grasp of how evolution by natural selection works. Or rather, it's absurd to believe that even a small improvement from the average isn't a HUGE advantage for a person's success in life and genetic legacy.

We bypass natural selection all the time. Some people are more vulnerable to certain pathogens. We give them medicine or vaccines to mitigate mortality. Natural selection would have us let nature take its course. Some people have religious beliefs that in fact route people towards nature or God determining mortality rather than medicine.

True, and there's nothing wrong with that. I think it's right and good to alleviate suffering where we can.

But we still stand to suffer as a civilization if the average quality of individuals doesn't improve, or even declines. Especially as the challenges we are capable of facing become more complex and challenging. Idiocracy comes to mind.

Then again, maybe our future is one where we develop sentient AIs that can independently keep civilization running, while humans can be left to degrade into a kind of pet that doesn't do any work and exists only for the benefit and good will of the AI.

Re: Turning stem cells into human eggs

#78

Post by KorematsuFredt »

bradleyjg wrote: post #41

More realistically, because the technology could turn eggs into a manufactured resource, it could supercharge the path to designer children. If doctors can make a thousand eggs for a patient, they’ll also be able to fertilize all of them and test to find the best resulting embryos, scoring their genes for future health or intelligence. Better still you can do it iteratively. Take cells from one person and turn them i…

Yes. That would be the day. I would love to have many children but I hate the notion of pregnancy. Once we can also grow them in labs I think it would be really great day for humanity. You could ship only embroyos to Mars and then let them grow into babies. (You will still need people to take care of them but we can ship only few hundred people with few million embroyos to colonize a distant planet.

Re: Turning stem cells into human eggs

#79

Post by anonporridge »

anonporridge wrote: post #62
klipt wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course they'd still need a surrogate to gestate the baby. Which ain't cheap.

Until we perfect artificial wombs. I wonder if it would make sense to use a surrogate to gestate the very early stages, and then transfer the fetus to an artificial womb for the later stages. There would probably be many more women willing to do this since it's the later stages of pregnancy and birth that creates the most wear and tear on the body, not to mention emotional trauma with immediately losing the baby you…

NICUs are basically artificial wombs that can keep a baby alive starting at a minimum of 22 weeks, out of 40 weeks for standard gestation.

The minimum age, cost, and risk of NICUs is just going to keep dropping as the tech and experience improves.

Re: Turning stem cells into human eggs

#80

Post by k__ »

wyager wrote: post #57

The problem creating demand for later-in-life fertility services for women is that the current structure of our society heavily penalizes women who don’t career-optimize during the years in which child-rearing would be (physically and mentally) least taxing and difficult. Long-term, I suspect the best answer will involve changing this structure rather than relying on complex medical interventions. One scheme I think…

To be fair, I would rather have me at 40 instead of 20 raising my own kids, instead of relying on my parents.
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