Submit your questions for: Leandra Ramm, Jonathan Anomaly, and David Hugh-Jones
A product of the genius sperm bank, bioethics, and genoeconomics!
Hello ISF readers,
I’m going to try something new here and put out a request for questions for some upcoming guests on the show. Please leave them in the comments and I’ll ask the ones with the most votes. So who’s coming on?
Leandra Ramm is coming on the show to discuss growing up as an offspring of the genius sperm bank.
Next up we have Dr Jonathan Anomaly, a brilliant philosopher who will be discussing his great little book, Creating Future People: The Ethics of Genetic Enhancement
Finally, we have Dr David Hugh-Jones who will be discussing his fascinating new working paper (many, many years in the making). You can read a write up on his Substack, too.
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Below are my questions for David Hugh-Jones:
1. How fast is dysgenics taking place? Is it accelerating or slowing?
2. How can we and should we respond to the threat of dysgenics?
3. How do we bring dysgenics into public discussion? Dr. Hugh-Jones has spoken to the Telegraph about his research, but some of his co-authors appear to ahve avoided talking to journalists...
4. How should mainstream scientists respond to 'cavalier' researchers from outside the academy delving into the controversial questions of behavioural genetics? Perhaps Dr. Hugh-Jones could comment on some of the approaches of his colleagues and co-authors?
5. Is it unwise to attempt to measure average phenotypic cognitive ability by country? If it is okay, how should such data be used for research? EDIT: I'm just trying to say would Dr Hugh-Jones be able to make any comments or criticisms on national IQ research.
6. How significant are the economic and social effects of dysgenics and of average national cognitive ability?
Below are my questions for Jonathan Anomaly.
1. Should we legalise cloning? If so, who would you clone?
I note in your book, creating future people, you only use the term 'cloning' twice. Why not give the topic greater focus? Making a few copies of the scientists behind the Manhattan project could have much larger positive effects on the world than what embryo selection for intelligence can do with current technology?
With the power of cloning the state could design an elite class, brought up in specialised government-run facilities rather than nuclear families. In other words, should we use cloning to follow Socrates's vision of elite reproduction and education as laid out in the Republic?
2. How fast is dysgenics and what do you think the socioeconomics consequences will be? Are we headed for some sort of 'collapse' or merely stagnation and 'Brazilification'?
I'd note the current estimates of the relationship between national intelligence and GDP show each national IQ point is associated with around a 7% increase in GDP per capita. So a loss of, let's say, 8 NIQ points implies a ~40% decline in GDP per capita. Which sounds like stagnation to me. The 8 IQ decline is just my guess of what decline we would expect over 100 years. But maybe stagnation makes a successful eugenics policy even harder.
But there are key problems with this estimate: a) we can't know the effect of average global intelligence. ie. How does America's intelligence affect China's GDP? b) If as Lynn says, a national IQ point is half genetic and half environmental, perhaps a 1 point decline in genotypic IQ would reduce national IQ by 2 points leading to a somewhat more pessimistic prediction?
3.. Do Flynn effects matter for socioeconomic outcomes or are they 'hollow'? How does this change our predictions for dysgenics? If Flynn effects do matter, will genotypic decline reduce the environmental causes of intelligence, leading to a vicious second order effect?
4. Dysgenics seems to be stronger in less intelligent groups. Has dysgenics been accelerating and will it continue to do so?
5. What is the most probable way that societies stop dysgenics? Is there a miracle scenario where it stops itself? Which leads me onto the next question...
6. Recently Meisenberg and Dutton have written about selection for political intolerance and political conservatism, an issue that has aroused much less discussion than the issue of falling genotypic intelligence. Do you have any comments about this research and the selection's effects on humanity's future? Wouldn't such selection slow and eventually stop dysgenics?
A question for Leandra Lamm:
1: Did feel a disconnect with your presumably more close to the mean parents?
2: Do you think it would(or did, depending on if you had any) help to have siblings of similar giftedness as yourself?
A line of questioning for Jonathan Anomaly:
1: Many of the genes that increases highr IQ also seems to reduce fertility in today's society. Would you also edit genes to counteract the fertility loss that editing for higher IQ would seem to cause?
2: do you see a scenario where humans with genes that edited for both higher IQ and fertility would start to outcompete unedited humans for resources?
3: To make editing for higher IQ and increased fertility efficient and make sure that the higher IQ persists over generations, the next step would be to edit your children to make them more open to in turn also edit the genes of their children. Do you think this step could happen, either willingly, or my chance within the DNA database AI looking for ways to look for higher fertility genes?
Got no question for David Hugh-Jones but I am very much looking forward to see what his take is and how it differes from Dutton's!