
The Future of Reproduction Is Mind-Boggling - Hooke
http://www.newstatesman.com/culture/books/2016/05/end-sex
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gwern
Bizarre that both Greely and Ball seem to be unaware of iterated embryo
selection, which is far more mind-boggling than anything else covered in the
article.

> Intelligence runs in families, but there is no guarantee you’ll get a good
> dose. While putative “intelligence genes” have been sought for years, so far
> all we have found is a handful of genes that collectively account for less
> than two IQ points. Greely thinks this will improve as we get more adept at
> gene-hunting. I am not so sure.

Several misunderstandings here. First, it is unimportant whether you have a
few or many SNPs which pass a thoroughly arbitrary threshold of p-values.
P-values are not posterior probabilities are not effect sizes are not
utilities are not profits are not decisions. What matters here is the fraction
of variance the full polygenic score can explain. Second, already out of date
- Okbay et al 2016 has increased the number of genome-wide significant
education hits to 162:
[https://www.dropbox.com/s/my9719yd8s5hplf/2016-okbay-2.pdf](https://www.dropbox.com/s/my9719yd8s5hplf/2016-okbay-2.pdf)
Third, this will go up monotonically as sample sizes increase, as it has
already gone up as sample sizes increased, as has happened with other traits
where GCTAs confirmed substantial SNP heritability. Fourth, one selection step
may be unimpressive, but many will be much more impressive, bringing us back
to iterated embryo selection, which is the true importance of the mentioned
breakthroughs in gamete<->stem-cell conversion techniques...

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toomuchtodo
My wife and I went through several IVF rounds, and our doctor even indicated
that we could have our embryos genotyped to select for certain traits. We
didn't, but we could have. The phrase, "Their doing some very interested
research in China right now" was said during one of our consultations.

I have no illusions that in 10-20 years, I could have an embryo not only
selected for traits I'm interested in, but the embryo edited using CRISPR if
necessary to express the traits wanted if not already present. I wouldn't even
need reproductive tissue to do this.

Interesting times. It feels like biology/genetics is on the verge of exploding
similar to what happened to silicon in the 70s, with far greater consequences
for humanity.

~~~
hkmurakami
Brb rewatching GATTACA.

(great film, if any of you haven't seen it)

~~~
nickpsecurity
I second that for anyone considering these things.

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rspeer
Let me make sure I'm understanding the genetics right. Wouldn't the child of a
"uniparent" be maximally inbred?

~~~
eru
Depends on how you select the genetic material, I assume.

If you select half of the parents material and then just double it, that's
sounds like it would be maximally inbred.

If you just select all of it, that's a clone.

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gaius
Of all the problems facing humanity, making more of us isn't one of them.

Also, ad-blocker-blocker.

~~~
ycosynot
To the contrary I think there's a decent argument to have about the idea that
if we cloned a few billion people into being, it could help solve our problems
faster, through their brain power and the increase in competition. There'd be
less to eat, and more short-term pollution, but it might be beneficial long-
term, since most of the CO2 to have been released has already been released
cumulatively during the last century.

~~~
dikdik
As nice as the sentiment sounds, a majority of our most brilliant people now
are working on improving click-rates and keeping the stock market efficient. I
don't really have hopes for the utopia you speak of.

~~~
eru
> [...] and keeping the stock market efficient.

Efficient allocation of capital is a noble endeavour.

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andrewclunn
Perhaps the main cultural benefit will be more people actually planning their
reproduction and families. Of course this will be shortly followed by a
"natural born" rights movement, where the unengineered (but virtue of being
less competitive) demand to be recognized as a protected class.

~~~
Grishnakh
Good luck telling the "natural born" apart from the engineered. Obviously, the
more extreme the engineering, the easier it'll be to detect, but more subtle
tweaks will not.

All this "designer baby" stuff sure will take the fun out of unprotected sex
though.

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chrisstu
Excellent article and a nice balance between discussing the technology and the
ethical implications. As a technologist I find it frustrating that the media
almost always focuses on the ethics.

While the politicians in certain locations might seek to constrain this type
of research, often on religious grounds, it will simply move offshore to more
liberal regimes. As the technology progresses, the wealthy will utilise it to
engineer "designer babies". The politicians and ethicists may as well accept
that this research and development is going to happen; they can simply choose
whether they want to control and benefit from it or give away the lead.

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adrianN
The future of stalking: collect some skin cells, grow a clone of your object
of desire.

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x5n1
Can't wait to be able to clone myself... well probably won't happen for me
personally. But sexual reproduction is so annoying. You have to have another
person to deal with, and you don't know what the hell you are going to get out
of the dael.

~~~
magicbeanss
Yes and it's sweaty and gross and doesn't feel like literally the best psycho-
physical experience ever when done correctly with a loving partner.

~~~
Grishnakh
It's great if you can find that mythical partner. The problem is finding that
partner, especially if you're not very attractive or not very social.

Hopefully, in the future we can fix the former (current cosmetic surgeries are
just barbaric hackery, I mean at the cellular level, like rewriting someone's
genome to make them taller and more attractive), and then extend lifespans so
people have more time to find good partners instead of having to settle.

~~~
eru
Have you tried exercise?

In any case, all your ancestors managed to procreate (duh!). So you can't
blame your genes too much.

