
China Is Engineering Genius Babies (2013) - pcnonpc
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/5gw8vn/chinas-taking-over-the-world-with-a-massive-genetic-engineering-program
======
smaili
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 intelligence by five to 15 IQ points.

It's also interesting to note this was authored in 2013. I would be curious to
know the kinds of things discovered in the ~4 year span.

~~~
HiroshiSan
is a high IQ enough to determine 'success'?

~~~
jandrese
It's not sufficient, but arguably necessary.

There are roughly three things that make you successful: 1\. Being smart 2\.
Working hard 3\. Opportunity

Everybody can do #2, but most won't. #1 is at least partially genetic. #3 is
mostly luck, but is influenced by the other two. In fact all of the factors
influence one another to a degree. Being born in an area with good schools and
working hard can overcome somewhat deficient genetics for #1 for example. On
the flipside, being born a genius in sub-Saharan Africa with no opportunities
or even anything to work hard for makes success almost impossible.

~~~
sharemywin
You forgot the 2 that count the most luck and network.

~~~
jandrese
That's opportunity. The network is basically being born into the right
circles, which is pretty much entirely luck. A few people do break in through
sheer determination and/or a lucky break with some contacts.

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andreyf
I wonder how they define intelligence. I suspect the cognitive traits that
will serve an economy best in 30-40 years, when these babies reach the top of
their economic productivity, are not what one might expect today.

~~~
themeiguoren
So I was one of the volunteers for this study - they accepted people based on
a threshold of an official IQ test, or SAT/ACT scores. I forget if it was 99th
percentile or higher. I heard about it on LessWrong way back while they were
soliciting volunteers, and signed up as a way to get a free genotyping since
my SAT was high enough.

I lost the email thread, but I didn't get my genome data back for about 2
years (April 2015). The researcher I was talking to seemed frustrated at some
pretty large delays in the project.

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pcnonpc
"Given the Mendelian genetic lottery, the kids produced by any one couple
typically differ by _5 to 15 IQ points_. So this method of "preimplantation
embryo selection" might allow IQ within every Chinese family to increase by 5
to 15 IQ points per generation. After a couple of generations, it would be
game over for Western global competitiveness.

...."

[https://www.edge.org/response-detail/23838](https://www.edge.org/response-
detail/23838)

~~~
nsxwolf
Or it could mean millions of high IQ Chinese people doing menial jobs while
suffering feelings of existential dread at a higher rate than their lower IQ
peers.

~~~
HowardMei
Yep, since the booming of Conficius, generations of Chinese has been wasting
their IQ and suffering from rationality-reality inconsistence.

Increasing IQ without reforming the culture is just a mean to crush opponents
in Chinese social darwin scheme.

~~~
magic_beans
I'm very interested by this. What is it about Chinese culture that is
oppressive to people with high IQs?

~~~
HowardMei
Turn any rational debate into a moral debate [good people vs. bad people] and
appeal to authority/majority [to get the good people tag].

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vbuwivbiu
Given the way genes work, which is that they operate in networks and rarely
code for a single trait, what other phenotypes would be affected by selecting
for such genes ?

~~~
magic_beans
I would expect attractiveness to take a dive.

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superlopuh
I'm relatively sure the Soviets had a go and got nowhere. I'm hoping this
attempt will go about as far.

~~~
placeybordeaux
the Soviets were hampered in many ways. One of them was a fundamental
misunderstanding of genetics:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lysenkoism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lysenkoism)

~~~
peoplewindow
And a fundamental misunderstanding of intelligence.

The USSR was run primarily by highly educated engineers. China has the same
issue. Yet somehow the preference of large communist dictatorships for
credentialed leaders does not correlate with actual success.

One problem is that 'intelligence' is a very tricky thing to define and isn't
at all the same as IQ or academic achievement. The world is full of foolish
academics. The first thing the nascent Soviet Union tried was putting a
committee of academics in charge of setting every price in the USSR, over 21
million of them. The futility of this task was not apparent to any of the
ideologically-soaked intellectuals that ran things until the economy
collapsed, although I suspect many ordinary kulaks could spot the problem
right away.

~~~
placeybordeaux
The reliance of measuring intelligence in only a handful of highly specific
ways is a failing that is found across humanity.

------
foobaw
Here's a newer article on the results:
[https://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/24/health/chinese-
scientists...](https://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/24/health/chinese-scientists-
edit-genes-of-human-embryos-raising-concerns.html)

The conclusion: technology is not ready for editing genes of human embryos
yet.

~~~
gwern
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.

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santoriv
This article interviews Geoffrey Miller.

He wrote an article around the same time here:
[https://www.edge.org/responses/q2013](https://www.edge.org/responses/q2013)

Here is a response to that article: [https://eastasiastudent.net/china/edge-
org-chinese-eugenics-...](https://eastasiastudent.net/china/edge-org-chinese-
eugenics-rubbish/)

TLDR; The view promoted by this article is probably only supported by a single
person(Geoffrey Miller) and is highly speculative.

~~~
moises_silva
I know this enters the realm of character assassination, but, after reading
the article I also was curious who Geoffrey Miller is. Found a wikipedia
article which contains one of his twitter posts:

"Dear obese PhD applicants: if you didn't have the willpower to stop eating
carbs, you won't have the willpower to do a dissertation. #truth." [0]

I know that doesn't invalidate his arguments and you can't judge a whole
person by something they posted on twitter, but man, I'm disappointed this is
the kind of person whose genes are considered so valuable to replicate. In our
efforts to optimize for intelligence we may leave so many other good traits
behind.

[0] [https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2013/06/how-
twi...](https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2013/06/how-twitter-
schooled-nyu-professor-about-fat-shaming/313728/)

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justinzollars
Totally 100% unrelated but on the line "China continues to buy up American
debt", the United States could just as easily buy up Chinese debt. For some
reason it just doesn't do this.

~~~
droidist2
True. It's not considered as safe of an investment. A lot of times you can't
even trust the numbers China publishes about their economy.

------
lostgame
>> 'I don’t think they have any imperial ambitions to spread China’s
borders—they’re not going to act like Nazi Germany or America in the 20th
century'

Oh, wow, that's quite a serious yet subtly thrown-in burn...

------
xster
I'm exaggerating a bit but basically:

\- Primary source of the article says "It’s not genetic engineering or adding
new genes"

\- Vice's marketing department: "Gina is engineering babies!!!@$@#%1111"

------
circlefavshape
Dear HN - the world would not be a better place if everyone was more like you.
It probably wouldn't even be better for _you_

------
dekhn
Are they still carrying this out? I thought it stopped when the head of BGI
bailed.

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pavlov
I guess the movie "Gattaca" just got the location wrong.

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digitalshankar
IQ is bullshit.

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mcappleton
People are afraid of "super intelligent" AI that can make itself smarter
taking over the world. Well they didn't count on people becoming
"superintelligent", making themselves smarter :)

Not sure how well these Chinese experiments will work out though. For some
reason I doubt it will have the amazing effects they intended, at least in the
near term.

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kingkawn
That anyone believes that this effort at extrapolation will produce anything
but monstrosity is unbelievable

~~~
joshmarlow
Care to elaborate?

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erokar
China, with its totalitarian capitalism, scares the shit out of me. I truly
believe this country poses the single biggest threat to human kind today.

~~~
magic_beans
How is the U.S. any better? (Assuming you're American, correct me if I'm
wrong)

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CyberDildonics
This article is a train wreck of nonsense, misunderstanding and predictions of
the future. It is just talking about research of finding correlation in
genomes and intelligence. Also Japan is the largest holder of US treasuries,
followed closely by china.

~~~
pcnonpc
The East Asian culture strongly values intelligence and education. The parents
there WILL act on embryo selection and genetic engineering when it is
available and safe.

~~~
CyberDildonics
The point is that the article is taking bits of research into simple
correlation and extrapolating that into embryo selection, guesses about IQ
points being raised and all sorts of other things. It shouldn't be taken
seriously in any way.

> The parents there WILL act on embryo selection and genetic engineering when
> it is available and safe.

It seems a bit of a reach to be so adamantly sure of what other people will do
in an already predicted future.

