[ExI] Purified humanity Re: Your Genome Is a Post-Apocalyptic Wasteland

[Eugen Leitl]

On Sun, Oct 06, 2013 at 06:33:03PM +0100, Anders Sandberg wrote:

> Us too. We have been discussing this at FHI at some length, trying
> to find good references and models. There seem to be a significant
> mutational load on most organisms, but converting the theory into

Of course that mutational load is a side effect of evolutionary
optimization. Such a brittle system must be henceforth perpetually
maintained by manual intervention, or be outcompeted by wild
type should that chain ever break.

> predictions for actual mental or physical performance has so far
> eluded us. Anybody who has some good pointers into the literature is
> most welcome to share them!
> 
> Removing redundancy to make mutations directly lethal might not be
> optimal for all genes. A lot of mutations seem to just reduce
> performance, so you increase the risk of being born with reduced
> performance genes. After all, being heterozygous for sickle-cell
> anemia is not lethal, yet pretty annoying.