[ExI] The hits just keep on coming

[William Flynn Wallace]

Adrian wrote: but radical enhancements are relatively unlikely.  Altering
existing adult humans is far more easily done through surgery (and
adjustments of chemicals, such as hormones).  There are many ways to
accomplish said surgery (such as nanotech), but genetic alteration is
generally not one of them.

But with the coming of Crispr, we can turn off bad genes (yes, I know, you
were talking about enhancements - but not dying could certainly be looked
at as an enhancement) - I read that 10K (seemingly an impossibly high
number) single genes cause disorders.  Plenty of time for some to get
detected and dealt with long before they would occur - such as Huntingdon's
Chorea and some cancers.

bill

On Tue, Feb 26, 2019 at 12:45 PM Adrian Tymes <atymes at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Tue, Feb 26, 2019 at 8:34 AM Dan TheBookMan <danust2012 at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> > On Feb 22, 2019, at 11:13 AM, Adrian Tymes <atymes at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > Any bio-Singularity would take 20 years to come into
> > > effect, more than enough time for others to verify and copy what
> > > works.
> >
> > That depends on the bio-Singularity scenario. With altering CCR5 before
> birth, my guess is you’re right. But what about altering it and genes
> afterwards? For instance, let’s say said genes really did boost
> intelligence or other factors (self-control, for instance) to such a large
> degree as to make huge numbers of people cognitively superior (to their
> non-altered contemporaries or in the universal case to their former selves)
> within the span of a few years or a few months. (Pure speculation on my
> part. I don’t know how quickly altering genes in children or adults would
> lead to markedly improved cognitive outcomes.)
>
> As someone who has studied this...  ;)
>
> The short and only mostly accurate version is, most genes matter when
> you are growing up, and mostly stop mattering by the time your body
> (brain included) has been constructed - that is, reached its adult
> form.  Past that, they get passed to kids to inform their bodies how
> to assemble themselves.  What genes still matter when you are an adult
> tend to have more to do with maintaining the body (preventing or
> enabling the decay associated with old age, for instance) than
> building it.
>
> Which means tweaking your kids' genes (or yours, for the sole purpose
> of making kids with said tweaked genes) is possible, but changing
> yourself by genetic therapy, not so much.  There are exceptions, but
> radical enhancements are relatively unlikely.  Altering existing adult
> humans is far more easily done through surgery (and adjustments of
> chemicals, such as hormones).  There are many ways to accomplish said
> surgery (such as nanotech), but genetic alteration is generally not
> one of them.
>
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