[ExI] A Gedanken Rational Eugenics Experiment (AGREE)

[rex]

Rafal Smigrodzki <rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com> [2013-10-24 07:29]:
>On Wed, Oct 23, 2013 at 9:16 PM, rex <rex at nosyntax.net> wrote:
>
>> Smart fraction theory:
>>
>> http://www.lagriffedulion.f2s.com/sft.htm
>> http://www.lagriffedulion.f2s.com/sft2.htm
>

>Zygote selection is an already existing technology which, if widely
>applied, could dramatically increase the smart fraction, even if the
>below average would not participate. 

Hello Rafal,

Yes. I've proposed the idea before in another venue.

>Generally, it's not realistic to expect voluntary participation in an
>eugenics effort from stupid people, and I am quite averse to any
>non-voluntary effort.

If a woman isn't planning on becoming pregnant in the next 6 months,
why not get paid for a birth control implant? What's the downside?

>However, smart people are frequently quite obsessed withe the IQ of
>their offspring (if they have any), and despite the current leftoid
>anti-science animus, I would expect a lot of interest if a company
>would offer zygote full sequencing and selection. If you could screen
>about 50 zygotes (a big if but not fundamentally impossible) per
>pregnancy, you could shift the average IQ of offspring by more than 1
>SD. I am assuming here that 85% of the zygotes would be non-viable to
>begin with, leaving about 6 to make the actual choice from. Since the
>likely parental generation would have above average IQ, the filial
>generation might be actually pretty smart. Unless the service was
>banned, it could have some impact on national IQ even before human IQ
>ceases to matter.

Perhaps surprisingly, it only requires 4 viable zygotes to have a 50%
probability of at least one having a potential IQ greater or equal to
1 SD above the mean (R code below). It requires screening 31 to get
a > 50% probability of 2 SDs above the mean. 

BTW, why do you assume so few zygotes are viable?

zy=4
frac = vector('numeric', 100)
for (j in 1:100){
   count = 0
   N=1000
   for (i in 1:N){
     group = rnorm(zy, 100, 15)
     if (max(group) >= 115) count = count+1
   }
   print(c('fraction', count/N))
   frac[j] = count/N
}
print(c(mean(frac), sd(frac)))

-rex
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