[ExI] article about Rafal and his daughter

[Henry Rivera]

Your warning about turning off things deemed not practical is fair and I agree would be ill-advised. Learning what connects to what and if there are trade offs will be hard. Will it require trial and error?

Low level or undesirable jobs will be/have been targeted first by the smartest people for technological solutions. Or economics will dictate higher wages for the less desirable jobs until/unless there is a technological solution. Those jobs are a special case perhaps in that there is a potential solution with technology in most cases if we wait long enough. I’m thinking for other vocations, there is room for more high IQ people—smarter detectives, designers, creators etc. I tend to be optimistic about technology. I also see intelligence increase as a necessary step in our evolution and am optimistic it will lead to more technological solutions to our problems and a higher quality of life for more people.

If an individual or a society has the option to select for intelligence increase in their offspring, is it ethical to ignore that for the purpose of having less intelligent people around to do undesirable tasks? Anyone remember the movie Gattaca where, because the society assumed people with less than optimal  genes had no greater potential, they were designated to menial vocations? Society couldn’t improve those people in the movie genetically, but what if they had CRISPR and knew how to use it skillfully? To withhold that technology would serve to maintain the inequities of that society (hypothetical unintended consequences of that tech aside). What is the ethical obligation? No one wants to do harm or perpetuate existing harm. Maybe it depends on what harm we can predict could result from both options.    

Thanks for the stimulating conversation. 

> On Jun 24, 2022, at 2:27 PM, Gadersd via extropy-chat <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
> I did not mean to imply that high intelligence, agriculture, and artistry are mutually exclusive, but one can argue that they are in general statistically inversely correlated. I do not know this for sure as I have not done much research on the matter, but surely you must admit that selecting embryos for particular traits will likely significantly alter the distribution of vocations among other things. I highly doubt a person with an IQ of 140+ would be very willing to be a garbage collector when there are much more lucrative opportunities available. Parents may also select strongly for personalities associated with the careers they want their future children to excel in. Imagine that your parents were content with your genes that control intelligence but detected an artistic gene that could be seen as a potential distraction from more “practical” matters. Imagine an entire stern generation with an IQ of 140 with little variation in personality and emotion who all desire to be doctors, lawyers, and engineers with no interest in anything else. Surely an Asian parent's dream, but perhaps not the best for society as a whole. This is of course an extreme example, but it is easy to fall down a slippery slope.
> 
>>> On Jun 24, 2022, at 1:18 PM, Henry Rivera via extropy-chat <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>>> 
>>> 
>>>> On Jun 24, 2022, at 11:44 AM, Gadersd via extropy-chat <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>>> If everyone were an Einstein who would want to be a farmer or artist?
>> 
>> Don’t be so sure about that. 
>> 
>> Me and people like me have many options. It’s good to have options. I am an artist at heart. Yet I have an IQ over 140 and a doctorate. I knows  some brilliant people who have gone on to mainly do agriculture. 
>> 
>> Also, the analyses of personality/occupational types Leary did in the 50s shows people are drawn to certain societal roles based on personality, and I posit these wouldn’t change if say I did a genetic modification to make me not have high blood pressure. But who really knows yet what is connected to what gene-wise and epigentically. 
>> 
>> <659-2-large.gif>
>> Adapted from Interpersonal Diagnosis of Personality(p. 65) by T Leary, 1957, New York: Ronald.
>> 
>> - Henry
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