Yes. I suspect a pretty deep divide here is whether you tend to see zero sum or positive sum interaction as the default. If you see zero sum interaction as the default, then you'll either be a leveling down egalitarian (left) or an immigration/trade restrictionist (right). Or maybe both (see, eg, the new magazine Compact, which combines elements of both left and right zero sum thinking).
By contrast, if you see positive sum interaction as the default, you're less bothered by inequality (it needn't be hurting the worst off) and less worried about free movement of goods/labor making your compatriots worse off. This is why I see much more in common between the Trumpian and progressive worldviews than their supporters tend to; it seems to me they make the same starting mistake, and just develop it in different directions.
That was going to be my minor quibble. If you hold resources fixed, then devoting funds to helping poor kids has (plausibly) higher marginal value than advanced math classes for the gifted, who are already much better off. This may not be how the actual tradeoff works in the real world but that’s at least a more charitable version of the egalitarian objection.
Yeah that’s probably where I lie too—Nietzsche FTW—but then you need to do some work to justify funding advanced math classes instead of cost effective global health/aid! It still probably works in favor of math but it’s not completely obvious. Of course that’s not the reason egalitarians object so that’s not going to help them.
My sense is that it's not hard to find pure leveling down in k-12 education. Eg, getting rid of tracking because you don't like how the demographics turn out, without any attempt to show the worse performing kids do better in untracked classes. (My local district did this. ) Or SF getting rid of any option to take middle school algebra (this was widely reported, though they eventually reversed). Gifted programs don't generally have to be more resource intensive than regular ones, since the main point is just separating kids who can benefit from faster paced instruction, and then giving it to them. Teachers teaching a bunch of gifted 8th graders algebra don't need more resources than teachers teaching less advanced math to an undifferentiated class.
I agree with everything you said here but I'd like to mention too important other points.
First, in practice if someone's concern really is equality of opportunity the very last thing they should do is push for strict regulation. I think we can guarantee that worldwide effective bans just won't happen so they very rich and powerful will have access. The question is just do we open it up so the price can fall like it did with cell phones or keep it locked away for the ultra-rich?
Second, everyone tends to get stuck on things like intelligence and sure many people want a successful child but I think the real action here is with happiness. Some people really do seem essentially an order of magnitude more happy (hypomanic) and equally if not more functional. The possibility for reduction of human suffering just by choosing less unhappy genes is amazing.
Yea, I think people will discover quickly that actively selecting for (ultra-high) "intelligence" will come with a lot of drawbacks where the juice isn't worth the squeeze. But, if you can make your children incapable of suffering (https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/profile-the-far-out-initiative), then I suspect we'd quickly see a ton of adoption.
Yah I really like that idea but I think further research needs to be done to be sure it doesn't cut down joy or wasn't someone with a weird mental illness that caused them to lie about their experiences. But it's certainly promising.
There was a case many years ago of a deaf lesbian couple using the sperm of a man with five generations of deafness in his family to purposely engineer a deaf child.
I imagine you’d agree with me that that decision was terribly immoral, but do you think society should have interfered with the couple’s reproductive freedom in this case?
It is an interesting case! I actually don't know that it was "terribly immoral". Maybe "mildly wrong," at worst (and maybe not even that). Many deaf people deny that they are harmed by their deafness, and even if they're mistaken about that, I suspect it's only a fairly mild harm. In this case, since the parents themselves were deaf, and well-positioned to enculturate their child into the Deaf community, I could even see it being for the best that their child be deaf like them rather than different.
I definitely do *not* think that society should have interfered with their reproductive freedom in this case.
I tend to agree in that case, I don't know if it was a good choice but the fact that there isn't reason to think the long term happiness of the child is going to be much less makes it not such a big deal.
But I'd note that the same logic should justify deliberately taking the kid to be deafened after birth (in some painless way). I'm willing to bite that bullet (at least morally legal practicality matters too).
I think the harder case is people who know they have a very substantive chance of having a child with a very painful and life ruining condition and refuse to engage in testing/selection against the condition. I don't see how we can distinguish that action from deliberately inflicting similar pain and short life on a child by poisoning them.
I would say that the couple is doing what they are doing for the express purpose of their own desires, rather then the desires of the child (who would likely choose not to be deaf if they had a choice).
This more or less gets back to abortion. The child would not choose to be aborted. At least in the abortion case there is some kind of burden being placed on the mother that we have decided they have a right to reject. In the deaf case raising a non-deaf child does not place a burden on the deaf parents.
Put another way, imagine if the child was born hearing and then the parents used surgical tools to make their child deaf, because they would prefer a deaf child. We would consider this cartoonishly evil.
As I said, I'm not that bothered by then deafening the child after birth in a painless medical fashion. The argument the parents make (non-absurdly) is that they are part of a vibrant and rewarding deaf community and it will be difficult for that child to be accepted if they aren't also deaf.
Would I find that convincing? No, but it's not really any different than choosing to raise a child as religious, forcing them to spend hours a day doing gymnastics or violin or even taking certain classes in school. Lots of things parents do to their children aren't based in studies showing it maximizes child welfare but are based in the idea "I find this valuable so I want you to have it too" which is the same thing the deaf parents feel.
But if we take this equivalence seriously then failing to use embryo selection knowing the child might suffer some serious painful developmental disability is also morally equivalent to choosing to inflict that kind of condition on the child. Indeed, the natural upshot of this argument is to establish the moral necessity of using such technology.
We have laws about child abuse that do apply to surgically mutilating children but don’t apply to making them take piano lessons. One is an ok choice and one isn’t.
I think that purposely choosing to deform an embryo is something that the state might have a right to suspend, though the logistics of that are so complicated that it might not be worth it.
On a moral level though I think it’s worthy of intense social disapproval.
Not enhancing an embryo is less bad, but myself I would think less of anyone that didn’t do it.
The fact that we have a law against one thing and not the other is hardly good evidence that what the law bans is wrong and what it doesn't isn't.
But I also don't think that legal claim is clear. For instance, is circumcision legally child abuse? Morally? What's the difference? And for the most part people get men circumscribed for exactly the same reasons coming up here -- it's what is considered normal in their religious/cultural space and they want the kid to fit into that community.
Basically, you are just packing all the work into the term deform. Whether or not something is deforming a child or improving them tracks whether or not you think that thing is good and doesn't provide a framework for figuring out when these things should be allowed.
Many things we do to/for children have costs and benefits. A Christian scientist is going to see using modern medicine as a selfish choice by the parents that emperils the child's soul. Now I'm happy to call christian science bunk but that doesn't really help you draw a line that puts making a child deaf on one side but circumciscing them on another. And that doesn't get into the many kinds of permanent medical procedures that have tradeoffs on both sides.
The ethical justification here is that the alternative is the deaf child wouldn’t have been born at all. Which is worse, being born deaf or not being born at all? The couple could have a hearing child of course, but that would be a completely different child altogether.
Excellent piece. I've long been a fan of reproductive choice/freedom framing for genetic enhancement, and I'm now going to start using the phrase "genetic reproductive freedom" myself.
Mostly on board, but thinking of some substantial downsides:
Hypothetically there could be a gene for “be depressed but also really good at finance” or similar which people would choose because they have to compete with other people, making everyone worse off… A Moloch problem. In that case restrictions can be better than none. Could we ban selecting for that gene without forcing everyone to not have kids with that gene?
Genetic fads would be a thing. A substantial portion of a generation could have some catastrophic genetic issue at the same time. Though most people would be cautious unless Moloch forces them to rush.
Governments would want to subsidize it, especially for “pro-social” genes. Selecting an embryo based off of government recommendation is like having sex with your government. Ew. Governments would subsidize genes that benefit the government at the expense of the people. Imagine the political fights over rs644148 which makes people have higher openness https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2874623/
What about choosing the gender of one's child? I think your argument implies this is fine, and I tend to agree, but I think this is an especailly important real-world example given the prevalence of (illegal) sex-selective abortion in places like India. My sense is that many people lament the millions of 'missing women' in India https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jan/30/more-than-63-million-women-missing-in-india-statistics-show
But maybe what we should be lamenting is gender-discrimination in society, not so much gender discrimination in selecting embryos (or in reality, selectively aborting foetuses more often).
Yeah, I at least think there's a strong presumption against interfering to prevent sex-selection. There might be some social contexts in which full reproductive autonomy would give rise to a sufficiently socially problematic sex imbalance to justify overriding this presumption. I don't have a strong view on exactly where the boundaries lie for such interference. I don't think it's relevant to 21st century America, though. (If anything, I gather the current typical preference is more for daughters than sons, and a tilt in that direction doesn't seem so socially problematic -- single women being less prone to violence than single men. I'd also expect it to be self-correcting over time, as some parents could be expected to want to advantage their child's romantic prospects by selecting for whatever looks to be the socially under-supplied sex.)
I also agree that we should primarily aim to address any underlying gender discrimination that leads to lopsided preferences across society.
Introspecting, I think my biggest discomfort arises from the idea that unrestricted embryo selection is in some sense limiting the rights of the child, subsuming them to the rights of the parent to pick their child.
My objections are weakest for things like medical conditions, or other things that clearly and more or less unanimously are agreed to benefit the child individually.
It's strongest for things that are more obviously "personality" or "lifestyle" based: the idea that a parent might select embryos to maximize predisposition to religiosity, or a certain political orientation, or a certain personality type makes me pretty uncomfortable--by analogy to the case of parents influencing their children after birth, we absolutely do limit the parents' ability to influence these things in their children if they sufficiently intrude on the child's autonomy, and what is more intrusive than editing the kid's genetic code?
What makes iq contentious, imo, is that it's not clearly one or the other: while there are individual benefits to the child it's not obvious to what extent the benefits are positional--in which case the value only obtains precisely to the degree to which the technology is _not_ equally accessed.
It also feels like the equilibrium of a society where a large portion of the population has their IQ go up by half a standard deviation or whatever (I'd actually be curious to know what people think is realistically possible with current embryo selection) could be significantly different from our current equilibrium that it's not an obvious improvement.
That doesn't mean it's _not_ of course, but I think it's a little muddier.
That's interesting. I would've thought it completely obvious that a universally more intelligent citizenry would be (vastly) better! That's why it's so worthwhile to, e.g., remove lead from paint, petrol, and so on.
I think that's probably right but a) my last comment is referring to the situation where it's a large proportion but _not universal_ which I think is a bit more complicated (though I'm still pretty sympathetic) and b) achieved by means of embryo selection/genetic change, which might also be importantly different from removing lead paint, eg for reasons of diminishing genetic diversity, or if genes for IQ are correlated with other traits.
Finally, I'll note that appealing to the benefits to society overall is somewhat sidestepping the personal liberty argument.
Some couples with a family history of a debilitating disease like schizophrenia choose to use polygenic embryo screening. One annoying aspect of ethical arguments is that they usually call for blanket removal of availability, but at least some couples wouldn't even have a child if they were not sure they could reduce the risk of such a condition below a certain threshold. Those parents aren't unreasonable, and so a restriction on polygenic screening could amount to the greatest violation of liberty they experience in their lives.
I disagree, because I don't think we'd build a society of kind, self sufficient, diverse and extraordinarily talented individuals with gene editing. I think you'd see selection of high variance leadership traits by the rich, and docility and conformity by the masses. Not through some conspiracy, but because the easiest way to be happy in a society is to maximally fit and conform to your expected role in it. The rich are much more protected in eccentricity.
Even in the comments to this article, you mention Alan Turing as an example of the high marginal utility of folks with talents standard deviations above the norm. If we found a gene cluster for homosexuality, it seems incredibly likely that many would select against it, which would lower the odds of another Turing (him being gay). That selection bias feels dangerous if it's likely that creativity and brilliance are related to non-conformity in other aspects of life. And observationally, queer and neurodivergent people seem awfully overrepresented in the arts and sciences.
I'm for genetic screening and selection, but only traits that intrinsically reduce an individuals ability to enjoy life after medical interventions. If it only sucks to be X because society disadvantages X, I'm a little wary of stamping it out (homosexuality). If it doesn't actually suck that much to have X, after medical intervention, I also suspect we shouldn't stamp it out (poor eyesight). It's only in cases with obviously reduced quality of life we can't compensate for, say a congenital muscle wasting disease 50% likely to kill the individual before adulthood, would I want to step in.
No strong opinion tbc, but a lot of us aren't that liberal, inasmuch as we think that voluntary choices of individuals can lead to bad equilibria that ultimately restrict freedom- letting individuals do what they want so long as they don't directly harm others doesn't necessarily maximise total long run freedom and dignity. A lot of us are also political pragmatists- banning assortive mating would be traumatic, hard to enforce and cause a lot of upset, but this new technology which hasn't been introduced yet- banning that is politically sustainable and will be experienced as far less intrusive.
Honestly, while it's not a major priority, I think the government should probably do more to discourage assortive mating- not by penalising it, but by encouraging non-assortive mating. Increasingly not just cross class marriages, but even cross class relationships are friendships are on the decline. In terms of reconnecting the classes and encouraging life long friendships, banning private schools probably helps in this regard. Maybe some socioeconomic form of bussing could even be considered. Encouraging community institutions (sports teams etc.) could help.
My actual view is probably that this technology should be permitted for some but not all kinds of condition, but only if it is made available to everyone at once through a completely free at the point of service system.
”Trust women” is just a political slogan, not an argument. I doubt anyone who believes abortion is wrong has had their opinion changed by ”trust women”.
A lot of the argument here seems to be ”no true liberal would be against this, so it must be permissible”.
My article is primarily targeted at liberals. The idea is that principles they already accept *commit* them to also supporting genetic reproductive freedom. (I don't expect anyone who is generally opposed to reproductive freedom to have their opinion changed by this article.)
Once you allow genetic enhancement, it will become obvious that nearly all people overwhelmingly favor certain traits that we could effectively call "superior". People who lack those traits would then have to accept that revealed preference show them to be inferior.
I don't think those hurt feelings are enough to level down an entire generation, but that is something liberals do an awful lot today.
Ok, but I wouldn’t trust anyone whose commitment to ’liberalism’ is so religiously strong that they feel they have to accept every revolutionary thing that comes along simply because it would be more ’liberal’ to do so.
It seems to me that any new technology that has any risks involved is going to create the need for some regulation, but some people like to pretend otherwise.
I'm open to arguments for regulation. But some argument is needed. There should be a strong presumption in favor of freedom, i.e. letting individuals make decisions about their own lives.
There are two standard reasons for this: (1) they are better informed than anyone else is about the specific details of their life situation, and (2) they have stronger incentives than anyone else to make the right decision.
Decisions about reproduction aren't decisions about "their own lives" but about other people's lives.
In general, I think that abortion should be legal, up to a certain gestational age. In the American political context, that means I would support politicians who support "reproductive rights". But to me, that sounds like the kind of silly euphemism that politicians like to use, I don't support some more general doctrine of "reproductive rights" or "freedom".
I remember hearing a conversation about gambling, where one person said he was libertarian about it, and didn't think that the government should regulate it, although he understood that some people's lives are damaged by gambling. But your two reasons don't apply to this, because,
1. People who have gambling problems may know the specific details of their life situations better than other people, but they know worse than other people the effect of gambling on their lives (ie. they have less insight into it).
2. They don't have stronger incentives to make the right decisions, they have stronger incentives to make the wrong decisions.
Ok, maybe that is all irrelevant, because that is about gambling. It just came to mind. But I guess a problem with those reasons is that "specific life details" are irrelevant to whether something is right or wrong (how specific do we mean? and doesn't it degenerate into something like "no one else understands how I feel about this"), and people are incentivized to make the wrong decisions as well as the right ones.
I think some sort of quasi-paternalist argument may be the strongest one, like the argument for generally trying to prevent suicide. If there’s good reason to believe that most attempted genetic “enhancement” is likely to have systematic distortions in the informational base people are using for their decisions, then it may be likely that most attempts to do genetic enhancement have effects that the person doesn’t actually want.
I had never thought of the lgbtq angle of things in the genetic engineering conversation, very interesting.
Presumably there could be a world in the future where no one is trans, if people converge to thinking that trans people go through undue hardship of having to live in the wrong body.
What other aspects of human personality could be a culturally divisive line in a similar vein, in a world where genetic engineering is common? Perhaps neurodivergent attributes ?
If this is an issue that you're passionate about, and it sounds like it is, then I think your best bet might be the following...
Strongly promote 'genetic reproductive freedom' to the relatively liberal Asian nations - Japan, South Korea, Singapore, etc... These nations have not been corrupted by 'authoritarian egalitarianism' as much as modern Europe and english-speaking nations have been.
Decent chance that many of the people of these Asian nations will desire 'genetic reproductive freedom' in order to gain an edge for their children in the extremely competitive educational/workplace arena of these nations.
Within a generation (or two at most), these Asian nations will start to BRUTALLY eat America's lunch when it comes to creating great minds, great scientists, technological improvements, etc...
Then America will have to choose what's more important to it - authoritarian egalitarianism or winning a global competition that will be far more important than what the space race was. Maybe at this point, America will finally dispense with authoritarian egalitarianism, adopting genetic reproductive freedom in the process.
Sadly, I have serious doubts that the west will dispense with authoritarian egalitarianism anytime soon. It's too entrenched in our modern culture, it's a luxury we can currently afford, and even many highly intelligent people who probably should know better are still hesitant to oppose it. Genetic reproductive freedom is simply incompatible with authoritarian eqalitarianism.
A quite nice defense of reproductive autonomy. This issue will only grow in importance in the near future. I think powerful technology is coming which will enable large returns in health and intelligence. I saw this as a really important effective altruist cause but many didn't seem too receptive.
Perhaps my ignorance of the technology at hand answers this question. But doesnt the implicit ban on Human cloning put us in this opportunity cost would of not having more 'capable' children being born? Other issues ofc come at mind but if some billionaire with the resources wanted to clone themselves AFAIK they can't legally do so
Yes. I suspect a pretty deep divide here is whether you tend to see zero sum or positive sum interaction as the default. If you see zero sum interaction as the default, then you'll either be a leveling down egalitarian (left) or an immigration/trade restrictionist (right). Or maybe both (see, eg, the new magazine Compact, which combines elements of both left and right zero sum thinking).
By contrast, if you see positive sum interaction as the default, you're less bothered by inequality (it needn't be hurting the worst off) and less worried about free movement of goods/labor making your compatriots worse off. This is why I see much more in common between the Trumpian and progressive worldviews than their supporters tend to; it seems to me they make the same starting mistake, and just develop it in different directions.
That was going to be my minor quibble. If you hold resources fixed, then devoting funds to helping poor kids has (plausibly) higher marginal value than advanced math classes for the gifted, who are already much better off. This may not be how the actual tradeoff works in the real world but that’s at least a more charitable version of the egalitarian objection.
I suspect that's not true, because the very most capable people in society have extraordinarily huge positive externalities (think: Alan Turing).
Yeah that’s probably where I lie too—Nietzsche FTW—but then you need to do some work to justify funding advanced math classes instead of cost effective global health/aid! It still probably works in favor of math but it’s not completely obvious. Of course that’s not the reason egalitarians object so that’s not going to help them.
My sense is that it's not hard to find pure leveling down in k-12 education. Eg, getting rid of tracking because you don't like how the demographics turn out, without any attempt to show the worse performing kids do better in untracked classes. (My local district did this. ) Or SF getting rid of any option to take middle school algebra (this was widely reported, though they eventually reversed). Gifted programs don't generally have to be more resource intensive than regular ones, since the main point is just separating kids who can benefit from faster paced instruction, and then giving it to them. Teachers teaching a bunch of gifted 8th graders algebra don't need more resources than teachers teaching less advanced math to an undifferentiated class.
Agreed. I’m playing devil’s advocate on behalf of a non-cartoonishly evil version of egalitarianism.
I agree with everything you said here but I'd like to mention too important other points.
First, in practice if someone's concern really is equality of opportunity the very last thing they should do is push for strict regulation. I think we can guarantee that worldwide effective bans just won't happen so they very rich and powerful will have access. The question is just do we open it up so the price can fall like it did with cell phones or keep it locked away for the ultra-rich?
Second, everyone tends to get stuck on things like intelligence and sure many people want a successful child but I think the real action here is with happiness. Some people really do seem essentially an order of magnitude more happy (hypomanic) and equally if not more functional. The possibility for reduction of human suffering just by choosing less unhappy genes is amazing.
Yea, I think people will discover quickly that actively selecting for (ultra-high) "intelligence" will come with a lot of drawbacks where the juice isn't worth the squeeze. But, if you can make your children incapable of suffering (https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/profile-the-far-out-initiative), then I suspect we'd quickly see a ton of adoption.
Yah I really like that idea but I think further research needs to be done to be sure it doesn't cut down joy or wasn't someone with a weird mental illness that caused them to lie about their experiences. But it's certainly promising.
There was a case many years ago of a deaf lesbian couple using the sperm of a man with five generations of deafness in his family to purposely engineer a deaf child.
I imagine you’d agree with me that that decision was terribly immoral, but do you think society should have interfered with the couple’s reproductive freedom in this case?
It is an interesting case! I actually don't know that it was "terribly immoral". Maybe "mildly wrong," at worst (and maybe not even that). Many deaf people deny that they are harmed by their deafness, and even if they're mistaken about that, I suspect it's only a fairly mild harm. In this case, since the parents themselves were deaf, and well-positioned to enculturate their child into the Deaf community, I could even see it being for the best that their child be deaf like them rather than different.
I definitely do *not* think that society should have interfered with their reproductive freedom in this case.
I tend to agree in that case, I don't know if it was a good choice but the fact that there isn't reason to think the long term happiness of the child is going to be much less makes it not such a big deal.
But I'd note that the same logic should justify deliberately taking the kid to be deafened after birth (in some painless way). I'm willing to bite that bullet (at least morally legal practicality matters too).
I think the harder case is people who know they have a very substantive chance of having a child with a very painful and life ruining condition and refuse to engage in testing/selection against the condition. I don't see how we can distinguish that action from deliberately inflicting similar pain and short life on a child by poisoning them.
I would say that the couple is doing what they are doing for the express purpose of their own desires, rather then the desires of the child (who would likely choose not to be deaf if they had a choice).
This more or less gets back to abortion. The child would not choose to be aborted. At least in the abortion case there is some kind of burden being placed on the mother that we have decided they have a right to reject. In the deaf case raising a non-deaf child does not place a burden on the deaf parents.
Put another way, imagine if the child was born hearing and then the parents used surgical tools to make their child deaf, because they would prefer a deaf child. We would consider this cartoonishly evil.
As I said, I'm not that bothered by then deafening the child after birth in a painless medical fashion. The argument the parents make (non-absurdly) is that they are part of a vibrant and rewarding deaf community and it will be difficult for that child to be accepted if they aren't also deaf.
Would I find that convincing? No, but it's not really any different than choosing to raise a child as religious, forcing them to spend hours a day doing gymnastics or violin or even taking certain classes in school. Lots of things parents do to their children aren't based in studies showing it maximizes child welfare but are based in the idea "I find this valuable so I want you to have it too" which is the same thing the deaf parents feel.
But if we take this equivalence seriously then failing to use embryo selection knowing the child might suffer some serious painful developmental disability is also morally equivalent to choosing to inflict that kind of condition on the child. Indeed, the natural upshot of this argument is to establish the moral necessity of using such technology.
We have laws about child abuse that do apply to surgically mutilating children but don’t apply to making them take piano lessons. One is an ok choice and one isn’t.
I think that purposely choosing to deform an embryo is something that the state might have a right to suspend, though the logistics of that are so complicated that it might not be worth it.
On a moral level though I think it’s worthy of intense social disapproval.
Not enhancing an embryo is less bad, but myself I would think less of anyone that didn’t do it.
The fact that we have a law against one thing and not the other is hardly good evidence that what the law bans is wrong and what it doesn't isn't.
But I also don't think that legal claim is clear. For instance, is circumcision legally child abuse? Morally? What's the difference? And for the most part people get men circumscribed for exactly the same reasons coming up here -- it's what is considered normal in their religious/cultural space and they want the kid to fit into that community.
Basically, you are just packing all the work into the term deform. Whether or not something is deforming a child or improving them tracks whether or not you think that thing is good and doesn't provide a framework for figuring out when these things should be allowed.
Many things we do to/for children have costs and benefits. A Christian scientist is going to see using modern medicine as a selfish choice by the parents that emperils the child's soul. Now I'm happy to call christian science bunk but that doesn't really help you draw a line that puts making a child deaf on one side but circumciscing them on another. And that doesn't get into the many kinds of permanent medical procedures that have tradeoffs on both sides.
The ethical justification here is that the alternative is the deaf child wouldn’t have been born at all. Which is worse, being born deaf or not being born at all? The couple could have a hearing child of course, but that would be a completely different child altogether.
I think a hearing child existing is better than a deaf child existing.
That’s fine. But it doesn’t necessarily follow that the couple’s choice to have a deaf child is immoral and should not be permitted.
Excellent piece. I've long been a fan of reproductive choice/freedom framing for genetic enhancement, and I'm now going to start using the phrase "genetic reproductive freedom" myself.
Mostly on board, but thinking of some substantial downsides:
Hypothetically there could be a gene for “be depressed but also really good at finance” or similar which people would choose because they have to compete with other people, making everyone worse off… A Moloch problem. In that case restrictions can be better than none. Could we ban selecting for that gene without forcing everyone to not have kids with that gene?
Genetic fads would be a thing. A substantial portion of a generation could have some catastrophic genetic issue at the same time. Though most people would be cautious unless Moloch forces them to rush.
Governments would want to subsidize it, especially for “pro-social” genes. Selecting an embryo based off of government recommendation is like having sex with your government. Ew. Governments would subsidize genes that benefit the government at the expense of the people. Imagine the political fights over rs644148 which makes people have higher openness https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2874623/
Dems: “Subsidize for! More artists!”
Reps: “Subsidize against! Fewer druggies!”
What about choosing the gender of one's child? I think your argument implies this is fine, and I tend to agree, but I think this is an especailly important real-world example given the prevalence of (illegal) sex-selective abortion in places like India. My sense is that many people lament the millions of 'missing women' in India https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jan/30/more-than-63-million-women-missing-in-india-statistics-show
But maybe what we should be lamenting is gender-discrimination in society, not so much gender discrimination in selecting embryos (or in reality, selectively aborting foetuses more often).
Yeah, I at least think there's a strong presumption against interfering to prevent sex-selection. There might be some social contexts in which full reproductive autonomy would give rise to a sufficiently socially problematic sex imbalance to justify overriding this presumption. I don't have a strong view on exactly where the boundaries lie for such interference. I don't think it's relevant to 21st century America, though. (If anything, I gather the current typical preference is more for daughters than sons, and a tilt in that direction doesn't seem so socially problematic -- single women being less prone to violence than single men. I'd also expect it to be self-correcting over time, as some parents could be expected to want to advantage their child's romantic prospects by selecting for whatever looks to be the socially under-supplied sex.)
I also agree that we should primarily aim to address any underlying gender discrimination that leads to lopsided preferences across society.
Introspecting, I think my biggest discomfort arises from the idea that unrestricted embryo selection is in some sense limiting the rights of the child, subsuming them to the rights of the parent to pick their child.
My objections are weakest for things like medical conditions, or other things that clearly and more or less unanimously are agreed to benefit the child individually.
It's strongest for things that are more obviously "personality" or "lifestyle" based: the idea that a parent might select embryos to maximize predisposition to religiosity, or a certain political orientation, or a certain personality type makes me pretty uncomfortable--by analogy to the case of parents influencing their children after birth, we absolutely do limit the parents' ability to influence these things in their children if they sufficiently intrude on the child's autonomy, and what is more intrusive than editing the kid's genetic code?
What makes iq contentious, imo, is that it's not clearly one or the other: while there are individual benefits to the child it's not obvious to what extent the benefits are positional--in which case the value only obtains precisely to the degree to which the technology is _not_ equally accessed.
It also feels like the equilibrium of a society where a large portion of the population has their IQ go up by half a standard deviation or whatever (I'd actually be curious to know what people think is realistically possible with current embryo selection) could be significantly different from our current equilibrium that it's not an obvious improvement.
That doesn't mean it's _not_ of course, but I think it's a little muddier.
That's interesting. I would've thought it completely obvious that a universally more intelligent citizenry would be (vastly) better! That's why it's so worthwhile to, e.g., remove lead from paint, petrol, and so on.
I think that's probably right but a) my last comment is referring to the situation where it's a large proportion but _not universal_ which I think is a bit more complicated (though I'm still pretty sympathetic) and b) achieved by means of embryo selection/genetic change, which might also be importantly different from removing lead paint, eg for reasons of diminishing genetic diversity, or if genes for IQ are correlated with other traits.
Finally, I'll note that appealing to the benefits to society overall is somewhat sidestepping the personal liberty argument.
Some couples with a family history of a debilitating disease like schizophrenia choose to use polygenic embryo screening. One annoying aspect of ethical arguments is that they usually call for blanket removal of availability, but at least some couples wouldn't even have a child if they were not sure they could reduce the risk of such a condition below a certain threshold. Those parents aren't unreasonable, and so a restriction on polygenic screening could amount to the greatest violation of liberty they experience in their lives.
I disagree, because I don't think we'd build a society of kind, self sufficient, diverse and extraordinarily talented individuals with gene editing. I think you'd see selection of high variance leadership traits by the rich, and docility and conformity by the masses. Not through some conspiracy, but because the easiest way to be happy in a society is to maximally fit and conform to your expected role in it. The rich are much more protected in eccentricity.
Even in the comments to this article, you mention Alan Turing as an example of the high marginal utility of folks with talents standard deviations above the norm. If we found a gene cluster for homosexuality, it seems incredibly likely that many would select against it, which would lower the odds of another Turing (him being gay). That selection bias feels dangerous if it's likely that creativity and brilliance are related to non-conformity in other aspects of life. And observationally, queer and neurodivergent people seem awfully overrepresented in the arts and sciences.
I'm for genetic screening and selection, but only traits that intrinsically reduce an individuals ability to enjoy life after medical interventions. If it only sucks to be X because society disadvantages X, I'm a little wary of stamping it out (homosexuality). If it doesn't actually suck that much to have X, after medical intervention, I also suspect we shouldn't stamp it out (poor eyesight). It's only in cases with obviously reduced quality of life we can't compensate for, say a congenital muscle wasting disease 50% likely to kill the individual before adulthood, would I want to step in.
No strong opinion tbc, but a lot of us aren't that liberal, inasmuch as we think that voluntary choices of individuals can lead to bad equilibria that ultimately restrict freedom- letting individuals do what they want so long as they don't directly harm others doesn't necessarily maximise total long run freedom and dignity. A lot of us are also political pragmatists- banning assortive mating would be traumatic, hard to enforce and cause a lot of upset, but this new technology which hasn't been introduced yet- banning that is politically sustainable and will be experienced as far less intrusive.
Honestly, while it's not a major priority, I think the government should probably do more to discourage assortive mating- not by penalising it, but by encouraging non-assortive mating. Increasingly not just cross class marriages, but even cross class relationships are friendships are on the decline. In terms of reconnecting the classes and encouraging life long friendships, banning private schools probably helps in this regard. Maybe some socioeconomic form of bussing could even be considered. Encouraging community institutions (sports teams etc.) could help.
My actual view is probably that this technology should be permitted for some but not all kinds of condition, but only if it is made available to everyone at once through a completely free at the point of service system.
”Trust women” is just a political slogan, not an argument. I doubt anyone who believes abortion is wrong has had their opinion changed by ”trust women”.
A lot of the argument here seems to be ”no true liberal would be against this, so it must be permissible”.
My article is primarily targeted at liberals. The idea is that principles they already accept *commit* them to also supporting genetic reproductive freedom. (I don't expect anyone who is generally opposed to reproductive freedom to have their opinion changed by this article.)
Once you allow genetic enhancement, it will become obvious that nearly all people overwhelmingly favor certain traits that we could effectively call "superior". People who lack those traits would then have to accept that revealed preference show them to be inferior.
I don't think those hurt feelings are enough to level down an entire generation, but that is something liberals do an awful lot today.
Or... we could just *not* describe people in gratuitously offensive ways as "superior"/"inferior". I don't see any good purpose to such language.
It doesn’t matter how you describe it. Everyone knows no matter how flowery a language you put it in. You either accept it and move on or you don’t.
I don’t think I’m superior to someone who is in chronic pain. I think I am more fortunate than them.
It’s quite fortunate to be superior.
Ok, but I wouldn’t trust anyone whose commitment to ’liberalism’ is so religiously strong that they feel they have to accept every revolutionary thing that comes along simply because it would be more ’liberal’ to do so.
It seems to me that any new technology that has any risks involved is going to create the need for some regulation, but some people like to pretend otherwise.
I'm open to arguments for regulation. But some argument is needed. There should be a strong presumption in favor of freedom, i.e. letting individuals make decisions about their own lives.
There are two standard reasons for this: (1) they are better informed than anyone else is about the specific details of their life situation, and (2) they have stronger incentives than anyone else to make the right decision.
Decisions about reproduction aren't decisions about "their own lives" but about other people's lives.
In general, I think that abortion should be legal, up to a certain gestational age. In the American political context, that means I would support politicians who support "reproductive rights". But to me, that sounds like the kind of silly euphemism that politicians like to use, I don't support some more general doctrine of "reproductive rights" or "freedom".
I remember hearing a conversation about gambling, where one person said he was libertarian about it, and didn't think that the government should regulate it, although he understood that some people's lives are damaged by gambling. But your two reasons don't apply to this, because,
1. People who have gambling problems may know the specific details of their life situations better than other people, but they know worse than other people the effect of gambling on their lives (ie. they have less insight into it).
2. They don't have stronger incentives to make the right decisions, they have stronger incentives to make the wrong decisions.
Ok, maybe that is all irrelevant, because that is about gambling. It just came to mind. But I guess a problem with those reasons is that "specific life details" are irrelevant to whether something is right or wrong (how specific do we mean? and doesn't it degenerate into something like "no one else understands how I feel about this"), and people are incentivized to make the wrong decisions as well as the right ones.
I think some sort of quasi-paternalist argument may be the strongest one, like the argument for generally trying to prevent suicide. If there’s good reason to believe that most attempted genetic “enhancement” is likely to have systematic distortions in the informational base people are using for their decisions, then it may be likely that most attempts to do genetic enhancement have effects that the person doesn’t actually want.
I had never thought of the lgbtq angle of things in the genetic engineering conversation, very interesting.
Presumably there could be a world in the future where no one is trans, if people converge to thinking that trans people go through undue hardship of having to live in the wrong body.
What other aspects of human personality could be a culturally divisive line in a similar vein, in a world where genetic engineering is common? Perhaps neurodivergent attributes ?
If this is an issue that you're passionate about, and it sounds like it is, then I think your best bet might be the following...
Strongly promote 'genetic reproductive freedom' to the relatively liberal Asian nations - Japan, South Korea, Singapore, etc... These nations have not been corrupted by 'authoritarian egalitarianism' as much as modern Europe and english-speaking nations have been.
Decent chance that many of the people of these Asian nations will desire 'genetic reproductive freedom' in order to gain an edge for their children in the extremely competitive educational/workplace arena of these nations.
Within a generation (or two at most), these Asian nations will start to BRUTALLY eat America's lunch when it comes to creating great minds, great scientists, technological improvements, etc...
Then America will have to choose what's more important to it - authoritarian egalitarianism or winning a global competition that will be far more important than what the space race was. Maybe at this point, America will finally dispense with authoritarian egalitarianism, adopting genetic reproductive freedom in the process.
Sadly, I have serious doubts that the west will dispense with authoritarian egalitarianism anytime soon. It's too entrenched in our modern culture, it's a luxury we can currently afford, and even many highly intelligent people who probably should know better are still hesitant to oppose it. Genetic reproductive freedom is simply incompatible with authoritarian eqalitarianism.
Agree that is inconsistent to be pro-choice and against embryo selection or germline gene editing.
A quite nice defense of reproductive autonomy. This issue will only grow in importance in the near future. I think powerful technology is coming which will enable large returns in health and intelligence. I saw this as a really important effective altruist cause but many didn't seem too receptive.
Perhaps my ignorance of the technology at hand answers this question. But doesnt the implicit ban on Human cloning put us in this opportunity cost would of not having more 'capable' children being born? Other issues ofc come at mind but if some billionaire with the resources wanted to clone themselves AFAIK they can't legally do so