A Fight I'm Glad to Miss

It’s good to be smart, right? There’s no down side is there? There’s a down side to being taller. On average tall people don’t live as long. It takes more resources to sustain a tall person. As a species we’d probably be better off if we were all a foot shorter. But if everyone were somewhat smarter, wouldn't that be unambiguously good? I think so. Even for the people who are already pretty smart. It’s probably true for our dogs as well. I can’t think of any downside to having the dog population be smarter. Cows, I don’t know. Maybe cows should just be left as they are. And as for rats, we certainly don’t want them to be any smarter. They’re too smart as it is.

How long do you think it will be before those pretty smart people who are messing around in the human gene pool will be able to make new off spring smarter? A hundred years? That doesn’t seem implausible to me. Isn’t that a direct extension of having the capability to fix the genes that predispose people to cancer or sickle cell anemia or many other genetically linked maladies? Once we can alter our genes to make us more healthy, won't we be close to being able to make ourselves smarter, or stronger, or blonder or whatever? To return to a very old allegory I think we have already reached out and plucked the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, (you could think of that as the age of enlightenment), and we are steadily moving that fruit in the direction of our lips. Once we have learned how to remake our species according to our own likes and dislikes, then we will truly be God-like, whether that God be real or simply supposed by many people to be real.

For a couple of decades there have been stories about the angst of parents feeling that the path to an Ivy League education now begins at preschool. Miss the correct feeder preschool and kiss that Harvard education goodbye. Imagine the fight there is going to be over deciding whose kids get to be born really smart. Of course there will be plenty of God fearing folk in this country who will oppose such genetic manipulation, but once the Chinese have the capability, then the national defense argument for us to do it too will be pretty forceful. Will we have a market based solution? Will the opportunity to have smarter kids be something one can or must buy? Can human society work if everyone is a genius?

Let’s suppose my grand children will be breeding in 30 to 40 years. I don’t think it will be their problem, but the fight may have begun in their lifetimes.

I'm sorry great great grand children for what you are in for, but at least you won't have to worry about getting cancer.