Fiddling with Nature: Surrogacy and the Future of Humanity (Audio and Video)

Inez joins me to talk about my recent article on surrogacy. She acts as sort of my explainer of social conservatives, whose beliefs I often find odd. Inez gives me a secular defense of the idea that we should be skeptical of reproductive technology. We go back and forth, and it ends up sounding to me that we at heart have differences that are more empirical in nature than reflective of differing values. For those interested in the basics of behavioral genetics, I highly recommend The Nurture Assumption by Judith Rich Harris.

I ask Inez the question of whether she would rather be born with a 125 IQ and a broken family, or an 85 IQ and both parents, and I’m shocked by her answer. We then get into the future of humanity, how much we should fiddle with nature, and the extent to which biotechnology does so. I don’t disagree that two biological parents are probably ideal, I just think genes matter a lot more, and that there’s a lot of evidence to back up this idea. Inez says we shouldn’t necessarily trust biased researchers, but I note that one interesting thing about the behavioral genetics literature is that its results were the last thing that academia wanted to find. But the truth has kept revealing itself.

We end with some discussion about what Republicans will do on the abortion issue. I’m of the opinion that there’s a good chance that Trump just goes completely pro-choice by the general election, which will be a hilariously ironic outcome to the last several years of our politics. Of course, he’ll probably appoint the same judges as any other Republican would, so the actual results with regards to abortion rights will be the same. That being said, if any single individual can shift Republican opinion on this issue, it is certainly Trump.

For those who asked, we’re back to recording video this week. Part of my problem with doing it before was you had to create a new post, and I didn’t want to clutter the website. But now that Substack allows everything in the same post, that’s one less reason not to do it. I can’t promise video every week, but I’ll try to release it whenever I can going forward.