Great take. Everyone once in a while, polarization is helpful. It feels like at least on this issue, the theocrats will make themselves into a nice punching bag.
I have to say, that from my point of view in the more liberal tribe, I appreciate Richard because he does actually think about things pretty carefully from points of view that I don’t otherwise encounter much, and doesn’t very often succumb to the temptation to bait the likes of me in framing ideas and positions. So, I do read him almost as regularly as I read The Bulwark as well as a lot of more liberal (mostly) Substack contributors. Thanks Richard!
In this particular case, I did have a hard time not thinking that some of what he was saying here was a bit tongue-in-cheek, especially the stuff about the establishment in law of such “Catholic” ideological extremism being helpful in keeping liberals (or at least elite liberals —who do, by the way, control most of our institutions and have since the “managerial revolution became a thing) on track to support increased biotech engineering of fetuses into “superbabies,” etc.
The fun thing about Richard is that for me, at least, many of his most salient observation do, at least initially. strike me as subtly “tongue-in-cheek,” which has perhaps the desired effect of giving me pause by getting me to think harder about what he’s saying. And often, I am happy to report, he succeeds. That’s a rare gift.
The single act that did the most to ensure access to genetic screening was Justice Thomas using the potential to preferentially abort members of protected classes as an argument against abortion.
Until then I think it wasn't totally settled which way the left would go but no one on the left is going to go near Thomas's pro-life argument. As long as people like him keep making it we don't need dumb rulings about IVF.
I highly advise reading the AL SCT opinions before opining on them - they aren't "anti-IVF", unless to be "pro-IVF" you have to think that clinics that don't secure embryos and let random people wander about taking embryos out of cold storage and dropping them on the floor is a good thing.
The case involved a question of statutory interpretation and all but the Chief Justice's concurrence are very reasonable opinions that come to different conclusions about how to interpret the particular statute in this particular context. (The Chief's is a rather unusual discussion of theology, in aid of understanding a particular word in the AL constitution.) It seems pretty clear that the media and the IVF clinics are peddling a narrative about these cases that serve their own interests (IVF clinics don't want to be liable for not doing common sense stuff like having locks on doors and freezers, apparently). In fact, this episode of deliberate misrepresentation of the 131 pages of court opinions may be evidence against your "the media is awesome" hypothesis.
You're crazier than a loon. Throwing human embryos out like trash, as happens almost every time in this Orwellian procedure, is inhuman and debased. I encourage you to grow in your understanding of civilized humanity
IVF is ultimately playing God. If Karen waited to have children until her 30s and is having a hard time, that's something we should address on a cultural level, not with technology that enables bioengineered human trafficking. Likewise with surrogacy, a mother that does not carry her child through pregnancy and experience childbirth will have substantially lowered bonding with that child which equals higher rates of abuse. Children are not accessories that someone should be able to purchase.
Republicans glomming onto IVF are entirely missing the plot. We need to encourage young, smart, and ambitious Americans to get married and have children during the years the human body is made to, not enabling young women to freeze eggs for 20 years while they pursue their boss girl programming. Yes, we are coming for your birth control next!
I would also like to say that "superbabies" is not a good phrase to use. We are looking at an increase 5-10 or maybe even 15+ IQ points per generation once we have IVG. Not some super-race. It's as Scott says here: https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/contra-smith-on-jewish-selective . 10 points is the difference between Ashkenazi Jews and White Americans. I expect most people to support +10 IQ points per generation. I mean, the Flynn effect has gone that pace in most places. I know, the Flynn effect is often not on g and so on.
Just so we are clear where I personally stand on this, I certainly would be very happy to have lots of people with von Neumann level intelligence. Still, such a drastic change probably would be a hard sell to the public. It makes more sense to advocate for embryo selection, enhancement, and so on than for "superbabies". Those technologies operate within the normal range of variance between siblings, so people will accept them. Talking about "superbabies" is like saying "eugenics". https://www.richardhanania.com/p/why-i-oppose-eugenics . It's bad politics.
It's also not really descriptive of how embryo selection works. Say we can do IVG and raise the mean IQ to say 130. That would of course be fantastic. If we have 1000 embryos, perfect polygenic scores, and select only on intelligence and no other traits we get about +30 points. 1000 embryos gives you a bit over 3 SD. Since half the variance in families and heritability being about .8 which is about .9^2, the SD is about .9*15/sqrt(2), which a bit less than 10. Then, still ~97% of people will have IQs at most 160. You will need another couple of generations and/or a massive number of embryos in IVG to get an average IQ above 160.
Absolutely fantastic piece! In the paper you link to at https://twitter.com/RichardHanania/status/1761917821712556385 it shows that only 17% of Americans have a moral problem with embryo selection for IQ, and less with age, 20% among the oldest group and <=15% among the youngest. This makes sense as the woke left and hardcore anti-IVF right are really both <=10% of the population. It's great to see so much support for embryo selection in the US. I would expect even more public support in places like Israel and Singapore, but it seems that even in the US the public support won't be an obstacle. I guess it is really not so surprising. The US, Israel, and Singapore are the only countries that have approved lab grown meat so far.
I also can't help but notice that Nazis like Nick Fuentes and some other twitter anons hate IVF, with Fuentes recently calling it a "sin", and are saying or at least implying that (((they))) are behind all of this stuff. See for instance this from some time ago https://twitter.com/stevesilberman/status/1590788232312414209 where Fuentes blames pro-choice on (((them))). Hopefully that's the death of the idiotic Godwin's Law argument against genetic enhancement. As if Israeli and Jewish attitudes, and Winston Churchill's attitude wasn't enough already. It's hard to tell what the actual Nazis would have thought of IVF, but it's not too crazy to believe that they would have thought it was a sin, and that ESIQ is bad. We do know that they believed that the notion of IQ was bad because it was an instrument of Jewish supremacy.
The fact that human life begins at conception isn't just a religious doctrine, it's a reality that we can observe at the cellular level specifically thanks to advances in science and technology. In the past, the anti-life position would've been more defensible as we largely didn't actually know what was happening inside the woman during pregnancy.
It sounds like conservatives should vocally endorse higher spending, higher regulation, higher taxes, and higher deficits, so that progressives would automagically adopt the opposite positions.
It's plainly obvious that surrogacy opponents like Louise Perry simply want to rig culture and policy to further their intragender competition interests. Adding costs to other women's reproductive freedom is good for women who thrive best as stay at home moms supported by a man with perhaps a hobby job.
People talk about selection for IQ and against schizophrenia. But what happens when someone commercializes it about things people (other than nerds and borderline autists like us) *really* care about, like height and attractiveness?
The difficulties attached to LBAC are one more sign that the simulation is flawed and that nobody bothered to work out consistent solutions to the edge cases. Oh well.
I'd argue there should be a divergence in what citizens have the right to do (i.e. surrogacy) and what should be societally encouraged and promoted. While I agree with the case for maximizing citizen freedom, especially when it comes to control over children, there are various practices in regards to raising a child that deserve a lot of skepticism and perhaps even ostracization
Overall agree. However, there's something to keep in mind when it comes to the eugenic aspect of IVF and surrogacy; namely that they may not be so eugenic.
With regards to surrogacy, this will simply raise the birth rate of career-oriented women. And not just the moderately-career-oriented ones, but those so involved into their careers that they couldn't afford to take some time off to have children. And yes, I'm aware many rich women will just resort to it because they can, and that's cool.
As to IVF, it's fine — desirable, even — when used to screen out potential health problems along with other dysgenics; however, the widespread use of it for those with fertility problems will have the opposite effect, which is to spread weak-fertility predispositions.
Great take. Everyone once in a while, polarization is helpful. It feels like at least on this issue, the theocrats will make themselves into a nice punching bag.
I have to say, that from my point of view in the more liberal tribe, I appreciate Richard because he does actually think about things pretty carefully from points of view that I don’t otherwise encounter much, and doesn’t very often succumb to the temptation to bait the likes of me in framing ideas and positions. So, I do read him almost as regularly as I read The Bulwark as well as a lot of more liberal (mostly) Substack contributors. Thanks Richard!
In this particular case, I did have a hard time not thinking that some of what he was saying here was a bit tongue-in-cheek, especially the stuff about the establishment in law of such “Catholic” ideological extremism being helpful in keeping liberals (or at least elite liberals —who do, by the way, control most of our institutions and have since the “managerial revolution became a thing) on track to support increased biotech engineering of fetuses into “superbabies,” etc.
The fun thing about Richard is that for me, at least, many of his most salient observation do, at least initially. strike me as subtly “tongue-in-cheek,” which has perhaps the desired effect of giving me pause by getting me to think harder about what he’s saying. And often, I am happy to report, he succeeds. That’s a rare gift.
Thanks agains, Richard!
The single act that did the most to ensure access to genetic screening was Justice Thomas using the potential to preferentially abort members of protected classes as an argument against abortion.
Until then I think it wasn't totally settled which way the left would go but no one on the left is going to go near Thomas's pro-life argument. As long as people like him keep making it we don't need dumb rulings about IVF.
I highly advise reading the AL SCT opinions before opining on them - they aren't "anti-IVF", unless to be "pro-IVF" you have to think that clinics that don't secure embryos and let random people wander about taking embryos out of cold storage and dropping them on the floor is a good thing.
The case involved a question of statutory interpretation and all but the Chief Justice's concurrence are very reasonable opinions that come to different conclusions about how to interpret the particular statute in this particular context. (The Chief's is a rather unusual discussion of theology, in aid of understanding a particular word in the AL constitution.) It seems pretty clear that the media and the IVF clinics are peddling a narrative about these cases that serve their own interests (IVF clinics don't want to be liable for not doing common sense stuff like having locks on doors and freezers, apparently). In fact, this episode of deliberate misrepresentation of the 131 pages of court opinions may be evidence against your "the media is awesome" hypothesis.
You're crazier than a loon. Throwing human embryos out like trash, as happens almost every time in this Orwellian procedure, is inhuman and debased. I encourage you to grow in your understanding of civilized humanity
IVF is ultimately playing God. If Karen waited to have children until her 30s and is having a hard time, that's something we should address on a cultural level, not with technology that enables bioengineered human trafficking. Likewise with surrogacy, a mother that does not carry her child through pregnancy and experience childbirth will have substantially lowered bonding with that child which equals higher rates of abuse. Children are not accessories that someone should be able to purchase.
Republicans glomming onto IVF are entirely missing the plot. We need to encourage young, smart, and ambitious Americans to get married and have children during the years the human body is made to, not enabling young women to freeze eggs for 20 years while they pursue their boss girl programming. Yes, we are coming for your birth control next!
I would also like to say that "superbabies" is not a good phrase to use. We are looking at an increase 5-10 or maybe even 15+ IQ points per generation once we have IVG. Not some super-race. It's as Scott says here: https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/contra-smith-on-jewish-selective . 10 points is the difference between Ashkenazi Jews and White Americans. I expect most people to support +10 IQ points per generation. I mean, the Flynn effect has gone that pace in most places. I know, the Flynn effect is often not on g and so on.
Just so we are clear where I personally stand on this, I certainly would be very happy to have lots of people with von Neumann level intelligence. Still, such a drastic change probably would be a hard sell to the public. It makes more sense to advocate for embryo selection, enhancement, and so on than for "superbabies". Those technologies operate within the normal range of variance between siblings, so people will accept them. Talking about "superbabies" is like saying "eugenics". https://www.richardhanania.com/p/why-i-oppose-eugenics . It's bad politics.
It's also not really descriptive of how embryo selection works. Say we can do IVG and raise the mean IQ to say 130. That would of course be fantastic. If we have 1000 embryos, perfect polygenic scores, and select only on intelligence and no other traits we get about +30 points. 1000 embryos gives you a bit over 3 SD. Since half the variance in families and heritability being about .8 which is about .9^2, the SD is about .9*15/sqrt(2), which a bit less than 10. Then, still ~97% of people will have IQs at most 160. You will need another couple of generations and/or a massive number of embryos in IVG to get an average IQ above 160.
Absolutely fantastic piece! In the paper you link to at https://twitter.com/RichardHanania/status/1761917821712556385 it shows that only 17% of Americans have a moral problem with embryo selection for IQ, and less with age, 20% among the oldest group and <=15% among the youngest. This makes sense as the woke left and hardcore anti-IVF right are really both <=10% of the population. It's great to see so much support for embryo selection in the US. I would expect even more public support in places like Israel and Singapore, but it seems that even in the US the public support won't be an obstacle. I guess it is really not so surprising. The US, Israel, and Singapore are the only countries that have approved lab grown meat so far.
I also can't help but notice that Nazis like Nick Fuentes and some other twitter anons hate IVF, with Fuentes recently calling it a "sin", and are saying or at least implying that (((they))) are behind all of this stuff. See for instance this from some time ago https://twitter.com/stevesilberman/status/1590788232312414209 where Fuentes blames pro-choice on (((them))). Hopefully that's the death of the idiotic Godwin's Law argument against genetic enhancement. As if Israeli and Jewish attitudes, and Winston Churchill's attitude wasn't enough already. It's hard to tell what the actual Nazis would have thought of IVF, but it's not too crazy to believe that they would have thought it was a sin, and that ESIQ is bad. We do know that they believed that the notion of IQ was bad because it was an instrument of Jewish supremacy.
The fact that human life begins at conception isn't just a religious doctrine, it's a reality that we can observe at the cellular level specifically thanks to advances in science and technology. In the past, the anti-life position would've been more defensible as we largely didn't actually know what was happening inside the woman during pregnancy.
It sounds like conservatives should vocally endorse higher spending, higher regulation, higher taxes, and higher deficits, so that progressives would automagically adopt the opposite positions.
It's plainly obvious that surrogacy opponents like Louise Perry simply want to rig culture and policy to further their intragender competition interests. Adding costs to other women's reproductive freedom is good for women who thrive best as stay at home moms supported by a man with perhaps a hobby job.
People talk about selection for IQ and against schizophrenia. But what happens when someone commercializes it about things people (other than nerds and borderline autists like us) *really* care about, like height and attractiveness?
The difficulties attached to LBAC are one more sign that the simulation is flawed and that nobody bothered to work out consistent solutions to the edge cases. Oh well.
I'd argue there should be a divergence in what citizens have the right to do (i.e. surrogacy) and what should be societally encouraged and promoted. While I agree with the case for maximizing citizen freedom, especially when it comes to control over children, there are various practices in regards to raising a child that deserve a lot of skepticism and perhaps even ostracization
Overall agree. However, there's something to keep in mind when it comes to the eugenic aspect of IVF and surrogacy; namely that they may not be so eugenic.
With regards to surrogacy, this will simply raise the birth rate of career-oriented women. And not just the moderately-career-oriented ones, but those so involved into their careers that they couldn't afford to take some time off to have children. And yes, I'm aware many rich women will just resort to it because they can, and that's cool.
As to IVF, it's fine — desirable, even — when used to screen out potential health problems along with other dysgenics; however, the widespread use of it for those with fertility problems will have the opposite effect, which is to spread weak-fertility predispositions.
Pro life Conservatives apparently just want to make white people more r-selected. Sad!