Better Babies? Steven Pinker thinks not

and I tend to agree with him. Here is what I wrote in FuturePundit's entry on the same article:

Once it becomes cheap and fast to sequence the DNA of each person then it will become possible to sequence the DNA of millions of people and do a massive comparison of mental traits (e.g. IQ, personality tests, and various facts from life histories such as arrest records, mental illnesses, and involvement in various hobbies and forms of recreation) and genetic variations to tease out complex relationships between genetic variations.

Essentially this means that we'll be able to figure out how humans work by looking at a great sample of people (ideally ALL people) and figuring out patterns that certain types of people exhibit. Unfortunately, this is not guaranteed (or even likely) to work, because extant humanity is an infenitestimal fraction of potential humanity. This means that patterns observed in the small sample of extant humanity may not generalize to potential humanity.

It's well known that in order to figure out how a particular system works, you can take two routes: (i) break it apart, figure out how each component works, then figure out how the various components fit together, all the way to the full system, (ii) try the system with different inputs (in this case, genes), measure the output (e.g., "beauty") and build a model from this data that you have suspect that will hold in general.

Case (i) is unlikely to happen any time soon, mainly because it might require a conceptual breakthrough, but more importantly because it's computationally intractable and will remain so for the foreseeable future. Case (ii) which is the approach favored by those enthusiastic about genetic engineering will fail for the reason that I mentioned, namely that your model will be built using only on 6 billion pieces of input-output data, and will have to generalize to a much larger set of inputs.

Better babies?

Why genetic enhancement is too unlikely to worry about

By Steven Pinker, 6/1/2003

THIS YEAR, THE 50th ANNIVERSARY of the discovery of the structure of DNA has kindled many debates about the implications of that knowledge for the human condition. Arguably the most emotionally charged is the debate over the prospect of human genetic enhancement, or ''designer babies.'' It's only a matter of time, many say, before parents will improve their children's intelligence and personality by having suitable genes inserted into them shortly after conception.

A few commentators have welcomed genetic enhancement as the latest step forward in the age-old struggle to improve human life. But many more are appalled. They warn that it is a Faustian grab at divine powers that will never be used wisely by us mortals. They worry that it will spawn the ultimate form of inequality, a genetic caste system. In his book ''Our Posthuman Future'' (just released in paperback), the conservative thinker Francis Fukuyama warns that genetic enhancement will change human nature itself and corrode the notion of a common humanity that undergirds the social order. Bill McKibben, writing from the political left, raises similar concerns in his new jeremiad ''Enough: Staying Human in an Engineered Age.''

But whether they welcome or decry it, almost everyone agrees that genetic enhancement is inevitable if research proceeds on its current course. Genetic enhancement is a major concern of the President's Council on Bioethics; its chairman, Leon Kass, and several of its members, including Fukuyama, are outspoken worriers.

As it happens, some kinds of genetic enhancement are already here. Anyone who has been turned down for a date has been a victim of the human drive to exert control over half the genes of one's future children. And it is already possible to test embryos conceived in vitro and select those that are free of genetic defects such as cystic fibrosis.

But when it comes to direct genetic enhancement-engineering babies so they will carry genes for desirable traits-there are many reasons to be skeptical. Not only is genetic enhancement not inevitable, it is not particularly likely in our lifetimes. This skepticism arises from three sources: futurology and its limits, the science of behavioral genetics, and human nature itself.

Full Article

Posted by Dienekes at June 1, 2003 11:00 PM | PermaLink