I think that repeatedly re-opening discussions on any form of eugenics actively undermines the work many EAs are doing in the global south and severely risks our reputation and credibility as a movement in the global health space. Given the history of discussing this topic within EA, I do not believe that anyone in this community has the precision and tact to discuss proposals around eugenics without causing these harms, if it is even possible to do so at all (I do not believe it is).
I also believe that discussing eugenics on the forum undermines attempts to make EA more welcoming to a large number of racial groups, because of the association with forms of oppression and genocide against those groups. I believe that all of these harms persist even if you don’t specifically talk about where you might believe the existing differences in intelligence lie, because of that history. I believe that there are many people who would make fantastic EAs who are turned off of this movement because of this association.
I believe that members of the EA movement and its leaders should loudly and sharply condemn all forms of race science, human biodiversity, and more broadly, eugenics, because of these harms.
I am also, frankly, tired of having to write this comment every 6 months.
Given the history of discussing this topic within EA,
Thanks for your links in the other comment; I had been searching for human intelligence amplification, but not “genetic enhancement”. (I generally avoid the term “enhancement” in this context because I believe it is subtley philosophically incorrect—it bakes in a degree of eugenical thinking, in that it kinda sounds like it presumes some notion of “better” and therefore presumes some notion of “good”, which is a core outlook of eugenics.)
Glancing at those links, I can understand some more why you might have a reaction like this, haha. I would submit myself as different from that history. I’m serious about this area; I view moral and societal aspects as equally important to technical aspects; I’m not a trained expert but I have been studying for a few years; and I’m here to actually think these things through, ideally working more with some EAs.
I also believe that discussing eugenics on the forum undermines attempts to make EA more welcoming to a large number of racial groups, because of the association with forms of oppression and genocide against those groups. [...] I believe that there are many people who would make fantastic EAs who are turned off of this movement because of this association.
This makes total sense. I would be curious to hear from / talk with anyone who is turned off by reprogenetics in general or turned off from EA because of reprogenetics in particular. I’d like to understand the issue better and understand where people are coming from better. (I understand that might be difficult because maybe most people would just not want to talk about it, but nevertheless. Maybe someone reading this is like “I was almost turned off by this stuff, but I stuck around.” and would be up for chatting.)
I think there’s a couple dimensions:
There’s a set of real problems around ideology / policy / social stances. In particular, how could society think about the use of reprogenetics, in a way that doesn’t affirm or apply eugenic motivations? I’ve thought about this a lot; see for example here: https://berkeleygenomics.org/articles/Genomic_emancipation_contra_eugenics.html I think that reprogenetics can be pursued in a way that is clearly, firmly, truly good—including being not racist, not totalitarian, pluralist, liberal, and egalitarian. That’s not supposed to be obvious, and I think there are substantive open questions here; part of pursuing this cause would be working this out more seriously, including merging with lots of groups and perspectives (e.g. hearing more from disability groups, more generally giving proper equal seat at the table to advocacy groups in general, thinking about what sorts of state policies or professional norms can work, etc.).
Suppose arguendo that there is such a good stance for reprogenetics. Then there is still the problem of EA communicating this as a social movement. In other words, a newcomer to EA would not necessarily by default be able to parse out whether EA’s inclusion of some work on reprogenetics is eugenical or not, even if it is in fact not eugenical. There would be significant work of communication (which is continuous with ongoing reevaluation and giving more people or groups their proper seat at the table). I haven’t thought about this much. I’m curious if you think this is infeasible even assuming the previous point is true?
I believe that all of these harms persist even if you don’t specifically talk about where you might believe the existing differences in intelligence lie, because of that history.
Reprogenetics is orthogonal to ancestry groups; it would be a set of tools that could be offered to individual couples who want kids. I’m against eugenic policies such as paying certain types of people to have kids or not have kids, anything about immigration, etc. I think there is a positive ideology (I mean, a coherent ideology that gives explicit answers to the relevant questions) that is good and that is anti-racist and anti-eugenics. The only interest that I have in differences in intelligence or any other trait, are differences between individuals with or without a given allele.
I believe that you want to deploy this technology in a way that avoids coercions and avoids racism. The problem is that you aren’t in charge of society: once the tech is out there, you don’t get a large say in how it gets used. Those decisions go to the public in the case of democracies, and to a handful of scumbags in the case of dictatorships and oligarchies.
A quick look through history will show that basically anytime one group of people sees another group as genetically or racially inferior, discrimination and atrocities result. I see no reason to think that this trend will not continue if we create new groups of people. If Bulgarians embrace genetic “amplification”, to improve their “intelligence” and “morals”, but Romanians ban it, human history indicates that Bulgarians will look at Romanians as their inferiors, and treat them accordingly.
The problem is that you aren’t in charge of society: once the tech is out there, you don’t get a large say in how it gets used.
Right. That’s why I’m not like “hm let me write down a list of good things to do with this technology and allow those, and write down a list of bad things to ban, and then that solves everything”. Instead I’m like “ok, there’s a big set of questions around how society can take stances around this technology; let’s figure out whether and how such a stance can actually result in overwhelmingly good outcomes for humanity—i.e. figure out what that stance is, and figure out how to figure it out (e.g. who to bring in to give voice to), figure out how to get to society having that stance, etc.”. See for example https://berkeleygenomics.org/articles/Genomic_emancipation_contra_eugenics.html
Regarding your second paragraph, I’d appreciate some metadata. For example, is this a worry that you’re just now thinking of? Is it something you’ve investigated a bunch and have a lot of detail about? Is this something you feel confident about, or not? Is this something you’re interested in thinking about? Are you putting this forward as a compelling reason to not investigate more about whether reprogenetics should be a top cause (as opposed, for example, to one major downside risk that would have to be considered and evaluated as part of such an investigation)?
I don’t feel very worried about it because in fact these children would be quite varied in themselves as a class, and there would be quite a lot of variation, so that there’s no clear distinction between kids resulting from reprogenetics vs. not. See the diagram in this subsection: https://berkeleygenomics.org/articles/Genomic_emancipation.html#intelligence Further, by default these kids would have varied backgrounds, grow up in different places, etc. But, maybe it’s a more likely risk than I’m guessing at the moment.
That said, I do think it’s very important, for this and many other reasons, to make reprogenetic technologies very accessible (inexpensive, widespread, legal, functional, safe, applicable to anyone), so that there isn’t siloing into some small class. I also want this technology to be developed and deployed in a liberal, diverse democracy first, for this reason and for other reasons.
I think these are fair points, but the tone seems deconstructive and a bit condescending. I think it’s possible to disagree and to caution loudly while still respecting that the post was made in good faith.
I think that repeatedly re-opening discussions on any form of eugenics actively undermines the work many EAs are doing in the global south and severely risks our reputation and credibility as a movement in the global health space. Given the history of discussing this topic within EA, I do not believe that anyone in this community has the precision and tact to discuss proposals around eugenics without causing these harms, if it is even possible to do so at all (I do not believe it is).
I also believe that discussing eugenics on the forum undermines attempts to make EA more welcoming to a large number of racial groups, because of the association with forms of oppression and genocide against those groups. I believe that all of these harms persist even if you don’t specifically talk about where you might believe the existing differences in intelligence lie, because of that history. I believe that there are many people who would make fantastic EAs who are turned off of this movement because of this association.
I believe that members of the EA movement and its leaders should loudly and sharply condemn all forms of race science, human biodiversity, and more broadly, eugenics, because of these harms.
I am also, frankly, tired of having to write this comment every 6 months.
Thanks for engaging!
Thanks for your links in the other comment; I had been searching for human intelligence amplification, but not “genetic enhancement”. (I generally avoid the term “enhancement” in this context because I believe it is subtley philosophically incorrect—it bakes in a degree of eugenical thinking, in that it kinda sounds like it presumes some notion of “better” and therefore presumes some notion of “good”, which is a core outlook of eugenics.)
Glancing at those links, I can understand some more why you might have a reaction like this, haha. I would submit myself as different from that history. I’m serious about this area; I view moral and societal aspects as equally important to technical aspects; I’m not a trained expert but I have been studying for a few years; and I’m here to actually think these things through, ideally working more with some EAs.
This makes total sense. I would be curious to hear from / talk with anyone who is turned off by reprogenetics in general or turned off from EA because of reprogenetics in particular. I’d like to understand the issue better and understand where people are coming from better. (I understand that might be difficult because maybe most people would just not want to talk about it, but nevertheless. Maybe someone reading this is like “I was almost turned off by this stuff, but I stuck around.” and would be up for chatting.)
I think there’s a couple dimensions:
There’s a set of real problems around ideology / policy / social stances. In particular, how could society think about the use of reprogenetics, in a way that doesn’t affirm or apply eugenic motivations? I’ve thought about this a lot; see for example here: https://berkeleygenomics.org/articles/Genomic_emancipation_contra_eugenics.html I think that reprogenetics can be pursued in a way that is clearly, firmly, truly good—including being not racist, not totalitarian, pluralist, liberal, and egalitarian. That’s not supposed to be obvious, and I think there are substantive open questions here; part of pursuing this cause would be working this out more seriously, including merging with lots of groups and perspectives (e.g. hearing more from disability groups, more generally giving proper equal seat at the table to advocacy groups in general, thinking about what sorts of state policies or professional norms can work, etc.).
Suppose arguendo that there is such a good stance for reprogenetics. Then there is still the problem of EA communicating this as a social movement. In other words, a newcomer to EA would not necessarily by default be able to parse out whether EA’s inclusion of some work on reprogenetics is eugenical or not, even if it is in fact not eugenical. There would be significant work of communication (which is continuous with ongoing reevaluation and giving more people or groups their proper seat at the table). I haven’t thought about this much. I’m curious if you think this is infeasible even assuming the previous point is true?
Reprogenetics is orthogonal to ancestry groups; it would be a set of tools that could be offered to individual couples who want kids. I’m against eugenic policies such as paying certain types of people to have kids or not have kids, anything about immigration, etc. I think there is a positive ideology (I mean, a coherent ideology that gives explicit answers to the relevant questions) that is good and that is anti-racist and anti-eugenics. The only interest that I have in differences in intelligence or any other trait, are differences between individuals with or without a given allele.
I believe that you want to deploy this technology in a way that avoids coercions and avoids racism. The problem is that you aren’t in charge of society: once the tech is out there, you don’t get a large say in how it gets used. Those decisions go to the public in the case of democracies, and to a handful of scumbags in the case of dictatorships and oligarchies.
A quick look through history will show that basically anytime one group of people sees another group as genetically or racially inferior, discrimination and atrocities result. I see no reason to think that this trend will not continue if we create new groups of people. If Bulgarians embrace genetic “amplification”, to improve their “intelligence” and “morals”, but Romanians ban it, human history indicates that Bulgarians will look at Romanians as their inferiors, and treat them accordingly.
Right. That’s why I’m not like “hm let me write down a list of good things to do with this technology and allow those, and write down a list of bad things to ban, and then that solves everything”. Instead I’m like “ok, there’s a big set of questions around how society can take stances around this technology; let’s figure out whether and how such a stance can actually result in overwhelmingly good outcomes for humanity—i.e. figure out what that stance is, and figure out how to figure it out (e.g. who to bring in to give voice to), figure out how to get to society having that stance, etc.”. See for example https://berkeleygenomics.org/articles/Genomic_emancipation_contra_eugenics.html
Regarding your second paragraph, I’d appreciate some metadata. For example, is this a worry that you’re just now thinking of? Is it something you’ve investigated a bunch and have a lot of detail about? Is this something you feel confident about, or not? Is this something you’re interested in thinking about? Are you putting this forward as a compelling reason to not investigate more about whether reprogenetics should be a top cause (as opposed, for example, to one major downside risk that would have to be considered and evaluated as part of such an investigation)?
Anyway, on the object level, I’m interested in thinking about it. I mentioned a class of such worries here https://berkeleygenomics.org/articles/Potential_perils_of_germline_genomic_engineering.html#internal-misalignment but haven’t investigated that particular worry.
I don’t feel very worried about it because in fact these children would be quite varied in themselves as a class, and there would be quite a lot of variation, so that there’s no clear distinction between kids resulting from reprogenetics vs. not. See the diagram in this subsection: https://berkeleygenomics.org/articles/Genomic_emancipation.html#intelligence Further, by default these kids would have varied backgrounds, grow up in different places, etc. But, maybe it’s a more likely risk than I’m guessing at the moment.
That said, I do think it’s very important, for this and many other reasons, to make reprogenetic technologies very accessible (inexpensive, widespread, legal, functional, safe, applicable to anyone), so that there isn’t siloing into some small class. I also want this technology to be developed and deployed in a liberal, diverse democracy first, for this reason and for other reasons.
I think these are fair points, but the tone seems deconstructive and a bit condescending. I think it’s possible to disagree and to caution loudly while still respecting that the post was made in good faith.