Superbabies is a backup plan; focus the energy of humanity’s collective genetic endowment into a single generation, and have THAT generation to solve problems like “figure out how to control digital superintelligence
The academic institutions in charge of exploring these ideas are deeply compromised by insane ideologies. And the big commercial entities are too timid to do anything truly novel; once they discovered they had a technology that could potentially make a few tens of billions treating single gene genetic disorders, no one wanted to take any risks; better to take the easy, guaranteed money and spend your life on a lucrative endeavor improving the lives of 0.5% of the population than go for a hail mary project that will result in journalists writing lots of articles calling you a eugenicist.
Superbabies is a backup plan; focus the energy of humanity’s collective genetic endowment into a single generation, and have THAT generation to solve problems like “figure out how to control digital superintelligence”.
Science-fiction solutions for science-fiction problems!
Let’s see what the comments say!
Considering current human distributions and a lack of 160+ IQ people having written off sub-100 IQ populations as morally useless […]
Dude are you aware where you are posting.
Just hope it never happens, like nuke wars?
Yeah that’s what ran the Cold War, hopes and dreams. JFC I keep forgetting these are kids born long after 1989.
Could you do all the research on a boat in the ocean? Excuse the naive question.
No, please keep asking the naive questions, it’s what provides fodder for comments like this .
(regarding humans having “[F]ixed skull size” and can therefore a priori not compete with AI):
Artificial wombs may remove this bottleneck.
This points to another implied SF solution. It’s already postulated by these people that humans are not having enough babies, or rather the right kind of humans aren’t (wink wink). If we assume that they don’t adhere to the Platonic ideal that women are simply wombs and all traits are inherited from males, then to breed superbabies you need buy-in from the moms. Considering how hard it is for these people to have a normal conversation with the fairer sex, them both managing to convince a partner to have a baby and let some quack from El Salvador mess with its genes seems insurmountable. Artificial wombs will resolve this nicely. Just do a quick test at around puberty to determine the God-given IQ level of a female, then harvest her eggs and implant them into artificial wombs. The less intelligent ones can provide eggs for the “Beta” and “Gamma” models…
But you don’t go from a 160 IQ person with a lot of disagreeability and ambition, who ends up being a big commercial player or whatnot, to 195 IQ and suddenly get someone who just sits in their room for a decade and then speaks gibberish into a youtube livestream and everyone dies, or whatever.
this whole “superbabies will save us from AI” presupposes that the superbabies are immune to the pull of LW ideas. Just as LW are discounting global warming, fascism etc to focus on runaway AI, who says superbabies won’t have a similar problem? It’s just one step up the metaphorical ladder:
LW: “ugh normies don’t understand the x-risk of AI!”
Superbabies: “ugh our LW parents don’t understand the x-risk of Evangelion being actually, like, real!”
oh no, not a eugenicist!
I got caught on that quote too…
Science-fiction solutions for science-fiction problems!
Let’s see what the comments say!
Dude are you aware where you are posting.
Yeah that’s what ran the Cold War, hopes and dreams. JFC I keep forgetting these are kids born long after 1989.
No, please keep asking the naive questions, it’s what provides fodder for comments like this .
(regarding humans having “[F]ixed skull size” and can therefore a priori not compete with AI):
This points to another implied SF solution. It’s already postulated by these people that humans are not having enough babies, or rather the right kind of humans aren’t (wink wink). If we assume that they don’t adhere to the Platonic ideal that women are simply wombs and all traits are inherited from males, then to breed superbabies you need buy-in from the moms. Considering how hard it is for these people to have a normal conversation with the fairer sex, them both managing to convince a partner to have a baby and let some quack from El Salvador mess with its genes seems insurmountable. Artificial wombs will resolve this nicely. Just do a quick test at around puberty to determine the God-given IQ level of a female, then harvest her eggs and implant them into artificial wombs. The less intelligent ones can provide eggs for the “Beta” and “Gamma” models…
These people are insane.
Once again, the Yuddites pine for MODOK
esprit d’escalier
this whole “superbabies will save us from AI” presupposes that the superbabies are immune to the pull of LW ideas. Just as LW are discounting global warming, fascism etc to focus on runaway AI, who says superbabies won’t have a similar problem? It’s just one step up the metaphorical ladder:
LW: “ugh normies don’t understand the x-risk of AI!”
Superbabies: “ugh our LW parents don’t understand the x-risk of Evangelion being actually, like, real!”