WIRED has a frightening report by John Bohannon, “Why Are Some People So Smart? The Answer Could Spawn a Generation of Superbabies”. Really, just sooner than I was expecting. After sixty years of DNA research and computer development, serious effort is being made by non-dogmatic people taking advantage of today's super-computers to get the crunching done. The article is worth contemplating if you have children.
These efforts may not succeed, but others will — plus surprises. Please note that prohibition is unenforcible world-wide.
So, get ready for “enhanced” humanity. What these
“enhancements”
will be and who will get them, and what happens to those who don't will make the future very interesting. Gattacaca? Could be worse, like I Put My Blue Genes On.
“Enhanced” humans may not think like we dull “normals” do, and . . .
And when they achieve the breakthrough, who will be standing behind the screen to appropriate this knowledge and turn it to malevolent purposes?
ReplyDeleteSF author David Weber ponders this in his Honor Harrington series. If he's right, there will be some "surprises" because the human psyche is more complex than a simple concept of "intelligence".
ReplyDeletehttp://baencd.thefifthimperium.com/22-MissionofHonorCD/MissionofHonorCD/
"there will be some "surprises" because the human psyche is more complex than a simple concept of "intelligence"."
ReplyDeleteThat was exactly my thought when I read this.
I took a genetics course this last semester and learned about a few processes that involve more than one set of genes, sometimes on different chromosomes. But my teacher stressed that there are new discoveries made all the time that turn old knowledge on its head.
And I heard an interesting documentary once on the taming and breeding of foxes in Russia. The breeder was selecting for tame-ability and friendliness, and he got increasingly unfoxlike dogs. At some point in the documentary someone said that there appears to be some "vertical" connections in our dna in addition to the "horizontal" ones we know about.
Hmmm . . . Well, I suspect some of the key psychological features of "foxyness" as it were, are wrapped around foxes being solitary, non-pack animals.
ReplyDeleteBut they probably have ancestors that are pack animals. And what makes dogs tameable and friendly is based on their pack characteristics. I suspect this guy basically ended up breeding foxes to be pack animals again, reverting them to a more doggy ancestry and taking away the "solitary fox" stuff.
KHAAAAAN!!!!
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