Re: Hurray for China

On Mar 22, 2013 3:43 PM, "hibbsa" <hibbsa-/[email protected]> wrote:
>
> While the West self destructs (with a little help from "friends") China
> is fully intent their children will be going to the stars.
>
> http://www.vice.com/read/chinas-taking-over-the-world-with-a-massive-genetic-engineering-program


From the article:
>
> At BGI Shenzhen, scientists have collected DNA samples from 2,000 of the world’s smartest people and are sequencing their entire genomes in an attempt to identify the alleles which determine human intelligence. Apparently they’re not far from finding them, and when they do, embryo screening will allow parents to pick their brightest zygote and potentially bump up every generation's intelligence by five to 15 IQ points. Within a couple of generations, competing with the Chinese on an intellectual level will be like challenging Lena Dunham to a getting-naked-on-TV contest.

So what's the argument that genes have a role in more human
intelligence? There isn't one in this article. He just says something
like apparently we're almost there in finding the genes that do play a
role in more human intelligence.

So it seems like what they are doing is getting DNA from smart people,
maybe also getting DNA from dumb people, and comparing the DNA,
looking for correlations -- looking for genes that the smart people
have that the dumb people don't have -- actually its more like looking
for genes that most smart people have that most dumb people don't
have. And then they will conclude that those genes are the one that
(partly) cause more intelligence. A classic correlation argument (i.e.
not an argument). [Also how will they choose how much is "most"?
Arbitrarily?]


And their plan is to have parents to make 100 zygotes, and pick the
one that has the best intelligence genes, and let that one become
their child.


How are they going to test their theory? Are they just going to wait
to see if their national average IQ scores go up (they did mention
this in the article)? If so, how does that test the theory that
certain genes partly cause more intelligence? It doesn't. IQ scores
can go up because the government's education system get more effective
in getting kids to learn how to take IQ tests better. I'm pretty sure
national average IQ scores go up over time anyway. So how will they
refute the theory that IQ scores went up for the same reason they're
going up now? What are they going to do, come up with a measure of how
much IQ scores already go up, and then compare the new numbers of IQ
scores going up, and then claim that the extra IQ rise is due to the
gene selection? But this is another correlation argument (i.e. not an
argument). Any number of variables could be the cause of the extra IQ
rise, including the same reason for its rise in the past.

What a waste of wealth.

-- Rami


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