this post was submitted on 21 Oct 2024
119 points (100.0% liked)

TechTakes

1489 readers
31 users here now

Big brain tech dude got yet another clueless take over at HackerNews etc? Here's the place to vent. Orange site, VC foolishness, all welcome.

This is not debate club. Unless it’s amusing debate.

For actually-good tech, you want our NotAwfulTech community

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
dgerard@awful.systems
119
US startup charging couples to ‘screen embryos for IQ’ (www.theguardian.com)
submitted 2 months ago by sue_me_please@awful.systems to c/techtakes@awful.systems
87 comments fedilink hide all child comments
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] HelixDab2@lemm.ee 16 points 2 months ago (2 children)

IQ is so incredibly complicated, and we really don't know how it works, and what genes allow for the possibility of high IQ. So what are they even screening for? If they're just looking at broad trends in population IQ compared to genetics, then what they're actually seeing are environmental factors, which play an immense role in whether or not potential is ever reached.

[–] conciselyverbose@sh.itjust.works 7 points 2 months ago

But on the plus side, the people capable of paying for this bullshit are going to have significantly higher chance of proper nutrition for their kids, access to good education, and ability to avoid environmental toxins, so they just have to compare their "handpicked sperm" to the population as a whole and they'll show great results.

Yeah this is an obvious scam lol.

(It's not about IQ specifically, but to anyone interested in how many different environment factors play a role in human behavior/outcomes, Behave by Robert Sapolsky is an excellent overview of research in a broad variety of fields. It's definitely not a light read, but it doesn't assume too much prior knowledge, and is one of my favorite books on what makes us tick.)

[–] Gradually_Adjusting@lemmy.world 4 points 2 months ago (1 children)

There are likely many hundreds or more of contributing alleles according to one paper I read in uni. How individual differences manifest genetically is stultifyingly complex. We still don't even have a unifying theory of what intelligence is, or even consciousness - much less "how make smarterer". It's before early days, we're still banging rocks together. Scientists know approximately dick about intelligence.

[–] HelixDab2@lemm.ee 4 points 2 months ago (1 children)

That's the really crazy thing, innit? We don't even know what being conscious entails! But we've got over one hundred years of studying ("studying") psychology while just handwaving the underlying mechanisms. We have no idea how all the genes interact, much less how environment directly influences all of that, but we're still trying to do complex eugenics that's lightyears past our current understanding.

Maybe we get to Gattaca someday, but it's not going to be soon.