[jcranmer]

Okay, let's get this silly sci-fi trope out the way. Genetics doesn't work like that.

We don't have a clue how to edit DNA to make people smarter or taller or stronger. And there's no sign that we're going to get to that knowledge sometime this century.

Furthermore, what we do know about our genome and our proteome strongly suggests that lots of stuff are doing double-duty. The gene that causes sickle cell anemia also provides antimalarial resistance. That makes the argument for changing DNA one way or the other much more difficult to make.

And, furthermore, even applying CRISPR to human cells is still not exactly successful yet. Of the two CRISPR babies, one was mosaic (i.e., the edits didn't reach all the cells) and the other was heterozygous (i.e., didn't reach both copies of DNA), and neither actually contained the desired deletion. So all the ethics violations were in pursuit of a project that would have scored at best a C (just to underscore how much of a monster He was).

[meowface]

You could be right, but I think you're being a bit pessimistic. We're nowhere near fine-tuning complex traits like intelligence and strength, but I could see it happening within all of our lifetimes.

[credit_guy]

I wish you were right, but I have my doubts. Some people familiar with writing software think the DNA is some type of very long program written in some unknown language. If only we could decipher the language. In reality, there is no language. The genes are recipes to build some nano-machines (the proteins). That's it. Some of us posses a certain version of a protein, some posses another one. Everything is emergent properties. It's like positing the rules for a "game of life". You can't tell from the rules what emergent behavior you'll see. You need to run the game. Evolution does just that, it runs the game. Some codes survive, some don't. There is no language of the genetic code.

For us to fine tune inteligence or strength, we need to be able to predict lots and lots of layers of emerging properties. Or simply to find ways to run the game many, many times. We can't run the game by experimenting with babies. Will we be able to run the game on a computer? I'm not holding my breath on this one.

[jakeogh]

We cant even do the 3-body problem; it's -trivial- but still not a closed solution.

We seem to be good at coming up with approximations and ways to exert selection pressure.. but when we let our digital approximations go analog/realware, the results are difficult to use... http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.50....

[mcv]

I wouldn't call that pessimistic. Fine-tuning traits like intelligence, strength, height, etc are in my opinion the thing that's going to lead to designer babies. The longer we stay away from that, the better.

I can certainly see the case for fixing genetic defects, though as the sickly cell/malaria example shows, that's not always clear cut either. And even if you just fight genetic defects, if it's only available to the rich, it's going to create a genetic class system where the rich literally have better genes than the poor. I shudder to think what that might do to a society.

[meowface]

Well, I was referring to what might happen, not what should happen. Regardless of how you or I feel about the subject, designer babies are pretty much inevitable.

[nyolfen]

>We don't have a clue how to edit DNA to make people smarter or taller or stronger. And there's no sign that we're going to get to that knowledge sometime this century.

iterated embryo selection for those traits is at most 10-15 years away, though i suspect much closer

[bilbo0s]

You suspect wrong. The time it takes to ascertain the, say, intelligence of an iteration is just too long. The OP is right, this sort of thing is, best case, a century long study.