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“Genetic Engineering” will not “save” population trends

December 17th, 2008 by Andrew Yates

A commenter at Half Sigma expresses a common sentiment in the software community regarding genetics:

Don’t get your knickers in a twist. Egg selection, sperm selection, genetic engineering, and bioengineering will fix this. If we didn’t have these coming technologies, we would be screwed.

I tend to keep politics out of Think Gene, but I have bad news for the libertarian-leaning technologists of the Internet alarmed by the obvious asymptotic exponential limits in the human population function. As they know, high social fitness (e.g. education) is inversely correlated with reproductive fitness. However, reproductive technologies will only exasperate that correlation because they make socially fit children more expensive. Thus, the stratification of social fitness will continue to accelerate.

First, a quick brief about human-directed genetic selection:

  • People will genetically engineer their children —and themselves— when the technology is available and demonstrably effective. To disagree would be to claim that all people will never practice any genetic engineering, and that is absurd.
  • People already “genetically engineer” their children naturally: it’s called “sexual selection.” It’s not an coincidence that you don’t simply pick a random name out of the phone book to have children. Also, this selection is and has always been very much socially directed —implicitly and explicitly. This is so obvious that maybe it’s not consciously apparent to some people, but think of this: do your parents care with whom you have children?
  • Society has and continues to strongly select people based on their genetics. The far most obvious example is that children are almost always raised by their biological parents. More broad and obvious examples include university admissions and nepotism. Further, society is getting better at sorting people by abstract merits rather than by mere geographic or ethnic constraints. Obvious examples include standardized testing and Internet communities. There is some non-zero correlation between these abstract merits and genetics.
  • Technologies to artificially select gametes by genetic material are already available, although their use today is largely limited to very obvious genetic selection criteria like sex chromosomes and critical monogenetic diseases. This technology is rapidly advancing as we continue to learn about the human genome.
  • Socially selecting yourself —e.g. attending graduate school— delays reproduction by a few years. But (generously) assuming a population-wide equal lifetime reproductive fecundity, that’s no big deal, because everybody is having the same number of children, right? WRONG.
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    This the compound interest formula. Increasing the number of years until one has children increases the exponent. There is an exponential difference in population rates based solely on years waited to have children. Intuitively, think when you’re 28, out of grad school, have saved some money, and are ready to start a family, the 1.2 kids born to the teen-pregnant couples are already only 8 years away from reproducing again. Assuming family A has 1.2 children at 28 and family B has 1.2 children at 18, starting with equal populations, family B will double in size compared to family A every 110 years. (This function is even more greatly exasperated if the reproduction rate for family B is higher. If family B has twice as many kids per person (2.4) as family A, then family B doubles every 15 years compared to family A). This is highly simplified, but note in reality, the situation is even worse. Assume that some children in family B, by some greater intellectual or motivational endowment, attend graduate school. Likewise, some children in family A get teen-pregnant and choose not to attend university like their parents. The net effect is that the ability and motivation to achieve intellectual pursuits increasingly necessary in our highly specialized society is biologically deselecting itself out of both families when compared to the total population.

Now that’s out of the way…

Reproductive technologies like genetic engineering make having children an even more expensive investment of wealth and time —but only for the most success-conscientious couples. A larger investment means that the period and rate of childbirth will continue stratify by one’s desire to invest in themselves and their family —especially for couples without extended family support.

Face it, the trend in civilized nations is radical non-directed social stratification. It’s better to accept this reality so that we can discuss and respond to it rationally rather than pretending that the world is one big “all men are created equal” family because it’s too scary to think about otherwise. “All men are created equal” is a pragmatic legal abstraction that has been socially successful the last several centuries. It’s not a physical description of reality.

Contrary to the hallmark of every critical journalistic piece about genetics, the future of inequality needs no neo-Hitler concocting blonde-hair, blue-eyed super genius babies in sterile reproductive camps. It only needs to increasingly make raising more successful children more expensive. I’m not aware of any significant counteracting trend.

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Viewing 18 Comments

    • ^
    • v
    The only way I see a counteracting trend happening is resources necessary for continued living. A more intellectual individual is more likely to develop enough wealth to support themselves and take care of any life-threatening emergencies that may arise. This would have been a bigger deal in previous eras when threats were more common. However, in our current extra-safe society, this is not so much the case anymore. However, when space travel becomes easily feasible, it may begin to crop up again. Earth, by being a relatively closed system, has limited resources and can theoretically only sustain so many people. The requirements to surviving in a extra-planetary environment requires careful management of resources and environment and a better intelligence. In short, once extra-planetary colonization because easily accessible, genetic evolution may turn back towards the evolution of greater intelligence.
    • ^
    • v
    I don't know, this reads to me like the same "technology will save us" hopeful dodge. Extra-planetary colonization? Come on, bring it back down to Earth.
    • ^
    • v
    "Face it, the trend in civilized nations is radical non-directed social stratification."

    Is it ? I was under the impression that more and more people have access to education, - which means that more and more people have equal opportunities, which is what matters, - we moved away from "everyone created equal" some time ago didn't we ?
    • ^
    • v
    Not in America. I can't speak about attitudes in Europe, but I assume that they're not radically different.

    You'd certainly get in trouble if you stated "people are not created equal" on the television news in the USA. Also, "equal opportunity" is silly, too. Something as simple as where you are born and raised clearly nixes that idea. Are you telling me that you'd have the same life in Concordia, MO as in Toledo, OH, as in Palo Alto, CA as in Manhattan, NY? Again, that people do NOT have equal opportunity is one of those "so obvious" things about life that it seems one can't think about it directly.
    • ^
    • v
    No, you probably wouldn't have the same life, but that IMO is not the same as not having equal opportunity, a tougher route maybe, but still opportunities are not actively blocked by authorities. I think what you are arguing is a lack of equal possibilities (in the lack of a better word) or maybe a lack of equal access, in which case I agree, equality is an (undesirable ?) utopia.

    That said, in contrast to US, Europe (and especially my region) is approaching equal possibilities too.
    • ^
    • v
    " Face it, the trend in civilized nations is radical non-directed social stratification"

    Can you give me an example of an uncivilized nation?
    • ^
    • v
    "Civilized" isn't a scientific term, but I specified "civilized" to keep my opinion to what I know: modern, urban, literate, specialized society. Start subtracting those traits and my thesis becomes less relevant.

    I'm not going to name a specific nation because:
    - it would provoke a potential opinion battle that's not relevant or interesting to my thesis and
    - I don't have the concrete evidence to defend any such claim
    - Naming a politically recognized state would be misleading since often many different social bodies that could be "nations" exist in a single state. For example, by "Americans," do you mean upper east side Manhattan? "Deliverance" rural south? The Bronx projects? A midwestern suburban housing development?
    • ^
    • v
    The solution is make it free. The only way to avoid stratification is to make genetic engineering freely available to every parent at no cost and to an extent it should be required in order to get rid of diseases. We should also redefine disease. Notice whenever one trait is deficient compared to another but the deficient trait is in the majority it's not regarded as a disease or disability. Instead the other trait is regarded as a gift. Why should percentages determine disease? Let's objectively define disease. If with available technology it could be better without diminishing another trait it should be defined as a disease and treatment should be required in the womb(adults on the other hand should be free to do what they want with their own bodies once gene therapy becomes effective on adults). There may be some tradeoffs and that's where the element of choice would come in. I'd expect that to lead to quite a bit of diversity, since there will probably be a lot of tradeoffs. But people's chances of success would become more equal. Choice would also come in regarding neutral traits. In the end we'd have a more fair society, since people's chances in life would be the same at birth. Some would fail and work at the bottom due to their own choices and some would succeed and make it to the top, but the important thing is it would be due mostly to effort since the genetic factor would no longer be an issue.
    • ^
    • v
    Making genetic engineering "free" doesn't make it equally available to all people, though it may help amortize the costs. First and foremost is the decision when and how to participate. For example, birth control is "free," yet some populations continue to have unwanted pregnancies. Second, consider different levels of service. More comprehensive care may be more expensive than basic subsidized care, but further, genetic engineering of children is an extremely complex and emotionally engaging subject. Even if the exact same service was available to all people at no cost, some people will be more willing and more able to participate in the planning than others.
    • ^
    • v
    However, reproductive technologies will only exasperate that correlation because they make socially fit children more expensive
    • ^
    • v
    I tend to keep politics out of Think Gene, but I have bad news for the libertarian-leaning technologists of the Internet alarmed by the obvious asymptotic exponential limits in the human population function.
    • ^
    • v
    Likewise, some children in family A get teen-pregnant and choose not to attend university like their parents. The net effect is that the ability and motivation to achieve intellectual pursuits increasingly necessary in our highly specialized society is biologically deselecting itself out of both families when compared to the total population.
    • ^
    • v
    This would have been a bigger deal in previous eras when threats were more common. However, in our current extra-safe society, this is not so much the case anymore. However, when space travel becomes easily feasible, it may begin to crop up again. Earth, by being a relatively closed system, has limited resources and can theoretically only sustain so many people
    • ^
    • v
    A more intellectual individual is more likely to develop enough wealth to support themselves and take care of any life-threatening emergencies that may arise.
    • ^
    • v
    A more intellectual individual is more likely to develop enough wealth to support themselves and take care of any life-threatening emergencies that may arise. This would have been a bigger deal in previous eras when threats were more common. However, in our current extra-safe society, this is not so much the case anymore. However, when space travel becomes easily feasible, it may begin to crop up again. Earth, by being a relatively closed system, has limited resources and can theoretically only sustain so many people.
    • ^
    • v
    This would have been a bigger deal in previous eras when threats were more common. However, in our current extra-safe society, this is not so much the case anymore. However, when space travel becomes easily feasible, it may begin to crop up again. Earth, by being a relatively closed system, has limited resources and can theoretically only sustain so many people.
    • ^
    • v
    A larger investment means that the period and rate of childbirth will continue stratify by one’s desire to invest in themselves and their family —especially for couples without extended family support.
    • ^
    • v
    A more intellectual individual is more likely to develop enough wealth to support themselves and take care of any life-threatening emergencies that may arise. This would have been a bigger deal in previous eras when threats were more common. However, in our current extra-safe society, this is not so much the case anymore. However, when space travel becomes easily feasible, it may begin to crop up again.

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