US startup charging couples to ‘screen embryos for IQ’
US startup charging couples to ‘screen embryos for IQ’
Heliospect’s services were marketed at up to $50,000 for 100 embryos, undercover footage shows
I can't see any problems here. It's not like there's a famous novel about why this is a terrible idea or a movie about it with Ethan Hawke and Uma Thurman.
The idea of intelligence being a static property of a person is already known to be wrong. And IQ is not the same as intelligence. The idea that there’s one number to put to how smart a person is needs to die.
Also there are multiple types of intelligence, im good at tracking and navigation but woefully braindead when confronted with a social situation where I cant just poker face and pretend I am above it all.
So basically they are straight up scamming people since we do not have knowledge of genetic indicators correlated with a test that has changed over the years.
Never mind that genetics can't reliably predict IQ. The important thing is that IQ can't reliably predict intelligence.
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IQIntelligence is colloquial and subjective. It can't be objectively measured anymore than beauty or since of humor. -
IQ depends on their only being one kind of underlying intelligence.
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IQ hews to cultural categories in defiance of biology and genetics.
IQ is your performance on an IQ test. It's not subjective at all, for the same reason that SAT math scores are not subjective.
The real question is whether SAT scores and/or IQ scores have anything to do with what we consider "intelligence".
Yeah its a stupid thing to filter for. Looking for genetic diseases and such. I get it. Trying to looks for mental or athletic prowess likely is not going to work. Of course the same rich folk who do this will have tutors/trainers and arrange their whole life around whatever thing they want them good and low and behold they will be good at it and tell their friends how it was because of the genetic selection.
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Among all the moral problems, there is also a technical problem: we don't know that much about the relationship between IQ and genetics. Not even close to enough. We can't even reliably predict something as straightforward as eye color outside of very simple situations and that is far clearer than the genetics of building and operating brains.
Not only is the genetics that underlie human intelligence complicated, so too is understanding intelligence itself. It's not even clear that human intelligence can sensibly be reduced to a single number, or even a set of numbers, let alone ones that can be used to ordinaly rank people.
The situation isn't much, if at all, better for any of the other traits they list. There may be some useful screens for specific mutautions that result in particular diseases that are well understood, but when it comes to the full understanding and subtlety of more complex traits, human genomics just isn't there yet.
Anybody with even half a brain knew that IQ was a bullshit number the first time they heard about it. Anybody who thinks that’s how intelligence works is not intelligent themselves.
Oh I think there was a book about this... Brave New... something
Okay, say this was true. I'm not saying it is, but let's carry this argument to the next step.
IQ is a score that shows how well someone can solve problems and think compared to other people their age. It doesn’t measure how smart you are in every way, but it can help show how strong your brain is in certain kinds of thinking. So let's say, okay, they aren't born smart, but we'll train them to BE smart, and this screening will make it easier because we won't be working upstream against "the dumbness," or whatever. Kid has the capacity to be smart, now all we have to do is train them, right?
Next, you have to assume that their parents and environment allows for this. These services will be available for rich parents only, which historically have been a better environment for teaching. But it also will give these "high IQ kids" access to parents of conservative, "Christian values" as well as liberal rich kids. So now we have a problem. What if having a high IQ also leads to insanity? We haven't even defined what "smart" is, really, and so a lot of conservatives, "smart" means "stronger than your enemy." Intelligence without compassion breeds psychosis, and leadership qualities that are sociopathic and ruthless. And that INCLUDES turning on their own kind. But that's what they want, right? "Survival of the fittest," a kind of social Darwinism.
"Sorry dad. I know you raised me to be the head of the company, but I gutted it instead, and will be funding my super-race and frankly...? You're genetically inferior. Goodbye."
What if having a high IQ also leads to insanity?
I don't know about insanity, but there are and have been plenty of smart people who also have some very weird ideas. Linus Pauling thinks vitamin C is a panacea. Bobby Fischer believes in antisemitic conspiracy theories. Garry Kasparov thinks history is wrong and has come up with his own timeline of history. Nikola Tesla was terrified of women with pearl earrings and talked to pigeons. Yukio Mishima thought he could restore imperial Japan, something the emperor himself didn't want. Mayim Bialik is just fucking nuts.
Oh God lol... "Sorry sir/ma'am your baby is dumb as fuck. That little unborn shit can't even tell me what shape goes in what hole! He's got no chance."
We should just rewrite the IQ test with a bias for babies.
Baby comes in test at 160, then if they test later just be like idk what did you do?