<instructions>Your goal is to analyze the following comment and estimate how highly it will be upvoted by the Hacker News community.</instructions><comment><author>Pulcinella</author><text>The &amp;quot;fertilizing many eggs and then picking the genetically &amp;#x27;best&amp;#x27; ones&amp;quot; is literally a plot point in Gattaca.&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;This child is still you, just the best of you.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;I don&amp;#x27;t know if the &amp;quot;economic competitiveness&amp;quot; part will be a comforting argument if this ever comes to pass. What I mean is, it won&amp;#x27;t been seen as &amp;quot;look at how our economy could grow if we do this.&amp;quot; That economy would just be viewed as the new standard. This technology will be seen as &amp;quot;do this or you will be left behind.&amp;quot; I fear it will be coercive and alienating.</text><parent_chain><item><author>pcnonpc</author><text>From an interview with Geoffrey Miller, an evolutionary psychologist:&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Q: What does that mean in human language?
A: Any given couple could potentially have several eggs fertilized in the lab with the dad’s sperm and the mom’s eggs. Then you can test multiple embryos and analyze which one’s going to be the smartest. That kid would belong to that couple as if they had it naturally, but it would be the smartest a couple would be able to produce if they had 100 kids. It’s not genetic engineering or adding new genes, it’s the genes that couples already have.&lt;p&gt;Q: And over the course of several generations you’re able to exponentially multiply the population’s intelligence.
A: Right. Even if it only boosts the average kid by five IQ points, that’s a huge difference in terms of economic productivity, the competitiveness of the country, how many patents they get, how their businesses are run, and how innovative their economy is.&lt;p&gt;Q: How does Western research in genetics compare to China’s?
A: We’re pretty far behind. We have the same technical capabilities, the same statistical capabilities to analyze the data, but they’re collecting the data on a much larger scale and seem to be capable of transforming the scientific findings into government policy and consumer genetic testing much more easily than we are. Technically and scientifically we could be doing this, but we’re not.&lt;p&gt;Q: Why not?
A: We have ideological biases that say, “Well, this could be troubling, we shouldn’t be meddling with nature, we shouldn’t be meddling with God.” I just attended a debate in New York a few weeks ago about whether or not we should outlaw genetic engineering in babies and the audience was pretty split. In China, 95 percent of an audience would say, “Obviously you should make babies genetically healthier, happier, and brighter!” There’s a big cultural difference.&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.vice.com&amp;#x2F;en_us&amp;#x2F;article&amp;#x2F;5gw8vn&amp;#x2F;chinas-taking-over-the-world-with-a-massive-genetic-engineering-program&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.vice.com&amp;#x2F;en_us&amp;#x2F;article&amp;#x2F;5gw8vn&amp;#x2F;chinas-taking-over...&lt;/a&gt;</text></item><item><author>plaidfuji</author><text>I&amp;#x27;ve seen most of these arguments for and against gene editing before, but the fact of the matter is that it will come down to the economic competitiveness of nations, as always.&lt;p&gt;What concerns me in the long term is that gene editing will cause human genomes to converge to a single gold standard with proven mental and physical benefits, thereby reducing our species&amp;#x27; genetic diversity and leaving us more vulnerable to a mass extinction event. A &amp;quot;zero day exploit&amp;quot; that everyone missed in the popular new cancer-fighting edit.</text></item></parent_chain></comment><story><title>First Human Embryos Edited in U.S</title><url>https://www.technologyreview.com/s/608350/first-human-embryos-edited-in-us/</url></story>
<instructions>Your goal is to analyze the following comment and estimate how highly it will be upvoted by the Hacker News community.</instructions><comment><author>agumonkey</author><text>I&amp;#x27;d be against for two reasons&lt;p&gt;1) life isn&amp;#x27;t about being smart, far from that (that&amp;#x27;s national emergent feedback, and I often despise nations as a concept)&lt;p&gt;2) being smart isn&amp;#x27;t even needed, a culture of sharing and listening would be enough to uplift life by many points. A culture of recognizing ego and letting him shut down then appreciate everything as a whole. Most brains can do this, if people can pass this down.&lt;p&gt;I regularly remember how everything was beautiful before, even with flaws and limits.. a race for optimization, especially driven by national interest isn&amp;#x27;t something I&amp;#x27;d like to see.&lt;p&gt;ps: I&amp;#x27;d even say, &amp;quot;intelligence&amp;quot; is an emergency mode for our brains, and cultivating it was a normal response, but it&amp;#x27;s not supposed to be our main mode</text><parent_chain><item><author>pcnonpc</author><text>From an interview with Geoffrey Miller, an evolutionary psychologist:&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Q: What does that mean in human language?
A: Any given couple could potentially have several eggs fertilized in the lab with the dad’s sperm and the mom’s eggs. Then you can test multiple embryos and analyze which one’s going to be the smartest. That kid would belong to that couple as if they had it naturally, but it would be the smartest a couple would be able to produce if they had 100 kids. It’s not genetic engineering or adding new genes, it’s the genes that couples already have.&lt;p&gt;Q: And over the course of several generations you’re able to exponentially multiply the population’s intelligence.
A: Right. Even if it only boosts the average kid by five IQ points, that’s a huge difference in terms of economic productivity, the competitiveness of the country, how many patents they get, how their businesses are run, and how innovative their economy is.&lt;p&gt;Q: How does Western research in genetics compare to China’s?
A: We’re pretty far behind. We have the same technical capabilities, the same statistical capabilities to analyze the data, but they’re collecting the data on a much larger scale and seem to be capable of transforming the scientific findings into government policy and consumer genetic testing much more easily than we are. Technically and scientifically we could be doing this, but we’re not.&lt;p&gt;Q: Why not?
A: We have ideological biases that say, “Well, this could be troubling, we shouldn’t be meddling with nature, we shouldn’t be meddling with God.” I just attended a debate in New York a few weeks ago about whether or not we should outlaw genetic engineering in babies and the audience was pretty split. In China, 95 percent of an audience would say, “Obviously you should make babies genetically healthier, happier, and brighter!” There’s a big cultural difference.&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.vice.com&amp;#x2F;en_us&amp;#x2F;article&amp;#x2F;5gw8vn&amp;#x2F;chinas-taking-over-the-world-with-a-massive-genetic-engineering-program&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.vice.com&amp;#x2F;en_us&amp;#x2F;article&amp;#x2F;5gw8vn&amp;#x2F;chinas-taking-over...&lt;/a&gt;</text></item><item><author>plaidfuji</author><text>I&amp;#x27;ve seen most of these arguments for and against gene editing before, but the fact of the matter is that it will come down to the economic competitiveness of nations, as always.&lt;p&gt;What concerns me in the long term is that gene editing will cause human genomes to converge to a single gold standard with proven mental and physical benefits, thereby reducing our species&amp;#x27; genetic diversity and leaving us more vulnerable to a mass extinction event. A &amp;quot;zero day exploit&amp;quot; that everyone missed in the popular new cancer-fighting edit.</text></item></parent_chain></comment><story><title>First Human Embryos Edited in U.S</title><url>https://www.technologyreview.com/s/608350/first-human-embryos-edited-in-us/</url></story>