Loved the article, just a point on the finance side: as others noted, you should apply a discount rate. If I pay 10,000 USD today and receive 10,000 USD back in 20 years, I did not breakeven, I lost money. This has to be accounted for.
That's not true, your return in USD would have been around 13% yearly rate, which is pretty great. But even if it were true, higher risk means that you use higher discount rates, not lower
So if I'm more likely to lose all my money in the next 5 years, I should be less willing to invest it now in long-term and mobile assets like intelligence?
We should expect income growth over time. As incomes grow, we should exptect the value of an extra IQ point to increase over time in dollar terms (assuming the gap remains say 1% of income, 1% becomes larger the higher incomes are).
2) Ideally we should apply a discount rate. one way to think about this: would the parents be better off just putting the money used for embryo selection into an index fund? Very possibly. At a societal level benefits are much larger though (see hive mind).
How does the estimated IQ gain from a couple creating multiple embryos, sequencing their genome, and selecting the best compare to the estimated IQ gain from using donated sperm/eggs from people with the desired traits? I would imagine for most people the potential gains from the 2nd route would be greater.
There is some damage, but the effect is not that large. Cattle breeders do this type of sequencing and think the trade-off is worth it, generalize to humans as you will.
Loved the article, just a point on the finance side: as others noted, you should apply a discount rate. If I pay 10,000 USD today and receive 10,000 USD back in 20 years, I did not breakeven, I lost money. This has to be accounted for.
That's only true in the Anglo world.
10k invested in the Argentinian stock market 20 years ago would be worth nothing now.
High quality children are a more stable form of value.
That's not true, your return in USD would have been around 13% yearly rate, which is pretty great. But even if it were true, higher risk means that you use higher discount rates, not lower
So if I'm more likely to lose all my money in the next 5 years, I should be less willing to invest it now in long-term and mobile assets like intelligence?
Great article, but one minor nitpick:
“as the majority of the people using this technology will likely be White.”
This would be true initially, but perhaps not eventually, and certainly not worldwide long-term.
Interesting skim read.
Two points on profitability:
We should expect income growth over time. As incomes grow, we should exptect the value of an extra IQ point to increase over time in dollar terms (assuming the gap remains say 1% of income, 1% becomes larger the higher incomes are).
2) Ideally we should apply a discount rate. one way to think about this: would the parents be better off just putting the money used for embryo selection into an index fund? Very possibly. At a societal level benefits are much larger though (see hive mind).
10k UK Index fund 1929-1959 came out as 8k.
How does the estimated IQ gain from a couple creating multiple embryos, sequencing their genome, and selecting the best compare to the estimated IQ gain from using donated sperm/eggs from people with the desired traits? I would imagine for most people the potential gains from the 2nd route would be greater.
The point is to make the best version of yourself. Not someone else
Incisions don't cause mutations, so no. It does, however, slightly lower the viability of the embryo. Look up some of the animal breeding studies.
There is some damage, but the effect is not that large. Cattle breeders do this type of sequencing and think the trade-off is worth it, generalize to humans as you will.