The moderator is like a bad journalist 'don't let the facts get in the way of a good story' - he makes his cheesy sci fi predictions but carelessly snubs Pinker in the process. Pinker then rebuts him with ruthless precision, to which the audience has to applaud. Cheesy sci-fi writer is then suitably embarrassed
Easy for Pinker to say he and his wife would not choose to select for higher intelligence in their children, they already have a higher chance of having smarter kids just based on who they are. I think a majority would choose to enhance. But maybe I'm off.
@rxp56 about negligible difference in intelligence from one embryo to another, just look around you at any family with 4 or more kids if there is a one of them with a noticeable higher intelligence than their siblings. i did notice that one of the kid had a noticeable higher intelligence but my sample size is only 3 families as 4+ families are rare in western countries so would love to see data on thousand of families with 4+ kids comparing iq levels among siblings.
@rxp56 All of those concerns are true of gene editing. Other problems with gene editing include your CRISPR machine accidentally inserting the sequence you want someplace in the genome where you didn't want it, or the gene you're messing with having functions you don't know about yet that you end up disrupting, or the gene you're messing with not actually doing what you think it does because it was only correlationally and not causally associated with the trait you wanted to affect. Those effects scale up exponentially with the number of genes you edit. Which is a problem, because a lot of the traits we care about are massively polygenic, requiring potentially thousands or tens of thousands of edits, where the maximum number of edits you can safely make is maybe five or so. So, don't do gene editing. Do embryo selection instead. In particular, do multiple trait embryo selection, because there's literally no reason not to prefer it to single trait embryo selection. Then you can get +1 - 2 SD or so across the board in a basket of high value traits, including things like intelligence and grit and health. www.gwern.net/Embryo-selection
@@dinsel9691 I can see why. It seems to be one of the most worthwhile things humanity could be doing right now. It's hard to imagine a problem that wouldn't be helped by having smarter, healthier, more productive and well-adjusted people. I mean the US alone spends something on the order of a trillion dollars on euthenics. This involves a lot of pushing up slopes of diminishing marginal returns, and more than a few unintended consequences along the way. And yet, almost no one proposes to reject the pursuit of euthenics wholesale. I've literally never heard anyone say anything like "rich kids might get better schools than poor kids, therefore school is unfair, therefore we should ban schools." At most, some people like Caplan or Murray would make cuts in some areas with a low or negative benefit to cost ratio.
@@OptimalOwl Humans are going to be able to dramatically alter the brain much faster and with more precision with neurotechnologies like pulsed ultrasound, photobiomodulation and other BCIs very soon. That's why the race to find ethical guidelines for these huge implications must be as fast as possible. As well as the race, informed by the wisdom of the spiritual traditions, to modify the brain in the right way before corporations come along and modify it the wrong way. The probable result of what you imagine will be a vast genetic divide and civilizational chaos. The whole rich kids/better schools thing is much less of a problem, because it is at a much lower scale and the poor people know that if you took those rich kids and raised them in a poor environment, they would grow up just as unintelligent. I think you're also confusing happiness with intelligence. A lot of intelligent people (such as me) know that is very much NOT the case. Yuval Harari, the author of Sapiens, has a lot to say on this subject.
Dear Moderator, you are obviously well-informed. But stop saying "I agree" or otherwise at every turn. You are dragging the conversation toward your own opinions.
I wish the host wasn't there, each time I got exited to hear the guests he ruins it, "I wrotes a novel I"m so smart" " OK you have 1 minute to talk we are running out of time " really bro ???? . Both setve and stephen should have been given more time to talk . Look at 57:00 stephen wants to talk so bad... OMFG LET THE MAN WHO BY CHANCE WAS BORN SOOOO SMART AND HAPPENS TO HAVE STUDIED GENETICS+MATH BACKGROUND TALK, THIS IS SOOO RELEVANT TO THE TOPIC AT HAND ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! I also respect the class the guessed handled him with, those are great people.
Psychology is such a crazy field. Most of the best psychologists are all not psychologists but from other fields. It's like you cannot get unbiased unless you didn't start of not caring about it (I don't want to start counting my negatives).
The moderator spent too much time trying to enforce his view on speakers. Also gave more speaking time to the speakers that agreed with him. He completely ignored and disregarded any of Dalton's arguments and points.
A disaster of a panel. Given the moderator's pedantic, glacial pace in topic coverage, I would've expected the audience to be in a high school auditorium. To further annoy intelligent, interested viewers, Metzl makes himself the node of the conversation, blocking any real discussion that doesn't advance his own topical interest. A moderator is supposed to facilitate conversation, not monopolize it. Perhaps his background colors his efforts here (government/policy think tanks): is this a policy debate, or a collision of minds? This would've been far more interesting if the moderator left and let the three experts moderate themselves. Or, if another moderator with tangential interest was chosen, like say Julian Assange or Eric Schmidt. Having gone through the process of writing novels (and creating the morals they carry), Metzl has very clear opinions about what this technology is supposed to mean. With a moderator like that, there is no point in having three "brilliant minds come at this question from different perspectives." Ultimately, a wasted opportunity.
I didn't think the moderator was nearly as bad or blocked conversation as you claim here. I do think he could have been better. ...Julian Assange is a damn joke, I feel that his presence on the stage here would probably have been a disaster
Well when you know you know what you're talking about and you know the other person doesn't and they won't at least amend their position, then you get a little irritated, especially when they're potentially misleading the average person in their prediction of what's to be expected or is reasonable.
What we easily can do though is pick through many combinations of gametes and/or zygotes and greatly increase a parent's offspring's chances of having a healthy, happy, & wealthy life. It would be hard to make parental choice unethical.
Dalton Conley needs to get a backbone. He was holding back big time from telling Pinker that was wrong. Don't beat around the bush Dalton, this is important.
+JE Moody Hey, i watched the video a few days ago and don't really remember some of the stuff. Can you elaborate a bit what you mean Conley should have said?
we are kind of hypocrite because if we are not selecting embryos for "general intelligence" (defined as what iq measures that is : short-term memory, analytical thinking, mathematical ability and spatial recognition) we are actively distorting our kids brain to this "general intelligence" goal by putting our kids in a school system that clearly puts the emphasis over these traits at the expense of other types of intelligence (the obvious maths/arts imbalance in the traditional school curriculum). i also notice we have the same kind of hypocrisy when we teach our kids to not physically punch other kids in the face but it is ok to psychologically knock them off and humiliate them with every test grades or competitive sports, a distorted logic where there is only one good answer to a problem or a single winner to a race.
Bill Hampton So it's just a social construct. Biologically speaking men have more hair than women. You're in effect circumcising your masculinity for being neat and prim and proper.
My first thought was this conversation in the future will send people to the floor laughing. It’s kinda like Thomas Jefferson when he suggested that westward expansion will take 1000 years, and it might have if technology were to stay static. Intelligence, as we understand it, is way overrated, and trying to maximize it through genetic engineering is a bad idea, because it is so narrow. Now it is not because it can’t be done, but because it has so little value. Are genetics has been optimized through natural selection for planet earth, and this has inherent design cost, one of which is the spaghetti code of the genome, instead of natural selection removing sections of code it has simply commented it out. Making most of our code junk. Now finding active DNA is the goal and that is desirable, but the code we have is far from functionally obvious, and truly reverse engineering DNA is necessary to make sure your not destabilizing the Jenga tower. If we assume the value is to thrive, then What we need is creative people. To thrive requires a well-rounded and diverse population with diverse interests. Are test are designed to test for the type of intelligence that we recognize today, and fails to detect some of the creativity that we will need in the future. I find that many smart people hold onto bad ideas, because of their ability to create fanciful stories that can reinforce these ideas. In short we don’t see intelligence for the liability that it is, and it is truly a liability, balance can not be overstated. Ray Kurzweil often pokes fun at linear thinking of which this is a good example of, we think about exploring DNA substantiated in biology but in the coming decades it will be Digital biology that super seeds the test tube experiments of today. Emulating human biology in a computer is likely 50 to a hundred years off, but on our current trajectory it appears inevitable. At this point we have the merging of fantasy with reality. I hope at this point we will wean ourselves of this obsession with intelligence.
Mark, I don't think you would say any of this if you knew what intelligence researchers were actually doing. Intelligence, as it is currently understood, shows up in all human mental activities. It is implicated in a wide range of life outcomes. It's not always the best single predictor of any given outcome, but showing that another factor is at least as important as intelligence in regards to even a single outcome is always a big deal. And anyway, it only really matters if we're contemplating gene editing. Which we shouldn't be, because it's impractical and potentially horrifying. If you just do multiple trait embryo selection, then you can probably squeeze out +1 - 2 SD across the board in a basket of important traits, including but not limited to intelligence. www.gwern.net/Embryo-selection
What an awfully inaccurate overly simplified summary of the bell curve. Guess we know why he came out looking like a stereotypical tech geek but simultaneously had the least to say.
![ปฏิเสธไม่ไหว (Crush on you) - LIPTA feat. No One Else [Official MV]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/NBw1jF342vw/mqdefault.jpg)
The moderator is like a bad journalist 'don't let the facts get in the way of a good story' - he makes his cheesy sci fi predictions but carelessly snubs Pinker in the process. Pinker then rebuts him with ruthless precision, to which the audience has to applaud. Cheesy sci-fi writer is then suitably embarrassed
Easy for Pinker to say he and his wife would not choose to select for higher intelligence in their children, they already have a higher chance of having smarter kids just based on who they are.
I think a majority would choose to enhance. But maybe I'm off.
@rxp56 about negligible difference in intelligence from one embryo to another, just look around you at any family with 4 or more kids if there is a one of them with a noticeable higher intelligence than their siblings. i did notice that one of the kid had a noticeable higher intelligence but my sample size is only 3 families as 4+ families are rare in western countries so would love to see data on thousand of families with 4+ kids comparing iq levels among siblings.
@rxp56 All of those concerns are true of gene editing. Other problems with gene editing include your CRISPR machine accidentally inserting the sequence you want someplace in the genome where you didn't want it, or the gene you're messing with having functions you don't know about yet that you end up disrupting, or the gene you're messing with not actually doing what you think it does because it was only correlationally and not causally associated with the trait you wanted to affect.
Those effects scale up exponentially with the number of genes you edit. Which is a problem, because a lot of the traits we care about are massively polygenic, requiring potentially thousands or tens of thousands of edits, where the maximum number of edits you can safely make is maybe five or so.
So, don't do gene editing. Do embryo selection instead.
In particular, do multiple trait embryo selection, because there's literally no reason not to prefer it to single trait embryo selection. Then you can get +1 - 2 SD or so across the board in a basket of high value traits, including things like intelligence and grit and health.
www.gwern.net/Embryo-selection
@@OptimalOwl thanks for the article dude...
This was one of my pipe dream "business ideas"... using polygenic scores in IVF selected embryos...
@@dinsel9691 I can see why. It seems to be one of the most worthwhile things humanity could be doing right now. It's hard to imagine a problem that wouldn't be helped by having smarter, healthier, more productive and well-adjusted people.
I mean the US alone spends something on the order of a trillion dollars on euthenics. This involves a lot of pushing up slopes of diminishing marginal returns, and more than a few unintended consequences along the way.
And yet, almost no one proposes to reject the pursuit of euthenics wholesale. I've literally never heard anyone say anything like "rich kids might get better schools than poor kids, therefore school is unfair, therefore we should ban schools." At most, some people like Caplan or Murray would make cuts in some areas with a low or negative benefit to cost ratio.
@@OptimalOwl Humans are going to be able to dramatically alter the brain much faster and with more precision with neurotechnologies like pulsed ultrasound, photobiomodulation and other BCIs very soon. That's why the race to find ethical guidelines for these huge implications must be as fast as possible. As well as the race, informed by the wisdom of the spiritual traditions, to modify the brain in the right way before corporations come along and modify it the wrong way.
The probable result of what you imagine will be a vast genetic divide and civilizational chaos. The whole rich kids/better schools thing is much less of a problem, because it is at a much lower scale and the poor people know that if you took those rich kids and raised them in a poor environment, they would grow up just as unintelligent.
I think you're also confusing happiness with intelligence. A lot of intelligent people (such as me) know that is very much NOT the case.
Yuval Harari, the author of Sapiens, has a lot to say on this subject.
Dear Moderator, you are obviously well-informed. But stop saying "I agree" or otherwise at every turn. You are dragging the conversation toward your own opinions.
wtf moderator loved hearing himself talk.
+ramicule And the two smartest guys, the two steves didn't get enough time compared to the other 2
The moderator just talks too much!
Pinker was being a moron
I wish the host wasn't there, each time I got exited to hear the guests he ruins it, "I wrotes a novel I"m so smart" " OK you have 1 minute to talk we are running out of time " really bro ???? . Both setve and stephen should have been given more time to talk .
Look at 57:00 stephen wants to talk so bad... OMFG LET THE MAN WHO BY CHANCE WAS BORN SOOOO SMART AND HAPPENS TO HAVE STUDIED GENETICS+MATH BACKGROUND TALK, THIS IS SOOO RELEVANT TO THE TOPIC AT HAND ! ! ! ! ! ! ! !
I also respect the class the guessed handled him with, those are great people.
Psychology is such a crazy field. Most of the best psychologists are all not psychologists but from other fields. It's like you cannot get unbiased unless you didn't start of not caring about it (I don't want to start counting my negatives).
Thumbs up for quintuple negation.
The moderator spent too much time trying to enforce his view on speakers. Also gave more speaking time to the speakers that agreed with him. He completely ignored and disregarded any of Dalton's arguments and points.
Dalton made a very interesting point toward the end: Since we have only 20,000 genes, any tinkering is apt to have many (unexpected) effects.
This moderator is spectacularly annoying
Pinker was being more annoying
A disaster of a panel.
Given the moderator's pedantic, glacial pace in topic coverage, I would've expected the audience to be in a high school auditorium. To further annoy intelligent, interested viewers, Metzl makes himself the node of the conversation, blocking any real discussion that doesn't advance his own topical interest. A moderator is supposed to facilitate conversation, not monopolize it.
Perhaps his background colors his efforts here (government/policy think tanks): is this a policy debate, or a collision of minds?
This would've been far more interesting if the moderator left and let the three experts moderate themselves. Or, if another moderator with tangential interest was chosen, like say Julian Assange or Eric Schmidt. Having gone through the process of writing novels (and creating the morals they carry), Metzl has very clear opinions about what this technology is supposed to mean. With a moderator like that, there is no point in having three "brilliant minds come at this question from different perspectives." Ultimately, a wasted opportunity.
I didn't think the moderator was nearly as bad or blocked conversation as you claim here. I do think he could have been better.
...Julian Assange is a damn joke, I feel that his presence on the stage here would probably have been a disaster
Metzl didn't add anything, but also didn't subtract much. It's a solid effort by the 3 experts.
Pinker looks freaking angry! He usually smiles.
Well when you know you know what you're talking about and you know the other person doesn't and they won't at least amend their position, then you get a little irritated, especially when they're potentially misleading the average person in their prediction of what's to be expected or is reasonable.
@@mpcc2022 Pinker is not better informed that the other 2 experts.
Artificial intelligence created by genetically engineered geniuses...
Then they killed by A.I. Artificial General Intelligence is not very Intelligent.
That would be crazy let's make it happen
What we easily can do though is pick through many combinations of gametes and/or zygotes and greatly increase a parent's offspring's chances of having a healthy, happy, & wealthy life. It would be hard to make parental choice unethical.
when will you do a second conference on the same subject ?
Dalton Conley needs to get a backbone. He was holding back big time from telling Pinker that was wrong. Don't beat around the bush Dalton, this is important.
+JE Moody
Hey, i watched the video a few days ago and don't really remember some of the stuff.
Can you elaborate a bit what you mean Conley should have said?
+JE Moody
Please elaborate, Mr Moody.
we are kind of hypocrite because if we are not selecting embryos for "general intelligence" (defined as what iq measures that is : short-term memory, analytical thinking, mathematical ability and spatial recognition) we are actively distorting our kids brain to this "general intelligence" goal by putting our kids in a school system that clearly puts the emphasis over these traits at the expense of other types of intelligence (the obvious maths/arts imbalance in the traditional school curriculum). i also notice we have the same kind of hypocrisy when we teach our kids to not physically punch other kids in the face but it is ok to psychologically knock them off and humiliate them with every test grades or competitive sports, a distorted logic where there is only one good answer to a problem or a single winner to a race.
Yes it can
Inb4 someone complains there's no woman on stage :-)
Yeah, some sexy girls on stage showing some cleavage would be nice. I'll just pretend that Pinker's a girl.
The hair? Why isn't hair associated with being masculine?
Because here in the twenty-first century in this part of the world, most guys have short hair. That's why.
Bill Hampton
So it's just a social construct. Biologically speaking men have more hair than women. You're in effect circumcising your masculinity for being neat and prim and proper.
I wish I got circumsized.
If shared environment is so non-important, aren't those cram schools wasted money?
Humble intelligence
This should be interesting.
Government will slow down Science
00:18:00
My first thought was this conversation in the future will send people to the floor laughing. It’s kinda like Thomas Jefferson when he suggested that westward expansion will take 1000 years, and it might have if technology were to stay static.
Intelligence, as we understand it, is way overrated, and trying to maximize it through genetic engineering is a bad idea, because it is so narrow. Now it is not because it can’t be done, but because it has so little value. Are genetics has been optimized through natural selection for planet earth, and this has inherent design cost, one of which is the spaghetti code of the genome, instead of natural selection removing sections of code it has simply commented it out. Making most of our code junk. Now finding active DNA is the goal and that is desirable, but the code we have is far from functionally obvious, and truly reverse engineering DNA is necessary to make sure your not destabilizing the Jenga tower.
If we assume the value is to thrive, then What we need is creative people. To thrive requires a well-rounded and diverse population with diverse interests. Are test are designed to test for the type of intelligence that we recognize today, and fails to detect some of the creativity that we will need in the future. I find that many smart people hold onto bad ideas, because of their ability to create fanciful stories that can reinforce these ideas. In short we don’t see intelligence for the liability that it is, and it is truly a liability, balance can not be overstated.
Ray Kurzweil often pokes fun at linear thinking of which this is a good example of, we think about exploring DNA substantiated in biology but in the coming decades it will be Digital biology that super seeds the test tube experiments of today. Emulating human biology in a computer is likely 50 to a hundred years off, but on our current trajectory it appears inevitable.
At this point we have the merging of fantasy with reality. I hope at this point we will wean ourselves of this obsession with intelligence.
Your comment is longer than the whole video, fuck.
You have no sense of proportion
Mark, I don't think you would say any of this if you knew what intelligence researchers were actually doing.
Intelligence, as it is currently understood, shows up in all human mental activities. It is implicated in a wide range of life outcomes. It's not always the best single predictor of any given outcome, but showing that another factor is at least as important as intelligence in regards to even a single outcome is always a big deal.
And anyway, it only really matters if we're contemplating gene editing. Which we shouldn't be, because it's impractical and potentially horrifying. If you just do multiple trait embryo selection, then you can probably squeeze out +1 - 2 SD across the board in a basket of important traits, including but not limited to intelligence.
www.gwern.net/Embryo-selection
@@billy-joes6851 that was long
@@thinkingmouse2751 I am not sure what I was smoking... but I want some more of it....
55:44 Israel is trying to do it
What an awfully inaccurate overly simplified summary of the bell curve. Guess we know why he came out looking like a stereotypical tech geek but simultaneously had the least to say.
In my opinion, the bell curve largely collected data. I think it is very difficult to interpret it
Useless comment Scrubbzy
what a terrible "moderator"
He's fine
Genius is mostly environmental. Extreme genius requires genetics.
Depends on how genius is defined..