Modern WisdomIs It Ethical To Hand-Pick Your Child’s Genes? - Dr Jonathan Anomaly
CHAPTERS
- 0:00 – 2:10
Why IQ talk feels taboo: post‑WWII stigma and misuse of testing
Jonathan explains why IQ discussions trigger discomfort, tracing it to the political misuse of IQ testing in the early 20th century and the post‑WWII backlash against genetic explanations. They touch on how eugenics, immigration policy, and group comparisons made the whole topic socially radioactive.
- •Early IQ tests were sometimes misused to justify restrictive immigration and supremacist narratives
- •Post‑WWII norms broadly stigmatized genetic explanations for differences
- •A provocative historical aside: Nazi Germany’s relationship to IQ testing
- •Why people conflate IQ research with moral judgment and political agendas
- 2:10 – 3:57
Individual vs group differences: what “genetic influence” means in practice
Chris asks for clarity on genetic individual differences versus group differences. Jonathan defines intelligence broadly and argues that variation in cognitive ability exists within and across populations, analogous to height or athletic performance differences.
- •Intelligence as creative problem-solving (not just memory)
- •Individual differences in traits like height and IQ have genetic components
- •Group-level patterns can exist without implying moral hierarchy
- •Olympics examples used to illustrate trait distributions
- 3:57 – 6:48
Are IQ tests reliable? Bias, the ‘g factor,’ and what replicates
They address common critiques that IQ tests are biased or meaningless. Jonathan argues modern tests are broadly reliable, measure multiple cognitive subskills, and repeatedly recover a general intelligence factor (g), supported by decades of behavioral genetics evidence.
- •Early cultural biases existed but were largely corrected
- •IQ batteries sample diverse abilities (verbal, spatial, logic, basic math)
- •Spearman’s hypothesis and the emergence of ‘g’ across tests
- •Twin studies and heritability evidence for cognitive ability
- 6:48 – 15:39
What IQ predicts—and the moral hazard of treating people as ‘more valuable’
Jonathan outlines correlations between IQ and life outcomes, then Chris highlights the social danger: once IQ predicts income, education, stability, and crime, it becomes easy to slide into ‘worth’ judgments. Jonathan adds that both overemphasizing and denying IQ can create moral and policy failures.
- •IQ correlates with education, income, marital stability, addiction, and criminality (even controlling for SES)
- •Possible mediators: time horizons and self-control rather than ‘IQ causes everything’
- •Risk of conflating cognitive ability with moral value
- •Counter-risk: denying IQ fuels envy-based politics and bad institutional design (Vonnegut example)
- 15:39 – 20:26
Embryo selection arrives: IVF + polygenic scores and the ‘arms race’ concern
The conversation pivots to reproductive technology: selecting among IVF embryos using polygenic scores. Jonathan claims meaningful within-family variation can be captured across multiple embryos and predicts rapid expansion from health traits to cognition and eventually personality traits.
- •Selection vs gene editing: selection is here now; editing is later
- •Polygenic selection already used for disease risk reduction; cognition selection emerging
- •Within a set of embryos, predicted trait differences can be sizable
- •Concerns about unequal access and stratification; Jonathan predicts a spectrum, not two castes
- 20:26 – 24:03
We already select traits: mate choice, sperm donors, and the ‘everyone is a eugenicist’ argument
Chris argues that partner choice and donor selection already function as informal eugenics—people choose traits they believe benefit future children. Jonathan agrees and adds that attraction and social dominance cues may encode information about competence and coordination ability.
- •Mate selection as the most common form of genetic ‘screening’
- •Donor choice makes preferences explicit: kindness, intelligence, health
- •Attraction cues as proxies for social success and resilience
- •Women’s preferences often depend on seeing traits ‘in action’ (status, trust, coordination)
- 24:03 – 33:44
Treatment vs enhancement and the consent problem: where the moral lines blur
They debate whether preventing disease is morally different from enhancing traits like height or IQ. Jonathan argues the treatment/enhancement line is often incoherent (we ‘enhance’ with braces, glasses, etc.), while Chris notes selection differs philosophically from editing because no single embryo is being altered without consent.
- •Treatment vs enhancement distinction: intuitive but unstable
- •Every child lacks literal consent; discussion of hypothetical consent and ‘all-purpose goods’
- •Selection among embryos vs editing a particular embryo (different ethical intuitions)
- •In socialized healthcare, prioritizing disease prevention over aesthetic enhancement may make policy sense
- 33:44 – 40:47
Gene erosion and mutation load: why ‘doing nothing’ still changes the genome
Jonathan introduces the idea that modern medicine relaxes natural selection, allowing more deleterious mutations to accumulate over generations. Using Chesterton metaphors, he argues maintaining current human welfare may require active genetic strategies like embryo selection to reduce disease burden.
- •Most new heritable mutations are neutral or harmful; selection historically purged some of them
- •Modern healthcare enables survival/reproduction with traits that would otherwise be selected against
- •Chesterton’s Fence vs ‘Chesterton’s Post’: leaving things alone invites ongoing change (entropy)
- •Embryo selection framed as preventing genetic meltdown rather than radical redesign
- 40:47 – 44:01
Birth rates, subsidies, and religious constraints: who adopts selection first?
They connect declining fertility and IVF expansion to the politics of access. Jonathan predicts governments may subsidize IVF to raise birth rates (citing China/Israel) and that some religious groups may resist—potentially compounding disadvantages over generations.
- •Falling birth rates + older parenthood increase IVF demand
- •Government subsidies could democratize IVF and indirectly accelerate embryo selection
- •Corporate benefits (e.g., fertility coverage) push uptake
- •Religious objections may slow adoption; coercion is rejected as a solution
- 44:01 – 48:55
Cousin marriage, bottlenecks, and genetic disease: why some populations have stronger incentives
Jonathan argues embryo selection could bring especially large health benefits in communities with high consanguinity rates or historical population bottlenecks. He discusses Islamic cousin marriage prevalence, a hypothesis about the Catholic Church’s cousin-marriage bans, and Ashkenazi carrier screening norms.
- •Consanguinity increases expression of rare harmful alleles and disease burden
- •Henrich/Schulz thesis: Church bans on cousin marriage shaped European trust norms and health outcomes
- •Prediction: high-consanguinity regions may adopt embryo screening quickly for health reasons
- •Ashkenazi Tay‑Sachs testing as an accepted, routine form of genetic screening
- 48:55 – 56:44
Collective action risks: self‑defeating arms races, height, and sex‑ratio selection
Chris asks what could go wrong socially even with voluntary selection. Jonathan frames risks in economic/game-theoretic terms: individually rational choices can yield bad equilibria, though some races (like height) may self‑equilibrate; they also discuss possible sex-ratio imbalances and why incentives might correct them.
- •Embryo selection as a potential collective action problem (negative-sum outcomes)
- •Height as an example: relative gains disappear; extreme height carries health costs
- •Self-equilibrating behavior likely limits runaway selection
- •Sex selection preferences may differ by socioeconomic conditions; imbalances could trigger counter-preferences
- 56:44 – 1:04:52
Genetics and morality: empathy, personality, and the case against ‘unconditional cooperators’
They explore what it would mean to ‘morally enhance’ humans. Jonathan argues morality evolved to solve cooperation problems; traits like empathy and conscientiousness are partly heritable, but maximizing niceness could be exploitable—better to cultivate conditional cooperation and moralistic punishment of defectors.
- •Morality as social technology for coordination; religion and morality co-evolve (Darwin)
- •Heritability influences empathy and personality traits relevant to cooperation
- •Critique of ‘make everyone nicer’ proposals: unconditional cooperators get exploited
- •Value of reciprocal altruism, punishment, and moralistic aggression in sustaining cooperation
- 1:04:52 – 1:26:44
IQ and collaboration: longer time horizons, pro-social externalities, and ‘blank slate’ backlash
Jonathan and Chris link cognitive ability to cooperative behavior, arguing the mechanism may be future-oriented thinking. They broaden into politics: denial of heritability (‘blank slate’) creates misunderstandings about behavior, and genetic technologies may force a public reckoning as private adoption outpaces public rhetoric.
- •Evidence from prisoner’s dilemma/public-goods experiments: higher cognitive ability correlates with cooperation
- •Mechanism hypothesis: longer time horizons and better prediction of consequences
- •Genetic enhancement argued to create positive network effects (innovation, wealth, social stability)
- •Prediction of ‘preference cascades’ as elites privately adopt selection while publicly condemning it
- 1:26:44 – 1:36:15
Public attitudes & polygenic embryo screening: what people approve (diseases) vs reject (traits)
They review survey findings on polygenic embryo screening: strong approval for preventing major diseases, moderate support for selecting on intelligence, and strong disapproval for skin color. Jonathan argues some of the pattern reflects wisdom (prioritize health) but also misinformation about intelligence and mental health, and he disputes maximizing life satisfaction or agreeableness.
- •Survey: very high support for screening against cancer/heart disease/Alzheimer’s
- •Traits receive lower approval; intelligence is highest among traits but still moderate
- •Framing effects: ‘obesity’ as disease vs ‘BMI’ as trait changes approval
- •Arguments against maximizing life satisfaction/agreeableness; value of discontent and disagreeability in some contexts
- 1:36:15 – 1:47:39
Adoption timeline and second-order consequences: IVF growth, IVG, ideology, and political selection
Chris asks about uptake; Jonathan predicts accelerating adoption driven by infertility trends, government incentives, and cost reductions, with ideological resistance fading quickly. They end by speculating about future selection for political orientation or religiosity, and Jonathan shares where to follow his work.
- •Near-term adoption: small but meaningful percentages by decade’s end; growth via IVF normalization
- •Potential step-change from IVG: selecting among hundreds/thousands of embryos
- •Long-run societal effects: reduced disease burden globally; modest IQ gains countering dysgenic trends
- •Risk scenario: selection for religiosity/political extremism once heritability is widely understood; closing plugs for book/website/column
