Ain’t Nobody Stealin’ My Sperm, Homeboy
This CrankCentralStation piece by James Miller on the mass production of embryos has plenty of funnies. This, however, is particularly hilarious:
Embryo selection gets even more interesting when we consider how a nation such as China might use it. Imagine that in ten years China forces all its college students to get genetic tests. Students with intelligence genes in the top 1% of the top 1% of humankind are then forced to donate sperm or eggs.
See, this is what I don’t understand about the sort of “libertarians” who write at TCS. They scream like freshly-neutered puppies if anyone tries to raise their taxes, but they have zero problem with having the government force people to donate their sperm and eggs to create an army of hyper-intelligent Over Men:
China then uses the sperm and eggs to create a billion embryos each year. The genetic intellectual potential of all these embryos is checked. Those in the top 10,000 are implanted into women.
How are you likin’ this Brave New World, ladies? Are you looking forward to being used as the government’s incubators for its Übermensches?
Each of these embryos has the intellectual potential to be in the top one-billionth of humankind. Now because of environmental factors many of these embryos won’t turn into intellectual titans.
And I’m sure they’ll lead rich and fulfilling lives as failed genetic experiments.
But let’s say that one in ten does. This means that each year 1,000 people with the scientific ability of Einstein will be born. By 2035 they will become adults and start doing scientific research. I imagine these Einsteins will be rather helpful to China’s economy and military.
“Mr. President, we must not allow a Chinese-super-baby gap!”
Get outta here, ya maniac!
UPDATE: Someone who knows something about genetics replies to Miller in the comments. I will imagine Dr. Miller’s responses:
Ten years from now?…the Chinese are going to screen 1 billion 3-day old embryoes looking for the 10,000 best?
“Each of these embryos has the intellectual potential to be in the top one-billionth of humankind.” What? Each of these would be among the “top six or seven” smartest people on Earth? And now there are going to be 10,000 of those born each year? Starting ten years from now?
Is it really that simple? We can’t do any of this…none of the techniques we are using today would ever be used to do this. But even if any of this could work (and it can’t) we might be able to do such a thing once or twice…One billion times? with the current technology? ten years from now? in China? Really?
Imagined Miller response: You are clearly the victim of linear thinking, my friend. Once the Singularity arrives, all technological progress will increase exponentially forever and ever. Thus, the Chinese will be able to screen 10,000 embryos per day if they’re lazy. The real number of post-singularity embryos screened could reach 20 kajillion-katrillion.
Do you have any idea how expensive that would be (the first time) if we are ever able to do it? Who is going to fund the project to develop this technology?
Imagined Miller response: Tax cuts!
And then provide the service as a commodity? Our global economy would need to be fundamentally different long before this could happen. No corporate entity would undertake it…no government.
Imagined Miller response: The Laffer curve states that if you cut taxes to a rate of -25% for the richest individuals, then revenue will go up forever.
What are you thinking? Are you even thinking at all when you write such foolishness?
Imagined Miller response: Uh… do I have to answer that?
So…eugenics is chic now amongst these people?
Cripes….
And that “rather” in the last sentence. These people should be publicly flayed just for saying “interesting” and “rather.”
I think that would be rather interesting, don’t you?
Keep the government out of my portfolio, but by all means, implant some intellectual assets in my wife’s uterus.
Boy, I wish we had one of them doomsday machines.
Hell yeah! And they could take the shell gene from an armadillo, and the flight gene from a seagull, and, and, and the gills gene from a carp and build the perfect soldier who could swim, fly, and never need elbow pads.
Lord knows at this rate we’re gonna need to breed LOTS of soldiers…
mikey
Legalize,
“Doomsday device? Ahh, now the ball’s in Farnsworth’s court!”
“Humankind may be changed…”
“…researchers may quickly determine which combination of genes gives people the best chance of having a high IQ…”
“So let’s say that a certain couple’s genes mean that normally they have only a 1% chance…”
“Embryo selection gets even more interesting when we consider how a nation such as China might use it.”
Seriously, is there a single paragraph that isn’t written in the purely hypothetical voice?
Why not suggest that we can grow a team of genetically modified supermen to play basketball? I mean, if researchers can map the DNA, it’s possible they could find a genetic combination to grow a cannon out of a man’s chest, and certainly the NBA might put such developments to use…
“Boy, I wish we had one of them doomsday machines.”
Me too, but simply for the ability to pull of the evil-super-villain “MWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA” and mean it.
Oh no, he can envision a nightmarish, highly unlikely scenario that sounds like an Ed Wood level bad sci-fi movie! PANIC!
I can’t tell, does Miller think this is a good idea or not? I’m guessing that because he’s a Libertarian/Randroid, he has an vastly overrated sense of his intellectual abilities and considers himself to be in that top 1%, and as such thinks it’s a good idea. Poor Libertarians, they get so excited about the idea of some humans being superior to others, only to be disappointed to find out it’s not them.
A few years ago I gave up on TCS a when the “libertarian” site kept publishing defenders of “Intelligent Design.” I wrote to their web master, and gist of his response was that they also post articles by those who endorse evolution.
Alrighty, then! That’s some stereotypically pro-science ‘tarians they got over there!
Ummm, this makes less sense than Sam Neil describing how the Event Horizon could fold space. When your science article is getting beat badly by movies where the phrase “English, Doctor!” is spoken, it’s time to rewrite.
“intelligence genes?”
This means that each year 1,000 people with the scientific ability of Einstein will be born. By 2035 they will become adults and start doing scientific research.
Shades of “The Boys From Brazil!”
This always makes me giggle, this and the ones who think that by having lots and lots of white Republican babies they’ll be able to dominate the political scene.
You know what people? Your kids grow up to do what THEY want to do, not what you want them to do. Thought isn’t heredity. Intelligence may be heredity, but INTEREST isn’t.
who’s to say that they won’t start doing something else scientific extremely well, like manufacture illicit chemical drugs, or make bombs? Or, OTOH, make really popular hit music or design great computer games or become the hottest party-planner around?
Unless this article is advocating locking the little ones up and forcing them to play with toy chemistry sets till they’re 21.
Then, too there’s that rebellion factor – I always wonder how many children of hopeful right wingers flee their families to become wild-eyed lefties.
A generation hence, Chinese geniuses develop a virus to that wipes out the neoconservative movement overnight. Asked how they did it, they explain that they combined the viruses that wiped out hypocrites and morons but it was too powerful. Then they developed a virus that wipes out people who lack compassion, and the neoconservatives were history.
Say that reminds me; there’s something wrong with my semen.
(movie quotes can be inserted into virtually any online discussion).
If intelligence were controlled by a single gene, or even a simple set of genes, his argument would merely be stupid. Since intelligence is actually a tapestry of factors, likely including a very large number of genes and significant environmental factors, his argument is so ridiculous it’s approaching a kind of inverse genius.
It takes both native talent and practice to be as pig-ignorant as Miller, and yet still be arrogant enough to write a column for public consumption.
I can’t believe that whore stole my Stanza!
I can’t believe that whore made it through the lake of acid!
Oh sure, he can have the made-up Chinese scientists screen a billion blastocysts for smartypants, but they can’t make a pseudo-uterus to bake it in? Typical male!
Sometimes I wonder how the people who pay for a favorable TCS writeup feel about having the impromptur diluted with this nonsense. Then I wonder if this nonsense exists to provide cover for the nuttier sponsored writeups. Then I wonder who is paying them to write about Chinese superbabies and I get very scared.
If intelligence were controlled by a single gene, or even a simple set of genes, his argument would merely be stupid. Since intelligence is actually a tapestry of factors, likely including a very large number of genes and significant environmental factors, his argument is so ridiculous it’s approaching a kind of inverse genius.
I believe it was Wolfgang Pauli who elegantly described a similarly staggering nadir of achievement as being “not even wrong”.
Democrats hope their chances of winning a battle with Bush on the war will be better next year as the election season heats up.
How about breeding a new generation of Super Democrats.
When where “the intelligence genes” discovered?
Er, that’s when were the intelligence genes discovered?
Maybe I’m missing one..
You don’t have to imagine Miller’s response, bradrocket.
Here it is,
“I am currently writing a book on how intelligence enhancements will influence society. I would be grateful if you would contact me so I can better understand your objections to my article.”
I’m not kidding.
Here’s my imagined email sent to Miller in reply;
“Don’t write a book about a topic you cannot comprehend.”
This always makes me giggle, this and the ones who think that by having lots and lots of white Republican babies they’ll be able to dominate the political scene.
My parents had 6 children for that very reason.
5 of us have turned out to be liberal activists and one is… well let’s say that he shares their narrow view of most other people and societies, but he’s too lazy to vote.
“Don’t write a book about a topic you cannot comprehend.”
That’s the essence of wingnut welfare right there.
I think he’s seen too many episodes of “Dark Angel”. My husband loves the show, and I’ve had to watch it many times.
aw dammit, a different brad pre-emptively wrote almost my exact response.
“You’re writing a book about a topic about which you obviously understand nothing??”
I submitted too soon… in Dark Angel the geneticly modified warriors are beautiful teenage girls. A wingnuts fantasy come true.
Me too, but simply for the ability to pull of the evil-super-villain “MWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA” and mean it.
Arthur: I can’t believe he wrote out his evil villain laugh.
Der Fledermaus: What a turkey!
Perhaps they could develop some kind of super Chinese worker to wipe out the American manufacturing sector.
I hate to say it, but I think you’re being too generous to wingnuts, bradrocket.
They write about topics that don’t actually exist, like, say, liberal fascism.
The Germans gave eugenics a bad name. I think it’s high time we fixed our shitty race. We breed animals and plants, why can’t we breed strong, intelligent, kind, witty humans?
Others watched Gattaca and saw a cautionary tale; I watched it and said “bring it on, it can’t come fast enough – and for God’s sake keep that guy with the heart condition from getting behind the wheel of a rocket or he’ll kill us all!”
I just don’t trust any of the current crop of us to do it right.
“[Wingnuts] write about topics that don’t actually exist, like, say, liberal fascism.”
And Islamic fascism for that matter (and the War on Christmas).
If we do everything right , and thats a big if , then we won’t have to do anything ever again . ” Anything ?” she said sorta anxiously , fingering her clasps nervously . “Anything !” was the triumphal response . She already missed her Binky , but bravely carried on , Binkless.
Just last night I watched “Seeds in Space,” the first-season original Star Trek episode about Khan, of the USS Botany Bay, the “superior being” created by eugenics, a total wingnut Great Man fantasy in gold-glittery glory (with a willing, passive sycophant to boot, the ship’s historian… a female VDH!) until William Shatner beats his ass up on the engineering deck. A real take-a-mile kind of asshole, further evidenced by his (years) later wrath (a whole film’s worth!) after Kirk’s benevolent near-pardon of him and the sycophant.
When the crew spoke of times of oppression, total war, and genocide, Khan spoke of them as times of greatness, glory, aspiration, ambition, accomplishment. The show does that now and then: it lays out left v. right in stark contrast, and leaves no question as to which is honorable and which is reprehensible. In this case, the lefty vision of “civilization = peace” vs the rightie concept of “civilization = domination”.
The original series was, for all its paramilitary trappings, quite a dirty-hippie show.
The real stupidity of the article is that he seems to think you can only do this if you are able to decode DNA. We were able to breed for fast race horses without knowing which piece of DNA is the “make a fast horse” one. We were able to take wolves and turn them into house pets that fit in Paris Hilton’s pocketbook. If China really wants to breed for smart people, why don’t they just make their smartest men become sperm donors for their smartest women? They could have started doing that in 1947.
Say that reminds me; there’s something wrong with my semen.
Winner!
Not to sound stereotypical or anything, but do we really need to lecture the Chinese about reproduction?
They could have started doing that in 1947.
Shhhh. Maybe they already have…wooooooooo!
You know, for the same sort of money, the Chinese could, I dunno, identify intelligent children at ages eight or nine and support them through enrichment programmes and university scholarships.
Thus BUILDINg Chinese MENTAL SUPERGIANTS in an attempt to DOMINATE the prostate WEST!!
Some gems from the comments:
I love how not performing eugenic experiments is now suddenly Big Government controlling your life and forcing you to support other people’s genetically inferior runts. I mean, “culling the dullards”? Talk about calling down fire upon yourself.
chinamen
Brings back memories. Gramps would alternate this with “Chinee”.
They could have started doing that in 1947.
Hmm. I’m not so sure about “Lazarus”, but I’m pretty sure “Long” sounds kinda chinese-y…
mikey
I love how not performing eugenic experiments is now suddenly Big Government controlling your life and forcing you to support other people’s genetically inferior runts. I mean, “culling the dullards”? Talk about calling down fire upon yourself.
No kidding — there will be no one left to write illogical TCS columns!
The chinamen reference makes me think of one of the great headlines in The Onion’s Our Dumb Century, from one of the early 1900 pages: “Will the Steam Engine Replace the China-Man?”
Don’t get me wrong, I hope the Chinese go ahead with their program. I hope they also start at the other end of the IQ spectrum as well: culling the dullards from their society.
It will be fascinating to watch the US politicians and clergymen respond: “even the stupid have a right to reproduce at your expense.”
Wow.
Do they even see it? Do they even begin to comprehend just what they’re actually saying? Seriously to God, there isn’t even a stretch to make this a Godwin. It’s just sitting there, like a ripened turd, stinking up the joint.
Actually, the unpredictability and ethics of eugenics aside, the problem is that we already know what one of the likely problems will be: autism. We’ve done (sorta, kinda) this experiment in Silicon Valley and the result is skyrocketing rates of autism. See: http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/9.12/aspergers_pr.html.
One problem is that high classical intelligence tends to come with an inability to understand the necessity of doing all the stupid things that humans need to do to have useful social interactions. As well as the fact that high intelligence sometimes short-circuits the brain’s ability to effectively harness that intelligence. Pure intelligence is just as useless as any other personality imbalance.
I hope they also start at the other end of the IQ spectrum as well: culling the dullards from their society.
This was from comments? How does that reconcile with “But we should oppose China because they allow abortions.”????????
Oh, silly me. It’s OK to kill people after they’re born.
“It will be fascinating to watch the US politicians and clergymen respond: “even the stupid have a right to reproduce at your expense.””
for some strange reason, I actually think that more Americans than “politicians” and “clergymen” would oppose a nationwide eugenics program. call me crazy.
One problem is that high classical intelligence tends to come with an inability to understand the necessity of doing all the stupid things that humans need to do to have useful social interactions. As well as the fact that high intelligence sometimes short-circuits the brain’s ability to effectively harness that intelligence
Hah! And I thought that “geniuses have no common sense” was just an adage for the benefit of stupid people.
But seriously, it explains so much. And when has the “smell test” ever failed when it comes to science?
Maybe things have changed, and this kind of work has been refuted, but another part of the problem with “breeding” for intelligence and such is hinted at in this comment: there are different kinds of intelligence. Or is Howard Gardner now passé?
I’m glad that Miller is warning us in advance of the great Chinese super-baby conspiracy, but he is ominously silent on other fiendish plans by the Yellow Peril, such as the North Korean outer-space mind control lasers, the giant warbots of Japan, and Thailand’s sinister photon cannon nano-clone teleporter vampires.
Sometimes I the feeling that these guys just write crap like this just to get featured on Sadly, No! Its the only logical reason I can come up with. I think they get lonely and just want some attention.
Well, my company is awash in chinese programmers who are all damn bright and they all realized the same thing: they didn’t want to live in China. Put it another way, you create an army of GM super geniuses, who exactly are you thinking they are going to fight for?
Actually, the unpredictability and ethics of eugenics aside, the problem is that we already know what one of the likely problems will be: autism. We’ve done (sorta, kinda) this experiment in Silicon Valley and the result is skyrocketing rates of autism. See: http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/9.12/aspergers_pr.html.
One problem is that high classical intelligence tends to come with an inability to understand the necessity of doing all the stupid things that humans need to do to have useful social interactions. As well as the fact that high intelligence sometimes short-circuits the brain’s ability to effectively harness that intelligence. Pure intelligence is just as useless as any other personality imbalance.
Well, bear in mind that we’re only taking ‘good at programming = SUPAR GENIUS’ as axiomatic because it fits our society’s fairly dumb stereotypes. Programmers are pretty disproportionately braindead wingnuts who can read shit like this, Rand, and Heinlein, and instead of seeing it as a dumb-ass mess of spaghetti logic and barely-cloaked racism, think ‘BRILLIANT!’
Bear well in mind that anyone who gets taught to apply the Super Genius label to themselves on the basis of a single talent – most notably programming, mathematics, engineering, music, chess/other simple gaming, etc. – winds up being hilariously uninformed and militantly incurious towards anything outside of that talent.
Fischer, for his chess brilliance, thinks the Jews rigged his defeats and also run the US from behind the scenes; most music prodigies I’ve known have been bloody-minded fascists or dopey kounterkultur liberals; and every college professor to teach music or music appreciation for long enough has stories about some idiot with a memorized three-digit IQ proclaiming that music is ‘solved’ – WITH SCIENCE.
If intelligence were controlled by a single gene, or even a simple set of genes, his argument would merely be stupid.
Robert M. may mock, but many researchers have received whopping great NIH grants to find genes linked to intelligence. In fact, there are lots of intelligence genes, so each group of researchers finds a different one.
If I were the one with the NIH grant, I’d be looking for dumbness genes.
Thus BUILDINg Chinese MENTAL SUPERGIANTS in an attempt to DOMINATE the prostate WEST!!
Hey, leave my prostate out of it.
I’d suspect this guy is trying to scare us w/ the age-old Yellow Peril. If they can’t get a war going w/ Iran, China is even better, they’ll really put up a fight. (“We’ve always been at war w/, well, someone.”) And if we don’t deal w/ China, they’re going to call in our debt one of these days & we”ll be screwed anyway, even if they aren’t building godless Commie Super-Geniuses. For TCS it’s win-win: War to finance Military-Industrial welfare for the think tanks where paranoid dilrods like this “work,” and no worries about our debt if the global financial system (house of cards) doesn’t fall down soon enough to protect their portfolios.
Bear well in mind that anyone who gets taught to apply the Super Genius label to themselves on the basis of a single talent – most notably programming, mathematics, engineering, music, chess/other simple gaming, etc. – winds up being hilariously uninformed and militantly incurious towards anything outside of that talent.
I’m sorry, but if I’m ranking people by the hilarity of their uninformedness and the militance of their incuriosity “Super Genius”es come in well below average, though clearly not at the very bottom. There are idiots in any subset of humanity, even intelligent people.
Also, “Super Genius”es tend to be identified by the fact that they go against scientific/artistic norms and are lucky enough to be right. Which makes it unsurprising that they have wacky ideas about many things that they are very wrong about.
Programmers are not often “braindead wingnuts”. They do skew disproportionately towards libertarianism/Randism largely as a defense mechanism for their lack of social skills. All part of a misplaced belief that just because they happen to be very intelligent, they should be valued for their intelligence alone, and not as a complete human being.
Just a quick calculation tells me that in order to get through 1billion embryos a year, China would have to check somewhere around 31 embryos a second. If it takes more than one second to scan a single embryo, they can’t pull it off.
But what if a billion Chinese superbabies all jumped off chairs at the same time?
WHAT THEN?
Pop Quiz, Hotshot:
1. “Conservatives” are to “intelligence”, as:
A: China is to personal freedom and individual liberty.
B. Rush Limbaugh is to Vietnam-era military service.
C: outer space is to clean air.
D. bacon is to play-doh.
Answer: E. All of the above.
Well, bear in mind that we’re only taking ‘good at programming = SUPAR GENIUS’ as axiomatic because it fits our society’s fairly dumb stereotypes.
yeah, that pisses me off too, like those f*cken ‘child prodigy’, some poor arsed 12 year old that has been home schooled or raised by geeks and is able to get to Oxford or Harvard. Genius does not mean that someone is only smart at one or two things, that strikes as more geeky than smart, having compassion and understanding should be a pre-requisite for being called smart.
In my field of engineering, there are a lot of genius type of people (I’m not one of them, i should point out), who are barely able to operate in normal society and have little or no comprehension about the effects of their work. If you sit in a bar with engineers, you’ll notice the type, they are only able to talk animatedly about their own subject, to the exclusion of anything interesting, like football, women, drink, etc
I believe that with good early nutrition and an environment conductive to learning, any child can be if not necessarily “genius” at least fairly intelligent. It’s not like the world needs a ton of geniuses to advance. You just need some people willing to think.
I was wondering how they were going to go about getting a billion viable embryos. A billion sperm, fuck, you could get in half an hour and make $50 too boot. But healthy eggs, even if you pump the chick full of fertility drugs, you could probably only hope for maybe a dozen in a good week. Assuming a base population of fewer then 500 Million Chinese women, only, say, 200 million in the healthy age, and that number keeps getting whittled down smaller and smaller as you factor location, availability, suitability, and so on until you get maybe a million- potential donars; that’s a LOT of moon cycles to get though for that Billion Baby March.
And what in the hell is so interesting about WOMEN, lobbey?
*flee*
Wingnuts trying to breed a more intelligent society? As level of intelligence is inversely proportional to level of wingnuttery, that’s a case of “Be careful what you wish for” if ever I saw one.
Hell, if they ever get it off the ground, I’ll donate.
U(:)bermenschen
The Carlsons and the Kagans are already on this. Once again, private initiative shows the way. At least *some* people aren’t letting those latter-day Dr. Fu Manchus catch us napping!
Breeding for geniuses? Is that all?
Why not try for the Kwisatz Haderach? The chance of that working out is probably the same.
Hey, leave my prostate out of it.
I never touched your prostate. I would have, but your check bounced, you deadbeat.
…other fiendish plans by the Yellow Peril, such as the North Korean outer-space mind control lasers, the giant warbots of Japan, and T….
Don’t forget the sharks with the frikkin’ laser beams on their heads.
Wingnuts trying to breed a more intelligent society?
If they succeeded, it would result in a liberal society.
D’oh!
[…] Related blogs: Sadly No, Ain’t Nobody Stealin’ My Sperm, Homeboy […]
I linked to your article from A Thousand Chinese Einsteins Every Year – if they are Jewish
U(:)bermenschen
I’m holding out for Flubbermenschen.
You know, I really hate it when there are 1000 top six most intelligent people.
uh oh, ann’s gonna be mad.
Thailand’s sinister photon cannon nano-clone teleporter vampires.
A thread with this AND an oblique reference to the Venture Brothers? Nice.
The sad thing is, if Skinemax had a cheapo sci-fi movie starring some teleporting vampires with photon cannon … I’d probably watch it. No doubt it’d start Caspar Van Dien and Catherine Oxenburg (friend of mine on the biz side of production said that their “number” is down to about $75K these days, less if they’re taken as a package deal), and Eric Roberts as the bad guy.
[…] this fine classic of wingnuttery from James D. Miller, the TechCentralStation columnist last seen here warning about China’s plans to create a master-race of baby Einsteins within the next 10 […]