Who said it was a single gene? Do you believe that because there is a risk, no study of these methods or this idea in general should continue?

There are several problems.

First, what is intelligence? Is it simply math & science? What if we lose other hard-to-measure, essential traits?

How much happiness is "better"? Should we "switch on" a gene that makes someone perpetually happier, given the option?

What happens when a set of traits becomes popular? Will diversity be lost? Will everyone choose lighter shades of skin?

Those are fantastic questions. Aren't they worth exploring with further research?

Here's one I find interesting. There is always talk of choosing for white, or lighter, skin, but what about the other side of the coin. Tanning is a huge business. Large numbers of white skinned people try to get a tan whilst on holiday, or use tanning salons. Large numbers of white people bemoan their inability to get a decent tan. What if lots of white people were to choose to have light brown children so that they would find it much easier to get a decent tan?

Another point of discussion: in the article there was talk of de-valuing disabled people. But surely the point of all this is to eliminate disability - if possible. Can anyone give any reason why this would be considered a bad thing? I'm not talking about devaluing existing disabled people (although evidence seems to suggest that we barely value them as people at the moment, though things are gradually improving). But surely anyone given the choice of being born with a disability or being born without the disability would choose the latter?

>we barely value them as people at the moment

I don't agree with that, violating ADA specifications is a sure fire way to be slapped across the face with massive fines and lawsuits, and every school I've attended bent over backwards to facilitate the disabled. Were there some cases or general biases you meant that I can read about?

Regarding your light vs dark skin, it would be an interesting question - if the laws allowed for "form" choices rather than purely "function," what sort of different kinds of children would we see from different cultures? Taller, tanner, blonder women from Sweden? Stouter, tanner, thicker men from America? Thinner, whiter, effeminate men from Taiwan? It'd be interesting if nothing else.

"But I prefer here to stick to a strictly logical line of distinction, and insist that whereas in all previous persecutions the violence was used to end our indecision, the whole point here is that the violence is used to end the indecision of the persecutors. This is what the honest Eugenists really mean, so far as they mean anything. They mean that the public is to be given up, not as a heathen land for conversion, but simply as a pabulum for experiment. That is the real, rude, barbaric sense behind this Eugenic legislation. The Eugenist doctors are not such fools as they look in the light of any logical inquiry about what they want. They do not know what they want, except that they want your soul and body and mine in order to find out. They are quite seriously, as they themselves might say, the first religion to be experimental instead of doctrinal. All other established Churches have been based on somebody having found the truth. This is the first Church that was ever based on not having found it.

There is in them a perfectly sincere hope and enthusiasm; but it is not for us, but for what they might learn from us, if they could rule us as they can rabbits. They cannot tell us anything about heredity, because they do not know anything about it. But they do quite honestly believe that they would know something about it, when they had married and mismarried us for a few hundred years. They cannot tell us who is fit to wield such authority, for they know that nobody is; but they do quite honestly believe that when that authority has been abused for a very long time, somebody somehow will be evolved who is fit for the job. I am no Puritan, and no one who knows my opinions will consider it a mere criminal charge if I say that they are simply gambling. The reckless gambler has no money in his pockets; he has only the ideas in his head. These gamblers have no ideas in their heads; they have only the money in their pockets. But they think that if they could use the money to buy a big society to experiment on, something like an idea might come to them at last. That is Eugenics."

G.K. Chesterton, Eugenics and other Evils.

I recommend reading this book, as Chesterton was one of the few voices against Eugenics in its prime, and the arguments still are good.

the arguments may be good in some rhetorical sense, but their inapplicability to modern biology means they aren't very good in the only sense that counts for this discussion. the fear is amusing, though

How are they inapplicable to modern biology?

Yes, so long as you're not playing with human lives while researching it.

Did you just volunteer to be the first experimental subject to get your genes edited with these techniques?

> Or maybe those countries will fuck up their population's genetic makeups in unforeseen ways

This is why diversity is important.

I think you're right, but I think this doesn't address what I suppose is a reasonable fear: engineer a significant enough advantage to out-compete a rival population, and then only later rediscover the need for diversity. That doesn't work out well in the long term for either population, but that doesn't mean that, given the choice, it wouldn't happen.

Given the Chinese example, I'm immediately reminded of the folly of The Great Leap Forward and Chinese steel production quotas, and their results.

Reasonablish, although we do (and I feel a bit monstrous saying some of this) already have existing models in the form of NA reservations and the Amish.

Both of these are (massively?) out-competing groups (one of them through "no fault of their own") who are maintaining existence.

Even a bit more of a deliberate effort on the part of the competitive majority to support any (and again, feel a bit monstrous) "baseline reserve population" would probably succeed enough.

Enough people living today will have their genome sequence that if that's true you can just edit in the 'diversity' later in the future if that's needed.

That would miss part of the initial issue, which is: what if there's something wrong introduced as part of any editing process?