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A comment on Biology is the New Tech: Letter from a conference on CRISPR. Parent comment

Re:Biology is the New Tech: Letter from a conference on CRISPR by haihaibye on Saturday July 27, 2019 @09:14PM (#20545301)
This is a belief just like God making man and animals on separate days.

We have DNA and (partly) heritable traits just like tomatos and wheat. The only reason modification (eg CRISPR) was done later in humans vs other organisms was due to ethical not technical reasons.

We have easily obtained metrics that work as a proxy for intelligence like IQ, educational attainment, elite professional success, number of patents, publications etc.

As for having many genes being responsible for a trait, Fisher showed in 1918 you can perform selection even if there were an infinite number of loci involved, see https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infinitesimal_model

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Re:Biology is the New Tech: Letter from a conference on CRISPR by justforyou on Sunday July 28, 2019 @10:46AM (#20547817)
>> educational attainment, elite professional success, number of patents, publications etc.

None of these are meaningful measures of intelligence.

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Re:Biology is the New Tech: Letter from a conference on CRISPR by haihaibye on Tuesday July 30, 2019 @09:19AM (#20564530)
They correlate and as I said are 'easily measured.. proxies for intelligence'

You can't just sequence people who have accomplished great things and are widely recognised as geniuses as there aren't enough of then and they're busy.

We need huge sample sizes. Ideally, you'd sequence a million people and have them sit rigorous tests, interviews etc. But it's way cheaper and faster to have them tick boxes on forms.

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Re:Biology is the New Tech: Letter from a conference on CRISPR by justforyou on Thursday August 01, 2019 @10:48AM (#20584163)
>> They correlate and as I said are 'easily measured.. proxies for intelligence'

You're going to have to provide meaningful evidence to back up the assertion that numbers of patents (as well as the other criteria listed) actually correlate to higher intelligence.

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Re:Biology is the New Tech: Letter from a conference on CRISPR by sgt101 on Sunday July 28, 2019 @03:11PM (#20549293)
As anyone who has worked at a university or a research lab has said always!
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Re:Biology is the New Tech: Letter from a conference on CRISPR by sgt101 on Sunday July 28, 2019 @03:10PM (#20549287)
There are ethical reasons - of course, but we should also consider safety; which will be a tough one for CRISPR for heritable conditions. What if a modification goes sour in the second generation? What if it leads to mid life cancer? It might be a long time before we know if this is genuinely safe.
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