I’m writing this for my future self. I want kids, and figure that if anything is going to be useful for raising them right, it’s going to be “testimony from myself as a child”. This is a repository for links, ideas, tangents and testimonies regarding parenting. Advice from parents welcome.

Embryo Screening

Embryo screening companies Herasight and __ already claim to

Should One’s Kids be One’s Own?

Nicholas Decker argues that it would be immoral not to pick someone smarter, happier, and healthier than you to contribute the genetic material for your child. When one is given the opportunity to screen their child’s genes even before embryo screening begins, one is supposed to take it. More dakka: no stone left unturned.

After all, the desire for one’s children to be one’s own, genetically speaking, stems naturally from evolution; and evolution is an idiot blind god that isn’t optimizing for your child’s wellbeing (or for that matter your own wellbeing)—only the gray-goo-like spread of your selfish genetic material. Humans will gladly rebel against evolution’s alien desires: we’ve invented condoms and family planning. So why not cast off this last, strange shard of desire? Are our genes not parasitical aliens who live in our DNA and whisper dark suggestions into our brains?

Is selection for the best co-parent not what we already do, in the sense that we get to pick the father or mother of our child? Why would this be any different? Perhaps we do not base our decision on explicit measure like happiness and IQ so much as on pure instinct; but is this not so too our algorithm for picking friends? If it is my instinct as a human that I trust, why not pick one’s friend who best “fits” as the father of my child? And if it is my instinct as a human that I mistrust, then I may whip out a clipboard and spreadsheet and find my candidate in that matter.

How much might it cost to filter every Nobel prize winner alive and then ask for / buy some of their genetic material? Far less than it costs to send one’s offspring off to college; yet the benefits would far exceed college’s meager contribution to their future.

In some sense, this entire question is silly. Puzzling dilemmas are, on priors, soluble in technology. If one has a perfect understanding of why a Nobel prize winner’s genetics are useful, then one can simply edit one’s own embryos to reflect that part of them, and even push past the humble “single-prize Nobel”. All other desirable attributes such as happiness, health, looks, may be achieved via genetic editing as well.

Should one then wait for genetic engineering to achieve this level of mastery before having children? Not necessarily! Puzzling dilemmas are, on priors, soluble in technology. Why not simply edit a live human? If one is basing one’s decision on impulse negative utilitarianism, as is often the case with arguments of the style “the world is too cruel for me to have children”, then one simply has to ensure one’s child is happier on net during their childhood and, once the requisite level of technology is reached, enjoy our century’s ability to boost their IQ / happiness / looks via in vivo editing. By the looks of it, the meta-technology required to pull this off might be less than a full childhood away anyway.

I certainly do not regret being born: and it would be difficult for me to come to terms with the idea that it’d be better for Earth if my parents had decided to have a child after shopping for genes at the Escondido sperm bank. I justify this by pointing out that I’m capable of providing valuable variance to our noosphere and Earth would lose it if I didn’t exist… I’d also reach into the “I haven’t proved myself yet” bag or perhaps the “talent is extremely specific to circumstances” i.e. “lightning doesn’t strike twice” bag, which feels delusional.1

However I would not have wished my parents had me later, once every problem on Earth2025 were solved and genetic engineering were advanced enough that I’d be born with all the characteristics I would’ve otherwise had to apply to myself in vivo in our own timeline. I assume this sentiment is common,2 and that it would be foolish to wait for gene editing to make strides before having children, or even to hesitate for a moment whether one wants children-from-another-source rather than one’s own, when it makes little difference in the end.

The argument for picking another to become the father of your child seems thwarted by technology (which makes who-the-genetic-parent-is a mostly obsolete question), which is convenient if the idea makes one uncomfortable. But I would also warn against entirely rebelling against the software evolution gave us for such matters: if I pick a mate I’d like to be a parent with, that is high praise dashed by the notion that I wouldn’t trust her to have picked me correctly. To suggest we head to a friend or a sperm bank is to insult her taste!