953 replies to this topic

[mag1]

It would be helpful to bring in an idea from economics to understand a driving force of the technology revolution.

Zero marginal cost.
Technologies that have been able to achieve essentially zero cost to produce one extra unit of output have been at the forefront of
technological change (For example, software) There are immediate consequences when ideas are the driving force of change: No large amount of initial capital is required and products can rapidly be introduced to the market.

Consider what would happen when the first humans are genetically engineered for a range of desirable traits. Assuming that such people were reproductively compatible with non-modified people, the genetic enhancements would likely rapidly diffuse through the community. The marginal cost would likely quickly approach zero.

Zero marginal costs products have lead much of the recent wave of innovation and wealth. By understanding how zero marginal cost products have been able to tilt the balance in favor of great ideas instead of large pools of capital, insight can be gained into what products will lead future breakthroughs.

[Mind]

Here is an article germane to this discussion: http://motherboard.v...s-take-our-jobs

 

 

 

In the future—with less work and responsibility due to robots taking our jobs and leaving us only to collect our UBI—we might find there is a lot more to life than buying the latest trinkets from Walmart, or zoning out late at night in front of a television, or worrying about how poorly our bosses treat us at work. I say let the robots come. They may take our jobs, but they bring us freedom as well. With that freedom, we can become the best human beings we are capable of—a people full of passion, education, and a newly discovered drive of what it means to be alive. Perhaps it's time to reimagine the American Dream.

 

Sorry to say, but this quote is biased from the techo-utopian perspective. "Becoming the best human beings we are capable of" is for the small percentage of people who possess a greater degree of agency (passion, drive, whatever term you like). For most of the world, the UBI (or guaranteed minimum income) will usher in an era more like the movie Idiocracy. Pay people to not work and most won't. I am not immune from the pull of the UBI. If I lost my job and someone told me, "here's $50,000 a year to do nothing", it would certainly be an attractive option. I could just do things I like, such as gardening, sports, life extension advocacy, etc... If the history of no-consequence welfare is any guide, the vast majority will live a life closer to pure hedonism (getting hand-jobs at starbucks - watch Idiocracy for the context). The UBI, whatever the intentions might be, will likely turn out to be a grand form of control.

 

Is this something to be frowned-upon (unethical, immoral)? Certainly not from the individual perspective of the newly minted hedonists. It could not be any better. What about from the perspective of the elites and techno-utopians who mistakenly think they will be running the show. Maybe they will think it is okay, but their positivist attitude stems from their bias of being near the top of the current intellectual pyramid. Will they accept being ruled by "the system", the "borg", "machine intelligence", etc? Probably not. The future is not "human". Will joining the "borg" provide more meaning to life than living in a type of "Matrix"? That is the question.

[niner]

Sorry to say, but this quote is biased from the techo-utopian perspective. "Becoming the best human beings we are capable of" is for the small percentage of people who possess a greater degree of agency (passion, drive, whatever term you like). For most of the world, the UBI (or guaranteed minimum income) will usher in an era more like the movie Idiocracy. Pay people to not work and most won't. I am not immune from the pull of the UBI. If I lost my job and someone told me, "here's $50,000 a year to do nothing", it would certainly be an attractive option. I could just do things I like, such as gardening, sports, life extension advocacy, etc... If the history of no-consequence welfare is any guide, the vast majority will live a life closer to pure hedonism (getting hand-jobs at starbucks - watch Idiocracy for the context). The UBI, whatever the intentions might be, will likely turn out to be a grand form of control.

 

Is this something to be frowned-upon (unethical, immoral)? Certainly not from the individual perspective of the newly minted hedonists. It could not be any better. What about from the perspective of the elites and techno-utopians who mistakenly think they will be running the show. Maybe they will think it is okay, but their positivist attitude stems from their bias of being near the top of the current intellectual pyramid. Will they accept being ruled by "the system", the "borg", "machine intelligence", etc? Probably not. The future is not "human". Will joining the "borg" provide more meaning to life than living in a type of "Matrix"? That is the question.

 

Very good point about the UBI being a grand form of control.  Society has various forms of control now, but the UBI would be controlled by who- or what-ever was in charge, instead of today's dispersed forms of control.  Perhaps it would be different if the UBI were not so generous.  Instead of 50K, how would your motivations change if it were 12-15K?  A part time job or a something entrepreneurial would start to look pretty attractive then.  Having a UBI to fall back on might allow a degree of entrepreneurial risk-taking that would be rare today.

 

If someone is an intellectual elite today, they probably aren't dumb enough to think they will be running the show.  They certainly don't run it now.  The show is run by money, and the more money you have, the more power, or "speech" you have.   I'd rather be ruled by a hyper-AI than by the plutocrats who run the country now.  I was about to say the only hitch is who gets to program the AI, but by definition, a singularity-level AI programs itself.  An AI would at least have to start with basic principles, like "human life is sacred", but might later decide on its own to modify those principles into something different, like "the sacredness of any life form is proportional to its neural complexity", causing us all to become vegetarians, or "the sacredness of any life form is proportional to its financial net worth and/or how cute they are", causing no change from the present system.

[Mind]

No surprise here, but traditional "doctoring"/medicine is a job that will dwindle as well: http://www.kurzweila...s-in-your-hands

 

 

 

The change is powered by what Topol calls medicine’s “Gutenberg moment.” Much as the printing press took learning out of the hands of a priestly class, the mobile internet is doing the same for medicine, giving us unprecedented control over our healthcare. With smartphones in hand, we are no longer beholden to an impersonal and paternalistic system in which “doctor knows best.” Medicine has been digitized, Topol argues; now it will be democratized. Computers will replace physicians for many diagnostic tasks, citizen science will give rise to citizen medicine, and enormous data sets will give us new means to attack conditions that have long been incurable. Massive, open, online medicine, where diagnostics are done by Facebook-like comparisons of medical profiles, will enable real-time, real-world research on massive populations. There’s no doubt the path forward will be complicated: the medical establishment will resist these changes, and digitized medicine inevitably raises serious issues surrounding privacy. Nevertheless, the result—better, cheaper, and more human health care—will be worth it.

 

[mag1]

The profound shift that has happened in the composition of doctors during the last few decades might be another indicator of the approaching singularity. It is no secret that the female participation in medical school

has increased dramatically during this time. It is not entirely clear why this has happened, though men have likely analyzed the future prospects of a medical career and have concluded that it is not worth the effort. This is a telling

example of how the singularity force is being felt even at the top of our society.

 

It is no great prediction to expect that genomic sequencing will emerge over the 2 years as a widely used technology. The glimpse that a family member has had at their exome has already revealed several very interesting very rare mutations of medical significance. We had absolutely no idea that we had some of the problems revealed in the scan. Most of these conditions have no recognizable name and do not appear in standard medical guides.

When the rest of the community also acquires such information, the whole excitement of medicine will be diminished: People will know what is wrong with them, or could go wrong with them 50 years from now, or more to the point (for doctors) how to avoid anything ever going wrong again by genetically engineering away any possible problem.

 

Such a political shift will be likely when people fully appreciate how genetically flawed they and everyone else are. Our exome scan reported 100 frameshift errors, 100 nonsense errors, 100s of possibly serious medical problems. There will be a revolution. There can be no doubt. People will not allow specious ethical arguments from preventing them from ensuring that their children will never be afflicted with serious medical conditions. The illegality of

germ-line genetic engineering will have to give way to the overwhelming despair that any future parents will face when peering deeply into their genomes.     

 

Such a change will take away most of the thrill of medicine. It is obvious to us, after reviewing a family member's exome, that everyone likely has very rare mutations that make them truly individual. Being a doctor in a world in which no one had a technology to determine someone's genetic makeup, must have been fascinating. Everyone walking into an emergency without a genome scan is a complete blank book. When we have went online and asked medical experts about our specific rare mutations many of them appeared to be at a loss for what to say. For example, we might say to them: We have a rare genetic mutation which was not seen in anyone in a large American population sample. How might such a mutation influence disease X?  At this point in time, people are extremely interesting because there is no standard mass produced model: this likely will not be true in the future. It would be so much more

efficient and medical knowledge would be so much more advanced if there were a genetically specified uniform blueprint for humanity. Everyone would benefit. If something were to go wrong, there would be detailed specific knowledge of how to correct the problem. However, as it is now many doctors will not even attempt to answer our rare mutations questions. 

 

Once widespread genetic engineering has been accomplished, it would seem unlikely medicine as we know could continue to exist. The medical system today largely treats a small group of genetically unfortunate people.  

However, when you look into the community, there are those who never have had any illness and none of there family have either. Cloning such people would shutter most of our hospitals. The doctors see this approaching.

Might this be why men have abandoned medicine in such large numbers? 

 

(A suggestion: The forum could add a grammar check function on the choice menu. Those who found grammar errors could earn points for their finds.)

    

[niner]

The profound shift that has happened in the composition of doctors during the last few decades might be another indicator of the approaching singularity. It is no secret that the female participation in medical school
has increased dramatically during this time. It is not entirely clear why this has happened, though men have likely analyzed the future prospects of a medical career and have concluded that it is not worth the effort. This is a telling
example of how the singularity force is being felt even at the top of our society.

This is not just happening in med school, it's all across the spectrum. Females are now outpacing males in most educational fields, and are graduating in significantly larger numbers than males. In 1965, men earned 61% of all college degrees, women 39%. The estimate for 2015 inverts this, with women earning 60% of all degrees, men 40%. The crossover point, when the ratio was 50:50 happened in 1981, thirty four years ago. Yet everywhere you turn, the evil patriarchy is still being fought. Have you seen a television commercial any time since the Nixon administration where the woman was the idiot and the man was the smart one? I doubt it. How about the other way around, where the guy is a dope and the woman has the clue? Yup. Lots of those. It's the standard of the industry. Consider some cultural models: Marge & Homer Simpson, Bart and Lisa, Peter and Lois Griffin, or the couple on American Dad-- in each case, the guy is an idiot or insane, and the woman is the smart one. Boys in America today are heading toward endangered species status, at the rate things are going. Pretty soon the go-to career choice for males will be prison inmate. So it looks like the Singularity is going to be no big deal for the guys- they'll already have been out of a job for a long time anyway. I have to ask, why are alarm bells not going off regarding the drop-off in male graduation rates? Do people think this is a non-issue?

Once widespread genetic engineering has been accomplished, it would seem unlikely medicine as we know could continue to exist. The medical system today largely treats a small group of genetically unfortunate people.  
However, when you look into the community, there are those who never have had any illness and none of there family have either. Cloning such people would shutter most of our hospitals. The doctors see this approaching.
Might this be why men have abandoned medicine in such large numbers?

I think that we will eventually fix our most egregious genetic errors. If we picked out ideal people and cloned them, we would eventually lose all our species' genetic diversity. That would be great until the next environmental challenge came, whether microbe or cosmic radiation storm, and virtually everyone was maladapted to it. However, being post-human means never having to say "I feel lousy". Maybe we really don't need genetic diversity, if we engineer ourselves well enough. It would be a tough problem, since everyone would effectively be marrying their twin sister or brother. There would be a lot of recessive genes we'd need to weed out.

Unless we can design humans that can sit in front of a computer all day eating junk food while remaining perfectly healthy, doctors will still have plenty of work on their hands.

[mag1]

The perspective of the singularity possibly provides considerable insight into the shifts in the fortunes of males over the last few decades.

The male doctors in my family knew from an extremely early age what their role in life would be and what rewards would result from following through
with such a career path. {It is quite embarrassing receiving a lecture from children barely out of kindergarten to get one's life together and develop clearly
defined goals.} Much of the social pathology/mental illness in our community results from people who lack such clear headed thinking. Knowing exactly where
you are headed and what you need to do to stay on course (such as with a medical career) is actually a tremendous simplification. Real life is not that simple.
There is often simply no obvious cause and effect relationship that people can rely on. The operant conditioning received by those intent on a medical career
needs to remove such uncertainty. If you accomplish this, then this results. Most of our family's doctors gave up a large portion of their childhood to become
doctors.

It is not difficult to understand why the equation has changed for those same families considering a medical or other professional career. Many of these families have
carefully thought about the future prospects of their children and realized (some for the first time in generations) that it is not worth it. After giving up
their childhood, there is no longer certainty that such a gamble will pay off. Read the scientific breakthroughs that are published everyday. Does anyone think
that investing the next 20 years to become a doctor makes any sense? Consider that a single genetic mutation added to the human gene pool (in APP) would eliminate AD!

As I mentioned before on this thread, the children being born today will likely make no meaningful contribution to humanity before the singularity occurs. (if it occurs when expected). How might this change the resources that will be allocated to the next generation?

[niner]

As I mentioned before on this thread, the children being born today will likely make no meaningful contribution to humanity before the singularity occurs. (if it occurs when expected). How might this change the resources that will be allocated to the next generation?

It might change the resource allocation a lot, at least if most people even knew about the singularity, much less believed that it would happen on schedule, which is not presently the case.   For one thing, we might encourage our children to actually have a childhood.  I had an awesome childhood (particularly considering my dysfunctional family...) and I managed to become a scientist with a lucrative career in the private sector.  I'm not sure I'd want a doctor who gave up their childhood- they might not have the entire human skill set that a doctor needs.  I have kids who are in school now, and I'm pretty shocked at the lack of physical activity that's built into their day at school.  Recess and PE used to be a standard thing for everyone, now it's like an afterthought.   I could ride my bike to the store a mile away when I was seven, but today if you let your kid walk to the school bus stop by themselves someone will report you to child protective services.   It's kind of hard to imagine that we could have a Singu1arity when much of the country has lost touch with reality.  Maybe if or when it finally happens, the first thing it will do is shut down all 24 hour news outlets in order to fulfill its mission of protecting humans from threats to their well being.

[mag1]

I am not sure whether it is necessary for most people to need to know what is going on, for the changes of the singularity event to be made by the power brokers.
Things might start to happen and most people will not have any particular idea why.

For example, there is a push to legalize marijuana in different parts of the world now. How much of this is motivated by a cynical decision that children will no longer make a contribution to the future anyways? It is well known that such a change will be catastrophic for young people. Societies that have chosen that policy have quickly encountered a state of total social collapse. Some find the whole notion of reefer madness quite amusing. However, it turns out that I have that SNP. If I had been a recreational marijuana user, then it is not unreasonable to expect that I would have developed marijuana psychosis. Many others likely also have this genotype. Thus, the social consequences of the possible legalization of marijuana are very disturbing. What would be the result of having large numbers of young people struggling with psychotic illness caused by marijuana? Probably not
pleasant.


Anyone with understanding of human development would acknowledge the painstaking task involved in helping young people realize their potential. An inventor might fail thousands of times before finally getting it right. What if the community decided that they would no longer provide resources to people who failed thousands of times before a breakthrough or took decades to make a discovery? It is especially scary because we are no longer talking about events that might be decades in the future. The singularity event might already be changing the decisions today about resource allocations and the environments in which the next generation will be nurtured in.


It is surprising that such fundamentally important topics as the singularity event are not more fully part of the public discourse. So many of the really important ideas never make the newspapers, tabloids, reality or talk shows. Unfortunately, this forum is one of only a few places where the singularity event does not need to be explained. It is sad that so many people don't have any clue what is going on. The first indication they will likely have of the singularity event is when they notice infinite technological change happening all around them.

Children who are born doctors and spend their entire life with the single focus of becoming the best doctor they can be can be very well-adjusted and happy people.
So much of the pathology of modern life relates to people who have never gotten on the goal-achievement merry-go-round. Medicine is such a vitally important
component of modern society that this firm input-output relationship had to be clearly defined.

This is the likely at the very heart of why men have abandoned medicine (and many other professions) in such a dramatic and rapid fashion:
the input-output relationship is now seriously in doubt.

Babies born to be doctors, who played with DNA toys in their cribs, who followed their medical relatives on rounds in hospitals and homes as children, who fully understood what role they would play in the community long before attending medical school, and have now entered the medical profession face a very uncertain future. What major illness couldn't be cured within the next 5 years? Metastatic illness was cured in mice 20 years ago. Clinical translation of this result and many, many others is in process. It is not unreasonable to think that this has changed the decision making process of entering medicine.

It is surprising that conseratives have never picked up on the potential for using the idea of goal-directed behavior to direct the future of people at the margins of our community. As soon as people could see the connection between effort and reward, life could improve for them. Perhaps they could be offered some sort of incentive for every course they completed.

[Mind]

My profession (meteorology/forecasting) is certainly feeling the effects of automation as well. What attracted me to the field is that I was always interested in the weather, I enjoyed math & physics, and I enjoyed analyzing maps. When I started, back in the 1990s, the field still required a person to have deep knowledge of the chemical and physical processes of the atmosphere, be able to synthesize/plot relevant data onto a map by hand, and model the future changes within your head. It was great. Humans generally love pattern recognition.

 

Now it is all done by computers. I still have all the knowledge and have a working model running in my head, but on a day-to-day basis I curate computer output more than anything else. I throw out obviously bad data points, collate the rest, and present the forecast in an easily digestible format across many media platforms. Sigh.

[mag1]

Does anyone have updates on the predictions made in The Singularity is Near? The book was written 10 years ago, so we should now be at the
quarter pole on the race to the singularity event.

The book mentions a list of technologies that were undergoing exponential change (for example, genome sequencing, computers etc.)
It would be nice to have an update. Computer clock speeds seem to have leveled off and do not appear to have stayed with the trend
from the book. (Computers appear to be stuck in the low Gigahertz range). It would appear from the information in the book and
online reports that a computer with human equivalent computational power has already been made (10^^16 FLOPS). I do not remember
there being any headlines about such an important milestone.

Interestingly, China currently has the world's fastest supercomputer. Shouldn't investment in high-end supercomputers now be a
national strategic priority? With the singularity approaching, we are now playing for all the marbles. Being a few steps behind
when an entire building was required to add up a grocery bill made no difference. However, being a few steps behind now could be
the difference between possessing the intelligence of a primate and an infinite singularity superintelligence.

[Mind]

Here is a good thread too use for keeping track of Ray Kurzweil's predictions: http://www.longecity...ls-predictions/

[Sanhar]

If it helps, computing technology seems to be advancing in the optical sector on its way to the quantum sector.  I have been seeing a significant amount of developments in optical computing which would seem to be a good stepping stone to quantum (and may be incorporated into quantum computing tech for all I know) and they're saying that the systems will run much faster and also cooler.

 

Moore's law is seemingly going to survive for quite some time.  Here's a link to a recent development in this regard:

http://www.scienceda...50302105203.htm

[mag1]

Might someone post an update on the introduction of this thread?
Almost 2 years when this thread started, IBM Watson was performing at the level of a first year medical student.
Has it graduated yet? Is it now a better doctor than all human doctors combined?
The people want to know.

The introduction also noted long term income curves etc. . Do others on this thread find these statistics true to their life experience?
I do not. I feel so much richer than I did years ago. Having access to my own research library in my own home (i.e. the internet) makes me
feel extremely blessed. Virtually no human in all of history has had access to the quantity and quality of information that I have had.
This has substantial implications for the future healthcare, education, finances etc. of my family.

The fact that none of this has translated into the measured economic statistics simply shows how far out of touch such approaches are. People have become obsessed with quantifying, and taxing economic activity and not actually thinking of the benefits that have flowed to people from these technological changes. It seems quite possible that the divide between the nominal economy and the real economy in which people live will continue to grow as we move toward the singularity.

Edited by mag1, 18 March 2015 - 01:03 AM.

[niner]

You can't eat internet access.  There's simply no question that the middle class in America hasn't done all that well in the past 40 years. 

[mag1]

I just feel so blessed.

I can hardly believe it. I walk into my computer room and I can access an overwhelming database of information. I remember all those years ago when I would have to go to some building half way across town called a library to do the same thing. I made such arduous journeys only a few times in my entire life. Now I spend considerable amounts of time every day interacting with this vast treasure trove of information. Much of our society have become such dedicated researchers.

There can be no doubt that this is a pivotal time in human history. The same people who a generation ago idled their lives away watching mindless TV have a real opportunity to become an expert in something and make a real contribution. Not everyone will, though now almost everyone on this planet at least has powerful tools at their disposal.

[niner]

I just feel so blessed.

I can hardly believe it. I walk into my computer room and I can access an overwhelming database of information. I remember all those years ago when I would have to go to some building half way across town called a library to do the same thing. I made such arduous journeys only a few times in my entire life. Now I spend considerable amounts of time every day interacting with this vast treasure trove of information. Much of our society have become such dedicated researchers.

There can be no doubt that this is a pivotal time in human history. The same people who a generation ago idled their lives away watching mindless TV have a real opportunity to become an expert in something and make a real contribution. Not everyone will, though now almost everyone on this planet at least has powerful tools at their disposal.

 

Yeah, It's certainly cool.  Still, you have to have a place to live, utilities, food, clothes, transportation, healthcare, and education so that you can make use of the information riches you now have access to.  How do you pay for all that stuff?

[mag1]

I feel so badly for people who are stuck in a poverty mindset. It can be difficult to move beyond such thinking.

Life would be so much more positive for people, if they could embrace abundance thinking.

We live in a world of overflowing abundance.

Everyone can access the largest reference library from the comfort of their own home.
IBM Watson has already demonstrated expert level ability in medicine. What happens when your desktop can access such a genius for perhaps
no greater payment than a pop-up ad?

In almost every respect, technology is fundamentally changing the problem of scarcity.
Measuring economic well-being on the basis of how many things people have, completely ignores the profound wealth revolution that has been
been underway for decades.

Perhaps the people of the future who will have infinitely powerful computers, endless energy sources, ideal health etc. will also be fooled by the naysayers.

[Sanhar]

Well, if one's needs are met, it's easy to look at this via abundance thinking.

 

At least in the US getting enough to eat is not that hard via the EBT/food stamps solution.

 

Housing continues to be a problem, although many people use a roommate system or othre group housing system.

... I note directly that housing is about to be massively disrupted by 3d printing.  The only remaining issue beyond that is who is going to take the time (and the land) to make real public housing.

 

Transportation can be a major problem unless you live in an area with public transport.

 

Clothing... well, that's cheap.  We can go to Goodwill or something.

 

So if these needs are met, what's to stop us from saying the internet is great and we have many options?

Edited by Sanhar, 19 March 2015 - 05:20 PM.

[niner]

I feel so badly for people who are stuck in a poverty mindset. It can be difficult to move beyond such thinking.

Life would be so much more positive for people, if they could embrace abundance thinking.

We live in a world of overflowing abundance.

Everyone can access the largest reference library from the comfort of their own home.
IBM Watson has already demonstrated expert level ability in medicine. What happens when your desktop can access such a genius for perhaps
no greater payment than a pop-up ad?

In almost every respect, technology is fundamentally changing the problem of scarcity.
Measuring economic well-being on the basis of how many things people have, completely ignores the profound wealth revolution that has been
been underway for decades.

Perhaps the people of the future who will have infinitely powerful computers, endless energy sources, ideal health etc. will also be fooled by the naysayers.

 

You can access the largest reference library from the comfort of your own home, providing you have a home.  And internet access.  And a device.  And money to get through the paywall on the library.   In the midst of all this abundance, how do you personally pay for all that stuff, along with food, utilities, etc?  We may live in a world of overflowing abundance, but most of it is in the hands of the wealthy few, and they don't appear to be keen on releasing their death-grip.    This thread is about the potential for many people to lose what little income they currently have, but the end of scarcity isn't going to conveniently happen at the same time.  There will probably be a multi-decade period of increasing social disorder until we come up with a new way to organize society.

Perhaps the people of the future who will have infinitely powerful computers, endless energy sources, ideal health etc. will also believe in unicorns.

[mag1]

A new era of humanity has begun!

 

Welcome to the age of abundance.

 

http://www.nature.co...rm-line-1.17111

[Kalliste]

World history is pretty depressing. The competition for resources probably started within a few months after the nanocells started to copy themselves. I think the scenario that happens in Accelerando is pretty realistic in terms of what the world will be like with supersentinent artifical intelligence vice presidents of transplanetary corporations.

Hopefully it will be nice for us bags of meat. But I have serious doubts about our potential to not be used for our constituent atoms by a bootstrapping hostile AI looking for domination of Sol-space.

[mag1]

Um, did we miss it?

 

Speculation is now building that CRISPR technology has already been used with humans (see url in my above post).

It appears that it is expected to be reported shortly.

 

This is a milestone achievement in human history.

The power to redefine the genetics of humanity changes everything.

[niner]

Speculation is now building that CRISPR technology has already been used with humans (see url in my above post).

It appears that it is expected to be reported shortly.

 

This is a milestone achievement in human history.

The power to redefine the genetics of humanity changes everything.

 

Sounds like it.  There was an article on the front page of the NY Times today.  It may have just been a reference to this paper though.  The authors of this paper said:

 

Should a truly compelling case ever arise for the therapeutic benefit of germ­line modification,

 

 

Hmm.  That's a pretty impressive lack of imagination.   Obviously, this has all manner of implications, and could result in a really creepy world of super-humans and old fashioned normal humans.   How exactly would that work out?  Would they bring back anti-miscegenation laws?   I don't think this has much to do with an era of abundance.  It's more like an early salvo in what is going to become a hailstorm of weirdness that everyone is going to have to absorb.  I hope we don't screw this up.  The cat's already out of the bag, so it's a matter of whether it is going to be done in the sunlight or in secretive super-villain lairs. 

[mag1]

The reporting on this story was very distorted.

 

For example, a family member has had an exome scan done. There were not 1 or 2 mutations of concern, there were not a few dozen, there were thousands of mutations that we have been

worried about for months. It offers no comfort if someone were to point out that the X-linked mental retardation mutations that our family member carries is present in a majority of the human population or that the family member is a carrier

of several BRCA mutations that at this time have not been accessed for a relationship to cancer.

 

When wide-spread genome sequencing begins over the next few years, a general understanding will emerge in mainstream society that genetic engineering will be necessary. It is hard to look at people in the same way again. Would anyone

want to get married if they could carefully analyze their potential partner's genome? I doubt it.Our family member's readout on the exome was typical though very scary. There were an average number of stop gain mutations (around 100).

This means that 100 of their genes were completely useless. There were also stop loss, frameshift, missense etc. mutations. Looking though an exome is terrifying. Dozens of extraordinarily rare diseases were reported in the exome analysis.

 

It is fair to say that everyone who has not been genetically engineered will have similar results. There are no eugenic people before CRISPR.

 

However, if the article that is expected soon can establish that such errors have been edited out, life will be forever different. It will not be especially relevant if one or two mutations had been removed with CRISPR.

If this were done, it would not be entirely clear whether simple selection had been done. However, if a child were presented that had no stop gain or stop loss errors, we would know without question that we had entered

a truly different time.

 

The Gene Race is on.

 

Those nations that reject the challenge on ethical grounds will quickly become completely marginalized.

After genetic engineering is commonplace, people with average intellect today will be considered severely mentally challenged by those who have been genetically engineered

 

[niner]

The reporting on this story was very distorted.
 
For example, a family member has had an exome scan done. There were not 1 or 2 mutations of concern, there were not a few dozen, there were thousands of mutations that we have been
worried about for months. It offers no comfort if someone were to point out that the X-linked mental retardation mutations that our family member carries is present in a majority of the human population or that the family member is a carrier
of several BRCA mutations that at this time have not been accessed for a relationship to cancer.
 
When wide-spread genome sequencing begins over the next few years, a general understanding will emerge in mainstream society that genetic engineering will be necessary. It is hard to look at people in the same way again. Would anyone
want to get married if they could carefully analyze their potential partner's genome? I doubt it.Our family member's readout on the exome was typical though very scary. There were an average number of stop gain mutations (around 100).
This means that 100 of their genes were completely useless. There were also stop loss, frameshift, missense etc. mutations. Looking though an exome is terrifying. Dozens of extraordinarily rare diseases were reported in the exome analysis.
 
It is fair to say that everyone who has not been genetically engineered will have similar results. There are no eugenic people before CRISPR.
 
However, if the article that is expected soon can establish that such errors have been edited out, life will be forever different. It will not be especially relevant if one or two mutations had been removed with CRISPR.
If this were done, it would not be entirely clear whether simple selection had been done. However, if a child were presented that had no stop gain or stop loss errors, we would know without question that we had entered
a truly different time.

Why did your family member get an exome scan?  All it seems to have done is create mass anxiety.  Was there any genetic counseling done before or after?  This kind of story is exactly why more people don't learn anything about their genome, even things that would give them actionable intelligence.
 
What you are looking at in your family member is a snapshot of evolution through natural selection.  That's the process that brought us to the point we are today.  We all do it.

 

The Gene Race is on.

Those nations that reject the challenge on ethical grounds will quickly become completely marginalized.
After genetic engineering is commonplace, people with average intellect today will be considered severely mentally challenged by those who have been genetically engineered

 

 

This is exactly the dystopia that people are trying to prevent.  Maybe there will be three classes of beings:  The Super-AI, The Modified Human, and Meatbags.  All this gene editing stuff should probably be in its own thread- want me to split it out?
 

[mag1]

We got an exome scan because we were looking for the genetic reason behind an illness a family member had. We still have not been able to find the problem. This is partly the result of the overwhelming number of mutations that

were reported in the exome file (around 60,000). We had no anticipation of how deeply flawed a typical human genome could be. This family member has been very healthy. Yet, there are hundreds and hundreds of very serious

genetic errors in their exome.  Hundreds and hundreds of stop loss, stop gain, frameshift etc. mutations. These errors are very serious. A frameshift error makes an entire gene transcript meaningless. When we could not find the answer

we were looking we started spreading the net to related illnesses. Often in medicine as it is practiced today, illnesses are lumped into categories of symptoms that do not accurately reflect a precise genetic definition. As we relaxed the definition of the

illness of interest a large number of alternative possible illnesses emerged. 

 

It is still early days with exomes. Our exome had many mistakes and there is still much uncertainty about the results. Most of the really interesting mutations were likely sequencing errors. (that would be about 30,000 of the 60,000 mutations).

These were the mutations with low quality, low depth, strand bias etc. It will be much easier to interpret an exome when large scale sequencing can immediately correct all of this noise. We did not go through genetic counseling. It is still a little

early for mass roll out of this technology, though the analysis software has been constantly improving. There have been some very interesting finds with the exome. Some of them possibly actionable. We are working through some of the leads now. 

 

We are very glad that we have went through this process. The conception of the genome promoted by 23andme is how connected humanity is through their genomes. It should not be surprising that when the gene chip looks for genotypes

that have frequencies of up to 50% that you will match up with others whom you might not have had a common ancestor within the last 50,000 years. It offers a view of genetics that emphasizes what is in common with people.

 

However, the exome scan has shown us things that are different between people. It will be hard to understand people in the same way as before. The exome has revealed mutations that are very specific to our family. A very small group

of people would share some of these mutations. Further, as we have went through the exome we have found rare mutations that speak to how we as a family perceive the world. The exome scan has revealed secrets about ourselves that even we

were not fully aware of. The exome scan has been a great learning experience and it has clearly shown to us the problems that happen in the world when people of different genetic backgrounds attempt to interact. Unfortunately, with the knowledge

acquired through the exome scan we now appreciate how different we are to other people. Other people will be perceived just as an objective psychologist would or the anthropologist considering an odd species of primates. By revealing the genetic truth about ourselves, we have realized that other people will also have rare mutations and they will be their own mystery onto themselves.

 

The reunification of humanity as a single community can now only occur through creating a common genetic blueprint. Until then we will all have to live in our own separate realities.

 

 

The dystopia that we should all be most concerned about is the catastrophe all around us!

 

100% of humans progress to Braak stage 2 (MCI [pre-Alzheimer's]), if they live to 90.

European nations have decided that they will allow the euthanization of children.   etc. etc.

 

The great irony is that genetic engineering will remove all of this drama so that people can actually go about their lives and enjoy it.

Genetic engineering will allow for the end of the welfare state, the care-giving state and the emergence of a post-state existence where highly capable individuals can go about their life

unimpeded by other people's tyrannies.

 

There was a palpable sense of urgency in today's announcement. The experts in genetics seem to have been forewarned that an imminent report will document the use of gene editing in humans.

In every other such race, America embraced the challenge and won. It is all too obvious that if the challenge were not taken up this time due to ethical considerations, America will no longer be a world

leader. Turning down the promise of genetic engineering will mean the passing of the torch to those who will illuminated the world.

 

 

Let's keep the thread as it is. This breakthrough moment into a new trans-human future is probably going to calm down for a while

[Kalliste]

If the forum lacks a general thread on GE I would like that to be a separate thread from this one, that seems mainly centered on software and hardware of computers.

Edited by Cosmicalstorm, 21 March 2015 - 07:18 AM.

[mag1]

Wow, this link shows that CRISPR can be done in living animals.

 

http://www.longecity...a-mutated-gene/

 

Anyone want to change their genome in vivo?

[Kalliste]

Wow, this link shows that CRISPR can be done in living animals.

 

http://www.longecity...a-mutated-gene/

 

Anyone want to change their genome in vivo?

 

 

Whatever this dog got

http://www.lol101.co..._Dog_VI8QW9.jpg