What Should be Allowed and Outlawed in a World of Genetic Engineering?

In 1978, the first "test tube baby" was born. By 2017, babies born by in vitro fertilization (IVF) were 1.7% of all babies born in the US.

In 2018, 40 years after the first IVF baby, two baby girls were born whose genes had been edited. I think there is a real possibility that gene editing will become more common in 40 years than IVF is now.

Which genetic changes should be outlawed in such a world?

Which genetic changes should be allowed?

If you refuse to analyze or edit genes of your offspring and they suffer from what will then be an easily preventable genetic issue, should they be able to sue you?

Evolution to this point has been random. Will the world improve once evolution is made more intentional?

Arrested Development: November as a Choice Between a Patrimonial or Modern State, of Progress or Decay

The worldviews we hold determine what kind of institutions we can create.

Francis Fukuyama argues that government emerged gradually through these stages:

• A band: small group of hunters and gatherers who were related.
• A tribe: like a band but they pushed back genetic connection a generation or more and thus were able to get bigger groups than a band.
• A patrimonial state: the state administration is essentially an extension of the ruler's household (think Louis XIV or Kim Jong un) and relies on family and friends.
• A modern state: this state is impersonal and power does not consist of the ruler's family or friends; rather, recruitment to administrative positions is based on impersonal criteria such as merit, education, or technical knowledge.

I was talking to a guy from Africa, asking about the government in his country. He said that the political party you join is almost always defined by which tribe you're part of, which often makes politics zero-sum. Most of his countrymen get their identity by tribe and not nationality, he said.

The good news is that we seem to be further along than so many besieged African nations . What's shocking to me, though, is the realization that so many Americans would still prefer the patrimonial state that Trump fights for, a government in which his son-in-law consistently gets the most important assignments, his friends are made immune from law and order, and his decision about whether to send aid or troops to a state are based on which party dominates. And of course when loyalty is the test and not technical expertise, conspiracy theories abound because belief in conspiracy theories that defy critical assessments are a great test of loyalty. As Trump said, "Stick with us. Don't believe the crap you see from these people, the fake news. ... What you're seeing and what you're reading is not what's happening."

We create the institutions we believe in. You could probably say that our institutions are simply manifestations of our beliefs. For now, a big portion of the American population believes in a patrimonial rather than modern state. It's simply not possible for African nations ruled by people who think of themselves as tribal to enjoy the peace and prosperity a nation affords. Similarly, it's simply not possible for the US to enjoy the peace and prosperity a modern state affords when so many Americans are committed to a patrimonial state. The regions of the country that hold this view are going to always be less prosperous than the regions that instead believe in a modern state. We will soon see which is the real America and what stage of development we're at.

The Most Important Development in the Evolution of Humans

First an excerpt from Thinking Big, a book about how our brains evolved to adapt to social realities. A key point here is this matter of thinking in terms of relationships and not just rationally.

Food was certainly of vital importance and obtaining it efficiently and securely must have dominated much of their [early hominins’] lives. The archaeologist Rhys Jones, who lived with Aborigines in Northern Australia, once said to us that these hunters and gatherers were always 24 hours away from hunger.But for us the keys to understanding food lie in the implications for social cooperation. This takes two forms. First are the tactical demands, of getting working parties together to hunt or gather safely and with greater chance of success. This covers defence against predators as well as obtaining those foods that were needed to fuel expanding brains. Second is the strategic matter of planning for bad times. This is achieved by looking for help beyond your immediate community. Instead of restricting access to resources by defending them against all-comers, it is better to allow other people in. By linking individuals and their communities over very large geographical areas a form of ecological insurance is produced. [highlighted added]Archaeologists refer to this as social storage: tokens exchanged for food in bad times, and vice versa in good. In other words, if conditions deteriorate where you happen to be ranging, then we will allow your community to come over to our range and use our resources for a while. Later, the reverse will be the case, and you can pay us back. Such a system works well, but it requires that the community has a territory large enough to cover a wide range of habitats. It won’t work so well if community territories are small and consist of essentially the same kind of habitat.
…..Rather than concentrating on what may be rational explanations of why they hunted bison rather than reindeer or chose not to eat fish, as the isolated Tasmanians famously did 6000 years ago, we need to shift the perspective and see the role of food and other materials in creating relationships rather than simply meeting calorific goals. Archaeological explanations for the human story need to be relational (being social) as well as rational (being economic). Social life is not based on calories alone but on the relationships that emerge when things are made, exchanged, used, and kept.pp. 86-7 of Clive Gamble, John Gowlett, and Robin Dunbar’s Thinking Big: How the Evolution of Social Life Shaped the Human Mind, Thames & Hudson, London, 2014, paperback version 2018.

Put more simply, as humanity evolved it faced two choices.
1. Defend your limited resources from others.
2. Expand your limited resources by sharing with others.

Archaeologists think that Neanderthals adopted the first strategy and early humans adopted the second. Neanderthals went extinct. We've become the dominant species.

As it turns out, the second strategy of strengthening relationships rather than walls has a host of advantages. Not only do you have more insurance against bad times but this strategy requires you to cooperate with larger groups of others, which enables all sorts of advances. This means opportunities for wider array of mates, the exchange of ideas, and the "outsourcing" of or cooperation on explanations, research and development, and cultural and technological innovations that eventually dwarfed the diversification of food sources in importance.

The choice to cooperate to share more rather than compete to protect less may be the single most important choice early humans ever made.

What Made - and Still Makes - Western Civilization Great

INSTITUTIONS AS TOOLS OR SACRED OBJECTS

The battle between social conservatives and progressives

In last week’s speech in Poland, Trump warned about a threat to Western Civilization. He mentioned “history” six times and spoke of          “the bonds of history, culture, and memory,” and “the bonds of culture, faith, and tradition.” Speaking for the right, Trump is proudly pointing to the West as having a superior tradition worth fighting for.

Douglas Murray, author of The Strange Death of Europe: Immigration, Identity, Islam, argues that the Left in Europe is essentially embarrassed to argue that their culture is really better than any other and authorities have actually looked away number of atrocities, including honor killings (families killing their own sisters and daughters because of their shame at who they’ve married) because it might seem racist to prosecute these as crimes.

So we have the Right arguing for tradition and the Left arguing for cultural relativism. The one would head backwards and the other would stand around awkwardly, apologizing for seeming to suggest that their ways are any better than that of any other people.

What seems to be missing is the appreciation for history without treating historical institutions as sacred or a culture as synonymous with race or nationalism (which it is not).

The West was seemingly the first to do something that set it apart and set it on the road to progress. This is worth defending.

INSTITUTIONS AS SACRED OBJECTS OR SIMPLY TOOLS

How we think about institutions defines our communities. Three ways to characterize the great institutions of the West like church, state, and bank are:

1       Sacred objects that must be preserved: this the attitude of the social conservative
2.      Obsolete objects that must be eradicated: this the attitude of the radical
3.      Simply tools that everyone should have access to: this is the attitude of the progressive

The debate in the West today is between social conservatives and progressives. The radicals who in past generations argued to outlaw religion (as the French Revolutionaries and Soviets did), financial markets (as communists throughout the world did last century) and even the nation-state (as anarchists have) are largely ignored in today’s political debates. Institutions separate us from the other primates and the real argument is not over whether we should have them but how we should treat them.

The most defining revolutions of the West were led by progressives and transformed these institutions:

1.      Church - the battle between Protestants and Catholics that gave us freedom of religion between about 1300 and 1700
2.      Nation-state – the battle between royalists and revolutionaries that gave us democracy between about 1700 and 1900
3.      Bank - the democratization of financial markets that gave us the American dream between about 1900 and 2000

Each revolution turned a dominant institution ruled by elites into a tool used by the average person. These were not one-time events. For instance, democracy was a revolution but it took centuries more to extend it from white, property owning Protestant men to even 18-year-old minority women. Early forms of religious freedom just gave you a choice between Catholic, Calvinist and Lutheran, not the thousands of denominations and religions (including atheism) available today. Like economic progress, this social progress isn’t something that happens one year and then stops; it is on-going and progress is as dependent on social change as it is on technological change.

Social conservatives are more likely to wonder about the intentions of founding fathers. If you see institutions as tools, though, the idea of protecting them from change is about as odd as insisting that Rudolf Diesel or Henry Ford never intended for us to drive cars with cup holders or GPS. Even if true it’s irrelevant to those of us alive now.

It’s difficult to understand how visceral is the reaction to Trump without understanding how differently social conservatives and progressives think about our major institutions.

FREEDOM OF RELIGION

First amendment:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

As it turns out, freedom of religion, free speech, a free press and political activism are all intertwined. Our founding fathers had genius enough to see that and packaged them into the same amendment. All have to do with freedom of thought but started with freedom of religion.

In 1302, Pope Boniface issued a bull that asserted his lordship over all of Christendom. By 1648 the Treaty of Westphalia essentially took away the pope’s power to dictate religion to a ruler and the ruler’s power to dictate religion to the people. The battle for freedom of religion played out between roughly 1300 and 1700 and gave us terrible atrocities like the Spanish Inquisition and the Thirty Years War that killed about ten percent of Europe’s population before reaching a resolution.

Had freedom of religion merely brought peace, that would have been enough. There is more, though. Once you’re free to choose your beliefs, you might just choose to base those beliefs on scientific evidence rather than religious revelation. As it turns out, freedom of religion allows scientific thinking to flourish.

In the early 1600s, the Church put Galileo under house arrest; by the late 1600s, England made Newton the Master of the Mint. Freedom of religion enabled the rise of science.

Progressives see in Trump’s travel ban targeted at Muslims not just a challenge to freedom of religion, which is reason enough to be upset. They see it as an attack on freedom of thought. Trump “knows” that Islam is the wrong religion and that climate change is not real and that he’s being attacked by “fake news.” Social conservatives see Trump as protecting their true and sacred religion; progressives see him as attacking freedom of thought.

DEMOCRACY

The next big revolution played out between about 1700 and 1900. At its beginning monarchs had absolute power and by its end those monarchs were either constrained by law or had been removed. The nation-state had become a tool for the average person and not just the elites. Rule of law and a representative government are foundational to democracy and both continue to evolve.

Newton defined laws that could apply universally to any object, from planet to moon to apple. His friend John Locke argued for laws that would apply universally to any person, from aristocrat to merchant to laborer. Laws that governed the natural world and should govern the social world were a focus of the Enlightenment thinkers who inspired democratic revolutions.

When Trump asks the head of the FBI not to investigate his National Security Adviser, this is a challenge to the rule of law, taking us back to the old system of personal privilege. When he leads a task force to investigate voter fraud (that all studies suggest is nonexistent), he is actually moving to make voting more restrictive. (Although he does seem rather sanguine about foreign interference, even if he’s trying to block Americans without photo ID.)

The invention of the car was dramatic but no one with a choice between a Tesla and a Model T would choose to drive the T. Like the car, democracy continues to evolve. If 1776 was the moment Americans “invented” modern democracy it is worth remembering that voting rights continue to expand to include more people over time. It took 200 years before the 18 year olds we sent to war could vote.

The real question is, who should be able to define the policies that define the community they live in? Put differently, is the government a tool for anyone to use or is it reserved for just a few? Progressives and social conservatives have very different answers to this.

THE AMERICAN DREAM

The most recent of our great institutions to be made a tool of the masses and not just the elites is the bank (or, more broadly, financial markets that include credit and investment markets). This access has helped people to become more affluent and more able to define their own lifestyle.

The levels of consumption that enable individuals to pursue the American dream would not be possible without modern capital markets. Warren Buffet argues that his upper-middle class neighbors in Nebraska live better than John D. Rockefeller did roughly a century ago. The cars, smart phones, TVs, and polio vaccines the average American now has rely on vast amounts of capital. The billions it takes to produce and purchase this vast array of goods would boggle the mind of any adult living in 1900, even John D. Rockefeller.

Access to financial markets gives the individual access to the American dream and the credit card and 401(k) account might be the simplest symbols of this broadening of access. Keynesian economics is another element of this revolution.

One of Keynes most overlooked insights into capital markets was this: capital markets could reach equilibrium before labor markets did. In other words, it was possible for capitalists to stop investing before a community reached full employment. If capital markets were just tools for elites, communities would have to accept this; if they were to be tools for the masses, communities would have to adopt policies that changed this. Keynes gave us options for this.

Unemployment during the Great Depression hit 25%; during the Great Recession, it peaked at 10%. One big reason for the differences in severity was the application of Keynesian stimulus; Bernanke did all he could to prop up credit markets to encourage investment and consumption. Like church and state before it, the bank has been made a tool for the average person. Interest rates were used to maximize employment, not returns to capital.

Social conservatives don’t like the Federal Reserve or its charter to subject financial markets to larger goals like employment. Again, as with church and state, they feel that what we’ve inherited is sacred and should not be changed. For them, Keynesian is a bad word. The battle between social conservatives and progressives over banking regulations and Federal Reserve policy often seems obscure but there is a reason that bank is the first part of bankrupt. The consequences of getting this policy wrong are severe.

INSTITUTIONS AS TOOLS

For centuries, progress has followed from letting more people have access to these great institutions, using them as tools for their own benefit. Life got better when our founding fathers extended the use of government from just aristocrats to landed gentry; it got better again when it was extended to women in the early 20th century and to minorities in the late 20th century. There is no evidence that progress now lies in the opposite direction, in restricting rather than broadening access to freedom of religion, democracy, and the American dream. The more that people have been able to use church, state and bank as tools for their own lives, the better the world has become.

Sitting Still in a Plane Moving 400+ miles per Hour - Why People Are Unimpressed with Economic Progress

Evolutionary scientist Richard Dawkins argues that there was no first human. The reason? The change in any given generation was so imperceptible that what appears dramatic over millions of years seemed to fall within the range of normal variation. There was no baby born to early primates that looked more like modern man. The change was very slow and might have passed undetected by anyone generation in spite of the dramatic difference between early mammals and modern man. There are less dramatic examples in every day life. The hour hand on your watch moves, Dawkins says, but you won't see it. You will be old, eventually, but there is no one morning when you wake up old. One of the biggest obstacles to understanding evolution is that we can't even conceive of millions of years of time, much less how much change can play out within that huge window of time.

On a related note, studies have shown that many people can't really appreciate the impact of compound interest. If you put $10,000 into the account of your newborn grandchild and made 10% a year on that investment, by 50 that grandchild would have one million dollars. If you didn't give them the money until they retired at 67, they'd have $6 million. If you made them wait until 100 (assuming great gains in longevity), they'd have $137 million. The way that compound interest begins to escalate is hard to conceive, but of course it makes a dramatic difference in lifestyles for capitalist countries that make progress each year, even if that progress doesn't seem particularly dramatic at the time. 

And that might be one reason why people are so unimpressed with economic progress. At any given instant - any year or sometimes even decade - the progress we make may not seem impressive. Even if we're making the right moves, today doesn't seem any different from yesterday. 

We (rightfully) project the long-term impact of carbon emissions and what that will mean for global temps. That is sort of mind-boggling because it shows us the long-term impact of incremental change. But if incomes raise as much in the 21st century as they did in the last, median household income (adjusted for inflation) will be about $300,000, a projection as valid even if less bandied about.

Darwin Turns 200 - Still Refuses TV Interviews

..."It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one most adaptable to change."
- Charles Darwin

It is hard to think of a more ringing endorsement of a man's profound understanding of biology and life than this: Charles Darwin celebrates his 200th birthday tomorrow. To me, this shows that he has, not just theoretical understanding but, practical knowledge. If any of us detractors could live so long, they might have better grounds on which to contest his claim to understand how life works.

Evolution is an idea that - like us hurtling through space at thousands of miles an hour in orbit around the sun - is obviously, intuitively, and spectacularly wrong. It is wrong because it defies our own observations and the gut sense that comes from a life time of perception that sees cause and effect through the window of hours or - at best - years but staggers at the notion of causation that plays out over millions and billions of years.

For this reason alone, Darwin's odd conclusion that various life forms evolved is a stunning insight. He saw finches with different characteristics in different environments but he did not, obviously, himself watch the slow evolution of different length and shaped beaks. Darwin's insight came from observation of a result, and from this he worked backwards to a process. Try that. Imagine seeing a cake and figuring out baking.

I find in Darwin's life great inspiration as well. The man worked, on average, only a few hours a day and yet he made one of the greatest contributions to thought of all time. (Further confirmation for me that busy is too often a poor and misleading substitute for productive or - even more importantly - creative.) And the man did not release his great work until he was 50.

One of the many reasons that I admire him is that, for me, the concept of evolution seems to shed huge insight into even social change and development. After reading a great deal of history, I have become a radical incrementalist. That is, I believe that things change radically - but usually in small increments at any given time. Societies evolve.

We have come to apply the concept of evolution to phenomenon as varied as software, language, customs, markets, and technology. It is hard to imagine understanding any dynamic system without the notion of evolution.

As essential as his stunning idea has proven, it still pales in comparison to turning 200.

Historical Teleology and Intentional Evolution

Evolution does lead to greater complexity simply because it leads to greater diversity.

I don’t pretend to have the intellectual clout of people like John Gray or Stephen Jay Gould, but I disagree with their contention that evolution has no tendency to move towards greater complexity. It seems to me that discounting the forward progress of evolution is a form of intellectual mischief, a fashionable rejection of optimism. Species or institutional proliferation seems to suggest a richer, more complex environment; the species that will evolve in such an environment have the opportunity to be more complex as well.

I am reading John Gray's new and fascinating book, Black Mass: Apocalyptic Religion and the Death of Utopia. In spite of the fact that he seems to simply make claims as often as he argues points, the book is provocative and contains big ideas.

He writes,
"If anything defines ‘the West’ it is the pursuit of salvation in history. It is historical teleology – the belief that history has a built-in purpose or goal – rather than traditions of democracy or tolerance, that sets western civilization apart from all others.”

Yet history – or social evolution - does not need to be teleological in order to move towards greater complexity and more possibility. One can be optimistic about the direction of history without embracing the notion that today’s present was foreordained by our past.

Even more importantly, evolution in biology and society are beginning the transition to intentional processes. Genetic engineering and social change are both in their infancy, but seem to me inevitable. (Undoubtedly, unintentional evolution will continue in both arenas as well, and might even accelerate as intentional evolution is attempted.)

To me, the important point is that entities like society or history or the environment are abstractions. What matters is that individual species and people have options, have room to thrive. In terms of social evolution, the purpose is not a particular type of society. Rather, the purpose ought to be a sustainable world that creates the opportunity for a diverse set of individual to thrive.

What this means is that an institution emerging in today’s world has the possibility of adapting to and exploiting technologies as different as the stock market, legislation, and the Internet. Newly emergent institutions in such an environment need not exploit all this possibility, but some will. This means that increased complexity, if not inevitable, is highly probable.

This means that individuals in these institutions have more possibilities in terms of skill sets to tap into or develop. Given enough time, it almost seems as though possibility means inevitability. Given that a more complex environment offers more opportunity for complexity of species or institutions, it seems inevitable that it will occur in some fashion.

Gray’s insistence that social evolution has no forward direction is about as dangerous, it seems to me, as the notion that social evolution has already realized its potential, has already reached its apex in today’s world.

While history may have no purpose, we can imbue our future with one. And given that we seemed to have moved into the post-DNA period of intentional evolution, this seems rebuttal enough to arguments against increased complexity or purpose.

I might be wildly optimistic, but given how much of today is colored by how we feel about tomorrow, I’ll choose optimism.

Is the Story of History the Story of Progress?

The philosopher John Gray is out with a new book, tantalizingly named Black Mass: Apocalyptic Religion and the Death of Utopia. This is not a review (I've not read the book, due out today in Britain), but a comment about what he says is one of his central points.

Progress is chimerical, he says. It is delusional to think that history has a direction. This is reminiscent of the late Stephen Jay Gould's argument that complexity is not the direction of evolution.

It seems to me that both ignore a central point of evolution. Species adapt (or, in the case of social evolution, institutions and peoples adapt) to their environment. It may be true that the adaptation that will prove advantageous is random rather than teleological, but the environment to which the species is adapting is continually more complex. What this means, practically speaking, is that there is a direction in evolution - towards greater complexity.

John Gray may argue that such a direction does not constitute progress, but it would be hard to imagine a scenario in which species (or institutions and processes and cultural norms) didn't become more intricate, more complex, and more able. To my simple mind, that's close enough to progress.

Forcing the OR Between Science & Religion

Responding to Chrlane's comment on the previous post, I was struck by a thought that clarified so much of my squeamishness about the evolution vs. religion debate in recent years.

People like Pat Robertson and Sam Harris have been trying to force an OR between science and religion. Pat Robertson and others would say that the Bible is to be trusted on matters of origin more than scientists and would say that you can believe in God OR those secular scientists. Sam Harris would point to the illogic of certain scriptures and beliefs and say that you can believe in God OR science, but not both.

The secular scientists and religious fundamentalists both make me nervous for very similar reasons: they are insisting that we choose between science and religion, forcing an OR between the two.

Perhaps it is because the majority of us Americans are neither scientists nor theologians that we can so casually hold to our belief in science AND religion. I suppose that at some level it is logically inconsistent to hold to both.

But I also think I know enough about the process of science and faith to stop short of believing that either is infallible or, even, that they are addressing the same issues. I'm a Christian, yet the conversation about whether the Bible is inerrant seems to miss the point. For Christians, the foundational truths in the Bible are Christ's teachings - teachings typically communicated in the form of parables, stories that may or may not have happened. That is, the "truth" of the stories Jesus told have little to do with the truth they contain. By contrast, science is all about objective truth that can be measured, replicated, and studied.

I'm sure that there are plenty of people who would be horrified that I'm so naively and ignorantly insisting that the link between science and religion is AND rather than OR. And while the fundamentalists and agnostics who decry my lack of intellectual rigor may have a point, I think that they actually miss the larger point. Their conclusions are fundamentally uncivil - resulting in widespread dismissal of a large swath of the population. While forcing an OR between science and religion may work within the small confines of their own minds, it does not work within the wider expanse of society and civil discourse. I don't think it is any coincidence that whenever the OR groups gain power - whether they are running theocracies or atheist regimes - dissent is punishable by imprisonment OR death. As for me, I simply don't trust the OR groups, whether they claim to be operating under the guise of religion OR science.

Power, Poltics, Science & Religion

In last week’s Republican debate, three candidates rejected the idea of evolution. They would likely point to particular verses to buttress their opposition, but there are verses that clearly oppose the scientific claim that the earth orbits and verses that prohibit charging or collecting interest on loans (usury). (See Psalms 93:1 and 104:5 for examples of verses about the earth not orbiting or Romans 13:8 or Ezekiel 18:13 for prohibitions against usury.)

I would say that the rejection of evolution is based in something other than a literal interpretation of the Bible. Rather, it seems to me, it reflects a belief in the power of pronouncements. “God said, ‘Let there be light,” and there was light,’” has great appeal to politicians who love the idea of going into a foreign country and saying “Let there be democracy!” or going into a classroom and saying, “Abstain from sex!” Life is so much simpler if all that stands between us and our ideals are simple pronouncements.

One reason that the Catholic Church rejected Copernicus’s ideas was that accepting these ideas would mean that scientists with data could challenge church officials with scripture. They were perfectly right to see Copernicus’s ideas about revolution as, well, revolutionary. In 1514, Copernicus published his first explanation of his heliocentric view. In 1517, Martin Luther wrote his 95 Theses, the first salvo in the Protestant Revolution. After Copernicus and Luther, the Catholic Church never again wielded so much power.

Political conservatives who reject evolution are the intellectual grandchildren of those who rejected Copernicus’s ideas. They have similar motivations. If evolution suggests that reality changes gradually and through trial and error, it suggests a world less predictable and certain, suggests strategies more tentative and exploratory than their personality would embrace. More importantly, accepting evolution suggests giving up power, admitting that the answer to questions may lie “out there” with millions of scientists rather than here in my personal interpretation of God’s will. As it was with the Catholic Church in the 16th century, the real issue is power.