Polygenic screening doesn't prevent schizophrenia in a meaningful way, though. It just prevents those embryos with high risk from developing into people (modulo your beliefs about when personhood begins).
That seems at odds with how most people would resolve other moral choices.
For instance, in triage situations, it's normally considered good for doctors to treat the person with the best survival chance rather than picking randomly.
Conversely, it's normally considered obligatory for them to treat as many people as they can--it would be pretty weird to have a situation where it's morally obligatory to give an EQUAL survival chance to everyone, but NOT morally obligatory to make that survival chance be as high as you reasonably can. By analogy, it would be weird if you had a free choice about HOW MANY embryos to incubate, but not a choice of WHICH embryos to incubate.
And I have difficulty imagining anyone arguing that you ought to choose the other parent of your child at random, to give all possible potential children an equal chance, instead of having a baby with your spouse. (You could argue that the difference here is that the embryos aren't fertilized yet, and your obligations only start when they are--but that seems to make the objection from the previous paragraph even more acute.)
If you believe personhood occurs early in embryonic development you shouldn't create superfluous embryos, yes. However, supposing you have already made that error, I don't think assigning equal or near-equal survival chances to each are all that unreasonable. The reductio ad absurdum of your own position would be that if there's some small number of gene combinations that maximize life, all other things being equal ONLY those gene combinations should ever exist. I think most people value hetereogeneity in life to an extent that allows you to leave a large number of QALY's on the table, at which point it's not clear to me that there's an airtight argument for favoring non-schizophrenics over schizophrenics anymore.
I wasn't trying to promote any specific position, but I notice that the position you have chosen to argue against is "it is OBLIGATORY (not merely permissible) to choose the embryo with more QALYs", and there is plenty of room for that position to be wrong without the "it is obligatory to choose by RNG" position being correct. (Also I'm not sure I buy that your reductio really is absurd, but I don't feel strongly enough to want to defend it right now.)
Re "supposing you have already made that error," imagine a story where, due to some SF/F premise, it is possible to suddenly accidentally create several obviously-fully-developed people, where you meant to create one. In all the stories like this that I can recall, the characters take it as morally obvious that you are now obligated to preserve ALL of the people you created (if possible). I cannot recall a single one where it was suggested that you are morally obligated to choose randomly which one to keep, but are free to discard the rest. I predict that a story where all the characters agreed on that standard would evoke moral disgust in most readers.
It's possible that RNG selection actually ends up with less heterogeneity in the end! The only acceptable way to choose embryos is to invent metrics of uncertain value or real-world relevance and then laboriously search for the embryo that maximizes all of them (weighted, of course, with the results of your preliminary work to determine how to choose weights without immorally privileging things like general health, QALYs, intelligence, etc).
I'll take a stab at it then: Embryos aren't "entitled" to anything and you can use absolutely any metric you please for determining which ones get to develop and be born.
I'll agree with that. But it is categorically different from preventing lung cancer by banning cigarettes, or preventing car accident deaths by requiring car seats.
But... why would we care? You can carve reality in an infinity of ways - several infinities, most likely. "it is categorically different" has value only so far as this category pays dividends.
I'm sorry if I'm over-reaching here, but a common argumentation technique is to carve reality at an arbitrary point, they use this categorization as a supporting argument for something else.
In this particular case polygenic testing prevents schizophrenia in future children in all ways that count - pretty much functionally identical with how folic acid or abstaining from smoking and alcohol prevent a bunch of other conditions. We don't use a magnifying glass on how exactly alcohol is bad for you. So why mention that it's categorically different at all?
> You can carve reality in an infinity of ways - several infinities, most likely.
What would this distinction mean? Usually, you'd come up with a category, like "ways in which it is possible to carve reality", and then consider whether the number of things in the category was finite or not. Clearly it isn't, but since there's only one category, there's only one quantity involved.
>I'm sorry if I'm over-reaching here, but a common argumentation technique is to carve reality at an arbitrary point, they use this categorization as a supporting argument for something else.
It’s not as arbitrary as you think. You can prevent schizophrenia “at the societal level” by killing everyone who might get schizophrenia. Who could possibly be against this? You will never have to deal with a schizophrenic again! We can create a schizophrenia-free society!
More seriously, I’m not one of those people who believes in objective morality, but if I was, I would be very concerned that IVF clinics are literally Auschwitz.
I’m not necessarily opposed to IVF, but I think it’s a relevant consideration to bring up if one is arguing that the objections are stupid. It didn’t even click for me reading the post that we were talking about murdering embryos until we get the right one until I saw the top comment in this chain.
I thought one of Scott's recent posts shows that not to be true (or at least not as easy as it seems). Nazi Germany tried to kill all schizophrenics, and they have the same rate as countries that did not. IIRC the rate returned to normal extremely fast as well, like the 50s or 60s.
He's not saying "kill everyone who might get schizophrenia so they won't have kids with schizophrenia" he's saying "kill everyone who might get schizophrenia, then there will be no schizophrenics left in society." Because you killed them all. When more pop up you'll kill them too.
Yes, but in your example the categorization pays dividends immediately and obviously.
My beef isn't with support or condemnation of abortion (for what's worth, I'm European and I find the whole debate strange and exotic, and rather strongly disagree with both extremes). My beef is with sneaking the categorization as an argument for the belief instead of the consequence of the belief.
If OP said "I think we should make a distinction because in one case we're killing embryos and this is bad", this would be owning your position and, agree or not, it's a valid point to make.
Instead, OP suggested in a public forum that it's a categorical difference, with the possible intention of supporting his belief with this categorization. That's circular logic, and it's also use of a Dark Art. Which is ok on Facebook or X, but I thought here should be gently censured.
I'll write a post sometime in the next few weeks about why I don't think it's categorically different from those things at all. If I forget until March, please remind me!
Please do write on this. Ive been internally grappling with the above thread for some time. My entryway has been Michael Sandel and the ethics chapter from the Walter Isaacson biography of Jennifer Doudna
In a counterfactual where people did IVF without screening, they'd still be choosing some embryos over others. Some embryos wouldn't develop into people either way. This just affects which embryos are which. But, in a eugenic sense, these embryos-turned-people could in turn reproduce and spread their genes with different risks for schizophrenia, and in different counterfactuals different embryos in the next generation won't exist at all.
Polygenic screening doesn't prevent schizophrenia in a meaningful way, though. It just prevents those embryos with high risk from developing into people (modulo your beliefs about when personhood begins).
That sounds very "meaningful" if you have to select one or two from a dozen one way or another.
They might each be entitled to an equal probability of selection. It might be immoral to use any method besides RNG to make the choice.
That seems at odds with how most people would resolve other moral choices.
For instance, in triage situations, it's normally considered good for doctors to treat the person with the best survival chance rather than picking randomly.
Conversely, it's normally considered obligatory for them to treat as many people as they can--it would be pretty weird to have a situation where it's morally obligatory to give an EQUAL survival chance to everyone, but NOT morally obligatory to make that survival chance be as high as you reasonably can. By analogy, it would be weird if you had a free choice about HOW MANY embryos to incubate, but not a choice of WHICH embryos to incubate.
And I have difficulty imagining anyone arguing that you ought to choose the other parent of your child at random, to give all possible potential children an equal chance, instead of having a baby with your spouse. (You could argue that the difference here is that the embryos aren't fertilized yet, and your obligations only start when they are--but that seems to make the objection from the previous paragraph even more acute.)
If you believe personhood occurs early in embryonic development you shouldn't create superfluous embryos, yes. However, supposing you have already made that error, I don't think assigning equal or near-equal survival chances to each are all that unreasonable. The reductio ad absurdum of your own position would be that if there's some small number of gene combinations that maximize life, all other things being equal ONLY those gene combinations should ever exist. I think most people value hetereogeneity in life to an extent that allows you to leave a large number of QALY's on the table, at which point it's not clear to me that there's an airtight argument for favoring non-schizophrenics over schizophrenics anymore.
I wasn't trying to promote any specific position, but I notice that the position you have chosen to argue against is "it is OBLIGATORY (not merely permissible) to choose the embryo with more QALYs", and there is plenty of room for that position to be wrong without the "it is obligatory to choose by RNG" position being correct. (Also I'm not sure I buy that your reductio really is absurd, but I don't feel strongly enough to want to defend it right now.)
Re "supposing you have already made that error," imagine a story where, due to some SF/F premise, it is possible to suddenly accidentally create several obviously-fully-developed people, where you meant to create one. In all the stories like this that I can recall, the characters take it as morally obvious that you are now obligated to preserve ALL of the people you created (if possible). I cannot recall a single one where it was suggested that you are morally obligated to choose randomly which one to keep, but are free to discard the rest. I predict that a story where all the characters agreed on that standard would evoke moral disgust in most readers.
In the absence of some pressing reason why all lives couldn't be preserved, yes, you're right.
It's possible that RNG selection actually ends up with less heterogeneity in the end! The only acceptable way to choose embryos is to invent metrics of uncertain value or real-world relevance and then laboriously search for the embryo that maximizes all of them (weighted, of course, with the results of your preliminary work to determine how to choose weights without immorally privileging things like general health, QALYs, intelligence, etc).
I don't know what "entitled" means here.
Iterate over the possible meanings and choose the one that doesn't lead to you responding to this.
I'll take a stab at it then: Embryos aren't "entitled" to anything and you can use absolutely any metric you please for determining which ones get to develop and be born.
This is an argument against polygenetic screening in general, not against screening for the genes that corollate with schizophrenia in particular.
I guess I would phrase that as "it prevents schizophrenia at the family level" or something.
I'll agree with that. But it is categorically different from preventing lung cancer by banning cigarettes, or preventing car accident deaths by requiring car seats.
But... why would we care? You can carve reality in an infinity of ways - several infinities, most likely. "it is categorically different" has value only so far as this category pays dividends.
I'm sorry if I'm over-reaching here, but a common argumentation technique is to carve reality at an arbitrary point, they use this categorization as a supporting argument for something else.
In this particular case polygenic testing prevents schizophrenia in future children in all ways that count - pretty much functionally identical with how folic acid or abstaining from smoking and alcohol prevent a bunch of other conditions. We don't use a magnifying glass on how exactly alcohol is bad for you. So why mention that it's categorically different at all?
> You can carve reality in an infinity of ways - several infinities, most likely.
What would this distinction mean? Usually, you'd come up with a category, like "ways in which it is possible to carve reality", and then consider whether the number of things in the category was finite or not. Clearly it isn't, but since there's only one category, there's only one quantity involved.
>I'm sorry if I'm over-reaching here, but a common argumentation technique is to carve reality at an arbitrary point, they use this categorization as a supporting argument for something else.
It’s not as arbitrary as you think. You can prevent schizophrenia “at the societal level” by killing everyone who might get schizophrenia. Who could possibly be against this? You will never have to deal with a schizophrenic again! We can create a schizophrenia-free society!
More seriously, I’m not one of those people who believes in objective morality, but if I was, I would be very concerned that IVF clinics are literally Auschwitz.
To people who are okay with abortion, selecting (and therefore killing) embryos isn't the same thing as killing people who have already been born.
I’m not necessarily opposed to IVF, but I think it’s a relevant consideration to bring up if one is arguing that the objections are stupid. It didn’t even click for me reading the post that we were talking about murdering embryos until we get the right one until I saw the top comment in this chain.
I thought one of Scott's recent posts shows that not to be true (or at least not as easy as it seems). Nazi Germany tried to kill all schizophrenics, and they have the same rate as countries that did not. IIRC the rate returned to normal extremely fast as well, like the 50s or 60s.
He's not saying "kill everyone who might get schizophrenia so they won't have kids with schizophrenia" he's saying "kill everyone who might get schizophrenia, then there will be no schizophrenics left in society." Because you killed them all. When more pop up you'll kill them too.
Yes, but in your example the categorization pays dividends immediately and obviously.
My beef isn't with support or condemnation of abortion (for what's worth, I'm European and I find the whole debate strange and exotic, and rather strongly disagree with both extremes). My beef is with sneaking the categorization as an argument for the belief instead of the consequence of the belief.
If OP said "I think we should make a distinction because in one case we're killing embryos and this is bad", this would be owning your position and, agree or not, it's a valid point to make.
Instead, OP suggested in a public forum that it's a categorical difference, with the possible intention of supporting his belief with this categorization. That's circular logic, and it's also use of a Dark Art. Which is ok on Facebook or X, but I thought here should be gently censured.
I'll write a post sometime in the next few weeks about why I don't think it's categorically different from those things at all. If I forget until March, please remind me!
Please do write on this. Ive been internally grappling with the above thread for some time. My entryway has been Michael Sandel and the ethics chapter from the Walter Isaacson biography of Jennifer Doudna
In a counterfactual where people did IVF without screening, they'd still be choosing some embryos over others. Some embryos wouldn't develop into people either way. This just affects which embryos are which. But, in a eugenic sense, these embryos-turned-people could in turn reproduce and spread their genes with different risks for schizophrenia, and in different counterfactuals different embryos in the next generation won't exist at all.