How to better advocate for genetic enhancement to the EA community?

By Ives Parr @ 2024-03-28T23:31 (–20)

I consider myself an advocate for Effective Altruism, attend EA meet-ups, read/reviewed What We Owe The Future, participated in the effective essays competition, and read/post on the forum occasionally. During the late summer and early fall of 2023, I spent a very large number of hours researching/writing a 10k+ word post directed toward the Effective Altruist community.  My proposal was that the use of genetic enhancement technology could be used to benefit humanity, and that it was an overlooked potential cause area. The title was "The Effective Altruist Case for Using Genetic Enhancement to End Poverty." 

The thesis of the article is that cognitive ability (as measured by IQ) influences many positive outcomes at the individual and national level. National IQ is positively associated with development and highly associated with the log of GDP/c. I next discussed the unfortunate fact that environmental interventions on IQ are typically either short-term, "hollow", or ineffective. I then explained several possible genetic enhancement technologies and how the potential returns could be absolutely massive, and how these could have positive societal returns from all. Finally, I proposed several potential ways of accelerating progress on this front.

The post was not particularly well-received initially. And it recently came under scrutiny again. Part of the motivation for this post is that the post currently has -16 karma (archive), but an average read-time of only 4 minutes and 56 seconds according to analytics. Since the article is a 42 minute read, it would appear likely that some people may be spending little time on it before voting. It appears that this has caused the post to be hidden from search with (archive) and without quotes (archive)-- perhaps on account of the negative votes? I contacted EA help who thanked me for flagging this and said they would pass it to the tech team (thank you!). 

This is unfortunate since it means that it is practically undiscoverable using the forum. At least one EA forum member, felt this wasn't enough, saying: "That said, your post contributes quite a lot to me feeling embarrassed to be an EA, and of my feeling of not being at home here. I think more so because it is tolerated and implicitly endorsed by CEA by virtue of not being removed or something like that." With the downvotes, it seems others may feel similarly. So, I want to pose this as a question of how I can better advocate for genetic enhancement and possibly be better received by EA and the forum more generally? I don't want to give up on this cause because I think it's important.

Here are some of the criticisms I have already receieved and how I responded or would respond now:

• Criticism for whiteness/talking about non-white countries/eugenics: According to analytics, the post received a large number of downvotes following a post by Ulrik Horn's post "Why I care so much about Diversity, Equity and Inclusion in EA" in which he said: "A few examples of my bad experiences in EA (and this is from me generally steering clear of EA events because I have been disappointed so many times now): [...] EAF posts on eugenics (e.g. posts like this by white people on eugenics in poor, non-white countries) [...]" Horn says he should have dropped the word "white" from his comment but that he still feels worse if the author is white and that the post "contributes quite a lot to me feeling embarrassed to be an EA." (comment)
  • my post is broadly applicable to the whole world, but the point is that poverty could be highly alleviated in the least developed nations. EAs are constantly focusing on the less developed countries, so I cannot see why that is particularly bad. I never said "non-white" countries, so Horn contrasting me being white (which he assumed) with the article focusing on non-white countries seems to be trying to introduce a racial framing into the argument which I did not myself make. I responded to the "eugenics" accusation in the article. My proposal is advocating for consensual reproductive choices, not coercive eugenics. 
  • I don't see the relevance of my race as to whether or not my article is true or good. Is that fair? or how should I overcome the issue of my whiteness (I'm neither confirming nor denying that I'm white) so as not to give bad experiences to or embarrass or alienate EA's like Horn? I could (a) not write articles on EAF at all, (b) recruit non-white coauthors, (c) ask a non-white person to write the article for me, (d) only focus on improving the lives of whites  (that doesn't seem right).
• Criticism for citing Manking Quarterly: Bob Jacobs spent a long time discussing one of my citations of MQ, noting that it has nasty associations saying he does not want to pay to see the article. I respond, and he clarifies that "to clear up any confusion I don't think a journal being made by horrible people allows you to conclude that their conclusions are false, but I do think it allows you to not give them any money." (comment here). I offered to email him the pdf of the article twice, but he did not take me up on the article. How could I be better? I'm not sure on this one.
• Criticism for neglect of cultural/education: Bob Jacobs says that one of my citations mentions the possibility of cultural factors or education. Which I discussed at length the issue with (fadeout/hollow), so he responds that the gains may be hollow but we don't know what actual intelligence is. I preemptively addressed this point in the article  (II. Intelligence and Institutions) and then again in my response (comment here). 
• Criticism of Lynn: Bob Jacobs criticizes the quality of Lynn's data. He mentions one of Wicherts et al.'s articles. I made a point to mention that Lynn updated the estimates in the original article over the past ~20 years. Moreover, I pointed to many other researchers who produced highly correlated estimates with Lynn (comment here). Once again, I feel as though I preemptively addressed this criticism in the original article (III. The Importance of NIQ). See below. I don't think we should just throw out the idea because the most important figure in NIQ is controversial.
• Criticism of NIQ generally: another commenter said "Not an expert in the area, but the data on National IQ seems shoddy at best, fraudulent at worst. Due to the number of potential confounds, I don't put much stock in cross-country regression analyses, especially when run on such poor data."
  • I thought that I asked constructive questions in response: "Can you point me to a measure of cognitive ability that is both better and does not show a moderate-strong correlation with NIQ scores? From the article, I provided several studies that use testing data like PISA to create scores of mental ability (some calling it "harmonized learning outcomes" or "universal basic skills"), but these have a moderate to strong correlation with NIQ scores anyway. What other good data on cognitive ability are you using to inform your beliefs? I provided an estimate of NIQxlog(GDP/c) at 0.82. What do you think the actual value is and how do you reach that number?"

You can read the comments here. I felt I responded in a respectful manner and addressed the point or responded constructively. There was not a lot of engagement overall, but the article still ended up downvoted to the point of being unviewable on the forum.

In my mind it seems that this is something that could be a real positive force in the world, but it seems that it has been highly rejected by the EA forum (-16 karma). This is troubling to me because it means this cause area will not be considered if it cannot even be seen. I think many of the criticisms used against my article were already adressed within the article itself and the read-time was low. So, I want to figure out ways to actually get the idea out there in EA!

• What are some ways to better advocate for the cause?
• What key pieces of evidence could I bring forward that I have not yet? 
• Any other ideas?