Montaigne, IVF & Embryo Selection, Q&A

# Podcast Final Version

[00:00:00] Okay. What's up everybody? Is this thing on? Can you hear me okay? I can see the comments here. I just thought I'd fire this thing up. It's been a long time since I've done a live stream for those of you who have been following me for a long time. You might remember back in the day when I first started doing internet stuff, that I did live streams kind of a lot.

[00:00:22] It was one of the first things I started doing online. And it was, I used to do all kinds of just random things for me at the time. It was like a way to bl off steam. I just thought it was an interesting and fun sort of genre, if you will. a blank canvas, an interesting way to kind of share my ideas and share what I was reading at the time or what I was doing at the time.

[00:00:42] Sometimes I would do weird kind of, uh, adventurous ones, like out and about. I did this one. I dunno if anyone here remembers this. If you remember this, you're, you're definitely og I was, uh, I was like doing ketamine in New Mexico and, uh, out late one night, like walking around the streets. I did a live stream then I, I did some, I did some strange ones over, over the years.

[00:01:03] This was like more than five years ago. And then I kind of stopped doing live streams. I haven't done a live stream in, in years literally. And here I'm, by the way, I'm watching the chat and if people have anything. I will circle back to try to take questions if anyone has any. I'll circle back at the end of this session.

[00:01:28] I have an agenda, by the way. I should let you know I've prepared a very serious agenda. I talking points and news items, breaking news, and, uh, so I will, no, I'm not gonna display. I could do that, I could display comments, but I think best to set them off to the side. But I see you, Christian, I see you Momo, Fuku, uh, what's up people?

[00:01:49] Um, I wonder if I'll see any people from back in the day, any of the same characters from back in the day. We'll see. But anyway, I used to do live streams a lot. Uh, when I was first getting into the internet, I just found it to be a fun, creative sort of format. And then at a certain point I stopped doing them for the reason that I just felt like they weren't I didn't have a clear vision of what I wanted to do with them.

[00:02:09] And I felt that it wasn't accumulating into anything valuable. And so for, you know, several reasons, I just decided that I wanted to retire the approach. So haven't done one in years, as many of you know, I had a couple kids and was forced to grow up in quite a few ways. And I also have been writing this book for about a year now.

[00:02:28] I've been pretty hunkered down on that and helping no chain build their audience. So I've just been pretty busy and my whole kind of operation kind of fell apart, frankly. Uh, I wasn't publishing anything really very consistently. So, basically now that the book is truly almost done, no chain is like going insanely well.

[00:02:44] I mean, I, the thing has launched, it's working. There's a token, it's floating. It's like crazy. I mean, it looks like it's really, succeeding and, and I'm still helping with them a lot, but it's like the baby is out into the world, so I feel less pressure. I feel more kind of, free to, uh, do my own thing.

[00:03:02] And uh, now that the book is almost done, and I feel like I've gotten control of you know, being a father and don't, certainly don't have it all under control, but, you know, I, I feel like. I've settled into, the identity. I, I've sort of bitten all the bullets that one is required to bite, and I feel like I have relinquished my, youthful ego.

[00:03:20] And I, I am now, uh, I, I've just sort of capitulated to the realities of, uh, my, my life as a middle-aged father and husband. I feel like now I've sort of stabilized everything and stabilized my mood, my identity. I've lost, I lost a little bit of weight. I'm, so, I could still probably use a lose a couple more, but, uh, I'm feeling good.

[00:03:39] The point is, what I'm getting at is. The past few years have been a pretty wild ride, but the book is truly almost done. I'm super pumped on it as well. I'm like incredibly excited and proud of it. So I'm emboldened by that. And with no chain being out in the world and going really well, I'm also super emboldened by that.

[00:03:54] I'm just like everything, you know, the past few years have been hard. I've been like really focused in a, in a kind of whole, doing a few of these like high value things, relatively out of the limelight, uh, and laying low. But now it's like starting to, really come to fruition. And so yeah, I'm just feeling like, uh, like when I first started doing a live stream forever ago.

[00:04:16] There's something about the livestream format that just beckons me. It's like a, it's an interesting canvas. It's just a strange, weird thing. It's always fun to kind of see what other people are thinking or if people wanna ask things. Uh, Michael James here says, uh, I remember back in the day when you shot videos in a warehouse in your undies.

[00:04:33] I don't actually remember that exactly, specifically, but I'm sure that I did. And, uh, yeah. So, you know, I'm a little less wild nowadays, but I still like the livestream genre, if you want to call it that, as just an interesting, a very interesting canvas. And you know, what I will also say is I've been kind of inspired by some of the new stuff coming out on, especially that sort of live stream, especially the kind of Twitter centric live stream formats.

[00:05:00] I think it's very interesting, like, like the, tBPN if you've seen these guys the Technology Brothers podcast crew, it's like they're doing basically tech news, but Twitter first or X first. And it's really pretty interesting. I kind of, you know, I've been paying attention to them and that's really pretty cool and intriguing.

[00:05:17] And I've also been, now that I, you know, work with No Chain and I've been helping them build their audience, and it's going really well. I've been kind of like paying more attention to the emergent, like crypto media and, you know, there's like interesting, funny, kind of like Gen Z guys, like this guy thread guy who does like a livestream show.

[00:05:32] He kind of also claims to be, uh, attempting to kind of supplant, C-N-B-C-I think he said recently. So I've been paying attention to this and I have to admit, seeing these sort of Twitter first live stream TV formats, I have to admit, I kind of was like, you know, that. Actually really, that looks really fun and it looks really smart actually.

[00:05:50] You know, I could see something like that. And so right now I'm actually streaming on Twitter. I never used to stream on Twitter, even when I was doing it, somewhat consistently back in the day when I was just doing it for fun. Even then, I was mostly doing it to YouTube because the norms weren't, you know, it just wouldn't, it wouldn't have worked on Twitter.

[00:06:05] But now, you know, Twitter's kind of where it's at. Yes. I'm still gonna call it Twitter, by the way. I don't care. I'm, I'm insisting on that. And, uh, yeah, so all these converging factors, all these variables, I was kind of like, let's just play jazz. You know? that's what this is all about.

[00:06:18] That's what this whole independent scholar lifestyle that I've built, this business model I've developed. And yeah, really this lifestyle, that I felt called to pursue many years ago and it kind of embarked out on my own, in this weird new world. I like what it's really all about.

[00:06:35] Ultimately for me, for some people it's about like building the biggest audience possible or making as much money as possible, or, launching businesses or whatnot. For me, it's always been at the end of the day about. Freedom, like deep freedom, like the ability to do whatever I want, when I want, not that I wanna, you know, piss away my time doing, stupid stuff.

[00:06:56] I've done a lot of that, in the past, but, you know, I've kind of grown out of a lot of that. But nonetheless, the point still stands that at the end of the day, that indie scholar lifestyle that I've fought so hard to win, uh, successfully in the past few years.

[00:07:07] The whole payoff to all of it is just pure freedom. if I have an idea and I just wanna play jazz, I can do it. No one's gonna stop me. And there's really no I set the rules. So I had this idea came to me in a premonition, recently that, you know, maybe I would do a little pilot just for fun of some kind of, you know, TV show type format.

[00:07:26] So what I did was I kind of just went through my notes, some of the things I've been reading and paying attention to, and, jotted down some bullet points. And I actually, have no idea if I'm gonna continue doing this or not. I mean, I'd love your feedback. If you find this cool or fun or edifying, definitely let me know.

[00:07:40] And I'm watching the comments by the way. I will, address questions if you have any. But I'd love to hear your feedback. I'm just gonna take a stab at this kind of creative concept I had of, what would it look like to do some kind of weird, TV show, maybe along the lines of, the stuff that I've been doing.

[00:07:54] over the past few years. So I thought I'd sort of share some things that I'm reading, some things that I'm seeing, and develop some lines of thought. I mean, my goal would be to, make something, quite useful and edifying hopefully to people. So what I did was I actually made these little overlays, check that out.

[00:08:09] And, a little agenda here. So, one of the first things I wanna talk about is Monta. there's a chapter on Monta in the Indie Scholar book. And the best biography that I read, or, studied and kind of worked with, about Monta is this one by, this guy named, Philippe, Dessan, I'm guessing that's how you pronounce it.

[00:08:25] This book in particular is, really, really interesting, for a few reasons. And there's a few things I could share with you or teach you about the life of Monte, but. The one that I want to kind of start with, some of this is quite well known, in the book. I think I go through some things that, are much less known.

[00:08:40] But one of the points that's well known is that, Monta was, he was ambitious in a certain sense, but he was really not trying to, be a philosopher. He sometimes nowadays, thought of and referred to as a philosopher, that's not really how he thought of himself.

[00:08:54] He was basically writing notes in his own notebook, trying to make sense out of the world, in his own mind. And that's a very well known sort of fact about him. one of the famous questions that he asks himself in his notes is what do I He was this sort of process of self-discovery is what he was doing.

[00:09:10] And the reason this is interesting is in my view, and I read about this in the book, is that there's something strange about when you have this kind of. Genuinely and deeply kind of private and humble, agenda or viewpoint on your work. It has a weird way of, somehow that tends to make it, for certain reasons, even more kind of, important and effective and influential to other people in a strange way.

[00:09:37] And so there's this weird thing throughout, the history of ideas where a lot of the people who are most sort of eager to be kind of politically significant with their ideas often end up falling flat. And they end up spending a lot of their life trying to achieve that, but not actually achieving it.

[00:09:51] And in the process, not really doing particularly interesting work either. But those people who really seem kind of committed to this really personal, private, strange and humble sort of truth seeking lifestyle, they're the ones who seem more likely to. Actually produce a body of work that is particularly significant and particularly forceful.

[00:10:16] And the irony is that these people tend to surprisingly have disproportionate influence and kind of effectiveness and, significance. And even in the political world. And you see this really, really clearly with Monta. And that's of the biggest and most important through lines in this book in particular, that really kind of, is different than a lot of the other Monta biographies is that, Dessan points out that Monta was, he was quite ambitious and he was political, the character for some time was that he was like genuinely kind of uninterested in all of that stuff.

[00:10:46] It seems it was not so much the case, like his essays and his thinking and writing were kind of consciously. Embedded in a certain political landscape. So he was not naive and he was not. The point is not that he's some kind of like pure, person dropping out of society. This book shows very strongly and clearly that, he was intensely, you know, kind of invested in the affairs of his community.

[00:11:05] Politically, you have to remember, this is early 16th century you know, there's crazy wars of religion going on. It's a really, really chaotic time and you know, there's massacres and things like this happening around him. He was a Catholic. But one of the cool things and interesting things about his writing is that, he's sort of like a natural Catholic.

[00:11:22] Like he's not writing about, how to be trad Catholic or something like that. He's not this like, like nowadays where people who are kind of like very um, identitarian in their kind of religious viewpoints. He was Catholic, but he was, it didn't really sound like it when he was writing.

[00:11:37] You know, he, he clearly has these sort of Catholic viewpoints and, and kind of assumptions. So he is a kind of natural Catholic, but he is not this self-conscious kind of like, theologian type of guy. And so another reason, one of the many reasons why, his, his work really quite resonates with me.

[00:11:51] And he's such an interesting kind of, I think role model frankly for a lot of people. You know, working today, especially those of you in, in my orbit of kind of the independent scholar ecology, let's call it. So yeah, just really really fascinating case study. And this, this is one of the reasons that he's in the book.

[00:12:07] 'cause he really has, on several dimensions, uh, a lot, a lot to teach us. And I think the, uh, there was one more, there was one more thing I wanted to say about him.

[00:12:17] It's going on Ocean Blade. Hey, I used to watch your vids a few years ago and you just popped up. Yeah, exactly. You know, one of the coolest things about the internet is you can fall off for a few years, frankly. And you're just allowed to just get right back on. And what I have noticed since I've jumped back on the horse is that all the same people are kind of still there.

[00:12:35] Maybe not all the same, but you can just pop back on and you can pick back up wherever you left off. So if any of you have ever fallen off, like I fell off the past couple years you know, hopefully you, I'm happy to report, you know, there's literally nothing stopping you from jumping back on the horse other than psychology and inertia, which is real for sure.

[00:12:54] And so if you can just get over that, look at me now. I have a TV show. I have a leading, bestselling, number one in the, what are they called? The rankings, the standard, uh, what are they called it on tv? I, I don't even know. It's also alien to me. Anyway, so that's what I find, uh, really interesting and inspiring about Monte.

[00:13:11] I will say, he had a beautiful house. Uh, check that out. Pretty beautiful. You know, one of the things that I cannot relate to about Monta is that he from money. he had a nice inheritance, a nice family business, but he did still have to run the business.

[00:13:24] So this is kind of interesting, he did not have so much money that he could just sit around his entire life doing nothing. You know, it's pretty hard to maintain even a nice, estate. It takes a lot of work. And so he spent most of his life running the family business and maintaining this beautiful state.

[00:13:40] And so he only starts writing relatively late in life. And as I said, his essays. fundamentally create a new kind of genre in modern writing the essay. they were really influential, but he didn't have, this kind of conscious agenda to change the world with his essays.

[00:13:59] he was embedded in a very particular kind of political community and with a certain kind of political, hierarchy and, set of political conflicts that he was embedded in. And the writings did have a kind of self-conscious role in all of that, which this book, this biography in particular, goes through so brilliantly.

[00:14:13] it's really quite interesting. But he definitely never had some kind of ambition like, oh, I'm going to innovate and create this novel kind of revolutionary genre called the essay, which no one's ever done before. And this is going to change the way that people think and write.

[00:14:26] No. and so what, this is the final thing I want to talk to you about When it comes to Monte, the final lesson that is, most interesting to me, which I read about in the book, the Independent Scholar, is that, the effects that Monta had were not primarily through local politics.

[00:14:43] he was ultimately in part because of the, status and respect achieved from his essays. Those actually did play a role in making him more politically powerful. But that's not why we know his name today. That's not why he's so significant in the scheme of things.

[00:14:57] That's not why he is such a genuinely significant and original and impressive thinker. when you actually trace the mechanisms through which his ideas became influential, it's really interesting. And there's this other book, which I don't have on hand 'cause it's a kind of obscure, academic book that costs like a thousand dollars to buy.

[00:15:14] But I'll write about it later. In this really amazing literary history, I'm forgetting the guy's name. sadly, I will pull it up. He shows very convincingly that the reason Monta becomes so influential is that he enables a large number of other people around Europe to start thinking on their own terms and to start writing on their own terms in the way that he did his essays.

[00:15:40] In other words. Bootstrapped the agency and creativity, the kind of mental, and intellectual creativity of other kind of gentleman, scholars, let's call them in Europe at the time. It was the example that he set. People would read his essays and they'd say, oh, you know, I could do this. And they start thinking on their own.

[00:16:00] So he basically gives Europe this, amazing kind of playbook example of what it looks like for a thinking person to simply evaluate the world, to study, to read, to think, and to write in a way that's not professional. It's not trying to be an academic philosopher or an academic theologian or whatnot.

[00:16:19] It's not trying to be, any of this sort of institutionalized molds of what it might have meant to be an intellectual or whatever. It was just man thinking. It was a certain kind of exemplary demonstration of how Educated, thoughtful individual in the 16th century. Could get his hand on some books, do some thinking, do some reading, and publish some original ideas.

[00:16:40] He gave them a template, a kind of style guide and a kind of demonstration effect, right? He kind of put it on the map as a type of person you could be and a type of writing you could do, and that it would matter, and that it would be interesting that people would read it and that it was intrinsically edifying.

[00:16:53] He showed all of these things through his essay genre that he more or less, invents. Obviously there are predecessors, obviously, you know, there's, the writings of people like Seneca or whatnot. There are many predecessors, but, it's one of the most well known kind of commonly argued things about Monte that, his essays are basically, that's when we date the invention of the modern essay,

[00:17:14] Yeah, that book was the one that really, made me realize I had to put a chapter in about Monta in the independent scholar book because, I thought that was really important, and most people don't know that at the end of the day, the way the independent scholar really functions in the history of ideas is not by building some school of thought that's like an academic camp and you're gonna, take over the scientific literature or something like this and get more citations or something like this.

[00:17:39] It's not that. it's a kind of combination of how one lives with how one thinks and writes and publishes. That one, the independent scholar kind of shows his peers at the time. That he's living and writing that a different way is possible. That a different way of thinking is possible, a different way of writing is possible and a superior more interesting, more vitalistic and honest and authentic, faster paced, form of writing that is more fit to the historical time.

[00:18:04] So it's like the independent scholar is kind of updating what it means to think and write and publish, at any given moment in time for the smartest people in that era. 'Cause someone has to be doing that work. and that, that's one way to understand kind of the role, of the independent scholar, who the independent scholar is as an archetype and how they produce, how they successfully, have effects in the history of ideas.

[00:18:26] So that's one of the ideas that, you'll find in my book, once I send it out. I know I've been saying this for a long time, but it is truly almost done. it's just the final, I'd say the final 5% is like 80% of the work I'm learning. So. yeah, that's one little lesson that I'm learning about Monta.

[00:18:41] I thought you might find that edifying. The book I'm talking about in this, podcast is, Philippe Dasan Monta a life amazing biography. If you're interested in the intellectual and historical and political dimensions of 16th century, French humanism and politics and the wars of religion, it's really an amazing, portrait into that world.

[00:19:01] So, alright, I don't see any questions yet Thanks for the comments, everyone. Nice to see some friendly faces, but I'd love, to set aside some time at the end to take questions if there's anything people wanna ask me about or anything I'm talking about, if you wanna double click on any of it, please do.

[00:19:16] Don't be shy. As you see, I put this little agenda at the bottom, because that will keep me on track and remind me I have to keep going. So the next thing that I wanted to talk about is

[00:19:26] this lovely lady, nor Sidiki. She's the founder of a startup called Orchid, which is doing embryo selection as a service. I recently engaged with some of her tweets because, she's been in the limelight, recently. She recently did a podcast with, Ross, and just a few weeks ago, I was too busy to write about it or share about it.

[00:19:46] I should have. But I did a debate, in person here in Austin, Texas, with, Johnny Anomaly, who I've known for some time. A friend of mine, and he also is building a startup in this space. And our mutual friend organized a debate. it was a very interesting event, very fun. And, RA Kahn moderated it, it was cool.

[00:20:04] Someone should have made a video. I'm sad that nobody did. It was pretty fun. I thought it was a really good time. Anyway, in preparation for that, this was a few weeks ago. I actually spent, some good time going through some of the research and going through some of the data and really thinking about the question of IVF and embryo selection.

[00:20:18] I had never really looked at it before. Thoughtfully, you know, obviously we all have our viewpoints and assumptions, but, I went through it and, you know, there were a few things I think about IVF and embryo selection that people don't frequently think about, which are not even. In any of the popular kind of arguments.

[00:20:36] Obviously there's this kind of, back and forth right now, and many of my, very discerning and intelligent, viewers and listeners, will already be familiar with these. So I'm not gonna rehash, some, basic played out arguments, pro or con on the debate. But I want to bring to your attention a few arguments or ideas or facts some stylized facts, let's call them, that are not widely understood and not widely talked about.

[00:20:59] As a jumping off point, why don't we look at one of her recent tweets where she says, what if your baby never walks? What if they're never able to live independently? What if you could have stopped it but chose not to? That's the question that orchids embryo screening forces. You optimize everything, your career, diet, skincare, but you're going to chance it on your child's genome.

[00:21:21] One of the most significant determinants of their health. What I think is interesting about this, and the reason it makes a good jumping off point, is that do you notice anything strange about the way she's talking here? She's talking about your baby in the singular, but the whole point of embryo selection is that you make a bunch of tiny little embryos, and then you screen them, you measure them, and you make some probabilistic assessments of, what diseases they may or may not have or what traits they may or may not have.

[00:21:51] And you get to select the one that you think is best. And so I find it, first of all, very dubious, frankly, and a little dishonest. Uh, I don't know if she's purposely doing this or if it's, just, you know, she hasn't fully thought about it or whatnot. I won't accuse her one way or the other, but the.

[00:22:10] On a technical level, I think that this is basically dishonest. or at the very least, it's highly misleading, because her framing and her rhetoric is talking to potential mothers and fathers, you know, as if all she's trying to do is improve your baby, your one baby.

[00:22:27] Who wouldn't want that, right? she makes it seem like it's a totally free lunch. And look, if you are into this, I have lots of friends who are into this. yes, I'm a Catholic myself, but I'm not bringing any kind of particularly ideological or religiously informed, perspective here today.

[00:22:41] If you are into this, I say. That's fine for you. Just bite the bullet, use your language and grammar such that you are making clear about where you're getting these improvements from. And you're very technically and literally getting these improvements from the discarding of other little tiny, very early possible future babies.

[00:23:02] And so what I thought would be interesting to do, and this is what I did in my debate Johnny Anomaly, is go through, some of the less known arguments and I actually, wrote down all my notes and put them on my blog, and I wanna walk you through a few of them.

[00:23:17] Okay. So I wanna go a little bit out of order because some of them I think are, uh, you know, kind of more significant than others. And one of the first arguments I want to make is that. These are people who care a ton about things like shrimp welfare, right? They think it's these rationalist, secular, atheistic kinds of, optimizers, which is, totally fine if you wanna do that.

[00:23:40] I'm, you know, I'm an anarchist. I might be a Christian, but I'm an anarchist. If the transhumanists want to pleasure themselves to death, I'm not going to, be passing policies to stop them. I frankly don't care. You can pleasure yourself to death or, do what you want.

[00:23:52] You know the consequences. You'll face the consequences. What I'm going to argue is that even on those terms, I think IVF and embryo selection are not as good a deal as people make them sound to be. And so think about this, like really try to unpack this a little bit.

[00:24:08] These are people who write blog posts and they think it's so smart, they think it's so funny and cool and fascinating and quirky. And look at me, I'm just like so brilliantly focusing on these unconventional ways of thinking and these details of logic and facts that no one else looks at. And they're like really, really concerned with something like shrimp welfare, with the reasoning being, if you, I'm of course referring to this blog post that was, uh, circulating a few weeks ago, and people were kind of talking a lot about it, uh, for many reasons. One, because seems kind of funny, but two, because people actually really do take this very seriously.

[00:24:41] And the logic of these kind of rationalist, you know, less wrong, uh, utilitarian, secular atheist people of which, nor Sidiki seems to be one of them. Or she was a teal fellow, you know. So, we are at the end of the day talking about relatively small circles of, you know.

[00:24:58] You know, kind of west coast technological forms of rational thinking and reflection. This is ultimately a pretty small world. and I think it's quite fair to diagnose, orchid and less wrong and roughly in one kind of overarching sociology. And so this sociology takes it very, very seriously to think about, let's say, shrimp welfare, for the reason being, of course, that there's a large number of shrimp.

[00:25:21] So maybe shrimp are not as significant as human beings. Maybe the kind of sentient value of a shrimp is less than that of a human being. But there's so many of them, uh, around the world's oceans that even if the shrimp have a small value, if they're fractionally valuable as a human life.

[00:25:38] There's so many of them that you have to do this kind of like population calculation and consider the kind of expected value of all of these, life forms, right? And so, and they're kind of, sentient, however you want to, kind of think about that. That's the basic idea.

[00:25:53] In fact, mind you, this is such a strong kind of way of thinking. I have seen. I couldn't find it. But I remember reading it a long time ago that I even read a blog post once, from someone who presented this kind of elaborate, rationalist argument about how we should be morally concerned, even possibly with the ethical status of video game characters.

[00:26:16] I kid you not, I read this somewhere, I couldn't find it. If anyone finds that, please send it over to me. But it was this very thoughtful and highly concerned analysis of, Video game characters literal NPCs. They obviously don't have the conscience, or the pain receptivity that human beings have.

[00:26:33] But if you think that there, even any slight non-zero chance that a video game character is somehow possibly on a kind of gradient with consciousness, and that's a very common idea, right? this is used as well. When people talk about AI and all of the kind of rationalist AI safety arguments.

[00:26:53] This is very much a kind of common motif that a lot of smart people subscribe to that Sure. LLMs are not conscious yet, but we should treat them as like, fractionally conscious on, on some small, non-zero degree. So the same argument can be applied to literally, I've seen it applied by these people to video game characters.

[00:27:11] Okay. And, you know, if you think about all the video games that have ever been played and all the NPC video game characters that are dying or being, punctured with some sort or something on a daily basis, you know, uh, it actually is a whole lot of video game characters. So we owe it as moral philosophers.

[00:27:27] We owe it to think very carefully about the harm that could be inflicted to, video game characters or shrimp or LLMs or what have you. Okay. I think that suffices to show, to demonstrate that this is in fact a widespread sort of motif, uh, or assumption that is really quite popular. It's not just popular in the rationalist, bay area.

[00:27:49] Secular atheist modes of thought. It's actually high status. It's like it's seen as cool and impressive. The more you kind of double click and double click and double click and expand something that all the normal people think. Commonsensically, they think it's absurd to be looking at carefully at something moral through a moral lens.

[00:28:10] The more obscure and tiny a thing you can drill into and argue for the very possibility of some sort of, um, moral relevance or, or, that has some sort of ethical status. The more impressive and interestingand, and free spirited, your rationalist mind is.

[00:28:27] Okay. And so I just find it so hilarious that being the case, none of these people take it upon themselves to apply that lens to embryos, right? And so I'm not gonna try to be some crusty grumpy, Christian. Who's just gonna yell at you on this live stream that an embryo is a human life.

[00:28:48] Although I do tend to think that personally I understand that if if you don't, if you were not religious and you're a pure materialist, uh, you're probably not gonna believe that. and that. I'll let you be. I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna beat that home. But what I'm gonna say is that even on materialist grounds, you actually have to do the math.

[00:29:05] And if you do the math, then the coming popularization of embryo selection will actually be a absolutely devastating kind of ethical holocaust, even if you're a materialist. And so this is obviously just, back to the napkin math, but it is plausible and grounded in data that basically.

[00:29:27] You fast forward the current development of embryo selection technology. As you know, it's being performed by startups such as orchid. If you play that forward, we're probably going to be, uh, in the not too distant future. The globe is very likely going to be discarding somewhere on the order of a billion embryos a year globally.

[00:29:46] That's, basically predictable based on current trends, uh, where the cost of IVF is decreasing and the number of people in the world you know, is increasing. So, uh, you can do some very basic math and. when I looked at the math, you know, and I, I kind of give ranges to be most realistic. But it looks to me like it'll be somewhere between 2050 and 2144 sometime in, in that area that, uh, will probably have something like 90% adoption where just extrapolating from current trends where like, you know, the secular atheist, kind of fraction of the world would, will probably choose to do IVF 'cause it'll be quite cheap.

[00:30:25] And you know, as these, uh, as the proponents of, of IVF and embryo selection always make very clear, you know, there are obvious, temptations to do it. There are, there are obvious gains that you can have, that you can achieve in terms of the genetic profile of your offspring.

[00:30:39] So that's some basic back of the napkin math that I given this blog post. And what I find is that if we get to. As I think we plausibly will a billion embryos a year being discarded, then you have to give those embryos some non-zero value, even if you're a materialist. For the same reason that we care so much about shrimp welfare.

[00:31:02] And we care so much about, the possible sentient of current LLMs. What I argue is that on materialist grounds, you should give an embryo at least I would say the value of 0.0 0 0 3 0 2, of a human life.

[00:31:21] That's because there's 30,000 days in a full life on average, and so. It's just a heuristic. But I think it's a, it's a very defensible and reasonable heuristic that, uh, in the very first five days of its existence, an embryo, even if you don't think it's a human life, let's say it's it's 0.0, 0 0 2 of a human life in terms of its, uh, value or, uh, you know, the respect that it deserves in terms of our care for life and ethics and all of this.

[00:31:49] And again, this is, I'm purely materialist grounds even if you think the soul is not real and you think there are no kind of religious requirements of any kind, you cannot. seriously care so much about shrimp and you cannot care, so you cannot seriously care about video game characters.

[00:32:07] Or another one would be like long-term individuals, right? This is very popular. This is a term, kind of, developed or pushed by, uh, William McCaskill. You know, this idea that we are accountable on some level ethically to potential future lives. Well, you just cannot take any of these ideas seriously and not give some non-zero value to a day five embryo.

[00:32:30] Okay? So I find it very suspicious that and frankly on just unserious totally implausible that this kind of sociology that is obsessed with. This type of calculation just for some reason never got around to doing it with embryos. So in this post, I give, uh, you know, a very extremely conservative, a kind of assessment of a possible way to weight the value of an embryo if you don't believe in the soul.

[00:32:54] And what I find is that when you play forward the math, when a billion embryos a year are discarded that's pretty much like, that's like basically killing 200,000 humans. And so, that's roughly about 73 9 elevens every year. Okay. And so, I think that's, uh, pretty significant frankly.

[00:33:16] And again, you can have different, you can draw different boundaries, you can make different estimations for yourself, but I'm, what I'm mostly disturbed by and what I call BS on is the. Absolute disengagement from any of these considerations. Like, what I find to be contemptible and just a, a sign of complete immaturity and unseriousness is this, framing of the problem that is just it sounds like a free lunch.

[00:33:45] And of course, if you're selling a business, you know what better framing is there than to say, Hey, I've built a product that can give you and your family pure gains at no cost other than financial cost. So buy my product and it's just an unmitigated on alloy, good for you and your family and you and your one baby that we're going to improve.

[00:34:06] Well, that is BS with all due respect. That is BS because you are you are improving the results. That a family gets in terms of the kind of like functional rationally evaluated performance of the offspring that you happen to bring into this world. Yes.

[00:34:23] Obviously, IVF and embryo selection promises to do that. Now, interestingly there, I've read some pretty thoughtful, there are interesting technical possible objections, but I'm not gonna go there 'cause it's not my field. And I'm gonna just for the sake of argument, I'll grant that in the short term, yeah, you're gonna get, a certain, certain kind of improved performance in, uh, the types of offspring that you have.

[00:34:43] That's fine. But don't act like there's no cost and don't act like you're just optimizing one baby because what you're really doing is helping people pick among multiple babies. And you really just don't want parents to think about that at all. And so it's, it's truly a kind of disingenuous, propagandistic rhetoric here to use this kind of, singular form of, of baby.

[00:35:07] But then also if we think it's so cool to do this kind of, long-term population ethics calculation around, pain and wellbeing and, and pleasure and suffering, and you're willing to do it to shrimp and you're willing to do it to video game characters and you're willing to do it to LLMs, well then you should be willing to do it to embryos.

[00:35:26] And, uh, if you are, then you, you will find that embryo selection is pretty much signing up for at least 73 September 11th happening every year in the coming future. So I make a few other arguments that I think are quite interesting and unpopular. I try to only make the kind of uncommon arguments that you haven't heard of.

[00:35:44] One is, for instance, that. If IVF and embryos section becomes normalized, like you are not going to be, producing some, really significant influential bloodline or something like that. That's what a lot of these kind of like upper middle class drivers think when they think like, oh, I'm gonna do IVF for all my kids.

[00:36:01] 'cause I want them to have that extra couple of IQ points or whatever they're optimizing for. No, bro, you, you know, you and your family are not going to be, the super people who are populating the solar system. Because in fact, once this becomes normal and everyone is doing it and there's no stigma against it you should probably expect that the wealthiest people are going to be able to have so many more babies and so many more superior babies to you and your family.

[00:36:26] So I did some basic math and you know, I mean, Basically any decka billionaire of which, you know, there are a good handful in the world right now. If a decka billionaire decided to spend $1 billion they could even todayhave as many as 26,000 babies, by my calculation, I kind of give some, um, napkin math here for how I get to that.

[00:36:46] And so I think what I would argue is that the only reason Elon Musk is not producing 26,000 babies through IVF and embryo selection is that it is still seen as quite weird. And it is still stigmatized. I mean, think about it. Elon Musk gets flack from the public for having like, whatever, 13 wives or whatever he is got.

[00:37:03] Obviously in historical terms, that ain't nothing, it's actually not, you know, it's not that bad at all in the scheme of things. But that's one of the things that people give him the most crap for, like in the public, and so, if we really let this cat out of the bag and people like Nora Sidiki.

[00:37:16] End up being hugely successful and, and their startups, you know, really change the norms and change, the entire culture around this topic and everyone thinks it's totally cool and good and normal, and just unalloyed good to use IVF and selection in every possible context.

[00:37:31] Then you should expect extraordinary and extreme kind of, genetic inequality to take off. And guess what? You're not gonna make the cut. Okay. It's gonna be like even if you're super smart, even if you know you're making like a million or $2 million a year or something, like no, it's nothing.

[00:37:45] You're, you're peanuts. And in, a few generations, the entire world will just be the children of the wealthiest people who are able to have like the most optimized babies, uh, at a scale that you can't even fathom. Okay. Yeah. I think there's a lot of short-term thinking when it comes to this.

[00:38:03] In the short term, it seems really tempting. It seems like, do IVF and embryo selection, you'll make your kid a little bit smarter and also you'll avoid, some disease that you're scared of them maybe getting, and they'll tell you that there's no downside. They'll tell you that just the financial cost and it's pure upside for you and your family.

[00:38:21] And on some level to a lot of people, it's gonna look like that, in the short term. but when you actually double click on all of this and you think it through and you play it forward. it's not such a pretty picture. And I think, if you're thinking about this kind of thing, you should really, question, what it is you're getting into when the kind of spokespeople for these projects and companies are really quite, I think clearly choosing a very aggressively kind of misleading, rhetoric, to talk about it.

[00:38:46] I think the things that I pointed out, should give you, a lot of cause for concern, and I think you should think about it. The final thing I'll say is that, there's a few arguments here, but one of the most powerful, I think in my humble opinion, is that.

[00:38:59] I just don't think that we know what you should optimize for. Like, it's easy to say, if your family is at risk for, a particular disease or something like that, then people will be highly motivated to just choose an embryo that is not going to have that, disease profile, in their polygenic score or whatnot.

[00:39:16] And, again, it looks like a free lunch. It looks like just pure upside. But you have to play this forward on the population level. Like if everyone is optimizing for something, it starts maybe by preventing, the disease that your family is particularly afraid of, but obviously you play it forward and people are gonna be optimized.

[00:39:34] People have to choose what to optimize for on some level. Like there is a choice required and it's always presented as if it's obvious in the short term. 'cause right now it feels like there's a lot of low hanging fruit, and it feels like the questions are very simple and straightforward. But do you think that as a species.

[00:39:50] Do we know what to optimize for? Even on rationalist grounds, even if like you totally reject all kind of religious requirements or, or biases, do you really feel confident that as a human being you have some sort of, formula for determining what you should be optimizing? 'cause it is ultimately up to you and they say this, right?

[00:40:09] Like the no sidiki of the world say this, frequently. That it's all about parental choice. It's another big part of her, branding and framing and marketing. Okay. Does any parent really have any reliable framework or heuristic? Formula or philosophy for really grounding confidently what they should be optimizing for.

[00:40:31] Should you optimize for iq? Should you optimize for disease prevention? You can't have everything right there, there, there are hard trade-offs involved. And if you pull from, you know, the genome here, you might end up, pulling, you know, this other part of the genome in a different direction, right?

[00:40:46] So, now there are arguments that there might be some. Particular issues that, the research shows you can manipulate without, causing any other trade offs. I'm familiar with that. But at the population level, like there's just no reason to believe, in my view, that we have any strong foundation for actually knowing what to select for.

[00:41:08] And so if there is no known reliable formula for what an individual family should select for, like, is IQ more important than, you know, disease prevention or whatnot? Like if, if we don't have a framework for that, it seems to be beyond, the actual capacity of, of natural human reason, even with all of our, you know, computational devices.

[00:41:31] Then I just don't see how you can justify entering into that terrain again. I'm not even saying I'm not, you know, I'm not judging, I'm not saying that you shouldn't or that we should, like, you know, I'm anarchist, I'm a Christian, but I'm an anarchist. So as I said, I'm really not personally losing any sleep if the newer Sidiki of the world wanna go, do this to their embryos, um, I'm not losing any sleep over that.

[00:41:56] I just don't think that anyone has a strong sort of philosophical case for what exactly to optimize, in which case, I think we're just opening a really terrible kind of Pandora's box for the population personally. And you have to figure that you play this forward a few generations and. IVF embryo selectors are going to be optimizing for about the same things that Instagram people are optimizing for, right?

[00:42:21] We're just gonna be having, you know, we're gonna be expressing our pathetic, personalities as adults through our children. You know, we're gonna have these like, just like we give kids terrible names now, and we do all, you know, just like all these pathologies that, uh, parents have nowadays.

[00:42:36] People using their kids, you know, to build followings on Instagram and whatnot. You know, you've heard about like these like family YouTube channels where it's like they're just like slave driving the kids and abusing them and stuff. Like, all this kind of crazy chaos. Uh, it's just gonna be applied at the level of IVF and embryo selection, right?

[00:42:51] There's no way to know what you should optimize for. As the stuff gets cheaper, crazy parents are going to optimize for all the wrong things because that's how humans are. Uh, you know, we are we're falling creatures constantly optimizing for the wrong things. Like that is, that is kind of what we do.

[00:43:04] Especially at the population level. Like if you think you're really smart, fine. Um, but you have to, even the most elite, you know, rationalist will, will grant me that at the population level. Yeah. People make terrible choices. And so play that forward with IVF and the species is going to become just absolutely monstrous.

[00:43:20] I mean, it's gonna be, it's gonna be an absolute catastrophe. And, the orchids of the world, the Nor Sidiki of the world right now, they think they're like really, you know, pioneering unalloyed goods for humanity through technology. And maybe in the short term there will be some, positive, positive results.

[00:43:36] Uh, but you play it forward and, uh, the whole world I think is in, for a world of pain, at least the people who are doing this, I think personally. I don't see myself doing it with my kids. And that's partially 'cause I'm, I'm, bound by conscious to, to the, you know, the teachings of the Catholic church.

[00:43:52] But I think those who choose to do it are actually, in the long term opening themselves up to a world of greater pain. And on that final point, I will just say, actually, you know, it's the Catholic church that is the real accelerationist, position on all of this, because I will remind everyone that, in utero gene editing is actually where it's at.

[00:44:10] That would be my final argument is that. You should, not do IVF and embryo selection. You should just wait until you can literally edit the genes of your baby inside of the mother's body which is coming. there have already been some successes on animal models. I believe.

[00:44:24] I forgot the details, but I believe, you know, we know how to do this in principle. And I think it's coming. And the Catholic Church is cool with this. Okay, so the Catholic church is not some sort of reactionary, traditionalist behind the times, you know, Luddite institution necessarily, although in some, in some good ways.

[00:44:41] It is. The Catholic church has said on the books that in utero, gene editing would be allowed for curative purposes. And to me that's way better, why choose to have. A holocaust of embryos around the world over the next few decades when you could just be patient and we can genetically edit babies inside of the mother's body, and we can do it with the blessings of the Catholic church.

[00:45:02] So to me, that's the real alpha move. That's the pioneering Chad brave new world that I find more interesting. And I think, you know, embryo selection is kind of like a low rent, you know, hack job basically that is, when you do the math and you look at the expected value of the destruction, I think, the cost outweigh the benefits in the long run.

[00:45:23] That is my case. And I'm suspicious of a kind of secular rationalist, atheistic science community that is, so obsessed with calculating the welfare of shrimp. But so peculiarly uninterested in calculating the potential expected welfare of embryos taken as a whole over the long term. So those are my thoughts.

[00:45:43] Those are my arguments. You can read the post Justin Murphy Studio slash ivf. Uh, there's some more stuff up there if you want to see. So, all right. I don't know if people have questions or whatnot. I don't see any in the chat. I'm only looking at YouTube, by the way. I should say. I can't see the other platforms.

[00:45:56] So if you have a question, I'll throw it up At the moment, I'm not seeing any questions. So that would be the end of the q and a. So speak now or forever hold your piece. I hope you found this interesting. This was fun. This is, I think it's been like years before, since I've done a live stream.

[00:46:10] And yeah, just as I remember, it's an interesting live, unpredictable kind of format that I miss Well, I do more. I don't know. We'll see. when I decided I would do this pilot and just have fun with it, I did think about, what future episodes would look like, and I have notes, I have, I would say I have like a draft agenda for like two or three more shows like this.

[00:46:33] So I think I will probably do them. unless I go to sleep tonight. I feel like this was a waste of time and it was, silly, but I think I'll do at least a few more shows. I'll be curious to hear from people if you, find this at all interesting or valuable or fun or whatnot. But, like I said, now that no chain is out into the world, not only does no chain work, but the token is like out in the world.

[00:46:52] it's like unreal. Like I've never participated in a startup like this where it's actually gotten this far, I mean, they've been working on this, privately for about two years, just doing the research and development and building the product, and they only launched.

[00:47:07] In May, they launched a Layer one blockchain. Like this is no joke, it's really serious, work that they've done. This is not like some BS thing that a layer five, roll up that rolls up into a layer four, which rolls up into a layer three, which plugs into, the Ethereum may net or something this is no joke.

[00:47:23] This is a, very novel, layer one blockchain built on a technical discovery, a genuinely novel, technical architecture based on zero knowledge proofs, which was not possible. Until recently, and which these guys figure it out and, the thing works, the thing runs and there's a token in public, which is just so cool.

[00:47:43] I mean, it's so exciting and I've never been this far working with a startup, so now that, happening and it looks like it's, it's working, obviously not financial advice at all. Like, who knows? The future is uncertain. But I personally, I'm so inspired and pumped up by it that I'm kind of like, okay, I can come up for air now.

[00:47:58] Like, this thing I think is gonna happen personally. And, it's like a massive project. So it's a layer one blockchain, so it's either going to be like. Competitive with Bitcoin and Ethereum and Solana and up there, you know, in the top 50, in my humble opinion, it's either going to the top 50, in market cap or it's gonna go nowhere.

[00:48:17] The charts are going up and to the right. to me, it going nowhere seems like not, in the cards at the moment. These are just my personal evaluations. I'm just sharing with you how I think about it. I kind of am just stunned that, we've made it this far.

[00:48:30] We've jumped through so many, technical Im probabilities and difficulties not financial advice whatsoever. I don't have a crystal ball, but, based on my honest analysis, this is one of the most exciting things that I've ever personally, been a part of for sure.

[00:48:42] And so it's affecting the other things I'm doing. Like, I feel more just kind of relaxed and able to kind of come up for air and do, creative, content like this now that it's out into the world and it seems to be, succeeding so far. So. Yeah, it's a new morning in America as far as I'm concerned.

[00:48:56] Got a question here from Christian. Would in utero editing also allow for people to give their kids genes that neither parent has? Yeah, it's a bit above my pay grade. You have to ask Zeb Khan. I'm not gonna pretend to try to answer, technical questions like this.

[00:49:10] 'cause it's not my expertise. I don't know what the limits are. I think giving kids genes, sounds a little, informal and imprecise. surely there will be some limits at some point on, I dunno what the hard limits are. But surely, in the short to medium term, and maybe even just structurally forever, there's going to be some limits to, how much you can modify.

[00:49:31] But yeah, it seems to be that it's already known how to do certain forms of limited, spot editing. like, here's something in the genome that causes a particular disease now zap it and it will no longer cause that disease or whatnot. again, above my pay grade.

[00:49:45] I don't pretend to have any technical, you know, knowledge of the details, but. I do know that in utero editing, uh, I believe it has been done officially in animals, uh, of at least one or two varieties. I'm not sure how deep that's gone, but I do believe that's, certainly possible in theory, and I do believe it's been demonstrated at least once or twice in practice.

[00:50:04] And so there's no known reason why it can't work with humans. And for the types of use cases that you know, orchid and people like that are marketing I do believe that like quite a lot, quite a lot of those things, like, especially like the unit, you know, the, the like one gene defects, like TX disease, like there's a whole class of diseases that it's really like very specific in the genome.

[00:50:27] It's like just one gene. Um, you know, they, I do believe they know how to kind of like. Turn them on or off, I think would be a slightly more, correct way to talk about it. I don't know. I don't know if you could just give kids Gene, so, or I don't know the right way to talk about that, so I'm just gonna be, uh, responsible and not talk about it.

[00:50:44] But good question. Point is though you're gonna be able to do, you know, as that develops, you're gonna be able to fix lots of things with in utero editing. And personally I'd rather wait for that. Alright. That's the only question. Alright, well, I gotta go. It's getting late here.

[00:50:58] it's already like, uh, I gotta put my kids to sleep. thanks for hanging out. Good to see some friendly names in the chat. Hello Ellie, and a few other people who I remember from, forever ago. So, uh, thanks for hanging out. Uh, let me know, gimme feedback. Was this interesting?

[00:51:10] You know, was it not? I don't know. Uh, I just wanted to, have fun and come up for air. And now that the book is almost done. Knock chain out into the world. I wanted to, yeah, just start coming up for air. Play around with this and see what it feels like. All right. Thanks everyone. Over and out.

[00:51:27] Catch you later.