Episode Details

Dr Jonathan Anomaly is a philosopher and bioethicist. He has taught at universities around the USA, and won a teaching award for a class he designed at Duke and also taught at UNC, Penn, Arizona, and San Diego. Jonathan has also held visiting positions at the universities of Oxford and Gothenburg, and established the first Philosophy, Politics, and Economics program in Latin America  Anomaly is a pro-natalist, advocates eugenics/genetic enhancement, and opposes factory farming. He has written articles on collective action problems such as antibiotic resistance, especially resistance arising from the overuse of antibiotics in animal agriculture, and has published papers on the potential benefits and costs of using embryo selection to increase intelligence or alter other traits parents care about. He has also written about the social costs of egalitarian political dogmas in modern American universities  His first solo book, Creating Future People, explores how our ability to manipulate the genetic endowment of our children is likely to transform humanity. And it’s that book we focus most of our discussion on today. The book is a wonderful primer, it’s only about 130 pages and you can now download it for free using the link below. I cannot recommend it enough. It’s a brilliant and accessible guide to perhaps the most important technological developments in our lifetimes.   

Download Jonathan's book here: https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/oa-mono/10.4324/9781003014805/creating-future-people-jonathan-anomaly  

My links:  

Substack: https://ideassleepfuriously.substack.com 

Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/Ideas_Sleep 

Twitter: https://twitter.com/Ideas_Sleep 

Timestamps: 

Intro 00:00 2:40 Jonathan's philosophical journey 5:00 Bioethicists are boring conservatives 6:25 The most impressive philosopher Jonathan ever met 7:20 Biggest philosophical influences 8:59 Is academic philosophy detrimental to philosophy as a whole? 11:18 Zizek, Foucault, and charlatans 17:18 Jonathan's approach to bioethics 21:49 CRISPR's power 23:58 How much biology do you have to know to do bioethics? 27:10 CRISPR vs embryo selection 29:15 Erroneous beliefs about IQ 33:30 The heritability of IQ 36:10 Embryo selection for IQ 38:35 Our current technology 39:50 Are there theoretical limits to increasing IQ? 42:30 Mental illness & giftedness 48:40 Jonathan's dream child 52:10 What will different people select for? 58:40 Aesthetic preferences by class 1:03:01 Evolution does not stop 1:05:09 Is genetic inequality bad? 1:10:08 Should we use the word eugenics?  1:12:05 Jonathan's attempted cancellation  1:17:12 Most people believe sterilisation is morally correct 1:19:28 Moral standing vs moral status 1:22:52 What's the best argument for true equality? 1:26:22 Woke religion 1:31:48 Political ramifications of genetic enhancement 1:37:44 Stem cells & future developments 1:42:44 Rich people will lead the way 1:44:50 The dangers of regulation 1:47:25 Zero-sum games in the 21st century 1:51:02 Audience question 1: IQ & fertility genes 1:56:28 The role of feminism 2:02:30 Audience question 2: Would gene-edited people outcompete others for resources? 2:03:37 Audience question 3: Would gene-edited people select children who also wanted to gene edit? 2:05:49 Closing comments