Billionaires like Elon Musk want to save civilization by having tons of genetically superior kids. Inside the movement to take 'control of human evolution.'
Antiaging research has had some success in targeting specific diseases, but as the Ellisons and Bezoses of the world get older, the chance of radical life extension in their lifetime becomes more unlikely. So some are turning to the next best thing: their progeny. For people who believe deeply in the genetic heritability of traits, passing on what they see as their superior DNA can be the ultimate path to influence.
What these movements all have in common is a fixation on the future. And as that future starts to look more and more apocalyptic to some of the world's wealthiest people, the idea of pronatalism starts to look more heroic. It's a proposition uniquely suited to Silicon Valley's brand of hubris: If humanity is on the brink, and they alone can save us, then they owe it to society to replicate themselves as many times as possible.
Meanwhile, the Collinses said a mutual friend had been encouraging them to fly to Austin to meet with Claire Boucher, the musician known professionally as Grimes who is the mother of two of Musk's children. It makes sense considering that Musk, who has fathered 10 known children with three women, is the tech world's highest-profile pronatalist, albeit unofficially.
Musk had two of his 10 children, X Æ A-Xii and Exa Dark Sideræl Musk, with the singer Grimes. He has also fathered six children with his ex-wife Justine Musk and twins with his employee Shivon Zilis.Musk was echoing an argument made by Nick Bostrom, one of the founding fathers of longtermism, who wrote that he worried declining fertility among"intellectually talented individuals" could lead to the demise of"advanced civilized society." Émile P.
Malcolm said he was glad to see Musk bring these issues to the forefront."He's not as afraid of being canceled as everyone else," Malcolm told me.
Before she met Malcolm, Simone was convinced she wanted to live her life single and child-free. But when she was 24, she decided to have her heart broken once just to say she'd done it. As she does with all her goals, she created a system: She made a profile on OKCupid, where a picture of her dressed as a Stormtrooper in a sultry pose was catnip for the nerds of Silicon Valley, and rated her dates out of 50. After a string of 16s, Malcolm scored a 42.
The Collinses decided to embark on a sixth round of IVF to use the service. Though Genomic Prediction's"LifeView" test officially offers risk scores only for 11 polygenic disorders — including schizophrenia and five types of cancer — they allowed the Collinses to access the raw genetic data for their own analysis.
The tests they performed also provided a risk score for autism, a diagnosis Simone herself has received, which they decided not to take into account. Simone compared her autism to a"fine-tuned race car": Even if she struggles with certain"real-world" situations, she said,"If I'm on the track and I have my pit crew and I have the perfect fuel—" "I'm also really hesitant to select against any type of extreme mental peculiarity in a person," he added.
The Collinses themselves have been called"hipster eugenicists" online, something Simone called"amazing" when I brought it to her attention. Demographers have pushed back on population anxiety like Musk's, pointing out that international migration from countries with growing populations will help stabilize global conditions. Others have argued that it is an actively harmful distraction from more pressing issues like the climate crisis and global inequality.
"If our technology works," the Conception cofounder Matt Krisiloff said,"it really will open the door to women being able to have children into their 40s and 50s comfortably." Simone and Malcolm weren't particularly surprised to learn that, at 31, I have only one close friend with a baby. The median age for women having their first child passed 30 for the first time in 2019, according to the US Census Bureau, up from 27 in 1990.
Octavian and Torsten were born before PGT-P testing was available, but their parents hope to select future embryos using the emerging technology.I asked what set their vision apart from Gilead, the totalitarian regime depicted in"The Handmaid's Tale" that designates certain women as breeders.Still, many observers are troubled by the fact that pronatalists worry less about how many children people are having and more about who is having them.
During our initial tour of the farmhouse, Simone pointed out one of its many peculiarities: the toilet tucked away in the corner of her office, where she muted herself during virtual meetings to secretly throw up during bouts of morning sickness. The Collinses said that some potential investors backed out of their search fund when they learned about their plans to have children. Determined to prove them wrong, she said, she even took sales calls during labor.
The logic behind the Collins Institute reflects their thinking at large:"If you want to make the future better for everyone and you could choose to dramatically increase the educational outcomes of the bottom 10% of people or the top 0.1% of people," the Collinses say to choose the 0.1%.
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