253: Jamie Metzl | Genetic Engineering and the Future of Humanity
The Jordan Harbinger Show
Jordan Harbinger
4.8 • 12.3K Ratings
🗓️ 18 September 2019
⏱️ 58 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Jamie Metzl (@JamieMetzl) is a technology futurist and geopolitical expert, entrepreneur, media commentator, Senior Fellow of the Atlantic Council, and author of Hacking Darwin: Genetic Engineering and the Future of Humanity.
What We Discuss with Jamie Metzl:- Why the speed at which genetic engineering is progressing is akin to Neil Armstrong stepping foot on the moon just six years after the first flight of the Wright brothers.
- Why the genetic traits that seem universally beneficial to us today may turn out to be as ephemeral (and useful to humanity) as powdered wigs and skinny jeans.
- The danger our species faces when we're able to selectively edit out genes that cause disorders without fully understanding their potential benefits or evolutionary purpose (e.g., recessive sickle cell disease carriers' resistance to malaria).
- Why China — run by a government that values the good of the country over the rights and privacy of its citizens — is better poised than the US and other Western countries to excel in the application of genetic science.
- Why addressing the values of equity and diversity today is important for avoiding genetic stagnation and greater friction between the haves and have-nots of tomorrow.
- And much more…
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to the show. |
| 0:03.9 | I'm Jordan Harbinger. |
| 0:05.3 | As always, I'm here with producer Jason DeFilippo. |
| 0:08.0 | On the Jordan Harbinger show, we decode the stories, secrets and skills of the world's |
| 0:11.8 | most brilliant and interesting people and turn their wisdom into practical advice that |
| 0:15.8 | you can use to impact your own life and those around you. |
| 0:19.8 | If we brought a baby from a thousand years ago in a time machine to today, it would |
| 0:24.6 | largely be the same. |
| 0:26.0 | If we brought a baby from a thousand years in the future, or even a hundred years in |
| 0:29.6 | the future, back to now, it would have outlier traits and genetic disease resistance |
| 0:34.1 | that we've never even seen. |
| 0:36.4 | This is because gene editing technology is about to change our lives and the world in |
| 0:40.9 | the next few decades. |
| 0:42.4 | The upside of being able to alter physical and mental traits, such as appearance and IQ, |
| 0:46.9 | is just too good to pass up. |
| 0:49.4 | But who gets to make these important decisions that will affect the entire human gene pool? |
| 0:53.8 | Is it the government? Is it corporations? Is it the Chinese Communist Party? |
| 0:58.5 | These all seem like bad options that could lead to bad outcomes. |
| 1:02.4 | What will AI and big data do to speed up this process? |
| 1:06.2 | And what are the limits of human capability? |
| 1:08.6 | We're about to find out in what many experts believe might be the next arms race, using |
| 1:13.3 | stem cells instead of nukes. |
... |
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