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Miasma

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Human civilization is ‘inefficient.’ There are many activities we could do that would make humans massively better-off on net, that a small subset of humans know about and are in favor of, but a larger subset will not allow, mostly because of negative associations. Call this state of being blocked by negative associations ‘miasma.’

I set out to write a grand theory of miasma. I failed; all you get is this stupid list (of things blocked by miasma).

This list is by definition going to be controversial. It could be described as “topics Robbie thinks most of the world is wrong about, and thinks his arguments are much better than the majority’s, such that he is taking the inside view and not updating towards consensus.”

I don’t expect to change anyone’s mind in this post; I will be happy if I pique someone’s curiosity.

Later I will include a list of topics that, despite strong initial opposition, eventually beat the miasma. If you go back far enough in time, almost every opinion humans have today was at one point miasmic.

Haven’t Beaten Miasma #

Geoengineering for Global Warming #

Humanity should emit sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere and seriously study the effects. Plausibly, we could delay global warming for half a century for a couple billion dollars a year. We should study this seriously, by intentionally emitting the first 200 kilotons, eg a ninth of what one smelting factory in Russia already emits per annum and ~1% of what was emitted by Mount Pinatubo in 1991.

Polygenic Embryo Selection #

We can sequence the genome of embryos and screen them for risk from many diseases and for IQ. Testing for IQ is weakly shadow-banned: many IVF clinics will not allow you as a screener if they know you do this. Gene-editing is also tractable⁠[1] but not pursued scientifically. The vast majority of people who get IVF do not take advantage of this for the health benefits or the IQ benefits, despite the intervention being hilariously cost- and time-efficient relative to the traditional health system and schools.

Tracking #

Separating students by ability empirically speeds up learning and lifts confidence⁠[2]. See my previous post.

Electoral Reform #

Ranked Choice Voting, multi-seat districts, making election day a holiday, popular presidential elections, a much larger House of Representatives, and fixed Supreme Court terms are all good ideas.

Paying Organ Donors, Challenge Trials #

We should pay people for their blood and kidney donations, and for agreeing to risky medical trials. It’s sad that some people are destitute. That doesn’t mean we should disallow poor people from making voluntary and mutually beneficial agreements.

Beat Miasma Long Ago #

Starting to Beat Miasma #

Notes #

  1. He Jiankui edited the CCR5 gene in two embryos to make them resistant to HIV. The twins were born in October 2018, and a third child in 2019. A Shenzhen court sentenced him in December 2019 to three years in prison and a ~$430,000 fine for illegal medical practice, and banned him from reproductive medicine for life. He did not reproduce the CCR5-Δ32 deletion he was aiming for; we don’t know what the effects of his edit are. ↩︎

  2. I know this is a controversial claim. ↩︎

  3. This became respectable only when Queen Victoria did it. ↩︎

  4. I really want this in every major US city. We could increase throughput and tax revenues while reducing travel times and pollution; there’s no cost except ‘equity.’ ↩︎

  5. They are ~10x safer than human-operated ones per mile driven. There is significant cyberattack tail risk; this doesn’t change my mind. ↩︎

  6. It’s reasonable to be cautious about GMOs, and there are bad applications (eg making crops resistant to Roundup so that you can blanket them in it). ↩︎

Sources #

Claude found these sources. Robbie did not review them.

  1. Smith & Wagner (2018), “Stratospheric aerosol injection tactics and costs in the first 15 years of deployment,” Environmental Research Letters 13:124001 — a program lofting 0.2 Mt SO2 in year one and ramping linearly costs ~$2.25bn/yr averaged over 15 years, and halves the rate of increase in radiative forcing. ↩︎
  2. Greenpeace India (2020), “Ranking the World’s Sulfur Dioxide (SO2) Hotspots: 2019–2020,” from NASA OMI satellite retrievals — the Norilsk smelter complex is the largest anthropogenic SO2 point source on earth, and accounts for more than half of all Russian emissions NASA tracks. Rosprirodnadzor, Russia’s environmental regulator, put Norilsk’s 2022 SO2 emissions at 1,765,000 tonnes (Nornickel’s own disclosure says 1,778,000). ↩︎
  3. Self, Zhao, Holasek, Torres & King (1996), “The Atmospheric Impact of the 1991 Mount Pinatubo Eruption,” in Fire and Mud: Eruptions and Lahars of Mount Pinatubo, Philippines, eds. Newhall & Punongbayan, USGS / University of Washington Press — the June 1991 eruption injected ~17 Mt of SO2 into the stratosphere, cooling the Northern Hemisphere by ~0.5 °C. ↩︎
  4. Steve Hsu told me this in person. ↩︎
  5. Capalbo, de Wert, Mertes, et al. (2024), “Screening embryos for polygenic disease risk,” Human Reproduction Update 30(5):529–557 — polygenic screening is sold by three US companies (Genomic Prediction/LifeView, Orchid, MyOme); couples screened by Genomic Prediction number in the low hundreds, with a few babies reported born. The denominator is from the CDC’s 2022 Assisted Reproductive Technology National Summary Report: 435,426 ART cycles on 251,542 patients at 457 US clinics in 2022, producing 2.6% of all US births. So polygenic screening reaches well under 1% of IVF patients. ↩︎