Tucker Debates Biotech CEO on Baby Customization, Eugenics, and God’s Existence

off camera, I disagree with this conceptually, I think, but I'm also completely ignorant of the details. So I kind of want to know what this is before even asking you questions about whether it's a good idea. Can you just, I'll just stand back and let you explain

what you're doing. Yeah, so first things are having me on course. So patients, there's

one way of reproducing the IVF, right? So you can see naturally the V6 or maybe if you're infertile or if you have some sort of high-tiered disease or for some other reason you do IVF. When you do, yeah, I'm sorry. I'm going to, I specialize in them questions. Can you explain for people who don't know what is IVF? First of all, yeah, what is IVF? IVF stands for in vitro fertilization. So basically imagine the egg in the sperm, right? The foundation

“of life to make an embryo is basically putting those things together in a clinic, right?”

And then basically you take that embryo and you transfer it into a woman and then it implant into a woman's pregnancy. So conception takes place outside the womb, correct? Okay, yeah. And so during this process, IVF, what you do is today, even if nucleus then it exists, even if genetic optimization then it exists. You make several embryos. Okay, so in your IVF clinic, you make several embryos. The amount of embryos in the baking varies, but you

might have four or five. You actually do genetic testing on these embryos to identify things like chromosome abnormalities, like down syndrome, for example. So that's very commonplace. That's done

and basically every IVF clinic in the United States, they will actually screen embryos,

the genetics of the embryos to see if they have some sort of severe chromosome abnormality. What we do is we basically provide more information on their embryos. So we also read the DNA, but now we give information on things like other dietary disease risks, also chronic disease is things like cancers, Alzheimer's, diabetes, also traits like IQ or height, etc. So to be clear, we're not changing any DNA. There's this process in IVF where you make embryos, already

genetic testing is done in embryos. What we do now is you provide you a little bit more information on your embryos. So the basically that information can be used, then implant which embryo, the couple deans to be best. So basically give more information to couples to then choose which embryo they want to implant. I don't want to derail this conversation two minutes in. Okay. You've just said we can tell the IQ of a person by the genetics. So

I was reliably informed. I accused not real. Okay. And it's not determined by genetics.

“So I think it's helpful to think about all these different characteristics from diseases”

to traits, right? People know intuitively something like height for example, right? They say oh, that's that's genetic or something like breast cancer, eye color, right? These things people intuitively know are genetic. And so you can actually basically take these different phenotypes and measure how genetic any phenotype is. So what does it actually mean? The most simple way of explaining is imagine you took two identical twins. So they have

the same DNA, right? And then basically separate the twins. They grew up in different environments. Sometimes in pop culture, people hear about these different things. We actually take twins. And they have, again, the same DNA, they're identical DNA. And then you big grow up in different places for every reason. So they're subject to different environments. And then you can actually measure basically how much more similar they, how similar they are across all these different

phenotypes to see basically how genetic some things studies. Yes, twin studies. Yes. And so using twin studies, you can actually get measurements of things from diseases, right? Like cancers and diabetes and Alzheimer's is mentioned to things like height or IQ or BMI, etc. So twin studies show that IQ is specifically about 50% genetic, but to be clear, IQ is just one of over 2,000 factors that we actually look at, right, principally parents and patients.

“They come for disease. They always come for disease. And remember that when the embryos you're”

picking from the most important determinant of the genetics of your embryo is, well, your partner,

right? So you're actually not changing DNA. This is not genetic. You're not changing DNA. You're not making a, like an embryo's DNA better. You're basically reading the embryos DNA that you have. So when you pick your partner, you're basically picking the kind of genetic bull and then you can basically pick which embryo you deemed to be best based off of your preferences and values. I mean that this, like, again, I just want to say thank you for doing this. Yeah, absolutely.

Not here to attack you at all. I think this is one of the most important conversations we can have. And I agree. I'm, you're much younger than I am. So you weren't here for the debates that took place in the early 1990s about what traits are the product of genetics and which are the product of environment. But up until pretty recently, the public conversation has settled on a consensus that everything is environment and that genetics aren't real. And this was at the

very center of our national debate about race and crime and educational achievement in calm. And it all grew out of or was crystallized by a book called The Belker, if you heard of this. Yeah, have you? Yeah. So it seems like that debate is over and we're, and I'm not,

yeah, gender and explicit big role. Yeah, gender and place, a real. So I think in society today, when people think about like, hi-ter cancers, I'm not into because I'm not talking about, there's hearty theory disease risk like P.K.U, Tay-Sax, cystic fibrosis, beta-thalcemia, these are conditions we also screen for, to make sure that parents can, you know, reduce suffering

each generation. So that's also part of what we do. And those conditions are basically deterministic

in nature. So if you have two bad copies of like cystic fibrosis, we're going to get cystic fibrosis and it's debilitating. And so there's like policies, you know, that basically encourage, you know, Americans and people around the world to do screening, to not pass down basically an invisible

“genetic burden to their child. Right. Right. That's like classical kind of genetics. So I think”

it's interesting because you, you know, you take eugenics, right? No, no, no, not eugenics. You genics. It's improving human species. No, no, no, you're breeding. Eugenics refers to basically a corrosive use, corrosive controlling human reproduction. Right. Four sterilizations, even youth in Asia, controlling who can get married to who. So, no, no, no, no, those are methods by which you implement in eugenics. But they're not the only ones. Eugenics simply means there's

something inherently where you can disagree with the concept. But the concept is corrosive or not, the improvement of a species. In this case, the human species through selective breeding. Well, but there's no selective breeding. Remember, patients choose who they marry. And then in the embryos, they have, right, you're not changing the embryos. In the embryos, they have, patients can make their own choice in which embryo they want to implant. So juxtapose like

eugenics, I was not selective breeding. This is literally breeding. Well, breeding is by definition, the process of bringing new life into the world and you're deciding which of these embryos becomes a person. And so that is, that is breeding. Well, it's not, it's not choosing people's

“marriages. It's not giving them forced sex activities. But it is breeding. That's what breeding is.”

Well, I would say that in IVF clinics for, you know, last couple decades, there's been this

process of basically taking these embryos, getting more information on the embryos, and then

picking which embryo wants to implant, right? Again, you're not changing DNA. You're not controlling who can get married to who? Like, just to be clear, if you go back, um, eugenics is a term, it came up within the late 19th century by a scientist named Francis Gulton. Okay. He was a British scientist. Yeah, but have all of us. Yeah. But yeah, he's talking up with the term eugenics. Interestingly, the term eugenics was actually about 20 years before the term genetics. This is really interesting.

A lot of people don't know that. Yeah. This is very important. Eugenics, um, naturally did not require genetics. So genetics, when the term was coined, it was the science of heredity, right, of passing down information. The, remember, the units of heredity identified as DNA. That was only into the 1940s, right? Right. And then I didn't find the structure of DNA was actually

“after World War II in the 1950s. So we didn't even know for basically, um, in 1927, and I think it”

was buck versus Bell, the U.S. Supreme Court deemed forced sterilizations constitutional. Okay. At that point, we had no idea that DNA was actually the genetic basis. This is really,

really important. People always get this wrong because they don't, they don't follow the timeline.

Um, eugenics as a, as a, as a, as an corrosive ideology to control populations had nothing to do with not like a genetics period. It had nothing to do with the genetics. Why was it corrosive? Um, well, I think if you basically forced sterilize somebody against the will, I mean, I getting that against the fundamental, you know, liberty of a person. I asked, there's no question. I couldn't agree more. Um, but again, that was just one manifestation of it. So forced played no role in a

lot of it. It was steering people, giving them options, telling them that, you know, if you married this kind of person, here's the outcome you're likely to get when you have children. Well, forced to play, I mean, again, of course, in 1927, the United States, the Supreme Court deemed constitutional, and forced stations are constantly, I'm just saying that, and I couldn't be more opposed to that. Yeah, in fact, the whole program. But I just want to notice a factual matter that

forced sterilizations were an incredibly ugly evil manifestation of an idea that was not limited to forced sterilizations. Yeah. Yeah. The same idea you're articulating, which is people should try to improve the human species by selective creation of children. So yeah, I disagree with that. I just don't know how it was a different. So nuclear is ultimately in what we give patients, ultimate patients actually want. Right. Again, patients are choosing their partner. They're choosing

to do IVF. Um, they have, basically, options. They have civil embryos. They get information. There's actually no, um, best embryo, right? So nuclear is a company and no patients can ever say, oh, this is the best embryo because there's no, um, fundamental virtue rooted in biological characteristics. So like the idea that like you could even have a best, for example, is misguided, principally, in my view, because something like virtue, right? And I think of two kinds of virtue. There's

natural virtue and then divine virtue, right? It's fundamentally not biological, it's not physical.

the partners of the choose and in doing IVF to then pick the embryo that sets the best set of

biological characteristics of them. But there is no virtue. There's no morality in that decision. Well, I've noticed. Yeah. But so do you think that it's equally virtuous to have a child intentionally have a child, which we can now do with the genetic testing you're describing? Who has Down syndrome, Tay Sachs and CF? Is that as virtuous as having a child who is none of those things? Because I

“thought you just thought I think that it's not good to get rid of those things. To be clear,”

virtues independent of virtues, independent of biological characteristics, parents can choose based off their preference what they want, what is best. So let me give you an example. So there was a case of reproductive medicine where a deaf couple, they want to have a deaf child. Yep. That to them was basically was best. That term best is relative context specific to the parent. We have patients, for example, that might have Huntington, which is a severe near-game disease,

very severe. Yeah, very severe. It's always on what dominant means is passed down.

Right. And by the way, this is actually interesting. Something like Huntington's or schizophrenia, these are exactly the kind of conditions that in the 20th century, they would say, hey, these people are unfit. Right. They should not be produced. Right. Because they have some sort of neuropsychiatric or some sort of debilitating conditions around the family. Like in my case, you know, one of the reasons why I started the business is because one of my family members,

she unfortunately went to sleep and she passed away in her sleep. So these things are

“deeply personal to people. And they set the result of a genetic anomaly?”

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rather? Yeah. Is there, I don't know the answer, is there evidence that that is genetically predisposed to it? It's a very strongly, there's a very strong genetic basis to schizophrenia, really. Correct, yeah, yeah, and we know that. Yes, that is a very well-established science. Yeah, I'm learning. No, it's interesting. Okay, but you said it that a minute ago that there is a nationwide entity to global effort to get rid of conditions like. But again,

deafness is a great example. It's not for me to tell a deaf couple, where they should have a dentistry. But that can apply across everything now. Right, if somebody wants to have a child, based off their, instead of what they deemed to be best, based off their limits, that's their right, and that's their choice. So I'm not saying that it's better to have a child that is a not deaf, for example. I can't do that. I can't possibly say that depends on them. I think that's

entirely the choice of the of the family. Okay, that's a consistent position. I wonder though, because you describe something that's absolutely real, which is a system globally that is designed to minimize to reduce the incidence of certain conditions. Right, so you said that, that's the policy like, so you genetic test, all the embryos at every IVF clinic, because you want to make sure we have less Down syndrome, for example. But no, but again, the, the, what's important here is,

there's not some sort of broad centralized body being like, oh, we need to all do this sort of testing embryos. That decision rests in the parent's choice. A parent can choose not to screen embryos or Down syndrome. Okay, they could make that decision. And if they make that decision, they can then transfer that embryo and have that baby. That's entirely their choice. It's not like that there's no, and I don't, I mean, that, let's not be disingenuous. There is a global effort

to reduce the incidence of certain conditions. Of course, everyone just assumes like, you can't,

“I mean, that's why the incidence of Down syndrome has fallen off a cliff. There's been”

an elimination of Down syndrome. Not entirely. It's like parents making choices, though. There's a parents and couples making their health care systems, steer people in certain directions or have a preference. I think the health care system, unfortunately, right now is a sick care system. I mean, the health care system actually is very much not in the business of prevention. I mean, it's interesting. I was going to get these stats, which is the U.S. health care system

spends about $5 trillion. It's a lot about, I think, 4 trillion goes to chronic disease treatment. So things like cancers and diabetes and Alzheimer's, in 2021, four times many people died of

peak of the pandemic. What is the real pandemic here? On that point, if you think about it,

and also, by the way, of the 5 trillion, so 4 trillion about 80% is chronic disease, about

“500 billion is about rare diseases. So these rare genetic conditions lie outlined, right?”

So genetics has a strong impact in both heartitary disease, like cancers, I outlined like chronic diseases, as well as rare disease. So genetics can help impact four, four and a half trillion dollars of health care expenditure, but, and there's a but, remember, there's 4 trillion dollars. Somebody's making money for someone being sick. Oh, yeah, and that's horrible. But it's of course, you say, of course, but I think that we can't just take that as a given, right? Like genetics

of the science, if deployed, can be used for parents to make their own decisions, to directly reduce breast cancer risk, diabetes risk, if there's something in their family, schizophrenia, Alzheimer's,

help reduce that next generation. So these things can be used to basically help build what we call

generational health effectively. So I, I don't save a lot of money through improving the species through eugenics. Everyone, people may this argument for over 100 years. I get it. I'm just wondering why I'm wondering a lot of things, but we want to, yeah, remember, too, that IVF is about 2% of the way babies are born in the United States. Most babies are still born, and actually conceived. So we, we actually have a service for those couples as well. We can basically take a

T, T, T, T, T, T, T, T, you can just something called Procreation Simulation, you can simulate basically the risk for your child. Okay. And that is a service that can basically help any couple too. So I just want to be clear that it's not just IVF patients as well. These are couples that think can employ these screening and then to have a healthy baby. What about sex? What about sex? Well, I mean, the

number one thing that people have used prenatal testing for is choosing the sex of their child.

“Right. So that's, that's what explains the demographic imbalance in China is. Yeah. So”

that's like the number one thing globally, India, in India actually, a lot to be clear too. So in IVF clinic, you can't even pick sex in India because there's a response. But well, legally, but of course it happens all the time because there's a global preference for sons. And that's why you see so many more boys think girls when in fact, it's the opposite. In the United States, actually, if you look at the IVF, it's about, it's about 50, 50. I'm saying, I'm not talking

with the US, but how do you feel about that? Would it be okay with you if someone came in and said, get rid of the girl embryos? So to be clear that that's, so to be clear, in the United States, this has played out over the last like 20 years. Like, people have no to pick the sex of their, of their child and IVF clinic. Spoke the United States, and then again, at some point internationally, too, but eventually became outlawed for the reason you outlined, which is people who don't say

it makes slightly more boys. Um, well, I mean, it's illegal and it's much harder in these countries. Yeah. Yeah. Um, in the United States, though, if you actually played out people making their own choices, it ends up being about, um, again, 50, 50. So this is actually interesting, but what do you think of it? Would it be valid for someone to come in and say, I mean, you said this is a, you know, an ethically neutral question, you know, about whether or not to have a child with this or that

genetic condition, but what about sex? Is that ethically neutral? Is it okay in your view for a couple to say, I don't want any girls. In, in my view, that is the progative of the parents to pick which sex they want. And if you play that out across many, many, many couples making their own independent choices, by which is embodiment of this kind of liberty and choice, um, you see

“it ends up being about 50, 50, which I think actually undercuts this idea that everyone's going to”

pick, you know, a boy, for example, right? There's this notion that it's culturally specific in this time, you know, exactly. Of course, but that applies across any traits than Tucker, which is people, there's not a universal best. It's very much key specific to the specific family history, specific values and schools. Of course, of course. But what I think we're, we're talking about two different things. You're talking about outcomes, and I'm talking about the process and

whether the process itself is valid. And right, and I totally, I've actually seen the numbers. So I know that you are absolutely right on the question of sex selection, but you think it's okay. There's no moral problem at all because these are questions of life and death. So I do think moral questions are relevant questions. You don't think there's any moral question around choosing by sex. To be clear, I think that there is no universal biological best period across any

phenotype because biology is inherently neutral. Now there is universal morality. Okay, specifically, again, two kinds. There's natural virtue, right, and also divine virtue. Natural virtue can come from the cultivation, the soul, which is independent of biology. It's not in the physical plane. And so I think from from divine virtue, divine virtue to me is more about union with God. So natural virtue is not necessarily about soul come from. There's God. There's God, what do you mean?

Why is there no, of course I agree. But I don't know why there's a distinction between the virtues, again, where in the weeks. Natural virtue can be intellectually derived.

grace and revelation, which come from God. You can't necessarily, a human being's mind is limited. It's finite. You can't necessarily grasp that. So there has to, there's a, there's a, so you can, one you can derive from like thinking like what leads to basic union ammonia human flourishing. Right. That kind of virtue, natural virtue. But I come from Aristotle. And the other kind is

thing about divine virtue, which is what goes beyond intellect, which Thomas Aquinas basically

brought together and thought about, okay, there's this idea of natural virtue that, you know, the Greeks came up with. And then, of course, there's this idea of divine virtue kind of from, you know, the Old Anne New Testament about union with God. And, you know, over legends actually talk, ultimately about surrendering. Personally, I do believe in God, just so you know, if that's not clear. Well, here's something that thieves count on security cameras usually stop where Wi-Fi stops, right?

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What kind of God do you believe in? So I've meditated for about seven years.

“And what I keep coming across is the best way to articulate, I see God as an experience,”

versus an ideology, which is that there's a quote that's actually from Rumi. I think he articulates it. Well, Rumi is a Persian poet. He says, imagine you go to the ocean and you come back with a picture of water. So the picture of my mind is the ego is the logical mind. And then the ocean is God, the source, the one, the divine, whatever you want to call it. That's why I think about God. So I think from my experience meditating, and from what I've seen,

the, again, human mind, the intellectual mind is limited in finite. And there's basically this

vastness. It's hard to describe, which is why often the Sufi's would use poetry to actually describe God, because it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's a lot of it. You can't describe it directly because it's too big. Precisely, it's infinite. It's vast. That's why like the ocean is an example. Another way like to think about it is like, if you're a rain drop, and it's easy for us, especially modern society to think, the rain drop is the world, but eventually you return to the ocean.

And you realize it's much bigger. And so, um, so that's your conception of God. Yes, that's my, it,

“again, I think God is more, is more an experience. It can't get God cannot be conceptualized.”

It can't be articulated. It's not a logical thing. You cannot use logic to articulate God. I mean, to me, that's a, it's incompatible. Um, but so, I think you can, you try to use metaphors and try to explain

it. Um, I always like the Sufi poets, because I feel like they do a really, really,

really nice, beautiful job of that. Um, certainly of describing the vastness and fundamental incomprehensibility of God, precisely. Oh, I couldn't agree with you more. And only poetry can capture that, but it leaves unanswered the core question for the three Abrahamic religions, which is what does God want for us to do and believe, and what's your view on that? Well, Islam, specifically, Islam literally means surrendering to one. Yes. I think that's the answer.

In other words, Islam, and you can, I'm not Christian. You're Christians. You can tell me more about Christians. You, but there's a constant surrender and Christianity. So in Islam, there's, I mean, it's literally Islam, not just a surrender. Yes, it's an experience. Oh, the whole thing. It's literally surrender to being tortured to God. Yeah, of course. And then in Buddhism as well, they call it different things in Buddhism. It's a little bit more, um, extraordinary into the

illusion of the ego, for example. Um, but the concept of surrendering, I think, is basically universal. There's no question. And so, yeah. But, um, so right, that's my answer. That's the, you know, that's the very beginning. That's the, get sexual understanding of it. But then you move immediately into what does God want you to do? What powers do he have? What powers do you have? What are the things you're allowed to do? What are the things you're not allowed to do? I mean, that's such a products of logic,

but it's also like pretty spelled out in every, um, in every, um, in every one of the three religions that derive from Abraham. So what's review of that? Like are there things that God want to allow us to do?

There's one this idea of consequentialism, which is basically the end justifies the means,

which you're seeing a lot of in today's culture. I have noticed that. Yeah, unfortunately, even in Silicon Valley, which we can talk about, even in Silicon Valley. Yeah, and especially, you just say that, especially especially, especially, it's in Silicon Valley. And then there's a Sam Altman may even be doing it. I mean, yeah, I mean, yeah, we can talk about that. And people and the thing is, when people realize they're not, they're more philosophies. They end up

succumbing to one anyways where they recognize it. Or cross the question, everybody's religious. Yes. And then yeah, exactly. And then there's this concept of deontology, which is sort of like maybe, you know, the end just does not justify the means. And there's rules, right? Murder's bad, line is bad. And, you know, it's kind of no matter what the specifics are going to start, these things are wrong. Right? There's that more of philosophy. You can adopt deontology,

which can be secular or non-cyclical or as my understanding of it. Um, then there's virtue as it is. Not really. Okay. If there are rules, why are they rules rather than preferences? If you came up with them, they're preferences. If the power that created the universe came up with them, then they're rules that aren't laws. So one has no meaning at all. Yeah. Nothing can be better than anything else. Yeah. If they, yes. And the others absolute. So like, no, there can't be a secular

sorry, or a stottle, a secular understanding of absolute value. I think there cannot be a second

understanding of divine virtue. We can, we can, we can get more into this. What I mean there, but let me just outline this quickly. And then I'll bring it around. So there's the consequentialism, which is most people I think can contemporary society adopt. There's deontology, right? Which is, as you rooted, rooted in some sort of maybe there's some universal. This is good. This is bad. Then there's, you know, virtue ethics, right? Which basically the instead of saying, oh,

the consequence instead of saying, oh, this action is good because the consequence was good, or this action is good because the action is inherently good or wrong because of some secular and non-secular set of rules. You're saying, hey, the action thing that needs to measure,

“you need to think about is the moral character of the person doing the action. And then if the”

moral character, if they possess these kind of cardinal virtues, things like temperance and justice, and wisdom, for example, then it so follows that the action they do would be virtuous. Right?

So you try to cultivate the soul basically, and then in cultivating the soul and cultivating virtue,

you confers, basically, virtue and the action. Right? So basically, the first two in my view, in my view, deontology and consequentialism is very much about the action, right? It's the same as this outcome good based off some thing you try to maximize. And then deontology, which is this concept of, forget about that outcome is good or not, is this the right or wrong thing. Then the concept of virtue of ethics, which is instead of saying, you know, looking at the action,

like it's ultimately human beings' production, actions aren't just there, human beings' production, the quality of the action should be measured or it's deemed virtuous if the person can strive and embody virtue. Okay? And so personally, and I'm still talking by the way, time on natural virtue, right? Now, my time at Divine Version, time out in the intellectual plane, things that people can think about and reason argue over things with the mind and not things

“that go beyond the mind, right? And so in the concept of virtue of ethics, I think this is”

the try to moral philosophy. We try to embody and insane, hey, and this comes back all the way to embryonic selection, which is, hey, there is no biological best. There is no, right? Again, the soul, the soul, which is non-physical, ultimately does not rest. It cannot be programmed in biology. So people can have different preferences. Somebody could say, you know, I want my son or daughter to be a lawyer or someone else could say, you know, athletes, someone else could say

an entrepreneur or someone else could say an artist. These are different outcomes that are based off people's local preferences, physical preferences, contextual preferences, but they're smaller, right? They're smaller preferences. They're not a divine preference. There's such a thing as that. Yeah, well, of course, they disagreed that there's no divine preference, but I, there's no divine preference in biology because the divine isn't rooted in the, it's not,

it's not um, what depends where you think biology came from, I guess. I guess that's true. I mean, I also don't want to create life. No, no. So this is actually a paradox that I struggle with too,

“because another thing that I think a lot about is something called pancycism, which is an idea that”

basically, each object has its consciousness, even like a rock, right? And it's my sound strange to people, but it doesn't sound strange. It doesn't sound strange. I don't think you're fully off base, I know the answer. I don't know the answer. I don't know the answer. I don't know the or easy thing to work. So this idea that rock has consciousness, it's a being. I'll be at, you know, not as sophisticated human consciousness, but it's there. And it provides this idea that

consciousness is this kind of spectrum all the way up to, let's say, humans. And then each thing has this consciousness, and accordingly, it's kind of made and it's endowed with something that goes beyond just kind of its weight or matter, basically. It's basically very non-imperists, just not materialists. And it basically believes this idea that again, God is giving this consciousness everything. And I tend to, I actually like that a lot. I actually like that a lot

I think you said that people cannot create life. I think nature has a greater intelligence, and human beings, unless people will say we are a part of nature, but we are an nature. But life, that you're in the life business, right? I mean, obviously, or we would, what IVF does, for example, is they use natural laws. We didn't make these natural laws. Right? We use natural laws that

exist. And then we, and then basically, to be clear, we're not IVF clinic. We work in IVF clinics,

and IVF clinics are the ones that are doing IVF. We provide more information. But in the context of IVF,

“you are using natural law. You are not making natural law. You can't make a baby. I think there's”

a good chance you may be violating natural, but I don't know. I'm not in charge. But I just, I want to get to the fundamental question, though, which is who creates life. I think I would say God, but to be clear. So this is complicated, but you're not the only one who doesn't call certain. I mean, I don't know. I think I don't know. But I, and I don't mean to put you on this spot. Who creates life? Yeah, I mean, come on. I shouldn't be even asking questions like this

and expecting you to have some co-gen answer because I don't think anyone does. Now, other than to say God, or to say more precisely, not us, not us, is that fair to say not us? Yeah, that is fair to say not us. And we operate in that plant, and to be clear, the stories of sci-fi, right? Like Frankenstein, for example, or even Jurassic Park, some example. But Frankenstein, this idea that we can make life, right? We cannot make life. That's the lesson of the story. Let me just say, I think you

“thought a lot more about this in your average business, man. So I'm, I'm, I'm just gonna, I think”

I was gonna handle this, but you're a lot more thoughtful than I expected for a young entrepreneur. So thank you. Thank you, Tiger. No, I mean, that's totally sincerely. You've actually thought a lot about this, and I don't know that the answers to any of these questions really, but giving my best shot. Um, so, but we both agree that some higher being created life, we know that we didn't. We, so we could, we could assign it to nature, we could assign it to God, but we don't create life. We don't

create life. We don't create life. We don't create life. We don't create life. We don't create life. We don't do operate with that nature. Right, not for within a man. For decades, Russell Brandt was one of the most famous actors and comedians and agnostics in the world today. He is one of the most sincere Christians we know of, a follower of Christ. His personal transformation is remarkable. We saw it

up close. He is now recounted it in an amazing book called How to Become a Christian in seven days

in a recounts what happened to him and it makes the case to all of us for stepping away from our

“secular assumptions and returning to the only thing that matters which is God. I've read it. It's amazing.”

And right now there's only one place to get it. Tucker Carlson Books.com. This is the first release from our new publishing company. We created Tucker Carlson Books to bypass the sensors and bring you things that are actually worth reading and sharing. And we're starting this venture with what matters most. And that's Russell Brandt's message of the promise of forgiveness and joy through Jesus. We're proud to launch our new bookstores. Russell Brandt's had to become a Christian in

seven days. It is the message this country needs most. Find his day on Tucker Carlson Books.com. Do we have the right to take life? So so so so so so no we don't now if we talk about embryo, I see this with your. I'm not sure. I mean it has all kinds of information. It's including for the Iran War, but I'm just it's all around us the thoughtlessness with which we take life. It's not aimed at you. It's aimed at everybody. Everybody on the globe. But it begins with a question. Do we

have the right to take life? So again, let's think about the different moral values of some of good half here. If someone has consequentialism, they could say, hey look, we want to come in murder for this good. And maybe they have some good that they do. I'm highly familiar, right? Yeah, the case is for murder. I just wanted to know what you think. I'm tell you what I think. But I just tell you that there's this kind of it's like very pluralistic. And then some of you could say

murders are always bad, which is fine. I respect that opinion, absolutely. And then there's sort of

this, this last book, which again, I keep coming back to this idea of virtue at things, which is what do you, like how do you, can you have a cultivation and the spirit of the soul to think, hey, you know what, what is right in the situation? Because society does not have a definitive answer to this question, right? People sometimes say, knee jerk, they'll say, oh, murder's always bad, but then they'll be pro the death penalty, right? Or people are inconsistent. There's no

data about it. And they ignore their own failings and highlight those of others. They've got planks in their eyes and they're picking this out of a set of yours famously. So I get it, people are flawed. But I do think that we can through a little bit of rigor arrive at like what's right or wrong. Yes, I mean, and what we're trying to, what can we say about the right of a person to take another person's life? Well, I don't, I personally, I don't think there is a right,

and of course there's a question like what, what is, you know, I don't think there's a right

“period, I just don't think so. I'm with you. I'm with you now. I, I think we both understand,”

it's hard not to want to exercise that right when you can or someone annoys you or there's a country you don't like or there's a okay or so then what can we say about an embryo in a lab? Yeah, yes, that life. So going back to the pens like a philosophy, right, which is like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, it's a half-locker. I'll give you a proper answer. But these things are not, these are things are not

simple. I can be like, oh, yes, it's like let's just bear to think first again. There is a spectrum of consciousness.

There's a spectrum from, you know, rocks to a sentient being all the way to a more conscious, you know, being like a human a more complicated, evolved, fully conscious being. And the question is where does an embryo sit in that? That is the fundamental question. It doesn't have a soul, for example. That is the key question. That is the key question in my view. I totally agree. That is the key, like, let's just like make no mistake. Anytime somebody argues about an embryo and IVF and to be clear, I just want to be very clear on the purpose of our business.

We do not do IVF. We work with an IVF. I understand. Right, I just want to be very clear to everyone. You see the intersection of, you know, in every big trend, you know, we have a huge responsibility.

“Right, yeah. And so I think it's important to, before we can argue, oh, it's embryo life. It's like, well, what is the life come from?”

Right. Is it the physical thing? Right. For me, I think about when I think about death, I think death is a doorway. That's my own personal belief. This is a, this is a, this is a vessel. Right. You know, at the physical, we're not the physical. We're something else. We're metaphysical. We're soul. Okay. And so the fundamental question is that, okay, well, does an embryo have a soul?

And then I think about it. I always like to think about things that are inductively. So I just want to

don't want an embryo, but I think about, you know, there's a huge diversity and a range of life. And I can, in my head at least, and again, this is the feelings of the intellect. And I think that's only do so much. Okay. But when I think about, I think, okay, I think about a rock, which I think has some kind of a pro-to-consciousness, some very, very limited consciousness that we don't understand, maybe through some psychic or meditative work, you could try to, you know,

“we come a rock and try to understand. It's like more subjective experience if it exists, right?”

Although it's an embryo to a doctor, a human. And so because of this inspection, it comes out to this question, if at what point, basically, do we have this, is there a soul in an embryo? And I tend to think, and I don't know, obviously, but I tend to think, I tend to think that an embryo doesn't have a soul. Now, why do you think that? Well, I don't know. I don't know. But why would you think? I would think that there's, there's a couple reasons why,

which is an embryo, so I can take a more reductionist approach, and I could say an embryo is principally a cell, and when you reproduce a ready embryo is actually one cell.

Yeah, it devised exactly, devised me because many cells, but principally at first it begins just

this one, one cell. I thought it was the sperm in the egg, made the embryo. Yeah. Oh, so my definition. Yeah, it's a cell. Yeah, it's for me to egg, it's a cell, and then it starts to body. And it becomes more and more of, uh, eventually into a human. Sorry, I was, I just lost my screen and thought, um, so the question was, uh, you, you said you, you tend to think that an embryo does not have a soul, and I asked, why would you assume that? Yeah, yeah, yeah, I was

taking that away. Um, so when you, when you look at the way that, um, when you look at the way that actually, people can see you've naturally, when it's up happening is that, um, you have these formations of, of, of kind of small formations of an embryo, okay, right, which is this an egg meets the cell, and then it travels down and tries to implant, and then many times actually naturally, it doesn't implant successfully. So nature already has such that, you figure

about IVF, and in natural conception, it is the case that, um, basically you have, uh, these embryo formation and then ends up not forming. And now the way I see it is, I see that, um, nature wouldn't make it such that or God wouldn't make it such that, and embryo would have a soul if in natural procreation, it is the case that the embryos come and go because I don't think God, in my personal belief, I don't think God would basically be getting rid of souls. I just don't think so.

Now, do I think that there is a fundamental beauty, not just, I mean, absolutely to an embryo, in that, and this is really important for me to say because, uh, I do not have to say it. I do think it is similar to like a wave that forms and then again returns the ocean because everything returns the ocean. So I don't see it as something that's like, oh, the embryo is being discarded. I see it's returning back to the source. Even if I don't believe that it has an explicit

soul. Does that make sense? So it's, it's a little more of a nuanced argument. Yeah, um, it does make it kind of sense. Uh, I don't think it's insane. And again, I think it's, I think you thought about this in a way that I'm very impressed by, even if I don't agree. And I just wish more people in your business would like think about this because that, you know, it's important to

So, um, I guess the difference between a wave and a IVF is the human choice involved in the latter. And so, I guess the core problem that I have with this is that I'm not convinced that we have a right to make certain choices. Do people have the right to make any

“choice available to them? I think people don't have the right in our culture. People will”

conflate greater performance with being morally better, which is a thing a big problem. So there's two kinds of value. There's instrumental value and there's more value. Um, instrumental value is contingent. And this is actually really important. All of them, um, biology, all of it nature is contingent value. For example, um, you know, you, you, you, you, you would maybe want an entrepreneur potentially to be more risk-eeking, but you wouldn't want your surgeon to be more risk-eeking, right? Um,

in other words, the value of phenotypes actually changes the parent environments. Right. And this is obviously, but it's actually, I think people miss this sometimes because I think there's a universal best. They'll say, hey, if you optimize for X phenotype that I deem to be best, it will lead to a better person. Doesn't lead to a better person. It might lead to a more optimized outcome, but it doesn't lead to a better person. So if people have the choice to choose their own children,

we're going to have a nation of private equity now people. No, I'm serious. They're going to optimize - That is good right now. - Oh yes, that's okay, so this is actually interesting. - A couple things, oh wow. - No, I'm not.

- No, no, no, no, I'm talking to you better than I talk to you. - This is so interesting, 'cause you're making an assumption. So there's many people argue, I say I'm. - There's many, there's many parts of this. The first part is, will people basically

all choose in the same direction? And interestingly, again, people actually want very different things. And we see that everyday with patients, right? Which is like, there's this idea that like,

which people will come in and be like, oh, every good person is going to pick the same way.

“As you mentioned, sex is actually a great proxy for this, right?”

Sex, selection in the United States is about 50/50. And so if you think about any possible phenotype, like even when you somebody comes and says, I want to optimize for a types of diabetes risk. Someone else might want to do schizophrenia or Alzheimer's,

depending on their family history. Somebody else might want to do a height, for example, if they're both shorter parents, they might want to have a tar kid to be clear.

The traits always come after diseases, but nevertheless.

So what I'm saying is that there's this notion, there's this idea of a universal, best biologic characteristic. It doesn't exist, it doesn't exist. - No, no, no, no, we're arguing two different things. - I'm not saying I agree with you completely.

And I believe that the diversity baked into humanity comes from God. He created different tribes, okay? He did that on purpose. - Yeah.

- That's my belief. And they're different from each other by definition. They're different tribes. And they have different characteristics. And a lot of those, as you have been brave enough

to admit, are genetic. And that's a fruit of the creation. - Yes. - God did that, we didn't. People are very different.

They demand uniformity. And by the way, if you think we're going to get diverse outcomes, have you been around rich people? They're not only very similar. They dress the same.

They have exactly the same attitudes. They want their kids to get into the same six schools. I've lived in this world my whole life. It's the opposite of what you're describing. They have all changed, which is the same.

- Rich people make up a very, very small set of society. There's a big world that there's a big ocean out there. - We're going to identify the f-patients that they make up. - What percentage? - Rich people about all of them.

So I want to say it's about all of them. There are a lot of people that we're dialed in, too. - But it takes a couple of weeks.

- People do IVF, generally, almost always,

'cause they can't conceive naturally to be clear. And natural conception, it can't quite be. - No, but talking, no. - No, talking anyone. - I don't talk about, this is important to say,

which is people who conceive naturally, first.

“And naturally, that's what conception is for you to be clear.”

- But yeah, that's what it costs me. - Let's assume, let's actually play this up. - 'Cause actually, that's really, really interesting. And I actually think you do touch on a fundamental point on the way that people tend to move together,

especially, especially wealthy people. They tend to do the same thing. They tend to, it's perfect. - It's every group. I don't know how to depict on rich people at all.

I'm one of them, but I just am very familiar with them. And yeah, but societies are governed by herd instincts. That's why it's a society and not just a collection of hermits. - So I think there's a couple of ways that I think about this. There's the kind of on the ground, what I'm seeing,

which I can tell you about what I'm seeing, and then I can tell you about the more we can talk about, like, more broadly how this play out, to where the fact that people are pretty memetic and what they pick, okay?

On the ground, what I'm seeing is, I see couples. Again, a diverse range of couples to be clear, like, this technology is going to get cheaper and cheaper, whole genome sequencing specifically. This is actually interesting.

The cost of reading all of somebody's DNA,

it used to be about a billion dollars, one billion.

So the human genome project in the early 2000s cost a billion dollars. When I started the business about six years ago,

So billion dollars to $1,000 dollars, that's the kind of wonder of making things cheaper, making these more accessible. So I do think there's a point where this technology, anyone can actually access, that's a really important to stay,

to say, and that's one of my missions. This is, I say, hey, this shouldn't only belong for people who have means, should we belong to everybody, right? Because ultimately, every parent should have the right to reduce the suffering in their future child.

I mean, I just think every parent should have that right.

I would never argue against the desire to reduce suffering.

“I guess, but then you have to ask yourself,”

if the reduction of suffering is the most virtuous thing you could do, why are the societies on this planet with the least suffering falling apart the quickest? Have you ever noticed that? Well, I think in more contemporary society,

we've lost the concept of virtue generally. And my view is there an action between suffering and virtue. And of course, there is, it's a one to one. And there is no virtue without suffering, actually. And suffering is, so in other words,

if you had a drug that could eliminate anxiety, just take a pill, no more anxiety, you could call it, I don't know, pick a name, Benzo de Asapines. And all of a sudden, you could just like eliminate

the suffering, and would there be downsides to that? Oh, there would be mass overdose deaths. There would be the zombification of the entire population, there would be addiction, physical addiction, that you could die because of, which,

so I guess what I'm saying is,

I'm not making a case for anxiety, which is horrible, anyone who's ever had it knows how horrible and terrifying it is. I'm only saying that maybe there's a purpose to suffering. We don't want to deal with it. None of us does, I certainly don't.

We can't. We can't transcend suffering in the same way we can't. Maybe we shouldn't. But we can't, it's like saying, let's transcend gravity. We're in this world, well we're in our language.

I'm trying to transcend suffering, and all I'm saying is, societies, I'm not for suffering, against suffering. Yeah, hate war, you know, I don't like suffering at all.

“And I think we should try to alleviate it.”

But all I'm saying is, maybe these aren't decisions that are up to us, and maybe there's a larger picture that we can't see, and maybe we should pay close attention to our successful attempts to eliminate suffering and assess the fruits, like what happened?

Did it work? Or did it cause even more exquisite suffering?

More grotesque suffering?

I think that's a very fair, and the context of, you know, you know, there's a great example of obviously opioids. You know, people get addicted, they think they're getting rid of pain. What are opioids, exactly? Yeah, in getting rid of pain, you're actually creating more suffering.

And that's a fair point. I think the context of genetics, and what we're doing is, it's actually interesting because it's non-invasive. It's a genetic, the optimization technology, you know, a couple thousand dollars, there's a lot, right?

It's a lot. It's going to come down. It's going to come down. And so, it's not only now at the very beginning, you know, you have these embryos.

Eventually you're already doing IVF, you're already picking embryo. You get more information. You can pick an embryo with a 50% reduction risk and breast cancer. You can have an embryo without, you know,

Braco, which is a breast cancer marker, right? You can, you know, schizophrenia, depletaining condition, really impacts families. It's horrible. It's horrible.

And in fact, these are the very people who wouldn't want to have a child, who wouldn't want to. But now because of the advent of more advanced screening, they are more comfortable having a child too.

“And then actually, I think it's lost too.”

I, I know with you. Genic, progenic technology is fundamentally anti-ugenic. It's actually progenic technology, your pro-natalist, in that way, because the very people who would have been deemed unfit by some definition, right, because they have more suffering.

And to be clear, if you suffer more, you have no less more worth to be very clear. We've said that already to establish that, you know, I agree on that. But there is the very people that Genics is helping.

That's the very people that are helping. The very people who would have been deemed unfit by the 20th century. Now, through this technology, they're actually able to have a child through IVF. They're able to have a child and feel comfortable doing that.

Also, there's been, you know, I can't, I'm not criticizing anything you're saying. I just said that I'm a stickler for definitions, because it's very important. Sure.

This is you, Genics. And it, and it's, I mean, if you read the earlier genists, some of them were really smart. Yeah, really smart. Genics was an international movement, actually.

It spanned many, many things you're born to be aware. And it was thoroughly discredited by the Nazis who were the most enthusiastic, eugenicists of all. I mean, they cleared out the mental hospitals. Yeah.

And they cleared out. But this is important though. In that way, it's actually anti-ugenic, because the very people that like the Nazis, for example, would target, right? People who are sick and kill and kill and murder.

They've kind of been forgotten to history, horrible. But those very people are now there can actually access this technology. It's actually interesting. There was a whole non-humane.

So the point, the, I don't want to bring the Nazis in, because it's so emotionally fraught and they had all kinds of other sins. But the goal of the eugenicists was the same. It was, let's reduce human suffering.

Let's make this better by being thoughtful about how we reproduce and let's bring whatever signs we have. They had much less than we have to bear on this question. And they would make, they did make the argument that Lothrop Stodderd, who was a Harvard professor

and a brilliant legit brilliant guy historian, a lot about him was absolutely virtuous, I would say. But he was also a wild-eyed eugenicist, because he was smart, and he saw this human suffering, and he said, let's get rid of it.

We don't, it's something it's people down syndrome, but we don't want more of them. That was his argument, because it will reduce human suffering. If you were kids with down syndrome, if you were suffering, it's a moral failure,

because the eugenicists, in my view, misconstrued the idea of, again, this idea of virtue with biology. There is no virtue in biological characteristics. He was more of a failure in that case.

He was making the case and the smart ones work. But we're talking, please, let's suffering.

“That's what they were saying, let's suffering.”

But less suffering isn't more virtuous. And that's, it's hard for people to do it. What does he mean by that, you know? - Well, I agree, just because, I mean, - You know, leave it a religion with people.

- So for people, we've all had loved ones that have passed away. God forbid from some disease, I mentioned my cousin. My grandmother's both out of cancer as well. My uncle died of a heart attack, right? He was playing soccer with my dad.

He was 45, he collapsed, he died. From a heart attack, which, by the way, is the number one killer in this country. Just because somebody, you know, had cancer, just because somebody has heart disease. Just because somebody has a condition,

schizophrenia, Alzheimer's, these conditions,

again, they impact 20 million Americans.

So this is the problem of our time, okay? Does not make them any less of a person. - I know. - And so the fundamental moral failure, it was a moral failure of gen eugenics,

which is misconstruing these things, which idea that it's better to reduce suffering. Better, that playing term of better doesn't come from the physical plane. It comes from something beyond. - But I mean, in social that we're disagreeing,

I think we're agreeing, there's no, that your physical condition is not a reflection of your moral value. - No, by the way, the eugenics has got that fundamentally wrong. - Maybe I'm sure some did, but they were consequentialist, though.

That's actually important. Going back to the kind of different moral philosophies. If you look through the world that way, it actually helps articulate things. They viewed it as, they unjustifies it means. We should actually do this forced sterilizations.

We should make it constitutionally. - I think the end just by the means was a much less common argument among the eugenicists as it is now among the technologists. - That's true. - That's very true.

- But these attitudes not only have not been suppressed or eliminated, they've flowered into the dominant attitude in the country, so like they won. I'm just saying, I'm not trying to just saying that this idea

“that you can make people better and in fact that you should.”

- No, but that's our saying, though. - Remember, this is nuanced, but it's really important for people to understand. - You're saying people have the opportunity to do it. - But people have the opportunity, nuclearists.

We never say, hey, these are your five embryos.

This is the best embryo. We cannot, we are not divine. - We can never do that or stand, but the choices that people make are governed by a lot of things, of course. But one of their intuition, their religious views,

to be clear, first and foremost, it's the direct experience of suffering, the patients that come to us without fail. And to be clear, they might want to optimize for a trait as well. I'm not saying, of course, they would. My people think about these things realistically,

but the first thing they care about is, my mother had breast cancer, my dad had prostate cancer, my grandfather had Alzheimer's. So I just think towards schizophrenia. I get it.

- Yeah, right, so you want to start with the lived experience of the patient, and then go for some. - And then go for some. - And the cake, every person is experienced suffering and every person is seen the loved one die

if you live long enough. - Yeah. - And I just want to be totally clear, so I don't

seem self-righteous, which I never want to be.

If I had had the opportunity, when my children were in the youth rower before to say, no, to schizophrenia, no, to the things that I really fear, it's schizophrenia's at the top of the list. I think it's the coolest thing.

But also CF, yeah, which is in my family. - And all these things, by the way, I'm a carry for statistics, fibrosis. - Yep, a lot of people are. - Yeah, I love you, Arya.

- And I don't want my baby to go for a bit to have that. - Of course not. - No, though, actually, the therapies for CF, that's a whole different conversation I want to be boring. But anyway, I would just say, like all expect impairments,

if I'd had a chance to reduce or eliminate the risk that my children would have these horrible diseases or conditions, I would have taken it. - Absolutely. - Absolutely.

- So I'm not judging anybody, I get it. Completely, I would have done it.

“My question is, honestly, what's the effect”

of giving people this choice, which is to improve in their minds? You say you're morally neutral on it. It's hatching a value to deafness or hearing, but we're not, okay, but people do, everybody does. - Yes, everyone does.

- That's for everyone other than you does. - No, no, no, but to be clear,

but most people will direct the idea that there's this idea of conflating, reduce suffering, they would say that's better. - Of course. - And then we can play that out, so let's play that out.

- Let's play outside. - Actually, you tell me what you imagine because this is one of the biggest changes in human history. - I will say, I will say again, that people will make different choices.

- I really want to say that, there's actually two parts of this argument, people, no, no, no, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not on some personal make different choices, but not, so a lot, like, it's a random distribution of choices.

Is that what I was saying? - I'm not saying that, I'm not saying that. - Okay, what I am saying though is people will bring, so what we think about this, to make it more intuitive for people is, if you think about like our,

there's this concept in Selam Leckler Biology, okay,

it's called, it's basically this concept called

to, to looting me, basically that the more specialized something is, the more effective it is.

“So in Biology, you see things specialize all the time, right?”

So for example, things begin stem cells, they become neurons, they become immune cells, they become different parts of the body, right? Because these bodies have different functions, and so they need different specializations, okay?

And when we actually, I'm a big believer that like, everything mirrors everything, from the molecular to the celestial, everything, okay? And so, let me keep going with this. And so, I remember it is, specialization breeds sophistication,

okay, that's true in Selam Leckler Biology, which is specialization breeds sophistication. The more specialized something, the more sophisticated it is, okay? And so in a society, if you look at like, you know, people who are really high in their craft, right?

Like Alyssa Lou, figure skating versus like an Einstein, versus like an Elon versus like a, I don't know, like an artist like Da Vinci. These people have very different sets of characteristics. And the way nature works is human beings cannot defy nature.

It's a seesaw, so let me give an example.

Every, every, every single time people always say this to me,

they say, oh, people will pick for IQ. Let me put aside my moral argument. Let me put aside my, people won't actually always pick for IQ, but let's actually assume that's the case. Let's assume that's the case, let's assume that's the case.

Everyone will pick for IQ. One interesting thing about picking for IQ, genetically, is that when you pick for IQ, and this interesting thing, when you tell patients this, you can see how they refactor the decisions, when you pick for IQ, you're actually picking against conscientiousness

and extroversion, genetically. It's a seesaw, right? It's almost like if you're playing like a fee from my player or something

“and you make somebody stronger, they have less agility, right?”

So what happens is, and also you're making them, uh, genetically speaking more like it to be autistic. So these things are genetic. You can't, you can't, um, you can't defy these things, right? So these things go in opposite directions.

So you start selecting for one, it actually take these things away. So it starts becoming more of a value judgment. And so, wait, let me, let me play this out. So let's assume that to your point, there's a fashion of the day, right?

People are, um, you know, we see this with fashion, we see this in tech, we see this, you know, we see investors, they'll allocate toward AI, you know, people will wear that and they're wearing the same thing. And so how in New York, you know, how is this possible?

My people will go to the same private school as you were saying this, right? All these things end up kind of the taste followed through. So let's assume all the rich people basically start optimizing for IQ, or everyone actually start optimizing for IQ, not just for people, everyone starts optimizing for IQ.

There's actually an evolutionary mechanism is called a frequency dependent selection. What is frequency dependent selection? What it basically means is that the rare or phenotype becomes relative to the other phenotypes.

So in this case, for example, if everyone picked for IQ, extroversion and conscientious starts decreasing, okay, in terms of the province and the population, the more valuable that phenotype becomes. In other words, the rare that extroversion

conscientious becomes, the more valuable it actually becomes, actually flourish and appropriate. So you're arguing it's a self-correcting problem.

And that's the key point, which is we think as humans,

we can defy nature. We cannot defy nature. We have to operate within nature's bounds, within evolution's bounds. We have to operate within this framework.

“So if that were true, then why did India ban sex selective abortions?”

It's interesting because India specifically was about so let's actually walk through this. India was about 55, 45 males to females, 55, 45, right? People actually think often it was higher. And by the way, the natural rate of having a boy

is actually slightly biologically higher than a girl. So people think it's actually 50, 50, it's actually not. It's actually like 52, 48. It's actually to that perspective. It's actually, it is necessarily a significant,

but it's actually not insanely high. And on that point also, which is actually interesting. Over a billion, and I have people, it's. Yeah, it can, it can absolutely. Over generations, but actually it's not,

I think what's interesting here is this is just, or kind of a factoid, but males, babies, they tend to actually have the higher risk of basically dying in infancy. So the ends of happy, and they feel good at general populations

about 50, 50, but actually biology has it that it's slightly, or it's toward males. But let's take the sex example. Let's say it plays out that over many generations, people,

and people start picking across sex. It's actually the same phenomena. Whereas the number of males, for example, come down, the number of females come down, because of frequency-based selection.

Let's say you're in a population just very simply. There's 70 males, 30 females. The value of female in that population is much higher.

And basically you can model this and show

that each successive generation, there are certain sets of genetics that confer as slightly higher probability than of having a female. And so that will actually propagate such that the genes that confer higher females would keep proliferating through,

until the population comes back to actually equanimity. So why did they ban it? Well, obviously, that's like a longer term evolutionary thing to say in that things will self-correct. - But obviously, it was self-correcting,

and it was milking up. - No, but it's an idea and stable. I mean, if human choice on questions of life and death and procreation at this granular level is self-correcting, and it's just inherently good in the no-downsides,

“then why did the biggest country in the world ban it?”

To be clear, I'm not saying that there's not short-term material consequence for like something like sex selection. Of course there's, which is sex selection. I'm not saying that. - I think that more significant than any other kind of selection.

- Sorry. - Why is that unique like sex selection? - It's not, actually. - Well, it's unique in that. - Over IQ, I mean, these are deep characteristics.

- It's like defining characteristics. - It's actually interesting point you make on sex because if you look at sex, it's a way of kind of playing out what happens if people pick across traits. Right, because sex is, sign of disease.

It's a choice. Depending on what you want, people make different choices, right? This is actually a good kind of furistic of how people would choose. And on that point, actually, interestingly, sometimes we receive criticism from, for example, the American Society of Reproductive Medicine

for saying that traits are not reproductive medicine. However, sex is ultimately a trait that people have been picking for the last 20 years. So there's a bit of this hypocrisy in medicine. - I guess what I'm trying to get to is really the core question,

which is, is there a downside to playing God? - Okay, first up, we're not playing God. - Well, of course, there's, we're, we're making choices that we're not available to us.

- So, very recently, that have never in human history been made

by people ever, not one time. - We cannot play God, God created, God created everything here. We cannot, let me be more precise and use a less charged way to describe it. We are doing things that have never been done in human history.

- That's actually not true, I would argue in this case. - Well, it's very true. - Because how long have test two babies, IVA? - I've been around since 1970s, since about 40 years, actually. And by the way, it's not like you look around,

you're like, oh, that's not a baby. - So, I'm not attacking IVF, yeah, I'm certainly not attacking IVF babies or people at all. I'm merely saying that in the scope of human history, this is brand new.

- When you say this, that what do you mean? - The ability to choose the traits of your children with this level of precision to get a certain number of embryos and say, I want the ones that don't have these conditions that do have these traits

that has never been tried in human history period. - I would, well, there's no deep. - I would be happy. - No, I'd be out a little bit. - When you, remember, you're picking the summaries

to the baby. - I mean, you're picking from the pool, so when you pick your partner, for example, you're setting the possible genetic pool. So, for example, two short parents,

this wouldn't be meeting us.

“- Yeah, two short parents, so I can have a tall baby, right?”

The same is actually true for genetic optimization. You can't have two short parents have a tall child with this technology. - I have a taller child. - I understand, but the core point is this is something.

This is an acceleration, look, people want this. I wouldn't debate you there. And people do calculate these things as they choose a mate. - Of course.

- He's too dumb, I can't marry him. He's too short, I can't marry him. He's from, you know, whatever. There are lots of geneticalities of people don't want to pass any.

- And in doing that, they're actually picking

by the way, the most important set of outcomes

for their child, 'cause it's your partner, it's the other side of it, absolutely. But never with this level of precision. Never has there been a menu where you can say where you can identify qualities

that you can't identify by smell or sight. You can't know so much of what you've just described except through brand new science. So I'm not even attacking that. I'm merely asking a question that has to be asked,

which is what are the downsides? - So, I mean, we talked about the, I mean, you pointed out one of the downsides, which is like, okay, everyone starts picking for a specific sex, for example. Right, it can create a population problems.

And even if I would argue and I did argue, hey, over time this actually is self-corrected,

“which I think is a truly challenging set.”

So this will be self-corrected, right? But obviously in the short term, there's still like a cute problem, right? But I would say actually IVF has been operating for, again, 40 years and other policies,

like for example, one China's one China's policy, has led to much greater problems. IVF is still the way 2% of the way babies are born. I think your principle concern on where the single or I,

of people thinking, oh, you know? Oh, like, you know, I can, you know, if I can sign, I mentioned Frank's time. It's literally that. He's saying, hey, huh, I could make life, right?

And then how about life thing food? How about we're drawing part, actually, too? Is this idea that, hey, I could do this. And then there's negative unforeseen consequences. How do I give both of those reconsequences?

I think that science fiction. I mean, hey, let's create Lyme disease. Hey, let's create, let's, I don't know. Let's strengthen this virus. Oh gosh, it's out of the lab, intentionally,

and it doesn't matter, you infect the world with COVID. That just happened five years ago. So it's like, we don't need to look far to see the unintended consequences of emerging science. I'm not blaming anyone for it.

I think people have a terrible track record of seeing the consequences of their actions. We know that in our own sex lives, don't we?

“So I think we can just say, it's important with something”

this powerful and potentially transformative to a admit that there will be unintended consequences

because that's 100% true always.

And think through B, what those consequences might be. So I'm saying. I think we should be tangible with them, though, and make sure people actually understand. So again, IVF is the way two percent of the way

babies are born. IVF has been operating in the United States for about 40 years. This is not like 40 years. - It's 1970s. - Oh, I was there, right?

- Yeah, yeah. - The test of the babies in the cover of Time Magazine. - It was, yeah. - I mean, if people don't, are there any consequences to that, do IVF?

- Yeah, have we studied the consequences? - Yeah, they've actually tracked children. The study size are a little bit smaller from when I looked into it, and then one might expect, but basically they see no material difference, no.

- Is it true? - That what? - There's no measureable difference at all between children born from an IVF procedure and children conceived naturally.

“- Obviously, there's some environmental things”

that you'd take in averages, but yeah, when I looked into this, and I obviously talked a lot of scientists about this as well, they said, yeah, there's no difference, yeah. - Which is pretty amazing, but actually,

I think we know that in nature, well, we can track it over the course of the decades since this is nature, of course, it's something that we are, by definition, not nature, it's something that people are doing

in order to improve nature, like nature would be infertility. I'm against infertility, by the way, I'm not arguing from fertility, I'm just saying, whatever it is, it's not nature, it's the opposite of nature.

- I think we are operating within nature. So let's go to the framework of God, created in these natural laws, we're using natural laws. We're not making life, we didn't go to a lab and make life. We're using the principles of nature,

we're using the principles of predators, and we're applying them. It's still beautiful, it's still very beautiful. - I'm not saying, I think we are using nature. - I'm not saying it's bad or not beautiful, I'm just saying it's not nature any more

than nuclear weapons or nature. You can say what they're made from atoms,

the essential building block of matter, okay?

But we're exerting force and our will on nature to create an outcome that wouldn't occur if we didn't do that. So it's by definition and on nature. - Now I could have actually occurred,

even if you didn't necessarily do it, it could have just the baby could have happened that way.

“But also I would say that remember that there's gene editing”

which is much further out in this idea that you can actually take an embryo and make it whatever you want basically, theoretically, we can talk about that, which is very, very different. So I think the concept of IVF clinics

using this technology to get patients more information when they're already getting information on their embryos. Now we expand the information, we can help deal with the chronic disease crisis in the United States, the rare disease crisis as well.

- Right, Genics is unique. - I've seen, oh no, I have pre-existing my upside. - No, I agree with you on the upside. I just want to know the downside. - Yeah, I don't see here,

any, there's no downside. - Of course, like talking, of course, there's downside. - What do you imagine it might be? - Well, I think let's play this out, okay.

The first thing I'd say is that with IVF at its prevalence

today at 2% I think it's actually more or less fine and 2% is about 150 babies. I think I'm gonna outline this scenario where I think there's a lot more risk and where human reproduction is gonna materially change, right?

I mean, you might argue this is a material change, right? - I don't, IVF, IVF was the principal material change. - Well, you're arguing this material change because you're saying that we're gonna have less chronic disease, lower health care costs,

less suffering and that's all good. - You should choose that. - Patients can choose that. - Well, you've argued that way with all results. - Yes, and you're right, it will be the result

and I'm for it. - Yeah, I just wanna say I'm for it. I'm just saying that whenever I hear the upside as you would in any scenario, including your personal family investments

like tell me the downside, yeah, someone says, well, there's no downside. - Yeah, and I'm like, I don't know if I trust you anymore. So what's the downside? - Again, I will articulate downside,

I have to explain. - No, you're gonna blame some other technology. - No, I'm not gonna blame some other technology. - Gene editing, spad, no. But what about the technology that you're offering

has an upside, I totally agree with you. - Yeah. - And that will be real and support it. - Yeah. - I would support, I don't know, a lot of things.

- But what's the downside? Like you must have thought about that?

the fundamentally, this technology can be exploited by centralized bodies to try to control reproduction. - Yes. - That is the downside.

That is the story of the 20th century, sorry if you didn't find it.

“But it's just like, yes, that is the downside.”

We've seen the downside. We've experienced the downside, but to be clear, but to be clear, that is a moral failure. That is not a failure of the technology. I've said, I've established that Eugenics, for example,

it's decades before genetics. - Yeah, it's a distinction that a difference in my view. - Okay. - But what you're saying, what you're saying is, without saying it explicitly,

that people misuse the creation and they use it for good, but they also use it for bad. - Yeah. - And that's just how people are. - Yeah.

- And they've always been that way.

- And they will always be that way. - Yeah. - So with that in mind, I don't think it's just, I totally agree that, of course, centralized powers, whoever they are.

- Yeah. - Yeah. - Yeah. I'm not even sure who they are, but they clearly exist. - Governments, friends of them, and that's more of the 20th century,

or the Epstein class that runs the governments, or whoever these entities are, they, yeah, that's bad. I totally agree. But the experience of India shows us

that given choice, people will also make the wrong decisions as individuals. So I'm just wondering what those consequences might be. Let me just say. I'm interested in this because I have hunting dogs,

and I've had them my whole life. And hunting dogs are bred for certain qualities. And I watch it carefully, and dogs have such short life cycles relative to people that you can kind of, in your lifetime, watch this happen.

But they're bred for certain, I have flushing dogs, spanials, and they're bred to, work close to you, find the bird, jump the bird, - Yeah.

- Retrieve the bird. - Yeah. - If you are not very careful about breeding them, or if you breed them only for certain specific qualities, you can wind up destroying the dog.

- Yeah. - And this is well known in animal husbandry. It's well known in bird hunting. It's well known among anybody who deals with animals. And I don't see people as any different.

And I know that there are massive consequences to the dog. Like you get out of the dog's a dive cancer at five. You could dogs with hip dysplasia. You could dogs with unexplained rage that bite your children.

Like we can't foresee with any precision, the effects of our tinkering with reproduction. - Absolutely. - Let me actually give a really example of this. So in China, the scientist, who was known

for using genutin to engineer the first babies, actually, Dr. He.

What he did was he engineered the CCR5 genome.

“I believe that's what the gene was called.”

And he used CRISPR CRISPR is a bacteria response system. It stands for, you know, clustered regularly. Interspace, short palandromic repeats. Basier first to the set of palandromic DNA sequences in a bacteria.

And he used that to make a gene-in device called CRISPR. And he basically used CRISPR. - Why remember very well. - And CRISPR is composed of two things. It's composed of like a guide.

Like basically imagine it takes the device to the right part of the DNA, which is like a scissors. And then it x is me. It has a guide which takes the CRISPR to the right part of the DNA that is endonucleus, which basically cuts the DNA.

A little bit of technical explanation. Basically, you can use bacteria immune response system. Harness is a gene-in device, okay? And this is what the scientist did. And obviously, you know, about the story.

And he went and he actually engineered human numbers. - Okay. - And it's going on now. - In China? - Oh, the other parts of the world too.

- So basically what he did was he knocked out the CCR5 gene.

And his justification for knocking out the specific gene was that it would make the children basically resistant to HIV. It's that was what he said. This is really interesting for a lot of reasons.

One is because you didn't need gene editing to do that. You could actually just done that with existing genetic technology that was much cheaper, much less expensive. But even for that aside, gained the fundamental thing that you're articulating,

which is done in tenant consequences. When you actually optimize for the knocking out that specific gene, you're also opening up the susceptibility of that baby to other infectious disease. Because what CCR5 does is it encodes

for a specific immune receptor that basically when destroyed, it makes it easier for other pathogens and to basically infect you. In other words, there's this, there's this, the danger side of this to your point

is that balance, which is in trying to do something good, what he deemed to be virtuous if you will. It actually potentially could have had very severe consequences on the children's health.

“And so I think that's a very real tangible example”

that we've seen of some of the dangers, and you know, balance and activity, the balance and act that is nature. And that's really important to say. - What about in your life, have you ever wound up with something

that you didn't expect and maybe didn't want and found it to be a great blessing over time? - Yeah, absolutely. - I mean, meditation, I mean,

you chose to try, I think you know, sometimes you, you know, at a broader force, guides you to these things. - Yeah, you know, the experience of having children

“is the most profound example that I think,”

if you ask any parent or most parent, many parents, will tell you, like I didn't expect this at all. - Yeah. - I didn't grow up with girls, didn't have a mom, didn't have sisters, didn't want girls,

I don't understand girls, like my wife, but don't want girls ended up having a ton of girls.

Never would have chose that.

- Yeah. - And really one of the great experiences of my life, truly, I mean that. And I'm not embarrassed to say this 'cause my girls don't, I feel this way.

- But, you know, anyway, I never would have, if I'd had the choice, just like, I don't get girls, I can't be the other of girls, like what? - Yeah.

- And yet that, again, turned out to be this great blessing and I'm really glad I didn't have the choice. Have you ever had any experience like that? I mean, yeah, I think some of the best things that happened in life are not things

that you can control, it's part of the divine. - Yes, absolutely, absolutely, 100%. - And some of the best things that, man, you don't want at all. - And but it's actually good for you, yeah.

- It's the best for you, that's the thing for you, yeah. And I think that you want it, isn't the thing that you need. - So maybe if you get to be the author of your own story and of your own children, if you,

the more control you have, the more you get what you want, the more totally you're destroyed. (laughs) - I'm not good for you to get everything you want.

I don't, that's been my experience. - Talk or remember though, like, GeneX obviously is not deterministic, right? So there's two other parts of life. - What?

- You were just telling me, it was, it's not to do it. - We can get rid of all these diseases. - Yeah, which I'm for. - But it's hugger, a good example, it's like lung cancer.

Be smoke, in case you risk a lung cancer. - There's some GeneX component, but it can be both. - Most of our heart is your enjoyment of what you do. - Yeah, just wanna put it in the word of each smoking if that could.

- Yeah. - Heart disease as well. - Right, obviously there's a, if I'm here to complain to you, but there's also like, what do you eat?

How much exercise these things? And so, under the framework, you think,

“okay, like, what I think is really important in life,”

in life, which can go as well beyond genetics. And we're not genetic determinists here, obviously. That's just not reality. Again, I will go back to the spiritual and cultivation of the soul, that cultivation of the soul

to eventually, hopefully, divine virtue, you need in with God, right? That is able to everyone independent of their biological characteristics. And so I think it's important not to again,

to complete, optimize the outcome. - Oh, you've made that point in life. - But that point is such, that is the point, that is the point, the point is that the union with God, ultimately,

is that is what life is about. So, you're not actually removing, like this idea that like, you can, like, if there was a world where somehow parents could, perfectly predict the baby's gonna be like this

and this and this, you can't physically, that you can't, you can't, you can't encode the soul, it's what I'm saying. It doesn't come from my eyes. - I mean, no, oh, wow.

- So, that's so capacity always is what I'm arguing.

- Yeah, I mean, but you argue in the margins. I mean, what you're saying is right, it's true, there's no debating what you're saying. It's fast and I appreciate that you're saying it. - Yes.

- But it's equally true that we are exercising powers that we didn't have, that's true. - That's true. - And so very recently and that we know more than we ever have. And I just think, and I don't think we can stop it,

I don't think there's any way we can stop it. If you weren't doing this and the gene editors weren't doing it, I mean, - I don't like that for more philosophy, generally, like, maybe you're right, but I actually think people,

“I think people, I think they over shoot dig, I should stop it.”

Keep people way over shoot the idea that, oh, technology's inevitable. Technology's not inevitable, this is driving me crazy. People make choices that drive technology forward. Technology does not just happen. It's been, you know, 20 years of,

really, if it's really 15 years probably, since, you know, some of these more advanced

screenings have existed, but they've never actually been adopted.

So the idea that technology naturally progresses is it's a narrative created by Silicon Valley to try to justify raising more money. And by the way, taking away more responsibility, no, people make choices that drive technology forward.

- I think you're too an extent rate. - I mean, this is a whole separate conversation, I don't want to bore or running to you or Swift, but I do think we make choices that's absolutely right, and it's incumbent on us to try to make the right choices

for ourselves and those around us. Okay, all true, those choices matter, all true. - Absolutely. - We are also products at the time, in which we live in the systems, which we operate.

So that's, so those things are equally true. I get it, I don't want to be boring, but I agree with you, our choices are important. But there's also, again, a lack of respect for what we don't know, which makes me very uncomfortable

in science, and one of the reasons that I think that we should put a lot of doctors and scientists in prison as soon as we can is because they've really hurt us over the last, say, six years, by not acknowledging what they don't know,

overstating their own foresight. - Yeah, about things that no human being can know,

- Yeah, yeah.

- Okay, and suddenly we have these enormous powers

that are not actually matched to our wisdom at all. And I just want to say out loud, I'm really worried about it, and I think certain individuals should be punished for doing this. Like the guys who made COVID in the lab,

they're not in jail, like, what? Does that bother you? Do you think it's a lesson? Does that tell us anything? - Yeah, it is a lesson.

- We have to be responsible stewards of the technology and not be punished for people who like kill millions through their foolishness.

“- Yeah, yeah, I mean, I think the key is that,”

again, genetics can bring up for somebody to be smarter, but it cannot make somebody wise. And the idea that you can genetically encode somebody's life, again, that's not true, like not like nature, in the DNA, in the nucleus, that's not true.

So I want to be clear that you're not controlling

the life outcome of your child, you're not going to be like,

okay, now the child's going to become, you know, LeBron James, and they're going to be on the star. That will come from coverage, if you have more work done. - So genetics is important. Genics is important, it plays a factor, it plays a role.

But I'm not going to sit here and say, oh, genics is everything, it's not, it's not. Obviously, I know that he's not in case that it is. - No, but the argument that you can control parents can control their child's life structure,

not just that genetics is pretty deterministic. - I'm actually making the opposite argument. Which is, you have no freaking idea what's going to happen. When you tamper with the stuff, we actually know way less than we think we do, we have less control than we imagine,

and that we should proceed with that in mind. That's my only argument. But my question is much more specific. You said the technology is not inevitable. I kind of agree with you.

- I don't know, I don't know. - We certainly have an obligation to do our best. - Yeah, for the people who didn't do their best and who hurt others, like the whole world, like the guys you designed COVID in the Wuhan lab,

which they did, we've established that, shouldn't there be some punishment for them, and wouldn't that help future generations make wiser decisions if they saw that there were consequences to being thoughtless with technology?

- I think generally speaking, the kind of history, at least like the modern history of like Silicon Valley, has gone from,

“I think it had some idea of kind of virtue ethics,”

but like Google back in the day was don't be evil. If you say that today, you'll kind of be laughed at. That was like their corporate motto. You had Paul Graham had his hackers and painters, this idea of that was kind of this,

like kind of a beautiful early Silicon Valley spirit. There was another case of Steve Jobs, 2005, Stanford commencement address. He ended it by saying, stay hungry, stay foolish. Obviously, humility, have humility,

open yourself up to the world, not just the natural world, but the divine world. I think a lot of the Silicon Valley ideology has moved from sort of hackers and painters to you know, maybe capitalists and politicians or the like.

In other words, it's moved into kind of a technocapilism, this idea, that technologies inevitable, this idea that capitalism is inherently good. Like it's inherently good as something grows. And you said with AI companies all the time,

they'll celebrate, oh, we hit 100 million AR

and you know, two days or something. And it fundamentally mistakes, speed, and the rate of which something grows with value. My cancer grows very quickly, it's horrible.

“And so I think there's this fundamental idea”

that, you know, this kind of a grow grow grow grow, that you know inherently the consequences, like you know, be damned, just grow growth is inherently good. I think that fundamental philosophy is so bad. - So it's a self-justification. - Yes.

So but I wonder where it grows from. So I think you described crispy and well, the evolution of the attitudes and Silicon Valley. Generally speaking, from, hey, this can liberate everybody. - Yes, good.

- To, hey, this hikes GDP and I've got a massive place in Athens and therefore it's good. And those are definitely different justifications. And I wonder to what you attribute the change. Like how did that happen?

How did you go for one place to another? And here's my thesis in one sentence. - Power. - Yeah. - When you get a lot of power, you get corrupted. - Exactly. - Power crops, yeah.

- So there's no greater power than determining what kind of kids people are gonna have. (laughing) - So like, are you worried at all? - Again, we don't determine.

- Yeah, you have. - We don't cover population. - We don't. - No, we don't. Because if you are making their own choices, we don't make the choice for them. - If you are making their own choices,

- It usually makes the choice. - No, we don't, we don't, we don't. - And good, I mean, just say we're only testing. For these three things or whatever you could, you design the screen.

- There are four. - There are four. - You design the outcome of population. - Virtue, not in biology. - Virtue is not in biology. - Okay, so no, we do not encode populations 'cause human beings can't encode, like, that is a gut,

that it makes mistakes, it seems like we are God. We are not God.

So that's an inescapable fact.

“And I think it's important to just like where the mantle,”

like this is what we're doing. We're changing the nature of people. We're gonna try to make them better. - Nature is a very tricky word. The nature of people comes from God.

It doesn't come from genetics to substance of people. They're intelligence, they're science. - They're science. - Yeah, they're life span. - It's a key distinction, though,

because ultimately, any human being should

want, again, greater, spiritual cultivation. - Okay, but I'm just saying, you are part of not you alone, or even substantially, but you're part of a trend in science that will change the nature of people. So I do think it's worth just admitting that,

because then once you realize the burden on your shoulders, you can bear up under it. - Do you think, or I think, yeah, definitely this technology, I just want to be very careful with the word nature, versus the budget of countries.

- I agree that we're changing by law characteristics. - How long people are changing? - You're changing that. - So that alone is how tall people are. How well they do in the SAT, but again,

it's not deterministic in that way. It's not like you can look at somebody's DNA, and be like, "Oh, they're gonna get a 15, 70 in their SAT." - But I agree though, overpopulations. And we're talking about populations,

and you're saying it's IVF is 2% or whatever, but I'm just saying the technology we can see where this is going, you offer people a chance to have children who are healthier and smarter, and they're gonna take it,

and I've already admitted that I would have taken it, because I love my children. - Yeah. - It's that simple. So we know this is going to happen

if the technology exists, and it's widely available. And so that puts you, and not just you, of course, this is hardly an attack, but it puts you in a position of having power over the course of humanity, over the evolution of humanity,

or watching humanity change at the individual level. And like, that's a big burden, man. That's a burden that only God bore before like 20 years ago.

- We are not God, and we can never be God to it.

Well, that's a good start. - We are not God. - We are not God. - But do you see it as profound? - Absolutely.

Yeah. I mean, I mean, to see patients who have had some, again, I use the Huntington's example, right to see a loved one die at age 25, because they're brain decayes,

and then to never want to have a child. - Huntington since it's really here. - And then to use the technology, the emotion. You know, the miracle that they can have a baby, basically, and that's amazing.

“- It is amazing, but with respect, I think having watched,”

I mean, I was out in Silicon Valley in the 90s, covering this, and I don't know the people, I still know some of them, they were totally fixated on the upside. - Yeah. - In a good way.

- Yeah. - They were like, this gives the encyclopedia Britannica, you probably don't know what that is, but it's a physical encyclopedia that's set on your shelf and costs like thousands of dollars.

- Yeah. - That's replaced by this CD-ROM. You know, this, yeah, collection of ones in zeros, and like it's incredibly amount of information, people will be so much better informed.

And now you look 30 years later, and that's like definitely upsides to technology, but also downsides. - Well, we're susceptible to the same force, 'cause we're human.

- Well, that's exactly the argument I'm making. - Yeah. - Yeah, we are susceptible to the same force. It's, it's, you know, how can we continue to do that spiritual work?

'Cause it is spiritual work, right? To cultivate the soul, to make sure we maintain in these values that I've been articulated. - I totally agree, so here's my final question. I'll stop torturing you.

- Okay. - Yeah, I think you've done such a great job, actually. - But thanks, and I'm, it's nothing to do with you. I'm just worried about these things in your smart, and you've again, for the third time thought about them

to a surprising degree for a guy who's also trying to build a company, I'm impressed. - Thank you. - But if we're gonna proceed one hopes with this kind of science in a way that creates

rather than destroys, then we need to keep in mind as you said 20 times the spiritual dimension. - Yes, but the spiritual dimension is a dividing point. Some things are good for the spirit and some things are bad for the spirit.

Some things are consistent with virtue. Some things are not, and if we believe in God, we believe God prefers some outcomes over others. God has rules, it's a nature of God. So will there be an attempt to say,

now these are the rules, like you can't test for this certain thing, you can't make this choice.

“You have to constrain people's choices at a certain point”

if you're going to remain consistent with any kind of ethic. - Yeah. - Now I've thought a lot about that. - It's very tricky, because you used his India did.

India said to us, billion people, you can't have that choice, sorry. - No, that's a very tricky. It's very tricky and very complicated.

I think the key thing that we have to do is a business

and the more line that people can hold us to is nucleus has not, is not, and we'll never say that one embryo is better than another embryo, we just won't.

with moral value, they're different things.

And I think in deeply recognizing that and deeply realizing by the way, the indeterministic nature of genetics as well. As I said, heart disease, you can have a bad diet, you can exercise lung cancer, even for things like schizophrenia.

As I mentioned, strong genetic components, but you can take, you know, we actually has made people more schizophrenic, for example. So there's an environmental component as well.

“And so I think you have to have the deep humility”

in saying, there's no better, maintain that moral philosophy. Because that is the foundation for me. - That's the foundation for me. - Can't say it's better to be non-schizophrenic than schizophrenic.

- I don't think it's for me to say, though. I also don't think, though, to be clear, when we use the term better, we start to climb moral value. And again, I don't think more value lies in the realm of bilateral characteristics.

I don't think so. - So there's no more value? - No, that's not true.

There's universal morality.

- Which is natural, say, better not to have schizophrenia. - Well, again, when we say better, I think we're just defined differently. I think it's better in the sense that it reduces suffering. - Absolutely, that's your measure than better.

- Exactly, but what's your measure? - Exactly, but it's honestly better in terms of the world. - So this is totally immoral. This is literally moral.

It has no reference. - It's not immoral. No, I don't know, 'cause everything has a spirit as I said. Just 'cause every the fifth, there's the physical world, and then there's each thing has a divine spirit to it, right?

So each thing has some virtue or opposite of virtue, vice, for example, that's true, that's a true thing. But again, these things are not actually incompatible with each other. They're actually compatible.

But as a company, can you say there's anything you won't do? - As a, on behalf of nucleus, I think, well, when you say anything we won't do you mean, like I don't know, if I didn't say, the biology has no moral reference, we're not doing that period, because it's wrong.

We're not providing an analysis, for example.

“Like we're not providing some, that's what you mean.”

- We're not going to make certain behavior easier. - When you say shrimp behavior, you mean picking for a specific, like, characteristic. - I don't know, 'cause like, we're pretty old. - We're pretty old.

- In fact, you're fentanyl for a living and say, I'm not forcing people to take it, it's their choice. But I would say I'm not manufacturing fentanyl because it's bad. It's just inherently bad, it degrades people.

And in some cases kills them, so I'm not doing that. - Yeah. - So, I don't know that is it enough to say, let the people decide? - No, it's not, you have to, you have to be careful,

like, giving an IQ analysis, for example, right? We've gone through many, many iterations that that's what we've been doing in, and we sort of slow rolled it out. - Honestly, because we didn't want people to misunderstand it,

we don't want people to think, because, again, genetically, it's just like not possible

in the same way that there's always environmental components,

that you can just like, look at somebody's DNA and guess that SAT score. That's like people's very simplistic model, which is like, but, but, so I'm saying that the way, we have responsibility to very carefully communicate that result.

So, that I've got clinic, the patient, the physician, everyone understands it.

“And then when I think when people understand it,”

it takes it from sort of this sensationalist things and just grounds. - We shift the moral responsibility from yourself. - No, because the more responsible, you shift the product in what way?

- I could make a product and say, "Oh, this embryo is better "than this embryo." I mean, that would be principally the most immoral line that we could cross. I could say, for example, this embryo

is gonna be super, super, super smart, right? No, we're careful in the way we say this. - Well, that's just a false claim, right? Yeah, I mean, it would be false, but also like, - But what you're saying is that the moral decisions

rest with the customers, not with you. They decide what's better. Is it better to have a kid with Down syndrome or not? They decide, you're not gonna have any role in the moral decision. -ations can't, so, again, there's no more of value,

'cause like, it comes from God, but patients can decide instrumental value, right? Like, going back to the death couple, the death couple deemed it to be best, right, for what they want for the outcome they're optimizing for.

In this case, best means optimizing for the set of biological characteristics for some outcome, right? For example, somebody might want their daughter to be shorter, to be a gymnast, for example, somebody might want their son to be tall, to be a MBA player.

Someone else might say, "I don't care how athletic they are. "I don't care how pretty they are. "I want them to be an academic "and you know, study really hard their entire life." - Depending on their things, as I mentioned in cell biology,

specialization, breeds sophistication. You realize very quickly, very intuitively, that the value of a phenotype is contingent to its environment. - I guess so, this is where it comes back to, it's up to them, the parents to decide

what is their instrumental value, that they map to these phenotypes and to pick and to our job to defend it. - No, I get it, I get it, I just hope it works. I think the worst things that I've ever done

are the things with the greatest promise, like the iPhone, like I got, I was so psyched for the iPhone, I was like, "I don't need a computer. "I can work in my living room. "Next, you know, you can't have a conversation

"with your wife." - Yeah, social media is, it's really bad. - But it's bad because it's good. - Benzo Diazopens are great. That's why they're terrible.

Does that make sense? - Benzo Diazopens are like the greatest drug. If you were taken in Benzo Diazopens,

One of my, a kid on my haul,

“importing school as dad was a pharmacist”

and he had value when I was like, "I'll take anything you know, whatever I was a child, "I was an idiot." I take this thing, I was like, "That's the greatest thing I've ever taken."

And it was so good I never took it in,

'cause it freaked me out. - Yeah. - Yeah. - Literally, all of your voices in your head, any woman listening will know her,

"I am at the things like, "Ah, whatever, going out of the background." Silence, everything's fine. You're not like, "Stone, you're not out of it." You're just like, "Great, you're improved, "you're your best self."

And my animal sense, even in 10th grade I was like, "That's bad." - Yeah. - Super bad.

Whereas you do other drug, do cocaine,

simple night doing cocaine. You suffer the next day. And so there's it's really clear, this is not good, right? Benzos are the best.

“And that's why they're the most addictive,”

most dangerous, most society, destroying product that we make. - Yeah. - Or does that make sense? - Yeah.

- The badness is in direct proportion to the promise, the goodness. - Yes. - Yes.

And then there is a moral character

of the person giving out to that drug. And in social media case, too, talking about more philosophy, optimizing for clicks and dopamine, you end up falling a consequentialist framework, right?

Because there's no virtue, you end up falling a consequentialist framework, and justifies the means to the point that everybody's scrolling and liking and clicking all day.

- Oh no, percent. - So it's the question that you're asking is how do you, there's this problem of power 'cause power crops are absolutely, yeah. Absolutely, there's a problem of Silicon Valley,

which is there's a promise, but then you underestimate the thing, it's like, how do you maintain virtue?

“Basically the question is, how do you maintain virtue?”

How do you maintain your soul and your spirit despite these pressures? What's the answer? Well, one, it's really hard. I imagine, I'm hoping to practice for nucleus

and hopefully this industry, it's praying. It's meditation, it's deep, deep humility. With realizing going back to what I said, there's a rain drop. If you think that the rain drops in the entire world,

you're thinking about the entire ocean. That's why I come back to. - Yeah, well, you have a lot of authority, you have a lot of power for young man, more than much more than I ever will.

And so, is it wisely? And thank you for your thoughtfulness and you're willing to have this conversation and I'm sure it's been hellish for you, but you've done a great job.

- Thank you, Tucker. - Thank you. - Appreciate it, thanks. (upbeat music)