Большие вопросы: кастомизация младенцев, евгеника и существование Бога

Tucker Debates Biotech CEO on Baby Customization, Eugenics, and God\u2019s Existence

Источник: https://tuckercarlson.com/tucker-show-kian-sadeghi-041426

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Tucker [00:00:04] Thanks for doing this. I appreciate it. I'll just say at the outset, which I told you off camera, I disagree with this conceptually, I think, but I'm also completely ignorant of the details. Yeah. 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 stand back and let you explain what you're doing.

Kian Sadeghi [00:00:25] Yeah. So first, thanks for having me on. Of course. Um, so patients, there's one way of reproducing via IVF, right? So you can conceive naturally via sex, or maybe if you're infertile or if you have some sort of hereditary disease or for some other reason you do IVF. Um, when you do, yeah, I'm sorry.

Tucker [00:00:41] I specialize in dumb questions. Can you explain for people who don't know? What is IVF?

Kian Sadeghi [00:00:46] IVF stands for in-vitro fertilization, so basically imagine the egg and the sperm, right, the foundation of life to make an embryo, it's 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 an implant and the woman's pregnant. So conception takes place outside the womb. Correct. Okay. And so during this process of IVF, what you do is today, even if nucleus didn't exist, even genetic optimization didn't exist, you make several embryos. Okay, so in your IVF clinic, you make several embryos. The amount of embryos in the baking, it varies, but you might have four or five. You actually do genetic testing on these embryos to identify things like chromosomal abnormalities like Down syndrome, for example. Right, so that's very commonplace. That's done in 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 chromosomally abnormality. What we do is we basically provide more information on the embryo.

So we also read the DNA. But now we give information on things like other hereditary disease risk, also chronic diseases, 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 we provide you a little bit more information on your embryos so the basically that information can be used and implant which embryo the couple deems to be best. So basically give more information to couples to then choose which embryo they want to implant.

Tucker [00:02:16] 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 IQ... I was reliably informed IQ is not real. Okay. And it's not determined by genetics.

Kian Sadeghi [00:02:30] 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, height, they say, oh, 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 it is imagine you took two identical twins, so We have the same DNA. And then basically you separate the twins, they grow up in different environments. Sometimes in pop culture, people hear about these different things where you actually take twins and they have, again, the same DNA, their identical DNA, and then they grow up in places for whatever reason, so they're subject to different environments, and you can actually measure basically how similar they are across all these different phenotypes to see basically how genetic something is. Twin 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 as mentioned. To things like height or IQ or BMI, et cetera. So twin studies show that IQ specifically is 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 embryos is, well, your partner, right. So, you're actually not changing DNA. This is not gene editing. You're not changing DNA. You're making an embryo's DNA better. You're basically reading the embryo DNA that you have. So when you pick your partner, you're basically picking the kind of genetic pool, and then you can basically pick which embryo you deem to be best based off of your preferences and values.

Tucker [00:04:10] I mean, this like, again, I just wanna say thank you for doing this. Yeah, absolutely. I'm not here to attack you at all. I think this is one of the most important conversations we can have. I agree. 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 products 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. This was at the very center of our national debate about race and crime and educational achievement, income. And it all grew out of or was crystallized by a book called The Bell Curve. Have you heard of this? Yeah, I have, yeah. So it seems like that debate is over and there's not an attack at all. It's just like crazy to me that people are just saying this out loud. Yeah, genetics plays a big role.

Kian Sadeghi [00:05:09] Yeah, genetics plays a role. So I think in society today, when people think about like height or cancers, and to be clear, I'm not talking about, there's hereditary diseases like PKU, Tay-Sachs, cystic fibrosis, beta thalassemia. These are conditions we also screen for, right? To make sure that parents can reduce suffering in each generation. So that's also part of what we do. And those conditions are basically deterministic in nature, right. So if you have two bad copies of like cystic fibrosis, you're cystic fibrosis and it's dilatating. 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. Um, right. Right. That's like classical kind of genetics. So I think it's interesting because you make eugenics, right? No, no, no. Not eugenic. It's eugenical.

Tucker [00:05:54] How is it not? It's improving human speech.

Kian Sadeghi [00:05:58] Eugenics refers to basically corrosive use, corrosively controlling human reproduction, right? Forced sterilizations, even euthanasia, controlling who can get married to who.

Tucker [00:06:09] No, no, no. Those are methods by which you implement in eugenics, but they're not the only ones. Eugenics simply means, there's nothing inherently, well, you can disagree with the concept, but the concept is, gross or not, the improvement of a species, in this case, the human species, through selective breeding.

Kian Sadeghi [00:06:26] 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 embryo. In the embryas they have patients can make their own choice in which embryo they want to implant. So juxtapose like eugenics. How is that not selective breeding? This is literally. That's definitely not selective.

Tucker [00:06:43] 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 breeding. It's not choosing people's marriages, it's not giving them forced vasectomies, but it is breeding, that's what breeding is.

Kian Sadeghi [00:07:02] Well, I would say that in IVF clinics for the last couple of decades, there's been this process of basically taking these embryos, getting more information on the embryos and then picking which embryo you want 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 Galton, okay? He was a British scientist. Yeah, a bunch of them. Havelock, Ellis. He came 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. Eugenic naturally did not require genetics. Genetics when the term was coined, it was the science of heredity, right, of passing down information. Remember, the unit of heredity identified as DNA.

That was only until the 1940s, right? And then identifying the structure of DNA was actually after World War II in the 1950s. So we didn't even know for basically, in 1927, and I think it was Buck versus Bell, the US 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 follow the timeline. Eugenics as a corrosive Ideology to control populations had nothing to do with micro genetics period. It had nothing due to Jack. Why was it corrosive? Well, I think if you basically force sterilize somebody against their will, I mean I getting that's against the fundamental, you know liberty

Tucker [00:08:31] Of a person. Of course, there's no question that I couldn't agree more. But again, that was just one manifestation of it. So force 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.

Kian Sadeghi [00:08:50] Well, force did play, I mean, again, in 1927, the United States, the Supreme Court deemed constitutionally a forced organization.

Tucker [00:08:56] I'm just saying that, and I couldn't be more opposed to that, in fact, to the whole program, but I just want to note as a factual matter that forced sterilizations were an incredibly ugly, evil manifestation of an idea that was not limited to forced sterilization. The idea is the same idea you're articulating, which is people should try to improve the human species by selective creation of children.

Kian Sadeghi [00:09:22] So yeah, I disagree with that. I just don't think. How is it different? So nucleus, ultimately, and what we give patients, ultimately what patients actually want, right? Again, patients are choosing their partner. They're choosing to do IVF. They have basically options. They have several embryos. They get information. There's actually no best embryo, right. So nucleus is a company and no patient can ever say, oh, this is the best embryos 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. Genetics can only program for physical things and then people can basically make their choices within the partners that they choose and in doing IVF to then pick the embryo that sets the best set of biological characteristics to them but there is no virtue there is morality in that decision. I've noticed.

Tucker [00:10:17] Yeah. But, so do you think that it's equally virtuous to have a child, intentionally have a, 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 has none of those things? Cause I thought you just said that it is good to get rid of those. Get rid of those things.

Kian Sadeghi [00:10:38] To be clear, 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 in reproductive medicine where a deaf couple, they want to have a deaf child. That to them was what was best basically. That term best is relative, context specific to the parent. We have patients, for example, that might have... You know, Huntington's, which is a severe neuroderm disease, very, very severe. It's autosomal dominant means it's passed down, right? And by the way, this is actually interesting. Something like Huntington 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 reproduce, right, because they have some sort of neuropsychiatric or some sort of debilitating condition that runs in 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, she passed away in her sleep. Um, so these things are deeply personal to people and they, they- Is that the result of a genetic anomaly? Yeah. A condition that can cause irregular heart beating, cause sudden, sudden death.

Tucker [00:11:43] I don't want to sidetrack you, but you threw in Schizophrenia, is there evidence that that is genetically predisposed to it?

Kian Sadeghi [00:11:54] Strongly, there's a very strong genetic basis to schizophrenia, right? Really? Correct, yeah, yeah. And we know that. Yes, that is a very well-established science. Sorry. Yeah.

Tucker [00:12:03] Sorry, I'm learning. Yeah, no, it's interesting. So, okay, but you said it a minute ago that there is a nationwide, indeed a global effort to get rid of conditions like...

Kian Sadeghi [00:12:17] Deafness is a great example. It's not for me to tell a deaf couple whether they should or shouldn't have a deaf child. I understand. But that can apply across everything now, right? If somebody wants to have a child based off their set of what they deem to be best based off the lived experience, that's their right and that's the choice. So I'm not saying that it's better to have a child that is not deaf, for example. I can't do that. I can't possibly say that. It depends. I think that's entirely the choice of the family.

Tucker [00:12:44] Okay, so that's a consistent position. I wonder though, but 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 you genetic test all the embryos at every IVF clinic because you want to make sure we have less Down syndrome, for example.

Kian Sadeghi [00:13:08] But no, but again, 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 for Down syndrome, okay? They could make that decision. And if they make that decisions, they can then trans that embryo and have that baby. That's entirely their choice. See you next time.

Tucker [00:13:28] There's no, and I don't, I mean, 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. Those are parents making choices though. Those are parent and couples making the choices.

Kian Sadeghi [00:13:51] 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 system actually is very much not in the business of prevention. I mean it's interesting I was looking at these stats which is the U.S. Health care system spends about five trillion dollars, which is a lot, about I think four trillion goes to chronic disease treatment. So things like cancers and diabetes and Alzheimer's. In 2021, four times as many people died of a chronic disease than COVID. Four times many people died of a chronic disease than COVID at the peak of the pandemic. So you have to ask, what is the real pandemic here, okay? And on that point, if you think about it, and also, by the way, of the five trillion, so four trillion, about 80% is chronic disease, about 500 billion is about rare diseases. So these rare genetic conditions that I outlined, right?

So genetics has a strong impact in both a hereditary disease like cancer, as I outlined, like chronic diseases, as well as rare disease. So genetics can help impact, you know, four or four and a half trillion dollars of healthcare expenditure, but, and there is a but. Remember, those four and half trillion. Somebody's making money for someone being sick. Well, yeah, I mean, of course. That's horrible, but it's of course, you say of course but I feel that we can't just take that as a given, right? Like genetics as a science, if deplored, can be used for parents to make their own decisions to dramatically 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 use to basically help build what we call generational health effectively.

Tucker [00:15:16] Um, so I don't save a lot of money through improving the species through eugenics. Everyone, people made this argument for over a hundred years. I get it. I'm just wondering why I'm wondering a lot of things, but, um,

Kian Sadeghi [00:15:29] Well, one thing to say, remember too, that IVF is about 2% of the way babies are born in the United States. Most babies are still born naturally conceived. So, we actually have a service for those couples as well. We can basically take a cheek swab, you can do something called procreation simulation and 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 healthy, baby. What about sex?

Tucker [00:16:00] 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 what explains the demographic imbalance in China, as you know. So, that's like the number thing globally.

Kian Sadeghi [00:16:17] India same. In India actually outlawed it to be clear too. So in IVF clinic you can't even pick sex in India because there's a disbalance.

Tucker [00:16:24] 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 than girls when in fact it's the opposite. In the United States actually, if you look at the IVF, it's about 50-50. I'm saying, I'm not talking about 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?

Kian Sadeghi [00:16:46] So, to be clear, in the United States, this has played out over the last 20 years. People haven't been able to pick the sex of their child in IVF clinics, both the United States and then, again, at some point internationally too, but eventually became outlawed for the reason you outlined, which is people generally pick slightly more boys. I mean, it's illegal and it's much harder in these countries. Okay. In the United states, though, if you actually played out people making their own choices, it ends up being about, again 50-50. So this is actually interesting because people-

Tucker [00:17:13] Was it valid for someone to come in and say, I mean, you said this is an ethically neutral question 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-

Kian Sadeghi [00:17:31] In my view, that is the prerogative 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, which is an embodiment of this kind of liberty and choice. 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- Well, it's culturally specific in its time. You know, it- Of course. But that applies across any traits in Tucker, which is people, there's not a universal best. It's very much key specific to the specific family history, specific values and culture. Of course, of course.

Tucker [00:18:03] 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 we this 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 bisects.

Kian Sadeghi [00:18:33] To be clear. There is no universal biological best, period, across any phenotype because biology is inherently neutral. Now there is universal morality, specifically, again, two kinds. There's natural virtue and also divine virtue. Natural virtue can come from the cultivation of the soul, which is independent of biology. It's not in the physical plane. How is that different from divine virtue? Divine Virtue to me is more about union with God.

Tucker [00:19:04] So if there's no God, where does the soul come from?

Kian Sadeghi [00:19:07] There's God, there's God. What do you mean? Why is there no God?

Tucker [00:19:09] Of course, I agree, but I don't know why there's a distinction between the virtues again run the week

Kian Sadeghi [00:19:15] I'll tell you why. Natural virtue can be intellectually derived, wisdom, courage, justice, temperance. It's kind of classic Aristotle. And then there's things like grace and revelation, which come from God. You can't necessarily, a human being's mind is limited, it's finite. You can't actually grasp that. So there has to, there's a, so you can, one, you can derive from like thinking like what leads to basic eudaimonia, human flourishing, right? That kind of virtue, natural virtue, right? Coming from Aristotle. Another kind I'm Thinking about divine virtue, which is what goes beyond the intellect, right? 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 was this idea of divine virtue coming from, you know, in the Old and New Testament about union with God and, you know, old religions actually talk ultimately about surrendering. Personally, I do believe in God, just so you know if that's not clear. What kind of God do you believe in? So, I've meditated for about seven years. 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, it's actually from Rumi. I think he articulates, well, Rumi is a Persian poet. He says, imagine you go to the ocean and you come back with a pitcher of water. So the pitcher 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, okay? That's how 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 and finite and there's basically this vastness. It's hard to describe, which is why often the Sufis would use poetry to actually describe God, because it's this hard. You can allude to it. You can't describe it directly because it is too big. Precisely. It's infinite. It's vast. That's why I like the ocean as an example. Another way I like to think about it is like, if you're a raindrop, and it's easy for us, especially modern society, to think the raindrop 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, again, I think God is more, is more an experience. It can't get, God cannot be conceptualized. It cannot 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 try to use metaphors and try to explain it. Um, I always liked the Sufi poets because I feel like they do a really, really nice Beautiful job of that.

Tucker [00:21:38] Certainly of describing the vastness and fundamental incomprehensibility of God for sure. Oh, I couldn't agree with you more. 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?

Kian Sadeghi [00:21:58] Islam specifically, Islam literally means surrendering to one. I think that's the answer. In other words, Islam, and you can, I'm not Christian, you're Christian, so you can tell me more about what Christians do, but there's a concept of surrender in Christianity. So in Islam, there's, it means literally Islam, not just a concept.

Tucker [00:22:16] It's the whole thing. Jesus surrendered to being tortured to death. Exactly.

Kian Sadeghi [00:22:20] Yeah, of course. And then in Buddhism as well. They call it different things in Buddhism. It's a little bit more like surrendering to the illusion of the ego, for example. But the concept of surrendering, I think, is basically universal. There's no question. And so, yeah.

Tucker [00:22:36] But, so right, that's the very beginning, that's a conceptual understanding of it, but then you move immediately into what does God want you to do? What powers does he have? What powers do you have? What are the things you're allowed to do, what are the thing you're not allowed to? I mean, that that's just a product of logic, but it's also like pretty spelled out in every one of the three religions that derive from Abraham. So what's your view of that? Like are there things that God won't allow us to do.

Kian Sadeghi [00:23:05] The way I think about this is there's sort of three different more philosophies somebody could adopt. There is one idea of consequentialism, which is basically the end justifies the means, which you see a lot of in today's culture. I haven't noticed that. Yeah, unfortunately, even in Silicon Valley, which we can talk about. Even in Silicon. Did you just say that? Especially, especially in Silicon valley. 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 or not there are more philosophies, they end up succumbing to one anyways, or they recognize it. 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 is bad, lying is bad and you know it's kind of no matter what the specific circumspect story, these things are wrong, right. There's that more philosophy you can adopt deontologie, which can be secular or non-secular is my understanding of it. Then there's virtue ethics. Not real. Okay.

Tucker [00:24:03] If they're 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 rule, they are laws. So one has no meaning at all. Nothing can be better than anything else. And the other is absolute. So like, no, there can't be a secular, sorry, Aristotle, a secular understanding. Absolute value

Kian Sadeghi [00:24:30] I think there cannot be a second understanding of divine virtue. 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 consequentialism, which is most people I think in contemporary society adopt. There's deontology, which as you rooted in some sort of maybe there's some universal, this is good, this is bad. Then there's virtue ethics, which basically instead of saying, oh, the consequence, instead of say, oh this action is good because the consequence was good or this action is good because action is inherently good. Or wrong because of some secular or non-secular set of rules, you're saying, hey, the actual thing that you need to measure and you need think about is the moral character of the person doing the action. And then if the moral characters, 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 confers basic virtue in the action. Right? So basically the first two in my view, deontology and consequentialism is very much about the action. Right? It's saying, hey, is this outcome good based off some thing you're trying to maximize? And then deontolgy, which is this concept of, forget if the outcome is good or not, is it the right or wrong thing? Then the concept of virtue ethics, which is instead of saying, you know, looking at the action, because ultimately human beings produce action, actions aren't just there, human beings produced action, the quality of the action should be measured or that it's deemed virtuous. If the person can strive and embody virtue, okay?

And so personally, and I'm still, by the way, talking about natural virtue right now. I'm not even talking about divine virtue. I'm talking about in the intellectual plane, things that people can think about and reason or argue over, things of the mind, not things that go beyond the mind. And so, in the concept of virtue ethics, I think this is the child of moral philosophy we try to embody in saying, hey, and this comes back all the way to embryonic selection, which is, hey there is no biological best. There is none. Right? Again, 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. Someone else could say athlete. Someone else can say an entrepreneur. So let's just 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, they're not just thing is that.

Tucker [00:26:52] Yeah.

Kian Sadeghi [00:26:53] I, well, of course I disagree that there's no divine preference, but I... Well, there's not divine preference in biology, because the divine isn't rooted in the...

Tucker [00:27:00] It's not, it's not. Well, it depends where you think biology came from, I guess.

Kian Sadeghi [00:27:04] I guess that's true. I mean, I also don't 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 panpsychism, which is the idea that basically each object has its its consciousness, even like a rock. Right. And this might sound strange to people, but doesn't sound strange. Doesn't sound. I don't think you're fully off base. I don't know the answer. I don't know. I don't know either crazy thing to So this idea that, you know, rock has... Consciousness. It's a being, albeit, you know, not as sophisticated as 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 is basically very non-imperious, just non-materialist. And it basically believes this idea that again, God has given this consciousness to everything. And I tend to, I actually like that a lot. I actually liked that a lot for a lot of reasons. Okay, so can I ask you a couple fundamental questions?

Tucker [00:28:11] Please. So you just said, I think you said, that people cannot create life.

Kian Sadeghi [00:28:20] Nature has a greater intelligence and human beings, sometimes people will say we are part of nature, but we are nature.

Tucker [00:28:27] But life, so you're in the life business, right? I mean, obviously.

Kian Sadeghi [00:28:30] Obviously or? What IVF does, for example, is they use natural laws. We didn't make these natural laws, right? We use natural law that exists and then we and then basically and to be clear, we're not an IVF clinic. We work in IVF clinics and IVF are the ones that do IVF. We provide more information but in the context of IVF, you are using natural law. You are not making natural law, You're not you can't make a baby. This is in.

Tucker [00:28:55] Well, I think there's a good chance you may be violating natural law, 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?

Kian Sadeghi [00:29:10] I would say God, but to be clear, so, this is complicated, but... You're not the only one who doesn't...

Tucker [00:29:18] Is uncertain. I mean, I, I don't know, but I, and I don t mean to put you on the spot who creates life. I mean. Come on. I shouldn't be even asking questions like this and expecting you to have some cogent answer because I don't t think anyone does now other than to say God or to say more precisely, not us. Not us. Is that fair to say?

Kian Sadeghi [00:29:37] Yeah, that is that is fair to say not us and we operate within that plant and to be clear the stories of sci-fi Right like Frankenstein for example, or even drastic parts on example, but Frankenstein this idea that we can make life, right? We cannot make life. That's that's that that's the lesson of these stories. Let me just say

Tucker [00:29:51] I think you've thought a lot more about this in your average businessman. So I don't know how I was gonna handle this, but you're a lot thoughtful than I expected for a young entrepreneur. So thank you. Thank you, Tucker. No, I mean that totally sincerely. You've actually thought a whole lot about this. And I don't know the answers to any of these questions, really, but giving my best shot. So we both agree that some higher being created life, we know that we didn't. So we could assign it to nature, we could assign it to God, but... We don't create life.

Kian Sadeghi [00:30:21] We don't create life, we operate within nature. Right. We operate within. Amen. Do we have the right to take life? So this is so so so. No. Now, if we talk about embryo, because I assume this was your, I mean, it has all.

Tucker [00:30:40] I'm not sure. I mean, it has all kinds of implications, 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?

Kian Sadeghi [00:30:57] Let's think about the different moral values that someone could have here. If someone has consequentialism, they could say, hey, look, we want to commit murder for this good, and maybe they have some good that they need to be good. Right, yeah. I'm highly familiar with testifications for murder. I just want to know what you think. I'll tell you what I think. But I'll just tell you that there's this kind of, it's like very pluralistic, and then somebody could say murder's always bad, which is fine. I respect that opinion, absolutely. And then there's sort of this last bucket, which again, I'm going to keep coming back to this idea of virtue ethics, which is, can you have a cultivation in the spirit of the soul? To think, hey, you know, what, what is right in this situation? Because society does not have a definitive answer to this question, right? People will sometimes say knee-jerk, they'll say, oh, murder's always bad, but then they'll be pro the death penalty.

Tucker [00:31:36] People are inconsistent. There's no doubt 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 yours, famously. So I get it, people are flawed. But I do think that we can, through a little bit of rigor, arrive at what's right or wrong. Yes, I mean, that's what we're trying to do. What can we say about the right of a person to take another person's life?

Kian Sadeghi [00:31:59] Well, I don't, I personally, I don't think there is a right. I personally don't think there's a right in any circumstance. I don't see that, I don't see that. I mean, and of course, there's this question like what is, you know, I don't think there's a right period. I just don't think so. Um, well, I'm with you. I'm

Tucker [00:32:15] Now, 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 is a, okay. So then what can we say about an embryo in a lab is that life.

Kian Sadeghi [00:32:33] Let me go back to the panpsychic philosophy, right? Which is this idea. No, no, no. We have to tuck her. No, don't tuck her! I'll give you a proper answer. But these things are not simple. I can't be like, oh, yes, let's just bear with me for a second. There is a spectrum of consciousness. There's a spectrum from a rock to a sentient being all the way to a more conscious 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. Does an embryos have a soul, for example? That is a key question. That is the key question, in my view. I totally agree. That is key, let's just make no mistake, anytime somebody argues about an embryo, an 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 within IVF clinics. I understand. I just wanna be very very clear. You're just at the intersection of every big trend. No, we have a huge responsibility. Right, yeah. And so I think it's important to, before we can even argue, oh, it's embryo life. It's like, well, where does the life come from? Is it the physical thing? Right, for me, I think about when I think of death. I think death is a doorway. That's my own personal belief. This is a vessel. You're not the physical. We're not physical. We're something else. We're metaphysical. We're soul. Okay? And so then 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 inductively. So I just don't want to think of an embryos, but I think there's a huge diversity and range of life. And I can, in my head at least, and again, this is the feelings of the intellect. Things let's only do so much. But when I think about it, I think, okay, I think about a rock which I think has some kind of maybe proto-consciousness, some like very, very limited consciousness that we don't understand, maybe through some psychic or meditative work you could try to, you know, become a rock and try to understand it's like more subjective experience if it exists, right, all the way to an embryo, to a dog, to a human. And so because of this spectrum, it comes down to this question of at what point basically do we have this, is there a soul in an embryo? 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 a couple reasons why, which is an embryos, so I can take a more reductionist approach and I could say embryo is principally a cell and when you, reproduced already, embryos actually want so. Yeah, it divides, exactly divides and becomes many cells, but principally at first it begins just as one cell. I thought it was, it was the sperm and the egg made the embryo. Yeah. Oh, so by definition. Yeah, It's a cell. Yeah. Sperm meets egg. It's the cell and then it starts dividing and it becomes more and more of a eventually into a human. Um, sorry, I was gonna say I just lost my train of thought, um...

Tucker [00:35:17] So the question was, you said you tend to think that an embryo does not have a soul, and I asked, why would you assume that?

Kian Sadeghi [00:35:25] Yeah, yeah, yeah. I was taking away. Um, so when you, when you look at the way that, um, When you look at the way that actually people conceive naturally, what ends up happening is that you have these formations 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 it such that you figure out IVF and in natural conception it is the case that basically you have this embryo formation and then ends up not for me. But the way I see it is, I see that nature wouldn't make it such that, or God wouldn't make it so such that. An 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 thing 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 I don't know how else to say it. I do think it is similar to like a wave. That forms and then again returns to the ocean, because everything returns to ocean. So I don't see it as something that's like, oh, the embryo is being discarded. I see it is returning back to the source. Even if I don't believe that it has an explicit soul. Does that make sense? So it's a little more of a nuanced argument.

It does make a kind of sense. Right, yeah.

Tucker [00:36:49] It does make a kind of sense I don't think it's insane and again I think it I think you've 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 beginning. Yeah, right. It isn't it's very important. It may be the most important thing. It is so I guess the difference between a wave and IVF is the human choice involved in the ladder. 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 any choice available to them? I think

Kian Sadeghi [00:37:35] don't have the right, in our culture, people will conflate greater performance with being morally better, which is I think a big problem. So there's two kinds of value. There's instrumental value and there's moral value. Instrumental value is contingent. And this is actually really important. All of biology, all of nature is contingend value. So, for example, you would maybe want an entrepreneur potentially to be more risk seeking. But you wouldn't want your surgeon to be more risk-seeking, right? In other words, the value of phenotypes actually changes depending on the environment. And this is obvious to say, but I think people miss this sometimes because they 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. It doesn't lead to better person, it might lead to more optimized outcome, but it doesn't need to a person. Dude, you're destroying your own case. No, I'm not, though. Yes, you are, because what you're saying is right. Yes, you are. No, I'm not.

Tucker [00:38:27] What you're saying is right. No, no, no. You're telling the truth about the way people are, which is lacking foresight and understanding of the holistic picture. So if people have the choice to choose their own children, we're going to have a nation of private equity people.

Kian Sadeghi [00:38:42] No, I'm serious. They're going to optimize for what's good right now. Yes, that's just okay. So this is actually interesting. A couple of things. Oh, wow. No, no, no. Tucker, Tucker, this is so interesting because you're making an assumption. So there's about the way people are. Yes, I am. There's many parts of this. The first part is, will people basically all choose in the same direction? And, you know, interestingly, again, people actually want very different things. And we see that every day with patients, right? Which is like there's this idea that like rich people will come in and be like, Oh, every rich 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, you know, any possible phenotype, like even when somebody comes and says, I want to optimize for type 2 diabetes risk, someone else might want to do schizophrenia or Alzheimer's, depending on their family history, somebody else might want to do height, for example, if they're both shorter parents, they might want to have a taller 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 idea of a universal best Biologic characteristic.

It doesn't exist, it doesn't exist. No, no, we're arguing two different things.

Tucker [00:39:42] 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. That's my belief. And they're different from each other. By definition, they're are 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. God did that. We didn't. People. Are very different. They demand uniformity. And by the way, if you think we're gonna 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 role my whole life. It's the opposite of what you're describing. They will all change. Rich, rich.

Kian Sadeghi [00:40:28] People make up a very, very small set of society. There's a big world out there, there's a bigger ocean out there.

Tucker [00:40:32] What set of IVF patients do they make up? What percentage?

Kian Sadeghi [00:40:35] Rich people about all of them. So I wouldn't say it's about all of them, there are a lot of people that are dialed in to this technology. People do IVF, if they can't generally, almost always, because they can conceive naturally, to be clear, and natural conception is all. It can cost quite a bit. But Tucker, no, I know Tucker, but this is important to say, which is people conceive naturally first, naturally, natural conception, is free, to be clear. Yep, that's what it cost me. Let's assume, let's actually play this out. It's actually really, really interesting. I actually think you do touch on a fundamental point on the way that people tend to move together, especially wealthy people. They tend to do the same thing.

Tucker [00:41:14] Yeah, it's every group. I don't mean to pick on rich people at all. I'm one of them, but I just am very familiar with them. But social societies are governed by herd instincts. That's why it's a society and not just a collection of hermits.

Kian Sadeghi [00:41:30] So I think there's a couple 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've seen, and then I can talk about more broadly how this play out to where the fact that people are pretty memetic in what they pick, okay? On the ground, what I am seeing is I see couples, again, a diverse range of couples, to be clear, 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, right? So the Human Genome Project in the early 2000s, it cost a billion dollar. When I started the business about six years ago, in 2020, it was about a thousand dollars, right. So a billion to a thousand, that's the kind of wonder of making things cheaper and making things more accessible. So I do think there's a point where this technology, anyone can actually access. That's like really important to stay to say, and that's one of my missions is to say, Hey, this shouldn't only belong for people who have means to 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 has that right.

Tucker [00:42:31] 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?

Kian Sadeghi [00:42:53] I think in more contemporary society, we've lost the concept of virtue generally, in my view. But is there a connection?

Tucker [00:43:01] 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 benzodiazepines and all of a sudden you could just like eliminate this 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 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...

Kian Sadeghi [00:43:49] Don't can't we can transcend suffering in the same way we can maybe we shouldn't but we can't it's it's like saying Let's transcend gravity. We're in this world while we're snatching our way

Tucker [00:43:58] trying to transcend suffering. And all I'm saying is societies, I'm not for suffering. I'm against suffering. I hate war. I don't like suffering at all. And I think we should try to alleviate it. All I'm seeing 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?

Kian Sadeghi [00:44:32] I think that's a very fair, in the context of, you know, there's a great example of obviously opioids. People get addicted. They think they're getting rid of pain. What are opioids exactly? In getting rid a pain, you're actually creating more suffering. And that's fair point. I think in the conducts of genetics, what we're doing is, it's actually interesting because it's non-invasive genetic, the optimization technology costs a couple thousand dollars. Which is a lot, right? It's a lot. It's going to keep coming down, right, and coming down. I can't believe you completely. And so suddenly now at the very beginning Um, you know, you have these embryos eventually you're already doing IVF, you're already picking an embryo, you get more information, you can pick an embryal with a, you know, 50% reduction risk in breast cancer, uh, you can have an embryos without, you know, BRCA, which is a breast cancer marker, right? You can, um, you know, schizophrenia, dilatating condition, really impacts families. Horrible, horrible, horrible. And, and in fact, these are the very people who wouldn't want to have a child, who wouldn't t want to, but now because of the advent of more advanced Screening. They are more comfortable having a child. And that actually, I think, gets lost too. I'm with you.

Progenetic technology is fundamentally anti-eugenic. It's actually progenetic technology, you're 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 moral worth, to be very clear. We've said that already, we've established that, you and I agree on that. But those are the very people that genetics is helping, that's the very people they're 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... Wait, no, I can't.

Tucker [00:46:10] Um, I'm not criticizing anything you're saying. It's just that I'm a stickler for definitions. Cause it's important. Sure. This is eugenics and it has, and it's, I mean, if you read the early eugenicists, some of whom are really smart, really

Kian Sadeghi [00:46:24] GenX was an international movement actually. It spanned many many things to your point.

Tucker [00:46:27] I'm very 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 and they cleared out the disabilities.

Kian Sadeghi [00:46:37] But this is important though, in that way, it's actually anti-eugenic because the very people that like the Nazis, for example, would target people who are sick and kill and kill and murder. That's kind of been forgotten to history. Horrible. But those very people are now they can actually access this technology. It's actually interesting. And there was a It's actually interesting.

Tucker [00:46:52] There was a- Hold on, hold on. So the point, 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 optimize human ability. Let's make this better by being thoughtful about how we reproduce. And let's bring whatever science 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 Stoddard, 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 all this human suffering. He's like, let's get rid of it. We don't, it's something that's people with Down syndrome, but we don't want more of them. That was his, that was his argument because it will reduce human suffering, fewer kids with Down syndrome, few.

Kian Sadeghi [00:47:49] Suffering. Well, it's a moral failure because the eugenicist in my view misconstrued the idea of, again, this idea of virtue with biology. There is no virtue in biological characteristics. It is a moral failure.

Tucker [00:48:00] He wasn't making that case, no. He was making the case and the smart ones were less suffering.

Kian Sadeghi [00:48:07] You're saying less suffering. But less suffering isn't more virtuous. And that's, it's hard for people to like, what does he mean by that? You know? Well, I agree. If just because, I mean, we've all had loved ones that have passed away, God forbid from some disease, right? I mentioned my cousin, my grandmother's both died of cancer as well. My uncle died of a heart attack, right, when he was playing soccer with my dad. He was 45. He collapsed. From 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 200 million Americans. So this is the problem of our time, okay, does not make them any less of a person. And so the fundamental moral failure, it was a moral failure of eugenics, which is misconstruing these things, which idea that it's better to reduce suffering, better, that plain term of better doesn't come from the physical plane, it comes from something beyond.

Tucker [00:49:10] But I'm not even sure that we're disagreeing. I think we're agreeing that there's no, that your physical condition is not a reflection of your moral value. No, but by the way, the eugenics.

Kian Sadeghi [00:49:20] That's got that fundamentally wrong. Why? Maybe I'm sure some did, but- They were consequentialists 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 the end justifies the means. We should actually do this forced sterilizations. We should make it constitutional. Well, I mean that-

Tucker [00:49:35] I mean, I think the ends justify the means was a much less common argument among the eugenicists as it is now among the Technologists that's for sure. That's very true. And these attitudes not only have not been suppressed or eliminated They've flowered into like the dominant attitude in the country. So like they won I'm just saying I'm not trying to just saying they're this idea that you can make people better and in fact that you should No, no, but that's how we're saying though

Kian Sadeghi [00:50:03] Remember, no Tucker Tucker, this is this is nuanced was really important for people understand You're saying people have the opportunity to do it, but people have opportunity nucleus We never say hey, these are five embryos. This is the best embryo. We cannot we are not divine. No, we can never

Tucker [00:50:16] But the choices that people make are governed by a lot of things. Of course. But one of the, you know, their intuition, their religious views.

Kian Sadeghi [00:50:25] 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, right? People think about these things realistically, but the first thing they care about is my mother had breast cancer, you know, my dad had prostate cancer, my grandfather had Alzheimer's. So I just think- My sister had schizophrenia. I get it. Yeah, right. So you want to start with the lived experience of the patient.

Tucker [00:50:48] And then go from there. That's all baked in the cake. Every person has experienced suffering and every person has seen a loved one die if you live long enough. And I just wanna be totally clear so I don't seem self-righteous, which I never wanna be. If I had had the opportunity when my children were in utero or before to say no to schizophrenia, no to the things that I really fear, schizophrenia is at the top of the list. I think it's the cruelest thing. But also CF, which is in my family.

Kian Sadeghi [00:51:15] All these things, by the way, I'm a carrier for cystic fibrosis. Yeah, a lot of people are. A lot of them are, yeah. And I don't want my baby, God forbid, to have that.

Tucker [00:51:21] Of course not. No, though, actually, the therapies for CF have, that's a whole separate conversation. I don't wanna be boring, but anyway, I would just say, like all expectant parents, 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. How could you not? Absolutely. So I'm not judging anybody. I get it completely. I would've 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, not attaching a value to deafness or hearing, but. But people do, everybody does. Everyone other than you. Everyone other then you does.

Kian Sadeghi [00:52:07] No, no, no. But to be clear, we can have more philosophy and then say, but most people will object the idea that there's this idea of conflating reduced suffering. They would say that's better. Of course. And then we can play that out. So let's play that out.

Tucker [00:52:18] So you tell me what you imagine because this is one of the biggest changes in human history.

Kian Sadeghi [00:52:25] I will say, Tucker, I will say again that people will make different choices. I really want to say that there's actually two parts of this argument on people. No, no, I'm not. Some people make different choices, but not so a lot of like it's a random distribution of choices. Is that what you're saying? I'm not saying that I'm not saying OK, what I am saying, though, is people will bring that. So when we think about this, like to make it like more intuitive for people. If you think about like our, there's this concept in cell and molecular biology, okay? It's called, it's basically this concept called, uh, it eluded 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 in stem cells, they become neurons, they became immune cells, uh they become different parts of the body, right, because these bodies have different functions and so you need different specializations. And when you actually I'm a big believer that like everything mirrors everything from the molecular to the celestial, everything. OK. And so let me let me keep going with this. I can remember what it is. Specialization breeds sophistication.

That's true in cell and molecular biology, which is specialization breeds sophisticated. The more specialized something is, the more sophisticated it is, okay? And so in a society, if you look at people who are really high in their craft, like Alyssa Liu figure skating versus an Einstein versus an Elon versus an artist like DaVinci, 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 single time people always say this to me. They say, oh, people pick for IQ. Let me put aside my moral argument. Let's actually 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 is interesting because 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 FIFA my player or something, and you make somebody stronger, they have less agility, right. So what happens is, and also you're making them, genetically speaking, more likely 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 takes these things way. So it starts becoming more of a value judgment. I understand. So wait, let me play this out. So let's assume that to your point, there's a fashion of the day, right? People are, you know, we've seen this with fashion, we see this in tech, we see this, you see investors, they all allocate toward AI, you know, people end up saying wearing the same thing in Soho and New York, you know, how is this possible? Right? People will go to the same private schools. You were saying this, right, all these things end up kind of the taste follow through. So let' s assume all the rich people basically start optimizing for Um IQ, or everyone actually start optimizing for IQ, not just first people, everyone start optimizing for IQ. There's actually an evolutionary mechanism that's called a frequency-dependent selection. What is frequency- dependent selection? What it basically means is that the rarer a phenotype becomes relative to the other phenotypes. So in this case, for example, if everyone picked for IQ extraversion and conscientious starts decreasing, okay, in terms of the prevalence of the population, the more valuable that phenotype become. In other words... Rarer that extraversion of consciousness becomes, the more valuable it actually becomes to actually flourish in a population.

Tucker [00:55:52] So you're arguing it's self-correcting.

Kian Sadeghi [00:55:56] 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.

Tucker [00:56:11] So if that were true, then why did India ban sex-selective abortions?

Kian Sadeghi [00:56:16] 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 not, it is actually like 52-48. So actually through that perspective, it actually is statistically significant, but It's actually not insanely high. And on that point also, which is actually interesting. Well, over a billion and a half people, it's significant. Yeah, it can, absolutely, over generations. But actually it's not, I think what's interesting here is, this is just a kind of a factoid, but males, babies, they tend to actually have the higher risk of basically dying at infancy. So it ends up happening, they feel like the general population is about 50-50, but actually biology has it that it's slightly urged toward males. But let's take the sex example. Let's say it plays out that, you know, Over many generations, people, let's say it wasn't outlawed or people still practice anyways, and people start picking across sex. It's actually the same phenomena. Whereas the number of males, for example, come down, the number 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 a slightly higher probability then of having 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.

Tucker [00:57:44] So why did they ban it?

Kian Sadeghi [00:57:46] Well, obviously that's like a longer-term evolutionary thing to saying that things will self-correct, but obviously it was

Tucker [00:57:50] But it actually wasn't self-correcting and it was making the society unstable. 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 and there are no downsides, then why did the biggest country in the world ban it?

Kian Sadeghi [00:58:05] To be clear, I'm not saying that there is not short-term material consequence for something like sex selection. Of course there is, especially sex selection, I am not saying.

Tucker [00:58:15] Than any other kind of selection. Sorry? Why is that unique? Like we're talking- Sex selection, it's not actually. Well it's unique in that- Over IQ, I mean these are deep characteristics.

Kian Sadeghi [00:58:28] Defining characteristics. It's actually an interesting point you make on sex because if you look at sex, it's a way of kind of playing out what happens when people pick across traits, right? Because sex is not a disease, it is a choice, depending on what you want, people make different choices, right, so it's actually a good kind of heuristic of how people will 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 the trades that people have been picking for the last 20 years. So there's a bit of this hypocrisy in medicine as well.

Tucker [00:59:01] That's what I'm trying to get to is really the core question, which is, is there a downside to playing God? Okay. First of all, we're not playing God. Well, of course we are. We're making choices that were not available to us until very recently that have never in human history been made by people ever, not one time. We cannot play God.

Kian Sadeghi [00:59:18] God created us, God created everything here. We cannot, we cannot, Let me be more prudent.

Tucker [00:59:22] 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.

Kian Sadeghi [00:59:30] That's actually not true, I would argue in this case.

Tucker [00:59:31] Uh, well, it's- Because-

Kian Sadeghi [00:59:33] very true. How long have test tube babies IVF been around since the 1970s, so it's about 40 years actually. And by the way, it's not like you look around and you're like, oh that's an IVF baby. This is a long time.

Tucker [00:59:44] I'm not attacking IVF, 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 though, 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.

Kian Sadeghi [01:00:14] I would caveat a little bit when you remember you're picking from the pool that so when you pick your partner, for example, you're setting the possible genetic pool. So for example two short parents are not going to 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.

Tucker [01:00:35] You can have a taller child. I understand, but we're, okay, those, 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 cant marry him, he's from, you know, whatever. There are lots of genetic qualities that people don't want to pass on.

Kian Sadeghi [01:00:58] In doing that, they're actually picking, by the way, the most important set of outcomes for their child. Because your partner is the other person. Absolutely.

Tucker [01:01:05] But never with this level of precision, never has there been a menu where you can say, where you 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?

Kian Sadeghi [01:01:32] So, I mean, we talked about the, I mean, you pointed out one of the downsides, which is like, OK, if 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 self-corrected, which I think is true and valid. Have you talked to Indians that? So this will be self-corrected, right? But obviously in the short term, there's still like a acute problem, right. But I would say actually IVF has been operating for again, for 40 years and other policies, like for example, China's one child policy has led to much greater problems. IVF is still the way 2% of the way babies are born. I think your principal concern on where this can go awry. I mean, there's a long history in science fiction of people thinking. Like, you know, I, I can, you know, Frankenstein, I mentioned Frankenstein. It's literally that it's somebody saying, hey, huh, I could make life. Right. And then how about life thing? Uh, how about we're going to park actually too is this idea that, hey I can do this. And then there's a negative unforeseen consequences. I would argue both of those were consequentialist. I don't think that's science fiction. I mean, hey.

Tucker [01:02:39] Hey, let's create Lyme disease. Hey, lets create, I don't know, let's strengthen this virus. Oh gosh, it's out of the lab, intentionally or not, 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 foreseeing the consequences of their actions. We know that in our own sex lives, don't we? So I think we can just say they're 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. That's all I'm saying.

Kian Sadeghi [01:03:22] I agree I think we should be tangible with them though and make sure people actually understand So like again IVF is the way two percent way babies are born IVF has been operating in the United States for about 40 years This is not like um 40 years. I said 1970s is oh I was there. I remember. Yeah. Yeah the test two babies on the cover of Time magazine It was yeah, I mean people don't call there any consequences to that do do IVF. Yeah, have we studied the concept? Yeah, they've actually tracked children Um, 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 now. Is it, is it true?

Tucker [01:03:59] There's no measurable difference at all between children born from an IVF procedure and children conceived naturally.

Kian Sadeghi [01:04:05] Obviously, there's some environmental things that you're taking averages, but yeah, when I looked into this, and I've obviously talked to a lot of scientists about this as well, they said, yeah, there is no difference, yeah. Which is pretty amazing, but actually I think it's a testament to nature. Well, we can track it over the course of the decades since I've been.

Tucker [01:04:20] Well this isn't nature of course, it's something that we are, well it's by definition not nature, it's just something that people are doing in order to improve nature, like nature would be infertility. I'm against infertile, by the way I'm not arguing for infertilia, I'm just saying whatever it is, it is not nature. It's the opposite of nature.

Kian Sadeghi [01:04:35] We are operating within nature. So let's go to the framework of God created 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 the principles of nature, using the principles of heredity and we're applying them. It's still beautiful, it's still very beautiful. I'm not saying-

Tucker [01:04:55] I'm not saying it's bad or not beautiful. I'm just saying it is not nature any more than nuclear weapons or nature. You can say, well, 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 not nature. Nature.

Kian Sadeghi [01:05:15] The outcome could have actually occurred even if you didn't necessarily do it. The baby could have happened that way. But also I would say that remember that there's gene editing, which is much further out. It's the idea that you can actually take an embryo and make it whatever you want basically. Theoretically, we could talk about that, which it's very, very different. So I think the concept of IVF clinics using this technology to give 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? Genetics is unique. I've seen- Oh, no. I appreciate the- So I'm saying- Yep.

Tucker [01:05:44] I've seen, oh no, I appreciate the upside. No, I agree with you on the upside, I just want to know the downside. Yeah, the down- And I don't see here any, there's no downside. Of course, Tucker, of course there's downside. What do you imagine it might be?

Kian Sadeghi [01:05:56] 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. 2% is about 1 in 50 babies. I think I'm going to outline the scenario where I think there's a lot more risk and where human reproduction is going to materially change, right? You might argue that this is a material change, I would argue IVF was the principle material changes.

Tucker [01:06:19] You're arguing this material change because you're saying that we're going to have less chronic disease, lower health care costs, less suffering, and that's all good. Patients can choose that, patients can choose. Well, you've argued that will be the result. And you're right, it will be the result and I'm for it. I just want to 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. If someone says, well. There's no downside. Then I'm like, I don't know if I trust you anymore. So what's the downside?

Kian Sadeghi [01:06:50] Again, I will articulate downside. It's just I have to explain.

Tucker [01:06:53] No, you're going to blame some other technology for that.

Kian Sadeghi [01:06:55] I'm not going to blame some other technology.

Tucker [01:06:56] You're saying, gene editing's bad, but what about the technology that you're offering has an upside, I totally agree with you, and that will be real, and I'll support it. I would support, I don't know, a lot of things, but what's the downside? Like, you must have thought about that. Of course, of course.

Kian Sadeghi [01:07:16] The... The... The.... The... Fundamentally... This technology can be exploited by centralized bodies to try to control reproduction. Yes. That is the downside. That is this story of the 20th century. Sorry for getting emphatic, but it's just like, yes, that is the down side. We've seen the downside, we've experienced the downside but to be clear, but to clear, that is a moral failure. That is not a failure of the technology. I've said, I've established that eugenics, for example, was decades before genetics.

Tucker [01:07:45] Yeah, it's a distinction without a difference in my view, but 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 bad, and that's just how people are. And they've always been that way, and they will always be that way. So with that in mind, I don't think it's just, I totally agree that, of course, centralized powers, whoever they are, I'm not even sure who they are but they clearly exist. Governments. I mean, that's where the 20th century or the Epstein class that runs the governments or whoever these these entities are They they yeah, that 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 a certain, I have flushing dogs, spaniels, and they're bread to work close to you, find the bird, jump the bird.

Retrieve the bird 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. And this is well-known in animal husbandry, it's well- known in bird hunting, it's 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 dogs that die of cancer at five, you get dog with hip dysplasia, you get with unexplained rage that bite your children. We can't foresee with any precision the effects of our tinkering with reproduction.

Kian Sadeghi [01:09:37] Let me actually give a real example of this, so in China, the scientist who was known for using gene editing to engineer the first babies, actually, Dr. He, what he did was he engineered the CCR5 gene, I believe that's what the gene was called, and he used CRISPR. CRISPR is a bacterial immune response system. It stands for Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats, basically refers to the set of palindromic DNA sequences in a bacteria. And he used that to make a genetic device called CRISPR. And he basically used CRISPR- Oh, I 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, excuse me, it has a guide which takes the CRISPR to the part of DNA, then it's endonuclease, which basically cuts the DNA. A little bit of technical explanation. Basically, you can use a bacterial immune response system. Harness it as a genetic device, okay? And this is what the scientists did. And I'm obviously, you know, about the story. And he went and he actually engineered human numbers. And- It's going on now. In China? Oh, in other parts of the world too. So basically what he did was he knocked out the CCR5 gene and what his justification for knocking out this specific gene was that it would make the children basically resistant to HIV AIDS. 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 have actually just done that with existing genetic technology that was much cheaper, much less expensive.

But even putting that aside, getting to the fundamental thing that you're articulating, which is unintended 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 to basically infect you. In other words, the dangerous 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 the balancing act that is nature. And that's really important to say.

Tucker [01:12:03] 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.

Kian Sadeghi [01:12:14] Meditation and I mean, I know but something that

Tucker [01:12:15] No, but something that, that's something you

Kian Sadeghi [01:12:17] Presumably you chose to try it. I think sometimes you, you know, a broader force guides you to these things, yeah.

Tucker [01:12:24] You know, the experience of having children is the most profound example of that, I think. If you ask any parent, or most parents, 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've 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 because my girls don't 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 father of girls, like what? 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 an experience like that?

Kian Sadeghi [01:13:12] I mean, yeah, I think some of the best things that happen in life are not things that you can control. It's part of the divine. Yes. Yes. 100%. And sometimes there are things that, man, you don't want at all. But it's actually good for you. Yeah. It's the best for you? The best thing for you, yeah. The thing that you want isn't the thing that you need.

Tucker [01:13:31] 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. It's not good for you to get everything you want.

Kian Sadeghi [01:13:49] That's been my experience. Tucker, remember though, like... Genetics, obviously, is not deterministic, right? So there's two other parts of life. Wait, what? You were just telling me it was... It's not determinist. We can get rid of all these diseases, which I'm for. But Tucker, a good example is like lung cancer. You smoke, increase your risk of lung cancer, there's some genetics component, but it can be both. Also increases your enjoyment of life, I just wanna put in a good word for smoking, if I could. Yeah, heart disease as well, right. Obviously there's a family history component to it, but there's also like what you eat, how much you exercise, these things. Um, and so. Under the framework, you think, OK, 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 the reality. Again, I will go back to the spiritual and cultivation of the soul, that cultivation of the soul to eventually hopefully divine virtue union with God. That has to be able to everyone, independent of their biological characteristics. And so I think it's important not to again conflate, optimize your specific outcome. You've made that point and I so appreciate it. But that point is such, that is the point. That is the points.

The point is that the union with God ultimately is, that's 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 going to be like this and this and that, you can't physically, you, you cant, you You can't encode the soul, that's what I'm saying. It doesn't come from biology. We know a lot. So there's stochasticity always is when I'm...

Tucker [01:15:19] Yeah, I mean, but you're arguing the margins. I mean what you're saying is right. It's true. There's no debating what you saying It's fact and I appreciate that you're seeing it Yes, but it's equally true that we are exercising powers that we didn't have until 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't stop it if you weren't doing this and the gene editors weren't doing it. I don't like that more philosophy generally like

Kian Sadeghi [01:15:44] Maybe you're right. But I actually think people way overshoot that. I can't stop it. People way overshoot the idea that, oh, technology is inevitable. Technology is not inevitable. This drives me crazy. People make choices that drive technology forward. Technology does not just happen. It's been, you know, 20 years of really 15 years probably. Since some of these more advanced screenings have existed, but they've never actually been adopted, right? 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.

Tucker [01:16:20] I think you're to an extent right. I mean, this is a whole separate conversation I want to bore our viewers with 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 also true. We are also products at the time in which we live in the systems In which we operate so that's that so those things are equally true Again, 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 overstating their own foresight. About things that no human being can know. Like there's no respect for the limits of the human mind. And suddenly we have these enormous powers that are not actually matched to our wisdom at all. And I just wanna 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?

Kian Sadeghi [01:17:39] Does that bother you? Do you think that's a lesson? Does that tell us anything? Yeah, it is a lesson. We have to be responsible stewards of the technology.

Tucker [01:17:48] And I'm happy punishment for people who like kill millions through their foolish.

Kian Sadeghi [01:17:52] Yeah, I mean, I think the key is that... Again, genetics can program 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 nature, like in the DNA, in the nucleus, that not true. So I wanna be clear that you're not controlling the life outcome of your child. You're not gonna be like, okay, now the child's gonna become Lebron James, and they're gonna be on the star. That will come from the virtue of hard work, et cetera. So genetics is important. Genetics is important, it plays a factor, it plays the role, but I'm not gonna sit here and say, oh, genetics is everything. It's not. It's obviously not. Nobody's making the case that it is. No, but the argument that you can control, parents can control their child's life trajectory, would suggest that genetics is pretty deterministic, but I'm saying it's not but I'm saying it's not.

Tucker [01:18:38] I'm actually making the opposite argument, which is you have no freaking idea what's gonna happen when you tamper with this 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. It's not inevitable, no. 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 who 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?

Kian Sadeghi [01:19:23] 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, right? Like, you know, 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, you Know, hackers and painters, this idea of that that was kind of this like kind of a beautiful early Silicon Valley spirit. There was um There was another case of Steve Jobs, 2005 Stanford commencement address. He ended it by saying, stay hungry, stay foolish, basically 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 hackers and painters to maybe capitalists and politicians or the like. In other words, it's moved into kind of a techno-capitalism, this idea that technology is inevitable. This idea that capitalism is inherently good, like it's inherently good if something grows, and you say that with AI companies all the time, they'll celebrate, oh, we hit a hundred million AR in two days or something, and it fundamentally mistakes speed and the rate at which something grows with value. Cancer grows very quickly. It's horrible. And so I think there's this fundamental idea that, you know, this kind of, oh, grow, grow grow grow, that, inherently, the consequences ... Be damned. Just grow. Growth is inherently good. I think that fundamental philosophy is so bad.

Tucker [01:21:00] Well, it's a self justification, but I wonder where it grows from. I think you described crisply and well, the evolution of the attitudes in Silicon Valley, generally speaking, from, hey, this is going to liberate everybody, it is good, to, hey this hikes GDP and I've got a massive place in Atherton, 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 from one place to another? And here's my thesis in one sentence. Power. When you get a lot of power, you get corrupted. Power corrupts, yeah. So there's no greater power than determining what kind of kids people are gonna have. So like, are you worried at all?

Kian Sadeghi [01:21:46] Again, we don't deter them, we kind of kiss them off. We don't talk to them. Overpopulations, you do. No, we do, because people are making their own choices. We don't make the choice for them. People are making our own choices People could easily make the choices. No, I...

Tucker [01:21:55] We don't we don't and good. I'm just say we're only testing for these three things or whatever you could you design the screen Well, sir, they're for you design. They'll come over to you

Kian Sadeghi [01:22:04] The outcome of a population. No, virtue is not in biology. Okay. So, no, we do not encode populations because human beings can't encode, like, that is God. It makes a mistake assuming it's like we are God, we are not God. We are not going to affect the nature of people.

Tucker [01:22:20] So, that's an inescapable fact, and I think it's important to just, like, wear the mantle. Like, this is what we're doing, we're changing the nature of people, we're going to try to make them better. But nature is a very tricky word. The nature of the people comes from God.

Kian Sadeghi [01:22:33] Genetics. The substance of people, their intelligence, their height, their lifespan. That's a key distinction though because ultimately any human being should want, again, greater spiritual cultivation.

Tucker [01:22:43] 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 we did.

Kian Sadeghi [01:23:04] Definitely this technology, I just want to be very careful with the word nature versus biological characteristics. I agree that we're changing biological characteristics How long people live, 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 going to get a 1570 in their SAT.

Tucker [01:23:22] I agree with you though, in principle. Overpopulations, and we're talking about populations, and you're saying it's, you know, 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 going to take it. And I've already admitted that I would have taken it, because I love my children. It's that simple. So we know this is gonna 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. We're 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.

Kian Sadeghi [01:24:06] We are not God and we can never be God. Good. Well, that's a good start. We are God. We are. Not God. Do you see it as profound? Absolutely. 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 their brain decays and then to never want to have a child. Huntington is really hard. And then to be able to use the technology, the emotion, you know, the miracle that they can have a baby, basically, and that's amazing.

Tucker [01:24:45] It is amazing. But I, with respect, I think having watched, I mean, I was out in Silicon Valley in the nineties covering this and I knew the people. I still know some of them. They were totally fixated on the upside in a good way. They were like, this gives, the encyclopedia Britannica, you probably didn't know what that is, but it's a physical encyclopedia that's set on your shelf and costs like thousands of dollars. That's replaced by this CD-ROM, you know, this collection of ones and zeros. And like, it's incredible, the amount of information, People will be so much better informed! And now you look 30 years later and it's like, definitely upsides to technology, but also downsides. Well, we're susceptible to the same force because we're human. Well, that's exactly the argument I'm making.

Kian Sadeghi [01:25:27] I agree. Yeah, we are sort of the same force. How can we continue to do that spiritual work, because it is spiritual work to cultivate the soul, to make sure we maintain in these values that I've been articulating?

Tucker [01:25:44] I totally agree. So here's my final question. I'll stop torturing you. Okay. I think you've done such a great job actually. Oh, thanks. I'm, it's nothing to do with you. I'm just worried about these things and you're smart. And you've, again, for the third time, thought about them to a surprising degree for a guy who was also trying to like 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, Yeah, 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 spiritual. Some things consistent with virtue. Some things or not. And if we believe in God, we believe God prefers some outcomes over others. God has rules. It's the nature of God. So, will there be? An attempt to say, no, 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.

Kian Sadeghi [01:26:51] No I thought a lot about that. It's very tricky.

Tucker [01:26:54] Just as India did. India said there's a billion people. You can't have that choice. Sorry.

Kian Sadeghi [01:26:57] No, that's a very tricky, it's very tricky and very complicated. I think the key thing that we have to do as a business and the moral line that people can hold us to is nucleus has not, is not, and will never say that one embryo is better than another embryo. We just won't. Because again, we cannot mistake instrumental value 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 cannot exercise, lung cancer. Even for things like schizophrenia, as I mentioned, strong genetic components, but you can take, you know, wheat actually has made people more schizophrenic, for example. So there's environmental component as well, and so I think they have to have the deep Militine saying, there's no better. Maintain that moral philosophy, because that is the foundation of, for me, that's the foundation of what we do.

Tucker [01:27:55] I just can't say it's better to be non-schizophrenic than schizophrenic.

Kian Sadeghi [01:28:00] I don't think it's for me to say though. I also, again, I also don't think though, to be clear, when we use the term better, we start to find moral value. And again, I don't think more value lies in the realm of biological characteristics. I don't think so.

Tucker [01:28:13] So there's no moral guide at all?

Kian Sadeghi [01:28:15] No, that's not true. There's universal morality, which is natural and divine.

Tucker [01:28:18] I can't say that it's better not to have schizophrenia than to have Schizophrenia.

Kian Sadeghi [01:28:22] Well, again, when we say better, I think we're just like defining it differently. I think it's better in the sense that it reduces suffering. Absolutely. Okay, well, then that's your measure, then it's better. Yeah, exactly. But what's your measurement? Exactly. But it's honestly better in terms of their worst person. So this is totally amorous.

Tucker [01:28:33] This is totally immoral. This is literally immoral, it has no reference.

Kian Sadeghi [01:28:35] No, it's not immoral. No, not at all, because everything has a spirit, as I said. Just because there's the physical world and then each thing has a divine spirit to it, right? So each thing has some virtue or opposite of virtue, vice for example, right, 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

Tucker [01:29:01] I don't know, you just said biology has no moral reference because everything has a spirit. I'm just wondering, is there like a line where like, we're not...

Kian Sadeghi [01:29:12] Period because it's wrong. We're not providing an analysis, for example. Like we're not provided in some analysis. That's what you're not going to make certain behavior easier. When you say certain behavior, you mean picking for a specific, like characteristic.

Tucker [01:29:24] I don't know. I mean, I could manufacture fentanyl for a living and say, I'm not forcing people to take it. It's their choice. But I would say I'm manufacturing fentanyol because it's bad. It's just inherently bad. It degrades people and in some cases kills them. So I'm doing that. So I don't know that is it enough to say, let the people decide?

Kian Sadeghi [01:29:42] No, it's not. It's not, you have to be careful, like given IQ analysis, for example, right? We've gone through many, many iterations of that way of doing it and we sort of slow rolled it out. Presumably 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 the SAT score. That's like people's very simplistic model, which is like, right, but so I'm saying that the way we have a responsibility to very carefully communicate that result. So the IVF clinic, the patient, the physician, everyone understands it. And then when I think when people understand it, it takes it from sort of the sensationalist things and just grounds it. Will you shift the moral responsibility from yourself to your customers? No, we're still morally responsible. We ship a product. In what way? I could make a product and say, oh, this embryo is better than this embryal. I mean, that would be principally the most immoral line that we could cross. I could say, for example, this embryos is gonna be super, super, super smart, right? No, were careful in the way we say things. Well, that's just a false claim, right. Yeah, I mean it would be false, but also like people. What's your

Tucker [01:30:40] 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 going to have any role in the moral decision.

Kian Sadeghi [01:30:50] Patients can't so again there's no moral value because that comes from God but patients can decide instrumental value right like going back to the deaf couple the deaf 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 to for some outcome right For example, somebody might want their daughter to be shorter to be a gymnast, for example. Somebody might want her son to be tall to be an NBA player. Someone else might say, I don't care how athletic they are, I want them to be academic and study really hard their entire life. Depending on those 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 get it. So this is what it comes back to. It's like it's up to them, the parents, to decide what is their instrumental value that they map to these phenotypes and to pick. It's up with you whether you want to take fentanyl. And our job too.

Tucker [01:31:43] No, 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, I was so psyched for the iPhone. I was like, I don't need a computer. I can work in my living room. Next thing you know, you can't have a conversation with your wife. Yeah, social media, it's really bad. But it's bad because it's good. Benzodiazepines are great. That's why they're terrible. Does that make sense? I think- Benzodiazepines are like the greatest drug. Have you ever taken a benzodiazepine? I took it one time in high school. One of my, a kid on my hall in boarding school, his dad was a pharmacist and he had Valium, and I was like, I'll take anything. You know, whatever, I was a child, I wasn't an idiot. I take this thing, I'm like, that's the greatest thing I've ever taken. And it was so good, I never took it in because it freaked me out, because there was no downside. Literally all of your like voices in your head, any woman. Listening will know what I'm talking about. Like the things are like, ah, whatever, going on in the background, silenced. Everything's fine. You're not like stoned, 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 drugs, you do cocaine, stay up all night doing cocaine. You suffer the next day. And so there's, it's really clear. This is not good, right? Benzos. And that's why they're the most addictive, most dangerous, most society destroying product that we make. Yeah. Does that make sense? Yeah, that makes sense. The badness is in direct proportion to the promise.

Kian Sadeghi [01:33:22] Goodness. Yes. There is a moral character of the person giving out to that drug. And in social media case too, talking about moral philosophy, optimizing for clicks and dopamine, you end up falling into consequentialist framework, right? Because there's no virtue, you end of falling into consequentialists frameworks and justifies the means to the point that everybody's scrolling and liking and clicking all day. 100%! It's the question that you're asking is how do you... There is this problem of power because power corrupts absolutely. Yeah. Absolutely. There's a promise to 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 your soul and your spirit despite these pressures? What's the answer? Well, one, it's really hard. I imagine and I'm hoping to practice for nucleus and for hopefully this industry, it is praying, it is meditation, it has deep, deep humility with realizing, going back to what I said, There's a raindrop? If you think that the rain drops the entire world, you're thinking about the entire ocean. That's where I come back to.

Tucker [01:34:27] Yeah, well, you have a lot of authority. You have a lotta power for a young man, more than, much more than I ever will. And so, use it wisely. And thank you for your thoughtfulness and your willing to have this conversation. And I'm sure it's been hellish for you, but you've done a great job.

Kian Sadeghi  [01:34:40] Appreciate it. Thanks. 5