Ordinary Banana

In general new tech goes first to the rich, and then the cost goes down & it becomes more widely available until all can share it. But there is a class of potential tech to which this logic does not apply. Doomsday tech; last period tech; ladder-kicking tech. For example,

Vernor Vinge wrote of "bobbles," military tech that provided such a decisive military advantage the first faction to use it was near guaranteed an eternal chokehold on power. There is a nearer example: genetic engineering for intelligence. If it is possible, and first available

to the rich, and confers a large enough advantage, it seems plausible to me the first generation of adopters (rather, their children) could secure a permanent advantage. New rounds of tech would only heighten the problem, as the first altered generation used the cutting edge

tech on their kids, etc. * * * I see this issue as more serious by many orders of magnitude than AI risk.

morlocks and eloi, etc.

the genetic engineering you're talking about would only accelerate some of the natural consequences of improved nutrition and pediatric medicine (and possibly assortative mating)

it does bring to mind an interesting thought experiment about how much an order of magnitude difference in pace of acceleration would matter though. probably quite a lot.

Yeah. Think of it concretely - say 50,000 people each have at least one kid engineered to have an IQ 6SD higher than von Neumann. The kids form a community. What would they honestly think of we schlubs?