4 ms·

> Each individual contribution is so tiny that the effect is lost in noise, even if we sampled all humans. Maybe for some genes, but for thousands of others, t

by ggreer 11y ago

> Each individual contribution is so tiny that the effect is lost in noise, even if we sampled all humans. Maybe for some genes, but for thousands of others, the signal is definitely there. Intelligence is highly heritable –as much as height. Just like height, it's spread across thousands of genes. Yet GWASes have found hundreds (soon to be thousands) of genes for height.[1] If researchers had a quarter of a million pairs of IQs and genomes, they'd find a similar number of genes for cognitive abilities. > If you just optimise[sic] for one trait, the chances you'll even end up with a viable embryo after a dozen iterations are pretty slim. That seems highly unlikely. We've done far worse with domesticated animals and they've been quite viable. Some breeds of dog are predisposed to genetic diseases such as hip dysplasia, but that's because we didn't have the ability to screen for genetic defects. (Or more cynically: breeders cared more about looks than diseases.) When domesticating animals, breeders often found rare traits and exaggerated them. But for human cognitive abilities, the best alleles are already prevalent in the population. It's just that nobody has lucked into all of them at once. And unlike height, there's no square-cube law to disadvantage more cognitive horsepower. > There's a lot of selective pressure on cognitive abilities; so there must be reasons why we aren't smarter than we are. These reasons will probably kill your experimental embryo. Humans have definitely been selected for intelligence, but we were also selected for other things such as famine resistance. The tradeoffs are different today, and we can do a much better job than nature. We can fix a lot of mutation load. Really, we're not nearly as smart as we could be. In the words of Nick Bostrom: > Far from being the smartest possible biological species, we are probably better thought of as the stupidest possible biological species capable of starting a technological civilization—a niche we filled because we got there first, not because we are in any sense optimally adapted to it. 1. http://www.nature.com/ng/journal/v46/n11/full/ng.3097.html http://www.nature.com/ng/journal/v46/n11/full/ng.3097.html

jakobegger 11y ago
The correlations seen in the the genome-wide-association study are impressive, but I don't see how they would help in this case. If you'd use that data for a model, you'd end up with a model that has thousands of parameters, and each of them has a huge margin of error. Using this data, how precise would your model be? Ie. given a genome, how precisely could you estimate height? Concerning your comparison with breeding: you seem to misunderstand me. I don't think that breeding per se doesn't work. Breeding by looking at phenotypes works wonderful. But what you suggest is to just iterate to optimise [according to my spellchecker that is how you spell it] according to a model. You are missing the step where those embryos grow (or fail to grow) into adults. Without this step, your optimisation procedure will drift randomly on every axis that your model doesn't measure.
T-A 11y ago
> unlike height, there's no square-cube law to disadvantage more cognitive horsepower Are you sure? http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20150413-the-downsides-of-being-clever http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20150413-the-downsides-of-be... I have a pet theory that while a modest intelligence advantage is likely to be genuinely beneficial, social animals like humans quickly run into trouble if they stray more than a couple of standard deviations from the average. Imagine living all your life surrounded by idiots (parents, teachers and superiors included), having to explain the stupidest thing in painstaking detail (and regularly being scorned as the one who doesn't get it), and of course having no palatable romantic partners. Down that road lies bitterness, voluntary solitude and maybe substance abuse. Something like http://nautil.us/issue/21/information/the-man-who-tried-to-redeem-the-world-with-logic http://nautil.us/issue/21/information/the-man-who-tried-to-r...
- ChrisGranger 11y ago
  I'd think that as soon as the highly intelligent person becomes more common, that problem will mostly go away. There will be enough geniuses around that they'll be able to form large peer groups in "normal" society, and not just in high-IQ clubs or PhD. circles...
- cperciva 11y ago
  Imagine living all your life surrounded by idiots (parents, teachers and superiors included), having to explain the stupidest thing in painstaking detail (and regularly being scorned as the one who doesn't get it), and of course having no palatable romantic partners. I think this is the most accurate description I've ever seen of my pre-university life.

by ggreer 11y ago

jakobegger 11y ago

The correlations seen in the the genome-wide-association study are impressive, but I don't see how they would help in this case. If you'd use that data for a model, you'd end up with a model that has thousands of parameters, and each of them has a huge margin of error. Using this data, how precise would your model be? Ie. given a genome, how precisely could you estimate height? Concerning your comparison with breeding: you seem to misunderstand me. I don't think that breeding per se doesn't work. Breeding by looking at phenotypes works wonderful. But what you suggest is to just iterate to optimise [according to my spellchecker that is how you spell it] according to a model. You are missing the step where those embryos grow (or fail to grow) into adults. Without this step, your optimisation procedure will drift randomly on every axis that your model doesn't measure.

T-A 11y ago

> unlike height, there's no square-cube law to disadvantage more cognitive horsepower Are you sure? http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20150413-the-downsides-of-being-clever http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20150413-the-downsides-of-be... I have a pet theory that while a modest intelligence advantage is likely to be genuinely beneficial, social animals like humans quickly run into trouble if they stray more than a couple of standard deviations from the average. Imagine living all your life surrounded by idiots (parents, teachers and superiors included), having to explain the stupidest thing in painstaking detail (and regularly being scorned as the one who doesn't get it), and of course having no palatable romantic partners. Down that road lies bitterness, voluntary solitude and maybe substance abuse. Something like http://nautil.us/issue/21/information/the-man-who-tried-to-redeem-the-world-with-logic http://nautil.us/issue/21/information/the-man-who-tried-to-r...

ChrisGranger 11y ago
I'd think that as soon as the highly intelligent person becomes more common, that problem will mostly go away. There will be enough geniuses around that they'll be able to form large peer groups in "normal" society, and not just in high-IQ clubs or PhD. circles...
cperciva 11y ago
Imagine living all your life surrounded by idiots (parents, teachers and superiors included), having to explain the stupidest thing in painstaking detail (and regularly being scorned as the one who doesn't get it), and of course having no palatable romantic partners. I think this is the most accurate description I've ever seen of my pre-university life.