3 ms·

Just look at high intelligence and its correlation with all sorts of other issues including rare diseases, social issues, mental health issues, etc. It's empty

Just look at high intelligence and its correlation with all sorts of other issues including rare diseases, social issues, mental health issues, etc. It's empty idealism to think that the human condition can be solved through genetic engineering, if anything it can be made quite a bit worse.

tendersej 7y ago
What if a ream of social and mental issues could stem from people of high intelligence feeling alienated due to their being so different from their « standard intelligence level » fellow humans?
- rocqua 7y ago
  That strikes me as wishful thinking by intelligent people who consider the problems they and their surrounds suffer to be unique and blamed on 'the others'.
antepodius 7y ago
And it's empty pessimism to think it couldn't be. High IQs might have deleterious side effects, but even ignoring the possibility of those ever being fixed- given the association of IQ with negative side effects, if I offered you a pill that would give you an IQ of 80, would you take it? If we raised the intelligence of everyone future child that would have had an IQ of 80 or below to 100, would that not be an improvement to the human condition? If we eliminated genetic diseases, would that not be an improvement?
- devoply 7y ago
  IQ allows you to solve problems, in the case of humans mostly for society. If you increase someone's IQ their ability to solve problems is increased, but what is also increased is their ability to see all the problems and their desires increase with their abilities -- hedonistic treadmill. Therefore increasing IQ will have no effect on their perception of the human condition. If you start decreasing IQs and decrease everyone's then similarly it will have no effect on any individual's perception of their condition. Intelligence is the red queen and an arms race, if you start raising anyone's IQ then you will have to raise everyone's IQ. If you do so genetically, then you will be genetically modifying pretty much everyone. Since the technology and its long term implications are not understood at all, it's basically a giant experiment on the whole of human race. Not to mention other unexpected side-effects like the genomics wars from Star Trek where your enhanced people start wanting to rule the world and are cunning enough to do it. Another example if Ozymandias from the Watchmen, imagine someone with that level of intelligence wanting to fix the problems of the world... by any means necessary. You don't know what you are getting yourself into, and optimism won't fix that. And if you go wrong you will probably have a genocide on your hands, either them the genetically enhanced killing you or you killing them. I mean you could create a theory like the Nazis had if you were genetically enhanced people that would be scientifically true. Where does that leave the rest of humanity? No more than Jews to the Nazis. If the Nazis had given Jews a choice to join them and become Nazis by genetically engineering themselves to being the Blue Eyed Aryan race, would that have made Nazism okay?
  - quotemstr 7y ago
    You're forgetting the effect of technology. High IQ invent the means of supporting a lot more people than the Earth otherwise could support and allows them to live longer and in greater comfort than ever before. We might even go to the stars and make trillions of new lives. Think about all of those lives, those experiences, that sum of happy moments: does it all mean nothing to you? Is it not something we should want to make real?

tendersej 7y ago

What if a ream of social and mental issues could stem from people of high intelligence feeling alienated due to their being so different from their « standard intelligence level » fellow humans?

rocqua 7y ago
That strikes me as wishful thinking by intelligent people who consider the problems they and their surrounds suffer to be unique and blamed on 'the others'.

antepodius 7y ago

And it's empty pessimism to think it couldn't be. High IQs might have deleterious side effects, but even ignoring the possibility of those ever being fixed- given the association of IQ with negative side effects, if I offered you a pill that would give you an IQ of 80, would you take it? If we raised the intelligence of everyone future child that would have had an IQ of 80 or below to 100, would that not be an improvement to the human condition? If we eliminated genetic diseases, would that not be an improvement?

devoply 7y ago
IQ allows you to solve problems, in the case of humans mostly for society. If you increase someone's IQ their ability to solve problems is increased, but what is also increased is their ability to see all the problems and their desires increase with their abilities -- hedonistic treadmill. Therefore increasing IQ will have no effect on their perception of the human condition. If you start decreasing IQs and decrease everyone's then similarly it will have no effect on any individual's perception of their condition. Intelligence is the red queen and an arms race, if you start raising anyone's IQ then you will have to raise everyone's IQ. If you do so genetically, then you will be genetically modifying pretty much everyone. Since the technology and its long term implications are not understood at all, it's basically a giant experiment on the whole of human race. Not to mention other unexpected side-effects like the genomics wars from Star Trek where your enhanced people start wanting to rule the world and are cunning enough to do it. Another example if Ozymandias from the Watchmen, imagine someone with that level of intelligence wanting to fix the problems of the world... by any means necessary. You don't know what you are getting yourself into, and optimism won't fix that. And if you go wrong you will probably have a genocide on your hands, either them the genetically enhanced killing you or you killing them. I mean you could create a theory like the Nazis had if you were genetically enhanced people that would be scientifically true. Where does that leave the rest of humanity? No more than Jews to the Nazis. If the Nazis had given Jews a choice to join them and become Nazis by genetically engineering themselves to being the Blue Eyed Aryan race, would that have made Nazism okay?
- quotemstr 7y ago
  You're forgetting the effect of technology. High IQ invent the means of supporting a lot more people than the Earth otherwise could support and allows them to live longer and in greater comfort than ever before. We might even go to the stars and make trillions of new lives. Think about all of those lives, those experiences, that sum of happy moments: does it all mean nothing to you? Is it not something we should want to make real?