4 ms·
> we can't find any lasting intervention (beyond very early childhood) to improve people's IQ We have, actually! It's just that they've all been implemented al
by laverya 6y ago
> we can't find any lasting intervention (beyond very early childhood) to improve people's IQ
We have, actually! It's just that they've all been implemented already. Iodine supplementation was huge. (Childhood Iodine deficiency results in an adulthood IQ deficit of ~15 points)
The next big IQ improvement looks like it might be iterated embryo selection [0] which is currently possible and will soon be practical, but has a whole host of ethical issues attached to it. (Is it right for the children of the rich to get another advantage like this? (Not a question for the Talebs of the world who think IQ is bunk, but one I'm sure many will be asking) Is throwing away dozens of viable embryos ethical? Are we 'playing god'? And further down the line, is using CRISPR-Cas9 to directly edit the genome of your descendants OK?)
0: https://www.gwern.net/Embryo-selection https://www.gwern.net/Embryo-selection
- lopmotr 6y agoIt gets a bit trivial if you count deficiencies as improving IQ by "correcting" their dose. I would think any simple intervention doesn't really count as improving IQ so much as enabling some latent potential that was already present. We can also ingest less lead or get bashed on the head less, but once everyone's doing that perfectly, we'll still have people with lower IQ that can't be brought up to the level of those with the highest.