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International competition will eventually force the US to change rules like this. When everyone in China lives till 200 years old and they all have IQs of 130+

International competition will eventually force the US to change rules like this. When everyone in China lives till 200 years old and they all have IQs of 130+, the FDA will be pushed aside.

adamc 2y ago
There's an assumption here that such drugs will exist. They might not.
hattmall 2y ago
The entire drug research sphere outside of the US is miniscule. Unless you can sell the drug in the US there's very little point to investing in the large scale research needed to truly determine efficacy. Yeah there's some minimal state sponsored stuff outside of the US. BUt it's like comparing Little League to the MLB.
- pcrh 2y ago
  Where do you get this idea from? More than half of all major drug companies are based in Europe and Asia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_biomedical_companies_by_revenue https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_biomedical_com...
  - adamc 2y ago
    Maybe from the fact that half of all pharmaceutical revenues come from the US (and likely a much higher share of the profits). Single-payer systems are more cost-effective but definitely provide less revenue to pharmaceutical companies.
    - jiggawatts 2y ago
      “We can overcharge patients” in no way leads to the logical conclusion that “more medicine is developed here.” It just means your pharma companies can get away with higher profit margins.
  - hattmall 2y ago
    Ok, I think your list, and the fact that HALF are in 1 Country VS the entire rest of the world qualifies my statement. As well Roche, ASZ, and GSK do the bulk of their research in the US. On top of that the largest outside of the US is China and there is very little trust of data coming from there in the Western World.
com 2y ago
If this great science fiction scenario were to come to pass, I’m pretty confident that it wouldn’t be only the FDA that would be pushed to the side. The impact of a population in an organised, technologically advanced society being one standard deviation of intelligence higher than a strategic rival population … would be immense. Even if just temporarily boosting intelligence, something like a militarised Flowers for Algernon scenario is pretty terrifying.
- jiggawatts 2y ago
  Someone I know pointed out that there’s a feedback effect: groups where everyone is smarter do better not just because of the first order effect but also because they can cooperate better. There’s a roughly quadratic effect on productivity. Mass enhancement of the general population would have far reaching consequences.
- anovikov 2y ago
  Why? It will only result in more and harder dictatorship, more direct terror and fear, and even more unhappy society. Democracy works best when people are easy to manipulate through mass media. Smart people will need to be coerced by force. Maybe in fact, to a degree this is what already happening. Superior education in China makes democratic transition next to impossible. Maybe the observation that countries with the best education tend to be authoritarian is not because "dictators are good at educating people" but other way around - because it's a natural selection and if a highly educated country tries to transition to democracy, it either ruins democracy, or education, or country itself. Any model of governance mainly solves the problem of "how to satisfy interests of the stakeholders - i.e. the elite - without ruining things"; there are many ways to ruin things (even elite itself can bring about it's own downfall), but the one everyone fears most is when people get too angry. Democracy is a good way to shift responsibility back to people itself, thus defusing this threat. But it requires people being sufficiently dumb to bite it.
  - djeastm 2y ago
    >countries with the best education tend to be authoritarian On what basis are you making this claim?
com2kid 2y ago
The Chinese government ran a huge research effort to try and determine the genes for intelligence. From what I understand it was a failure, as the genetic causes of intelligence are too spread out and varied to be easily isolated. I'm pretty sure if the project had succeeded that the Chinese government would have had no moral qualms about gene-engineering a population with an IQ of 130+ and the US would be permanently behind in every field forever after.
- adamc 2y ago
  I think all sorts of assumptions are baked into that statement. Would the CCP even survive if the population IQ was 130+?
  - ClumsyPilot 2y ago
    It would be a worthy ultimate sacrifice
- ClumsyPilot 2y ago
  > Chinese government would have had no moral qualms about gene engineering Anyone cares to shed a tear for IQ 85/90 people that have to navigate increasingly complex world? Look at the amount of legal documents, EULA’s, software, and complex corporate structures that an average Joe has to deal with today vs 50 years ago. How long u till average person can no longer cope?
- nyokodo 2y ago
  > the Chinese government would have had no moral qualms about gene-engineering a population with an IQ of 130+ and the US would be permanently behind in every field forever after. The US is already a key brain-drain destination for Chinese elites, why would that change?

International competition will eventually force the US to change rules like this. When everyone in China lives till 200 years old and they all have IQs of 130+, the FDA will be pushed aside.

adamc 2y ago

There's an assumption here that such drugs will exist. They might not.

hattmall 2y ago

The entire drug research sphere outside of the US is miniscule. Unless you can sell the drug in the US there's very little point to investing in the large scale research needed to truly determine efficacy. Yeah there's some minimal state sponsored stuff outside of the US. BUt it's like comparing Little League to the MLB.

pcrh 2y ago
Where do you get this idea from? More than half of all major drug companies are based in Europe and Asia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_biomedical_companies_by_revenue https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_biomedical_com...
- adamc 2y ago
  Maybe from the fact that half of all pharmaceutical revenues come from the US (and likely a much higher share of the profits). Single-payer systems are more cost-effective but definitely provide less revenue to pharmaceutical companies.
  - jiggawatts 2y ago
    “We can overcharge patients” in no way leads to the logical conclusion that “more medicine is developed here.” It just means your pharma companies can get away with higher profit margins.
- hattmall 2y ago
  Ok, I think your list, and the fact that HALF are in 1 Country VS the entire rest of the world qualifies my statement. As well Roche, ASZ, and GSK do the bulk of their research in the US. On top of that the largest outside of the US is China and there is very little trust of data coming from there in the Western World.

com 2y ago

If this great science fiction scenario were to come to pass, I’m pretty confident that it wouldn’t be only the FDA that would be pushed to the side. The impact of a population in an organised, technologically advanced society being one standard deviation of intelligence higher than a strategic rival population … would be immense. Even if just temporarily boosting intelligence, something like a militarised Flowers for Algernon scenario is pretty terrifying.

jiggawatts 2y ago
Someone I know pointed out that there’s a feedback effect: groups where everyone is smarter do better not just because of the first order effect but also because they can cooperate better. There’s a roughly quadratic effect on productivity. Mass enhancement of the general population would have far reaching consequences.
anovikov 2y ago
Why? It will only result in more and harder dictatorship, more direct terror and fear, and even more unhappy society. Democracy works best when people are easy to manipulate through mass media. Smart people will need to be coerced by force. Maybe in fact, to a degree this is what already happening. Superior education in China makes democratic transition next to impossible. Maybe the observation that countries with the best education tend to be authoritarian is not because "dictators are good at educating people" but other way around - because it's a natural selection and if a highly educated country tries to transition to democracy, it either ruins democracy, or education, or country itself. Any model of governance mainly solves the problem of "how to satisfy interests of the stakeholders - i.e. the elite - without ruining things"; there are many ways to ruin things (even elite itself can bring about it's own downfall), but the one everyone fears most is when people get too angry. Democracy is a good way to shift responsibility back to people itself, thus defusing this threat. But it requires people being sufficiently dumb to bite it.
- djeastm 2y ago
  >countries with the best education tend to be authoritarian On what basis are you making this claim?

com2kid 2y ago

The Chinese government ran a huge research effort to try and determine the genes for intelligence. From what I understand it was a failure, as the genetic causes of intelligence are too spread out and varied to be easily isolated. I'm pretty sure if the project had succeeded that the Chinese government would have had no moral qualms about gene-engineering a population with an IQ of 130+ and the US would be permanently behind in every field forever after.

adamc 2y ago
I think all sorts of assumptions are baked into that statement. Would the CCP even survive if the population IQ was 130+?
- ClumsyPilot 2y ago
  It would be a worthy ultimate sacrifice
ClumsyPilot 2y ago
> Chinese government would have had no moral qualms about gene engineering Anyone cares to shed a tear for IQ 85/90 people that have to navigate increasingly complex world? Look at the amount of legal documents, EULA’s, software, and complex corporate structures that an average Joe has to deal with today vs 50 years ago. How long u till average person can no longer cope?
nyokodo 2y ago
> the Chinese government would have had no moral qualms about gene-engineering a population with an IQ of 130+ and the US would be permanently behind in every field forever after. The US is already a key brain-drain destination for Chinese elites, why would that change?