11 ms·

Algernon's Law

151 points by kiba 14y ago

ghshephard 14y ago
Excellent article all around - I wish more people wrote this way. The author initially puts forth a thesis, "Any simple major enhancement to human intelligence is a net evolutionary disadvantage." - and then sets forth to both support it, while simultaneously identifying all of the major issues with this concept, the possible loopholes, and touching on all the popular memes that the HN crown will likely want to bring up (modafinil) and examining them through that lense of "If it's so great, why didn't we evolve that direction." The author is opinionated, controversial, entertaining, and educational - with citations to boot.
- Scene_Cast2 14y ago
  Yep - awesome author. I'll definitely be taking a look at some of his other articles. IMHO - the reason for the lack of IQ right now is that evolution is slow. We haven't really needed high IQ (that badly) for more than, say, 500 years - which is a ridiculously small amount of time.
  - tokenadult 14y ago
    I'll definitely be taking a look at some of his other articles. I've noticed his user name here on HN and over on Wikipedia for a while. I was just doing some more browsing around for his writings, prompted by the article submitted here today. I see "My Mistakes" http://www.gwern.net/Mistakes http://www.gwern.net/Mistakes provides a lot of food for thought.
  - Wingman4l7 14y ago
    He's also got the top result from Google (if not the only one) for an actual complete purchase process & site review[1] of The Silk Road[2]. [1]: http://www.gwern.net/Silk%20Road http://www.gwern.net/Silk%20Road [2]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silk_Road_%28marketplace%29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silk_Road_%28marketplace%29
  - Wingman4l7 14y ago
    And he does double-blind medical experiments on himself, complete with statistical analysis of the results! http://www.gwern.net/Zeo http://www.gwern.net/Zeo http://www.gwern.net/Nootropics http://www.gwern.net/Nootropics (uses sparklines!)
APelletier 14y ago
I believe there is far too much emphasis placed on genetic and/or chemical/biological explanations of intelligence. Whether you agree with the sentiment of the linked essay or not, the only real and true control we can ever have over intelligence through genetics/biology is via eugenics. Until such a practice is accepted (and here's hoping it never is) we need to focus on what we can control: Culture. The unfortunate thing is this is difficult to approach from a geuinely scientific/empirical approach. The fortunate thing is that some common sense can go a long way: Feed babies/children well, set the bar high from an early age, start teaching them a second language at an early age, expose them to new and many experiences, etc.
- AngryParsley 14y ago
  >the only real and true control we can ever have over intelligence through genetics/biology is via eugenics. There are plenty of other ways: Drugs[1], surgery, somatic gene therapy, and transcranial direct-current stimulation. All of these technologies offer much greater potential for enhancement than cultural changes. Also, changing culture is hard. Really hard. Creating intelligence-enhancing technologies is probably easier. 1. http://www.gwern.net/Modafinil http://www.gwern.net/Modafinil and http://www.gwern.net/Nicotine http://www.gwern.net/Nicotine are early examples of the potential of pharmaceuticals.
- Ygg2 14y ago
  > the only real and true control we can ever have over intelligence through genetics/biology is via eugenics. For now. In future I do hope there are ways to allow for artificial increase of intelligence via drugs/nano-machines. Eugenics is like the last resort for increasing intelligence (the dirtiest hack imaginable). Mainly because it only works on population and not individual level and it's not immediate. Not to mention breeding for intelligence has other problems as well.
Alex3917 14y ago
"Any simple major enhancement to human intelligence is a net evolutionary disadvantage." An individual who is more intelligent might be less likely to pass on their own genes, but may well make the species as a whole more resilient. Looking at evolution from the perspective of the individual is a mistake.
- pjscott 14y ago
  How would helping "the species as a whole" increase the frequency of that person's genetic traits in the population? It sounds very pretty and virtuous -- get ahead by helping others, hooray -- but the math just doesn't work.
  - karamazov 14y ago
    This could work through group selection - on average, groups containing more intelligent individuals would outcompete groups not containing them. However, this requires a scenario with group competition, and probably also requires substantially more time than individual selection for the dynamic to play out.
  - Alex3917 14y ago
    "How would helping 'the species as a whole' increase the frequency of that person's genetic traits in the population?" I mean that's pretty much just standard evolutionary theory. C.f. sickle cell anemia.
    - pjscott 14y ago
      How so? Having the sickle cell trait (i.e. being heterozygous for the gene which, in homozygous individuals, causes sickle cell anemia) gives an advantage to individual evolutionary fitness in areas where malaria is a big problem. There's no need for group selection arguments to explain the prevalence of that trait.
- monkeypizza 14y ago
  Wow, people really hate group selection! Last thing I saw on it was a blogging heads video [0], which convinced me it's not as dead as I thought it was. [0] http://bloggingheads.tv/videos/2361 http://bloggingheads.tv/videos/2361
rubashov 14y ago
"The Bell Curve" way back in the 90s touched on the many ways substantially above average IQ appears to be maladaptive. You get much more than 1.5 standard deviation for the parents on IQ and infant mortality actually spikes. Also various neuro diseases appear strongly correlated to IQ of the parents, like tay-sachs, for example.
- rdl 14y ago
  Tay Sachs is highly correlated with certain types of Jewish people. The same group is highly above median iq. I don't think smart East Asians populations have higher rates of Tay Sachs. The Cajun and québécois who also have high rates of Tay Sachs are not statistically smarter than median. It is probably more generally that closed mating groups are more likely to amplify traits good and bad.
  - Ygg2 14y ago
    I'd say its other way around. They mate for good traits, but the proximity of their genes leaves them open to vulnerabilities like Tay Sachs. That's my view of it at least.
spindritf 14y ago
Especially the changed trade-offs regarding nutrition are interesting. Right now in the west we can meet pretty much arbitrarily high calorie intake requirements with decent control over its composition but we're still in the energy conserving mode, making us fat and "lazy". Another trade-off completely changed by modern civilization is risk aversion. We can afford much more risk because of modern medicine, because of living in populous, anonymous cities, because of immense wealth to fall back on... And yet it takes a lot of courage for most people to approach and talk to a stranger (an attractive stranger of the opposite sex in particular), fight in a martial arts tournament, or stand out in any significant way (by dressing differently, by speaking loudly). Those who do usually aren't making a calculated decision but are simply unadjusted.
- guard-of-terra 14y ago
  This it true. Humans are optimised to live in environment in which modern humans won't want to live. We want to live in big cities with high tech, medical care, abundant food. Let's make a genome optimized for that!
tokenadult 14y ago
I guess I will have to be the first here to join issue directly with the thesis statement of this interesting article: "The lesson is that Mother Nature know best. Or alternately, TANSTAAFL: 'there ain’t no such thing as a free lunch.' Trade-offs are endemic in evolutionary biology. Often, if you use a drug or surgery to optimize something, you will discover penalties elsewhere. . . . "In 'The Wisdom of Nature: An Evolutionary Heuristic for Human Enhancement' 12 (Human Enhancement 2008), Nick Bostrom and Anders Sandberg put this principle as a question or challenge, 'evolutionary optimality challenge' (EOC): "If the proposed intervention would result in an enhancement, why have we not already evolved to be that way?" The answer to the evolutionary optimality challenge (EOC) comes from any properly taught Biology 101 course: evolution is not a teleological process, and it neither seeks nor is driven by "enhancement," but results in haphazard adaptations of ancestral systems through stochastic survival of genes. I will make the counterclaim here that it is by no means clear (and it is certainly not conclusively shown by any of the examples in the interesting submitted article) that anything that can properly be called "optimizing" of human beings or of humanity as a whole necessarily results in a "penalty." The staggering additions to human well being (and to the number of living Homo sapiens individuals) as a result of cultural innovations around the globe look to be mostly gain with remarkably little pain. I can eat foods that are grown in environments I have never visited, use this Internet device to communicate with all of you, fly to places far away without sprouting wings, and learn the thoughts of deep thinkers who are long dead. The progress of humankind in the last few thousand years has been a story of casting off natural constraints. I may have to use the full Hacker News editing time period for comments to "optimize" this reply some more after I spend some time with my family, so please don't penalize me yet for the brevity of this reply. Before someone builds a chain of conclusions based on a supposed natural law, to reach other conclusions, it is first necessary logically to demonstrate the truth of the claimed natural law. "The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarkes_three_laws http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarkes_three_laws Thanks for bringing up this topic of discussion. First edit: I see another comment mentions group selection. That is not a widely accepted idea (as contrasted with kin selection) in evolutionary theory. See three recent posts (there are more where those came from) from Jerry Coyne's Why Evolution Is True website: 24 June 2102 "The Demise of Group Selection" http://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2012/06/24/the-demise-of-group-selection/ http://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2012/06/24/the-demis... 26 June 2012 "Did human social behavior evolve via group selection? E. O. Wilson defends that view in the NYT" http://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2012/06/26/did-human-social-behavior-evolve-via-group-selection-e-o-wilson-defends-that-view-in-the-nyt/ http://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2012/06/26/did-human... 28 June 2012 "I (and others) comment on Steve Pinker’s discussion of group selection" http://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2012/06/28/i-and-others-comment-on-steve-pinkers-discussion-of-group-selection/ http://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2012/06/28/i-and-oth... Oh, and since we are talking about human intelligence as a big part of the discussion here, I should mention the Wikipedia user bibliography "Intelligence Citations," http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:WeijiBaikeBianji/IntelligenceCitations http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:WeijiBaikeBianji/Intellige... a reference pathfinder that will always need more editing, as there is continually new research on this topic, but which already gathers many of the best monographs on the subject and some good review articles in one place. Second edit: pjscott's thoughtful reply asks, I don't think you've actually disagreed with the article. Did you read the 'Loopholes' section? I've reread the article again, now that you've asked, and I think what I see here is a certain degree of rhetorical incoherence. I wouldn't compose an article this way if I wanted to make a tight argument, but perhaps the author desires to "essay," and try out ideas, and is still making up his own mind. Anyway, based on the author's yeah-buts in some of the examples given after the "Loopholes" section of the article, and on the artitle's title, and on the first wave of comments received here on Hacker News, I have to take a stand and strenuously disagree with the idea that there is any "evolutionary optimality challenge (EOC)" to be met by human beings endeavoring to improve themselves, to improve human society, or to improve the world in general. There is plenty of scope for further optimization of individual human beings and of the human condition.
tikhonj 14y ago
This is slightly off-topic, but I've always been suspicious of the "TANSTAAFL" principle. Maybe reading some books by Heinlein soured me on it :P. (He's normally a great writer, but either I didn't understand To Sail Beyond the Sunset, which is likely, or it wasn't any good, which is unlikely but possible.) Basically, the assumption there is that the current equilibrium is optimal or close to optimal. The problem is that this is often untrue. If I'm being inefficient, there is no reason for an improvement not to be completely free, after all. It also smacks of "conventional wisdom" which is often much more conventional than wise. More pertinently, I think this can apply to evolution. Now, clearly, I am no expert on evolution, so I could be completely off-base. But my understanding is that evolution can get caught in local maxima. That is, there could be some sufficiently remote global maximum in the fitness function that isn't reached because any probable mutation hits a lower value between the current state and this possible maximum. I suppose an example could be about how evolution never came up with the wheel. I think there are cases where wheels would increase fitness, but they are simply too remote from existing organisms to reasonably evolve. If such an effect exists, then some sort of design process could overcome it. In this case, we could strictly improve on evolution. Now, I'm not sure if this is an actual effect, but it seems plausible. If anyone has any actual studies on the subject, I would like to see them.
- Tichy 14y ago
  I think the article mentions "any simple way to enhance IQ" - presumably "simple" meaning that evolution would also have had an easy way to discover that simple way. For example if digesting a substance the body already manufactures enhances intelligence, it seems likely that it would be easy for evolution to make bodies manufacture more of that substance. I think that is especially true since many substances in the brain are really just (exchangeable?) carriers of information (I am not a medic, though).
- andreasvc 14y ago
  This indicates it is actually a theorem (proven in the area of machine learning): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_free_lunch_theorem http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_free_lunch_theorem
Cushman 14y ago
This is an interesting article, but there's something about it that bothers me I'm trying to put my finger on. I think I'm a little wary of using this sort of analytic argument to validate a theory like this ex post facto while ignoring a much simpler theory that trivially explains the same results: Medicine is hard. It has nothing to do with evolution; take an intelligent person with no mechanical experience, tools, or instructions, give them a car which is behaving oddly, and ask them to fix it. It will be a miracle if they manage to properly diagnose and fix the problem without destroying at least a couple of engines. The fundamental rule is "Interfering with a complex system for which you don't have the manual by trial and error is as likely to do harm as good." I guess I don't see why this is treated as an insight into human intelligence. No one with mechanical experience thinks you can make a car go faster by using hotter gasoline. No one with technical experience thinks you can make a computer run faster by boosting the input voltage. For the same reason, no one with medical experience thinks there's a drug that can make you smarter. It just doesn't make sense. But that doesn't mean you can't make a faster car, or computer, or brain, or that it need be terribly difficult. For all of these, the answer lies in structure. And in this respect, brain modification may be the easiest of the three, because modifying brain structure is one of the primary functions of the brain.
- pjscott 14y ago
  > No one with technical experience thinks you can make a computer run faster by boosting the input voltage. Fun fact: some computers actually can be made to run faster by raising the input voltage! The higher voltage decreases the delays of the logic gates, and lets you clock it faster. The big problem is that this also raises the power consumption -- both energy per second and per clock cycle.
  - Cushman 14y ago
    That's a good note, but I did mean the computer's input voltage, not the CPU's. You can increase an individual neuron's firing speed plausibly trivially, but the brain (like the computer) is a complex regulated system that can't be played with that way without causing problems.
vibrunazo 14y ago
> If the proposed intervention would result in an enhancement, why have we not already evolved to be that way? Really? This is getting upvoted here? How disappointing. "Evolution doesn't have a goal, it doesn't make future plans. Evolution is an accident." - Richard Dawkins in The Selfish Gene Did you know giraffes have a nerve connecting the points in it's head that are about 5cm apart? But instead of connecting those 2 points directly, the nerve goes all the way down through the neck, then all the way back up, to connect its end point. Is there any advantage in this design instead of just connecting directly? No there isn't, giraffes are that way only because, historically, that's how they evolved. Evolution doesn't make intelligent plans. Mutation happens randomly, then natural selection will sometimes prune out bad mutations. That's all. Evolution is imperfect. Alluding there's anything intelligent about evolution is alluding to intelligent design and creationism.
- tikhonj 14y ago
  Just to reiterate: upvoting an article does not mean "I agree". It means that it's interesting. If I see a well-written and interesting article that may not be correct, I'm likely to upvote it. Why? Well, I want to read an interesting discussion about it: perhaps its premise is wrong, but I'm not equipped to answer so I want to farm it out to the HN reader base.
  - beernutz 14y ago
    That DOES seem to be the right way to use upvotes. Surface the interesting content for comment and debate.
- pjscott 14y ago
  A few paragraphs down the article is a list of answers to the question you quote, from the same author. It includes this: > There is a discrepancy between the standards by which evolution measured the quality of her work, and the standards that we wish to apply. Even if evolution had managed to build the finest reproduction-and-survival machine imaginable, we may still have reason to change it because what we value is not primarily to be maximally effective inclusive-fitness optimizers. The actual thesis of the article is more interesting than what you seem to have read into it.
Xcelerate 14y ago
The whole premise of his argument is based on the statement "There's no such thing as a free lunch". His logical conclusions are then derived from this. However, he never actually proves the statement, and I for one don't believe it. Why must there necessarily be a tradeoff for anything good? There's no law requiring that, and what makes one person happy may make another person miserable. EDIT: I just realized there's about 15 people on HN that said the same thing. And that's why I visit this place!
Goladus 14y ago
Among other things, the author of the OP does not adequately address the role of environment in survivability, reproductive success, and genetic expression itself. He mentions birth control. Birth control is a valuable adaptation in certain environments, particularly where sex plays an important social role beyond reproduction (see: Bonobos) or where resources are scarce and would be wasted on excess offspring. But obviously, birth control can be severely maladaptive for an individuals genes and populations that overuse it may be at greater risk of extinction than those that don't.
- gwern 14y ago
  All your examples are examples which show that birth control is perfectly doable and easy; hence modern birth control - often no births at all, rather than spacing or infanticide - easily passes under the 'that would not be reproductively fit but we want it anyway' criterion.
phlee 14y ago
IQ != Intelligence, Intelligence doesn't necessarily imply evolutionary success
- Ygg2 14y ago
  Funny, I've always thought that definition of intelligence meant to be able to solve a huge array of various problems. Which should imply evolutionary success in theory. OTOH I can see how it can cripple you (e.g. a 'dumb' car salesman can sell cars for more because he doesn't know if the car is worth less than his offer).
Rhino55 14y ago
1. Eliezer S. Yudkowsky was 17 when he wrote his article. 2. Yudkowsky's article starts off with unfalsifiable nonsense and unwarranted speculation about the future course of evolution. 3. IQ can't be improved? Are you ....... kidding me? Raven's progressive matrices are a book. A book. You practice for 2 hours each year, you're going to get the hang of it. I'm sorry, this is such bs I can't believe anyone other than the most insecure Stanford undergrad would buy into this snake oil.
losethos 14y ago
This guy is a moron! He thinks long life should be an advantage by default. (He says something would have to go wrong or we would live longer.) In fact, rapid generations are optimal for evolution and slowing down generations must be justified. Old people have to pull their weight or evolution will get rid of them!
msellout 14y ago
Pangloss.

151 points by kiba 14y ago

Excellent article all around - I wish more people wrote this way. The author initially puts forth a thesis, "Any simple major enhancement to human intelligence is a net evolutionary disadvantage." - and then sets forth to both support it, while simultaneously identifying all of the major issues with this concept, the possible loopholes, and touching on all the popular memes that the HN crown will likely want to bring up (modafinil) and examining them through that lense of "If it's so great, why didn't we evolve that direction." The author is opinionated, controversial, entertaining, and educational - with citations to boot.

Scene_Cast2 14y ago
Yep - awesome author. I'll definitely be taking a look at some of his other articles. IMHO - the reason for the lack of IQ right now is that evolution is slow. We haven't really needed high IQ (that badly) for more than, say, 500 years - which is a ridiculously small amount of time.
- tokenadult 14y ago
  I'll definitely be taking a look at some of his other articles. I've noticed his user name here on HN and over on Wikipedia for a while. I was just doing some more browsing around for his writings, prompted by the article submitted here today. I see "My Mistakes" http://www.gwern.net/Mistakes http://www.gwern.net/Mistakes provides a lot of food for thought.
- Wingman4l7 14y ago
  He's also got the top result from Google (if not the only one) for an actual complete purchase process & site review[1] of The Silk Road[2]. [1]: http://www.gwern.net/Silk%20Road http://www.gwern.net/Silk%20Road [2]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silk_Road_%28marketplace%29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silk_Road_%28marketplace%29
- Wingman4l7 14y ago
  And he does double-blind medical experiments on himself, complete with statistical analysis of the results! http://www.gwern.net/Zeo http://www.gwern.net/Zeo http://www.gwern.net/Nootropics http://www.gwern.net/Nootropics (uses sparklines!)

APelletier 14y ago

I believe there is far too much emphasis placed on genetic and/or chemical/biological explanations of intelligence. Whether you agree with the sentiment of the linked essay or not, the only real and true control we can ever have over intelligence through genetics/biology is via eugenics. Until such a practice is accepted (and here's hoping it never is) we need to focus on what we can control: Culture. The unfortunate thing is this is difficult to approach from a geuinely scientific/empirical approach. The fortunate thing is that some common sense can go a long way: Feed babies/children well, set the bar high from an early age, start teaching them a second language at an early age, expose them to new and many experiences, etc.

AngryParsley 14y ago
>the only real and true control we can ever have over intelligence through genetics/biology is via eugenics. There are plenty of other ways: Drugs[1], surgery, somatic gene therapy, and transcranial direct-current stimulation. All of these technologies offer much greater potential for enhancement than cultural changes. Also, changing culture is hard. Really hard. Creating intelligence-enhancing technologies is probably easier. 1. http://www.gwern.net/Modafinil http://www.gwern.net/Modafinil and http://www.gwern.net/Nicotine http://www.gwern.net/Nicotine are early examples of the potential of pharmaceuticals.
Ygg2 14y ago
> the only real and true control we can ever have over intelligence through genetics/biology is via eugenics. For now. In future I do hope there are ways to allow for artificial increase of intelligence via drugs/nano-machines. Eugenics is like the last resort for increasing intelligence (the dirtiest hack imaginable). Mainly because it only works on population and not individual level and it's not immediate. Not to mention breeding for intelligence has other problems as well.

Alex3917 14y ago

"Any simple major enhancement to human intelligence is a net evolutionary disadvantage." An individual who is more intelligent might be less likely to pass on their own genes, but may well make the species as a whole more resilient. Looking at evolution from the perspective of the individual is a mistake.

pjscott 14y ago
How would helping "the species as a whole" increase the frequency of that person's genetic traits in the population? It sounds very pretty and virtuous -- get ahead by helping others, hooray -- but the math just doesn't work.
- karamazov 14y ago
  This could work through group selection - on average, groups containing more intelligent individuals would outcompete groups not containing them. However, this requires a scenario with group competition, and probably also requires substantially more time than individual selection for the dynamic to play out.
- Alex3917 14y ago
  "How would helping 'the species as a whole' increase the frequency of that person's genetic traits in the population?" I mean that's pretty much just standard evolutionary theory. C.f. sickle cell anemia.
  - pjscott 14y ago
    How so? Having the sickle cell trait (i.e. being heterozygous for the gene which, in homozygous individuals, causes sickle cell anemia) gives an advantage to individual evolutionary fitness in areas where malaria is a big problem. There's no need for group selection arguments to explain the prevalence of that trait.
monkeypizza 14y ago
Wow, people really hate group selection! Last thing I saw on it was a blogging heads video [0], which convinced me it's not as dead as I thought it was. [0] http://bloggingheads.tv/videos/2361 http://bloggingheads.tv/videos/2361

rubashov 14y ago

"The Bell Curve" way back in the 90s touched on the many ways substantially above average IQ appears to be maladaptive. You get much more than 1.5 standard deviation for the parents on IQ and infant mortality actually spikes. Also various neuro diseases appear strongly correlated to IQ of the parents, like tay-sachs, for example.

rdl 14y ago
Tay Sachs is highly correlated with certain types of Jewish people. The same group is highly above median iq. I don't think smart East Asians populations have higher rates of Tay Sachs. The Cajun and québécois who also have high rates of Tay Sachs are not statistically smarter than median. It is probably more generally that closed mating groups are more likely to amplify traits good and bad.
- Ygg2 14y ago
  I'd say its other way around. They mate for good traits, but the proximity of their genes leaves them open to vulnerabilities like Tay Sachs. That's my view of it at least.

spindritf 14y ago

Especially the changed trade-offs regarding nutrition are interesting. Right now in the west we can meet pretty much arbitrarily high calorie intake requirements with decent control over its composition but we're still in the energy conserving mode, making us fat and "lazy". Another trade-off completely changed by modern civilization is risk aversion. We can afford much more risk because of modern medicine, because of living in populous, anonymous cities, because of immense wealth to fall back on... And yet it takes a lot of courage for most people to approach and talk to a stranger (an attractive stranger of the opposite sex in particular), fight in a martial arts tournament, or stand out in any significant way (by dressing differently, by speaking loudly). Those who do usually aren't making a calculated decision but are simply unadjusted.

guard-of-terra 14y ago
This it true. Humans are optimised to live in environment in which modern humans won't want to live. We want to live in big cities with high tech, medical care, abundant food. Let's make a genome optimized for that!

tokenadult 14y ago

I guess I will have to be the first here to join issue directly with the thesis statement of this interesting article: "The lesson is that Mother Nature know best. Or alternately, TANSTAAFL: 'there ain’t no such thing as a free lunch.' Trade-offs are endemic in evolutionary biology. Often, if you use a drug or surgery to optimize something, you will discover penalties elsewhere. . . . "In 'The Wisdom of Nature: An Evolutionary Heuristic for Human Enhancement' 12 (Human Enhancement 2008), Nick Bostrom and Anders Sandberg put this principle as a question or challenge, 'evolutionary optimality challenge' (EOC): "If the proposed intervention would result in an enhancement, why have we not already evolved to be that way?" The answer to the evolutionary optimality challenge (EOC) comes from any properly taught Biology 101 course: evolution is not a teleological process, and it neither seeks nor is driven by "enhancement," but results in haphazard adaptations of ancestral systems through stochastic survival of genes. I will make the counterclaim here that it is by no means clear (and it is certainly not conclusively shown by any of the examples in the interesting submitted article) that anything that can properly be called "optimizing" of human beings or of humanity as a whole necessarily results in a "penalty." The staggering additions to human well being (and to the number of living Homo sapiens individuals) as a result of cultural innovations around the globe look to be mostly gain with remarkably little pain. I can eat foods that are grown in environments I have never visited, use this Internet device to communicate with all of you, fly to places far away without sprouting wings, and learn the thoughts of deep thinkers who are long dead. The progress of humankind in the last few thousand years has been a story of casting off natural constraints. I may have to use the full Hacker News editing time period for comments to "optimize" this reply some more after I spend some time with my family, so please don't penalize me yet for the brevity of this reply. Before someone builds a chain of conclusions based on a supposed natural law, to reach other conclusions, it is first necessary logically to demonstrate the truth of the claimed natural law. "The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarkes_three_laws http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarkes_three_laws Thanks for bringing up this topic of discussion. First edit: I see another comment mentions group selection. That is not a widely accepted idea (as contrasted with kin selection) in evolutionary theory. See three recent posts (there are more where those came from) from Jerry Coyne's Why Evolution Is True website: 24 June 2102 "The Demise of Group Selection" http://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2012/06/24/the-demise-of-group-selection/ http://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2012/06/24/the-demis... 26 June 2012 "Did human social behavior evolve via group selection? E. O. Wilson defends that view in the NYT" http://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2012/06/26/did-human-social-behavior-evolve-via-group-selection-e-o-wilson-defends-that-view-in-the-nyt/ http://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2012/06/26/did-human... 28 June 2012 "I (and others) comment on Steve Pinker’s discussion of group selection" http://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2012/06/28/i-and-others-comment-on-steve-pinkers-discussion-of-group-selection/ http://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2012/06/28/i-and-oth... Oh, and since we are talking about human intelligence as a big part of the discussion here, I should mention the Wikipedia user bibliography "Intelligence Citations," http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:WeijiBaikeBianji/IntelligenceCitations http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:WeijiBaikeBianji/Intellige... a reference pathfinder that will always need more editing, as there is continually new research on this topic, but which already gathers many of the best monographs on the subject and some good review articles in one place. Second edit: pjscott's thoughtful reply asks, I don't think you've actually disagreed with the article. Did you read the 'Loopholes' section? I've reread the article again, now that you've asked, and I think what I see here is a certain degree of rhetorical incoherence. I wouldn't compose an article this way if I wanted to make a tight argument, but perhaps the author desires to "essay," and try out ideas, and is still making up his own mind. Anyway, based on the author's yeah-buts in some of the examples given after the "Loopholes" section of the article, and on the artitle's title, and on the first wave of comments received here on Hacker News, I have to take a stand and strenuously disagree with the idea that there is any "evolutionary optimality challenge (EOC)" to be met by human beings endeavoring to improve themselves, to improve human society, or to improve the world in general. There is plenty of scope for further optimization of individual human beings and of the human condition.

tikhonj 14y ago

This is slightly off-topic, but I've always been suspicious of the "TANSTAAFL" principle. Maybe reading some books by Heinlein soured me on it :P. (He's normally a great writer, but either I didn't understand To Sail Beyond the Sunset, which is likely, or it wasn't any good, which is unlikely but possible.) Basically, the assumption there is that the current equilibrium is optimal or close to optimal. The problem is that this is often untrue. If I'm being inefficient, there is no reason for an improvement not to be completely free, after all. It also smacks of "conventional wisdom" which is often much more conventional than wise. More pertinently, I think this can apply to evolution. Now, clearly, I am no expert on evolution, so I could be completely off-base. But my understanding is that evolution can get caught in local maxima. That is, there could be some sufficiently remote global maximum in the fitness function that isn't reached because any probable mutation hits a lower value between the current state and this possible maximum. I suppose an example could be about how evolution never came up with the wheel. I think there are cases where wheels would increase fitness, but they are simply too remote from existing organisms to reasonably evolve. If such an effect exists, then some sort of design process could overcome it. In this case, we could strictly improve on evolution. Now, I'm not sure if this is an actual effect, but it seems plausible. If anyone has any actual studies on the subject, I would like to see them.

Tichy 14y ago
I think the article mentions "any simple way to enhance IQ" - presumably "simple" meaning that evolution would also have had an easy way to discover that simple way. For example if digesting a substance the body already manufactures enhances intelligence, it seems likely that it would be easy for evolution to make bodies manufacture more of that substance. I think that is especially true since many substances in the brain are really just (exchangeable?) carriers of information (I am not a medic, though).
andreasvc 14y ago
This indicates it is actually a theorem (proven in the area of machine learning): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_free_lunch_theorem http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_free_lunch_theorem

Cushman 14y ago

This is an interesting article, but there's something about it that bothers me I'm trying to put my finger on. I think I'm a little wary of using this sort of analytic argument to validate a theory like this ex post facto while ignoring a much simpler theory that trivially explains the same results: Medicine is hard. It has nothing to do with evolution; take an intelligent person with no mechanical experience, tools, or instructions, give them a car which is behaving oddly, and ask them to fix it. It will be a miracle if they manage to properly diagnose and fix the problem without destroying at least a couple of engines. The fundamental rule is "Interfering with a complex system for which you don't have the manual by trial and error is as likely to do harm as good." I guess I don't see why this is treated as an insight into human intelligence. No one with mechanical experience thinks you can make a car go faster by using hotter gasoline. No one with technical experience thinks you can make a computer run faster by boosting the input voltage. For the same reason, no one with medical experience thinks there's a drug that can make you smarter. It just doesn't make sense. But that doesn't mean you can't make a faster car, or computer, or brain, or that it need be terribly difficult. For all of these, the answer lies in structure. And in this respect, brain modification may be the easiest of the three, because modifying brain structure is one of the primary functions of the brain.

pjscott 14y ago
> No one with technical experience thinks you can make a computer run faster by boosting the input voltage. Fun fact: some computers actually can be made to run faster by raising the input voltage! The higher voltage decreases the delays of the logic gates, and lets you clock it faster. The big problem is that this also raises the power consumption -- both energy per second and per clock cycle.
- Cushman 14y ago
  That's a good note, but I did mean the computer's input voltage, not the CPU's. You can increase an individual neuron's firing speed plausibly trivially, but the brain (like the computer) is a complex regulated system that can't be played with that way without causing problems.

vibrunazo 14y ago

> If the proposed intervention would result in an enhancement, why have we not already evolved to be that way? Really? This is getting upvoted here? How disappointing. "Evolution doesn't have a goal, it doesn't make future plans. Evolution is an accident." - Richard Dawkins in The Selfish Gene Did you know giraffes have a nerve connecting the points in it's head that are about 5cm apart? But instead of connecting those 2 points directly, the nerve goes all the way down through the neck, then all the way back up, to connect its end point. Is there any advantage in this design instead of just connecting directly? No there isn't, giraffes are that way only because, historically, that's how they evolved. Evolution doesn't make intelligent plans. Mutation happens randomly, then natural selection will sometimes prune out bad mutations. That's all. Evolution is imperfect. Alluding there's anything intelligent about evolution is alluding to intelligent design and creationism.

tikhonj 14y ago
Just to reiterate: upvoting an article does not mean "I agree". It means that it's interesting. If I see a well-written and interesting article that may not be correct, I'm likely to upvote it. Why? Well, I want to read an interesting discussion about it: perhaps its premise is wrong, but I'm not equipped to answer so I want to farm it out to the HN reader base.
- beernutz 14y ago
  That DOES seem to be the right way to use upvotes. Surface the interesting content for comment and debate.
pjscott 14y ago
A few paragraphs down the article is a list of answers to the question you quote, from the same author. It includes this: > There is a discrepancy between the standards by which evolution measured the quality of her work, and the standards that we wish to apply. Even if evolution had managed to build the finest reproduction-and-survival machine imaginable, we may still have reason to change it because what we value is not primarily to be maximally effective inclusive-fitness optimizers. The actual thesis of the article is more interesting than what you seem to have read into it.

Xcelerate 14y ago

The whole premise of his argument is based on the statement "There's no such thing as a free lunch". His logical conclusions are then derived from this. However, he never actually proves the statement, and I for one don't believe it. Why must there necessarily be a tradeoff for anything good? There's no law requiring that, and what makes one person happy may make another person miserable. EDIT: I just realized there's about 15 people on HN that said the same thing. And that's why I visit this place!

Goladus 14y ago

Among other things, the author of the OP does not adequately address the role of environment in survivability, reproductive success, and genetic expression itself. He mentions birth control. Birth control is a valuable adaptation in certain environments, particularly where sex plays an important social role beyond reproduction (see: Bonobos) or where resources are scarce and would be wasted on excess offspring. But obviously, birth control can be severely maladaptive for an individuals genes and populations that overuse it may be at greater risk of extinction than those that don't.

gwern 14y ago
All your examples are examples which show that birth control is perfectly doable and easy; hence modern birth control - often no births at all, rather than spacing or infanticide - easily passes under the 'that would not be reproductively fit but we want it anyway' criterion.

phlee 14y ago

IQ != Intelligence, Intelligence doesn't necessarily imply evolutionary success

Ygg2 14y ago
Funny, I've always thought that definition of intelligence meant to be able to solve a huge array of various problems. Which should imply evolutionary success in theory. OTOH I can see how it can cripple you (e.g. a 'dumb' car salesman can sell cars for more because he doesn't know if the car is worth less than his offer).

Rhino55 14y ago

1. Eliezer S. Yudkowsky was 17 when he wrote his article. 2. Yudkowsky's article starts off with unfalsifiable nonsense and unwarranted speculation about the future course of evolution. 3. IQ can't be improved? Are you ....... kidding me? Raven's progressive matrices are a book. A book. You practice for 2 hours each year, you're going to get the hang of it. I'm sorry, this is such bs I can't believe anyone other than the most insecure Stanford undergrad would buy into this snake oil.

losethos 14y ago

This guy is a moron! He thinks long life should be an advantage by default. (He says something would have to go wrong or we would live longer.) In fact, rapid generations are optimal for evolution and slowing down generations must be justified. Old people have to pull their weight or evolution will get rid of them!

msellout 14y ago

Pangloss.