Iterated embryo selection looks like it will lead to humans smarter than any human who has ever lived - perhaps they will be clever enough to figure out how to upgrade an old fogey like me. As an aside, I'm not sure people understand how ridiculously cheap iterated embryo selection will be provided some very conservative advances in biotech, ethical mores will be unlikely to suppress it - even if international treaties are put in place.
I found the "fast" days where usually better spent focusing on specific, hard problems that had been vexing me, whereas the "slow" days might be better spent multitasking, organizing and communicating with peers to explore new ideas. I never quite pinned down how to influence these variations... though I suspect it was a combination of sleep, stress, caffeine, etc. In the end, I just roll with it. I haven't done the daily testing in a while, but I still try to be hyper-aware of which "mode" I might be in.
I agree, given the gestation time of a human, AI may well come first. Even if we perfected iterated embryo selection today, 18 years is a lot of time and perhaps AI would be developed before the super geniuses reach peak productivity.
>Also I don't think there's an iq 200 set of genes, there's probably trade offs that would prevent this a brain has a given number of neurons and they operate at a slow speed so this is like trying to breed a better horse when cars are obviously on the horizon and will be followed by jets.
Everything I'm reading is saying the genes for IQ, as with most traits, are additive. And it really is as easy as putting as many high-IQ-associated genes into one genome as possible.
I still agree there are tradeoffs but I also doubt that mutational load is ignorable as a major driver of I.Q.; the implication being that if by removing mutation you improve intelligence, the body must be able to support a large I.Q. in the first place.
It's one of those border cases that gets me all giddy. Whatcha gonna do, ethicists; stop storing the embryos completely or find a way to do it without freezing? Present the damaged ones? Etc.
When young you have less thing to worry about, your focus is very high quite often. This goes away past your twenties. Time goes faster and you become a juggler. I recently had health issues, stupid things like crippled blood flow will impair you capacity to warm up and retain data. The brain version of going out of breath because harmed lungs.
Also, vaguely related, taught myself music in an ad-hoc manner, 6 years until I understood harmony, and by understanding I don't mean knowing the so-called theory, I mean 'sensing' harmony like heat or color, it's almost tangible. I can't explain it, but it seems, depending on the brain, that after a while even the subtle and elusive things start to get parsed by your neurons. It just take a while before you have a mapping of it. And it goes in layers, the more years, the more you're able not to care about simple things, say, fundamental harmonics, and can start to tune yourself to subtle data (higher harmonics, "dissonant" tones, modulated and non quantized movements etc)
"Polgár and her two older sisters, Grandmaster Susan and International Master Sofia, were part of an educational experiment carried out by their father László Polgár, in an attempt to prove that children could make exceptional achievements if trained in a specialist subject from a very early age.[11] "Geniuses are made, not born," was László's thesis. He and his wife Klára educated their three daughters at home, with chess as the specialist subject."
Imagine a physicist or mathematician or engineer tutored in their discipline from age five! And imagine if those were as common as the little kids one sees dutifully going to piano practice every afternoon. The world would look very different.
So far it does not appear to be possible to increase intelligence via training. You can increase some proxies for intelligence that way, for example memorization, or puzzle solving.
True intelligence is very hard to define, but I define it as the capacity to reason in a non-linear way. i.e. to reach a conclusion without any obvious steps that took you from a to b.
Also, having been around a lot of 'highly intelligent' people, I have found that many are still not very effective. Most still make bad choices, have poor judgement, adhere to dogma, can't think laterally or fluidly, lack curiosity, lack discipline, lack self-reflection, etc. Is it possible for a 'smart' individual to easily get better at those things?
Yes, these issues have been researched, and are continually being addressed (though one might argue they should be given much more attention than is currently the case). Some examples of causes of decreased intelligence include malnutrition (sometimes caused by parasites), and heavy metal poisoning (often lead and/or arsenic in well-water).[1][2][3]
>Also, having been around a lot of 'highly intelligent' people, I have found that many are still not very effective. Most still make bad choices, have poor judgement, adhere to dogma, can't think laterally or fluidly, lack curiosity, lack discipline, etc. Is it possible for a 'smart' individual to get better at those things?
If you are interested in these issues, I suggest that you read some of Phillip Tetlock's work on judgement and prediction; I have found it tremendously interesting and helpful, though I have often been taken aback when re-examining my own faults through the lens of his work.[4] From what I have read, you are already at a tremendous intellectual advantage, as you are examining meta-cognition issues, which can help you improve your cognition, and understand your limitations.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impact_of_health_on_intelligen...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead_poisoning
I still don't understand why, if everybody in the control group only change around the error ratio and the test group on average advances beyond the error ratio, that doesn't show an improvement. According to the authors what would show an improvement?
[0] they don't say this outright in the paper, but the SAT discussion clearly allude to this form of thinking. They don't even entertain the idea that practice might be the reason for a large increase in a persons SAT score, but rather say, the highest score is representative.
I am no statistician, but I think there is more to the argument than that. My take is that Haier is saying that IQ is not a ratio scale, and you cannot gauge the significance of a result by treating it as if it is.
Nevertheless, I get the impression he is trying to stretch the importance of this observation. He writes 'Nonetheless, the main point is that to make the most compelling argument that intelligence increases after an intervention, a ratio scale of intelligence is required' (my emphasis), which raises the question of whether there is not a not-quite-so-compelling argument to be made without such a metric.
FWIW, I don't have a horse in this race as I am on the fence over whether IQ is as fundamental a measure as its proponents insist.
[1] http://michaelwferguson.blogspot.com/p/the-inappropriately-e...
(I might not have an IQ of 150+, but I can spot the same pattern 30 seconds later.)
(EDIT: Whose methodology passed my cursory inspection but was terrible in a subtle way.)
Which is fair. But "is a myth so far" suggests disproof, not proof that it's not currently true. As they repeatedly show, it would be very difficult for them to prove that, since they'd have to usefully measure delta in intelligence.
The burden of proof should be on anyone who claims to have an intelligence boosting method. The field is littered with hucksters who have claimed to succeeded; this was true in the '60s when Jensen first wrote on it, and it's still true now. It's the cold-fusion of psychology (something which is theoretically possible, would be immensely valuable practically, and has never panned out when examined rigorously).
Anyway, Haier's paper is not intended to be comprehensive, and we can point to some examples of investigating claimed intelligence increases and seeing that they indeed turn in the predicted null effect on intelligence: te Nijenhuis et al 2007, te Nijenhuis et al 2014, etc. See my other comment with link to citations & fulltexts.
That to me alone means by staying healthy we stay more intelligent. ie. Get more sleep.
I think the title is quite misleading.
