Me. In general, the less intelligent people are, the less they contribute to society. I'd rather live in an engineered society with engineered people. The primary problem to solve is discrimination against non-engineered people. That problem was the only reason Gattaca was so dystopian. As long as there are controls in place that make it difficult, it should be possible to move forward with engineering humans in a pr…
The ladies who empty the trash here contribute more to society than I do. I just write throwaway apps for throwaway companies, they actually DO something.
But you can empty the trash and they can't build your apps.
Also, when thinking about creating value, you need to think about scale. They change your trash and are limited by their physical ability and time. Let's say they saved you 4 minutes and changed 400 trashes, saving 399 other people 4 minutes. They've created ~24 hours of value.
If your app helps people save 30 seconds a day and did that for 100k people, then you created about 12 days more value.
Sounds like you're really plugged into this. Is there really a contingent out there that thinks Gattaca[1] is a desirable outcome? Edit; citing the movie as a widely known example of a stratified society with both engineered and non engineered humans. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gattaca
(Gattaca is a fictional movie, not a realistic outcome. What anyone thinks about it is irrelevant because it has not, will not, and could not happen, any more than Brave New World.) As far as making use of these techniques, certainly. Transhumanists, socialists, and 'liberal eugenicists' have always advocated 'seizing the means of reproduction', so to speak, but it's mostly been theoretical; modern behavioral genetic…
(Gattaca is a fictional movie, not a realistic outcome. What anyone thinks about it is irrelevant because it has not, will not, and could not happen, any more than Brave New World.) As far as making use of these techniques, certainly. Transhumanists, socialists, and 'liberal eugenicists' have always advocated 'seizing the means of reproduction', so to speak, but it's mostly been theoretical; modern behavioral genetic…
Why do you say its unrealistic? Eugenics has been seriously considered in the past, and is likely to be seriously considered in the future. If genetic modification and control becomes 'easy' and relatively safe I don't see why those in power wouldn't try to exercise control over that power. In that future its not hard to imagine lawmakers banning having children who would have inherited known genetic 'defects'. Now i…
Gattaca is unrealistic because (aside from being intended as mass-market entertainment rather than a scientific extrapolation) it is simultaneously too aggressive and too conservative: it envisions a world in which instant genome sequencing can be done effectively for free on a global scale (which, as cheap as genome sequencing has become, does not seem likely to ever happen unless non-chemical-based processes are developed) while organizations use solely genetic information far beyond its predictive limits (set by heritability estimates, which are noticeably <100% for traits of interest like intelligence) and ignoring the overriding phenotypic information, but puts this in a setting where there are no genuine consequences to any of this, no genetic engineering, no embryo selection, all of which should make the society unrecognizable. If the Gattacaverse's scientific understanding and control of genetics were really as perfect as portrayed, none of the events would happen in the first place - it is ludicrous to imagine a world of genetically-engineered von Neumanns walking around and still needing human janitors, for example. Its poorly conceived world is mostly there as as simplistic grade-school-level allegory about 'how you shouldn't judge a book by its cover' with a genetics gloss. Which is fine as entertainment, but where we're going looks nothing like Gattaca.
People are afraid of "super intelligent" AI that can make itself smarter taking over the world. Well they didn't count on people becoming "superintelligent", making themselves smarter :)
Not sure how well these Chinese experiments will work out though. For some reason I doubt it will have the amazing effects they intended, at least in the near term.
"Given the Mendelian genetic lottery, the kids produced by any one couple typically differ by 5 to 15 IQ points . So this method of "preimplantation embryo selection" might allow IQ within every Chinese family to increase by 5 to 15 IQ points per generation. After a couple of generations, it would be game over for Western global competitiveness. ...." https://www.edge.org/response-detail/23838
" ... every Chinese family ..."
This is overstated. Plain IVF today in the US costs tens of thousands of dollars. As a result in 2014 it was around 1.5% of births. Some insurance will cover IVF but is more expensive and there are generally caps. Its only accessible to the relatively well off and that's unlikely to change in the short and medium term.
So even if development of embryo selection technology proceeds rapidly it would only be available to the super rich for quite some time.
It's not sufficient, but arguably necessary. There are roughly three things that make you successful: 1. Being smart 2. Working hard 3. Opportunity Everybody can do #2, but most won't. #1 is at least partially genetic. #3 is mostly luck, but is influenced by the other two. In fact all of the factors influence one another to a degree. Being born in an area with good schools and working hard can overcome somewhat defic…
You forgot the 2 that count the most luck and network.
That's opportunity. The network is basically being born into the right circles, which is pretty much entirely luck. A few people do break in through sheer determination and/or a lucky break with some contacts.
It's not sufficient, but arguably necessary. There are roughly three things that make you successful: 1. Being smart 2. Working hard 3. Opportunity Everybody can do #2, but most won't. #1 is at least partially genetic. #3 is mostly luck, but is influenced by the other two. In fact all of the factors influence one another to a degree. Being born in an area with good schools and working hard can overcome somewhat defic…
#2 is also genetic. Stamina and attention span count for a lot.
Me. In general, the less intelligent people are, the less they contribute to society. I'd rather live in an engineered society with engineered people. The primary problem to solve is discrimination against non-engineered people. That problem was the only reason Gattaca was so dystopian. As long as there are controls in place that make it difficult, it should be possible to move forward with engineering humans in a pr…
The ladies who empty the trash here contribute more to society than I do. I just write throwaway apps for throwaway companies, they actually DO something.
If you're getting paid it means what you're doing means something to someone, even if it doesn't mean anything to you.
A dictatorship that wants to shut down criticism but raise IQ ? That seems like contradiction 101.
Not at all. Many of Hitler's associates were remarkably intelligent (IQ scores): 1 Hjalmar Schacht 143 2 Arthur Seyss-Inquart 141 3 Hermann Goering 138 4 Karl Doenitz 138 5 Franz von Papen 134 6 Eric Raeder 134 7 Dr. Hans Frank 130 8 Hans Fritsche 130 9 Baldur von Schirach 130 10 Joachim von Ribbentrop 129 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuremberg_trials#Intelligence_...
this doesn't really mean anything? you would find similarly high iq people around anyone with the power and the money to acquire them.