Comment by Moshe_Silnorin | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Moshe_Silnorin | Hacker News Reader

I've been interested in brain training and nootropics for a very long time. The conclusion I've come to is intelligence is pretty much fixed, current psychopharmaceuticals are of very, very, very limited usefulness, and most of the differences in intelligence we see between people are caused by genetic factors not education or rearing. This was immensely disappointing for me - I'd literally give everything I own to be moved up a few standard deviations, but it does seem to be the case. I'll be the first in line for any effective enhancement, but we do not have them now. The most likely approaches for increasing the intelligence of humans are things like embryo selection and genetic engineering of embryos - biotechnology can only do so much after your brain is done growing.

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 disagree. I think many non-genetic factors affect "intelligence", even on a day to day basis. I myself have been able to detect noticeable and substantial variations in my faculties over these time frames. Brain-training exercises might not increase intelligence (I don't know) but there was a period of time when I found them valuable as a evaluation tool- I would do some sudoku puzzles every morning to "test" my myself that day (a very specific and narrow definition of intelligence). Even between days where I didn't feel noticeably different, I would still sometimes see a large difference in average time to solving the puzzles ( ie. as much as ~1min 30sec vs. ~5min! ).

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.

Looks like you've been reading Bostrom. I was actually annoyed about the amount of time he spent on the whole notion of genetically engineering smarter humans. I think his intent was to rigorously prove that even if technology for some reason halted and all progress in machine learning ended along with moore's law we'd still reach super intelligence. From that standpoint I get it as a philosopher to create a bulletproof argument. But I think it's very unlikely that it will happen that way. It's already far more practical to teach Watson to read better than genetically engineer a new Einstein. 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.

Some equate I.Q. to "mutational load", meaning that the correction of factors interfering with genetic health gets you to a point where your I.Q. is maxed, not really anything else.

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.

>The most likely approaches for increasing the intelligence of humans

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.

> 18 years

Why 18 years? You can harvest fertile gametes much earlier than that in an ordinary person. And with some unethical drugs you can reduce that age even more.

Just watch out you don't end up selecting for early maturation :)

> 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.

High IQ's come with large tradeoffs. Foremost among them is a much higher rate of depression. Second among them is a reduction in socialization.

Bear in mind that that each of the "high-IQ-associated genes" (alleles) is responsible for the synthesis of a polypeptide, and that the phenotypes produced by their interactions can be extremely difficult to predict.

I believe the studies you have in mind, one of which appeared on HN last week, find that high IQ is not associated with any small set of highly unusual alleles (i.e. "freak mutations"). This isn't to say that genetically engineering a person to have a high IQ is as simple as "putting as many high-IQ-associated genes into one genome as possible." It could be the case that certain specific interactions between the products of these alleles prove deleterious to the individual with respect to intelligence or other traits.

I agree that some of the sentiment on HN about the mutability of intelligence is wishful thinking, but our understanding of genomics and the genetic component of intelligence is still very much incomplete.

I'm getting this from Hsu. He seems to think this will not be an issue: http://arxiv.org/abs/1408.3421

Why not teach Watson to genetically engineer a new Einstein? Brains might be "slow" compared to modern tech, but they're terrifically more efficient. There may be some use to reverse engineering them yet.

It's funny that embryo selection occurs when you freeze a collection and embryos and pick the ones that survive the thaw. Chinese scientists have done studies on this effect - the resulting children are considered to be extremely healthy, much more than normal.

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.

That is really interesting... got any links to the studies (or articles talking about the studies) you mentioned?

https://quadrant.org.au/magazine/2015/05/eugenics-ready/ In here somewhere IIRC.

Thanks!

I went through weird stages when it comes to intelligence. Too many years thinking I was, then college wiped any sort of past confidence in my abilities, then I finally understood some things very late, still not a genius, but the fact that you can finally reach for new abstract concepts even when you spent 3 years looking at them blind is reassuring. Also underlying health, and lifestyle is of great matter.

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)

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