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Comment by elihu | Hacker News Reader

> Yuval Noah Harari, an Israeli historian and a professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, outlines how big brains are not necessarily better brains in his book Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind. Our brains use around 25% of the calories we eat a day but account for only 2-3% of our body weight (Harari).

Interesting that our brains are so resource-intensive. It doesn't seem that surprising that natural selection would favor smaller or more efficient brains in many cases.

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This is already playing out at a global level:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S01602...

"There were strong negative correlations found between national IQ and three national indicators of fertility."

I think we should look on with worry that there are people with smaller brains that we are now giving unlimited resources to (food, technology, medicine), via aid and welfare programs. The dysgenic potential is immense.

There are so many problems with this post.

* Implying a connection between IQ and brain size

* Implying IQ is a measure of a person's worth to society

* Implying people below some magic IQ threshold that renders them unworthy are being "given" resources

While the first one is probably really wrong, the other two are clearly fine.

Imagine a unique cat with an IQ of human. Would you say it is more worth to society, than any other cat? Probably so. Is there a magic IQ threshold that renders other cats not as worthy as humans to not be given the same kind of resources? In a way yes, as you would draw a line.

Intelligence is what makes humans humans.

I do love cats, but it's not clear to me what an extremely high IQ cat would be useful for. I suspect it would fall somewhere between lethal and unusually annoying.

A smarter cat plots better ways to murder small animals and calculate more comfortable resting places. Having a smart ones he seemed to be doing all the cat things pretty optimally. For social conflicts him being huge enough that other cats and roaming dogs where scared was a lot more useful. A super high IQ could maybe useful for hunting in dangerous places (it would avoid getting hit by cars and other hazards in cities).

At the very least they should be able to solve Mechanical Turk tasks.

IQ is a culturally-biased measure that, on its best day, is useful for comparing different cohorts and, if it's being used for a good purpose, bridging any gaps. It only measures individual intelligence by a very narrow view of intelligence. There are plenty of high IQ dupes and highly effective people who'd flub an IQ test.

> highly effective people who'd flub an IQ test.

Evidence for this? Effective at what?

> * Implying a connection between IQ and brain size

There is a connection between IQ and brain size. There are a lot of other factors for IQ, but brain size do matter.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7440690/

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