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Comment by Apocryphon | Hacker News Reader

Going beyond that, is intelligence == good worth debating? To the extent that the increase of mental health issues across the population seems to be happening irrespective of IQ. Or perhaps it isn't- does high IQ correlate with certain mental disorders? And are there other, less quantified measures worth improving for the well-being of society, such as EI.

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Insofar that you think that technological progress and man's expansion into the universe are good things, yes intelligence is good.

But the question is if intelligence is the primary determinant. The current social and political crises affecting society seem to do with emotional issues that may be linked to intelligence but not necessarily driven by (only) it. And the seemingly rapid increase in mental health disorders is concerning. How does intelligence correlate with sanity, one wonders.

Intelligence is the primary determinant in the sense that you need intelligence to make the innovations which drive society forward. But of course, social factors are important and to be such as to allow intelligent people to achieve their potential.

It would seem that whenever you engage in any endeavor that involves more than one person, social intelligence immediately becomes relevant. I'm not at all convinced that the solutions to current problems will be solved by intelligence alone. Social factors, group dynamics, teamwork are all vital. There was no single genius behind the Manhattan Project.

I find them neutral, they are what we make it.

Advancements in technology can be detrimental to the environment, lethal, make us dumber, worsen quality of life in several ways, help control and imprison us, and any combination of the previous.

And "expansion into the universe" means little if it's for some lucky few. Why should the rest care, just because if Earth is whiped out those few get to "continue"?

That's even assuming it's doable without something like generation ships - which even at the solar system level is a big if.

High IQ seems to correlate with bipolar disorder, but that's about it. It's the only negative that correlates with intelligence I know about.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3705611/

There was also this study of Mensa members, but that's probably an extreme outlier group.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S016028961...

Intelligence has trade-offs, costs and other limitations or we would have maxed it out hard (ie. an "intelligence explosion" would have occurred).

Increased mental illness might be one, other one is the brain size being limited by the hips of mother. Brains / intelligence also has energy costs which we might not have been able to optimize for yet.

As such, I would say that intelligence is a cost that you run. It allowed for reproduction and survival for humans when they moved towards colder regions for example, but there's little to no reason to maintain that intelligence if you don't need to adapt anymore. I think you need harsh material constraints (I don't know, space faring) to keep it from shaving itself off in order to optimize the human machine.

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