Dr Id, thanks for your input. We have been in the process of creating a master race for a million years. Women select for intelligence as part of the package. That's universal across women. Sexual selection leaves behind the unwanted genes and proliferates those which are desirable.
Of course you are right that there is a LOT more to a human than intelligence, but that doesn't mean it's good to have less intelligence. Intelligence is free, biologically. It's not like a big body which causes problems physiologically. Intelligence is just the form of the neurons and doesn't require a much bigger brain. There are plenty of low decile large brains, so it's not as though a high IQ brain would cause a shortage of blood, or problems with birth or anything like that.
It's like smarter software - it doesn't take up more room on an ASIC or require more electricity. On the contrary. In the brain, smart people show up in scans as just lighting up a couple of parts of their brain when figuring something out, whereas dullards have a red-hot brain firing all over, looking for a solution.
It's easier to do smart than dull. Smart is the natural state.
Why is it scary to have an intelligent race? Most people like intelligence, in themselves and those surrounding them. I could use another 40 points of IQ. Heck, I'd take 1000 if I could get it. They moan when dull people misdiagnose their medical problems or crash the aircraft into a mountain.
Women have been choosing intelligence for eons, so it's obviously in demand. Men don't rate it as highly in women as other features, but it's still a good thing in the male sexual shopping list.
I'm not confusing IQ and psychological development at all. They are separate things but go along with each other. Good insight and judgment and EQ etc etc etc are desirable too.
People spend a lot of time, effort and money trying to make their offspring more intelligent and educated in all sorts of ways. It's much easier just to pull out a better brain.
Average IQs around the world have already increased, "naturally" by about a standard deviation, since 1910, as determined by the Flynn Effect. By clipping smart genes right into the zygote's DNA, it would be easy to zoom intelligence wayyyy up.
It's almost as though you are saying that intelligence is a bad thing. Should women not be allowed to be discriminatory against dullards? I know equal rights are all the rage, but that would be an interesting bit of social engineering.
Mqurice
PS: The USA is doing intelligence selection already, importing thousands of the smartest from around the world. It seems to be working for them. We all do it all the time.
But whatever we do, we won't be able to compete with It, the cyberspace brain which will rule the world. We'll be dopey little IQ 160 nodes in the network, following instructions. Symbiotic for a while, like now, until we have nothing left to offer. Then, like chimps, we'll be simply left behind in the jungle. We 20th century types will be anachronistic remnants of a time gone by.
Those looking for the second coming are unknowingly watching it in the process of construction. It is the metaphysical manifestation of Gaia's goal. God's plan in action! They shouldn't look for a bloke in a beard and dressed in a toga. |
