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To: Crabbe who wrote (3256)	1/12/2006 4:52:29 AM
From: elmatador	Respond to of 219744

You raise some interesting points, Crabbe. Isn't IQ of the mass increasing to reach average? I tend to think that in the past we have had just a few high IQ (still IQ meaning intelligent people as conceived by us here). It was OK and adequate. The vast majority weren't forced to increase IQ. In my profession they were planting poles, and extendind copper wires in between them and bolting down huge electro-mechanical machinery to make a communication system. Once progess increased the possibilities of radiocommunications there was no need for poles and copper wire as before. Lots of low IQ guys who had been ported farm originated fence-building (poles and wires) to urban life, no longer had jobs. To productively work they needed higher IQ, else they could not dominate the new vacuum tube-based technologies. Slowly, force by the requirements of society IQ needed to be higher. As a result -in the last 50 years- the mass that could survive with below average IQ needed higher IQ to be productive. That's what I think is the meaning of the step by step IQ increment. The IQ set developed that we have, result of the last 50 years, is directed -very much focused- to solve today's problems. Obvioulsy possessing this IQ set, that me and you possess, we would starve since we could not fish for protein. Slaughter and fleece a bird or kill and skin animals. My father is 84 years old has all the knowledge to do all that above. result of last century rural life.

To: Crabbe who wrote (3256)	1/12/2006 1:18:04 PM
From: Maurice Winn	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 219744

<assuming that the Flynn effect continues in 200 years everyone will be smarter than the smartest man in the world. an absurd concept.> Not at all. The smartest man in the world is not very bright in absolute terms. He is quite clueless. Compared his memory and recall speed with Google's for example. Compare Kasparov's ability to beat the top chess programmes - he can't unless the machine isn't allowed to do this that and the other. Properly designed machines can obviously clean up the smartest people. Humans are just a kilogram of wet chemistry, with lumberingly slow chemical conductivity processes enabling thinking from sluggish cell to sluggish cell. When photons and electrons and magnetic fields get whizzing along in cyberspace 'thinking', they don't have to wait for molecules to travel a distance and bump into each other. We have an inbuilt handicap which we can't escape. The smartest man in the world is still just a random collection of cranial DNA which is unlikely to be simply the best possible, even if choice is limited to existing DNA sloshing around in the gene pool without additional mutations or genetic engineering. With 6 billion of us, I think there are a lot of genes which combined into one person would give a large increase in brainpower. They are distributed around, with Hawking having some which Einstein didn't have. Get all the good ones, put them all into one head and then we'd really have some thinking going on. A few years ago, I was thinking of doing just that! An intelligence researcher I know would do the work, finding the hot-stuff DNA, then we could set up a McDonald's embryo selection and design business and women could bring in their eggs, and tick off what they want in their little darling. "Would you like IQ170 with that?" Mothers wouldn't say, "No, I'd like a dullard please". They'd be sued by their embittered offspring for a start. Women select what they think is a smart bloke, or as smart as they can get, while having other good stuff too [they don't look for a single variable; a nasty, ugly IQ170 nerd will be left in the computer room with his sadistic self-designed 3D pornography]. Given the effort people and their offspring put into "education", trying to make mush into something comestible, it would be a lot easier and faster and even cheaper, not to mention a lot more fun for the child, to just plug in the "right stuff" so the child could do the study in 2 minutes then go and play all day. If you have ever seen [or done it yourself] youngsters slogging over tough stuff which their brains are simply ill-equipped to process, it's quite sad. They want to be good, but can't. They fail. Failure is bad. Everyone should be able to succeed. But they can't with goop for brains. What's even worse is that parents and teachers put pressure on the poor things, telling them that if only they'd work harder they could do it. The youngster believes these supposedly knowledgeable people only to fail, which doubles their pain. The answer is the Flynn Effect, with genetic engineering turbo-charging to cut to the chase. Everyone smarter than Stephen Hawking and Einstein combined is the way to go. They were dummies. Look at Hawking; still can't figure out black holes and a unified wave function to describe everything properly, even after decades of mucking around with them. It's just a lousy cosmos for God's sake! Mqurice PS: We don't need to discuss women because the smartest woman is not as smart as the smartest man. We are talking genuine brainpower here, not gender neutrality and equal rights. See previous discussions. Of course, after we have finished with genetic tinkering and they don't mature earlier than men, then they might be as smart. People will reach adulthood at age 30 in the new-age humans. Imagine how cool that would be - a huge long childhood instead of the current brief period of joy before adulthood crushes the spirit and imagination.

To: Crabbe who wrote (3256)	1/12/2006 1:47:53 PM
From: Maurice Winn	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 219744

<Where is your evidence that we are particularly smarter than prehistoric man was 100,000 years ago. Could you survive in his world with his tools? Could you have invented control of fire, the spear, perhaps the bow and arrow? > Crab, 100,000 years ago, people were not a lot smarter than chimps, so we only need to draw a line from then to now to get a rough idea of the rate of progress [which might not be a straight line of progress as the world's population has increased over the millennia, giving more opportunities for evolutionary processes to do their work]. My guess is that the rate of progress is greatest now since there are such vast legions of us all trying to mate and joining the Darwin Awards, and that the evolutionary rate has increased steadily from 100,000 years ago. Here's the world's population since 100,000 years ago: faculty.plattsburgh.edu With only 1 million people way back then, evolutionary processes were much slower even though women then would have been having at least 10 children each, if they didn't die young. I think a bunch of smart people from now would easily live way back then. Basic technologies are pretty much instinctive now. Our little grandson, only 6 months old, loves to hold a stick, which he chews on rather than whacking wildebeest, but he's getting the idea. He can throw stuff and that seems quite instinctive too. But at present it's a "don't want" action rather than a "take that" plan. He loves running too, which is obviously useful for catching said wildebeest [though he's not good at running without assistance]. Yes, I think it would be a doddle to wander the landscape with no rush hour, no cubicles, picking up fish and fruit at leisure, with nothing to do all day but mate and dance around a fire. But I'd miss CNN and CDMA and while spear throwing contests would be fun, I quite like golf. "Racial pride"? Comparing oneself to a slug, or chimp, and thinking onself better isn't exactly "pride". Being human, or even biological, is distinctly embarrassing, not prideful. That's why we cover our bums and walk around on our hind legs, pretending that we don't have a digestive tract, and aren't really animals like those other losers who don't bother hiding when they go to the toilet or mate. It's also why we invent supernatural omniscient/omnipotent/omnipresent deities which we pretend are like us and that love us. "Prejudice"? That's means prejudging. It's not prejudging. It's obvious that humans are smarter than chimps. Give one the keys to your car if you doubt that. That's judgment, not prejudgment. Mqurice