> Each genetic variant slightly increases or decreases cognitive ability. Because it is determined by many small additive effects, cognitive ability is normally distributed, following the familiar bell-shaped curve, with more people in the middle than in the tails.
How do we know these genes have an additive effect on IQ?
The causal relationship asserted by this quote is very strange. They claim: Because these effects are additive, IQ is normal distributed. What...? IQ is a test. It's normal distributed, like most tests are.
They're referring to the central limit theorem here, I assume[1], which not a bad insight. However it should be obvious that this normal distribution phenomenon arises out of such tests being scored additively from a number of relatively independent questions (whose answers can be thought of as independent random variables of unknown distribution).
In any case, I don't see how they can justify a causal link (in either direction) between some alleged additive effect of genes and the IQ test itself.
Personally, I'm mostly interested in this claim on additive intelligence genes, since I'm not an expert on this. It would be fascinating and exciting if there were additive "intelligence genes". However, as someone working on artificial neural network research as a hobby, I'm highly skeptical of this. It seems much more likely that human intelligence is a delicate balance of many interacting factors relating to the architecture and "algorithms" of the brain.
The question of additivity of genetic effects is discussed in more detail in reference [1] above (sections 3.1 and also 4): http://arxiv.org/pdf/1408.3421v2.pdf
In plant and animal genetics it is well established that the majority of phenotype variance in complex traits which is under genetic control is additive. (Linear models work well in species ranging from corn to cows; cattle breeding is now done using SNP genotypes and linear models to estimate phenotypes.) There are also direct estimates of the additive / non-additive components of variance for human height and IQ, from twin and sibling studies. Again, the conclusion is the majority of variance is due to additive effects.
There is a deep evolutionary reason behind additivity: nonlinear mechanisms are fragile and often "break" due to DNA recombination in sexual reproduction. Effects which are only controlled by a single locus are more robustly passed on to offspring. Fisher's fundamental theorem of natural selection says that the rate of change of fitness is controlled by additive variance in sexually reproducing species under relatively weak selection.
Many people confuse the following statements:
"The brain is complex and nonlinear and many genes interact in its construction and operation."
"Differences in brain performance between two individuals of the same species must be due to nonlinear effects of genes."
The first statement is true, but the second does not appear to be true across a range of species and quantitative traits.
Final technical comment: even the nonlinear part of the genetic architecture can be deduced using advanced methods in high dimensional statistics (see section 4.2 in [1] and also http://arxiv.org/abs/1408.6583).
>> Each genetic variant slightly increases or decreases cognitive ability. Because it is determined by many small additive effects, cognitive ability is normally distributed, following the familiar bell-shaped curve, with more people in the middle than in the tails.
> How do we know these genes have an additive effect on IQ?
I came to post on the same topic. Some gene effects are additive but those are the simple ones and there isn't that many of them. In something complex like a human brain, there are going to be tons of interactions between genes, so that maybe genes A+B makes someone smarter and C+D also make someone smarter, but the combo A+C makes someone actually less smart. The interactions are likely to be insanely complex -- eventually solvable but it will be a while.
To use a computer metaphor, the optimization landscape is not smooth and it doesn't only have a single optimal peak, it is highly complex with lots of local hills (which are caused by the interactions.)
> The breeding of domesticated plants and animals has changed some populations by as much as 30 standard deviations. Broiler chickens, for example, have increased in size more than four times since 1957. A similar approach could be applied to human intelligence, leading to IQs greater than 1,000.
This chicken metaphor is very wrong in that that was achieved via artificial selection, not genetic engineering. Artificial selection can make directed fast movement through an optimization landscape, but it does this without actually trying to figure out the interactions at the gene level, rather it looks as the results and selectively breads for those. When you do this to human it is called eugenics, and, to put it mildly, it likely isn't going to come back into fashion:
One the one hand, I would be deeply stunned if an IQ of 1000 was available just by flipping all the genetic switches to "on". The result of doing such a thing that I would actually expect would be to create a non-viable embryo.
On the other hand, it is undeniable that genetic fiddling will someday be able to raise intelligence, and even if all it could do was reliably produce people of the 150-170 range, it could still radically change the world. And that's merely hypothesizing the reliable production of an effect that already exists and therefore can not be impossible. One can imagine that an IQ 1000 may be simply impossible on anything recognizably like the neural substrate we run on. We don't have enough information to know that right now. But we know we can get 150-170.
I would imagine that there are a number of different ways a particular brain could be more successful than another at performing a particular cognitive task. I do believe you are right in thinking that some of them are better thought of as algorithmic, but some of them are perhaps simple and independent (such as better memory recall). Neither algorithmic structures in the brain nor simple characteristics like recall/speed of language parsing can explain everything if we are to believe that the human brain is as complicated as evidence demonstrates.
It's also a huge mistake to think that this is the ONLY thing those genes do.
It's likely that many of them will increase depression, anxiety, ADD, schizophrenia, drug addiction, etc.
Evolution produces genomes within the constraint of the environment. I'm no luddite, but I'd be pretty concerned with genetic engineering without regard for the environment of the individual.
It actually doesn't matter if some of them cancel each other out. There still is the best combination of them, and statistically it's very likely to be better than anything evolution has come up with. Human population is just not large enough for the evolution to try many combinations.
Interesting article, but I feel it misses the simple fact that any individual with an IQ of 1000 is likely to be "insane" by any modern measure of the world - they certainly wouldn't have a world-view that has much in common with their "fellow men". As it stands, many of those who have exceptionally high IQs or high "intelligence" struggle to exist in a world that isn't geared for them. These "hyper-intelligent" individuals, should they ever exist, would likely be stoned by their fellow men, or would choose to be the other variety of stoned rather than suffer the stupid of the world.
I think this effect is significant even with IQs much lower than "super-intelligence". Socially, people organize into a hierarchy of authority. A significant rule of this structure is that should should never be smarter than your superiors - finding a better solution than your "betters" is akin to showing them to be wrong and is confused with a display of dominance. Persons of inferior social standing but superior intelligence are treated as a threat.
If there was a genetic component to "super-intelligence" then we would observe it. How many of those great minds listed had parents or children that also made the list: zero. Also, would any of these (suspiciously all European) super-geniuses have been as successful if there were born in a small backwater village? There are probably millions of people with Einstein-level intelligence around the world, but living in environments that are hardly conducive to the expression of their genius.
The breakthrough that we need to realize super-intelligence is not Eugenic or academic, it is social. The only way to allow the best minds in the world to blossom in potential is:
1. Grant access to intellectual resources and opportunities to everyone.
2. Stop the authoritarian practice of crushing dissent.
I see many posts here asking about the genetics of intelligence. Here is the best review to date (it is open access) [1]. The authors have been studying the genetics of intelligence for over 30 years. The tl;dr is that we know if no single genetic switch that can increase intelligence, there seem to be many little switches that give rise to the normal IQ distribution.
As I commented on this interesting article when it was a submission to Hacker News, "Robert Plomin and Ian Deary are mainstream researchers on the behavior genetics of human intelligence, the authors of well regarded textbooks (Plomin), popular books (both), and primary research articles (both) on various related topics. Their joint point of view as expressed in the review article published today is not the exact point of view of all researchers in the field, but I thought it would do as a discussion-starter here on Hacker News.
"A crucial detail (Deary and Plomin would both agree about this, but it hasn't come up in the discussion here yet) is that heritablity has NOTHING to do with modifiability. It is quite possible in principle that a novel environmental intervention might be discovered that could boost most people's intelligence. It is even possible that the most effective intervention might have a gene-environment (G × E) interaction such that the intervention would most help people with lowest IQ, and least help people who already have high IQs. No such intervention that human beings can direct purposefully has yet been found, but it is clear from the Flynn effect[1] that something in the environment can have powerful effects in raising average IQ levels of whole countries, as has happened in the developed world throughout the last century (for as long as IQ tests have been around).
"It is correct that people marry and have children on bases other than just shared level of intelligence. (But living in the same town, and completing higher education at similar ages, and pursuing compatible occupations for marriage, etc. is correlated with IQ.) It is still far too early to say how rapidly human populations might see noticeable effects from assortative mating by IQ. It is reasonably clear that often-feared dysenic trends probably are NOT happening--the lowest-IQ people in the world population don't reproduce at all, and high-IQ people actually have reasonable numbers of children to replicate their genes. In any event, the favorable environmental trends have SWAMPED whatever genetic trends are going on for IQ in the whole human population, and people are getting smarter all over the world, according to the research on the Flynn effect.
"It is still a hard problem to identify anything at all meaningful and replicable about how gene differences influence IQ differences, even though it is now settled wisdom that they do. Human IQ, as the article says, is influenced by MANY genes, and many of those genes interact with one another in ways that are not understood at all yet."
Seems we are more likely to move into rather dark conjecture. For some reason, humans seems to be rather convinced of themselves, in spite of there really being no evidence for any kind of justification. We are facing a future that is being wholly underestimated where the USA is ushering in an existence that is dominated by control and oppression and abuse; how can that be any kind of indication that there are, let alone will be super intelligent humans. I think someone has been reading too many scifi novels and listening to bamboozlers.
There is no objective evidence that we are getting any more intelligent than past intellectuals even if we are simply just building on top of previous achievements. Just alone the notion that you would not realize that our "achievement" is just building upon achievements of the past is proof enough that there really has been little to no improvement. Call me when humanity has been able to wrestle itself away from the mental parasite that is religion. Then we can talk about the possibility of super intelligent humans. Let's the get the blatantly obvious mental health issues out of the way first.
Religion a "mental parasite?" I doubt you've known very many intelligent people in your life. I know some very successful, top-of-the-bell-curve people who are religious. Get real.
"I have always thought that von Neumann's brain indicated that he was from another species, an evolution beyond man."
--Nobel laureate Hans E. Bethe
Yet we have no evidence that von Neumann's supergenius intelligence was due to any specific genetic traits that he inherited. And even if some of these could be genetically isolated, we have no basis at this point to believe that any of these (as of yet unspecified) traits can be "engineered", singly or collectively.
The article gets worse from there. Presumably the author is aware of the Fallacy of Linear Extrapolation, yet he boldly goes on to say:
Given that there are many thousands of potential positive variants, the implication is clear: If a human being could be engineered to have the positive version of each causal variant, they might exhibit cognitive ability which is roughly 100 standard deviations above average. This corresponds to more than 1,000 IQ points.
This aside from the fact that no one really what (high) IQ is, or what an IQ of 1,000 points (or even "100 standard deviations above average") could possibly mean (or even be measured).
This is totally false. Intelligence is strongly genetic. Traits are very often genetically additive. Although we won't be certain until do a huge survey of genetics, all the author is saying is that it might be possible. And if it is, then we do have the technology to "engineer" a child with the genes we want.
The article assumes that if 1000 positive gene changes are responsible for increasing intelligence, you'll get 1000 increases of intelligence. It's much, much more likely that a lot of those gene changes overlap, meaning combined changes won't affect the IQ any more than either/or changes would.
> It's much, much more likely that a lot of those gene changes overlap, meaning combined changes won't affect the IQ any more than either/or changes would.
No, it's not. Please see Hsu's extended comments on the topic of interaction and non-additivity at the top of the page, and note the support from twin studies & GCTA. The point of his suggested strategy is that you're targeting the subset of gene changes in total heritability which don't do that.
It's even possible that some are mutually antagonistic/incompatible.
If gene A or gene B increase intelligence, A + B might cancel out or even lower it below baseline. It all depends on what mechanisms are responsible and how the genes alter those.
Possible to check this out. Society is polarizing and smart people are now tending to associate with other smart people to an extent that did not occur earlier. How are their progeny performing?
It's been known since antiquity that sometimes geniuses sire idiots. The hyperfocus on genetics as the source of IQ is probably wrong. Let's remember that we are well educated apes and if not for the education we would still be looking at sticks and flint without realizing their combined value.
>> The hyperfocus on genetics as the source of IQ is probably wrong.
Substantiate this please because just the other day I read "We know from many decades of research in behavioral genetics that about half of the variation across people in IQ is due to genes." [0]
A lot of people want to believe that genetics doesn't play a big part in differentiation between human abilities but as science is not supporting that viewpoint it might be a good time to begin re-educating people on the limits of education.
There's a very large gap between your first two sentences, especially since it's quite common for there to be large variations in intelligence among people raised/educated in similar environments.
The largest impact on our brains isn't our genetics. Our ability to recall information has become moot, I know I personally just store an index of all the information I lean in my brain. Then if I'm like, "Oh, this can be solved with <insert solution>" I just look it up, since I have all the worlds previous knowledge literally a few typed words and 2 - 3 clicks away.
Further, every gene we alter effects other genes, if we alter a large portion to increase our brain capacity we really have no idea what else will be effected.
Worse yet, we really don't have a "good" measurement of IQ to begin with. Is being able to do spacial tasks really intelligence, perhaps we should focus on memorization a bit more... it is really all arbitrary.
The only real genetic benefits to our brain come from improved wiring, i.e. able to complete concurrent tasks, storing memories more efficiently, etc. The only way I see any of this being improved are from significant advances in neuroscience and genetics, and we make the assumption that we can simulate all of this or experiment on humans (pretty large assumption here).
Everything is possible given enough time, but I do not think we are anywhere near close enough to do genetic modifications to improve the brain. Perhaps we could do some bio-machine hybridization, i.e. connect my brain to the internet or something, that's a bit closer, but still 20+ years out (if I had to guess).
FYI, I actually am trying to start a company to gather more accurate information and augment the brain: http://synaptitude.me/
> Further, every gene we alter effects other genes, if we alter a large portion to increase our brain capacity we really have no idea what else will be effected.
I agree completely. There are tons of interactions. It is a incredibly complex process to genetically engineer improved intelligence in any significant fashion.
> Worse yet, we really don't have a "good" measurement of IQ to begin with. Is being able to do spacial tasks really intelligence, perhaps we should focus on memorization a bit more... it is really all arbitrary.
> The only real genetic benefits to our brain come from improved wiring, i.e. able to complete concurrent tasks, storing memories more efficiently, etc
This is pretty simplistic and I think wrong. Our brains wiring is the only real difference between us and monkeys (and every other animal for that matter), but that different "wiring" (more and different structures) makes a massive difference. To dismiss "wiring" differences like this is insane.
> Perhaps we could do some bio-machine hybridization, i.e. connect my brain to the internet or something, that's a bit closer, but still 20+ years out (if I had to guess).
There are a lot of open questions with regards to intelligence manipulation, both scientific and ethical. We're like a child accessing the internet for the first time. We don't know what it is, how it works, and we've been told there are things we should never do.
Genetic engineering of humans is likely to be an extremely powerful tool, and we aren't going to understand it until we start playing around. We've already got some cognitive baselines for other species, perhaps we can start trying to manipulate their intelligence and see what happens.
And we can try to perform 'ethical eugenics' on ourselves. Imagine having 15 or 100 embryos, and picking your favorite. If you only intended on raising 1 child in the first place, I don't see how this is wrong. It's less grey than abortion. Having sets of 'chosen' babies will give us a ton of information about our genetics, even if we don't start manipulating their genes directly.
I'm within a decade of having children, and I really hope that I can 'optimize' at least one of the multiple children I intend to have. I feel like the potential scientific progress is worth the risk.
1. I'm skeptical that we can actually give a sensible definition of “intelligence” / “smartness”.
2. Even if we could do (1), I'm still skeptical we can inflate that intentionally.
3. Even if we can do (2), I'm extremely skeptical the outcome is desirable, for any definition of “desirable”, either from our own point of view or our augmented offspring's.
Other than that, the idea seems like a perfect example of stone-cold megalomania.
See how you might like this definition: intelligence, including artificial intelligence (which just means intelligence resting on non-organic materials), means general and arbitrary analogical ability. I think this definition fits what people mean when they say "general mental ability", which I think is what people mean to measure when they use IQ.
I think this is a really good definition of intelligence for communicating what we want to talk about here. And personally I think it's fine to accept a useful definition, even if it is not perfect, and even if its proliferation means some people get unjustly damaged, insofar that the pragmatism of the construct is adequately useful. From there, you have a community tool that can undergo refinement or challenge.
It seems very plausible that we could raise whatever people are trying to invoke when people say words like "intelligence", IQ, g, or arbitrary analogical ability. I'm surprised you are extremely skeptical that we could desirably raise intelligence. Even a noisy and brutish eugenic pressure in the environment would push a population towards a direction, and I'm convinced that this will happen with or without explicit policy.
If 1000 genes have an impact on intelligence, "activating" them all is likely to result in illness.
We've seen something similar with Schizophrenia - get one related gene variant and you get someone with creative flair or good pattern recognition. Inherit 5 and they become paranoid and hear voices.
"Superintelligence" by Nick Bostrom is well worth the read on this topic. Thanks to Elon Musk for recommending it.
Roughly speaking, Nick suggests that human biology does have a limit, and AI will jump far ahead in the time that it does take to use eugenics to boost human intelligence.
> In the former case, parents choosing between 10 or so zygotes could improve the IQ of their child by 15 or more IQ points.
Well, yes—if you kill the bottom 90-93% of people ranked by intelligence, then the remainder are going to be quite smart.
Of course, that doesn't account for the possibility that there might be other good things about the children the parents never see.
And in fact, if it's true that there's a strong correlation between high intelligence and problems, then such an approach might lead to more problems than it solves.
Artificial selection also appears to work in unusual ways. We don't really understand the mechanics of it. Foxes were selectively bred in several experiments (and for the fur trade) for tameness. Basically breeding only foxes that don't bite or recoil from people.
The breed developed a whole range of dog like characteristic, behavioral and morphological. They whine and bark (which neither wolves or wild foxes do). They develop a diversity of coloration. I've even heard some had cute floppy ears. Obviously there is a corollary to dog evolution, which we don't really understand either.
Selecting for a trait or a family of traits in humans will probably have unexpected side effects.
The chicken analogy doesn't sit right with me because there are far more generations of chickens over a given period of time; and additionally the trait that you want to select for in a chicken is clear. You want the biggest chicken in the least amount of time.
Intelligence is only one trait out of many that you would like to select for. Attractiveness, strength, health, etc. all matter just as much. Balancing competing concerns is harder than just making a fat chicken.
The depth of control over raw genetic material that occurs within each living thing is complex to an order not yet close to a meaningful understanding. Gene methylation alone can render a gene meaningless for you, your children, and theirs.
It is the scope of the remaining unknowns in this field that allow us to project our speculative hopes onto them.
I normally balance on the relatively skeptical side on most things. But topics like this make me giddy.
No doubt consequences and roadblocks will abound. But if superhuman intelligence is coming in some form (and I think it is), I'm excited. Embarrassingly so.
The 'what will happen?' story is hard to pin down. What are the emotional impacts of owning a 100X better than Einstein brain? What are the social impacts? Does collaboration work better? Human intelligence enabled a step change in mammalian collaboration during the paleolithic revolution.
Genetic engineering is not the only potential path either. Technological access to information extends the human cognitive potential. The interface between mind and machine may reach revolutionary points. Our minds have different learning capabilities at 20 days, 20 months or 20 years old. Can that be hacked? Can we have all these capabilities at once, for extended periods?
I stopped reading the article about halfway through, because it didn't seem like anything radically new... but the one comment i'd make is that it's clear a combination of genetics and environmental factors affect intelligence, and frankly both are improving. The article seems to go on about how genes are improving, however the internet is having a pretty significant effect too.
A well built house can be renovated from something that looks terrible, to something people will pay loads of money for. A fully functional brain can be renovated too. People can learn how to think, and while there are parts that are quite degenerate, there are a greater number of parts that help people learn.
[+] [-] electrograv|11 years ago|reply
How do we know these genes have an additive effect on IQ?
The causal relationship asserted by this quote is very strange. They claim: Because these effects are additive, IQ is normal distributed. What...? IQ is a test. It's normal distributed, like most tests are.
They're referring to the central limit theorem here, I assume[1], which not a bad insight. However it should be obvious that this normal distribution phenomenon arises out of such tests being scored additively from a number of relatively independent questions (whose answers can be thought of as independent random variables of unknown distribution).
In any case, I don't see how they can justify a causal link (in either direction) between some alleged additive effect of genes and the IQ test itself.
Personally, I'm mostly interested in this claim on additive intelligence genes, since I'm not an expert on this. It would be fascinating and exciting if there were additive "intelligence genes". However, as someone working on artificial neural network research as a hobby, I'm highly skeptical of this. It seems much more likely that human intelligence is a delicate balance of many interacting factors relating to the architecture and "algorithms" of the brain.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_limit_theorem
[+] [-] stephenhsu|11 years ago|reply
In plant and animal genetics it is well established that the majority of phenotype variance in complex traits which is under genetic control is additive. (Linear models work well in species ranging from corn to cows; cattle breeding is now done using SNP genotypes and linear models to estimate phenotypes.) There are also direct estimates of the additive / non-additive components of variance for human height and IQ, from twin and sibling studies. Again, the conclusion is the majority of variance is due to additive effects.
There is a deep evolutionary reason behind additivity: nonlinear mechanisms are fragile and often "break" due to DNA recombination in sexual reproduction. Effects which are only controlled by a single locus are more robustly passed on to offspring. Fisher's fundamental theorem of natural selection says that the rate of change of fitness is controlled by additive variance in sexually reproducing species under relatively weak selection.
Many people confuse the following statements:
"The brain is complex and nonlinear and many genes interact in its construction and operation."
"Differences in brain performance between two individuals of the same species must be due to nonlinear effects of genes."
The first statement is true, but the second does not appear to be true across a range of species and quantitative traits.
Final technical comment: even the nonlinear part of the genetic architecture can be deduced using advanced methods in high dimensional statistics (see section 4.2 in [1] and also http://arxiv.org/abs/1408.6583).
[+] [-] bhouston|11 years ago|reply
> How do we know these genes have an additive effect on IQ?
I came to post on the same topic. Some gene effects are additive but those are the simple ones and there isn't that many of them. In something complex like a human brain, there are going to be tons of interactions between genes, so that maybe genes A+B makes someone smarter and C+D also make someone smarter, but the combo A+C makes someone actually less smart. The interactions are likely to be insanely complex -- eventually solvable but it will be a while.
To use a computer metaphor, the optimization landscape is not smooth and it doesn't only have a single optimal peak, it is highly complex with lots of local hills (which are caused by the interactions.)
> The breeding of domesticated plants and animals has changed some populations by as much as 30 standard deviations. Broiler chickens, for example, have increased in size more than four times since 1957. A similar approach could be applied to human intelligence, leading to IQs greater than 1,000.
This chicken metaphor is very wrong in that that was achieved via artificial selection, not genetic engineering. Artificial selection can make directed fast movement through an optimization landscape, but it does this without actually trying to figure out the interactions at the gene level, rather it looks as the results and selectively breads for those. When you do this to human it is called eugenics, and, to put it mildly, it likely isn't going to come back into fashion:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugenics
[+] [-] jerf|11 years ago|reply
On the other hand, it is undeniable that genetic fiddling will someday be able to raise intelligence, and even if all it could do was reliably produce people of the 150-170 range, it could still radically change the world. And that's merely hypothesizing the reliable production of an effect that already exists and therefore can not be impossible. One can imagine that an IQ 1000 may be simply impossible on anything recognizably like the neural substrate we run on. We don't have enough information to know that right now. But we know we can get 150-170.
[+] [-] hderms|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chubot|11 years ago|reply
It's likely that many of them will increase depression, anxiety, ADD, schizophrenia, drug addiction, etc.
Evolution produces genomes within the constraint of the environment. I'm no luddite, but I'd be pretty concerned with genetic engineering without regard for the environment of the individual.
[+] [-] nautilus|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Alex3917|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] imaginenore|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] madaxe_again|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] protonfish|11 years ago|reply
If there was a genetic component to "super-intelligence" then we would observe it. How many of those great minds listed had parents or children that also made the list: zero. Also, would any of these (suspiciously all European) super-geniuses have been as successful if there were born in a small backwater village? There are probably millions of people with Einstein-level intelligence around the world, but living in environments that are hardly conducive to the expression of their genius.
The breakthrough that we need to realize super-intelligence is not Eugenic or academic, it is social. The only way to allow the best minds in the world to blossom in potential is:
1. Grant access to intellectual resources and opportunities to everyone.
2. Stop the authoritarian practice of crushing dissent.
[+] [-] aurelian|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] a8da6b0c91d|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hyperion2010|11 years ago|reply
1. http://www.nature.com/mp/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/mp201410...
[+] [-] tokenadult|11 years ago|reply
"A crucial detail (Deary and Plomin would both agree about this, but it hasn't come up in the discussion here yet) is that heritablity has NOTHING to do with modifiability. It is quite possible in principle that a novel environmental intervention might be discovered that could boost most people's intelligence. It is even possible that the most effective intervention might have a gene-environment (G × E) interaction such that the intervention would most help people with lowest IQ, and least help people who already have high IQs. No such intervention that human beings can direct purposefully has yet been found, but it is clear from the Flynn effect[1] that something in the environment can have powerful effects in raising average IQ levels of whole countries, as has happened in the developed world throughout the last century (for as long as IQ tests have been around).
"It is correct that people marry and have children on bases other than just shared level of intelligence. (But living in the same town, and completing higher education at similar ages, and pursuing compatible occupations for marriage, etc. is correlated with IQ.) It is still far too early to say how rapidly human populations might see noticeable effects from assortative mating by IQ. It is reasonably clear that often-feared dysenic trends probably are NOT happening--the lowest-IQ people in the world population don't reproduce at all, and high-IQ people actually have reasonable numbers of children to replicate their genes. In any event, the favorable environmental trends have SWAMPED whatever genetic trends are going on for IQ in the whole human population, and people are getting smarter all over the world, according to the research on the Flynn effect.
"It is still a hard problem to identify anything at all meaningful and replicable about how gene differences influence IQ differences, even though it is now settled wisdom that they do. Human IQ, as the article says, is influenced by MANY genes, and many of those genes interact with one another in ways that are not understood at all yet."
[1] https://www.ted.com/talks/james_flynn_why_our_iq_levels_are_...
http://blog.ted.com/2013/09/26/further-reading-on-the-flynn-...
[+] [-] wahsd|11 years ago|reply
There is no objective evidence that we are getting any more intelligent than past intellectuals even if we are simply just building on top of previous achievements. Just alone the notion that you would not realize that our "achievement" is just building upon achievements of the past is proof enough that there really has been little to no improvement. Call me when humanity has been able to wrestle itself away from the mental parasite that is religion. Then we can talk about the possibility of super intelligent humans. Let's the get the blatantly obvious mental health issues out of the way first.
[+] [-] chadgeidel|11 years ago|reply
Doesn't the Flynn Effect (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_effect) counter that claim?
[+] [-] mo1ok|11 years ago|reply
Also, Flynn effect.
[+] [-] dreamweapon|11 years ago|reply
--Nobel laureate Hans E. Bethe
Yet we have no evidence that von Neumann's supergenius intelligence was due to any specific genetic traits that he inherited. And even if some of these could be genetically isolated, we have no basis at this point to believe that any of these (as of yet unspecified) traits can be "engineered", singly or collectively.
The article gets worse from there. Presumably the author is aware of the Fallacy of Linear Extrapolation, yet he boldly goes on to say:
Given that there are many thousands of potential positive variants, the implication is clear: If a human being could be engineered to have the positive version of each causal variant, they might exhibit cognitive ability which is roughly 100 standard deviations above average. This corresponds to more than 1,000 IQ points.
This aside from the fact that no one really what (high) IQ is, or what an IQ of 1,000 points (or even "100 standard deviations above average") could possibly mean (or even be measured).
[+] [-] Houshalter|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rheide|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gwern|11 years ago|reply
No, it's not. Please see Hsu's extended comments on the topic of interaction and non-additivity at the top of the page, and note the support from twin studies & GCTA. The point of his suggested strategy is that you're targeting the subset of gene changes in total heritability which don't do that.
[+] [-] NoMoreNicksLeft|11 years ago|reply
If gene A or gene B increase intelligence, A + B might cancel out or even lower it below baseline. It all depends on what mechanisms are responsible and how the genes alter those.
[+] [-] vixin|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] McDiesel|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ams6110|11 years ago|reply
Seems a bit less certain than the title.
[+] [-] buraksarica|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Beltiras|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lhnz|11 years ago|reply
Substantiate this please because just the other day I read "We know from many decades of research in behavioral genetics that about half of the variation across people in IQ is due to genes." [0]
A lot of people want to believe that genetics doesn't play a big part in differentiation between human abilities but as science is not supporting that viewpoint it might be a good time to begin re-educating people on the limits of education.
[0] http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/201...
[+] [-] csallen|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Rapzid|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jsilence|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lettergram|11 years ago|reply
Further, every gene we alter effects other genes, if we alter a large portion to increase our brain capacity we really have no idea what else will be effected.
Worse yet, we really don't have a "good" measurement of IQ to begin with. Is being able to do spacial tasks really intelligence, perhaps we should focus on memorization a bit more... it is really all arbitrary.
The only real genetic benefits to our brain come from improved wiring, i.e. able to complete concurrent tasks, storing memories more efficiently, etc. The only way I see any of this being improved are from significant advances in neuroscience and genetics, and we make the assumption that we can simulate all of this or experiment on humans (pretty large assumption here).
Everything is possible given enough time, but I do not think we are anywhere near close enough to do genetic modifications to improve the brain. Perhaps we could do some bio-machine hybridization, i.e. connect my brain to the internet or something, that's a bit closer, but still 20+ years out (if I had to guess).
FYI, I actually am trying to start a company to gather more accurate information and augment the brain: http://synaptitude.me/
[+] [-] bhouston|11 years ago|reply
I agree completely. There are tons of interactions. It is a incredibly complex process to genetically engineer improved intelligence in any significant fashion.
> Worse yet, we really don't have a "good" measurement of IQ to begin with. Is being able to do spacial tasks really intelligence, perhaps we should focus on memorization a bit more... it is really all arbitrary.
I disagree. We have a decent measurement, but we do not have a good understanding of the neurological basis of it all: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G_factor_(psychometrics)
> The only real genetic benefits to our brain come from improved wiring, i.e. able to complete concurrent tasks, storing memories more efficiently, etc
This is pretty simplistic and I think wrong. Our brains wiring is the only real difference between us and monkeys (and every other animal for that matter), but that different "wiring" (more and different structures) makes a massive difference. To dismiss "wiring" differences like this is insane.
> Perhaps we could do some bio-machine hybridization, i.e. connect my brain to the internet or something, that's a bit closer, but still 20+ years out (if I had to guess).
Sounds like an https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exocortex
[+] [-] Taek|11 years ago|reply
Genetic engineering of humans is likely to be an extremely powerful tool, and we aren't going to understand it until we start playing around. We've already got some cognitive baselines for other species, perhaps we can start trying to manipulate their intelligence and see what happens.
And we can try to perform 'ethical eugenics' on ourselves. Imagine having 15 or 100 embryos, and picking your favorite. If you only intended on raising 1 child in the first place, I don't see how this is wrong. It's less grey than abortion. Having sets of 'chosen' babies will give us a ton of information about our genetics, even if we don't start manipulating their genes directly.
I'm within a decade of having children, and I really hope that I can 'optimize' at least one of the multiple children I intend to have. I feel like the potential scientific progress is worth the risk.
[+] [-] tempodox|11 years ago|reply
2. Even if we could do (1), I'm still skeptical we can inflate that intentionally.
3. Even if we can do (2), I'm extremely skeptical the outcome is desirable, for any definition of “desirable”, either from our own point of view or our augmented offspring's.
Other than that, the idea seems like a perfect example of stone-cold megalomania.
[+] [-] LLWM|11 years ago|reply
Even if you did, I'm skeptical that you understood it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G_factor_(psychometrics)
[+] [-] threatofrain|11 years ago|reply
I think this is a really good definition of intelligence for communicating what we want to talk about here. And personally I think it's fine to accept a useful definition, even if it is not perfect, and even if its proliferation means some people get unjustly damaged, insofar that the pragmatism of the construct is adequately useful. From there, you have a community tool that can undergo refinement or challenge.
It seems very plausible that we could raise whatever people are trying to invoke when people say words like "intelligence", IQ, g, or arbitrary analogical ability. I'm surprised you are extremely skeptical that we could desirably raise intelligence. Even a noisy and brutish eugenic pressure in the environment would push a population towards a direction, and I'm convinced that this will happen with or without explicit policy.
[+] [-] bencollier49|11 years ago|reply
We've seen something similar with Schizophrenia - get one related gene variant and you get someone with creative flair or good pattern recognition. Inherit 5 and they become paranoid and hear voices.
[+] [-] AJ007|11 years ago|reply
Roughly speaking, Nick suggests that human biology does have a limit, and AI will jump far ahead in the time that it does take to use eugenics to boost human intelligence.
[+] [-] wtbob|11 years ago|reply
Well, yes—if you kill the bottom 90-93% of people ranked by intelligence, then the remainder are going to be quite smart.
Of course, that doesn't account for the possibility that there might be other good things about the children the parents never see.
And in fact, if it's true that there's a strong correlation between high intelligence and problems, then such an approach might lead to more problems than it solves.
[+] [-] netcan|11 years ago|reply
The breed developed a whole range of dog like characteristic, behavioral and morphological. They whine and bark (which neither wolves or wild foxes do). They develop a diversity of coloration. I've even heard some had cute floppy ears. Obviously there is a corollary to dog evolution, which we don't really understand either.
Selecting for a trait or a family of traits in humans will probably have unexpected side effects.
[+] [-] cpwright|11 years ago|reply
Intelligence is only one trait out of many that you would like to select for. Attractiveness, strength, health, etc. all matter just as much. Balancing competing concerns is harder than just making a fat chicken.
[+] [-] kingkawn|11 years ago|reply
It is the scope of the remaining unknowns in this field that allow us to project our speculative hopes onto them.
[+] [-] netcan|11 years ago|reply
No doubt consequences and roadblocks will abound. But if superhuman intelligence is coming in some form (and I think it is), I'm excited. Embarrassingly so.
The 'what will happen?' story is hard to pin down. What are the emotional impacts of owning a 100X better than Einstein brain? What are the social impacts? Does collaboration work better? Human intelligence enabled a step change in mammalian collaboration during the paleolithic revolution.
Genetic engineering is not the only potential path either. Technological access to information extends the human cognitive potential. The interface between mind and machine may reach revolutionary points. Our minds have different learning capabilities at 20 days, 20 months or 20 years old. Can that be hacked? Can we have all these capabilities at once, for extended periods?
Like I said, giddy.
[+] [-] Morgawr|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] swalsh|11 years ago|reply
A well built house can be renovated from something that looks terrible, to something people will pay loads of money for. A fully functional brain can be renovated too. People can learn how to think, and while there are parts that are quite degenerate, there are a greater number of parts that help people learn.