We are now at the point where we can realistically expect to see interventions that significantly increase human intelligence.
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I should probably address one concern before I go further. Some people might worry that since natural selection optimizes traits, increasing human intelligence would naturally upset some balance, mess up some precise tradeoff, and so such attempts are foredoomed. Forgeddaboutit. The tradeoffs are optimized, all right, but for past environments, not the present. We have a lot more elbow room nowadays; you could say that the trade space is roomier. Certain costs of intelligence that were once crucial are no longer. If a more active brain used up 10% more calories, that’s a sacrifice that most Americans would be willing to make. If higher intelligence requires a larger brain, well, we have C-sections.
I see five feasible approaches: selection, spell-checking the genome, QTLs for intelligence, cloning, and hybrid vigor.
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Having no design innovations, humans enhanced via any of my five preferred approaches would be fully back-compatible. Unions with ordinary humans would be fully
fertile. The children of spell-checked people and normals would have about half the usual amount of genetic load and would still be mighty impressive.
A new cool post on the West Hunters blog.
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