100 IQ average humans have attempted to wipe out 60 IQ average humans. There were programs for mandatory or financially incentivized sterilization of people with down syndrome and other mental disabilities in many western countries, including their mass murder in the holocaust.
As for >140 IQ average humans, remember that these make up little more than 3% of the population of every country. It would be very unstrategic for them to talk about the rest of humanity in an openly antagonistic way. Instead, if they wanted to win eugenics, they would have to make false promises to bring the rest of humanity along while they amass power.
And this still begs the question that those with the money and power to do this would be trying to do eugenics in a way you consider to be right. That they wouldn’t outgroup people or aspects of humanity that you care about. That the new subpopulation’s memes would be aligned with the rest of humanity.
60 IQ humans are defective, generally incapable of taking care of themselves, are unproductive and without a lot of effort by others have bad lives.
Of course we’d rather new humans be 100 IQ rather than 60 IQ. Even so, it’s generally accepted that killing them, forcefully sterilizing (at least those who are aware) is immoral. Which means that despite incentives the majority population treats them as members of the same race and morally relevant.
(Contrast with current humanity—people are useful and can produce more than they eat, so there’s no incentive to get rid of them. Further, you only need more selection for improvement, no sterilization necessary)
This new subpopulation would be much smaller than the 140+IQ group (I doubt we’re getting 2 million 200IQ+ people very quickly), and also 140IQ people aren’t interested in killing off everyone else...
If this new population wants to agitate for making new humans with high IQs I don’t see that as a threat.
Eugenics for memes seems closer to sci-fi right now and unless done really stupidly seems irrelevant
60 IQ humans are defective, generally incapable of taking care of themselves, are unproductive and without a lot of effort by others have bad lives.
I’m confused.
I would expect you to already know that chimpanzees have an IQ lower than 60 and are capable of taking care of themselves and having a decent life. And I would expect you to have come across examples of people with mental disabilities living independent lives or programs helping them do so.
Sure, many might not be capable of doing labor that has sufficient street value in our current economy that they can pay for their own sustenance using the sale of their labor, but that is the same fate that would befall all humans if we manage to build a friendly AGI.
I would expect you to already know that chimpanzees have an IQ lower than 60 and are capable of taking care of themselves and having a decent life
You are comparing apples and oranges in a bait-and-switch. No one knows that, nor should you expect them to, because it is blatantly false. Chimpanzees are not Curious George or noble savages: they are large animals. Chimpanzees are capable of ‘taking care of themselves and having a decent life’ only to the standards and the very narrow, limited context of a chimpanzee (in a zoo, or perhaps a forest, strictly protected by rangers from the rest of the world so they stop going extinct so fast). That is not the standards and context of a 60 IQ human… unless you are suggesting, of course, that we lock up all such humans in a zoo or exile them to a park in central Africa where they will go about nude, eat raw food, have a large fraction of their children (if any) die, be devoid of anything recognizable as culture or most of the things we consider that make a human life worth living, and probably die themselves in a decade or two of preventable diseases or being murdered by a fellow primate (perhaps, as Frans de Waal memorably described one chimpanzee interaction, by having their testicles bitten off in a dominance struggle)? Not what I would consider a decent human life, personally.
In reality, if you put a chimpanzee in the human context of people and expect them to ‘take care of themselves’, they will not be able to, because they would be unemployed, unemployable, completely fail at basic standards of human life, starving, homeless, less able to be reasoned with or communicated with than someone in a schizophrenic psychotic break, and probably in jail or shot by police within the year after mauling or killing another human. This is why chimpanzee refuges have to put muzzles on chimps when interacting with humans, sedate them for flights to said refuges, and even chimpanzees raised from birth with humans and given every advantage we know how have a rather alarming rate of eating the faces of caregivers or just random strangers (a rate that would be even higher if more people were foolish enough to attempt such a thing or to persist after initial warning shots of face-eating behavior rather than dumping them on refuges equipped to handle such dangerous animals), eg Project Nim.
Not what I would consider a decent human life, personally
Only looking at the worst parts of life in the lowest possible bar for how we could reasonably treat people on the most unfavorable edge of a widely cast net of what someone with 60 IQ is like is not really a good standard for determining who lives a decent life. But yes, I do consider chimpanzees to have a decent enough life as is.
But I think that you’re losing sight of my point that these arguments have all served to commit mass murder on people with much lower mental abilities than the average human. When the average human with a say in these matters changes, they could bring the same argument to bear against including 100 IQ humans.
Because there are plenty of examples of 100 IQ humans treating each other horribly because they’re idiots. There are 100 IQ people that have cut other people’s genitals off, thrown acid in thier faces, disfigured or tortured them, ones that have intentionally reduced their lifespans by decades through stupidity, ones that can’t keep themselves standing because they specialized into a job that is now automated, etc. Without 120 IQ humans propping them up they would probably not have the technology to prevent the way they raise their children to be a human rights violation.
But I think that you’re losing sight of my point that these arguments have all served to commit mass murder on people with much lower mental abilities than the average human.
If this is the “point,” then your comment reduces to an invalid appeal-to-consequences argument. The fact that some people use an argument for morally evil purposes tells us nothing about the logical validity of that argument. After all, Evil can make use of truth (sometimes selectively) just as easily as Good can; we don’t live in a fairy tale where trade-offs between Good and Truth are inexistent. The asymmetry is between Truth and Falsehood, not between Good and Evil.
As far as I can tell, gwern’s point is entirely correct, completely invalidates your entire previous comment (“I would expect you to already know that chimpanzees have an IQ lower than 60 and are capable of taking care of themselves and having a decent life.”), and you did not address it at all in your follow-up.
And as Gwern said, the claim that chimpanzees can make a good life for themselves in their societies despite their lack of intelligence has huge asterisk marks at best, and at worst isn’t actually true:
100 IQ average humans have attempted to wipe out 60 IQ average humans. There were programs for mandatory or financially incentivized sterilization of people with down syndrome and other mental disabilities in many western countries, including their mass murder in the holocaust.
As for >140 IQ average humans, remember that these make up little more than 3% of the population of every country. It would be very unstrategic for them to talk about the rest of humanity in an openly antagonistic way. Instead, if they wanted to win eugenics, they would have to make false promises to bring the rest of humanity along while they amass power.
And this still begs the question that those with the money and power to do this would be trying to do eugenics in a way you consider to be right. That they wouldn’t outgroup people or aspects of humanity that you care about. That the new subpopulation’s memes would be aligned with the rest of humanity.
Not sure why the holocaust is relevant.
60 IQ humans are defective, generally incapable of taking care of themselves, are unproductive and without a lot of effort by others have bad lives.
Of course we’d rather new humans be 100 IQ rather than 60 IQ. Even so, it’s generally accepted that killing them, forcefully sterilizing (at least those who are aware) is immoral. Which means that despite incentives the majority population treats them as members of the same race and morally relevant.
(Contrast with current humanity—people are useful and can produce more than they eat, so there’s no incentive to get rid of them. Further, you only need more selection for improvement, no sterilization necessary)
This new subpopulation would be much smaller than the 140+IQ group (I doubt we’re getting 2 million 200IQ+ people very quickly), and also 140IQ people aren’t interested in killing off everyone else...
If this new population wants to agitate for making new humans with high IQs I don’t see that as a threat.
Eugenics for memes seems closer to sci-fi right now and unless done really stupidly seems irrelevant
I’m confused.
I would expect you to already know that chimpanzees have an IQ lower than 60 and are capable of taking care of themselves and having a decent life. And I would expect you to have come across examples of people with mental disabilities living independent lives or programs helping them do so.
Sure, many might not be capable of doing labor that has sufficient street value in our current economy that they can pay for their own sustenance using the sale of their labor, but that is the same fate that would befall all humans if we manage to build a friendly AGI.
You are comparing apples and oranges in a bait-and-switch. No one knows that, nor should you expect them to, because it is blatantly false. Chimpanzees are not Curious George or noble savages: they are large animals. Chimpanzees are capable of ‘taking care of themselves and having a decent life’ only to the standards and the very narrow, limited context of a chimpanzee (in a zoo, or perhaps a forest, strictly protected by rangers from the rest of the world so they stop going extinct so fast). That is not the standards and context of a 60 IQ human… unless you are suggesting, of course, that we lock up all such humans in a zoo or exile them to a park in central Africa where they will go about nude, eat raw food, have a large fraction of their children (if any) die, be devoid of anything recognizable as culture or most of the things we consider that make a human life worth living, and probably die themselves in a decade or two of preventable diseases or being murdered by a fellow primate (perhaps, as Frans de Waal memorably described one chimpanzee interaction, by having their testicles bitten off in a dominance struggle)? Not what I would consider a decent human life, personally.
In reality, if you put a chimpanzee in the human context of people and expect them to ‘take care of themselves’, they will not be able to, because they would be unemployed, unemployable, completely fail at basic standards of human life, starving, homeless, less able to be reasoned with or communicated with than someone in a schizophrenic psychotic break, and probably in jail or shot by police within the year after mauling or killing another human. This is why chimpanzee refuges have to put muzzles on chimps when interacting with humans, sedate them for flights to said refuges, and even chimpanzees raised from birth with humans and given every advantage we know how have a rather alarming rate of eating the faces of caregivers or just random strangers (a rate that would be even higher if more people were foolish enough to attempt such a thing or to persist after initial warning shots of face-eating behavior rather than dumping them on refuges equipped to handle such dangerous animals), eg Project Nim.
Only looking at the worst parts of life in the lowest possible bar for how we could reasonably treat people on the most unfavorable edge of a widely cast net of what someone with 60 IQ is like is not really a good standard for determining who lives a decent life. But yes, I do consider chimpanzees to have a decent enough life as is.
But I think that you’re losing sight of my point that these arguments have all served to commit mass murder on people with much lower mental abilities than the average human. When the average human with a say in these matters changes, they could bring the same argument to bear against including 100 IQ humans.
Because there are plenty of examples of 100 IQ humans treating each other horribly because they’re idiots. There are 100 IQ people that have cut other people’s genitals off, thrown acid in thier faces, disfigured or tortured them, ones that have intentionally reduced their lifespans by decades through stupidity, ones that can’t keep themselves standing because they specialized into a job that is now automated, etc. Without 120 IQ humans propping them up they would probably not have the technology to prevent the way they raise their children to be a human rights violation.
So where is the line in the sand?
If this is the “point,” then your comment reduces to an invalid appeal-to-consequences argument. The fact that some people use an argument for morally evil purposes tells us nothing about the logical validity of that argument. After all, Evil can make use of truth (sometimes selectively) just as easily as Good can; we don’t live in a fairy tale where trade-offs between Good and Truth are inexistent. The asymmetry is between Truth and Falsehood, not between Good and Evil.
As far as I can tell, gwern’s point is entirely correct, completely invalidates your entire previous comment (“I would expect you to already know that chimpanzees have an IQ lower than 60 and are capable of taking care of themselves and having a decent life.”), and you did not address it at all in your follow-up.
Not sure how many very mentally impaired people you’ve spent time with. Chimpanzees are not the same as mentally impaired humans. At all.
And as Gwern said, the claim that chimpanzees can make a good life for themselves in their societies despite their lack of intelligence has huge asterisk marks at best, and at worst isn’t actually true:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/DfrSZaf3JC8vJdbZL/?commentId=rNnWduiufEmKFACL4