Probably not? The effect sizes of the variants in question are tiny, which is probably why their intelligence-promoting alleles aren’t already at fixation.
There probably are loads of large effect size variants which affect intelligence, but they’re almost all at fixation for the intelligence-promoting allele due to strong negative selection. (One example of a rare intelligence promoting mutation is CORD7, which also causes blindness).
Since posting this two years ago, I believe Kman looked into this more and concluded that the intelligence enhancement effect of CORD7 is likely not real.
More information: that “CORD7” variant is actually in an IQ GWAS, but showed ~0 effect. Note that I couldn’t rule out the PROM1 variant in the same way since it’s much rarer and not in the GWAS.
I think it suggests that the blindness comes from a different, rarer variant (in the PROM1 gene). If anything that would update me towards thinking the IQ effect, if real, also comes from that rarer variant.
(Edit: the 6 carriers of the PROM1 mutation studied in this paper had an average verbal IQ of 104, which is pretty strong evidence against it giving a huge boost to verbal IQ as reported by the CORD7 paper).
Do you think there’s an Algernon tradeoff for genetic intelligence augmentation?
Probably not? The effect sizes of the variants in question are tiny, which is probably why their intelligence-promoting alleles aren’t already at fixation.
There probably are loads of large effect size variants which affect intelligence, but they’re almost all at fixation for the intelligence-promoting allele due to strong negative selection. (One example of a rare intelligence promoting mutation is CORD7, which also causes blindness).
This suggests that the intelligence enhancement and the blindness come from different independent alleles.
Since posting this two years ago, I believe Kman looked into this more and concluded that the intelligence enhancement effect of CORD7 is likely not real.
More information: that “CORD7” variant is actually in an IQ GWAS, but showed ~0 effect. Note that I couldn’t rule out the PROM1 variant in the same way since it’s much rarer and not in the GWAS.
What’s your take on this?
I think it suggests that the blindness comes from a different, rarer variant (in the PROM1 gene). If anything that would update me towards thinking the IQ effect, if real, also comes from that rarer variant.
(Edit: the 6 carriers of the PROM1 mutation studied in this paper had an average verbal IQ of 104, which is pretty strong evidence against it giving a huge boost to verbal IQ as reported by the CORD7 paper).