My understanding is those arguments are usually saying “you can’t easily get boosts to IQ that wouldn’t come with tradeoffs that would have affected fitness in the ancestral environment.” I’m actually not sure what the tradeoffs of steroids are – are they a free action everyone should be taking apart from any legal concerns? Do they come with tradeoffs that you think would still be a net benefit in the ancestral environment?
The obvious disadvantage of steroids in the ancestral environment is that building muscle requires a lot of calories and our ancestral environment was food-scarce. The disadvantage of taking steroids right now (aside from legal concerns) is that they come with all sorts of nasty side effects our genome hasn’t been selected against to mitigate.
My understanding is those arguments are usually saying “you can’t easily get boosts to IQ that wouldn’t come with tradeoffs that would have affected fitness in the ancestral environment.” I’m actually not sure what the tradeoffs of steroids are – are they a free action everyone should be taking apart from any legal concerns? Do they come with tradeoffs that you think would still be a net benefit in the ancestral environment?
[fake edit: interstice beat me to it]
The obvious disadvantage of steroids in the ancestral environment is that building muscle requires a lot of calories and our ancestral environment was food-scarce. The disadvantage of taking steroids right now (aside from legal concerns) is that they come with all sorts of nasty side effects our genome hasn’t been selected against to mitigate.