This reply is hilarious in the context of your first one. At first you confidently assert that changing genes in the brain won’t do anything to an adult, followed by your statement that “we understand still far too little of how brains work” to know what’s going to happen following such a therapy along with other predictions like total memory erasure. Which is it?
While the vast majority of neurons are subject to mitotic arrest after adolescence, gene expression, the regulation of gene expression, and morphological/biochemical restructuring of individual neurons (plasticity) doesn’t stop until you’re dead. Additionally, there’s no reason to rule out the possibility of genome changes in adolescence leading to macroscopic changes in brain structure, especially considering that certain histone de-acetylase inhibitors like valproate have been shown to re-activate developmental critical periods in particular areas of the brain, and that cell reprogramming therapies such as those being interrogated by David Sinclair’s lab have been demonstrated to be able to rewind the biological clock on neurons, regaining any lost plasticity, regeneration ability, or otherwise anti-change properties gained with age. Even without such fancy therapies, there is nothing barring the possibility that macroscopic brain morphology is to an extent emergent from gene expression at the level of individual neurons, and that changes at the local scale could reverberate globally to generate different macroscopic morphological characteristics.
But suppose that all of what I said isn’t true, and indeed genetic changes as an adolescent would not lead to the macroscopic morphological characteristics that have been shown to correlate with intelligence, like greater brain volume, shorter white matter path lengths, greater cortical thickness, etc. To kman’s point, alterations at the level of local neurons can still be beneficial for intelligence, which has already been demonstrated unlike my hypotheticals in the last paragraph. This is obviously true to anyone who performs a quick survey of some of the SNPs associated with greater intelligence, such as having a T allele at rs2490272, which is on the FOXO3 gene. The protein encoded by FOXO3 isn’t involved in the macrosopic structural formation of the brain whatsoever, and instead acts on the cellular level to protect neurons from oxidative stress, regulate protein turnover, and regulate DNA repair. It is easy to see why having a better version of this protein would lead to healthier neurons (whatever that means) and thus greater intelligence, which is what all GWASes that investigate this gene show. FOXO3 is just one of many of such genes.
While writing well is one of the aspects focused on by the OP, your reply doesn’t address the broader point, which is that EY (and those of similar repute/demeanor) juxtaposes his catastrophic predictions with his stark lack of effective exposition and discussion of the issue and potential solutions to a broader audience. To add insult to injury, he seems to actively try to demoralize dissenters in a very conspicuous and perverse manner, which detracts from his credibility and subtly but surely nudges people further and further from taking his ideas (and those similar) seriously. He gets frustrated by people not understanding him, hence the title of the OP implying the source of his frustration is his own murkiness, not a lack of faculty of the people listening to him. To me, the most obvious examples of this are his guest appearances on podcasts (namely Lex Fridman’s and Dwarkesh Patel’s, the only two I’ve listened to). Neither of these hosts are dumb, yet by the end of their respective episodes, the hosts were confused or otherwise fettered and there was palpable repulsion between the hosts and EY. Considering these are very popular podcasts, it is reasonable to assume that he agreed to appear on these podcasts to reach a wider audience. He does other things to reach wider audiences, e.g. his twitter account and the Time Magazine article he wrote. Other people like him do similar things to reach wider audiences.
Since I’ve laid this out, you can probably predict what my thoughts are regarding the cost-benefit analysis you did. Since EY and similar folk are predicting outcomes as unfavorable as human extinction and are actively trying to recruit people from a wider audience to work towards their problems, is it really a reasonable cost to continue going about this as they have?
Considering the potential impact on the field of AI alignment and the recruitment of individuals who may contribute meaningfully to addressing the challenges currently faced, I would argue that the cost of improving communication is far beyond justifiable. EY and similar figures should strive to balance efficiency in communication with the need for clarity, especially when the stakes are so high.