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Comment by jared314 | Hacker News Reader

History has taught me enough to be worried about that.

Well what if you could give your self a brain upgrade via gene therapy? What's so bad about that? I guess many would be upset as it would go against our ideology here in America that frowns on any suggestion that intelligence has innate components.

Fun error message - "This update failed to install successfully. Please try again after reboot"

You seem to be making the rather large assumption that people who aren't intelligent are thus due to genetics. In my experience it's usually their ideology that makes them "stupid". No gene therapy is going to fix that, you'll just be putting an F1 engine in a car that spends all it's time idling.

Movies have taught me enough to be worried about that!

Gattica will happen ... in china apparently.

The title is "Gattaca" for a reason: four bases found in DNA are adenine (abbreviated A), cytosine (C), guanine (G) and thymine (T). It's fantastic movie IMO.

Gattuca would have been an admissable typo.

History has taught you to be worried about people knowing genes (or clusters of genes) which correlate with intelligence, to various degrees?

The record of scientists in examining the links of race and intelligence is not so good. People tend to jump to conclusions even when they think they're being logical.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugenics

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Craniometry

So just because scientists have been wrong on a topic we should stop exploring it when newer measuring tools become available? I encourage this kind of research, just because it will probably show that there is more genetic variation between individuals than between races ;-)

I wasn't drawing the conclusion that we should not explore the question. But I do think people should wonder: With all the useful, actionable questions arising from genetic research, why are we attracted by an unseen force to the particular question of intelligence and race? Why not try to address a question more likely to help people (e.g., the genetic origin of certain diseases)? Why the fascination with this question?

I'm not talking about forbidding certain investigations, just trying to be smart about prioritizing investigations.

You say "...it will probably show that..." -- already injecting preconceived notions of the outcome into the scientific question. This is an example of why investigations into this question seem to reveal more about the investigator than the question.

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