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Comment by electrograv | Hacker News Reader

> Each genetic variant slightly increases or decreases cognitive ability. Because it is determined by many small additive effects, cognitive ability is normally distributed, following the familiar bell-shaped curve, with more people in the middle than in the tails.

How do we know these genes have an additive effect on IQ?

The causal relationship asserted by this quote is very strange. They claim: Because these effects are additive, IQ is normal distributed. What...? IQ is a test. It's normal distributed, like most tests are.

They're referring to the central limit theorem here, I assume[1], which not a bad insight. However it should be obvious that this normal distribution phenomenon arises out of such tests being scored additively from a number of relatively independent questions (whose answers can be thought of as independent random variables of unknown distribution).

In any case, I don't see how they can justify a causal link (in either direction) between some alleged additive effect of genes and the IQ test itself.

Personally, I'm mostly interested in this claim on additive intelligence genes, since I'm not an expert on this. It would be fascinating and exciting if there were additive "intelligence genes". However, as someone working on artificial neural network research as a hobby, I'm highly skeptical of this. It seems much more likely that human intelligence is a delicate balance of many interacting factors relating to the architecture and "algorithms" of the brain.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_limit_theorem

View on HN

The question of additivity of genetic effects is discussed in more detail in reference [1] above (sections 3.1 and also 4): http://arxiv.org/pdf/1408.3421v2.pdf

In plant and animal genetics it is well established that the majority of phenotype variance in complex traits which is under genetic control is additive. (Linear models work well in species ranging from corn to cows; cattle breeding is now done using SNP genotypes and linear models to estimate phenotypes.) There are also direct estimates of the additive / non-additive components of variance for human height and IQ, from twin and sibling studies. Again, the conclusion is the majority of variance is due to additive effects.

There is a deep evolutionary reason behind additivity: nonlinear mechanisms are fragile and often "break" due to DNA recombination in sexual reproduction. Effects which are only controlled by a single locus are more robustly passed on to offspring. Fisher's fundamental theorem of natural selection says that the rate of change of fitness is controlled by additive variance in sexually reproducing species under relatively weak selection.

Many people confuse the following statements:

"The brain is complex and nonlinear and many genes interact in its construction and operation."

"Differences in brain performance between two individuals of the same species must be due to nonlinear effects of genes."

The first statement is true, but the second does not appear to be true across a range of species and quantitative traits.

Final technical comment: even the nonlinear part of the genetic architecture can be deduced using advanced methods in high dimensional statistics (see section 4.2 in [1] and also http://arxiv.org/abs/1408.6583).

I just realized I've said all of this already in http://arxiv.org/pdf/1408.3421v2.pdf (p.16):

... The preceding discussion is not intended to convey an overly simplistic view of genetics or systems biology. Complex nonlinear genetic systems certainly exist and are realized in every organism. However, quantitative differences between individuals within a species may be largely due to independent linear effects of specific genetic variants. As noted, linear effects are the most readily evolvable in response to selection, whereas nonlinear gadgets are more likely to be fragile to small changes. (Evolutionary adaptations requiring significant changes to nonlinear gadgets are improbable and therefore require exponentially more time than simple adjustment of frequencies of alleles of linear effect.) One might say that to first approximation, Biology = linear combinations of nonlinear gadgets, and most of the variation between individuals is in the (linear) way gadgets are combined, rather than in the realization of different gadgets in different individuals.

Linear models works well in practice, allowing, for example, SNP-based prediction of quantitative traits (milk yield, fat and protein content, productive life, etc.) in dairy cattle. ...

>> Each genetic variant slightly increases or decreases cognitive ability. Because it is determined by many small additive effects, cognitive ability is normally distributed, following the familiar bell-shaped curve, with more people in the middle than in the tails.

> How do we know these genes have an additive effect on IQ?

I came to post on the same topic. Some gene effects are additive but those are the simple ones and there isn't that many of them. In something complex like a human brain, there are going to be tons of interactions between genes, so that maybe genes A+B makes someone smarter and C+D also make someone smarter, but the combo A+C makes someone actually less smart. The interactions are likely to be insanely complex -- eventually solvable but it will be a while.

To use a computer metaphor, the optimization landscape is not smooth and it doesn't only have a single optimal peak, it is highly complex with lots of local hills (which are caused by the interactions.)

> The breeding of domesticated plants and animals has changed some populations by as much as 30 standard deviations. Broiler chickens, for example, have increased in size more than four times since 1957. A similar approach could be applied to human intelligence, leading to IQs greater than 1,000.

This chicken metaphor is very wrong in that that was achieved via artificial selection, not genetic engineering. Artificial selection can make directed fast movement through an optimization landscape, but it does this without actually trying to figure out the interactions at the gene level, rather it looks as the results and selectively breads for those. When you do this to human it is called eugenics, and, to put it mildly, it likely isn't going to come back into fashion:

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

When you do this to human it is called eugenics, and, to put it mildly, it likely isn't going to come back into fashion.

Surprisingly we do it all the time, on animals, and we call it breeding. It is very successful and if applied to humans could produce real geniuses without any new tech or research in a handful of generations. Too bad the word has such negative association.

Last I checked, most people mated with a partner of their choosing.

That you call it love and not "selection of the most desirable traits" doesn't change the facts ;-)

You are using the same mistake as most people when they associate the word eugenics with mass forced extermination of certain traits. Because of fear and certain individuals in the past.

The word can be used in a modern context, where eugenics is performed voluntarily, on a very small population, and under scientific supervision for causes that benefit the entire humanity. The rest can live and love whoever they want.

Genetic manipulation functionally falls in the same category, but it is better accepted because it doesn't have the negative history attached to it.

It isn't voluntary for the offspring that are created through such efforts. Sure, that's not the case for procreation to begin with... but the difference is that these people would effectively be bred for a specific purpose. Then, to keep it voluntary, I guess we would lightly suggest to them at some tender age to consider going into field which requires high intelligence? Or do we not interfere at all, and just observe them from a distance (since you mention scientific supervision)?

Nobody has a voluntary choice in their birth and eugenics doesn't have to breed people for a certain position or job. It may be something as simple as egg/sperm analysis that calculates a favorable (in whatever way the technology designers determine that) gene sequence and then the child would be raised normally. Eugenics doesn't mean the decay of the moral fabric of society or the loss of basic ethics in research. Why is it so hard to imagine eugenics integrating into modern society?

This fear is really surprising to me.

It's not surprising at all. Eugenics on a large scale is also know as population control and it elicits negative visceral reactions for good reasons. Large undertakings usually require some kind of central control and the history of such control is not positive at all.

Now if the choice comes down to something between two individuals because technology makes it possible to make certain choices that's a different matter but even then you are treading in dangerous territory. Who gets access to the technology? How do you verify that the technology is safe? Is there a beta test period? Who gets to be a beta tester? Anyway the list is long and the technology is nowhere near where it needs to be for even these kinds of choices to be made between two individuals let alone at the population level.

I find the idea in general just intuitively unappealing. Humanity can't breed itself out of the problems it is in. Being smart is simply not enough. Anything worthwhile requires hard work. So are you going to breed for hard work as well now? I don't see these scientists looking for those genes though.

Its like you didn't even notice that World War II happened.

Why not treat them identically to any intelligent child born today? This doesn't have to be weird.

> The word can be used in a modern context, where eugenics is performed voluntarily

Relevant http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tMz_tK4Q6Qs

"Eugenics" is actually currently practiced, but described as pre-implantation diagnostics. This allows parents who are carriers of a deleterious mutation, such as that causing Tay Sachs Disease, to avoid having children with the condition.

So what you're saying is that attractive women are all in on a eugenics conspiracy designed to wipe out white gamers who watch wolf sex cartoons?

I would be more than happy to raise a child that was not genetically related to me if it's genes were "better".

I notice your use of scare quotes. Is the state of the art advanced enough to make a judgement on whether or not a person is better at the genetic level than another person? I'm not just talking about some specific category or skill, but also as a well-rounded person. Because these people will have to live their own lives, and would be subject to whatever other traits that might arise when you try to optimize humans for some kind of skill. I at least don't think that the state of the art is so advanced that they can predict that optimizing for some specific trait might have some unforeseen consequences when it comes other, perhaps seemingly unrelated traits.

Is the corollary that one should not raise less "better" children? If this what we come to practice as a species, I would definitely hope that a superior one wipes us out soon.

If this is what we come to practice as a species, we are in fact replacing ourselves with something superior. And unless you hope for your children to never be as successful as you were, that's a good thing.

For whose definition of "better" and "superior"?

The parents of each individual child, obviously.

I sincerely hope you see the contradiction in your comment.

The corollary is that you would not go out of your way to conceive more less "better" children.

Once you are responsible for a child, you stay responsible.

Don't make this weird.

You also have to define "better". Here we are only talking about super intelligence. But what about creativity in music, film, writing, etc. Those things enrich our lives. Who is going to make the films and animes that I love?

What if the person does not fit your definition of a super intelligent person with a high IQ but instead is a genius in music. Also, how do we know that by focusing only on super intelligent people we won't be killing off the other traits that make life worthwhile, the arts, music, film. There are multiple perspectives that make a person a genius, high IQ is just one of them among many.

As somebody else mentioned, just like breeding dogs, you may be able to select for one trait at the expense of the others.

Frankly high IQ is overrated. It is probably biased anyway. i.e. Children that grow up in high income families have better IQ results than children living in poverty. It could simply mean that the differentiator is good education at an early age.

"Creativity" is correlated with higher IQ.

I understand the urge to resist reducing humans to a single numerical measurement, but the fact is that "IQ" or "g" or general "cognitive ability" or whatever you want to call it is strongly positively correlated with almost every trait and life outcome that people value.

> [...] Children that grow up in high income families have better IQ results than children living in poverty.

Yes, because high IQ parents tend to make more money and tend to get high IQ children (even if those children got adopted away or orphaned early on). On the other hand, if high income families adopt children of low IQ parents those children end up with an IQ resembling that of their low IQ biological parents.

The research has been done.

>>even if those children got adopted away or orphaned early on

Was race accounted for. i.e. Where there minorities and white kids in the group. If only white kids then that tells me that the problem is more systemic. i.e. racism.

If it holds for white kids in white countries (i.e. before mass immigration) then you agree that it is not about racism?

(Which it does, btw.)

By the way, I don't know if you have heard about these two papers before. They might interest you (or not).

Hopkins, Russell, Schaeffer, "Chimpanzee Intelligence is Heritable", Current Biology, 2014.

<way too many coauthors to list but the main guy seems to be P.M. Visscher>, "Genome-wide association studies establish that human intelligence is highly heritable and polygenic", Molecular Psychiatry, 2011.

The latter paper reports on a study (with N=3511) on unrelated people to see whether their genotype and their phenotype regarding intelligence had anything to do with each other. People were tested with DNA chip for SNPs and had their IQ measured. The interesting result was that people who had more similar DNA also had more similar IQs (and vice versa, of course).

Drop me an email @gmail.com for copies.

This child may even come to understand the difference between "it's" and "its".

Thanks to Paul Graham, Sam Altman, Paul Buchheit, John Collison, Patrick Collison, Jessica Livingston, Robert Morris, Geoff Ralston, and Fred Wilson for reading drafts of this.

Unluckily at least in Germany highly educated people often produce less children than low educated ones.

The goal should be to help encourage the next generation to do something meaningful (to them), regardless of what advantages they had at birth.

If country A makes and achieves its goal to give the next generation an average IQ of 130, and country B makes its goal to encourage the next generation to do something meaningful (to them), B will serve A before long.

I somewhat doubt it. Let's use something you're likely to be familiar with, smartphone apps... Now it's arguable that the skills required to develop a smartphone app implies a reasonable level of intelligence, yet look at any app store and you'll see huge numbers of uninspired, lowest common denominator shovelware. Does the world really need hundreds of todo apps? Do you really think people are driven to make those apps for anything greater than the "prestige" of being an app developer or a desperate attempt at making money?

Compare and contrast with a society that values the outcome of the work rather than how book smart you need to be able to do it. For example nature conservation is pretty easy to understand how to do right, and there's a tangible lasting benefit.

Guess it depends on what you view as a society worth having.

Maybe. Or lots of people from country B will get into country A as "refugees", bring along their families, and have taxpayers in country A pay for them while they do what they can to be racist and criminal against native people from country A.

It depends on the moral sensibilities of the A'ers.

Your veil is a bit too thin there.

Am I wrong?

Yes.

"Surprisingly we do it all the time, on animals, and we call it breeding. It is very successful"

Breeding is successful in some sense, but certainly not without its issues. For example, by breeding pedigree dogs we've left them with a number of genetic defects that are hard to remove due to the reduced gene pool, e.g. Dalmatian deafness, Bulldog respiration, King Charles Spaniel syringomyelia, etc...

Addressing the article, I find the idea of quantifiable intelligence to be one of the dumbest ideas we ever came up with. What does an IQ point mean, really? From my understanding, testing it basically boils down to using a specific subset of symbolic puzzles. Intelligence can be quantified numerically in the same way love can be quantified numerically, i.e. not at all, without losing the essence of what you're looking for.

Also, intelligence by itself is not a goal in its own right, it's the purpose to which it's applied that matters. If super intelligent people exist, what would we have them do? The same things we do but faster? No thanks.

Instead of wasting our time trying to group ourselves into categories, we should be looking to bring out the best of the talents we find in the people around us. That seems like a better goal than chasing a 1000 IQ person.

I agree the research would have to be gradual and aware of those issues. I doubt dog breeders really care for those.

IQ can be measured, there are many tests that do so. More time you spend checking more accurate you can get. Not infinitely accurately but good enough.

That makes little sense. Speed is not a requirement for new research and discovery. Original though is. That is what we should strive for.

Eugenics could do exactly that.

"I agree the research would have to be gradual and aware of those issues. I doubt dog breeders really care for those."

Are you suggesting dog breeders don't care about dogs? From what I've seen they tend to be quite fond of them. The issue is we breed dogs for different traits, with the issues I mentioned before the dogs might've been bred for their looks, but other dogs that were at some point bred for work still have issues... Golden Retrievers are high risk for developing cancer, German Shepherds are high risk for hip dysplasia, Dachshunds are high risk for back problems, etc... It's not that dog breeders want to give dogs issues, it's a byproduct of selective breeding, as defects that do creep in are harder to remove.

"That makes little sense. Speed is not a requirement for new research and discovery. Original though is. That is what we should strive for."

The tests we are talking about do not measure creativity in any meaningful sense.

"Eugenics could do exactly that."

How could eugenics do exactly that? I'm talking about bringing out the talents of people around you, i.e. they already exist.

I think that to many people, the phenomena behind IQ is a suspected general mental ability. It may also be fitting to describe this as a general or arbitrary analogical or mapping ability. I think this definition also captures what people think of when they say "artificial", or non-organic intelligence.

When you say that IQ is just "a specific subset of symbolic puzzles", I believe you are criticizing IQ as ungeneralizable, or as having external validity issues.

I think the reason why IQ has remained as a widespread construct is because it is actually so useful in predicting performance across an array of situations, such as general job performance, of which IQ or g is often a top-tier or unmatched predictor, better than years of relevant work experience. And whenever someone accuses IQ of being inadequate, and they come out with their More Complete test, it turns out that their measurements and predictions are insufficiently distinctive from IQ, which even further supports the idea of a "general" mental ability.

"And whenever someone accuses IQ of being inadequate, and they come out with their More Complete test, it turns out that their measurements and predictions are insufficiently distinctive from IQ, which even further supports the idea of a "general" mental ability."

Here's the thing... I'm criticising IQ tests, but I'm not suggesting we create a more complete test, I'm suggesting the whole idea of measuring intelligence numerically is fundamentally flawed.

There are a few reasons I believe measuring intelligence numerically is flawed, but probably the central one is that I don't believe it exists as a fixed entity, I believe it's adaptive depending on the circumstances we find ourselves in.

As with any debate on human traits the tendency is to go back to the nature vs. nurture question. I believe you can have a natural aptitude for something, but the environment you live in is what helps your intelligence develop, and this is the largest differentiator in what we perceive as intelligence. Put simply, change the environment and you change the intelligence. Therefore scores like IQ do not measure someone's true potential, they only hint at what they've already been exposed to. That's why to me such tests are a waste of time.

> Therefore scores like IQ do not measure someone's true potential, they only hint at what they've already been exposed to. That's why to me such tests are a waste of time.

Hmmm. As far as I know you are allowed to retake IQ-tests if you want, still the differences are there. Some people will never pass 120 no matter how many times they take the test.

It appears reading comprehension isn't a prerequisite for a good IQ score, what I'm saying is those scores are irrelevant, do try and keep up. Oh and its very easy to train someone to get beyond your benchmark as long as they have a reasonable grasp on language, you just show them past exam questions and show the steps to take to get the answer, it's what passes for education in many subjects.

Just to go further into this, decided to remind myself what an IQ test question looked like. This is the first one that came up...

"1, 3, 5, 7, 8, 9, 11 - Which one doesn't belong in this series?"

Now the "correct" answer is 8, but that's only because we second guess what the examiner wants. Truthfully 11 is equally correct, as its the only 2 digit number, and the number series could be single digit numbers. But there's nowhere to explain your reasoning, so you better choose the "correct" answer anyway...

>reading comprehension...try and keep up

Don't be an ass.

>What I'm saying is those scores are irrelevant

But you claimed the scores are based on what you're exposed to rather than your potential. If they don't change over time then that's a strong counter to your argument.

And not being potential was critical to your 'central' flaw with the approach. Perhaps you can name other flaws, but you haven't made them clear, and you haven't actually disagreed with threatofrain's assertion that IQ is the best correlation with general performance that we have.

>math

It's a series, not a set. 11 is not 'equally' correct.

"But you claimed the scores are based on what you're exposed to rather than your potential. If they don't change over time then that's a strong counter to your argument."

As I mentioned in another comment, I was rude because I was tired of explaining why it was pointless, but I did address that it's possible to teach better IQ scores by focusing on how to pass the tests.

"It's a series, not a set. 11 is not 'equally' correct"

http://i.word.com/idictionary/series

"a number of things or events of the same class coming one after another in spatial or temporal succession"

Depending on your definition, there's no requirement on a series to contain the complete list of elements, so long as they are in the correct order.

Yep that's a definition. I'm not sure why you quoted it?

You can make all kinds of arguments to remove any number, but which one leaves a sequence with minimal kolmogorov complexity? Which one leaves a sequence where you can predict the next number?

"Which one leaves a sequence where you can predict the next number?"

Who said you had to predict the next number? If the question asked "Fill in the next number in this sequence" then I'd agree with you, but instead it asked which number didn't belong.

It's a heuristic. If you can't explain the series then you lose a lot of points in arguing that you interpreted it correctly.

Remember, the question isn't asking you to sort a bag of numbers into piles, it's giving them in a specific order and asking which list of n-1 numbers in that order is most coherent.

"is most coherent" Of course it's clear which is most coherent, but what I'm trying to illustrate is how less obvious approaches may still demonstrate intelligence, I'll look up some more IQ test questions and find a different example to do this...

EDIT: Found one that should be better. What is your answer to this question... http://imgbox.com/a7vshE9u

Well there's one interpretation with three answers that doesn't use the info presented, and there's another interpretation with one answer that does use the info presented... 8

So I see your point about figuring out what the examiner wants and I think it makes the question better since you can't blindly run with a first interpretation and ignore half the question.

(Is that a real IQ test? I'm not trying to say it isn't, just that "internet IQ test" is not a trustworthy phrase.)

I'm glad we found something we can agree on (the 'figuring out what the examiner wants' point).

The question was from an Internet IQ Test, no idea if it's ever been used elsewhere, I understand it's not necessarily the most reliable source.

To be honest it now seems you are arrogant on top of your ignorance.

Two people try to explain to you and you go on talking without reading.

Regarding reading comprehension: what part of eitlands explanation that you are often free to take iq tests multiple times didn't you understand? And so on.

And, regarding your example: if you are going to be arrogant, make sure you are right.

"Regarding reading comprehension: what part of eitlands explanation that you are often free to take iq tests multiple times didn't you understand? And so on."

I was tired of having to explain why assigning a number to intelligence made little sense, so yes I was a little rude. Besides, I addressed eitlands' assertion that certain numbers are beyond reach, just like any formal test you can train people to become good at taking the test.

> I was tired of having to explain why assigning a number to intelligence made little sense

So stop explaing it. Assigning a number to intelligence makes a lot of sense.

As have been pointed out 1.) it seems those measurements can be reproduced with statistical significance so they measure something and 2.) whatever it measures it seems to be one of the best indicators we have of future job performance.

What they don't tell us is what a person is worth, if he is a good person etc.

"So stop explaing it."

Okay, I'll let someone else do it then...

"those measurements can be reproduced with statistical significance"

http://m.psychologytoday.com/blog/beautiful-minds/200910/int...

"How much can these scores change over a person's lifetime, and how limiting are a person's scores for obtaining what they want out of life?

For groups of individuals, IQs are fairly stable between childhood and adulthood, but for specific individuals within a group, IQs can--and do--vary greatly over a lifetime. The IQs will vary as a result of specific interventions (such as preschool enrichment programs), quality education (or the lack of it), injuries that affect brain functioning, and other aspects of the environment that either enhance or diminish one's cognitive ability. In addition, errors of measurement are much larger than people tend to think, and, therefore, an individual's IQs will vary from time to time--sometimes substantially--simply due to the chance fluctuations that accompany any repeated measurement. And, there is more to life success than the ability to score high on IQ tests. People can be successful based on their creativity, street smarts, and personality variables."

eitland, I'm sorry I was rude towards you, you didn't deserve it.

I'll try and make this constructive. Would you agree that human intelligence centres around pattern recognition? If so, which patterns would you class as hard to teach?

True. Humans are exactly the same as a lab rat ethically and in terms of biologically complexity.

There's no good reason for whatever downvotes you're getting. The fact is the comment underscored by your sarcasm is correct: that breeding, alone, is not necessarily going to produce any super-intelligent human. The biology of intelligence is one we haven't come close to a deep understanding of. To glibly throw out "selective breeding" as a scientific approach to generating super-intelligent humans is, frankly, not a very scientific thing to do.

Eugenics was an attempt to subvert economics.

As humans, we reward those traits we collectively find most desirable with additional resources. Parents with additional resources may choose to grant them as seed capital for their children, to have more children themselves, or to promote traits they find desirable in other people's children.

Our species is currently directing its breeding efforts towards ruthless, unethical business managers and corrupt politicians.

If we wanted geniuses, we would be paying people just for being smarter than the median. Instead, tuition is rising faster than inflation, and our smartest folks are often tremendously burdened with debt during their prime reproductive years, to the point that any children they may have are bound by their available resources rather than by their potential.

We are selectively breeding ourselves. It just turns out that the rich assholes want humanity to be more like them. If smart people want to breed more geniuses, we're probably going to need to do it on a different planet, where intelligence will be more of a survival advantage.

Just watch out for Khan.

The smartest folks generally get scholarships.

Scholarships are also given out based on criteria unrelated to intelligence or aptitude. Do you happen to know what proportion of all scholarship funding is allocated purely on the basis of academic strength?

Don't know, but I've heard that the average scholarship at our local University is not applied for. There are many small ones, with very specific criterion. One of my son's friends was surprised to win a scholarship, because he hadn't applied - the dean had applied for him!

Breeding really isn't the panacea you make it out to be.

I skipped grades, have an advanced science degree, earn a lot in a job that requires above average intelligence, etc. My parents were both high-school dropouts, and my mother in particular was identified as being "slow" when she was younger (not below average in IQ, but on the very low end of it). On the other hand, I personally know very intelligent couples (one consisting of a pair who each individually are far more intelligent than I am) whose kids have also been "slow".

What you're describing is 'regression to the mean.' Francis Galton noticed this effect when he was studying the traits of various genetically influenced traits.

This doesn't invalidate the idea of eugenics. You can still modify the average of a trait over time in a given population in spite of any mean-regressing tendencies. It just happens a bit more slowly.

If you were significantly more intelligent than the mean, you would recognize the irrelevance of your anecdotes.

Genetic Testing is well and growing. Leads to embryo selection implicitly, which is not so far from eugenics.

A good example is French Canadian region Lac St Jean where parents are allowed to select their embryo considering rare diseases present in the region :

http://www.procreacliniques.com/en/genetic-testing/french-ca...

At the fringes (if one can call it that), it already is in fashion. See for example http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Down_syndrome:

"About 92% of pregnancies in Europe with a diagnosis of Down syndrome are terminated."

"About 1.4 per 1000 live births in the United States and 1.1 per 1000 live births in Norway are affected. In the 1950s, in the United States, it occurred in 2 per 1000 live births with the decrease since then due to prenatal screening and abortion"

I think the border between what is deemed acceptable and what isn't is moving towards more selection, and it wouldn't surprise me that, in a few centuries, we would be abhorred to learn how far it moved, and those who live then will look in horror at our primitive ways. Kids with Huntington's disease or genes that make it likely they will develop breast cancer still get born all the time, for example.

EDIT: Down syndrome, not being hereditary, isn't the best example, but the message still stands.

Down syndrome actually is hereditary. For some reason, some groups like to obfuscate this. Most cases are due to random mutation, but the cause is genetic, and can be passed on to children.

One the one hand, I would be deeply stunned if an IQ of 1000 was available just by flipping all the genetic switches to "on". The result of doing such a thing that I would actually expect would be to create a non-viable embryo.

On the other hand, it is undeniable that genetic fiddling will someday be able to raise intelligence, and even if all it could do was reliably produce people of the 150-170 range, it could still radically change the world. And that's merely hypothesizing the reliable production of an effect that already exists and therefore can not be impossible. One can imagine that an IQ 1000 may be simply impossible on anything recognizably like the neural substrate we run on. We don't have enough information to know that right now. But we know we can get 150-170.

Meh, you also need the motivation component. IQ is a measure of capability, not a personality trait. It's perfectly easy to imagine tons of people with high IQs who either unmotivated (e.g. satisfy their itches by say gambling or playing video games) or destructive (criminals).

There are probably hundreds of thousands of people with greater IQ than Bill Gates, Larry Page, or Elon Musk. It doesn't mean they have the inclination to change the world.

This can't be overstated. In college, the smartest guy I knew was also the laziest. He used to tell me different ideas he had for how to be the laziest person imaginable while still living a comfortable life, which were always amusing. He could destroy anybody else on campus at chess without effort and not paying attention, focusing instead on EverQuest or some other videogame he was simultaneously playing.

> One the one hand, I would be deeply stunned if an IQ of 1000 was available just by flipping all the genetic switches to "on". The result of doing such a thing that I would actually expect would be to create a non-viable embryo.

That makes no sense. All these variants would have been obtained by comparing in the general (living) population people with differing copies. Why would these variants be completely harmless in normal people and suddenly lethal in conjunction? Is there any evidence at all for this idea? For example, do we see extremely intelligent people (who will be highly enriched in the relevant variants) dropping like flies in their teens?

It makes plenty of sense. You see random weird things like marfan syndrome linked to higher IQ. Among the high IQ ashekanazim there are a bunch of weird neurological diseases. Genes virtually never do one thing. Select for one trait and you're also going to get a bunch of other unexpected stuff, much of it probably unrelated to cognition.

> You see random weird things like marfan syndrome linked to higher IQ. Among the high IQ ashekanazim there are a bunch of weird neurological diseases.

In the small Ashkenazi population, yes, thanks to founder effects. In the general population, with no bottlenecks to force harmful variations to persist, why would there be large negative effects to any of the normal variation of IQ-affecting genes? They would have been selected against.

And you did not respond to any of my points about the general population or the observed lack of severe disease with higher IQs.

There are correlations to problems in the general population. For examples, homosexuality and narcotics usage. The thing to do is probably to ask a dog breeder.

I think inside two sigma, in well out-bred people, general health and IQ are highly correlated. Body temperature (resting metabolic rate) and IQ are correlated. Longevity and physical attractiveness are correlated. I don't think this bodes well for tweaking some menu of brain genes to good effect. Intelligence is mostly caught up in general health and mutational load, within normal bounds. I doubt these claimed IQ genes exist quite the way is being claimed. We're probably looking at an inextricably complex web of genetic, epigenetic, and environmental factors.

As I think the genes are probably tied up in basic cellular metabolism and endocrinology more-so than some isolated brain design, I will lay money that monkeying with the lot of them is going to go badly. There's a reason genetic algorithms involve discarding the vast majority of each generation. We'll see won't we. If I could lay $500 that these efforts will completely fail with animals, I would.

> There are correlations to problems in the general population. For examples, homosexuality and narcotics usage.

The latter of which is not a problem - for those people. More generally: longevity is a accurate indicator of all net problems for people, ranging from social problems to suicide to schizophrenia to drug abuse to disease rates. Is longevity lower for the high-IQ? No, it is not. It is higher. So much for your 'inextricably complex web'.

> Longevity and physical attractiveness are correlated.

I believe this is mostly driven by the low-end, is it not? All those 'funny-looking kids'.

> If I could lay $500 that these efforts will completely fail with animals, I would.

You can't, of course, because that would be a waste of time; there are no measures of general intelligence nearly as well-validated with any animals as for humans (whether you want to specify cognitive functioning or life outcomes), and if there were, no one would bother to capture nearly enough genomes or genotypes to nail down the respective variants.

> Is longevity lower for the high-IQ? No, it is not. It is higher.

That's my whole point. I'm not sure you're following. It's mostly about health down to the cellular level. It's about a high performance immune system during gestation and development. It's about the absence of mutational load, not the existence of IQ boosting genes. Good luck if you think it's a simple matter of inserting genes a, b, and c. It's about how millions of pieces fit together exactly.

You seem to be saying we're going to be able to take a top notch, high end consumer car (person with IQ 120) and add a turbocharger, remove some body weight, and tighten up the tolerances and compression ratio to get more zoom. I'm saying that's just not going to work. The absolute best case will be you manage to make an F100 racer, which falls apart after 100 miles without extreme maintenance. But more likely the thing won't even run properly.

You have no idea and I have no idea how genetic engineering of mammals will play out. I am convinced that you are operating from flawed premises of the organism as a machine. Your focus on simple correlations belies the misunderstanding. In the organism we are talking about a chaotic, extremely complex system like the weather or an economy that will badly defy engineering attempts. Go read jurassic park, lol.

Time will tell.

> It's mostly about health down to the cellular level. It's about a high performance immune system during gestation and development. It's about the absence of mutational load, not the existence of IQ boosting genes. Good luck if you think it's a simple matter of inserting genes a, b, and c. It's about how millions of pieces fit together exactly.

If it's about 'mutational load' (you do understand the difference between that term as usually used and the SNP strategy Hsu proposes, right?), then flipping them should work just fine: you're removing damage and friction.

> You seem to be saying we're going to be able to take a top notch, high end consumer car (person with IQ 120) and add a turbocharger, remove some body weight, and tighten up the tolerances and compression ratio to get more zoom.

No, I am not making a simplistic analogy to a machine.

> But more likely the thing won't even run properly.

Which is why high-IQ people drop like flies after 100 miles, right...

> In the organism we are talking about a chaotic, extremely complex system like the weather or an economy that will badly defy engineering attempts.

Yes, it's all so terribly terribly complex, whooo knooowwwsss what will happen.

> Go read jurassic park, lol.

Newsflash: _Jurassic Park_ was fiction. That is: made up, not real.

From the article:

"This means that there must be at least thousands of IQ alleles to account for the actual variation seen in the general population. A more sophisticated analysis (with large error bars) yields an estimate of perhaps 10,000 in total."

The odds that you can flip a few thousand genes without harm seem to me to approach 0 rapidly. None of these genes are, after all, coding for "intelligence"... they're doing some sort of chemical thing, after all. Heck even if it produces a viable embryo it seems more likely to produce insanity than superintelligence (assuming we could even distinguish the two).

That said, yeah, I'm just hypothesizing, but it seems far more likely to me that rather than some sort of monotonic increase in the "intelligence" factor that we can just pile on freely that there will be any number of incompatible additions, things that where adding either one or the other of some modification takes you to the optimal point but having both takes you beyond, and, well, all the other exciting and whacky things we see in the genetic world. In the arbitrarily-complicated n-dimensional space of "intelligence" just ramping all the available controls to "maximum" doesn't strike me as likely to produce an optimal result.

(I did, however, resist giving a8da6b0c91d's answer; a priori we can't tell whether the Ashekenazi Jews are made susceptible by their intelligence, or if they merely got something nasty co-selecting with their intelligence. Perhaps somebody somewhere has made that particular study, I don't know, but my point is merely that study would be required on a case-by-case basis. That can't be used as a general argument when we're discussing intelligently modifying genetics.)

> The odds that you can flip a few thousand genes without harm seem to me to approach 0 rapidly.

I have bad news for you, then: in the general populations, there's not merely thousands of SNPs, there are hundreds of thousands! I guess we're all going to die tomorrow now that we've realized this.

> In the arbitrarily-complicated n-dimensional space of "intelligence" just ramping all the available controls to "maximum" doesn't strike me as likely to produce an optimal result.

Yet, breeding works. Chickens and cows, for example, are scores of standard deviations away from their ancestors on some traits like weight or milk production, and while they may not be exactly as healthy or robust as their ancestors, they have hardly gone extinct.

"I have bad news for you, then: in the general populations, there's not merely thousands of SNPs, there are hundreds of thousands!"

Evolution isn't direct manipulation... part of what has evolved in the genome is the ability to be evolved in the first place. The genetic operations being proposed by this article bears no resemblance to the operations used by evolution.

While I've previously indicated my disagreement with the other sibling chain of discussion going on here, the car analogy isn't the worst. You can't take a sedan and just Push Everything To Eleven (individually, one criterion at a time, with no attention paid to integration) and expect a high-performance vehicle to result.

In math terms, we have a function f(x, y) -> IQ, and where we are now, we know going in the positive x direction will raise IQ and we know going in the positive y direction will increase IQ. We have no guarantee whatsoever that x + y will result in an increase in IQ. We certainly have even less guarantee when we start piling on the dimensions, and my comment about expecting a non-viable embryo is because in fact the xs and ys and zs and so on aren't just affecting IQ (since there aren't actually genes for that) but are having other effects as well. The odds of crossing into a nonviable regime somewhere, even from a starting position of known functionality, strike me as almost 1.

I sense I may be goring a bit of a sacred ox here, so let me remind you of my supreme confidence that genetic engineering can indeed raise IQ. It's just going to be harder than what this article proposes to produce a supermegagenius.

> Evolution isn't direct manipulation... part of what has evolved in the genome is the ability to be evolved in the first place.

What on earth do you think breeding does? It selects for increasing proportions of genetic variants in the phenotypically above-average members of the flock. What difference is there between creating a predictive score for an embryo and choosing to implant the highest-scoring one, with making the changes predicted to increase scores with something like CRISPR?

> You can't take a sedan and just Push Everything To Eleven (individually, one criterion at a time, with no attention paid to integration) and expect a high-performance vehicle to result.

Organisms are not cars. This is remarked upon by everyone how biology designs things in a very different fashion from humans, and yet this knowledge gets thrown out as soon as inconvenient...

> In math terms, we have a function f(x, y) -> IQ, and where we are now, we know going in the positive x direction will raise IQ and we know going in the positive y direction will increase IQ. We have no guarantee whatsoever that x + y will result in an increase in IQ.

Please, look up the twin and GCTA studies and what is meant by 'additive'. If there were those complex wiggly interactions, they would not show up as hits from the GWAS studies since they're not additive, and they would not contribute to the large additive fraction of heritability but the other parts.

"What on earth do you think breeding does? It selects for increasing proportions of genetic variants in the phenotypically above-average members of the flock."...

... using certain operators that are not arbitrarily recombining DNA. "Crossover" and such may be somewhat oversimplified versions of what real life does, but neither are the real life genetic operations anywhere near "completely free" recombinations.

Your arguments based on conventional evolutionary operations do not apply to cases where we are engineering freely, without regard to what appears where on chromosomes or any of the other myriad ways we've evolved the ability to safely evolve.

I do also feel like perhaps you are sneaking a step in where the intelligent manipulator double-checks whether the gene combinations make sense, which, if so, would be subtly begging the question as my point is precisely that we would have to check.

Besides, if I may flip the burden of proof around for a moment and appeal to something that may only be a heuristic rather than a solid logical argument, do you really think superintelligence is going to be this easy? "Just" look up all the thousands of genes that contribute to intelligence, assume they must all be doing it linearly (in the "linearly-combinable" sense of the term), and flip them to "smart" rather than "dumb"? Really? It's never that easy, even for things multiple orders of magnitude simpler than genetically engineering intelligence. It would boggle my mind if the path, or even a path, to human superintelligence could be so thoroughly expressed in so few bits.

I would imagine that there are a number of different ways a particular brain could be more successful than another at performing a particular cognitive task. I do believe you are right in thinking that some of them are better thought of as algorithmic, but some of them are perhaps simple and independent (such as better memory recall). Neither algorithmic structures in the brain nor simple characteristics like recall/speed of language parsing can explain everything if we are to believe that the human brain is as complicated as evidence demonstrates.

It's also a huge mistake to think that this is the ONLY thing those genes do.

It's likely that many of them will increase depression, anxiety, ADD, schizophrenia, drug addiction, etc.

Evolution produces genomes within the constraint of the environment. I'm no luddite, but I'd be pretty concerned with genetic engineering without regard for the environment of the individual.

This is a great comment and an important question. We are posting it on the Nautilus article site, credited to you, and ask the author to reply.

Speaking of normal distributions, in order for someone to have an IQ of 1,000, wouldn't there have to be trillions and trillions of people?

It actually doesn't matter if some of them cancel each other out. There still is the best combination of them, and statistically it's very likely to be better than anything evolution has come up with. Human population is just not large enough for the evolution to try many combinations.

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