alt Hacker NewsI know it must be obvious but this proves to me that biological intelligence hasn't nearly reached its peak. If we select for pure intelligence, biological brains can get much smarter. Imagine if we had 5 million geniuses as smart or smarter than Tao doing quantum physics. But life doesn't select for pure intelligence, it selects for survival.
In the Dune books, they banned computers so they bred super mentally capable humans.
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Sure. But it doesn’t really seem clear to me that selecting for intelligence actually results in a better world. It’s a fallacy to think that intelligence = more rational or immune to human flaws, as a cursory glance at any “intelligent” social group should make obvious.
I think we’d be better off optimizing for conscientiousness or empathy, frankly. Even a world run by gardeners would probably be more beautiful and meaningful than one run by math geniuses.
Intelligent people tend to reproduce a lot less than other people. You wanna be average (or slightly above) for the best chance at successful procreation. And hyper-intelligent people are especially bad at procreation.
it's been a while, but I think mentats in Dune are trained not bred. Also, they use mind enhancing drugs (sapho juice IIRC). Which I guess makes a interesting point too, though different from yours :D
(I do agree biological intelligence is not close to its peak)
There is a slightly unexplored tangent in Brave New World about an experiment on Cyprus, where a society of humans bread to be intelligent descended in to civil war because nobody wanted to do menial work.
Interesting thought experiment.
The question is: what do we want to optimize for?
Minimize pain and suffering for humans? The spread of mankind throughout the universe?
I’m pretty sure your idea would help with the latter. Not so sure about the former tbh.
Strictly speaking, evolution selects for viable offspring, not simply surviving. But that’s a nitpick, quite beside your point.
> Imagine if we had 5 million geniuses as smart or smarter than Tao doing quantum physics.
This is a real possibility in our lifetimes due to AI.
Careful, we live in a society which has taken a side in the nature vs. nurture debate and if you're deemed to be on the wrong side of that then you'll be accused of being a nazi
Not sure it works like that, I think his biggest superpower was intrinsic motivation. Any child who read maths textbooks with enthusiasm for 3-4 hours a day for years could in theory at least get close to doing what he did, but what kid had that level of motivation?
Physics is not stuck because we don't have smart theoreticians who have good ideas: it is stuck because we don't have big enough particle accelerators and detectors to distinguish correct from incorrect theories.