I heard that Ashkenazi Jews are 1 SD up on IQ, which is about the kind of improvement we are talking about with embryo selection. I do not have the impression they are bad towards other humans. Do you think otherwise?
To be clear, I am not trying to gotcha you with antisemitism, and I totally understand if you want to avoid discussion because this is a politically charged topic.
I wouldn’t expect this issue to kick in significantly until you were roughly twice as intelligent as the average detective in law enforcement: you would need a significant effective power differential, such that you could pretty reliably commit crimes and actually get away with them (or come up with dastardly tactics that haven’t been criminalized because no one else though of them). If that statistic is accurate, then 1 SD is ~15 IQ points which isn’t going to cut it. If we had accurate crime records for a decent sample size of people with IQ 200–250 (at least 7 SD) then we could have a discussion — otherwise I’m extrapolating from effects of other much larger power differentials produced mostly by causes other then raw IQ, like handing people executive power.
...which would imply that dangers should be minimal from either slow augmentation which has time to become ubiquitous in the gene pool, or from limited augmentation that does not exceed a few standard deviations from the current mean. Assuming, of course, that our efforts don’t cause unwanted values shift.
I think all currently progressing human enhancement projects of which I am aware are not expecting gains so large as to be dangerous, and therefore worthy of support.
I heard that Ashkenazi Jews are 1 SD up on IQ, which is about the kind of improvement we are talking about with embryo selection. I do not have the impression they are bad towards other humans. Do you think otherwise?
To be clear, I am not trying to gotcha you with antisemitism, and I totally understand if you want to avoid discussion because this is a politically charged topic.
I wouldn’t expect this issue to kick in significantly until you were roughly twice as intelligent as the average detective in law enforcement: you would need a significant effective power differential, such that you could pretty reliably commit crimes and actually get away with them (or come up with dastardly tactics that haven’t been criminalized because no one else though of them). If that statistic is accurate, then 1 SD is ~15 IQ points which isn’t going to cut it. If we had accurate crime records for a decent sample size of people with IQ 200–250 (at least 7 SD) then we could have a discussion — otherwise I’m extrapolating from effects of other much larger power differentials produced mostly by causes other then raw IQ, like handing people executive power.
Agreed.
...which would imply that dangers should be minimal from either slow augmentation which has time to become ubiquitous in the gene pool, or from limited augmentation that does not exceed a few standard deviations from the current mean. Assuming, of course, that our efforts don’t cause unwanted values shift.
I think all currently progressing human enhancement projects of which I am aware are not expecting gains so large as to be dangerous, and therefore worthy of support.