I suspect a large part of the problem is LW is trying to find answers to a field that has no reliable results, improving minds (aka nootropics.) We know that existing drugs at most give you emotional health, and even here there are some limits to that. So it’s not surprising that attempts to improve minds fail a lot presently.
I would place a 80-90% prior probability that the boring answer is correct, that the brain is a complicated mess that is hard to affect in non-genetic ways. That stated, even if genetics can figure out how to improve intelligence, there’s a further problem in that people would figuratively riot because of equality memes that say that intelligence doesn’t matter and that anyone can become talented (this is absolutely not true, but equality memes like this don’t matter about truth.)
I would guess that different brains are damaged in different ways. Sometimes it’s genetic. Sometimes it’s just too much or too little of some chemical produced in the brain (potentially also for genetic reasons), which might be fixable by a chemical intervention. (Or maybe not, because the damage caused by the chemical imbalance might be irreversible.)
But different brains will require different chemical interventions. Maybe your friend was X-deficient and took extra X, and it made the symptoms go away. But your brain may be Y-deficient, so adding X will not help. Or maybe your brain already has too much X, and adding more X will fuck you up immediately.
If a doctor told me that statistically, people in my condition are likely to benefit from X, and the doctor would prescribe me a safe dose of X, and then monitor whether my condition improves or not… I might actually try it.
But that is completely different from e.g. a friend telling me that they know someone who took X and was happy about the outcome. First, it’s not obvious that X was actually responsible for the outcome. Maybe the person changed a few things in their life at the same time, and something else worked. Or maybe the person is just addicted, and “happiness” is what their addicted brain reports when asked how they feel about taking X. But most importantly, it may be the case that X helps some people, and hurts other people, and this person is a lucky exception, while those bad cases everyone heard about are the rule. And if I tried X and it wouldn’t work for me, I can already predict that the friend’s advice would be something like “try more” or “try something stronger”.
I suspect a large part of the problem is LW is trying to find answers to a field that has no reliable results, improving minds (aka nootropics.) We know that existing drugs at most give you emotional health, and even here there are some limits to that. So it’s not surprising that attempts to improve minds fail a lot presently.
I would place a 80-90% prior probability that the boring answer is correct, that the brain is a complicated mess that is hard to affect in non-genetic ways. That stated, even if genetics can figure out how to improve intelligence, there’s a further problem in that people would figuratively riot because of equality memes that say that intelligence doesn’t matter and that anyone can become talented (this is absolutely not true, but equality memes like this don’t matter about truth.)
I would guess that different brains are damaged in different ways. Sometimes it’s genetic. Sometimes it’s just too much or too little of some chemical produced in the brain (potentially also for genetic reasons), which might be fixable by a chemical intervention. (Or maybe not, because the damage caused by the chemical imbalance might be irreversible.)
But different brains will require different chemical interventions. Maybe your friend was X-deficient and took extra X, and it made the symptoms go away. But your brain may be Y-deficient, so adding X will not help. Or maybe your brain already has too much X, and adding more X will fuck you up immediately.
If a doctor told me that statistically, people in my condition are likely to benefit from X, and the doctor would prescribe me a safe dose of X, and then monitor whether my condition improves or not… I might actually try it.
But that is completely different from e.g. a friend telling me that they know someone who took X and was happy about the outcome. First, it’s not obvious that X was actually responsible for the outcome. Maybe the person changed a few things in their life at the same time, and something else worked. Or maybe the person is just addicted, and “happiness” is what their addicted brain reports when asked how they feel about taking X. But most importantly, it may be the case that X helps some people, and hurts other people, and this person is a lucky exception, while those bad cases everyone heard about are the rule. And if I tried X and it wouldn’t work for me, I can already predict that the friend’s advice would be something like “try more” or “try something stronger”.