Are you talking about raising the IQ of a person, or the average IQ of a population? There’s little discussion of the former because decades of failed interventions has made “you can’t raise an existing person’s IQ reliably” the default hypothesis. Once you’ve got past the easy childhood stuff like nutrition, lead paint and iodine deficiencies, there’s not a lot you can do. Aside from some kind of Black Swan like a pill that raises you up a standard deviation, there’s not much room for hope.
Raising the IQ of the next generations though, there’s discussion on that since all the theory deems it totally possible. See here for example.
But yes, in absolute terms there’s little discussion on how to solve the problem. Many writers assume the problem is politically intractable.
There’s a good amount of interest in eg r/nootropics and Gwern has written about the possible benefits of supplementing local water supplies and whatnot. Part of the problem is that the solutions are political complex since they involve A) convincing sufficient people IQ is really a thing and then B) getting large groups of people to admit they’re dumb and want their children to be smarter. In terms of technical solutions we’re just not there cybernetically yet I don’t think. Genetic solutions have the whole eugenics problem to contend with though china seems to be working on it regardless.
Are you talking about raising the IQ of a person, or the average IQ of a population? There’s little discussion of the former because decades of failed interventions has made “you can’t raise an existing person’s IQ reliably” the default hypothesis. Once you’ve got past the easy childhood stuff like nutrition, lead paint and iodine deficiencies, there’s not a lot you can do. Aside from some kind of Black Swan like a pill that raises you up a standard deviation, there’s not much room for hope.
Raising the IQ of the next generations though, there’s discussion on that since all the theory deems it totally possible. See here for example.
But yes, in absolute terms there’s little discussion on how to solve the problem. Many writers assume the problem is politically intractable.
I was talking about raising the IQs of large numbers of existing people.
My impression is that there just isn’t much interest is looking for physical solutions.
Compare the amount of interest in combating obesity to the amount of interest in becoming more intelligent.
There’s a good amount of interest in eg r/nootropics and Gwern has written about the possible benefits of supplementing local water supplies and whatnot. Part of the problem is that the solutions are political complex since they involve A) convincing sufficient people IQ is really a thing and then B) getting large groups of people to admit they’re dumb and want their children to be smarter. In terms of technical solutions we’re just not there cybernetically yet I don’t think. Genetic solutions have the whole eugenics problem to contend with though china seems to be working on it regardless.