I just want to note the origin and context for “Algernon effect” for anyone who might stumble across this. Eliezer Yudkowsky based the term “Algernon’s Law” on the SF book Flowers for Algernon and used it loosely to refer to the idea that evolution has probably found most of the simple ways to increase human intelligence in ways that benefit transmission of the genes involved. Then Gwern built on Eliezer’s writing and others in his coverage of purported intelligence enhancing drugs and other practices. Scott cited Gwern in redefining Algernon’s Law to mean “your body is already mostly optimal, so adding more things is unlikely to have large positive effects unless there’s some really good reason,” and now it’s being used here to mean “it’s easier to hurt yourself than help.”
Genes that cause disadvantages at later ages (which impact fewer organisms) may give a reproductive advantage at a younger age, and thereby achieve a net reproductive advantage.
The optimizing pressure of natural selection diminishes with age, particular in the post-reproductive part of the life cycle.
This helps explain why people age, which is just another word for the development of health problems over time and the mortality risk they cause. It may also help explain evolutionary limits on intelligence. A gene that enhances intelligence, but lowers the chance of reproduction overall in the ancestral environment, will be selected against. For example, if a gene increases intelligence, but delays puberty, causing the organism to suffer more brushes with death in the wild, evolution may select it out of the gene pool—even though this particular form of evolutionary cost may not be one that we particularly care about, or that even impacts us very much in our modern, low-risk environment.
None of this is to necessarily contradict Elizabeth’s comment—just to add context.
I just want to note the origin and context for “Algernon effect” for anyone who might stumble across this. Eliezer Yudkowsky based the term “Algernon’s Law” on the SF book Flowers for Algernon and used it loosely to refer to the idea that evolution has probably found most of the simple ways to increase human intelligence in ways that benefit transmission of the genes involved. Then Gwern built on Eliezer’s writing and others in his coverage of purported intelligence enhancing drugs and other practices. Scott cited Gwern in redefining Algernon’s Law to mean “your body is already mostly optimal, so adding more things is unlikely to have large positive effects unless there’s some really good reason,” and now it’s being used here to mean “it’s easier to hurt yourself than help.”
I haven’t looked much into intelligence research, but the mainstream understanding of this idea in aging research is based on antagonistic pleiotropy and diminishing selection pressure with age.
Genes that cause disadvantages at later ages (which impact fewer organisms) may give a reproductive advantage at a younger age, and thereby achieve a net reproductive advantage.
The optimizing pressure of natural selection diminishes with age, particular in the post-reproductive part of the life cycle.
This helps explain why people age, which is just another word for the development of health problems over time and the mortality risk they cause. It may also help explain evolutionary limits on intelligence. A gene that enhances intelligence, but lowers the chance of reproduction overall in the ancestral environment, will be selected against. For example, if a gene increases intelligence, but delays puberty, causing the organism to suffer more brushes with death in the wild, evolution may select it out of the gene pool—even though this particular form of evolutionary cost may not be one that we particularly care about, or that even impacts us very much in our modern, low-risk environment.
None of this is to necessarily contradict Elizabeth’s comment—just to add context.