You’re correct that the average IQ could be increased in various ways, and that increasing the minimum IQ of the population wouldn’t help us here. I was imagining shifting the entire normal distribution two SDs to the right, so that those who are already +4-5SDs would become +5-7SDs.
As far as I’m concerned, the progress of humanity stands on the shoulders of giants, and the bottom 99.999% aren’t doing much of a difference.
The threshold for recursive self-improvement in humans, if one exists, is quite high. Perhaps if somebody like Neumann lived today it would be possible. By the way, most of the people who look into nootropics, meditations and other such things do so because they’re not functional, so in a way it’s a bit like asking “Why are there so many sick people in hospitals if it’s a place for recovery?” thought you could make the argument that geniuses would be doing these things if they worked.
My score on IQ tests has increased about 15 points since I was 18, but it’s hard to say if I succeeded in increasing my intelligence or if it’s just a result of improving my mental health and actually putting a bit of effort into my life. I still think that very high levels of concentration and effort can force the brain to reconstruct itself, but that this process is so unpleasant that people stop doing it once they’re good enough (for instance, most people can’t read all that fast, despite reading texts for 1000s of hours. But if they spend just a few weeks practicing, they can improve their reading speed by a lot, so this kind of shows how improvement stops once you stop applying pressure)
By the way, I don’t know much about neurons. It could be that 4-5SD people are much harder to improve since the ratio of better states to worse states is much lower
I was imagining shifting the entire normal distribution two SDs to the right,
Right, but those interventions are harder (shifting the right tail further right is especially hard).
Also, shifting the distribution is just way different numerically from being able to make anyone who wants be +7SD. If you shift +1SD, you go from 0 people at +7SD to ~8 people.
(And note that the shift is, in some ways, more unequal compared to “anyone who wants, for the price of a new car, can reach the effective ceiling”.)
A right shift by 2SDs would make people like Hawkings, Einstein, Tesla, etc. about 100 times more common, and make it so that a few people who are 1-2SDs above these people are likely to appear soon. I think this is sufficient, but I don’t know enough about human intelligence to guarantee it.
I think it depends on how the SD is increased. If you “merely” create a 150-IQ person with a 20-item working memory, or with a 8SD processing speed, this may not be enough to understand the problem and to solve it. Of course, you can substitute with verbal intelligence, which I think a lot of mathematicians do. I can’t rotate 5D objects in my head, but I can write equations on paper which can rotate 5D objects and get the right answer. I think this is how mathematics is progressing past what we can intuitively understand. Of course, if your non-verbal intelligence can keep up, you’re much better off, since you can combine any insights from any area of life and get something new out of it.
You’re correct that the average IQ could be increased in various ways, and that increasing the minimum IQ of the population wouldn’t help us here. I was imagining shifting the entire normal distribution two SDs to the right, so that those who are already +4-5SDs would become +5-7SDs.
As far as I’m concerned, the progress of humanity stands on the shoulders of giants, and the bottom 99.999% aren’t doing much of a difference.
The threshold for recursive self-improvement in humans, if one exists, is quite high. Perhaps if somebody like Neumann lived today it would be possible. By the way, most of the people who look into nootropics, meditations and other such things do so because they’re not functional, so in a way it’s a bit like asking “Why are there so many sick people in hospitals if it’s a place for recovery?” thought you could make the argument that geniuses would be doing these things if they worked.
My score on IQ tests has increased about 15 points since I was 18, but it’s hard to say if I succeeded in increasing my intelligence or if it’s just a result of improving my mental health and actually putting a bit of effort into my life. I still think that very high levels of concentration and effort can force the brain to reconstruct itself, but that this process is so unpleasant that people stop doing it once they’re good enough (for instance, most people can’t read all that fast, despite reading texts for 1000s of hours. But if they spend just a few weeks practicing, they can improve their reading speed by a lot, so this kind of shows how improvement stops once you stop applying pressure)
By the way, I don’t know much about neurons. It could be that 4-5SD people are much harder to improve since the ratio of better states to worse states is much lower
Right, but those interventions are harder (shifting the right tail further right is especially hard).
Also, shifting the distribution is just way different numerically from being able to make anyone who wants be +7SD. If you shift +1SD, you go from 0 people at +7SD to ~8 people.
(And note that the shift is, in some ways, more unequal compared to “anyone who wants, for the price of a new car, can reach the effective ceiling”.)
Right, I agree with that.
A right shift by 2SDs would make people like Hawkings, Einstein, Tesla, etc. about 100 times more common, and make it so that a few people who are 1-2SDs above these people are likely to appear soon. I think this is sufficient, but I don’t know enough about human intelligence to guarantee it.
I think it depends on how the SD is increased. If you “merely” create a 150-IQ person with a 20-item working memory, or with a 8SD processing speed, this may not be enough to understand the problem and to solve it. Of course, you can substitute with verbal intelligence, which I think a lot of mathematicians do. I can’t rotate 5D objects in my head, but I can write equations on paper which can rotate 5D objects and get the right answer. I think this is how mathematics is progressing past what we can intuitively understand. Of course, if your non-verbal intelligence can keep up, you’re much better off, since you can combine any insights from any area of life and get something new out of it.