(I didn’t want to reply, but given the follow-up...)
Since they are already intelligent, there’s a road to incremental improvement. For hands, it’s not even clearly possible, will take too long, and psychology will change anyway in the meantime, causing even greater value drift (which is already the greatest cost of breeding for intelligence).
It depends on the attitudes of the species. Non-standard appendages might be a sign of ill-health. Humans are not the only species that uses a heuristic approximating “looks like a normal member of my species” as a proxy for health and general evolutionary fitness. So breeding hands might be tough, in that they wouldn’t be able to breed easily with the other members of the population necessarily. On the other hand, breeding for intelligence doesn’t have that problem. But all of this is highly speculative and to a large extent is a function in detail of what the species is like and what obvious phenotypical variation there is that can be easily traced to genetics.
My understanding is we’re starting from the assumption that the species in question is on average far more rational (and probably more intelligent) than humanity. If creatures that can create a thriving scientific community in the total absence of technology have gotten to the point of saying “You know, things would be a lot easier if we had hands. Hey, how about selective breeding?” I don’t imagine the fact that they’d likely find hands unsexy would be an issue.
Would it be easier for greater-than-human intelligent nohanders to breed themselves for more intelligence or for, you know, hands?
(I didn’t want to reply, but given the follow-up...)
Since they are already intelligent, there’s a road to incremental improvement. For hands, it’s not even clearly possible, will take too long, and psychology will change anyway in the meantime, causing even greater value drift (which is already the greatest cost of breeding for intelligence).
The answer is yes.
It depends on the attitudes of the species. Non-standard appendages might be a sign of ill-health. Humans are not the only species that uses a heuristic approximating “looks like a normal member of my species” as a proxy for health and general evolutionary fitness. So breeding hands might be tough, in that they wouldn’t be able to breed easily with the other members of the population necessarily. On the other hand, breeding for intelligence doesn’t have that problem. But all of this is highly speculative and to a large extent is a function in detail of what the species is like and what obvious phenotypical variation there is that can be easily traced to genetics.
My understanding is we’re starting from the assumption that the species in question is on average far more rational (and probably more intelligent) than humanity. If creatures that can create a thriving scientific community in the total absence of technology have gotten to the point of saying “You know, things would be a lot easier if we had hands. Hey, how about selective breeding?” I don’t imagine the fact that they’d likely find hands unsexy would be an issue.