In many debates about cognition enhancement the claim is that it would be bad, because it would produce compounding effects—the rich would use it to get richer, producing a more unequal society. This claim hinges on the assumption that there would be an economic or social threshold to enhancer use, and that it would produce effects that were strongly in favour of just the individual taking the drug.
I think there is good reason to suspect that enhancement has positive externalities—lower costs due to stupidity, individual benefits that produce tax money, perhaps better governance, cooperation and more great ideas. In fact, it might be that these benefits are more powerful than the individual ones. If everybody got 1% smarter, we would not notice much improvement in everyday life, but the economy might grow a few percent and we would get slightly faster technological development and better governance. That might actually turn the problem into a free rider problem: unless you really want to be smarter taking the enhancer might be a cost to you (risk of side-effects, for example). So you might want everybody else to take the enhancers, and then reap the benefit without the cost.
In many debates about cognition enhancement the claim is that it would be bad, because it would produce compounding effects—the rich would use it to get richer, producing a more unequal society. This claim hinges on the assumption that there would be an economic or social threshold to enhancer use, and that it would produce effects that were strongly in favour of just the individual taking the drug.
I think there is good reason to suspect that enhancement has positive externalities—lower costs due to stupidity, individual benefits that produce tax money, perhaps better governance, cooperation and more great ideas. In fact, it might be that these benefits are more powerful than the individual ones. If everybody got 1% smarter, we would not notice much improvement in everyday life, but the economy might grow a few percent and we would get slightly faster technological development and better governance. That might actually turn the problem into a free rider problem: unless you really want to be smarter taking the enhancer might be a cost to you (risk of side-effects, for example). So you might want everybody else to take the enhancers, and then reap the benefit without the cost.
There’s a historical IQ enhancer we can use to look for this effect: food.