From: Anders Sandberg (asa@nada.kth.se)
Date: Sun Jan 19 2003 - 11:10:13 MST
On Sun, Jan 19, 2003 at 10:20:06AM -0500, Gary Miller wrote:
> Ander Sandberg said:
>
> Documented High correlation of IQ in MZA Twins (much higher than 0.8
>
> http://www.mugu.com/cgi-bin/Upstream/Issues/psychology/IQ/bouchard-twins
> .html
Sure, but the conclusion still holds. See
http://www.umass.edu/preferen/gintis/feldman.pdf and
http://www.santafe.edu/sfi/publications/Working-Papers/01-01-005.pdf
That IQ is heritable doesn't mean you can get the benefits of
intelligence to reproduce across generations easily.
> Because we are suggesting that we provide what would could be called
> the ideal mental and social environment. I defined that as the
> children will get to interact and compete with others of their
> intelligence they will not face the boredom or negative social stigma
> associated with appearing to too smart that they would face in normal
> schools. The teachers likewise be chosen for their ability to
> motivate and teach gifted students. Common sense tells me children
> raised in such an environment would make much better use of their
> learning and intellectual capacity than the same child in a normal
> school environment.
Sure. It would likely help most of them most of the time. There is also
a very real risk of them running into the usual problems gifted children
have with overambitious parents trying to foist destiny on them, in
this case not just "make mommy happy" but "save humanity!".
But look at the big names in history (selected by the importance of
their contributions) and try to see how many of them had enriched
upbringings. You will see that most of them had entirely ordinary
upbringings of the time - Pasteur, Newton, Einstein, Edison and so on.
There might be a larger incidence of enriched upbringings than in the
population at large, but if you do the math you will see that increasing
the number of good upbringings of people with good genes with 20 does
not produce a large number of geniuses:
Assume one genius per 100 million people (this could be regarded as a
definition of a genius): P(genius) = 10^-8. Assume normally one in a
thousand gets a really good upbringing: P(upbringing)=10^-3. Assume a
good upbringing increases the likeliehood of being a genius a
hundredfold.
In a population of N people, you would get
N*[(1-P(upbringing))*P(genius) + P(upbringing)*1000*P(genius)]
= N*[(1-1e-3)*1e-8 + 1e-3*1e-8*1000]=1.99e-8
geniuses on average.
Now if you add 20 people to this equation, and let N=6e9, that increases
P(upbringing) with just 3e-9! The increase in the number of geniuses
would be minuscule. You can extend the above by adding a P(good genes),
but it won't help much (in fact, it will make things worse).
> The only remaining probability would be whether these children would
> choose to make a positive contribution to the singularity. Although
> this should not be coercive they should be exposed to ideas and
> concept of the singularity early in life. Asked to write a few papers
> of it as they are growing up. And provided with news and discussion
> about how it perhaps may affect the singularity. In this way we would
> hope to have their efforts directed to the betterment of mankind if
> not the singularity itself.
Maybe they will explain to the project leaders that the whole idea of
the singularity is bunk?
The problem with real transformative genius is that it is creative and
produces something entirely unexpected. While I approve of nurturing it,
I don't think it can be nurtured with a specific goal in mind. If you by
singularity mean "general human progress" then I might regard the aim of
your project as valid (even if I disagree on the means), but it may
very well be that these children advance it by becoming great writers,
theologicians or revolutionaries.
> Once out of school these children should compete for research grants in
> their chosen fields.
> We will also learn much from a social experiment of this magnitude.
> Instead of 20 I would say
> 20 per year!
You have never heard of Kantian ethics, have you? :-)
While a lot of what Kant wrote was irrelevant or IMHO misled, I think
his point about never treating humans solely as means is important and
ties in with transhumanism. Why do we want to advance? Because we want
to enhance what it means to be a human, to get better lives. We are our
own ends. But if we are advancing by building savior kindergartens we
are turning people into means in just the way a lot of the anti-cloning
ethicists are warning, and there would also be a contradiction with the
aims of transhumanism. Sure, let people advance humanity if they want,
and let's give children the best upbringing and genes we can make for
them. But we shouldn't give them the upbringing and genes to fulfill
*our* wants, but *theirs*. In general that will likely be the
advancement of humanity too, in their own way.
> >> If you want to accelerate the singularity, isn't it
> >> more cost-efficient to find ways of bringing extra
> >> stimulation to the already existing kids that have
> >> good potential but too little stimulation? Maybe
> >> Sesame Street 2.0 is more powerful than the cloning vat.
>
> This is too much of a shotgun approach. Of course we need better
> schools, better teachers, and better family environments but we are
> working towards that today. Too many schools lack truly accelerated
> programs for the gifted to help them reach their full potential.
Is progress done by lone geniuses or the collective intelligence of an
entire civilization? I'm not saying that geniuses are unimportant or
that individuals don't matter - far from it - but that real progress
consists of far more than the initial imaginative spark: it is research,
development, production, funding, application, feedback and regulation.
Even if we get a lot more of those rare geniuses I would be surprised if
that changed the rate of progress very much, since they would still have
to rely on the *huge* infrastructure of collaborators, assistants,
engineers, economists, customers and other "unimportant" people adding
their own skills to the endeavor. And if you could make more of those
smarter - even at random - you would get an amplifier effect.
The myth of the lone genius as the necessary and sufficient condition of
progress is popular. But it isn't very true, and policies based on it
can waste much effort and resources on infinitesimal gains. On the other
hand, by fixing those messy and bad schools and education programs (even
by subversively spreading education outside normal channels) you can get
a lot of mediocre people to become a little bit less mediocre, or more
accepting of new ideas.
-- ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Anders Sandberg Towards Ascension! asa@nada.kth.se http://www.nada.kth.se/~asa/ GCS/M/S/O d++ -p+ c++++ !l u+ e++ m++ s+/+ n--- h+/* f+ g+ w++ t+ r+ !y
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