Re: Maternal diet as a kind of genetic modification

From: Anders Sandberg (asa@nada.kth.se)
Date: Mon Aug 04 2003 - 06:30:02 MDT

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    On Sun, Aug 03, 2003 at 07:04:46AM -0500, randy wrote:
    > On Sun, 3 Aug 2003 00:35:45 +0200, you wrote:
    >
    > I agree with this general theory. I also wonder if it does not affect
    > IQ. During my travels, I have had contact with a lot of third
    > worlders. It always seemed to me that they had low IQs. Perhaps the
    > poor maternal diet is why.

    It might contribute, but there are other factors too: lack of education,
    a less information dense society, communications problems (when you
    cannot communicate swiftly and exactly, the other part seems stupid) and
    the wrong context. The last part is important: people show a great deal
    of intelligence and ability in their native context, but get rather
    "stupid" in an unfamiliar context where they cannot rely as much on
    their learned world knowledge.

    Improving maternal diet is a good thing in general, and if we also
    figure out what aspects of it produce the best results on the child we
    might be able to do a lot of low-tech enhancement in a very acceptable
    way. The gain in human intelligence and eventual ability of a good
    maternal feeding program might be far greater than many adult
    intelligence enhancement programs.

    -- 
    -----------------------------------------------------------------------
    Anders Sandberg                                      Towards Ascension!
    asa@nada.kth.se                            http://www.nada.kth.se/~asa/
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