Re: Are there smartdrugs?

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Technotranscendence wrote:

> On Tuesday, October 12, 1999 8:51 AM Bostrom,N (pg) N.Bostrom@lse.ac.uk
> > One theoretical argument against the possibility of smartdrugs is that if
> > there were a simple way of boosting intelligence, evolution would already
> > have discovered it.
>
> This is, IMHO, a bogus argument. First off, it makes a false dichotomy
> between evolution and humanity -- as if humans are somehow outside
> evolution. Second, and more to the point, if one is going to make such a
> separation, imagine if someone in the 1960s had said: "If there were a
> simple way of storing data in an optical media, evolution would already have
> discovered it." Now we have CDs, don't we? What is meant here is that
> biological evolution is not the only means of progress and discovery.
> Outside microbial life, it took humans to invent the wheel...
>

Whatever intelligence that has been produced by evolution has come about as an accidental by-product of what it *does* select. And if you want to understand what it does select, just picture the Beatles surrounded by 10 thousand, screaming 13 year old girls, each of whom wants to have one of those boy's baby.

-Ken

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