From: Hal Finney (hal@finney.org)
Date: Wed Jun 19 2002 - 10:53:06 MDT
Eliezer describes his "Algernon's Law":
> ["Any simple attempted enhancement to human intelligence is probably a net
> evolutionary disadvantage." The term "Algernon" comes from Daniel Keyes's
> Hugo winner, "Flowers for Algernon".]
I'm not sure that this law is completely convincing. Although humanity
obviously differs from the apes in terms of intelligence, it doesn't
necessarily mean that every possible simple method for increasing
intelligence has been exploited. Evolution is slow, and we've only had
about a million years, maybe 50,000 generations. That's the equivalent of
about 6 years of evolution for bacteria (assuming a one hour reproduction
period). That seems small enough that some straightforward possibilities
could be overlooked. 98% of our genome is the same as the chimp, further
suggesting that not all simple differences have been tried. So it seems
possible that the meandering course of evolution might not have explored
all of the possible space of relatively simple intelligence improvements.
Another point is that, even to the degree that it is true, it may not be
relevant to attempts to increase intelligence. We can tolerate changes
which would have been evolutionary disadvantages in the past. Increases
in head size would have reduced the probability of live birth, while
today we can do a Caesarian section. Slowing the rate of development
a few more years would probably have been a disadvantage in the past,
but would be perfectly tolerable today. Other changes which might have
harmful side effects could be compensated with modern medicine.
Together both of these considerations suggest that there may be some
relatively simple and practical genetic interventions which could increase
human intelligence.
Hal
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