Genetically Engineered Intelligence

[Mountaineer]

Unintended consequences --->  Smarter criminals?  Smarter terrorists?  Petri dish abortions?  More rapid moral decay?

... M

[Mountaineer]

More rapid moral decay?

I'm not sure why this would necessarily follow.

Tenn,

I may be in left field on this, but it seems to me the more man tries to situationally "play God" the greater the probablilty of moral decay (I'm speaking of morals and not moralism) since the distinction between "right" and "wrong" may get a lot more blurry.  I'm equating "man" to being somewhat like many/most superstars (film, sports, music, etc.) where it is really difficult to handle the fame and fortune wisely.  When man sees himself as a superstar, capable of most anything he desires, it scares me as I know that man is fundamentally not a particularly "nice" creature.  I can envision many more meglomaniacs than we have had in the past.  But on the other hand, I am very much supportive of smart people and high IQs - after all I are one.    Just ask me. 

... M

[MediumTex]

More rapid moral decay?

I'm not sure why this would necessarily follow.

Tenn,

I may be in left field on this, but it seems to me the more man tries to situationally "play God" the greater the probablilty of moral decay (I'm speaking of morals and not moralism) since the distinction between "right" and "wrong" may get a lot more blurry.  I'm equating "man" to being somewhat like many/most superstars (film, sports, music, etc.) where it is really difficult to handle the fame and fortune wisely.  When man sees himself as a superstar, capable of most anything he desires, it scares me as I know that man is fundamentally not a particularly "nice" creature.  I can envision many more meglomaniacs than we have had in the past.  But on the other hand, I am very much supportive of smart people and high IQs - after all I are one.    Just ask me. 

... M

Isn't most of modern medicine basically man trying to play God?

Doesn't anything but a completely fatalistic existence involve some element of playing God with respect to your own destiny?

Isn't the choice to believe in a God who wants to provide you with supernatural assistance when you struggle a form of playing God?

also isn't deciding that almost everyone who isn't following Christianity or your denomination of Christianity must be playing god ... a form of playing god

[dualstow]

as I know that man is fundamentally not a particularly "nice" creature. 

I always think about this in the frame of evolution, and I think about it whenever Medium Tex talks about Americans and our penchant for violence. Though there may be less violent cultures out there, there is certainly no shortage of those which are even more violent. Since I believe that we evolved from the same source as chimps and apes, I suppose it's not a surprise that we humans have anger, aggression and violence built in. We're still working on that.

[Mountaineer]

I'm not sure why this would necessarily follow.

Tenn,

I may be in left field on this, but it seems to me the more man tries to situationally "play God" the greater the probablilty of moral decay (I'm speaking of morals and not moralism) since the distinction between "right" and "wrong" may get a lot more blurry.  I'm equating "man" to being somewhat like many/most superstars (film, sports, music, etc.) where it is really difficult to handle the fame and fortune wisely.  When man sees himself as a superstar, capable of most anything he desires, it scares me as I know that man is fundamentally not a particularly "nice" creature.  I can envision many more meglomaniacs than we have had in the past.  But on the other hand, I am very much supportive of smart people and high IQs - after all I are one.    Just ask me. 

... M

Isn't most of modern medicine basically man trying to play God?

Doesn't anything but a completely fatalistic existence involve some element of playing God with respect to your own destiny?

Isn't the choice to believe in a God who wants to provide you with supernatural assistance when you struggle a form of playing God?

See the religion thread where I touch on this.  I am not going to comment here since I've been requested not to post religious material in other threads and it offends those who don't want to turn the channel or ignore stuff they don't like.  If you wish to pursue these questions, please post in the religion thread. 

... M

[Pointedstick]

It strikes me that this is unfortunately an altogether unrealistic option due to the myriad ethical quandaries it imposes, not to mention the practical matters of how to get it past the elites in society without them availing themselves of the same technology and simply re-creating the divide, with both sides at higher levels of intelligence than before but still apart from one another.

While we're dreaming of utopian ways to heal the social fabric, why not this: a society in which the basis for wealth and prosperity is not intelligence but rather virtue. As we all know, the intelligence-based system leaves many out in the cold because they are genetically incapable of manifesting the intelligence needed to raise themselves above the level of subsistence that an industrial-technical society provides. But virtue is available to all, no matter how smart or dumb, clever or dull. In a society that makes the virtuous man wealthy, the social distinction between the brilliant and the stupid evaporates, as does the gulf between them in civil society. And the phenomenon of the highly intelligent but amoral rich man vanishes, along with the temptation for everyone else to follow that path to great riches that taints the social fabric with selfishness, greed, and hedonism.

[Xan]

I like the idea, PS, but how?

[Pointedstick]

I think it is basically impossible until high productivity becomes so quotidian that the returns to intelligence are reduced because everyone already has the capacity to do anything and live however they want, so further production just isn't all that necessarily. However, this runs into the problem that in such a society, the more likely outcome is that people will spend 100% of their time in holodeck-like virtual reality simulators playing out their fantasies rather than working to bring their fantasies to reality. Once that happens, that society is pretty much doomed beyond the generation that first experiences it unless it's defended and sustained by robots. Basically a voluntary Matrix.

[Xan]

It sounds like you're describing the Star Trek: The Next Generation utopia.  It was never really explained why everybody isn't on the holodeck all the time.  Based on the Barclay storyline, perhaps it was social censure, but I don't think that would cover it.

Your fear is very much like the very first pilot episode of the original series in 1964.  The big-brained dudes had a society where everybody had achieved such mental acumen that they lived in fantasy, and everything fell to bits around them.  They had to kidnap Captain Pike and try to get him to breed with one of his crewmates to inject some life.

[Tortoise]

While we're dreaming of utopian ways to heal the social fabric, why not this: a society in which the basis for wealth and prosperity is not intelligence but rather virtue.

Not a bad idea! Unfortunately, it requires everyone to agree on what's virtuous and what's not. If we could do that, probably most of the world's existing problems would resolve themselves.

So it seems to me that the even more fundamental solution is... getting everyone on the same page philosophically/religiously so that we can all agree on what is virtuous.

Good luck with that

am i the lone contrarian who is having the idea in the back of my mind "why not do this" (choosing for intelligence) "it has a certain appeal to it"...
not as some Utopian solution since it would never be likely to get applied in some way that would have Utopian results, but in a pure genetic selfishness, i might want my offspring to have every possible advantage i could give them. sort of way?

this is assuming that the benefit to intelligence was spread across all types and areas of intelligence and not just warping the kid to excel in one specific or small area..

[Libertarian666]

This is of course not a new idea, but I still doubt that it will be as simple as they seem to think.
But if it is really that simple, then why wait until the next generation to benefit from it? Why not engineer a retrovirus to fix the genome in people who are already here?