Intelligence boosts for everyone!

One time a guy accused me of "wanting to always be the smartest guy in the room". I replied: "Apparently you haven't seen the rooms I hang out in." As a matter of fact, I've always enjoyed being the dumbest guy in the room, because I'd rather learn from smart people than have to explain stuff to people.

So I guess it's not surprising that I think we should offer intelligence-boosting technology to everyone. Given the option, I'd much rather live in a society where everyone was a super-genius, even if that would take away  my economic niche (Who would need a semi-smart finance professor in a world of super-geniuses?). But my desire to smart-ify everyone in America is not just for my own benefit; I think most people would benefit from 80 extra IQ points, on net. Sure, there are studies saying that smart people have emotional problems. But I suspect a lot of these are just due to growing up weird and different; if we smart-ified everybody, this wouldn't be a problem.

So how about the technology? Does it exist? Well, on the cyborg side of things, there are some experiments being done with artificial memory and augmented learning. And then on the genetic side of things, there is a big effort underway in China to find the genes that cause extremely high intelligence:

The roots of intelligence are a mystery. Studies show that at least half of the variation in intelligence quotient, or IQ, is inherited. But while scientists have identified some genes that can significantly lower IQ—in people afflicted with mental retardation, for example—truly important genes that affect normal IQ variation have yet to be pinned down. 

The Hong Kong researchers hope to crack the problem by comparing the genomes of super-high-IQ individuals with the genomes of people drawn from the general population. By studying the variation in the two groups, they hope to isolate some of the hereditary factors behind IQ... 

Scientist say that tens of thousands of regular people would have to be studied just to find the first useful IQ gene. 

That's where BGI's genomic deep dive comes in. The team will compare the genomes of 2,200 high-IQ individuals with the genomes of several thousand people drawn randomly from the general population. Because most of the supersmart participants being studied are the cognitive equivalent of people "who are 6-foot-9-inches tall," says Dr. Hsu, it should be much easier to identify many key IQ-related factors in their genomes. (Dr. Hsu is now vice president for research and graduate studies at Michigan State University.)

So we may soon know some genes for exceptional intelligence. This would probably allow us to create super-smart babies (through a "knock-in" technique), or maybe even to augment the intelligence of adults.

Now, people are going to be worried about this technology, for two main reasons. The first reason is that it has the obvious potential to create lots of social inequality. If the distribution of smart-ification technology is left to the private sector, rich people will start having much smarter kids than middle-class or poor people, and generational inequality will be the result. The solution to this is to socialize the technology. Make smart-ification technology available for everyone, via the government.

The second worry is that this smacks of academic racism and eugenics. And indeed, the American scientist who is the driving intellectual force behind the Chinese project is Steve Hsu, a Michigan State physicist who has written a fair amount of academic-racist and pro-eugenics stuff on the web defended the notion of "race" as a biological classification, raised questions about "group differences" in abilities between races, and argued vocally against affirmative action (and here is academic-racist blogger Razib Khan defending and praising Hsu). (Note: See update below.)

But I think this worry is clearly unfounded. Because smart-ification technology will be race-blind! The technology would work equally well on any person, black, white, Asian, etc. In fact, identifying specific genes for high intelligence would clearly indicate that race and intelligence are not fundamentally linked, thus essentially slaughtering the entire academic-racist culture.

So I say, best of luck to the folks at BGI. If they do find the smart genes, the U.S. government must make sure to hack their databases, steal the data, and - assuming it's safe - make smart-ification available free for the masses. Then maybe I can fulfill my fantasy of being the dumbest guy in any given room.

(Note: I don't think IQ is really the measure of intelligence, and in fact I doubt intelligence can be usefully described by a one-factor scalar model at all. But "IQ enhancement" is a shorthand for enhancement of all sorts of cognitive tasks - working memory, spatial visualization, learning speed, etc. etc.)


Update: Steve Hsu emails me, contending that he is not an "academic racist", writing:

I think you should rethink your incorrect characterization of me as an "academic-racist"...I don't know whether group differences in cognitive ability or behavior have any genetic basis. (In fact, this particular question is not one of my main interests -- I am much more interested in the genetic architecture of cognitive ability than in its distribution over ethnic groups.)

I'm certainly willing to give Steve the benefit of the doubt here. I define "academic-racism" by a focus on ethnicity as a determinant of abilities, not by a belief in genetic determinants of ability. So if Steve says he doesn't care about ethnicity, I'll take him at his word. But of course you can read Steve's "race and ability" blog post and decide for yourself.