quote:But I'm not sure we'd necessarily want to increase the human race's ability to take tests, if it comes with the price of having the human race be antisocial or less creative.
And why do you make the assumption that this would be the case? Because in fact, IQ generally does correlate with creativity. Are you sure you haven't watched too much Star Trek? The thing about Spock, you know, and indeed all Vulcans who struggle with the 'dichotomy' between reason and emotion, is that they are not real.
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quote:"And why do you make the assumption that this would be the case?"
Since I used the word "if" I obviously didn't make an assumption.
quote:"Because in fact, IQ generally does correlate with creativity."
If you have studies indicating such, you've not offered links to them in this forum. If you don't have studies indicating such, you're merely stating an unsubstantiated belief.
quote:"The thing about Spock, you know, and indeed all Vulcans who struggle with the 'dichotomy' between reason and emotion, is that they are not real."
And here you insult me by implying that I believe them to be real.
But since I spoke about creativity (and charisma, and general social capability), not emotion, you're not only making insulting implications, you're making insulting non-sequitur implications.
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quote:Since I used the word "if" I obviously didn't make an assumption.
And yet, of all the many things that conceivably could go wrong in tinkering with brain development, this one is really the first that just springs to mind? Of all the many things one could say about such a modification, the one topmost in your attention is "we might lose creativity"? I assume that you do not create English sentences and post them on Hatrack by drawing words at random from a dictionary; it follows that you must think this a concern valid enough to draw other people's attention to. (Or you might as well post "But what if increasing IQ causes comets to crash into Jupiter?") So what, then, makes you think this is something worth paying attention to?
Link on relation between IQ and creativity. Takeaway: Creative people are generally high in IQ; below IQ=120 creativity increases with increasing IQ; above that threshold you cannot make individual predictions except that such people are likely to score high on creativity. That is, if you have people of IQ 100, 110, 120 and 130, then it is very likely that the last two will be more creative than the first two, and the second more than the first, but the creativity ranking of the last two is almost random. However, since we are discussing gains of say two or three points distributed over the entire population, most of whom are below 120 in IQ, there is a clear net gain in creativity to be expected.
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quote: And yet, of all the many things that conceivably could go wrong in tinkering with brain development, this one is really the first that just springs to mind?
So it's my prioritization that you find so objectionable? Fine, then you tell me: what is the thing that YOU believe should be the *first* thing that we should be worried about, other than interference with other non-IQ-measurable forms of intelligence.
I find it a significant problem exactly because there's no easy way to measure those other forms of intelligence.
quote:I assume that you do not create English sentences and post them on Hatrack by drawing words at random from a dictionary; it follows that you must think this a concern valid enough to draw other people's attention to.
Yes. Then the appropriate response would be to question me on *why* I consider that a possibility worth mentioning, rather than accuse me of making assumptions. And bring up Spock of all things.
So, why not ask?
In which case my response would have to entail my knowledge of existing conditions that correlate negatively to social intelligence, without a simultaneous decrease in IQ. See Asperger's syndrome.
When IQ is the only metric you discuss, I very naturally become worried that IQ is the only metric you care about.
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quote:In which case my response would have to entail my knowledge of existing conditions that correlate negatively to social intelligence, without a simultaneous decrease in IQ. See Asperger's syndrome.
But you are apparently unaware of conditions with the opposite effect, such as Williams Syndrome:
quote:People with Williams Syndrome (caused by deletion of a certain region on chromosome 7) are hypersocial, ultra-gregarious; as children they fail to show a normal fear of adult strangers. WSers are cognitively impaired on most dimensions, but their verbal abilities are spared or even exaggerated; they often speak early, with complex sentences and large vocabulary, and excellent verbal recall, even if they can never learn to do basic arithmetic.
quote:So it's my prioritization that you find so objectionable?
That, and also that this is such a cliche. Can you name a science fiction movie, novel, or show from the last fifty years which included any consideration on intelligence at all, which did not show intelligence as opposed to emotion, rationality opposed to creativity, or some variant of this? When your first worry is a cliche - and notice that this is not one of those cliches that's based on a grain of truth, as far as the science can tell - then the obvious inference is that you haven't actually thought very much about it, but are just going for the first association you can think of.
quote:Fine, then you tell me: what is the thing that YOU believe should be the *first* thing that we should be worried about, other than interference with other non-IQ-measurable forms of intelligence.
Creating an aristocracy of intelligence even more entrenched than the one we have now. But I must say I am not very worried about it. If, on the other hand, it turns out we cannot find a way to increase IQ without damaging some other aspect of the brain - before creativity, I would rather worry about less subtle failure modes such as schizophrenia or manic-depressiveness; it doesn't really take a lot of damage to knock the brain out of its evolution-tuned equilibrium - then this is very much a self-correcting problem. The early adopters will serve their purpose as canaries, just as they did for thalidomide.
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