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Comment by Rire_Virus (Humere_Virus) on Significantly Enhancing Adult Intelligence With Gene Editing May Be Possible · 2023-12-17T12:13:46.954Z · LW · GW

Hi,

Since I have read your entire post on intelligence boosting I had to DM you.

I ask you as a fellow human being who errs just as much as everybody else to read this with open and calm mind, refraining from immediate judgement. I have tried to be as critical as possible not to bully you, but in order to point out some holes in this post which I hope in the end will do nothing but improve it.

It seems to me that there are some very significant obstacles to this. You have addressed 2 of them, however solutions you provided are not nearly solutions. I think you are a bit too optimistic about this, although I like optimism, we can't allow ourselves to chase a fictional dream just because we are slaves to our physiology of dopamine drive which works on the basis of least resistance path. So we are always inclined to favor a bit undefined but promising solutions over real, non-ambiguous data which clearly demonstrates the solution will not work. 

I dare say this because I have read too much statements in this post like: with further research this can be solved or One has to believe. (Believe is what hopeless do)

I understand you are deeply invested in this, and I really wish you were right, but there are just WAY TOO MANY UNSOLVED PROBLEMS here and WAY TOO LITTLE DATA on how the body and especially each cell works in the brain - not all cells work the same, yet every single one of them is essential. It is like we have no map of the environment but wish to visit a castle of king Arthur. 

I don't think people are trying to pick the low hanging fruit with monogenic diseases, these diseases are simply a priority for us to solve, coupled with sufficiently advanced technology and knowledge to actually solve them. However delivering 100 edits per single lipid particle is like saying we are able to design, build and actually deliver a fully functional warp 7 capable spaceship in 2 weeks, give or take 3 days with current knowledge.

I truly think we should talk about this and I agree with you on many of your points, but before solving a biological limit to intelligence perhaps we should first try to reach it. Imagine if our education systems worked efficiently enough to push average IQ to 160, wouldn't it be interesting. And besides, what makes you think genetics will magically triple our IQ, if we are not capable of reaching IQ of 150 as a society than how on Earth do you think we will be able to reach 800. Like you are trying to build a car with max speed of 290 mph, while you don't even have a driving license let alone know how to control a beast capable of 150 mph.

KEY POINT: there is no magic solution, if it is too good to be true, it usually is untrue. 

Good luck and thank you!