Comment by romberg on Transhumanism as Simplified Humanism · 2021-10-12T09:42:25.307Z · LW · GW

"If the technology were available to gradually raise her IQ to 120, without negative side effects, would you judge it good to do so?"

to me it seems possible to give simple answers, if "without negative side effects" would hold.

BUT in reality this is NEVER the case! There will be different distribution of wealth etc, the lifes of quite some people will change (at least a bit).

Thus there are always negative side effects! Thus the question to be answered is, to compare the positive effects (multiplied by the number of people (and not the power of these people)) with the negative side effects (multiplied by the number of people (and not the power of these people))?

If these negative side effects are assumed to be zero, then of course you can find questions that come up with solutions that are obviously not good. But that is just making non-adequate assumptions!