I honestly think that indifference and lack of learning is holding us further back than biology is. But maybe we'd have somewhat of an easier time if critical thinking came easier to people.
this post was submitted on 22 Aug 2025
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I, for one, welcome our new super-intelligent rodent overlords
We think we'll turn ourselves into superhumans with gene editing, and worry about the societal implications and potential uses for evil.
But, the world is dumb. I suspect we'll actually turn ourselves into figurative pugs or Gros Michel bananas given the chance.
Edit: Which is also really bad.
New technology will not solve issues unless we have the political will to ensure it will help everyone.
Such technology is worthless or potentially actively harmful until we deal with the social disasters currently occurring.
Or, we could just provide everyone with a good education.
That's very ignorant of basic biology. You should read the citations here: https://maximiliankohler.blogspot.com/2020/08/why-im-voting-for-one-of-two-senile-old.html
Maybe you can link them directly so I don't have to sift through your shitty blog? At a glance, if your argument is that we should also have initiatives to increase the health of everybody, than I agree, and don't need some smug asshole putting words in my mouth.
Watch the movie Gattaca, there's your answer. Basically a two-class society between richt edited people and poor natural-born people who would be even more disadvantaged.
If everyone gains 30 IQ points, nobody gains 30 IQ points. That's how indices work.
I mean, sure...
They readjust 100 once drift becomes noticable and it's not the average result anymore.
But an IQ tests are still quantifiable and a hypothetical where everyone would score 30 points higher on the current scale is still worthwhile.
If we could magically snap our collective fingers and everyone become smarter? Sure, probably good for society.
But what's definitely incredibly toxic for society would be to pay-wall these sort of advances to the rich, creating a semi-human racial offshoot being constantly told that they are better, smarter and wealthier than any other human. Only new flavors of racism, apartheid and ethnic cleanings follow.
That is absolutely what would happen.
IQ tests are a scam and are rooted in Eugenics. They are also heavily skewed when the takers are poor and malnourished.
People arent born "stupid". They lack access to health and education.
When getting on your personal yacht, how many attendees are needed?
The news industry would collapse overnight as their entire customer base suddenly realizes "Hey! This is all just alarmist BS and straight up lies! Look at this, the headline isn't even CLOSE to depicting the reality of the situation. You'd have to be a complete fucking idiot to fall for this crap!"
Kind of whataboutism from my side... But won't healthy (and enough) food for kids, education and opportunities provide an IQ boost? I guess we could do a noticeable increase if we wanted...
Would this be the start of the eugenics wars?
This widespread, and seemingly sole focus on genes is ignorant.
way fewer kids till wealth inequality was reduced to reasonable levels.
what could possibly go wrong
Flowers for Algernon
If everybody could read and understand Marx, people would seize the means of production.
I am not clever enough to know if they would still be exploited by an elite. The way investment bankers spend their bonuses makes me think so.
Everyone gaining 30 IQ points would be the death of Marxism, ordinary people would be able to see that his economics is garbage.
Why are they garbage?
He lived back when political economy was pretty much just a bunch of guys groping around in the dark, on the rare occasion that they got something right it was mostly luck. The ideas his entire ideology is built on top of, like all paid labor being inherently exploitative because of excess profits or the declining rate of profit signaling the imminent death of capitalism, have no basis in reality.
Wikipedia makes it seem as if the theory is still valid:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tendency_of_the_rate_of_profit_to_fall
Why are excess profits not exploitative? That seems to be more of a moral argument than a theory.
What about the accumulation of capital? After reading Marx, even if not entirely correct, wouldn't people spread wealth more equally to reduce the influence of Capital on politics?
I agree that people would not outright implement Marxism. Yet, what would they implement?
The falling rate of profit in and of itself is not controversial, but 200 years later it hasn't come anywhere close to killing capitalism like Marx predicted, it's a good thing that shows us competition is working to bring down prices and allocate capital more efficiently.
I agree that moral arguments are not economic ones and that a more equal distribution of wealth is compatible with my moral intuitions and would surely make people happier on average, but Marx presented his arguments in economic terms and we should assess them on that basis. Marx based his arguments about labor and excess profits on the labor theory of value, which may have been the best we had at the time but does not explain the world very well at all and has since been abandoned by any serious economists.
I might not be entirely convinced that the concentration of wealth inherently threatens democracy, but because I consider it sacred and believe it to be so much better than the alternatives we should take steps to protect it from anything that could conceivably threaten it, though I worry that attempting to aggressively redistribute wealth could have consequences worse than what we're trying to prevent.
It seems to me that capitalism, though it could always use some tweaks around the edges, is for the most part sound and has produced better outcomes for the average person than any of the available alternatives. If anybody is going to implement an alternative I hope they do it far from me.
The falling rate of profit cannot kill as long as capitalism has no competition. Now China makes it a problem. E.g. Intel hasn't invested enough for the next technology. China's chip production is almost closing the gap.
There are other areas where investments weren't made. Cell phone coverage is ridiculous, as is fibre to the home. Antibiotics are going to become a problem. The housing market and high speed rail both prevent mobility and better allocation of resources.
The software industry has solved it by selling services and not products. But that has left us with an enshittified Windows and an office suit with a file format that stifles innovation.
Curing neurological diseases isn't the same as bumping up IQ.
But 30 points is fucking huge...
Like, that's the difference between dead center "average" and a legal intellectual disability.
Because 30 points is where communication becomes hindered.
So if everyone got a 30 point bump, it would change absolutely nothing. The people being manipulated would be 30 points smarter, but so would the people manipulating them.
IQ just isn't a big deal, that's why they dropped the threshold for "genius" from 160 to 120 and added things like motivation and drive.
What really matters is the difference between people