Zack_M_Davis comments on Shortness is now a treatable condition - Less Wrong
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Comments (110)
I'm sure they could do something useful. I say that.
But I don't think they'll do so much for me that it'd make up for it. As I said, consider the job market. This pill would put me into the bottom 30% of the population IQ-wise (I'm guessing, does anyone have the actual numbers? The only people I would still be above would be the 110-130 range.). Have you looked at how well the current bottom 30% does? From what I remember of the job statistics in The Bell Curve, the prospects are absolutely dismal, and seem likely to get worse over time thanks to automation.
In the scenario as specified, I think you're in the 72nd percentile. The half of the population originally with <100 IQ jumps up to <130 IQ (still below you), and you're still above the people in the 110-130 group who were also denied the drug.
On an absolute scale, they're doing fine.
Hm... OK, I think you're right about that. Being in the 72nd percentile is not nearly as bad as dropping down into the 30s. Rereading the original formulation I see that I assumed that the <110 population would jump up past me, while as specified they would just have a 30 point boost which would put them much nearer me but not past.
Unfortunately, real humans (such as myself) do not live on absolute scales. This is why we are happier to see our neighbor's salary cut than the both of us receive a raise but his much larger, and this is why self-assessed happiness of nations is only weakly correlated with wealth & not perfectly correlated.