James_Miller comments on Open thread, December 7-13, 2015 - Less Wrong
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (223)
The reason this approach won't work is that genes aren't linear factors that can added up together in that way. Even in something as simple as milk production, you need to do selection over multiple generations and evaluate each generation separately, building up small genetic changes over time.
If you could construct an actual model relating various genes to intelligence, in a way that took into account genetic interactions, then you could do what you propose in a single generation, but we are very very far from being able to construct such a model at present.
As it stands today, if you just carried out that naive approach you would end up with a non-viable embryo or, in the best-case scenario, a slightly-higher-than-average intelligence person. Not a super-genius.
When researching my book I was told by experts that the intelligence genes which vary throughout the human population probably are linear. Consider President Obama who has a very high IQ but who also has parents who are genetically very different from each other. If intelligence genes worked in a non-additive complex way people with such genetically diverse parents would almost always be very unintelligent. We don't observe this.
Evidence?
Harvard Law Review
Counter-evidence: affirmative action.
In any case, it's interesting that Obama's SAT (or ACT) scores are sealed as are his college grades, AFAIK.
HLS students of any skin color have high IQs as measured by standardized tests. The school's 25th percentile LSAT score is 170, which is 97.5th percentile for the subset of college graduates who take the LSAT. 44% of HLS students are people of color.
When I see funny terms like "people of color" (or, say, "gun deaths"), I get suspicious. A little bit of digging, and...
Black students constitute 10-12% of HLS students. Most of the "people of color" are Asians.