Not having grown up on science fiction, but being an avid reader of this blog: what is it with the reverence shown to science fiction stories and movies among OB's readers? From whence does the authority to give insight on important ideas emanate? I understand that many readers were motivated toward their current important interests by early exposure to SF. I also realize that some of the authors were/are scientists in their own right, but are they on the level of those scientific greats who are quoted (and frequently dispatched) here regularly? If so, why do not we see more quotes from the authors themselves, instead of from their characters and their story-lines? If these authors have such important insights, why is there not more discussion about the origins of those insights, how and why these authors have such utility in the field of important truths, such as occurs when the blog reviews EY's stories and their relationships to his actual work? I know I'm far older than most readers (or at least the commenters); is this a generational thing? It seems so out of line with the intense rationality of the group otherwise. Is it just enetertainment (I'm all for that), or what am I missing?

In medicine, the concept "zebra" represents a strange, unlikely condition or diagnosis, usually to be avoided or considered on a lower tier, iterated thus: When one hears hoofbeats, one should think of horses rather than zebras. Spending too much time chasing zebras detracts from making the diagnosis of "horse". Coincidence? Or just another example of the medical field's poor thought process?

@Dynamically Linked: Eliezer did reevaluate, and this blog is his human enhancement project!

I suggested a similar opinion of the blog's role here 6 weeks ago, but EY subsequently denied it. Time will tell.

Does the unusual tenor of this post have anything to do with the upcoming Singularity Summit and its potential for fund-raising?

@EY: We are the cards we are dealt, and intelligence is the unfairest of all those cards. More unfair than wealth or health or home country, unfairer than your happiness set-point. People have difficulty accepting that life can be that unfair, it's not a happy thought. "Intelligence isn't as important as X" is one way of turning away from the unfairness, refusing to deal with it, thinking a happier thought instead. It's a temptation, both to those dealt poor cards, and to those dealt good ones. Just as downplaying the importance of money is a temptation both to the poor and to the rich.

How could the writer of the above words be the writer of today's post? Apparently (as I'm told) you knew from the days of the Northwestern Talent Search that you weren't the smartest of those tested (not to mention all those who were not tested), but certainly one of the smartest. Apparently, you were dealt a straight flush to the king, while some in history received a royal flush. What difference does it make whether someone thinks you are the smartest person they have known, unless you are the smartest person? Does a straight flush to the king meet the threshold required to develop a method for "saving humanity"? If not, why aren't you in the camp of those who wish to improve human intelligence? *awaits clap of thunder from those dealt better hands*

Bertrand Russell felt that such thought processes are native to humans:

What a man believes upon grossly insufficient evidence is an index into his desires -- desires of which he himself is often unconscious. If a man is offered a fact which goes against his instincts, he will scrutinize it closely, and unless the evidence is overwhelming, he will refuse to believe it. If, on the other hand, he is offered something which affords a reason for acting in accordance to his instincts, he will accept it even on the slightest evidence. The origin of myths is explained in this way.

Perhaps any reasoning one readily accepts is evidence of bias, and bears deeper examination. Could this be the value of educated criticism, the willingness of others to "give it to me straight", the impetus to fight against the unconscious tendencies of intelligence?

@Carl Shulman:

Thanks Carl. Now I understand. See Teacher's Password.

Thank you, Carl Shulman, for correcting my misinformation. It's difficult for one to know which references are reliable, when one is not in the field.

@Carl Shulman: The largest hypothesized effects of the disease alleles would be only a small fraction of the Ashkenazim advantage: they just aren't frequent enough.

Dr. Bostrom cites this paper (so I considered it might be reliable) in his treatise on cognitive enhancement: "Natural History of Ashkenazi Intelligence" by Gregory Cochran, Jason Hardy, Henry Harpending. Speaking of the incidence of of the Ashkenazim mutations, they state: "the probability of having at least one allele from these disorders is 59%.". As I understand it, these disorders are exceedingly rare in non-Ashkenazim. Are these authors simply incorrect, or did you mean that a 59% incidence just isn't frequent enough? That incidence is very close to the intelligence distribution I read between mutated and non-mutated Ashkenazim. Coincidence? Or already discredited?

... if everyone was given the ability of todays top 2% regarding IQ. What would happen, implications, economic output, happiness and so on.

This doesn't seem outlandish. In my former field, advances in gene therapy have been able (in animal models) to improve the function of tissues. Observations such as: the association of autosomal recessive and low-penetrance dominant mutations in Ashkenazim with high intelligence. Without at least heterozygosity for the health disorders associated with the mutations, Ashkenazim are no more intelligent, in the aggregate, than non-Ashkenazy Jews. See here and here. It seems reasonable that the genetic pattern of this disease/intelligence relationship will be known, the ethical concerns addressed, and a method for cognitive enhancement available to all, perhaps sooner rather than later. So much the better if it were to be effective in adults! Please correct me if I have misunderstood this concept.

"I have known more people whose lives have been ruined by getting a Ph.D. in physics than by drugs." -- Jonathan I. Katz

Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know. --Ernest Hemingway