Zahlreiche Studien in den letzten zwei Jahren zeigen, dass CRISPR-basierte Interventionen Mutationen korrigieren und die Zell- und Verhaltensfunktion bei Mausmodellen von Hirnerkrankungen wiederherstellen können. Krankheiten, die durch Mutationen in Genen verursacht wurden, die mit Gehirnfunktionen verbunden sind – wie wechselende Hemiplegie der Kindheit (AHC), Huntington -Krankheit und Friedreichs Ataxie – haben bei Mäusen, bei denen ihr Gehirn Gen bearbeitet hat, wesentliche Verbesserungen festgestellt.
Dies wirft eine faszinierende Möglichkeit auf – was ist, wenn diese Genbearbeitung über die Korrektur von Krankheiten hinausgehen könnte? Was wäre, wenn Sie einen IQ-Boost von 20 bis 30 Punkten erhalten könnten? Aus offensichtlichen Gründen wäre dies für Menschen auf persönlicher Ebene enorm, aber es würde auch politische Auswirkungen haben. Wie wäre die Gesellschaft, wenn alle 30 IQ -Punkte intelligenter wären?
What would society be like if everyone could be 30 IQ points smarter? In the future, we may be able to use gene editing to edit our brains throughout our lives, successful tests in mice suggest.
byu/lughnasadh inFuturology
25 Kommentare
I don’t think anything would change, at least not radically, regrettably. Intelligence does not preclude idiocy.
I wonder how this would change the upper top 0.1%.
I imagine the world would become more dangerous.
Casinos and the lottery would suffer, mass layoffs from the gambling industry.
honestly? Probably more depression and even less children.
What the world needs is genetically eliminating psychopats
*Could* be. In the real world, it’ll just be for those who can afford it, so it would likely make things worse. But let’s assume we’re just doing it for everyone (yippee!)
Well, a whole lot of people would probably be more prone to mental illnesses, so you’d see some of those rise (depression, anxiety, OCD.) The applicability of IQ varies- your IQ doesn’t really matter when you’re on meth, for instance, and IQ doesn’t magically create skills we didn’t cultivate in people (like „understanding science.“)
But we could rotate shapes and complete patterns like crazy. That might be nice. Architecture might get a little cooler, and test scores would rise for kids. I would guess with all the confounds we’d see a mild rise in well-being in 10-15 years.
Making people smarter won’t make them less selfish.
Intelligence isn’t as important as people like to pretend. Rich people pretend it’s important so they can justify saying „we have generational wealth because we’re so smart“. In reality, moderately more intelligence would probably just increase depression and anxiety with little benefit.
I considered this in terms of, „If aliens kidnapped you and gave a choice… push this button, and…“ etc.
Ultimately I decided I’d rather increase everyone’s *propensity to think,* rather than our ability to do so. I think you’d get more bang for your buck that way.
On one hand intelligence makes the bigger picture possible to see. On the other hand intelligence makes the big picture possible to manipulate.
IQ scores are normalised so if literally everybody increased their scores by 20 then we’d adjust the scale so that what would have been 120 is now 100 again.
But as for the material/political impacts? I’m not sure. It’s all relative isn’t it? The whole tone of political discourse might elevate somewhat, but I’m sure people will call their political opponents stupid anyway.
Besides, the [Flynn effect](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_effect) has shown that IQ as a whole has risen over the decades and tests have been adjusted to account for this. Would a 20 point increase in IQ equate to the same difference between society now and society 100 years ago? Could be cool to see…
Then again, we dont know if there might be an organic limit to IQ as well. And higher IQ is not an unqualified good. People with higher IQs arent necessarily more successful, happier, etc. Some people might want to adjust the other way! Ignorance could be bliss…
Find something that could cure my severe anxiety and depression and then we might all be on our way to actually living very happy successful lives, IQ points mean little in the grand scheme of life.
This tech would absolutely be priced out of the range of regular people and reserved only for the elite. We could have a population with significantly higher intelligence RIGHT NOW if our educational system was used to promote critical thinking skills.
The top 1% will never allow their taxpaying consumer base to “become smarter”
What if, perhaps, we use this to increase citizen loyalty? What if, perhaps, we sell it as disease prevention and we prevent some disease, but we mostly use it to increase citizen loyalty? IQ is a subjective pseudoscience anyways, so all we need to do is make IQ co-morbid (hehehe) with loyalty to state. I’ll take my payment in Palantir stock and citizenship for some other country that doesn’t extradite.
I wouldn’t mind having the rats of NIMH moving boulders around in the yard.
Frankly, I’d rather everyone be 30 EQ points higher. Plenty of „brilliant“ sociopaths out there. Check out the entire Lex Luthor-looking broligarchy for instance.
It’s an interesting question. It implies, what intelligence really does for society? The more complex a society gets, the more complex are the issues it produces and therefore the harder to solve them it will get. So, if we assume society will get more complex, because we as humans will get more connected with each other on a global basis, we also will face thougher problems.
However, intelligence is only potential. It often isn’t a skill issue or therefore an intelligence issue, to solve a specific probleme. Most of the time it’s to get a compromise or even a consense to really chance something. So, if we all get smarter, there isn’t much of a change at all. Intelligence doesn’t change world views, political preference etc. and to be able to boost the potential to solve more technical or mathematical problemes doesen’t lead to a better society for all.
I would take it that way, the possibility to make people smarter will at least make us all better in adapting. Therefore, it will boost the potential of change things faster – to the better or worse, that’s not an IQ issue, but an inherrently human one.
Everyone is missing the point. If you can edit genetics for improved intelligence then you can edit for improved empathy as well. The point is that gene editing is definitely a net positive no matter how you use it
People with higher iq’s can think faster than the average person. Unfortunately this only means they come to the wrong conclusion quicker.
An increase in IQ would be fine, but what is really needed is an increase in critical thinking.
IQ has gone up about 3 pts every decade. They have to adjust the test often. Someone scoring 100 in 1925 would score 70 on today’s test.
Studies show people with higher IQs are more depressed, more anxious.
I know quite a lot of people who are smarter than Average and a few who are 30 IQ points smarter than average and above.
They have advantages in some areas. They have disadvantages in many other aspects of life.
Maybe it can cancel out the effect of microplastics, heavy metals and the increasing CO2 levels making everyone stupider
At first I was thinking there would be a lot more depressed and anxious people who only interact with others when they have to. But that’s really only true for 120+ and since a 20-30 point increase wouldn’t get most of the population to that level it probably would be fine.