Big Think
Today’s video is part of a series on genius, in proud collaboration with 92Y’s 7 Days of Genius Festival – http://www.92y.org/Genius.
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Transcript – I think it’s unwise to make a confident prophecy in what technology will or won’t eventually be able to do. I think that cuts both ways. That is it’s people have looked foolish by saying that something will never happen, but they’ve also looked foolish by saying that something is inevitable. So there are things that we can accomplish technologically that we as a society have chosen not to, such as passenger supersonic air transport. I think if you were to say to someone in 1957 the speed of commercial jets now is going to be the same as the speed of the commercial jets in 2016, 60 years from now, they would say you’re nuts. Technology goes up, up, up, up, but sometimes it doesn’t. Because people don’t like sonic booms and jet fuel got too expensive. Likewise, if you would’ve said in 1972 no one is going to set foot on the moon for another 44 years and counting, again. They would say technology always lifts us higher and higher, but sometimes it doesn’t. The Cold War ended. People lost interest. There are all kinds of social and economic factors that in combination make the future of technology inherently unpredictable. And I think in engineering human intelligence, to say nothing of human genius, no one knows but I would put my money with no. For one thing, there are moral and legal taboos. People think that introducing traits into offspring is a form of eugenics and is on a slippery slide to Nazism. I happen to think that that is a bogus ethical argument, but it is by far the majority that’s a cool argument and in many countries genetic enhancement is or will be illegal. And it’s going to take a huge force to overcome that. Just as cloning is illegal in virtually every country, when Dolly the sheep was cloned in 1997 there were confident predictions that there’s nothing you can do to stop human cloning. It was just around the corner and here we are almost 20 years later and it has not happened.
Read Full Transcript Here: http://goo.gl/Av3ZVL.
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boy, it's a neck bear circle jerk in here
It would be unethical to not to enhance ourselves.
Always say no to overclocking
The Chinese will do it.
He claims human cloning hasn't happened since Dolly the sheep was cloned. Is this guy THAT ignorant? Privately funded research is certainly happening outside the rules of law somewhere in the world. It's going to happen.
Feeble minds you need genetic enhancements to be smarter. lol.
Wow, worst time to say we've decided not to have supersonic flight. Here's a company trying to make it happen
http://boom.aero/
Smarter then Steven Pinker? I'm pessimistic about that.
If so, then we must welcome our new asian overlords. A friend of mine sent me a picture of a lab that focused primarily on intelligence genes. The lab was huge, needless to say the funding must be astronomical.
People think IQ is akin to a genetic hand-me-down like hair color or height, but increasingly I think it is more akin to a skill like basketball or gaming. If you practice your critical thinking skills like patience, experimenting, focus, and persistence then you will increase your score dramatically on essentially any IQ test there is.
So this suggests that high IQ or even genius is a trained skill. It is not an intellectual skill that one is born with, it is an intellectual skill that is attained, like nearly everything (if not everything) through practice.
So what is IQ measuring? I'd say it's measuring an individual's mastery of thinking tools, be it a below average mastery or above average.
If this is true, it explains why intelligence does not appear to be inherited, because for the most part, it isn't, because learned skills are not inherited.
genetic manipulation/enginering is the most vile and disgusting science, especially when they apply it to the human genome, it is gross and it needs to be stopped at any cost, what nature produces by itself is already great
in my own opinion
we need to make a billion steven pinker clones.
About steroids: I really don't think is morality the issue, I think money in sports is the real issue. There is no empirical reason why we should favor achievement based on suffering.
Our current state favors the breeding of dummies. A lot of "smart" people can't justify having kids in their minds.
So give kids abilities they don't have to develop through character, discipline, and passion. I rank that great scientific achievement above ADHD meds! Humanity = 0, Shitty Parenting = 1000
Interesting that Steven should bring up how jet travel hasn't increased in speed because people don't like sonic booms. I just heard a piece on the Economist podcast that they are working on making sonic booms quieter. I guess this is possible, it has to do with the shape of the aircraft.
You know that there is a much safer way of introducing intelligent genes into the human gene pool: 1. Gather all the men in Mensa International and all the high achieving and high intelligent college and university, young men, and then pay them to donate their sperm. 2. Make it so that a lot more of the men in Mensa International and the highly intelligent college and university, young men who have donated their sperm become the first sperm donors to be selected for artificial inseminations in single females who are wanting to have a child. 3. Get married men to at least try to consider the possibility of having their wives carry at least one baby from a man from Mensa or a highly intelligent college or university, young man sperm donor. 4. repeat steps 1. and 2. and then step 3 will become much easier since intelligence will be more wide spread and thus will become more of a practical experience for both the husband and wife.
Steve Pinker should definitely be cloned.
I'd wanna implant dinosaur penis genes.
It's fucking insane there's been no change in the way public flights are handled in over 50 years.
Get your fucking asses moving already.
I'm not sure you could make smarter humans with genetic enhancement. Yeah, you could make their brains bigger, but that doesn't necessarily mean they'd be smarter…
Doesn't his argument work equally well in both directions, actually?
"We don't know what the side effects of introduced genes are, so we are ethically forbidden from making changes."
"We don't know what the side effects of your existing genes are, so we are ethically obligated to make changes."
We won't have special education placements any more?
he didnt answer the question in the title though.
Gattaca
This is a respectable point of view, but the Chinese are already experimenting on human embryos and conducting large scale correlation studies to identify the set of genes responsible for IQs superior to 150. The West will be drawn in.
Keep in mind improving the intelligence of offspring could happen through genetic enhancement but it also can happen through embryo selection and that is already taking place with the testing of Downs syndrome and people making their personal decision on whether to abort the pregnancy. As our knowledge of intelligence increases I would expect it very likely that people would test & select fertilized eggs based on a number of factors. But I suspect that is a separate issue that Pinker isn't referring to in this short clip.
interesting! thanks
Genetic enhancement may be illegal and taboo here… but probably not in China or North Korea that have different cultures, moral systems, and governments. Even countries like India or UAE, there’s really nothing in their way religiously and socially.
The willingness to use it may change but the technology did continue to increase.