Known and Unknown Possibilities

 

A brief summary on why intelligent women should reproduce:
http://infoproc.blogspot.com/2010/07/assortative-mating-regression-and-all.html
Note that the .5-.7 estimate is based on how much assortative mating has occurred among each parent's ancestors (more past assortative reproduction raises the estimate).

In the distance, thunderings and flashings of the overman:
http://infoproc.blogspot.com/2012/06/plenty-of-room-at-top.html

Average person=1000 deleterious mutations affecting IQ. Top hundredth of a percent IQ=900 such deleterious mutations.

And if we did a few dozen rounds of in vitro eugenic breeding (iterated embryo selection, IES), how much might this number be reduced? Of course, other genetic goals would receive some priority as well (eg, girls should be blessed with Marilyn Monroe's physical attributes). The principle limit on this technology may well be lack of knowledge of the phenotypic effects of various genes and gene-gene interactions. Some mathematical problems cannot be solved--experiments become necessary. Extrapolating the recent rate of progress, I suspect IES will be feasible within 10 years, though it will be suboptimal at least with respect to the gaps in our knowledge of which genes do what. And on the non-linearity problem, Hsu said, "Most of the genetic variation in intelligence is additive...fortunately for us linear effects still dominate the population variation* of quantitative traits. As any engineer or physicist can attest, linearity is our best friend :-)" Inescapable non-linearity, tragically, renders climate predictions invalid.

One problem with Hsu's analogy of this process with plant breeding: the ethical environment is completely different. Blind alleys in plant breeding are merely a waste of resources; in humans, they may entail great suffering.
But, the potential effects, as derived from such analogies, are spectacular: 32 SD increase in corn oil production per plant (an effort still making progress), an increase in flying speed of certain flies from 2.2 to 170 cm/sec in 100 generations of directed breeding without significant downsides on other characteristics.

There is a prevalent sense among neurologists that human intelligence has already undergone intense evolutionary selection and that it is subject to certain physical limits. These points are relevant to neuro-eugenic prospects. Hsu in the comments responds to this: "the results imply lots of extant variation to work with. Just imagine flipping all the (-)'s to (+) in a particular person. You get a lot more than +5 SDs." Hsu in the comments: "One important aspect of the toy model I discuss in the talk is that if it is correct, then any couple has the potential of producing a nearly max IQ child, because there will be little overlap between the locations of their (-) alleles." Aha! The path around reproductively negligent female geniuses.


A finely compacted interview of Hsu on his genetics work:
http://intelligence.org/2013/08/31/stephen-hsu-on-cognitive-genomics/
Note that China is financing a major attempt to take the lead in practical human eugenics.

His recent intelligence and heritability presentation (less compacted):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FgCSkGeBUNg&t=5m2s

In sum, this strikes me most forcefully--I had been unaware of the nearness of eugenic capacities--also unaware of their probable potential in the neurological realm. To paraphrase Boswell, my thoughts upon this awful change are in general full of wild apprehensions. This presages a Turn in human affairs, like to surpass all that came before. The implications are all-encompassing.

Biomedical Innovation

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vb15kf7W1wk

 

If they can make this happen, a technological pursuit I've been tracking for 15 years, it would shift the paradigm for valve repairs. The younger the patient, the more important and advantageous this would be. Lacking this innovation, as is currently the case, patients who are not full-grown face multiple surgeries to ensure that the size of the valve keeps pace with the growth of their hearts. The benefits even for adults are considerable: the 2% yearly mortality/morbidity resultant from the artificial valve is eliminated--repeat surgery is unnecessary--and the need to take harmful medications ad infinitum is avoided. In theory, this would place the patient, post-surgery, in the position of a person with a healthy, natural heart. Researchers in this field, therefore, deem tissue engineered valves the holy grail. Given that this remains at least a year out, even in Europe, and that younger patients would presumably (and justly) receive priority over adults. The relatively high frequency of valve issues in the population means this would impact hundreds of thousands a year just in Europe and America--it would constitute the most important triumph for tissue engineering so far.

Death by Office Chair, Death by Shift Work

http://journals.lww.com/acsm-msse/Abstract/2009/05000/Sitting_Time_and_Mortality_from_All_Causes,.5.aspx I'm surprised they found such a strong correlation here. It looks to be a quality study. Even the physically active have a 40% kick-up in mortality between the never-sitters and the almost always sitters. For the obese it's much worse: the mortality rate jumps fourfold. Most of the increase in risk for all sub-categories occurs between those sitting half the day and those sitting all day. So, if you keep to your feet half the day, you avoid almost all of the risk from sitting. This may be part of the reason: "Marc Hamilton, Ph.D., one of Katzmarkzyk’s colleagues, suspects it has to do with an enzyme called lipoprotein lipase (LPL), which breaks down fat in the bloodstream and turns it into energy. Hamilton found that standing rats have ten times more of the stuff coursing through their bodies than laying rats. It doesn’t matter how fit the rats are; when they leave their feet, their LPL levels plummet. Hamilton believes the same happens in humans." It may be that inadequate LPL causes blood fats to accumulate in the bloodstream, which may cause an inflammatory or clotting effect. There was also another study on this issue, comparing street car or trolley drivers who stood on the job and bus drivers who sat. All I remember is that it appeared to be a well-controlled study, the standers lived 5 years longer than the sitters, and most of the sitters' excess mortality was from cardiovascular disease. One more touchstone worthy of mention is a study, at least reasonably well-controlled, that indicated a 5 year survival advantage for those who consistently slept well and at night compared to those who slept poorly most of the time.

An Exemplary Study

http://www.economist.com/sciencetechnology/displayStory.cfm?story_id=15391226 I consider this news both good and bad, but quite unsurprising. There are 100,000 chemicals in use today in America. Their impact on human health is not known, with a few exceptions. Do you know what it would cost to determine their impact? Hundreds of billions--plus which, these tests, to be thorough, would have continue for decades for each chemical, and new chemicals are invented every year. Also, these tests would not measure the interactions of exogenous chemicals in the human body--leaving a huge area of ignorance even if all this time and money were to be expended. For this case, the good side is reduced fertility in an overpopulated world--I've suddenly realized that Haiti and Africa and the Muslim world are in desperate need of flame-retardant lifestyles. The bad side is that this is the tip of the iceberg in a great many senses--this chemical has more nasty effects yet to be discovered, there are 100,000 other contaminants and essentially infinite possible interactions between them, and our life becomes more inescapably chemicalized every day.