Ethically augmenting human intelligence

I really need to be studying for an exam right now, but this topic has been on my mind for awhile and I just need to get it out.

There is some sort of variance to human intelligence. I think IQ is fairly bullshit, but its the only thing we really have right now to attempt to quantify something that is nigh unquantifiable. In my opinion, the way this works is that you have some sort of “genetic limit”, similar to exercise/athletes. Most of us probably don’t have the genetics to be an NFL player. I definitely don’t. But I think a vast majority of the population is not reaching their intelligence genetic limit, for factors they cant control and are inherently unfair.

It can be as simple as your mom drank alcohol when she was pregnant, you grew up in a violent household, or you just didn’t get enough of one out of probably hundreds of different nutrients that are necessary for neurological development. There are a ton of things that can impact the extremely sensitive process of the nervous system developing. Getting infected by some sort of pathogen that causes your body to have to focus on fighting it off instead of pumping as much nutrients to your brain as possible. The list goes on and on.

There are factors you can control. Perhaps greater control than many think. You can learn fast if you work insanely hard. Whether or not you can increase your IQ is the subject of much debate. But my argument for ethically augmenting human intelligence is centered around the fact that the world is unfair, and people don’t deserve to have some sort of limit set by things totally outside their control. You don’t deserve an entire lifetime of not reaching your full potential because you got hit with some misfortune before you were born or soon thereafter. You don’t deserve an entire lifetime of not reaching your full potential because you were just so happened to be born somewhere with poor air quality. And you definitely don’t deserve an entire lifetime of not reaching your full potential because the house you grew up in was old and had lead pipes.

This type of topic unfortunately often devolves into really low forms of debate. That is not the point of this. The ability to augment human intelligence should be available to all. We have everything to gain from a smarter population. This is my attempt to lay out a framework for how this can be done ethically and fair to all.

Lets start before you’re even born. It is fairly well researched that there is a significant genetic contribution to IQ. There is also significant genetic contribution to neurodegenerative disorders. I don’t pretend to be a geneticist, but I know we have the technology to completely augment the genes in an embryo. And I also think we have identified many genes that are suspected to influence human intelligence. What these genes do is important, but I am not an expert. Perhaps there is just a gene that encodes the size of your brain. Or one that encodes for how many neurons you have per unit of brain. Regardless, I have zero moral qualms with editing the genes of an embryo to increase intelligence. I think it is immoral to not be doing so. This also ties in with deleting genetic disease, but that is outside of the scope of what I am writing now.

Anyway, the important part is that this technology is again available to all. If this technology is locked behind a huge price tag, we have just successfully entered Brave New World where we have a ruling caste of geniuses.. and then everybody else. That is the worst possible outcome for any sort of genetic intelligence manipulation and is horrifying. Because we live in a capitalist society, the only way this ever has a shot of being available to everyone, maybe even for free, is making the gene editing process extremely low cost.

Embryo editing is definitely invasive. But the process should be standardized to make it practical (and low cost). I envision a machine where you just put the embryo in, the correct genes are edited, and it comes out. This would definitely be a significant engineering challenge, but its probably possible. I would like to know how much gains we can really get from this. A reasonable limit might be the smartest human to have been born so far. It would be revolutionary to give everyone this power.

This is a marketed different than embryo selection, in which you examine the genetic code of the egg cells of a female, and “pick the best one”. By the way, that already happens. Rich and powerful people already pre-select their embryos for intelligence w/ IVF. There are publicly facing companies that claim to do this. If the public is aware about it, you think the rich haven’t been doing it for a decade?

So we have successfully edited the genes of everyone’s kid to give them a genetic predisposition to being smarter, perhaps vastly. Now we have to engineer our environment that everyone grows up in to promote intellectualism, and defeat things that harm the nervous system. First and foremost, I believe that parents have a responsibility to help their children develop curiosity and interest in learning. The best way to do this is to ensure parents only have children when they are ready. There is nothing worse for intellectual development than a child that doesn’t have a solid home life. So we should probably make birth control easy to get and spend time engineering forms of birth control that have less side effects.

Secondly, we need to educate women about the fact that the development of a child is very, very heavily influenced by the conditions in the womb for those 9 months. Fetal alcohol syndrome is one of the leading causes of intellectual disability in the Western world. I don’t pretend to have all the answers, and this is a controversial topic, but we need to ensure that mothers know their nutrient intake/habits/what they breathe will influence their child’s intelligence heavily. This is especially true one we remove the genetic lottery aspect. Perhaps artificial wombs are in order. This could remove variance in nutrition, pollution, drugs, etc., but should be optional. Carrying a child around for 9 months is very personal, but many might be willing to forego that.

A lot of this really centers around optimal nutrient intake. We should better educate the populace about nutrients that are very important for neural development, both in and out of the womb. Iodine deficiency is one of (if not the) leading cause of intellectual disability in developing countries. This is just one of many chemicals that, if not given in high enough quantities, results in a lifetime of not reaching full potential. I know Iron, Omega 3, and Iodine are some of the big ones. We already go through efforts to add iodine to our salt to help with this. We should go even further.

Engineering the environment to promote intellectualism can literally mean engineering the environment. The air we breathe, the water we drink, and the soil we farm. There are tons of studies on air quality and intelligence. We should go to extreme lengths to remove pollutants from our planet. This can range to moving away from combustion engines to total bans on chemicals like lead, arsenic, and PCBs. I have never seen people defend a potent neurotoxin like electronics people and leaded solder. Seriously, there is no safe amount of this stuff to exist in anything.

So we have genetically engineered our embryos, and engineered the environment that children grow up in to guard the nervous system. What now?

The benefits to this would be vaster than I can possibly put into words. We would certainly take huge strain off our educational system. A smarter populace will be far more motivated to educate themselves. And they’ll take that education extremely far. We could be on the cusp of a cultural and technological revolution. We have already gotten so far with some smart people. We could equip everyone with incredible gifts of imagination, problem solving, and memory. This would change the world.