If [the new elite] believe, as more and more of them are encouraged to do, that their advancement comes from their own merits, they can feel they deserve whatever they can get … The newcomers can actually believe they have morality on their side. So assured have the elite become that there is almost no block on the rewards they arrogate to themselves.

I’ll try to figure out exactly how to modify your representation there, and will try to add to thins in the next day or two. Look out for it!

http://pinker.wjh.harvard.edu/articles/media/2003_06_06_globe.htm

Pinker makes a good case that we won’t see genetic engineering of humans any time soon.

1. Many people in low-status positions are there because of a lack of marketable talents.

2. Marketable talents are generally innate.

3. There is widespread and accurate awareness of the two facts above.

4. Because of this people feel empathy/solidarity with those in lower status positions. (“There but for the grace of God…”)

5. This sense of solidarity is a significant constraint on social and political inequality.

6. There exists or may soon exist technologies by which parents could reliably enhance their children’s endowment of innate marketable talents.

7. If these technologies become widespread, people will come to see lack of talent and the concomitant low status as a result of (parental) choice rather than of fate.

8. This will result in a decrease in solidarity and so exacerbate inequality.

Is that basically correct?

Alvy: You look like a really happy couple? Are you?
Woman: Yeah.
Alvy: Yeah? So how to you count for it?
Woman: I am very shallow and empty, and I have no ideas and nothing interesting to say.
Man: And I’m exactly the same way.
Alvy: I see. That’s very interesting. So you managed to work out something?
Man: Right!

Thank you for pointing out the absurdity of this debate. First, the premise is ludicrous. It’s like nutrition. Iodine prevents goiters; vitamin C prevents ricekts; etc. Very effective interventions. But while there are powerful tools to correct deficits, it doesn’t at all follow that there are nutritonal tools to improve performance above the norm, despite a huge amount of mythology in this area. Mutatis mutandis, genes are the same. Easy to correct deficits, essentially impossible to produce supermen. This has to do with the fundamental nature of a biological organism as the nexus of a very large number of weakly determining forces. Sandel et al. need to read some real biology instead of posthumanist cheerleading.

Second, the conclusion doesn’t follow from the premise anyway. Chess is essentially a solved problem. Have people stopped playing chess? Far more people exercise today than did a generationa go; is this because fitness is now more a matter of “innate talent” than it was in 1970? Um, no. I’ve recently taken up drawing; at the calsses i go to there’s a real cross-section of people. Photogrpahy and all the computer-assisted techniques out there don’t seem to have any effect on people’s desire to develop this particualr talent. And even if the impossuible occurred,a nd a pill was developed that enhanced people’s innate visual abilities, it’s absurd to think that would stop people from doing the hard work of developing their talents. It’s hard to believe that someone who thinks talent and practice are substitutes rather than complements has ever engaged in any serious creative work.

But the first question is whether these sorts of interventions are remotely likely and the burden of proof is on those who think they are.

Regarding FADS7 gene variants, there’s some reason for optimism that appropriate supplementation with the proper fatty acids can achieve the same benefits, IF you know in time that you should be doing it. Yet to be established is whether that supplementation has any ill effects if you didn’t need it. Probably not, but I expect we’ll know that shortly.

We’re accumulating an increasing tool box of non-genetic intelligence enhancing interventions. Most of them seem to involve early prenatal nutrition, at a point in pregnancy where the woman doesn’t have a clue yet that she’s pregnant. You’d think this knowledge would be informing public policy; We’re talking things that are a hell of a lot cheaper and more effective than Head Start, after all.

Isn’t raising the bottom of the Bell Curve more important than keeping people from looking at it?

Parents throughout the country are being pressured and coerced by schools to give psychiatric drugs to their children. Teachers, school psychologists, and administrators commonly make dire threats about their inability to teach children without medicating them. They sometimes suggest that only medication can stave off a bleak future of delinquency and occupational failure. They even call child protective services to investigate parents for child neglect and they sometimes testify against parents in court. Often the schools recommend particular physicians who favor the use of stimulant drugs to control behavior.

I suppose it’s true that someone born with a decent musical ability is not likely to bother making the effort to develop it further, knowing that someone else can just pop a little pill and immediately start churning out a dozen superb symphonies every week.