This is an interesting article, but there's something about it that bothers me I'm trying to put my finger on. I think I'm a little wary of using this sort of analytic argument to validate a theory like this ex post facto while ignoring a much simpler theory that trivially explains the same results:
Medicine is hard.
It has nothing to do with evolution; take an intelligent person with no mechanical experience, tools, or instructions, give them a car which is behaving oddly, and ask them to fix it. It will be a miracle if they manage to properly diagnose and fix the problem without destroying at least a couple of engines. The fundamental rule is "Interfering with a complex system for which you don't have the manual by trial and error is as likely to do harm as good."
I guess I don't see why this is treated as an insight into human intelligence. No one with mechanical experience thinks you can make a car go faster by using hotter gasoline. No one with technical experience thinks you can make a computer run faster by boosting the input voltage. For the same reason, no one with medical experience thinks there's a drug that can make you smarter. It just doesn't make sense.
But that doesn't mean you can't make a faster car, or computer, or brain, or that it need be terribly difficult. For all of these, the answer lies in structure. And in this respect, brain modification may be the easiest of the three, because modifying brain structure is one of the primary functions of the brain.
> No one with technical experience thinks you can make a computer run faster by boosting the input voltage.
Fun fact: some computers actually can be made to run faster by raising the input voltage! The higher voltage decreases the delays of the logic gates, and lets you clock it faster. The big problem is that this also raises the power consumption -- both energy per second and per clock cycle.
That's a good note, but I did mean the computer's input voltage, not the CPU's. You can increase an individual neuron's firing speed plausibly trivially, but the brain (like the computer) is a complex regulated system that can't be played with that way without causing problems.
Okay, fine -- but bear in mind that there are computers which run everything, from the CPU to the memory to the I/O, off a single (variable) input voltage. Most microcontrollers, for example, meet this description. I googled one at random to get some specific numbers; the PIC18F4550 runs on anything from 2 to 5.5 V, and this is not unusual.
Okay, okay, you got me. I'll concede the point entirely :) Feel free to disregard the analogy as it applies to computers which may be made to run faster by raising the input voltage.
Right - but, if you read the article, the author then comes up with some examples of human-net improvements that don't seem to have any downsides (that outweigh the improvements), that could have evolved, and do seem to have a significant net benefits. They then go to argue _why_ these may not have evolved (new conditions, new values, etc...)
That's what makes the article interesting - is there are exceptions to Algernons's law.
Analyzing and debating the "exceptions" to the "law" is what I'm calling "validating". I just don't really understand what makes the premise valuable enough to deliberate over when there's a simple, straightforward, boring explanation for the same phenomena.
It think it is because these are transhumanists. They want these things to be true. They would like to live in a science-fiction world, not in a straightforward, boring, stuff-is-hard world.
I was trying not to be too personal, but I do basically agree with you. I dearly adore transhumanist fiction, but their real-world philosophy seems to boil down to pretending that the fiction is real. One hesitates to compare them in that respect to Trekkies, but there the comparison stands.
Medicine is hard.
It has nothing to do with evolution; take an intelligent person with no mechanical experience, tools, or instructions, give them a car which is behaving oddly, and ask them to fix it. It will be a miracle if they manage to properly diagnose and fix the problem without destroying at least a couple of engines. The fundamental rule is "Interfering with a complex system for which you don't have the manual by trial and error is as likely to do harm as good."
I guess I don't see why this is treated as an insight into human intelligence. No one with mechanical experience thinks you can make a car go faster by using hotter gasoline. No one with technical experience thinks you can make a computer run faster by boosting the input voltage. For the same reason, no one with medical experience thinks there's a drug that can make you smarter. It just doesn't make sense.
But that doesn't mean you can't make a faster car, or computer, or brain, or that it need be terribly difficult. For all of these, the answer lies in structure. And in this respect, brain modification may be the easiest of the three, because modifying brain structure is one of the primary functions of the brain.