14 replies to this topic

[mag1]

As a public service to those members of the forum who are unaware of the possibility of genetic enhancement of human intelligence to 1500 IQ (or greater) please be so advised.

 

Clearly this will create a massive discontinuity in human history: A Genetic Singularity Event.

Prepare ... Now.

Everything that is currently understood as a guide to human behavior and human society will soon 

no longer be valid.

 

This topic has been discussed mostly by me at length on the Genetic Singularity thread, though I am aware that many would not have been following such posts. I thought it wise due to the critically important nature of this topic to make it a thread unto itself. This could be for those who only manage to read the headlines before continuing with their other activities.

 

In this instance the headline might read:

 

Scientists provide a mathematical proof that extremely large increases in intelligence are possible, and given the competitive nature of the human species likely to occur over the short to medium term.

 

Not exactly a snappy headline, though it does at least express the main idea.

 

For those interested, here is some of the background. Genetic studies over the last 10-20 years have conclusively established that intelligence and many other traits and illnesses are highly polygenic.

Yet, the largest effect IQ variant that was found with sample sizes into the thousands explained 0.01% of the

variance in IQ. An enormously small effect size. Many in the research community had almost given

up on genetics having any role to engineer a better more intelligent future of humanity.

 

However, it appears that one largely overlooked idea from this research was that with so many of these small effect size variants there would be an enormous opportunity to radically enhance human intelligence.

 

To clarify this consider flipping 1 coin. Half the people would wind up with a head and half a tail.

If intelligence were like that then we would have a very divided- bipolar- community.

We don't.

Intelligence is obviously not determined in such a way.

 

Now what happens with 2 coins? We would wind up with 3 genotype classes and all of the classes

have a substantial probability of occurring. Life isn't like that either.

 

With ten coin tosses we no longer expect to see a maximal phenotype frequently occurring.

This is perhaps how researchers might have thought genetics worked with intelligence.

There would be a fairly limited number of variants and the extreme phenotypic limit would

be not much higher than what could be observed in the community. Most of the kids can fit

into a normal school context and the community would be largely be able to have a stablish

psychometric veneer.

 

With 10,000 coins it becomes essentially impossible to expect that anyone would

hit 10,000 heads. We still have an IQ distribution that allows for most kids to function in a generic academic

environment, though now the observed IQ phenotype is higher with a large enough population.   

The phenotypic extreme is never observed and it is far beyond anything that

could be imagined. Intelligence and many other traits have such a genetic architecture.

 

 

The sociopolitical implications are overwhelmingly profound.

 

I can post further details of this later if there is an interest, though briefly it is now possible to 

find all the variants involved in human intelligence. The upper range of human IQ is thought

to be roughly 1500 (give or take). Clearly we have now reached a point that I am referring to as

the Genetic Singularity.  Other traits such as schizophrenia, anxiety and many many others would

follow a similar logic. The potential to radically reimagine humanness has now arrived.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

   

 

Edited by mag1, 18 January 2018 - 12:06 AM.

[mag1]

OK, we can use this thread to build up the evidence and the other thread of the same name to consider the profound

implications that will result once the Genetic Singularity occurs.

 

Everything in the original post can be extensively documented.

 

Firstly, the genetic architecture of human intelligence is based upon a very large number of small effect size variants.

 

Even with a sample size of 7000 children with a 500 k microarray, only 1 SNP emerged after correcting for false discovery

rs1378810 and it only explained 0.4% of the variance, while the study had 95% power to detect variants of this size.

It was thought that this SNP would not be functionally related to intelligence 

Yet, this SNP might not have replicated in further research due to the so called winners' curse. Combining the 6 SNPs 

found in the study into a SNP set resulted in explaining 1.2% of the variation in IQ. This study, published 10 years ago,

provided one of the first clear views of the genetic nature of human intelligence. The author's seemed genuinely amazed

that the effect sizes that they found were so tiny. If the largest effect size is only 0.4%, then what is a more typical effect

size? What effect size might contribute to the largest fraction of human IQ? Further research found even smaller effect sizes.

{An earlier study PMID:15319578 had used a smaller sample on a 10K gene chip.}  PMID:18067574

• The truly diminutive effect sizes of IQ variants should have been understood to imply that a very extreme intelligence phenotype in humans should be possible. When you flip 10,000 coins, you will not observe the maximal phenotype. Instead of thinking of IQ as a Bell Curve, it would be better to think of it as taking all that area bunched up near the center of the Bell Curve and taking each of the pixels and forming a line. This would represent how maximal IQ functions. Each of the variants could be chosen so as to contribute positively to the maximal extent. Adding up all these small effects results in an overwhelmingly massive potential optimal human IQ.
•  
• For some reason, this was not apparently perceived at the time instead there seemed to be a certain despair. However, the more polygenic intelligence is the better: the smaller the effect sizes the higher the potential maximal IQ.
•  
• Human society would have been much less stable if large IQ effect size had been present. It would then have become unlikely that social position could be maintained even over much more than a generation or two. With small effect sizes, the social structure is more stable yet regression to the average would mean that great divergences from the average could also not be maintained through time.
•  

Edited by mag1, 18 January 2018 - 06:04 PM.

[mag1]

The setup now is that this thread will be more for the sociopolitical and other speculations about the approaching Genetic Singularity that will be caused by genetic enhancement of IQ and other traits while the other thread will be devoted to tracing out how the research has unfolded over the last number of years to bring us to where we are right now.

 

Of note, massively increasing intelligence of humanity will be of not inconsequential relevance to the stated purpose of this forum. Attaining Unlimited Lifespans would be a much more attainable goal if humans were to have nearly Unlimited IQs. There can be no argument that moving human intelligence anywhere near the predicted optimized levels would profoundly change the innovation potential of future modifieds.  

[mag1]

Reviewing the literature over the last few years can give us some insight into how much of a struggle it has been to advance the science and the near term expectation that the entire genome should unlock. Real science feels much more like a hopeless grind than an overwhelming success: something that we will appreciate as we work through the years and years of mostly unsuccessful research. This line of inquiry has been ongoing for over a century and it has only been within the last 2 years that a successful conclusion was assured. 

 

The above research was reconsidered two years later (in 2010). At that time the price of gene chip technology then allowed for a new study design with three stages and carrying forward a few thousand of the most promising SNPs to the second stage instead of only a few dozen.

Yet, even with the same sample size and this redesign, no genome wide significant SNPs were found. { PMID:  20306291 }

 

Ten years ago with the samples used no variants were being replicated. In fact if you look at one of the most highly viewed threads in Longecity's Genetics category about the film Idiocracy informed posters in 2010 were speculating that our future was dumb. We were heading for an inevitable dumbing down of humanity from dysgenic forces. From the perspective of 2018 this point of view seems highly

naive and misguided. Even with what has been extracted from the human genome, human intelligence should now be widely understood

to be enhancable. Natural dysgenic declines in IQ of perhaps 1 IQ per decade could easily be replaced by 10 IQ points increases per generation which could continue for many centuries.

 

We will return to this topic and consider it in more depth, though a more realistic genetic enhancement potential on the table now is likely more on the order of 5-10 SD or 75-150 IQ points. We can work out reasonable models for this later. Informed commentary should now be reflecting the science which suggests we are now at the beginning of the largest increase in human intelligence that has ever occurred. 

 

 

   

Edited by mag1, 19 January 2018 - 05:47 PM.

[mag1]

I was going to struggle through the last 10 years of genetic research into intelligence and then finally after this exhaustive journey

make it to the present. Why struggle?


Here are the references for the last 10 years that you can trace through if interested.


PMID:    21826061

PMID:    23501967

PMID:    23358156

PMID:    25032841

PMID:    25224258

PMID:    25744449

PMID:    26912939

PMID:    25754080

PMID:    27046643

PMID:    26239293

PMID:    26303664

PMID:    28530673

PMID:    29182012

PMID:    29321673

PMID:    29326435

doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/175406

doi http://dx.doi.org/10.1101/176511

PMID:    29326435

PMID:    29321673


Yes, it would have been somewhat of a struggle to have worked through all of these.
 

[mag1]

A more visual summary would help convey much of the above research.


The below dramatically displays how the search for IQ variants has unfolded over the last 10 years.

As can be seen, there were no clearly replicated variants until last year. Once samples sizes hit

about 100k the intelliome began to unlock. It is thought that a near complete unlock should occur

at 1-2 M sample size. It is especially notable that only about 100 SNPs have been revealed to date.

 

It is expected that there will be in excess of 10,000. So, we are now at the very start of a vast exponential wave of intelligence variant discovery. Surfing the exhilarating wave is in progress right NOW. 

 

 

 IQ Effect Timeline.jpg   51.7KB   0 downloads

 

 

 

 

 

 

The below two figures are of particular social interest. These figures show that for a wide range of behavioral traits/diseases, effect sizes are  almost zero with many thousands of variants contributing. If this holds true in future research it would mean that there are no variants for intelligence of even minimal significance. The entire genetic architecture of intelligence and in parallel much of the social structure of our societies is constructed on the basis of infinitesimally small effect size variants. Notably the Bell Curve of effect sizes is centered at zero and has as many negative as positive effect sizes.    


 Effect Distribution 1.PNG   180.8KB   0 downloads

 Effect Distribution 2.PNG   245.86KB   0 downloads








The below figures show the expected many thousands of variants that are expected for many traits and diseases.


 SNP Number.PNG   456.34KB   0 downloads









The figures below are of particular social importance: they show at what sample sizes the human genome will unlock

(as above Traits are to the left and Diseases are to the right with the same color scheme).

 

 Variance Captured.PNG   401.6KB   0 downloads

 

 

 

 

When examining these figures

the social relevance should become apparent: these figures allow us to predict at what sample sizes the social impact will

be felt for various traits. For example, the autism genome is 50% unlocked at only 500k while the IQ genome appears to unlock

closer to 2M. When these unlocks were to occur it would be reasonable to expect substantial social consequences could follow.

Unlocking the IQ genome would allow phenotyping for intelligence would a simple DNA sample. Children could be genotyped at

birth and assigned to the environment that matched their genotype. Such a possibility is no longer a distant future. As the above

figure showed the IQ genome has now already begun to unlock and it is now all but certain that a full unlock will happen over the short term.

Only 2 million gene chip files are needed. Ancestry.com is approaching 10 million such files and 23andme has over 3 million. Simply

asking for years of education is sufficient to do the analysis. Many wold find such a preordained randomly determined life disturbing.

The easy way out of this will be to begin a process of selection in which IQ is enhanced. If we were to choose all the positive effect sized variants and none of the negative variants we would wind up with IQs on the order of magnitude of 1500.

 

Edited by mag1, 20 January 2018 - 03:17 PM.

[mag1]

On the other thread with the same name as this one, I have recently posted that extreme social disruption is now rapidly approaching.

This should also be noted here on this thread.

 

The human genome is now unlocking.

A substantial percentage of the variance for intelligence, various other behavioral traits and diseases should be expected to be reported this year. This means that over the next year simply genotyping people should reveal a great deal of information about their phenotypes.

For example, genotyping children before they began attending school could be reasonably be imagined to begin for the next school year.

 

A genetically organized society should not be unexpected even in the short term. Currently such organization is the result of years and years

of school testing and selection. A gene chip test could soon give the answer before anyone even started their academic journey.

 

For many such a result would be objectionable. It would speak to arbitrary advantages determined by a random process of genetic recombination. If the community did not want such a future, then introducing genetic selection technology would allow for a more egalitarian outcome. It would also result in truly massive increases in intelligence. As IQ increased into the 100s of points differences between people might start to be considered less socially relevant. Currently with IQ averages near 100, there are a fair number of people who need a range of social services just to get by. With an average IQs above 200, no one would need such assistance.    

 

 

 

[mag1]

Thank you everyone for all these ratings!

I am glad to know that I am reaching others out there.

 

My conclusion from what I perceive is happening in genetics research is that a global reproductive moratorium should now occur.

Clearly reproducing at this time with an imminent upgrade of the human genome makes no sense.

This will now be my operational definition to determine whether or not others also interpret the current research as I do.

Postponing reproduction over at least the next year or two would make an overwhelming amount of sense.

It now seems within our reach to greatly change various characteristics of human behavior that are determined by 

polygenic inheritance. These features apply to everyone in the community so reproductive technology will need to roll out to the level

that every child will be part of this system.

 

For those who might disagree please join the conversation.

It is difficult to respond to vague ratings such as disagree etc. .

I consider this to be the central question humanity now faces.

I would greatly appreciate informed comments.

 

I would especially be interested in a coherent rebuttal to my suggestion that reproduction is now irrational.

How could it be rationale under the current conditions?

 

I fully understand that this is a difficult topic and people are reluctant to talk about it, though that will not make this all go away. We have now stepped inside of the Genetic Singularity Event Horizon. The sample sizes required to fully unlock a range of human polygenic traits including intelligence are now fully within our reach.

Pretending that this will disappear if we all just wish hard enough is not a rationale nor reasonable response. One could only expect that those of higher intelligence will be the ones who carefully consider the current evidence and postpone reproduction at this time, while those of lesser ability will ignore such evidence and reproduce all the same, even with the consequences that would then result for their children. Hopefully others will consider the extreme importance of having a thoughtful dialogue and will post to this forum with well supported rebuttals if any were to exist. 

 

Edited by mag1, 22 January 2018 - 12:35 AM.

[mag1]

Recognizing that we are now within the Event horizon of the Genetic Singularity Event will be helpful in order to understand the changes that we should now expect to occur.

For whatever reason, mainstream media has not reported on this yet. I can only imagine how close to the very moment of social collapse we will have to wait until some indication

might be sent through the established channels.

 

We have been waiting for such social impact for more than 100 years when Mendel, Galton and Spearman began our genetic journey.

Yet, through all these years no great rupture in human experience occurred. Life continued mostly as it had always had.

 

Things are different now.

 

The ability to have good phenotypic predictors based on mere DNA samples will have large social impacts.

Identifying the extreme outliers for traits is already in hand.

This will give us a technology is organize our communities in ways that have never been possible before.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[platypus]

let's see primates with IQ200 first ok? 

[mag1]

Thank you for joining the conversation platypus!

 

This should without question be a topic of discussion in our mainstream media, though for whatever reason it isn't.

It is becoming increasingly alarming to me that a public discourse has not begun.

If anyone has any examples of broadcasters reporting on this please post.

At the same time there is now quite a bit of conspicuous uptake on this subject in the ivy league and think tank 

worlds.

 

One important point to keep in mind is that the use of polygenic phenotyping could happen much in advance of actually

enhancing traits. The human genome unlocks at a sample size of about 1 million.

This research is already in the publication process.

 

Doesn't it seem concerning that we are now waiting for research to report on technology that will peer deeply into our genetic soul?

Edited by mag1, 23 January 2018 - 09:19 PM.

[mag1]

ssgac is about to publish an article in Nature Genetics in which 3000 genome wide significant variants for EA are revealed

which represent 37.61 SD of EA. 37.61 SD of IQ would be equal to over 500 IQ points. The two are not exchangeable,

though 500 IQ is a very rough estimate of what we are talking about. Since EA and IQ are correlated about 0.5 perhaps a better

rough guess would be more like 250 IQ.

 

However, now that this 1.1 million sample has revealed what is coming there should now be a wave of research that will

complete the description of the genetics of human intelligence. We might then be talking 1500 IQ.

[mag1]

The about to be published article in Nature Genetics describing 37.61 SD of EA is a game changer!

There is no longer anything to reasonably argue about: Very large enhancement of human intelligene

is clearly possible and now seems guaranteed to occur. We are now on a technology curve which will

be driven by intense economic interests to move this forward as quickly as possible.

 

There are enormous social implications of this research that should now become manifest.

For example, if the above argument is valid (which it is), then total fertility collapse should now be expected.

Why? Having unenhanced children just prior to the arrival of enhanced children would almost certainly

lead to such a generation having essentially zero economic value. Enhanced children would likely have at least

a 1 SD advantage over those who had not been enhanced. Those who are aware of enhancement technology

will likely choose to wait until enhancement is possible and more fully developed. It should be expected that

children born before IQ enhancement will be less capable than children of a typical cohort. This could occur because

the parents who decide not to have children based on the possibility of enhanced would be expected to have higher

ability than those who chose to become parents even with the knowledge that enhancement is approaching.

Such a temporal differential IQ effect of fertility has never occurred before. However, it could have substantial social consequences.

 

 

 

[world33]

let's see primates with IQ200 first ok?

 
Was that a deliberate effort to interrupt a single man forum thread  ?

Edited by world33, 27 April 2018 - 09:55 AM.

[mag1]

Hey world33!

Thanks for your reply.

 

I guess you knew that this comment would just be like a red flag for a bull. And you'd have been right.

 

This is big!

This IS very BIG!!

 

Simply massive massive implications of what is happening now.

platypus' comment probably is no longer a joke.

They HAVE found over 500 EA points!

Clearly we are now already over 200 IQ for humans.

 

Fortunately, no one has bothered even disputing such assertions on this forum.

I am of course suitably impressed with the intelligence shown by the members.

 

There is no longer anything worth debating anymore.

The debate is completely over.

I would love to have a thread brawl about this, though I really would not be able to show

any particular enthusiasm. An argument needs at least two plausible sides.

Nay-saying does not count!

 

Super exciting!

 

My guess is that China's latest posturing reflects the fact that they have already a generation of genius on the way.

It seemed quite odd to me when China stood its ground over the recent American trade position. Then it occurred to me:

They must already be enhancing. Everything really came into focus for me from there.

 

It should be obvious to one and all that if (when) China turbocharges their half SD IQ advantage with 1-2 SD more

of genetic enhancement things will become very interesting. If this is already in progress, then we should feel a

wave of psychometric potential radiating out of China perhaps within the next 5-7 years. It would probably be

quite difficult to hide it after that point. It would then not be entirely clear what economic role many of the rest of us

would play in anything but a pretend economy. 

 

No one wants to come out and play; and I am left shooting goals in an empty net. 

I am very unsure why there is so little activity. The thought leaders are clearly on

record that this is now inevitable. Doesn't a 200+ IQ world interest anyone?

Edited by mag1, 27 April 2018 - 11:14 PM.