[Rune]

Wired

Why are some people so smart? The answer could spawn a generation of superbabies

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'B')ut he is far from average. After being identified early as a science prodigy, Zhao raced through China’s special programs for gifted students and won a spot in Renmin, one of the country’s most elite high schools. Then, to the shock of his friends and family, he decided to drop out when he was 17. Now, at 21, he oversees his own research project at BGI Shenzhen—the country’s top biotech institute and home to the world’s most powerful cluster of DNA-sequencing machines—where he commands a multimillion-dollar research budget.

Zhao’s goal is to use those machines to examine the genetic underpinnings of genius like his own. He wants nothing less than to crack the code for intelligence by studying the genomes of thousands of prodigies, not just from China but around the world. He and his collaborators, a transnational group of intelligence researchers, fully expect they will succeed in identifying a genetic basis for IQ. They also expect that within a decade their research will be used to screen embryos during in vitro fertilization, boosting the IQ of unborn children by up to 20 points. In theory, that’s the difference between a kid who struggles through high school and one who sails into college.

[PrestonSturges]

One of the dumbest fucking articles ever posted on the internet.

This "project" is about as imaginative as running the night shift at a fast food joint. He's a technician.

Also, the idea that this kid mastered several fields (programming, genetics, statistics) in a day is absurd. He's clearly a flunky, a stooge.

If he really had as mental horsepower as claimed, he'd be doing something more imaginative than working in an automated sequencing facility.

[Rune]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('PrestonSturges', 'O')ne of the dumbest fucking articles ever posted on the internet

[PrestonSturges]

BTW one of the smarter people I know just emailed me about the looming threat of sharia law and no mercy for anyone who's not cocked locked and ready to rock for Jesus. Smart, but totally bipolar.

[Rune]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('PrestonSturges', 'B')TW one of the smarter people I know just emailed me about the looming threat of sharia law and for anyone who's not cocked locked and ready to rock for Jesus. Smart, but totally bipolar.

[Beery1]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Rune', 'T')here really ARE some kids born with incredible intellectual gifts. You see articles about them here and there. They don't necessarily lead fabulous lives; they don't all become billionaires. But they demonstrate unusually high mental talents.

[Rune]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'S')o many of your posts seem to end with this sentence. Maybe the problem isn't with others failing to understand some great potential, but with you failing to understand the likely limits of that potential.

[PrestonSturges]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Rune', '
')With cheap gene-sequencing, it would be possible to collect and compare a million genomes from people who demonstrate very high IQ. Perhaps there are some answers to the question there.

[Rune]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('PrestonSturges', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Rune', '
')With cheap gene-sequencing, it would be possible to collect and compare a million genomes from people who demonstrate very high IQ. Perhaps there are some answers to the question there.

[PrestonSturges]

It's like the IT industry - it's all about selling hardware, selling hardware, selling hardware. There is no business model in having politicians emailing photos of their junk, it's all about selling the server farms that make it possible.

In the case of the genome project, it was mostly ABI selling the original sequencers and the pharmaceutical industry nearly went bankrupt because they spent all their money on hardware and reagents rather than talent and knowledge. So here we go again, with the hardware vendors selling the usual three magic beans. No business model, just a silly PR story to sell the hardware, sell the hardware.

[AgentR11]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('PrestonSturges', 'B')TW one of the smarter people I know just emailed me about the looming threat of sharia law and no mercy for anyone who's not cocked locked and ready to rock for Jesus. Smart, but totally bipolar.

[PrestonSturges]

Regards personality, it's also very likely that people selectively bred for maximum intelligence would be too much alike.

...............Mustapha Mond smiled. "Well, you can call it an experiment in rebottling if you like. It began in A.F. 473. The Controllers had the island of Cyprus cleared of all its existing inhabitants and re-colonized with a specially prepared batch of twenty-two thousand Alphas. All agricultural and industrial equipment was handed over to them and they were left to manage their own affairs. The result exactly fulfilled all the theoretical predictions. The land wasn't properly worked; there were strikes in all the factories; the laws were set at naught, orders disobeyed; all the people detailed for a spell of low-grade work were perpetually intriguing for high-grade jobs, and all the people with high-grade jobs were counter-intriguing at all costs to stay where they were. Within six years they were having a first-class civil war. When nineteen out of the twenty-two thousand had been killed, the survivors unanimously petitioned the World Controllers to resume the government of the island. Which they did. And that was the end of the only society of Alphas that the world has ever seen."
The Savage sighed, profoundly.
"The optimum population," said Mustapha Mond, "is modelled on the iceberg–eight-ninths below the water line, one-ninth above."
"And they're happy below the water line?"
"Happier than above it......"
-Brave New World

The bottom line is that social progress and individual success largely depend on how much sabotage is tolerated. In wartime, sabotage gets someone shot, and progress moves at breakneck speed. In peacetime, sabotage is just another day at the office.

[Rune]

What a lot of idiotic 5h1t.

I think your parents would have really appreciated having access to any sort of genomic information and selection methods which could have prevented the tragedy.

[Subjectivist]

A lot of people who think they are smart really are not competent at many things, they are just specialists in one area. Einstein was a mathematical genius, but his other intellectual areas were average or a little less. Seems as if he had an almost savant like mathe skill with an otherwise average brain.

[PrestonSturges]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Rune', 'W')hat a lot of idiotic 5h1t.

I think your parents would have really appreciated having access to any sort of genomic information and selection methods which could have prevented the tragedy.

[Rune]

Nah, I'm joking around and having fun.

I'm done with this thread anyway. I just posted it because the breakthrough, really, is scientists are now able to collect millions of genomes and do statistical analyses on them - simply because it is now cheap enough to do so.

...and genome sequencing probably will continue to become cheaper yet. So it is inevitanble that these kinds of studies will be conducted, not only for traits like high IQ or psychopathology and whatever else has been shown to have some degree of heritability.

In the article, it said that high IQ had a heritability factor of around 70 - 80%.

I never expected that the article would get anyone's back up - but then a lot of people get emotional about me on this board. Its a trait - an unusual ability that I have.

[AgentR11]

Well, IQ is an inherently controversial subject....

[ralfy]

Intelligence can also be measured and viewed in different ways.

[davep]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Rune', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'E')xome sequencing is already hitting the $500 mark, and Life Technologies' Jonathan Rothberg says, "In three months, we'll be able to do one entire human genome for $1,000." Zimmerman adds that other technologies like nanopore sequencing could further affect the price of sequencing.

Still, those sequences have to be interpreted. "We have information available today beyond our ability to absorb it," Burrill adds.

[Rune]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('davep', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Rune', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'E')xome sequencing is already hitting the $500 mark, and Life Technologies' Jonathan Rothberg says, "In three months, we'll be able to do one entire human genome for $1,000." Zimmerman adds that other technologies like nanopore sequencing could further affect the price of sequencing.

Still, those sequences have to be interpreted. "We have information available today beyond our ability to absorb it," Burrill adds.