And as a great companion video to the Vsauce post, ASAPScience asks if we can improve not our Strength or Speed, but our Intelligence through genetic means, and what people are already doing about it.
The core of their idea is based on The Cognitive Genomics Project, Big Data & Gene Therapy.
Sequencing DNA used to take decades & billions, but now it’s much faster and cheaper.
Pair that with bigger server-farms like Amazon Web Services, and more powerful databases & analytics and you might just find out some of the potentially 1,000s of genes associated with high IQ.
-Right now we seem to have only one, barely.
Then, after finding that, the solution might turn out to be a massive set of Gene-Therapy injections that make 1000s of changes to your code through the viral-dna change mechanism. Sort-of like catching a “Genius-Flu”, or becoming Aaron Cross without all the chop-socky.
But as-before, there are always complications and you might not always get the changes you want and nothing else, as several gene-therapy patients have unfortunately found out.
Until then, one of the only ways to grow new neurons is to follow Elizabeth Gould’s advice.
The jury is out on brain-gyms like Lumosity, but they still seem like fun, and if Rutiger Gamm can turn himself into a calculator, improvements might just be a matter of repetition & discipline.
And until the screening-patterns to check in-vitro embryos for high-IQ correlations become common-practice, the surest bet for smarter children is the old-fashioned-way of finding a high-IQ person & making babies with them.
Worth a watch & check out the companion video by VSauce.
Photo/Video Credits:
YT-Can We Genetically Improve Intelligence? video and screenshot, by ASAPScience
Links:
• New Yorker Article on BGI
• TechnologyReview on BGI
• Wikipedia-Gene Therapy
• SciAm-Making Smarter Mice
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