James Watson, who elucidated the structure of DNA 50 years ago with Francis Crick, has published an opinion advocating the use of gene therapy to eliminate stupidity. This has generated sharp criticism relating to the technological as well as ethical feasability. To date, we do not know enough about the myriad of genes that affect intelligence, and there is also a great amount of environmental factors. Even if we did, people argue improving intelligence by genetic manipulation is not ethically acceptable.

 

http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99993451

 

 

Personally I would love to see this happen. We'd be alot better off if everyone was smarter. Nature gave us the intelligence to unlock its secrets and alter them. It seems hypocritical to propose eliminating disease by gene therapy, but not to go one step further and improve things.

While I don't totally disagree with the idea I do see some problems. Since stupidity is a relative term you'd still have stupid people, they'd just be smarter than todays stupid people.

"If you are really stupid, I would call that a disease," says Watson, now president of the Cold Spring Harbour Laboratory, New York.

 

Wow, what a statement!

lol

 

Watson, no stranger to controversy, also suggests that genes influencing beauty could also be engineered. "People say it would be terrible if we made all girls pretty. I think it would be great."

 

 

What a guy, huh?

 

Enough of that, I'm against this. The lower 10% as Watson says, are stupid. So what? I'm thinking something along the lines of this:

"These are characteristically casual and provocative statements by James Watson," Rose adds. "I think they should be treated just as amusing rather than as a serious account of what behavioural genetics or any genetics should be doing, or will be able to do."

 

What is intelligence anyways? The rating on the IQ scale? As they say about beauty, its all subjective

 

But he adds: "The IQ suggestion is a little bit less silly, if you turn the logic on its head. Watson likes to annoy - no question - but he's no fool." Genetics could and does help people with severe disorders like Fragile X syndrome and phenylketonuria, both of which affect IQ, says Jones: "The problem is where do we draw the line?"

 

This relates back to a thread somewhere on SF talking about machines taking over mankind; if we want to be super-smart and super efficient, why not just design machines to take us over? They'll be much better than we are, right?

 

[also reminds of a novel, I think it was called Brave New World by Aldous Huxley]

Double post

Good, that will keep driving us towards a smarter world.

I'm not sure I want a world of smart people or pretty girls. and besides, intelligence and appearance are really just based on personal preferance, if someone came to you and told you everything there is to know about ketchup, you might call him an idiot, but he would clearly be smart enough to know everything about ketchup;)

 

sorry...point: everything is relative, no need to go messing with it and mess things up

better than someone who says "oooooooooohhhhh ketcup!!!!" and squirts it all over the place

If everyone was brilliant, who would be our fast food workers?

Originally posted by blike

If everyone was brilliant, who would be our fast food workers?

Rota system.

 

On decimal time, just like the trains.

 

 

Anyway who needs gene therapy to eliminate stupidity? Just give me a gun, lots of ammo, and some creative legal wrangling and I'll volunteer.

BTW:

 

Thread: "Using gene therapy to eliminate stupidy"

 

Ho ho ho.

Originally posted by blike

If everyone was brilliant, who would be our fast food workers?

 

Arts graduates

Machines.

 

And of course if there was a sufficient demand for a job that can't be done by machines (yet), the salary incentive would go up and smart people who cared about money would do it.

Originally posted by LuTze

Arts graduates

 

HEY!

 

But going back to my original argument:

 

Originally posted by NSX

This relates back to a thread somewhere on SF talking about machines taking over mankind; if we want to be super-smart and super efficient, why not just design machines to take us over? They'll be much better than we are, right?

only stupid people care about money.

People are smarter (based on the level of education) and prettier (at least we don't stink as much) than we were before. You can agree with the idea based on a logical extension of that progression, or disagree based on the futility of it.

 

The inherent flaw is that if we make women both smarter AND prettier then they'll be pretty but they'll have the good sense not to sleep with me.

 

And if all these smarter people become students then there'll be no shortage of fast food workers.

Wait a danged minute... if there are no stupid people, who will be eating all this fast food?

Darn, you beat me to it! so consider it seconded

OK so it took the best part of a year to occur to me, but I got there eventually.

 

AND FASTER THAN YOU LOT. Watson would have you all retired by now.

how does one actualy qualify "stupidity", as the even the smartest of people can often do stupid things, it`s part of the Human Condition. the word or meaning of the word "Stupid" is very difficult to qualify or quantify. and so I`de expect isolating a Gene for this condition would be impossible as there would be no such gene. although I expect that certain mental aberations and disorders could be treated in the distant future by gene identification and apropriate counter measures, non of them would actualy be the same as "Stupidity"

 

ps: I`m all for the great looking chicks part though

Have a look in the NS article and see if it's mentioned in there...

*shakes head*

Maybe the guy who decided to bring that up was stupid

YT2095 said in post #19 :

how does one actualy qualify "stupidity", as the even the smartest of people can often do stupid things, it`s part of the Human Condition. the word or meaning of the word "Stupid" is very difficult to qualify or quantify.

 

I made up my own system of categories to help clarify this (in my own mind, anyway  :

 

Idiocy = Incapable of learning.

 

Ignorance = Capable of learning but has limited/no access to information.

 

Stupidity = Capable of learning and having access to information, but won't learn (usually in defence of internal belief system against contradictory [but valid] external information).

I strongly think that there should be a balance between stupid people and smart people. Then, the world would be more perfect.

What do you mean by "balance"?