Is it Ethical to raise everyone's IQ on this Planet to 180?

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HawkI said:
Coming up with a suitable cautionary message is tricky...

'Caution; The 'Bell Curve' of intelligence will be made obsolete due to prolonged exposure from this Psychotechnological device'

'Caution; Society will be undermined after prolonged exposure from this Psychotechnological device'
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I am strongly reminded of Trump's Healthcare bill.

"It's the greatest ever! It'll cure your cold, wipe your butt and butter your toast."
"Oh yeah? Where is it?"
"It's the greatest ever!"
 
parmalee said:
A quote often attributed to Woody Allen: 90 percent of success is simply showing up.

Sure, that can be read in the Malcolm Gladwell sense, putting in one's due diligence over the course of time, but it can also be read as, well, simply showing up. (Please try to resist the urge to speculate upon my preferred reading of that quote.) Insofar as our inability to reliability measure and assess "intelligence" in any truly meaningful sense, we also cannot wholly discount the role that perceptions play in the assessment of intelligence. I mean, show up enough to become a regular commentator on Fox news, and you'll have nearly 100 million people thinking you're a freakin' genius.
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Expanding upon this a bit, and broadening our definitions of intelligence:

The Beatles certainly put in their 10 thousand hours--well, Paul, John and George did. Ringo, however, did not. Ringo never practiced and he didn't even keep a kit in his own home. Moreover, he's left-handed but set his kit up in right-handed fashion; consequently, he couldn't do a proper roll even. He, pretty much, just showed up. And yet... Ringo is a freakin' genius, and he's widely respected even by highly proficient, virtuoso type drummers.

Phil Collins is perhaps the drummer most stylistically similar to Ringo, and yet, I think most would agree that he is of the "highly proficient, virtuoso" variety. Compare the drumming (isolated, with bass) on the Beatles' "A Day in the Life" to that of the latter section (also, mostly isolated bass and drums) of Genesis' "Cinema Show"--from about 5:50 onwards--which Phil claims to be directly inspired by "A Day in the Life":



Then there's Angus Maclise to consider, and even Mo Tucker, but I'll leave it at that.
 
wegs said:
They’re = they are (contraction)
Their = possessive
There = adjective or noun
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About ten or twelve years back, I started taking this anticonvulsant that was relatively new on the market. Among other things, it had some very specific cognitive side-effects: users reported consistent homophone confusion and mixing up of pronouns. This effect did not seem to abate with time. Of course, this effect was not reported in the official datasheet, but then Big Pharma is notoriously unscrupulous with respect to revealing reported side-effects.

Another side-effect, incidentally, was weight loss--and often considerable weight loss, especially amongst those who can't very well afford to be losing much weight (such as myself): at 6'1", I went from about 135 pounds down to 105 pounds--giving me a BMI of less than 14. It was not a good look, to put it mildly.

Needless to say, this drug--or device, if you will--did not seem to increase intelligence. It also didn't do dick for seizures.
 
HawkI said:
Your hobby is also to become a genius?
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???

No, precisely the opposite: I've long pursued methods and means for achieving a state of total idiocy. Not idiocy as defined in very much outdated editions of the DSM, but rather a more elusive sort of idiocy which formal definitions do not adequately convey.

Intelligence, especially of the sort which can ostensibly be measured, is fleeting and changes, often quite dramatically, throughout the course of a person's life. Moreover, any and all methods and means by which we aim to assess such are always inevitably tainted by oft overlooked class, racial, gender, etc. biases which very much privilege persons who are very much of the right "flavor." Such assessments are not wholly meaningless and without value, but the value is quite limited nonetheless.

Moreover, the results of any and all means by which we aim to "objectively" assess "intelligence" have long been compromised by persons (such as myself) who know full well how to "game the system."

Total idiocy, on the other hand, is nearly impossible to define and even more difficult to judge and assess: there's a very fine line between clever and stupid. And means and methods for attaining said state are largely unsatisfactory, as I very briefly illustrated in post #74. And yet we tend to know it when we see it.
 
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I've done it; I know how to make a cautious message to the reader; It's all in the Title. People know Poison is bad, just by its name.

But what to call it... I like this Title.

Psychotechnological Anti-'Bell Curve Intelligence Distribution' Device
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I can't really see the point of pandering any further to Hawkl's delusion.

I notice that there has been some interesting discussion on unrelated topics, so I apologise for closing the thread on those, but you can continue elsewhere if you want to.

Hawkl didn't seem to be interested in discussing the ostensible topic, anyway. He's more about self aggrandisement.
 
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