[cogman10]

I think the only thing I really quibble a bit with is the description of "dumber".

Our "domestication" has historically been more that we've gone from a generalist species to a specialist society. With that, things that were previously probably a boon for survival and reproduction become less so (For example, quick reaction times don't matter so much when you have a city wall to keep out predators and a backup hunting party).

My assumption is that what we've lost is more our brain matter used to sleep in trees and wake up/run from predators at all hours of the night. Stuff that's less important when you have night watchman, fires, and shelter.

It's similar to how dolphins have huge brains, but most of that is dedicated to sound processing. If dolphins learned how to make huts, farm fish, and fight off predators I'd imagine the part of their brain dedicated to processing sound would start to shrink as there isn't the evolutionary pressure to keep it around.

Sort of like how humans might be evolving towards color blindness because being able to tell the difference between red and green doesn't necessarily increase our ability to have children. That might lead to weird changes in our eyes and brains that could shrink them but wouldn't necessarily mean those humans are any dumber than their predecessors.

[bobthechef]

I agree that smaller brain does not mean dumber. This is a very simplistic idea of what brains are for. Whales have huge brains, but I would guess that has more to do with their size.

I don't understand what you mean by "generalist" vs "specialist". I think intelligence is related to why, for example, human beings lack armor, fur, and all sorts of specialized features, functions, and excellences that other species have. Human intelligence can dream up an indefinite if not infinite number of functions which are "offloaded" to technology. We wear clothing and can adjust it depending on the climate which allow us to adapt to environments more than any other species. We have optical instruments which can extend our vision beyond that of any other species depending on need. We have all sorts of communication instruments which allow us a greater range of communication than any other species. We can harvest food in ways that put all other species to shame. We can outrun, fly, and swim any other animal. I could go on. Any capacity other species have we can (at least in principle) exceed with the help of technology, all thanks to human intelligence.

Assuming selection as an explanatory model, I don't see why we should expect to see that basic feature going away. Even with greater specialization in one direction or another, you still need much of that basic underlying generality.

[inawarminister]

AFAIK human natural niche was persistence hunting. Due to our body shape and ability to sweat, we can outrun prey species in the long run. That's how we're engineered, by natural selection in Ice Age Africa. Persistent trekkers that can throw sticks and stones.

Later, we domesticated dogs and other species, then made more and more advanced technologies. But at it's core? Our niche was that.

[robbedpeter]

I'm pretty sure that humans are apex persistence hunters - we can run any animal to death, not just prey species. It's a brutally effective adaptation. It's the greatest weapon we had until fire.

Even fat modern lazy humans have it in them - kick in survival mode brain chemistry and enough luck to keep chasing a deer's trail for days, the deer will die of exhaustion before the human.

[hawk_]

> This is a very simplistic idea of what brains are for.

Or it could be that my small brain is incapable of seeing how small brain can mean dumber

[matheusmoreira]

Sounds like we need to take control of this evolutionary process and start engineering it. Just because we are no longer required to use these abilities on a daily basis doesn't mean we don't want them. Evolution can go to hell with its "pressures", humanity is supposed to get better over time, not worse.

[vlovich123]

You're making a value judgement like "better" and "worse" as if there was a clear global optimum that you can reach. Why do you assume that's the case?

Let's assume there even is a global optimum. Why do we think this global optimum would be invariant on environment? We have clear examples of species that fail to adapt to their changing environment quickly enough dying off. If you took the survivors of a change and then changed things back, those survivors might die again. That means you are fit to the environment you find yourself in. As the environment changes, you're not "better" or "worse" than someone who's more fit to a different environment.

Humanity is not getting strictly better on all stats. It's like a video game. We might tweak improve some stats and have to give up others. We are a bit more unique in that we largely optimize for the environment we create for ourselves, but that doesn't mean humans are constantly "getting better" over time. You could maybe try arguing that the human condition has improved over time due to technology, medicine, etc, but even that's an imperfect analysis because our historical record is so inaccurate.

[matheusmoreira]

Surely having sharper and more intelligent humans is an objectively better uncontroversial outcome. If there's even a chance that our environment is somehow downregulating important features such as intelligence, we must find a way to reverse that process.

[hawk_]

> Surely having sharper and more intelligent humans is an objectively better uncontroversial outcome

What if there's a level of intelligence above which humans decide not to reproduce?

[matheusmoreira]

I question the intelligence of a human species that does not reproduce.

[vlovich123]

By what metric are you making the claim that humanity does not reproduce?

To my eye we’ve simply unlocked medical science and have taken control of reproduction to the point where it’s not critical to the species for everyone to reproduce. I’d be more concerned about all the plastics and chemicals that are now circulating in our bodies slowly decreasing our ability to reproduce than us as a species being too dumb to reproduce. That position just doesn’t have an existence proof point (no pandas don’t count because while it’s a funny pop meme, all evidence suggests they just can’t/won’t mate in captivity and it’s environmental for them).

[danwills]

Is this perhaps too focused on the individual which might not lead to the optimum for the zoomed-out / group (population-level) case?

This reminds me of a meta-system-transition where simplified versions of individual (previously independent) units can lead to a unified cooperative whole that works better at the meta-system level (similar to what led to eukaryotes or to multicellularity). It's like a sacrifice that the individuals make (of things that might have looked like intelligence in the previous context) in order to be able to work together better, and these kinds of transitions have worked out extremely well for life, so far! (I guess I am biased, being alive and everything!?)

Should humans resist the formation of human meta-systems? Human/robot meta-systems? Certainly seems like a good chance that an extremely successful meta-system could be dangerous to the rest of the regular humans!? But if it's actually better, then that's just normal (meta) evolution.

[matheusmoreira]

> Should humans resist the formation of human meta-systems? Human/robot meta-systems?

No. I'm saying humans should not lose abilities or features because of it. We should be able to live comfortable lives and still maintain peak physical and mental performance. Any changes in our nature should not go against that.

[vlovich123]

We specialize though. Some people might be able to maintain peak mental performance. Others peak physical. Some might be better at social things to make sure we have a cohesive well-functioning society. There's probably thousands of character traits and some are going to invariably be tradeoffs in our genome/social conditioning. There's a reason there aren't Einstein-level intelligences running around every day doing body building, modelling, race car driving all at once. You have to choose what you spend your time on and most people choose to intersect that with natural abilities and interests.

Also, assuming the conclusions of the article in any way prove a shift in intelligence (it doesn't), you'd still be looking at averages which tells you nothing about the effect it has on total number at population. Maybe there's an upper bound of "smart" people or "strong" people modern society demands. Certainly as a skill becomes more commoditized it becomes less valuable economically. Maybe we've got too many smart people now because a lot of people saw the explosion in value of such careers?

[SamoyedFurFluff]

But do you have any evidence of that? With our supposedly down regulated intelligence we’re achieving ever more and faster.

[bobthechef]

Sounds like eugenics. Heh, no thanks.

Also "better" and "worse" only mean something relative to an end. I do not deny ends (I take human nature to be teleological, for example), but many "evolutionists" (i.e., those who accept a basically materialistic worldview) do deny the reality of ends (and are wholly incapable of accounting for them even if reduced to mental phenomena by virtue of having painted themselves into a metaphysical corner).

[exporectomy]

Do you have a real concern with eugenics or is it just because your culture demonizes it?

We already have little bits of eugenics baked into law and culture. Why not a little bit more? It doesn't have to involve death camps.

[SamoyedFurFluff]

Eugenics involved horrific deprivations of human dignity for arbitrary decisions of what seemed at the time to be “self evidently good” traits that are much less self evidently good now… if the traits were even retained.

[notriddle]

Same reason so many people object to censorship: nobody can be trusted with that kind of power.

[exporectomy]

Is that really why eugenics is demonized? That the human race (not any living individuals) is giving up its freedom to some sort of fallible authority?

I guess, like censorship, people only object to an arbitrary subset of it. People love censorship of "really bad" ideas just as they love eugenics of "really bad" genes.

Most people seem happy with asserting our authority of gene selection over animals though :P Conservationism is that. Not to mention actual selective breeding and killing of course. Perhaps we rightly believe humans truly are capable of being benevolent arbiters of who gets to reproduce and who doesn't in animals.

[cogman10]

Animal breeding is somewhat different from human breeding.

With animal breeding, there's almost always a set goal. Getting a fatter, tastier, more hardy, or in the extreme, aesthetically pleasing animal.

I doubt we'd really use eugenics for any of them. However, a pure eugenicist might say "Well, why not? Why not select for people less prone to cancer, more physically fit, with better immune systems?"

So then it comes into the question of what eugenics has historically been used for. The worst example would probably be the sterilization of gay people. We used it against mental illness in an age where lobotomy was considered a good treatment for mental illnesses such as hyperactivity.

And all of this, of course, sort of belays the fact that for humans there seems to be no reason why we couldn't use gene therapy in place of breeding programs. Why do we need eugenics when we can directly target the aspects we want in the future generation (and quite a few people would opt in for those changes).

We already seem some of this just in genetic testing of embryos and fetuses. When people know a fetus has downs syndrome, they get abortions and try again. I could see the same with a whole host of chronic illnesses.

[notriddle]

People select their own mates. On the assumption that you aren’t just advocating for stuff that’s always happening, you presumably want to set up some authority for who people mate with other than the couples involved. Why can’t they decide for themselves?

It really is pretty similar to the kinds of things that are used to advocate against E2E encryption. An attempt to have the state encroach on territory that used to be private.

[The_Colonel]

> Sort of like how humans might be evolving towards color blindness because being able to tell the difference between red and green doesn't necessarily increase our ability to have children.

Doesn't this hold true for "dumbness" as well? Being dumb is no longer an obstacle in having a reproductive success.

I wouldn't be surprised if there was a peak in the reproduction rate bell curve around IQ 80-90.

[im3w1l]

> Our "domestication" has historically been more that we've gone from a generalist species to a specialist society.

Outsourcing violence to the police is a huge step of domestication.

[algebraically]

Good point.