
Algernon's Law - gwern
http://www.gwern.net/Drug%20heuristics?2
======
maaku
Gwern, this whole subject is sloppy. It is trivially simple to improve IQ
scores by practicing the types of questions IQ tests make. There is no
reliable way to measure IQ, therefore it's not clear that IQ is measuring
anything reliably. What, _exactly_ , are you talking about then?

~~~
selmnoo
I improved my IQ by 20 pts in an year's time. It was pretty simple: study
SAT/GRE words, and do a lot of arithmetic exercises.

I know that it increased by 20 pts. because I underwent an IQ test conducted
by a licensed psychologist twice.

~~~
viggity
it was always my understanding that "good" IQ tests should have almost zero
variance based on your vocabulary, or hell, even your mathematical abilities.
A "good" IQ test simply tests your logic facilities.

Example "good" questions would show a sequence of 6 shapes and ask you what
the next one in the series should look like. or perhaps a question like "given
that all boogles are quinks and some quinks are flets, are all flets
boogles?".

A question on a "bullshit" IQ test would be: "'Daring' is an appropriate
adjective for: A. Rocks. B. Planets. C. Humans.". Another would be "x^2 = 36,
solve for x"

Now, I know that some standardized tests (ACT, SAT, IBTS), will sometimes try
to estimate your IQ by correlating your scores, but that is fraught with
problems and shouldn't be taken as gospel.

~~~
foobarbazqux
> A "good" IQ test simply tests your logic facilities.

You can dramatically improve your logic facilities by taking a course in
logic. Your boogles, quinks, and flets question is trivial if you know even
rudimentary set theory.

~~~
Smaug123
Not even that - it's the kind of question that becomes dramatically easier to
answer if you know how to trick your brain into thinking it's easy. "Given
that all cats are animals and some animals are mice, are all mice cats?"

~~~
foobarbazqux
It's actually a harder question if you phrase it with cats, animals, and mice!
The correct answer is "possibly" (either yes or no), but the cats, animals,
and mice question predisposes you to answer with "no".

~~~
Smaug123
For me, that kind of comes under the category of "know how to answer the
question": that is, "remember that you have produced an example, which does
not constitute proof but merely evidence". You're right that it's still not
easy to distinguish between "definitely yes" and "not {definitely no}", though
I do still find it easier with nouns-which-I-know than made-up-words, I think.
I should have put in an attempt to make the statement true - maybe "Given that
all cats are cats, and some cats are cats, are all cats cats?"

------
tachyonbeam
He talks about MDMA and how it reduces anxiety near the end. When I first
tried it, I found it quite amazing how a pill could completely eliminate my
social anxiety for a few hours. I'd _never_ felt so comfortable in my own skin
and surrounding environment. I'd never realized that at every waking moment,
even when alone, even when I think I'm pretty relaxed, I always feel some
amount of background anxiety. This drug was able to take the anxiety down to
zero. I was no longer afraid to go talk to strangers, I could really have fun
at parties.

The downsides, though, are pretty obvious. For one, MDMA causes a crash.
Sometimes, I'd be down for 2, even 3 days afterwards, which would be quite
unpleasant and kill my productivity. Another thing is that well, anxiety and
fear are sometimes useful. If you're too trusting of people around you, you
might eventually get yourself in risky situations. You might trust people you
really shouldn't.

There's also been a study on MDMA that showed that it changes the way you
interpret signs of rejection given off by people. You interpret people's
response to you more positively, even if it isn't all that positive. MDMA can
help you approach people, but it can also make you a little delusional (over
optimistic) about the way people perceive you.

My personal opinion is that people with less baseline anxiety are probably
still generally better off in the modern world. They're less stressed, they're
more open to approaching and being approached by people, they end up having
more friends because of this. They might have a tendency to be more trusting
and not notice as much when they annoy people, but it probably generally works
in their favor. I probably worry too much about displeasing other people.

~~~
bitwize
MDMA sounds to humans what Toxoplasma gondii infection is to rats.

~~~
tachyonbeam
With the difference that you're presumably much more intelligent than a rat.
Even if you don't feel anxious, you _can_ reason on a purely logical basis as
to what might be a bad idea. Even if you stopped feeling fear, you'd probably
still be intelligent enough to look on both sides before crossing the street.
I do agree that it can, and probably will increase risk taking, though. The
risks I took on MDMA were social risks, things I don't actually deem to be
dangerous, things my fear stops me from doing but that I should probably be
attempting more often.

I find that MDMA makes it very easy to "open up" to people and tell them what
you think. This is probably one of the reasons why people are looking into
using it as a therapeutic aid for PTSD and rape victims. In the context of a
party though, this can translate in you being very comfortable telling your
friends what you really think about them, even if it isn't a good idea. I
found I'm still able to ask myself rationally "is this something I should be
telling this person?", "could this be hurtful to this person?" and stop myself
from saying stupid things. This is different from alcohol, which makes you
both less anxious and less intelligent. I can tell you that on MDMA, I
actually feel extremely sharp, more than normal (better recall, better verbal
fluency, etc).

I can tell you that people have said stupid and offensive things to me while
high on MDMA, however. One girl told me that she disliked my new hairstyle
(thanks, I like it just fine), and also told me that she frequently had sex
dreams about me, but that nothing could come of it since she had a boyfriend.
Both of these were things I didn't want to know. I will say though that this
same girl has said more offensive and annoying things to me while sober.

------
trendoid
I wonder how many people thoroughly read these gwern articles before jumping
to comment their opposing views. There is a lot of information inside. It may
take me 5-6 hours to properly go through it before concluding that gwern didnt
take X into account. Idea : On HN, even if I save long articles for later and
read a week after, my posted views will not be read by anyone since the
discussion is already over. Maybe HN can provide a service where everyone gets
update whenever a new comment is posted on such articles. I get to choose
which posts I want updates from(and most will be ones having lots of words
since updates will be few and far between). That way even if someone comments
after a week, she atleast knows few people are getting aware of it.

~~~
mietek
I wish there was a service like this.

------
DennisP
Seems to me a flaw in this argument is that much smarter humans do show up
from time to time, without apparent ill effect. It's conceivable that we could
at least enhance intelligence to John von Neumann's level.

~~~
gwern
It's conceivable, but it's not going to be easy or _simple_. Think of how many
billions of humans existed simultaneously with John von Neumann without being
anywhere near his level. If we figure that Neumann was mostly due to a stellar
combination of alleles, then that implies he got lucky on a very large number
of alleles (imagine a bunch of alleles which can be on or off, and Neumann got
all of them 'on'; then because he was 1 out of 5 billion or whatever, he got
log_2 5,000,000,000 = 32. This is not 1 variation, which is easy to select on,
or 2, but 32. The current state of the art, using n=100,000 is around 3 SNPs.
(I apologize in advance to the geneticists for my reasoning here.))

And I would note that Neumann, despite being happily married, a gifted
negotiator, lady's man, and party-goer, never had children.

So Neumann might violate either the simple or reproductive fitness
requirements: to the extent we can hope to manufacture Neumanns through
genetic engineering, it's not going to be easy; and to the extent we can judge
from n=1, the reproductive fitness penalties may be large.

~~~
thromeaway34
fyi,
[http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marina_von_Neumann_Whitman](http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marina_von_Neumann_Whitman)

~~~
gwern
Ah. My bad. I guess I was thinking of his second marriage and didn't remember
he had a daughter. But I see she only has 2 kids, so maybe it will still be
true soon that von Neumann was without any surviving descendants...

------
stiff
_If the proposed intervention would result in an enhancement, why have we not
already evolved to be that way?_

This is completely misguided, because evolution does not necessarily
"progress" in any sense. Here is a good explanation:

[http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/misconceptions_faq....](http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/misconceptions_faq.php#a3)

This looks like a typical example of what happens when people from
mathematical fields or philosophers take up evolution and A) view it as some
sort of simple optimization procedure and B) use it as some all-pervading
philosophical principle from which things can be derived and don't have to be
proven.

~~~
Symmetry
I think that the author covered most of the same objections in his essay that
the FAQ you link does, missing only that evolution doesn't necessarily work
well in small populations.

~~~
stiff
He nevertheless proceeds as if this is something that is generally true, with
it only being false in exceptional situations. There is no reason to suppose
that this is generally true, which makes the heuristic useless, and hence his
reasoning gets very shaky, for example:

 _How about opiates? Morphine and other painkillers can easily be justified as
evolution not knowing when a knife cut is by a murderous enemy and when it’s
by a kindly surgeon (which didn’t exist way back when), and choosing to make
us err on the side of always feeling pain. But recreational drug abuse?

#1 doesn’t seem too plausible - what about modern society would favor opiate
consumption outside of medicinal use? If one wishes to deaden the despair and
ennui of living in a degenerate atheistic material culture, we have beer for
that.57

#3 doesn’t work either; opioids have been around for ages and work via the
standard brain machinery.

#2 might work here as well, but this dumps us straight into the debate about
the War on Drugs and what harm drug use does to the user & society._

He completely misses here what he wrote himself earlier for example about
there not existing a simple mutation from the current state to the "desired"
one.

~~~
moyix
There is reason to believe that it's true except in exceptional situations,
and this is covered in the article:

 _Theoretical calculations apparently indicate that in a changing environment,
the fitness gap between the current allele and its alternatives will be small
and large gaps exponentially rare19; this is as one would expect from the
market analogue (the bigger the arbitrage, the faster it will be exploited)._

~~~
stiff
I understand this research to say: if there exists a simple mutation that is
hugely beneficial, it will spread fast. This does not mean every beneficial
change to the DNA we as intelligent beings can come up with can be expected to
have most likely already happened in the course of evolution. The article
acknowledges this at one point, but some of the further discussion in
uninformed by this issue.

------
tokenadult
Previous discussion (of an earlier version of this article?) 461 days ago:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4201233](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4201233)

Readers who are interested in following up on the professional literature on
human intelligence and IQ testing are invited to dig into the "Intelligence
Citations" bibliography

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:WeijiBaikeBianji/Intellig...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:WeijiBaikeBianji/IntelligenceCitations)

in Wikipedia user space.

------
pallandt
I haven't read the whole article, but there is at least one inaccuracy I
spotted. Piracetam's primary mechanism of action is glutamatergic, not
cholinergic. This is why the known side-effects include anxiety, headaches,
insomnia or irritability. The cholinergic impact is less pronounced.

~~~
mistercow
Citation?

~~~
pallandt
I don't have much time right now to sift through so many papers, but see these
for instance:

[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10583700](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10583700)
,
[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1372342](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1372342)

I haven't stated anything outrageous, it's been known for a long time that
piracetam is a positive modulator of glutamate receptors.

~~~
mistercow
I'm not disputing that. But I've read a ton of studies about piracetam, and
I've always had the impression that its _primary_ mechanism was cholinergic.

~~~
pallandt
It largely depends on what you've read: how reputable the journal, how well-
informed and genuine the researchers were etc. Some papers are written just
for the sake of making one researcher's 'quota' or fulfilling the minimal
requirements for a grant. It's not unusual even in the research community to
keep rehashing old information.

~~~
gwern
I too was distinctly under the impression that piracetam's mechanism was
cholinergic and other mechanisms were bit players; Wikipedia likewise gives
that impression:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piracetam#Mechanisms_of_action](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piracetam#Mechanisms_of_action)

~~~
pallandt
I always take Wikipedia with a grain of salt, especially when it comes to
pharmacology / pharmacodynamics / pharmacokinetics. I may be wrong though, so
take my opinions with a grain of salt as well please.

Here's another way of looking at the issue though.

For instance, an example of the symptoms a cholinergic overdose would cause
('bradycardia, sinus arrhythmia, vomiting and respiratory insufficiency'), as
opposed to piracetam's most common side-effects listed on Wikipedia ('anxiety,
insomnia, irritability, headache, agitation, nervousness, and tremor'):
[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/14658400](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/14658400)

Although not listed on Wikipedia, sinus tachycardia is another potential side-
effect of piracetam, perhaps more common than bradycardia. Unfortunately I
can't find where I put my Thomson Micromedex toxicology leaflets on piracetam,
I'd look up more info.

Btw, I hope I haven't offended you, it's clear you put a lot of work into the
article and are passionate about the subject. I'm off to sleep, have an
awesome day wherever you are.

~~~
gwern
So... the evidence for your claim was that some of the side-effects sound
similar?

------
codex
To me, a related supposition is more interesting: if you put a human in an
environment which minics closely their recent evolutionary history, will
previously-missing environmental triggers boost intelligence (or any other
bodily function?) to their optimum, perhaps via hormesis? Such an environment
would include:

\- higher amounts of exercise \- periodic fasting and/or malnutrition \- lower
carb intake (sugars, grains) \- higher plant intake \- higher sunlight
exposure \- sleep/wake cycle dictated by the Sun \- less sitting

... but might also include:

\- exposure to rotted food and disease \- increased bodily injury \- increased
exposure to the elements

------
notahacker
The article opens with a claim that (i) an individual's brain is wired in a
way which makes _change in IQ_ difficult for a set of healthy humans with IQ
over a certain threshold which is basically orthogonal to the main thrust of
the article (ii) that _higher [potential] IQ has an evolutionary disadvantage_
Sure, one can posit that (i) occurs because of (ii): i.e. (iii) to mitigate
against the risk of people harming their reproductive ability by training up
their IQ, _the evolutionary process selects for immutable IQ_

But that seems like a hypothesis with little to recommend it against the
alternate hypothesis that mutability of IQ is neutral with respect to
evolution but _evolving brain structures whose performance in certain tasks
can be radically improved in adulthood is difficult, period_. Especially when
one considers that high IQ at birth isn't eliminated from the gene pool, and
marked increases in 1930-normalised IQ between generations doesn't appear to
markedly disadvantage modern Westerners.

Similarly, it seems simpler to accept that the phenotype "potential 140 IQ" is
the consequence of specific, rare combinations of certain genes which overall
aren't correlated with survival, without positing side effects of IQ-linked
genes. Ubermensch can't be bred because their kids aren't clones rather than
because they're necessarily deficient in other ways.

I'd see the incidence of Tay Sachs disease as a _counterexample_ to the theory
that high performance in a specific brain function necessarily has
evolutionary tradeoffs. Ashkenazi Jews on average test with higher verbal and
mathematical intelligence and lower spatial intelligence than other ethnic
groups, which could imply that human brains naturally-selected for optimal
function in one area are punished in other areas. Ashkenazi Jews are also more
likely to carry the recessive gene for the very rare and very debilitating
Tay-Sachs disease. But since 26 out of 27 Ashkenazi Jews don't have that
recessive gene, which afaik is uncorrelated with IQ amongst Ashkenazi Jews, it
suggests the common factor between Askhenazi intelligence and Ashkenazi Tay-
Sachs incidence is inbreeding. Reduced average spatial intelligence could,
like Tay-Sachs, be the unfortunate effect of a restricted gene pool rather
than an "tradeoff" which must inevitably be caused by higher scores in other
tests.

~~~
Anderkent
> alternate hypothesis that mutability of IQ is neutral with respect to
> evolution but evolving brain structures whose performance in certain tasks
> can be radically improved in adulthood is difficult, period.

Merely 'difficult' is not much of a counter-argument - almost every component
of a human being is at least 'difficult' to design. There doesn't seem to be
reason to believe creating higher intelligence is _especially_ more costly, in
comparison to the already achieved intelligence.

------
SoftwarePatent
> it’s not too surprising that human medicine may be largely wasted effort or
> harmful 13 (although most - especially doctors - would strenuously deny
> this).

This claim requires evidence, but the citation is to a blog post about
nutrition, not medicine.

~~~
gwern
> This claim requires evidence, but the citation is to a blog post about
> nutrition, not medicine.

I didn't realize nutrition had nothing to do with medicine. And _actually_ ,
the citation is to a list of 24 posts by Hanson covering various aspects of
the negative case for medicine, including but not limited to nutrition.

------
jmmcd
I've been collecting examples of the abuse and misunderstanding of the no-
free-lunch theorems, and this is a pretty flagrant one:

> "Any simple major enhancement to human intelligence is a net evolutionary
> disadvantage." The lesson is that Mother Nature know best. Or alternately,
> TANSTAAFL: there ain’t no such thing as a free lunch.

~~~
Houshalter
Why do you think that is wrong?

~~~
jmmcd
The NFL theorem (for search and optimisation) states that all algorithms for
searching a fixed problem space perform the same, in expectation, when you
don't know anything about the fitness (cost) structure over that space. There
is a tradeoff in a sense: an algorithm can only do better than random search
on some instances of the problem if it does worse on others. There's no sense
of a tradeoff between multiple objectives on a single instance of a search
problem, which is what gwern is talking about.

~~~
Houshalter
I believe it's actually a reference to the general expression "There ain't no
such thing as a free lunch" and has little to do with the computer science
theorem of a similar name.

([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/There_ain't_no_such_thing_as_a...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/There_ain't_no_such_thing_as_a_free_lunch))

~~~
jmmcd
Yes, but Gwern links to the wiki page on the NFL theorems.

------
SnacksOnAPlane
Intelligence is not an unalloyed good as the article claims. An excess of
intelligence without some outlet for it produces frustration and, in extreme
cases, depression.

~~~
Anderkent
So it has a cost, exactly as the article claims?

The very _point_ of the article is that there is no free lunch. Intelligence
improvements are bound to be trade-offs, because otherwise they'd have evolved
already. Frustration and depression may be some of these costs.

------
oh_sigh
Another day, another gwern.net post.

~~~
_exec
Not a fan?

~~~
oh_sigh
It's not that I am not a fan, but it's just strange that we've been seeing so
many posts from gwern.net, considering he's been writing for many years. This
article, for example, is from 2010.

~~~
alecdbrooks
He explained why he's submitting so many nine days ago:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6466422](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6466422).
He constanly updates and expands the articles on his website, so it isn't so
strange for an article created in 2010 to be posted now. This post, for
example, was last modified today.

------
scythe
I find the overall argument to be rather weak. The most relevant problem is
that it starts on a premise that might as well be this: "Intelligence is a
substance, and a nootropic is a drug that makes the brain produce more of it."

Of course I've intentionally phrased this as to make it seem ludicrous, but
throughout the article he talks of "more" or "less" intelligence as though it
were a fungible sort of thing. Really, though, intelligence is just a way that
human beings interpret each other's behavior, related to performance on
various tasks (mathematics, etc). There's no particular reason to assume that
evolution would have optimized for, e.g., skill in mathematical analysis, and
therefore there isn't any particular reason to assume that even the silliest
of low-hanging fruit wouldn't have been picked, for instance an elderly and
distinguished analyst, such as Paul Erdos, may benefit from taking
amphetamine.

There are also radical differences in what we measure as "IQ", which is mostly
performance on a battery of strange tasks, and the sort of mental performance
that leads to evolutionary success. There are, for example, arguments to the
evolutionary sufficiency of ADHD[1], OCD[2].

1:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunter_vs._farmer_hypothesis](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunter_vs._farmer_hypothesis)

2:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocd#Causes](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocd#Causes)

More critically, though, is that this represents yet another article on the
basis of "I-think-it-oughta" evolutionary reasoning. You think "intellectual
low-hanging fruit" ought to be selected for, but you don't have empirical
evidence. The claim is based almost entirely on hand-waving and citations of
Eliezer Yudkowsky, who is not in any case an authoritative source [3], and
whose claims have not been in general accepted by contemporary neuroscientists
[4].

3: [http://rationallyspeaking.blogspot.se/2010/09/eliezer-
yudkow...](http://rationallyspeaking.blogspot.se/2010/09/eliezer-yudkowsky-on-
bayes-and-science.html)

4: notably absent here: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_of_human_intelligence
and here:
[http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=evolution+intelligence+a...](http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=evolution+intelligence+algernon&btnG=&hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C11)

Meanwhile, experimental evidence is contradicted. For instance, amphetamine
_is_ correlated with improvements in IQ, not to the tune of 20 points, more
like four[5]. In fact, things as random -- and ostensibly detrimental -- as
_mescaline_ [6] can improve certain aspects of mental functioning, albeit at
the cost of others. That what are essentially shots in the dark can produce
noticeable improvements in certain qualities bodes well for rational drug
design, which has been a success in other fields e.g. cisplatin vs. imatinib.

5:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amphetamine#Medical](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amphetamine#Medical)

6:
[http://www.medpagetoday.com/Psychiatry/Addictions/2070](http://www.medpagetoday.com/Psychiatry/Addictions/2070)

Another thing that is important to keep in mind is that the workings of the
body can be _highly_ counterintuitive. For instance, one might expect choline
supplementation to increase the level of brain acetylcholine. It seems
natural, right? But it's not true[7]. Furthermore, while piracetam's effects
are commonly considered to be affected (and side-effects reduced) by choline
supplementation[8], it is now generally believed to act primarily as an
allosteric modulator on ion channels linked to AMPA-sensitive glutamate
receptors[9]. Facile reasoning of the sort "what negative effects might have
prevented evolution from doing this" thus cannot, itself, tell us very much.

7:
[http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/mrm.1910390619/fu...](http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/mrm.1910390619/full)

8: popular claim on longecity et al, e.g.:
[http://www.pillscout.com/2013/06/17/your-piracetam-dosage-
is...](http://www.pillscout.com/2013/06/17/your-piracetam-dosage-is-
wrong/#comment-36) , [http://www.bluelight.ru/vb/threads/181563-any-piracetam-
user...](http://www.bluelight.ru/vb/threads/181563-any-piracetam-users-out-
there)

9:
[http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/jm901905j](http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/jm901905j)

The most immediately difficult claim to me is the advocacy of spaced
repetition, when it is not clear why the claims of the article necessarily
apply to drugs but not to techniques such as this -- could we not evolve to
use it instinctively?

For all this, there is a little useful data in the article. It is indeed
widely suspected that choline is underrepresented in modern diets[10],
possibly because major dietary sources of choline include eggs and fatty
meats, which have been discouraged in Western diets due to a now-controversial
belief that cholesterol and saturated fats are antinutrients. There are indeed
large differences between WEIRD[11] and historical environments, many of which
go without mention -- socializing is much easier, our lives demand much less
energy, the risk of malnutrition has been all but eliminated, etc.

10:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Choline](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Choline)

11:
[http://www.facstaff.bucknell.edu/jvt002/BrainMind/Readings/H...](http://www.facstaff.bucknell.edu/jvt002/BrainMind/Readings/Henrich_2010.pdf)

The general thrust of my post is that "evolution" is not an argument that
computer scientists can throw around in order to do biology without actually
studying it[12], and that evolutionary psychology is often subject to
epistemological problems, cf. _The Emperor 's New Paradigm_[13].

12: [http://www.amazon.com/Behavioral-Genetics-Robert-
Plomin/dp/1...](http://www.amazon.com/Behavioral-Genetics-Robert-
Plomin/dp/1429205776)

13:
[http://commons.lib.niu.edu/bitstream/10843/13182/1/BullerTiC...](http://commons.lib.niu.edu/bitstream/10843/13182/1/BullerTiCS%20Reprint.pdf)

~~~
gwern
> I find the overall argument to be rather weak. The most relevant problem is
> that it starts on a premise that might as well be this: "Intelligence is a
> substance, and a nootropic is a drug that makes the brain produce more of
> it."

Which of course it is not. Some supplements work on a deficiency principle,
but many do not.

> Of course I've intentionally phrased this as to make it seem ludicrous, but
> throughout the article he talks of "more" or "less" intelligence as though
> it were a fungible sort of thing.

Performance is a measurable thing. It is measured all the time. There didn't
have to be a positive manifold to cognitive performance, we could live in a
world where there are two kinds of mental performance which are zero-sum - but
nevertheless, there is a _g_.

> There's no particular reason to assume that evolution would have optimized
> for, e.g., skill in mathematical analysis, and therefore there isn't any
> particular reason to assume that even the silliest of low-hanging fruit
> wouldn't have been picked, for instance an elderly and distinguished
> analyst, such as Paul Erdos, may benefit from taking amphetamine.

Of course there's no reason to expect evolution to optimize human intelligence
for humans' culturally-based and idiosyncratic desires. It optimizes for
reproductive fitness. Hence if we optimize ourselves for our own desires, we
are probably incurring a fitness cost, and satisfying one of the loopholes.

(I swear, I am amazed at how every time this essay shows up somewhere, I can
reliably count on someone to take one of the loopholes - and no matter how
repeatedly, clearly, explicitly, in bulleted or enumerated lists, I have
stated them - someone will proudly take a loophole and offer it as a
refutation: 'ah, what if we optimize thousands of genes simultaneously? ah,
what if nature optimizes for reproduction and not our desires? ah, what about
the latest self-improvement fad like dual n-back which might add an IQ point
or two?')

> There are also radical differences in what we measure as "IQ", which is
> mostly performance on a battery of strange tasks, and the sort of mental
> performance that leads to evolutionary success. There are, for example,
> arguments to the evolutionary sufficiency of ADHD[1], OCD[2]. > > 1:
> [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunter_vs._farmer_hypothesis](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunter_vs._farmer_hypothesis)
> > 2:
> [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocd#Causes](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocd#Causes)

Those are cute examples, I'll borrow those.

> More critically, though, is that this represents yet another article on the
> basis of "I-think-it-oughta" evolutionary reasoning.

No, it follows from straightforward reasoning about natural selection. How
could intelligence be selected for if it does not have a fitness advantage? If
it has a fitness advantage, why has it not reached fixation? And so on.

> You think "intellectual low-hanging fruit" ought to be selected for, but you
> don't have empirical evidence. The claim is based almost entirely on hand-
> waving and citations of Eliezer Yudkowsky, who is not in any case an
> authoritative source [3], and whose claims have not been in general accepted
> by contemporary neuroscientists [4].

You are badly mistaken here. I am not citing Yudkowsky because his authority
'makes it so', and it's interesting that you immediately jump to thinking
that. I quote him because he formulated the idea well, and I think in some
respects better than Bostrom's later paper, and his formulation makes a good
jumping off point for all the other material I discuss, which is heavily
referenced and generally to as standard authorities as one could wish for.

> Meanwhile, experimental evidence is contradicted. For instance, amphetamine
> is correlated with improvements in IQ, not to the tune of 20 points, more
> like four[5]. In fact, things as random -- and ostensibly detrimental -- as
> mescaline[6] can improve certain aspects of mental functioning, albeit at
> the cost of others. That what are essentially shots in the dark can produce
> noticeable improvements in certain qualities bodes well for rational drug
> design, which has been a success in other fields e.g. cisplatin vs.
> imatinib.

There is nothing 'random' about your choice of those substances and it is
dishonest to describe it as so. You chose ampehtamines and mescaline because
they are some of the very few substances which can claim to improve mental
functioning as opposed to be inert or poisons. (Is a random pharmaceutical
drug a random drug? No, because it has been through a rigorous selection
process which may have examined hundreds of thousands of millions of chemicals
in the pharmacorp or university's search for new drugs.) And as you point out,
the benefits are offset by costs: mescaline has some famous effects, but
amphetamines in the experiments also damage performance on some tasks.
Finally, you do not show how these substances are completely free lunches, and
so your entire paragraph is a non sequitur.

> Another thing that is important to keep in mind is that the workings of the
> body can be highly counterintuitive. For instance, one might expect choline
> supplementation to increase the level of brain acetylcholine. It seems
> natural, right? But it's not true[7].

[https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S092549270...](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0925492703001045)
"Oral choline increases choline metabolites in human brain"

> it is now generally believed to act primarily as an allosteric modulator on
> ion channels linked to AMPA-sensitive glutamate receptors[9].

Could you elaborate on how your reference supports your assertion? It seems to
be about discovering (half a century later) that piracetam also affects some
other receptor, but I see nothing in it to support your claims about 'it is
now generally believed' to act 'primarily' on this receptor.

> The most immediately difficult claim to me is the advocacy of spaced
> repetition, when it is not clear why the claims of the article necessarily
> apply to drugs but not to techniques such as this -- could we not evolve to
> use it instinctively?

We _do_ use it by default. That's what it is: multiple presentations over long
time periods form strong memories. The presence of the spacing effect in many
differing species ([http://www.gwern.net/Spaced%20repetition#generality-of-
spaci...](http://www.gwern.net/Spaced%20repetition#generality-of-spacing-
effect)) and different kinds of memories suggests that it's a heuristic for
recognizing important regularly-repeating features of one's environment,
rather than expanding substantial resources memorizing noise and regularly
refreshing the synapses (see the Tononi papers for more discussion of the
metabolic costs of sleep & memory). Spaced repetition itself is about faking
this repeating regularity by a practice involving flash cards.

> The general thrust of my post is that "evolution" is not an argument that
> computer scientists can throw around in order to do biology without actually
> studying it[12], and that evolutionary psychology is often subject to
> epistemological problems, cf. The Emperor's New Paradigm[13].

I am not a computer scientist. As for the rest, readers can make up their own
minds.

~~~
scythe
I feel most of what you said simply contradicts me. That you have not bothered
to do basic research here is evident:

>No, it follows from straightforward reasoning about natural selection. How
could intelligence be selected for if it does not have a fitness advantage? If
it has a fitness advantage, why has it not reached fixation? And so on.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_of_human_intelligence](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_of_human_intelligence)

This is why. It should be the first goddamn thing you look up. Or, you know, a
systematic review of some sort. _Not_ your intuition. If something doesn't
serve the primary drivers of the evolution of intelligence --which _by no
means_ must select for general intelligence as measured by the Raven
Progressive Matrices Test, then it need not be selected for! This isn't, of
course something you should take from me. Read something. By someone who
actually studies biology. u.u

~~~
gwern
> I feel most of what you said simply contradicts me.

I feel I provided clear argument and at least as many citations, combined with
less sloppy research and supercilious arrogance. And I note that you aren't
bothering to address a single one of my points, such as pointing out that your
confident claims about choline supplementation seem to be totally false.

>
> [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_of_human_intelligence](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_of_human_intelligence)

I am sure you will be glad to explain to me, beyond a bare URL.

> If something doesn't serve the primary drivers of the evolution of
> intelligence --which by no means must select for general intelligence as
> measured by the Raven Progressive Matrices Test, then it need not be
> selected for!

I never said evolution optimizes performance on a RAPM and most of the essay
was about this.

------
a3voices
Let's say you have a dog, and you want to make it as smart as a person. How
would you do that? Giving it drugs won't work. The dog is limited by the brain
structures that make it distinct from a human. Regardless of whatever drugs or
supplements you give it, the dog will always act like a dog. Maybe it will be
slightly smarter, but not in any truly astonishing way. Maybe with the right
drug, it could learn 100 words instead of 20. But the dog won't be able to do
everything a person can do.

The same goes for people. There's no way you'd be able to make a person
meaningfully smarter through supplementation or drugs.

~~~
msane
Essentially you just said:

> Supplementation could hypothetically improve the cognitive ability of dogs.
> But it could never make them as smart as humans.

> The same goes for humans. Supplementation could never improve their
> cognitive abilities.

I suppose maybe this shoddy little syllogism would be forgivable if you
haven't had your coffee yet this morning.

~~~
gwern
> I suppose maybe this shoddy little syllogism would be forgivable if you
> haven't had your coffee yet this morning.

Caffeine may not be improving his intelligence, but removing damage ie.
withdrawal. (And so about as surprising as 'lack of sleep deprivation
increases intelligence!' or 'lack of iodine deficiency increases
intelligence!') This is one of the challenges of studying addictive
stimulants: how do you know whether, for experienced tolerant users, the
apparent benefits are genuine benefits or just treating withdrawal?

~~~
msane
It's a really interesting question. I'm looking askew at the coffee cup in
front of me. I suppose it makes the most sense for studies to begin prior to
first exposure; to have data on subjects going back perhaps even as long as it
takes for them to become tolerant. I suppose factoring out the effect of
learning for a long-term study which involves cognitive tests is it's own
challenge as well? I'm enjoying
[http://www.gwern.net/Nootropics#caffeine](http://www.gwern.net/Nootropics#caffeine)
now :)

------
mumbi
I believe that gwern is a little too obsessed about IQ.

~~~
tedks
It's common on less wrong to be very pro-IQ. I think this is a mix of
contrarianism and desperately wanting to be superior at something, since most
people on less wrong don't seem to be terribly well-off in other respects.

That said, it does seem like IQ correlates well with various other measures of
success, unless all of the articles Gwern cites are wrong in some way (which
is fairly probable), so you'd expect something to be there.

------
guard-of-terra
Human brain is stupid - fit to the wrong environment. I was thinking the other
day: Babies are afraid of strangers, any new people, especially if those are a
little scary. But that makes no sense in modern countries - nobody ever
threatens this child, and if on off-change somebody does, he'll try to be as
"friendly" as possible when doing so. Children scares make no sense! Adult
anxiety makes no sense either!

~~~
codex
I think that should civilization collapse a lot of behaviors will begin to
make a lot of sense. Hopefully that never occurs.

------
tedks
Gwern has some very good essays; I don't think this is one of them, because
it's about 'laws' created on less wrong rather than anything actionable.

It seems possible to dismiss this entire article with another less wrong
catechism: "life isn't fair."

~~~
gwern
> It seems possible to dismiss this entire article with another less wrong
> catechism: "life isn't fair."

I don't see how that's remotely relevant.

~~~
tedks
Well, it's a bit of a fully general counterargument, but then, so is "there's
no such thing as a free lunch."

> If the proposed intervention would result in an enhancement, why have we not
> already evolved to be that way?

Life isn't fair.

Drugs seem to make you think faster/stay up later/be happier? Evolution didn't
get it right the first time? Life isn't fair.

~~~
gwern
> Well, it's a bit of a fully general counterargument, but then, so is
> "there's no such thing as a free lunch."

It's not a fully general counterargument because it predicts a lot of things.
Claiming that's a fully general counterargument is like saying the Halting
problem is a fully general counterargument. It isn't.

> Life isn't fair.

Huh? How does that follow? 'Water is flowing uphill. Guess life isn't fair.'
'The hot air is not dispersing throughout the room due to convection. Guess
life isn't fair.' 'Wall Street is incorrectly pricing a derivative, leaving
billions in profit on the floor. Guess life isn't fair.'

~~~
tedks
>Huh? How does that follow?

Evolution isn't guaranteed to arrive at optimal outcomes at any given point in
time. Obviously "algernon's law" isn't a, you know, law, because if that were
the case humans wouldn't exist because any increase in intelligence would be
accompanied by a corresponding drop in chimpanzee fitness.

Why are modern humans the point where this stops being true? The whole thing
smells like sour grapes.

Why do people on MDMA have so much fun? Because life isn't fair. All the
people who lived before MDMA will never have that much fun. Evolution just
didn't hit the lucky path where humans are constantly tripping balls. Life
isn't fair.

>It's not a fully general counterargument because it predicts a lot of things.

So what doesn't it predict?

>Claiming that's a fully general counterargument is like saying the Halting
problem is a fully general counterargument. It isn't.

Well, the specific counterexample that indicates the halting problem is never
generally solvable is not a fully general counterargument, yes. But I don't
see how this is related.

Is there some reason why you think that using drug therapies to drastically
increase human general intelligence is an impossibility akin to water flowing
uphill? This is the logical step that the article failed to convey adequately
to me.

~~~
gwern
> Why are modern humans the point where this stops being true? The whole thing
> smells like sour grapes.

Humans are the exception that proves the rule, just like efficient markets
hypothesis does not mean that no one makes money on Wall Street - but the
vanishing few people with the skills and knowledge make money. It is an
observation that the base rate of successful improvement must be _extremely
tiny_.

> All the people who lived before MDMA will never have that much fun.
> Evolution just didn't hit the lucky path where humans are constantly
> tripping balls. Life isn't fair.

To give the example I already gave in my essay, evolution may or may not have
hit the lucky path, but if it did, because it disables perception of danger,
the goofy lucky people would be quickly eliminated by Inspector Darwin.

> So what doesn't it predict?

It predicts that if we discover a genuine improvement in intelligence, it will
be complex, fitness-reducing, or tiny. This is a very strong and specific
prediction which seems to be doing well.

> Is there some reason why you think that using drug therapies to drastically
> increase human general intelligence is an impossibility akin to water
> flowing uphill?

Water flowing uphill is not an impossibility: it is extremely unlikely. I
chose my examples to be unlikely but not impossible - just like it is not
impossible that someone will discover a way to majorly increase intelligence
which is simple and without reproductive fitness penalties, it's just
incredibly unlikely.

~~~
tedks
>Humans are the exception that proves the rule,

You know, this phrase actually means "an exception that makes the rule more
specific," not "a counterexample that mysteriously makes the rule more
likely."

>To give the example I already gave in my essay, evolution may or may not have
hit the lucky path, but if it did, because it disables perception of danger,
the goofy lucky people would be quickly eliminated by Inspector Darwin.

This is a post-hoc justification, not an advance prediction, and not a finding
of a focused research campaign. As is the rest of this article.

You haven't convinced me that any of those things are fitness-reducing! On the
contrary, I think that to the extent that humans are fitness-maximizers rather
than adaptation-executers, those things all increase fitness by rather a lot.

>This is a very strong and specific prediction which seems to be doing well.

Don't the legions of coked-up amphetamined-up professionals totally disprove
this?

