Sorry, but you conflate IQ with individual values that are acquired mainly through culture and education.
A higher IQ does not automatically mean that a person will care about global problems that have no immediate negative effect on their own life, affect everyones wellbeing in the long run and are hard to solve. Or that a society with a higher average IQ will magically create political and economical structures that reward working towards common good instead of rent seeking.
Case in point - Silicon Valley has probably an average IQ around 120-130. How many truly planet-saving innovations have been created there? I mean, you fail to eradicate powerty in SF, your backyard. Because why bother if creating ever new and exciting ways to share cat pictures is infinitely more personally rewarding in the short run and who gives a f about anything else?
So, my point is, higher IQ is not a solution in and of itself, since human nature - instinct to care about oneself first and foremost, will still be present. This instinct can be only tamed by education, culture and political and social structures that promote common good. The chances that a society will evolve these kinds of structures is a toss-up. It is a lot more likely that the outcome will be exactly the same as what we see now - much like adding a 1.2 multiplier to all stats for both mobs and pcs in a computer game - numbers are different, but it is still the same game.
The key is culture, and education, and conscious work towards better social, economic and political structures. But I am quite sure that we will all kill ourselves a long time before any of that will happen.
I'm not conflating IQ with values, I'm arguing that as average IQ goes up, the percentage of the population who will recognize that certain problems of non-immediate import will inevitably become immediate, personal problems, will also go up.
I agree with you that the mechanisms through which greater awareness and active concern for seemingly abstract problems will trickle into the global zeitgeist are things like education, culture, and social/political structures. But where do those come from, and what allows people to perceive their value and meaning? You can't teach people things that you don't understand, and they can't learn things that they can't understand. Better cultural and social structures are a result of better understanding; better understanding is more common with brains that are better able to perceive patterns and project consequences.
I see your point. I would argue, howevever, that very few of the issues we are facing at the moment stem from lack of understanding. We have most of the knowledge we require to instantiate a radically better-off civilisation, and, most importantly, we have the tools to continue gathering and applying said knowledge and iterate on said civilisation.
But we choose not to. There are loads of VERY smart people in the top positions of gigantic multinationals. They do not lack for IQ, or for information that without a shadow of doubt informs them about the long-term consequences of their actions. They choose, daily, to apply their IQ and information not to create solutions that would benefit humanity as a whole, but to maximize the short-term gains for themselves and (hopefully) their shareholders. The reasons for this behaviour are multitudinous and complex, but I would argue that lack of IQ is not a major contributing factor, quite the opposite.
And all that could still fall in the category of "fine, whatever", if in their greed they would not actively destroy the education system already in place, because people who lack basic knowledge and tools for critical thinking are that much easier to manipulate. Again, it is not the lack of IQ that is the issue, it is the knowledge and exercise it has been exposed to. I myself have an IQ well above average (Mensa member), but before I found out about heuristics, biases and critical thinking, and learned to apply them, I was an easy prey for "mediums", "spiritual guides" and other "new age" crap.
TL;DR people are easy to manipulate regardless of their IQ, if they haven't had an opportunity to learn to use it.
> I would argue, however, that very few of the issues we are facing at the moment stem from lack of understanding.
My 11 year old nephew sprained his ankle a few weeks ago playing basketball, badly enough that he started walking in an odd way to compensate for the discomfort. He kept playing sports, including soccer on a rough grass field, every day at school recess, despite us having talks several times about how he needs to stay off it and let it recover or else he risks causing lasting damage. He nods and says, "I know" when I tell him that, but he keeps doing it. I think we are collectively much the same: we 'know', but we don't really believe that the abstract, distant bad thing will ever really happen to us.That is not understanding. That is lip service.
My argument isn't that IQ makes every individual behave better - it is the statistical argument that if the population average went up 20 points (and that number is one I just threw out, but I do think it's close), then we might cross a tipping point where there would then be enough people who take abstract, distant bad things seriously enough to take meaningful action, to form a significantly politically effective bloc.
Case in point - Silicon Valley has probably an average IQ around 120-130. How many truly planet-saving innovations have been created there? I mean, you fail to eradicate powerty in SF, your backyard. Because why bother if creating ever new and exciting ways to share cat pictures is infinitely more personally rewarding in the short run and who gives a f about anything else?
So, my point is, higher IQ is not a solution in and of itself, since human nature - instinct to care about oneself first and foremost, will still be present. This instinct can be only tamed by education, culture and political and social structures that promote common good. The chances that a society will evolve these kinds of structures is a toss-up. It is a lot more likely that the outcome will be exactly the same as what we see now - much like adding a 1.2 multiplier to all stats for both mobs and pcs in a computer game - numbers are different, but it is still the same game.
The key is culture, and education, and conscious work towards better social, economic and political structures. But I am quite sure that we will all kill ourselves a long time before any of that will happen.