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