Brave New World

Read Steve Hsu's Nautilus article on Super-Intelligence. If so-called IQ-related genetic variants are truly additive then his estimates are probably correct. His postulated being could possibly understand the fine details of any topic in less than a day or shorter. Instead of taking several years to learn enough differential geometry to develop Einstein's General Relativity (which is what it took for Einstein), a super-intelligence could perhaps do it in an afternoon or during a coffee break. Personally, I believe that nothing is free and that there will always be tradeoffs. I'm not sure what the cost of super-intelligence will be but there will likely be something. Variability in a population is always good for the population although not so great for each individual. An effective way to make a species go extinct is to remove variability. If pests had no genetic variability then it would be a simple matter to eliminate them with some toxin. Perhaps, humans will be able to innovate fast enough to buffer them against environmental changes. Maybe cognitive variability can compensate for genetic variability. I really don't know.