On Thu, 24 Apr 2014 15:56:56 Jason White wrote:
Carl Turney <carl@boms.com.au> wrote:
I don't think we could get "everyone well educated". There are biological limitations for many, and no matter how advanced a culture is, there will always be the need for a significant proportion of menial jobs (though they'd seem pretty neat to us nowadays).
Julian Savulescu presents interesting arguments in favour of human enhancement, for example, biological interventions to raise the average intelligence of the population or to improve the capacity for impulse control (lack of which is responsible for some criminal behaviour).
There are biological factors for impulse control that are well known. The correlation between lead in the bloodstream and poor impulse control is shown by the drop in crime ~20 years after unleaded petrol was introduced. For intelligence it's not so clear, while there are obvious biological factors that cause low intelligence (EG fetal alcohol syndrome) it's not clear that there is anything significant we can do to improve things. However the link between intelligence (as measured by IQ tests) and parenting/environment is clear. I am not aware of any evidence to show that we can significantly improve the IQ of middle class people in Australia by biological means - at least not without the technology to modify DNA for IQ. But we can improve the education system and help parents teach their children more effectively if money was assigned to the task. But the current government would rather cut education funding and spend money on fighters used to support the US in Afghanistan and other pointless wars. -- My Main Blog http://etbe.coker.com.au/ My Documents Blog http://doc.coker.com.au/