{"id":742,"date":"2010-11-12T16:05:16","date_gmt":"2010-11-12T15:05:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/medical-ethics\/?p=742"},"modified":"2010-11-12T16:05:36","modified_gmt":"2010-11-12T15:05:36","slug":"savulescu-on-mathematical-enhancement","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/medical-ethics\/2010\/11\/12\/savulescu-on-mathematical-enhancement\/","title":{"rendered":"Savulescu on Mathematical Enhancement"},"content":{"rendered":"

Over at Practical Ethics, Julian Savulescu has been thinking about the possibilities raised by the observation that brain stimulation would appear to have increased the mathematical ability of trial participants<\/a>.\u00a0 He concludes that the observation – and the implicit uses to which it could be put – are ethically important<\/a>.<\/p>\n

One of the arguments he produces is this:<\/p>\n

[E]ven those at the top end of mathematical ability might benefit from enhancement.\u00a0 If one takes those people in the top 1% of the population of IQ, the top quarter of that top 1% produce more than twice as many patents as the bottom quarter.\u00a0 So even if you are in the top 1%, enhancing your IQ might enhance your creativity and inventiveness.\u00a0 Kadosh and colleagues begin their article, \u201cDalton, Keynes, Gauss, Newton, Einstein, and Turing are only a few examples of people who have advanced the quality of human life and knowledge through their exceptional numerical abilities.\u201d\u00a0 But if we were to enhance the ability of such geniuses by even a tiny per cent, problems would be solved that would otherwise be unlikely to be solved.\u00a0 Tiny improvements have great effect over large numbers of people over significant periods of time.\u00a0 An important problem that has remained unsolved or unrecognized could be solved.\u00a0 It is important to recognize that cognitive enhancement is an important social and economic issue.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

There’s something about this that doesn’t add up (arf!).<\/p>\n

The appeal to the number of patents produced, for example, is only superficially strong.\u00a0 The main reason for this is that producing patentable work may well have something to do with intelligence or mathematical ability, but the relationship is much more complicated.\u00a0 For one thing, we have to be clear about what’s being patented: many patents do not recognise breakthroughs, but minor improvements or variations of existing inventions (especially in the US, where the patent system has a notoriously wide scope).\u00a0 In other words, it’s not obvious that the intellectual ability\u00a0of the patent-holder is vastly important – it isn’t obvious that a super-brain would be important: the mere luck of having the opportunity to file a patent would count for a lot.<\/p>\n

In respect of the major breakthrough patents, it’s possible that ability counts a bit more, but even here, it’s far from being self-evidently of central importance.\u00a0 Notably, massive institutional support is likely to be a factor in a good portion of patentable work (and the same applies to an even greater extent to Nobel or Nobel-equivalent work – though it’s still just about possible for hobbyists or non-pros to function at this level<\/a>, it’s very unlikely indeed).<\/p>\n

We have to consider this point in relation to the high likelihood that these supportive institutions are likely to attract the best brains anyway – or, at least, to have the ability to sift out the less-than-best.\u00a0 So there’ll be a natural agglomeration of talent there.\u00a0 But if this is so, then – again – it’s less easy to see that boosted individual talent would make much of a difference.\u00a0 If it’s true that the top 1-in-400 (that is, a quarter of the top 1%) produce such a disproportionately high number of patents, that’s plausibly because they’re the top 1-in-400, and so get the plum research jobs, rather than because they’re extra bright.\u00a0 In short: relative, rather than absolute, intellectual advantage may well explain at least some of the disproportionality.<\/p>\n

If there’s anything to this objection, it casts into doubt the claim that<\/p>\n

\u00a0if we were to enhance the ability of such geniuses by even a tiny per cent, problems would be solved that would otherwise be unlikely to be solved.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This is because, if the objection’s sound, genius doesn’t after all have such a marked effect on the speed of discovery.\u00a0 And, besides – the claim that some of the problems that Julian has in mind would otherwise be unlikely<\/em> to be solved seems to come from nowhere; I’d want to know more about how these likelihoods are calculated.\u00a0 Julian’s claim has a certain superficial attraction here, but the big question that has to be addressed concerns whether there’s more to it than that.<\/p>\n

Julian finishes the post with the claim that<\/p>\n

[m]athematics is not merely for boffins. It affects all of our lives, every day. Enhancing everyone\u2019s mathematical abilities, even those of geniuses, is in everyone\u2019s interests.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

If all else is equal, this last sentence may be true.\u00a0 But it remains to be seen that ability is so crucial, in comparison with – say – the social conditions in which discoveries are more or less likely to be made.\u00a0 It might well be that we’d be better off still by not worrying too much about enhancement, and finding ways better to make use of the human capital that we have already.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Over at Practical Ethics, Julian Savulescu has been thinking about the possibilities raised by the observation that brain stimulation would appear to have increased the mathematical ability of trial participants.\u00a0 He concludes that the observation – and the implicit uses to which it could be put – are ethically important. One of the arguments he […]<\/p>\n

Read More…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1240,328,472],"tags":[1856],"class_list":["post-742","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blogosphere","category-philosophy","category-thinking-aloud","tag-enhancement"],"yoast_head":"\nSavulescu on Mathematical Enhancement - Journal of Medical Ethics blog<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/medical-ethics\/2010\/11\/12\/savulescu-on-mathematical-enhancement\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Savulescu on Mathematical Enhancement - Journal of Medical Ethics blog\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Over at Practical Ethics, Julian Savulescu has been thinking about the possibilities raised by the observation that brain stimulation would appear to have increased the mathematical ability of trial participants.\u00a0 He concludes that the observation – and the implicit uses to which it could be put – are ethically important. 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