I suspect that it's only a matter of time until the genes that control g are known. From there, it's only a modest step to ensure that every human is able to maximise their intellectual capability. The resulting increase in g will presumably bring scientific literacy within the reach of a far larger percentage of the population.

In other words "our cognitive software and biological hardware" may no longer be as limiting as it once might have seemed to be, in what I believe, will be a transhuman future.

Of course the first country to start down this road, will force everyone else to follow or be defeated and enslaved. Accept transhumanity or end up living in something like a zoo or wildlife reserve, while the real transhuman masters decide your future for you.

I suspect that it's only a matter of time until the genes that control g are known. From there, it's only a modest step to ensure that every human is able to maximise their intellectual capability.

terms like "matter of time" and "modest step" aren't exactly precise. i would count myself on the optimistic end of the spectrum in terms of the resolution capacities of science and implementation capacities of genetic engineering, but i do think we are in a race against time in some ways.

Legal culture precedes scientific culture both historically and theoretically.

Just saying.

Legal culture precedes scientific culture both historically and theoretically.

i agree it is a necessary procondition for scientific culture. hope katrina didn't treat you too badly martin.

The hurricane did as hurricanes do. It was the Louisiana State Legislature and the Army Corps of Engineers that screwed me.

New Orleans was too suffused with stupidity to maintain viability. Disaster was inevitable given the venality of the politicians and the ignorance of the populace.

IMHO the national body politic shares that diagnosis and the prognosis is depressingly the same.

Let's just say I don't share your eschatology.

As far as genetic engineering, my thoughts here

Nice rant, that raises many interesting questions.

One of them: you write, "Scientists live in a world of esoterica, and non-scientists are going to be the ones who will fund them and sponsor them." Which makes me curious about your views on all the "science's responsibilty to culture at large" questions. Given that the culture of science depends on the support of various overlapping/interlocking cultures, and that they in fact support science, what kinds of respect, duties, obligations does science owe to society at large? You probably don't feel this way, but there's often a tendency in fields to think that they should be supported to do and pursue what they want -- to get on with their researches, and the hell with the rest of the world. It's an attitude that has made a mockery of the arts worlds, for instance, and that has also resulted in lots of awfulness we all suffer through: bad urbanism, shitty architecture ... (Fields that tend, however bogusly, to model themselves on science, by the way.) In the arts, I root for more responsiveness between the audience's pleasures and preferences and what artists want to get up to. Same with you and science?

david, i don't necessarily disagree with you. let's just say that i think gene-meme coevolution will be nothing we can really conceive of though, the meme and gene will really be irrelevant distinctions where ideas can take form effortlessly.

You probably don't feel this way, but there's often a tendency in fields to think that they should be supported to do and pursue what they want -- to get on with their researches, and the hell with the rest of the world.

i think this is really a proximate attitude that gets rhetorically transformed into the default position in bull sessions. what little i've read indicates that there is a generation or two latency between the emergence of a new field in pure science and its subsequent regular implementation and development in applied science & engineering. this might not hold right now in fields like biotech, but, be as that may be, i think most scientists assume that a great deal of science that they do (if not the vast majority of it in frequency terms) will have future applied implications. for example, a lot of "pure math" later comes in handy in other fields. i don't think fundamentally scientists really believe that society is obligated to fund them, but after cranking out rejected grant proposal after rejected grant proposal to the NSF or NIH i think a lot of the rhetoric tends toward wishful thinking and expresses day-to-day frustrations in an overwrought fashion. also, remember that many scientists are somewhat psychologically maladjusted.

also, note i will post a follow up or two on this issue, so excuse me if i don't follow this thread closely :) i'm going to be busy for a bit....

Hey, blogging takes precedence over real life. Doesn't it?

Razib, I'd like to hear more about the conflict between "classical", "balance", and "neutral" theories some time, but no rush.

I'd like to hear more about the conflict between "classical", "balance", and "neutral" theories some time, but no rush.

itz all semantics in the postgenomic era michael :) but back in the day when they didn't know what DNA was the classical school under r.a. fisher posited that most selection was purifying and that most of the genome would be fixed, with polymorphisms due to transitions that were under directional selection on the way toward fixture. the balancing school headed by sewall wright held that most selection was purifying too, but, a greater proportion of the genome would exhibit polymorphism because of occassional locus where heterozygote advantage or frequency dependent selection and other factors inducing diversity were operant. hubby and lewontin showed that both schools were wrong and that the amount of polymorphism was WAY HIGHER than they predicted a priori. neutral theory (and nearly neutral) just explains why most substitutions (not necessarily mutations, though that depends on the genome in question i guess) would be neutral (not purifying/negative or directional position or balancing/overdominant), and this random walk process across the frequency space would result in a constant flux of polymorphisms going in and out of fixation. from what i can gather selectionists like dawkins simply did a rhetorical work around that they only cared about the functional genome (effecting phenotype) anyhow, etc. etc. i think these "schools" are really outmoded and the data is swamping theory at this point and people should just stop trying to shoehorn the way biology works into a grand meta-narrative (i.e.; selection vs. drift, canalization vs. contingency, etc. etc.), at least for now. there should be a moratorium on verbal models until analytic and simulation methods are brought to bear (and that is if there is a glimmer that empirical solutions to the questions might be had).

My fear is that as an increasingly large (or perhaps increasingly visible?) number of scientists abuse their positions in pursuit of power, fame or whatever, the whole scientific culture will wither away in the face of public contempt. I am not cheered up by my belated discovery of "THE RISE AND FALL OF MODERN MEDICINE" by James Le Fanu. He makes a very strong case for the prosecution, agin leading lights of the medical/bio world.

I think that epidemiology and most social sciences may be the mess they are because their practitioners are not expected to understand the math they use, so they mis-use it. This is much less common in physics and engineering, hence those fields are healthier.

Michael,

I agree, and would add that Environmentalists - and I've known a few, including a PhD - are some of the least mathematical and most reactionary of this type of "scientist".

A priest observed doing un-holy things in a church will draw exclamations--"you are not a man of god!" Replace the word god with science, and you have the state of "science" today. There is good science being done, gnxp reports on it, but don't count on all scientists searching for truth. They search for support for their investments.

A fascinating read, "Mary, Ferrie and the Monkey Virus", by Ed Haslam, http://www.copi.com/books/monkey...ey/ default.html
about strange but true events in the fine city of New Orleans, circa 50s-60s, with a toxic mix of biological research, medicine, politics, law, ethics, CIA, assassinations, right wing radio stations hidden in crumbling N.O. buildings--you need never be disillusioned again. You will be thoroughly vaccinated against blind faith in all of the above, or at least in their high priests.
I was left believing that flood in New Orleans is even more toxic than we think.

Oh geeze, now we have conspiracy theorists coming to the site.

mc, how is this related to razib's post on the nature of science? Answer: none, you clumsily plopped this down in this thread for what reasons I do not know. And it is Ironic that you bring this up in light of your criticism of science because this is just another irrational belief system. Let's not contaminate this thread with complicated conspiracy theories, theories which should be raised elsewhere.

Please, let's keep on topic and not let this wandering away from the issues raised in the post hijack this thread. Let this be it for this topic raised by "mc".

There is good science being done, gnxp reports on it, but don't count on all scientists searching for truth. They search for support for their investments.

of course. the only thing is that there is no better system. the church might be a whore (noise), but there isn't any other key to heaven handy (signal).

mc, you may not have blind faith in the high priests of "biological research, medicine, politics, law, ethics, CIA, assassinations, right wing radio stations hidden in crumbling N.O. buildings", but you seem to be quite accepting of conspiracy theories peddled by fairly obscure websites!

" let's keep on topic and not let this wandering away from the issues raised in the post hijack this thread. Let this be it for this topic raised by "mc"."

Hijack it? Don't get your knickers in such a twist. I thought the thread was done anyway. Tou and icepcik (I tend to transpose letters too) are doing things pretty much by the rules, using epithets (conspiracy theorist--how tired. But yes Virginia, there really are people who act like they believe the authorities.)
Razib seemed to be opening a conversation about the scientific world and the weaknesses and strengths therein, and the idea of any final "authority."
The book I linked was an excellenet example of scientists that should not be accepted as final authorities. It is well documented, but not WaPo friendly, admittedly.
As for icepcik: Obscurity is no evidence of truth or untruth, though the path is chilly and challenging But if you only want neon-lit government approved, seal of good-housekeeping science and/or politics, please yourself. I am surrounded in my work by government-employed scientists and the idea of taking them at their word is downright hilarious.
If I have offended you, please forget it, purge it from your world.

I think Robin Hanson's essay on the current scientific paradigm is pretty much on point.

"On the other hand, I also tend to agree with cognitive scientists that no matter what religionists profess, in their heart of hearts they all worship the same supernatural agent(s) in the sky, which are really only glorified Faces in the Clouds."

While I haven't read this Faces in the Clouds book, I'm not sure I can agree with this blanket statement that claims all religionists believe in some anthropomorphized God concept (which is what I think it is saying). Buddhists, for instance, have no such concept, though there are definitely forms of Buddhism (most of them in fact) that could be called a religion. Naturalistic pantheists would also fall into this category.