Intelligence Enhancements

From Accelerating Future:

"Humans share 98% of our genetic material with chimps, but the step from chimps to humans produced creatures that could walk on the Moon, exploit the power of the atom, and build skyscrapers. If a similar jump up in intelligence could produce the same discontinuous results, then wouldn’t it be fascinating to take that step?"

Yes, and I believe we will take this step within 30 years.

Imagine it's 15 years in the future. 50 million humans have had their DNA decoded. A group of scientists tests the IQ of 10,000 of these people including many of the smartest humans alive. Scientists quickly determine which genes make people geniuses. They then analyze how these genes influence the brain.

Once we understand what creates geniuses it will probably be easy to improve human intelligence. Evolution does not seek, even in humans, to maximize intelligence. (If it did there would not be so much variability in human intelligence.) It is extremely unlikely that evolution has pushed humans to the maximum intelligence that human-like creatures can obtain. (In math terms we have probably not reach the local maximum with respect to intelligence.) Thus, there probably will be (in 25 or so years time) easy ways to increase human intelligence. And of course the first thing that smarter humans will do will be to work at further improving human intelligence.