[Rune]

Wired

Why are some people so smart? The answer could spawn a generation of superbabies

But he is far from average. After being identified early as a science prodigy, Zhao raced through China’s special programs for gifted students and won a spot in Renmin, one of the country’s most elite high schools. Then, to the shock of his friends and family, he decided to drop out when he was 17. Now, at 21, he oversees his own research project at BGI Shenzhen—the country’s top biotech institute and home to the world’s most powerful cluster of DNA-sequencing machines—where he commands a multimillion-dollar research budget.

Zhao’s goal is to use those machines to examine the genetic underpinnings of genius like his own. He wants nothing less than to crack the code for intelligence by studying the genomes of thousands of prodigies, not just from China but around the world. He and his collaborators, a transnational group of intelligence researchers, fully expect they will succeed in identifying a genetic basis for IQ. They also expect that within a decade their research will be used to screen embryos during in vitro fertilization, boosting the IQ of unborn children by up to 20 points. In theory, that’s the difference between a kid who struggles through high school and one who sails into college.

But—and this is crucial—the implications of this math are that it will take far more than a few thousand genomes to solve the puzzle of intelligence. Given the small sample size they have so far, Hsu hopes they’ll start by finding one or two genes associated with intelligence. A recent Dutch study required more than 125,000 genomes to isolate three variants associated with educational attainment; to create a genomic predictor of IQ, Hsu says, it could take 1 million or more.

The good news for Zhao is that cheap DNA sequencing, together with more creative ways of obtaining DNA, means that a million genomes could be in reach within five years. The genomes don’t all need to be geniuses, because the IQ-affecting genetic markers they’re looking for—DNA typos that drag down intelligence—are more often carried by the 100-IQ people. That is, it’s a relative dearth of these mutations that gives people higher IQ, according to the theory.

I have always been fascinated by children who are born so intellectually gifted. Why? How do they exist? What would the world be like if everyone or most people were born with these abilities?

It must be genetic. And the method that Zhao is talking about doesn't take any Einstein to understand - its just an application of cheap gene-sequencing technologies.

I'd love to see some answers to this ancient question. And I'd love to see some capabilities emerge which would allow parents to select or de-select certain traits in their off-spring - just like the some of the disease traits mentioned in the article.

[PrestonSturges]

One of the dumbest fucking articles ever posted on the internet.

This "project" is about as imaginative as running the night shift at a fast food joint. He's a technician.

Also, the idea that this kid mastered several fields (programming, genetics, statistics) in a day is absurd. He's clearly a flunky, a stooge.

If he really had as mental horsepower as claimed, he'd be doing something more imaginative than working in an automated sequencing facility.

[Rune]

One of the dumbest fucking articles ever posted on the internet

Please don't flush your tampons down the toilet.

[PrestonSturges]

BTW one of the smarter people I know just emailed me about the looming threat of sharia law and no mercy for anyone who's not cocked locked and ready to rock for Jesus. Smart, but totally bipolar.

[Rune]

BTW one of the smarter people I know just emailed me about the looming threat of sharia law and for anyone who's not cocked locked and ready to rock for Jesus. Smart, but totally bipolar.

There really ARE some kids born with incredible intellectual gifts. You see articles about them here and there. They don't necessarily lead fabulous lives; they don't all become billionaires. But they demonstrate unusually high mental talents.

Anyone can google "high IQ children" and read about this or that kid and his/her abilities and accomplishments.

Why? How? Is it genetic? These are valid questions. These questions have always been asked about the intellectually gifted. the abilities of idiot/savants have prompted these questions as well.

With cheap gene-sequencing, it would be possible to collect and compare a million genomes from people who demonstrate very high IQ. Perhaps there are some answers to the question there.

That's all the article was about. If you don't understand something so simple as that, I feel sorry for you.

[Beery1]

There really ARE some kids born with incredible intellectual gifts. You see articles about them here and there. They don't necessarily lead fabulous lives; they don't all become billionaires. But they demonstrate unusually high mental talents.

Yes, they do. The problem is, almost all of these people are essentially just human computers. They have great memories or calculating abilities, but in all other respects, they are no smarter than the rest of us. That's why they almost never translate their gifts into practical applications. In terms of their potential for human achievement, these kids are little more than circus freaks.

If you don't understand something so simple as that, I feel sorry for you.

So many of your posts seem to end with this sentence. Maybe the problem isn't with others failing to understand some great potential, but with you failing to understand the likely limits of that potential.

[Rune]

So many of your posts seem to end with this sentence. Maybe the problem isn't with others failing to understand some great potential, but with you failing to understand the likely limits of that potential.

Collecting the genomes of a million high IQ people and then comparing them using sophisticated statistical analyses to the genomes of people with average IQs is simply another means of scientific inquiry.

This means of scientific inquiry would have been done long ago if it were possible. It has only been made possible by the ever-cheapening trend of gene-sequencing.

Gene sequencing used to be incredibly expensive just to get a single genome of worm. This is no longer the case. So the Wired article described a genius kid who works at an automated gene sequencing facility in china who wants to find out why he, himself, is so bright and why other kids exchibit very high IQs.

You don't have to confine yourself, when talking about high IQ, to those who are mental calculators. Bill Gates, for example, breezed through school because he was so bright. He is someone with a very high IQ; maybe no qualified and extremely rare genius, but someone who is obviously very bright. He also has other qualities such as personal drive and ambition that led to his success with Microsoft.

But the article focused on using a huge sample of genomes collected from the very bright to see if their is some genetic explanation for high IQ. No one knows what the outcomes of such an experiment would be. It could have multi-dimensional outcomes. No one knows.

No one knows what the results of a particular scientific inquiry will be until the scientific inquiry in question is perfomed. The analyses could yield some valuable information or they might not. No one knows.

But if its cheap to do, then it will be done by someone somewhere eventually. And this was what the article was about - a bright kid in china who wants to conduct this scientific inquiry into any possible genetic explanations for high IQ.

Seems pretty straight-forward to me.

[PrestonSturges]

With cheap gene-sequencing, it would be possible to collect and compare a million genomes from people who demonstrate very high IQ. Perhaps there are some answers to the question there.

Yes, and there really was no point for the article, it was a steaming pile about a million genomes is bound to yield something interesting. Actually all these fantastic things were supposed to have happened 10 years ago, but the human genome project got funding for two additional rounds and still basically came up empty.

The rest of the story was "Here's some random kid who works at the genome factory...." Not that he has an actual theory or anything, they just propped him up to say that a million genomes might yield something interesting. Gee, yah think?

But hey, I wasted a couple hours last month telling people that Eric Snowden wasn't some sort of super hacker turned software engineer but just a dweeb with a security clearance. If you ever wondered how religious cults start, look at the number of people who automatically swoon over the photo of a random stranger.

[Rune]

With cheap gene-sequencing, it would be possible to collect and compare a million genomes from people who demonstrate very high IQ. Perhaps there are some answers to the question there.

Yes, and there really was no point for the article, it was a steaming pile about a million genomes is bound to yield something interesting. Actually all these fantastic things were supposed to have happened 10 years ago, but the human genome project got funding for two additional rounds and still basically came up empty.

http://www.genomeweb.com/blog/lower-and-lower-it-goes

Lower and Lower It Goes
June 26, 2013
Obstacles to cheaper and cheaper sequencing are falling by the wayside, writes Eilene Zimmerman at CNN Money. She notes that when James Watson had his genome sequenced by 454 in 2007, it cost about $1 million, but newer technologies are bringing that cost drastically down.

"The cost-per-bit of biologic information is coming down faster than Moore's Law," Steven Burrill, from the financial services firm Burrill & Company tells her.

Exome sequencing is already hitting the $500 mark, and Life Technologies' Jonathan Rothberg says, "In three months, we'll be able to do one entire human genome for $1,000." Zimmerman adds that other technologies like nanopore sequencing could further affect the price of sequencing.

Still, those sequences have to be interpreted. "We have information available today beyond our ability to absorb it," Burrill adds.

I don't know what your bitching about.

$1000/genome is cheap. A million genomes at a $1000 is an inexpensive way to gather information for ANY set of genomes, whether that is for Tay-Sachs or the very bright.

A million bucks is chump change. If it cost $5 million to do the inquiry as suggested in the Wired article, then that's chump change too.

Once you've got all those sequences, you can do all sorts of statistical analyses on them to discover relationships between genes and their specific operaion together. They do this for disease processes; they can do it for high IQ.

[PrestonSturges]

It's like the IT industry - it's all about selling hardware, selling hardware, selling hardware. There is no business model in having politicians emailing photos of their junk, it's all about selling the server farms that make it possible.

In the case of the genome project, it was mostly ABI selling the original sequencers and the pharmaceutical industry nearly went bankrupt because they spent all their money on hardware and reagents rather than talent and knowledge. So here we go again, with the hardware vendors selling the usual three magic beans. No business model, just a silly PR story to sell the hardware, sell the hardware.

[AgentR11]

BTW one of the smarter people I know just emailed me about the looming threat of sharia law and no mercy for anyone who's not cocked locked and ready to rock for Jesus. Smart, but totally bipolar.

Its funny you posted this comment, as its very much in line with what I wanted to add.

There is this huge assumption, particularly amongst ideologically liberal and humanist (using these in a NON_NEGATIVE way) points of view that equates "being smart" with goodness, or deserving of high praise.

I respond simply, that there is absolutely no correlation between intelligence and benevolence. It just means that the brilliant thug can work you over faster and more thoroughly than anyone else. It is fortunate in our world that the brilliant person that would become a thug, ends up pursuing more comfortable and easy forms of labor, but that is only because the brilliance is rare, and society is generally willing to spend a ton of resources to find and put these rare cases of brilliance to good, well compensated use. However, there is no reason to expect that a world full of extremely intelligent people would be anything other than a world of absolutely ruthless Darwinistic competition. Those mediocre, kind, gentle, peaceful people, that maybe yell at their neighbors on a bad day... they provide the social inertia in a society, one should not underestimate their contribution to the stability of our modern world.

[PrestonSturges]

Regards personality, it's also very likely that people selectively bred for maximum intelligence would be too much alike.

...............Mustapha Mond smiled. "Well, you can call it an experiment in rebottling if you like. It began in A.F. 473. The Controllers had the island of Cyprus cleared of all its existing inhabitants and re-colonized with a specially prepared batch of twenty-two thousand Alphas. All agricultural and industrial equipment was handed over to them and they were left to manage their own affairs. The result exactly fulfilled all the theoretical predictions. The land wasn't properly worked; there were strikes in all the factories; the laws were set at naught, orders disobeyed; all the people detailed for a spell of low-grade work were perpetually intriguing for high-grade jobs, and all the people with high-grade jobs were counter-intriguing at all costs to stay where they were. Within six years they were having a first-class civil war. When nineteen out of the twenty-two thousand had been killed, the survivors unanimously petitioned the World Controllers to resume the government of the island. Which they did. And that was the end of the only society of Alphas that the world has ever seen."
The Savage sighed, profoundly.
"The optimum population," said Mustapha Mond, "is modelled on the iceberg–eight-ninths below the water line, one-ninth above."
"And they're happy below the water line?"
"Happier than above it......"
-Brave New World

The bottom line is that social progress and individual success largely depend on how much sabotage is tolerated. In wartime, sabotage gets someone shot, and progress moves at breakneck speed. In peacetime, sabotage is just another day at the office.

[Rune]

What a lot of idiotic 5h1t.

I think your parents would have really appreciated having access to any sort of genomic information and selection methods which could have prevented the tragedy.

[Subjectivist]

A lot of people who think they are smart really are not competent at many things, they are just specialists in one area. Einstein was a mathematical genius, but his other intellectual areas were average or a little less. Seems as if he had an almost savant like mathe skill with an otherwise average brain.

[PrestonSturges]

What a lot of idiotic 5h1t.

I think your parents would have really appreciated having access to any sort of genomic information and selection methods which could have prevented the tragedy.

Did my comment about stupid shites who live only to sabotage others hit too close to home?

[Rune]

Nah, I'm joking around and having fun.

I'm done with this thread anyway. I just posted it because the breakthrough, really, is scientists are now able to collect millions of genomes and do statistical analyses on them - simply because it is now cheap enough to do so.

...and genome sequencing probably will continue to become cheaper yet. So it is inevitanble that these kinds of studies will be conducted, not only for traits like high IQ or psychopathology and whatever else has been shown to have some degree of heritability.

In the article, it said that high IQ had a heritability factor of around 70 - 80%.

I never expected that the article would get anyone's back up - but then a lot of people get emotional about me on this board. Its a trait - an unusual ability that I have.

[AgentR11]

Well, IQ is an inherently controversial subject....

[ralfy]

Intelligence can also be measured and viewed in different ways.

[davep]

Exome sequencing is already hitting the $500 mark, and Life Technologies' Jonathan Rothberg says, "In three months, we'll be able to do one entire human genome for $1,000." Zimmerman adds that other technologies like nanopore sequencing could further affect the price of sequencing.

Still, those sequences have to be interpreted. "We have information available today beyond our ability to absorb it," Burrill adds.

I don't know what your bitching about.

$1000/genome is cheap. A million genomes at a $1000 is an inexpensive way to gather information for ANY set of genomes, whether that is for Tay-Sachs or the very bright.

A million bucks is chump change. If it cost $5 million to do the inquiry as suggested in the Wired article, then that's chump change too.

My maths may not be genius level, but surely 1 million x 1000 dollars is 1 billion dollars, not one million?

[Rune]

Exome sequencing is already hitting the $500 mark, and Life Technologies' Jonathan Rothberg says, "In three months, we'll be able to do one entire human genome for $1,000." Zimmerman adds that other technologies like nanopore sequencing could further affect the price of sequencing.

Still, those sequences have to be interpreted. "We have information available today beyond our ability to absorb it," Burrill adds.

I don't know what your bitching about.

$1000/genome is cheap. A million genomes at a $1000 is an inexpensive way to gather information for ANY set of genomes, whether that is for Tay-Sachs or the very bright.

A million bucks is chump change. If it cost $5 million to do the inquiry as suggested in the Wired article, then that's chump change too.

My maths may not be genius level, but surely 1 million x 1000 dollars is 1 billion dollars, not one million?

Yes, i have to admit defeat on that one!