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Would this outweigh the advantage of having more mid-level high-IQ people as engineers, researchers and entrepeneurs, increasing the amount of wealth flowing around in the system as a whole?
If we try, I'm sure we could construct arguments about the downsides of building roads. It uses a lot of cement, damages ecosystems, induces car fatalities, increases urban temperatures... There might be five or ten moderately bad things about building roads, more if we delve into hypotheticals. But there is one really good thing about building roads! You can travel quickly and cheaply on them! And that is more than enough to outweigh the costs and the negatives. The downsides can be addressed with related measures, skilled planning and implementation.
I suspect it is the same with IQ. Smarter children is a good thing. There is always the option of taking the genetics of elite scientists and cloning them exactly, if it's the genetics that make geniuses. If it's some combination of innate capabilities and some esoteric twisting of the brain via childhood experiences or plain luck, then the boon of having many moderately smarter people will be helpful in producing the luck and opportunities needed.
I'm imagining a hypothetical scenario where we can raise the average but reduce the variance. In such a case, it comes down to whether you think it's more important to have smarter mid-level engineers, doctors, etc. vs having more and smarter geniuses. I don't have a strong opinion one way or another, but was curious what others thought.
A reduced standard deviation in IQ already exists- women. Very few worldchanging geniuses, far fewer retards.
I leave what can be gleaned from this experiment to your interpretation.
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