MSNBC, home of high-octane public intellectuals Joe Scarborough and Ed (of The Ed Show), recently posted an online article concerning the synthetic enhancement of intelligence. Skimping on hard science, the article pulls quotes from reputable scientists concerning the ways in which doubling your IQ would improve your life (and the lives of people around you): advanced technology could be created and utilized to solve the Big Problems; no more god; and, obviously, we’d all be better looking and more self-actualized.
Ignoring the classically fascist value-system in use here, I think there’s a real lack of imagination in the scientific speculation published by MSNBC. And so I give you the following: ways in which doubling our intelligence would make us, um… I don’t know… (if I were twice as smart, I would find the word twice as fast).
– The First Noble Truth of Buddhism says that all life is suffering. The second states that this suffering is caused by ignorant desire. With twice as much brain, either our desires would be halved on the whole, OR our desires would be twice as intelligent. We would have a 50% greater chance of achieving Enlightenment in this lifetime.
– No more being poor or fat or homeless.
– Just imagine the greatest works of Western Literature, only twice as good. Huck Finn has a raft twice as large, double the amount of rocket attacks in Pynchon, the Great White Whale with skin so perfect an alabaster that two entire chapters are devoted to its description.
– Endings are twice as ambiguous. (But you can comprehend the ambiguity twice as well.)
– God is dead, but like, for real this time.
– No more murder, theft, or incest.
– Love, if not felt more deeply, better understood.
– OMG the jokes!
– No more excuses.
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