Nehaveigur

If there were an intervention that would result in enhanced intelligence, why have we not already evolved that way? The answer is the Algernon argument. Either there’s no simple improvement that’s possible, or there are trade-offs that make such improvements a bad idea. It’s a long blog post but it’s worth the time reading it closely.

Dynomight points out that the Algernon argument can be adapted to running too. There’s not likely to be a simple intervention that’d make us much faster. Another application would be longevity: Probably there’s no simple way to make us live much longer.