Comment by danaris
5 days ago
While I'm deeply and fundamentally skeptical of the recursive self-improvement/singularity hypothesis, I also don't really buy this.
There are some pretty obvious ways we could improve human cognition if we had the ability to reliably edit or augment it. Better storage & recall. Lower distractibility. More working memory capacity. Hell, even extra hands for writing on more blackboards or putting up more conspiracy theory strings at a time!
I suppose it might be possible that, given the fundamental design and structure of the human brain, none of these things can be improved any further without catastrophic side effects—but since the only "designer" of its structure is evolution, I think that's extremely unlikely.
Some of your suggestions, if you don't mind my saying, seem like only modest improvements — akin to Henry Ford's quote “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said a faster horse.”
To your point though, an electronic machine is a different host altogether with different strengths and weaknesses.
Well, twic's comment didn't say anything about revolutionary improvements, just "maybe we're as smart as we can be".