# Boost everyones intelligence? Or not? (Inspired by the movie Limitless) **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [December 6, 2014, 9:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/boost-everyones-intelligence-or-not-inspired-by-the-movie-limitless/706532 "2014-12-06T21:46:15Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 16\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Atomic\_Alex](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/atomic_alex/32/175_2.png) [@Atomic\_Alex](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Atomic_Alex)\ **Post date:** [December 6, 2014, 9:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/boost-everyones-intelligence-or-not-inspired-by-the-movie-limitless/706532/1 "2014-12-06T21:46:15Z")
This thread is inspired by the scenario presented in the movie Limitless and there are some mild spoilers ahead so reader be warned 🙂 _FIREBREAK_ In the movie a means of massively boosting an individuals intelligence is discovered and can be taken in a simple pill form. Although there are initial problems the main character discovers how to use it safely and effectively, and also seems to be the only person with access to it. His intentions seem to be benign but I wondered at the ethics or morality of keeping such a discovery to yourself. My question is what would you do in that scenario, I can’t think of how you could introduce something like that to the general population without causing massive problems, though it might be worse if it was kept under the control of a small elite, at present although the super-rich and powerful have many advantages over the rest of us they’re still only human, in this scenario in a very real sense they wouldn’t be. Its effects are to massively increase a persons intelligence to superhuman levels, as presented in the movie a person using it has perfect recall, incredible planning, strategic and tactical thinking abilities, the ability to learn with ease, able to intuit the correct answer and method to proceed from limited and tangentially connected information etc it is mentioned that the drug works better if a person is already smart but it can increase a dull individual to genius level. So use it only yourself and ensure its destroyed when you no longer have use for it? Release it widely? Something else? Personally I wouldn’t feel right keeping something like that to myself but I can’t imagine a safe means of realising it more widely (granted if I was using it I probably would…) ---
**Author:** ![Namkcalb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/c89c15/32.png) [@Namkcalb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Namkcalb)\ **Post date:** [December 6, 2014, 10:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/boost-everyones-intelligence-or-not-inspired-by-the-movie-limitless/706532/2 "2014-12-06T22:18:35Z")
I’ll see if I can develop a less potent form of the drug. I want to make the world a better place, but I still want to safeguard my power. ---
**Author:** ![Wesley\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wesley_clark/32/20581_2.png) [@Wesley\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wesley_Clark)\ **Post date:** [December 6, 2014, 10:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/boost-everyones-intelligence-or-not-inspired-by-the-movie-limitless/706532/3 "2014-12-06T22:35:37Z")
I say go for it. The main drawback I can see is that nobody will want to work anymore. People won’t want to do repetitive, mindless tasks if everyone’s IQ is 200+. The higher your IQ the higher your need for novelty and cognitive stimulation which most jobs are lacking in. As a metaphor, it would be like chimps debating raising their IQs to human levels. There are some problems but overall the good outweighs the bad. However if everyone is a genius then we will more quickly invent the machines to do our daily work for us. ---
**Author:** ![Maserschmidt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/maserschmidt/32/18829_2.png) [@Maserschmidt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Maserschmidt)\ **Post date:** [December 6, 2014, 10:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/boost-everyones-intelligence-or-not-inspired-by-the-movie-limitless/706532/4 "2014-12-06T22:47:48Z")
People interested in mayhem and crime will get much better at it. ---
**Author:** ![ITR\_champion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/c67d28/32.png) [@ITR\_champion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ITR_champion)\ **Post date:** [December 6, 2014, 10:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/boost-everyones-intelligence-or-not-inspired-by-the-movie-limitless/706532/5 "2014-12-06T22:52:21Z")
I agree with Wesley. Higher intelligence would have some bad effects, but those would be outweighed by the many good effects. The collapse in Justin Bieber’ s popularity alone would make it worthwhile. ---
**Author:** ![monstro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ba9def/32.png) [@monstro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/monstro)\ **Post date:** [December 6, 2014, 11:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/boost-everyones-intelligence-or-not-inspired-by-the-movie-limitless/706532/6 "2014-12-06T23:21:24Z")
I would give it to half the country’s black and Latino population, just to screw with racists. Seriously, I would charge something like $300 a pill, but I’d have a program to counterbalance inequality. For every person who buys the drug at full price, I’ll give away a lifelong prescription to another person, with a preference towards individuals from disadvantaged backgrounds. Like the college kid who has a goal to be a doctor or a lawyer, but their crappy K-12 education didn’t adequately prepare them. Also, anyone with an intellectual disability would be automatically eligible for a prescription. Everyone who receives the drug (whether by $$ or through the charity) will have to sign a “good citizen” contract. If my minions or I discover that they’ve used their talents for evil, then no more pills for them. They can always go to the black market, but at least I won’t be enabling their ill-begotten gains. ---
**Author:** ![levdrakon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/49beb7/32.png) [@levdrakon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/levdrakon)\ **Post date:** [December 6, 2014, 11:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/boost-everyones-intelligence-or-not-inspired-by-the-movie-limitless/706532/7 "2014-12-06T23:26:07Z")
I’d think the more people you give the pill to, the quicker those people will figure out how to make their own pills. ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [December 6, 2014, 11:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/boost-everyones-intelligence-or-not-inspired-by-the-movie-limitless/706532/8 "2014-12-06T23:34:38Z")
I’d give it to everyone. Intelligence is a good thing. Putting the formula out on the Internet comes to mind; done right it could make the formula essentially impossible to suppress. > [@Maserschmidt](#): > > People interested in mayhem and crime will get much better at it. Or more likely they will refrain from doing such things in the first place because doing them is stupid, and they won’t be stupid anymore. And the people trying to catch them will be smarter too, so they won’t have any actual advantage. ---
**Author:** ![Renee](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/renee/32/287_2.png) [@Renee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Renee)\ **Post date:** [December 6, 2014, 11:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/boost-everyones-intelligence-or-not-inspired-by-the-movie-limitless/706532/9 "2014-12-06T23:36:57Z")
I’d distribute it as widely as possible. I’d absolutely love to see what people came up with, and I think smarter people are generally nicer and more compassionate than dumb ones. I believe this would lead to vastly improved quality of life within a few years. ---
**Author:** ![Atomic\_Alex](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/atomic_alex/32/175_2.png) [@Atomic\_Alex](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Atomic_Alex)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2014, 9:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/boost-everyones-intelligence-or-not-inspired-by-the-movie-limitless/706532/10 "2014-12-07T09:17:11Z")
Problem is that I think if intelligence was boosted we’d be playing for much higher stakes, take someone like Osama Bin Laden, a superintelligent version of him would be much more of a threat. Granted those tasked with preventing attacks etc would also be superintelligent but that doesn’t mean they’d be infallible. Personally I’d worry that those with nefarious purposes would have their capabilities magnified to such an extent that they would be capable of immense if not total destruction, in a real sense and referencing the title of the movie, individuals limits would be removed, both for good and ill. Thanks for the answers everyone! ---
**Author:** ![Senegoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/senegoid/32/6606_2.png) [@Senegoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Senegoid)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2014, 10:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/boost-everyones-intelligence-or-not-inspired-by-the-movie-limitless/706532/11 "2014-12-07T10:17:43Z")
This would definitely be a threat to the Republican Party (as it and a substantial portion of its voting base are currently constituted) and they would fight it tooth and nail. Reader comments on Yahoo and YouTube would become much more intelligent and much less entertaining. ---
**Author:** ![Velocity](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/velocity/32/18006_2.png) [@Velocity](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Velocity)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2014, 10:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/boost-everyones-intelligence-or-not-inspired-by-the-movie-limitless/706532/12 "2014-12-07T10:28:53Z")
> [@Senegoid](#): > > This would definitely be a threat to the Republican Party (as it and a substantial portion of its voting base are currently constituted) and they would fight it tooth and nail. I could address this bigoted statement, but will just point out that plenty of people of low IQs are to be found on both sides. ---
**Author:** ![RTFirefly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c77e96/32.png) [@RTFirefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTFirefly)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2014, 11:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/boost-everyones-intelligence-or-not-inspired-by-the-movie-limitless/706532/13 "2014-12-07T11:44:02Z")
> [@Velocity](#): > > I could address this bigoted statement, but will just point out that plenty of people of low IQs are to be found on both sides. Sure, but only one party seems to be _dependent_ on it at the current time. Yeah, I’d put it in the water supply, and put the formula on the Web so that the entire world could benefit. Fox News would go out of business in a week. Climate change denialism would go away, people would understand simple concepts like how it makes no sense to blame unemployed people for being unemployed when there are a lot fewer jobs available than people looking for work, and why it makes sense to do lots of spending on infrastructure at such times that we’ll need to do sooner or later anyway, rather than waiting until Federal and state budgets are flush (because that happens when practically everyone’s working, which makes it expensive and counterproductive to pull people and equipment away from other jobs to work on infrastructure). In general, problems that are solvable by people knowing and understanding the facts - which are the vast majority of them - would get solved. Some issues are not solvable by logic, of course - abortion, Israel and Palestine - but really, 90% of what’s wrong with the world today is either directly because of ignorance and stupidity, or because smart but selfish people with lots of money and power can manipulate lots of ignorant and stupid people into supporting outcomes that are good for the manipulators but suck for the world in general. ---
**Author:** ![Cat\_Whisperer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cat_whisperer/32/4839_2.png) [@Cat\_Whisperer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cat_Whisperer)\ **Post date:** [December 8, 2014, 11:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/boost-everyones-intelligence-or-not-inspired-by-the-movie-limitless/706532/14 "2014-12-08T23:50:16Z")
> [@Senegoid](#): > > This would definitely be a threat to the Republican Party (as it and a substantial portion of its voting base are currently constituted) and they would fight it tooth and nail.\ Did you really have to do that? My gut reaction on reading the thread title was not no, but hell no! Think of all the trouble supersmart people could get into, when you consider how much trouble they get into not being supersmart! I think some of you in this thread are probably right, though - supersmart people would be likely to behave better. They would finally figure out that every time they leave their cart blocking the aisle at Walmart, someone asks them to move it, so stop blocking the aisle. Theoretically. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Joker\_and\_the\_Thief](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/e79b87/32.png) [@The\_Joker\_and\_the\_Thief](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Joker_and_the_Thief)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2014, 12:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/boost-everyones-intelligence-or-not-inspired-by-the-movie-limitless/706532/15 "2014-12-09T00:23:39Z")
[QUOTE=Aldous Huxley] 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.” [/QUOTE] Not a precise match, but pretty close. The world needs ditch-diggers too. The other problem with giving everyone super-intelligence is that there are certain things like terrorism that are much harder to defend against than they are to perpetrate, and making everyone smarter ups the stakes instead of leveling the playing field. 9/11 was bad, but something like a genetically engineered superbug could be cataclysmic (and would be much more easy to create if our enemies were geniuses). In fact, I think the only way the world could survive if everyone was super-intelligent would be the annihilation of everywhere that might contain anyone who would want to do us harm, since they probably could if we didn’t strike them first. ---
**Author:** ![JohnT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnt/32/15048_2.png) [@JohnT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnT)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2014, 1:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/boost-everyones-intelligence-or-not-inspired-by-the-movie-limitless/706532/16 "2014-12-09T01:26:14Z")
This is closer: [Brain Wave](http://www.amazon.com/Brain-Wave-Poul-Anderson-ebook/dp/B003XRELES/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1418088157&sr=1-1&keywords=brain+wave&pebp=1418088169351) by Poul Anderson. > [@](#): > > What if we were all designed to be smarter than we actually are? That is the premise of master science fiction novelist Poul Anderson’s 1954 debut work, Brain Wave. Unbeknown to its inhabitants, the solar system has for millions of years been caught in a force field that has had the effect of supressing intelligence. When in the course of normal galactic movement the solar system breaks free of the force field that has held it in its sway for so long, gone are the inhibiting effects and a remarkable change begins to sweep across the earth. > > In fact, the entire world is turned upside-down and Anderson’s novel is devoted to detailing the sometimes surprising, sometimes chilling aftereffects of this watershed event. In one of the novel’s opening scenes, Archie Brock, a mentally disabled man, finds himself suddenly awash in new kinds of thought as he ponders the night sky. In another scene, a young boy on a summer break works out the basic fundamental foundations of calculus before breakfast. Human life is dramatically transformed, as people with IQs of 400 find themselves living within social structures and institutions designed for people of considerably lower intelligence. There are others who refuse to accept what has happened and instead band together in a rebellion against the new order. > > In another interesting twist, human relationships with other creatures on the planet are likewise thrown into upheaval, as animals likewise rediscover their native intelligence. Archie Brock, for instance, finds working on a farm with intelligent animals a frustrating, comic and confounding experience, as some animals band together and escape while others befriend their former masters. > > Brain Wave is a fascinating “what if” novel and an exploration into the ways in which human society is organized and the assumptions that are made about how we value life. It is also a novel about equality and what happens when the hierarchical structures that we know and arrange our lives by finally disappear. Unless it’s updated, it’s very 1950s. While the world might be “smarter” you would still have issues with relative smartness, so that people with IQ’s 15% below norms now would still have IQ’s 15% below norms after the wonder drug has been distributed.