Myers’ Race Car Versus The General Fitness Factor

[Speculation] A response to PZ Myers' 'race car' objection to Hsu's genetic-IQ-engineering proposal (optimizing every gene for IQ would trade off against health/etc.). Scott shows the race-car intuition, though analytically compelling, fails empirically: high IQ correlates POSITIVELY with longevity, height, attractiveness, low crime, fitness, and cardiovascular health — several links demonstrated genetic. Offers four candidate explanations for why beneficial alleles persist without sweeping (heterozygote advantage, mutational load, EEA trade-offs no longer binding e.g. calorie cost, plus some genuine Myers trade-offs) and a long footnote on Ashkenazi IQ selection and evolution's differing 'exchange rate'. Substantive, well-reasoned genetics speculation.

Quality 69 · Strong. Strong (69): a sharp, informative treatment (the 'these all correlate positively' point is genuinely clarifying against the race-car intuition); held FIRM below Excellent because Scott flags it as speculation and the mechanism remains unresolved.

Claude’s paradigm shift 52 · Moderate. Moderate (52): the general-fitness-factor rebuttal to the race-car argument is a fresh synthesis, drawing on existing behavioral-genetics findings.

Real-world impact 3 · Moderate. Moderate (3): circulates in genetics/HBD-adjacent rationalist discussion of embryo selection; niche footprint.