Artificial Acceleration of Technological and Social Change

[SpitfireIX]

I don't have much input on your last question, but something tangentially related: computing could be pre-empted by assembly-line style calculating, as was done during the Manhattan Project: apparently calculations can be done much more quickly this way (with humans passing cards from one to the next, each doing a specific step in the calculation) that can be done with individuals doing the whole thing.

All I know about this I learned from Feynman's stories (particularly "Los Alamos From Below), in which he talks about how a team of girls could do calculations as quickly as the IBM machines that they had on order. They used the girls to help get the bugs out of their system before the machines arrived, but were surprised to find that the girls were as fast as the machines.

That seems to me that it could be a quite useful, low tech solution that wasn't implemented, for instance in artillery...

Thanks for the suggestion; I'll have to research that. (Not to mention it sounds interesting in and of itself, especially if Feynman is describing it. )

 

[Doghouse Reilly]

Jenny has just finished medical school and plans to become a neurosurgeon...Unsurprisingly, they are both highly intelligent (IQs of 150-160).

I don't think that neurosurgery is an area that tends to be populated by those with IQs as high as you've described.
Not saying it can't happen, but it wouldn't be expected.

I only bring it up because you said "unsurprisingly". I actually would be surprised to meet a neurosurgeon with an IQ that high. I believe that most people with an IQ that high, and the drive and ambition to go with it (as Jenny must have to actively pursue training in a challenging field) would be attracted to other fields.

People often overestimate the degree of intelligence necessary to be a doctor or surgeon. 150-160 is a rare IQ indeed, and would be far better applied elsewhere.

For some reason, brain surgery is one of those fields that tends to make people think, "Oh, wow, he/she must be a genius!" It shouldn't really evoke that response, IMO.

Neuroscience would be a more appropriate field for someone with a 150-160 IQ. Of course a neurosurgeon will be educated in neuroscience, too, but a practicing neurosurgeon is not the same as a neuroscientist, at least not in my understanding.

I'm also aware that there are those who dismiss IQ as being useful for measuring anything. That's not my position, and I'm assuming you consider it relevant since you brought it up in your character description.

 

[SpitfireIX]

I didn't mean to imply that IQs in excess of 150 are required for engineers and neurosurgeons; my wording was careless. I mentioned up-thread that I have a friend who was a pre-med when we were at Purdue; I estimate he has an IQ of about 150 (although he totally bombed out on a non-linear thinking test that I and most of our mutual friends passed easily). He told me that the material in medical school wasn't difficult; there was just a lot to learn.

I'll take your suggestion under advisement, though in the current back story I have for Jenny, one reason she wanted to be a surgeon is that her parents were.