Acquired savantism

[K. A. Pital]

In the immediate future, humans progress far enough in neurophysiology to understand the mechanics of savantism, including acquired savant syndrome. It is widely understood (after trials on volunteers) that one can improve human intellectual abilities at little to no cost to other functions of the human brain with advanced surgery, turning most humans into highly-capable savants.

What would be the correct course to take after such a discovery? Force humanity to become more intelligent? Offer it as an option to everyone? For free or at a substantial cost, creating a huge intellectual dimension to the class division?

Discuss.

[Shroom Man 777]

They'd say that you were tinkering with God's most beautiful creation, there'd be an anti-intellectual backlash, and people who do this kind of brain surgery would be imprisoned or some shit and certain nations could impose some kind of mandatory IQ limit and people (artificially) exceeding that would have labels stamped on their foreheads or something and castigated and ostracized.

[K. A. Pital]

Who are they? You mean the Imams, Puristo and other incarnations of God's messengers in this unholy world? Could they really wield that much power to stop humanity's ascendance? And even if they and the politicians and businessmen did it to keep the sheeple in place, undercover "mind liberation" clinics would run hundreds if not thousands of such operations. IQ tests rarely show that you're a savant, that's not considering the possibility of an intelligent person faking the test.

[Rabid]

I'd say offer the procedure to everyone willing. That's the only moral thing to do. You can't force such a fundamental change on anyone, but you can't also hold such discoveries from the masses and in the hand of a small Elite.

After that, if we do our best to do away with prejudice and discrimination, Natural Selection and Social Darwinism will do their job.

But such a procedure in itself will not and can not heal all the ills of our society. It will merely be an enabler. For a brighter, smarter future...

[K. A. Pital]

I'd say offer the procedure to everyone willing. That's the only moral thing to do. You can't force such a fundamental change on anyone, but you can't also hold such discoveries from the masses and in the hand of a small Elite.

After that, if we do our best to do away with prejudice and discrimination, Natural Selection and Social Darwinism will do their job.

But such a procedure in itself will not and can not heal all the ills of our society. It will merely be an enabler. For a brighter, smarter future...

It is a fact that people with high cognitive abilities rarely get involved in a fight or competition to dominate other people. Matters of domination and exploitation seem more alien to them. I guess by becoming smarter humans will also become less prone to inducing suffering on others; it will also improve the understanding of complex ways to induce suffering in other humans and thus prevent it more easily. Temple Grandin dislikes communicating with humans and watching emotional entertainment shows, and yet she's keen on reducing the suffering of slaughtered animals. If more people could hold the elimination of suffering as a goal, perhaps the world would indeed become a better place.

[Purple]

Higher intelligence does not and will not breed higher compassion. All it will breed is a mighty superiority complex. After all, you just went and had your self modified with the explicit purpose of being better than others. And you even have the receipt to prove that you are now better than them. It is completely different than people born with a talent or high intelligence. I can see this going the way of Khan very quickly.

[K. A. Pital]

Superiority complex does not mean a desire to subjugate other people. On the other hand, inferiority and frustration do breed such desires. Bullies desire to prove that them being stupid doesn't mean they're low on the social hierarchy, hence the attempt to compensate a lack of intellect with violence.

After all, you just went and had your self modified with the explicit purpose of being better than others.

If it is accessible to everyone, there's absolutely no reason to consider yourself superior. You cannot know if the other person underwent such enhancement or not.

[evilsoup]

Giving it to everyone would certainly be the moral thing to do, but I don't think that's what would happen. Assuming that some pharmaceutical corporation has it's patent-claws dug deeply into this discovery (which, realistically, they would), this'll be sold as a fairly expensive treatment. Of course for savant-like abilities it would be worth taking out a loan, with the same reasoning as student loans.

The real problem would come if this treatment is inheritable. If it isn't, the wealthy (I wouldn't go quite so far as to say only the 'elite' would get it) would want to keep the treatment as an open option, so that their own kids benefit. If not, then they might see it in their best interests to kick the ladder away once they've climbed it by banning the treatment at some point in the future.

Are savants universally 'good guys'? Stas, you say that this treatment will have none of the 'typical' side-effects that afflict savants (that's in quotes because what I associate as savant-like behaviour might not be borne out by reality); but

Temple Grandin dislikes communicating with humans and watching emotional entertainment shows, and yet she's keen on reducing the suffering of slaughtered animals

sounds a lot like autistic behaviour to me. If your hypothetical treatment doesn't give people that kind of autistic side-effect, would they still necessarily find strife and competition to be 'alien concepts'? Or would they just be better at those things?

Or are you saying that any sufficiently advanced mind, when looking at the state of the world, will realise that the arguments for democratic socialism far outweigh their previous prejudices (and then actively work towards a peaceful revolution)? I'd like to think that you're right, but I'm not sure.

[Purple]

Superiority complex does not mean a desire to subjugate other people. On the other hand, inferiority and frustration do breed such desires. Bullies desire to prove that them being stupid doesn't mean they're low on the social hierarchy, hence the attempt to compensate a lack of intellect with violence.

And someone going for an operation to make him self factually better than he was before is not compensating for an inferiority complex? This is not a tattoo or something like that. It is an operation to make you superior to other humans, and more importantly to make you superior to the person you were before.

If it is accessible to everyone, there's absolutely no reason to consider yourself superior. You cannot know if the other person underwent such enhancement or not.

But you can and do know that you are superior than the average no augmented person. And you can and do know that most people probably are not augmented. After all, why should they be? Its not like being really intelligent is that appealing to the average couch sitting MC'yuckburger eating TW watching person. I mean, (excluding outside pressure) why does anyone desire such an update unless they factually are or consider them self incapable of achieving the kind of life style that they aspire toward? And that already screams inferiority complex or medical condition.


And I don't even want to get into the dark side of this. How long before employers start prioritizing operated people for employment? How long before they start demanding you operate? How long before children in school need to be operated if they want a chance of employment and an average life style at all? Its the same story as with any human augmentation. Done right, it can bring a lot of good to human kind. Done wrong and it becomes a runaway nightmare.

[Jaevric]

Offer it for free to everyone would be the best solution. I can't really condone the idea of forcing someone to undergo such a procedure (though I can understand the temptation to do so). Limiting it to the wealthy would be a nightmare, at least in the short term since it would create a minority of people with both enormous advantages in intellect and personal wealth, creating an even more firmly stratified society.

Wanting to undergo a procedure that makes you smarter is a sign of an inferiority complex? Really? I guess going to college for an education is a sign of an inferiority complex, also, since you're spending money to make yourself a better (or at least more educated) person than others. Is studying a sign of an inferiority complex? How about exercise or eating healthy?

Even if people undergoing the procedure don't end up more compassionate, having people be smarter and more logical is not as far as I'm aware an intrinsically negative situation (unless, possibly, you're a politician). If nothing else, smarter and more logical people might be more likely to make generally good decisions even if not for "compassionate" reasons.

If such a treatment was freely and widely available, then there's going to be tremendous pressure on people to undergo the treatment. And, frankly, so what? There's tremendous pressure on people to go to college in the United States, and a lot of employers won't look twice at your resume if you don't have a degree (admittedly, in the current environment, they won't look twice at your resume if you DO have a degree, but that's a different issue). College costs are tremendous; does that mean employers shouldn't be allowed to require college degrees because it's forcing people to do something they may prefer not to in order to have a chance at an adequate life style?

Maybe it's just that I'm a cynical bastard, but the world already sucks. I'm not sure that having such a treatment available to everyone is going to make the world suck more, and I can see a lot of ways it can improve humanity. I'd say go for it.

If it was only available at great expense...well...it might work out in the long run if (huge "if" here) the treatment actually resulted in a more logical and compassionate person since the "new elite" may feel it is beneficial to make the treatment more widely available. Or they may feel a certain noblesse oblige and actively work to change things to improve society for the "unaugmented." But I'd hate to count on it working out that way.

[Formless]

Savant syndrome isn't "I become smarter overall" its "I become super-smart in one area of knowledge and a complete drooling retard in others". That's why they are classically known as idiot savants. Because they appear to be idiots... unless they are in their one element. There are rare counterexamples where the savant has no (apparent) cognitive/developmental problems, but the term for that is "prodigy".

So, essentially, you are asking if people would want to acquire a form of autism, or possibly if its ethical to force people into such a state. I think the problem with that proposal should be obvious. The human race is overall pretty smart as is, this wouldn't improve anything unless it was reversible, something you could turn on and off at will; or if you could reliably produce prodigies (which seems unlikely). Then you could argue its awesomeness. Until then, better to look into tools that supplement human cognition (eg. computers and software, among other things) than to try and mess with a brain that's fiendishly complex and risk breaking it.

[K. A. Pital]

Formless, idiot savants are not the same as savants. You really have to read it once again. In fact, the very point of the standalone term "savant" was to make it clear that some people do not suffer from the idiot side of it. Orlando Serrel, Daniel Temmet and Temple Grandin aren't "idiots" or drooling retards in all areas except their expertise area. In fact, Serrel and Temmet are pretty socializing folks as far as their life shows. Temmet has a relationship.

Considering the number of known savants is 29, that's 10% of them who aren't really "retarded". Savantism and disorders are linked because usually early childhood or pregnancy brain damage uncovers savantism; and this is why I specifically said that a way to unlock savantism is found which doesn't cause massive brain damage.

[Formless]

I realize, however given what is understood at this time about the majority of savants (and no, its not a lot), I am under the impression that at the level of the brain it most likely works in a manner similar to autism (hence the high correlation between the two conditions). If so, then the treatment you propose in the OP seems like its just a philosophical fantasy. Savantism provides the excuse, but the details of it are ignored so that the transhumanist ethics question can be asked. If the details of savantism are so irrelevant, why bring up savantism?

Even assuming that the treatment works as described and for cheap, there remains a problem in the hypothetical timeline. At some point, someone has to do human experimentation to prove the treatment's reliability, cost effectiveness, and post op safety. Any cock-ups during the experimentation process would likely see the research program killed with extreme prejudice, because those cock-ups will involve people having their brains broken. This is both an ethical problem and a Public Relations reality. So I think those details about savantism that you want to ignore in this hypothetical are still relevant.

[K. A. Pital]

I realize, however given what is understood at this time about the majority of savants (and no, its not a lot), I am under the impression that at the level of the brain it most likely works in a manner similar to autism (hence the high correlation between the two conditions).

That's wrong. One of the few savants who is interested in studying his own brain (and also explaining it to people), that being Temmet, explained that it is probably the breakdown of barriers between isolated processes (and isolated parts of the brain) allowing one process to tap data directly from some other process. That does not impair thinking par se.

If so, then the treatment you propose in the OP seems like its just a philosophical fantasy.

Serrel was hit in the head by a fucking baseball ball and it did not cause him to go autist, but it made him a savant. My scenario is highly practical - what if we learned to do the same reliably (say, with a 0,5% or less autistic complications) via surgery, instead of relying on brain trauma giving us savants? What's "fantasy" about that?

Savantism provides the excuse, but the details of it are ignored so that the transhumanist ethics question can be asked. If the details of savantism are so irrelevant, why bring up savantism?

Details of what? Savantism is correlated with brain trauma because savantism is a compensatory mechanism for the brain. If you could make it work without trauma, wouldn't it be good? I mean, you have to be crazy to say this is a "fantasy". Immunization of people relies on the same - we provoke a reaction which is compensatory (immune activity) without actually killing the human with the disease (or at least the probability of dying due to vaccination is highly lowered).

Even assuming that the treatment works as described and for cheap, there remains a problem in the hypothetical timeline.

I never said the treatment is cheap. I just said it works. If it is expensive, I said the class division would be tremendously augmented by a huge intellectual gap.

At some point, someone has to do human experimentation to prove the treatment's reliability, cost effectiveness, and post op safety. Any cock-ups during the experimentation process would likely see the research program killed with extreme prejudice, because those cock-ups will involve people having their brains broken.

I said experimentation was carried out on volunteers. Some people do have nothing to lose, you know.

This is both an ethical problem and a Public Relations reality. So I think those details about savantism that you want to ignore in this hypothetical are still relevant.

Details like the fact that because we don't know a precise way to duplicate Serrel's acquired savantism, we are actually forced to live with brain trauma, degradation and other stuff like that giving us savants instead of understanding the mechanism and making it work without the destructive trauma?

If I was going to ask "can we make savants now en masse", I'd ask that in the OP. That would require people hitting themselves with stuff in the head or experimenting with electric shocks and would lead to lots of people being dead, some traumatized and others traumatized with unlocking of savantism. Such an unscientific trial-and-error method is definetely not what I wanted to discuss.

[ThomasP]

It is a fact that people with high cognitive abilities rarely get involved in a fight or competition to dominate other people. Matters of domination and exploitation seem more alien to them. I guess by becoming smarter humans will also become less prone to inducing suffering on others; it will also improve the understanding of complex ways to induce suffering in other humans and thus prevent it more easily. Temple Grandin dislikes communicating with humans and watching emotional entertainment shows, and yet she's keen on reducing the suffering of slaughtered animals. If more people could hold the elimination of suffering as a goal, perhaps the world would indeed become a better place.

Stas are you talking about boosting cognitive functions alone, as in just making people "better at X", or actually shifting the whole brain into "savant mode"? The latter entails more of a shift in the way of thinking happens, as opposed to just boosting raw number-crunching power, moving more towards the systemizing end of the spectrum.

While the intelligence comes with a price, it isn't exactly to that cute "drooling retard" degree. You'd wind up "smarter" in that rational problem-solving sense of the term, but maybe not so great in areas that require intuitively understanding other human beings, which might explain why non-competitive behaviors are so often packaged with higher cognitive functions.

It's not clear which you're after from the OP and follow-on discussion, though either one makes for an interesting thought experiment.

[Purple]

Correct me if I am wrong here. It seems to me that you have attempted to ask a morality question by attaching it to a real life explanation for plausibility. And now the details of that real world explanation are getting in the way of answering the actual question. If so, would you consider it prudent if we instead simply substitutes savantism with "Condition that makes people's IQ rise greatly" or something similar with you just laying out the effects for us?

[Tasoth]

In the rest of the world, the treatment would be left as an elective and you could probably get funding for it. In AMERIStan, it'd be elective and you'd have to take out significant personal loans that are going to ruin you for decades financially all the while facing fervent anti-savantism, discrimination by the masses and being used as a tool by companies. Or so the cynic in feels.

I'm surprised no one has pointed out the fact that people would have to go back to school to learn more after this. Also, what happens if a sociopath is on the receiving end of this? Enhanced cognitive abilities without losing who you are/what is in your head would be pretty horrific coupled to someone who doesn't care what happens to other and can predict market outcomes, read and manipulate people or plan military strategy better than anyone else. Nothing is being done to the brain to prevent someone who is already manipulative or ruthless before the operation to come out and specialize in knowing the drug trade operates, police procedure or security systems. It'd be interesting to see these super criminals operate.

[Formless]

That's wrong. One of the few savants who is interested in studying his own brain (and also explaining it to people), that being Temmet, explained that it is probably the breakdown of barriers between isolated processes (and isolated parts of the brain) allowing one process to tap data directly from some other process. That does not impair thinking par se.

I was going off a Wikipedia article, and of the three hypothesis it gives, the first directly references autistic thinking styles, the second references a theoretical explanation for autism, and the third sounds similar to what you are talking about. One hypothesis should not be taken as any more valid than the next until further evidence comes around to demonstrate it.

Serrel was hit in the head by a fucking baseball ball and it did not cause him to go autist, but it made him a savant. My scenario is highly practical - what if we learned to do the same reliably (say, with a 0,5% or less autistic complications) via surgery, instead of relying on brain trauma giving us savants? What's "fantasy" about that?

There is a pretty big leap from "this person had trauma cause syndrome A" to "therefore, we can reliably create syndrome A via surgical means". There are also people who have shot themselves in the head in an attempt to commit suicide and instead somehow cured themselves of the underlying depression. Doesn't mean we understand how it happened or are any closer to coming up with a working form of neurosurgery to cure depression. Put it another way, you say so yourself that there are only 29 known cases and only three of those lack any apparent disabilities. Its pretty unreasonable to expect that those three people will be easy cases to replicate.

Its not fantasy in that there is magic involved so much as it is just unrealistic in its expectations. Pie in the sky territory. Sci-Fi if you prefer. Sure, I can discuss those things and enjoy doing so, but bring in scientific concepts or phenomena and I expect that they are going to be important details to the setup.

Details of what? Savantism is correlated with brain trauma because savantism is a compensatory mechanism for the brain. If you could make it work without trauma, wouldn't it be good? I mean, you have to be crazy to say this is a "fantasy". Immunization of people relies on the same - we provoke a reaction which is compensatory (immune activity) without actually killing the human with the disease (or at least the probability of dying due to vaccination is highly lowered).

Like how the treatment works? Whether side-effects or complications are likely? Those two things I've already talked about of course, but there are others. Why specifically savant syndrome and not other brain improvements? What kinds of cognitive improvements do savants enjoy? IIRC, most savants have very keen memory, pattern recognition, and attention to details other people miss. I could be wrong about any one of those, but the point is that they aren't necessarily cognitive improvements everyone needs, and that too affects the possible utility of the operation.

I said experimentation was carried out on volunteers. Some people do have nothing to lose, you know.

Okay, but that isn't necessarily a cure all. For one thing, government funding (at least in the US) requires risk management by the researchers, its not enough for the volunteers to know ahead of time what they are getting into. After all, desperate people and gamblers will assess rewards above risks any day regardless of how rational it is to expect a payoff. Likewise, the PR aspect won't necessarily be quelled just by invoking volunteers, because people are going to evaluate the risks based on what happens to those volunteers. And with a process as complex as the brain, there will be problems, and those cock-ups will become part of the public consciousness whether you like it or not.

If I was going to ask "can we make savants now en masse", I'd ask that in the OP. That would require people hitting themselves with stuff in the head or experimenting with electric shocks and would lead to lots of people being dead, some traumatized and others traumatized with unlocking of savantism. Such an unscientific trial-and-error method is definetely not what I wanted to discuss.

Sure, I understand what you want. I just think its worth pointing out the realities in any thought experiment. I'm always pragmatic about thought experiments that way, even when I allow a few fantastic elements a pass.

[Lord of the Abyss]

I realize, however given what is understood at this time about the majority of savants (and no, its not a lot), I am under the impression that at the level of the brain it most likely works in a manner similar to autism (hence the high correlation between the two conditions).

That's wrong. One of the few savants who is interested in studying his own brain (and also explaining it to people), that being Temmet, explained that it is probably the breakdown of barriers between isolated processes (and isolated parts of the brain) allowing one process to tap data directly from some other process. That does not impair thinking par se.

I recall reading an article years ago about savantism that mentioned a fellow who is both a mathematical genius and a mathematical savant; which both demonstrated that it's possible to have normal or better intelligence with a savant talent, and allowed him to compare and contrast how his savant talent and his genius worked. IIRC, he talked about how his savantism bloomed a lot faster but peaked sooner, and how it was a much less conscious process. It wasn't quite like being consciously smarter; he'd just hand the talent a problem and out would come a solution in return with no awareness of how it solved the problem.

[K. A. Pital]

There is a pretty big leap from "this person had trauma cause syndrome A" to "therefore, we can reliably create syndrome A via surgical means".

I specifically noted that advances in neurophysiology allowed to reliably recreate the syndrome in the same fashion as happened to Serrel. That's a basic premise. It is more or less theoretically feasible (though practical realization may hit insurmountable roadblocks if we fail to progress any further in the understanding of brain functionality).

Sure, I can discuss those things and enjoy doing so, but bring in scientific concepts or phenomena and I expect that they are going to be important details to the setup.

I'm just extrapolating on the question which has been asked by an MD, not just me, a dumb medicine-knownothing.
http://www.wisconsinmedicalsociety.org/ ... red_savant

The challenge of course, if that is so, is how to access that hidden knowledge and skill without some sort of CNS catastrophe.

So what if this challenge is decided in favor of possibility? That is the question. Not whether or not it may be so that this challenge is insurmountable. I tried to make it clear in the OP.

[Shroom Man 777]

The whole point of the thread is that "what if" people understand the mechanisms of savantism, which they don't yet, and figure out a way to replicate it. Like a more insightful and better written RAR thread. It's like someone, in a time before genetics was well understood, asking for what if genetic engineering would allow us to make people better. Of course the actual mechanics of savantism are not well known, and even if they were well known, would still be incomprehensible to internet people pretending to be smart but aren't neuroscientists, but that's not what the scenario is asking about. It's asking about societal implications and such.

"What would be the correct course to take after such a discovery? Force humanity to become more intelligent? Offer it as an option to everyone? For free or at a substantial cost, creating a huge intellectual dimension to the class division?"

Notice the actual question doesn't ask about the actual mechanism of savantism. It could be all sciency technical medical crap, it could be a crayola obongata in Homer Simpson's brain, it's asking about societal craps.

I personally would be against forcing it, would be in favor of making it an option for everyone, and ideally free, but knowing realities, we'd see people having corporate logos on their medula oblongata as corporations patent various savantism/genius-inducing methodologies. There'll be a huge ass fucking Pfhize or Johnson & Johnson logo in your cerebral cortex after the operation, and you'll be super smart, for like ten million quatloos.

[Simon_Jester]

What I'm not clear on is whether acquired savanthood comes without costs. By costs I don't mean "induced autism," I just mean costs. The original post said "at little to no cost to other functions of the human brain," which is ambiguous. So to be clear:

Are we talking about a hypothetical treatment that greatly boosts intellectual ability in some areas, without a corresponding boost in others but without harming those other areas?

Or are we talking about something with tangible tradeoffs, like becoming a genius at one thing at the expense of, on average, becoming somewhat less good at others?

That really affects questions about how widely available to make the treatment, let alone whether to make it mandatory. If I had the option of becoming five times as good at math at the expense of losing 10% of my 'social skill' brain (whatever those numbers mean, since this is a hard area to quantify)... I'd say no. I don't need that much mathematical skill that badly. Someone else might say "yes" to the same treatment. But I think it would be doing me a disservice to force me to take the treatment, or to judge against me for thinking that losing 10% of my social skills is more important to my quality of life than gaining an extra 400% of my math skills.


There's also the question of what it makes you good at. Modifying your brain to do arithmetic super-fast and super-efficiently isn't really all that helpful in an age of calculators, for example. Modifying your brain to become a genius in an arbitrarily chosen field of your choice would be.

What is this treatment expected to be able to let us do, and what is it not expected to let us do? Can we become "super-intelligent" in areas related to social awareness and our grasp of the mechanisms of how society works? Can we become "super-ethical?" If so, under whose definition of ethics? If we become "super-memorizers," what will we be memorizing and will we be able to avoid memorizing irrelevant or uninteresting material?

[sciguy]

I personally would be against forcing it, would be in favor of making it an option for everyone, and ideally free, but knowing realities, we'd see people having corporate logos on their medula oblongata as corporations patent various savantism/genius-inducing methodologies. There'll be a huge ass fucking Pfhize or Johnson & Johnson logo in your cerebral cortex after the operation, and you'll be super smart, for like ten million quatloos.

The patents would only last 20 years. That's a long time, but it would take a long time for something like this to become popular and accepted. I would guess that there would probably be years of clinical trials before it was approved for general sale, and then after that it would probably be more years still before many people were interested in having it; after all, most people are going to be reluctant to have their brain tinkered with until it's a well-established procedure.

For comparison, consider LASIK eyes surgery: patents filed in 1989, human trial started in 1992, and full FDA approval until 1997. Presumably hacking people's brains would take even longer to become accepted and FDA approved...

[K. A. Pital]

Are we talking about a hypothetical treatment that greatly boosts intellectual ability in some areas, without a corresponding boost in others but without harming those other areas?

Yeah. More or less the "baseball ball hit me in the head" savant case. The guy became a supermemorizer and good at calculating dates but not much more. Probably savant improvements would be limited to some types of synesthesia and supermemorizing abilities (which, frankly, are very useful even if they capture "unnecessary" details), perhaps uncanny artistic talents (related to supermemorizing, as they often are in savants who can reproduce shit which they only saw for an eyeblink).

You can't choose the exact type of improvement, but you certainly can avoid your other skills being hampered. No "area of choice" booster, that's unlikely to work with savantism, and more likely to work with other forms of mind enhancement. Supermemorizing by default and perhaps good calculation - that's it.

[Korto]

Temple Grandin dislikes communicating with humans and watching emotional entertainment shows, and yet she's keen on reducing the suffering of slaughtered animals

sounds a lot like autistic behaviour to me. If your hypothetical treatment doesn't give people that kind of autistic side-effect, would they still necessarily find strife and competition to be 'alien concepts'? Or would they just be better at those things?

Temple Grandin is autistic. In fact, she's famous for it. Her parents were advised to institutionalise her as a child. I don't think her disinterest in humans can be blamed on her higher intelligence (if, indeed, it is). She even said at one point (and I'm relying on foggy memory here) that she can understand animals because she thinks the same way they do, she's a "Visual" thinker.

However, if the process is as side-effect free as in the OP, it should be offered free to all children, as early as it can be safely carried out. The cost to the state will be repaid manyfold in the coming generation. It would be like any other giant state project.