What Could Aliens Do To Devolve Humans With A Germ Line Virus?

Question

The Objective

Lots of questions at this site consider how humans could be enhanced with genetic engineering. But, if you are an alien, you may have the opposite priorities.

These aliens are civilized and have their own code of ecological ethics, so they don't want to exterminate humans (and would prefer to prevent massive, sudden population decline in humans, to the extent that this is possible).

But, they do want to prevent humans from continuing to develop into a species that is technologically superior to them that could be a threat to the aliens, should humans gain access to interstellar transportation technologies that the aliens already possess, either developed by humans on their own, or by humans reverse engineering it from alien technology in a manner that would require an ability on the part of the humans to understand the underlying physics with this huge hint available.

The aliens believe that humans are currently at least seventy years away from developing interstellar transportation technology on their own (assuming that they don't intervene).

(This interstellar transportation technology involves fake physics of the usual sort for science fiction, such as space folding in dimensions not known to current science, that is at least as difficult as general relativity and quantum physics to invent, but is easy enough for a trained person to operate. The viability in the real world of this fake physics technology is not, itself, part of the question).

The aliens are also aware that humans are at risk of self-extermination and would like to prevent that from happening. They also don't want to make a change so extreme that the affected people cannot properly be called humans, even though they are genetically modified humans.

The aliens also value elegance and minimalism. They want to make changes that are as subtle as possible to achieve their goal.

Also, the more subtle the effect, the more time it will take to detect it and mobilize a reaction to it, and the less time humans have to respond to the germ line retrovirus threat discussed below.

Precedents In Fiction

The closest analog to this that I can think of in fiction is Asimov's "brain fever" concept.

The Germ Line Virus Mechanism

The aliens have advanced bioengineering technologies and can engineer a germ line virus that would impact as many humans as viruses for the common cold or similar common viruses do today that would change the genetics of human sperm and egg cells causing everyone with at least one parent infected, before the sperm and/or egg cells that give rise to the child are formed, to have the genetic changes that the aliens desire.

This technique would not reach 100% of the human population (at least not immediately) but would reach a very large proportion of the human population and would disproportionately impact humans that are not in isolated (usually technologically backward) communities. It would probably impact at least 90%-95% of the non-isolated human population in each generation, more or less randomly. So, in the second generation, less than 1% of the human population would be uninfected, and assuming more or less random mating, in the third generation, the unaffected non-isolated human population in the third generation could be in the hundreds or less.

So, a solution that it likely to be possible to thwart if there are just a few hundred random people who are unaffected probably isn't sufficient.

The Question

What should the aliens target to modestly devolve and tame humanity in a way that prevents them from making technological progress (and that may even represent a step backward for mankind) without exterminating the species or causing a mass die off from the virus itself?

Answer 1

Manage so the IQ lowers by a few points starting around age 20-24 (hormone driven perhaps), and the hit increases for a few generations (release new versions of the same virus). Especially if there are no other effects, this might well go unnoticed, and/or be attributed to measurement errors or statistical flukes. Also use it to reduce aggressivity (adrenaline and testosterone susceptivity), to offset the increased aggressivity from lowered IQ. Nobody will question or investigate that.

This will erode the number of people brilliant enough to fuel progress, but will not be so hard on people just bright enough to maintain things. The focus of most brilliant people will increasingly become how to make technology and other complicated things simple enough for most people to still enjoy them, a scenario seen e.g. in Kornbluth's The Marching Morons and The Little Black Bag.

Answer 2

Strengthen the empathy gene

Much of what allows current humanity to 'grow' is a healthy ignorance of externalized costs. Wealthy capitalists are blissfully unaware of how bad their employee's lives are because those are costs that someone else has to bear. Polluting companies will pollute because the environment doesn't cost them anything and besides, the people making the money live far away from the disgusting watersheds and ravaged lands. Investors in large tech companies don't care that everyone's privacy has evaporated so long as they get a return on their investment.

With a stronger empathy gene, the emotional cost of all this abuse would be internalized. Wealthy capitalists would have to pay their people more because the thought of their workers suffering would be unthinkable. Currently, the mantra of Capitalism is "growth, regardless the cost". With a stronger empathy gene, it might become "growth, but let's not destroy stuff".

With all those internalized costs, developing new products will slow since there's less demand for new things.

The inability to forget that low-paid employees made your fancy new smartphone might prevent you from upgrading every year, maybe every three years. Or that sweatshop workers made your new clothes, you'll get new clothes when you need them, not when you want them. The knowledge that polar bears are starving to death because you want to drive a huge SUV might get you to trade to a smaller car.

Crime rates on all kinds of crimes should go down too. If everyone is your family member (thanks strong empathy gene!), it's really hard to steal from them or murder them. This won't cure crime but it will cut down on many types.

Answer 3

A couple of ideas:

A World of Hedonists

Rats will perform lever-pressing at rates of several thousand responses per hour for days in order to obtain direct electrical stimulation of the lateral hypothalamus. Multiple studies have demonstrated that rats will perform reinforced behaviors at the exclusion of all other behaviors [...]

Brain stimulation reward

Give those pesky humans something better to do than to think and work all day. Modify their nervous system to get a considerable dosis of pleasure for mundane activities. Not so much as to become mindless zombies, but enough that almost all of them just want to barely cover their social obligations to lose themselves in a world of bliss. Why spend months and years of hard work researching some arcane tech, when you can get each afternoon the same satisfaction that you would receive by your future discovery?

Ideally, the system would combine with human biology to improve homeostasis: if you have been enjoying a bit too much of those delicious foods and you are becoming too fat you will begin enjoying walking more and more, while food is progressively less atractive.

Of course, given the natural variability both in the humans and in the virus effect, not everybody will just "drop it". But those who still like intellectual work and reward will have their hands full, as the rest of the people will just do the bare minimum and a considerable fraction not even that. The "inmune" will have to manage society; just getting the civilization not to collapse would be a titanic task¹.

The most selfless and resistant people will be able to do and/or convince others to do some work (build a road here or there, recover a forest), but long complex tasks will be impossible. Nobody will want to produce that special alloy needed for that piece of that gigantic particle accelerator, when they can spend the day basking in the sunlight.

The best of the idea? You can blame the effects on something else. For example, that manking is like that and that now our technology has freed us of our obligations; reports about the indolence of the new generations and how new technologies weaken people are from new. And if the truth is discovered, most people will just think "So the aliens want us to have a good time? How nice of them!"

Every Man For Himself

As outlined above, science is a complex task that requires lots of interactions with other people: from having other people knowledge available in books, to people providing guidance, others providing funding and management. Not to mention the researchers themselves. In the end, the research return all that work by sharing their discoveries.

And yet there is cutthroat competition to get fame, position, resources.

Increase that a notch or two. Make scientists VERY entitled to their discoveries. Any bit of data discovered, if published, may lead to OTHER scientists STEALING your future discoveries. It is better to keep it secret until you get to the big, definitive discovery yourself and nobody else.

"Inmune" people continue operating at usual for a time, but they mostly get fed of the game and either adopt it or leave for other fields.

In any case, given the stagnation resulting of these changes, funding for science (specially theorical/long term research) shrinks as it provides no results.

The most obvious problem is that such change risks destroying society if it affects too many aspects of life; maybe the virus effects are linked to intellectual capacity.

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¹I would advise the aliens to provide by covert means a minimal level of automatization of the food procurement and sanitation areas.