Squashing the IQ Curve - A Less Stressful Reality?

[CuriousArv]

OH! the strategic mind would think of another way of succeeding if intelligence wasn't in its favour. I don't know if the two are mutually exclusive though. People with greater natural intelligence have greater capacity for strategy...they have a bigger 'pie' to work with. So introduction of the tech might be still warranted..but..hmm... ok this is tricky

 

[honestrosewater]

Haha, so the betterment of humanity was really just a pretext for you to play with people's brains. I knew it.

 

[CuriousArv]

No, such a mind possibly only cares about success anyhow..I don't think I'm supportive of such a world which is part of reality we are all experiencing.

I am genuinely looking for a better way... If I could answer this question successfully I'd be happy. I'm unable to do it so far.

Will supplying intelligence augmentation to people be the best way towards building a reality where a path to prosperity without sinister behaviour is available to anyone?

So far I can say, you can weave and dodge and plot..and get some way..but possibly causing great amounts of mayhem when you aren't too smart to yourself and others... hmm... even if you are smart but insecure..you could wreck the world worse..

So you really need an intelligence/sense of altruism enchancement device to do the job.. I think this'd work. How would you build an altruism enchancement device?! 'It Zaps your brain when your evil!' haha.. I don't know but would be really curious to find out.

 

[honestrosewater]

Will supplying intelligence augmentation to people be the best way towards building a reality where a path to prosperity without sinister behaviour is available to anyone?

I think, as Huck pointed out, you will at least make smarter criminals.

Why do you think that an increase in intelligence will be accompanied by an increase in goodness? And what does either have to do with happiness or prosperity? (I'm not suggesting that they aren't connected. I'm just asking for your thoughts.)

 

[CuriousArv]

Well I just want that connection between level of intelligence and happiness/prosperity to be severed... I don't people to have to point that out as a genuine excuse because in some cases they really couldn't work out a better way.

A simultaneous intellgience/altruism enchancement device is what should be created and marketed. People wanting more intelligence should pay the price of becoming more good. I think this is fair.

But will this actually increasing their chances of perishing because suddenly freedom is curtalied as a result of their increased good? Do you always need a bit of evil to live? is it essential? Damn! i think unfortunately this might be true..i don't know though...maybe one can make such beings incredibely robust. Any thoughts? Perhaps there should be an 'undo' mechansim so faced with extinction, the alturistic super being steps down to a lower meaner existence to survive.. this could be the only way.

 

[honestrosewater]

A simultaneous intellgience/altruism enchancement device is what should be created and marketed. People wanting more intelligence should pay the price of becoming more good. I think this is fair.

Hm, that sounds like a lopsided kind of fairness. Why do you think you own this device? I mean, you are presuming that this technology is someone's property, right, by wanting to sell it? On what does this concept or right of property and ownership depend? Or, if you want to regulate its use, on what does the authority to regulate its use depend? Are you in the US?

 

[CuriousArv]

No not in U.S. I don't own any device. There'd be much more care about the way this should be handled but I'm just throwing around considerations as they occur to me. Okay I see the hope for building and marketing such a device relatively quickly just vanish now. But maybe there is a case (albeit complex one) for the idea to be implemented.

 

[honestrosewater]

No not in U.S. I don't own any device. There'd be much more care about the way this should be handled but I'm just throwing around considerations as they occur to me.

Right, I understand.

Oh, first, I meant to say that I don't see how you can make people good. Setting aside the fact that there is more than one possibility for what good actually is, what exactly is morality if there are no moral choices? If you don't have any choice in the matter, if you can't decide to do the right thing, how is your action still a moral one? I'm not sure I actually have answers to those, but it strikes me as suspect that you can force people to be good. Anywho...

Wherever you are, your ownership or regulation of this device, unless you are going to do this by brute force, depends on people honoring the social contracts that create things like ownership and regulatory authority and whatever. So you are presupposing some capacity for goodness in people already, no? Of keeping promises and such? Why not build on this rather than whatever it is that you want to force on people or trick them into?

 

[CuriousArv]

Mabye not altruism, but ethical enchanement and majority survival oriented even at the expense of self sacrifice..

man.. we might end up becoming robots governed by axioms in the long term future! Perhaps we already are so maybe
its not really losing out in any way.

 

[CuriousArv]

Right, I understand.

Wherever you are, your ownership or regulation of this device, unless you are going to do this by brute force, depends on people honoring the social contracts that create things like ownership and regulatory authority and whatever. So you are presupposing some capacity for goodness in people already, no? Of keeping promises and such? Why not build on this rather than whatever it is that you want to force on people or trick them into?

Are you saying the best strategy is strongly push for ethically minded people to power and remove support from the 'smart criminals' and forget about intelligence augmentation? Supposing you are saying this, most people are still going to be conned anyway ebcause they can't tell diff between ethically positive and smart criminal so well..


So best we can do is keep 'smart criminals' in check by keeping them as accountable as possible. Is this best we can hope for?

 

[honestrosewater]

Are you saying the best strategy is strongly push for ethically minded people to power and remove support from the 'smart criminals' and forget about intelligence augmentation?

No, like I said, I am busy enough with my own (secret) world domination plans already.

Supposing you are saying this, most people are still going to be conned anyway ebcause they can't tell diff between ethically positive and smart criminal so well..

What do you mean conned? Into what?

So best we can do is keep 'smart criminals' in check by keeping them as accountable as possible. Is this best we can hope for?

Does every crime have the same motivation, and does every criminal have the same ethical system? I don't think so. Someone who steals because their children are hungry might not have much at all in common with someone who steals only to see if they are clever enough to not get caught. So no, I think that you can, for starters, stop some crime by making the system fairer (to everyone).

 

[moe darklight]

Roger. I see your point, but I must ask: what's in a name?

an IQ is an IQ is an IQ
I know, I'm really picky about certain things.

I did grant that I could have misunderstood you.

haha my bad, it did come off that way once I read it again, which is why I found your comment funny.

sorry curiousarv for going so off-topic with my nitpicking

 

[Huckleberry]

I can't help but think that handing out some smart pill to people will not solve the worlds problems. It's like being given the answers to the test before you take it. What would be the purpose of learning anything if the answer to everything comes in a pill?

It sound slike you are suggesting a pill to make people more altruistic as well. That could be 10 times worse than any smart pill. When you combine altruism with authority over others the consequences become so much greater. In a selfless quest to do good and right the wrongs in the world, people do some heinous things, thee holy crusades, The Salem witchcraft trials, the premise for the war in Iraq. Selling a pill to make people altruistic would be another such misconstrued act of altruism. Terrorism is an altruistic act that places higher regard on ones beliefs than themselves or others. Can you imagine a world where everyone held such strong beliefs?

In truth these acts are not selfless at all. It is just another way of manipulating people into what one believes is the correct method of thinking. People need to be free to choose what is correct for themselves, regardless of how strongly one feels about their decisions. People are more important than beliefs, but I'm not sure there is a way to separate the two.

 

[CuriousArv]

What if it was available in the market and it actually worked and it was cheap? Okay all of these arguments up to now have questioned the merit of this action but I'm thinking this

what if some despot or hostile government decided to hand out such 'pills' to all of their citizens and through their vast intellectual superiority over other nations/simply wipe them out and take over the world. It could just be a handful of evil people. Alternatively what if these people decided, we are just going to wipe out the lower classes because we can replace them with machines and rid ourselves of minding their problems. 'the nazis of world war 3' How would you fight this? Have no choice but actually give these pills to everyone? nanotech and medicine and scientists aren't scarce or only available to few nations. They're everywhere.

 

[honestrosewater]

It could just be a handful of evil people.

Who gets to decide which people are evil?

How would you fight this?

How would you fight it, by any means necessary?

 

[CuriousArv]

If these people actually intend to secretly be good by staging this..and causing the world to then rush to buy the pill..then hopefully they know exactly what their doing because if it went wrong somehow lot of people could get killed. Whoever's selling these pills is going to rake it in.

 

[Huckleberry]

What if it was available in the market and it actually worked and it was cheap? Okay all of these arguments up to now have questioned the merit of this action but I'm thinking this

what if some despot or hostile government decided to hand out such 'pills' to all of their citizens and through their vast intellectual superiority over other nations/simply wipe them out and take over the world. It could just be a handful of evil people. How would you fight this? Have no choice but actually give these pills to everyone? nanotech and medicine and scientists aren't scarce or only available to few nations. They're everywhere.

Brute force is a pretty good equalizer. A bullet doesn't care how intelligent you are. Intelligent people still need to eat food and drink clean water. They would need their factories and materials and economic structure. Take those resources away and it doesn't matter how intelligent they are. Besides, intelligence isn't the main requirement of a soldier.

To take over the world with intelligence you would have to act within the existing system and play one nation against another. Don't present oneself as a target for people's hatred. Use the armies of other nations to destroy themselves. Create politics to cause unrest in citizens. Manuever resources to cause resentment between cultures. Control the information that people can receive so as to spread the propaganda that you want the citizens to believe. Change the law to justify ones actions and proclaim that it is in the best interests of the security of the nation. Discredit any opposition and make them appear foolish and irrational. Spread distrust and insecurity and fear and when people start to believe it they can be manipulated to whatever end is desired. When one controls all the resources one has all the power.

Giving out smart pills would make people harder to deceive. It is much better to make people believe that tomorrow will be much the same as today. And when the time is right they can be set in a panic and pointed in the general direction of the thing one wants destroyed. People are smart enough to take care of the rest. So if they gave out smart pills they would be inhibiting their ability to control people. And if smart pills were given out to make people aware of the deceptions then there would eventually be all the downfalls mentioned in the previous posts. There is no shortcut to peace and understanding. They primarily require respect for others and their beliefs.

(Don't get any ideas HRW. I know how bent you are on world domination.)

 

[CuriousArv]

haha... if I was a really about world domination..i don't think i'd be telling people ideas just like this not that any of them are clever anyway. just curious as usual.

 

[CuriousArv]

Ok..Finally understand.. You would only allow a reserach program with the intention of augmenting intelligence if you knew that the risk that posed (of smarter criminals being produced and being easily capable of destroying the world) is lesser in magnitude compared to if you did nothing. Unless somebody can point out that this is the case, all moves towards artifically enchancing intelligence should generally be opposed. By doing this one is doing the right thing and preventing the possibility for life to be severely threatened.



If somebody is in the lower world though, then yes things are tougher for them and yes they have the greater chances of getting culled. But nobody in the smarter world is going to life a finger unless
1. they are a caring sort and provide educational oppurtunties for sideways movement
2. they realize that the risk posed to their lives is otherwise magnified.

chances are only if 2 kicks in, they'll do something.

So people in robotics and bio-medical engineering...is anybody doing something to stop them coming up with such devices?
If there is nothing one can do they must these people then just start building guarding techs right way because they realize that
intelligence augmentation is inevitable?

 

[honestrosewater]

No, I don't know of any reasons that the search for knowledge should ever be opposed. (Edit: Well, actually, I suppose I do. It's probably not worth it if it causes unnecessary suffering. Knowledge is probably not the highest on my list, but it is pretty high. (Edit: Or, rather, I should have distinguished between the knowledge itself and actually conducting the search for it. I don't know of any reason that knowledge itself should ever be declined, but I realize that it can't always be gained ethically. Does that make sense? Blarg.))

It sounds like you still haven't taken the step back that I was trying to get you to take. Say that you can divide the population into two groups, X and Y. One group is good and right and one group is bad and wrong. How do you decide which group is which? Does it depend on which group you are in? Are you ever in the bad and wrong group?

As far as criminals go, have you ever heard the expression "might makes right"? Do you think Nelson Mandela should still be in prison?