How a more intelligent/educated population would change the system
I have been thinking a lot about how a more educated population could both become just economically richer or understand/realize the flaws of the system and so create a better one based on less exploitation (as the current one) of less intelligent /fortunate people and resources. I hope the idea is clear, I’m writing it in between breaks at new year’s celebration since nobody here seems interested in talking about it . I will eventually expand more as soon as i get in front of my laptop.
I have been thinking (hidden)
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There are things that a higher intelligence waterline would improve, and things that it wouldnt. So the obvious one is that insofar as there is wealth production bottlenecked on human attention, diligence, cleverness, etc, it would be a big gain. But then the flipside is the zero sum stuff like finance or certain kinds of politics or pure tournaments where increased intelligence wouldnt affect things. There may even be as nietzsche implies ways that man is harmed by intelligence or at least reason; the tendency to get caught in bullshit abstractions. The interesting questions are like would it impact governance. I think many things would be better like policy would be better designed and the psyops would be higher brow, but many wouldnt change. Many of the key problems arent matters of intelligence but structural incentives, faction, decay of culture etc. Civilizational decline is always at its root a pathology of social epistemology in a way that no amount of intelligence can escape because it’s somehow adversarial. A lot of the structural stuff in society isnt about ideas or thought at all, but something prior to that that even ants could figure out and even gods would struggle with.
There are things tha (hidden)
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>>2357It's not mostly intelligence in the sense of IQ nor education in the sense of our current education system.
If one could implement a new education system from the ground up, something like a modernized version of Greek paideia, then yes that would make a large difference. That would require a new regime, and be an essential part of it.
It's not mostly inte (hidden)
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>>2360Oh yeah if we could actually *educate* the population arbitrarily, and not just improve smarts, that would have massive impacts. Because with education you can inspire a worldview, work ethic, social graces, way of life, etc. Education is a regime. Intelligence is just a sort of bio-cognitive efficiency.
Oh yeah if we could (hidden)
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>>2361>Civilizational decline is always at its root a pathology of social epistemology in a way that no amount of intelligence can escape because it’s somehow adversarial.A use for intelligence in the current sclerotic regime is to articulate a vision of the future. Once that's solved, education is a component of governance that works towards that.
For example, could we move heavy industry to the moon and clean up the earth at the same time? What sort of cultural factors would need to change to inspire that?
A use for intelligen (hidden)
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>>2364>A use for intelligence in the current sclerotic regime is to articulate a vision of the future. Once that's solved, education is a component of governance that works towards that.I think there are several competing visions already in place. There's Musk's interplanetary species vision, there's the Chinese "United Earth Government", there's the Communist vision, there's so many of them someone should actually lay them out and map them.
I think there are se (hidden)
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Sadly the world is g (hidden)
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I also have been thinking about this. A more "intelligent" population, and particularly one with a greater share of people capable of delayed gratification would have less poverty and fewer petty crimes. That in turn would allow for a freer society, with less taxes, a smaller welfare system and a smaller tendency for the nanny state.
Of course higher average intelligence by itself is not sufficient to achieve such a political outcome, but I think it'd make it more feasible.
I also have been thi (hidden)
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>>2375I think you are mistaken in thinking that the welfare state, taxes, and whatnot are about actual needs, rather than the ability of a bureaucracy to insert itself into every aspect of life. We already don't need those things and would probably do better overall without them. The reason we have them is that the parties who benefit from them (bureaucrats, activists, politicians in need of clients, etc) are more powerful than any organized player who benefits from a more free society. This balance of power has nothing to do with absolute intelligence, as far as I can tell. At most it's about relative intelligence. This is what I mean with actually much of our social problems being structural rather than bottlenecked on population quality.
I think you are mist (hidden)
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