A while back I was discussing long term future values, i.e., what we want our descendants to be or achieve, and I realized that pretty much any simple description of such values seems crazy. With a little effort it is easy to find counter-examples, or at least discomfort-examples, to most any description much beyond “I hope future folks get what they want.”
Something titled like “Lying to Ourselves”. You could spend half of your chapters on normal daily examples of how we really make decisions about dating, marriage, kids, since people love that, then you could build up to how this way of thinking affects how we think about and accept and change our systems of social control like governments.
Brilliant post, reminded me of Keat's notion of negative capability - very few successful people stray outside their competence because they don't have that negative capability (except enough to get skilled at their core work) and are comfortable enough where they are, intellectual curiosity & high IQ are not necessarily concomitant traits.
"Muddle headedness is a condition precedent to independent thought."- Alfred North Whitehead
How many CEO's do you know personally to determine whether or not they are reflective? On another note would you say that you are more reflective about world issues than Bill Gates?
The inferred properties of electric charge, color charge, spin, mass, etc. seem to be sufficient for explaining what we observe, including human ability and behavior. There is no need to introduce an additional property of “intelligence”…doing so adds nothing.
Deriving the particulars of argumentative and informative posting behavior from the basic physical properties of the type you mention is not something I ever saw in my Physics PhD education. Maybe I was absent that day?
If such a derivation existed, I would imagine there would be a step something like "And then a miracle happened" before they derive the answer. Perhaps that miracle step includes "intelligence."
It would take you 4 months to write a book that would be better and more useful than a Geoffrey Miller book, and his books are good and useful, and successful.
Something titled like "Lying to Ourselves". You could spend half of your chapters on normal daily examples of how we really make decisions about dating, marriage, kids, since people love that, then you could build up to how this way of thinking affects how we think about and accept and change our systems of social control like governments. You'd have to make sure to navigate away from the exact subject that 'freak undercover naked' economists cover. Then you could go wacky for a couple of chapters.
So you could do something useful and probably successful on a national level, by February, that would synthesize some of your thinking about us. How many people are in that position?
there's a selection bias. we see the smart, unreflective people who "succeed" and become CEO. we don't see the smart, unreflective people who lead lives of quiet desperation as low-ranking vice presidents at fortune 500 companies. nor will we ever see again the smart, unreflective people who blew up trading MBS. (cf. taleb)
....sounds like a bit of normal existential angst.
'
"I don't think we're here for anything, we're just products of evolution. You can say 'Gee, your life must be pretty bleak if you don't think there's a purpose', but I'm anticipating a good lunch."
-Dr. James Watson (Nobel laureate & co-discoverer of DNA)
Sounds to me like we have very different standards for both who counts as smart and who counts as successful. Most smart people don't try to be successful, (instead they play out an identity they are handed like everyone else) so the don't succeed. Big surprise. I'm very surprised when I see someone who seems to be trying to be successful, as I understand trying, and I expect such people to succeed with high confidence.
In my perspective, the choice between iconoclastic and conventional success is less a matter of status-seeking and more a matter of whether you have the willpower to chug through the less-fun route of conventional success. Don't expect any sympathy from the successful because chances are, all things being equal they would also prefer to work on non-mainstream topics yet they still force themselves through the drudgery of mainstream success for the sake of economic security. The iconoclasts are unique in possessing the freedom to pursue their primary interests and chances are that this is a boon that their non-iconoclastic peers deeply envy.
I have always marveled at those that achieve conventional success. I want to know how they managed to keep from being distracted by more interesting topics.
"I hope future folks get what they want" is a reasonable statement and, despite its limits, leaves us with plenty of valuable work to do.
For example, if the human race is mostly extincted by a preventable event in the next 50 years, then future folks will not exist and/or be less likely to get what they want, which is bad. So we should work hard to prevent the event from happening.
Intelligence has nothing to do with it. To the extent that success isn't predetermined, it's random.
The problems that you are presented with and the solutions you arrive at are both purely a function of the universe's initial conditions and causal laws, and not due to any intrinsic property that you possess as an individual.
The inferred properties of electric charge, color charge, spin, mass, etc. seem to be sufficient for explaining what we observe, including human ability and behavior. There is no need to introduce an additional property of "intelligence"...doing so adds nothing.
A while back I was discussing long term future values, i.e., what we want our descendants to be or achieve, and I realized that pretty much any simple description of such values seems crazy. With a little effort it is easy to find counter-examples, or at least discomfort-examples, to most any description much beyond “I hope future folks get what they want.”
Isn't this a strong argument for concentrating on existential risk in addition to the inherent badness of future folks not existing? (Existing is a prerequisite for almost everything future folks could want, so the expected value of working against existential risk is not decreased much by our ignorance.)
Something titled like “Lying to Ourselves”. You could spend half of your chapters on normal daily examples of how we really make decisions about dating, marriage, kids, since people love that, then you could build up to how this way of thinking affects how we think about and accept and change our systems of social control like governments.
SOLD!
Brilliant post, reminded me of Keat's notion of negative capability - very few successful people stray outside their competence because they don't have that negative capability (except enough to get skilled at their core work) and are comfortable enough where they are, intellectual curiosity & high IQ are not necessarily concomitant traits.
"Muddle headedness is a condition precedent to independent thought."- Alfred North Whitehead
How many CEO's do you know personally to determine whether or not they are reflective? On another note would you say that you are more reflective about world issues than Bill Gates?
He was quiet for a long time, but just recently left some comments at my blog. He hasn't updated his own in quite a while.
The inferred properties of electric charge, color charge, spin, mass, etc. seem to be sufficient for explaining what we observe, including human ability and behavior. There is no need to introduce an additional property of “intelligence”…doing so adds nothing.
Deriving the particulars of argumentative and informative posting behavior from the basic physical properties of the type you mention is not something I ever saw in my Physics PhD education. Maybe I was absent that day?
If such a derivation existed, I would imagine there would be a step something like "And then a miracle happened" before they derive the answer. Perhaps that miracle step includes "intelligence."
It would take you 4 months to write a book that would be better and more useful than a Geoffrey Miller book, and his books are good and useful, and successful.
Something titled like "Lying to Ourselves". You could spend half of your chapters on normal daily examples of how we really make decisions about dating, marriage, kids, since people love that, then you could build up to how this way of thinking affects how we think about and accept and change our systems of social control like governments. You'd have to make sure to navigate away from the exact subject that 'freak undercover naked' economists cover. Then you could go wacky for a couple of chapters.
So you could do something useful and probably successful on a national level, by February, that would synthesize some of your thinking about us. How many people are in that position?
there's a selection bias. we see the smart, unreflective people who "succeed" and become CEO. we don't see the smart, unreflective people who lead lives of quiet desperation as low-ranking vice presidents at fortune 500 companies. nor will we ever see again the smart, unreflective people who blew up trading MBS. (cf. taleb)
Where did he go?
'Doubting my far mind".
....sounds like a bit of normal existential angst.
'
"I don't think we're here for anything, we're just products of evolution. You can say 'Gee, your life must be pretty bleak if you don't think there's a purpose', but I'm anticipating a good lunch."
-Dr. James Watson (Nobel laureate & co-discoverer of DNA)
Sounds to me like we have very different standards for both who counts as smart and who counts as successful. Most smart people don't try to be successful, (instead they play out an identity they are handed like everyone else) so the don't succeed. Big surprise. I'm very surprised when I see someone who seems to be trying to be successful, as I understand trying, and I expect such people to succeed with high confidence.
How would we know? Our lives are examined.
In my perspective, the choice between iconoclastic and conventional success is less a matter of status-seeking and more a matter of whether you have the willpower to chug through the less-fun route of conventional success. Don't expect any sympathy from the successful because chances are, all things being equal they would also prefer to work on non-mainstream topics yet they still force themselves through the drudgery of mainstream success for the sake of economic security. The iconoclasts are unique in possessing the freedom to pursue their primary interests and chances are that this is a boon that their non-iconoclastic peers deeply envy.
I have always marveled at those that achieve conventional success. I want to know how they managed to keep from being distracted by more interesting topics.
Says the guy reading the blog at the office.
"I hope future folks get what they want" is a reasonable statement and, despite its limits, leaves us with plenty of valuable work to do.
For example, if the human race is mostly extincted by a preventable event in the next 50 years, then future folks will not exist and/or be less likely to get what they want, which is bad. So we should work hard to prevent the event from happening.
Intelligence has nothing to do with it. To the extent that success isn't predetermined, it's random.
The problems that you are presented with and the solutions you arrive at are both purely a function of the universe's initial conditions and causal laws, and not due to any intrinsic property that you possess as an individual.
The inferred properties of electric charge, color charge, spin, mass, etc. seem to be sufficient for explaining what we observe, including human ability and behavior. There is no need to introduce an additional property of "intelligence"...doing so adds nothing.
A while back I was discussing long term future values, i.e., what we want our descendants to be or achieve, and I realized that pretty much any simple description of such values seems crazy. With a little effort it is easy to find counter-examples, or at least discomfort-examples, to most any description much beyond “I hope future folks get what they want.”
Isn't this a strong argument for concentrating on existential risk in addition to the inherent badness of future folks not existing? (Existing is a prerequisite for almost everything future folks could want, so the expected value of working against existential risk is not decreased much by our ignorance.)