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Nathan Merrill's avatar

See, the problem here is you think you're rational.

As a wise man once said, if you think you're free, you'll never escape.

The truth is that this is all entirely irrelevant because you're making the extremely false argument that this is the limiting factor here. The reality is that it is very hard to improve something which is already really good or really complicated.

Consider, for instance, a computer program. It would probably be possible to make, say, Starcraft 2 run 20% better. But how HARD would it be to make that game run 20% more efficiently?

Making things work vastly better is frequently quite difficult, and the more complicated a thing is, the harder it is to do that.

In other words, increasing intelligence is likely to actually suffer diminishing returns rather than accelerating returns, because every iteration is that much harder than the last one.

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Overcoming Bias Commenter's avatar

What if there was a drug or some sort of external method which could strengthen the plasticity of the brain? 

My guess is the brain evolved to be as plastic as it is because it creates more stability in people which helps/helped them survive. For most people taking a drug that increased their plasticity, it would be a tossup whether it led to disaster (impulsive, irrational, angry behavior etc could take over) or led to a great "betterness" (increased rationalilty, compassion, etc.).I would imagine if such a drug or external method was created, the creators would be very careful about who they gave it to. Lets look at a possibility for what would happen if a benevolent government controlled this drug. Perhaps they would choose the following traits to look for (these are the traits that I believe imperative in order to achieve a happy/meaningful life): compassion, self-discipline, ability to face fear, a healthy response to failure, and a mind that uses logic and evidence to reach its conclusions. They would first probably send this person through rigorous training to emphasize these positive traits: I am imagining a completely personalized education designed by the greatest educators/scientists/spiritual persons. If they then gave this person this drug I would think this person would quickly be able to quickly increase these traits, which would then allow him/her to further increase these traits, the cycle goes on. This person could become incredibly powerful in a positive way and also help us quickly reach a further understanding of how to improve this process in the next person and maybe eventually come up with a true theory of betterness.

This could all be negative as well and if this drug got in the wrong hands it could lead to a manipulative, scary person. 

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