Smartest person you kn(e)w

[smcder]

Ultimately it is a question of the planetary ecology -- how much life it can support. Our species (sitting at the controls of what happens) has had the 'brains' but not the sense to work together to reduce human birth rates. That in itself is a manifestly reasonable solution to our overpopulation problem, and should long ago have been addressed and enforced -- except that our warring tribal power structures cannot agree to work together to bring it about through the single global agency we have, the radically limited UN.



Indeed: the Holocaust in Germany, and the one visited on the native population of North America (among similar outrages). That doesn't make your proposal more reasonable or acceptable (though you go on to elaborate details that seem to be more 'humane'). I don't personally want to debate those proposals, and I don't know how they could be applied responsibly: who/what body of medical judges would identify and justify each human obliteration?. To me only controlling the birth rate is acceptable, and it could be done. But speaking of the survivors of holocausts and genocides, in what sense do you mean 'survival'? Merely the continued existence of the survivors? As if those survivors didn't continue to live with broken spirits and scalded hearts? Have you talked with any of these survivors? I have, especially Jewish people who can't speak about what was done to their parents, wives, husbands, children without breaking down 30, 40, 50 years later, who live hidden away in their apartments fearful of the world beyond the door, unable to engage it, permanently disheartened by outrage and grief and a terrible sense of helplessness..



That's an interesting idea about the Neanderthals that I've seen expressed elsewhere. Continuing genetic traces of Neanderthal DNA in ours could account for some of the extreme variations in sensitivity we see in humans today. I do think our species is in general more emotionally calloused these days, which I think derives as much from the dominant current interpretation of what we are (mainly dominant in the West) as from the variety of traumas that most people on the planet have passed through over time. Merleau-Ponty used this metaphor -- the fish is in the water and the water is in the fish -- to evoke for his readers the intimate interconnections and interdependence between consciousness and the world in which it exists. The metaphor also works if we extend it to the compromised health and vigor of organisms in polluted environments today. The more polluted the world becomes, the more damaged we become, both physically and spiritually. It's a vicious circle that needs to be remediated from both ends of the spectrum of subjectivity and objective conditions within which we live and find reasons to want to live, or not.

Ultimately it is a question of the planetary ecology -- how much life it can support. Our species (sitting at the controls of what happens) has had the 'brains' but not the sense to work together to reduce human birth rates. That in itself is a manifestly reasonable solution to our overpopulation problem, and should long ago have been addressed and enforced -- except that our warring tribal power structures cannot agree to work together to bring it about through the single global agency we have, the radically limited UN.

That's why I didn't specify an ecological disaster or that the population was the cause it would work just as well to say we had to reduce the population from 7 billion to 6.5 billion in a few weeks - I just didn't want there to be anything that could be faulted to anyone. The point of the hypothetical was to see how people valued one thing over another. You usually need a whole series of hypotheticals (and a captive audience ... like a law school classroom) for this work ... but what you see happens is that as you slide from something outrageous 7 billion or 1 billion to a real life case (Hiroshima) one step at a time, people find out what they really believe.

Indeed: the Holocaust in Germany, and the one visited on the native population of North America (among similar outrages). That doesn't make your proposal more reasonable or acceptable (though you go on to elaborate details that seem to be more 'humane'). I don't personally want to debate those proposals, and I don't know how they could be applied responsibly: who/what body of medical judges would identify and justify each human obliteration?. To me only controlling the birth rate is acceptable, and it could be done. But speaking of the survivors of holocausts and genocides, in what sense do you mean 'survival'? Merely the continued existence of the survivors? As if those survivors didn't continue to live with broken spirits and scalded hearts? Have you talked with any of these survivors? I have, especially Jewish people who can't speak about what was done to their parents, wives, husbands, children without breaking down 30, 40, 50 years later, who live hidden away in their apartments fearful of the world beyond the door, unable to engage it, permanently disheartened by outrage and grief and a terrible sense of helplessness..

Again, it's not my proposal - that's to tweak the hypothetical in such a way that some would accept the more "humane" terms "well, no one suffers and people are going to die in about the same order, if only a little faster - then that's OK" - and in fact you see that in your law school classroom happening ... and you make note of who those people are! In the hypothetical there would be no body of medical judges - except for the designers of the virus according to the rules I described.

I did talk with a lot of people who survived when I was in Germany. The first family I stayed with - the mother witnessed a box car of children being unloaded and put into the ground. She was told by her mother that they were sleeping. I visited Dachau that year too and it was one of two places where I had a sense of evil that was almost physical. Elie Wiesel's books are also good - as is Conscience and Courage - and Frankl's books of course. So the virus is kind of a forced choice "Endlosung" - would we give up our existence in order to hold on to our humanity?

Historically, I think we have not. But you mention that there seems to be evidence we are growing now in empathy and I hope that's true. As to my own solution to the problem - I think I would preserve humanity if possible - because of the potential we have shown ... although I think the more interesting book than Planet of the Apes would be Planet of the Dogs. I'd really like to see how human level intelligence would work in a dog society!

As to my active participation in the above scenario, I could see value in taking the virus as a volunteer subject (as someone who is already ill and would preferentially be affected by the virus anyway to see if there are any "side effects") -

@Burnt State
@ufology
Another solution to the 7:1 problem that wasn't mentioned would be to simply share the information you have - i.e. that the world's population would have to be reduced by six billion in a short time or everyone dies. I wonder what would happen then?

In fact that's a hypothetical in itself.

You are the only person who knows that if the world's population isn't reduced by six billion in a few years ... then everyone on the planet will die.

Do you tell anyone?

Fun discussion material for a long family car trip or your next family get together! ;-)

 

[Randall]

OK - then wouldn't this be the smartest, most dispassionate thing you could do - to accept the following offer?

Aliens come to you and offer to re-distribute all the world's resources equally among all 7 billion people.

No catches ... you get 1/7 billionth of the resources yourself - no more or less. You ask why they do it and they say they are bored and curious how a randomly selected human would answer.

Yes? or No? (no Googling)

No. I don't think that would be the smartest solution ( assuming there is one that is realistic ).

 

[smcder]

No. I don't think that would be the smartest solution ( assuming there is one that is realistic ).

So ... "No" you would not evenly distribute all the world's resources?

Anyone else?

To be clear, this isn't the 7:1 scenario ... it's the how can I best help those I feel compassion for scenario?

And it's just a general question: is this the right thing to do? The best for all concerned?

The other thing is to think what might be meant by resources ... the aliens said

"all" the world's resources

Does that make a difference in your answer?

 

[smcder]

In my recent travels I discovered a similar thought experiment that was put forth in 1967

Trolley problem - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

"The trolley problem is a thought experiment in ethics. The general form of the problem is this: There is a runaway trolley barreling down therailway tracks. Ahead, on the tracks, there are five people tied up and unable to move. The trolley is headed straight for them. You are standing some distance off in the train yard, next to a lever.

If you pull this lever, the trolley will switch to a different set of tracks. However, you notice that there is one person on the side track. You have two options: (1) Do nothing, and the trolley kills the five people on the main track. (2) Pull the lever, diverting the trolley onto the side track where it will kill one person. Which is the correct choice?"

"The problem was first introduced byPhilippa Foot in 1967,[1] but also extensively analysed by Judith Thomson,[2][3] Peter Unger,[4] andFrances Kamm as recently as 1996.[5]Outside of the domain of traditional philosophical discussion, the trolley problem has been a significant feature in the fields of cognitive science and, more recently, of neuroethics. It has also been a topic on various TV shows dealing with human psychology."

 

[Constance]

So ... "No" you would not evenly distribute all the world's resources? Anyone else? To be clear, this isn't the 7:1 scenario ... it's the how can I best help those I feel compassion for scenario? And it's just a general question: is this the right thing to do? The best for all concerned?
The other thing is to think what might be meant by resources ... the aliens said
"all" the world's resources. Does that make a difference in your answer?

I've been a democratic socialist for a long time. The question as asked is impractical and impracticable. Our goal around the planet should long ago have risen to the level of requiring a managed economy of the planet's life-supporting resources, abolishing poverty and oppression worldwide. We could use the alien's help in instructing us on how to achieve this goal on a planet carved up among nations and corporations controlling the global economics of Late Capitalism in the interests of political dominance and private profit..

 

[smcder]

I've been a democratic socialist for a long time. The question as asked is impractical and impracticable. Our goal around the planet should long ago have risen to the level of requiring a managed economy of the planet's life-supporting resources, abolishing poverty and oppression worldwide. We could use the alien's help in instructing us on how to achieve this goal on a planet carved up among nations and corporations controlling the global economics of Late Capitalism in the interests of political dominance and private profit..

A hypothetical isn't practical ... at first. But it should move that way step by step in response to the answers.

In this case the first step is to find out why one would or wouldn't share everything with everyone if they could and to see what one thinks "all resources" might mean?

You're farther along on this line of questioning because you've thought it through and come to a position.

In @ufology post above he said he had to have a certain level of comfort even if others had less. So the line of questioning could also examine the ethics of the position - and look at sacrifice and altruism.

If one answered yes above the hypothetical could then move backward to see what sharing the worlds resources equally means, to what extent it's possible and if one thinks it's the right answer.

 

[Constance]

I'll even bite on the trolley problem, but I'm getting tired of these tormenting questions so will retire from the thread after this. I think it's a no-brainer that one would quite automatically divert the trolley to the track on which only one person was standing since the number of people (relatives, children, friends, associates) impacted by killing five people would be exponentially greater.

 

[smcder]

I'll even bite on the trolley problem, but I'm getting tired of these tormenting questions so will retire from the thread after this. I think it's a no-brainer that one would quite automatically divert the trolley to the track on which only one person was standing since the number of people (relatives, children, friends, associates) impacted by killing five people would be exponentially greater.

I understand! ;-) ... and appreciate the answers ... I don't expect anyone to answer them - it's fun if they do - and we can move on or end the thread.

(Ps from here the (hypothetical) law professor would question if the utilitarian theory is a no brainer, if there are others ways to look at it and how a judge might look at the case in a court of law - as action was taken that resulted in death.

He or she might also begin to examine how this relates to the 7:1 problem.)

 

[Soupie]

Can you support the claim that intelligence and the capacity to experience compassion are mostly innate? My reading on intelligence is dated - back in the 90s, but there was an enormous uproar over Herrnstein and Murray's claim that IQ was innate (and varied by "race") Stephen J Gould's book The Mismeasure of Man was maybe the best reply at the time ... from all of that discussion the highest figures I saw for heritability of intelligence was 50% ... even rats that were raised in "enriched" environments seemed to show more intelligence.

Sorry to dig this up, but didn't want to leave this hanging. So if the mean IQ is 100, then I suppose generally anything above or below that we would attribute to 50% genetics and 50% environment? Do I have that right?

I've read that intelligence -- based on twin studies -- may be as high as 60% genetics, but 50% is fine. And you're right that saying it's all "innate" is obviously wrong. However, I would say that the 50% environmental most likely refers to early environment, say, prenatal to 5 and perhaps even later, maybe 10-12 years old. So intelligence is mostly determined via genetics and ones environment between the prenatal period and the age of 5ish. Thus, while intelligence might not all be innate, per se, it seems to be largely out of ones' hands as an adult.

 

[smcder]

Sorry to dig this up, but didn't want to leave this hanging. So if the mean IQ is 100, then I suppose generally anything above or below that we would attribute to 50% genetics and 50% environment? Do I have that right?

I've read that intelligence -- based on twin studies -- may be as high as 60% genetics, but 50% is fine. And you're right that saying it's all "innate" is obviously wrong. However, I would say that the 50% environmental most likely refers to early environment, say, prenatal to 5 and perhaps even later, maybe 10-12 years old. So intelligence is mostly determined via genetics and ones environment between the prenatal period and the age of 5ish. Thus, while intelligence might not all be innate, per se, it seems to be largely out of ones' hands as an adult.

However, I would say that the 50% environmental most likely refers to early environment, say, prenatal to 5 and perhaps even later, maybe 10-12 years old.

Sounds like an empirical question - let's find out!

 

[smcder]

ny times articles
can you make yuourself smarter
cant paste the link now
until recently considered impossible, increase your intelligence through training
Google it or Ill look it up later and see if it's what we're looking for

 

[smcder]

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2012/04/22/magazine/can-you-make-yourself-smarter.html?pagewanted=all

Boost Memory to Increase Intelligence

https://www.gwern.net/docs/dnb/2012-chooi.pdf

 

[smcder]

5 Experts Answer: Can Your IQ Change? | Intelligence Tests & IQ Scores

 

[Burnt State]

@Burnt State
@ufology
Another solution to the 7:1 problem that wasn't mentioned would be to simply share the information you have - i.e. that the world's population would have to be reduced by six billion in a short time or everyone dies. I wonder what would happen then?

In fact that's a hypothetical in itself.

You are the only person who knows that if the world's population isn't reduced by six billion in a few years ... then everyone on the planet will die.

Do you tell anyone?

Fun discussion material for a long family car trip or your next family get together! ;-)

if I could be listened to and not deemed insane like this man, then I would work to tell the story:

because like you I would want the human race to survive. we have shown potential. we are brilliant, creative, divine, imaginative creatures of science, art and music. we haven't begun to show what we can really do, as we're too busy concerning ourselves with materialism, instead of focusing on ideas of creative brilliance, instead of getting to know each other. so I would want to save the 1 billion in any way possible. i would definitely make pamphlets and things....after all, hope matters

as for the Trolley problem, that's a real dilemma. inaction kills 5, and leaves 1 alive and action kills 1 but saves 5. do I want to be responsible for killing someone instead of letting chance do what chance will do? I've faced those life and death scenarios before and chose wrong. so I know that in this case it would be difficult to make a decision. one wants to slow down time, estimate the situation, understand the consequences of available decisions and then act or not.

can I live with myself knowing I killed someone to save 5? I think in this case, no. I do not think I would be comfortable with knowing I was responsible for a death. whereas, could I live with not saving someone because of inaction or failed action? yes I could, and have.

this is of course very different for me than the absolutist aspects of the 7:1 examples because these are the last 1 billion whereas these six people have billions after them. do their own individual lives mean anything to me that would cause me to feel the same as the 7:1 slaughter? no, I do not have that information. I don't know if that 5 is my family or if the 1 is my brother so I can only decide whether or not saving 5 can outweigh killing 1. as I am not prepared to go to the family of 1 to explain why I chose to kill their family member to save others, I could still stand before the families of the five and explain why I could not commit murder to save their family members.

 

[smcder]

Sorry to dig this up, but didn't want to leave this hanging. So if the mean IQ is 100, then I suppose generally anything above or below that we would attribute to 50% genetics and 50% environment? Do I have that right?

I've read that intelligence -- based on twin studies -- may be as high as 60% genetics, but 50% is fine. And you're right that saying it's all "innate" is obviously wrong. However, I would say that the 50% environmental most likely refers to early environment, say, prenatal to 5 and perhaps even later, maybe 10-12 years old. So intelligence is mostly determined via genetics and ones environment between the prenatal period and the age of 5ish. Thus, while intelligence might not all be innate, per se, it seems to be largely out of ones' hands as an adult.

The articles linked above show a more complex picture.

You only mention intelligence in your response but originally you said that the ability to experience compassion was innate?

 

[smcder]

Adult intelligence. Ackerman, Phillip L.

KNOWLEDGE AND INTELLIGENCE

When an adult is presented with a completely novel problem (e.g., memorizing a random set of numbers or letters), the basic intellectual processes are typically implicated in predicting which individuals will be successful in solving problems. The dilemma for adult intellectual assessment is that the adult is rarely presented with a completely novel problem in the real world of academic or occupational endeavors. Rather, the problems which an adult is asked to solve almost inevitably draw greatly on the his/her accumulated knowledge and skills--one does not build a house by only memorizing physics formulae. For an adult, intellect is better conceptualized by the tasks that the person can accomplish and the skills that he/she has developed rather than the number of digits which can be stored in working memory or the number of syllogistic reasoning items which can be correctly evaluated. Thus, the content of the intellect is at least as important as the processes of intellect in determining an adult's real-world problem solving efficacy.

From the artificial intelligence field, researchers have discarded the idea of a useful General Problem Solver in favor of knowledge-based expert systems. This is because no amount of processing power can achieve real-world problem solving proficiency without an extensive set of domain-relevant knowledge structures. Gregory (1994) describes the difference between such concepts as "potential intelligence" (knowledge) and "kinetic intelligence" (process). Similarly, Schank and Birnbaum (1994) say that "what makes someone intelligent is what he /she knows."

.....

This reminds me of the studies showing hours of practice predicted level of expert performance not IQ.

 

[smcder]

if I could be listened to and not deemed insane like this man, then I would work to tell the story:

because like you I would want the human race to survive. we have shown potential. we are brilliant, creative, divine, imaginative creatures of science, art and music. we haven't begun to show what we can really do, as we're too busy concerning ourselves with materialism, instead of focusing on ideas of creative brilliance, instead of getting to know each other. so I would want to save the 1 billion in any way possible. i would definitely make pamphlets and things....after all, hope matters

as for the Trolley problem, that's a real dilemma. inaction kills 5, and leaves 1 alive and action kills 1 but saves 5. do I want to be responsible for killing someone instead of letting chance do what chance will do? I've faced those life and death scenarios before and chose wrong. so I know that in this case it would be difficult to make a decision. one wants to slow down time, estimate the situation, understand the consequences of available decisions and then act or not.

can I live with myself knowing I killed someone to save 5? I think in this case, no. I do not think I would be comfortable with knowing I was responsible for a death. whereas, could I live with not saving someone because of inaction or failed action? yes I could, and have.

this is of course very different for me than the absolutist aspects of the 7:1 examples because these are the last 1 billion whereas these six people have billions after them. do their own individual lives mean anything to me that would cause me to feel the same as the 7:1 slaughter? no, I do not have that information. I don't know if that 5 is my family or if the 1 is my brother so I can only decide whether or not saving 5 can outweigh killing 1. as I am not prepared to go to the family of 1 to explain why I chose to kill their family member to save others, I could still stand before the families of the five and explain why I could not commit murder to save their family members.

Is it fair of me to compare the 7:1 problem to our current global situation? I think it's around a billion people who are starving, certainly if you count in the results of the lack of other resources and the resulting diseases, etc - you'd approach that number.

I worked with one of the largest shipping companies in the world last Christmas season and there's no logistical problem to send an 8oz package to the other side of the world in 24hrs.

So we won't participate in mass murder individually, which I think is right, but we don't seem to have the capacity to act in coordination to give up some comfort to meet the basic needs of all. That's kind of a species failing ... it's hard to blame any one person, because if we don't all do it at the same time, it doesn't work. And we are going to all have very different ideas of how to make it work and we're not going to give up those ideas either to coordinate a response ... porcupine theory again.

because like you I would want the human race to survive. we have shown potential. we are brilliant, creative, divine, imaginative creatures of science, art and music. we haven't begun to show what we can really do, as we're too busy concerning ourselves with materialism, instead of focusing on ideas of creative brilliance, instead of getting to know each other. so I would want to save the 1 billion in any way possible. i would definitely make pamphlets and things....after all, hope matters

I don't guess I really know what a long time is in this case, but it seems to me we've had a long time to show what we can do as a species.

I don't see so far that science and technology have made us better people, but has rather increased the comfort of a small percentage of people. I think that's what motivates many people interested in transhumanism - the idea that they will benefit - but from what I can see, the history of technology is the greater the benefit the fewer people receive it. Transhumanism is a very great "benefit" so why would an average person receive it?

Transhumanism seems to focus on increased intelligence, physical ability and immortality. That's why I ask whether the idea of transhumanism should consider some kind of moral improvement or focus on increasing those things you mention - creative brilliance, empathy, getting to know one another? And how would we do that? What if anything is it "safe" to change about ourselves? Is it safe to trust the evolutionary or is our tweaking ourselves a part of that process ... smart enough to ask questions, aren't we!

And if we've not been motivated by these qualities to a great enough extent in the past, why would we be motivated to increase them now?

 

[smcder]

Do I want to be responsible for killing someone instead of letting chance do what chance will do?

Thinking lawyerly, I say once you've observed and assessed the situation you've changed it morally. If you had frozen up that would be another matter.

And chance already did its thing - it brought you to being present and able to influence the outcome. I'd argue that that creates an obligation to participate.

It also hinges on the idea of action. I say the action was a mental one, the decision to do nothing, you didn't freeze, which might be a kind of inaction or at least something less in your control - you went through an active mental process and decided to do nothing ... so I would say you took action and are responsible for the action.

So now the morality of the action hinges on valuing one life over five.

 

[smcder]

@Soupie - you could do this empirically ... take an iq test, then practice with one of those brain trainer software for a period of time and re-test, or against some measure of intelligence, even if it's more subjective - you might also be interested in "working memory" - I think you mentioned you're not good at this or haven't focused on it and it's linked in some of the studies above to increase in adult IQ (although other studies, of course, dispute this) ... it may also be we need to introduce Soupie's dilemma: humans are not smart enough to measure the kind of intelligence that can be increased ... ?

 

[Soupie]

You only mention intelligence in your response but originally you said that the ability to experience compassion was innate?

Like intelligence, personality seems to become relatively stable once one becomes an adult. So, like intelligence, personality (which I'm lumping compassion into) seems to emerge from a complex interaction of gene expression (nature) and environmental influences (nurture). So, again, I would argue that once one reaches adulthood -- mid-twenties -- the core of ones intelligence and personality are established.

However, there is research that indicates nature and nurture can both be trumped, to a certain, but powerful, extent by the mind:

The Social Life of Genes: Shaping Your Molecular Composition - Pacific Standard: The Science of Society

“You can’t change your genes. But if we’re even half right about all this, you can change the way your genes behave—which is almost the same thing. By adjusting your environment you can adjust your gene activity. That’s what we’re doing as we move through life. We’re constantly trying to hunt down that sweet spot between too much challenge and too little.

“That’s a really important part of this: To an extent that immunologists and psychologists rarely appreciate, we are architects of our own experience. Your subjective experience carries more power than your objective situation. If you feel like you’re alone even when you’re in a room filled with the people closest to you, you’re going to have problems. If you feel like you’re well supported even though there’s nobody else in sight; if you carry relationships in your head; if you come at the world with a sense that people care about you, that you’re valuable, that you’re okay; then your body is going to act as if you’re okay—even if you’re wrong about all that.”
​

So the fact that -- as willful entities -- we can cognitively shape our own "environment" is powerful. My only question is whether we can do so to the extent that we can significantly increase our intelligence or change our personality. If we can completely and radically change who we are, it begs the question: who is changing who?