Re: META: List allowables & cults (was DirkJOIN)

From: Olie Lamb (neomorphy@gmail.com)
Date: Tue Mar 07 2006 - 16:52:40 MST


On 3/8/06, Eliezer S. Yudkowsky <sentience@pobox.com> wrote:
>
> Jeff Medina wrote:
> >
> >>Some, like the belief that IQ is the highest value in
> >>life, are common among technophiles.
> >

I find it kinda funny that {IQ/ objective measures of intelligence} is so
often hailed around Transhumanist / Technophile circles, when it's so often
derided as bunkum in psych circles (to which many cog-sci stuff is
connected}.

Having seen the outcomes from various groups selected for IQ / intelligence,
I'm a little mixed on the issue. I think that talk of "general
intelligence" needs to be carefully separated from IQ measurements, which
are unavoidably skewed by specialised modules, like, say, LANGUAGE.

But that's not what I wanted to pip in about...

> But if you're intelligent you also get the intrinsically valuable fun of
> figuring things out. It is more fun to do things through your own wits
> than to do them via genie bottle.

It can be. But just coz you got the smarts doesn't mean that you will enjoy
using them. Most folks have plenty of smarts to keep their brains fully
occupied through sheer imagination. However, a heckuvalotta people prefer
to stare at the TV, which often results in lower levels of brain activity
than staring at a blank wall.

Laziness will promote a "genie, do it for me!" approach to thought, just
as eagerness will promote asking the genie not to tell you until you've
figured it out.

It is a fun, but largely empty excercise to imagine the sociological
implications of Superintelligence on most people's motivations for all sorts
of endeavours.

-- Olie NcLean



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