Comments on: Wisdom of the Ancients, Redux

By: Keller Scholl

Keller Scholl — Sat, 12 Oct 2013 19:34:17 +0000

You refer to the elite of the victorian society as if it corresponds perfectly with the IQ-elite of the victorian society. In modern America, this wouldn’t be true, and I suspect that it was much less true in Galton’s age, where inherited wealth would still explain the vast majority of your personal wealth. So, they may have been the elite, but that doesn’t mean that they were the smartest.

I agree with your conclusion, but this point troubled me.

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By: Douglas Knight

Douglas Knight — Sat, 01 Jun 2013 22:12:17 +0000

I don’t think Roger Scuton called Margaret Thatcher a “vile woman.” Do you have a source for this? At least since she left office, he has been extremely positive.

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By: Multiheaded

Multiheaded — Sat, 01 Jun 2013 20:22:55 +0000

Smarter? Yeah, might be a mistake on my part. Positive impact? Citations needed, to me it seems that Jobs mostly built fancy toys that didn’t push the industry itself forward but rather just marketed it very well… Buffet got brushed aside with his open letter about his class being parasitical and a threat to American society while Keynes changed policy in major ways… Thatcher looks just straight-up destructive…
(just for fun: http://samkriss.wordpress.com/2013/04/08/scenes-from-the-thatcher-funeral/)

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By: Multiheaded

Multiheaded — Sat, 01 Jun 2013 20:16:15 +0000

I suspect that object-level policy and ideology/propaganda are in practice always enmeshed in many weird ways, so you might be making a dangerous mistake by not accounting for ideological factors right at the drawing board.

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By: Multiheaded

Multiheaded — Sat, 01 Jun 2013 20:12:54 +0000

Thatcher? Gotta be fucking kidding me. From what I’ve heard from British bloggers: cultural devastation, homeless people on the streets, squandered the windfall of North Sea oil, “reformed” unprofitable industries by demolishing them wholesale (as the Chicago Boys helped do in 1990s Russia, so this is kinda personal for me)… Hell, Roger Scruton, an eminent British conservative/reactionary, called her a “vile woman”.

I agree that Curie wasn’t all that exceptional. I linked Curie to Thatcher because she went from a good and positive-utility scientist/bureaucrat to a negative-utility politician, IMO.

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By: Scott Alexander

Scott Alexander — Sat, 01 Jun 2013 18:44:57 +0000

Agreed with the first part, not sure what you mean by the singularity opportunity cost.

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By: Scott Alexander

Scott Alexander — Sat, 01 Jun 2013 18:44:18 +0000

Totally happy to agree that even small IQ gains are super important.

And if you want to institute some simple and ethical eugenics plan like the one I mentioned in my description of Raikoth – or just promoting the Nobel sperm bank better – I am totally in support of that.

But if the argument is reversing the demographic transition, or even banning all foreign immigration (which may be a special case since it decreases average IQ without decreasing the number of high IQ people around for several generations until interbreeding is complete, and might even bring in new advantageous alleles ie hybrid vigor) – both of which are two of the most otherwise highest-utility policies there are, and both of which would require fundamental and very dangerous restructurings of society to complete – then I don’t think the gains from one or two IQ points are that high.

And I also think that there are probably vastly, VASTLY easier way to get those gains – either by decreasing class inequality (which allows the geniuses in the lower class to realize their potential via Flynn Effect), Nobel sperm bank type projects, biologically-informed parenting like in that guide I wrote, or just intelligence amplification research. Anything complicated that involves fighting off Vast Formless Things should be number two hundred on the list.

If that was the only way to stop total dysgenic collapse of society, that would be one thing. If we’re talking one IQ point, screw it.

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By: Konkvistador

Konkvistador — Sat, 01 Jun 2013 18:28:47 +0000

Your wider point is good despite terrible examples however. To solve it you would basically neeed a thiusand Robin Hansons running a country. I suggest we clone or upload. Leftist politics (but I repeat myself) in general are a huge neagtive sum game.

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By: Konkvistador

Konkvistador — Sat, 01 Jun 2013 18:24:51 +0000

Fun fact: Keynes considered Eugenics vitally important.

Also Thacher was probably a net gain for Britain, her problem was that she onky squashed the Unions and not the other centers of power.