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> 3. Most humans spend large amounts of time doing drudge, unrewarding work below their full developed potential Imagine all humans working at their full poten

> 3. Most humans spend large amounts of time doing drudge, unrewarding work below their full developed potential Imagine all humans working at their full potential. Would we have fewer people because we do not need that much potential? Would this have caused world wars decades, centuries, or millennia earlier? What will be the cost of making all humans work at their full potential? Maybe a hard problem to solve.

deleted 4y ago
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WJW 4y ago
I kinda depends if they can agree on what needs to be done I suppose, just like in the real world. But TBH it sounds like it would quickly devolve into NIH, a bit like a team with too many seniors.
- mlyle 4y ago
  Imagine monarchs and elites in the 1200s picturing what would happen if the commoners were educated and able to pursue intellectual pursuits en masse. They'd have similar arguments. And I mean, they wouldn't be wrong: we're wasteful; we duplicate effort; things are scattershot and disorganized. But we live in an amazing world of progress, creative expression, and wealth, too. Imagine taking another small step in the direction towards developing and exploiting human talent and allowing for self-actualization.
  - WJW 4y ago
    Oh I don't disagree that we should allow as many humans as possible to do self-actualize. It is clearly the right thing to do just from a moral standpoint. I just think that most of the people who fully "self-actualize to their full potential" as, say, a lobbyist or a conspiracy theorist podcaster would not be of as much benefit to the world as some of the enlightenment era scientists. That was what I was getting at in my previous post: having everyone at peak potential is great when everyone is aligned. If there is internal strife, peak potential just means bigger conflicts. Taken to the extreme, that means bigger wars and billions of dead people. Until we can figure out the coordination problem, human limitations are not the biggest problem IMO.
    - mlyle 4y ago
      Yah-- I get you. My counterpoint is that even without people being aligned, we're far outperforming the past and what people hundreds of years ago thought we might do with increased privilege. Indeed, we even have less strife overall, even if we have many more axes of disagreement and fewer shared values.
fractallyte 4y ago
This speculation is addressed in the novel Brainwave, by Poul Anderson (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brain_Wave https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brain_Wave) It's pretty dated regarding the roles of women and men, but the ideas are very interesting nevertheless. One of the big insights is that many people might not be ready to operate at full potential - they would succumb to various forms of insanity. Look how the Internet's 'network effect' amplified the voices of conspiracy theorists all over the world. Now imagine an enhancement of that kind of paranoia: this is what the super-rationalist protagonists had to deal with in Brainwave...
- kshacker 4y ago
  Yeah conspiracy theories, or people just going full potential in villainy would be very interesting takes.

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WJW 4y ago

I kinda depends if they can agree on what needs to be done I suppose, just like in the real world. But TBH it sounds like it would quickly devolve into NIH, a bit like a team with too many seniors.

mlyle 4y ago
Imagine monarchs and elites in the 1200s picturing what would happen if the commoners were educated and able to pursue intellectual pursuits en masse. They'd have similar arguments. And I mean, they wouldn't be wrong: we're wasteful; we duplicate effort; things are scattershot and disorganized. But we live in an amazing world of progress, creative expression, and wealth, too. Imagine taking another small step in the direction towards developing and exploiting human talent and allowing for self-actualization.
- WJW 4y ago
  Oh I don't disagree that we should allow as many humans as possible to do self-actualize. It is clearly the right thing to do just from a moral standpoint. I just think that most of the people who fully "self-actualize to their full potential" as, say, a lobbyist or a conspiracy theorist podcaster would not be of as much benefit to the world as some of the enlightenment era scientists. That was what I was getting at in my previous post: having everyone at peak potential is great when everyone is aligned. If there is internal strife, peak potential just means bigger conflicts. Taken to the extreme, that means bigger wars and billions of dead people. Until we can figure out the coordination problem, human limitations are not the biggest problem IMO.
  - mlyle 4y ago
    Yah-- I get you. My counterpoint is that even without people being aligned, we're far outperforming the past and what people hundreds of years ago thought we might do with increased privilege. Indeed, we even have less strife overall, even if we have many more axes of disagreement and fewer shared values.

fractallyte 4y ago

This speculation is addressed in the novel Brainwave, by Poul Anderson (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brain_Wave https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brain_Wave) It's pretty dated regarding the roles of women and men, but the ideas are very interesting nevertheless. One of the big insights is that many people might not be ready to operate at full potential - they would succumb to various forms of insanity. Look how the Internet's 'network effect' amplified the voices of conspiracy theorists all over the world. Now imagine an enhancement of that kind of paranoia: this is what the super-rationalist protagonists had to deal with in Brainwave...

kshacker 4y ago
Yeah conspiracy theories, or people just going full potential in villainy would be very interesting takes.