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All humans have on average the same intelligence. Why do you assume that there will be a few who will be able to keep up with the pace of retraining oneself. In

by fmora 16y ago

All humans have on average the same intelligence. Why do you assume that there will be a few who will be able to keep up with the pace of retraining oneself. In many poor countries the reason they stay poor has to do with cultural differences rather than IQ differences. i.e. If you teach your kids from a very young age to have good work ethics and good study ethics and teach that anything is possible as long as they work hard then they will grow up to be achievers. If you do not teach your kids this then chances are that they will be poor. Besides, if we ever do achieve the singularity and assuming that we do not destroy ourselves many things that are really expensive now will become extremely cheap in such a way that even the poorest person will still live like a rich person. Singularity will enable us to find solutions to energy much faster than if we tried to do it on our own. It will probably find a way to extract all the energy we need from the sun's rays. Once this happens energy will be as cheap as the oxygen you breath. We'll also have self replicating machines meaning that anything anybody has you will be able to build it in your own home. In fact, poverty may be eliminated all together. Who knows what will become valuable in the new economy. Really, I don't think we can even begin to imagine it. We will probably work to better ourselves and humanity. Yes, we will work maybe even more than before even if we have all the material wealth we can have. Why? Well, because most human beings become depressed if they are not doing anything. We will do what we truly feel passionate about rather than work in a crappy job just to pay the bills because there will be little to no bills to pay. The future is truly Star Trek.

Unseelie 16y ago
Or, the future is the most competitive, up to date persons moving into a range of capability which allows them to marginally outcompete their less up to date peers, catching a faster acceleration. Their less up to date peers follow suit, but while they're retraining for their new devices, the leading edge is learning, faster than before, an even newer device. Or, even better, the minds of kurzwiel's singularity are owned, trained, and taught by competitive corporations, who's only job is to make a great deal of money. The best firms are the ones who compete in the harshest manner, and again, the average gets left far behind. I think its far a mistake to assume that more stuff means an egalitarian future.
- fmora 16y ago
  If people are poor then they won't be able to buy your stuff. On the other hand people with more money means that they'll have a stronger buying power. It benefits the rich that the average person is also well off. People will kill to own a singularity device. However, I don't think this will be necessary since by the time we are technologically ready to invent such a machine it will be invented or duplicated in every single country on earth and by anybody that wants one. We will reach a point in our future where the knowledge to build an Artificial Intelligence machine will be obvious by everybody the same way it is obvious now that the earth is round. This will make it impossible for any single entity to control this technology. The knowledge will be out there in the net for anybody to read. This assuming that we are not stupid enough to destroy ourselves before we reach this point.
gwern 16y ago
> All humans have on average the same intelligence. Why do you assume that there will be a few who will be able to keep up with the pace of retraining oneself. I think you do not quite understand the concept of an 'average'. When one is hiring for a job, does one hire 'humanity' with its average, or an individual human who can be arbitrarily above or below the average?
- fmora 16y ago
  I stand corrected. You are assuming that a person with a phd is inherently smarter than a person running a hot dog stand. He is not. He has more accumulated knowledge but I don't think he is necessarily smarter. I bet that if the hot dog person had been rightly motivated at a young age he could also get a phd. Also, a lot of people are able to game interviews. The difference between an average intelligent person and a super genius is really quite small when it comes to brain power. What you will notice is that the super genius got to where he is because he has worked harder at it than anybody else. From the outside it looks like he is just that much smarter than you or me. The truth is that he is probably just as smart as you or me. He just works harder than you or me at what he does. Same with talented pianist or painters. People like to think that they are borne that way. The truth is that they log thousands and thousands of hours working at it, usually at a very young age. Once they become very good at what they do people label it as talent and do not remember the hard work that it took them to get there. A really brief example, to people from 2000 years ago you will seem like a super-super genius because of all the things you know. Is that truth? No, people from 2000 years are just as smart as you and me. Difference between geniuses and average person is probably so minuscule that it really doesn't contribute that much to success. Persistence and working at it is what makes the difference. There are a lot of supposed geniuses (really high IQ averages) that are complete bums and never achieve anything in life.
  - gwern 16y ago
    > You are assuming that a person with a phd is inherently smarter than a person running a hot dog stand. I'm assuming that if I pick random PhDs and hot dog vendors, I will get a higher average IQ from my random PhDs. Are my PhDs strictly greater in IQ than my hot dog sellers? Maybe, maybe not. But will, say, 99% of my PhDs have a higher IQ? I'd bet on that number or something like it. > No, people from 2000 years are just as smart as you and me. No, they were not. There were a few geniuses back then, the ones we still read and write books about. All few tens of thousands of them out of billions. But the average was vastly below the modern-day. The environmental causes alone are legion: lead plumbing, no formal schooling (worth something like 5-10 IQ points), rampant parasitic diseases of every conceivable sort, irregular or poor nutrition with nutritional deficits (protein deficiency damaging early neurological development - low myelination of nerves, iodine deficiency, etc.), medicine that would kill most patients... Your only valid points are that IQ is not perfectly correlated with success and that it varies within every group. This is not news to anyone who has done even a little reading on the topic.

by fmora 16y ago

Unseelie 16y ago

Or, the future is the most competitive, up to date persons moving into a range of capability which allows them to marginally outcompete their less up to date peers, catching a faster acceleration. Their less up to date peers follow suit, but while they're retraining for their new devices, the leading edge is learning, faster than before, an even newer device. Or, even better, the minds of kurzwiel's singularity are owned, trained, and taught by competitive corporations, who's only job is to make a great deal of money. The best firms are the ones who compete in the harshest manner, and again, the average gets left far behind. I think its far a mistake to assume that more stuff means an egalitarian future.

fmora 16y ago
If people are poor then they won't be able to buy your stuff. On the other hand people with more money means that they'll have a stronger buying power. It benefits the rich that the average person is also well off. People will kill to own a singularity device. However, I don't think this will be necessary since by the time we are technologically ready to invent such a machine it will be invented or duplicated in every single country on earth and by anybody that wants one. We will reach a point in our future where the knowledge to build an Artificial Intelligence machine will be obvious by everybody the same way it is obvious now that the earth is round. This will make it impossible for any single entity to control this technology. The knowledge will be out there in the net for anybody to read. This assuming that we are not stupid enough to destroy ourselves before we reach this point.

gwern 16y ago

> All humans have on average the same intelligence. Why do you assume that there will be a few who will be able to keep up with the pace of retraining oneself. I think you do not quite understand the concept of an 'average'. When one is hiring for a job, does one hire 'humanity' with its average, or an individual human who can be arbitrarily above or below the average?

fmora 16y ago
I stand corrected. You are assuming that a person with a phd is inherently smarter than a person running a hot dog stand. He is not. He has more accumulated knowledge but I don't think he is necessarily smarter. I bet that if the hot dog person had been rightly motivated at a young age he could also get a phd. Also, a lot of people are able to game interviews. The difference between an average intelligent person and a super genius is really quite small when it comes to brain power. What you will notice is that the super genius got to where he is because he has worked harder at it than anybody else. From the outside it looks like he is just that much smarter than you or me. The truth is that he is probably just as smart as you or me. He just works harder than you or me at what he does. Same with talented pianist or painters. People like to think that they are borne that way. The truth is that they log thousands and thousands of hours working at it, usually at a very young age. Once they become very good at what they do people label it as talent and do not remember the hard work that it took them to get there. A really brief example, to people from 2000 years ago you will seem like a super-super genius because of all the things you know. Is that truth? No, people from 2000 years are just as smart as you and me. Difference between geniuses and average person is probably so minuscule that it really doesn't contribute that much to success. Persistence and working at it is what makes the difference. There are a lot of supposed geniuses (really high IQ averages) that are complete bums and never achieve anything in life.
- gwern 16y ago
  > You are assuming that a person with a phd is inherently smarter than a person running a hot dog stand. I'm assuming that if I pick random PhDs and hot dog vendors, I will get a higher average IQ from my random PhDs. Are my PhDs strictly greater in IQ than my hot dog sellers? Maybe, maybe not. But will, say, 99% of my PhDs have a higher IQ? I'd bet on that number or something like it. > No, people from 2000 years are just as smart as you and me. No, they were not. There were a few geniuses back then, the ones we still read and write books about. All few tens of thousands of them out of billions. But the average was vastly below the modern-day. The environmental causes alone are legion: lead plumbing, no formal schooling (worth something like 5-10 IQ points), rampant parasitic diseases of every conceivable sort, irregular or poor nutrition with nutritional deficits (protein deficiency damaging early neurological development - low myelination of nerves, iodine deficiency, etc.), medicine that would kill most patients... Your only valid points are that IQ is not perfectly correlated with success and that it varies within every group. This is not news to anyone who has done even a little reading on the topic.