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It's well-known that the Nazis imported eugenics from Yale and Oxbridge. And eugenics was publicly defended by people all over the political spectrum until 1939

It's well-known that the Nazis imported eugenics from Yale and Oxbridge. And eugenics was publicly defended by people all over the political spectrum until 1939. After 1945, it went underground. It never went away. Moldbug can preach his Carlyleism all he wants. In the end, the unleashing of energy will be due to people researching the genetic basis of intelligence and IVF. The pathological bloviators preach, the unsung soldiers and scientists make things happen.

pron 7y ago
> In the end, the unleashing of energy will be due to people researching the genetic basis of intelligence and IVF. I'm not so sure. There is a core problem here, and that is that intelligence is not all that it's made up to be. It takes no more than a glance at the current American president to see that. That intelligence (by which I mean relative intelligence) is some ultimate power is, itself, a myth perpetuated by people who consider themselves particularly intelligent. You'd hear similar things about beauty from beautiful people. Clearly, many great works were done by people who were not amazingly intelligent, and people who were amazingly intelligent have done some amazingly stupid things. Personally, I think charisma is far more important. I see no inherent reason why any discoveries regarding intelligence would have bigger consequences than discoveries about charisma.
- NaggingGranpa 7y ago
  You don't need to understand intelligence that well to change the world. A little predictive power can go very far. In the end, it's a bit like playing roulette. A small edge and many bets will make you rich. > I see no inherent reason why any discoveries regarding intelligence would have bigger consequences than discoveries about charisma. It was not charisma that cracked Enigma and built the A-bomb. Better brains means better weapons, which means conquering and annihilating stupider tribes. It's the history of Mankind. Charisma helps uniting tribes. But united tribes of many hunter-gatherers can be slaughtered by a handful of machine guns produced by boring industrialized societies.
  - pron 7y ago
    > A little predictive power can go very far. Yeah, but I don't think intelligent people are better at predicting things (weighted by impact). Again, look at the current US president; or at stock traders. > It was not charisma that cracked Enigma and built the A-bomb. No, but arguably neither would have been done when they were done if it weren't for a war that started largely due to charisma. > But united tribes of many hunter-gatherers can be slaughtered by a handful of machine guns produced by boring industrialized societies. But it's not high relative intelligence that brought us industrialization. Those same people who were later industrialized had had hundreds of thousands of years of hunting-gathering.
    - NaggingGranpa 7y ago
      > I don't think intelligent people are better at predicting things I never claimed such a thing. I meant predictive power when it comes to allocating resources, especially from the budget devoted to education. A dollar wasted on trying to educate a moron could be invested in military R&D. > a war that started largely due to charisma. Charisma? Do you mean Napoleon? Or von Bismarck? You don't need much charisma to make the French and the Germans kill each other. Who was the charismatic leader that made the Danes go to war with the Prussians? With such a strange statement, you outed yourself as a non-European. No matter how many history books you read, some things you will never understand. In that regard, you are exactly like Moldbug. Just do not claim that Rousseau invented nationalism, please. My aged heart cannot take that much. > Those same people who were later industrialized were just as intelligent during the hundreds of thousands of years of hunting-gathering. You're implying that a hunter-gatherer society, an agricultural society and an industrialized society select for the same traits. And that the initial distributions were the same. Think Fokker-Planck. How likely is that? Zero probability, I would say.
      - pron 7y ago
        > A dollar wasted on trying to educate a moron could be invested in military R&D. How would you know if that's a dollar better-spent? All humans are pretty bad at flying, yet airplanes are pretty useful. All of technology is spending on the respective meaning of "educating morons." Military R&D is a great example. A weakling with a gun can easily beat a strong sword-wielding knight. In fact, the difference between a strong fighter with a sword and a weakling with a sword is pretty much erased by guns. > Do you mean Napoleon? Or von Bismarck? I meant Hitler. Napoleon was a different story, but WWI was also very much a product of Romanticism. > you outed yourself as a non-European Well, I'm Jewish. > You're implying that a hunter-gatherer society, an agricultural society and an industrialized society select for the same traits. Traits? Have we already established that natural selection in the past ~10000 years since the agricultural revolution has had any significant impact in shaping human society? (To be clear, that was a rhetorical question; no, we have not established that).

pron 7y ago

> In the end, the unleashing of energy will be due to people researching the genetic basis of intelligence and IVF. I'm not so sure. There is a core problem here, and that is that intelligence is not all that it's made up to be. It takes no more than a glance at the current American president to see that. That intelligence (by which I mean relative intelligence) is some ultimate power is, itself, a myth perpetuated by people who consider themselves particularly intelligent. You'd hear similar things about beauty from beautiful people. Clearly, many great works were done by people who were not amazingly intelligent, and people who were amazingly intelligent have done some amazingly stupid things. Personally, I think charisma is far more important. I see no inherent reason why any discoveries regarding intelligence would have bigger consequences than discoveries about charisma.

NaggingGranpa 7y ago
You don't need to understand intelligence that well to change the world. A little predictive power can go very far. In the end, it's a bit like playing roulette. A small edge and many bets will make you rich. > I see no inherent reason why any discoveries regarding intelligence would have bigger consequences than discoveries about charisma. It was not charisma that cracked Enigma and built the A-bomb. Better brains means better weapons, which means conquering and annihilating stupider tribes. It's the history of Mankind. Charisma helps uniting tribes. But united tribes of many hunter-gatherers can be slaughtered by a handful of machine guns produced by boring industrialized societies.
- pron 7y ago
  > A little predictive power can go very far. Yeah, but I don't think intelligent people are better at predicting things (weighted by impact). Again, look at the current US president; or at stock traders. > It was not charisma that cracked Enigma and built the A-bomb. No, but arguably neither would have been done when they were done if it weren't for a war that started largely due to charisma. > But united tribes of many hunter-gatherers can be slaughtered by a handful of machine guns produced by boring industrialized societies. But it's not high relative intelligence that brought us industrialization. Those same people who were later industrialized had had hundreds of thousands of years of hunting-gathering.
  - NaggingGranpa 7y ago
    > I don't think intelligent people are better at predicting things I never claimed such a thing. I meant predictive power when it comes to allocating resources, especially from the budget devoted to education. A dollar wasted on trying to educate a moron could be invested in military R&D. > a war that started largely due to charisma. Charisma? Do you mean Napoleon? Or von Bismarck? You don't need much charisma to make the French and the Germans kill each other. Who was the charismatic leader that made the Danes go to war with the Prussians? With such a strange statement, you outed yourself as a non-European. No matter how many history books you read, some things you will never understand. In that regard, you are exactly like Moldbug. Just do not claim that Rousseau invented nationalism, please. My aged heart cannot take that much. > Those same people who were later industrialized were just as intelligent during the hundreds of thousands of years of hunting-gathering. You're implying that a hunter-gatherer society, an agricultural society and an industrialized society select for the same traits. And that the initial distributions were the same. Think Fokker-Planck. How likely is that? Zero probability, I would say.
    - pron 7y ago
      > A dollar wasted on trying to educate a moron could be invested in military R&D. How would you know if that's a dollar better-spent? All humans are pretty bad at flying, yet airplanes are pretty useful. All of technology is spending on the respective meaning of "educating morons." Military R&D is a great example. A weakling with a gun can easily beat a strong sword-wielding knight. In fact, the difference between a strong fighter with a sword and a weakling with a sword is pretty much erased by guns. > Do you mean Napoleon? Or von Bismarck? I meant Hitler. Napoleon was a different story, but WWI was also very much a product of Romanticism. > you outed yourself as a non-European Well, I'm Jewish. > You're implying that a hunter-gatherer society, an agricultural society and an industrialized society select for the same traits. Traits? Have we already established that natural selection in the past ~10000 years since the agricultural revolution has had any significant impact in shaping human society? (To be clear, that was a rhetorical question; no, we have not established that).