[ExI] No need for radical changes in human nature/was Re: Private and government R&D

[Stathis Papaioannou]

2009/7/3 Rafal Smigrodzki <rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com>:

> ### I wish I could share your optimism. The way I see it, at least 60%
> of all activity today happens under duress (since the government
> directly or indirectly controls about 60% of the society), plus there
> is a minor amount of private violence. This is an improvement over the
> savages in the jungles of South America or Africa, where most men die
> by homicide.

Really?

>  It may be better than life in Mexican villages, where
> social customs impose an implicit marginal tax rate of 85%. But there
> is no doubt that the vast majority of US citizens happily endorse mass
> slaughter of random brown people, destruction of lives of millions of
> workers here and abroad (through protectionist trade measures), and
> even the daily senseless mayhem on our roads. Today I saw five cops on
> three miles of highway, brazenly, in broad daylight attacking honest
> workers, just swaggering over with their guns and squeezing them for
> cash under the pretext of committing what they call "crimes", and what
> I call driving home.

You mean they were putting cash into their own pockets, or issuing
speeding tickets? The question of traffic laws is an interesting one,
since even an anarchist society might decide that they are worth
having.

> I think that a stably non-violent society will emerge only after
> enough people boost themselves to the equivalent of IQ140 or higher
> (so they won't have false consequentialist ideas about the need for
> initiation of violence), and erase whatever neural networks make them
> envious and domineering (to remove the real emotional drivers of
> violence).

Is there any evidence that more intelligent people are less likely to
be violent or dishonest? I think the main difference would be that
they will be more sophisticated in the crimes they commit.
Intelligence, alas, is not even a good predictor of religiosity. It's
a bit arrogant to assume that if people were smarter, they would think
like you, even if you are in fact smarter than most people.

As for changing their brains to make themselves less aggressive, I am
hopeful that given the ability to make such changes, more people would
in fact choose to do this rather than make themselves more aggressive.

-- 
Stathis Papaioannou