<div dir="ltr"><span class=""><div><blockquote style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:2px solid blue;padding-left:1ex"><div><div><p><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:rgb(31,73,125)">This brings up an interesting question. What if… everyone had too much free time on their hands? Assume away constant struggles for the basics, so we have sufficient food, shelter, all the bear necessities of life, spelling intentional (Google on it, younger friends.)</span></p></div></div></blockquote></div><div><br></div></span><div>Assuming Maslow was roughly right, people will spend their energies on mostly social stuff - including a lot of status competition. Some will go further and aim at self-realization and doing cool stuff. Most likely a larger fraction than now will drop out and just enjoy life as couch potatoes.</div><span class=""><br><br>Anders Sandberg, Future of Humanity Institute Philosophy Faculty of Oxford University<br><br><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:comic sans ms,sans-serif;font-size:small;color:rgb(0,0,0);display:inline">Let's look at this from a stand point of the Big Five. I really don't think you can characterize what a hypothetical average person would do, so let's look at specifics:<br><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:comic sans ms,sans-serif;font-size:small;color:rgb(0,0,0);display:inline">Introversion/Extroversion: at the extremes, you will find introverts doing introverted things, like my reading and gardening. The extroverts will do extroverted things like jumping out of airplanes, literally or figuratively.<br><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:comic sans ms,sans-serif;font-size:small;color:rgb(0,0,0);display:inline">Conscientiousness: people high on this trait will find something useful to do, or at least the pretension of it, like spending their time getting more advanced degrees. People low on this one will have no problem being couch potatoes.<br><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:comic sans ms,sans-serif;font-size:small;color:rgb(0,0,0);display:inline">Emotionality: not particularly relevant here, I think</div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:comic sans ms,sans-serif;font-size:small;color:rgb(0,0,0);display:inline">.<br><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:comic sans ms,sans-serif;font-size:small;color:rgb(0,0,0);display:inline">Openness to experience; those high will fill their time with experimenting with new things, of which there is no end, of course.<br><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:comic sans ms,sans-serif;font-size:small;color:rgb(0,0,0);display:inline">Agreeableness: </div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:comic sans ms,sans-serif;font-size:small;color:rgb(0,0,0);display:inline">not particularly relevant, I think.<br><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:comic sans ms,sans-serif;font-size:small;color:rgb(0,0,0);display:inline">There is no average person. There is an infinite number of mixtures of these traits and prediction of their behavior in the 'too much time' situation will be extremely difficult unless you deal with the extremes of each category.<br><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:comic sans ms,sans-serif;font-size:small;color:rgb(0,0,0);display:inline">Way back (before 1960) I heard of a guy who graduated from college in psych and applied<br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:comic sans ms,sans-serif;font-size:small;color:rgb(0,0,0);display:inline">to a regular business. He was given a personality test, which he happened to know. He solved the problem of answering truthfully or the way he thought they wanted him to by doing the latter. His test results came back: This person is either abnormally normal or he is lying. Pretty good test, eh? (Nowadays there are severe restrictions legally as to what tests you can give prospective employees.)<br><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:comic sans ms,sans-serif;font-size:small;color:rgb(0,0,0);display:inline">Yeah, it's a dull answer, all right</div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:comic sans ms,sans-serif;font-size:small;color:rgb(0,0,0);display:inline">. Perhaps someone can think of what the high/low emotional</div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:comic sans ms,sans-serif;font-size:small;color:rgb(0,0,0);display:inline"> people will do as well as the high/low agreeableness people.<br><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:comic sans ms,sans-serif;font-size:small;color:rgb(0,0,0);display:inline">Sorry - <div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:comic sans ms,sans-serif;font-size:small;color:rgb(0,0,0);display:inline">unless you favor very roughly right, <br></div>Maslow's hierarchy had</div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:comic sans ms,sans-serif;font-size:small;color:rgb(0,0,0);display:inline"> too many exceptions, reversals etc. - difficulty testing the theory as well because of its lack of scientific basis. It does have a strong appeal to common sense and we all know how valuable that is.<br><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:comic sans ms,sans-serif;font-size:small;color:rgb(0,0,0);display:inline">I do wonder if the rate of creating new religions would change. It was described as two a day a few years back in an Atlantic Monthly article; "Oh Gods" (on the web). <br> bill w<br></div></span><div class="gmail_extra"><div class="gmail_quote"><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><br>_______________________________________________<br>
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