[extropy-chat] Collective Singularities

Lee Corbin lcorbin at tsoft.com
Mon Jun 5 03:51:10 UTC 2006


Anders writes

> George Dvorsky wrote:
> >> Increasing individual cognitive capacity has a big multiplicative effect
> >> on the economy, according to some of my current analysis (stay tuned
> >> :-).
> >
> > While I'm sure that there's some truth to your analysis, one factor you
> > must be sure to consider is the impact of wide scale under-employment.
> > Already today the cognitive demands of work isn't matching what many
> > people are truly capable of (ie people are over-educated relative to
> > their jobs). In the future, I can imagine more of the same; just because
> > you have groups of populations with high IQs doesn't mean that the
> > cognitive demands of jobs will follow accordingly.
> 
> Having overeducated people in simple jobs suggests that there isn't enough
> entrepreneurship, venture capital or whatever for them to find new niches;
> I don't think that is an unavoidable consequence of too much brainpower.
> Maybe it is rather a sign that we have too little economic flexibility
> (individually and societally).

Anders knocks the ball out of the park!   (To use an American expression.)



Omigod!  I can't find anything whatsoever to disagree with here.
And I swore that I'd never write a "me too" post.   Huzza.

Lee

> One approach to estimate the use of higher IQ for GDP is to look at
> correlations between IQ and salaries, and then do a bit of extrapolation
> (adding in changes in probability of holding a job, some lowered social
> costs for prisons and poorhouses etc). Those are based on a status quo
> assumption about the structure of the economy, so they might not hold very
> far into the future (I would also love to have a way of including a
> competition factor in such models).
> 
> Another is to look at the productivity residual and assume some of it is
> due to technological ability increase; that produces a multiplicative
> factor that is probably a more robust mixture of lots of smaller factors.
> 
> A third, and honestly fairly iffy approach, is to base it on
> http://www.iapsych.com/articles/dickerson2006ip.pdf that suggests that
> national IQ is multiplicative of GDP. Here the cause and effect are likely
> tightly meshed and the raw data is suspect, so this should be taken with a
> ton of salt.
> 
> But overall, the impression I get is that higher intelligence overall
> produces a big effect on the overall economy, even if it might be just a
> smaller group that does most of the smart work. A bit like Florida's
> creative and service classes: if the creatives are smart and productive
> enough, it doesn't matter that most others do macjobs. The entire economy
> grows fast anyway.
> 
> -- 
> Anders Sandberg,
> Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics
> Philosophy Faculty of Oxford University




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