So I disagree with his argument that infinite growth is possible. But even taking that premiss as correct
If you want more brain power you don't need more people, you can simply treat the people that already exist better. Think of how much brain power is lost to poverty and inequality. People who dont have enough money to survive, people who are in debt, spend so much mental energy just trying to survive. Calculating how much they can afford, how they can stretch their money. Its such a waste, when we could just provide them with the necessities they need to live a dignified life. And then we could see what they created. Sure some people make it out, but percentage wise they are the exception that proves the rule.
Based on what we know about epidemiology, the impact of pollution, the impact of prenatal and early childhood stress. Just consider how those compound with years of poorly funded education in neighborhoods made unstable by the transience of poverty. Add in the school to prison pipeline (partially fueled by a rise in police officers in schools in response to school shootings) and (imo) inevitable substance abuse and think about how many brain cells have been destroyed. I dont think I'd be able to think deeply in those situations.
If brains/ideas are our most important resource we are wasting them. On an almost unimaginable scale.
Yes. Stephen Jay Gould put this thought very well: “I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein's brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops.”
On the other hand (outside of a handful of exceptions) major tech advances are usually made by multiple people at the same time that have access to a similar set of starting information, usually resulting in patent wars and other kinds of disagreements of who was first to figure out something by days or months. And that was already commonplace more than century ago.
The bottom line is with nearly 8 billion people alive there is no such thing as an original thought anymore and everyone is replaceable. So as a consolation even if these people died and continue to die it may not matter much in the grand scheme of things.
But not everyone can have every thought at the right time, and our thoughts compound on each other. Even if 9 women cant have a baby in one month, 8 billion minds working in parallel is still, to me, indisputably better than 1. The future is waiting for us to stop holding our collective selves back.
For sure, I suppose it mainly depends on how common an idea is. If it's something that one in a million people will figure out then there are 8000 redundant people alive for it to be discovered right now and it likely won't make a difference if our population was halved (or didn't have access to the prerequisite information to make the discovery). But there are likely to be ideas that are far rarer than that, and the more people there are the faster those can be discovered I suppose.
Coming up with ideas is only a small part of progress, we also need many more people who will use the results of these ideas, converting them to widespread technologies, instead of leaving them as weird useless curiosities the way it have happened with most of discoveries in ancient world.
If our population was halved, the cost of developing new cpu, new software or a new technology would stay the same, but the benefit would be halved, and therefore less of these things would be developed.
Yes. I am living in a small country (Czechia). Tech products that cannot be internationalized easily, such as software tailored to uses of local legal system, are very visibly underinvested/underdeveloped. A country of ten million just isn't a very attractive market for such niche products.
On the other hand, Czech antivirus business exploded with the advent of the Internet. Everyone and their dog needed some kind of protection against malware.
To say nothing of Einstein’a child born out of wedlock (to a mother who was Einsteins equal) because his family wouldn’t allow him to marry and lost to history. Now think of all the brilliant minds who by accident of birth are never afforded the opportunity of education. Now think of all the regular people who could contribute at a higher level with an bit of training.
Our biggest obstacle, and our greatest opportunity for advancement (and the continued growth our system requires) is the fact that opportunity is not available to all.
The good news is that the problem is so vast there are parts of it everywhere. Every one of us can pick it up and help.
And that is exactly why you need growth. In a more primitive society the subsistence farming and basic low-value manufacturing are all there is. As technology and capitalism ascend to greater heights you start to get more opportunities for creativity and ingenuity, and enough excess to create the leisure for more high-minded pursuits.
But I’ve come to see that waste of brilliant brains less and less as an unfortunate outcome in a non-ideal world, and more and more as intended.
The (western) world is full of mediocre yet privileged people who (consciously or subconsciously) do whatever they can to avoid competition. And this is the root of much evil in the world.
People are right to want to avoid competition. The issue is that in a system that pushes competition hard on individuals, the only way to avoid it is to prevent accomplishment.
The fundamental issue is that our system is built in such a way that one person's accomplishment is another person's loss.
I've always found the argument for competition rather funny. It seems as though most of us have grown up, not necessarily but at least with the idea, of the "loving family" in mind.
That in order for a child to grow and achieve their full potential they have to be loved and supported by everyone in their family; this means brothers, sisters, fathers, mothers, grandmothers, etc.
How is it that the way we structure the core social organisation in our grand societies is so at odds with the way we structure the broader structures? Not only that, but if you look at a classroom; what is the best for children? Encouraging hyper competition or collaboration between classmates? What is the best inside a business, collaboration or competition? What is the best for our governments, collaboration between the different branches or competition?
It seems as though everywhere we look at, we go "yes, people in an organisation have to collaborate with other!" from families to governments... yet... an organisation of organisations (a society) is in turn better served through competition?
We developed these massive societies to overcome the need for competition, but sometimes I feel like this ethos is being turned against us and that some people want us to return to a state of being where everyone is out for themselves in a cruel world that is filled with dangers. And I don't understand why.
How would you know whether one thing id better than the other without testing them- having them compete against each other? Most e.g. products you could make are a waste, and figuring out what should be made and how much of it is a very non-trivial problem.
If someone invests their money in your company they wont want you giving your new invention to someone else to profit from. Also basically impossible to coordinate things without prices. Seems like a good way for people to get taken advantage of and for massive inefficiencies to go undiscovered.
Same in general for companies. Internally, they are essentially tiny quasi-Communist (and generally secretive, isolationist and rather totalitarian) states complete with their own politburos, centralised top-down control and, theoretically, a common goal for all departments, the penalty for not buying into being exile.
This changes pretty abruptly at the boundary of the company into almost the exact opposite: a marketplace where it's every company for themselves, there's no common goal, and resources, money and ideas both, are jealously hoarded by each entity behind thick silo walls.
Obviously the analogy isn't perfect, but it's interesting how we're supposed to simultaneously operate in a much-vaunted capitalist context, but mostly interface to it through a thick layer of, basically, socialist systems.
Can you elaborate on how avoiding competition is the root of much evil? It is plausible if you mean it as avoiding by stifling or suppressing it.
On the other hand, I believe that competition, broadly construed, is the root of evil (competition is for losers). The more we can not compete with each other, but rather support each other in our own personal endeavors, the better.
Whenever the incumbent seeks to maintain their position by means other than performance - I think the reference is to e.g. large companies closing down, in an effort to keep revenue streams (think vendor locking, kickbacks, back room board deals, nepotism).
There is certainly harm here, but I agree it's not all about competition - if the incumbent shares their knowledge and resources with others then, while revenue streams might go down for, more people will benefit and as a whole revenue streams will go up, or at least be distributed more fairly.
In a zero sum world, companies either avoiding competition or sharing is a burden, in a non zero sum world it is not.
I think ultimately the author is wrong - the idea that ideas can endlessly reap, it ignores the physical world - there are only so many available acres of land and goods at any given time. He dismisses Peak Oil, etc as a misunderstanding about the limits, but the reality is there are many limits, each one with different consequences as it is passed. Thinking the edge of the city is a block away and then discovering you were wrong is not proof that there is no edge to the city, but it does matter that you have to take a car versus walk a block - the limits are still there.
Arguments about peak resources should focus on the average income pressure a citizen is facing, an infinite number of ideas does zip for you if your citizens are too poor or in debt to be able to purchase the fruits of your ideas. Unless you want to start giving away money at a steadily increasing rate...and that has never worked out.
Spacex and Starlink are so far ahead of their “competitors” because Elon is solely focused on what they need to be. He’s never trying to one-up anyone else. Companies who are, are perpetually playing catch-up
"One-upping" is, in my opinion, something very different from competition.
When I am writing my books, I am not trying to one-up anyone, but I still operate in a competitive environment where actions of other players influence both my inputs (paper, printing costs) and outputs (how much can the finished book cost and still be attractive to potential readers).
Same with SpaceX. They fly to space. Some others fly to space too, including some smaller startups like RocketLabs that are nevertheless very vibrant. This has some non-zero influence on SpaceX activity. For example, they want to be a trusted partner of NASA/US Gov, because NASA/US Gov rewards them with launches, even if it does not directly help their stated goal to make life multiplanetary and may even distract from it a bit.
>So I disagree with his argument that infinite growth is possible.
People believing in "infinite growth" or even a scaled-down "sensible" version of it, are like people believing in perpetual motion machines, but with degrees and influence on policy.
It's even more tragi-comical when they become even more commited to it as infrastructure, growth engines, society, etc. is crumbling all around them...
future brainpower though and the value of helping poor people is really far out (multiple generations); capitalism can’t even see past the quarter. people are still too self interested, we’d all need to catch religion for it to work
> Think of how much brain power is lost to poverty and inequality.
How much exactly? Do you have an estimate?
A good rule of thumb for dismissing bad arguments is asking yourself: "would the same have been argued in the opposite circumstance?" Improving conditions for people in need is a moral imperative. If it were proven beyond the shadow of a doubt that this won't actually maximize economic growth or pace of progress, would you say "oh well" and abandon them? I'd wager you would not. This is one cause to suspect you are not arguing in good faith when you shoehorn their plight into this discussion.
Based of what we know about conditions in modern advanced economies, intelligence as measured by standardized tests is both a good proxy for scientific achievement potential, without any signs of plateauing in the upper ranges [1] and overwhelmingly genetic in origin, with a large number of specific associated polymorphisms already known [2] and parents and children getting closer in the trait rather than diverging with age due to random effects [3]; crucially, with little to no effect of social stratification on heredity [4]. This all but rules out any significant impact of your laundry list of plausible harms – which are, nevertheless, issues that must be addressed for purely humanitarian reasons. (Purported evidence for significant impact is usually invalidated by genetic confounding).
What this means, however, is that there is very little or perhaps no low-hanging fruit left (it having been picked by Flynn effect over the last century), and we are unlikely to directly accelerate progress by any popular progressive policy, as it would not increase our labor pool for cognitively demanding work. And the hardest, highest-impact problems remain dependent on uniquely capable individuals – not lone geniuses but entire teams and organizations of them, sure, and only more scarce for it.
People who have wrestled with available evidence seriously tend to arrive at the idea that we need to institute a program of voluntary genetic improvement and ensure its availability to all. The tech is already here; the price can be driven almost arbitrarily low at scale. Whether we become a society of geniuses or one stratified by genetic enhancement [5] is a matter of policy – and willingness to look truth in the eye.
That is many big words to be so blind. A big brain does not make a person immune to poverty or war. If a person does not believe maximizing economic growth (as measured by GDP and/or the performance of the Dow Jones Industrial Average) is the most holy of missions, then I suppose their genetics are just too impure.
I am not a serious wrestler, but I do not want the government instituting genetic programs as a final solution to a perfect society.
> People who have wrestled with available evidence seriously tend to arrive at the idea that we need to institute a program of voluntary genetic improvement and ensure its availability to all.
It's great to read comments like these because it's one of the rare times when these people go mask-off and just tell you that they're eugenicists. Kudos for honesty.
Genetics and race-science cannot be separated, as they were forged in the same (American) fire [1][2]. The role of the former in supporting the latter never goes away; it just changes forms. For every phrenology that's utterly falsified, there's an "omg but what about polygenic risk scores!?" that pops up in its place [3]. Intelligence scores, IQ, psychometrics? Same thing: willing and enthusiastic handmaidens of selective breeding and strengthening the gene pool. Forced sterilization came soon after (60-70k people in the US).
Don't let these guys fool you: there's no "debate" about intelligence and heredity, or really any behavioral genetics, only a reactionary moral and political project: find the vulnerable, the poor, and the sick, and grind'em into dust.
Meanwhile:
> and willingness to look truth in the eye.
Mask on or off, this is a constant: "I'm a brave teller of hard truths in a world intent on hiding from them." You wonder if they'd really be exempt from their own "programs of genetic improvement."
Eugenics is very much alive, though not fashionable to talk about.
Most parents, if they learn that their baby is going to have Down syndrome or another serious genetic defect, choose to abort it. Prenatal screening and acting upon its results is ubiquitous even in very liberal Californian circles.
With the advent of genetic manipulation in living humans, the cat will be out of the bag once and for all. There would certainly be people willing to try e.g. a genetic modification that massively lowers their risk of developing atherosclerosis while seemingly having no negative effect on people who have it naturally. [0]
See, this is exactly the problem I'm talking about. For example, you are referencing Feldman&Riskin, as if they have made some cogent argument. They have not, their review is a mess. Consider Nick Patterson's response:
> Let us discuss the genetics of Educational Attainment (EA) defined as the number of years of schooling and measured in adults over 30 years old. EA takes up a good part both of the book and the review. Using genetic data from more than 300,000 individuals of European ancestry, it was possible to develop a ‘score’ using the genomes of the people in the study (Okbay et al. Genome-wide association study identifies 74 loci associated with educational attainment, Nature, 2016). The details of the score are of lesser importance, but it’s important to realize that the score is a single number calculated from a genomic sample, by a fixed recipe. The score is correlated with EA at an enormously significant statistical level. This result was then replicated in an Icelandic study, using entirely different individuals from the first study. (Kong et al. Selection against variants in the genome associated with educational attainment, PNAS, 2017). Again enormously significant results were obtained.
> How do Feldman and Riskin explain these results? After a somewhat rambling diatribe complaining that choices were made in the details of the score, and how exactly the EA phenotype was chosen to study, they conclude that ‘researchers are [not] counting anything but their own projections’. How is this reasonable? A recipe is given, checked in a different study and the results replicated. (Incidentally a much larger study with more than 3,000,000 (!) individuals was completed just this month and the results again replicated). Are we somehow to believe that experimental error in Iceland is correlated with EA of a sample? This is truly absurd.
> ...This review is baffling. Feldman is a leading mathematical biologist at Stanford who I would have assumed understands statistical genetics, yet if I didn’t know who the reviewers were I would have thought that they were incompetent or ignorant.
> Perhaps Feldman and Riskin think that any argument is acceptable if it goes against results that they dislike?[1]
etc.[2]
Then you act like there is some continuing chain of "phrenologies" which have been falsified by science. In reality, the opposite is true – differential psychology and genetics are independent from any phrenological legacy, stand on their own and receive consistent confirmation, whereas, for example, both Gould (already approvingly cited in the thread) and Franz Boas, the founder of modern progressive anthropology, knowingly lied when grappling with literal skull shape data [3][4][5]. Yet those are still cited as authorities on the matter.
You frame it into a narrative where duplicitous "eugenicists" feign being truth-tellers to reinforce their political agenda; aren't you practicing this very approach? But then the question is precisely who has truth on their side, and things Feldman&Riskin feel compelled to write in their review suggest it's still hereditarians.
> Don't let these guys fool you: there's no "debate" about intelligence and heredity, or really any behavioral genetics, only a reactionary moral and political project: find the vulnerable, the poor, and the sick, and grind'em into dust.
This is conflict theory in its essence [6] – or rather, conspiracy theory. You dismiss all evidence that conflicts with your political views because you a priori assume it is produced by a complex conspiracy with the aim to grind the vulnerable into dust. But this assumption forces you into a closed, totalitarian ideology. When you are offered a project of "genetic improvement" that does not involve sterilization, abuse or any denial of personal freedom, you are confused as to what is happening, and resort to plain denial and scare quotes. "How is this reasonable?", indeed.
> You wonder if they'd really be exempt from their own "programs of genetic improvement."
Why would I want to be exempt, though? You've taken time to find a statistical objection to GWAS data, but don't understand what embryo selection[7] is about technically, and how it's most likely to hurt people you wish to protect by being limited in accessibility to the very rich, if at all?
What's the concrete scenario you have in mind here, really?
