Ask HN: How can we make humanity as a whole smarter?
To approach the problems of climate change, humanity must act intelligently as a whole at global scale. But this is far from what's actually happening. Not even countries, cities or companies are able to combine the intelligence of all their individuals to create a smart entity. It only works for very small group sizes, like pair programming. What can we do to enable many individuals to act as one intelligent entity?
32 comments
For climate change, is it a problem of intelligence though? We all know plastic is bad, but most of us don't care. Most of us know reducing meat consumption is a good thing (for environment and otherwise), but most of us won't entertain even reducing meat consumption, let alone going vegetarian. And so on. I don't think it is ignorance is as big a problem as "fuck you, I don't care" attitude
I'd wager what is needed more is kindness - to ourselves, to one another, to animals, to environment etc, more than intelligence.
I'd wager what is needed more is kindness - to ourselves, to one another, to animals, to environment etc, more than intelligence.
Exactly.
The actual conflict is individualism vs collectivism.
Can humans act in collective interest? Maybe.
Smaller homogenous communities have an easier time than large diverse communities. And the problems you mention involve the latter.
The actual conflict is individualism vs collectivism.
Can humans act in collective interest? Maybe.
Smaller homogenous communities have an easier time than large diverse communities. And the problems you mention involve the latter.
It's also a matter of perceived consequences. To put it bluntly, most people simply don't have the energy, at the end of the day, to chase "feel good", distant, ethereal causes. Yeah meat consuption leads to pollution, but that's such a stretch of the imagination, and I'm hungry, so please let me see what I need to do to pay this month's rent and taxes instead.
There's an oil spill in the ocean? Man, that sounds bad. But what can you do, it's in the ocean, someone will take care of it eventually.
I know it's a defeatist way of thinking but you can't build a running society (meaning with, literally, people running all the time) and expect to conserve energy for non-primary, non-immediate, non-localized causes.
To put it even more bluntly: I would be very happy to change my whole way of life if I didn't have to run after money. But I have to, and I'm exhausted, and that's the problem.
There's an oil spill in the ocean? Man, that sounds bad. But what can you do, it's in the ocean, someone will take care of it eventually.
I know it's a defeatist way of thinking but you can't build a running society (meaning with, literally, people running all the time) and expect to conserve energy for non-primary, non-immediate, non-localized causes.
To put it even more bluntly: I would be very happy to change my whole way of life if I didn't have to run after money. But I have to, and I'm exhausted, and that's the problem.
Well, what's "smart?" Native of Australia were not considered smart 200 years ago; but now we appreciate their lifestyle and culture a whole lot more. Which attitude is "smarter?" What will we think about it in another 100 years?
Merely bringing everyone along doesn't ensure "smart"; look at Japan in ww2. They had an admirable unity of purpose, or at least a lack of vocal internal disagreement... Did that improve the characters of their actions?
I disagree that any individual human has much need to consider "humanity as a whole" in their decision making; i don't think we are smart enough, or can see enough, to hope to think logically about such scales. The best we can do is be the best we can be in our scope, and let the things out of our scope happen as they will.
Merely bringing everyone along doesn't ensure "smart"; look at Japan in ww2. They had an admirable unity of purpose, or at least a lack of vocal internal disagreement... Did that improve the characters of their actions?
I disagree that any individual human has much need to consider "humanity as a whole" in their decision making; i don't think we are smart enough, or can see enough, to hope to think logically about such scales. The best we can do is be the best we can be in our scope, and let the things out of our scope happen as they will.
> Native of Australia were not considered smart 200 years ago; but now we appreciate their lifestyle and culture a whole lot more.
Do we? I don't see it. Their lifestyle isn't sustainable with modern population levels, billions would die. Of course killing off billions of people would fix climate change problems, but people wouldn't say that is a good solution.
Do we? I don't see it. Their lifestyle isn't sustainable with modern population levels, billions would die. Of course killing off billions of people would fix climate change problems, but people wouldn't say that is a good solution.
>Their lifestyle isn't sustainable with modern population levels
Exactly.
Their culture not only looks more sustainable, it proved itself sustainable over thousands of years without leading to the devastating growth & overpopulation of the 21st century, which is the primary reason that for so many (aboriginal & global) it will not end well.
Exactly.
Their culture not only looks more sustainable, it proved itself sustainable over thousands of years without leading to the devastating growth & overpopulation of the 21st century, which is the primary reason that for so many (aboriginal & global) it will not end well.
Perhaps: "Their culture was more appropriate to their circumstances than was initially appreciated."
I agree, killing billions to fix climate change would be distasteful.
I agree, killing billions to fix climate change would be distasteful.
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I am intelligent but at the same time sceptical of science and the the media. Science is always changing it's mind, which is the nature of science. Will scientists discover one day we didn't cause climate change?
The media and news also love to promote fear. For those of us who are older we can see every generation has it's fears. I have lived through the fear of nuclear armageddon. Now every new movie I watch seems to have a climate change plot.
I love our planet and act responsibly towards it. I hate wind turbines destroying the landscape but I appreciate others probably felt the same way when electricity pylons where strewn across the landscape. I will continue to be responsible but I will not be lectured by a child, a Prince or even the venerable David Attenborough.
My comments should give you some insight to the unintelligent you want to fix :-)
The media and news also love to promote fear. For those of us who are older we can see every generation has it's fears. I have lived through the fear of nuclear armageddon. Now every new movie I watch seems to have a climate change plot.
I love our planet and act responsibly towards it. I hate wind turbines destroying the landscape but I appreciate others probably felt the same way when electricity pylons where strewn across the landscape. I will continue to be responsible but I will not be lectured by a child, a Prince or even the venerable David Attenborough.
My comments should give you some insight to the unintelligent you want to fix :-)
You can’t. You can’t make anyone do anything. Your best bet is to make information freely available open and transparent. What I don’t understand is, why you are blaming the individual? There is zero incentive for businesses to stop pumping pollutants into a world that will be dead and gone by the time they’re dead. Stop blaming the person who eats meat and drives a car to a factory every day in order to survive. Blame the powers that be that exploit us and the environment solely because they kneel at the altar of profit.
On a final note, I think its wrong to hold the global population accountable. Why should small countries gimp themselves when china cant stop pumping toxins into the air and india cant stop throwing trash into the ocean?
On a final note, I think its wrong to hold the global population accountable. Why should small countries gimp themselves when china cant stop pumping toxins into the air and india cant stop throwing trash into the ocean?
Same thing you can do in a company, recongize where the stupidity comes from and work hard to curtail its influence worldwide over the short term, mid term, and long term for generations without fail.
First of all you've got to make it so things can at least stay the same without getting worse.
As we have seen for decades the momentum continues to build in the direction of humanity as a whole getting stupider, especially in leadership positions where it is more devastating than ever.
If you want intelligent decision-making or even rare brilliance to prevail over stupidity, you've got a lot of stupid obstacles to eliminate beforehand.
Without all the stupid shit to work around, there's already enough brilliance to challenge the world if left to its own devices.
First of all you've got to make it so things can at least stay the same without getting worse.
As we have seen for decades the momentum continues to build in the direction of humanity as a whole getting stupider, especially in leadership positions where it is more devastating than ever.
If you want intelligent decision-making or even rare brilliance to prevail over stupidity, you've got a lot of stupid obstacles to eliminate beforehand.
Without all the stupid shit to work around, there's already enough brilliance to challenge the world if left to its own devices.
> Same thing you can do in a company, recongize where the stupidity comes from and work hard to curtail its influence worldwide over the short term, mid term, and long term for generations without fail.
What do you do if it comes from the top?
What do you do if it comes from the top?
Seems like you would have to upend things.
Addressing the question in the headline: CRISPR readily available for human usage -> designer babies -> genius level IQ and stunning beauty as the new average with fewer variance -> more trust and social cohesion
Regarding your bridge to climate change: You need exactly zero social cohesion to fix climate change. Just set the correct monetary incentives. Implement global CO2 emission rights, to align the most eco-friendly solution with the most cost-effective.
Regarding your bridge to climate change: You need exactly zero social cohesion to fix climate change. Just set the correct monetary incentives. Implement global CO2 emission rights, to align the most eco-friendly solution with the most cost-effective.
"stunning beauty as the new average with fewer variance"
I don't know about that. Beauty varies greatly based on the the preferences of individuals. Sure there are general trends at a societal level, but even that changes over time (short term: dad bod, longterm: fat vs skinny). The reduction in variation can even lead people to seek mates with traits that do vary from the average (ie peacocking).
I don't know about that. Beauty varies greatly based on the the preferences of individuals. Sure there are general trends at a societal level, but even that changes over time (short term: dad bod, longterm: fat vs skinny). The reduction in variation can even lead people to seek mates with traits that do vary from the average (ie peacocking).
Smarter might be harder than ‘less stupid’, but the hardest problems are agency problems.
Look at that condo that collapsed in Florida. The residents would have had to tax themselves $15 million to fix it, but who wants to do that? It might be more prudent to have started saving it 10 or 20 years ago, but a pot of money is just asking to get stolen, wasted, diverted or otherwise cause mischief. People are right to be afraid of carbon credits or anything that concentrates a lot of money in a few hands. Now the only people left to sue (who have assets) are the survivors.
Realistically we are going to have mass casualty events from climate change in the next decade and people’s attitudes will change pretty rapidly; somebody is going to panic and start seeding sulfate aerosols, and that is going to take the conflict to another level. (I was thinking of doing a Kickstarter to rent a boat and seed iron in the ocean and got talked out of it by one of the experts — nobody can stop you from doing it out of the US thanks to Don Rumsfeld keeping us out of the Law of the Sea treaty)
Some reading on the political science front:
Legitimation crisis by j Habermas
Logic of collective action by m Olson
End of liberalism by T Lowi.
Look at that condo that collapsed in Florida. The residents would have had to tax themselves $15 million to fix it, but who wants to do that? It might be more prudent to have started saving it 10 or 20 years ago, but a pot of money is just asking to get stolen, wasted, diverted or otherwise cause mischief. People are right to be afraid of carbon credits or anything that concentrates a lot of money in a few hands. Now the only people left to sue (who have assets) are the survivors.
Realistically we are going to have mass casualty events from climate change in the next decade and people’s attitudes will change pretty rapidly; somebody is going to panic and start seeding sulfate aerosols, and that is going to take the conflict to another level. (I was thinking of doing a Kickstarter to rent a boat and seed iron in the ocean and got talked out of it by one of the experts — nobody can stop you from doing it out of the US thanks to Don Rumsfeld keeping us out of the Law of the Sea treaty)
Some reading on the political science front:
Legitimation crisis by j Habermas
Logic of collective action by m Olson
End of liberalism by T Lowi.
'but a pot of money is just asking to get stolen, wasted, diverted or otherwise cause mischief'
This sounds to me like short sightedness is the ultimate problem at hand.
This sounds to me like short sightedness is the ultimate problem at hand.
It's predictable that a portland cement + rebar building will need repair in 40 years.
It's not so predictable what financial markets will do.
Retrospectively, financial markets performed very well from 1980-2020; had they set aside $X a month per unit and invested it in stocks and bonds it would have been easy to accumulate $20M, so long as they didn't draw down during 2000 and 2008.
Had they actually tried they might have asked for $2X or $3X a month and wound up with too much money and the question of what to do with it (build a bowling alley, pay themselves a dividend, ...) -- which could put them right into "too little money" territory.
Condominiums themselves were an answer to financial instabilities at the time. In a conventional apartment the developer is going to raise money to build the building and get one or several bank loans for 20 years or so. That kind of person easily gets overleveraged, goes bankrupt, etc.
For the condominium the developer gets construction finance for a year or two and then gets a huge chunk of cash and the bank is made whole. The owners of the units have mortgages with many different banks so the risk is spread out.
It might be good "long term thinking" for some of the parties to structure the deal so that they don't need to think about how the economy is going to go over the next 40 years. It's not good in the long term for the owners because the governance structure isn't adequate to what it governs.
The apartment building would concentrate risk in some respects but also concentrates responsibility. A real estate developer who owns 20 apartment buildings will have some that need more repairs and some that need less; that developer can go to the banks or government for funding to make repairs and raise the rent to pay back the loan. If the developer gets over their head the bankruptcy courts can keep the business a "going concern."
It's not so predictable what financial markets will do.
Retrospectively, financial markets performed very well from 1980-2020; had they set aside $X a month per unit and invested it in stocks and bonds it would have been easy to accumulate $20M, so long as they didn't draw down during 2000 and 2008.
Had they actually tried they might have asked for $2X or $3X a month and wound up with too much money and the question of what to do with it (build a bowling alley, pay themselves a dividend, ...) -- which could put them right into "too little money" territory.
Condominiums themselves were an answer to financial instabilities at the time. In a conventional apartment the developer is going to raise money to build the building and get one or several bank loans for 20 years or so. That kind of person easily gets overleveraged, goes bankrupt, etc.
For the condominium the developer gets construction finance for a year or two and then gets a huge chunk of cash and the bank is made whole. The owners of the units have mortgages with many different banks so the risk is spread out.
It might be good "long term thinking" for some of the parties to structure the deal so that they don't need to think about how the economy is going to go over the next 40 years. It's not good in the long term for the owners because the governance structure isn't adequate to what it governs.
The apartment building would concentrate risk in some respects but also concentrates responsibility. A real estate developer who owns 20 apartment buildings will have some that need more repairs and some that need less; that developer can go to the banks or government for funding to make repairs and raise the rent to pay back the loan. If the developer gets over their head the bankruptcy courts can keep the business a "going concern."
What makes you think the reason we can’t handle, for example, climate change is “we are not that intelligent”? I think the reason in this case is quite simple: some people/organizations/governments don’t want to apply measures against climate change because it will cost them money.
I'm not talking about the intelligence of some individuals, but of groups acting as an entity. Let's say aliens look at earth and ask why earthlings don't do anything against their extinction. If the answer they get is "it's too expensive", that seems quite stupid.
We already act intelligently, and the first thing most humans realize is that they don't really have much of an influence on global warming directly, and that they are better of doing the minimum required.
Global warming will be solved by better technology, or not at all.
Global warming will be solved by better technology, or not at all.
Douglas Englebart wrote 75 seminal papers answering your question and demonstrated them in "the mother of all demos".
Alan Kay has many talks and papers explaining the ideas.
Alan Kay has many talks and papers explaining the ideas.
> What can we do to enable many individuals to act as one intelligent entity?
Do you want intelligence (critical reasoning) or group conformance? It sounds like you want both when those are actually opposing forces.
Do you want intelligence (critical reasoning) or group conformance? It sounds like you want both when those are actually opposing forces.
Critical reasoning goes hand in hand with group conformance. To reason collaboratively, you need a collaborative truth to build on. Did I misunderstand your question?
Critical reasoning the ability to independently question things including group dynamics. Conformity is the quest for agreement. Perhaps your confusion is truth according to Mills.
You're conflating intelligence with values. We don't know what intelligence is.
A lot of psychopaths, racists, sociopaths, Dogecoin promoting tech entrepreneurs, gang members, etc are very intelligent according to their own values and their immediate perceived interests irrespective of how dumb they may seem to people like myself that simply don't share their values. To answer your question, in the same way media literacy and sex education have edged their way closer to being first class forms of education, we need to do the same with the concept of social engineering. Everything humans do is social engineering - everything. Ingratiating an awareness of social engineering into the culture as a responsible and useful tool and do so in a way that is crystallized and direct should be a first class citizen. As it stands this is taught indirectly through a hodgepodge of scattered concepts like "leadership skills", "media literacy","customer service" , .... whatever.
Fuck all this - it's all just social engineering and that is what should be taught. Full stop.
Awareness is needed to help inoculate people against under-challenged ideological assumptions, cults, corporate cults, tech cults, social media cults,nationalist cults,nation-state cults, military cults, business cults, gang cults, and charismatic sociopaths trying to build their own cults. But of course, my view reflects my values and not my "intelligence". :)
A lot of psychopaths, racists, sociopaths, Dogecoin promoting tech entrepreneurs, gang members, etc are very intelligent according to their own values and their immediate perceived interests irrespective of how dumb they may seem to people like myself that simply don't share their values. To answer your question, in the same way media literacy and sex education have edged their way closer to being first class forms of education, we need to do the same with the concept of social engineering. Everything humans do is social engineering - everything. Ingratiating an awareness of social engineering into the culture as a responsible and useful tool and do so in a way that is crystallized and direct should be a first class citizen. As it stands this is taught indirectly through a hodgepodge of scattered concepts like "leadership skills", "media literacy","customer service" , .... whatever.
Fuck all this - it's all just social engineering and that is what should be taught. Full stop.
Awareness is needed to help inoculate people against under-challenged ideological assumptions, cults, corporate cults, tech cults, social media cults,nationalist cults,nation-state cults, military cults, business cults, gang cults, and charismatic sociopaths trying to build their own cults. But of course, my view reflects my values and not my "intelligence". :)
Intensive meditation, an hour a day for about 10 years, will produce dramatically saner leadership in most cases.
I'm probably getting a lot of shit for this, but "intensive meditation" sounds exactly like something that Americans might come up with as they lack time for actual meditation.
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By making ourselves smarter and preaching science everywhere we are.
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