From: Eliezer S. Yudkowsky (sentience@pobox.com)
Date: Sat Jun 22 2002 - 03:44:22 MDT
Brian Phillips wrote:
>
> Mr. Broderick has made a statement to the effect (pardons if
> I misrepresent him) that the downside of "high-IQ gunslinging"
> is the realization that there is basically nobody who is a very
> great deal more intelligent than you are....that this is somewhat
> depressing. Must it be so?
I would recommend consciously severing the connection between your bell
curve position and tribalist social rankings. This includes not only gross
errors such as claiming a high tribal position on account of high
intelligence, but also subtler errors such as altering your self-estimate to
avoid 'placing yourself above others', or incorrectly believing deprecating
statements about the value of intelligence in order to avoid others seeing
you as arrogant. In cases like these, we should do our best to err on the
side of accuracy. The cognitive connection between intelligence and social
rank should be cut with a knife - complete separation.
Speaking as a Singularitarian, intelligence is incredibly valuable and
entangled with everything else that matters. You need only turn your
attention away from the intraspecies intelligence differences between
humans, and look at the difference between humans and chimpanzees, to have
this dramatically illustrated.
Politically incorrect errors in rationality are easy to point out, but it
takes a true iconoclast to avoid politically correct errors in rationality.
Right now it is politically correct to understate the value of
intelligence, but I feel that this meme is destructive of both intelligence
and personal growth. If it seems to you that intelligence is unrelated to
wisdom, you aren't looking hard enough. You don't become a Jedi by saying
"The Force isn't everything, you know," but I bet it was a popular saying in
the Old Republic just before it fell.
-- Eliezer S. Yudkowsky http://singinst.org/ Research Fellow, Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence
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