There are people that only think about making things better for themselves no matter how it effects others. These people would just use that “extra” intelligence to up their game. So no, I don’t think there would be less conflict.
I think part of the reason some of those people live that way is because they don’t think through the effects of everyone else living their lives that way. Perhaps the stat boost to INT would give them the ability to follow that course of action to it’s logical conclusion and therefore choose to live differently?
Exactly. If you do nothing about greed and selfishness/narcissism then nothing changes, you just have smarter greedy people. :/
Theoretically, the people opposed to manipulative narcissists also become more intelligent
Ultimately, however, leftism is an intellectual position. It’s typically held by people who are either well-read, or at minimum understanding of the concept of fairness for all people (which requires abstract thinking and a good theory of mind). Very few people believe in leftism due to stupidity. That’s why it’s in Republicans’ best interest to keep people stupid.
Increasing intelligence of the general population would be a basal necessity for changing the economic system.
IQ is not a proxy for education, though. Raising intelligence without changing education wouldn’t accomplish much. People are kept stupid by means of propaganda, regardless of their intellectual ability.
I don’t see why that would help. But if everyone’s empathy increased by 50% of the average amount of empathy, that might help. (Not that it is measurable, but this is obviously fantasy)
Probably not. Conflict doesn’t arise because people don’t have the right ideas, more so conflict is the result of material conditions and processes. The battle for resources, the right to surplus extraction, class struggle, imperialism, all of these result from the evolution of class society, and not because of intelligence.
Wouldn’t intelligence also be a material condition? How your brain is wired plays a significant role in how it interacts with the environment, so if humans evolved with a more intelligent brain it would significantly alter our trajectory from early civilisations, no? Would probably also kick off civilisations much earlier.
It would likely make a difference, but probably wouldn’t reduce conflict by much. Capitalism doesn’t exist because humans are evil, or unintelligent, for example.
No, there would be less conflict in the world if we were to cure people from psychopathy, sociopathy, narcissism, racism and other ails that lead to destructive selfishness.
Conflicts in the world dont come from the lack of intelligence. Its class conflicts that are at the root of everything else
Depends what you mean by intelligence, but i would argue that there would be more conflict.
People who do not move, do not notice their chains.
Well, if we look around today, some of the best minds in world are busy making people click on ads
I can see both sides. Smarter people would make the pie bigger. But a flat %increase would make the absolute intelligence gap even wider, which is what I think is the more relevant metric. Evil spirited smart people would manipulate stupid people even harder and that benevolent smart people may not do much to stop it.
Would the world be better? Maybe. Would the world have less conflict? I bet not.
No, we would just use it for better confict
Intelligence, no. We need empthy, self-love, unity.
No, the conflicts would simply be more damaging.
Humans, regardless of intelligence, are destructive. More intelligence just means more destruction.
We are the Fermi paradox made flesh.
points at everything humans have built look at everything humans have destroyed
I’m sorry I can’t hear you over the collapse of the AMOC.
For the ten millionth time, its capitalism
And humans built it.
“Humans” can be violent, short sighted and ignorant when people stop thinking critically and start applying dumb, impractical abstractions to complex and ever-changing objective reality – and then stubbornly pretend like the dumb abstraction is objective truth.
On a thread about being more intelligent to prevent human suffering, don’t be on the side of stupidity and suffering by pretending that a deeply contradictory social order that directs all human activity toward the production of war and human suffering, is the only social order humans have ever been capable of producing, let alone, will ever produce.
You’re entitled to be a misanthrope and hate humanity, but entitlements granted by capitalism on one side, are paid for with victimization on the other side. Being on the side of the victims, but receiving entitlements (often unintentionally) means that the victimized class both hates them self for their even involuntary role in in the victimize/entitlement social relation, but also unable to imagine anything different.
Ultimately, it is a fear of freedom that prevents humanity from advancing beyond capitalist social relations. But fear in some inspires courage in others. And in that courage, is hope.
A lot of societies produced war and suffering long before capitalism existed.
And many didn’t, and none produced the kind of mass industrialized war capable of dozens of millions of casualties. But yes their ruling classes still waged war for the same reason as our ruling classes do. So it isn’t a problem of human nature, but a problem with having a ruling class.
But never before have the underclass actually held the tools and means of production, and been as directly opposed in every rational interest, as the exploiting and exploiter classes produced by capitalist social and economic relations. Furthermore, the working classes are broadly opposed to war, broadly in support of rational, secular government, human rights, and freedom of association. But because the education and dissemination of info to the masses is overseen by the ruling minority, people lack the ability to name the problems which we face.
So our social forces that produce war, are imperialism, which is a historic stage of capitalism. So we can concretely identify specific tendencies in a society built by people, name them, and subsequently resist them; rather blaming all problems of society on “human nature”. We can be much more accurate and specific than that. And the moment we are, we have an imperative to do something. Which is why fatalism is so convenient for people who fear freedom.
That’s how people who consider themselves rational and scientific end up falling for apocalypse myths; with facts underwriting eschatology. I think there would be less conflict and difficulty in the world if people were 50% less gullible.
Probably not. In fact if you mean everyone gets smarter starting tomorrow but up til today we’re in the same crappy world as always, that’s probably a disaster. Yeah we have some sociopath criminals in high places, but lots more of them are in prison or doing really dumb things (there’s a tv show about them, “world’s dumbest criminals”). Now imagine they suddenly get a whole lot smarter. Everyone else also becoming smarter won’t help that much.
If you mean human evolution somehow went on a different path making all humans smarter all the way back to prehistoric times, then it’s harder to say, but it doesn’t sound so great either.
Emotional intelligence isn’t the answer either, for the same sorts of reasons. Maybe there’s a separate thing called “wisdom” but there will always be gaps.
You might like HPMOR, a Harry Potter fanfic novel that philosophizes a lot about these types of questions. It’s at hpmor.com. Warning, the main character is insufferable a lot of the time, especially near the beginning. So you might hate it, in which case feel free to quit after a few chapters.
For a more positive take, try the old school science fiction novel “Protector” by Larry Niven.
I keep seeing this type of comment but people seem to ignore that everyone is increasing their intelligence. The malicious, and the benevolent.
I don’t see that as helping much, at least without creating a horrible police state. Imagine thousands or millions of James Bond villains or other mad scientists running around and finding ways to evade detection. Making the cops smarter only goes so far.
What does it even mean for one person to be 50% more intelligent than another person?
Surely that’s just meant as a general concept and we don’t need to split hairs on the definition of that? Imagine an IQ test or whatever else people normally understand when using the word intelligence, and that such a person would get 1.5 times as many questions right
