Squashing the IQ Curve - A Less Stressful Reality?

[CuriousArv]

If these people actually intend to secretly be good by staging this..and causing the world to then rush to buy the pill..then hopefully they know exactly what their doing because if it went wrong somehow lot of people could get killed. Whoever's selling these pills is going to rake it in.

 

[Huckleberry]

What if it was available in the market and it actually worked and it was cheap? Okay all of these arguments up to now have questioned the merit of this action but I'm thinking this

what if some despot or hostile government decided to hand out such 'pills' to all of their citizens and through their vast intellectual superiority over other nations/simply wipe them out and take over the world. It could just be a handful of evil people. How would you fight this? Have no choice but actually give these pills to everyone? nanotech and medicine and scientists aren't scarce or only available to few nations. They're everywhere.

Brute force is a pretty good equalizer. A bullet doesn't care how intelligent you are. Intelligent people still need to eat food and drink clean water. They would need their factories and materials and economic structure. Take those resources away and it doesn't matter how intelligent they are. Besides, intelligence isn't the main requirement of a soldier.

To take over the world with intelligence you would have to act within the existing system and play one nation against another. Don't present oneself as a target for people's hatred. Use the armies of other nations to destroy themselves. Create politics to cause unrest in citizens. Manuever resources to cause resentment between cultures. Control the information that people can receive so as to spread the propaganda that you want the citizens to believe. Change the law to justify ones actions and proclaim that it is in the best interests of the security of the nation. Discredit any opposition and make them appear foolish and irrational. Spread distrust and insecurity and fear and when people start to believe it they can be manipulated to whatever end is desired. When one controls all the resources one has all the power.

Giving out smart pills would make people harder to deceive. It is much better to make people believe that tomorrow will be much the same as today. And when the time is right they can be set in a panic and pointed in the general direction of the thing one wants destroyed. People are smart enough to take care of the rest. So if they gave out smart pills they would be inhibiting their ability to control people. And if smart pills were given out to make people aware of the deceptions then there would eventually be all the downfalls mentioned in the previous posts. There is no shortcut to peace and understanding. They primarily require respect for others and their beliefs.

(Don't get any ideas HRW. I know how bent you are on world domination.)

 

[CuriousArv]

haha... if I was a really about world domination..i don't think i'd be telling people ideas just like this not that any of them are clever anyway. just curious as usual.

 

[CuriousArv]

Ok..Finally understand.. You would only allow a reserach program with the intention of augmenting intelligence if you knew that the risk that posed (of smarter criminals being produced and being easily capable of destroying the world) is lesser in magnitude compared to if you did nothing. Unless somebody can point out that this is the case, all moves towards artifically enchancing intelligence should generally be opposed. By doing this one is doing the right thing and preventing the possibility for life to be severely threatened.



If somebody is in the lower world though, then yes things are tougher for them and yes they have the greater chances of getting culled. But nobody in the smarter world is going to life a finger unless
1. they are a caring sort and provide educational oppurtunties for sideways movement
2. they realize that the risk posed to their lives is otherwise magnified.

chances are only if 2 kicks in, they'll do something.

So people in robotics and bio-medical engineering...is anybody doing something to stop them coming up with such devices?
If there is nothing one can do they must these people then just start building guarding techs right way because they realize that
intelligence augmentation is inevitable?

 

[honestrosewater]

No, I don't know of any reasons that the search for knowledge should ever be opposed. (Edit: Well, actually, I suppose I do. It's probably not worth it if it causes unnecessary suffering. Knowledge is probably not the highest on my list, but it is pretty high. (Edit: Or, rather, I should have distinguished between the knowledge itself and actually conducting the search for it. I don't know of any reason that knowledge itself should ever be declined, but I realize that it can't always be gained ethically. Does that make sense? Blarg.))

It sounds like you still haven't taken the step back that I was trying to get you to take. Say that you can divide the population into two groups, X and Y. One group is good and right and one group is bad and wrong. How do you decide which group is which? Does it depend on which group you are in? Are you ever in the bad and wrong group?

As far as criminals go, have you ever heard the expression "might makes right"? Do you think Nelson Mandela should still be in prison?