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Comment by adrianmacneil | Hacker News Reader

Have you considered that purely meritocratic actions, with no affirmative action, might only result in reaching a local maxima of productivity for an organization or industry?

It's possible that by following your stance and having pure equality, we will not reach an ideal state that could have been reached, given some short term hires/promotions to create role models which then help others to reach their potential.

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There is no doubt that this is true, but I do not consider optimising metrics such as productivity across industries or even across humanity itself to be a worthwhile goal. In fact, I consider it to be a dangerous goal in itself.

I have little doubt that an AI-driven society with sociopolitical decisions taken by some benevolent artificial dictator, with a planned economy, would score very high in whatever metrics we consider important, but that is not a world I want to live in. Not even if we could find a way to objectively measure happiness and the society would be based on maximising aggregate happiness.

I want a live in a world that empowers the individual, and leaves the individual with the choice on how to live his life. A world where each individual has and feels the liberty to pursue happiness.

I have little doubt that this world is most certainly not optimal based on most aggregate metrics you can think of, such as productivity across industries.

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