Comment by Fckd | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Fckd | Hacker News Reader

What if a smart person thought of a crypto currency and then foresaw its devastating impact on the planet, what do you think that person would do?

I belive smart people want to work on ideas that are net positive and as you know many ideas (even successfull ones) are net negative.

* Airbnb - locals are outbidded by tourists

* uber/lyft - better solution is public transportation

* Amazon - big marketplace but no idea whats fake and have to pray to god that no one dies while trying to deliver our orer

* Roundup - kills grass and also friendly insects on top of that gives you cancer

* Teflon - no need to burn calarioes on washing dishes but pollutes ground water with forever chemicals

* meat industry - you get tasty meal but animals and earth suffer

* Zillion sataliets in orbit - remote locations (no one lives or not need) gets access to internet but astronomy suffers

the list goes on

> "I belive smart people want to work on ideas that are net positive"

Do you have any basis for that belief or is that just wishful thinking? Or is that the way how you choose to define "smart", so it becomes true by definition?

I would say that a persons goals, purposes and values is an important aspect that's pretty much orthogonal to their intellectual ability to figure out how to best achieve their long-term goals and further their values, whatever they happen to be. Perhaps there's some correlation there, but IMHO it's not necessary nor very strong, all kinds of counterexamples come to mind; there certainly are people who are very intelligent and effective while literally being sociopaths.

Smart people also realize the world isn't perfect, and it wasn't before we were here either. In a world where long term outcomes have infinite factors taking actions with short term benefits is rational because there is no control or impact over the long term effects.

That is obviously not totally true, but I think probabilistically speaking, it's _somewhat_ true.

So the defining feature of intelligence is that the truly smart take actions with short term benefits at the cost of long term detriments?

Close. Smart people are _willing_ to take actions with short term benefits at the cost of long term detriments.

Smart people understand that there are multiple correct answers to the same problem depending on what timeframe you are operating under, and that the long timeframe is less controllable.

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