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Comment by phkahler | Hacker News Reader

>> Soon I start to wonder about concepts that I don’t know exist: concepts whose existence I can never even suspect, let alone contemplate. What can I ever know about that which lies beyond the limits of what I can even imagine?

I find it more interesting or even frightening to contemplate those differences among humans today. For those with an IQ in the 90's, what thoughts and concepts am I able to understand that they can't? And likewise, what am I personally not able to to grok that some of the smartest people can? Even within engineering and software I find that some practitioners have a hard time with some things I find easy, and I have a hard time with concepts others find easy. It may just be differing backgrounds, but what if these are differences in raw cognitive capability? Levels of abstraction seem real if not well defined.

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> It may just be differing backgrounds, but what if these are differences in raw cognitive capability?

Honestly, I think ignorance may be bliss. I loathe to think about what arrogance, bigotry, and manifestations of depression would pop up had we concrete ways to measure capability.

Ignorance isn't a real option.

If the truth is knowable, someone will find it eventually.

The best you can do is opt yourself into ignorance. You can't opt everyone around you into the same ignorance. And by opting yourself into ignorance, you potentially create a competitive advantage for those who don't have the same hangups for facing ugly truths as you do.

>> Honestly, I think ignorance may be bliss. I loathe to think about what arrogance, bigotry, and manifestations of depression would pop up had we concrete ways to measure capability.

That's why I find the idea somewhat frightening. But that is also what makes it a far more interesting (relevant) question.

Why do we often implicitly consider the human cognitive capability as it is embodied in adult individuals' biological makeup to be immutable, now and in the future? Even a single existence proof of a method for cognitive enhancement would deal away with this frame.

I get that we aren't (yet) spoiled by availability of (gene or cellular) therapies uplifting our IQs, but hey, at least those mice were able to receive theirs: https://www.cell.com/cell-stem-cell/pdf/S1934-5909(13)00007-...

Given the sheer amount of capital available for trial and error on (sometimes ridiculous like juicero) consumer products it's weird that so little of it is allocated to advance the biotechnology of human enhancement.

What difference would it make? We treat poor and rich as equals... or should. Amputees are not treated any less than athletes.

These questions impose artifical beliefs as plausible theorems

One wonders if you think ramps for amputees are considered an artificial belief or not.

The answers to these questions have real ramifications, treating them as artificial is how harm to real people happens.

> Amputees are not treated any less than athletes.

I see you don't understand meritocracy. Amputees can physically do less than athletes, therefore they deserve worse food, worse housing, and worse medical care, unless they can offset this defect in some other way.

It's almost blasphemous to do otherwise; if God has seen fit to punish them, your offsetting of that punishment shows a prideful disapproval of God's plan. God has made His judgment of the amputee clear, so it's actually your duty to reinforce that judgement. God has given us dominion over this world, and the responsibility to maintain it; we can do that better with athletes, rather than people who are missing limbs. Or secularly, we collectively maintain the world's wealth through our individual contributions. The mean athlete contributes more, the mean amputee contributes less, and what goes around, should come around. Workers, not shirkers!

I like to think of it as the reverse golden rule. Accept unto yourself that which you would have done to others. If you're worth less, eat less.

In this instance your handle is apt.

This sounds like an astoundingly appealing philosophy to one who is towards the top of this meritocracy pecking order, and utterly repugnant to anyone downward. It's so self-serving in that regard, that the "conflict of interest" in those who benefit in extolling it as the order for all...well, it makes the whole thing highly questionable. Is it the best way because it's the best way, or because it's best for you? It's really hard to see anyone who is on the wrong end of this system arguing for it, so in the end they would have to be subjugated? That rarely (never?) works out (if it can be considered a good thing to work out at all...), so it's clear to me that a hard-liner meritocratic system is never really going to work.

I'm not quite sure whether this is a genuinely held point of view or devil's advocacy.

What are you smoking. Someone's physical abilities have had little to do with their impact on the world for at least a century...

Let's give rewards equally to all; the builders, the creators, the criminals and the leeches. That is surely the best system of distribution. How cruel must you be to let another man have less than you? So we must take from those who labor and with a wisdom that they have not, re-distribute the fruit of society fairly to all. It is a unjust and wicked world, so let us take control and right the world's wrongs.

This made me think about Sam Harris's comparison between ourselves and John Van Neumann as analogous to a comparison between a chicken and ourselves.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8nt3edWLgIg&t=382s

JVN was a superhuman, but he is a bit oversold and a goto example of this class of people. Hyperbolic comparison by Sam doesn't help here.

Now, Terry Tao is a person of the same, if not greater caliber. A real, living 200 IQ genius.

Von Neumann’s impact is at least an order of magnitude greater than Tao’s. No disrespect, he is a great mathematician. But the sheer breath of von Neumann’s impact is unparalleled. [1]

[1]https://www.wikiwand.com/en/John_von_Neumann

Those rare few where the extreme overclocking of their brain from birth had somehow enough cooling to keep them from going insane :-D

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