A very important part of this frontier is ability to create genetic copies to see which part of a trait is genetic.
It is crazy that we ban research on cloning, and still don't have many clones of successful scientists.
It is crazy that we ban research on cloning, and still don't have many clones of successful scientists.
Not because these aren’t brilliant people but because brilliance isn’t the most important factor in innovation. Rather, innovation is driven by people who are exposed to a novel environment and are just smart enough to not ignore it.
Bill Gates’ highschool was the only one in the US with a computer. Albert Einstein was working in a patent office where he saw a conga-line of patents discussing how to standardize the measurement of time across vast geographies.
Both brilliant people. Both exposed to a novel societal idea. Thankfully they were smart enough to run with it.
I suspect having at least moderately wealthy parents is a huge factor. I'm sure a lot of potentially great scientists died unknown for absence of those.
I don't thik this was a relevant factor. Certainly not as much as reading Poincare's work (which anyone had access to).
Of course, better genes means nutrition, education and opportunity go further
The point is that the world would benefit from even one more von Neumann.
Which would also indicate the likelihood of a lot of other people achieving more than they would have under more adverse conditions.
The point is that we could have dozens of von Neumann's twin brothers helping us to speed up that process, but we choose not to for no good reason.
Even one additional Von Neumann would be great. More would be fantastic.
And would be associated with a lot of other more impactful people.
The “good” reason for not providing better conditions is we don’t have a system for that.
My vote would be that the value of all raw natural resources not created by human beings efforts be considered a joint inheritance.
The raw value of them being shared by all equally with a focus on health and education for children, and keeping adults above survival mode. We would all benefit from that investment, even the rich.
The efforts of those who extract and process them, as with any human added value, would be rewarded by the competitive marketplace as usual.
Almost all solutions to actually solving environmentalism and sustainability at a long term global level involve lots of complicated policies which seemingly can only be accomplished with a higher degrees of altruism, better intelligence of multiple flavors, etc.
https://youtu.be/pRIIwJh1DDQ?t=165
We kind of NEED a general increase to intellect and ability. Also would save on rising health care costs.
Ironically, we'd need some sort of eugenics for the ruling elite to truly raise them to a point that they could then responsibly apply eugenics to the rest of the population.
The "elite" will probably start doing this in the next 50 years. Honestly I'm shocked it hasn't started in my lifetime (I'm ~50 years old)