steven0461 comments on Cascio in The Atlantic, more on cognitive enhancement as existential risk mitigation - Less Wrong
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If you decreased the intelligence of everyone to 100 IQ points or lower, that would probably eliminate all hope for a permanent escape from existential risk. Risk in this scenario might be lower per time unit in the near future, but total risk over all time would approach 100%.
Why do you think it's the nuclear weapons that keep the current peace, and not the memory of past wars, and more generally/recently cultural moral progress? This is related to your prediction in resource depletion scenario.
List of wars by death toll is very interesting.
There's little evidence for theory that threat of global thermonuclear war creates global peace.
That's a good point, but it would be more relevant if this were a policy proposal rather than an epistemic probe.
I don't see why this being an epistemic probe makes risk per near future time unit more relevant than total risk integrated over time.
The whole thing is kind of academic, because for any realistic policy there'd be specific groups who'd be made smarter than others, and risk effects depend on what those groups are.