gwern comments on Intelligence as a bad - Less Wrong

2 Post author: PhilGoetz 25 April 2012 04:55PM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (35)

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

Comment author: gwern 25 April 2012 06:25:33PM 2 points [-]

Strictly speaking, everyone who isn't paying the innovator but is benefiting from the innovation is a free-rider. Who benefits disproportionately? I guess to the extent that all economic wealth flows to anyone disproportionately (perhaps the rich), they benefit disproportionately from innovation as well.

Comment author: siodine 25 April 2012 07:06:34PM *  3 points [-]

Perhaps the rich

I don't know if that's serious or snark, but I don't think it's necessarily the rich. For instance, the management class could absorb the positive externalities of their more intelligent and less socially adept subordinates while only being marginally richer. So, as a whole if you could say the management class produces no to few benefits themselves, and yet takes a huge chunk of economic wealth roughly the size of what you'd expect from the positive externalities from intelligence, then you could potentially make some interesting conclusions.

ETA: I'm using this as an example of the kind of thing I'm talking about, and I'm not supporting it as a conclusion or even a hypothesis.