RolfAndreassen comments on Rationality Quotes August 2013 - Less Wrong

7 Post author: Vaniver 02 August 2013 08:59PM

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Comment author: wedrifid 04 August 2013 06:54:40PM 7 points [-]

I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein’s brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops.

A proactive interest in the latter would seem to lead to extensive instrumental interest in the former. Finding things (such as convolutions in brains or genes) that are indicative of potentially valuable talent is the kind of thing that helps make efficient use of it.

Comment author: RolfAndreassen 10 August 2013 04:58:14AM 8 points [-]

I suspect, actually, that Gould would not view "find the geniuses and get them out of the fields" as a reasonable solution to the problem he poses. What he wants is for there to be no stoop labour in the first place, whether for geniuses or the terminally mediocre. The geniuses are just a way to illustrate the problem.