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MichaelVassar comments on I'm scared. - Less Wrong Discussion
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I think I could help, but it would take a while. I seriously need someone else to be able to start doing that helping in the not so long term. For now, I will flatly assert that I expect an intense, rational effort to succeed by a quite moderate number of otherwise ordinary people to be enough to swing the balance for the light-cone's future, but such an effort must actually acknowledge human realities and work with them, rather than punishing people for their imperfections.
Understanding what some call the terror of the situation will change a lot. People should volunteer at shelters or prisons or with something like big brothers/big sisters and see the pain that stupidity, weakness, irrationality, love of ignorance and all the rest cause. The real terror of the traits commonly possessed by the people and economic entities that shape our society. Think hard about daily life in rural china, north korea, iran, the ghettos and the trailer parks and think about the evolutionary pressure that puts on the 150+ IQs that happen to be born there and what the consequences of a little bit of love and reason can be. Thinking about this forces one to admit to selfishness and yield to temptation or intentional suffering to purify this, or admit that one is choosing love of misery over ripples of rationality that can add to a critical mass for breaking cycles of ignorance, corruption and abuse.
"otherwise ordinary people"
Are you really sure about this?
I don't mean average, but yes, ordinary, as in typical physics PhD from a good but not necessarily very top program. Darwin and Smith seem to have been such people to start, but aspired to more. Possibly Socrates and Einstein. No Newtons required, nor even Faradays or Fields Medalists.
even the most extraordinary eat, shit, sleep, fuck, become addicted and I also feel that merging needs is the key to cooperation