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RichardKennaway comments on What resources have increasing marginal utility? - Less Wrong Discussion

36 Post author: Qiaochu_Yuan 14 June 2014 03:43AM

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Comment author: RichardKennaway 16 June 2014 12:07:06PM 1 point [-]

The world doesn't seem to be dominated by super high g people.

There aren't all that many of them. But consider, say, Jobs, Gates, Peter Thiel, and the like.

it seems like we would see vast resources and power controlled by super geniuses.

Jobs, Gates, and Thiel again, depending on how vast and how much power. But why would a genius necessarily go for vast resources and power? Would that have helped Einstein think about physics?

Btw, this is a reason I find Batman completely implausible. I'm willing to suspend that and be entertained, but he seems to spring into existence as an adult, fully formed with several lifetimes worth of knowledge, experience, wealth, and power. The only backstory I can make up to explain that is that in a former life as a genius he cracked the problems of how to retain all one's memories through rebirth, and how to ensure an auspicious rebirth. He really does have several lifetimes' worth of knowledge and experience, and then got himself reborn in a position to inherit vast wealth and power as soon as he reached legal adulthood.