Stereotypes are largely consensus-based, which gives them a larger data pool than any individual would have. If a comedian starts making jokes about the foibles of a large group, and most people haven't experienced those same foibles, they're not going to find it funny. Now, smaller groups can get a lot nastier treatment, both because there's less evidence to contradict a stereotype, and because they can turn into the token butt of jokes(Newfies being the stereotypical example where I'm from - nobody actually believes the jokes, but everybody makes them just because they're the group you make dumb-people jokes about). But "women" is a far too common group to get much in the way of false stereotypes, for example.

At this point, I should also point out the dangers of stereotypes that are true only because culture forces them to be. For example, saying that women needed protection in the 19th century was basically true, but it was largely true because we didn't let women protect themselves. Feedback loops are a real danger.

There's a lot of truth in stereotypes. Not all women nag, but more do than men. Not all men are irresponsible, but more are than women. Since it's very difficult to make statements like that seriously in modern society - usually, you can only say it either anonymously or in groups of close friends whom you trust to not take it personally - a lot of people embed it in comedy, where the filters are lower, and where there's more reason for it to come up in the first place than just expressing bias.

It's not a harmless practice, of course, but it does provide a useful safety valve sometimes.

Groupthink is as powerful as ever. Why is that? I'll tell you. It's because the world is run by extraverts.

The problem with extraverts... is a lack of imagination.

pretty much everything that is organized is organized by extraverts, which in turn is their justification for ruling the world.

This seems to be largely an article about how we Greens are so much better than those Blues rather than offering much that is useful.

I don't have the answer but would be extremely interested in knowing it.

(Sorry this comment isn't more helpful. I am trying to get better at publicly acknowledging when I don't know an answer to a useful question in the hopes that this will reduce the sting of it.)

A potential practical worry for this argument: it is unlikely that any such technology will grant just enough for one dose for each person and no more, ever. Most resources are better collected, refined, processed, and utilized when you have groups. Moreover, existential risks tend to increase as the population decreases: a species with only 10 members is more likely to die out than a species with 10 million, ceteris paribus. The pill might extend your life, but if you have an accident, you probably need other people around.

There might be some ideal number here, but offhand I have no way of calculating it. Might be 30 people, might be 30 billion. But it seems like risk issues alone would make you not want to be the only person: we're social apes, after all. We get along better when there are others.

Your title asks a different question than your post: "useful" vs. being a "social virtue."

I chose a somewhat misleading title deliberately, although I can understand if people take issue with that. As I acknowledged in the post itself, it's clear that ruthlessness can be useful from the perspective of individual companies. From the perspective of a person judging their value to society, it's not so clear that ruthless business executives are useful. Their competitive advantage may lie purely in allowing them to make decisions that are in the company's interest, but not the public interest.

X is more ruthless than Y (...) but X also stands to be more profitable than X.

I'm guessing you mean X stands to be more profitable than Y?

Your title asks a different question than your post: "useful" vs. being a "social virtue."

Consider two companies: A and B. Each has the option to pursue some plan X, or its alternative Y. X is more ruthless than Y (X may involve laying off a large portion of their workforce, a misinformation campaign, or using aggressive and unethical sales tactics) but X also stands to be more profitable than Y.

If the decision of which plan to pursue falls to a ruthless individual in company A, company A will likely pursue X. If the decision falls to a "highly competitive, compassionate, with restrictive sense of fair play" individual in company B, B may perform Y instead. If B does not perform Y, it is likely because they noted the comparative advantage A would have, being likely to pursue X. In this case, it is still in B's interest to act ruthlessly, making ruthlessness useful.

Now, is it a virtue? Well, for a particular company it is useful: it allows the pursuit of plans that would otherwise not be followed. Does the greater society benefit from it? Well, society gains whatever benefit is gained from business pursuing such plans, at the cost of whatever the costs of such plans are. But it is a useful enough character trait for one company's executives that it grants a competitive advantage over other companies where that trait is absent. Thus, it is an advantage- and perhaps a virtue, I am not sure how that word cashes out here- for each company. Companies without ruthless executives may fail to act or fail to act quickly where a ruthless executive wouldn't hesitate. So in situations where ruthless tactics allow one to win, ruthless individuals are an asset.

I'm not sure what more can be said on this, as I don't have a good way of cashing out the word 'social virtue' here or what practical question you are asking.

You say this is why you are not worried about the singularity, because organizations are supra-human intelligences that seek to self-modify and become smarter.

So is your claim that you are not worried about unfriendly organizations? Because on the face of it, there is good reason to worry about organizations with values that are unfriendly toward human values.

Now, I don't think organizations are as dangerous as a UFAI would be, because most organizations cannot modify their own intelligence very well. For now they are stuck with (mostly) humans for hardware and when they attempt to rely heavily on the algorithms we do have it doesn't always work out well for them. This seems more a statement about our current algorithms than the potential for such algorithms, however.

However, there is a lot of energy on various fronts to hinder organizations whose motivations are such that they lead to threats, and because these organizations are reliant on humans for hardware, only a small number of existential threats have been produced by such organizations. It can be argued that one of the best reasons to develop FAI is to undo these threats and to stop organizations from creating new threats of the like in the future. So I am not sure that it follows from your position that we should not be worried about the singularity.

There may be important differences between avoiding low status and seeking high status.