There is a moment where he gets "the idea". This is the thing that takes him from his hedonic whirlwind to a purposeful existence. He's trying to change the world.
My hope is that he'd use the powers of the pill to set up labs to study the process it works on, mass produce it, use his political clout as president to push it though as a legal nootropic, and use the bully pulpit to promote it. Make everyone smart.
What I'm gathering from the other replies to my comment is that people are not so much in need of intelligence as they are in need to realize their full value.
Please define your use of the word "rich".
i was quoting from the original post. In the context i assumed it meant: enough money to not have to worry about needed more money.
He uses this new power to finish his book, get back together with his girlfriend, become rich, and eventually become president of the united states. Incidentally he gets in shape, establishes himself as high status at top tier social events, learns many new languages, and sleeps with a bunch of women.
How would it work if everyone had this power?
Doesn't being rich require that others be poor?
Only one person can become president at a time.
Doesn't being at the top tier of social events (or anything) mean that there needs to be sub tiers?
"Sleeps with a bunch of women": this seems to answer the above problems. Humans would be so busy "sleeping" with each other they'd have little time or use for money, politics, or meaningless social gatherings. Food would still be important. I'd like to think art would be too. Sex, food, and transformative experiences. A return to the animal kingdom. That makes me almost hopeful.
But, I have this all wrong, don't I. I'm going back to the sequences now....
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Note: This is a LIE.
The correct quote was that I said on SL4 that when Douglas Lenat switched on Eurisko, essentially the first time anyone had ever built a Turing-complete freeform genuinely recursive self-modifier with heuristics modifying heuristics, he ought to have evaluated a 5% chance of it going FOOM.
I was 4 years old when Eurisko was switched on, and could not possibly have said anything at the time.
Declan McCullagh. Write it down. Never trust him.
No matter how many terrible things you've heard about the mainstream press, you truly cannot appreciate how bad it really, really is until you have been reported on yourself. It is at least two orders of magnitude worse than you think it is from reading Reddit.
Very true.
As someone who has worked in the industry i can tell you that the process of creating news stories is remarkably similar to that of producing chicken nuggets -- although, probably not as sanitary.