Push the button until you’re intelligent enough to know you’ll only regret it more the next time you push it.
But maybe the thought that “you’ll only regret it more” is only your short-sightedness due to being too dumb. If you push it again, you’ll finally understand better how to apply it all.
It gives you intelligence, but it doesn’t give you drive or a good work ethic.
So you just end up extremely intelligent and still lazy.
Work smart, not hard!
The best programmer is a lazy programmer.
Insanity is only a button push away.
What if you can’t know till you hit that point
I think you’d wind up losing the ability to have meaningful relationships with your loved ones and others in your life, as your raw intelligence pushed you towards a sort of hyper-rationality. Maybe you’d also stop caring about that. But chances are your loved ones wouldn’t.
I’d proceed cautiously. Nudge it up, give some time to see how your life changes as a result. Maybe do some journaling. A couple weeks or months later, nudge it up again, etc. That way you can get some metrics regarding how it’s impacting your life and make the decision to stop if you think things are heading the wrong way.
Also something something Lawnmower Man and something something Flowers for Algernon.
Also, extremely intelligent people are often seriously depressed.
Some dude I knew cried while drunk bemoaning the heat death of the universe.
My dumbass reply?
I didn’t hear no bell
That sounds dumb, not intelligent.
Apparently the majority agrees.
Who knew we had so many intelligent people here.
Intelligence doesn’t necessarily make you rational; for example all the extremely intelligent people who believe in mythical sky daddies without evidence of said sky daddy.
It’d also a false spectrum to place intelligence opposite of empathy, these are two distinct qualities in people. Intelligence doesn’t predict one’s interest, or your behavior, or how you might relate to people.
Keep in mind, in flowers for algernon, Charlie was always socially awkward . Before the experiment, he was lacking in understanding that his “friends” were bullying him; as his intelligence (and knowledge and understanding;) grew… he came to understand that, coupled with the resentment of his old tormentors kept him socially awkward and isolated.
It wasn’t that he was suddenly hyper rational, but rather that he came to understand, and they resented him for that.
In any case the obvious solution is to share the button.
Sky daddies. 😂
extremely intelligent people who believe in mythical sky daddies without evidence of said sky daddy.
Like who?
Well there’s Bob. And Dave. And the whole CM crew down at Livermore.
for example all the extremely intelligent people who believe in mythical sky daddies without evidence of said sky daddy
When somebody who’s smart believes something that seems dumb to you, doesn’t that suggest that you might be wrong and/or misunderstand what they said?
When someone says “I believe xyz exists ”, I would expect evidence of XYZ existing. That the majority of humanity happens to share that belief is irrelevant to whether or not XYZ actually exists.
Without evidence, those beliefs are not based in rational thought. Humans are complicated, emotions, social coercion and all manner of other messy bullshit affect how we see and perceive the world.
Intelligence doesn’t make one rational, nor does it predict the kind of things one comes to believe. Most fake news, (false) conspiracy theories, etc, are succeeding because they’re presented in a way that bypasses analysis and reasoned thinking- by going straight to the primal emotions.
Which is why, for example, “Think of the children!” Is the rallying cry of Republican assholes pushing anti-LGBTQ bullshit; it bypasses reasoning for the easy and immediate emotion.
When somebody who’s smart believes something that seems dumb to you, doesn’t that suggest that you might be wrong and/or misunderstand what they said?
With you on that but also feel that in general judging others doesn’t ring as being very smart to me. I was bullied a lot growing up, judged etc. And that taught me how people’s judgemental remarks can affect others which helped me avoid that train of thought myself.
I eventually became judgemental myself, for a while and realized that I was a very… angry and sad person.
I think the biggest game-changer for me was being taught gratitude. I went from hyperfocusing on everything wrong about my life, and others to training myself to instead search for what’s nice about life, and others.
So personally? Being judgemental toward another human being doesn’t seem like a smart thing to do as it will just bring down others AND myself
But also… none of us handpicked to be born in our particular bodies. None of us hand-picked and chose the circumstances we would grow up in in life, nor the variables that would change us and mold us, genetics and so many factors form a person. So judging a person that just happened to grow in a different body and think differently than myself? What good does that do? If I was born in their body instead of mine then I would think exactly the same way that they do so I am absolutely no better, none of us are. Sure people do bad things and have annoying traits but at the end of the day being mad at them and judging them does nothing because we would be exactly the same in their shoes. Want to be angry at something or judge someone I guess place that judgment at fate, the cosmos, the universe, just in general things that are out of our control and we do not understand. But people in general aren’t really good or bad we are just a product of trillions of factors that we had absolutely no say in nor control of. It’s not like people can just… exit human existence for a bit become enlightened and then enter our bodies again now thinking exactly the way others think they should… they just got what they got, and our that way because this life made them that way really.
Humans are very concerned with dominance games. (See 99% of movies and games for massive evidence). We want to put the other guy down and establish ourselves as up. Contriving a justification for that is trivial. Any rationale is just another tool for that.
Humans are very concerned with having a consistent story for explaining their world. Any assertion that contradicts that story is gonna require shouting down. Which generally leads back to the prior paragraph.
Intelligence doesn’t trend to an objective “perfection of the brain”, nor does it give you more access to universal awareness. You’ll still be limited to a human’s perception. Someone with 190+ IQ can still believe in false conspiracy theories due to the nature of the human brain. They may be able to easily solve a problem and deduce the nature of patterns, but will still fall to human cognitive biases.
In any case the obvious solution is to share the button.
100% agree there
Yes, I was thinking more like Dr. Manhattan. Have fun on Mars.
I was going to reference Dr. Manhattan but I’m not familiar enough with the comic to be sure I have the right interpretation of his character. I’ve only seen the movie.
I was thinking more the “general understanding” type intelligence rather than the spock/data type intelligence. But sure, either way your relationships might suffer.
It’s a monkey paw deal. Greater intelligence means a greater understanding of the world and how much it sucks.
“the world sucks” is a conclusion drawn from your present level of intelligence. You might draw different conclusions when you hit the next level of intelligence.
Let’s look at an example.
Level 1 INT:
Israeli invaders are killing Palestinian civilians in Gaza.
Level 2 INT:
Israeli invaders are killing Palestinian civilians in Gaza, and the USA is funding them.
Level 3 INT:
Israeli invaders are killing Palestinian civilians in Gaza. The invasion is an indirect result of harrassment and conflicts between Israel and irregular muslim extremist militants. The American involvement stems from a foreign aid agreement from the 1960s (rooted in WWII events) and several terrorist attacks against America by the same extremist groups.
No, greater understanding doesn’t make it better. Things don’t happen in a vacuum and the good (or understandable) doesn’t cancel out the bad.
How about
Level 1 : ideas are vessels of truth
Level 2 : ideas are toys
Level 3 : ideas are the spoor of alien sex demons
I mean who knows?
Even if only 10% of the world sucks, that is enough for t"he world sucks" to be accurate. It is higher than that, and barely anything that happens doesn’t include something negative as an outcome.
Community celebrations often uplift most people while ostracizing a portion of the population. Many people see things that could uplift everyone as zero sum games and then make sure they end up that way. Many times there are glaringly obvious solutions that are either held back or are implemented and then completely undone in short order by regressive groups. Even recognizing how many positive sounding slogans are blatant lies to mislead the masses, but everyone has fallen for them, is seriously depressing.
And all of that could be easily understood by the average person if they didn’t want to believe the positive stuff was true and that those that speak up about unfair treatment are just seeing things wrong.
That’s just your intelligence level talking. A couple whacks on the button and you’ll be thinking something completely different.
“See, it’s just your Matrix pod needs a new filter.”
Alright, become infinitely intelligent, create some ai to take over the world, and using your superintelligence, solve the alignment problem and make everything perfect for everyone.
Won’t work because people really hate things being obviously forced onto them, even positive things.
Plus I would be smart enough to know that it is a futile endeavor in the long run even if it was successful.
You’d be smart enough to be sneaky about it. Play the old “inflame their passions” then “supply a satisfying rationale for said passions” propaganda kung fu.
You’d also be smart enough to work around it. You’d be able to strategically convince the right people to implement it, and convince enough people to support it for it to go through, then the remaining detractors are either propagandized into liking it (like how business and governments do things now, but much better), or they remain in a small minority who will never change their minds, but aren’t important because nobody else cares.
Or you could use your superintelligence to make make an ai that makes people okay with it in the same way the hypothetical earworm ai does https://youtu.be/-JlxuQ7tPgQ?si=yCSfctxpmaOdbnTd
Or there’s some way that none of us could possibly come up with that would simultaneously work perfectly and is completely ethical. There’s no way to say, but saying it definitely won’t ever work i think is just due to a lack of imagination in this case.
This isn’t meant as a brag, but as ethos. I am openly considered to be the most intelligent(book smarts) person I know. Not by me, but by everyone around me.
Through self reflection, i have realised that suffering is universally bad. Unfortunately, we evolved in a darwinian universe, and as such suffering is inevitable. My conclusion is that the only way to permanantly erase suffering is to permanantly erase everything with the ability to suffer.
All life in the universe must be erased, or else things may eventually evolve to commit even greater atrocities than the human race has already managed.
The saying “ignorance is bliss” is a common saying for a reason.
you should go into the scrap irony business.
In OP’s case you’d have to mash that button till the point of bitter regret
My problem isn’t that my int is too low, it’s that my wis and cha are both negative
Gimme a button that grants rizz and social awareness
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Is there a button that makes you less smart? I would want to push that button until I was happiest.
“Extended warranty? How can I lose?!” “Perfect”
There is, but it’s not a button
So you think stupidness makes you happy? I gotta say I disagree.
I mean it’s intelligence that keeps you from trying to eat rocks. Eating rocks clearly leads to unhappiness.
Maybe we’re talking about 2 different kinds of intelligence.
I’m talking about “understand all the things” (mind, body, emotions, etc) type intelligence.
If you’re stupid you’re not going to notice the world burning down around you. Blissful ignorance.
You’d need to hit that sweet spot, especially right now
It’s easy to take advantage of someone who doesn’t know any better, and part of that manipulation (especially recently) is trying to get people angry and upset.
I’d rather know enough to not fall for it
So dumb people don’t suffer from being stupid? You really must be hitting that button. In my experience stupid people suffer the most, unless they are also rich af.
Many don’t, if you’re talking like bottom 10% yeah, shoot for bottom 25% instead.
So by your logic the dumb people who bought property in a flood zone dont suffer and don’t notice when their homes get destroyed? or you just consider that to be a small fraction of the dumb people? either way I disagree
That’s a stretch and half there…
Foolishness and stupidity aren’t the same thing, you would be foolish to buy something in tornado alley or a fault zone, but sometimes you also don’t have an option. Or maybe those people are the bottom 10%, notice how OP said until they were happiest, they understand going too far tips the scale again.
I think you’re being pedantic, but I agree sometimes we dont have a good choice available
“The more you know, the more you know you don’t know.”
If the button increases capacity but not the actual things you know, then I’d say pushing the button would drive you kind of batty rather than improve any measurable quality of your life. Better to be stupid and happy.
If it gives you the answers to the secrets of the universe and the means to use them then I would absolutely bash the button. Let me accelerate the development of society through affordable space travel, cures for all diseases, and convincing eli5 arguments that bring peace to the world.
Well, if you keep pushing the button eventually you will be smart enough to figure out something even better to do with your time. Then push it once more to check. Then if the idea still seems like a good plan, go do it.
That seems sensible, and inevitable. What’s smart today might be dumb tomorrow.
Had you pushed it once more, the fatal flaw would have become all-too-obvious.
You’ve obviously never read Flowers for Algernon.
I just finished reading that earlier today. What a coincidence!
I haven’t, but I Googled it. It’s about a MOUSE!? I always assumed it was one of those “unhappy women in corsets”-type books.
Charlie Gordon is about to embark upon an unprecedented journey. Born with an unusually low IQ, he has been chosen as the perfect subject for an experimental surgery that researchers hope will increase his intelligence-a procedure that has already been highly successful when tested on a lab mouse named Algernon.
As the treatment takes effect, Charlie’s intelligence expands until it surpasses that of the doctors who engineered his metamorphosis. The experiment appears to be a scientific breakthrough of paramount importance, until Algernon suddenly deteriorates. Will the same happen to Charlie?
It’s not about the mouse. It’s about the issues that come with extreme intelligence and the progress and deterioration of Charlie.
It’s an excellent book and very much worth reading.
Fantastic book. I listened to the audiobook and I still have vivid memories of when I started it, of me mowing the lawn and having my mind blown.
Stupid sexy Algernon
Read it. It’s short and easy and it will stay with you for a lifetime
Not exactly at the same level, but a short story related to this topic that I love is Understand by Ted Chiang.
Seeing all these “Intelligence sucks” comments makes me realize the anti-science movement is natural and inevitable. We’re doomed.
A lot of it is very clearly an ego thing, they’re all saying ‘I’m smarter than most people who need to push the button and anyone smarter than me is also worse off…’ it’s the same thing people do with the age they were born ‘older generations don’t understand, newer generations have been ruined’
I think it’s partly because no one wants to admit if they were smarter then they’d make better choices because then there might be someone smarter who suggests that change their mind on something and that’s never going to happen.
Like all the comments ‘i know things are bad, if don’t want to understand how bad they are’ it’s inconceivable that they could understand their misthinking on a subject and change their opinion, they see it as any extra intelligence will just make them more sure they’re right.
Personally I’d hammer that button for a few days then spend some time trying to work out solutions to my problems and the world’s problems - if I can’t do it I’ll go back to the button until I’m able to
I like both your explanation of the prevailing answers here and your proposed use of the button - it all makes sense!
They’re just trying to trick you into not pushing the button, so that when they press the button they’ll outwit you.
Maybe they’re just all being contrary and ironic. Because you know they’d hit that button faster than you can blink. You can bet your liver on it.
Yes, being contrary, ironic (and, in a word, bitchy) really is that popular.
Hell no. I’m smart enough to know that being smart sucks. I’m chucking that thing into the fucking river.
Then you are in agreement with the majority of the replies here.
It’s weird. I assumed that everybody wanted to be smarter.
Maybe they’re just being contrary. Maybe the contrariness-urge is what’s ubiquitous.
Its not that being smart is bad necessarily, but neither is it automatically good. I would never wish myself dumber, and maybe being smarter would be helpful… But most of my problems on life aren’t linked to a limited intelligence.
Obviously, it depends on your definition of intelligence (itself a complicated issue) but if the button would just give me better IQ score type intelligence I don’t think it’d help much. I’m plenty smart for my day to day life, job, relationships etc. The internal problems that prevent me achieving things are to do with focus and discipline / time management. And the main actual barriers are social or economic.
So sure, if the button made me so smart that I could somehow just see some novel solution that I could then market for money, so I could afford the life coach who would help me actually achieve the goals I want, then yeah smart me up! But being given a bunch of money would be a more direct solution. And a button that that improved my ability to actualise the plans I’m already smart enough to create would be muchore appealing!
Tldr: lemmy is full of people who are smart enough that not being smarter isn’t the main barrier I’m their life.
Ever heard the saying ignorance is bliss? Being just smarter without an outlet means you’re just going to be focused on… well nothing which is also debilitating. Most people we see as smart are just focused on a specific skillset or aptitude and have spent a lot of their own time honing that. For some people that focus comes easier.
Slamming a button that makes you smarter just means you might be more aware of what you don’t know and how you handle that could be more of a curse than a blessing.
You (and pretty much every person in this thread. It’s amazing how you people are in agreement that being smart is bad) should go into the scrap irony business.
You’ve just cursed some poor catfish.
Yeah it’d be like being Luke Wilson in Idiocracy.
I am smart enough to know things are bad I would rather not know just how bad things are
You’ll be super smart and you’ll see all the flaws in the world, but you won’t be able to do anything about it. Have fun living with that!
Seeing the world as flawed might just be an artifact of your present level of intelligence. Best to be humble I’d say.
username checks out
My take away from reading Flowers For Algernon, a story about a magical drug that does exactly this being trialed on a severe mentally retarded person is that sometimes ignorance is bliss and intelligence does not equal happiness.
I’ll always remember a story my buddy told me in high school. His dad was a judge, and absolutely brilliant, and a major alcoholic. One time his dad sat him down and said ‘I think you’ll have a good life. Because you’re smart enough to do well in this world, but not smart enough to realize what a shithole it is.’
I really think that there is a point where if you’re smart enough, you have brain power to really pay attention to everything that goes on in the world. And paying attention to all of that can do serious harm to one’s psyche.
I think the sane thing to do is make a machine that hits the button so you can actually use your newfound intelligence. Might need to hit the button a bit before making the machine.
You do this, but plot twist: the button makes the button-pushing machine more intelligent, and it starts to plan your downfall…
Gonna suck for the machine since it’s incapable of movement or doing anything other than pressing the button. No IoT device here.
That’s true! You have nothing to worry about. The magic button is not making the button-pushing machine smarter by adding circuits which make it smarter, which enable it to plan, which enable it to communicate. You have nothing to worry about, YOU are getting smarter… you’re getting smarter… you’re getting smarter…
Which goes swell, until you realize that you are instead dealing with an ever complex and gnawing realization you can barely quantify as existential dread in light of the remarkably complex yet dangerous capabilities found in every human present and yet to be conceived on this suddenly constricting mortal plane, exceeded only by the sheer number of permutations which you generously call ‘best case scenarios’ that result in an irrevocable destructive spiral on the fragile biome only loosely labeled by you as “third rock from the sun”.
Being stuck in an existential dread cycle isn’t exactly intelligent. You can logic your way out of it. If you see a demise that you don’t like, there’s no benefit spending what time you have left fretting about the end. Just cross that bridge when you get there and otherwise enjoy life until then, or try to outsmart the situation to avoid it.
Push it enough and you’ll become smart enough to see if it is a good idea or not.
Then if you see it was not, push it until you’re smart enough to create a button that takes your intelligence back.
I agree. You would be opening the door to countless new options. Probably many options that you haven’t even imagined.
