With a population of seven billion, it’s hard not to commit a weak version of the typical mind fallacy and assume you can assume anything about people’s motivations.
Diverse as we all are, humans occupy but a tiny pin-point in the mind-design space of all possible intelligent agents. That our values are mostly aligned is one reason that there are so many opportunities for the positive-sum exchanges that have fueled the economic growth of the past several hundred years. I rarely encounter anyone that really truly desires a future that I find horrible (though plenty claim to want such futures). On the other hand, plenty of people go about achieving their goals in all sorts of awfully inefficient ways.
Improving the world’s rationality to the point that people can actually achieve their goals seems like the least of our worries.
Diverse as we all are, humans occupy but a tiny pin-point in the mind-design space of all possible intelligent agents. That our values are mostly aligned is one reason that there are so many opportunities for the positive-sum exchanges that have fueled the economic growth of the past several hundred years. I rarely encounter anyone that really truly desires a future that I find horrible (though plenty claim to want such futures). On the other hand, plenty of people go about achieving their goals in all sorts of awfully inefficient ways.
Improving the world’s rationality to the point that people can actually achieve their goals seems like the least of our worries.