Let’s think of examples of groups of ten thousand genius-level people working together towards a common narowly-defined goal.
Wikipedia claims that the LHC “was built in collaboration with over 10,000 scientists and engineers from over 100 countries, as well as hundreds of universities and laboratories”. I doubt they were all von Neumann level, and I imagine most of them weren’t working exclusively on the LCH. And no matter how nice scientists and engineers are, the group probably didn’t cooperate as well the one Wei proposed. (Although diversity probably does count for something.)
Other groups of similar size I can think of are NASA, IBM, Google and Microsoft. (Though, like the LHC, I don’t think they’re hiring only von Neumann level geniuses. Probably many multinational companies would exceed the size but would be even further from the genius requirements.) But they don’t quite work in a single direction (NASA has many missions, Google and Microsoft have many products).
That said, I wouldn’t object strongly to calling such groups weakly superintelligent. Building stuff like the LHC or the Apollo program in ten years is so vastly beyond the ability of a single man that I don’t quite classify an entity that can do it as a “human-level intelligence”, even though it is assembled from humans.
(Also, I could see a group like this building an MSI-2, though it’d take more than ten years if starting now.)
No, I’m not, but I’m not nearly von Neumann’s genius level either, and I wasn’t educated and indoctrinated from birth for that purpose.
And there certainly are people who are that single-minded, we’ll “just” have to figure out which parts of nature or nurture cause it. Even drugs slightly more advanced that the stuff used now for ADHD might be useful.
Even with “normal” geniuses, I’d bet a group would gain a lot of focus even from “mundane” changes like not having to worry about office politics, finding grants, or assembling your children’s college fund, or going to college and finding a promising career for younger geniuses. I’m not saying this kind of changes are easier to achieve in practice, just that they’re very low-tech; you don’t need lots of research to try them, just a big (monetary and political) budget.
“mundane” changes like not having to worry about office politics, finding grants, or assembling your children’s college fund, or going to college and finding a promising career for younger geniuses
All these can be viewed as wasting time, but don’t forget that they are important parts of the motivation framework—promotion, recognition, monetary reward, etc—that people operate in. Motivation is an important factor in productivity. If we remove (eg) the competitive grant system, will researchers slack off?
If we remove (eg) the competitive grant system, will researchers slack off?
I’ll bet some would and some wouldn’t. See Einstein and how he was working on relativity (at least at the beginning).
If this trait is genetically detectable, it would presumably be a selection criteria for MSI-1. If it is based on nurture, presumably the necessary conditions would be part of the indoctrination for MSI-1. Finally, if it cannot be anticipated, presumably MSI-1 would use post-facto selection (i.e., raise and train more than 10k candidates, keep those that “work” and let the others do other stuff.)
Also, there are likely other motivational elements that would work in a MSI-1 (at least in my view, the selection and training and indoctrination implicit in the OP’s suggestion would be very different from any group I am aware of in history). And stuff like peer recognition and the satisfaction of a job well done are huge motivators in some cultures.
Also, remember we’re seeing this with culture-tinted glasses: In the west pretty much everyone is focused on a carreer, family and the like; the few who aren’t are seen as “slackers”, “hippies”, “weirdos” etc. Even if not subscribing to that cultural subtext rationally, it’s hard to prevent the unconscious associations of “no care for money=status” ⇒ “no motivation”.
Moreover, and this was part of my idea, I think there may be something to the idea behind structured procrastination (.com). Which is to say I don’t really know. What I do know is that I’m not very single-minded and there is evidence it is not a common trait.
Let’s think of examples of groups of ten thousand genius-level people working together towards a common narowly-defined goal.
Wikipedia claims that the LHC “was built in collaboration with over 10,000 scientists and engineers from over 100 countries, as well as hundreds of universities and laboratories”. I doubt they were all von Neumann level, and I imagine most of them weren’t working exclusively on the LCH. And no matter how nice scientists and engineers are, the group probably didn’t cooperate as well the one Wei proposed. (Although diversity probably does count for something.)
Other groups of similar size I can think of are NASA, IBM, Google and Microsoft. (Though, like the LHC, I don’t think they’re hiring only von Neumann level geniuses. Probably many multinational companies would exceed the size but would be even further from the genius requirements.) But they don’t quite work in a single direction (NASA has many missions, Google and Microsoft have many products).
That said, I wouldn’t object strongly to calling such groups weakly superintelligent. Building stuff like the LHC or the Apollo program in ten years is so vastly beyond the ability of a single man that I don’t quite classify an entity that can do it as a “human-level intelligence”, even though it is assembled from humans.
(Also, I could see a group like this building an MSI-2, though it’d take more than ten years if starting now.)
The “Working in a single direction” part seems hard: are you so single-minded? I know I’m not.
No, I’m not, but I’m not nearly von Neumann’s genius level either, and I wasn’t educated and indoctrinated from birth for that purpose.
And there certainly are people who are that single-minded, we’ll “just” have to figure out which parts of nature or nurture cause it. Even drugs slightly more advanced that the stuff used now for ADHD might be useful.
Even with “normal” geniuses, I’d bet a group would gain a lot of focus even from “mundane” changes like not having to worry about office politics, finding grants, or assembling your children’s college fund, or going to college and finding a promising career for younger geniuses. I’m not saying this kind of changes are easier to achieve in practice, just that they’re very low-tech; you don’t need lots of research to try them, just a big (monetary and political) budget.
All these can be viewed as wasting time, but don’t forget that they are important parts of the motivation framework—promotion, recognition, monetary reward, etc—that people operate in. Motivation is an important factor in productivity. If we remove (eg) the competitive grant system, will researchers slack off?
I’ll bet some would and some wouldn’t. See Einstein and how he was working on relativity (at least at the beginning).
If this trait is genetically detectable, it would presumably be a selection criteria for MSI-1. If it is based on nurture, presumably the necessary conditions would be part of the indoctrination for MSI-1. Finally, if it cannot be anticipated, presumably MSI-1 would use post-facto selection (i.e., raise and train more than 10k candidates, keep those that “work” and let the others do other stuff.)
Also, there are likely other motivational elements that would work in a MSI-1 (at least in my view, the selection and training and indoctrination implicit in the OP’s suggestion would be very different from any group I am aware of in history). And stuff like peer recognition and the satisfaction of a job well done are huge motivators in some cultures.
Also, remember we’re seeing this with culture-tinted glasses: In the west pretty much everyone is focused on a carreer, family and the like; the few who aren’t are seen as “slackers”, “hippies”, “weirdos” etc. Even if not subscribing to that cultural subtext rationally, it’s hard to prevent the unconscious associations of “no care for money=status” ⇒ “no motivation”.
Moreover, and this was part of my idea, I think there may be something to the idea behind structured procrastination (.com). Which is to say I don’t really know. What I do know is that I’m not very single-minded and there is evidence it is not a common trait.