And remember, living in a world in which the average person is as smart as an upper-level computer programmer still isn’t nearly as humbling as the fact that a well-organized cubic centimeter of carbon could be millions of times smarter than anyone.
I figure this to be a good general rule on these matters: unless you designed your own brain, you should not be proud of your own brain.
You can still enjoy what intelligence you have, and acknowledge your superiority if it’s accurately gaged. But being proud of your in-built mental acuity strikes me as nearly as absurd as being proud of having extraordinarily efficacious liver. Though it’s an unavoidably brain-state, pride is a bit masturbatory. I’m sure it has some evolutionary function, but it might be as arbitrary as proud ape-men were better able to convince ape-woman they were ape-men of accomplishment.
Sadly, in our world, the influence you have over yor brain is quite small compared to environmental and old-age factors we have no control over. So you can take pride in taking care of your brain, but it’s hard for you to be very effective right now, even on the scale of existing human variation.
For me at least, that’s the primary / most effective source of points in the first place. Doing some meta related to that earns them even more points from me just because of the apparent scarcity (i.e. I rarely see people outside LW do any of it).
And remember, living in a world in which the average person is as smart as an upper-level computer programmer still isn’t nearly as humbling as the fact that a well-organized cubic centimeter of carbon could be millions of times smarter than anyone.
I figure this to be a good general rule on these matters: unless you designed your own brain, you should not be proud of your own brain.
Do people get any points for taking good care of their brains and stocking their brains with ideas and information?
You can still enjoy what intelligence you have, and acknowledge your superiority if it’s accurately gaged. But being proud of your in-built mental acuity strikes me as nearly as absurd as being proud of having extraordinarily efficacious liver. Though it’s an unavoidably brain-state, pride is a bit masturbatory. I’m sure it has some evolutionary function, but it might be as arbitrary as proud ape-men were better able to convince ape-woman they were ape-men of accomplishment.
Sadly, in our world, the influence you have over yor brain is quite small compared to environmental and old-age factors we have no control over. So you can take pride in taking care of your brain, but it’s hard for you to be very effective right now, even on the scale of existing human variation.
When a good brain becomes unusable for a while
For me at least, that’s the primary / most effective source of points in the first place. Doing some meta related to that earns them even more points from me just because of the apparent scarcity (i.e. I rarely see people outside LW do any of it).
But what would I have designed my own brain with?