Perhaps this has some éxtra’ significance in light of Paris, but I’m really feeling this at the moment:
What global problems do you consider most important at the moment? How would you solve them?
Identity crisis is the main global problem. People lost their identity, their orientation, their life quality standards. They don’t care about who they are, they develop personalities based on the mainstream trends, they play roles and they waste their lives in their attempts to adjust to what some few others expect from them and their lives. People have neither time nor any intention to realize what life is about. They are born and live to become consistent and excellent workers, minor pieces of a giant puzzle for some few strong people’s entertainment purposes and benefits. Therefore, they don’t care about the quality of their lives, about other lives, about relationships and the society in general, about our children’s future. It is indeed a pity, however it is a fact. Education could be helpful towards self-realization, awareness, knowledge, mental maturity, overcoming any external restrictions and limitations. As I usually say to my psychotherapy clients, the solution to any problem is to make a stop and one step back.
The usual bias of highly intelligent people: “You have to do everything alone!”
Why it exists—Well, if most of the time you are surrounded by people who compared to you are idiots, cooperating with them or delegating tasks to them seems like a really bad idea. And the obvious alternative is to do it alone.
How it fails—Once internalized, it is difficult to get rid of the habit even when you meet other highly intelligent people. Also, if you do the math correctly, many tasks are worth delegating to less intelligent people, because the average value of the outcome is still positive.
How it shapes people—If you alieve that cooperation is impossible, your remaining options are either fatalism or hero worship (and depression, when you realize you are not the superman, and will never be), depending on whether you believe that individuals able to fix large problems single-handedly exist or don’t.
Why did I post this as a reply to your comment:
They are born and live to become consistent and excellent workers, minor pieces of a giant puzzle
So far (cutting away the rest of the sentence), there is nothing wrong with this; it describes a productive person.
for some few strong people’s entertainment purposes and benefits.
Here comes the hero worship.
Education could be helpful towards self-realization, awareness, knowledge, mental maturity, overcoming any external restrictions and limitations.
Here is how we should make everyone a hero.
There is nothing wrong with having a hero now and then, but if you imagine a society where everyone tries to “overcome any restrictions and limitations”, but no one is willing to be an “consistent and excellent worker”… actually, this could be funny to observe (but horrible to live there).
Global Warming is high on my list. The cost for reducing CO2 in the atmosphere seems low enough that this may be the best way to solve it. There are proposals to remove CO2 from the atmosphere at ~$100/tonne. Intuitively, it seems the cheapest way to “remove” CO2 from the atmosphere is to not put more there in the first place: to stop digging up C and burning it. We could still have liquid and gaseous hydrocarbon fuel, we would just need to derive it form biomass: algae and jatropha are both probably in the less than $100 per barrel range, with, I think, algae being very scalable. I wonder if buying up all the coal and oil in the ground and keeping them there once owned wouldn’t be the cheapest way to keep C from underground from making it into the air.
Human Population Growth. With less population, all other resource constraints become easier to shift towards sustainable solutions. I’d like to see fertility control tied to aid: you want welfare or international aid, you get fixed. It strikes me the absolute best place to lower population growth is among populations that can’t support themselves.
Perhaps this has some éxtra’ significance in light of Paris, but I’m really feeling this at the moment:
-Highest IQ dude. He’s also sorta handsome.
The usual bias of highly intelligent people: “You have to do everything alone!”
Why it exists—Well, if most of the time you are surrounded by people who compared to you are idiots, cooperating with them or delegating tasks to them seems like a really bad idea. And the obvious alternative is to do it alone.
How it fails—Once internalized, it is difficult to get rid of the habit even when you meet other highly intelligent people. Also, if you do the math correctly, many tasks are worth delegating to less intelligent people, because the average value of the outcome is still positive.
How it shapes people—If you alieve that cooperation is impossible, your remaining options are either fatalism or hero worship (and depression, when you realize you are not the superman, and will never be), depending on whether you believe that individuals able to fix large problems single-handedly exist or don’t.
Why did I post this as a reply to your comment:
So far (cutting away the rest of the sentence), there is nothing wrong with this; it describes a productive person.
Here comes the hero worship.
Here is how we should make everyone a hero.
There is nothing wrong with having a hero now and then, but if you imagine a society where everyone tries to “overcome any restrictions and limitations”, but no one is willing to be an “consistent and excellent worker”… actually, this could be funny to observe (but horrible to live there).
Global Warming is high on my list. The cost for reducing CO2 in the atmosphere seems low enough that this may be the best way to solve it. There are proposals to remove CO2 from the atmosphere at ~$100/tonne. Intuitively, it seems the cheapest way to “remove” CO2 from the atmosphere is to not put more there in the first place: to stop digging up C and burning it. We could still have liquid and gaseous hydrocarbon fuel, we would just need to derive it form biomass: algae and jatropha are both probably in the less than $100 per barrel range, with, I think, algae being very scalable. I wonder if buying up all the coal and oil in the ground and keeping them there once owned wouldn’t be the cheapest way to keep C from underground from making it into the air.
Human Population Growth. With less population, all other resource constraints become easier to shift towards sustainable solutions. I’d like to see fertility control tied to aid: you want welfare or international aid, you get fixed. It strikes me the absolute best place to lower population growth is among populations that can’t support themselves.