Not a magical solution to all the world’s problems, but likely a useful idea as a charitable donations tax credit which aggregates to some small percentage of the budget. A donation voucher of fixed amount.
The world’s problems can’t be solved if intelligence is inefficiently allocated. Pragmatarianism, by facilitating the efficient allocation of intelligence, would be instrumental in solving the world’s problems. But I agree that there’s nothing magical about value signals.
The world’s problems can’t be solved if intelligence is inefficiently allocated.
This seems like a highly non-obvious claim. What is your reasoning? How inefficient does it need to be?
Take an outside view. What is the probability that one person comes up with a specific idea that is absolutely critical to the success of the world’s problems?
Also as a pure practical issue: if one is trying to get people to listen, the best thing to say when someone says this isn’t a magical solution is something closer to “sure, of course not, but it can probably help a fair bit for the reasons I outlined”. People are much less likely to listen if one does try to argue that one’s idea really is the one critical idea.
Just to be on the safe side, by “efficient allocation of resources” I mean when the supply (of goods and services) matches the preferences of consumers. Maybe it helps to think of an arrow hitting the target. The arrow being the supply and the target being the preferences of consumers. The closer the arrow (the supply) is to the target (our preferences) the more efficient the allocation of resources.
Intelligence is by far our most important resource. And by “intelligence” I mean any sort of insight/idea/thought which helps the arrow move closer to the target.
For sure it took quite a bit of intelligence to put a man on the moon. Most people will consider this accomplishment to be a good example of solving a big problem. But was it really an efficient allocation of intelligence? Did the arrow really hit the target? In order to answer this question we have to know where the target is.
If the government is good at knowing where the target is then why in the world do we bother shopping? Shopping is the process by which we communicate to producers when they’ve hit the target. Whenever you buy something you say “hey man nice shot!” The reward you offer for good shots provides producers with an incentive to make better shots. If the government can truly know where the target is then markets are a massive waste of time. Well...assuming we ignore the government’s lack of incentive to act on its knowledge.
In reality, government producers are no better than private producers at knowing where the target is. Therefore, if we want to ensure that intelligence is efficiently allocated then we have to allow people to shop for themselves in the public sector. If space exploration is truly a pressing problem for society… then taxpayers will allocate their taxes accordingly and the corresponding shift in resources (ie intelligence) will help move the arrow closer to the target.
Regarding your purely practical issue… I see your point… but I was really just looking for an excuse to dangle the “efficient allocation of intelligence” and see if anybody would bite. You bit! I caught you! Are you a big fish? Or shall I throw you back?
Honestly I’ve only recently thought of the efficient allocation of intelligence. It happened the other day when I found out about a blog that has like 400 comments on some of its entries. The topics are intelligent so the first thing that popped into my mind was that.… if there’s clearly so much obvious demand for intelligent discussion then why don’t they start their own forum? I referred to the situation as the “awkward allocation of intelligence”. This really got me thinking about how intelligence is allocated. It’s pretty fascinating so I didn’t need much of an excuse to throw it out there and see if anybody wanted to chomp on it with me.
Not a magical solution to all the world’s problems, but likely a useful idea as a charitable donations tax credit which aggregates to some small percentage of the budget. A donation voucher of fixed amount.
The world’s problems can’t be solved if intelligence is inefficiently allocated. Pragmatarianism, by facilitating the efficient allocation of intelligence, would be instrumental in solving the world’s problems. But I agree that there’s nothing magical about value signals.
This seems like a highly non-obvious claim. What is your reasoning? How inefficient does it need to be?
Take an outside view. What is the probability that one person comes up with a specific idea that is absolutely critical to the success of the world’s problems?
Also as a pure practical issue: if one is trying to get people to listen, the best thing to say when someone says this isn’t a magical solution is something closer to “sure, of course not, but it can probably help a fair bit for the reasons I outlined”. People are much less likely to listen if one does try to argue that one’s idea really is the one critical idea.
Just to be on the safe side, by “efficient allocation of resources” I mean when the supply (of goods and services) matches the preferences of consumers. Maybe it helps to think of an arrow hitting the target. The arrow being the supply and the target being the preferences of consumers. The closer the arrow (the supply) is to the target (our preferences) the more efficient the allocation of resources.
Intelligence is by far our most important resource. And by “intelligence” I mean any sort of insight/idea/thought which helps the arrow move closer to the target.
For sure it took quite a bit of intelligence to put a man on the moon. Most people will consider this accomplishment to be a good example of solving a big problem. But was it really an efficient allocation of intelligence? Did the arrow really hit the target? In order to answer this question we have to know where the target is.
If the government is good at knowing where the target is then why in the world do we bother shopping? Shopping is the process by which we communicate to producers when they’ve hit the target. Whenever you buy something you say “hey man nice shot!” The reward you offer for good shots provides producers with an incentive to make better shots. If the government can truly know where the target is then markets are a massive waste of time. Well...assuming we ignore the government’s lack of incentive to act on its knowledge.
In reality, government producers are no better than private producers at knowing where the target is. Therefore, if we want to ensure that intelligence is efficiently allocated then we have to allow people to shop for themselves in the public sector. If space exploration is truly a pressing problem for society… then taxpayers will allocate their taxes accordingly and the corresponding shift in resources (ie intelligence) will help move the arrow closer to the target.
Regarding your purely practical issue… I see your point… but I was really just looking for an excuse to dangle the “efficient allocation of intelligence” and see if anybody would bite. You bit! I caught you! Are you a big fish? Or shall I throw you back?
Honestly I’ve only recently thought of the efficient allocation of intelligence. It happened the other day when I found out about a blog that has like 400 comments on some of its entries. The topics are intelligent so the first thing that popped into my mind was that.… if there’s clearly so much obvious demand for intelligent discussion then why don’t they start their own forum? I referred to the situation as the “awkward allocation of intelligence”. This really got me thinking about how intelligence is allocated. It’s pretty fascinating so I didn’t need much of an excuse to throw it out there and see if anybody wanted to chomp on it with me.