Well, even by this definition success will always be based on things beyond an individual’s control. I’m assuming you mean success at something zero-sum like status. After all, since people will try their hardest to succeed (to their innate limits of willpower and drive), the factor distinguishing success form failure cannot be under their control.
Maybe dividing things into a continuum of ‘under the individual’s control’ to ‘beyond the individual’s control’ doesn’t make sense. It’s still something my brain tries to do, and it still feels unfair that intelligence would so strongly determine outcomes.
One of the ways my mind perceives this is basically as a waste. “Look these two sacks of meat expend nearly the same amount of resources, yet one can’t feed itself while the other has positive externalities it dosen’t fully capture. The difference being 4 or 5 standard deviations caused by just a few thousand genes.
Can’t we find a way to fix up the less productive one rather than wasting all that negentropy to build a whole new one out of the same atoms?”
Also I’m generally in favour of letting people improve themselves, it really sucks from an eudaimonic perspective that we can’t do anything about such an important aspect of ourselves.
Well, even by this definition success will always be based on things beyond an individual’s control. I’m assuming you mean success at something zero-sum like status. After all, since people will try their hardest to succeed (to their innate limits of willpower and drive), the factor distinguishing success form failure cannot be under their control.
Maybe dividing things into a continuum of ‘under the individual’s control’ to ‘beyond the individual’s control’ doesn’t make sense. It’s still something my brain tries to do, and it still feels unfair that intelligence would so strongly determine outcomes.
One of the ways my mind perceives this is basically as a waste. “Look these two sacks of meat expend nearly the same amount of resources, yet one can’t feed itself while the other has positive externalities it dosen’t fully capture. The difference being 4 or 5 standard deviations caused by just a few thousand genes. Can’t we find a way to fix up the less productive one rather than wasting all that negentropy to build a whole new one out of the same atoms?”
Also I’m generally in favour of letting people improve themselves, it really sucks from an eudaimonic perspective that we can’t do anything about such an important aspect of ourselves.
Transhumanism ftw.
Could you give an example of what you would consider ‘fair’?
I think you can dissolve the argument by substituting “under individual’s control” with “trainable”.
I agree.
I think Swimmer is talking about the same thing Eliezer pointed out in Why Are Individual IQ Differences OK?