While I would not yet claim “black belt” competence in it, Mathematica has already enabled me to perform feats which I would not have previously dared to contemplate, despite having worked in Common Lisp. Mathematica is famously proprietary and the runtime is bog-slow, but the development environment is currently in a class of its own (at least from the standpoint of exploratory programming in search of solutions to ultra-hard problems.)
Sounds cool, but this is not quite what I was aiming at.
I had in mind average Joe the truck driver who cannot understand an argument like “Corn ethanol is a bad idea because the energy conversion efficiency of corn plants is extremely low, so the energy output of the process, including all the farming and processing, may be negative”, but who instead falls victim to “Corn ethanol is good because you should SUPPORT OUR FARMERS!”
You’re talking about enhancing the efficiency of the smartest people (like you), I’m talking about enhancing the efficiency of the average person.
Well if you are really only interested in raising the average person’s “IQ” by 10 points, it’s pretty hard to change human nature (so maybe Bostrom was on the right track).
Perhaps if somehow video games could embed some lesson about rationality in amongst the dumb slaughter, that could help a little—but people would probably just buy the games without the boring stuff instead.
Sounds cool, but this is not quite what I was aiming at.
I am curious what you had in mind. Please elaborate.
I had in mind average Joe the truck driver who cannot understand an argument like “Corn ethanol is a bad idea because the energy conversion efficiency of corn plants is extremely low, so the energy output of the process, including all the farming and processing, may be negative”, but who instead falls victim to “Corn ethanol is good because you should SUPPORT OUR FARMERS!”
You’re talking about enhancing the efficiency of the smartest people (like you), I’m talking about enhancing the efficiency of the average person.
Well if you are really only interested in raising the average person’s “IQ” by 10 points, it’s pretty hard to change human nature (so maybe Bostrom was on the right track).
Perhaps if somehow video games could embed some lesson about rationality in amongst the dumb slaughter, that could help a little—but people would probably just buy the games without the boring stuff instead.