Realistically, the world is too complex and too large to even remotely be able to predict the outcome of making everyone 50% smarter.
My best guess though is that it wouldn’t change much. If everyone is smarter, no one is smarter. High intelligence doesn’t automatically mean Mr. Spock. I used to be involved with Mensa and many of the people I met were nuts, lacked critical thinking skills, or were so full of themselves for testing well they were blind to external information. I myself am highly intelligent on paper, but if you looked at my life you would see a lifelong series of dumb choices and in many cases choosing the worst possible option even knowing it was.
What I mean is being smart isn’t as valuable a skill to have as one might think. Especially at the top end of intelligence, smarter basically equates to faster at solving problems. Raw processing power does play into it for sure but the difference between someone with an IQ of 130 and an IQ of 160 is how fast they finished the test.
The best way to make the world a better place would be to teach everyone critical thinking and emotional intelligence skills.
As an estimate, how many problems in your life do you think can be attributed to people thinking the wrong thing or being confidentially incorrect in general?
I agree with emotional intelligence being important, I think IQ and EQ should be consolidated as one because recognizing patterns in behaviour on paper isn’t that much different than recognizing patterns in shapes/numbers
I remember 20y ago thinking the internet was creating a sort of intellectual “travelator”, where some people would get on and be launched far ahead of the rest. The result would be a huge division in intelligence across society, which would lead to a feeling of disenfranchisement and civil unrest.
So no, if everyone’s intelligence went up by 50% of their own intelligence, you’d just have more of the same problem.
I believe public education is vital, but we didn’t place enough emphasis on the importance of uniform funding across districts and states, rather than having “good schools” and “bad schools”.
Well, if we look around today, some of the best minds in world are busy making people click on ads
Ultimately, however, leftism is an intellectual position. It’s typically held by people who are either well-read, or at minimum understanding of the concept of fairness for all people (which requires abstract thinking and a good theory of mind). Very few people believe in leftism due to stupidity. That’s why it’s in Republicans’ best interest to keep people stupid.
Increasing intelligence of the general population would be a basal necessity for changing the economic system.
If you mean emotional intelligence then yes. Being able to solve puzzles better (standard IQ) doesn’t mean squat to reducing conflict of the puzzles you solve are how to exploit others more
There are people that only think about making things better for themselves no matter how it effects others. These people would just use that “extra” intelligence to up their game. So no, I don’t think there would be less conflict.
Theoretically, the people opposed to manipulative narcissists also become more intelligent
I think part of the reason some of those people live that way is because they don’t think through the effects of everyone else living their lives that way. Perhaps the stat boost to INT would give them the ability to follow that course of action to it’s logical conclusion and therefore choose to live differently?
Exactly. If you do nothing about greed and selfishness/narcissism then nothing changes, you just have smarter greedy people. :/
Things like good public education make society more pleasant to live in for everyone including greedy opportunists and their families.
Same with balancing resource extraction against environmental stability.
What billionaires are doing seems totally illogical and self destructive even from a greed perspective.
Even if we assume they’re thinking they can escape on a space ark it makes no sense to want to live in the cold, harsh, hostile environment of a space instead of on the one planet that we can naturally breathe on that also happens to grow delicious things and stuff.
From no perspectives can this be a smart move, I refuse to believe it!
There’s a difference between IQ and EQ.
No, the conflicts would simply be more damaging.
Humans, regardless of intelligence, are destructive. More intelligence just means more destruction.
We are the Fermi paradox made flesh.
Absolutely not, some of the smartest people I’ve ever met have zero emotional intelligence. You can be incredibly accomplished academically and still be totally unable to work productively with others. A lot of these people lean towards aspie/AuDHD supremacy as well funnily enough - they think everyone else is just far too irrational to agree with their horrendously undeveloped philosophies.
I think the world would have less conflict if the average “emotional intelligence” went up 50%
Measuring intelligence is not like measuring a cup of flour. The IQ tests are not wholly scientific. So the premise of your question is not without controversy. But if we disregard that, then: no. Very clever people still bicker and get rubbed the wrong way. Intelligent people follow populists. Conflict is not solely the result of low intelligence. We might have different types of conflict (there are fewer incidences of fisticuffs at the chess club than at football) but not fewer.
I think what can be meant by intelligence is a whole complex of different things. So I think the answer depends on what exactly you mean by intelligence. If we focus in some of the aspects that might be called wisdom, or aspects that fall more under what’s been called “EQ”, the answer might be yes. If we mean what’s typically measured by an IQ test, I’d say no.
There’d be more conflict for a little while as the people finally come together to overthrow our oppressors, but after that I imagine things would settle down. It wouldn’t be perfect, because there would still be conniving people who do everything they can to take more than their fair share, but a populace with significantly more intelligence than today will be much harder to exploit, even if our oppressors become more intelligent as well.
No, we would just use it for better confict
If it could be raised enough to keep people from voting Republican the world would improve pretty damn quick!
Conflicts in the world dont come from the lack of intelligence. Its class conflicts that are at the root of everything else
The elite class causes wars and suffering because brainwashed idiots believe everything they see on the news.
Probably not. In fact if you mean everyone gets smarter starting tomorrow but up til today we’re in the same crappy world as always, that’s probably a disaster. Yeah we have some sociopath criminals in high places, but lots more of them are in prison or doing really dumb things (there’s a tv show about them, “world’s dumbest criminals”). Now imagine they suddenly get a whole lot smarter. Everyone else also becoming smarter won’t help that much.
If you mean human evolution somehow went on a different path making all humans smarter all the way back to prehistoric times, then it’s harder to say, but it doesn’t sound so great either.
Emotional intelligence isn’t the answer either, for the same sorts of reasons. Maybe there’s a separate thing called “wisdom” but there will always be gaps.
You might like HPMOR, a Harry Potter fanfic novel that philosophizes a lot about these types of questions. It’s at hpmor.com. Warning, the main character is insufferable a lot of the time, especially near the beginning. So you might hate it, in which case feel free to quit after a few chapters.
For a more positive take, try the science novel “Protector” by Larry Niven.
I keep seeing this type of comment but people seem to ignore that everyone is increasing their intelligence. The malicious, and the benevolent.
