I think the Taoists (in your simplified version) won the day here. Obviously you can’t not act according to your nature but, as you proved with your efficient movement experiment, you can act according to horribly incoherent theories about your nature or not act according to them and do better. What the world is trying to tell you (screaming, shouting) in all the examples you gave is that “intelligence” is a horribly incoherent theory about your nature. It means “doing less” exactly insofar as it is just identical with the human behavioral repertoire; it means having greater resources (memory, processing power) exactly insofar as it is a misplaced analogy with the properties of an mechanical artifact. The human behavioral repertoire cannot be improved upon because there is nothing but itself with which to compare it; it is simply a product of evolution. (Overcoming bias is self-annihilation.) What the Taoists grasp is that you do better to recognize this than not (and that’s the only way to do better).
I think the Taoists (in your simplified version) won the day here. Obviously you can’t not act according to your nature but, as you proved with your efficient movement experiment, you can act according to horribly incoherent theories about your nature or not act according to them and do better. What the world is trying to tell you (screaming, shouting) in all the examples you gave is that “intelligence” is a horribly incoherent theory about your nature. It means “doing less” exactly insofar as it is just identical with the human behavioral repertoire; it means having greater resources (memory, processing power) exactly insofar as it is a misplaced analogy with the properties of an mechanical artifact. The human behavioral repertoire cannot be improved upon because there is nothing but itself with which to compare it; it is simply a product of evolution. (Overcoming bias is self-annihilation.) What the Taoists grasp is that you do better to recognize this than not (and that’s the only way to do better).