Well, step one would be to convince a team of rationalists to come up with ideas to maximize misery… :P
I think that when choosing examples of misery causing things, your mind went first to examples of misery causing things which you come across in daily life. The reason i reach this conclusion is that your “devil” isn’t nearly evil enough. There have been actual, real-world devils who have done worse than your imaginary one. If you had lived in a society more plagued by real-world devils, you might have imagined something more sinister.
It is an interesting game though.
it occurred to me that the best way to discourage education might be to make it a chore.
Even a dreary educational system generally results in literacy. And how will you crush the next education reformer who comes along?
In the real world, the most effective ways to discourage education have been to replace education with propaganda, randomized violence against schools and schoolchildren, and economic conditions which make education impossible. The first two have been employed on purpose by various groups. Although, I suppose the first method does require that the “devil” be some sort of position of political power, all the second method requires is a small band of decentralized thugs. As for the third method, a reasonably wealthy person could probably economically unbalance a small third world country if they were smart about it.
These methods aren’t even targeted for misery maximization—they are just means to an end. If your goal is specifically to cause misery, there are even more effective ways. If anyone comes up with anything that seems truly effective, I suggest not sharing it online on the off-chance that someone happens upon it and tries!
And how will you crush the next education reformer who comes along?
I would centralize all education, and let the bureaucrats decide everything. Then I would set incentives to the bureaucrats so that they have nothing to fear by keeping the status quo.
(But I guess a truly evil-maximizing devil would instead invent a religion that tells people to torture all educational reformers to death. The status quo could be made sacred, literally.)
Well, step one would be to convince a team of rationalists to come up with ideas to maximize misery… :P
I think that when choosing examples of misery causing things, your mind went first to examples of misery causing things which you come across in daily life. The reason i reach this conclusion is that your “devil” isn’t nearly evil enough. There have been actual, real-world devils who have done worse than your imaginary one. If you had lived in a society more plagued by real-world devils, you might have imagined something more sinister.
It is an interesting game though.
Even a dreary educational system generally results in literacy. And how will you crush the next education reformer who comes along?
In the real world, the most effective ways to discourage education have been to replace education with propaganda, randomized violence against schools and schoolchildren, and economic conditions which make education impossible. The first two have been employed on purpose by various groups. Although, I suppose the first method does require that the “devil” be some sort of position of political power, all the second method requires is a small band of decentralized thugs. As for the third method, a reasonably wealthy person could probably economically unbalance a small third world country if they were smart about it.
These methods aren’t even targeted for misery maximization—they are just means to an end. If your goal is specifically to cause misery, there are even more effective ways. If anyone comes up with anything that seems truly effective, I suggest not sharing it online on the off-chance that someone happens upon it and tries!
I would centralize all education, and let the bureaucrats decide everything. Then I would set incentives to the bureaucrats so that they have nothing to fear by keeping the status quo.
(But I guess a truly evil-maximizing devil would instead invent a religion that tells people to torture all educational reformers to death. The status quo could be made sacred, literally.)
Bureaucrats aren’t evil, though. They’d be pro-social enough to let obviously good and obviously popular ideas go through.
That would be effective, but it’s also stretching the scope and specificity of the devil’s powers beyond what any human has possessed, ever.
To laugh or cry—that is the question.
How about I just suggest you read 1984?