Many people in the comments made the claim that making people more intelligent will, due to human self-deceiving tendencies, make people more deluded about the nature of the world.
Well, what I meant to say was that, we can’t take it for granted that making people smarter won’t make them more biased, in the absence of data. It might not seem likely to happen, but we can’t assign it a probability of “too small to matter” just yet.
(This post does, indeed, contain relevant data that suggests that smarter people believe fewer absurdities...)
One bias that I think is common among smart, academically minded people like us is that the value of intelligence is overestimated. I certainly think we have some pretty good objective reasons to believe intelligence is good, but we also add biases because we are a self-selected group with a high “need for cognition” trait, in a social environment that rewards cleverness of a particular kind. In the population at large the desire for more IQ is noticeably lower (and I get far more spam about Viagra than Modafinil!).
If I were on the Hypothetical Enhancement Grants Council, I think I would actually support enhancement of communication and cooperative ability slightly more than pure cognition. More cognitive bang for the buck if you can network a lot of minds.
Well, what I meant to say was that, we can’t take it for granted that making people smarter won’t make them more biased, in the absence of data. It might not seem likely to happen, but we can’t assign it a probability of “too small to matter” just yet.
(This post does, indeed, contain relevant data that suggests that smarter people believe fewer absurdities...)
One bias that I think is common among smart, academically minded people like us is that the value of intelligence is overestimated. I certainly think we have some pretty good objective reasons to believe intelligence is good, but we also add biases because we are a self-selected group with a high “need for cognition” trait, in a social environment that rewards cleverness of a particular kind. In the population at large the desire for more IQ is noticeably lower (and I get far more spam about Viagra than Modafinil!).
If I were on the Hypothetical Enhancement Grants Council, I think I would actually support enhancement of communication and cooperative ability slightly more than pure cognition. More cognitive bang for the buck if you can network a lot of minds.