If we assume that the attention of people competent and driven enough to solve big problems is the world's scarcest resource, what interventions should we prioritise?
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Conversation
Replying to
genetically engineering more competent and driven people
I’d guess hedonic baseline and energy levels are the easiest levers to play with. I’d expect they’re both somewhat simple and should increase competence and drive downstream
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i suspect it has less to do with genetics and more to do with childhood development but my answer is basically the same. smart competent people gotta be more deliberate about having and raising kids
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“Attention” is prioritized by “competent and drive people” towards places that are not the same as the “big problems” with significant frequency. There’s a relationship there on why that’s true that I get at it from one angle in my reply.
Hm, I'd suggest a variation on Parkinson's Law - "quant funds expand so as to gobble up the competent and driven people available to hire." I'm interested in how to get the (many) competent and driven people we have into socially useful spaces.
The ethics of gene manipulation come into play. Would be more feasible to improve the conditions of working class folks so they can have kids without breaking the bank.
There are plenty of competent and driven people already. Our society is not structured to empower them, but instead is focused on rent seeking and government that is the opposite of effective.