fluffy

@Leo Gura What kind of business did you have?

Not at all, my sister has an IQ of about 90, she will never attend college, university or any other type of higher learning. She is training to be a shop-assistant and will do that for her whole life, she started in the same school as me, but had to drop out because of her very low rate of learning. I could pass the courses that she did easily with almost no effort - because my IQ is around 126. we had exactly the same upbringing, so it's all down to genetics. Can't you see that IQ has many societal implications, and that some people, no matter how hard they work, will never be able to attain economic succes? How deluded could you be? And is specifically stated that I don't believe in IQ differences in races, don't put words in my mouth. there certainly are racial inequalities that we need to address. But rejecting the science behind IQ on that basis is another kind of stupidity and close-mindedness. Do you really think you could be whatever you wanted, if you worked hard enough? So everyone could become a competitive theoretical physicist of they just worked hard enough? That's just the epitome of wishful thinking. @Leo Gura @louhad

@Leo Gura But I'll be just chasing brain waves

@Leo Gura Believe me, I hope with all of my heart that you are right.

@Leo Gura Of course society has liberalized, that's what new technology does and a free society do. But let's not take this expansion of freedom for granted, we see many worrisome trends - like rise in homophobia (52% of British muslims think homosexuality should be illegal), political polarization and decline in real wages. sources:https://www.cnn.com/2016/04/11/europe/britain-muslims-survey/index.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/figures-reveal-a-shocking-rise-in-homophobic-hate-crimes-a6692991.html https://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2017-03-20/is-social-media-to-blame-for-political-polarization-in-america I loathe your teleological worldview, like everything will be more "evolved" and "good" in the end, a virus or ecological disaster could reduce us back to the stone age in no time. You are really naive in believing in that loony quasi intelligent design stuff. Do not think that liberal "more evolved" politics will fix all this, many of their so called truths and "intuitions" are just flat out wrong. Let's take a few liberal axioms: -Immigration causes a society to be more strongly connected and less polarized Wrong, look at Robert Putnam's (a democratic public policy professor at Harvard) research, immigration less social connection to the in and the out-group, it leads to a total loss of social capital, and a weakening of the society's social fiber. https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=12802663 -Differences in SES are mainly sociological in nature, not at all biological Wrong, IQ and conscientiousness the two biggest facets of succes are highly heritable and genetic, IQ is about 80% genetic, about as much as height. I do not believe in IQ differences between races, however i do believe in IQ differences between individuals. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heritability_of_IQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lk8sdMGJ3m4 -Differences between men and women are purely sociological in nature, there are no biological differences. Wrong, Differences between men and women are highly genetic, they show up in all societies and are even bigger in more equal societies, killing the constructivist paradigm. http://www.midus.wisc.edu/findings/pdfs/1779.pdf You'll be hard pressed showing these facts to a bunch of lefties, they will burn you at te stake, it's modern fundamentalism. Now try to deconstruct this.

@Leo Gura @Scholar Also, in Europe (extreme) right-wing parties garner the most votes from the youth. shouldn't this part of the population be more "evolved"?

@Leo Gura @Scholar Well, let’s take a model like SD which poses that the worldview of individuals evolves throughout their lifespan into using a more liberal, green, caring and complex set of beliefs. Then why do people become more conservative as they age? Isn’t that the complete opposite of what the model says? These logical inconsistencies really make me question the model. This is perfectly explainable by a temperamental analysis though. As people age, they get less open and more conscientious. These are the primary psychological traits correlated with conservatism, thus people get more conservative as they age.

Hahah, you continue to amaze me

Claims: "Reality is nothing but a perspective". Makes a career out of strawmanning libertarian and right-wing belief systems. Calls these belief systems "less evolved" by referring to his dumb neo-piagetian, teleological, spiritualist model. Have you ever wondered why no reputable political scientist has ever used Spiral Dynamics? Because it has no empirical backing whatsoever. You are ironically constructing an ideology from the ground up, using unscientific claims. Funnily you have no interest in debating me - because you know I could deconstruct your whole crooked endeavor. Not so curious about the Truth now, huh?

@Leo Gura Well, it has been empirically proven that women on average have more fear than men. Women score about one deviation higher on neuroticism, which gives them lower self-esteem, higher levels of anxiety and stress and lower levels of happiness. In contrary to what resentful feminists had theorized, these average differences are greater in more egalitarian countries. So, these differences seem to be mainly biological in nature. Also, the notion that less ego = less fear is pure BS. Look at psychopaths, they probably are the most egotistical bastards out there, but they lack the capacity to feel fear - often their brain circuitry doesn't permit its formation.

@Leo Gura Lol, imagine the advent of sex robots in the future. Forever changing the dating market and culture along with it. Truly a brave new world, women everywhere would be foaming out of their mouths.

@JosephKnecht @Carl-Richard Well, I certainly hope Kurzweil's predictions are wrong. Let's say I want to became a world-class entrepreneur, getting there would at least take a decade. When we reach 2030, machines could be better entrepreneurs than humans (according to Ray Kurzweil), would it still be worth putting all that time in building this skill? If this could be essentially non-competitive. My problem is closely interwined with the concept of anitya (impermanence) from Buddhism. How could we adopt our plans to the future, when the future is transient and ever-changing? Especially with change and acceleration going faster and faster. How can our conceptions about the future ever be accurate?

Viktor Frankl's book "Man's search for meaning" is pretty canonical. Jonathan Haidt's phenomenal book "The Righteous mind" gives you an overview of the differences in meaning-making between liberals and conservatives, and the overlapping causal biological and temperamental systems. As Enhance has said, reading ancient wisdom traditions is a good start, they take you to the core of (textual) human meaning-making, Jordan Peterson synthesizes these primordial traditions In his exquisite book "Maps of meaning", really one hell of book! (controversial opinion, I know)

After reading Ray Kurzweil's books, I became awash with a sense of dread about my predicament. Is it really worth it, building any skill, when AI could be as smart as any human in the future? Would it really be worth it pursuing spirituality, if you could just plug your mind into the "Neuralink super-consciousness"? Experts cite that these technologies could arrive as soon as 2029, forever changing culture and human life. These technologies make me a little scared about humanities place in the world and the futileness of our drives for wisdom, excellence and self-actualization, these just pale in the face of a superintelligent machine. Leo, could you please offer me some (practical) guidance? @Leo Gura