Assuming a button that, every time you push it, your intelligence goes up. The obvious and sane thing to do is to push the button all day. Yes? No? Maybe? Is there something that I'm missing here?

Comments

• starlord@lemm.ee ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  I imagine you’d reach a point where you’d be able to deduce that you no longer need/should more buff.

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  • dope@lemm.ee ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Maybe, maybe not .

    Like the Tibetan Buddhists say :

    Beyond, beyond, beyond beyond! Hail the goer!

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• assplode@kbin.social ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  It's very tempting to shamash that button. Intelligence is lionized. It's high praise to call someone a genius. I'd probably wait on any button pushing until I'm old enough to have some cognitive decline.

  I'm no genius. I'm a bit above average intelligence. And I have to say, I'm not sure it's done much to improve my overall happiness.

  Like many gifts, it's a double-edged sword. Having a higher capacity for language, problem solving, and memorization has done a lot to ostracize me for my peers over the years.

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  • dope@lemm.ee ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Call it a general intelligence then. Not purely intellectual but physical, emotional, etc too. A totally comprehensive expansion of awareness. Nothing to lose but shackles.

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    • ivanafterall@kbin.social ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      You can still find yourself ostracized. The world's smartest man has far fewer potential conversational partners than the world's averagest man or many of its dumber men. If he's also the world's most emotionally intelligent, he has neither conversation partners, nor people who can understand and connect on the level he can, etc...

      It just gets more and more isolating, at some point.

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• TomMasz@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  If there was something I wanted to be able to do that I can’t do now because I lack the intelligence to do I’d push the button just enough to get to that level. Otherwise, what would be the point?

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  • dope@lemm.ee ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    If there was something I wanted to be able to do that I can’t do now because I lack the intelligence to do I’d push the button just enough to get to that level.

    As your intelligence increased your wants would probably change, but sure. Seems sensible.

    what would be the point?

    Exploration, acquirement of power, because it’s better to be sane than insane…?

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• xia@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  If it is true that “with wisdom comes much sorrow”, then at some point you would come to an equilibrium point (or maybe… a cliff) beyond which doing so might endanger your own life/mental-health, and probably be smart enough to recognize that and stop using the button. Kind of a corollary or converse of “ignorance is bliss”…

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• roo@lemmy.one ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  You’re expending resources for greater intelligence with diminishing returns. At some point you’re killing yourself, so hopefully you’ll acquire enough intelligence to end the button cycle.

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  • dope@lemm.ee ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    What resources am I expending?

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    • JackGreenEarth@lemm.ee ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      The energy and time to press the button

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