In Paul Fussell’s book on class (I think), he says that people are really worried about differentiating themselves from the class immediately below them, but largely ignorant of the customs and sometimes even existence of the classes above them. When I found SSC, and then The Motte, and stuff like TLP, I was astonished to find a tier of the internet I had had no idea even existed. The quality of discourse here is . . . usually . . . of the kind that “high brow” (by internet standards) websites THINK they are having, but when you see the best stuff here you realize that those clowns are just flattering themselves. My question is, who is rightly saying the same thing about us? Of what intellectual internet class am I ignorant now? Or does onlineness impose some kind of ceiling on things, and the real galaxy brains are at the equivalent of Davos somewhere?
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Notes -
I would hope the smartest individual in this timeline wouldn't be wasting valuable time justifying their intelligence to lesser wits.
Solving actual problems seems a better use of their time.
Contrary to popular belief, time isn't a scarce resource, what is however very scarce, is the amount of time we maximally meaningfully allocate.
Being the least irrational mind on earth is mostly contingent/hortogonal to being a "functional" human being.
In fact maximizing someone's rationality necessarily ultimately leads to a strong dissonance between your thoughts and your actions.
Having a maximal impact on the world is not something I can easily achieve via the use of my physical body. It is much more efficient to design solutions in the realm of ideas than to implement them physically.
In fact to maximally alter the world, one must either communicate his ideas/world's actionable roadmap via the internet and/or accumulate power including via external recognition.
So in fact defending the case that I could informatively disrupt this world should be one of my top priorities and in an ideal world the rationalist/effective altruist diaspora would leverage it and share to me funding, visibility and other kinds of effectors to reality.
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