Rofel_Wodring t1_j6mj2p2 wrote on January 31, 2023 at 11:38 AM

Don't bother. Study something that you will be able to use in the next 5-6+ years, because if the singularity is actually a thing it'll make all of your past efforts moot -- unless you were right at the bleeding edge of the technology at the start of the singularity.

Here's my logic: 30 plus years of education and experience compared to 30 years of jacking off to cartoons means nothing if we can boost both scientist and slacker IQ to 600 with an injection of proteins and nanomachines. Then we put their brains in an aroused state and give them 12 years of additional university education in a week.

What do our super-geniuses do next? Can't say, but in such a scenario the education and experience of the scientist doesn't give them that much more of an edge after their IQ gets boosted to 600. So now there's a real question of whether the scientist was spending their time productively, given how obsolete past experiences were to future progression after the mind augmentations. The slacker can make a real argument that they wasted less of their time than the scientist (unless the scientist was working on the pill, of course), especially if both of them go on to make discoveries that eclipse anything the unaugmented scientist could or did find previously.

Of course, if a singularity isn't possible, the scientist didn't necessary waste their time. But while researching the singularity to see if it is actually possible is a worthwhile endeavor -- even if it turns out if it's not -- most people interested in the topic seem to think that it's possible, or at least desirable.

StatisticianFuzzy327 OP t1_j6mmvqy wrote on January 31, 2023 at 12:21 PM

Thank you!

I am going to keep that in mind while making decisions. I am not planning to do something completely useless or irrelevant to the present job market, because I too need to sustain myself and my research activities, and I'll try to be at the cutting-edge yet be prepared of all contingencies.

I don't see any flaw with your logic, sounds good, except we need to develop such an injection first. There's also a very interesting thing there in your argument, something I have thought about a lot in the last few months.

It's basically this: If the scientist really enjoys doing science, regardless of what the future holds for him that makes his efforts redundant, and if the slacker likes whatever he is doing, why is one better than the other? Just because one has interests and aptitude that is looked upon more favourably by the society, even though both are just following their passions and natural inclinations?

Another thing to consider here is that if a scenario such as what you proposed would come true, the scientist would never regret doing what he did, because he could never imagine being someone like the slacker jerking off to cartoons for years.

He simple can't, because his genes and early environment predisposed him in a way that only made him satisfied with his actions when he did science, and if he even tried doing what the slacker was doing, he'd instantly get buried with regret and intense dissatisfaction. That holds true even if he wasn't working on the pill. A similar point could possibly be made for the slacker, but I'm not sure.

Another point is that both the scientist and the slacker made the decision for how they wanted to spend their time and what career they wanted to do (or not do) at a time when they didn't have adequate information about the singularity (like today) and so they went ahead with whatever information was available to them and any other constraints and goals they happened to have.

Why does that matter? Because I believe that a decision should be judged by all the information that was available to the person at the time he made it, and it would remain a good or bad decisions regardless of what the future holds. So the scientist may have thought that singularity or not, they like science, and this is what they want to do with their life, and so even after the singularity, their decision was a good one.

On the other hand, the slacker might have thought the even if there were no singularity, maybe life is meaningless or they are a pathetic loser not smart enough to do science or that they adjust don't feel like it and choose to rely upon the singularity even though it was uncertain if such a thing would occur in the future. He was willing to take the risk, and bear the cost if singularity didn't take place, so he also took an informed decision (hopefully).

I agree with your last paragraph- even if it's not possible, it's still uncertain, and the best case scenario, the expected benefits if there's even a tiny chance that it's possible, would be worth any amount of resources that we could put into doing research on it, and the scientist would have done science anyway, so even if he's the one who finds out the singularity isn't possible, no time wasted.

Rofel_Wodring t1_j6pc3rm wrote on January 31, 2023 at 11:05 PM

>It's basically this: If the scientist really enjoys doing science, regardless of what the future holds for him that makes his efforts redundant, and if the slacker likes whatever he is doing, why is one better than the other? Just because one has interests and aptitude that is looked upon more favourably by the society, even though both are just following their passions and natural inclinations?

I have done the 'follow your dreams, regardless of how much the job market likes it' dance before. It did not work out for me. I pretty much wasted years of my life on a career path I found I could just not continue; I made do and pinched pennies until household debt caught up with me and I realize I was in a cycle of having to pay part of my rent with credit -- then I bit the bullet and switched jobs back to what I should have picked.

I am still paying off debt from that adventure. Sure, I learned a bunch of things and have a career path most salesmen or engineers would never have dreamed of... but I'd have rather have the mental health of not stressing out about whether my $500 overdraft can cover rent or having to surrender years worth of possessions because I literally cannot afford to pay the cross-country moving company the final delivery fee. No matter how enjoyable I found the work, my fulfillment could not overcome the misery of being broke and becoming worse off every month.

And I got lucky. Several times over the past years I've come within a hair's breadth of breaking my leg or totaling my car or missing a rent payment.

I have a path out of this whole mess, but it's ugly. I'd have rather not have followed my heart in the first place.

...

You won't hear stories like mine, because our society prefers to downplay and even lie about the risks of valuing anything more than money.

Value the money first, chase your dreams later. You can't enjoy your life if you're constantly stressing about being one accident or pink slip away from homelessness.