Most of what counts as wisdom is common sense. It is rather obvious when you think about it. But some gems, the really valuable, hard-earned ones, are counter-intuitive. They don't make sense on the face of it, but deep understanding shows that they are true.

 

Here's today's gem for your illucidation and edification:

 

One of the reasons I look forward to the new year is that The World Question Center publishes the answers to their annual question from some of the most brilliant minds on the planet. This year's question: 

In this thought experiment you discover an ancient artifact. It appears as a small plain box with a dial and a button. The dial can be turned to any number between -100 and +100 inclusive. When you first pick up the box you mysteriously acquire the knowledge of its purpose: When you press the button every live human on Earth will have their IQ adjusted by the amount specified on the dial. Everyone but the person who presses the button, your intelligence will remain unchanged. Once used the box will disappear. One more thing, if someone's IQ is reduced below 0 they will immediately die. Of course anyone with an IQ below around 40 will need assistance to survive, just as it is now.

 

You don't know how the artifact works or where it came from. It could be magical, divine, demonic or alien, it doesn't really matter. Assume for the sake of this thought experiment that the box works exactly as described. What do you do? (Yes, you may sell it on eBay but you will only get US$29 and have to cover the cost of shipping to Florida yourself :-)

The discussion on dumb people with high IQs continues on the SL4 list...

 

 On 11/22/05, Thomas Buckner <tcbevolver@yahoo.com> wrote:
> By comparison, former NH governor and White House
> chief of staff John Sununu reputedly has a 180 IQ
> and eidetic memory (both of which I would kill
> for) but somehow managed to be an utter fool in
> my estimation (among other follies, circa 1990 he
> ran a climate sim on his home computer, which
> couldn't have been much better than a 386 with a
> couple megs of ram, and decided global warming
> wasn't for real! When real climatologists running
> supercomputers weren't willing to place total
> faith in their sims.) If there's a better parable
> illustrating that IQ-isn't-everything, I'd like
> to hear it.

[I replied...]
There is another possibility here. Perhaps Sununu ran his little
program enough to gain an intuition into the chaotic nature of
dynamical complex systems like weather simulations. He observed how
small changes in the inputs and assumptions led to large changes in
the results and (correctly) reasoned that running on a supercomputer
isn't going to mitigate that problem. So he concluded that
climatologists couldn't possibly know with any degree of certainty
from running their own simulations whether global warming was going to
happen.

Spotted on the (rather interesting) SL4 mailing list...

They say smart people can be dumb. Apparently superintelligent people can be retarded.

This was in reference to a guy with an alleged IQ of 195 who is also a proponent of ID. How can smart people be dumb? I think this apparent contradiction can be resolved by realizing that there are two dimensoins at work here. One is general intelligence (the g factor) measured by IQ tests, the other is rationality. The two dimensions are only loosely correlated.

In today's thought experiment you are abducted by aliens. Before you get your knickers in a twist, no they are not interested in probing you. They turn out to be extremely friendly and intelligent. They tell you that you have been chosen at random to make a very important decision (or at least vote on it, they hint that you may not be the only abductee though you see no signs of others).

 

The aliens have knowledge and technology that could transform earth into a paradise but it comes at a terrible price. They can eliminate all forms of suffering due to disease, war, accidents, crime, etc using something they call "femtotechnology" but after 1000 years the atomic-scale machines will turn into grey goo and destroy all life and other complex structures that it has contact with.

 

So the question for you is this: Do you accept their gift along with the deferred death sentence for everyone and everything on Earth or do you decline and let humanity forge its own future? The aliens show you enough that you have every reason to believe they are telling you nothing but the truth in this matter.

 

[I first heard of this scenario from Keith Henson. I haven't heard from Keith since he was recently deported from Canada, I hope he is well...]