Newsgroups: alt.society.futures
Date: Mon, 27 Jul 1992 14:15:39 -0400 
From: "Daniel S. Efran" <de0t+@andrew.cmu.edu>
Subject: Re: Overcoming Human Limits
Distribution: world

Fascinating topic.

My first thought:  The main flaw in humans now is mental,
not physical (or rather bodily -- the mind is physical too).
Our problem-solving and reasoning skills are poor.  We honor
sunk costs.  When we estimate probabilities, we give excessive
weight to more familiar or obvious options.  We are gullible in
the extreme.  We respond to emotional arguments, to fear and
flattery, more than to facts and logic.  Our ability to choose the
best course of action in a situation, for the most part, sucks
turnips.  
Witness: We destroy our planet "to save money". We fight
to decide who owns a town, but when the battle is over, the 
town is a worthless ruin.  We elect our decision-makers in a
popularity contest in which lying is the norm and discussion of
the issues is a rarity.  
We forget the lessons of the past: the current "war on drugs"
ignores the lesson of prohibition (laws against something people want
create crime and don't stop consumption). The USA's AIDS "education"
policy ("Be afraid.  Don't have sex.") was tried before, with syphillis,
during the first world war.  It failed.  The successful replacement
("Ok, have sex.  But do it carefully.") is now meeting with huge
"moral" disapproval.
In short, we're stupid.  We can figure out the correct answers to
all these questions (and more).  We *do* figure them out.  But then
we ignore them and follow our instincts or our morals or our emotions.

If we intend to survive into the far future, this is what we must fix.
Either humans must become more intelligent, better able to use the
logic we've invented (discovered?), or we must turn the decision-
making power over to machines or unbiased scientists: people who
are *trained* to make rational decisions.  (Politicians are trained only
to convince other people.  This is useful, but only when you're right.)

[Footnote:  If you want details about how badly we make decisions,
read "Rational Choice in an Uncertain World" by (I think) Robyn
Dawes.  Also read "Metamagical Themas" by Douglas Hofstadter, 
particularly the chapter on the Prisoner's Dilemma.  And if you're
interested in human gullibility, read "Flim Flam" by James Randi.]

Physically, we're ok.  We can communicate quite well with our voices
and hands. We can travel ok with our legs and cars and airplanes.
We live a reasonable length of time -- longer would be nice, but
not until we learn to keep our numbers down and feed everyone.
(We have plenty of food-production capability, but we don't use it.
Nations starve because of petty politics.  We pay farmers NOT to
grow crops.  We use resources inefficiently -- we use enormous
amounts of grain to feed cattle, instead of just eating the grain
directly, which would give us several times as much food.  Again,
these are not physical problems but problems of poor decision-
making.)  We have the knowledge and skills now to overcome any
physical disadvantages we have.  Our senses are fine, our motor
skills are ok (both strength and dexterity).

Really, humans are pretty well designed.  And we can build anything
that isn't built into us.  But we're not quite smart enough.  All the
remaining problems of humanity can be traced to this one factor,
I think.

So what are we going to do about it?


Disclaimer:  All of the above are my opinions.  They are only my
opinions.  If you disagree, post your opinions and we'll have a 
discussion.  (I don't participate in arguments.)  That's why we're
doing this, right?

	---Daniel Efran
----------------------------------
An it harm none, do as you Will.
Practice random kindness and senseless acts of beauty.
Newsgroups: alt.society.cu-digest