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PaperclipPerfector  10d ago (text post)   25792 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 13, 2026

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but certainly a significant potential harm is the feeling of constantly comparing yourself to other people and feeling that you don't measure up in some way.

Unfortunately, this is just reality. And it relates to one or two collective action problems the masses don't comprehend. The best documented of these is the eugenics problem; less well documented but probably real is a problem with the economy where too much is based on luck, so people have to watch those with the same or lesser genetic endowment as themselves be much more privileged, which is wrong. But they can only think of the dumbest communism as a solution to this and that didn't work so well, so they have given up. Communism of course is based on the selfish heuristic of I would be better if I had more stuff, and not based on true collective action problem logic. The real solution would use IQ tests and would be enforced meritocracy or something along those lines.

Unfortunately, this is just reality.

I'm not sure I understand your point here. Do you dispute anything I said in the post you were responding to?

The real solution would use IQ tests and would be enforced meritocracy or something along those lines.

The problem with all meritocracy plans is that we don't have a rigorous definition of merit. We exist in a meritocracy if by merit we mean ability through whatever means to convince people to give you power. For various reasons people don't think this definition of merit is well aligned with their interests. I don't think a purely highest IQ people get the power would be particularly aligned with my interests either, maybe more so than the status quo, maybe not, but certainly smart people can get into all sorts of trouble.

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