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Problem in a colony of higly intelligent individuals

   
Another question that asks it self is who does the dirty jobs. And I mean that literally. For anything resembling a modern society to function you need people to unclog your sewers, shovel garbage and get their arms up to the elbow in grease maintaining stuff. Does your colony outsource all these jobs to out-of-colony businesses? In that case there is a potential point of failure. Does it make colonists do it on their own? How many 150 IQ people want to make a carrier of unclogging toilets? Again a point of failure.

I would say the technology have come so far that most of those firty jobs doesn't exist anymore. Take lavatories for example, they would be of the Star Trek kind where everything is turned into atoms and then reused as something else in a replicator. So repairing it would likely demand both higher education and skills.

Quote:
Originally Posted by FenixFagel View Post
I would say the technology have come so far that most of those firty jobs doesn't exist anymore. Take lavatories for example, they would be of the Star Trek kind where everything is turned into atoms and then reused as something else in a replicator. So repairing it would likely demand both higher education and skills.
You're looking for places where society breaks down, so don't make it easy on these folks. Maybe there's a machine that unclogs toilets, and a machine that fixes the toilet machine and a machine that fixes the machine that fixes the toilet machine; but eventually there's going to be someone who does a dirty, nasty job that no one wants, and that person is going to be discriminated against even subtly.

But I got a feeling that society will always break down. I mean even on the perfect Earth in Star Trek does things go smoothly. I just have a bit of problem seing how people who can build spaceships that travels between galaxies can't build a machine to do their dirty work.

I imagine 150 IQ would just become the new stupid. "Hey, everybody, guess who's trying to calculate atomic orbitals for a Hartree-Fock? It's "Truncated Dataset" Jenkins! lol." Look at Far Side comics for inspiration.

You could also do the "too many alphas" problem, particularly if the intelligence tested for was poorly defined and the test rewarded a certain aggressive, over-certain response. Basically if everybody's trying to lead and nobody wants to follow you get a vicious political mess of dominance games and authoritarianism. http://www.worthethic.com/the-alpha-male-syndrome.html

These people are really intelligent, so if they're given anything resembling what we'd consider a proper education, they'd be questioning everything.

To add to Ten's points, consider the inevitable special gifted individual with problematic personality traits. What is this person doing, because I'd imagine it'd be important to everyone one way or another.

Quote:
Originally Posted by ShakeyBox View Post
These people are really intelligent, so if they're given anything resembling what we'd consider a proper education, they'd be questioning everything.
The ultimate failure point is at the end of the day going to be that. For this eugenics project to work out you have to indoctrinate people into thinking it's a good idea. And for a proper intellectual education you have to teach them to question everything. And that's doublethink on a scale that is mind boggling.

But would I really need to teach them it's a good idea? Couldn't I just leave the door open for them to leave the colony whenever they want, trusting both their and the colony's judgement that they will either come back or weren't suited for the colony.

Because I'm not sure intelligent people would rule things the same way as less intelligent people. Sure, some might wish vast control, but shouldn't they be opposed by the hard to manipulate majority?

Are they intelligent or enlightened? They could be both, but they certainly don't have to be. If you're making a dystopia, not a utopia, just have them be regular old venal, power-craving, status-craving people, but ones who can do science good.

Quote:
Originally Posted by FenixFagel View Post
But would I really need to teach them it's a good idea? Couldn't I just leave the door open for them to leave the colony whenever they want, trusting both their and the colony's judgement that they will either come back or weren't suited for the colony.

Because I'm not sure intelligent people would rule things the same way as less intelligent people. Sure, some might wish vast control, but shouldn't they be opposed by the hard to manipulate majority?
Smart does not equal good. Do you know who the most intelligent people are in our societies? The CEOs that milk people dry to the bone for extra profit, the sociopathic bank managers that think of new ways to screw the little man over, the people behind political campaigns... Your average high achieving scientist that works on a cure for cancer is in fact not likely to be a genius with 150+ IQ. He is likely to be an average person with very good work ethic.




 

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