Re:Around the World, People Have Surprisingly Modest Notions...
by johnsonjo on Saturday June 23, 2018 @06:45PM
(#17383859)
Yeah. I agree that at least to our standards these answers are not modest. Having a relatively high IQ and a relatively long life expectancy are both (separately) relatively unlikely. So, to us these do not seem modest answers.
The goal of their study, however, was to see if it was true that when given the choice to have some attribute or quality of your life maximized with few limits would you choose the maximum. They say the choices were modest simply because in philosophical writings they often assume people will always choose the maximum if available. That is why they found this surprising and modest.
Re:Around the World, People Have Surprisingly Modest Notions...
by drngdds on Saturday June 23, 2018 @03:31PM
(#17382966)
>those are numbers that say you wish you were as smart as the smartest person you ever met,
A 130 IQ is the 95th percentile. I don't know about you but I've met more than 20 people.
And of course, the implication is obvious: If everyone did on average live to 120 and get an IQ of 130 on our tests, then everyone would be wanting to live 200 years, and quite a few people would probably want an IQ of 160 on the old tests. That is, unless that was the point where people just switched to transhumanism as simplified humanism: Having the choice to live longer and to understand the universe better are probably always a good thing, regardless of how long you've lived and how much you understand.