[dagheti]

The question that this story raises is "Can we solve these hard problems of aging, thinking, and feeling if we had intelligence far greater than we do today?"

Are we meant to read the narrator's idea that they can even solve the problems of aging and diseases and voluntary ovulation through science and intelligence as naive or inevitable?

Just because we can imagine a virus or a team of super smart people solving these problems, doesn't mean in reality it actually is possible to do so given limitations of physics and human nature.

I guess it doesn't really matter if RMS meant this story to be a satire of a technocrat's fantasy or a example of how increased intelligence would solve some of our biggest problems but I think how people read the story will depend a lot on their ideas about what is ultimately achievable and what is not through intelligence.

[revorad]

This discussion between Peter Thiel, Eliezer Yudkowsky, and Aubrey de Grey - http://www.vimeo.com/7396024 - has some good thoughts from the top people who are in fact working on those problems.

Couple of important highlights for me were:

Eliezer saying that he has to often remind himself to do not what he has most fun doing, not even what he has talent for but what needs to be done.

The other is Aubrey talking about how appalling it is that the smartest people in science work on the same things instead of working on important but ignored problems.

I highly recommend watching it, it's well worth the 29 minutes.

[indrax]

well to be fair, the genie solved the problems, the smart people are just copying.