It's more than that. Even if you take an extreme assumption that "Full" intelligence means being able to see ALL relevant facts to a "choice" and perfectly reliably make the objective "best" choice, that does not mean that being more intelligent than we currently are guarantees better choices than we currently make.
We make our choices using a subset of the total information. Getting a larger subset of that information could still push you to the wrong choice. Local maxima of choice accuracy is possible, and it could also be possible that the "function" for choice accuracy wrt info you have is constant at a terrible value right up until you get perfect info and suddenly make perfect choices.
Much more important however, is the reminder that the known biases in the human brain are largely subconscious. No amount of better conscious thought will change the existence of the Fundamental Attribution Error for example. Biases are not because we are "dumb", but because our brains do not process things rationally, like at all. We can consciously attempt to emulate a perfectly rational machine, but that takes immense effort, almost never works well, and is largely unavailable in moments of stress.
Statisticians still suffer from gambling fallacies. Doctors still experience the Placebo Effect. The scientific method works because it removes humans as the source of truth, because the smartest human still makes human errors.
I'd still counter it: someone can't be smart (have large brain power) if they also don't understand the value of altruism and ethics for their own well-being. While you can have "success" (in however you define it) by ignoring those, the risk of failure is greater. Though this does ignore the fact that you can be smart for a set of problems, but not really have any "general" smartness (I've seen one too many Uni math professors who lack any common sense).
Eg. as a simple example, as an adult, you can go and steal kids' lunch at school recess easily. What happens next? If you do that regularly, either kids will band together and beat the shit out of you if they are old enough, or a security person will be added, or parents' of those kids will set up a trap and perform their own justice.
In the long run, it's smart not to go and pester individuals weaker than you, and while we all turn to morality about it, all of them are actually smart principles for your own survival. Our entire society is a setup coming out of such realizations and not some innate need for "goodness".
>someone can't be smart (have large brain power) if they also don't understand the value of altruism and ethics for their own well-being
I would agree with this. And to borrow something that Daniel Dennett once said, no moral theory that exists seems to be computationally tractable. I wouldn't say I entirely agree, but I agree with like the vibe or the upshot of it, which is a certain amount of mapping out. The variables and consequences seems to be instrumental to moral insight, and the more capable of the brain, the more capable it would be of applying moral insight in increasingly complex situations.
hmm, I dunno if that simple example holds up very well. In the real world, folks do awful stuff that could be categorized as pestering individuals weaker than them than them, stuff much worse than stealing lunch money from little kids, and many of them never have to answer for any of it. Are we saying that someone who has successfully committed something really terrible like human trafficking without being caught is inherently not smart specifically because they are involved in human trafficking?
Yes, some will succeed (I am not suggesting that crime doesn't pay at all, just that the risk of suffering consequences is bigger which discourages most people).
It's more than that. Even if you take an extreme assumption that "Full" intelligence means being able to see ALL relevant facts to a "choice" and perfectly reliably make the objective "best" choice, that does not mean that being more intelligent than we currently are guarantees better choices than we currently make.
We make our choices using a subset of the total information. Getting a larger subset of that information could still push you to the wrong choice. Local maxima of choice accuracy is possible, and it could also be possible that the "function" for choice accuracy wrt info you have is constant at a terrible value right up until you get perfect info and suddenly make perfect choices.
Much more important however, is the reminder that the known biases in the human brain are largely subconscious. No amount of better conscious thought will change the existence of the Fundamental Attribution Error for example. Biases are not because we are "dumb", but because our brains do not process things rationally, like at all. We can consciously attempt to emulate a perfectly rational machine, but that takes immense effort, almost never works well, and is largely unavailable in moments of stress.
Statisticians still suffer from gambling fallacies. Doctors still experience the Placebo Effect. The scientific method works because it removes humans as the source of truth, because the smartest human still makes human errors.
I'd still counter it: someone can't be smart (have large brain power) if they also don't understand the value of altruism and ethics for their own well-being. While you can have "success" (in however you define it) by ignoring those, the risk of failure is greater. Though this does ignore the fact that you can be smart for a set of problems, but not really have any "general" smartness (I've seen one too many Uni math professors who lack any common sense).
Eg. as a simple example, as an adult, you can go and steal kids' lunch at school recess easily. What happens next? If you do that regularly, either kids will band together and beat the shit out of you if they are old enough, or a security person will be added, or parents' of those kids will set up a trap and perform their own justice.
In the long run, it's smart not to go and pester individuals weaker than you, and while we all turn to morality about it, all of them are actually smart principles for your own survival. Our entire society is a setup coming out of such realizations and not some innate need for "goodness".
>someone can't be smart (have large brain power) if they also don't understand the value of altruism and ethics for their own well-being
I would agree with this. And to borrow something that Daniel Dennett once said, no moral theory that exists seems to be computationally tractable. I wouldn't say I entirely agree, but I agree with like the vibe or the upshot of it, which is a certain amount of mapping out. The variables and consequences seems to be instrumental to moral insight, and the more capable of the brain, the more capable it would be of applying moral insight in increasingly complex situations.
hmm, I dunno if that simple example holds up very well. In the real world, folks do awful stuff that could be categorized as pestering individuals weaker than them than them, stuff much worse than stealing lunch money from little kids, and many of them never have to answer for any of it. Are we saying that someone who has successfully committed something really terrible like human trafficking without being caught is inherently not smart specifically because they are involved in human trafficking?
I would quote my original comment:
> ...risk of failure is greater.
Yes, some will succeed (I am not suggesting that crime doesn't pay at all, just that the risk of suffering consequences is bigger which discourages most people).
Seems more like brainpower is not inherently a 1:1 correlation for long term survival of a species.