I don't disagree with your overall point, but I do think that ingenuity, problem-solving, impulse control, and the ability to delay gratification and reach long-term goals have always been valuable skills.
You might still only be a farmer if you're smart, but you can at least be one of the more productive farmers with a more smoothly running farm.
I agree. Studies show time and time again that smart people are more efficient even at tasks that may not look like they require a smart person. So while people might not have been paid to do thinking jobs I don't buy that the intelligent did not always have had an edge, all else being equal.
What if this is modeled around the premise that in any situation where reasoning can be used, someone would have access to super-human reasoning?
Where does the human in the loop somehow manage to utilize super-human reasoning better than another person?
I'm not suggesting it's impossible, so much as wondering if we can reach a place where the human is truly irrelevant to the process, and can't make a better decision than the superhuman entity.
I'm not sure this is ever possible. It's more of a thought experiment. What's between here and there? Right now we can use pseudo-intelligence from silicon to our advantage, and being smarter than average is clearly a massively outsized advantage. It's similar to how being able to automate tasks gives you an outsized advantage, yet in so many more ways. But what if that advantage thins or even vanishes?
The point here is not that intelligence is somehow the super property where if you have slightly more intelligence then your neighbor that means you are better even if they are stronger, need less sleep, are more dexterous, are more mentally resilient etc. The point is that intelligence is an advantage.
Agree. If you've ever spent serious time in the country with farmers, the level of ingenuity is impressive among many, and they benefit from it greatly. As the grandson of depression farmers, I noticed intelligence mattered a lot, even if just for survival.
We're all hand-waving away the fact that there is no un-claimed farmland in the US. It's all owned already. You can't invent your way into possessing farmland. You will have to buy it from someone who no longer has any willingneess to sell it, unless you get lucky and find a dying person with no friends or family. If all we have is farming, no one would part with the land, as it's a valuable, vital resource.
None of this Jack inherits but wants to live in the big city and be an architect. He'll inherit and keep because there is no architecture job to be had.
As someone who grew up on a farm, "you may be a farmer but you could be a productive one" is so intensely depressing. Farming is a shitty job that requires insane amounts of back-breaking labor, never-ending toil, and all this at a time when climate change is going to utterly fuck over farmland and destroy crop yields.
You might still only be a farmer if you're smart, but you can at least be one of the more productive farmers with a more smoothly running farm.