"How about *) an improvement in our formal education?"
IMAO, only if that *results* in "*) a substantial increase in our average speed of learning". Which is possible, but I think would require, at minimum, a massive revolution in teaching methods. I don't see us getting there incrementally from our current pedagogy.
"our instincts tell us to steal, cheat, lie, in some cases rape, and other things"
I think that's an over-simplification. The evolutionarily stable (mostly) mix is that most people are cooperatively social, but a few sociopaths exploit the system. I'm not sure that that has significantly changed. We may (maybe) have reduced the expression of sociopathy among low-power members of society, but high-powered sociopaths are as powerful and abusive as they have ever been.
[I have occasionally played around with an SF Utopia scenario based on the existence of an objective test for sociopathy. That invention leads to the *actual* War to End Wars, as all the sociopaths make their last attempts to maintain control. But once the cooperative societies are immune to infection by defaulters, they are hugely more productive, and can't be beaten in the long term. The end result is a society where severe sociopaths are isolated in asylums, and mild ones are prevented from occupying positions of power.]
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Date: 2008-10-10 03:20 pm (UTC)IMAO, only if that *results* in "*) a substantial increase in our average speed of learning". Which is possible, but I think would require, at minimum, a massive revolution in teaching methods. I don't see us getting there incrementally from our current pedagogy.
"our instincts tell us to steal, cheat, lie, in some cases rape, and other things"
I think that's an over-simplification. The evolutionarily stable (mostly) mix is that most people are cooperatively social, but a few sociopaths exploit the system. I'm not sure that that has significantly changed. We may (maybe) have reduced the expression of sociopathy among low-power members of society, but high-powered sociopaths are as powerful and abusive as they have ever been.
[I have occasionally played around with an SF Utopia scenario based on the existence of an objective test for sociopathy. That invention leads to the *actual* War to End Wars, as all the sociopaths make their last attempts to maintain control. But once the cooperative societies are immune to infection by defaulters, they are hugely more productive, and can't be beaten in the long term. The end result is a society where severe sociopaths are isolated in asylums, and mild ones are prevented from occupying positions of power.]