No, they're not, but they CAN be. If you want to cure diseases, or make technological progress, with the sweat of your brow, Rapture can become your city as well.
> Scott says that if he “wanted to strengthen humanity as much as possible, [he’d] work on economic development, curing diseases, or technological progress.” But an assumption of vitalism is that only the highest type of person, the creative genius, is capable of achieving great things like these, which means it’s essential not to get in their way.
Economic development, curing diseases, and technological progress all enable a population to have a higher percentage of (as you say) "the highest type of person", no? Since all of those de-bottleneck realization of top-tier potential. Think (say) one in a million to 10-100 in a million. I'm from a middle-income country that during my parents' generation was a lower-income one, and still developing relatively rapidly; it seems plainly clear to me that this is the case.
This (of course) doesn't preclude "vitalist-only" initiatives like say gifted ed programs (of which my family members have been beneficiaries), government scholarships to study abroad (of which I'm a beneficiary) and so on; in fact it enables more such initiatives in the future due to increased human capital, state capacity, etc. There's no tradeoff when you extend the time horizon appropriately.
"Don’t encourage (through culture) or force (through taxes) altruism, which could limit them from pursuing their demanding obsessions"
That reminds me of a Facebook meme: if they are that great, why would paying taxes like an ordinary person hurt them?
No, they're not, but they CAN be. If you want to cure diseases, or make technological progress, with the sweat of your brow, Rapture can become your city as well.
> Scott says that if he “wanted to strengthen humanity as much as possible, [he’d] work on economic development, curing diseases, or technological progress.” But an assumption of vitalism is that only the highest type of person, the creative genius, is capable of achieving great things like these, which means it’s essential not to get in their way.
Economic development, curing diseases, and technological progress all enable a population to have a higher percentage of (as you say) "the highest type of person", no? Since all of those de-bottleneck realization of top-tier potential. Think (say) one in a million to 10-100 in a million. I'm from a middle-income country that during my parents' generation was a lower-income one, and still developing relatively rapidly; it seems plainly clear to me that this is the case.
This (of course) doesn't preclude "vitalist-only" initiatives like say gifted ed programs (of which my family members have been beneficiaries), government scholarships to study abroad (of which I'm a beneficiary) and so on; in fact it enables more such initiatives in the future due to increased human capital, state capacity, etc. There's no tradeoff when you extend the time horizon appropriately.