"I don't have a stored concept for what 'alcohol' is, but the question is something like - do they understand themselves and reality and their own desires and consequences well enough that you should not get in their way?  Just as you ought not to stand next to an adult optimizing everything they do whether they like that or not?  There is a very obvious tradeoff between letting smart people run the lives of less smart people and letting people run their own lives, what kind of civilization you end up with, and dath ilan has elected to be the latter kind.  And the more your smart people are not completely calibrated about how little they know about other people, the less that's even a tradeoff because people just do strictly better running their own lives?  I would expect Earth to have entirely bad experiences with letting its smart people run the lives of other people."

"I don't have a stored concept for what 'alcohol' is, but the question is something like - do they understand themselves and reality and their own desires and consequences well enough that you should not get in their way?  Just as you ought not to stand next to an adult optimizing everything they do whether they like that or not?  There is a very obvious tradeoff between letting smart people run the lives of less smart people, versus letting people run their own lives, and dath ilan has elected to be the kind of Civilization that goes mostly down the second path.  And the more your smart people are not completely calibrated about how little they know about other people, the less that's even a tradeoff because people just do strictly better running their own lives?  I would expect Earth to have entirely bad experiences with letting its smart people run the lives of other people."

"I don't have a stored concept for what 'alcohol' is, but the question is something like - does somone understand themselves and reality, their desires and the consequences, well enough that they can steer their own existence and you should not get in their way?  Just as you ought not to stand next to an average adult optimizing everything they do whether they like that or not?  There is a very obvious tradeoff between letting smart people run the lives of less smart people, versus letting people run their own lives, and dath ilan has elected to be the kind of Civilization that goes mostly down the second path.  And the more your smart people are not completely calibrated about how little they know about other people, the less that's even a tradeoff because people just do strictly better running their own lives?  I would expect Earth to have entirely bad experiences with letting its smart people run the lives of other people."