> "I belive smart people want to work on ideas that are net positive"

Do you have any basis for that belief or is that just wishful thinking? Or is that the way how you choose to define "smart", so it becomes true by definition?

I would say that a persons goals, purposes and values is an important aspect that's pretty much orthogonal to their intellectual ability to figure out how to best achieve their long-term goals and further their values, whatever they happen to be. Perhaps there's some correlation there, but IMHO it's not necessary nor very strong, all kinds of counterexamples come to mind; there certainly are people who are very intelligent and effective while literally being sociopaths.

Smart people also realize the world isn't perfect, and it wasn't before we were here either. In a world where long term outcomes have infinite factors taking actions with short term benefits is rational because there is no control or impact over the long term effects.

That is obviously not totally true, but I think probabilistically speaking, it's _somewhat_ true.

So the defining feature of intelligence is that the truly smart take actions with short term benefits at the cost of long term detriments?

Close. Smart people are _willing_ to take actions with short term benefits at the cost of long term detriments.

Smart people understand that there are multiple correct answers to the same problem depending on what timeframe you are operating under, and that the long timeframe is less controllable.