As a result, it is the ordinary kids, which is the majority middle, who will hurt -- they think they learn something in high school and college, but they really don't.
That is purely a systemic problem, there's no reason that it couldn't be natural.
Also there's no support for you argument, its mere opinion and unsubstantiated conjecture based upon false premises, but stated like fact.
That's a bold claim. Evidence?
That's another bold claim as support for the the thesis that STEM is "natural" for kids.
Remember: natural
First, China in general is not a free society, the state enforces what it wants its citizens to do, sometimes quite brutally.
https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-world/2018/china
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_China
"Xi Jinping wields a level of social control not seen since Mao, posing a direct threat to democratic values worldwide"
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/nov/23/chines...
So using China as an example of "naturalness" of human behaviour seems at the very least wilfully ignorant.
So let's look at children and schools.
http://www.bbc.com/capital/story/20150611-chinas-parent-army
"For the past year, 18-year-old Zhang Hao has been studying for 12 hours a day. He spends a minimum of nine hours in class taking practice papers, then continues to study at home. His parents worry that he sometimes crams up to 17 hours work in to a single day. "
https://www.economist.com/china/2018/08/18/china-sounds-the-...
"LIN MING, a ten-year-old who has two years left at his primary school in Beijing, does not remember the last time he returned home before 6pm on a weekday during term. As soon as school is out, his mother, Yang Mei, shuttles him around the city, dropping him off at tutoring agencies where he studies advanced maths and English grammar. Ms Yang accepts that she is “maybe putting a bit too much stress” on her son. But she has no choice. “Around 90% of my son’s classmates attend after-school lessons. It’s a competition I can’t lose.” "
"Chinese officials worry that pupils’ achievements may exact too heavy a mental and physical price"
"As long as admission to senior-high schools is based on results from the gruelling zhongkao exam, parents are likely to exploit every loophole to give their children an edge."
So, if you think that pushing kids beyond their limits with something like 16h work days in ways that negatively impacts their mental and physical health is a demonstration of "naturalness", then I just have to concede the point that this is all natural.
But then you have to also claim that schoolchildren killing themselves is also somehow "natural"
https://www.theglobalist.com/will-china-be-able-to-curb-adol...
"In the last few years, several studies have shown that adolescents and young people in China, Japan and other Asian countries have a large number of psychological problems that may lead them to commit to suicide."
"There are several causes for adolescent suicides. In many cases, suicides relate to fear of performing badly in exams."
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19082026
>>Studying STEM is not natural to many kids
> That is purely a systemic problem, there's no reason that it couldn't be natural.
"South Korea has the highest suicide rate in the world for children ages 10-19 and extremely high elderly (60+) suicide rates. For children, most suicides are caused by stress relating to education. Korean children have a school year of 11 months and often spend over 16 hours a day at school and at afterschool programs called hagwons."
https://bpr.berkeley.edu/2017/10/31/the-scourge-of-south-kor...
India: India has an average income of $2134 per person. Not per month, per year. It has 872 million people living below the poverty line. One quarter of the population lives on less than 60¢ per day.
So I'd respectfully suggest that there might be good, ahem, motivation to try your best to get good at STEM even if you don't find it particularly natural.
Gender bias in STEM? That's a god damn first-world problem.
https://www.bbc.com/news/business-39579321
"Most of the girls we talked to from other countries had a slightly playful approach to Stem, whereas in Russia, even the very youngest were extremely focused on the fact that their future employment opportunities were more likely to be rooted in Stem subjects."
Then, when wealth (and all other measures of gender equality) dramatically increase and people become free to choose to do whatever they want, largely free from economic survival pressure, suddenly, magically and inexplicably, "bias" pops up again.
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/02/the-more...
That's because you're not familiar with the actual data. Iran also has gender parity in STEM. The nordic countries have equal or worse gender ratios than America. It's called the gender equality paradox: the more gender equal a country, the less women choose STEM paths.
I don't think there's any intrinsic reason that studying STEM isn't natural. It could be hard to some kids while totally enjoyable to some others. I've seen kids enjoying building stuff and really engaged in their preliminary lessons for coding.
Think, things like being a designer, product manager, analyst, ect, ect, ect.
Even the job I do today, working as a web developer, is something that the "hardcore" programmers of 40 years ago, would likely look down on, as I do not fit into their traditional opinion, from 40 years ago, of what it means to work in STEM.
There will likely be more jobs like that in the future
The reason for this is because 40 years ago, you had to write everything to get something on screen.
The modern generation benefits from the foundational knowledge and be able to do more.
And to further expand this metaphor, I am sure that in another 40 years, there will be significantly more tools that will allow people to more easily develop things.
Such jobs would also be very valuable.
No it's more "I worked hard for it why should it be taken from me by force or fiat". I've found most folks who are well off (not living hand to mouth) are willing, and do give to charity. It's when some other group of people start demanding this behavior through governmental force when attitudes change.
Wealth redistribution is a choice of ethics.
What if we start to create better technologies that augment the economic usefulness of the lowest IQ people?
If you study world history you’ll quickly realize that it’s ultimately the choice of the mob with the torches and pitchforks. You’d be amazed at how disinterested they are in moral relativism or a chat about Atlas Shrugged. Personally I’d prefer a more equitable redistribution based on planning, rather than a redistribution based on plutocrats being put up against a wall.
What if we start to create better technologies that augment the economic usefulness of the lowest IQ people?
They definitely won’t be amused at the cries of “But wait, I want my tech to add economic value to you, low IQ person! sound of a gun cocking Waaait! Haven’t you even heard of a meritocra- BANG”
(If you’re going to start threatening murder as the premise of your theory of justice, you’d best make sure your side would actually be the one doing the killing.)
Yeah, that that could never go wrong and backfire horribly. How about we win a war before we decide to design, mass produce, and deploy enough robots to pacify a few hundred million people with guns. Oh, and don’t forget to make it the first hack-proof device ever, or you might find yourself on the wrong end of the robot.
Besides, I’m not threatening murder, I’m literally just describing a repeating and predictable cycle throughout history. If it makes you feel any better, I’ll be up against the wall too.
Yes indeed. The solution to the Luddite problem was basically to arrest them. Unemployed people are not a problem if they are in prison or dead.
Are mobs always morally in the right? Absolutely not. But neither the opposite is true.
Yes, but considering that there have always been orders of magnitude more poor people than rich and powerful people, your statement is effectively empty. More telling is that the rich and powerful get away with it, until they don’t. In France during the Revolution, in England during the civil war, in Russia when the czar system was torn down.
Push people far enough and they don’t break, they lash out and take their society down with them. It can be hard to predict when that will happen, but if circumstances don’t change it seems that it always does. Ghaddafi could have been forgiven for believing that after decades, he wouldn’t be hunted and killed by his own people. Hosni Mubarak clearly thought he was untouchable, as did Ben Ali in Tunisia.
I’ll say it again, I’d prefer an orderly and plannned redistribution rather than it all being burned to the ground because a handful of elites can’t finish their goddamned history education and ascribe to the “this time it will be different,” school of what could charitably be called “thought.”
What are you even talking about? The vast majority of minorities don't hold any power (especially not the power to kill the majority) precisely because there are so few of them and that's exactly the reason why they are oppressed. Rich people are an extremely special minority where this situation is reversed and they have power over the majority.
The US indeed have a large amount of land and many guns, but that land is already termed "fly-over" country, do you think most people on the coasts care if somebody runs around up in the Apalachian mountains with a gun shouting down with the rich?
If (which I do not believe) those persons will have no value at all, we will deal with them when/if they riot.
If only we had some proximal lesson from recent history to look to, as a way of explaining just how deveststing insurgencies can be in the modern world. You know, a lesson involving a bunch of mountain men with guns, fighting from their home turf. Oh well, I can’t think of anything, but if it comes up I’m sure that our record stamping them out quickly, effectively, and without catastrophic loss of life and treasure will speak for itself.
Just being "not in flyover country" isn't going to save the elites if the poor seriously rise.
The problem won't be robot shopping cart fetchers or grocery baggers, but that knowledge work, which is the last refuge of human usefulness in the workforce will get hollowed out from the lower-middle. There is no "next thing" after knowledge work.
Optimistic characterizations like "post scarcity" don't seem like they will be applicable before mass disemployment hits. Instead of having to implement redistributive policies for the 15% outside the knowledge economy, we will be faced with a bigger, more educated cohort that can't be retrained to other knowledge work faster than AI will automate those categories.
Shorter work-weeks will help. Perhaps for long enough to figure out a solution. Better start soon, though.
Why is it that IQ after all these years has the best correlation with many positive results such as academic ability and job success?
I'm not even sure if this a troll to be honest so i would like a bit more an argument than "it's not science cause i say so".
> More children taking MVM [multivitamin with mineral] supplements (44) than placebo (25) showed increases in nonverbal IQ scores of 15 or more points (35% compared with 21%; P<.01). The authors speculate that this result may be attributable to the fact that one in 7 schoolchildren was undernourished.[0]
The bad news is we won't do it. Implementing effective policy is the hard part.[1]
[0] https://www.mdedge.com/pulmonary-health-hub/article/64803/as...
[1] https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/09/10/society-is-fixed-biolo...
I'm still not convinced that it's possible to successfully tax the rich enough to ensure that the poor isn't poor. The redistribution (and taxation) always comes up as "the solution" to inequality. I think that's overestimating how rich the rich are, and underestimating the number of poor people.
It's easier to make the rich poorer, and close the wealth cap that way, compared to making the poor richer. Sadly that's not going to help anyone.
Maybe I'm underestimating how many rich people the world has, and how much money they have. It just doesn't seem like did have enough to make much of a difference.
That's your neoliberal take. Personally, I'm a little dubious that wealth created is 1:1 with social benefit created. But to say that his bank account benefits nobody would be a misrepresentation.
For whom?
Bear in mind this is the extremely idealistic neoliberal take.
Yeah it certainly is
I'm not sure I understand what you are proposing as an alternative. Taking Bezos assets to do something with?
Sitting on cash is expensive, due to inflation and taxes. It's generally better to re-invest. People are generally compensated as a function of the value they add to the company. If someone else can do a better job for less money, it would be in the board's best interests to hire them.
I do agree, though, that unwise expenditure of resources (mansions and watercraft, et all) should be criticized, though not high net-worth per-say. The problem, though, is that the common man is also guilty of unwise expenditure of resources. E.g. taking a vacation instead of providing life saving vaccines.
[0] https://thetab.com/us/2017/04/10/which-major-has-highest-iq-... [1] http://www.randalolson.com/2014/06/25/average-iq-of-students...
Turns out you don't need 4-years of heavy maths/physics/CS education to write React components, but most of my friends (and a surprising number of recruiters) still think you do.
I found myself thinking slower as I get older (and having more health problems), but so far I was able to counteract the disadvantages with better life decisions, so actually I have a happier life.
Intelligence is not just about the speed of thought. It's also about the depth of memory, the number of associations one has in one's internal model, and numerous other factors.
Consider a computer's memory that's halved. Suddenly it can run significantly fewer programs despite the fact that it rjnd at exactly the same speed.
Historically, the economic promise has been that everyone who CAN get a job will just get a Different job when new technologies make their current jobs obsolete. Plow-pushers will become welders, for example.
And the usual futurist's question is whether instead the low-skill workers are more like horses in the 1930's, soon to be completely useless. The interesting argument in the article is that, well, even if the low-skill workers aren't completely unemployed, they'll be pushed forever into low-productivity industries that are happy enough paying them serf's wages... Perhaps keeping them just busy enough to avoid open revolt. (perhaps.)
That's not at all what I said. What I said is that education opens the opportunity for those who have the innate ability.
1) if you exclude everybody less than 1 standard deviation above the mean in a normally distributed population, you're left with approximately 16% of the population. The tech sector currently employs approximately 4% of the US population, so at most it's employing 1 in 4 people whose IQ is >1 std deviation above mean. Plenty of room to grow.
2) The idea that STEM education is simply beyond the capabilities of people who aren't in that lucky 16% needs support. The correlation of success in STEM to IQ does not mean causation runs from 'having a high IQ' leads to 'capable of being educated in STEM'. It seems equally possible that 'pursuing education in STEM' leads to 'having a high IQ', and that if we push more people through STEM-oriented education, more people will develop high IQs (of course, that would move the average, which isn't how IQ works, but... you get the idea).
Perhaps the thing that AI may unleash is the power to access STEM techniques, without the same kind of need for formally thinking or operating in them so closely.
That question has been tested repeatedly by the scientific community, and the answer seems to be 'no'.
> An IQ test isn't some sort of measure of inherent capacity, just a measure of how well someone takes an IQ test.
That's just not the case. IQ correlates with many interesting phenomena.
Of course, IQ doesn't come close to explaining everything about life outcomes, but compared to virtually every other measure in psychology (or the social sciences more broadly) nothing else comes close to the empirical validity or explanatory power of IQ.
When I started working for a .gov years ago, about 40% of the technical staff where former administrative people (clerks, typists, etc) who were trained and transitioned into technology related jobs ranging from programmers to sysadmins to project managers. They were great.
On another thread, I help with a school club at my son's school where 8-year olds are building Raspberry Pi based gadgetry. They are average kids, and they do very well.
In other words: what is your evidence that IQ measures anything actually relevant?
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/iq-tests-are-fund...
https://www.popsci.com/why-iq-is-flawed
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/iq-scores-not-accurate-marker-o...
https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2009/07/the-tru...
> Kids who score higher on IQ tests will, on average, go on to do better in conventional measures of success in life: academic achievement, economic success, even greater health, and longevity.[0]
Yes, you can improve your performance on IQ tests with practice and motivation, but that does not make them “scientifically invalid” in any way. The fact is that so many things are correlated to IQ that it’s a useful theoretical construct, even if it’s misnamed and has little to do with what you’d call “intelligence.”
[0]: https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2011/04/what-does-iq-really-...
Sure, I'll give you that IQ measures something. The question is, is that something relevant to the argument that you can only be competitive in STEM with a higher IQ and therefore many people cannot be educated into STEM careers? Does IQ make you better suited for those jobs, or does the training for those jobs cause you to score higher on IQ tests?
It's no shock that richer and healthier people do better in school. If you want to call that "IQ" then fine, but saying the correlation goes the other way is an extraordinary claim that requires extraordinary proof. Without proof that a higher IQ makes you richer and healthier rather than the other way around, then yes, it is entirely scientifically invalid. Especially if you're not exactly sure what IQ is actually measuring.
If the parent wants to argue that some people can never be trained in STEM careers because STEM careers require too high of IQ, I demand proof that this psuedo-science malarky is defined and that it is proven to be inherent and cannot be trained during the course of STEM education.
“IQ is not scientifically proven” is, at best, an incomplete thought. What claim about IQ necessary for the upstream comment’s argument is unproven?
> and is inherently flawed.
It what manner relevant to the reference in the present discussion is IQ “inherently flawed”?
The parent is making the claim that, because of IQ, certain segments of the population are at a fundamental disadvantage when it comes to STEM careers. For this to be anything more than pure poppycock, there needs to be proof that IQ measures anything actually relevant to the success of those jobs. And not only relevant, but measures something that cannot be trained, cannot be explained by differences in education of astronomy majors vs home economics majors, something that fundamentally bars elementary education majors from succeeding in electrical engineering.
Prove that IQ measures anything that says an accountant could not have been otherwise trained to practice chemistry because they're 10 IQ points short. If IQ measures anything relevant to the job you perform, there has to be some proof.
If all good accountants or chemists have relatively high IQs, it doesn't prove that a good IQ is necessary, but it certainly provides some evidence. It's classic causation/correlation, but in this case, there are mountains of evidence of correlation.
If we are making the statement that certain sections of the population cannot be trained for STEM careers because they don't have the IQ to be competitive, then we'd better be damn sure that IQ isn't something that can be taught. And there is mounds of evidence showing that intelligence is not assigned at birth.
Does IQ measure intelligence, or education? And are either of those static throughout a person's life?
then throw in the ever fun new ways cities try to make money by trumping up trivial issues like declaring someone's home needs repair, a stack of firewood done "wrong", or a crack in a drive way, and fining them hundreds if not thousands of dollars. all fines against people who cannot afford to dispute the charge and may not even be able to pay it. Traffic fines starting over two hundred dollars for even the most minor infraction.
or school systems where the number of non teaching positions are inflated all the while at the same time politicians are raising taxes to under the guise of improving education but its merely to pay for non teaching jobs.
The idea that the "wealthy" are not paying sufficient taxes ignores the reality of how much taxes everyone is already paying. People tend to just focus in on the "income tax" and ignore all the fees and embedded taxes in every day living. the US has one of the most progressive tax systems in the world and when you look at who pays the bulk of the taxes its not even close. As a percentage the "wealthy" already pay many times percentage wise than other classes. The US governments own figures on taxes at federal, city, and state, levels shows this- it is not even disputable.
Yet, when Congress recently passed a law to limit state and city deductions from the Federal taxes to TEN THOUSAND dollars who complained? The same supposed champions of the poor and why ? because their OWN wealthy people were having to pay more taxes.
Simple truth, you could confiscate every billionaires fortune and not pay for our government or the proposals in the offing. however where you will find that wealth is the investments backing pensions and 401ks. you think that once they "nip" the wealthy they will stop? After all its already been stated by many in one party about the unfairness of 401K programs you can damn well bet they will get their wish.
We're going to continue to introduce technology to improve quality and enhance productivity. Will jobs continue to fall in industries that introduce technologies to enhance productivity? If so, education and wealth redistribution seem insufficient (albeit still necessary).
(I haven't checked the linked paper to see if this is answered.)
Maybe you meant, though, that we should be discussing plans to replace those with better social structures.
That's fair, but I admit to having a hard time imagining any that are not ultimately equivalent to wealth redistribution.
What we need to stop doing is putting young adults 5-6 figures in debt with no marketable skills.
If more than half of the population makes at least double what they need to keep themselves from starvation, then you could argue there is enough money.
In short, your disagreement with the GP is probably due to a disagreement about the lifestyle that UBI is supposed to afford its recipients.
Those in power might determine that the bare minimum UBI to avoid violent revolution is something like $5000 per year.
Housing, healthcare and education are the problems, but $5000 per year are not nearly enough for any of that.
Healthcare and education are problems, but I'm not sure they're enough to provoke a revolution when everyone is otherwise well-fed and sheltered from the elements.
I mean, US is projected to have one trillion budget deficit for a second straight year - "US Deficit 2019: Treasury to Borrow $1 Trillion for 2nd Year - Bloomberg".
Slap UBI on top of it and this is Greece trajectory.
Neither of these seems pleasant, but if enough people are starving or homeless, it might be inevitable.
You can trace a direct line from each of the top 10 problems in the world to ignorance. People don't actually suck nearly as much as it seems, people are just missing information. We're not econs, but we'd act a lot more closely to that model if we were, on average, more educated.
Immigration arguments because each immigrant would be entitled to something, often more than they contribute for some period of time.
Childbearing arguments, for essentially the same reasons as immigration.
Arguments about drugs and other vice, becasue everyone would want to make sure you are contributing as much as you can, and many feel drugs prevent that.
Arguments about education and career choices.
There are no absolutes, but as long as people basically believe that they have what they create, then they will focus on creating and not worry about what other people create (or not). When they believe they have what they can get through the political process, they will focus on political fights.
Fundamentally, freedom and large-scale socialism don't mix. In a socialist system, there are just too many other people who have a vested interest in what you do (and don't do). It may work in small countries or on short time scales, but these arguments eventually result in authoritarian policies.
It is not a zero-sum game. It would be more productive to facilitate wealth creation rather than devise new ways to forcibly take-away private property that offends you.
Reducing the countless barriers to entry that stunt human ingenuity is where the real fight is. People can learn, and they are already (e.g Make/Lambda School) when provided with cost-effective training that delivers on investment.
Wanting more of the same (tax + regulations) is not going to cut it now. We are past ridiculous levels (1:3 avg OCDE tax:gdp) and diminishing returns kicked in.
I agree, but when it comes to government funding of programs to facilitate wealth creation, many act like it is zero sum.
I feel like you have to subscribe to tabula rasa to think this is going to go off without a hitch.
Nobody seriously expected this to happen, it was an exercise in turning their own solution "all these laid off coal miners can learn to code" against them when they were laid off. Twitter now considers pointing out this hypocrisy to be harassment. I can see their point, it's kicking a person while they're down, but they were fine with undesirables like coal miners being kicked while they're down.
Nobody inherently deserves their wealth - it's largely a function of circumstance.
Should we not do our best to afford that "luck" to everyone?
Picketty argues that we tax income but not wealth and that's the root of our problems. I would imagine that your income is a way higher percentile than your wealth, income middle-class like you and me get smashed by income taxes (as someone from the working class in the UK it absolutely blew my mind when I learned how much wealth the people all around me had in their families, even just upper-middle class).
https://dqydj.com/net-worth-percentile-calculator-united-sta...
$1,000,000 in wealth is near the 88% in America.
If you're hanging around with people whose families live in the nice parts of London/(a major city), assume they're the top 10% ~ 1 million, assume 4% returns above inflation, they make 50k a YEAR from their assets, totally passively.
So their wealth income is way more than some relatives of mine TOTAL household income.
In effect, the upper-middle-classes are born on basic income. If you're trying to make moeny yourself - just attend that university, take that MBA course, spend 5 years on a very risky career path with internships (journalism, media). There's no point you have to worry if you can afford it you can just play a very long low-probability high upside game.
Edit: I just watched this post go up to 10 points, down to 3 and then back to 5. Clearly this is controversial. I find it interesting that wealth redistribution is this controversial. I'm curious as to why people would be against it. Is it really just "I worked hard for it why should I give it away" or something deeper?