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A comment on What are your options for cognitive enhancement?. Parent comment

Re:What are your options for cognitive enhancement? by jpadkins on Monday December 09, 2019 @09:57AM (#21743136)
> There’s also a general toxic mentality in America that we can all work our way to becoming billionaires - in reality, none of us can optimize our way into having family connections to the elites in our society.

Current billionaires are almost all from non-elite backgrounds. Only 1 of the top 10 came from a family with billion dollar wealth. https://www.forbes.com/billionaires/#57168b13251c

If you come from an upper middle class background (top 25th percentile), you can become a billionaire in America (with luck and hard work).

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Re:What are your options for cognitive enhancement? by slumdev on Monday December 09, 2019 @10:18AM (#21743324)
You don't need a billion dollars to have an elite background.

No one in the top ten is a rags-to-riches story. Plenty of elite universities and family connections.

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Re:What are your options for cognitive enhancement? by jpadkins on Monday December 09, 2019 @10:55AM (#21743652)
please don't strawman. I never said rags-to-riches. I said upper middle class (25th percentile). Elite universities take great students from upper middle class, and many of those billionaires did not graduate from elite universities.
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Re:What are your options for cognitive enhancement? by akhilcacharya on Monday December 09, 2019 @11:24AM (#21743875)
Eh...you probably can't get into an elite university without already being elite unless you're a recruited athlete or have another "hook". Normal, middle class kids don't win ISEF or math olympiads unless their parents are professors or something.
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Re:What are your options for cognitive enhancement? by mav3rick on Tuesday December 17, 2019 @07:10PM (#21820475)
Many kids do. Just because you didn't doesn't mean others don't.
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Re:What are your options for cognitive enhancement? by thisisbrians on Monday December 09, 2019 @03:43PM (#21746328)
Even still, the chances are vanishingly small. Substituting "millionaire" for "billionaire" brings it a bit closer to something to realistically strive for, I think (especially for us software/entrepreneur types).
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