Humanity itself is at risk from various extinction level events.
If you insist that it's okay for all gifted students to never exceed to the point of making ground breaking discoveries, we're likely extinct sooner rather than later.
The nongifted people, even if all completely stop contributing to society, would not result in an extinction.
IOW, we are all relying on the gifted people to save us. Hobbling gifted people even slightly has a far worse impact than not helping non gifted people.
And yes, I am part of the non gifted.
I'm surprised to actually find that there are people who think that the life they currently enjoy was the result of train drivers and janitors.
Gifted people only ever educated and working in ivory towers would starve long before enhancing life for anyone, except for the efforts of their 'lessers'.
Well, I don't see how the nongifted people will come up with any the technology required to leave this rock.
So the only other option is that we never leave, or we leave purely on the efforts of the gifted alone.
I did not write that.
> The nongifted people, even if all completely stop contributing to society, would not result in an extinction.
I'm not referring to not contributing, I'm referring to contributing negatively.
> I did not write that.
No, you wrote:
> it's OK if your gifted kid only has a PhD and a high paying job but not a Nobel prize.
Which is no different from "never exceed to the point of making ground breaking discoveries".
Maybe, but at the same time it's OK if your gifted kid only has a PhD and a high paying job but not a Nobel prize. Whereas it's a bit problematic for society if Donny Dumbass spends his life being a burden to everyone because he remains problematic...