_fhnu

Great comment. As you say, denying the research outright is playing a similar tune to those who would abuse the research to support pre-existing notions about everyone's rightful places in society.

We should be extremely skeptical of any argument that serves solely to justify the positions those in power, which is a typical endpoint for too many discussions of genetics. Using science to validate the status quo and describe certain economic and social classes as superiors/inferiors is a cruel perversion, but outright denying the science is similarly dishonest and not very convincing either.

Genetics are powerful, but only a piece of the great puzzle underlying human traits and behaviors. Especially when considering life at the individual level, you can't easily make any declarative statements about someone's potential, or even clearly discern the total effect of genes on their most basic traits like height without also considering a host of other factors with similar weightings. Beyond the ambiguity surrounding how genes and environment conspire to produce our traits, as Chomsky argues, the traits that are rewarded with wealth and power are often arbitrary: they are certain traits that can be identified in those who already have wealth/power in a self-justification of the existing hierarchy.

So even if we take the science at face value, it is quite a stretch to say that the science supports the current stratification. The two are not casually linked.

Life expectancy is dropping like a rock, and that's a number with a little more rigor behind it than PG's moronic hand waving. The guy has no idea what he's talking about and comes across as incredibly desperate to justify obscene hoarding of wealth. He'll draw a line between any two data points you can dig up, no matter how distant and spuriously correlated, if it will allow him to fellate a few billionaires.

We get it, these people pay you. Just say it: "I can see nothing wrong with the current distribution of wealth because the lenses in my eyeglasses are actually solid gold, a gift bequeathed to me by the Duchess of Facebook." The guy needs meritocracy to not be a myth, because he's styled himself as some kind of kingmaker who can selectively pluck only the most deserving young founders from a bubbling vat of Stanford alumni DNA. It's been a good run, but it's just getting gross now.

Hmm, surely there are cheaper forced labor options available in China?

Hyundai seems like they might be paying their employees, which seems a little off-brand for a company like Apple.

My frustrations with this behavior are less about not getting it, or not being able to participate, and more about finding the exercise distasteful, dishonest and ultimately destructive. The absolute worst aspect of this game is how clumsy and obvious these machinations can be. Employee trust in the entire organization is damaged when dimwitted ass-kissers with the subtlety of a brick are rewarded in lieu of any actual contributions and at the expense of decent people. Too often these environments are constructed in such a way that good people cannot succeed without serious comprises to their integrity. They get weeded out by their own moral disgust. The hierarchy then functions as a reverse sieve, allowing only the slime and detritus to remain.

It's also really less about being socially outgoing and schmoozing, and more about vociferously agreeing with everything that comes down from on high, and sniping at others for not immediately falling in line. I'm an introvert who generally enjoys going out for drinks, telling absurd jokes and making a fool of myself in public for cheap laughs, but unless I start puckering up and tonguing more asses, it won't help me navigate the corporate world. For someone like me, rather than forcing myself to be more extroverted, I actually need to do a better job at keeping my jokes to myself and limiting my self expression, so as to not threaten the fragile egos of those cursed with small amounts of power. I think your comment seriously underestimates the levels of animosity and petty one-upmanship that permeate the corporate ladder.