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> Nobody wants to be the parent of the most mentally stable Starbucks Barista here's an important question to ask yourself: if you had to choose, would you rat
by munin 11y ago
> Nobody wants to be the parent of the most mentally stable Starbucks Barista
here's an important question to ask yourself: if you had to choose, would you rather your children be kind, or smart?
- ryanmonroe 11y agoA kind idiot probably isn't of much use to society
- WalterSear 11y agoWhereas unkind people are actively detrimental to society.
- scrollaway 11y agoNeither is a smart asshole. How useful to society are those who try to leech money off it in the most efficient ways possible? (I'm talking charlatans and certain branches of banking)
- ckaygusu 11y agoSticking to the context, a smart person with ill intentions may damage the society. For a reference "smartness", assuming being kind or misogynistic is equally likely, the expected worth of a person is still zero, i.e. "isn't of much use to society".
- oh_sigh 11y agoSure they are. They won't be inventing new devices or running successful businesses, but they will probably enrich the lives of anyone in their social circle
- avz 11y agoBoth would be best, but if I had to chose I'd go for smart. I've seen smart, but unkind people learn to be kind over time. I doubt a kind halfwit can learn to be smart. That's presumably the case because smartness defines your general ability to learn, change and adapt.
- supercanuck 11y agoWhich one is more employable? If Hacker News is any indication, I would say Smart.
- avz 11y agoWhat makes you employable today may or may not make you so in two or three decades. For example, if an increasingly large fraction of cognitive employment is taken over by technology it is possible that the skills related to direct human-to-human interactions become the best bet. If this happens being kind may indeed make you more employable than being smart. (Caveat: as I argued in another post, smart person still has an advantage: she can generally learn other skills including being kind easier than a not-so-smart person)