11 ms·

Semi-bizarre ruminations about why kids from the midwestern U.S. leave home when they grow up and don't come back. As someone who did just that many years ago,

by grellas 17y ago

Semi-bizarre ruminations about why kids from the midwestern U.S. leave home when they grow up and don't come back. As someone who did just that many years ago, I can sum it up in a much shorter way: because there is nothing going on there. Maybe I could have succeeded at the local meat packing plant, or in my local 4H club, or at the smokestack plant down the road but I doubt that I or anyone else would want to be told, as we look out at the world of possibilities, that someone had decreed that this is what we were stuck with for our life's opportunities. A kind of reverse snobbery atypical for the midwest (where people are generally as friendly and easy-going as one might imagine). Very strange.

jerf 17y ago
You raise in passing a very good point to consider when someone proposes grand social engineering plans: What does it mean for a given person? It's all very well and good to promote "equality" uber alles, but that means that you're going up to a talented person and telling them that they will not be allowed to shine, or that there is no point as there will be no reward for it. Or to open another potential firestorm, when we talk about getting more women into computing that may very well manifest for a particular person as basically saying to her "Look, I know you think you want to study biology, but you really want to study computer science." (At the point where women are the majority of college students, I think there's a certain arrogance involved in telling this mass of women what it is they want to study.) Basically what I'm getting at is that the micro can't be separated from the macro. If you want to tell your children they can be anything they want, you can't end up with a perfectly egalitarian society as a result. If you want a perfectly egalitarian society, you can't tell children they can be whatever they want because egalitarianism will do a lot of choosing for them. (Or perhaps rather you can tell them that, but you will be lying.) And that's just one example. A lot of other "things everyone believes" about the macro and the micro can't be reconciled, and trying to force it won't make things any better. You can't have it all. Ever.
- Kisil 17y ago
  >If you want to tell your children they can be anything they want, you can't end up with a perfectly egalitarian society as a result. Perhaps an easier solution than the author's don't-let-anyone-excel would be to de-stigmatize lower-talent positions. Tell your children they can be whatever they want, and then let them follow whatever they're good at. Even if it's plumbing or retail. Fundamentally, I don't think meritocracy is incompatible with mass happiness. (More technically, I believe there exists some value system in which pursuit of excellence is encouraged without associating a sense of shame to "lower" professions.) > when someone proposes grand social engineering plans: What does it mean for a given person? We have to be very careful here to view imbalances as potential indicators of underlying problems, and find and treat those problems rather than the symptoms. To use your example, we have to determine whether systematic pressures are keeping women from choosing CS, and correct those pressures, rather than adding new pressures to choose CS. This point gets made frequently around here, but the mistake is made often enough that it bears repeating: adding different counter-pressures that fix the statistics may mask the problem, but often also exacerbate the underlying issues.
  - billybob 17y ago
    Yes. Let me make it personal. Why have I not invented cold fusion, written an operating system, or cured cancer? Answer: because I'm not smart enough. OK, I don't want to be too defeatist - I should try my best to do what I can. But I realize I have limits, and that I am more able than some and less able than others. Does that make me unhappy? No. And if it did, I think the fault would be mine. Like everyone else, I try to look on the bright side of things. Nobody is perfectly happy, and studies show that beyond the point where you have enough not to worry all the time, more money doesn't make you happier. We don't need to stop telling people 'you should try to excel.' But it would be good to add 'in whatever makes you happy.' If you love cars, be a great mechanic, not a sullen one who wishes he was an executive. And if you want to be a scientist but don't have what it takes, well, learning to be happy in something else is part of life. We all have to deal with that sort of thing.
    - paulgerhardt 17y ago
      http://www.ted.com/talks/mike_rowe_celebrates_dirty_jobs.html http://www.ted.com/talks/mike_rowe_celebrates_dirty_jobs.htm... Stick with it...(especially in the middle and towards the end) I'm still very much trying to digest the contents of this article rather than regurgitating the usual flippant answers. Not everyone can get a job in at their local Google datacenter, even if they train for 2 years. (There was an amazing NPR story recently to this effect.) And while I have moved multiple times, and across two hemispheres to get to Silicon Valley (and yet still can't call myself local to anywhere) I feel some obligation to satiate something I which appears as burgeoning task vacuum in rural America. That is, there is a tremendous amount of idle "Turking" power going to waste in the heartlands - lifetimes of mechanical acuity being thrown away on television rather than say another Wikipedia/Github for rapid-prototyped goods .
- decode 17y ago
  "If you want to tell your children they can be anything they want, you can't end up with a perfectly egalitarian society as a result." There are no people in the world who can do anything in the world. Even if your child had all of the intelligence, physical ability, drive, and opportunity possible, he or she would never have a choice between being a jockey and a basketball player. So, no matter how much of a meritocracy we have, you will be lying when you tell your child, "You can be whatever you want."
  - wdewind 17y ago
    Muggsy Bogues could learn to ride a horse pretty decently in a year or two...
nihilocrat 17y ago
That's basically what I was thinking, and it's so fundamentally obvious it's painful to think anyone would be surprised or wonder why people don't want to spend their lives in their no-name hellhole hick town. I grew up in the suburbs of various unremarkable mid-sized cities in the southeast, but I still had a strong "I need to get the hell out of here" feeling constantly in my mind growing up. Moving back home after college personally would feel like a sign of failure, a major life setback, and I felt pity for those who did so.

by grellas 17y ago

jerf 17y ago

You raise in passing a very good point to consider when someone proposes grand social engineering plans: What does it mean for a given person? It's all very well and good to promote "equality" uber alles, but that means that you're going up to a talented person and telling them that they will not be allowed to shine, or that there is no point as there will be no reward for it. Or to open another potential firestorm, when we talk about getting more women into computing that may very well manifest for a particular person as basically saying to her "Look, I know you think you want to study biology, but you really want to study computer science." (At the point where women are the majority of college students, I think there's a certain arrogance involved in telling this mass of women what it is they want to study.) Basically what I'm getting at is that the micro can't be separated from the macro. If you want to tell your children they can be anything they want, you can't end up with a perfectly egalitarian society as a result. If you want a perfectly egalitarian society, you can't tell children they can be whatever they want because egalitarianism will do a lot of choosing for them. (Or perhaps rather you can tell them that, but you will be lying.) And that's just one example. A lot of other "things everyone believes" about the macro and the micro can't be reconciled, and trying to force it won't make things any better. You can't have it all. Ever.

Kisil 17y ago
>If you want to tell your children they can be anything they want, you can't end up with a perfectly egalitarian society as a result. Perhaps an easier solution than the author's don't-let-anyone-excel would be to de-stigmatize lower-talent positions. Tell your children they can be whatever they want, and then let them follow whatever they're good at. Even if it's plumbing or retail. Fundamentally, I don't think meritocracy is incompatible with mass happiness. (More technically, I believe there exists some value system in which pursuit of excellence is encouraged without associating a sense of shame to "lower" professions.) > when someone proposes grand social engineering plans: What does it mean for a given person? We have to be very careful here to view imbalances as potential indicators of underlying problems, and find and treat those problems rather than the symptoms. To use your example, we have to determine whether systematic pressures are keeping women from choosing CS, and correct those pressures, rather than adding new pressures to choose CS. This point gets made frequently around here, but the mistake is made often enough that it bears repeating: adding different counter-pressures that fix the statistics may mask the problem, but often also exacerbate the underlying issues.
- billybob 17y ago
  Yes. Let me make it personal. Why have I not invented cold fusion, written an operating system, or cured cancer? Answer: because I'm not smart enough. OK, I don't want to be too defeatist - I should try my best to do what I can. But I realize I have limits, and that I am more able than some and less able than others. Does that make me unhappy? No. And if it did, I think the fault would be mine. Like everyone else, I try to look on the bright side of things. Nobody is perfectly happy, and studies show that beyond the point where you have enough not to worry all the time, more money doesn't make you happier. We don't need to stop telling people 'you should try to excel.' But it would be good to add 'in whatever makes you happy.' If you love cars, be a great mechanic, not a sullen one who wishes he was an executive. And if you want to be a scientist but don't have what it takes, well, learning to be happy in something else is part of life. We all have to deal with that sort of thing.
  - paulgerhardt 17y ago
    http://www.ted.com/talks/mike_rowe_celebrates_dirty_jobs.html http://www.ted.com/talks/mike_rowe_celebrates_dirty_jobs.htm... Stick with it...(especially in the middle and towards the end) I'm still very much trying to digest the contents of this article rather than regurgitating the usual flippant answers. Not everyone can get a job in at their local Google datacenter, even if they train for 2 years. (There was an amazing NPR story recently to this effect.) And while I have moved multiple times, and across two hemispheres to get to Silicon Valley (and yet still can't call myself local to anywhere) I feel some obligation to satiate something I which appears as burgeoning task vacuum in rural America. That is, there is a tremendous amount of idle "Turking" power going to waste in the heartlands - lifetimes of mechanical acuity being thrown away on television rather than say another Wikipedia/Github for rapid-prototyped goods .
decode 17y ago
"If you want to tell your children they can be anything they want, you can't end up with a perfectly egalitarian society as a result." There are no people in the world who can do anything in the world. Even if your child had all of the intelligence, physical ability, drive, and opportunity possible, he or she would never have a choice between being a jockey and a basketball player. So, no matter how much of a meritocracy we have, you will be lying when you tell your child, "You can be whatever you want."
- wdewind 17y ago
  Muggsy Bogues could learn to ride a horse pretty decently in a year or two...

nihilocrat 17y ago

That's basically what I was thinking, and it's so fundamentally obvious it's painful to think anyone would be surprised or wonder why people don't want to spend their lives in their no-name hellhole hick town. I grew up in the suburbs of various unremarkable mid-sized cities in the southeast, but I still had a strong "I need to get the hell out of here" feeling constantly in my mind growing up. Moving back home after college personally would feel like a sign of failure, a major life setback, and I felt pity for those who did so.