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American society increasingly mistakes intelligence for human worth
- robg 10y agoAnd gets it very, very wrong. "Intelligence" moves around with nutrition, stress, sleep, pollution. The brain is organic. We miss out on human potential in all the neighborhoods around the world that aren't safe and supported. The good news is we are headed in the right direction as a planet, but surprisingly this article doesn't mention it [1]. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_effect
- danieltillett 10y agoThe Flynn effect had stopped in most western countries including the USA.
- sangnoir 10y agoYour statement would only work as a rebuttal of parent's argument if everyone in the west had equally good nutrition (from birth), stimulation, emencouragement asand education as these factors are suspected to be behind the Flynn effect.
- danieltillett 10y agoI was just countering the parents argument that we are heading in the right direction - sure there is still some individuals that will benefit from whatever drives the Flynn effect but overall it is now insignificant.
- tumbas 10y agopeople consider vatican not to be equivalent to ISIS and even much worse
- jackgavigan 10y agoA meritoracy can reward qualities other than intelligence - integrity, talent, dedication, diligence, courage (both physical and moral), kindness, generosity, willingness to help others...
- DonaldFisk 10y agoIt would be nice, but I don't see it happening any time soon. http://www.forbes.com/sites/peterubel/2014/12/15/is-homo-economicus-a-psychopath/#7da50b1842c5 http://www.forbes.com/sites/peterubel/2014/12/15/is-homo-eco... Peter Ubel writes: "The researchers paint a powerful picture of Homo economicus: “We see a person who is intelligent, driven to excel and to dominate other people, and capable of impulse control and of working toward long-term goals. In other words, Homo economicus is the prototypical member of the social and economic elite.” And the social and economic elite think our society is a meritocracy, and that they deserve their wealth and place in society, and through their control of the media, have convinced most other people that this is true.
- Godel_unicode 10y agoThe implication here being that intelligence, impulse control, and the ability and desire to work towards long term goals are not merit? I'm curious, what then do you think constitutes merit?
- DonaldFisk 10y agoMerit can't be defined generally, varies according to circumstances, and people disagree on what is desirable. When it can be defined, it is usually difficult or impossible to measure. When we attempt to measure it, some people find ways of "gaming the system". And when it is easy to measure accurately, it's often of little practical use. We have created a society, or rather one has been created for us, in which borderline psychopathic behaviour is rewarded. Many people are beginning to wake up to this. Instead of trying to create a meritocracy, we should decide what sort of society we want and work towards that.
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- exratione 10y agoIn a world that is increasingly data, the ability to process and react to that data becomes worth. Marking worth is just more data processing, a declaration of subjective value in the scheme of your choice. Nothing special. The nature of your interactions with those of lesser worth, and your views of them, however...well, there is a defining thing for a human being.
- optimusclimb 10y agoExcept that the world around us is buildings, made of raw materials, i-beams, 2x4s, piping, etc. Built by people with trade skills. Filled with beds, sheets, refrigerators, dish washers, art on the walls, TVs, etc, etc. The whole world may seem just focused on data if you live in silly valley, and your job is to increase conversion rates and improve SEO so some founder can sell more overpriced clothes to people with disposable income. To the majority of people out there? The world is not all just data.
- anortons 10y ago"The qualifications for a good job, whether on an assembly line or behind a desk, mostly revolved around integrity, work ethic, and a knack for getting along"* * also being male, White, straight, Christian ...As though the 50's were the bastion of fair hiring practices.
- defen 10y agoThat's not a refutation of the article, unless you think that 50s-style "integrity, work ethic, and a knack for getting along" hiring practices inherently preclude women/non-whites/non-straight/non-Christian people. Your comment reads like you're just trying to score cheap diversity points against the standards of 60 years ago instead of engaging with the point of the article.
- serge2k 10y ago> unless you think that 50s-style "integrity, work ethic, and a knack for getting along" hiring practices inherently preclude women/non-whites/non-straight/non-Christian people. You don't?
- throwaway1923 10y agoTIL integrity and work ethic are sexist or racist.
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- frozenport 10y ago>> hiring decisions were “based on a candidate having a critical skill or two and on soft factors such as eagerness, appearance, family background, and physical characteristics.” Because this would be a much better world?
- manachar 10y agoAlternatively, American society values a human's worth by economic output and the economy has shifted to value humans who can successfully navigate the new more intelligence-based economy.
- duaneb 10y ago> the new more intelligence-based economy. Was intelligence not valued before?
- jessriedel 10y agoThe intelligence premium is definitely higher.
- tbabb 10y agoIn an economy where work is increasingly automated, those humans who can do things which machines can't are finding themselves more valued. That seems expected, and I am not convinced it is indicative of any problem or unfairness.
- technobabble 10y agoHow will actual automation impact small and in some cases medium-sized businesses? If I'm running a restaurant chain with 2-3 locations, does it make economic sense to employ robotic sweepers and chefs? Granted that won't replace all jobs lost, manual labor would still be valued in such areas.
- xivzgrev 10y agoThe unfairness component comes from your genetics and upbringing, both outside your control - some combinations are better suited to navigate this economy than others. So what do we as a society do with those at a disadvantage, sometimes severe (eg IQ below 90?) we can move toward finding ways to include them, or we can move toward excluding them. The problem from the article is a societal one trend toward exclusion, not economic as you pointed out.
- maker1138 10y agoAfter all human history where jocks ruled the earth, they're now upset that nerds are becoming important?
- nickpeterson 10y agoYou might be surprised by the intelligence of the ruling class from a few thousand years ago..
- mahmud 10y agoNot too hard to be intelligent when you have a monopoly on the means of knowledge transfer (books) and the time to persue leisurely learning. But it all changed widespread literacy. To steal a quote from Hilbert, "No one shall expell as from the paradise Guttenberg has created".
- cmurf 10y agoIf only this were true in elections.
- darpa_escapee 10y agoBehold, the most Hacker News post on Hacker News.
- dang 10y agoWe detached this comment from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11926528 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11926528 and marked it off-topic.
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- emptybits 10y agoI'm having difficulty reconciling this claim with how I see American society judging the worth of political candidates. (Also in the journalistic outlets American society values the most.)
- merouan 10y agoIt's hard to apply cultural analysis like this uniformly. I also feel that there is a general trend towards anti-intellectualism in America. I think both things can be true: that 'we' value excellence academically (because it confers greater and greater economic benefit) and yet are less open to ideas that are outside our worldview. On the other hand, the article suggests that the more intelligent are more likely to be oblivious of their own biases and flaws (and where is that more likely than in politics), so on its own terms is not necessarily contradictory :)
- Hondor 10y agoPeople tend to overestimate their own competence (and I suppose intelligence), so they must also see anyone who agrees with them as being of high intelligence too. That means we think the politicians we vote for are smart. It's just the ones other people vote for that aren't. Nobody will say "I want X but I'm not very smart so the politician who promises X is also not very smart and I won't vote for him."
- icebraining 10y agoI don't think so; for example, back in 2004, a poll showed that way more people considered Kerry intelligent compared to Bush. Yet Bush was seen as more decisive and made more people "feel more optimistic about the future". http://www.smdailyjournal.com/articles/lnews/2004-07-14/poll-bush-is-decisive-kerry-is-intelligent/ http://www.smdailyjournal.com/articles/lnews/2004-07-14/poll...
- eggy 10y agoI grew up in a poor, working class, crime-ridden neighborhood of Brooklyn in the 1970s, and I remember being smart as a kid was a reason to harass, and sometimes beat on somebody who was seen as too smart in class. This wasn't happening in the wealthier, more educated neighborhoods in NYC (I had friends there afterwards). Although, all parents wanted their kids to exceed in both areas. I think there was also some anger and negative fallout against college, since a lot of working class folks went to Vietnam, and saw college-educated protesters as disrespectful, and actually not so smart.
- ianai 10y agoI experienced the same for being smart in the "wrong neighborhood" in Albuquerque, NM (1990s).
- nononosisisi 10y agoOr in the wrong school. Which of unfortunately causes a revenge of the nerds syndrome.
- eggy 10y agoThe movie, 'The Revenge of the Nerds' came out in 1984, after I had left my neighborhood, and for all of its silly comedy, was a sign that things were changing. My parents and other parents in my poor, working class neighborhood saw education as the way to a better future, not just financially. Intelligence was berated by others in my age group in class. I don't equate education with intelligence, since I have met so many bright people who never finished high school (my father), and so many phDs whose intelligence I question to this day. That piece of paper, a university degree, can be earned with average intelligence, but costs a fortune for most non-public universities. As an acquaintance said to me about his son going to an Ivy league school, 'he's set up for life'. Regardless of his son's IQ, or final GPA, the societal strata he will interact with and form networked connections with, along with the school's reputation, will guarantee him a higher-than-average floor of entry compared to my children. For the record, I am not for that type of education.
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- ss108 10y agoThis hardly seems to be the case if you follow politics and talk to people about it.
- aswanson 10y agoPolitics, religion, and their close correlate, global warming, are subject to opinion sans facts. Hence, the average discourse re: those three tend to the degenerate case.
- stronglikedan 10y agoI wonder how the stats and facts in this article would compare to other developed countries. I know it's not a comparison article, but more of a call to action for America, written by Americans, but I would still be interested in the comparison. Especially, since they mention a couple of world-wide examples in the Darwin Awards and reddit.
- krauthammer2 10y agoThe very intelligent traditional men are the ones under attack in America. The stupid are not directly under attack. The stupid are under attack indirectly, because the true leaders of society are under attack. The evidence of this can be seen in all of the crumbling cities in America. Even Noam Chomsky, a renowned liberal, admits that America is in a decline. Understanding the reason can start with understanding that the very very intelligent men have been shouldered out of the Ivy League schools. Men have higher quantitative reasoning ability than women. The truly magical men that should be in control of our society are being shouldered out by very intelligent women. >In 2005, the distinguished economist Lawrence Summers was forced to resign as President of Harvard University after expressing the view, at a seminar on diversity in the academic workplace, that in some fields the innate cognitive differences between the sexes might make the search for a perfect 50:50 gender balance impossible. Mr. Summers taking damage here is an instance of the de-evolution effect of feminism that we all experience everyday. There will never be a balance in the genders until genius men are stepped on and damaged until their phenotypes have been genocided/they no longer exist. And even in that case, if the very genius men are being stepped on, then genius women are also going to be disappearing, as the same genius men are generally their fathers.
- douche 10y agoI expect to see this downvoted into oblivion, but you're not wrong. Men have a wider distribution of intelligence than women, so you end up with more male retards and more male geniuses. The bell curve is real.
- bordercases 10y agoIn a real meritocracy you would expect gender imbalances anyway, because of statistical phenomena such as these. Funny enough there are few comments on the gender imbalance of more females in nursing than males. Regardless of whether it comes down to stigmatizing of the profession (possible given the higher end of wages in nursing meaning the incentive should be there) or if it has to do with some distribution of talent, it's not commented on, despite being consistent with a universal application of sexism logic vs a particular application for just one gender.
- selectron 10y agoI don't have any problems with a society that is a meritocracy. This article is nonsense. If anyone wonders why so many people don't like political correctness just point them to this article.
- dopu 10y agoYour comment adds nothing of worth to the discussion. So what if you don't see any problems with meritocracy? Explain why you feel that way.
- selectron 10y agoThe whole premise was based on the assumption that meritocracy is bad - my point is that this is a flawed assumption. The proposed solutions were the government could step in and "discourage hiring practices that arbitrarily and counterproductively weed out the less-well-IQ’ed." This is counter to science - it has been shown that intelligence is one of the best predictors of the quality of an employee. Why should the government subsidize stupid people, or interfere in companies hiring the best qualified employees anymore than it already does? The reality is smarter people are on average better employees, which is not at all surprising. This article is using politically correct logic, as opposed to actually correct logic. A fundamental assumption of the article is that every person is of equal worth. Anyone who objects to this idea is labelled as racist or sexist or whatever-ist. But it is objectively just not true that people are all the same. A murderer is not equal to a doctor. Most people would choose to save a drowning doctor rather than a drowning murderer if forced to pick one. Similarly, if I a rational person had to choose between saving a drowning doctor who is an idiot or saving a drowning doctor who is a geniue, the rational person would save the smarter doctor.
- zemblan 10y agoThere's no reason that a doctor can't be a murderer. See Harold Shipman. That speaks to the core problem here. A less intelligent but more diligent and trustworthy person can be the better employee.
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- WalterSear 10y agoNo, it confuses material success with human worth. And this is not a new human behaviour, it's just exacerbated by increasing inequality, and made more obvious when the rules of success change, favouring different social groups. American society's infatuation with gungho capitalism certainly plays a part (thanks, Edward Bernaise), but I'm convinced it's a hard wired behaviour, like our preference for attractive people. Associating ourselves with both attractive and the powerful provide an evolutionary advantage.
- jasonm23 10y agoMaybe you meant Edward Bernays? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Bernays https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Bernays
- WalterSear 10y agoYes. He is a saucy fellow.
- milesward 10y agoUhm, STFU. Geniuses = good. Sexism = bad.
- krauthammer2 10y agoThat's an uncivil comment. Class, note the level of civility here. It is also well known that traditional men and women are more civilized. The stats carry on for ages. "Sexist" areas of America even have lower crime rates.
- dang 10y ago> STFU The civility rule here doesn't switch off just because someone else is wrong. Please don't do this again. Instead, please (re)-read the following, which describe what we're looking for in comments on this site—the idea is to post civilly and substantively, or not at all: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11926598 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11926598 and marked it off-topic.
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- rrecuero 10y agoAs I see it, the world, and america in particular is worshipping the culture of the intellect to the extreme, forgetting other innate and arguably more important human qualities. As philosophers like Jacob Needleman have said before, there is a line of knowledge and a line of being. If one progresses too further ahead from the other,it becomes useless and even harmful. We see examples everyday of people that are really smart but can't treat others like humans. The canonical example is a great coder that is a total jackass. There is a dire need for empathy, now more than ever...
- guscost 10y agoI'm a huge fan of Mike Rowe. He's done some amazing journalism with "Dirty Jobs" and his mikeroweWORKS foundation is terrific. He claims that unconditional encouragement toward intellectual dreams does not help most people, and argues that more kids should be pursuing professional trades. This overlaps with one of the better suggestions from this article. In general I think these are hit or miss, and maybe too academic, but the problem is a real one and it's not going to go away tomorrow. People have this notion that robots will just replace all manufacturing jobs next year or whatever, but as usual it's a lot more complex and subtle than that. And it's a cultural problem as much as an economic one. Of course I'm not able to say this from firsthand experience, having had little difficulty in school, and having accumulated enough skill with computers to find plenty of good work. And I can't really call for some given change before understanding more about the people in worse situations. I did go to a trade school though and more of those sounds like the best idea so far.
- x5n1 10y agoAt the end of the day say that you paid everyone the same amount of money regardless of whether they worked or did not. And there was no additional way to make money. Maybe there was an additional barter economy where you could work for things that you could then trade for other things. How would that change things. Because now no one would have to work and would only do things if they wanted to do them. And everyone could enjoy their lives rather than be treated like disposable machines. I think that sort of future is one to look forward to. One without class or coercion. Where everyone literally has the same power over everyone else and the little trinkets and things that they produce themselves are traded by individuals with other individuals not for money but for things that they themselves made which then determines their worth. Even supposedly technically superior well paying work usually treats the workers like tools. Management which is often staffed by not the most intelligent has the most power in an organization. They stress coerce and harass people in order to get work out of them, work which is often earning the company multiples of what they are paying people. And that's how the whole economy is structured. It is still not is possible to be a technical person who is well paid yet still not feeling happy, pleasant, or even healthy. It can still be a somewhat miserable way to live your life. Not as miserable as being not intelligent and employable, but still can be problematic. The economy is general is not a healthy place for mental health or physical health, especially things like getting fired or layed off. You have to go out of your way already exhausted by work to find that.
- tbabb 10y agoIntelligence is a perfectly fair criteria by which to judge a candidate, as in most jobs it will have a direct effect on the candidate's ability to perform their duties. If an employer over-weights intelligence to the exclusion of other criteria, like work ethic or social aptitude, then she may wind up with a candidate deficient in some other important area to her own detriment. It is important that everyone, regardless of their abilities or what they can offer for society, have access to certain basic standards of living. But it's absurd to suggest, as the author does, that we should hobble economic output just to favor creating meaningless busy work over automation. If that's important to us, we should just offer a basic standard of living directly. If intelligence isn't a valid/fair selection criteria for job candidates, then there is no such thing.
- Hondor 10y agoIt makes a valuable point that our popular culture that we think makes us "civilized" is really just a sham and we're no different from olden-days racists and homophobes but with a few extra rules applied. We're very careful not to abuse people because of their race, religion or certain types of sexuality, but for all the non-taboo classes of people, the gloves are off and we're no different from slave owners who justified mistreating blacks because they were sub-human. We can't call people niggers but we can call them retards. We can't lock up homosexuals but we can lock up pedophiles and zoophiles. We can't deny jobs or voting rights to women but we can deny jobs and voting rights to foreigners. We really aren't any more moral than we were 100's of years ago, we just fool ourselves into thinking we are.
- nononosisisi 10y agoI don't think it will ever be ok to be a pedophile which unfortunately you seem to imply it should be ok. Even back then lots of people knew slavery was wrong but could not do much about.
- Hondor 10y agoIt's hard to make an argument against pedophilia (as a sexuality) which doesn't also argue against homosexuality. Of course gay men raping other men is bad and is still a crime, just as adults raping children is bad. But that's not what contemporary culture says. It says it's wrong to be sexually attracted to children even without causing any harm. There were cultures in history where sex with children was accepted, such as the Romans https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pederasty#The_Romans https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pederasty#The_Romans but they recognized that it was harmful to the child so it was limited to slaves and other people who they didn't care about.
- a1b3c6 10y ago>It says it's wrong to be sexually attracted to children even without causing any harm. The act of having sex with children at all causes them harm. Any sex with children is considered rape, because children can NEVER consent to any form of sexual activity. That's the actual "modern value" we hold, not the one you've misunderstood it to be. That's why >It's hard to make an argument against pedophilia (as a sexuality) which doesn't also argue against homosexuality. Is an invalid statement. Homosexuality doesn't have to include raping other men, but pedophilia always involves raping (harming) children. Pedophilia "Just as a sexuality" can be considered immoral because the only way to express that desire is by harming children. That doesn't mean people should be punished just for being pedophiles, but obviously they need some form of counseling and to stay away from children.
- sixtypoundhound 10y agoPart of the problem is inserting the same standard across multiple roles; for example, mandating all managers have a college education. You don't need a college degree for most sales, customer service, and operations roles. Some of the best people managers and sales people I've met have sketchy degrees (or none at all). On the other hand, putting someone in charge of a process which is highly reliant on statistics or technology who doesn't have a college degree (or real world experience which proves ample ability) can be a total disaster. I've seen what happens when you take a non-statistical director and put them over a data science process.... they hide in familiar details (project plan! communications!) and can't understand the harder decisions involved in the role. Like does the magical black-box system even work....
- BuckRogers 10y agoThat's a huge improvement over where we were a few years ago, when Steve Jobs died and I noted all the human misery and pain he caused with his employment of Foxconn sweatshops. My coworker said Jobs' life was worth more than those factory workers. I reminded him that everyone has equal worth and he seemed stunned at my forceful response. Noting that your life has to feel pretty hopeless to jump out the window of the factory you work/live in. I guess being a do-well white boy in Chicago afforded him quite the luxury of deciding the world pecking order. Except I was also a white boy in Chicago calling him out on it. Considering we had multiple 2nd generation immigrant coworkers around us, who should in theory empathize with 3rd world work conditions, I was the only one who spoke up. Probably because the Steve Jobs > all guy was a fairly influential architect. But almost nothing stops me from piping up anyway. Still, judging human worth over intelligence is definitely a bit better than judging based on entrepreneurial capacity as my colleague was. Maybe in a couple more years we'll all agree that humanity has equal worth and dignity. Then all life, and we'll be set.
- astrange 10y agoFoxconn workers are less likely to commit suicide than Chinese in general, not more, which really weakens this argument. Although Steve Jobs made more from investing in Pixar than Apple (I think) so the mental health of Toy Story animators could be an issue?
- BuckRogers 10y agoThat reads as quite the troll, politically or financially motivated but I'll indulge you. To start off, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, do you have citations for either of your claims? Your entire argument rested on them yet you didn't produce. Even once you produce those, I disagree with your premise. The comparison should be work-related suicides in other factories in nations with better labor conditions. Fiat factory suicides vs Foxconn would make more sense than the population as a whole. Making more money with Pixar, if true, is not correlation or causation. You can make money, and not drive your employees or sub-contracted to suicide. Exploitation is not a requirement for financial success or otherwise. That was the point.
- throw2016 10y agoAmerican society worships financial success and the mythology of supermen and superwomen to the exclusion of nearly everything else and this extracts a huge price in the individual and social sense of well being. Since capitalism will rarely allow more than 20-30% 'success' that leaves a huge percentage of your population feeling inadequate. Sometimes it feels the focus on individual brilliance without context of social value impoverishes rather than nourishes. It can induce an adversorial state of hyper competition, in and out groups and a heightening state of frenzy to belong that leaves little room for niceties like empathy and community. The folklore of America's success reinforces the mythology of individual brilliance, but rational heads need to question without taking away from individual brilliance in the past, now or the neccessity of it in the future, the benefits of the colononization of an entire continent. The downside to this single minded focus is the simple fact that individuals are disempowered. They cannot effect any change. It takes real community and society to effect even the smallest change and that requires a functioning social setup with community, cooperation, empathy and mutual respect. Any communal action will require large numbers of americans to cooperate for instance protests or activism, at that point americans will discover their social structure does not allow for it and will not deliver. There is very little if any sense of community. It's been engineered out. It's unlikely individuals who have been devalued and left feeling worthless will make common cause in a hyper adversorial social structure.
- ctrlalt_g 10y agoTo be honest, it's really confusing. It's not so much that I worship financial success, it's that I'm scared of being financially insecure. It feels as if the only way to secure my future and the future of my children is to become the best. Perhaps some of this insecurity is translated into aggression toward anti-intellectualism, which I see as an attempt to make me feel guilty about wanting to be secure. There's also the larger concern over foreign competition. I know that social well-being is important, but when faced against countries who don't value social well-being, it feels as if America is at a significant disadvantage. After all, who could have competed against China's manufacturing prowess when the Green Movement was unique to the West? If America enacts strong protections for unintelligent people, will we see intelligence be outsourced? I know that my fears are selfish and childish and irrational, but I don't know how else to be. On one hand, I know how absurd it is to believe that intelligence is the solution to all of my problems. But if being smart can't solve my problems, what can? It seems equally absurd that being compassionate is the answer. I don't know. I'm sure none of this makes sense, but it's how I feel. Sorry about the rant.
- gwern 10y agoI disagree. American society has always had something of a love-hate relationship with intelligence, and there have always been examples like _Big Bang Theory_ venerating intelligence ('Sputnik moment' and astronauts, anyone?). Intelligence correlates with success cross-culturally and over time, so that's not in question. What is in question is the 'increasingly'; the only evidence offered, aside from anecdote, is that the returns from education have increased. This is inadequate. The research literature I'm aware of (http://www.gwern.net/Embryo%20selection#iqincome-bibliography http://www.gwern.net/Embryo%20selection#iqincome-bibliograph...) shows that intelligence has consistently been correlated with SES/income/occupation and it's not that clear it has been increasing at all. Particularly relevant is Strenze 2007, "Intelligence and socioeconomic success: A meta-analytic review of longitudinal research" http://emilkirkegaard.dk/en/wp-content/uploads/Intelligence-and-socioeconomic-success-A-meta-analytic-review-of-longitudinal-research.pdf http://emilkirkegaard.dk/en/wp-content/uploads/Intelligence-... who says: > Several studies have investigated changes in the association between intelligence and success during past decades. Although Herrnstein and Murray concluded that “ the main point seems beyond dispute ” (1994: 52) and some studies have found support for this point ( Murnane, Willett, & Levy, 1995 ), there are still serious reasons to doubt that the importance of intelligence is or has been growing. Neither the meta-analysis by Bowles et al. (2001) nor the review by Jencks et al. (1979) found any clear trend in the correlations between intelligence and success. The same conclusion was reached by Flynn (2004) and Hauser and Huang (1997) . Breen and Goldthorpe (2001) found that the association between intelligence and occupational status in England is, if anything, declining Strenze's own meta-analytic results using ~44 studies are on pg13 Table 2, where the correlation of intelligence with education/occupation/income over the 20th century show no clear pattern of increase or decrease: > The influence of the third moderator variable, year of success (i.e., year of the measurement of success), is analyzed in the third section of Table 2 . Year of success ranges from 1929 to 2003 in the present meta-analysis. Judging by the sample size weighted corrected correlations ( p ), there appears to be no historical trend for any one of the moderator variables: correlations with education and occupation remain more or less stable throughout the period under study; correlations with income fluctuate more but without any obvious direction. Quite surprisingly, if unweighted and uncorrected correlations ( r ) are observed instead, then the correlations with education and occupation exhibit a declining trend. So, if American society 'increasingly mistakes intelligence for human worth' and 'as recently as the 1950s, possessing only middling intelligence was not likely to severely limit your life’s trajectory', why are the more intelligent, if anything, less likely to be successful when we go from 1920 to 2000?
- djokkataja 10y agoSortition[1] (randomly selecting from the population for government positions) combined with direct democracy where possible would fundamentally address problems of inequality regardless of their source. Meritocracy, plutocracy, nepotism--you'll end up with a small group of people in power in any system unless the system is carefully designed to prevent it. Put another way, the article mentions several possible measures to try to provide for better outcomes for everyone who isn't "smart"; these are bandaids for cancer. These are top-down methods for "the elite" in various forms to provide for "everyone else" so that the have-nots have at least enough to avoid offending the sensibilities of the powerful. If fairness is a genuine concern and central goal for a society, then positions of power should be filled by a statistically representative sample of the population. Until then, inequality will be the status quo. As I see it, the primary benefit in this specific situation (technological unemployment or underemployment for the "not smart enough") would be faster reaction time. You might see similar solutions to those proposed in this article, but you wouldn't have to wait for people like Mike Rowe to write about problems of inequality (and you wouldn't have to wait even longer for people in positions of power to decide to do something). Random selection would produce many people who deeply care about the "not smart" because that describes about 50% of the people selected and many people they personally know. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sortition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sortition
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- WalterBright 10y agoAnti-intellectualism runs deep in American society. Consider the words nerd, wonk, geek, brainiac, college boy, the negative Hollywood stereotypes, etc. The Big Bang Theory is the latest incarnation of that. My father learned to keep his book collection out of the living room.
- bby 10y agoFuck that. Keep the book collection on display.
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- curioussavage 10y agoI disagree. Citing a few labels is easy, Hollywood and popular culture have stereotypes for every kind of person. Everybody thinks they are the persecuted group. I think the opposite. America most certainly worships intellectuals, who control public education. So starting at age 5-6 kids are brainwashed into thinking that they are 'stupid' if they can't do arithmetic in their head, or remember all the inane rules of the english language in their writing or what have you. It is ingrained into their skulls that if they don't go to college and take out loans to get what is basically now a glorified high school diploma++ they are failures. If you are having a conversation with someone and they ask where you went to college, and you reply that you dropped out or didn't go there is always an awkward moment. If you are making a good living or you hit it big, you are the exception. You slipped through the cracks thats all. Don't get me wrong As someone who grew up with his nose in a book, I know you ridiculed. But getting made fun of by a bunch of insecure children/teenagers is one thing. All major modern institutions of any importance exalt the intellectual while debasing anyone who hasn't been blessed.
- WalterBright 10y agoCheck out the mania (and enormous $$$) around sports and sports figures, actors, and musicians. I can't recall a nerd ever getting an endorsement contract. The only nerd prize is the Nobel; the Oscars, Emmys, Grammies, Halls of Fame, Heisemann Trophies, etc., are for other professions. Just for a small slice of it, the mania over the Olympics. Billions and billions of dollars, wall-to-wall TV coverage, of 2 weeks seeing who can run faster than the next.
- powera 10y agoWas this article ghost written by Diana Moon Glampers? I disagree with basically every sentence in the article and don't even know where to begin.
- powera 10y agoOK, a few specific complaints: * The very first sentence is horribly misleading, as intelligence (among other things) was necessary to avoid dying in wars or starving to death before then. This describes every decade in human history before the 20th century. * It also only applied to white men in the US (or Western countries) in the 50s. African Americans, women, people in India surely feel differently about how the 50s were for getting jobs. * The author blatantly ignores Duke Power, which generally bans IQ tests as part of hiring. * Apparently decreasing poverty is impossible, but all of the author's proposals aren't. * The author dislikes the term micro aggressions, yet immediately uses it to refer to calling anything "stupid". ... and I'll stop again.
- danieltillett 10y agoDuke power only bans IQ tests if you can't show a correlation between job performance and IQ. If you want to use IQ tests you just need to do the studies that show that IQ is an important factor for the position you are hiring for.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- PeterStuer 10y agoAs a non-American, and so 'judging' America only through the media, it does feel like the complete opposite. Deep ingrained anti-intellectualism, idolization of stupidity and love of the brazen and the rich. Scary decline of the sciences and rapid expansion of superstitions. Of course this does not apply to this here readership, but at least from an outside perspective we see 'idiocracy' surging onto the stage at breakneck speed.
- smt88 10y agoYour assessments are not consistent with facts. You imply that the media is a distorting lens, but then you go on to espouse views that come entirely from the media. I'm not sure I understand that. The US is becoming less religious, and it is the least religious it has ever been. People aren't increasingly idolizing stupidity or loving the rich, or Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders wouldn't have done as well as they did (both used anti-elite messaging). In fact, the on-going presidential election is proof that the rich are falling from grace. Occupy Wall Street, anti-"1%" sentiment, and a Democratic Socialist almost becoming the President are all indications that neoliberalism is dying in the US.
- PeterStuer 10y agoYes, i accept that the media is a distorting lens, that is why I specifically put this in as a disclaimer, but not living there it is the only lens I have available. I'll give you Sanders as a point in showing at least an attempt at curbing extreme neo-liberalism, but Trump seems (to me) like the front runner in the race to 'idiocracy'.
- kofejnik 10y agoThere's very little doubt that Trump is an extremely smart person. Also, see http://www.vox.com/2016/4/21/11451378/smug-american-liberalism http://www.vox.com/2016/4/21/11451378/smug-american-liberali...
- tonyedgecombe 10y ago
- teraformer 10y agoIn America, lots of excessively toxic, obnoxious bastards get much farther along in life than so many others by trading on unsophisticated deception, intimidation and betrayal, and not much else. After a while, you get tired of being smart and getting nowhere for all the effort you expend. Then, knowing what you know, and having noticed what's surrounded you for so long, well... intellectuals can decide for themselves a logical corollary to this.
- Aloha 10y agoI learned when I was a child it was dangerous to be the smartest person in the room. It's much safer to appear to be the village idiot, or at least less bright that the brightest. I do disagree fundamentally with the concept of the evils of merit - merit is so much more than smarts and formal education, its a mix of capacity for the role, agreeability and eagerness, productivity, effort expended, grooming and appearance, and a dozen other factors, most of which are intangible. You don't have to be information work level of smart to achieve these qualities either. The problem is a belief that certain kinds of education make one more suitable for a role. I'd take someone with 4 more years of real world experience over that college degree any day.
- Broken_Hippo 10y agoI think many find the same thing. Don't prove the teacher wrong. Too smart in a few subjects or suddenly figuring stuff out? Accusations of cheating. "You are too smart for your own good" the adults say. "Yeah, they are smart, but smart people don't have common sense and it shows" (which is really more noticing that the kid acts just like other children due to maturity levels or that they are thinking outside of the box). And it carries over into adulthood. One of the unfortunate things to learn is that sometimes, one just has to not say anything. Don't be smarter than the boss, nor too independent (yet not too clingy or stupid). Always a balance. Fitting into the mold actually goes further than actual intelligence.
- Aloha 10y agoFor me at least, its more.. don't stand out, hide in the crowd - I've never been one who's good at blending in, I don't need one additional thing to make me a target.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- ken47 10y agoFor those who count themselves among the intelligent, we should not doubt that in a generation or few, our skills may also be automated away.
- sandworm101 10y ago>> The 2010s, in contrast, are a terrible time to not be brainy. That sums it up. Intelligence doesn't matter, rather the appearance of intelligence gets one ahead. Appearing "brainy" counts more than actually being brainy. TheBigBangTheory is part of that trend. Intelligent people are expected to project a particular image. IRL that never happens. Many very smart people couldn't care less for trek, comics or any of the other stereotypes. And conversely, there are many absolutely not-smart people who do very well by simply dressing the part. I say bring on the standardized tests. Let us separate the smart from the fashionable.
- curioussavage 10y agoWhile I agree mostly with what you said initially. IMO if you think your "smart" or "dumb" based on the results of standardized tests then either way you are just a gullible fool. Standardized tests are designed to sort people based on what they can remember/understand at a given moment in time. A very crappy measure of 'intelligence' (whatever that word really means) indeed.
- sandworm101 10y ago>> Standardized tests are designed to sort people based on what they can remember/understand at a given moment in time. Maybe the knowledge-based tests such as the SATs, but there are plenty of aptitude tests that are not based on memorized knowledge. I also think it is naive to assume that there is some testable form of intelligence completely devoid of cultural knowledge. Someone may be very smart, but if they lack the basic tools to express themselves within a culture then those smarts are behind a real bottleneck.
- ashitlerferad 10y ago> Let us separate the smart from the fashionable. Borders between people don't help anyone.
- aplummer 10y ago"based on a candidate having a critical skill or two and on soft factors such as eagerness, appearance, family background, and physical characteristics..." I don't know if the author is trying to make this sound _better_ than today, considering "physical characteristics" often meant "white and male".
- kartan 10y agoThe premise is erroneous and it creates a difficult debate. > American society increasingly mistakes intelligence for human worth I think that we are just in the same place that we have always been. There were this intelligence tests in the 1900s that is what, still nowadays, commonly people mistakes as innate intelligence. "Yerkes intelligence exams (alpha, beta and individual) were culturally biased, taken under markedly different conditions and tended to reflect years in the U.S. and familiarity with dominant culture, rather than innate intelligence" http://www.understandingrace.org/history/science/race_intel.html http://www.understandingrace.org/history/science/race_intel.... Even innate intelligence is more complex than a number as there are different components to account for. So when the article reads "American society increasingly mistakes intelligence for human worth" it should read "Americans increasingly immature when judging others". I blame this phenomenon at the lack of education quality. Memorizing and doing mental calculus is far from what a good education should give you. Critical thinking, capacity to self-learning, appreciation of universal human values should be the main part of that education. And as it says America I don't think that it is restricted to any country. Education could be a lot better everywhere. But shrinking education budgets all around the world, because "crisis", are jeopardizing our future.
- known 10y agomarks != merit voting != democracy
- vasilipupkin 10y agoIncentivizing companies to resist automation seems like a terrible idea that would make everyone poorer, including the "less brainy"
- jacquesm 10y agoI'd substitute 'wealth' for 'intelligence', and it goes much further than just American society.
- grossvogel 10y agoIn fact, I'd say the unspoken premise of the article is that economic success equals human wealth. From there, it argues mainly that economic success is increasingly determined by intelligence. Strangely, the article ignores the strong anti-intellectual undercurrent in American culture, which may be a byproduct of these economic changes, and which seems to be the focus of many comments here.
- grossvogel 10y agoOops: "...economic success equals human worth"
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- zizzles 10y agoAre you guys living in the same world that I am? Nerdy geek-type intellectuals are at the BOTTOM of the totem pole in terms of respect and human worth in the 21st century. They are ostracized, bullied in school, most are awkward virgins (intellect is the anti-thesis when it comes to being a "womanizer" or "stud") and it's only getting worse as society progresses.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- rms_returns 10y agoYou are absolutely correct. The ones that get the most worth and respect are actually the middlemen who are good communicators between the "geeky" types and the zero knowledge "corporate" types. Whether the middlemen deserve it or not, I don't know but such are the things in the real world. In an IT company, for instance, you will always find the project managers and even supervisors getting all the glory and respect whereas the programmers and architects are shunned on the side.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- engi_nerd 10y agoAre you living in the same world as the rest of us? Sure, there are people who fulfill the stereotype that you've repeated here. But among the nerdy people I've known you'll find some great people with rich, full lives. People who spend their work lives searching for evidence of dark matter can also climb mountains and have great family lives. Telemetry engineers who spend their days working on RF systems can spend their lunch breaks learning sign language or brushing up on their knowledge of Korean. Those are just two of the people I've worked with. And look around. The most popular movies are based on comics. The most popular books are fantasy (Harry Potter) or science fiction dystopia (Hunger Games). Video games often have budgets on par with blockbuster films. Where is the social stigma on being a "nerd"? Largely gone, or at least it seems to me.
- 10y ago
- threepipeproblm 10y agoDon't be stupid vs. don't be stupidist?
- DominikD 10y agoSociety historically confusing religious convictions with human worth is somehow becoming worse by confusing intelligence with human worth. Fascinating case of rationalization.
- arisAlexis 10y agoIn the European Commissiom aka the public sector the only test you take to go into any position even clerical is an IQ test. I can't comprehend this it should be the other way around. Since maximizing profit is not so important but serving the public is.
- mcguire 10y agoI am not sure that the author isn't confusing America's wealth disparity with differential treatment of intelligence (which still seems to remain undefined). Sure, those with high SAT scores have greater access to the means for economic success, but I don't think that is because of any intrinsic difference in high-SATers and the run of the mill dummy. Rather, I'd suggest it is due to the winner-take-all nature of the current American society.
- jondubois 10y agoA terrible thing about society today is our diminishing ability for self-reflection (which is a form of emotional intelligence). Most of the stuff we do as individuals is driven by marketing and social pressure - So much so that many of us have become oblivious to our true internal needs. Maybe that's why so many people go to psychologists nowadays. In the past, people put more value on self-reflection, philosophical thinking and other types of emotional intelligence (e.g. wisdom) over raw I.Q.
- kstenerud 10y agoThis is pretty silly. In any society, we must decide how to distribute the resources generated by that society. So you make the rules, set up enforcement, and plod along, making changes as you go, as far as you dare in the face of the inevitable political machinations of everyone involved. The more intelligent and clever always benefit, because they know how to use the system to their own purpose. This has been so since the beginning. The less intelligent either end up in a position where their labor can be exploited, or they're left to slow decline or even death, depending on how much society values keeping them alive. That's any given society, in a nutshell. They may dress it up in value statements, laws, philosophies, religions, and so on, but in the end it comes down to power, and who has enough of it to extract the resources and status he wants. The difference is that now the "menial" jobs are almost gone, and the higher up jobs are on the chopping block. And so the first to die off will be those without power (as usual). We can come up with all sorts of platitudes about the value of human life, but in the end it always comes down to this. Welcome to the true nature of man. Of course, nowadays we have middle class folks who can experience the philosophical angst of the less fortunate, and come up with all sorts of rules, decide which words are acceptable or not, and police outward appearances and speech. You wouldn't think twice in deciding what to call someone who implemented a password policy with a max of 8 characters, or stored the passwords unsalted or even plaintext behind a system that hasn't had a security update in 10 years. But soon you will, because "stupid" is not an acceptable word anymore, nor is any word that compares intelligence or ability. We're all equal, after all, and that person deserves his job and the income it generates by virtue of his being human and equal to every other human. You wouldn't want him to starve now, would you?
- rmah 10y agoHuman worth or, as I like to call it "respect" has nothing to do with equality of outcomes. There is a difference between benefiting materially or politically from how society is structured and social respect. There is a difference between paying someone more or less for doing a job and how you treat someone when you interact to them. Let me put it a different way... why should you respect raw intelligence over a person's height? After all, both simply an accident of birth (genetics and early nutrition). Neither are something one achieves. I do not respect raw intelligence. I respect personality traits such as hard work, honesty, reliability, affability and bravery. I respect achievement, not potential. To tie someone's worth to inherent traits such as intelligence is, to me, somewhat shallow.
- CodexArcanum 10y agoThere are two rather egregious flaws in this line of thinking from the very start. The first is that "intelligence" is purely an inborn trait. That "being stupid" is a condition on par with serious mental disability. Stupidity isn't mocked by the smart to belittle the dumb. It's mocked by the majority of society to promote feelings of superiority in the mockery yes, but also to share lessons about what not to do. Anyone (barring mental disability, and even then) can learn, and can be taught. I've certainly encountered my share of the intelligentsia too brilliant to lower themselves to the common level, but I've encountered far many more gifted people who wanted deeply to share their knowledge with those around them. Yes, our society fetishises intelligence, but the vast teeming masses of "dumb people" are a lot smarter than most would believe. The second fallacy here is that financial earning or being able to survive at all are somehow connected to "human worth" which is connected to intelligence. As we automate more and more fields of labor, we are moving towards a post-job society. The issue isn't that Americans over value intelligence, it's that we over value the concept of "hard work." Especially as enshrined in the old advice of many parents, "you have to work hard to get ahead in the world." Well, no, you don't. Working smart helps a lot, but soon you won't have to work at all. Or you won't be able to. Forget our negative perception of "the dumb." We need to fix our negative perception of "the lazy." We must learn how to value people for something beyond their contributions to labor, and maybe we must also teach people how to have and feel valuable beyond labor. And we should do it fast, because after we automate away the drivers, the merchants, and the laborers, it won't be long before we've automated away the lawyers, artists, programmers, and doctors. And then there will be nothing left but politicians, and is that the world you want to live in?
- mgkimsal 10y ago> Anyone (barring mental disability, and even then) can learn, and can be taught.... the vast teeming masses of "dumb people" are a lot smarter than most would believe. I'm generally in agreement with the potential, but people need to desire to learn (or be smarter, or whatever you want to call it). There seems to have been a backlash against 'intelligence' which glorifies 'stupidity'. Not specifically with that word, but the notion of 'book learnin' being something to look down on, people getting 'too smart for their own good', etc. There are many folks who have far less 'raw intelligence' - whatever biological component we're born with - than I do, but are far more capable because they've applied themselves far more rigorously than I have over the years. So yes, of course, almost anyone can really learn more, but they have to want to do it in the first place, and get out of whatever cultural norms bind them to their notions of looking down on intelligence (and accomplishment in general).
- leecarraher 10y agoworthington's law: more money = better than https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ke9iShKzZmM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ke9iShKzZmM
- osazuwa 10y agoI don't buy this. This is not a problem. Anti-intellectualism is the problem. Our culture encourages people not to be smart. In a sentiment captured by Marco Rubio when he said it is better to be a welder than a philosopher, we teach young people that non-intellectual pursuits are more noble (so long as they make money). We teach men that it is more manly to work with your hands. We teach women that service-sector jobs, or jobs that require more social acumen are more womanly. We teach people the false-dichotomy of left-right-brain dominance, making it easy believe that one is simply unequipped for logic and quantitative mental work. We teach black youth that their role models should be athletes and pop-stars, not people successful in STEM-fields (personal experience). Our popular culture characterizes smart people as weird, eccentric, and disconnected from the rest of humanity -- those tropes are obvious in the article's examples of "Big Bang" and Sherlock Holmes. When my wife learned coding, all her old college girlfriends were amazed that she turned out to be so "smart". She was shocked, as she never saw herself as particularly smart (though she is), successfully learning to code is just a function of putting in the practice. It became apparent that her friends were socialized to believe that this coding was the exclusive domain of this mythical class of brainy people. Sure some people are naturally smarter, thus it is relatively easier for them to do mentally laborious work. However, If the economy increasing favors people who can carry a heavier mental workload, then the first step to preparing citizens for participating in that economy is overcoming our culture's resistant strain of anti-intellectualism.
- osazuwa 10y agoReading illiteracy is no longer a big problem. STEM-illiteracy is the new problem. It is easier for some to learn how to read than it is for others. Yet as a society we don't give people who find difficulty in learning to read a pass on reading. Nor should we for STEM fields.
- gravypod 10y agoI'd just like to chime in and say that the word meritocracy was not invented in the 50%. You can clearly see that here: https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=meritocracy&year_start=1800&year_end=1900&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share=&direct_url=t1%3B%2Cmeritocracy%3B%2Cc0 https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=meritocracy&ye...