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This article reads a bit too much like Brave New World. The article suggests to, literally, "...provide incentives to companies that resist automation, thereby

This article reads a bit too much like Brave New World. The article suggests to, literally, "...provide incentives to companies that resist automation, thereby preserving jobs for the less brainy." Preventing technological progress to ensure that we can have the "less brainy" spend their time carrying out tasks that are completely pointless? But it's okay, we can make sure they have plenty of soma - so they never concern themselves with their life's work being completely and absolutely pointless. Or does the author just assume they'd be too dumb to ever consider that? The problem with trying to be so overtly embracing is that it often reveals one's prejudices ever more clearly through implicit consideration of what is said. I completely agree with the article that the decreasing relevance of individuals who are not all that bright is going to be an increasing problem. And this problem is confounded by really awful demographic issues. Fertility rate is strongly positively connected to low education, low income, and high religiosity. But at the same time trying to reshape society to embrace slower individuals is going to just result in an even greater stratification of society. We're already economically stratified with some implicit intellectual stratification. This would make the shift from implicit quite explicit as those who value intelligence would end up separating themselves even more overtly from the 'new and improved' society that has been, in the words of the article, reshaped "with an eye to the abilities and needs of the majority". I also find the constant social science efforts to link "low" educational spending to decreased academic performance to be very questionable. At least by PISA scores many of the countries now outperforming us academically spend substantially less on education than we do. For instance Vietnam is now ahead of the US in math and science. In fact, they're 8th in the world in science. Their purchasing power parity GDP/capita is $6,925 ($2,305 nominal) and a total of 6.6% of that goes to education. That's $450/capita, parity compensated. In the US we spend 5.6% of $61,687 per capita which is $3455/capita - north of 700% greater than Vietnam's spending, parity adjusted. And even if you just take it in terms of poverty itself, the average income in Vietnam is around $1,800 a year - that's about $5,400 parity adjusted. Poverty is widespread in Vietnam. So is academic excellence. You can't just spend your way to people valuing and embracing education. - [1] Convenient listing of the 2015 PISA results - [2] List of nations by percent of GDP spent on education, one click away from conversion to parity adjusted $/capita - [1] - http://www.businessinsider.com/pisa-worldwide-ranking-of-math-science-reading-skills-2016-12 http://www.businessinsider.com/pisa-worldwide-ranking-of-mat... - [2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_spending_on_education_%28%25_of_GDP%29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_spending_...

Amezarak 8y ago
> Preventing technological progress to ensure that we can have the "less brainy" spend their time carrying out tasks that are completely pointless? Why is technological progress ipso fact good? I'm becoming increasingly convinced unguided technological progress is, rather, a terrible plague, and that some "progress" should be stopped altogether if we want our children to have any chance at a happy future.
- TangoTrotFox 8y ago
  The one major difference between humanity today and humanity of thousands of years ago is technology. Eras are dictated by technology. And this applies all the way to very recent events. We can really only look back on the world wars of not all that long with bemusement. It seems so surreal that we could have wars of such a scale that 3% of the world's population would be killed. And the reason these wars, which were becoming ever more violent, stopped was technology. Nuclear weapons made all out war between developed nations a thing of the past as the weapons were so brutally effective that they ensure there can never be a winner in any war, only losers. And going back further in history issues would be things such as starvation, dying from exposure to the elements, dying from basic sickness including run of the mill fevers or basic infections. Today our issues seem laughably petty by contrast. One concern effectively coming down to "I don't like that I only have a tv, air conditioning, internet access, a car, ready access to food, electronic toys of various sorts, ... but somebody else has even more!" And most importantly - you don't have to participate in all technology. In spite of my evangelizing technological progress above all, my phone is still an old brick (actually they're quite small now - and the batteries last for a couple of weeks at a time) 'dumbphone.' And my kids certainly will be raised Steve Jobsesque, which is to say no mobile devices or other such toys for them. I completely agree not all technological progress is good, and so you're free to step aside from it. Taken to extremes the Amish have turned away from nearly all technological progress and still flourish, at least so much as they can. With most of our wages today we could purchase large homesteads in 'flyover country' and get back to basics. And I find that extremely appealing and plan to do just that, though not in America. Although 'basics' in my view will include autonomous gardens, autonomous feeders, autonomous mowers, solar energy, and of course gotta have that juicy internet access. Life is what you make of it. And technology is the toolset that you get to draw your choices from.

Amezarak 8y ago

> Preventing technological progress to ensure that we can have the "less brainy" spend their time carrying out tasks that are completely pointless? Why is technological progress ipso fact good? I'm becoming increasingly convinced unguided technological progress is, rather, a terrible plague, and that some "progress" should be stopped altogether if we want our children to have any chance at a happy future.

TangoTrotFox 8y ago
The one major difference between humanity today and humanity of thousands of years ago is technology. Eras are dictated by technology. And this applies all the way to very recent events. We can really only look back on the world wars of not all that long with bemusement. It seems so surreal that we could have wars of such a scale that 3% of the world's population would be killed. And the reason these wars, which were becoming ever more violent, stopped was technology. Nuclear weapons made all out war between developed nations a thing of the past as the weapons were so brutally effective that they ensure there can never be a winner in any war, only losers. And going back further in history issues would be things such as starvation, dying from exposure to the elements, dying from basic sickness including run of the mill fevers or basic infections. Today our issues seem laughably petty by contrast. One concern effectively coming down to "I don't like that I only have a tv, air conditioning, internet access, a car, ready access to food, electronic toys of various sorts, ... but somebody else has even more!" And most importantly - you don't have to participate in all technology. In spite of my evangelizing technological progress above all, my phone is still an old brick (actually they're quite small now - and the batteries last for a couple of weeks at a time) 'dumbphone.' And my kids certainly will be raised Steve Jobsesque, which is to say no mobile devices or other such toys for them. I completely agree not all technological progress is good, and so you're free to step aside from it. Taken to extremes the Amish have turned away from nearly all technological progress and still flourish, at least so much as they can. With most of our wages today we could purchase large homesteads in 'flyover country' and get back to basics. And I find that extremely appealing and plan to do just that, though not in America. Although 'basics' in my view will include autonomous gardens, autonomous feeders, autonomous mowers, solar energy, and of course gotta have that juicy internet access. Life is what you make of it. And technology is the toolset that you get to draw your choices from.