5 ms·

> Sooner or later, I'm going to get around to writing a piece and titling it, "I reject equality" where I lay out the argument that the goal of equality is fund

by rue 16y ago

> Sooner or later, I'm going to get around to writing a piece and titling it, "I reject equality" where I lay out the argument that the goal of equality is fundamentally hostile to excellence. I will offer a pre-counterpoint: equality is not (should not be) about everyone being the same or at the same level, but more "from each according to their ability" — but at the same time considering the 100% effort from everyone to be (nearly) as valuable. This leads to the second question of what you consider essential in achieving exellence: I hope you can offer more of an explanation than "more money as reward".

lionhearted 16y ago
> I will offer a pre-counterpoint: equality is not (should not be) about everyone being the same or at the same level, but more "from each according to their ability" — but at the same time considering the 100% effort from everyone to be (nearly) as valuable. Honestly, I'm not sure how to reply to that, because I don't think any single human in history has ever given anything near 100% effort or achieved 100% of their potential. Maybe a rare few individuals - da Vinci? Jefferson? Tokugawa? Socrates? But I'm not so sure of that, even. No matter how good you get, you can always make another incremental improvement. Couple that with the fact that the vast majority of major breakthroughs come from individuals or small teams, and I think anything that stifles excellence to potentially help get more out of everyone is misguided. Again, though, I realize that I hold the minority position on this idea.
- rue 16y ago
  Substitute 100% with a percentage you feel comfortable with. Whatever puny humans consider "full effort" without ever aspiring for more… I think it is probably correct to say that the tips of major breakthroughs come from small groups, but to claim entirety of the credit would be discounting all of the work, research, support and infrastructure currently and in the past. I do not think it is feasible to go to an "every man for himself"-system at this point — plus I'd like to see some historic examples of such successes if that is your gist. Notably fostering an overall empowering society is not the same as putting Joe Sixpack in the Manhattan project 'cause he's been trying so hard, bless his little cotton socks. You need not respond here, but I hope your article-in-potentia can sufficiently flesh out and support your idea instead of only trying to deconstruct the current (?) stifling environ.
- joe_the_user 16y ago
  I don't think any single human in history has ever given anything near 100% effort or achieved 100% of their potential. However ridiculous I might find much of what you say, I love your optimism here. Now, wouldn't it be desirable for more people to have more of an opportunity to achieve their potential? Also, I've experienced "taking by force" only a couple times in my life and I don't think the tax system resembles this.
anamax 16y ago
> but at the same time considering the 100% effort from everyone to be (nearly) as valuable Why should we do something so wrong? Consider Derek Jeter and me. No matter how much effort I put in as a baseball player, I'm not going to approach him on his worst day. And that's true even if I was 10 years younger than he is. Some people are better than others at some things. Their effort is more productive. Ignoring that is dumb. And then there's the problem that not all things are equally valuable, so even if two things take an equal amount of effort, that doesn't tell us that they're equally valuable.
- rue 16y ago
  I do not consider professional athletes to bring anywhere near the "value" currently ascribed to them (lots of sports fans prefer college/amateur sports anyway) but that is sort of beside the point: I never said to ignore people's relative strengths and weaknesses. Derek Jeter probably can't do [whatever it is you do] as well as you can — nor should he try if he's found his niche. You both are probably both examples of highly skilled workers, and there are also jobs which require less skill that nevertheless must be done. We could further argue that absolutely everybody has something in which they would be considered high-skilled if they realised it and developed their skills but even that is not really necessary for the thrust of my pre-counterargument which is that from the perspective of the entire society, all necessary work is roughly equally valuable regardless of whether it can be done by 1 or 999 people out of 1000 (or million). The second part of that pre-counterargument is the motivation for excellence. Personally I do not think that wealth[1] is really a factor for geniuses, most of whom seem to do stuff out of sheer joy of doing it. I'm willing to entertain a pre-counter-counterargument, but some historical analysis would be welcome. [1] Beyond a reasonable level of comfort and in a society which does not require you to hoard loot to ensure survival of progeny, and certainly not at the levels where you could not even conceivably spend it all.
  - anamax 16y ago
    > thrust of my pre-counterargument which is that from the perspective of the entire society, all necessary work is roughly equally valuable regardless of whether it can be done by 1 or 999 people out of 1000 (or million). Your assertion that all necessary work is roughly equally valuable is wrong. And then you compound the error by ignoring supply. (It's unclear whether you're ignoring demand as well.) > Personally I do not think that wealth[1] is really a factor for geniuses That's irrelevant because few people are geniuses, so it doesn't much matter what motivates them. I get it that you think that you're not motivated by money and think that other people shouldn't be, but the brain-power going into high-wealth fields suggests that money does have some motivating power.
nopinsight 16y ago
There is pretty much no way to measure that objectively in practice. For example, our time spent on reading computer science books, learning more math, talking with other good programmers all affect our programming productivity. Moreover, learning to write clearly in English (or one's native language) also impacts how well one can code and comment. But much of those 'practices' has accumulated over years or even decades, some since childhood, some from family influence without one's trying. The system you propose, if implemented, will soon degenerate to how well one can pretend to be disadvantaged or fake the effort, so that more rewards will be offered even when the work output stays the same. This is equivalent to giving bonus for the hours spent as face time in office while chatting on Facebook there.
hxa7241 16y ago
> from each according to their ability Good to see a bit of Marxism/Communism on HN occasionally! -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/From_each_according_to_his_ability,_to_each_according_to_his_need http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/From_each_according_to_his_abil...

by rue 16y ago

lionhearted 16y ago

> I will offer a pre-counterpoint: equality is not (should not be) about everyone being the same or at the same level, but more "from each according to their ability" — but at the same time considering the 100% effort from everyone to be (nearly) as valuable. Honestly, I'm not sure how to reply to that, because I don't think any single human in history has ever given anything near 100% effort or achieved 100% of their potential. Maybe a rare few individuals - da Vinci? Jefferson? Tokugawa? Socrates? But I'm not so sure of that, even. No matter how good you get, you can always make another incremental improvement. Couple that with the fact that the vast majority of major breakthroughs come from individuals or small teams, and I think anything that stifles excellence to potentially help get more out of everyone is misguided. Again, though, I realize that I hold the minority position on this idea.

rue 16y ago
Substitute 100% with a percentage you feel comfortable with. Whatever puny humans consider "full effort" without ever aspiring for more… I think it is probably correct to say that the tips of major breakthroughs come from small groups, but to claim entirety of the credit would be discounting all of the work, research, support and infrastructure currently and in the past. I do not think it is feasible to go to an "every man for himself"-system at this point — plus I'd like to see some historic examples of such successes if that is your gist. Notably fostering an overall empowering society is not the same as putting Joe Sixpack in the Manhattan project 'cause he's been trying so hard, bless his little cotton socks. You need not respond here, but I hope your article-in-potentia can sufficiently flesh out and support your idea instead of only trying to deconstruct the current (?) stifling environ.
joe_the_user 16y ago
I don't think any single human in history has ever given anything near 100% effort or achieved 100% of their potential. However ridiculous I might find much of what you say, I love your optimism here. Now, wouldn't it be desirable for more people to have more of an opportunity to achieve their potential? Also, I've experienced "taking by force" only a couple times in my life and I don't think the tax system resembles this.

anamax 16y ago

> but at the same time considering the 100% effort from everyone to be (nearly) as valuable Why should we do something so wrong? Consider Derek Jeter and me. No matter how much effort I put in as a baseball player, I'm not going to approach him on his worst day. And that's true even if I was 10 years younger than he is. Some people are better than others at some things. Their effort is more productive. Ignoring that is dumb. And then there's the problem that not all things are equally valuable, so even if two things take an equal amount of effort, that doesn't tell us that they're equally valuable.

rue 16y ago
I do not consider professional athletes to bring anywhere near the "value" currently ascribed to them (lots of sports fans prefer college/amateur sports anyway) but that is sort of beside the point: I never said to ignore people's relative strengths and weaknesses. Derek Jeter probably can't do [whatever it is you do] as well as you can — nor should he try if he's found his niche. You both are probably both examples of highly skilled workers, and there are also jobs which require less skill that nevertheless must be done. We could further argue that absolutely everybody has something in which they would be considered high-skilled if they realised it and developed their skills but even that is not really necessary for the thrust of my pre-counterargument which is that from the perspective of the entire society, all necessary work is roughly equally valuable regardless of whether it can be done by 1 or 999 people out of 1000 (or million). The second part of that pre-counterargument is the motivation for excellence. Personally I do not think that wealth[1] is really a factor for geniuses, most of whom seem to do stuff out of sheer joy of doing it. I'm willing to entertain a pre-counter-counterargument, but some historical analysis would be welcome. [1] Beyond a reasonable level of comfort and in a society which does not require you to hoard loot to ensure survival of progeny, and certainly not at the levels where you could not even conceivably spend it all.
- anamax 16y ago
  > thrust of my pre-counterargument which is that from the perspective of the entire society, all necessary work is roughly equally valuable regardless of whether it can be done by 1 or 999 people out of 1000 (or million). Your assertion that all necessary work is roughly equally valuable is wrong. And then you compound the error by ignoring supply. (It's unclear whether you're ignoring demand as well.) > Personally I do not think that wealth[1] is really a factor for geniuses That's irrelevant because few people are geniuses, so it doesn't much matter what motivates them. I get it that you think that you're not motivated by money and think that other people shouldn't be, but the brain-power going into high-wealth fields suggests that money does have some motivating power.

nopinsight 16y ago

There is pretty much no way to measure that objectively in practice. For example, our time spent on reading computer science books, learning more math, talking with other good programmers all affect our programming productivity. Moreover, learning to write clearly in English (or one's native language) also impacts how well one can code and comment. But much of those 'practices' has accumulated over years or even decades, some since childhood, some from family influence without one's trying. The system you propose, if implemented, will soon degenerate to how well one can pretend to be disadvantaged or fake the effort, so that more rewards will be offered even when the work output stays the same. This is equivalent to giving bonus for the hours spent as face time in office while chatting on Facebook there.

hxa7241 16y ago

> from each according to their ability Good to see a bit of Marxism/Communism on HN occasionally! -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/From_each_according_to_his_ability,_to_each_according_to_his_need http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/From_each_according_to_his_abil...