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What about not and just make life better for everyone? > In a sane world, Hairer would long ago have been given a healthy grant or a generous basic income, as

What about not and just make life better for everyone? > In a sane world, Hairer would long ago have been given a healthy grant or a generous basic income, as well as a majestic set of lodgings wherever he so desired. Is this comedy?

xwdv 4y ago
The world has limited resources, be realistic. Prioritization makes sense.
- birdyrooster 4y ago
  The resources are limited because of undemocratic uses, largely thanks to wealth inequality (aka prioritization).
- RC_ITR 4y ago
  Sure. And heuristically, society doesn’t prioritize geniuses. So I guess we are just all realistically sad, huh?
  - quickthrower2 4y ago
    And, the point of writing is to spread ideas and change people's minds. Lobbying for the future state of what people think, effectively. There is also a difference between something being absurd and something we are just not used to yet.
  - sinenomine 4y ago
    Why doesn't society prioritize geniuses though? And does society really have a say in this decision process? Because it is pretty obvious that the ones deciding society-wide investment priorities are, for a lack of better word, the elites. As fellow HNer noticed in today's thread https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32120063 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32120063 elites are very much used to having precise control over their environment, and known&unknown unknowns irritate them. From this POV natural geniuses are just such an instance of a hard to control variable, and so it's obvious that prioritization of geniuses would pose a problem to the elites. Who knows when a popular genius will decide to amass the political power and change the power balance? It seems that the current packaging of the brightest into the ivory tower of the academia is a compromise, where one side gets a certain amount of income and freedom, in return for giving away broader ambition. And at least to me, this is disappointing.
    - xwdv 4y ago
      We live in an anti-intellectual society. I doubt geniuses will ever be given the proper resources they deserve to make powerful contributions in this world. Seems like beautiful people are the only real priority in this world. People will bend over backwards to just give you things if you are attractive, especially if you are female as well
- hourago 4y ago
  To prioritize people with mental health issues, disabilities, people excluded from society, etc. makes everybody better off. That seems the best investment. I'm sure that there are a lot of smart engineers here and they are doing fine. It's like giving free stylist to the most beautiful people, it seems a waste. It also seems a way of gatekeeping universal income.
  - f17 4y ago
    [dead]
- eyelidlessness 4y ago
  Prioritization does make sense. The overhead of selecting who benefits deprioritizes the beneficiaries and those who are selected out.
braingenious 4y ago
>Professor Martin Hairer evidencing the correlation between head size and IQ. It would be insane if this wasn’t parody.
- sinenomine 4y ago
  It's a joke, but the correlation is there, measured and replicated more than once.
  - paulpauper 4y ago
    research in the US stopped because it was deemed politically incorrect but there is some correlation.
    - lern_too_spel 4y ago
      Research in the US is slow because there is no money to be made from knowing how much head size affects intelligence and because we know that education, which can be monetized, has far greater effect anyway. Your political correctness bogeyman is not the source of the world's ills.
      - sinenomine 4y ago
        > because we know that education, which can be monetized, has far greater effect anyway Does it, though? No matter how hard scientists try (and do they try...), they cannot prove that education causally drives increase in fluid intelligence (g). At best it's crystallized intelligence, which is not the same. The research paints a different reality: education is about sorting, networking and acquiring crystallized knowledge. If one really seeks to find a way to raise g, one has to search elsewhere.
        lern_too_spel 4y ago
        The rapid increase of Korean IQs demonstrates this very clearly. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/235327743_The_Flynn_effect_in_Korea_Large_gains https://www.researchgate.net/publication/235327743_The_Flynn...
sinenomine 4y ago
This could work, realistically, as a scheme to incentivize the geniuses to work on problems that matter. One incentive presented here is providing them with basic income to achieve their full potential. This question is very deep and has wide implications. One thing is sure: without harnessing the natural talent of the human genius qualitative progress is impossible.
- ksec 4y ago
  I think parent is arguing that everyone should be better off and everyone should get equal treatment. And may even be implying resources should be distributed equally.... To put it in mildly simple term, you are likely not in the same political spectrum as parent.
  - braingenious 4y ago
    They’re both suggesting that the government use public money to subsidize people’s daily lives. The main difference is one person is advocating for the government to administer intelligence tests and collect data around that. What’s the big political difference?
    - ksec 4y ago
      One is suggesting everyone should be treated equally, and not specially "genius", what ever that definition might be. The other is suggesting there are people with higher potential where this may be worth the effort.
      - braingenious 4y ago
        OK. I still don’t get how “Give everybody free money” and “Give a subset of ‘worthy’ people as determined by a government agency free money” are that different. They’re both kind of bog standard socialist/communist ideas, just one has the self-dealing and nepotistic downsides to these ideologies explicitly baked into it by design. Edit: It’s kind of like arguing “feeding everybody is communism! Feeding everybody that is approved as officially My Buddies is Good Capitalism!” We’re discussing two different scenarios in which the government collects taxes and distributes that money to people without them being employed in any way.
civilized 4y ago
> What about not and just make life better for everyone? Well, that would cost thousands to millions of times more. I know that's a gauche point to make in contemporary America, where we don't have any concept of the difference between a program costing a million dollars and a quadrillion dollars, but I think it might be relevant here?
paulpauper 4y ago
Poe's Law strikes again

xwdv 4y ago

The world has limited resources, be realistic. Prioritization makes sense.

birdyrooster 4y ago
The resources are limited because of undemocratic uses, largely thanks to wealth inequality (aka prioritization).
RC_ITR 4y ago
Sure. And heuristically, society doesn’t prioritize geniuses. So I guess we are just all realistically sad, huh?
- quickthrower2 4y ago
  And, the point of writing is to spread ideas and change people's minds. Lobbying for the future state of what people think, effectively. There is also a difference between something being absurd and something we are just not used to yet.
- sinenomine 4y ago
  Why doesn't society prioritize geniuses though? And does society really have a say in this decision process? Because it is pretty obvious that the ones deciding society-wide investment priorities are, for a lack of better word, the elites. As fellow HNer noticed in today's thread https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32120063 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32120063 elites are very much used to having precise control over their environment, and known&unknown unknowns irritate them. From this POV natural geniuses are just such an instance of a hard to control variable, and so it's obvious that prioritization of geniuses would pose a problem to the elites. Who knows when a popular genius will decide to amass the political power and change the power balance? It seems that the current packaging of the brightest into the ivory tower of the academia is a compromise, where one side gets a certain amount of income and freedom, in return for giving away broader ambition. And at least to me, this is disappointing.
  - xwdv 4y ago
    We live in an anti-intellectual society. I doubt geniuses will ever be given the proper resources they deserve to make powerful contributions in this world. Seems like beautiful people are the only real priority in this world. People will bend over backwards to just give you things if you are attractive, especially if you are female as well
hourago 4y ago
To prioritize people with mental health issues, disabilities, people excluded from society, etc. makes everybody better off. That seems the best investment. I'm sure that there are a lot of smart engineers here and they are doing fine. It's like giving free stylist to the most beautiful people, it seems a waste. It also seems a way of gatekeeping universal income.
- f17 4y ago
  [dead]
eyelidlessness 4y ago
Prioritization does make sense. The overhead of selecting who benefits deprioritizes the beneficiaries and those who are selected out.

braingenious 4y ago

>Professor Martin Hairer evidencing the correlation between head size and IQ. It would be insane if this wasn’t parody.

sinenomine 4y ago
It's a joke, but the correlation is there, measured and replicated more than once.
- paulpauper 4y ago
  research in the US stopped because it was deemed politically incorrect but there is some correlation.
  - lern_too_spel 4y ago
    Research in the US is slow because there is no money to be made from knowing how much head size affects intelligence and because we know that education, which can be monetized, has far greater effect anyway. Your political correctness bogeyman is not the source of the world's ills.
    - sinenomine 4y ago
      > because we know that education, which can be monetized, has far greater effect anyway Does it, though? No matter how hard scientists try (and do they try...), they cannot prove that education causally drives increase in fluid intelligence (g). At best it's crystallized intelligence, which is not the same. The research paints a different reality: education is about sorting, networking and acquiring crystallized knowledge. If one really seeks to find a way to raise g, one has to search elsewhere.
      - lern_too_spel 4y ago
        The rapid increase of Korean IQs demonstrates this very clearly. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/235327743_The_Flynn_effect_in_Korea_Large_gains https://www.researchgate.net/publication/235327743_The_Flynn...

sinenomine 4y ago

This could work, realistically, as a scheme to incentivize the geniuses to work on problems that matter. One incentive presented here is providing them with basic income to achieve their full potential. This question is very deep and has wide implications. One thing is sure: without harnessing the natural talent of the human genius qualitative progress is impossible.

ksec 4y ago
I think parent is arguing that everyone should be better off and everyone should get equal treatment. And may even be implying resources should be distributed equally.... To put it in mildly simple term, you are likely not in the same political spectrum as parent.
- braingenious 4y ago
  They’re both suggesting that the government use public money to subsidize people’s daily lives. The main difference is one person is advocating for the government to administer intelligence tests and collect data around that. What’s the big political difference?
  - ksec 4y ago
    One is suggesting everyone should be treated equally, and not specially "genius", what ever that definition might be. The other is suggesting there are people with higher potential where this may be worth the effort.
    - braingenious 4y ago
      OK. I still don’t get how “Give everybody free money” and “Give a subset of ‘worthy’ people as determined by a government agency free money” are that different. They’re both kind of bog standard socialist/communist ideas, just one has the self-dealing and nepotistic downsides to these ideologies explicitly baked into it by design. Edit: It’s kind of like arguing “feeding everybody is communism! Feeding everybody that is approved as officially My Buddies is Good Capitalism!” We’re discussing two different scenarios in which the government collects taxes and distributes that money to people without them being employed in any way.

civilized 4y ago

> What about not and just make life better for everyone? Well, that would cost thousands to millions of times more. I know that's a gauche point to make in contemporary America, where we don't have any concept of the difference between a program costing a million dollars and a quadrillion dollars, but I think it might be relevant here?

paulpauper 4y ago

Poe's Law strikes again