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> I’m confused as to how this argues that precocious kids’ situation today is different from the past. Later I invite the counterfactual: "Imagine if Carnegie
by simonsarris 2y ago
> I’m confused as to how this argues that precocious kids’ situation today is different from the past.
Later I invite the counterfactual:
"Imagine if Carnegie and Da Vinci were instead compelled to stay in school for 10 more years. What would have happened?"
and,
"A 13-year-old Steve Jobs once called Bill Hewlett—whose number was simply listed in the phone book–and received a summer job at Hewlett Packard. This would be unsurprising in Carnegie’s time, was certainly surprising for 1968, and is culturally verboten today."
- chowells 2y ago> "Imagine if Carnegie and Da Vinci were instead compelled to stay in school for 10 more years. What would have happened?" Impossible to predict accurately, since so much of opportunity is luck. Maybe they would have made better connections in school. Maybe they would not have. Maybe they would have made the exact same connections. It's possible to make a statistical argument that since they got such ridiculously unlikely opportunities, any deviation from the path they took would have been bad for them. But then you're no longer arguing about the value of education, you're just making observations about a pair of lucky people. And that's not compelling at all, when you don't address the entire outcome distribution for people making the exact same choices.
- nobodyandproud 2y ago> This would be unsurprising in Carnegie’s time, was certainly surprising for 1968, and is culturally verboten today. A telephone was only accessible to businesses and the wealthy during Carnegie’s time, so no surprised there. A better analogy would be a postal letter.