5 ms·

You can't imagine interpreting the parent comment for its clear face value -- that supporting outlier high achievers helps everyone in society? The inventor o

by gowld 2y ago

You can't imagine interpreting the parent comment for its clear face value -- that supporting outlier high achievers helps everyone in society? The inventor of a vaccine or a microchip or a sculpture doesn't hoard the invention for themself. Meanwhile, societies like USSR and Communist China, that persecuted their geniuses, collapsed their previously great societies.

andrepd 2y ago
You are equating "persecuting genius" with "supporting those from low-opportunity backgrounds". Classic mistake, especially considering that those kids could become """geniuses""" too if they had a chance to even try. Giving a decent shot at those from disadvantaged households will ironically probably do more towards improving the number of high achievers than allocating too many resources to the children of the rich, which is what we're doing now.
- hackable_sand 2y ago
  In other words: Your team only moves as fast as its slowest member.
- dahfizz 2y ago
  How does removing gifted and talented programs support "those from low-opportunity backgrounds"? "persecuting genius" is literally what is happening.
  - andrepd 2y ago
    I'm not talking about this lol, of course removing gifted programs is a stupid idea. I'm talking about your position.
sangnoir 2y ago
> The inventor of a vaccine or a microchip or a sculpture doesn't hoard the invention for themself The built-in assumption is that those outlier high achievers & inventors were gifted students. Is there any evidence for this prior? As a devil's advocate, my counterpoint is that "grit" was more important than raw intelligence, if so, should society then prioritize grittiness over giftedness? A few months ago, there was a rebroadcast of an interview about the physician who developed roughly half the vaccines given to children in the US to this day. He seemed to be an unremarkable student, and persistence seems to have been the key quality that led to his successes, not a sequence of brilliant revelations.
- DiggyJohnson 2y ago
  Yes, there is a high correlation between intelligence (no matter how you measure it throughout childhood) and achievement in adulthood. A huge, massive difference. Obviously there are exceptions. Somebody seeming like a bad student is not one. Do you really need a citation for that?
  - sangnoir 2y ago
    My question was specifically about the outliers: has any research been done if outlying achievements go hand in hand with outlier IQs? Without any research or evidence, it's an area prone to a Just World fallacy where extraordinary achievements "ought" to be achieved by extraordinary talent. Rephrasing my doubts in perhaps an oversimplified manner: given the correlation you mentioned: is it reasonable to expect the top 100 wealthiest individuals (outliers) to also be 100 most intelligent people on earth?
    - chowchowchow 2y ago
      No, not to a person. There can be some stupendously dumb billionaires, especially since inheritance is a thing. I would however expect the average intelligence however-measured of the 100 richest "self-made" (lets just say who didn't themself inherit a generational amount of wealth) individuals in the US to be higher than a 100-person random sample of the population.
      - TexanFeller 2y ago
        Equating achievement to financial success is a big mistake, but a bigly American one. The great scientists, while often somewhat privileged, were rarely in the billionaire class or their time’s equivalent. The average brilliant scientist or mathematician nowadays is making a wage that doesn’t afford them any luxuries whatsoever.
    - philwelch 2y ago
      When you’re talking about outliers, it’s not an even-or situation. It’s not that being diligent is more valuable than being smart. Lots of people are smart, but the ones who are exceptionally smart and exceptionally diligent—outliers on two dimensions—are usually the most successful. It’s also worth pointing out that people who e.g. study algebra in eighth grade and calculus in high school aren’t actually outliers; they’re maybe the top 1/3 or so of the class in terms of mathematics ability.
cogman10 2y ago
No, I cannot because that is fundamentally not what the parent comment said or the framing that they used. > Meanwhile, societies like USSR and Communist China, that persecuted their geniuses, collapsed their previously great societies. I'm sorry, but that is not how either the USSR or China have operated. If anything, they hyper applied the notion cultivating geniuses. Education in both China and formerly the USSR is hyper competitive with multiple levels of weeding out the less desirables to try and cultivate the genius class. The problem with both is that your level of academic achievement dictated what jobs you were suited for with little wiggle room. Now, that isn't to say, particularly under Mao, that there wasn't a purging of intellectuals. It is to say that later forms of the USSR and China have the education systems that prioritize funding genius.
- aliasxneo 2y ago
  It seems like you're choosing to selectively interpret things to fit your own argument. > Meanwhile, societies like USSR and Communist China, that persecuted their geniuses, collapsed their previously great societies. They did indeed kill off most of their intelligentsia in the last century. This is clearly what the OP is referencing and is a historical fact. I'm not sure why you decided to take it in a different direction.
  - cogman10 2y ago
    Because for neither China nor the USSR was that the main contributor to their national problems. Further, the education system of both are definitely implementations of "let's spend the most money on the smartest people". In a discussion about the collapse of societies, it doesn't apply. In a discussion about education reform, it does not apply. It is also not an example of the original commentors statement that conquerors have used social spending to collapse their targets. I would further point out in both the case of the USSR and China's purge of the intelligentsia; it was FAR more about consolidating power in a dictator and far less about trying to set good national policy. In Mao's case in particular, he was frankly just a bit insane.
    - 2y ago
r00fus 2y ago
> Meanwhile, societies like USSR and Communist China, that persecuted their geniuses, collapsed their previously great societies. China is doing fine. In fact they're probably going to eclipse the US soon in terms of scientific output. USSR fell for the trap of trusting the West and consequently they suffered a lot in the 90s.
- teractiveodular 2y ago
  Mao's policies including the persecution of intellectuals during the Cultural Revolution killed millions and set China back by decades.
  - r00fus 2y ago
    Yes, that happened. It's also undeniable that since then, they've massively improved the lifestyle of 1.4B people. I'm not sure if they get to where they are today - without going through the Maoist stage.
    - HDThoreaun 2y ago
      > they've massively improved the lifestyle of 1.4B people. Because they gave up on the command economy idea and embraced markets and education. When they persecuted the geniuses everything went to shit and when they stopped things quickly improved. Really makes you think.
iwontberude 2y ago
These inventions are inevitable and don’t take talented and gifted people to do. It takes people undistracted by poverty and suffering.
- WgaqPdNr7PGLGVW 2y ago
  Completely incorrect. We have made incredible improvements in alleviating poverty and suffering over the past 50 years and yet innovation across almost all fields has slowed to a crawl.
  - omegaworks 2y ago
    >We have made incredible improvements in alleviating poverty and suffering over the past 50 years We have also made incredible strides at capturing the productivity and free time that would have fed innovation and effectively transferred it to the financial services industry. Since schools in the US were desegregated for people of color and women, America embraced a radically neoliberal approach to education. Rather than funding higher education for every citizen who wanted to pursue it now that everyone could, those in power chose to systematically and cynically de-fund higher education and replace it with a degree-for-debt model. State universities that used to provide low/free tuition to white men, now offer their services to all, for an ever-increasing price. This has created a society where smart people get on the edu-debt treadmill in search of a better life, only to then be beholden to existing, stagnant profit-maximizing entities to try to pay that debt off for the rest of their lives. This is how innovation has stalled: a top-down systematic defunding that has ensured both gifted and special-needs kids have to fight over scraps.
    - WgaqPdNr7PGLGVW 2y ago
      That is not true either. There is very little innovation happening in European countries where college is low/no-cost. They have less innovation than the US does despite our terrible college debt. It takes a certain kind of person to innovate and they make up a small % of the overall population. Measures aimed at helping the general population are very unlikely to help them.
lykahb 2y ago
Even at the most blood-thirsty periods USSR had programs for gifted youth, math clubs at school, and even dedicated highly selective schools. They also had cheap entertaining pop-sci books. The schools would fail the students who don't pass the tests. However, the scientists and engineers had a rather low salary, often lower than blue-collar workers'. The equality of outcome can take many forms.
revert_to_test 2y ago
Calling pre-revolution Russian society "great" sounds like a bit of a stretch, mostly due to quality (and freedom) of life for biggest group of it - farmers.
wat10000 2y ago
Russia was a backward, underdeveloped nation that couldn’t even beat Germany’s B team, and then collapsed into civil war. 25 years later, the USSR beat Germany’s A team and effectively conquered half of Europe, holding it for nearly half a century. China before the Communists got pillaged by a succession of outside powers, culminating in basically a failed state that barely had a national government. China after the Communists became prosperous and strong, with the world’s second largest economy and no prospect of being invaded. I’m no fan of Communism and I think a better system of government could have taken these countries farther, but “collapsed their previously great societies” makes no sense.

by gowld 2y ago

andrepd 2y ago

You are equating "persecuting genius" with "supporting those from low-opportunity backgrounds". Classic mistake, especially considering that those kids could become """geniuses""" too if they had a chance to even try. Giving a decent shot at those from disadvantaged households will ironically probably do more towards improving the number of high achievers than allocating too many resources to the children of the rich, which is what we're doing now.

hackable_sand 2y ago
In other words: Your team only moves as fast as its slowest member.
dahfizz 2y ago
How does removing gifted and talented programs support "those from low-opportunity backgrounds"? "persecuting genius" is literally what is happening.
- andrepd 2y ago
  I'm not talking about this lol, of course removing gifted programs is a stupid idea. I'm talking about your position.

sangnoir 2y ago

> The inventor of a vaccine or a microchip or a sculpture doesn't hoard the invention for themself The built-in assumption is that those outlier high achievers & inventors were gifted students. Is there any evidence for this prior? As a devil's advocate, my counterpoint is that "grit" was more important than raw intelligence, if so, should society then prioritize grittiness over giftedness? A few months ago, there was a rebroadcast of an interview about the physician who developed roughly half the vaccines given to children in the US to this day. He seemed to be an unremarkable student, and persistence seems to have been the key quality that led to his successes, not a sequence of brilliant revelations.

DiggyJohnson 2y ago
Yes, there is a high correlation between intelligence (no matter how you measure it throughout childhood) and achievement in adulthood. A huge, massive difference. Obviously there are exceptions. Somebody seeming like a bad student is not one. Do you really need a citation for that?
- sangnoir 2y ago
  My question was specifically about the outliers: has any research been done if outlying achievements go hand in hand with outlier IQs? Without any research or evidence, it's an area prone to a Just World fallacy where extraordinary achievements "ought" to be achieved by extraordinary talent. Rephrasing my doubts in perhaps an oversimplified manner: given the correlation you mentioned: is it reasonable to expect the top 100 wealthiest individuals (outliers) to also be 100 most intelligent people on earth?
  - chowchowchow 2y ago
    No, not to a person. There can be some stupendously dumb billionaires, especially since inheritance is a thing. I would however expect the average intelligence however-measured of the 100 richest "self-made" (lets just say who didn't themself inherit a generational amount of wealth) individuals in the US to be higher than a 100-person random sample of the population.
    - TexanFeller 2y ago
      Equating achievement to financial success is a big mistake, but a bigly American one. The great scientists, while often somewhat privileged, were rarely in the billionaire class or their time’s equivalent. The average brilliant scientist or mathematician nowadays is making a wage that doesn’t afford them any luxuries whatsoever.
  - philwelch 2y ago
    When you’re talking about outliers, it’s not an even-or situation. It’s not that being diligent is more valuable than being smart. Lots of people are smart, but the ones who are exceptionally smart and exceptionally diligent—outliers on two dimensions—are usually the most successful. It’s also worth pointing out that people who e.g. study algebra in eighth grade and calculus in high school aren’t actually outliers; they’re maybe the top 1/3 or so of the class in terms of mathematics ability.

cogman10 2y ago

No, I cannot because that is fundamentally not what the parent comment said or the framing that they used. > Meanwhile, societies like USSR and Communist China, that persecuted their geniuses, collapsed their previously great societies. I'm sorry, but that is not how either the USSR or China have operated. If anything, they hyper applied the notion cultivating geniuses. Education in both China and formerly the USSR is hyper competitive with multiple levels of weeding out the less desirables to try and cultivate the genius class. The problem with both is that your level of academic achievement dictated what jobs you were suited for with little wiggle room. Now, that isn't to say, particularly under Mao, that there wasn't a purging of intellectuals. It is to say that later forms of the USSR and China have the education systems that prioritize funding genius.

aliasxneo 2y ago
It seems like you're choosing to selectively interpret things to fit your own argument. > Meanwhile, societies like USSR and Communist China, that persecuted their geniuses, collapsed their previously great societies. They did indeed kill off most of their intelligentsia in the last century. This is clearly what the OP is referencing and is a historical fact. I'm not sure why you decided to take it in a different direction.
- cogman10 2y ago
  Because for neither China nor the USSR was that the main contributor to their national problems. Further, the education system of both are definitely implementations of "let's spend the most money on the smartest people". In a discussion about the collapse of societies, it doesn't apply. In a discussion about education reform, it does not apply. It is also not an example of the original commentors statement that conquerors have used social spending to collapse their targets. I would further point out in both the case of the USSR and China's purge of the intelligentsia; it was FAR more about consolidating power in a dictator and far less about trying to set good national policy. In Mao's case in particular, he was frankly just a bit insane.
  - 2y ago

r00fus 2y ago

> Meanwhile, societies like USSR and Communist China, that persecuted their geniuses, collapsed their previously great societies. China is doing fine. In fact they're probably going to eclipse the US soon in terms of scientific output. USSR fell for the trap of trusting the West and consequently they suffered a lot in the 90s.

teractiveodular 2y ago
Mao's policies including the persecution of intellectuals during the Cultural Revolution killed millions and set China back by decades.
- r00fus 2y ago
  Yes, that happened. It's also undeniable that since then, they've massively improved the lifestyle of 1.4B people. I'm not sure if they get to where they are today - without going through the Maoist stage.
  - HDThoreaun 2y ago
    > they've massively improved the lifestyle of 1.4B people. Because they gave up on the command economy idea and embraced markets and education. When they persecuted the geniuses everything went to shit and when they stopped things quickly improved. Really makes you think.

iwontberude 2y ago

These inventions are inevitable and don’t take talented and gifted people to do. It takes people undistracted by poverty and suffering.

WgaqPdNr7PGLGVW 2y ago
Completely incorrect. We have made incredible improvements in alleviating poverty and suffering over the past 50 years and yet innovation across almost all fields has slowed to a crawl.
- omegaworks 2y ago
  >We have made incredible improvements in alleviating poverty and suffering over the past 50 years We have also made incredible strides at capturing the productivity and free time that would have fed innovation and effectively transferred it to the financial services industry. Since schools in the US were desegregated for people of color and women, America embraced a radically neoliberal approach to education. Rather than funding higher education for every citizen who wanted to pursue it now that everyone could, those in power chose to systematically and cynically de-fund higher education and replace it with a degree-for-debt model. State universities that used to provide low/free tuition to white men, now offer their services to all, for an ever-increasing price. This has created a society where smart people get on the edu-debt treadmill in search of a better life, only to then be beholden to existing, stagnant profit-maximizing entities to try to pay that debt off for the rest of their lives. This is how innovation has stalled: a top-down systematic defunding that has ensured both gifted and special-needs kids have to fight over scraps.
  - WgaqPdNr7PGLGVW 2y ago
    That is not true either. There is very little innovation happening in European countries where college is low/no-cost. They have less innovation than the US does despite our terrible college debt. It takes a certain kind of person to innovate and they make up a small % of the overall population. Measures aimed at helping the general population are very unlikely to help them.

lykahb 2y ago

Even at the most blood-thirsty periods USSR had programs for gifted youth, math clubs at school, and even dedicated highly selective schools. They also had cheap entertaining pop-sci books. The schools would fail the students who don't pass the tests. However, the scientists and engineers had a rather low salary, often lower than blue-collar workers'. The equality of outcome can take many forms.

revert_to_test 2y ago

Calling pre-revolution Russian society "great" sounds like a bit of a stretch, mostly due to quality (and freedom) of life for biggest group of it - farmers.

wat10000 2y ago

Russia was a backward, underdeveloped nation that couldn’t even beat Germany’s B team, and then collapsed into civil war. 25 years later, the USSR beat Germany’s A team and effectively conquered half of Europe, holding it for nearly half a century. China before the Communists got pillaged by a succession of outside powers, culminating in basically a failed state that barely had a national government. China after the Communists became prosperous and strong, with the world’s second largest economy and no prospect of being invaded. I’m no fan of Communism and I think a better system of government could have taken these countries farther, but “collapsed their previously great societies” makes no sense.