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Why professors, pundits, and policy wonks misunderstand the world

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Re: Why professors, pundits, and policy wonks misunderstand the world

#81

Post by hahooooo »

yarrel wrote: post #7
rubidium wrote: post #3

Glad to see someone acknowledging the myopic view of most intellectuals. During my time in academia (PhD), I'll admit now I had very little idea of what life was like for the majority of people. Since then I've been living among many working class and poverty-level folks. Average household income in my neighborhood is <$22K (U.S.). As a result, my thinking has changed to unions are overall good ideas, UBI is foolish,…

Why do you regard UBI as foolish given that real-world context? I'm interested as opinions for and against it do tend to be from 30,000 feet.

The danger I see with UBI, is (in addition to possible inflation, etc.) is that commentators on HN tend to be of higher education, curious, and simply "hackers". Most people here would love to be payed money so they could sit and program some cool OSS, start a new company or simply change the world.

For them, UBI is fantastic. How many more Googles/GNUs/Apples would there be if engineers could quit existing companies and form, all while guaranteed basic sustenance.

The problem is that there are a lot of people who don't care for that. You pay them money, they'll sit playing Video games, sports, or simply bum around.

And then you start having issues convincing people to go for higher education (even assuming its free).

Wait, what about lower education?

Go to school, get good grades, or else you'll ... get a livable wage anyways?

Why should I write essays when I can play video games instead?

Then, until everything is automatable, you still need to get people to work under the hot sun, picking potatoes.

If you have a livable wage without it, why would you go? And how much will the farmer need to pay workers to go?

Re: Why professors, pundits, and policy wonks misunderstand the world

#82

Post by gsmethells »

Even though I have a Master's of Science in Computer Science, I also spent a few years of my youth (more than they suggest in this article) working as a groundskeeping for several apartment buildings across town. Mowing, weeding, edging, planting, etc.

On the flip side, my father had a PhD in Physics and taught at the local university. I believe I probably did better than most when it came to genes and funding, but I graduated high school with people who got up and milked the cows before coming into school and I know their lifestyle as well as my own.

I think this article itself is out-of-touch.

Re: Why professors, pundits, and policy wonks misunderstand the world

#83

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

Florin_Andrei wrote: post #54
throw_away_777 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you think they have different ranges of first-hand experiences? It is undeniable that by any objective measure professors are smarter (in the sense of being better able to tackle intellectual problems) than the average population. Do you honestly think someone working at Burger King has a better understanding of the world than a professor? I urge you to actually have a conversation with such a person.

> Do you honestly think someone working at Burger King has a better understanding of the world than a professor? They definitely have a better understanding of that slice of the world that they experience while the professor doesn't. The whole point of the article is aptly summed up by the "let them eat cake" anecdote, by the way.

And the professor has a better understanding of that slice of the world the professor lives in.

This is a facile argument, because the implication is that the outlook - which includes the interests - of ordinary people is morally more significant than the outlook of a minority of clever people.

It's effectively saying that intellectuals are worthless because sometimes they're wrong and/or out of touch.

In reality, if you round up all the intellectuals and kill them - something last tried by Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot - you don't generally get an improvement in the quality of life of ordinary people.

Is that extreme? Then how about simply ignoring all experts and professionals? Many experts and professionals are clever, and some surely count as intellectual.

Will ignoring them make life better for everyone else?

The author seems to be implying so. Personally, I'm not convinced - precisely because this kind of anti-intellectualism is a reliable cheap shot used by demagogues and authoritarians to direct attention away from other groups that are more likely to be causing deep problems.

Re: Why professors, pundits, and policy wonks misunderstand the world

#84

Post by throwanem »

sillyarg wrote: post #79
jerf wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those were two cherry-picked examples of things intelligentsia got right. It was not a claim that they get everything or almost everything right. I generally share the author's opinions about intellectuals as a category, and the gold standard was, in my opinion, a particularly good choice of an example that intellectuals get right where the common man is often quite wrong. The same concrete connection to the real wor…

It's impossible to take you seriously when you use Stalin's Five Year Plans as evidence that "Intellectuals" are negative. That's a flawed argument on so many levels: 1) It's ridiculous to conflate modern science and Stalin. It's worse than ridiculous. 2) Even if you can somehow convince yourself that it's reasonable to treat Stalin and modern scientists as a homogenous pool, Stalin's actions worked out quite well fo…

Take a breath.

Re: Why professors, pundits, and policy wonks misunderstand the world

#85

Post by dragonwriter »

hahooooo wrote: post #81
yarrel wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you regard UBI as foolish given that real-world context? I'm interested as opinions for and against it do tend to be from 30,000 feet.

The danger I see with UBI, is (in addition to possible inflation, etc.) is that commentators on HN tend to be of higher education, curious, and simply "hackers". Most people here would love to be payed money so they could sit and program some cool OSS, start a new company or simply change the world. For them, UBI is fantastic. How many more Googles/GNUs/Apples would there be if engineers could quit existing companies…

The problem you point to is self-limiting. Regardless of the nominal level of UBI, it won't provide a satisfactory income unless a sufficient number of people remain working to provide the goods and services required to provide a satisfying style of life for the UBI-only recipients and sufficient additional value to workers for them to continue working. Prices will adjust to make this the case.

As the quality of life provided on UBI-only declines, the incentive for additional productive work will increase.

(of course, lots of people now continue to expend additional effort beyond what is necessary for a minimally livable existence, so I don't see this as likely to be a great problem.)

Re: Why professors, pundits, and policy wonks misunderstand the world

#86

Post by return0 »

Just because we have Brexit, Trump and the rise of populists everywhere doesnt mean that pundits have suddenly strayed. Pundits have since the time of Socrates been out of touch with society. What i see as the failure of today's pundits is lack of rigor, perseverance and their tendency to lazily put their eggs in questionable baskets (e.g. universal income). O tempora, o mores, this is the world of 140-character-worshippers and high h-indexes.

Re: Why professors, pundits, and policy wonks misunderstand the world

#87

Post by Florin_Andrei »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #83
Florin_Andrei wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Do you honestly think someone working at Burger King has a better understanding of the world than a professor? They definitely have a better understanding of that slice of the world that they experience while the professor doesn't. The whole point of the article is aptly summed up by the "let them eat cake" anecdote, by the way.

And the professor has a better understanding of that slice of the world the professor lives in. This is a facile argument, because the implication is that the outlook - which includes the interests - of ordinary people is morally more significant than the outlook of a minority of clever people. It's effectively saying that intellectuals are worthless because sometimes they're wrong and/or out of touch. In reality, if…

> It's effectively saying that intellectuals are worthless because sometimes they're wrong and/or out of touch.

Oh, hell no. I've seen that side of the story, too, and it's completely wrong. We agree on that.

> In reality, if you round up all the intellectuals and kill them - something last tried by Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot - you don't generally get an improvement in the quality of life of ordinary people.

I lived under communist dictatorship for 20 years, and I have first hand experience with the results of those policies. Had to work my way through those mentalities, at times. To say you're not telling me anything new would be an understatement.

I've also participated to the 1989 anti-communist revolutions, and I've seen anti-intellectualism rearing its ugly head again - thankfully without dire consequences.

So the extremes are bad, as they always are.

But I don't think the article implies that intellectuals are worthless. The way I read it, perhaps biased by my own life track, is that intelligence and scholarly education are greatly enhanced by a broad range of experience. No matter how smart or polished you are, you'll judge the simple folk in a different way if you walk in their shoes for a while.

Re: Why professors, pundits, and policy wonks misunderstand the world

#88

Post by dragonwriter »

justinpombrio wrote: post #80
dragonwriter wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Working class wants to work. One of the principal selling points for UBI as a replacement for existing means tested social benefit programs is that it eliminates the perverse incentives created by means tested programs in which benefits are reduced by outside income (especially from work), at a rate that, in aggregate across the programs a person may be eligible for, may even exceed the after-tax income from work.…

Translation: Currently, many social benefit programs give people less money the more they work. If a person is eligible for enough of these programs, they can even make less money by working than they would by not working. UBI (universal basic income) doesn't have this problem because it pays people the same amount regardless of weather they work. Thus, it is arguably more in line with "working class wants to work" t…

That's not a precisely accurate translation, as there are plenty of social benefit programs that are not means tested beyond perhaps treating some of the benefit as normal income (e.g., Social Security), and my post was not making the "most social benefit programs" claim, only comparing UBI to those programs which are means tested (and which therefore are obvious candidates to replace with a UBI, given the usual arguments for UBI.)

Re: Why professors, pundits, and policy wonks misunderstand the world

#89

Post by sillyarg »

throwanem wrote: post #84
sillyarg wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's impossible to take you seriously when you use Stalin's Five Year Plans as evidence that "Intellectuals" are negative. That's a flawed argument on so many levels: 1) It's ridiculous to conflate modern science and Stalin. It's worse than ridiculous. 2) Even if you can somehow convince yourself that it's reasonable to treat Stalin and modern scientists as a homogenous pool, Stalin's actions worked out quite well fo…

Take a breath.

It just sucks that the HN mods think it's fine for dishonest ideological warriors like Jerf to casually conflate modern academia and Stalin, just because he did so without using profanity.

It's such an intense and personal attack; and it's so wildly dishonest... It completely eliminates all possibility of a useful conversation in a single sentence. It's poo.

Re: Why professors, pundits, and policy wonks misunderstand the world

#90

Post by carapace »

hahooooo wrote: post #81
yarrel wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you regard UBI as foolish given that real-world context? I'm interested as opinions for and against it do tend to be from 30,000 feet.

The danger I see with UBI, is (in addition to possible inflation, etc.) is that commentators on HN tend to be of higher education, curious, and simply "hackers". Most people here would love to be payed money so they could sit and program some cool OSS, start a new company or simply change the world. For them, UBI is fantastic. How many more Googles/GNUs/Apples would there be if engineers could quit existing companies…

A thought experiment: Assume a near-future world where automation can provide a decent standard of living for everyone. Further assume there is a part of the population that just slacks off. Would you be in favor of some sort of punishment to make those folks conform to your standard of not wasting their lives?
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