21–30 of 76 posts
How does this jive with the Silicon Valley trope that ideas aren't worth very much in and of themselves, but the people and teams who can execute on them are?
Equality of opportunity is a terrible concept. Even if we somehow solve it, it would just be shuffling people up and down the ladder of an unfair system. Instead, we should be dismantling the ladder. Real equality means equality of outcomes. Most people who talk about "equal opportunity" do so because they want to avoid talking about real equality and its implications.
>Equality of opportunity is a terrible concept. What? So you are in favor of other people (read: rich white people with parents that have money) having more opportunities than people that were born poor due to mere chance? >Real equality means equality of outcomes. I completely disagree. Real equality does NOT mean equality of outcomes. People have opportunities. People have choices. People make choices and these cho…
He explicitly wrote that no, he favors equality of outcomes.
Equality of opportunity is a terrible concept. Even if we somehow solve it, it would just be shuffling people up and down the ladder of an unfair system. Instead, we should be dismantling the ladder. Real equality means equality of outcomes. Most people who talk about "equal opportunity" do so because they want to avoid talking about real equality and its implications.
>Equality of opportunity is a terrible concept. What? So you are in favor of other people (read: rich white people with parents that have money) having more opportunities than people that were born poor due to mere chance? >Real equality means equality of outcomes. I completely disagree. Real equality does NOT mean equality of outcomes. People have opportunities. People have choices. People make choices and these cho…
In my opinion, according to family history, background etc (roughly boiling down to the income history in past 1-2-3 generations), kids won't be able to extract the same possibilities from the same conditions offered to each one: studies will be harder for some more than for others, simply because of the background, logistics etc, which will require not only working harder from someone who already does, but doing something they might not even know about: aiming higher, not compromising where others would be allowed to, having more confidence than an average kid their age, etc.
I don't really know how to solve this (I think this part incumbs to family, but is that equal opportunity still?). The best thing about the system you describe that they carefully detect and extract the "nuggets" we sometimes get here. But I should thinks all educational systems nowadays do that more or less well.
I know the author uses patents as a proxy for innovation. But is it really a valid proxy?
Do we want to maximize innovation or do we want to maximize patent holdings?
Why not remove patents and construct a modern understandig of "innovation". Did Einstein even patent anything in his own name? What about his contemporaries: Bohr, Heisenberg, Schrodinger?
But, inequality is just a small piece.
First, you need real education reform - educating kids on how the system operates. The current education system is broken and harmful. It teaches 99% of kids to become cogs in a system. And, after many years, they grow up to believe that being a cog is all there is. Instead, they need to learn how the system works and how to pull its levers and press its buttons to make it work for them. But, who is going to fund that?
But, even that’s not enough. Smart kids also need access to capital (‘other people’s money’ as my very rich friends call it) and connections. Having those things makes a huge difference.
> I encourage you to take a moment to absorb the size of these gaps. Women, African-Americans, Latinos, Southerners, and low- and middle-income children are far less likely to grow up to become patent holders and inventors. I know the author uses patents as a proxy for innovation. But is it really a valid proxy? Do we want to maximize innovation or do we want to maximize patent holdings? Why not remove patents and co…
Equality of opportunity is a terrible concept. Even if we somehow solve it, it would just be shuffling people up and down the ladder of an unfair system. Instead, we should be dismantling the ladder. Real equality means equality of outcomes. Most people who talk about "equal opportunity" do so because they want to avoid talking about real equality and its implications.
What's interesting is that the great innovations of the early 20th century, weren't by a diverse group of people. Eastern European Jews (of which Einstein was a member) produced a disproportionate amount of those discoveries. This was despite the fact that they were among the most persecuted groups in history. Because of this, I don't think that US government policy is the major reason for the differences in the arti…
Equality of opportunity is a terrible concept. Even if we somehow solve it, it would just be shuffling people up and down the ladder of an unfair system. Instead, we should be dismantling the ladder. Real equality means equality of outcomes. Most people who talk about "equal opportunity" do so because they want to avoid talking about real equality and its implications.
How do you propose to measure whether two outcomes are equal? Not everyone wants the same things. How many soccer games are equivalent to a guitar?
"THE YEAR WAS 2081, and everybody was finally equal..."
[0] https://archive.org/stream/HarrisonBergeron/Harrison%20Berge...
For reference, innovation is taking existing ideas and implementing or combining them well, invention is creating wholly new works.
Invention is still mostly the domain of academia. Some of the big corporations can afford to fund research into true invention, but generally the risks don't make good business sense because the rate of return is so low.
Innovation happens frequently in startups, but patents are still a poor measure of it. Patents mainly measure whether someone can afford the lawyers to write the applications. In my experience in software, the patents themselves are only a loose approximation of any real technology. Perhaps in mechanical sciences they are more concrete.