Talent is everywhere, opportunity is not • Hacker News Board

Re: Talent is everywhere, opportunity is not

#131

Post by aisengard » Sat, Sep 21, 2019, 2:32 PM UTC

threeisoneis wrote: post #74

Once again, an article related to utilitarian altruism that doesn't seem to draw a defensible conclusion from the arguments given. This particular type of article, and the works of the effective altruism movement more broadly, always creep up to the edge of demanding meaningful change but, in their conclusions, shrink away from it. They make the case that the world has a lot of issues, that a lot of people have bad l…

> The real solution is revolution. Take the table, take the world, break free from this failed system.

Ah yes, violent revolution, where the lower class gets killed en masse (a "noble sacrifice") and autocracy takes even greater hold as a result. The wheels of the revolution larpers are always greased with the blood of the downtrodden.

Re: Talent is everywhere, opportunity is not

#132

Post by __MatrixMan__ » Sat, Sep 21, 2019, 2:32 PM UTC

eaenki wrote: post #9

Imo Education is overvalued, Capital is under appreciated, And, Because Capital is trapped into networks, that Capital is squandered among an infinite array of companies employing the talent and producing products that don’t make you, or the planet, better, healthier, smarter or happier. (Apple’s SJ era, Google until 2014~ and Tesla fit the useful smarter happier paradigma, and not many other) My solution is: take a…

I don't think just giving the money to whoever has a prototype is a good idea. Some culturally relevant projects aren't the sort of thing you can make a prototype of, but I like where you're going. I'd amend it like so:

Once I've been a citizen long enough (i.e. paid enough taxes) I get to invoke my free year, which is a year where the government pays me enough to cover my bills and maybe a bit extra for projects and stuff.

During this year, I am encouraged to make some kind of contribution: maybe I start a business, maybe I do an art project, maybe I try to overthrow the government, it's up to me.

At the end of the year, I can provide a presentation about what society gained by funding my free year. If I do, it goes into an archive and part of the voting process means having citizens review these and decide whether I deserve another free year to persue similar endeavors. Maybe voted on free years are actually two years long so you can be more ambitious once proven viable.

So if society likes what you do when left to your own devices, they have the opportunity to keep funding it. If not, well you had your shot and nothing stops you from carrying on the old fashioned way.

As for yourself, you get to decide when to invoke your free year. Is the idea really ready? Do you have the skills? Should you put a bit more work into it on the weekends before you try to do it full time? These things ought to ensure sufficient seriousness from the participant. You can have a video game year on the government's dime, but unless people really want their tax money funding your gaming, your only going to get one.

Re: Talent is everywhere, opportunity is not

#133

Post by easytiger » Sat, Sep 21, 2019, 2:33 PM UTC

imtringued wrote: post #115

easytiger wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unbelievably childish idea which would be trivial to gamify. You only have to look at the industrialised corruption of public tenders for legitimate needs in Africa for a glimpse of human nature.

I agree. A lot of people would just secretly buy real estate or some other investment instead of actually doing the work.

Are you We CEO?

Re: Talent is everywhere, opportunity is not

#134

Post by dahart » Sat, Sep 21, 2019, 2:34 PM UTC

eaenki wrote: post #127

dahart wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps worth noting that the U.S. government already has a grant program with approximately this budget range. Pell grants give money to students who need money. Is it possible that Pell grants already provide more economic return than is possible with a far-fetched-idea plan for a small number of people? Pell grants do help enable education for millions, and as we see in the article & study, education is absolutely…

I find most universities to be borderline scams. The ones I deem not a scam, don't draw any benefit from that. I explained in another reply what I mean by far fetched products, which can be valued mathematically

> I find most universities to be borderline scams. The ones I deem not a scam, don't draw any benefit from that.

I don’t know what you mean. Have you attended most universities? The paper & article you are commenting on demonstrate that education level determines innovation, statistically speaking. That can be for a wide variety of reasons, but it would be good to understand what they are any why before tossing the whole system out the window and spending billions, wouldn’t it?

> I explained in another reply what I mean by far fetched products, which can be valued mathematically

If that were true and it worked reliably, then all great ideas would already be funded. Can you link to said comment? I don’t see it.

Re: Talent is everywhere, opportunity is not

#135

Post by eaenki » Sat, Sep 21, 2019, 2:34 PM UTC

kortilla wrote: post #104

eaenki wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. Just like that. And Google and Boston Dynamics came out of it. That’s amazing. Now what if the budget could be $30B a year, $1-3MM instead of $100K (which might have been suitable in 1997, certainly not today) and take 2 months instead of a year (or whatever it takes)? :)

You don’t need $1m to see if an idea is feasible. Budget isn’t the issue for those programs, it’s getting enough applicants with ideas that are even reasonable in the first place.

Oh yes, you do, in the current envoirement. You compete for the same attention from retail consumers and enterprises. The price to reach said consumer gets ever higher + the usual monetary inflation. That's why every company is raising $1MM+ in seed nowdays while decent ones are raising $3MM+.

Also, most of the times far fetched things require a lot of time and money by it's own virtue because they're hardware and require long basic research. See for example as of recently: BOOM.

We're not talking about seeing if there's demand for a piece of software.

Re: Talent is everywhere, opportunity is not

#136

Post by journalctl » Sat, Sep 21, 2019, 2:34 PM UTC

Jonnax wrote: post #22

Guthur wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

[flagged]

The idea that the world isn’t the meritocracy one might believe it to be is very disconcerting to some people, especially the people who benefit from such privilege as wealth, or being the preferred race/sex in their particular culture. The idea that perhaps not everyone can just “pull themselves up by their bootstraps” is foreign to people like this.

Re: Talent is everywhere, opportunity is not

#137

Post by krapp » Sat, Sep 21, 2019, 2:35 PM UTC

threeisoneis wrote: post #74

Once again, an article related to utilitarian altruism that doesn't seem to draw a defensible conclusion from the arguments given. This particular type of article, and the works of the effective altruism movement more broadly, always creep up to the edge of demanding meaningful change but, in their conclusions, shrink away from it. They make the case that the world has a lot of issues, that a lot of people have bad l…

>But the real path to liberation isn't the gradual improvement of the bottom while the top gets fatter and richer and more powerful. The real solution is revolution. Take the table, take the world, break free from this failed system.

Have fun storming the castle!

Re: Talent is everywhere, opportunity is not

#138

Post by mdorazio » Sat, Sep 21, 2019, 2:35 PM UTC

furthermoore24 wrote: post #128

If you study rhetoric, this article is so full of shit :)

If you comment like this on HN, please provide examples or you're not contributing to the conversation.

Re: Talent is everywhere, opportunity is not

#139

Post by rayiner » Sat, Sep 21, 2019, 2:37 PM UTC

BoiledCabbage wrote: post #122

elliekelly wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A handful of far-fetched ideas have added more economic value to the world than every diploma combined. I’m not sure we could even assign a dollar value to crazy ideas like satellites or the internet because the positive externalities they’ve created are so far-reaching. Crazy ideas a lot harder to evaluate, and a lot riskier, but they’re definitely not less valuable.

> A handful of far-fetched ideas have added more economic value to the world than every diploma combined. If you really believe this, it is shocking to me. It is almost impossible to overstate how incredibly wrong this is. This is probably the single most false yet honestly put forward statement I've read on HN. The fact that anyone believes this shows both how much a slice of society lives in a complete echo-chamber…

That's a lot of rhetoric, but I don't know if your response is any more substantive. At least if we're talking about college degrees rather than high school diplomas, OP may be correct: https://www.quora.com/What-percentage-of-American-adults-had...

We sent a man to the moon in 1969. At the time, half of Americans didn't have a high school diploma, and just 10% had a college degree. In the 1940s and early 1950s, when we broke the sound barrier and invented nuclear power, maybe 7% of Americans had a college degree, and just a third had a high school diploma.

Do you think the same society that did those things couldn't have invented the Internet and Facebook? It's not clear to me that college diplomas are adding value. I think a society with universal K-10 education, plus a handful of people getting college degrees in areas that really require it (medicine, engineering) could build pretty much anything a society can build. They might build even more--they wouldn't be wasting a big chunk of their youth in school.

Re: Talent is everywhere, opportunity is not

#140

Post by dahart » Sat, Sep 21, 2019, 2:37 PM UTC

maehwasu wrote: post #126

dahart wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps worth noting that the U.S. government already has a grant program with approximately this budget range. Pell grants give money to students who need money. Is it possible that Pell grants already provide more economic return than is possible with a far-fetched-idea plan for a small number of people? Pell grants do help enable education for millions, and as we see in the article & study, education is absolutely…

Pell grants force the spending to be allocated to universities. Leaving aside how laughably wastefully the universities spend that money, disconnecting the borrower from the spender of funds is a massive anti-pattern. Awareness of and discretion over spending is an extraordinary effective forcing function.

Pell grants go directly to students, so what do you mean about the universities spending it wastefully?

Pell grants are for education, it makes at least some sense they go universities. I’m not sure if you’re implying they should go to 2 year or vocational schools? Private, for-profit non-university schools are a large problem in the U.S. in that they have much lower financial returns for the students who attend them, and much lower quality educations. There’s an entertaining piece by John Oliver about this, among other sources.