Can too many brainy people be a dangerous thing? • Hacker News Board

Re: Can too many brainy people be a dangerous thing?

#41

Post by paganel » Thu, Oct 29, 2020, 12:22 PM UTC

Quarrelsome wrote: post #28

lwneal wrote: post #20

In Peter Turchin's book War and Peace and War [1], the term "elite overproduction" does not refer to an overproduction of smart people, education, or college degrees. Instead, it refers to an overproduction of nobility , individuals who extract income but who do not perform useful work. For example, France during the population boom of the high middle ages overproduced knights and minor nobles from 1200-1300. The nob…

> this was a contributing factor to the famines and wars of 1350-1400. I feel like you need to mention the black death in this same sentence though, as the nobility population change would arguably be a lesser factor in thrall to that massive event. It does certainly paint an interesting aftermath as the black death suddenly made life a valuable commodity leading to a small period of time where worker's rights and ev…

I also personally think that France's demographic situation in the early 1300s was a perfect example of Malthus's law, there were too many people compared to what the land could provide at that time (given the available technology). Some areas in the Southern Alps (Alpes-Maritimes) were never to be inhabited again after that.

Re: Can too many brainy people be a dangerous thing?

#42

Post by learnstats2 » Thu, Oct 29, 2020, 12:22 PM UTC

dalbasal wrote: post #31

lwneal wrote: post #20

In Peter Turchin's book War and Peace and War [1], the term "elite overproduction" does not refer to an overproduction of smart people, education, or college degrees. Instead, it refers to an overproduction of nobility , individuals who extract income but who do not perform useful work. For example, France during the population boom of the high middle ages overproduced knights and minor nobles from 1200-1300. The nob…

Good context. Thanks for that. Finding modern cognates to medieval nobility is fraught. In the republican era, it basically means "finger the bad guys." There's a tendency to label whoever you have beef with. Investors, bankers, the wealthy, political elites, the upper class... Does Peace and War go into inter-nobility issues, or does the thesis rest on just the problem of a fixed size peasantry supporting a growing…

>There's a tendency to label whoever you have beef with. Investors, bankers, the wealthy, political elites, the upper class...

Are these supposed to be different groups of people?

Re: Can too many brainy people be a dangerous thing?

#43

Post by TheSpiceIsLife » Thu, Oct 29, 2020, 12:23 PM UTC

lwneal wrote: post #20

In Peter Turchin's book War and Peace and War [1], the term "elite overproduction" does not refer to an overproduction of smart people, education, or college degrees. Instead, it refers to an overproduction of nobility , individuals who extract income but who do not perform useful work. For example, France during the population boom of the high middle ages overproduced knights and minor nobles from 1200-1300. The nob…

> would be investors who do not work for wages.

So, everyone with retirement investments. I think they're known as 401(k) in the USA, here in Australia Super Annuation.

We've built a self-collapsing economy?

Re: Can too many brainy people be a dangerous thing?

#44

Post by rsynnott » Thu, Oct 29, 2020, 12:25 PM UTC

throwaway0a5e wrote: post #36

lwneal wrote: post #20

In Peter Turchin's book War and Peace and War [1], the term "elite overproduction" does not refer to an overproduction of smart people, education, or college degrees. Instead, it refers to an overproduction of nobility , individuals who extract income but who do not perform useful work. For example, France during the population boom of the high middle ages overproduced knights and minor nobles from 1200-1300. The nob…

>The most straightforward modern equivalent to Turchin's "elite" nobility would not be people with advanced degrees: it would be There's a lot of groups one could complain about. On HN it's a toss-up between whether you complain about the wall street bankers or the urban landlords. In other circles people complain about the government and the white collar yuppies. The MBA types get complained about a lot but nobody c…

I mean, the nobility were, by and large, people who derived income from capital (generally, and in many countries exclusively, land) but didn’t generally themselves do productive work (they sometimes had minor government or judiciary roles, but these were often very minor, at least as time went on). It’s a fairly obvious comparison (though it was worse; modern investment, except in land, does at least indirectly lead to productive work).

There are also more recent examples of overpopulation of non-productive landowners. Post-ww1 the UK peaked at demolishing more than one stately home per day, as the Downton Abbey class abruptly became non-viable.

Re: Can too many brainy people be a dangerous thing?

#45

Post by simonh » Thu, Oct 29, 2020, 12:27 PM UTC

lwneal wrote: post #20

In Peter Turchin's book War and Peace and War [1], the term "elite overproduction" does not refer to an overproduction of smart people, education, or college degrees. Instead, it refers to an overproduction of nobility , individuals who extract income but who do not perform useful work. For example, France during the population boom of the high middle ages overproduced knights and minor nobles from 1200-1300. The nob…

I don't think that's right, Turchin himself pointed out the "overproduction of young graduates with advanced degrees”. The problem is the inability of society to support an excess of people who expect to be in the elite.

If the US really is producing 25,000 more lawyers per year than it can employ, that's a real problem. Multiply that across many other disciplines and that could easily be hundreds of thousands of people with credentials they cannot use. We see this in the UK as well where there is a growing cadre of graduates every year going into jobs that don't need a degree. This leads to growing numbers of people that expected to be in the elite, but aren't.

The source of unrest is resentment among people that don't think they're getting their fair share, and have the organisational and communications skills to do something about it. Investors that don't work for wages don't strike me as a likely group to develop growing levels of resentment.

Re: Can too many brainy people be a dangerous thing?

#46

Post by rsynnott » Thu, Oct 29, 2020, 12:27 PM UTC

TheSpiceIsLife wrote: post #43

lwneal wrote: post #20

In Peter Turchin's book War and Peace and War [1], the term "elite overproduction" does not refer to an overproduction of smart people, education, or college degrees. Instead, it refers to an overproduction of nobility , individuals who extract income but who do not perform useful work. For example, France during the population boom of the high middle ages overproduced knights and minor nobles from 1200-1300. The nob…

> would be investors who do not work for wages. So, everyone with retirement investments. I think they're known as 401(k) in the USA, here in Australia Super Annuation . We've built a self-collapsing economy?

I mean, to some extent, yes, probably. In an aging society, as the fraction of the population doing productive work falls, this sort of thing is likely to become a problem.

Re: Can too many brainy people be a dangerous thing?

#47

Post by awelkie » Thu, Oct 29, 2020, 12:30 PM UTC

jmeister wrote: post #10

Turchin uses the term “elites”, which is not the same as “brainy”. Genuinely “brainy” people can find new ways to contribute to society, there can never be too any of them. “Elites” on the other hand - highly credentialed and entitled - play zero-sum games. There’s a lot of interesting critique written by heterodox leftists today, in the spirit of Chris Lasch, on how the current progressive movement is just intra-eli…

Could you give some examples of such critiques? The idea seems interesting and I'd like to read a more long-form argument.

Re: Can too many brainy people be a dangerous thing?

#48

Post by question000 » Thu, Oct 29, 2020, 12:33 PM UTC

est31 wrote: post #40

lwneal wrote: post #20

In Peter Turchin's book War and Peace and War [1], the term "elite overproduction" does not refer to an overproduction of smart people, education, or college degrees. Instead, it refers to an overproduction of nobility , individuals who extract income but who do not perform useful work. For example, France during the population boom of the high middle ages overproduced knights and minor nobles from 1200-1300. The nob…

> The most straightforward modern equivalent to Turchin's "elite" nobility would not be people with advanced degrees: it would be investors who do not work for wages. (Not to say there is no overlap between those groups.) Investors do a lot of work, because they have to constantly think where to put their money, evaluate alternatives, make sure there is no money wasted on things, etc. Even passive investors who only…

Yeah but even if we accept passive investment is a form of productive labor, there's a limited number safe/good investments for those good investors.

As we saw in the 2008 recession when more and investors pile on even the safest investments (mortgages backed securities) the quality of those investments tends to be diluted (via CDO's, errant ratings companies, exploitative real estate practices)

This is what's making me nervous about index funds right now, the demand seems extremely high, but what about the supply how would you determine such a thing?

What is investors are smart but there simply aren't enough good investments out there? Are they going to give up and become doctors, lawyers or engineers? Or just spend more time with their kids?

Re: Can too many brainy people be a dangerous thing?

#49

Post by paganel » Thu, Oct 29, 2020, 12:33 PM UTC

jmeister wrote: post #10

Turchin uses the term “elites”, which is not the same as “brainy”. Genuinely “brainy” people can find new ways to contribute to society, there can never be too any of them. “Elites” on the other hand - highly credentialed and entitled - play zero-sum games. There’s a lot of interesting critique written by heterodox leftists today, in the spirit of Chris Lasch, on how the current progressive movement is just intra-eli…

> heterodox leftists today, in the spirit of Chris Lasch,

Any book or article recommendations that you might have easy access to? Reason is I've only recently started to read some Lasch and I genuinely like his writing, and on top of that I've also become really interested in fringe/heterodox left-wing writings as of late (I say that as a person usually on the right when it comes to politics). If it matters I'm also a fan of Jacques Ellul (which Lasch mentions among others as one of his inspirations).

Re: Can too many brainy people be a dangerous thing?

#50

Post by dalbasal » Thu, Oct 29, 2020, 12:34 PM UTC

jmeister wrote: post #10

Turchin uses the term “elites”, which is not the same as “brainy”. Genuinely “brainy” people can find new ways to contribute to society, there can never be too any of them. “Elites” on the other hand - highly credentialed and entitled - play zero-sum games. There’s a lot of interesting critique written by heterodox leftists today, in the spirit of Chris Lasch, on how the current progressive movement is just intra-eli…

>>Genuinely “brainy” people can find new ways to contribute to society, there can never be too any of them.

While we're on grand theories of politics and society... I think one of our modern/liberal theses is (perhaps) being played out currently.

Assuming that "brainy" is not totally unrelated to academic/educated, we have ratcheted up the supply of braininess. That does include empty credentialist trends, but it also includes people trained in science, engineering, mathematics and such. We have more of all of these people.

A lot of the logic behind producing them (ramping up university enrollment massively over decades) has been that productivity and income are a product of "human capital." IE, an engineer/doctor/etc. is n% more productive than a dock worker and therefore earns and produces n% more because education. Educate more people. They'll produce & earn more.

This was, like most social theories, part economics and part romanticism. People view/viewed economic gaps between poor and rich countries this way. IE, besides physical capital, you could turn a poor country into a rich one with education.

I don't think this was totally untrue. That said, I do think reality has given us some reality check nuances. There are other limits/factors on economic growth than education. To some extent, education was a proxy for wealth/power.. not it's source. Income does not necessarily reflect productivity, and productivity itself can be subjective.

To put a blunt end on it... "clerk" was, 50-100 years ago, the entry level white collar job. It came with entry level bougie status & income. Today, "clerical jobs" are very common. Those clerks are more highly educated. PCS are basically clerical super-efficiency machines. Yet, modern clerks don't have the modern equivalent of old timey clerk's status & income.