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

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

#181

Post by ip26 » Thu, Oct 29, 2020, 5:37 PM UTC

Haul4ss wrote: post #38

slfnflctd wrote: post #29

I'm not sure how brainy I am. Perhaps the main reason I came across that way in school is because my mom taught me to read early. In any case, no one in the lower-end workplace has been particularly interested in what brains I do have, or (apparently) anyone else's around me. It's all about how you can fit into the local pattern, which is often suboptimal yet resistant to change. Meanwhile, everything interesting/cha…

> Meanwhile, everything interesting/challenging I might have liked to work on is already being worked on by someone else, who is probably doing a better job than I would have You may be surprised to learn how false and limiting this belief is. Turns out most of those people are also just winging it, so if you wing it too, hey, you may actually reach a better outcome.

The catch is you have to develop the experience. You may well be able to reach a better outcome! But you do also have to commit to developing the depth, which can be a process of years.

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

#182

Post by sudosysgen » Thu, Oct 29, 2020, 5:38 PM UTC

FooHentai wrote: post #165

sparkie wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thomas Sowell writes about this in depth in several of his works. In Intellectuals and Society , he notes that many "intellectual elite" have been cheerleaders for some of the worst (economic) disasters and human rights abuses of the 20th century. In 2020, we can see this vividly with the coronahysterics causing untold and immeasurable damage to societies with arbitrary and poorly calculated lockdown rules. Sowell ar…

That first part about current pandemic politics really presented a hump I had to get over to read the rest of your post. Which when I got there I found thoughtful and interesting so thank you.

You should probably know that the rest of the critique is based on the principle that when one studies economics they should be entirely hostile to empirical arguments. This is why these arguments aren't taken seriously by anyone and why they are entirely ignored by those without an ideological motivation for the basis, which is that economics is not a social science but instead a transcendent discipline which can ignore both epistemology and empirical evidence and thus come to more convenient conclusions that completely ignore all the inconvenient conclusions of social science, experiments, history, and real life.

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

#183

Post by ska » Thu, Oct 29, 2020, 5:41 PM UTC

pram wrote: post #119

JamesBarney wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There seems to be weird dynamic where there are a ton of lawyers, there is not enough work, and many aren't being paid much. But it's still hard to find a lawyer that charges less than 250/hr. My hypothesis is that law school is not preparing lawyers well enough to be useful right after school. So many can't find a job to get the experience to compete with senior attorneys who charge 250/hr.

They just don't go into lawyering period. If you don't get into a biglaw firm after you get your JD you're usually permanently fucked. It's better to get a salaried position in an unrelated field than 'hang out your shingle' in pretty much all cases. Law schools are making lots of lawyers, but the 'failed' ones just drop out. That is why there is no downward pressure on the fees from increased supply.

Getting into a biglaw firm is only the first gate, as their model requires a pretty big funnel and up-or-out process. Lot's of promising young lawyers are grist for that mill, and many end up doing something else after.

Lots of young lawyers have no interest in biglaw either, and only some of them are naive about their future prospects.

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

#184

Post by lotsofpulp » Thu, Oct 29, 2020, 5:44 PM UTC

jborichevskiy wrote: post #143

MathematicalArt wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The following is a link to the Mathematics Subject Classification [1]. There are thousands of lines, with each line being a different area of specialization in the disciplines of math. Every time you think we are close to "running out" of ideas, things to do, or things to learn, I ask that you pull this up. Even if we limit to mathematics and don't talk about things like agriculture, psychology, and so forth, you hav…

Good example! Here’s another list of the World’s Hardest Problems. Aka the next $50T of economic growth https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Vb8WWbsVyEJzl66_qqtZfFr2...

What makes a lot of those hard is solving them while keeping the current political class ordering in place.

Wealth transfers and reduction in consumption are clear solutions, but getting people to give up their luxuries and prioritize future generations’ lives over their own is the root problem, which may not have a solution.

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

#185

Post by wobbly_bush » Thu, Oct 29, 2020, 5:44 PM UTC

bserge wrote: post #138

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed. Why is the US producing 25,000 more lawyers than it needs? Why is this happening in a supposedly rational maximally efficient - or close offer - market economy? The simple answer is because someone else profits hugely from the money they pay for training. Which in turn is a symptom of an extractive economy, not a productive economy. A productive economy would do a much better job of allocating talent to socia…

I mean, the US isn't "producing" those lawyers. People choose to become lawyers because they think it's a good idea. And generally, the choice of education seems to lag behind what's actually in demand, even worldwide.

> US isn't "producing" those lawyers. People choose to become lawyers

Isn't there any regulatory body which controls the number of law degrees awarded annually, like there is for doctors?

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

#186

Post by oivey » Thu, Oct 29, 2020, 5:44 PM UTC

TuringNYC wrote: post #159

Kalium wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember 2002 and 2003. And 2008. You're right. These are real worries for real people in the real world. Let's ground this in more realistic numbers: you can reasonably buy a $500k residential property in the SF Bay on a single $140k salary . That's a salary that's very achievable for a senior engineer - which is to say five years of experience, which many will hit by 30. It's one that you can keep getting when yo…

Thanks for your very logic take on this. I'll admit that many in my "generation" 2000/2001 grads (and also 2009 grads in NY) gut burnt and have a different risk-reward outlook in life. I think that explains some of the differences. What you say is highly logical and models well with the current state of the world. However, it doesnt model unknown unknowns. The problem with modeling unknown unknowns is that you remain…

At least addressing #1, I think people underestimate the fact that renting property is a business. If making your mortgage is contingent on both income from your job and your business, that’s a pretty risky position to be in. I’m not sure it’s fair to blame the law on this situation. If his tenant lost their job due to the pandemic they wouldn’t be able to make rent, either. He’d need to go through the time consuming and costly effort to evict that person over several months. The pandemic is the problem, and even the absurd real estate market is susceptible to that risk.

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

#187

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Oct 29, 2020, 5:45 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…

[deleted]

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

#188

Post by ip26 » Thu, Oct 29, 2020, 5:46 PM UTC

jahaja wrote: post #144

sparkie wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Try to look from another lens. Climate hysterics want to avoid responsibility for the economic damage that their carbon-neutral policies are going to have on society. They want accountability from others, but not themselves. How many have done the calculations to work out the second and third order effects of their zero fossil fuel agenda? Many of the most ardent callers for climate action are themselves not even cli…

> economic damage > nor the intellectual are educated in economics > the actual tacit knowledge that drives economic activity > Almost always, it is the same crowds who babble on about equality and wealth distribution too That whole reply pretty much sums up what most right-wing climate scepticism is about; a deep fear of equality and perceived threats to their privileged position in society. Hence, going down with t…

Not to mention the implied canard that economists are the only ones suited to design policy

(despite not being educated in climate science and lacking actual tacit knowledge on what drives global climate)

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

#189

Post by toast0 » Thu, Oct 29, 2020, 5:49 PM UTC

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #88

the_only_law wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is I dont really feel like an engineer or a scientist. I'm definitely not a good engineer partly because I don't care enough, but I'm neither smart nor educated enough to be a scientist. I'd personally describe myself as more of a hacker, but thats not particularly useful for much.

To teach, you only have to be one lesson ahead of the students. And there's lots of teaching to be done, before the hard science kicks in. So plenty of room for everybody!

To teach professionally, you also need to get whatever credentials the institution requires. I don't think my community college cared too much about formal credentials other than warm body and background check, but my four-year school seemed to prefer a PhD or a masters with industry experience. My kid's school district recently put out a call for substitute teachers which requires a bachelors degree (any field), a background check, and a whole lot of patience (not specifically listed).

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

#190

Post by bleepblorp » Thu, Oct 29, 2020, 5:50 PM UTC

teorema wrote: post #179

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 think you could generalize the idea of "individuals who extract income but who do not perform useful work" to "individuals whose extracted income exceeds the utility of the work they perform." Maybe to the converse as well, to an excess of "individuals whose extracted income subceeds the utility of the work they perform". It's basically talking about unjustified inequality. I think to some extent this maps onto the…

In addition to the weath-in-pixels visualization you linked, another very damning graph comes from the Fed's research arm:

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=bOfK

This is a plot of median household income in comparison to GDP per household, both in inflation-corrected dollars.

The GDP/household line has been pulling away from the household income line since the 1980s. While a great deal of wealth is being created in America, a decreasing share of it is trickling down into the hands of the median person. The rest of it is disappearing into the pockets of the already very wealthy in general, and the billionaires in particular.