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Elite Underproduction

troynikov.io

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Re: Elite Underproduction

#121

Post by xyzelement »

civilized wrote: post #28
rayiner wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The natural consequences of this will be China overtaking the US. Americans are not going to enjoy a world where they’re not the dominant power. Among other things they’re really going to hate not being able to print money for consumption free of consequences.

It's a concern, but a strong dollar isn't all roses and sunshine either. For one thing, it makes it hard for the American economy to compete in anything but the highest-margin industries. I'm not convinced that the rise of China will be so bad. Boomers and neocons want us to think so, but their "arguments" are mostly just paranoia and sentimentality.

> I'm not convinced that the rise of China will be so bad. Boomers and neocons want us to think so

You're not convinced that going from "living in the most economically dominant and militarily powerful country in the world" to "not" is going to somehow not be a painful experience?

You can use the "I am not convinced" line for anything. "I am not convinced that being homeless is worse than living in a nice house" but... ok, what would convince you?

Re: Elite Underproduction

#122

Post by somesortofthing »

max002 wrote: post #52

Im curious about one thing and im self-taugh so please forgive lack of understanding of uni world. Youre saying that physicist who do machine learning should be instead trying to unserstand physical world. While not having academic background i do read a lot of science news (its my porn:D) and now and then i see stuff like "new strong material discoveded by ml", "ml speeds up discovery of composite materials" or "ml…

I don't think the author meant to imply that ML as a whole doesn't improve our understanding of the physical world. The point seems to be more that the kind of ML work done by a lot of people who have the qualifications necessary to expand the borders of our understanding of the physical world doesn't meaningfully contribute to our knowledge.

Re: Elite Underproduction

#123

Post by xyzelement »

andreilys wrote: post #62

In our society, Elite Overproduction can be explained as a form of Malthusian social competition where only so many resources and only so much status is available, and the only way to access a satisfactory slice is to compete within the power structures that control them. In turn, our institutions evolve mainly to facilitate this competition rather than performing their ostensible material functions. In turn this cau…

>What happens when someone loses the high-status tournament to become a Supreme Court justice? Ideally they find another tournament/status game to play, somewhere they can succeed.

If someone reasonably bright orients their entire endeavor around the goal of becoming a Supreme Court Justice, they will be totally fine in life even if they fall well short of their goal. "Shoot for the moon, even if you miss you will land among the stars."

The problem we have is actually the opposite - too many people believe that no opportunity is available to them, thus they don't pursue anything, and end up stagnant or declining ("Aim for the ground... can't miss!")

Re: Elite Underproduction

#124

Post by nradov »

smnrchrds wrote: post #111

You may like this article as well: Why Are Egyptian Youth Burning Their University Diplomas? The Overeducation Crisis in Egypt https://www.brandeis.edu/crown/publications/middle-east-brie...

It's sad how the protesting Egyptian students are asking for exactly the wrong thing. Large numbers of public sector jobs are the problem not the solution. If they can't manage such a basic analysis correctly then it indicates that their elite educations didn't teach them much of value.

Re: Elite Underproduction

#125

Post by specialist »

enchiridion wrote: post #4
pharmakom wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thiel is right wing but definitely not libertarian.

Isn’t Thiel essentially anarcho-capitalist? So pretty far right and extremely (in the literal sense) libertarian. EDIT: anachro->anarcho

I thought Theil was a self-described neoreactionary, which is explicitly anti-democracy.

Which I interpretted to mean something like Aristotelian philosopher-king style governance. A fairly obvious logical conclusion when one's starting assumption that people (the polis) are fundamentally stupid and corrupt. By the standards of the self annointed philosopher-king, of course.

Re: Elite Underproduction

#126

Post by Invictus0 »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #118
kiba wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is the likelihood of discovering a new phenomena or largely unexplored field of science akin to the discovery of electricity and electrochemistry? There may be a finite amount of works on physics that we can do, or technological niches that we can exploit thanks to discoveries in physics or any relevant field of knowledge. The well of discoveries isn't running dry today, but it may in future generations.

> What is the likelihood of discovering a new phenomena or largely unexplored field of science akin to the discovery of electricity and electrochemistry? We have zero idea how gravity works, how to predict the properties of vast stretches of new materials, if the island of stability is real, what the limits to know propulsion technologies are, what the limits to know fusion technologies are, et cetera . And I’m not e…

Everyone here is missing the point. It's not that physics is running out of questions to ask. It's that the questions are getting increasingly more expensive to answer, and the answers are increasingly less compelling. The low-hanging fruit picked long ago, modern physics produces fewer discoveries that change people's lives in the way that radar, lasers, microwaves, and transistors did, which makes science investment less compelling to the public.

Re: Elite Underproduction

#127

Post by AmericanChopper »

pydry wrote: post #99
enkid wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this actually the case? There is a lot of research that is occuring in the private sector or research labs and the such. A lot of it is being done at universities, but us there an actual quantified measure if what percentage of research is not in a teaching institution versus what is?

Instead of trying to quantify research (not really measuable in any meaningful sense) perhaps ask yourself how physics has improved your every day life and then ask yourself which improvements you think society should have given up in exchange for a greater supply of quants. Things like the microchip, wifi, rocketry, satellites, jet engines, etc. If the answer is "none of it" that tends to suggest underproduction.

This is some rather flawed logic. The productivity of physicists at the time the microchip was invented doesn’t suggest anything at all about the productivity of physicists today, and the utility of productive physics research doesn’t suggest anything at all about the existence of non-productive physics research.

Re: Elite Underproduction

#128

Post by xyzelement »

greenail wrote: post #65

My view is that the problem isn't "lapsed physicists". They are largely still productive and contributing elites. The problem is the "pseudo elite" masters of sociology graduate who ends up at starbucks with a ton of debt and a chip on their shoulder. The incentives are "college is good" without regard for the demand for the degree. While I agree that "college is good", it clearly isn't a good investment for everyone…

I think this is it, and matches my recall of the original theory. The sociology graduate working at Starbucks perceives himself elite ("much smarter than the Trump-voting plumber who didn't go to college") but in reality lives in poverty because there's a demand mismatch for his eliteness.

This kind of dynamic adds to instability because such people are downwardly mobile (poorer than their parents) and rather than recognizing the key error that sent their life down the wrong track (choice of major/not going to a trade school) they "plant the seeds" of discord by shouting loudly that the situation is hopeless and "the system" is to blame.

Re: Elite Underproduction

#129

Post by forgotmypw17 »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #68
b9a2cab5 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If that was the case then FAANG wouldn't be filled with Asians and engineers from ex-Soviet countries. The makeup of high paying tech companies does not represent in any way the makeup of the American population. I posit the reason this is the case is American culture and anti-intellectualism. If you look at top public school undergrad programs that don't practice affirmative action (UC's, UW) the programs are almost…

> If that was the case then FAANG wouldn't be filled with Asians and engineers from ex-Soviet countries. The makeup of high paying tech companies does not represent in any way the makeup of the American population. I posit the reason this is the case is American culture and anti-intellectualism. There are schools in every country. There are not FAANG headquarters in every country. The top candidates from around the w…

The difference between American and Soviet schools back in the day was that Soviet curriculum was designed for ~80% to pass, while American was designed for ~99% to pass. (Nowadays, Russia has lowered the bar significantly, so the difference is no longer as huge.)

An average student who finished 5th grade in an average school in USSR could start 6th grade in the U.S. and coast along on what they'd learned until the first year of high school.

Re: Elite Underproduction

#130

Post by DFHippie »

thanhhaimai wrote: post #80
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If that was the case then FAANG wouldn't be filled with Asians and engineers from ex-Soviet countries. The makeup of high paying tech companies does not represent in any way the makeup of the American population. I posit the reason this is the case is American culture and anti-intellectualism. There are schools in every country. There are not FAANG headquarters in every country. The top candidates from around the w…

> The top candidates from around the world (who are willing to relocate) will emigrate to whatever country has the highest paying jobs. That happens to be FAANG companies in the United States right now. This view is only correct if a) the US border is completely open and b) all the candidates around the world can speak professional English. We know that both the above conditions are false.

How about this: the easier it is to relocate and work for FAANG companies, the more the FAANG workforce will resemble the global supply of people who would like to work for them. If the skill sought is coding, not sales, sufficient English fluency is not a great barrier. There are plenty of programmers who do fine without ever having mastered definite articles or the present perfect.
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