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Can too many brainy people be a dangerous thing?

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

#141

Post by Kalium »

TuringNYC wrote: post #130
Kalium wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How many software engineers do you know who are legitimately terrified of their student loan debts for a Bachelor's in CS? I've met people with grad degrees in less remunerative fields who absolutely have exactly the worries you imagine. But a fresh grad with a CS degree and a promising career? A 250k salary isn't even a stretch for them to imagine. Add a partner with a similar income and both the student loans and t…

Firstly, i graduated in 2001, so i've been through two down-cycles. Of course there are no worries now but you just need to look back and realize that $250k salaries can disappear, sometimes permanently. I remember how awesome it was in 2000, 2001, and then in 2002 and 2003 my friends were suddenly leaving CS to become mortgage brokers. I was blase about my liabilities in 2000, 2001. Not the case in 2002 or 2003. Bla…

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 you hit 35 or 40 if you don't move into management or technical leadership so long as you don't insist on working solely for startups founded recently by 20-somethings. It's a pay packet that will enable you to rid yourself of student loans in relatively short order, should you choose to do so.

The nice thing about the "the tech industry" is that one name covers a shockingly diverse swath. I've seen personal finance, business finance, high finance, business services, medicine, consumer electronics, and more all under the name of "tech". They are not nearly are industry-correlated as calling it all "tech industry" might lead someone to think. Often they have little in common with one another except using a bit of Python or Ruby.

With that in mind, and that any property appreciates in value over enough time (or at least is exceptionally unlikely to lose significant value in the SF Bay), we've got a scenario where of 0-4 concerns, only #2 is really a big one in this new world of remote work. 0 and 1 aren't big issues, as mentioned previously. 3 isn't a huge deal - you're sitting on an asset in which you have a non-trivial chunk of ownership that you can use. 4 is a universal issue that will arise in literally any scenario where you don't have 1%-grade resources, and no change of location (or income) will fix that.

Your concerns are wise, and clear-headed. I applaud your foresight and caution! I think it just might be possible that grounding numbers in reality might change the calculations slightly.

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

#142

Post by jquery »

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.

This feels wrong. Investors did work for wages (or their ancestors did) and then instead of consuming they spent it on others in exchange for a pension.

The modern day equivalent to nobility would be government employees and net tax recipients.

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

#143

Post by jborichevskiy »

MathematicalArt wrote: post #125
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…

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...

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

#144

Post by jahaja »

sparkie wrote: post #66
Hokusai wrote: post #24

So, increased numbers of educated people relate to a rise of expectations on equality, wealth distribution, etc. Status quo fights back and instability grows. A good example is the fight on climate change. The status quo wants to avoid responsibility for past, current and future damage. A growing educated population wants accountability. That creates tension. I agree, as much as I think that to keep leaders accountab…

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 the ship (a good economy & status quo) seem more rational than changing course.

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

#145

Post by reader_mode »

JamesBarney wrote: post #140
reader_mode wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean isn't it the same with developers ? If you're competent you have offers left and right and can command a very good salary. If you're out of a diploma mill with just the curriculum under your belt you're basically useless.

I don't think it is. I don't know any developers who have left the profession because of a lack of employability. But I know plenty of lawyers who have. And a law degree is probably more comparable to a masters in CS than a bootcamp like flatiron.

> I don't know any developers who have left the profession because of a lack of employability.

I feel like this is only true because there's such huge demand recently if you have a pulse and can code fizz buzz you can get hired - but I know 3 guys of the top of my head who went to school with me, finished 5 years (local uni, I dropped out but kept in touch) and then went in to IT or sales because they weren't good enough to get hired as devs - this was 10 years ago.

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

#147

Post by C1sc0cat »

silvestrov wrote: post #112
TuringNYC wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> I studies CS back in the 80s and back then every student I knew was genuinely interested in the subject and motivated to learn. In my last job at a bank I regularly interviewed recent CS graduates and candidates able to demonstrate a genuine passion for the subject were few and far between. You are comparing college students from the 1980s to those from 20xx. I'll tell you what is on the mind of the new students:…

> how the heck do I pay my student loans and save up for a $2M starter home Not valid for Scandinavia. In Denmark we get paid approx $1000 per month (like a wage) for studying and we pay $0 for attending university. You only have to pay for your own computer. Some students have a part time job, some get extra money from parents. So many students get by with zero loans.

And what proportion of 18/19 year olds goto university?

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

#149

Post by dbspin »

jquery wrote: post #142
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. This feels wrong. Investors did work for wages (or their ancestors did) and then instead of consuming they spent it on others in exchange for a pension. The modern day equivalent to nobility would be government employees and net tax recipients.

This is precisely backwards - especially in the US. Anyone with 'generational wealth' effectively guaranteed by investments and trust funds is in effect an aristocrat. However their income came - whether through their parents or their own work, they no longer have to take employment, can travel the world freely and don't share the concerns of the vast swathe of the ordinary population.

By contrast, the median government salary in the US is 51k. Notably many government sector employees like teachers are paid at about the same level of other industrialised countries (although with enormously worse paid vacations, and less autonomy than in most EU countries).

Source: https://work.chron.com/average-salary-government-employees-7... https://www.businessinsider.com/teacher-salaries-by-country-...

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

#150

Post by munificent »

JamesBarney wrote: post #110
rmrfstar wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If the US really is producing 25,000 more lawyers per year than it can employ, that's a real problem. Drill down on that issue, and you'll see the real problem. Non-corporate litigants are majority pro-se now. That's new. Most corporate-individual litigation takes placed in closed-door arbitration, where precedent cannot be established (e.g. to definitively decide that caste-based discrimination violates existing r…

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.

I think the trick is that you're using the same word for two groups. There are a ton of law school graduates, but not enough lawyers. Between the two, there is a gating function of bar associations, getting hired at a law firm, etc. If that gate is too small, then you get the effect you observe where there are too many "lawyers" (graduates) looking for work while simultaneously not enough "lawyers" (working lawyers) available to drive down prices.

Sometimes these artificial gates are good things. They can protect consumers from low-quality products whose quality is very hard to evaluate. The market you use to "buy" a lawyer is not efficient: lawyers are no commoditized and you don't buy them frequently enough to have a good skill at evaluating them. An artificial gate like a professional association can help ensure consumers get access to a quality product, and that shitty products are prevented from entering the market and driving down the reputation of all producers.

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