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

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

#171

Post by Kalium » Thu, Oct 29, 2020, 5:22 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…

I think you're right - our key difference is in risk tolerance.

You can choose to minimize your risks to maximize your resources for dealing with unexpected events. This is absolutely, completely, and in every possible way a valid life choice! Validity does not mean free of consequences, though.

I have several friends who live this way. They do their best to minimize every risk in their lives and maximize their spare resources. One thing they all have in common is that they never have enough saved to feel secure - there's always a bigger and scarier scenario that they aren't prepared for. Some of them even struggle to tap their "unknown unknown" funds in the event of genuine emergencies, because there's more that could go wrong and they need to be prepared.

Choosing to be maximally conservative is a perfectly reasonable and completely valid life choice. The catch, perhaps, is contextualizing it and accepting that you will pay a price for minimizing risk. Otherwise there's the real risk that a person winds up forever paralyzed by anxiety, sitting like the world's smallest dragon atop a horde of pennies in case you might need them.

And I think it's fair to say that that's not a portrait of your average college student or the future they envision.

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

#172

Post by asdff » Thu, Oct 29, 2020, 5:23 PM UTC

elindbe2 wrote: post #164

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" I disagree here. The closest equivalent would be people in academia, specifically the portions of academia that don't perform useful work. Basically, the "X studies" crowd. And that's exactly where we see the most political instability coming from these days.

I don't know why you mark people in pursuit of domain knowledge for the wider world as some evil elite, when there are people who exist to solely pursue personal profit at the cost of everyone else. These capitalists are the ones buying political adspace, spreading misinformation, and driving a wedge in the working class that directly leads to the polarized hyperpartisan political environment we have today. Not some underpaid humanities professor. The fact that you reflexively blame the academic is evidence that the propaganda from these moneyed groups is working as designed.

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

#173

Post by DaiPlusPlus » Thu, Oct 29, 2020, 5:24 PM UTC

deathhand wrote: post #34

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…

To distill the thought further: Rent seeking behavior in non-scaleable.

Seems to be scaling just fine for Apple though.

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

#174

Post by simonh » Thu, Oct 29, 2020, 5:27 PM UTC

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #136

simonh wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 peo…

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…

There’s no such thing as areal maximally efficient market economy. There are always externalities, information asymmetries, insufficient regulation, too much regulation, etc and frequently all of the above to some extent at the same time.

It’s as Churchill said of Democracy, it’s the worst form of government we’ve come up with, except for all the others. Fortunately in a Democracy we have the freedoms to discuss, identify and agree solutions to these problems. These solutions will probably lead to more problems. Rinse and repeat.

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

#175

Post by mwfunk » Thu, Oct 29, 2020, 5:30 PM UTC

Knowledge or intelligence can't ever hurt. The only things that can hurt a situation are when people have a lack of perspective, or a lack of self-awareness, or Dunning-Kruger type situations where they overestimate themselves, underestimate others, and are short on natural skepticism about their own cognitive processes.

But this stuff happens with anyone, and maturity and professionalism overcomes it. But perhaps its more obvious or toxic with super knowledgeable and specialized people.

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

#176

Post by simonh » Thu, Oct 29, 2020, 5:30 PM UTC

TuringNYC wrote: post #105

simonh wrote: post #60

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. I know, I know, get off my lawn.

>> 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:…

F-me, $2m for a starter home. Where on Earth do you live, and what sort of house do you live in?

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

#177

Post by bernawil » Thu, Oct 29, 2020, 5:31 PM UTC

rsynnott wrote: post #64

throwaway0a5e wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Obviously (hopefully) this is a very complex topic and our analogies are both lacking in nuance and inaccurate on certain levels. However... In the middle ages the nobility were effectively the government (and the church provided checks and balances, kind of) as well as the investor class. In addition to financing productive capacity they also did all the administrative things governments do. Obviously administrative…

> In the middle ages the nobility were effectively the government (and the church provided checks and balances, kind of) This was kind of true early on, and got less true both as the size of the nobility grew (especially in countries like France and Russia, which had serious nobility surpluses) and as a professional class of government emerged (by the time you get to Samuel Pepys, you're talking about largely a profe…

> it was anything from socially unacceptable (England) to effectively illegal (Roman Republic/Empire) for aristocratic landowners to invest in non-land things

can you expand on this? It's harder to think about "investment" opportunities back then because the economy was basically agriculture, the slave trade, urban real estate, and trading the fruits of agriculture and slavery. I think landowners in the Roman Empire did in fact partake in other business, say starting gladiator companies.

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

#178

Post by Kalium » Thu, Oct 29, 2020, 5:32 PM UTC

simonh wrote: post #176

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:…

F-me, $2m for a starter home. Where on Earth do you live, and what sort of house do you live in?

I don't think that's a real number for anywhere, unless you insist on never leaving the Upper East Side.

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

#179

Post by teorema » Thu, Oct 29, 2020, 5:32 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 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 idea of rent-seeking monopolies in current society and undercompensation of individuals. It's hard to go to something like this

https://mkorostoff.github.io/1-pixel-wealth/'

and not conclude that many people are being undercompensated grossly, and a small number of others are being overcompensated grossly.

For what it's worth, I agree with others that I don't think this maps onto "braininess" per se. I just think that's one of the character traits that happens to be valued the most in Western societies at the moment, so it's projected by the elites the most. In the past it might have been valor or nobility or courage or whatever it was -- the thing that is presented as justification for the excessive income, and protection of that income.

In general I think individuals are misvalued, not in the sense that persons don't matter, but the economic value placed on single individuals can be (and usually are) grossly overstated or understated. I think this transcends many many fields.

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

#180

Post by ska » Thu, Oct 29, 2020, 5:35 PM UTC

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.

> But it's still hard to find a lawyer that charges less than 250/hr.

I've seen research that the average lawyer (which is definitely not NYC biglaw firm) successfully collects on about 1/8 of their nominally billable hours.

If that is true, and you also factor in that they are effectively running a small business with all that implies for non-billable work, your $250/hr lawyer working on their own is making about $50k/year. So even if we are off by nearly a factor of two, they are hardly raking it in.

By comparison if you are in larger firms, more of the hourly rate is captured but it is also paying for multiple people.

Don't get me wrong, there are lawyers out there making great money (e.g. partners in those same NYC biglaw firms). But thinking that is the experience of the average lawyers is a bit like looking at levels.fyi and deciding that all over the country most software engineers are making 250k+.