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American society increasingly mistakes intelligence for human worth

theatlantic.com

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Re: American society increasingly mistakes intelligence for human worth

#211

Post by maxerickson »

willholloway wrote: post #206
yummyfajitas wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Western-style poverty (i.e. little work + wealth transfers adding up to approx $15-20k/year) doesn't kill. We have various randomized control trials which demonstrate this. Giving poor people money doesn't significantly affect health: http://m.qje.oxfordjournals.org/content/131/2/687 The medicaid expansion similarly had no statistically significant effect on health, though it does make people feel better: https://www…

Have you lived in Western style poverty? Have you mingled with those who patronize pawn shops and payday lenders? Please cite the various randomized control trials, and I would say it is far too early to draw conclusions on the effects of the medicaid expansion as it has only been two full years since rollout. I speak from experience, as someone from a wealthy family and a wealthy area that shunned the family busines…

The Oregon thing started in 2008.

It has mostly benefited the recipients financially rather than medically.

Re: American society increasingly mistakes intelligence for human worth

#212

Post by engi_nerd »

zizzles wrote: post #192
engi_nerd wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you living in the same world as the rest of us? Sure, there are people who fulfill the stereotype that you've repeated here. But among the nerdy people I've known you'll find some great people with rich, full lives. People who spend their work lives searching for evidence of dark matter can also climb mountains and have great family lives. Telemetry engineers who spend their days working on RF systems can spend t…

This is an all too common occurrence with "nerds" such as yourself on Hacker News: You are perhaps intelligent and high IQ. You are perhaps a successful telemetry engineer, yet you are BLIND when it comes to even a BASIC understanding how everything operates socially. Raw intelligence by itself, is scoffed at by the general population. Outside of your tight knit nerd-circle or a back office server room in Silicon Val…

I would disagree that I am blind. You and I have looked at the same things and drawn different conclusions.

I mean, if we're going to get along and have a basic understanding of being social, it would probably be nice if you didn't insult my social abilities right there in in your opening paragraph.

Re: American society increasingly mistakes intelligence for human worth

#213

Post by andai »

zizzles wrote: post #192
engi_nerd wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you living in the same world as the rest of us? Sure, there are people who fulfill the stereotype that you've repeated here. But among the nerdy people I've known you'll find some great people with rich, full lives. People who spend their work lives searching for evidence of dark matter can also climb mountains and have great family lives. Telemetry engineers who spend their days working on RF systems can spend t…

This is an all too common occurrence with "nerds" such as yourself on Hacker News: You are perhaps intelligent and high IQ. You are perhaps a successful telemetry engineer, yet you are BLIND when it comes to even a BASIC understanding how everything operates socially. Raw intelligence by itself, is scoffed at by the general population. Outside of your tight knit nerd-circle or a back office server room in Silicon Val…

I'm sorry to hear that.

Re: American society increasingly mistakes intelligence for human worth

#214

Post by willholloway »

maxerickson wrote: post #211
willholloway wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you lived in Western style poverty? Have you mingled with those who patronize pawn shops and payday lenders? Please cite the various randomized control trials, and I would say it is far too early to draw conclusions on the effects of the medicaid expansion as it has only been two full years since rollout. I speak from experience, as someone from a wealthy family and a wealthy area that shunned the family busines…

The Oregon thing started in 2008. It has mostly benefited the recipients financially rather than medically.

Oregon is just one program, why is life expectancy for wealthy rising, and falling for the poor?

Why is the gap around a full dozen years?

Re: American society increasingly mistakes intelligence for human worth

#215

Post by yummyfajitas »

willholloway wrote: post #206
yummyfajitas wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Western-style poverty (i.e. little work + wealth transfers adding up to approx $15-20k/year) doesn't kill. We have various randomized control trials which demonstrate this. Giving poor people money doesn't significantly affect health: http://m.qje.oxfordjournals.org/content/131/2/687 The medicaid expansion similarly had no statistically significant effect on health, though it does make people feel better: https://www…

Have you lived in Western style poverty? Have you mingled with those who patronize pawn shops and payday lenders? Please cite the various randomized control trials, and I would say it is far too early to draw conclusions on the effects of the medicaid expansion as it has only been two full years since rollout. I speak from experience, as someone from a wealthy family and a wealthy area that shunned the family busines…

tl;dr; Sad personal story and no stats. Also, faith healing worked for my uncle so I know that all those randomized control trials are wrong!

My numbers come from the BLS Consumer expenditure survey, though they moved it and I don't know where it is now. I blogged about it and reproduced it in a graph:

https://www.chrisstucchio.com/blog/2011/why_the_poor_dont_wo...

The CBO does similar calculations based directly on taxes and transfers, and gets a similar result:

https://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files/cbofiles/attachments...

Re: American society increasingly mistakes intelligence for human worth

#216

Post by powera »

defen wrote: post #62
afarrell wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What actually matters is perception of "integrity, work ethic, and a knack for getting along", because people can only make decisions based on their perceptions. Many* assert that the 1950s was a time when people widely believed that Negroes were shiftless, Queers were deviant, and women were hysterical. If you believe this, then it is natural to conclude that a Black man needed to be twice as hardworking in order to…

That's still utterly irrelevant to the article. Unless your claim is that the increased workforce participation from reduced discrimination today inherently leads to a "war on stupid people". Otherwise it's just a nitpick on a small point that doesn't detract from the article and invites off-topic comments like mine.

It's a lot easier to have above average jobs for everyone when you only care about 20% of the population.

Re: American society increasingly mistakes intelligence for human worth

#218

Post by maxerickson »

willholloway wrote: post #214
maxerickson wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Oregon thing started in 2008. It has mostly benefited the recipients financially rather than medically.

Oregon is just one program, why is life expectancy for wealthy rising, and falling for the poor? Why is the gap around a full dozen years?

I don't know.

But if I understand correctly, the point of bringing up the Oregon study was that access to medical care doesn't seem to have a lot to do with it. At least not the incrementally better access provided by Medicaid programs.

I would certainly speculate that there is a bundle of ideas that contribute to it. Ideas about personal decisions being impactful, leading to things like less smoking and better diet, and even better life situations (which can presumably lead to a different relationship with stress).

Re: American society increasingly mistakes intelligence for human worth

#219

Post by yummyfajitas »

willholloway wrote: post #214
maxerickson wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Oregon thing started in 2008. It has mostly benefited the recipients financially rather than medically.

Oregon is just one program, why is life expectancy for wealthy rising, and falling for the poor? Why is the gap around a full dozen years?

Probably because the poor behave differently from the rich - they tend to overeat more, exercise less, smoke more and drink more.

Also any disabled person (who probably has other health problems that reduce life expectancy) is by definition poor (poverty is defined as low market income).

Re: American society increasingly mistakes intelligence for human worth

#220

Post by Noumenon72 »

optimusclimb wrote: post #98
ctrlalt_g wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be honest, it's really confusing. It's not so much that I worship financial success, it's that I'm scared of being financially insecure. It feels as if the only way to secure my future and the future of my children is to become the best. Perhaps some of this insecurity is translated into aggression toward anti-intellectualism, which I see as an attempt to make me feel guilty about wanting to be secure. There's als…

> It's not so much that I worship financial success, it's that I'm scared of being financially insecure. I'm taking some time off from working right now and I think about this a lot. American life right now is a lot like a combination wager/equation you have to solve. At some point in life, you're own your own. This could be at 18, post college, or for some - after your parents have paid for college, a car, and maybe…

The wager would be a lot easier if you didn't have the uncertainty about living 30 years after retirement or 10. I would like to see suicide become a socially approved choice so we could eliminate the risk of those potentially terrible living conditions in old age.

(I have stretched my year off to 2.5 and counting... would definitely rather live like this for fifteen years and check out than go back to work to support thirty years in a nursing home.)

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