American society increasingly mistakes intelligence for human worth • Hacker News Board

Re: American society increasingly mistakes intelligence for human worth

#241

Post by facetube » Sat, Jun 18, 2016, 5:28 PM UTC

yummyfajitas wrote: post #240

facetube wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The RCT you cite examines the effects of "wealth shocks" (read: unexpected winnings) in a population of Swedish lottery winners on mortality and health care utilization, in a country that already has access to taxpayer-funded universal health care. The state pays 97% of all medical costs there [1]. Using this to support your claim borders on intellectual dishonesty IMO. Re: Medicaid, it's difficult to find high-quali…

The state provides health care, yet there are still disparities between rich and poor. This confirms my second and third studies which show health care doesn't help. This study also shows that (as postulated by folks down thread) that money doesn't change health behaviors. That's the point - health disparities are mostly not caused by either health care or wealth. They are caused by something else (e.g.diet, exercise…

The US absolutely does not have a universal health care system; roughly 33 million remain uninsured, and a large number of those who are insured do not have adequate savings to pay their high deductible (which can be as high as $6,000 per person per year in-network, and twice that out of network).

Re: American society increasingly mistakes intelligence for human worth

#242

Post by ctvo » Sat, Jun 18, 2016, 5:39 PM UTC

rmah wrote: post #234

kstenerud wrote: post #203

This is pretty silly. In any society, we must decide how to distribute the resources generated by that society. So you make the rules, set up enforcement, and plod along, making changes as you go, as far as you dare in the face of the inevitable political machinations of everyone involved. The more intelligent and clever always benefit, because they know how to use the system to their own purpose. This has been so si…

Human worth or, as I like to call it "respect" has nothing to do with equality of outcomes. There is a difference between benefiting materially or politically from how society is structured and social respect. There is a difference between paying someone more or less for doing a job and how you treat someone when you interact to them. Let me put it a different way... why should you respect raw intelligence over a per…

I understand your point, but your example of height is odd because we do value height, even if just subconsciously.

http://blogs.wsj.com/atwork/2014/06/09/tall-ceos-how-height-... http://www.apa.org/monitor/julaug04/standing.aspx

Re: American society increasingly mistakes intelligence for human worth

#243

Post by facetube » Sat, Jun 18, 2016, 5:40 PM UTC

yummyfajitas wrote: post #240

facetube wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The RCT you cite examines the effects of "wealth shocks" (read: unexpected winnings) in a population of Swedish lottery winners on mortality and health care utilization, in a country that already has access to taxpayer-funded universal health care. The state pays 97% of all medical costs there [1]. Using this to support your claim borders on intellectual dishonesty IMO. Re: Medicaid, it's difficult to find high-quali…

The state provides health care, yet there are still disparities between rich and poor. This confirms my second and third studies which show health care doesn't help. This study also shows that (as postulated by folks down thread) that money doesn't change health behaviors. That's the point - health disparities are mostly not caused by either health care or wealth. They are caused by something else (e.g.diet, exercise…

Here, I'll give you another comment to downvote: your original claim that was supposedly backed by the Swedish RCT was "giving poor people money does not improve health". You've now reversed the direction of causation. Money could easily improve health outcomes without completely eliminating disparities between rich and poor. Your conclusion does not logically follow from your claims.

Re: American society increasingly mistakes intelligence for human worth

#244

Post by kstenerud » Sat, Jun 18, 2016, 5:50 PM UTC

wallace_f wrote: post #238

kstenerud wrote: post #203

This is pretty silly. In any society, we must decide how to distribute the resources generated by that society. So you make the rules, set up enforcement, and plod along, making changes as you go, as far as you dare in the face of the inevitable political machinations of everyone involved. The more intelligent and clever always benefit, because they know how to use the system to their own purpose. This has been so si…

>The more intelligent and clever always benefit, because they know how to use the system to their own purpose. This has been so since the beginning. [...] That's any given society I appreciate your post and don't want to sound negative or combative, but I do think your argument's presupposition that intelligence always prevails is an interesting topic of discussion. I question the veracity of that assumption, but I d…

You're speaking too narrowly. I said intelligent and clever, because there are intelligent people who are not clever enough to discover how to overcome their personal and political obstacles. Tesla, Grothendieck, Turing, Gaudi, James Watson, and Bobby Fischer are prime examples of this.

When you learn beyond the rules of a system and discover the underlying patterns of the system, you are then able to exploit the system to your benefit. There are those who by chance rise or fall, and then there are those who stack the odds in their favor.

Re: American society increasingly mistakes intelligence for human worth

#245

Post by kstenerud » Sat, Jun 18, 2016, 5:54 PM UTC

rmah wrote: post #234

kstenerud wrote: post #203

This is pretty silly. In any society, we must decide how to distribute the resources generated by that society. So you make the rules, set up enforcement, and plod along, making changes as you go, as far as you dare in the face of the inevitable political machinations of everyone involved. The more intelligent and clever always benefit, because they know how to use the system to their own purpose. This has been so si…

Human worth or, as I like to call it "respect" has nothing to do with equality of outcomes. There is a difference between benefiting materially or politically from how society is structured and social respect. There is a difference between paying someone more or less for doing a job and how you treat someone when you interact to them. Let me put it a different way... why should you respect raw intelligence over a per…

"After all, both simply an accident of birth (genetics and early nutrition)."

And both are advantages because people respect them.

"Neither are something one achieves."

So what's your point? They still have the advantage of the innate respect their traits confer.

Re: American society increasingly mistakes intelligence for human worth

#246

Post by yummyfajitas » Sat, Jun 18, 2016, 5:55 PM UTC

facetube wrote: post #241

yummyfajitas wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The state provides health care, yet there are still disparities between rich and poor. This confirms my second and third studies which show health care doesn't help. This study also shows that (as postulated by folks down thread) that money doesn't change health behaviors. That's the point - health disparities are mostly not caused by either health care or wealth. They are caused by something else (e.g.diet, exercise…

The US absolutely does not have a universal health care system; roughly 33 million remain uninsured, and a large number of those who are insured do not have adequate savings to pay their high deductible (which can be as high as $6,000 per person per year in-network, and twice that out of network).

Read all three studies. Rand and Oregon show more health care doesn't improve health. Sweden shows more money doesn't.

What, exactly, are you disputing here?

Re: American society increasingly mistakes intelligence for human worth

#247

Post by duaneb » Sat, Jun 18, 2016, 6:02 PM UTC

tbabb wrote: post #35

duaneb wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the new more intelligence-based economy. Was intelligence not valued before?

In an economy where work is increasingly automated, those humans who can do things which machines can't are finding themselves more valued. That seems expected, and I am not convinced it is indicative of any problem or unfairness.

the capitalist class has always been an intellectual one. The labor class is dying; I don't think this indicates a higher premium on intelligence. If anything, this indicates a lower value than before as people take intelligence for granted.

Re: American society increasingly mistakes intelligence for human worth

#248

Post by gnaritas » Sat, Jun 18, 2016, 6:15 PM UTC

lucio wrote: post #156

x5n1 wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

http://www.biznews.com/undictated/2015/05/13/elon-musk-the-b... Elon Musk can be brutal with himself and then he has to convince other people to join him and those who want to experience brutality or know how to be brutal with themselves, to meet his standard will do so. And that's about it. I don't think "forcing" this on the world is a bad thing, as it's more closer to the natural order of things in hunter gatherer…

Why is everybody talking as if the communist experiment wasn't already tried? If you forcibly remove "freedom" to keep the fruit of your labor, you'll get general misery and poverty. It's false that "things will be done but slowly", the reality is that things will not get done at all, meaning lack of everything and the distribution of misery. For real examples look into any communist country. https://www.youtube.com/…

Why do people like you seem to think socialism and communism are the same thing?

Re: American society increasingly mistakes intelligence for human worth

#249

Post by facetube » Sat, Jun 18, 2016, 6:18 PM UTC

yummyfajitas wrote: post #246

facetube wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US absolutely does not have a universal health care system; roughly 33 million remain uninsured, and a large number of those who are insured do not have adequate savings to pay their high deductible (which can be as high as $6,000 per person per year in-network, and twice that out of network).

Read all three studies. Rand and Oregon show more health care doesn't improve health. Sweden shows more money doesn't. What, exactly, are you disputing here?

The Sweden study absolutely does not show that, and I've explained why elsewhere in the thread. The mere fact that something is an RCT does not make it instantly generalizable to all populations, no matter how many times you repeat the claim. You'd need to at least control for pre-intervention access to care and study a US population to even get close to what you're claiming.

Re: American society increasingly mistakes intelligence for human worth

#250

Post by internaut » Sat, Jun 18, 2016, 6:22 PM UTC

lorenzhs wrote: post #138

kofejnik wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's very little doubt that Trump is an extremely smart person. Also, see http://www.vox.com/2016/4/21/11451378/smug-american-liberali...

I don't think the GP meant to say that Trump isn't smart. It's that the policies he suggests are meant to appeal to feelings, not rationality. They are thus more likely to attract voters who don't think through what those policies could mean, were they to be implemented. (Not saying those are all of his voters, there are other motivations as well. Also not from the US.)

To play devil's advocate:

I think Trump supporters would say that there are simple truth about the universe that faux sophisticated liberals don't grasp or weight equally with less important things.

I believe that orthodoxies of the past half century have been a failure. If average wealth has not risen for decades, a fact, then there is something wrong with your model. Notice the slogan is not Make America Great. It is Make America Great Again.

That admission of failure is fascinating and completely ignored.