> why on earth would I pretend that an aerospace engineer’s talents are as easy to come by or acquire as that of a skilled barista?
Thank you for helping me to articulate why this viral tweet (21k likes) has been irritating the shit out of me:
"If you have a robust skincare routine you have demonstrated aptitude in many core skills of data science. I will not be taking criticism of this idea. Girls who have developed personalized skincare routines know more about multivariate causal inference than many engineers."
I want young girls to feel good about themselves. But we don't need to tell them that shopping at Sephora means they're data scientists.
your own writing may help some of us to know what DS do. My field (used to be library science) now teaches DS--that is where I work--an iSchool-- and I do not know what to say to the DS people who teach Python and R but I'm still teaching book history so they ignore me and I am not in same orbit as them. I seriously doubt when I move on if book history will be taught.
Yeah that’s virtuous bullshit. She could say “this is a real world example of elementary data science” but no. Gotta take it to the next level. Set up a recruiting table for NASA in Ulta.
Yes, it was late and I didn't but when I have to stop and look up things KK seems to take for granted I know I need a glossary. I think he should do a glossary on the home page for his substack.
The pure Twitterspeak (or whatever you want to call it) on display there is irritating enough on its own. Also: "If they can keep acting like hanging out in garages is 'computers' we get to have this."
I may be out of touch, but are they really acting like that? It seems like the boys "doing computers" are actually, y'know, doing computers, because they have access to them. It's not 1977.
Oh jeez--are we back to this again? I'm old enough to remember the same kind of condescension about how the average housewife had a harder job than anybody because she had to be somehow a professional chef, a tailor, a janitor, a purchasing agent, yada yada. As if the average 1960's dinner menu was the same as what was served in a fancy restaurant, and navigating a department store was the same as fufilling a government purchasing spec.
Yes! Or when people add up household tasks and conclude that the salary should be $100k (after all, they’re “at work” 24/7). We can appreciate domestic work, and argue for financial support, without patronizing women.
Been both a project manager and a house spouse. No comparison. Unless you have an army of kids, running the average American household doesn't take that much time. The house job is way better because nobody is hassling you about "deliverables" and weekly status updates.
Having been a house-husband, and a product development engineer ... I never had to negotiate for stove time, nor bargain for butter in my own kitchen. But I regularly had to fight for tester time, disk space, and specific material when I was a product engineer.
I bet nobody told you that you had to get your kids dressed in clean clothes in 30 minutes, even though every scrap of clothing in the house had to be washed and dried and that would take an hour at minimum even if you crammed everything together in one load and sacrificed quality. And if you pointed out this very basic fact you were told you are not a team player.
The thing about the house spouse job, is that there's more house spouse jobs around than there are people who are actually good at the skills it needs.
In the working world, people who won't make good project managers can be writers or programmers or bus drivers instead.
The really unfortunate thing is where two suck-ass project managers marry *each* *other* ...
I mean, running one’s own life is the biggest project management job there is, but we all have to do it! I don’t feel like being condescended to about the monetary value of being a mom makes me feel “valid”. Life is hard and running a household and being a parent is hard. Yes it would cost a lot of money to hire out all the things a house spouse does, but it would cost a lot of money to hire someone to be my personal assistant, housekeeper, chef, chauffeur, etc and it doesn’t mean running my own life is the same as being a CEO.
I think the point people are trying to make with the money (inflated as it is), is that it's not "everyone" doing it: it is women doing housework and related tasks like elder care, and historically that's been utterly ignored as a task that generates value.
Not everything has to have direct economic value to be highly important, often more important than work that generates a dollar value. I’d rather be able to acknowledge that than try to jam everything into the capitalistic mode of equating worth with dollars and cents.
This is why I am a huge fan of the expanded child tax credit. I'd take it a step further and provide social security credits for people who take time out of paid employment to do unpaid care for others--kids, parents, extended family. We see the sacrifices that families make to care for each other--people will abandon careers or quit jobs to care for babies or elders. Why not build on that preference and give stipends and social security credits for family caregiving and then see what the demand is for daycare, pre-K and institutionalized elder care? My hunch is that the "daycare crisis" would not be there and that wages would go UP for people in the paid workforce.
This kind of arrangement got a bad rap in the '60's because the people burdened with child and elder care didn't get to choose it. Because of their sex they were not included in the workforce and it was just expected they'd do all this for free so that men could get on with whatever. Capital has been exploiting the relative abundance of labor that was unleashed in the '70's by luring women into the workforce and then when that pool of cheap labor was tapped out, undermining immigration laws to create another pool of powerless labor. Now the "solution" is daycare and universal pre-K so that everybody has to be on the treadmill. It would be a lot easier and more humane to just make it economically possible to care for your own parents and children and still live decently.
Running one's own life is NOT project management! You are in charge of your own life. There are no external milestones you have to meet on penalty of losing your livelihood. If we are going to beat this wrong analogy to death, your life isn't a fucking project. At the very least it is a program.
When I was a young girl who was more interested in math than, uh, beauty rituals, this kind of messaging definitely did not make me feel good about myself.
You know what else kind of makes me sad here is the missed opportunity. The post could have used an interest in skin care (that I'm sure is shared by some men as well) to convey a mathematical concept that would actually be useful to people in their hobby and spark something other than a sense of smugness in the intended audience. Like I couldn't tell you what she had in mind about the data science embedded in skin care but, you know, show that! Instead of a demonstration of the benefits of formalization and quantification we get apparent disdain for those things.
Skincare culture is so fucked up, if only because of all the additonal useless plastic shit that culture releases into the environment. The mental health issues it causes are even worse.
As a grown man who has had terrible skin since he was a teen, used Acne meds and all kinds of soaps, etc, and now has a wife who has great skin—despite having barely any "skincare routine" worth mentioning beyond "occasionally moisturize and use non-harsh soap"— I would point out this also overlaps with Freddie's point in that a significant factor in the efficacy of skincare is genetic.
Failure to admit that there are stark differences in abilities, whether from intrinsic and extrinsic sources, leads to the corrosive belief that the poor are poor because of some moral failing and the wealthy are wealthy because of some moral superiority.
Most "moral superiority" of the wealthy is BS, but there's something about morality and poor folk that is seldom discussed quantitatively. Mistakes. The difference between 1 in 10, 1 in 100, 1 in 1000, and 1 in 10,000 (days where a clear mistake was made) - those differences are huge.
"Morality" is a way of minimizing mistakes.
"Immoral" behavior more often leads to bad outcomes.
Capitalism and measuring profit also reduces system mistakes far more reliably, and usually sooner, than any other system.
One question is how you prevent kids who are “tracked” according to ability from being forgotten about if they’re the lower achievers. I think that’s what people are really concerned about when they quibble with this idea.
Another is when does being in a lower performing setting impact the outcomes of a kid with more potential? There’s been talk about the better performing kids “uplifting” average or poor classrooms - how many better performing kids does that take and when do their outcomes get impacted?
That idea that smart kids can "uplift" their lower achieving peers has always pissed me off. Since when is it the responsibility of a kid to teach their friends? Isn't that what parents and teachers are supposed to do? Stop foisting your responsibilities off on kids! Even if a kid is bright, they may not have great social skills or be good at explaining things.
Yes, that’s true - but if a child finishes class work in 15 minutes that it takes peers 30 minutes to do, is the best use of the excess time helping classmates on stuff the kid has already just done?
I don't know. What do you think? Having been on both sides of that transaction--the kid who took forever to do math, but the kid who whipped through her spelling words in 10 minutes, my thought would be to give the fast kid something else to do that would engage them. I'm not sure it is a good idea to expect them to help their classmates. Kids may be able to do the work but their reasoning process might be idiosyncratic. Kids can also be jerks and and those who finish fast and then help the teacher can be ostracized for being suck ups.
I don't know about "expect" if that means "make." But I think "let" and "encourage" would be nice. I would personally prefer a culture where education was seen as a cooperative, we-all-want-to know-the-thing effort, rather than a competition. As for idiosyncratic -- fine and good. There is often more than one approach, and even knowing only this is mind-expanding.
Agree. There was a big focus on "project based" learning when my kids were students--the teacher would break the class into small groups of 3-4 kids and have them work together on problem sets. There was NO guidance as to how to work in groups, so the pattern was one or two kids did the work and the others sat around. Again-nothing wrong with peer tutoring and I think it has much to recommend it, but peer tutoring isn't the same as just assigning work and trusting the kids to figure out group dynamics. They are kids and kids, even adolescents, are still figuring out group dynamics and where they fit in.
"I would personally prefer a culture where education was seen as a cooperative, we-all-want-to know-the-thing effort, rather than a competition."
I realize I'm late to this. But first no, that's not how you want the smart kids to spend their time, in no small part because smart kids aren't teachers and it's a waste of their time and possibly hurtful to the lower ability kid.
Case by case basis, depending on the subject and the kid. Understanding something to the point of being able to explain it to someone else is very often not the same as what the kid has already just done. In seeing why someone else didn't get it, it sometimes makes you approach something in a different way that requires more reflection.
You're right. I'm talking about one of the arguments for eliminating honors or gifted/talented classes, which is that if the smartest kids are in the mainstream classes, their presence will somehow "elevate" the achievement of the entire group. It's never entirely clear what that means, but I suspect it means "raise the average test score for this group of kids so that the school doesn't look bad." Some educators will argue that a kid who is good at say, algebra, can help other kids with their work and that is a good thing. Yes it is, and if a school wants to encourage peer tutoring then create a time and space for it. Don't make the kids sit around in class fiddling with their phones while the teacher works with the students who are struggling. That is just asking for the bright kids to check out and hate school.
Oh screw that, agreed. It's also asking for the slower kids to shut down and not raise a hand, because they don't want to be the one slowing the parade down. This argument is often presented as though it justifies itself, without any specific, what-actually-happens-in-detail evidence.
Which folks? Are you saying the kids who finish fast go around and teach according to their understanding? Because that is why I am suspicious of the "each one teach one" idea. Just because some 14 year old thinks they have figured out quadratic equations doesn't mean they can effectively teach another 14 year old. Which is why I said kids often have "idiosyncratic" ways of understanding/learning concepts.
I went to a big public h.s. school in the MW. There were 15 classes and we were placed in homerooms by testing ability--6-1, 6-2...6-15.
I was a 6-2. The 6-1s were almost all boys who went into engineering fields. We 6-2s were a mix of girls and boys. Once in H.S 6-11 through 6-15s went to auto and shop classes. The 6-15 s were mostly boys. Can you believe that was once done? BTW, most of the kids in the high numbers went into military or trades or small business and ..at least so far as I remember from the one reunion I went to ...most were fine. Looking back this was draconian...you were in college prep or you weren't...but I do remember the fellows in auto classes had cars and were among the most sought after dates. This kind of school would be a great study but I am sure this is done no where now. I don't remember anxiety of who was in which class..the school body was kind of proud of the high ranking class who won debates against other schools...if there was any envy it was, as you would expect, about sports prowess.
We had a similar system, but I think they were craftier about the labels. I remember being with a bunch of kids that more or less were interested in the same things I was interested in, and there were whole groups of kids that seemed to spend all of their time over in the "business center" or in the shop complex. I think tracking got a bad rap because not all schools had the resources to provide business centers or auto shops, and so the 6.15's got dumped into a classroom and were ignored by a teacher that the principal was unable to get rid of.
a few years later I learned they did a reverse sort of thing so the 2 ends were higher academically 6-7 and 6-8 were the non-college bound. As if the students didn't figure it out. But later they used the term "gifted" and I think that was a labelling that created perceptions of not being gifted--esp.in a family where some are designated "gifted" and some not so. There were also programs that had students assigned to work as part of their HS program. We have had alternatives to what we have now.
I think Europeans are generally heading into their trades or profession at the age of 18 unless they take time off, so I assume high school has to start being tracked like that if you're going to have 17 year olds making the decisions to pursue medicine or law school.
In my UK high school we were tracked for most things, including Maths, English and languages, and I vividly remember that in the second form they simply took the entire bottom track of the Latin classes and sent them off to do Drama and social sciences instead. I was so pissed. I was in track 3 out of 4, if only I'd realised I needed to make my work that much crappier...
I came to this substack after reading _The Cult of Smart_ (which-I think I heard you & Joe Rogan discuss) so I have that background. Your book really helps people to understand that range of abilities and different abilities are ok. I know intelligence is a minefield. Librarians spent a lot of time on books for adult new readers trying to engage non-readers. Some will never do like to read and are more visual or oral. But getting away from intelligence...why is it ok for some people to be sports super stars and others not? Or musical and others not?
Thank you, we know a bit about lot or where to find it. And I can access databases for anyone who needs them. BTW--a librarian won Jeopardy last night and he's not the first.
Yes. A very quick story. I have a nephew, now 30, who is VERY smart, a good student, now a software engineer at Google, etc. When he was 12 or so he started playing chess, and became serious about it: books, problems, and then a tutor, an old Russian master, that he would visit every week. After a few months of this, he came to the tutor's house one day, and there was a 7-year old girl there. "Play her," he said. My nephew felt a bit weird, but he sat down across from her, and in a few minutes she crushed him. Then she did it again. And again. That day he realized that even though he loved the game, and would continue to enjoy it, she *had* something that he did not have, and that was the end of his chess "career." So, yes, of course.
When I go round to the club and get routed by a gaggle of sixth-graders, little do they realize that, with each of their piercing "Checkmate"s, they are feeding my pathological need for humiliation.
Does he still play it for fun? It's depressing to me when I see people quit doing something entirely because they rose to a level where they suddenly weren't better than everyone else there. Unless they were ONLY doing it for the gold stars to begin with.
Music is another one of those areas. Especially jazz. People who have good ears naturally will always be out of reach of those who must labor with ear training over the years. But unless you really study jazz, and play with others, you will never know just how much this natural talent helps. I loved it, and man did I try harder at it than anything, but then some kid comes in and just crushes the chord changes by ear. I knew I didn't have "it."10,000 hours wasn't gonna make a difference at that level. Next life time God, please? I still play, but I need my day job.
This is also the case for me. I'm naturally really good at music theory and that got me to a point in playing jazz, but when you start to try to outline fast moving, chromatic progressions, I think you need the ears. Also for memorizing tons of tunes.
I got a scholarship to study music in undergrad, was accepted to a couple of pretty good music programs, and started out studying cello performance. And I realized within a couple of semesters, just like the kid playing chess, that there was something in the other cellists I did not have. I loved it, I enjoyed and still enjoy the study of music, and if I practiced 8 hours a day for ten years I would not still not have that thing.
On the flipside, my brother decided in high school he wanted to learn drums. Our folks got him a beginner’s drum set and paid for a few months of lessons. After a year or so he declared he’d learned all he needed to from the teacher and quit, and within half a year of that he was a regular at improv jam sessions in local blues clubs. Later on he taught himself piano completely by ear, y’know, just for funsies. I got the music scholarship but he was always the greater talent.
On a serious, ahem, note, understanding this phenomenon was incredibly meaningful for me. I believe that knowing your limitations around a field you are good at is extremely difficult. To know the difference between 1/1000 vs 1/10,000 is extremely hard for humans. It took thousands of hours of playing and studying just to realize I am just a 1 in 100 musician, which means I wow my friends but embarrass my talented band mates. How the heck did the bass player sing three part harmony with the singer and pianist almost effortlessly, playfully? They have something in their brain I don't. They played music, I kind of worked music. Sigh.
I am incredibly interested if anyone has links to how to differentiate exceptional talent. I think the action for excellence happens at the tails, weird things happen there. I would like to learn more how those tails pattern.
Absolutely! Same in classical music. And everyone accepts it. Why is a visiting violinist paid $10-20K for a single concert while the members of the violin section don't make that in a month? Because she/he is who they are... and they are not. And so it goes. No hard feelings.
"that is, that not only are there no inherent predispositions towards being good or bad at school, no one even becomes better or worse, no one is smarter than another. There are no measurable differences in what we know or can do intellectually. "
Is there a term for this? I see so much pseudo-intellectual output that involves little more than obscuring things that we actually know. What REALLY is intelligence? What REALLY is being able to read? What REALLY is health? It subtract rather than adds to our knowledge of the world. I fucking hate it.
I think conservatives would probably call this "post-modernism," but I don't think that's it.
Deconstruction, perhaps? If the goal is to figure out what we're actually talking--in health, for example, do we define health as "being free of disease and injury", as "being able to run a mile and lift 60 pounds", as "being thin and attractive"? All of these are arguably being used as an underlying definition of health in one sector or another, but which definition is being used isn't always apparent.
Or possibly bureaucratization, if we're talking laws. It's easy to tell if a child can read one-on-one, but the government cannot feasibly sit down with every child one-on-one and see if they can read. So they have to select some endpoint to test, which involves figuring out what we want when we say "every child must be able to read".
I think part of the cause of the mystification about intelligence among, say, academics (who are by and large in its upper echelons) comes from a conviction that such mystification is somehow liberating for those who would not usually be successful. Two examples.
1. In philosophy, one explanation for the preponderance of men is that philosophers think of one another and care about genius. The big names are (thought to be) supremely intelligent and this more or less innate capacity is taken to explain their success. The idea is that women, who are, let's supposed, generally socialized not to think of themselves in such grandiose terms, take it that they are not geniuses, so cannot succeed in philosophy, and self-select out. Removing this pernicious myth is thus floated as one way of correcting the imbalance between the sexes.
2. More broadly in pedagogy, teachers are told they have to instill a "growth mindset:" students must believe, if they struggle with a task or a subject matter, that they are capable of growing and succeeding if only they put their mind to it. A belief that they simply aren't smart enough, no matter how they try, is taken to inhibit this necessary effort, and so a teacher should be a constant cheerleader, framing every obstacle a student faces as conquerable if they put their mind to it.
Both of these denials of the importance or even the existence of intelligence are made with the best of the intentions. They may even, for all I know, attain their desired ends, at least to some degree. They both, however, deny reality: the big names really were, by and large, actually geniuses, and sometimes you just will never be good at something no matter how you try. Assuming, then, that there is a problem of people giving up to soon, it would seem better, at least more honest, rather than peddling the noble lie that intelligence has no part in success, to instead try to uncover and cure the (irrational) lack of self-confidence that leads to people surrendering before the battle is lost.
I’m taking an A&P course right now and the first chapter was about study and learning techniques. Helpful. With a little section about growth mindset. Sort of helpful, but pretty defeating if you’re doing your best and using the techniques and still struggling, right? Because that makes the struggle your fault, a *personality* deficiency rather than a limitation imposed by the combo of your interest/intellectual predisposition/ability.
Go back to that 1975 paper above on “Role Of Expectations And Attributions” and look more closely at the proposed intervention to help these poor fixed mindset students:
Twelve extremely helpless children were identified [and tested on how many math problems they could solve in a certain amount of time]…the criterion number was set one above the number he was generally able to complete within the time limit. On these trials, he was stopped one or two problems short of criterion, his performance was compared to the criterion number required, and experimenter verbally attributed the failure to insufficient effort.
So basically, you take the most vulnerable people, set them tasks you know they’ll fail at, then lecture them about how they only failed because of insufficient effort.
Imagine a boot stamping on a human face forever, saying “YOUR PROBLEM IS THAT YOU’RE JUST NOT TRYING NOT TO BE STAMPED ON HARD ENOUGH”.
I do think that wealth/power has the ability to create the *impression* of intelligence, and that at least some attacks on the concept of intelligence are actually attempting to attack the upper-middle-class-smart-person-complex. There are certain cash-grab graduate programs available to anyone with money to convert into an Ivy League degree. There are white-collar jobs that really do consist of dicking around on a spreadsheet all day. I don't think that an aerospace engineer's talents are as easy to come by as a barista's, but I do think there are a lot of people who think they're Smarter than a barista because they had the grades and extracurriculars to go to a Good School or they have an emails job instead of a service job or they bought a terminal degree in a relatively non-rigorous field. I totally get the impulse to attack those people and the idea that certain signifiers are equivalent to intelligence. That said, the correct response is not that there's no such thing as intelligence or that all skill sets are created equal.
“If the concern is saying that there are attributes and abilities in life that matter that are not academic or connected to intelligence, and that they should be taken seriously and rewarded, the news is good, as this is perhaps the core argument of my book.”
Two questions (to which I do not, myself, have answers):
1) What’s the best argument for this, in your view? I ask because this reminded me of John McWhorter saying (in the context of the racial IQ gap debate): “Given a choice between history’s having produced Beethoven — or Ray Charles, or Hamilton — and its having produced penicillin, all would choose the latter.” I don’t know that I agree — or, at least, if our self-worth depends on being the person who invents penicillin, most of us will be very disappointed. But would be curious to hear your view in a nutshell. (I am still working my way through the book, I swear.)
2) Assume there are many socially valuable traits — musical and artistic and athletic ability, a la Gardner, but also loyalty and a strong work ethic and civic duty and sense of humor and so on. Still… if each of these can be plotted on a scale, are there people who fall at the far left of every scale — who are poor at all facets of being human? Lumpenproletariat or what have you? People who are neither skilled nor moral nor pleasant? If so, what do we do with them? Does every person have some value beyond the sum of their utility functions for other humans, and if so, from what does it derive? (I would accept religious or quasi-religious answers. I would also accept a Rawlsian argument that we treat each person AS IF they had value, because none of us knows before he is born which kind of person he will be. But, again, curious what your framework is.)
Your second question reminds me of this imagined letter from a State Compensation Board in a hypothetical perfectly egalitarian society in Elizabeth Anderson's "What Is The Point of Equality".
To the disabled: Your defective native endowments or current disabilities, alas, make your life less worth living than the lives of normal people. To compensate for this misfortune, we, the able ones, will give you extra resources, enough to make the worth of living your life good enough that at least one person out there thinks it is comparable to someone else's life.
To the stupid and untalented: Unfortunately, other people don't value what little you have to offer in the system of production. Your talents are too meager to command much market value. Because of the misfortune that you were born so poorly endowed with talents, we productive ones will make it up to you: we'll let you share in the bounty of what we have produced with our vastly superior and highly valued abilities.
To the ugly and socially awkward: How sad that you are so repulsive to people around you that no one wants to be your friend or lifetime companion. We won't make it up to you by being your friend or your marriage partner-we have our own freedom of association to exercise-but you can console yourself in your miserable loneliness by consuming these material goods that we, the beautiful and charming ones, will provide. And who knows? Maybe you won't be such a loser in love once potential dates see how rich you are.
"1) What’s the best argument for this, in your view? I ask because this reminded me of John McWhorter saying (in the context of the racial IQ gap debate): “Given a choice between history’s having produced Beethoven — or Ray Charles, or Hamilton — and its having produced penicillin, all would choose the latter.” I don’t know that I agree — or, at least, if our self-worth depends on being the person who invents penicillin, most of us will be very disappointed. But would be curious to hear your view in a nutshell. (I am still working my way through the book, I swear.)"
I don't understand how the discovery of penicillin relates to the artists mentioned? Why is it a choice? Does he think if Fleming never discovered penicillin it would have taken decades for somone to have made a similar discovery?
And here's the full quote. I think his point is that we might say we value other things, but being smart is always the real numero uno. (I'm not sure hunter-gatherers or many warrior cultures would agree -- being an excellent spear-fisher might well be prized above verbal/mathematical prowess, and they might have little interest in "driving civilization forward" -- but it is hard to deny, with hindsight, that antibiotics are nice to have.)
---------------------------
Finally, some advocates of “honesty” about race and IQ have argued that we must acknowledge that black people have lower IQs but must also “progress” toward an ability to celebrate individuals for a range of talents beyond intelligence. I consider those making this argument sincere — and quixotic.
“Smarts,” as they drive civilization forward, will always occupy a privileged place in our evaluation of human beings. The Duke Ellingtons and the Michael Jordans will be our kings, but the Albert Einsteins and the Stephen Hawkings will be our gods. As a linguist, I am aware of no human language in which the word for “smart” does not refer to, well, smarts. No society in the world applies that word as well to those who are good at spearing fish, playing the flute, or making themselves well liked. Much of the reason we step around the issue of race and IQ is that intelligence, shimmering in all of its viscerally resonant glory, is something whose value we do not really question.
The popularity of Howard Gardner’s schema of “multiple intelligences,” including the musical, social, and kinesthetic, only illuminates our genuine sentiments toward IQ. This extension of the concept of what it is to be intelligent handily distracts us from a guilty but primal elevation of the particular kind of intelligence Gardner classifies as “logical-mathematical” — i.e., what all of us deep down think of as “real” intelligence. In real life we will continue to casually designate some people as smart, with the implication that this is an unquestionably superlative attribute, on the basis of math, science, and scholastic performance rather than that of shooting hoops, playing the saxophone, or being popular.
This will not change. Given a choice between history’s having produced Beethoven — or Ray Charles, or Hamilton — and its having produced penicillin, all would choose the latter. That is, neither black Americans nor educated America will ever accept the idea that black people must cherish themselves as something other than smart.
"And here's the full quote. I think his point is that we might say we value other things, but being smart is always the real numero uno. (I'm not sure hunter-gatherers or many warrior cultures would agree -- being an excellent spear-fisher might well be prized above verbal/mathematical prowess, and they might have little interest in "driving civilization forward" -- but it is hard to deny, with hindsight, that antibiotics are nice to have.)"
Thanks for that. In any sort of physically demanding or apocalyptic scenario the relative worth of "smart may change."
As an aside.
"Under this analysis, there may be a heritable part of IQ that differs between the races, but, first, it is small, and second and more important, environmental factors override its effects. This is the main takeaway from a recent article in Vox by the IQ researchers Eric Turkheimer, Kathryn Paige Harden, and Richard Nisbett."
Interestingly I just listened to Kathryn Paige Harden on the Capitalisn't podcast and she agreed with the economists that the heritable effect of IQ is massive. She said that economists and other social scientists understand that whereas lay people don't. In fact one of the economists on the show, Luigi Zingales, said these polymorphisms were probably more predictive of intelligence than a FICO score was of someone repaying a mortgage.
Not equality of outcomes. But a floor. A floor of material outcomes.
Amen.
> why on earth would I pretend that an aerospace engineer’s talents are as easy to come by or acquire as that of a skilled barista?
Thank you for helping me to articulate why this viral tweet (21k likes) has been irritating the shit out of me:
"If you have a robust skincare routine you have demonstrated aptitude in many core skills of data science. I will not be taking criticism of this idea. Girls who have developed personalized skincare routines know more about multivariate causal inference than many engineers."
I want young girls to feel good about themselves. But we don't need to tell them that shopping at Sephora means they're data scientists.
Source: https://twitter.com/grimalkina/status/1484585594059583488
The author is a data scientist, so she knows perfectly well what they do. Which makes it even more annoying.
Trying to promote my own blog post (the actually existing AI and machine learning one) But then it sounded snarky so I deleted it and made a new reply
your own writing may help some of us to know what DS do. My field (used to be library science) now teaches DS--that is where I work--an iSchool-- and I do not know what to say to the DS people who teach Python and R but I'm still teaching book history so they ignore me and I am not in same orbit as them. I seriously doubt when I move on if book history will be taught.
Yup, and schools will produce thousands of students who know how to copy/paste code but who have none of the actual skills that data scientists need.
Yeah that’s virtuous bullshit. She could say “this is a real world example of elementary data science” but no. Gotta take it to the next level. Set up a recruiting table for NASA in Ulta.
It's really. bad. lab. work.
I have a recent post explaining some of the stuff that data scientists actually do (the machine learning and AI one)
I read it and will have to re-read it because it is formidable.
If it's hard to read, that's my fault!
No it’s Kathleen’s fault for not applying herself.
Yes, it was late and I didn't but when I have to stop and look up things KK seems to take for granted I know I need a glossary. I think he should do a glossary on the home page for his substack.
Let me know what's hard to understand in the comments. I want my posts to be useful
o no, it may be I have no context--I have not followed programming for years.
Hahahahahahaha this is honestly so fucking sexist. The soft bigotry of low expectations indeed.
The pure Twitterspeak (or whatever you want to call it) on display there is irritating enough on its own. Also: "If they can keep acting like hanging out in garages is 'computers' we get to have this."
I may be out of touch, but are they really acting like that? It seems like the boys "doing computers" are actually, y'know, doing computers, because they have access to them. It's not 1977.
Been fixing cars since 1957.
They're computers on wheels now.
Getting more so. e.g. Tesla.
Oh jeez--are we back to this again? I'm old enough to remember the same kind of condescension about how the average housewife had a harder job than anybody because she had to be somehow a professional chef, a tailor, a janitor, a purchasing agent, yada yada. As if the average 1960's dinner menu was the same as what was served in a fancy restaurant, and navigating a department store was the same as fufilling a government purchasing spec.
Yes! Or when people add up household tasks and conclude that the salary should be $100k (after all, they’re “at work” 24/7). We can appreciate domestic work, and argue for financial support, without patronizing women.
IDK. I feel like running a household is a pretty serious project management job.
Been both a project manager and a house spouse. No comparison. Unless you have an army of kids, running the average American household doesn't take that much time. The house job is way better because nobody is hassling you about "deliverables" and weekly status updates.
You must be rare, though. In my experience, 80% of project managers don't offer much value. A really good is SUPER helpful though
I was a terrible project manager--it was a job that consisted of all of the things I hate doing and I am bad at. Which proves your point.
To be truly good at this job takes enormous amount of hours and dedication, far more than dev, marketing, etc. It's why I hesitate going back.
Me too.
I'm glad that it works well for you. Maybe I'm just a mess of a person.
Deliverables, like a kid eating? I don't need a boss to feel the pain when I haven't met a deliverable on time.
Having been a house-husband, and a product development engineer ... I never had to negotiate for stove time, nor bargain for butter in my own kitchen. But I regularly had to fight for tester time, disk space, and specific material when I was a product engineer.
Yes, you are right. Running a household is easy.
I bet nobody told you that you had to get your kids dressed in clean clothes in 30 minutes, even though every scrap of clothing in the house had to be washed and dried and that would take an hour at minimum even if you crammed everything together in one load and sacrificed quality. And if you pointed out this very basic fact you were told you are not a team player.
The thing about the house spouse job, is that there's more house spouse jobs around than there are people who are actually good at the skills it needs.
In the working world, people who won't make good project managers can be writers or programmers or bus drivers instead.
The really unfortunate thing is where two suck-ass project managers marry *each* *other* ...
I mean, running one’s own life is the biggest project management job there is, but we all have to do it! I don’t feel like being condescended to about the monetary value of being a mom makes me feel “valid”. Life is hard and running a household and being a parent is hard. Yes it would cost a lot of money to hire out all the things a house spouse does, but it would cost a lot of money to hire someone to be my personal assistant, housekeeper, chef, chauffeur, etc and it doesn’t mean running my own life is the same as being a CEO.
I think the point people are trying to make with the money (inflated as it is), is that it's not "everyone" doing it: it is women doing housework and related tasks like elder care, and historically that's been utterly ignored as a task that generates value.
Not everything has to have direct economic value to be highly important, often more important than work that generates a dollar value. I’d rather be able to acknowledge that than try to jam everything into the capitalistic mode of equating worth with dollars and cents.
This is why I am a huge fan of the expanded child tax credit. I'd take it a step further and provide social security credits for people who take time out of paid employment to do unpaid care for others--kids, parents, extended family. We see the sacrifices that families make to care for each other--people will abandon careers or quit jobs to care for babies or elders. Why not build on that preference and give stipends and social security credits for family caregiving and then see what the demand is for daycare, pre-K and institutionalized elder care? My hunch is that the "daycare crisis" would not be there and that wages would go UP for people in the paid workforce.
This kind of arrangement got a bad rap in the '60's because the people burdened with child and elder care didn't get to choose it. Because of their sex they were not included in the workforce and it was just expected they'd do all this for free so that men could get on with whatever. Capital has been exploiting the relative abundance of labor that was unleashed in the '70's by luring women into the workforce and then when that pool of cheap labor was tapped out, undermining immigration laws to create another pool of powerless labor. Now the "solution" is daycare and universal pre-K so that everybody has to be on the treadmill. It would be a lot easier and more humane to just make it economically possible to care for your own parents and children and still live decently.
Running one's own life is NOT project management! You are in charge of your own life. There are no external milestones you have to meet on penalty of losing your livelihood. If we are going to beat this wrong analogy to death, your life isn't a fucking project. At the very least it is a program.
Obligatory Bill Burr link: https://youtu.be/BESx4mO7XX8
I am a female data scientist who has never been able to figure out skincare.
Do you own a bar of soap? Then you're good to go.
When I was a young girl who was more interested in math than, uh, beauty rituals, this kind of messaging definitely did not make me feel good about myself.
You know what else kind of makes me sad here is the missed opportunity. The post could have used an interest in skin care (that I'm sure is shared by some men as well) to convey a mathematical concept that would actually be useful to people in their hobby and spark something other than a sense of smugness in the intended audience. Like I couldn't tell you what she had in mind about the data science embedded in skin care but, you know, show that! Instead of a demonstration of the benefits of formalization and quantification we get apparent disdain for those things.
“Real women have skincare routines” is the new feminism.
Totally. She could have used skin care to encourage interest in science and data. Instead she’s like, ⭐️~you already have a PhD!!!⭐️
Now I feel like someone should totally get out there and craft that post.
Sadly, I suck at skin care. I only know how to do programming...
Skincare culture is so fucked up, if only because of all the additonal useless plastic shit that culture releases into the environment. The mental health issues it causes are even worse.
I hadn't seen that. What a ridiculous, ridiculous statement.
As a grown man who has had terrible skin since he was a teen, used Acne meds and all kinds of soaps, etc, and now has a wife who has great skin—despite having barely any "skincare routine" worth mentioning beyond "occasionally moisturize and use non-harsh soap"— I would point out this also overlaps with Freddie's point in that a significant factor in the efficacy of skincare is genetic.
This is an object lesson on how stupid intellectuals are, forklift drivers know this and yet we are for bidden to speak about it.
Failure to admit that there are stark differences in abilities, whether from intrinsic and extrinsic sources, leads to the corrosive belief that the poor are poor because of some moral failing and the wealthy are wealthy because of some moral superiority.
Most "moral superiority" of the wealthy is BS, but there's something about morality and poor folk that is seldom discussed quantitatively. Mistakes. The difference between 1 in 10, 1 in 100, 1 in 1000, and 1 in 10,000 (days where a clear mistake was made) - those differences are huge.
"Morality" is a way of minimizing mistakes.
"Immoral" behavior more often leads to bad outcomes.
Capitalism and measuring profit also reduces system mistakes far more reliably, and usually sooner, than any other system.
Doesn’t seem particularly controversial to me.
One question is how you prevent kids who are “tracked” according to ability from being forgotten about if they’re the lower achievers. I think that’s what people are really concerned about when they quibble with this idea.
Another is when does being in a lower performing setting impact the outcomes of a kid with more potential? There’s been talk about the better performing kids “uplifting” average or poor classrooms - how many better performing kids does that take and when do their outcomes get impacted?
That idea that smart kids can "uplift" their lower achieving peers has always pissed me off. Since when is it the responsibility of a kid to teach their friends? Isn't that what parents and teachers are supposed to do? Stop foisting your responsibilities off on kids! Even if a kid is bright, they may not have great social skills or be good at explaining things.
Having to teach/explain something is a very effective way to learn it better. But you're probably talking about something else.
Yes, that’s true - but if a child finishes class work in 15 minutes that it takes peers 30 minutes to do, is the best use of the excess time helping classmates on stuff the kid has already just done?
I don't know. What do you think? Having been on both sides of that transaction--the kid who took forever to do math, but the kid who whipped through her spelling words in 10 minutes, my thought would be to give the fast kid something else to do that would engage them. I'm not sure it is a good idea to expect them to help their classmates. Kids may be able to do the work but their reasoning process might be idiosyncratic. Kids can also be jerks and and those who finish fast and then help the teacher can be ostracized for being suck ups.
I don't know about "expect" if that means "make." But I think "let" and "encourage" would be nice. I would personally prefer a culture where education was seen as a cooperative, we-all-want-to know-the-thing effort, rather than a competition. As for idiosyncratic -- fine and good. There is often more than one approach, and even knowing only this is mind-expanding.
Agree. There was a big focus on "project based" learning when my kids were students--the teacher would break the class into small groups of 3-4 kids and have them work together on problem sets. There was NO guidance as to how to work in groups, so the pattern was one or two kids did the work and the others sat around. Again-nothing wrong with peer tutoring and I think it has much to recommend it, but peer tutoring isn't the same as just assigning work and trusting the kids to figure out group dynamics. They are kids and kids, even adolescents, are still figuring out group dynamics and where they fit in.
"I would personally prefer a culture where education was seen as a cooperative, we-all-want-to know-the-thing effort, rather than a competition."
I realize I'm late to this. But first no, that's not how you want the smart kids to spend their time, in no small part because smart kids aren't teachers and it's a waste of their time and possibly hurtful to the lower ability kid.
Plus, don't forget the pony. Gotta have a pony.
Case by case basis, depending on the subject and the kid. Understanding something to the point of being able to explain it to someone else is very often not the same as what the kid has already just done. In seeing why someone else didn't get it, it sometimes makes you approach something in a different way that requires more reflection.
You're right. I'm talking about one of the arguments for eliminating honors or gifted/talented classes, which is that if the smartest kids are in the mainstream classes, their presence will somehow "elevate" the achievement of the entire group. It's never entirely clear what that means, but I suspect it means "raise the average test score for this group of kids so that the school doesn't look bad." Some educators will argue that a kid who is good at say, algebra, can help other kids with their work and that is a good thing. Yes it is, and if a school wants to encourage peer tutoring then create a time and space for it. Don't make the kids sit around in class fiddling with their phones while the teacher works with the students who are struggling. That is just asking for the bright kids to check out and hate school.
Oh screw that, agreed. It's also asking for the slower kids to shut down and not raise a hand, because they don't want to be the one slowing the parade down. This argument is often presented as though it justifies itself, without any specific, what-actually-happens-in-detail evidence.
No, it's not. It's an effective way for some folks to learn it better, and those folks go around demanding that everyone fit into their strong suit.
Which folks? Are you saying the kids who finish fast go around and teach according to their understanding? Because that is why I am suspicious of the "each one teach one" idea. Just because some 14 year old thinks they have figured out quadratic equations doesn't mean they can effectively teach another 14 year old. Which is why I said kids often have "idiosyncratic" ways of understanding/learning concepts.
I went to a big public h.s. school in the MW. There were 15 classes and we were placed in homerooms by testing ability--6-1, 6-2...6-15.
I was a 6-2. The 6-1s were almost all boys who went into engineering fields. We 6-2s were a mix of girls and boys. Once in H.S 6-11 through 6-15s went to auto and shop classes. The 6-15 s were mostly boys. Can you believe that was once done? BTW, most of the kids in the high numbers went into military or trades or small business and ..at least so far as I remember from the one reunion I went to ...most were fine. Looking back this was draconian...you were in college prep or you weren't...but I do remember the fellows in auto classes had cars and were among the most sought after dates. This kind of school would be a great study but I am sure this is done no where now. I don't remember anxiety of who was in which class..the school body was kind of proud of the high ranking class who won debates against other schools...if there was any envy it was, as you would expect, about sports prowess.
We had a similar system, but I think they were craftier about the labels. I remember being with a bunch of kids that more or less were interested in the same things I was interested in, and there were whole groups of kids that seemed to spend all of their time over in the "business center" or in the shop complex. I think tracking got a bad rap because not all schools had the resources to provide business centers or auto shops, and so the 6.15's got dumped into a classroom and were ignored by a teacher that the principal was unable to get rid of.
a few years later I learned they did a reverse sort of thing so the 2 ends were higher academically 6-7 and 6-8 were the non-college bound. As if the students didn't figure it out. But later they used the term "gifted" and I think that was a labelling that created perceptions of not being gifted--esp.in a family where some are designated "gifted" and some not so. There were also programs that had students assigned to work as part of their HS program. We have had alternatives to what we have now.
I think Europeans are generally heading into their trades or profession at the age of 18 unless they take time off, so I assume high school has to start being tracked like that if you're going to have 17 year olds making the decisions to pursue medicine or law school.
In my UK high school we were tracked for most things, including Maths, English and languages, and I vividly remember that in the second form they simply took the entire bottom track of the Latin classes and sent them off to do Drama and social sciences instead. I was so pissed. I was in track 3 out of 4, if only I'd realised I needed to make my work that much crappier...
I came to this substack after reading _The Cult of Smart_ (which-I think I heard you & Joe Rogan discuss) so I have that background. Your book really helps people to understand that range of abilities and different abilities are ok. I know intelligence is a minefield. Librarians spent a lot of time on books for adult new readers trying to engage non-readers. Some will never do like to read and are more visual or oral. But getting away from intelligence...why is it ok for some people to be sports super stars and others not? Or musical and others not?
Just wanted to say I always look forward to your librarian perspective on Freddie's posts!
Thank you, we know a bit about lot or where to find it. And I can access databases for anyone who needs them. BTW--a librarian won Jeopardy last night and he's not the first.
Yes. A very quick story. I have a nephew, now 30, who is VERY smart, a good student, now a software engineer at Google, etc. When he was 12 or so he started playing chess, and became serious about it: books, problems, and then a tutor, an old Russian master, that he would visit every week. After a few months of this, he came to the tutor's house one day, and there was a 7-year old girl there. "Play her," he said. My nephew felt a bit weird, but he sat down across from her, and in a few minutes she crushed him. Then she did it again. And again. That day he realized that even though he loved the game, and would continue to enjoy it, she *had* something that he did not have, and that was the end of his chess "career." So, yes, of course.
Yeah, but what really is "good at chess?" Isn't me losing in 10 turns just a different "way of playing?"
Yes :)
When I go round to the club and get routed by a gaggle of sixth-graders, little do they realize that, with each of their piercing "Checkmate"s, they are feeding my pathological need for humiliation.
Does he still play it for fun? It's depressing to me when I see people quit doing something entirely because they rose to a level where they suddenly weren't better than everyone else there. Unless they were ONLY doing it for the gold stars to begin with.
Yes, he does! :)
Music is another one of those areas. Especially jazz. People who have good ears naturally will always be out of reach of those who must labor with ear training over the years. But unless you really study jazz, and play with others, you will never know just how much this natural talent helps. I loved it, and man did I try harder at it than anything, but then some kid comes in and just crushes the chord changes by ear. I knew I didn't have "it."10,000 hours wasn't gonna make a difference at that level. Next life time God, please? I still play, but I need my day job.
This is also the case for me. I'm naturally really good at music theory and that got me to a point in playing jazz, but when you start to try to outline fast moving, chromatic progressions, I think you need the ears. Also for memorizing tons of tunes.
I got a scholarship to study music in undergrad, was accepted to a couple of pretty good music programs, and started out studying cello performance. And I realized within a couple of semesters, just like the kid playing chess, that there was something in the other cellists I did not have. I loved it, I enjoyed and still enjoy the study of music, and if I practiced 8 hours a day for ten years I would not still not have that thing.
On the flipside, my brother decided in high school he wanted to learn drums. Our folks got him a beginner’s drum set and paid for a few months of lessons. After a year or so he declared he’d learned all he needed to from the teacher and quit, and within half a year of that he was a regular at improv jam sessions in local blues clubs. Later on he taught himself piano completely by ear, y’know, just for funsies. I got the music scholarship but he was always the greater talent.
On a serious, ahem, note, understanding this phenomenon was incredibly meaningful for me. I believe that knowing your limitations around a field you are good at is extremely difficult. To know the difference between 1/1000 vs 1/10,000 is extremely hard for humans. It took thousands of hours of playing and studying just to realize I am just a 1 in 100 musician, which means I wow my friends but embarrass my talented band mates. How the heck did the bass player sing three part harmony with the singer and pianist almost effortlessly, playfully? They have something in their brain I don't. They played music, I kind of worked music. Sigh.
I am incredibly interested if anyone has links to how to differentiate exceptional talent. I think the action for excellence happens at the tails, weird things happen there. I would like to learn more how those tails pattern.
“They played music, I kind of worked music.” Yes! That’s exactly it!
Absolutely! Same in classical music. And everyone accepts it. Why is a visiting violinist paid $10-20K for a single concert while the members of the violin section don't make that in a month? Because she/he is who they are... and they are not. And so it goes. No hard feelings.
"that is, that not only are there no inherent predispositions towards being good or bad at school, no one even becomes better or worse, no one is smarter than another. There are no measurable differences in what we know or can do intellectually. "
Is there a term for this? I see so much pseudo-intellectual output that involves little more than obscuring things that we actually know. What REALLY is intelligence? What REALLY is being able to read? What REALLY is health? It subtract rather than adds to our knowledge of the world. I fucking hate it.
I think conservatives would probably call this "post-modernism," but I don't think that's it.
Deconstruction, perhaps? If the goal is to figure out what we're actually talking--in health, for example, do we define health as "being free of disease and injury", as "being able to run a mile and lift 60 pounds", as "being thin and attractive"? All of these are arguably being used as an underlying definition of health in one sector or another, but which definition is being used isn't always apparent.
Or possibly bureaucratization, if we're talking laws. It's easy to tell if a child can read one-on-one, but the government cannot feasibly sit down with every child one-on-one and see if they can read. So they have to select some endpoint to test, which involves figuring out what we want when we say "every child must be able to read".
I think part of the cause of the mystification about intelligence among, say, academics (who are by and large in its upper echelons) comes from a conviction that such mystification is somehow liberating for those who would not usually be successful. Two examples.
1. In philosophy, one explanation for the preponderance of men is that philosophers think of one another and care about genius. The big names are (thought to be) supremely intelligent and this more or less innate capacity is taken to explain their success. The idea is that women, who are, let's supposed, generally socialized not to think of themselves in such grandiose terms, take it that they are not geniuses, so cannot succeed in philosophy, and self-select out. Removing this pernicious myth is thus floated as one way of correcting the imbalance between the sexes.
2. More broadly in pedagogy, teachers are told they have to instill a "growth mindset:" students must believe, if they struggle with a task or a subject matter, that they are capable of growing and succeeding if only they put their mind to it. A belief that they simply aren't smart enough, no matter how they try, is taken to inhibit this necessary effort, and so a teacher should be a constant cheerleader, framing every obstacle a student faces as conquerable if they put their mind to it.
Both of these denials of the importance or even the existence of intelligence are made with the best of the intentions. They may even, for all I know, attain their desired ends, at least to some degree. They both, however, deny reality: the big names really were, by and large, actually geniuses, and sometimes you just will never be good at something no matter how you try. Assuming, then, that there is a problem of people giving up to soon, it would seem better, at least more honest, rather than peddling the noble lie that intelligence has no part in success, to instead try to uncover and cure the (irrational) lack of self-confidence that leads to people surrendering before the battle is lost.
I’m taking an A&P course right now and the first chapter was about study and learning techniques. Helpful. With a little section about growth mindset. Sort of helpful, but pretty defeating if you’re doing your best and using the techniques and still struggling, right? Because that makes the struggle your fault, a *personality* deficiency rather than a limitation imposed by the combo of your interest/intellectual predisposition/ability.
Scott Alexander describes just this in his take on growth mindset: https://slatestarcodex.com/2015/04/08/no-clarity-around-growth-mindset-yet/.
Go back to that 1975 paper above on “Role Of Expectations And Attributions” and look more closely at the proposed intervention to help these poor fixed mindset students:
Twelve extremely helpless children were identified [and tested on how many math problems they could solve in a certain amount of time]…the criterion number was set one above the number he was generally able to complete within the time limit. On these trials, he was stopped one or two problems short of criterion, his performance was compared to the criterion number required, and experimenter verbally attributed the failure to insufficient effort.
So basically, you take the most vulnerable people, set them tasks you know they’ll fail at, then lecture them about how they only failed because of insufficient effort.
Imagine a boot stamping on a human face forever, saying “YOUR PROBLEM IS THAT YOU’RE JUST NOT TRYING NOT TO BE STAMPED ON HARD ENOUGH”.
I totally agree with this post.
I do think that wealth/power has the ability to create the *impression* of intelligence, and that at least some attacks on the concept of intelligence are actually attempting to attack the upper-middle-class-smart-person-complex. There are certain cash-grab graduate programs available to anyone with money to convert into an Ivy League degree. There are white-collar jobs that really do consist of dicking around on a spreadsheet all day. I don't think that an aerospace engineer's talents are as easy to come by as a barista's, but I do think there are a lot of people who think they're Smarter than a barista because they had the grades and extracurriculars to go to a Good School or they have an emails job instead of a service job or they bought a terminal degree in a relatively non-rigorous field. I totally get the impulse to attack those people and the idea that certain signifiers are equivalent to intelligence. That said, the correct response is not that there's no such thing as intelligence or that all skill sets are created equal.
“If the concern is saying that there are attributes and abilities in life that matter that are not academic or connected to intelligence, and that they should be taken seriously and rewarded, the news is good, as this is perhaps the core argument of my book.”
Two questions (to which I do not, myself, have answers):
1) What’s the best argument for this, in your view? I ask because this reminded me of John McWhorter saying (in the context of the racial IQ gap debate): “Given a choice between history’s having produced Beethoven — or Ray Charles, or Hamilton — and its having produced penicillin, all would choose the latter.” I don’t know that I agree — or, at least, if our self-worth depends on being the person who invents penicillin, most of us will be very disappointed. But would be curious to hear your view in a nutshell. (I am still working my way through the book, I swear.)
2) Assume there are many socially valuable traits — musical and artistic and athletic ability, a la Gardner, but also loyalty and a strong work ethic and civic duty and sense of humor and so on. Still… if each of these can be plotted on a scale, are there people who fall at the far left of every scale — who are poor at all facets of being human? Lumpenproletariat or what have you? People who are neither skilled nor moral nor pleasant? If so, what do we do with them? Does every person have some value beyond the sum of their utility functions for other humans, and if so, from what does it derive? (I would accept religious or quasi-religious answers. I would also accept a Rawlsian argument that we treat each person AS IF they had value, because none of us knows before he is born which kind of person he will be. But, again, curious what your framework is.)
Your second question reminds me of this imagined letter from a State Compensation Board in a hypothetical perfectly egalitarian society in Elizabeth Anderson's "What Is The Point of Equality".
To the disabled: Your defective native endowments or current disabilities, alas, make your life less worth living than the lives of normal people. To compensate for this misfortune, we, the able ones, will give you extra resources, enough to make the worth of living your life good enough that at least one person out there thinks it is comparable to someone else's life.
To the stupid and untalented: Unfortunately, other people don't value what little you have to offer in the system of production. Your talents are too meager to command much market value. Because of the misfortune that you were born so poorly endowed with talents, we productive ones will make it up to you: we'll let you share in the bounty of what we have produced with our vastly superior and highly valued abilities.
To the ugly and socially awkward: How sad that you are so repulsive to people around you that no one wants to be your friend or lifetime companion. We won't make it up to you by being your friend or your marriage partner-we have our own freedom of association to exercise-but you can console yourself in your miserable loneliness by consuming these material goods that we, the beautiful and charming ones, will provide. And who knows? Maybe you won't be such a loser in love once potential dates see how rich you are.
For number 2: gladiator arena for ugly-ass jerkwad idiots, probably.
But enough about the NHL.
Lol that’s harsh. Quite a few of those guys are hot, haircuts notwithstanding.
"1) What’s the best argument for this, in your view? I ask because this reminded me of John McWhorter saying (in the context of the racial IQ gap debate): “Given a choice between history’s having produced Beethoven — or Ray Charles, or Hamilton — and its having produced penicillin, all would choose the latter.” I don’t know that I agree — or, at least, if our self-worth depends on being the person who invents penicillin, most of us will be very disappointed. But would be curious to hear your view in a nutshell. (I am still working my way through the book, I swear.)"
I don't understand how the discovery of penicillin relates to the artists mentioned? Why is it a choice? Does he think if Fleming never discovered penicillin it would have taken decades for somone to have made a similar discovery?
I knew I should have included more context. (It's always tricky trying to figure how much of something to quote.) Here's the link to the full essay:
https://www.nationalreview.com/2017/07/race-iq-debate-serves-no-purpose/
And here's the full quote. I think his point is that we might say we value other things, but being smart is always the real numero uno. (I'm not sure hunter-gatherers or many warrior cultures would agree -- being an excellent spear-fisher might well be prized above verbal/mathematical prowess, and they might have little interest in "driving civilization forward" -- but it is hard to deny, with hindsight, that antibiotics are nice to have.)
---------------------------
Finally, some advocates of “honesty” about race and IQ have argued that we must acknowledge that black people have lower IQs but must also “progress” toward an ability to celebrate individuals for a range of talents beyond intelligence. I consider those making this argument sincere — and quixotic.
“Smarts,” as they drive civilization forward, will always occupy a privileged place in our evaluation of human beings. The Duke Ellingtons and the Michael Jordans will be our kings, but the Albert Einsteins and the Stephen Hawkings will be our gods. As a linguist, I am aware of no human language in which the word for “smart” does not refer to, well, smarts. No society in the world applies that word as well to those who are good at spearing fish, playing the flute, or making themselves well liked. Much of the reason we step around the issue of race and IQ is that intelligence, shimmering in all of its viscerally resonant glory, is something whose value we do not really question.
The popularity of Howard Gardner’s schema of “multiple intelligences,” including the musical, social, and kinesthetic, only illuminates our genuine sentiments toward IQ. This extension of the concept of what it is to be intelligent handily distracts us from a guilty but primal elevation of the particular kind of intelligence Gardner classifies as “logical-mathematical” — i.e., what all of us deep down think of as “real” intelligence. In real life we will continue to casually designate some people as smart, with the implication that this is an unquestionably superlative attribute, on the basis of math, science, and scholastic performance rather than that of shooting hoops, playing the saxophone, or being popular.
This will not change. Given a choice between history’s having produced Beethoven — or Ray Charles, or Hamilton — and its having produced penicillin, all would choose the latter. That is, neither black Americans nor educated America will ever accept the idea that black people must cherish themselves as something other than smart.
"And here's the full quote. I think his point is that we might say we value other things, but being smart is always the real numero uno. (I'm not sure hunter-gatherers or many warrior cultures would agree -- being an excellent spear-fisher might well be prized above verbal/mathematical prowess, and they might have little interest in "driving civilization forward" -- but it is hard to deny, with hindsight, that antibiotics are nice to have.)"
Thanks for that. In any sort of physically demanding or apocalyptic scenario the relative worth of "smart may change."
As an aside.
"Under this analysis, there may be a heritable part of IQ that differs between the races, but, first, it is small, and second and more important, environmental factors override its effects. This is the main takeaway from a recent article in Vox by the IQ researchers Eric Turkheimer, Kathryn Paige Harden, and Richard Nisbett."
Interestingly I just listened to Kathryn Paige Harden on the Capitalisn't podcast and she agreed with the economists that the heritable effect of IQ is massive. She said that economists and other social scientists understand that whereas lay people don't. In fact one of the economists on the show, Luigi Zingales, said these polymorphisms were probably more predictive of intelligence than a FICO score was of someone repaying a mortgage.