American society increasingly mistakes intelligence for human worth - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/07/the-war-on-stupid-people/485618/?single_page=true <comment><AUTHOR> I'm a huge fan of Mike Rowe. He's done some amazing journalism with "Dirty Jobs" and his mikeroweWORKS foundation is terrific. He claims that unconditional encouragement toward intellectual dreams does not help most people, and argues that more kids should be pursuing professional trades.

This overlaps with one of the better suggestions from this article. In general I think these are hit or miss, and maybe too academic, but the problem is a real one and it's not going to go away tomorrow. People have this notion that robots will just replace all manufacturing jobs next year or whatever, but as usual it's a lot more complex and subtle than that. And it's a cultural problem as much as an economic one.

Of course I'm not able to say this from firsthand experience, having had little difficulty in school, and having accumulated enough skill with computers to find plenty of good work. And I can't really call for some given change before understanding more about the people in worse situations. I did go to a trade school though and more of those sounds like the best idea so far.

<comment><USER3> At the end of the day say that you paid everyone the same amount of money regardless of whether they worked or did not. And there was no additional way to make money. Maybe there was an additional barter economy where you could work for things that you could then trade for other things. How would that change things. Because now no one would have to work and would only do things if they wanted to do them. And everyone could enjoy their lives rather than be treated like disposable machines. I think that sort of future is one to look forward to. One without class or coercion. Where everyone literally has the same power over everyone else and the little trinkets and things that they produce themselves are traded by individuals with other individuals not for money but for things that they themselves made which then determines their worth.

Even supposedly technically superior well paying work usually treats the workers like tools. Management which is often staffed by not the most intelligent has the most power in an organization. They stress coerce and harass people in order to get work out of them, work which is often earning the company multiples of what they are paying people. And that's how the whole economy is structured. It is still not is possible to be a technical person who is well paid yet still not feeling happy, pleasant, or even healthy. It can still be a somewhat miserable way to live your life. Not as miserable as being not intelligent and employable, but still can be problematic.

The economy is general is not a healthy place for mental health or physical health, especially things like getting fired or layed off. You have to go out of your way already exhausted by work to find that.

<comment><USER4> > Where everyone literally has the same power over everyone else

I'm sympathetic to these sorts of ideals. I think you've gone too far though. I want Elon Musk to be able to exist. The working world is a lot shittier than it needs to be. It's the ultimate buyer's market. The masses are forced to sell their labor under penalty of death. The owners, however benevolent, know this. They design our jobs with it in the back of their minds. They don't want to acknowledge it directly. They know they've won more power than a meaningless game should grant any person. But I think there's a way to fix even the subtlest (and not so subtle) forms of oppression without reverting to the Harrison Bergeron society. Just guarantee _everyone_ 's basic security. I want to be able to work. Both because I like nice things and because I want to contribute to society. But frankly, I'm pretty indignant about having to do it just for my basic safety.

<comment><USER5> _It 's the ultimate buyer's market. The masses are forced to sell their labor under penalty of death._

In that case, how come millions of non-workers aren't dead?

[edit: to clarify, I mean in the US and similar western countries.]

<comment><USER6> I can show you some gravestones if you'd like. The US health system is essentially inaccessible to those with chronic but treatable conditions who aren't continually holding down relatively good jobs. I can go and get my major depression treated at $5 per minute because I have an employer that pays $20k per year for health insurance.

I know families of five whose household income is less than my health insurance premium. I live in a first-world country where people buy antidepressants that they need from their friends and off the street, and have to beg/barter to refill the prescription that keeps their body from destroying their GI tract. Suicide is an ever-increasing problem. I step over the homeless on the way to work and reflexively look for signs of respiration. The dead are everywhere.

<comment><USER7> Obama (almost) fixed this. The Affordable Care Act extended Medicaid coverage from the absolute indigent, to those making up to 133% of the poverty line in their state, something around $16,000 per year.

The group that is in a bad spot are those right above that number, as even though their premiums are subsidized, deductibles are anywhere from 2400 to 6400 per annum.

That said, you are right the dead are everywhere.

Poverty kills. It deteriorates every system of the body, and it's first target is the brain.

The status quo is an evil waste of humanity, and poverty is grossly expensive and inefficient.

UBI can't come fast enough.

<comment><USER5> 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](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.nber.org/oregon/](https://www.nber.org/oregon/)

The RAND experiment back in the day had similar results based on variation in coinsurance levels: [http://www.rand.org/health/projects/hie.html](http://www.rand.org/health/projects/hie.html)

Why do you keep spreading myths?

Now, you may have discovered some correlations between poverty and bad health. As correlation is not causation, and an RCT is the best way to check. So apparently the correlation is caused by something else - i.e., some third factor which makes people both poor and unhealthy.

<comment><USER7> 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 business and went out with nothing to seek startup fortune. I had a good start in 2009 with a success in affiliate marketing, when that dried up I put all that I had made into another venture that limped along at sub-ramen levels for a while and then I pulled the plug.

The fallout was not fun, and the effects not benign. It was pre medicaid expansion and there was no healthcare to be had, and almost no safety net to be found whatsoever.

I could have gone home and had everything I needed but I wanted to make it on my own. I had been living in Boulder, Colorado and thought a move to Austin would lower expenses and extend the runway for the company.

That was ill-advised, and another story, but it added another dimension to my troubles at the time.

Was it a stupid risk? It was but I was young and felt invincible, and in 2010 with a liberal arts education there weren't a ton of jobs waiting for me.

The wealth transfers you speak of are not easy to get. I'm not even sure where you get the 15-20k number. What else is there for a low earning single male besides SNAP, and now Medicaid.

In that time, as someone who found themselves with no assets and no income the only benefit I seemed to have qualified for was about $160 a month that could be spent at the grocery store.

Feeling a tremendous amount of shame I applied for SNAP benefits, even though I knew that they were really a subsidy for American farmers, ideology had trained me that subsidies for corporations are virtuous, while subsidies for basic human needs are shameful.

Even though I qualified, the overworked staff denied my valid claim. It took them over a month to tell me this. It would have taken another month to apply again and maybe they would get it right that time. I gave up and having good credit financed my nutrition via credit card.

I hadn't coded since elementary school, but I was able to pick up django web dev and find a high paying job in a couple months.

But that happy ending is not typical. There is no way that the stress from that period didn't shave a little bit of time off my life.

And the lack of liquidity prolonged the period by a good bit. I spent so much time doing this or that to get $200 for the rent, it was tremendously inefficient and stressful. Bad terrible memories, a place I never want to go back to. I was sad during all of this. It broke up the relationship I was in with someone I really loved.

I spent a lot of time with those who ride the bus, with those who pawn. Their lives are very different than the lives of the families from my coastal home town. Their lives do kill them slowly, which is why life expectancy is a full dozen years longer for the wealthy.

I have since moved back to the wealthy coastal town I grew up in. Life is so easy here, because there is wealth here. You can get a nice boat for almost nothing because someone just doesn't want it anymore.

Someone I knew was just gifted a boat for $1 because the owner was just happy it was going to stay on the island.

No one ever gives my former bus riding compatriots anything.

The thing is the people that live here are no different genetically than the people at the pawn shops back in Texas. The only difference is the presence of wealth, and the virtuous effects that has when it's sustained for a few generations.

<comment><USER8> The Oregon thing started in 2008.

It has mostly benefited the recipients financially rather than medically.

<comment><USER7> 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?

<comment><USER5> 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).

<comment><USER7> It is poverty itself that creates short term thinking that leads to those choices.

This is why poverty is expensive for society, and investment by society to eliminate it would be paid back and much more.

<comment><USER5> No it isn't. Again, please read the RCTs I linked to. One of them addresses this exact question.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Alternatively, American society values a human's worth by economic output and the economy has shifted to value humans who can successfully navigate the new more intelligence-based economy.

<comment><USER10> > the new more intelligence-based economy.

Was intelligence not valued before?

<comment><USER11> 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.

<comment><USER12> The unfairness component comes from your genetics and upbringing, both outside your control - some combinations are better suited to navigate this economy than others.

So what do we as a society do with those at a disadvantage, sometimes severe (eg IQ below 90?) we can move toward finding ways to include them, or we can move toward excluding them. The problem from the article is a societal one trend toward exclusion, not economic as you pointed out.

<comment><USER11> Someone who is personable or eager or hardworking (or the opposite) is as much so because of the cards they are dealt by nature or their upbringing as a person who is intelligent (or the opposite). When you get down to it, everyone is _exclusively_ a product of their genes and the environment, and they are in control of neither.

A just society judges and rewards people based on what they contribute. Racism, sexism, ageism, and the like are unfair not because they select based on something "outside your control", but because they deprive a person of the opportunity to succeed or fail based on merit.

Intelligence is a direct factor (though not the only factor) in a person's success at performing just about any job. If it is not a fair criteria by which to judge, then there are _no_ fair criteria.

<comment><USER4> I'm more concerned about the act of "judging". What does that involve exactly? I'm fine with giving everyone A, B, C, D and F grades. I wouldn't care if you made people sew them into their clothing. But I'd like a person who got an F to have food and shelter. I don't see how they'd ever get another grade otherwise.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I grew up in a poor, working class, crime-ridden neighborhood of Brooklyn in the 1970s, and I remember being smart as a kid was a reason to harass, and sometimes beat on somebody who was seen as too smart in class. This wasn't happening in the wealthier, more educated neighborhoods in NYC (I had friends there afterwards). Although, all parents wanted their kids to exceed in both areas.

I think there was also some anger and negative fallout against college, since a lot of working class folks went to Vietnam, and saw college-educated protesters as disrespectful, and actually not so smart.

<comment><USER14> I experienced the same for being smart in the "wrong neighborhood" in Albuquerque, NM (1990s).

<comment><USER15> Or in the wrong school. Which of unfortunately causes a revenge of the nerds syndrome.

<comment><USER13> The movie, 'The Revenge of the Nerds' came out in 1984, after I had left my neighborhood, and for all of its silly comedy, was a sign that things were changing.

My parents and other parents in my poor, working class neighborhood saw education as the way to a better future, not just financially. Intelligence was berated by others in my age group in class. I don't equate education with intelligence, since I have met so many bright people who never finished high school (my father), and so many phDs whose intelligence I question to this day. That piece of paper, a university degree, can be earned with average intelligence, but costs a fortune for most non-public universities. As an acquaintance said to me about his son going to an Ivy league school, 'he's set up for life'. Regardless of his son's IQ, or final GPA, the societal strata he will interact with and form networked connections with, along with the school's reputation, will guarantee him a higher-than-average floor of entry compared to my children. For the record, I am not for that type of education.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Anti-intellectualism runs deep in American society. Consider the words nerd, wonk, geek, brainiac, college boy, the negative Hollywood stereotypes, etc. The Big Bang Theory is the latest incarnation of that.

My father learned to keep his book collection out of the living room.

<comment><USER17> I disagree. Citing a few labels is easy, Hollywood and popular culture have stereotypes for every kind of person. Everybody thinks they are the persecuted group. I think the opposite.

America most certainly worships intellectuals, who control public education. So starting at age 5-6 kids are brainwashed into thinking that they are 'stupid' if they can't do arithmetic in their head, or remember all the inane rules of the english language in their writing or what have you. It is ingrained into their skulls that if they don't go to college and take out loans to get what is basically now a glorified high school diploma++ they are failures.

If you are having a conversation with someone and they ask where you went to college, and you reply that you dropped out or didn't go there is always an awkward moment. If you are making a good living or you hit it big, you are the exception. You slipped through the cracks thats all.

Don't get me wrong As someone who grew up with his nose in a book, I know you ridiculed. But getting made fun of by a bunch of insecure children/teenagers is one thing. All major modern institutions of any importance exalt the intellectual while debasing anyone who hasn't been blessed.

<comment><USER16> Check out the mania (and enormous $$$) around sports and sports figures, actors, and musicians. I can't recall a nerd ever getting an endorsement contract. The only nerd prize is the Nobel; the Oscars, Emmys, Grammies, Halls of Fame, Heisemann Trophies, etc., are for other professions.

Just for a small slice of it, the mania over the Olympics. Billions and billions of dollars, wall-to-wall TV coverage, of 2 weeks seeing who can run faster than the next.

<comment><USER18> Nerds get endorsement contracts _all the time_. They're called research grants. Just look at the example of PMERP [0], for one.

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Morris_External_Researc...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Morris_External_Research_Program)

<comment><USER16> Research grants are not endorsement contracts. Have you ever seen a Nobel prizewinner on a box of Wheaties? pitching Hertz rent-a-car? Me neither.

<comment><USER18> Elinor Smith, not a Nobel prize winner but a big-time nerd[0], was on the Wheaties box.

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elinor_Smith#/media/File:Elino...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elinor_Smith#/media/File:Elinor_Smith_\(1942\).jpg)

<comment><USER16> She's a heroic pilot, not an intellectual.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Intelligence is a perfectly fair criteria by which to judge a candidate, as in most jobs it will have a direct effect on the candidate's ability to perform their duties.

If an employer over-weights intelligence to the exclusion of other criteria, like work ethic or social aptitude, then she may wind up with a candidate deficient in some other important area to her own detriment.

It _is_ important that everyone, regardless of their abilities or what they can offer for society, have access to certain basic standards of living. But it's absurd to suggest, as the author does, that we should hobble economic output just to favor creating meaningless busy work over automation. If that's important to us, we should just offer a basic standard of living directly.

If intelligence isn't a valid/fair selection criteria for job candidates, then there is _no such thing_.

</comment><comment><USER19> No, it confuses material success with human worth.

And this is not a new human behaviour, it's just exacerbated by increasing inequality, and made more obvious when the rules of success change, favouring different social groups.

American society's infatuation with gungho capitalism certainly plays a part (thanks, Edward Bernaise), but I'm convinced it's a hard wired behaviour, like our preference for attractive people. Associating ourselves with both attractive and the powerful provide an evolutionary advantage.

<comment><USER20> Maybe you meant Edward Bernays?

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Bernays](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Bernays)

<comment><USER19> Yes. He is a saucy fellow.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> There are two rather egregious flaws in this line of thinking from the very start.

The first is that "intelligence" is purely an inborn trait. That "being stupid" is a condition on par with serious mental disability. Stupidity isn't mocked by the smart to belittle the dumb. It's mocked by the majority of society to promote feelings of superiority in the mockery yes, but also to share lessons about what not to do.

Anyone (barring mental disability, and even then) can learn, and can be taught. I've certainly encountered my share of the intelligentsia too brilliant to lower themselves to the common level, but I've encountered far many more gifted people who wanted deeply to share their knowledge with those around them. Yes, our society fetishises intelligence, but the vast teeming masses of "dumb people" are a lot smarter than most would believe.

The second fallacy here is that financial earning or being able to survive at all are somehow connected to "human worth" which is connected to intelligence. As we automate more and more fields of labor, we are moving towards a post-job society. The issue isn't that Americans over value intelligence, it's that we over value the concept of "hard work." Especially as enshrined in the old advice of many parents, "you have to work hard to get ahead in the world."

Well, no, you don't. Working smart helps a lot, but soon you won't have to work at all. Or you won't be able to. Forget our negative perception of "the dumb." We need to fix our negative perception of "the lazy." We must learn how to value people for something beyond their contributions to labor, and maybe we must also teach people how to have and feel valuable beyond labor.

And we should do it fast, because after we automate away the drivers, the merchants, and the laborers, it won't be long before we've automated away the lawyers, artists, programmers, and doctors. And then there will be nothing left but politicians, and is that the world you want to live in?

<comment><USER22> > Anyone (barring mental disability, and even then) can learn, and can be > taught.... the vast teeming masses of "dumb people" are a lot smarter than > most would believe.

I'm generally in agreement with the potential, but people need to desire to learn (or be smarter, or whatever you want to call it). There seems to have been a backlash against 'intelligence' which glorifies 'stupidity'. Not specifically with that word, but the notion of 'book learnin' being something to look down on, people getting 'too smart for their own good', etc.

There are many folks who have far less 'raw intelligence' \- whatever biological component we're born with - than I do, but are far more capable because they've applied themselves far more rigorously than I have over the years. So yes, of course, almost anyone can really learn more, but they have to want to do it in the first place, and get out of whatever cultural norms bind them to their notions of looking down on intelligence (and accomplishment in general).

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I don't buy this.

This is not a problem. Anti-intellectualism is the problem. Our culture encourages people not to be smart. In a sentiment captured by Marco Rubio when he said it is better to be a welder than a philosopher, we teach young people that non-intellectual pursuits are more noble (so long as they make money). We teach men that it is more manly to work with your hands. We teach women that service-sector jobs, or jobs that require more social acumen are more womanly. We teach people the false-dichotomy of left-right-brain dominance, making it easy believe that one is simply unequipped for logic and quantitative mental work. We teach black youth that their role models should be athletes and pop- stars, not people successful in STEM-fields (personal experience). Our popular culture characterizes smart people as weird, eccentric, and disconnected from the rest of humanity -- those tropes are obvious in the article's examples of "Big Bang" and Sherlock Holmes.

When my wife learned coding, all her old college girlfriends were amazed that she turned out to be so "smart". She was shocked, as she never saw herself as particularly smart (though she is), successfully learning to code is just a function of putting in the practice. It became apparent that her friends were socialized to believe that this coding was the exclusive domain of this mythical class of brainy people.

Sure some people are naturally smarter, thus it is relatively easier for them to do mentally laborious work. However, If the economy increasing favors people who can carry a heavier mental workload, then the first step to preparing citizens for participating in that economy is overcoming our culture's resistant strain of anti-intellectualism.

</comment><comment><USER24> And gets it very, very wrong. "Intelligence" moves around with nutrition, stress, sleep, pollution. The brain is organic. We miss out on human potential in all the neighborhoods around the world that aren't safe and supported. The good news is we are headed in the right direction as a planet, but surprisingly this article doesn't mention it [1].

[1][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_effect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_effect)

<comment><USER25> The Flynn effect had stopped in most western countries including the USA.

<comment><USER26> Your statement would only work as a rebuttal of parent's argument if _everyone_ in the west had equally good nutrition (from birth), stimulation, emencouragement asand education as these factors are suspected to be behind the Flynn effect.

<comment><USER25> I was just countering the parents argument that we are heading in the right direction - sure there is still some individuals that will benefit from whatever drives the Flynn effect but overall it is now insignificant.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> American society worships financial success and the mythology of supermen and superwomen to the exclusion of nearly everything else and this extracts a huge price in the individual and social sense of well being.

Since capitalism will rarely allow more than 20-30% 'success' that leaves a huge percentage of your population feeling inadequate.

Sometimes it feels the focus on individual brilliance without context of social value impoverishes rather than nourishes.

It can induce an adversorial state of hyper competition, in and out groups and a heightening state of frenzy to belong that leaves little room for niceties like empathy and community.

The folklore of America's success reinforces the mythology of individual brilliance, but rational heads need to question without taking away from individual brilliance in the past, now or the neccessity of it in the future, the benefits of the colononization of an entire continent.

The downside to this single minded focus is the simple fact that individuals are disempowered. They cannot effect any change. It takes real community and society to effect even the smallest change and that requires a functioning social setup with community, cooperation, empathy and mutual respect. Any communal action will require large numbers of americans to cooperate for instance protests or activism, at that point americans will discover their social structure does not allow for it and will not deliver. There is very little if any sense of community. It's been engineered out. It's unlikely individuals who have been devalued and left feeling worthless will make common cause in a hyper adversorial social structure.

<comment><USER28> 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 also the larger concern over foreign competition. I know that social well-being is important, but when faced against countries who don't value social well-being, it feels as if America is at a significant disadvantage. After all, who could have competed against China's manufacturing prowess when the Green Movement was unique to the West? If America enacts strong protections for unintelligent people, will we see intelligence be outsourced?

I know that my fears are selfish and childish and irrational, but I don't know how else to be. On one hand, I know how absurd it is to believe that intelligence is the solution to all of my problems. But if being smart can't solve my problems, what can? It seems equally absurd that being compassionate is the answer.

I don't know. I'm sure none of this makes sense, but it's how I feel. Sorry about the rant.

<comment><USER29> > 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 a down payment on a house for you.

Whenever this is for you, the game is on - how long will it take you to amass enough savings to pay for your housing, food, and health care, until the age you think you'll die? Variables include your earning capacity, investments (which obviously have all sorts of options and risk), at what age you will no longer be able to do your work (and thus, forced to live off of savings), if you have offspring, etc.

Failure at this game results in potentially terrible living conditions in old age, losing potentially years of life because you can't afford to treat some sort of condition, not being able to pay for food, etc.

Personally, I think it's a tough game to play even with a marketable skill (though to be fair, I wasn't one of the lucky few starting out at 0 when I entered the workforce after college, but most of us aren't.)

I shudder to think how the average American is supposed to win that game.

Taking a year off, it really messes with your head doing the calculus of balancing extended time/freedom to enjoy your life, do want you want, reduce stress, exercise, read, not be a sycophant to some boss/comapny, etc - vs the loss of a six figure salary, and what that would turn into by age 65 (or thereabouts) after hopeful compounded interest and all that.

On the other hand, I could die at 40, or earlier.

<comment><USER30> 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.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I learned when I was a child it was dangerous to be the smartest person in the room. It's much safer to appear to be the village idiot, or at least less bright that the brightest.

I do disagree fundamentally with the concept of the evils of merit - merit is so much more than smarts and formal education, its a mix of capacity for the role, agreeability and eagerness, productivity, effort expended, grooming and appearance, and a dozen other factors, most of which are intangible. You don't have to be information work level of smart to achieve these qualities either.

The problem is a belief that certain kinds of education make one more suitable for a role. I'd take someone with 4 more years of real world experience over that college degree any day.

<comment><USER32> I think many find the same thing. Don't prove the teacher wrong. Too smart in a few subjects or suddenly figuring stuff out? Accusations of cheating. "You are too smart for your own good" the adults say. "Yeah, they are smart, but smart people don't have common sense and it shows" (which is really more noticing that the kid acts just like other children due to maturity levels or that they are thinking outside of the box).

And it carries over into adulthood. One of the unfortunate things to learn is that sometimes, one just has to not say anything. Don't be smarter than the boss, nor too independent (yet not too clingy or stupid). Always a balance. Fitting into the mold actually goes further than actual intelligence.

<comment><USER31> For me at least, its more.. don't stand out, hide in the crowd - I've never been one who's good at blending in, I don't need one additional thing to make me a target.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Part of the problem is inserting the same standard across multiple roles; for example, mandating all managers have a college education.

You don't need a college degree for most sales, customer service, and operations roles. Some of the best people managers and sales people I've met have sketchy degrees (or none at all).

On the other hand, putting someone in charge of a process which is highly reliant on statistics or technology who doesn't have a college degree (or real world experience which proves ample ability) can be a total disaster. I've seen what happens when you take a non-statistical director and put them over a data science process.... they hide in familiar details (project plan! communications!) and can't understand the harder decisions involved in the role. Like does the magical black-box system even work....

</comment><comment><USER34> >> The 2010s, in contrast, are a terrible time to not be brainy.

That sums it up. Intelligence doesn't matter, rather the appearance of intelligence gets one ahead. Appearing "brainy" counts more than actually being brainy. TheBigBangTheory is part of that trend. Intelligent people are expected to project a particular image. IRL that never happens. Many very smart people couldn't care less for trek, comics or any of the other stereotypes. And conversely, there are many absolutely not-smart people who do very well by simply dressing the part. I say bring on the standardized tests. Let us separate the smart from the fashionable.

<comment><USER17> While I agree mostly with what you said initially. IMO if you think your "smart" or "dumb" based on the results of standardized tests then either way you are just a gullible fool. Standardized tests are designed to sort people based on what they can remember/understand at a given moment in time. A very crappy measure of 'intelligence' (whatever that word really means) indeed.

<comment><USER34> >> Standardized tests are designed to sort people based on what they can remember/understand at a given moment in time.

Maybe the knowledge-based tests such as the SATs, but there are plenty of aptitude tests that are not based on memorized knowledge.

I also think it is naive to assume that there is some testable form of intelligence completely devoid of cultural knowledge. Someone may be very smart, but if they lack the basic tools to express themselves within a culture then those smarts are behind a real bottleneck.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> The premise is erroneous and it creates a difficult debate.

> American society increasingly mistakes _intelligence_ for human worth

I think that we are just in the same place that we have always been.

There were this intelligence tests in the 1900s that is what, still nowadays, commonly people mistakes as innate intelligence. "Yerkes intelligence exams (alpha, beta and individual) were culturally biased, taken under markedly different conditions and tended to reflect years in the U.S. and familiarity with dominant culture, rather than innate intelligence" [http://www.understandingrace.org/history/science/race_intel....](http://www.understandingrace.org/history/science/race_intel.html)

Even innate intelligence is more complex than a number as there are different components to account for.

So when the article reads "American society increasingly mistakes intelligence for human worth" it should read "Americans increasingly immature when judging others".

I blame this phenomenon at the lack of education quality. Memorizing and doing mental calculus is far from what a good education should give you. Critical thinking, capacity to self-learning, appreciation of universal human values should be the main part of that education.

And as it says America I don't think that it is restricted to any country. Education could be a lot better everywhere. But shrinking education budgets all around the world, because "crisis", are jeopardizing our future.

</comment><comment><USER36> As I see it, the world, and america in particular is worshipping the culture of the intellect to the extreme, forgetting other innate and arguably more important human qualities.

As philosophers like Jacob Needleman have said before, there is a line of knowledge and a line of being. If one progresses too further ahead from the other,it becomes useless and even harmful. We see examples everyday of people that are really smart but can't treat others like humans.

The canonical example is a great coder that is a total jackass. There is a dire need for empathy, now more than ever...

</comment><comment><USER37> That's a huge improvement over where we were a few years ago, when Steve Jobs died and I noted all the human misery and pain he caused with his employment of Foxconn sweatshops.

My coworker said Jobs' life was worth more than those factory workers. I reminded him that everyone has equal worth and he seemed stunned at my forceful response. Noting that your life has to feel pretty hopeless to jump out the window of the factory you work/live in.

I guess being a do-well white boy in Chicago afforded him quite the luxury of deciding the world pecking order. Except I was also a white boy in Chicago calling him out on it. Considering we had multiple 2nd generation immigrant coworkers around us, who should in theory empathize with 3rd world work conditions, I was the only one who spoke up.

Probably because the Steve Jobs > all guy was a fairly influential architect. But almost nothing stops me from piping up anyway. Still, judging human worth over intelligence is definitely a bit better than judging based on entrepreneurial capacity as my colleague was.

Maybe in a couple more years we'll all agree that humanity has equal worth and dignity. Then all life, and we'll be set.

<comment><USER38> Foxconn workers are less likely to commit suicide than Chinese in general, not more, which really weakens this argument.

Although Steve Jobs made more from investing in Pixar than Apple (I think) so the mental health of Toy Story animators could be an issue?

<comment><USER37> That reads as quite the troll, politically or financially motivated but I'll indulge you. To start off, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, do you have citations for either of your claims? Your entire argument rested on them yet you didn't produce.

Even once you produce those, I disagree with your premise. The comparison should be work-related suicides in other factories in nations with better labor conditions. Fiat factory suicides vs Foxconn would make more sense than the population as a whole. Making more money with Pixar, if true, is not correlation or causation.

You can make money, and not drive your employees or sub-contracted to suicide. Exploitation is not a requirement for financial success or otherwise. That was the point.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> A meritoracy can reward qualities other than intelligence - integrity, talent, dedication, diligence, courage (both physical and moral), kindness, generosity, willingness to help others...

<comment><USER40> It would be nice, but I don't see it happening any time soon.

[http://www.forbes.com/sites/peterubel/2014/12/15/is-homo- eco...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/peterubel/2014/12/15/is-homo-economicus-a- psychopath/#7da50b1842c5)

Peter Ubel writes: "The researchers paint a powerful picture of Homo economicus: "We see a person who is intelligent, driven to excel and to dominate other people, and capable of impulse control and of working toward long-term goals. In other words, Homo economicus is the prototypical member of the social and economic elite."

And the social and economic elite think our society is a meritocracy, and that they deserve their wealth and place in society, and through their control of the media, have convinced most other people that this is true.

<comment><USER41> The implication here being that intelligence, impulse control, and the ability and desire to work towards long term goals are not merit? I'm curious, what then do you think constitutes merit?

<comment><USER40> Merit can't be defined generally, varies according to circumstances, and people disagree on what is desirable. When it can be defined, it is usually difficult or impossible to measure. When we attempt to measure it, some people find ways of "gaming the system". And when it is easy to measure accurately, it's often of little practical use.

We have created a society, or rather one has been created for us, in which borderline psychopathic behaviour is rewarded. Many people are beginning to wake up to this. Instead of trying to create a meritocracy, we should decide what sort of society we want and work towards that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> I don't have any problems with a society that is a meritocracy. This article is nonsense. If anyone wonders why so many people don't like political correctness just point them to this article.

<comment><USER43> Your comment adds nothing of worth to the discussion. So what if you don't see any problems with meritocracy? Explain why you feel that way.

<comment><USER42> The whole premise was based on the assumption that meritocracy is bad - <USER2> point is that this is a flawed assumption. The proposed solutions were the government could step in and "discourage hiring practices that arbitrarily and counterproductively weed out the less-well-IQ'ed." This is counter to science - it has been shown that intelligence is one of the best predictors of the quality of an employee. Why should the government subsidize stupid people, or interfere in companies hiring the best qualified employees anymore than it already does? The reality is smarter people are on average better employees, which is not at all surprising. This article is using politically correct logic, as opposed to actually correct logic.

A fundamental assumption of the article is that every person is of equal worth. Anyone who objects to this idea is labelled as racist or sexist or whatever-ist. But it is objectively just not true that people are all the same. A murderer is not equal to a doctor. Most people would choose to save a drowning doctor rather than a drowning murderer if forced to pick one. Similarly, if I a rational person had to choose between saving a drowning doctor who is an idiot or saving a drowning doctor who is a geniue, the rational person would save the smarter doctor.

<comment><USER44> There's no reason that a doctor can't be a murderer. See Harold Shipman. That speaks to the core problem here. A less intelligent but more diligent and trustworthy person can be the better employee.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> I'm having difficulty reconciling this claim with how I see American society judging the worth of political candidates. (Also in the journalistic outlets American society values the most.)

<comment><USER46> People tend to overestimate their own competence (and I suppose intelligence), so they must also see anyone who agrees with them as being of high intelligence too. That means we think the politicians we vote for are smart. It's just the ones other people vote for that aren't.

Nobody will say "I want X but I'm not very smart so the politician who promises X is also not very smart and I won't vote for him."

<comment><USER47> I don't think so; for example, back in 2004, a poll showed that way more people considered Kerry intelligent compared to Bush. Yet Bush was seen as more decisive and made more people "feel more optimistic about the future".

[http://www.smdailyjournal.com/articles/lnews/2004-07-14/poll...](http://www.smdailyjournal.com/articles/lnews/2004-07-14/poll- bush-is-decisive-kerry-is-intelligent/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> It makes a valuable point that our popular culture that we think makes us "civilized" is really just a sham and we're no different from olden-days racists and homophobes but with a few extra rules applied. We're very careful not to abuse people because of their race, religion or certain types of sexuality, but for all the non-taboo classes of people, the gloves are off and we're no different from slave owners who justified mistreating blacks because they were sub-human. We can't call people niggers but we can call them retards. We can't lock up homosexuals but we can lock up pedophiles and zoophiles. We can't deny jobs or voting rights to women but we can deny jobs and voting rights to foreigners.

We really aren't any more moral than we were 100's of years ago, we just fool ourselves into thinking we are.

<comment><USER48> _We can 't lock up homosexuals but we can lock up pedophiles and zoophiles_

It's extremely offensive to compare homosexuality to the others. They aren't on the same spectrum, they're categorically different. Homosexuality involves to consenting adults, the others cannot by definition (according to legal and social norms).

 _We can 't deny jobs or voting rights to women but we can deny jobs and voting rights to foreigners._

Consider that this method of constructing comparisons is ridiculously arbitrary and creates a slippery slope. "We fish with worms but not with Chinese. Therefore no morals!" Huh?

<comment><USER46> > the others cannot by definition (according to legal and social norms).

Your argument could equally be used to justify criminalizing gay sex as long as it happens in a country where it's illegal and people generally don't like it. But really I'm not talking about sex but about sexuality. That's just what goes on inside people's minds. We aren't even tolerant of that. It's not a crime to be attracted to children but it's certainly ground to be abused by otherwise moral people.

I'm not comparing fish with Chinese. I'm comparing one group of humans with another. You could choose Americans and Chinese. How is it that we can ban members of one group from working for money but not the other? Of course this sounds ridiculous seen through the lens of current culture, but that's my point. We're so immersed in our culture that we can't see its hypocrisies.

We think it's wrong for employers to advertise "Irish need not apply" but today employers advertise "work permit required" and to get a work permit, you're not allowed to be Irish except for some special cases.

<comment><USER48> _Your argument could equally be used to justify criminalizing gay sex as long as it happens in a country where it 's illegal and people generally don't like it._

No it can't. It's the notion of consent that is subject to legal interpretation. In a symmetric relationship like homosexuality how would consent apply?

 _We think it 's wrong for employers to advertise "Irish need not apply" but today employers advertise "work permit required" and to get a work permit, you're not allowed to be Irish except for some special cases._

You seem to be missing my point. I'm not saying our categorizations aren't constructed and somewhat arbitrary. They are. What I'm saying is that your comparisons are poorly chosen. It's wise to wonder why we eat cows but not dogs. But a relationship between two consenting adults is not comparable to one between an adult and an animal. If you want to wonder why some farmers prefer sex with goats to sex with sheep, knock yourself out.

<comment><USER46> So you agree? Our ideas of right and wrong are largely arbitrary so we aren't actually very good people compared to our ancestors. Your main concern is that the examples I used to show that aren't as good as showing that we arbitrarily eat pigs but not dogs?

Your argument using consent seems to be more arbitrary than it needs to be. The legal definition of consent isn't the reason we don't allow those things. That's just a tool we use to decide if it's a crime. The reason we don't allow them is probably because it can psychologically harm the children. I'm not sure about the reason for animals but it's probably more similar to the reason we don't eat dogs but we do kill and torture them. That is, it's not for the benefit of the animals, but something arbitrary in our culture.

<comment><USER48> Sorry but you aren't making much sense to me.

 _Our ideas of right and wrong are largely arbitrary so we aren 't actually very good people compared to our ancestors._

This does not follow. The definition of "good people" hinges on a moral system, arbitrary as it may be.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> I'd just like to chime in and say that the word meritocracy was not invented in the 50%.

You can clearly see that here: [https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=meritocracy&ye...](https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=meritocracy&year_start=1800&year_end=1900&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share=&direct_url=t1%3B%2Cmeritocracy%3B%2Cc0)

</comment><comment><USER50> In America, lots of excessively toxic, obnoxious bastards get much farther along in life than so many others by trading on unsophisticated deception, intimidation and betrayal, and not much else.

After a while, you get tired of being smart and getting nowhere for all the effort you expend.

Then, knowing what you know, and having noticed what's surrounded you for so long, well... intellectuals can decide for themselves a logical corollary to this.

</comment><comment><USER51> Was this article ghost written by Diana Moon Glampers?

I disagree with basically every sentence in the article and don't even know where to begin.

<comment><USER51> OK, a few specific complaints:

* The very first sentence is horribly misleading, as intelligence (among other things) was necessary to avoid dying in wars or starving to death before then. This describes every decade in human history before the 20th century.

* It also only applied to white men in the US (or Western countries) in the 50s. African Americans, women, people in India surely feel differently about how the 50s were for getting jobs.

* The author blatantly ignores Duke Power, which generally bans IQ tests as part of hiring.

* Apparently decreasing poverty is impossible, but all of the author's proposals aren't.

* The author dislikes the term micro aggressions, yet immediately uses it to refer to calling anything "stupid".

... and I'll stop again.

<comment><USER25> Duke power only bans IQ tests if you can't show a correlation between job performance and IQ. If you want to use IQ tests you just need to do the studies that show that IQ is an important factor for the position you are hiring for.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> I wonder how the stats and facts in this article would compare to other developed countries. I know it's not a comparison article, but more of a call to action for America, written by Americans, but I would still be interested in the comparison. Especially, since they mention a couple of world-wide examples in the Darwin Awards and reddit.

</comment><comment><USER53> A terrible thing about society today is our diminishing ability for self- reflection (which is a form of emotional intelligence). Most of the stuff we do as individuals is driven by marketing and social pressure - So much so that many of us have become oblivious to our true internal needs. Maybe that's why so many people go to psychologists nowadays.

In the past, people put more value on self-reflection, philosophical thinking and other types of emotional intelligence (e.g. wisdom) over raw I.Q.

</comment><comment><USER54> I am not sure that the author isn't confusing America's wealth disparity with differential treatment of intelligence (which still seems to remain undefined).

Sure, those with high SAT scores have greater access to the means for economic success, but I don't think that is because of any intrinsic difference in high-SATers and the run of the mill dummy. Rather, I'd suggest it is due to the winner-take-all nature of the current American society.

</comment><comment><USER55> Sortition[1] (randomly selecting from the population for government positions) combined with direct democracy where possible would fundamentally address problems of inequality regardless of their source. Meritocracy, plutocracy, nepotism--you'll end up with a small group of people in power in any system unless the system is carefully designed to prevent it.

Put another way, the article mentions several possible measures to try to provide for better outcomes for everyone who isn't "smart"; these are bandaids for cancer. These are top-down methods for "the elite" in various forms to provide for "everyone else" so that the have-nots have at least enough to avoid offending the sensibilities of the powerful. If fairness is a genuine concern and central goal for a society, then positions of power should be filled by a _statistically representative_ sample of the population. Until then, inequality will be the status quo.

As I see it, the primary benefit in this specific situation (technological unemployment or underemployment for the "not smart enough") would be faster reaction time. You might see similar solutions to those proposed in this article, but you wouldn't have to wait for people like Mike Rowe to write about problems of inequality (and you wouldn't have to wait even longer for people in positions of power to decide to do something). Random selection would produce many people who deeply care about the "not smart" because that describes about 50% of the people selected and many people they personally know.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sortition](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sortition)

</comment><comment><USER56> Incentivizing companies to resist automation seems like a terrible idea that would make everyone poorer, including the "less brainy"

</comment><comment><USER57> I'd substitute 'wealth' for 'intelligence', and it goes much further than just American society.

<comment><USER58> In fact, I'd say the unspoken premise of the article is that economic success equals human wealth. From there, it argues mainly that economic success is increasingly determined by intelligence.

Strangely, the article ignores the strong anti-intellectual undercurrent in American _culture_ , which may be a byproduct of these economic changes, and which seems to be the focus of many comments here.

<comment><USER58> Oops: "...economic success equals human _worth_ "

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Reading illiteracy is no longer a big problem. STEM-illiteracy is the new problem.

It is easier for some to learn how to read than it is for others. Yet as a society we don't give people who find difficulty in learning to read a pass on reading. Nor should we for STEM fields.

</comment><comment><USER59> "The qualifications for a good job, whether on an assembly line or behind a desk, mostly revolved around integrity, work ethic, and a knack for getting along"*

* also being male, White, straight, Christian

...As though the 50's were the bastion of fair hiring practices.

<comment><USER60> That's not a refutation of the article, unless you think that 50s-style "integrity, work ethic, and a knack for getting along" hiring practices inherently preclude women/non-whites/non-straight/non-Christian people. Your comment reads like you're just trying to score cheap diversity points against the standards of 60 years ago instead of engaging with the point of the article.

<comment><USER61> 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 overcome the priors of those around him.

* including myself and pretty much everyone I know.

<comment><USER60> 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.

<comment><USER51> It's a lot easier to have above average jobs for everyone when you only care about 20% of the population.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER62> 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 since the beginning. The less intelligent either end up in a position where their labor can be exploited, or they're left to slow decline or even death, depending on how much society values keeping them alive.

That's any given society, in a nutshell. They may dress it up in value statements, laws, philosophies, religions, and so on, but in the end it comes down to power, and who has enough of it to extract the resources and status he wants.

The difference is that now the "menial" jobs are almost gone, and the higher up jobs are on the chopping block. And so the first to die off will be those without power (as usual). We can come up with all sorts of platitudes about the value of human life, but in the end it always comes down to this. Welcome to the true nature of man.

Of course, nowadays we have middle class folks who can experience the philosophical angst of the less fortunate, and come up with all sorts of rules, decide which words are acceptable or not, and police outward appearances and speech.

You wouldn't think twice in deciding what to call someone who implemented a password policy with a max of 8 characters, or stored the passwords unsalted or even plaintext behind a system that hasn't had a security update in 10 years. But soon you will, because "stupid" is not an acceptable word anymore, nor is any word that compares intelligence or ability. We're all equal, after all, and that person deserves his job and the income it generates by virtue of his being human and equal to every other human. You wouldn't want him to starve now, would you?

<comment><USER63> 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 person's height? After all, both simply an accident of birth (genetics and early nutrition). Neither are something one _achieves_.

I do not respect raw intelligence. I respect personality traits such as hard work, honesty, reliability, affability and bravery. I respect _achievement_ , not _potential_. To tie someone's worth to inherent traits such as intelligence is, to me, somewhat shallow.

<comment><USER64> 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://blogs.wsj.com/atwork/2014/06/09/tall-ceos-how-height- helps/) [http://www.apa.org/monitor/julaug04/standing.aspx](http://www.apa.org/monitor/julaug04/standing.aspx)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER65> I disagree. American society has always had something of a love-hate relationship with intelligence, and there have always been examples like _Big Bang Theory_ venerating intelligence ('Sputnik moment' and astronauts, anyone?). Intelligence correlates with success cross-culturally and over time, so that's not in question.

What is in question is the 'increasingly'; the only evidence offered, aside from anecdote, is that the returns from education have increased. This is inadequate. The research literature I'm aware of ([http://www.gwern.net/Embryo%20selection#iqincome- bibliograph...](http://www.gwern.net/Embryo%20selection#iqincome- bibliography)) shows that intelligence has consistently been correlated with SES/income/occupation and it's not that clear it has been increasing at all. Particularly relevant is Strenze 2007, "Intelligence and socioeconomic success: A meta-analytic review of longitudinal research" [http://emilkirkegaard.dk/en/wp- content/uploads/Intelligence-...](http://emilkirkegaard.dk/en/wp- content/uploads/Intelligence-and-socioeconomic-success-A-meta-analytic-review- of-longitudinal-research.pdf) who says:

> Several studies have investigated changes in the association between > intelligence and success during past decades. Although Herrnstein and Murray > concluded that " the main point seems beyond dispute " (1994: 52) and some > studies have found support for this point ( Murnane, Willett, & Levy, 1995 > ), there are still serious reasons to doubt that the importance of > intelligence is or has been growing. Neither the meta-analysis by Bowles et > al. (2001) nor the review by Jencks et al. (1979) found any clear trend in > the correlations between intelligence and success. The same conclusion was > reached by Flynn (2004) and Hauser and Huang (1997) . Breen and Goldthorpe > (2001) found that the association between intelligence and occupational > status in England is, if anything, declining

Strenze's own meta-analytic results using ~44 studies are on pg13 Table 2, where the correlation of intelligence with education/occupation/income over the 20th century show no clear pattern of increase or decrease:

> The influence of the third moderator variable, year of success (i.e., year > of the measurement of success), is analyzed in the third section of Table 2 > . Year of success ranges from 1929 to 2003 in the present meta-analysis. > Judging by the sample size weighted corrected correlations ( p ), there > appears to be no historical trend for any one of the moderator variables: > correlations with education and occupation remain more or less stable > throughout the period under study; correlations with income fluctuate more > but without any obvious direction. Quite surprisingly, if unweighted and > uncorrected correlations ( r ) are observed instead, then the correlations > with education and occupation exhibit a declining trend.

So, if American society 'increasingly mistakes intelligence for human worth' and 'as recently as the 1950s, possessing only middling intelligence was not likely to severely limit your life's trajectory', why are the more intelligent, if anything, _less_ likely to be successful when we go from 1920 to 2000?

<comment><USER66> The Big Bang Theory is a show where most of the laughs are derived from the characters being incompetent in some way or another. The basis of the show is "people failing at things outside of their specialist domain." That isn't venerating intelligence.

<comment><USER67> It's also just a standard sitcom, one that just happens to have the trappings of higher education in its scenery. Same jokes, same cadences, same formula as so many others. Curiously, I find Raising Hope, a sitcom about a dumb-as-rocks family, to be far more intelligently written.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER68> "based on a candidate having a critical skill or two and on soft factors such as eagerness, appearance, family background, and physical characteristics..."

I don't know if the author is trying to make this sound _better_ than today, considering "physical characteristics" often meant "white and male".

</comment><comment><USER69> After all human history where jocks ruled the earth, they're now upset that nerds are becoming important?

<comment><USER70> You might be surprised by the intelligence of the ruling class from a few thousand years ago..

<comment><USER71> Not too hard to be intelligent when you have a monopoly on the means of knowledge transfer (books) and the time to persue leisurely learning.

But it all changed widespread literacy. To steal a quote from Hilbert, "No one shall expell as from the paradise Guttenberg has created".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER72> In the European Commissiom aka the public sector the only test you take to go into any position even clerical is an IQ test. I can't comprehend this it should be the other way around. Since maximizing profit is not so important but serving the public is.

</comment><comment><USER73> Society historically confusing religious convictions with human worth is somehow becoming worse by confusing intelligence with human worth. Fascinating case of rationalization.

</comment><comment><USER74> For those who count themselves among the intelligent, we should not doubt that in a generation or few, our skills may also be automated away.

</comment><comment><USER75> In a world that is increasingly data, the ability to process and react to that data becomes worth.

Marking worth is just more data processing, a declaration of subjective value in the scheme of your choice. Nothing special.

The nature of your interactions with those of lesser worth, and your views of them, however...well, there is a defining thing for a human being.

<comment><USER29> Except that the world around us is buildings, made of raw materials, i-beams, 2x4s, piping, etc. Built by people with trade skills. Filled with beds, sheets, refrigerators, dish washers, art on the walls, TVs, etc, etc.

The whole world may seem just focused on data if you live in silly valley, and your job is to increase conversion rates and improve SEO so some founder can sell more overpriced clothes to people with disposable income.

To the majority of people out there? The world is not all just data.

</comment></comment><comment><USER76> This hardly seems to be the case if you follow politics and talk to people about it.

<comment><USER77> Politics, religion, and their close correlate, global warming, are subject to opinion sans facts. Hence, the average discourse re: those three tend to the degenerate case.

</comment></comment><comment><USER78> worthington's law: more money = better than [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ke9iShKzZmM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ke9iShKzZmM)

</comment><comment><USER79> Don't be stupid vs. don't be stupidist?

</comment><comment><USER80> If only this were true in elections.

</comment><comment><USER81> As a non-American, and so 'judging' America only through the media, it does feel like the complete opposite. Deep ingrained anti-intellectualism, idolization of stupidity and love of the brazen and the rich. Scary decline of the sciences and rapid expansion of superstitions. Of course this does not apply to this here readership, but at least from an outside perspective we see 'idiocracy' surging onto the stage at breakneck speed.

<comment><USER82> Your assessments are not consistent with facts. You imply that the media is a distorting lens, but then you go on to espouse views that come entirely from the media. I'm not sure I understand that.

The US is becoming less religious, and it is the least religious it has ever been. People aren't increasingly idolizing stupidity or loving the rich, or Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders wouldn't have done as well as they did (both used anti-elite messaging). In fact, the on-going presidential election is proof that the rich are falling from grace. Occupy Wall Street, anti-"1%" sentiment, and a Democratic Socialist almost becoming the President are all indications that neoliberalism is dying in the US.

<comment><USER81> Yes, i accept that the media is a distorting lens, that is why I specifically put this in as a disclaimer, but not living there it is the only lens I have available. I'll give you Sanders as a point in showing at least an attempt at curbing extreme neo-liberalism, but Trump seems (to me) like the front runner in the race to 'idiocracy'.

<comment><USER83> 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...](http://www.vox.com/2016/4/21/11451378/smug-american-liberalism)

<comment><USER84> 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.)

<comment><USER85> 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.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER86> marks != merit

voting != democracy

</comment><comment><USER87> Are you guys living in the same world that I am?

Nerdy geek-type intellectuals are at the BOTTOM of the totem pole in terms of respect and human worth in the 21st century. They are ostracized, bullied in school, most are awkward virgins (intellect is the anti-thesis when it comes to being a "womanizer" or "stud") and it's only getting worse as society progresses.

<comment><USER88> 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 their lunch breaks learning sign language or brushing up on their knowledge of Korean.

Those are just two of the people I've worked with.

And look around. The most popular movies are based on comics. The most popular books are fantasy (Harry Potter) or science fiction dystopia (Hunger Games). Video games often have budgets on par with blockbuster films. Where is the social stigma on being a "nerd"? Largely gone, or at least it seems to me.

<comment><USER87> 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 Valley, nobody actually cares about your quirky radio-frequency system hobby. Not even your boss cares, he just wants you to bust your back to help turn a profit.

On a social level, athletes and high-school football jocks take higher precedence than you. Pop musicians take higher precedence than you. Actors take higher precedence than you. Your local handsome extroverted bartender who can't even operate a computer takes a higher precedence than you (especially in the eyes of ovulating women) That is what human-worth means, in the 21st century.

Sorry guys. The show is over. Perhaps in the near future high-IQ nerds will finally engineer fully immersive virtual world(s), because that will be only world they will ever get any respect.

<comment><USER89> Forgive me if I'm mistaken, but I suspect the differences of opinion between you and the person you replied to may be due to age differences.

I was a nerd in high school and was picked on when I wasn't being out-right ignored. My college experience was noticeably better, but the stereotypical extroverted "jock" still had me and my friends beat in the dating pool and other social circles. By graduation I too would have agreed that "Your local handsome extroverted bartender who can't even operate a computer takes a higher precedence than you".

However, ten years later into a highly technical career, I am constantly amazed at how beautiful my coworkers' partners are and how much respect they command from their social circles. It turns out that by the mid-thirties intelligence, and the success that comes with it, are _incredibly_ attractive qualities. Most of these coworkers were introverted outcasts like me in school, but it's hard to ostracize someone in the prime of their life with a beautiful spouse, intelligent children, and a six figure salary.

<comment><USER88> If you're in your mid 30s, then you and I are about the same age. I'll turn 33 in a few months.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER90> >> hiring decisions were "based on a candidate having a critical skill or two and on soft factors such as eagerness, appearance, family background, and physical characteristics."

Because this would be a much better world?

</comment><comment><USER91> Behold, the most Hacker News post on Hacker News.

<comment><USER92> We detached this comment from [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11926528](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11926528) and marked it off-topic.

</comment></comment><comment><USER93> Uhm, STFU. Geniuses = good. Sexism = bad.

<comment><USER92> > STFU

The civility rule here doesn't switch off just because someone else is wrong. Please don't do this again. Instead, please (re)-read the following, which describe what we're looking for in comments on this site—the idea is to post civilly and substantively, or not at all:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html)

We detached this subthread from [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11926598](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11926598) and marked it off-topic.</comment></comment>


We Feared Deepfakes. Then Tech Monetized Them - <AUTHOR> https://onezero.medium.com/we-feared-deepfakes-then-tech-monetized-them-736746626d9c <comment><USER2> At the 2019/2020 year's NHK New Year's event we saw a first truly deepfake artist: Hibari Misora, who died 30 years ago, sang a new song, the singer was 'regular' CGI hologram, the song was a new deepfake-generated song using her old records as training data. I haven't seen that before!

[https://www.japantimes.co.jp/culture/2020/01/10/films/nhk- ra...](https://www.japantimes.co.jp/culture/2020/01/10/films/nhk-raises-dead- kohaku-mixed-reviews/?hootPostID=56dfc4a008194c25483ea66ed5978aaf)

<comment><USER3> That's interesting. I hadn't heard about deepfake-generated songs before. The main thing stopping deepfakes from becoming a problem that I see is that even though you can swap someone's face onto another person's body and have it mimic their facial expressions, you can't make them sound the same. So if you try to put words in someone else's mouth you have to have a way to generate audio in their voice to match the video. It seems that audio deepfakes are on their way now too, which I think is when we'll see a real problem.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> From the article (and where I slowly stopped reading): "The images produced by Cameos were slightly cartoony, meaning that the digital avatar looked a little bit more like a Bitmoji than the user's real face. But the effect was essentially the same — it took someone's likeness and spliced it onto another body or into another scene. "

This is presented as DeepFake-like technology. However the whole issue with DeepFakes is that they are (or can be) indistinguishable from a real video. Any tech or feature that deliberately or due to limitations in the approach doesn't do that isn't really DeepFaking anything, so I don't quite think the article is on the right track. Once companies actually incorporate DeepFake tech we might be able to make some sort of early assessment, but it's way too early to draw any conclusions yet.

Edit: I guess the author gets this notion from a TechCrunch article they linked, which also essentially calls all these type of filters DeepFaking. It's not. Really, look at the videos of Cameo.

On a side note, we should really have a proper name for this (ultrarealistic fake videos), since the origin of DeepFake is indeed a bit too specific to the technology. Who knows, maybe in the future there are other approaches that will work as well.

</comment><comment><USER5> I can't read the article, but my take on the headline is that monetizing deep fakes makes them even more terrifying, not less.

<comment><USER6> > then tech monetized them

I don't know what they intended to convey - that anyone in tech==evil.

Imagine the headline that puts journalism through a similar purity test: "then the journalists monetized them". They'd have you banned on social media

<comment><USER5> My take on the headline was that they were saying that Deepfakes were bad, but tech finding a way to monetize them made them less bad.

But headlines are often very misleading, and that's all I'm going on here.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I predict in the next year or so a deepfake will go viral and cause significant harm to an important public person. I bet it will come in the form of a supposed candid shot where the person will speak thinking they are not being recorded and say something damning or inflammatory.

<comment><USER8> Also real leaks would be shrugged off as deep fakes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I feel like it is much too soon to disregard deep fakes as mostly harmless</comment>


Ask HN: As an engineer, how do I become more involved in politics? - <AUTHOR> I'm sitting at home watching the march and wish there was a way I could apply my skills, engineering skills in particular, to help people be heard and help make a difference in this political climate. What can I do? <comment><USER2> Find local political/nonprofit groups and ask them what you can do to help. They will probably have a tonne of ideas with no idea how to implement them. Their ideas may not all be good, but as long as you've reached out to groups who have a track record of being effective, they're probably better than yours/mine. If you want to dig even deeper, try and really understand what they're doing and use your knowledge of what is possible to find opportunities they didn't know existed.

I spent this afternoon readings about housing policy and one of the nonprofits literally said on their website that they were seeking funding to do web development for an interactive visualisation. Is this the most effective way of using dev resources? No idea; maybe these visualisations help them influence decision makers in this area, but it's a start if you're really keen.

</comment><comment><USER3> Help people to reach to facts. Who promised what and then was the promise delivered. Who voted what, especially when it comes to dangerous acts. Who was found to support shady individuals. Such historical horizon should go far back into the past, not 10 years or 20 years but at least until WWII - since great grand parents of current political establishment was holding power during this uneasy time and they obviously had influence on their descendants.

</comment><comment><USER4> I'd try to meet up with like minded people. At the very least, put your email in your profile.</comment>


Letter to a Young Developer - <AUTHOR> http://avdi.org/devblog/2011/08/19/letter-to-a-young-developer/ <comment><USER2> Depending on where someone is is where I would advise people...

One of the issues I've seen with CS students is simple inexperience. They simply did not have experience coding outside of the simple assignments they were handed. They, consequently, were largely bad at programming.

My single piece of advise to early CS students who want to get better but haven't really hit their stride yet is to _code_. Write and maintain a program that is over 5KLoC. Keep coding. And code some more. You have to have a base of experience, or all the sage advise will go over your head like a smell in the wind. :-)

<comment><USER3> I'm not a programmer / hacker, but this is almost exactly the advice I give to people who say they want to be writers. If you want to be a writer... write. A lot. And not just assignments you're given in school: those simply aren't hard enough, and you'll be outcompeted, artistically and otherwise, by people who do more. There is no speed limit: <http://sivers.org/kimo> .

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> +1 for wikiwiki (interesting discussions of issues I was concerned about that I could not find addressed anywhere else); and stackoverflow (for issues that documentation isn't clear on).

I would suggest that the hardest part of programming is not coding, not learning APIs/tools, not managing projects or other people - and not even getting clear on specifications. It's understanding problems and creating solutions; this often requires designing new algorithms, but it also involves restating problems into forms that are easier to solve. Arguably, there is no actual coding in this.

But the way to be absurdly successful and useful is to find a need and meet it. The quality of programming (in itself) is of almost zero relevance to this.

</comment><comment><USER5> Overall not a bad list, if a little too Ruby-focused. But he left out something:

* Build Something. Get some hosting and build something that works, who cares if anyone actually uses it. Start simple and add features. This should get you thinking about design, things you did wrong that is hamstringing you now, refactoring to solve those issues, etc. In the end you have something you can show to potential employers and talk about with them. You can show them the code without a pesky NDA preventing you from showing your chops.

<comment><USER6> Too Ruby-focused?? Ruby appeared twice in the list, and both times as examples of much more general advice.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> The author forgot to mention how to cultivate an interest in coding which, I think, is a very important part. I have seen so many CS students that didn't like programming at all. They just finish the tasks their teachers give them and never want to see one more LoC in their idle time(Ironically, they still want to be great coders when asked). In my opinion, the first step to level up to a programmer is to "force" oneself to love coding.

<comment><USER8> You are comparing a college student to a professional...

First, you can't "force" yourself to love programming. If you came here for the money and not the challenge, then you will fail. I spent a lot of time in college learning about programming outside of class, but I also spent a lot of time avoiding programming.

The experiences in other parts of your life also help shape you as a programmer. Practicing 14 hours a day 7 days a week is not going to make you the best programmer. Problem solving skills come from all aspects of life.

If you truly want to be a great programmer then you are going to have to practice. The best advice isn't really about programming: -If you program 14 hours a day, and have no other life then it is time to find something else to occupy some of your time. It will change the say you think and help you solve problems better. You need some knowledge of people too or you will create horrible solutions to people's problems, and you will never be successful. -If you never program outside of work/school you need to find a side project. You won't get great without practice. Take at least 4 hours a week to work on something that someone is not forcing you to work on. This can be some OSS project you have been hearing about. It can be a new OSS project you want to build. It could even be the next big thing that will have you buying yachts and race cars for the time you aren't coding.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Nice list, I particularly liked this one:

"Flip a coin. Heads pick Vim, tails pick Emacs."

That pretty much sums it up. Spending any time deciding between any of the two is just wasting your time, if you are serious about programming you will _eventually_ master both.

<comment><USER10> "if you are serious about programming you will _eventually_ master both."

Starting to really dislike the text editor snobbery on HN.

At home I use TextMate for Python and Ruby, Eclipse for Java. At work, Eclipse for Java and Visual Studio for C#. I'm not 'serious' about my hobby and career because I like a different text editor to you?

<comment><USER9> It's not snobbery, it might have come out the wrong way (the word serious was a bad choice), but the idea still stands. It's completely fine to use different editors, as it is fine to keep developing web applications in php and not trying things like ror/django/node.js/nextbigframework, or never learning a lisp dialect.

But in all cases, just learning them will most likely improve your skills in many ways. Maybe you won't change from textmate to vim or emacs, but you will pick up many things from them that I believe will make your life easier.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This goes up there with Zed's Advice from an Old Programmer. Good practical advice for people just starting out.</comment>