[rewqfdsa]

What happens after we guarantee all access to learning resources and inequality persists? At what point will you accept the science that tells us how intelligence is mostly hereditary, immutable, and important?

The dream of stamping out inequality is built on the factually incorrect notion that we are all born with equal abilities. It's much easier to explain outcome differences as ability differences than to come up with increasingly unlikely forms of oppression.

As technology improves, low-IQ contributions become increasingly less valuable relative to machines, increasing inequality.

[digikata]

If anything science tends to point more to the fact that there isn't a single metric of intelligence that is somehow the most important. Maybe the most important factor isn't intelligence at all and is some combination of intelligence, communication and charisma? Even if there some set of human dominating factors, there's no guarantee that the order of the world in that moment would consistently value that factor without changing to another. There isn't even a guarantee that at the same point in time the same fitness tests are applied consistently - in one corner of the world one set of characteristics if favored, and and in another it's a different set. Heck, in the same city there's a huge variation...

In this environment the best we can to is provide somewhat consistent access to resources to encourage the development human ability in all its varied forms.

[rewqfdsa]

That's a nice fantasy --- oh, everyone's smart, just as different things. It just ain't true.

Science tells us that IQ is a general mental cognitive factor; tasks can be more or less heavily g-weighted, but intelligence is strongly correlated to all sorts of things, like mortality (inversely), lifetime income, accomplishment, marriage stability, and so on.

Try again.

[dang]

Please stop using HN to beat the same ideological dead hobby-horses over and over again. It is not what this site is for.

Please also edit the incivility out of your comments. There's no need for a nasty swipe like "Try again."

[rewqfdsa]

> Please stop using HN to beat the same ideological dead hobby-horses over and over again

Which specific facts are inappropriate to mention on HN?

[arturhoo]

I agree with everything you've said and I'm really sorry if it seemed that I was implying we are all born with equal abilities. I agree that intelligence is partly hereditary, immutable and important, the same way that is the willingness to take risks.

If there is an equality of access to resources (not only learning) the degree of income inequality will eventually be balanced. The problem, again, is that there is an increasing portion of society that is born intelligent but never able to develop it, put it in practice and finally contribute to the bigger wealth pie.

Income and wealth inequality will and should persist.

[jds375]

I think it may be the case that we are 'done' at that point. There needs to be some inherent inequality and luck, otherwise we can't improve... It would be like evolution without the mutations. We couldn't evolve if it weren't for that variation. Is it fair or right? I'm not sure... that's up for debate. But I do think that the inequality that would persist after resource-equality would be considered acceptable by most people.

[JoeAltmaier]

Actually as technology improves, people are freed to do fewer technological tasks. Technical IQ becomes less important. Ultimately most folks can return to reading, writing, art and leisure. As we used to call it, utopia.

The challenge is to redistribute resources fairly once the concept of 'working' is no longer pertinent.

[rewqfdsa]

The need to capture increased productivity as increased leisure time is the reason I support a basic income --- or a "technological divided", to put it differently. But we shouldn't fool ourselves into thinking that everyone is capable of making an equal contribution to society and that wage disparity somehow reflects unfairness.

[JoeAltmaier]

Agreed, like that name 'tech dividend'!

The rest depends on the definition of 'contribution'. A grandmother involved in raising grandkids is a significant contribution that is uncompensated at present. We could fix things like that. Definitely room for improvement in our antiquated economic system.

[rewqfdsa]

Sure. What really bothers me is equating pre-redistribution income differences with unfairness, -isms, discrimation, and so on. I resent being called a terrible person when all I've done is do my best work. Post-redistribution income is another story.