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by ganzuul 1831 days ago
You are correct, but there are going to be cases where the help should come in the form of UBI or NIT. Otherwise people on the unfortunate end of the ability spectrum are going to have to get gainful employment somehow.

We should definitely take care of them as a society built on solidarity, but we can be efficient about it too.
1 comments
kwhitefoot 1830 days ago
> take care of them

It sounds like you want to just pay people to stay alive without helping them to gain the skills necessary to make that life worthwhile to themselves.

Before we try to be efficient we need to agree on what we are being efficient about.

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chongli 1830 days ago
The wrinkle in this discussion is the inevitable march of technology. It’s simply a lot more difficult to make a valuable contribution to society today than it was a few decades ago. It takes a lot more education and specialized training to gain the skills that put oneself in demand.

The idea that we can push water uphill, and bring the most struggling students up above an ever-rising bar, is becoming a controversial one these days. There is a small but growing chorus of voices saying “enough already”, on both [1] sides [2] of the spectrum.

[1] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/36319077-the-case-agains...

[2] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/51087394-the-cult-of-sma...

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A4ET8a8uTh0 1830 days ago
The logical conclusion of this thought process is a question of what to do with laggards and I do not see it being addressed. Ignoring it is not a real option.
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ganzuul 1830 days ago
Please don't label people as laggards. It is dehumanizing. They could be your lost identical twin who had a chemical accident at a young age and never got the opportunity to develop properly.
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A4ET8a8uTh0 1830 days ago
Is it? I kind of understand the argument behind not calling someone 'last', but the language like this exists for a reason. What are you supposed to call segment of a population that is 'not top tier'? The last winner? It gets silly fast. We better get over the emotional component of words fast if we are to get to an actual solution.

For the record, I did not even try to dehumanize. I just applied the language of technology adoption to adoption of knowledge. It seemed applicable.

https://ondigitalmarketing.com/learn/odm/foundations/5-custo...

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ganzuul 1830 days ago
Oh, okay. Yeah I have made that mistake myself too I guess.

I agree that words have meaning, but IMO we want to focus the narrative on people who may have been unfortunate through no fault of their own. We want to treat them with compassion and take the time to find the right words for them. Words that they might describe themselves with. ...But they might say "I'm dumb" and think nothing of it.

The goal is to remove friction from the path to policy change, because we desire an outcome of improved efficiency. We may have to be creative with language to do it.

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ganzuul 1830 days ago
The unfortunate truth about IQ is that the distribution is on both sides of the mean. Some people are unteachable, but it sounds like you want to ignore the inconvenient.
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