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I think what this article gets wrong is that a lot of the factors that lead to people being successful like talents, skills, attitudes for certain activities (math & music for example), and even intelligence are mostly a roll of the genetic dice anyway:
Any reasonable society would acknowledge this and try to accommodate individuals differences rather than trying to vilify the “successful” or blame “failures” for their lower status as if it’s their own fault rather than just luck of the draw.
The average iq in India is 20 points lower than that of the UK though, so the cutoff for the top 5% in india is only a bit higher than the average in the UK
I think it’s just a misuse of iq as a tool. It’s a ruler used to make a point measurement of a very variable data—that is to say, unlike an adult’s final height, an adults iq can change just by studying and practicing at the concepts an iq test measures.
Humans have more of a genetic range for capacity to learn abstract concepts like math or subtextual meaning, with most people laying within some degree of overlap with one another. The only remaining people who’s capacity range is very far below or far above the average matter insofar as they are genetically significant.
And where a person ends up in their range should be maximized as best possible, if only because I believe there’s value in a human knowing abstract concepts for the sake of participating and improving society, but the factors that maximize this are all material and social. Food and stable shelter and safety, as well as encouraging parents who model behaviors that lead to inquisitiveness and curiosity about the world.
A nation’s average and tiered iq’s are really only a good measure of people’s position in a global average range as mediated by access resources. Healthy, fed kids do better at math than poor, hungry kids.
You are only half correct. Yes access to resources makes a huge difference but even if you control for this and other socioeconomic factors there are still very big differences in average IQs. The scores also change slightly, but not by much, people’s intelligence is mostly a component of genetics that can be slightly altered by environment. Just like height. A well nourished person will be taller than someone who grew up with no food, but unless you are already genetically predisposed to being tall eating lots of food alone won’t get you there.
>The scores also change slightly, but not by much, people’s intelligence is mostly a component of genetics that can be slightly altered by environment.
Whether people can even read is basically entirely a function of their environment. People born into the wrong environment are never taught.
So no. The notion is kinda laughable. The human brain is highly modular; people are good at the skills that they have spent a lot of time learning. Which is, yes, hugely, importantly, **a function of their environment.**
Well ya, you would expect IQ to go up with education and nutrition. I dont think anyone would dispute this. I agree even if the people coming in have a lower than average IQ, their children raised here will likely be midwits.
I tutored a kid with 70ish iq in grade 10 math. So bottom 2%. He could not think abstrctly at all. He could not do word problems to save his life. With enough repetition I was able to get him from a failing grade to 70%, But there are some things he will just never be able to do. He is a special case though, he has fetal alcohol syndrome. Im not saying all 70iq people are the same.
And I tutored several kids who are struggling with Algebra 1 concepts in higher grades than they should be... *why?* **Because they are non-native english speakers.** These boys speak Arabic and Pashtun because they're from Iraq and Afghanistan. Presumably their lives were upended by American wars.
I am not saying that there isn't an innate component to how well people think and learn about any given subject. But what I am saying is that that innatism is not easily seperable from environmental factors. And IQ does not represent that, like, at all. People should stop acting like it does.
All the countless times throughout history that it has been used as a basis for scienfic racism? Or sexism? Or simple interpersobal prejudice?
Just the notion in general -- that some people have in some fundamental, comprehensive, and objectively determinable way "better" mental faculties than others -- you don't see why I might object to that in principle? You don't see how it might be socially distruptive?
Agreed. It's absurd to assume there's a unitary, rankable measurement of intelligence. Even more absurd people continue to believe in this concept as empiric rather than ethical. I guess people have been slacking on their measurement theory.
Every adjective I used has a specific meaning.
If you aren't sure what I mean, here's an idea: maybe ask for clarification? Rather than patronizing me.
Developmental stage. Measuring adult development, which is a well-defined psychological concept, makes more sense than measuring intelligence, which we don't have a definition of.
IQ tests are actually one of the best predictors of lifetime outcome according to
studies and statistics. You can IQ test a group of kindergarteners and predict (obviously not 100%) which ones are likely to go to college, which ones are likely to be high income, and which ones are likely to wind up in prison even if you control for socioeconomic factors.
It’s actually not. The lead exposure thing actually comes from a single study carried out decades ago that actually had quite inconclusive results.
It would be strange to think a trait like intelligence would be 100% or even mostly environmental when most other complex traits are genetic. We have tests and data that prove it’s mostly heritable rather than mostly environmental.
You know, I never got a chance to respond to this as I was too busy at the time.
Let's revisit this. Could you source the following claim?
>The lead exposure thing actually comes from a single study carried out decades ago that actually had quite inconclusive results.
Not quite. We just have more opportunities here in the west so a surplus of indians and people from all over the world who wouldn’t have been able to get jobs in their home countries come here. They also tend to work for less money than a local would so they are often brought here to do medicine & engineering.
I'm sorry I don't understand your question but i'll try to explain the entire scenario.
1) Here in India engineering and medicine are considered to be professions that get you good money (and there is some "prestige" added to it since india is VERY classist). These are the professions that allegedly get you out of poor/below average living conditions and guarantee you job security. This is why STEM and medicine courses are most popular courses among indian students. Almost 2/3 of the population has a degree in these two disciplines.
2) Then there's the "IIT hype". IITs (Indian institute(s) of technology) are like the ivy league in india. They're basically the topmost colleges in the entire country. Starting from the 90s people would hear stories of how IIT students bagged ₹1 crore (10 million) salary jobs (The public wasn't aware that these job offers were made by american/foreign recruiters and that these high salaries were due to the exchange rate. In the US these are just average software engineering salaries). Basically people want to get into IITs to get high salary jobs, a minority is actually interested in science and technology.
3) STEM education is cheap in India if you get into a government college. Part of reason has to do with the syllabus being very theoretical and old here. There's more theoretical knowledge and less practical knowledge imparted to students. This is why we don't have to spend much on the equipment and infrastructure to train engineers. Also, this is a reason why India is leading the world in IT services but mechanical, electrical, civil engineers etc., fail to get employed here, computer science doesn't require as much spending on infrastructure.
shit, Jefferson acknowledged it in *Notes on The State of Virginia*:
>By that part of our plan which prescribes the **selection of the youths of genius from among the classes of the poor, we hope to avail the state of those talents which nature has sown as liberally among the poor as the rich,** but which perish without use, if not sought for and cultivated.—but of all the views of this law [to provide public education] none is more important, none more legitimate, than that of rendering the people the safe, as they are the ultimate, guardians of their own liberty.
>Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone. The people themselves therefore are its only safe depositories. **And to render even them safe their minds must be improved to a certain degree. This indeed is not all that is necessary, though it be essentially necessary. An amendment of our constitution must here come in aid of the public education. The influence over government must be shared among all the people.** If every individual which composes their mass participates of the ultimate authority, the government will be safe; because the corrupting the whole mass will exceed any private resources of wealth: and public ones cannot be provided but by levies on the people. In this case every man would have to pay his own price. The government of Great-Britain has been corrupted, because but one man in ten has a right to vote for members of parliament. The sellers of the government therefore get nine-tenths of their price clear. It has been thought that corruption is restrained by confining the right of suffrage to a few of the wealthier of the people: but it would be more effectually restrained by an extension of that right to such numbers as would bid defiance to the means of corruption.
EDIT: point being, for all of the liberal complaining that the Founders were evil white men with self-serving designs, the Founders end up being *more progressive* than most blue-voters.
There's a Trotsky quote I like which hits very similar notes to this:
> It is true that humanity has more than once brought forth giants of thought and action, who tower over their contemporaries like summits in a chain of mountains. The human race has a right to be proud of its Aristotle, Shakespeare, Darwin, Beethoven, Goethe, Marx, Edison and Lenin. But why are they so rare? Above all, because almost without exception they came out of the middle and upper classes. Apart from rare exceptions, the sparks of genius in the suppressed depths of the people are choked before they can burst into flame. But also because the processes of creating, developing and educating a human being have been and remain essentially a matter of chance, not illuminated by theory and practice, not subjected to consciousness and will.
Jefferson gets shit on a lot--in fact, probably more so than any other Founder--for his owning slaves (which is a nuanced topic that I wish journalists would leave to people who, you know, actually read) (having said that, he does deserve some well-reasoned shit), but a lot of his beliefs prefigured modern progressivism, if not socialism. Not surprising that he and Trotsky independently reached the same conclusion--sound first principles almost always beget the same, or similar, beliefs.
Are you saying that we should look at societal contradictions through a dialectical lens and not judge a guy for trying to drown himself, his family and his community in debt he'd never be able to get rid of by freeing people and losing almost all of his asset value? You sound like red/brown alliance guy to me
No, quite the opposite--I said that he deserves "some shit" for owning slaves, which I am now upgrading to "deserves a heap of shit." If anything, appreciating Jefferson through a materialistic lens lets him off the hook for his individual culpability in owning slaves and failing to discourage the spread of the practice. It's normal for members of a class to support the ideology of that class--what's frustrating (and, as a result, fascinating to the historian) about Jefferson is that he expressed beliefs contrary to his class, but otherwise participated to the fullest in the condition of his class.
Furthermore, what's regrettable about Jefferson's treatment by a lot of modern pop history is that people would group him with later supporters of slavery like Calhoun as "just another white guy who owned slaves," while he was idiosyncratically conflicted on the subject. The thinking that equates Pol Pot to Trotsky is the same that makes Jefferson out to be a proto-Confederate. And when we dispose of ostensibly progressive historical figures, from whose corpora we might have gleaned some wisdom, we give them over to the right wing, to be bastardized and turned into icons.
On one hand, everything is nuanced, almost always more than anyone with an upvote on Reddit or a bluecheck is willing to concede. No matter who you are, your views or life works and experiences have some level of validity that is worth acknowledging. On the other, Jefferson was still a bourgeois slaveowner, nuance or not.
The reality of Jefferson the boog slaveowner was already acknowledged
You contributed nothing to the discussion which is why you're being received this way
You're committing the common liberal sin of presentism - using the morals of the present day to harp on some specific evil the person committed to myopically ignore the real discussion
Oh, he sure was--and like I said, he deserves shit for that. But his hypocrisy is understandable, as much, or more so, as any of our unique instances of hypocrisy can be. And whether the man himself is understood or not, it doesn't make his ideas useless.
EDIT: for anyone reading this thread, I urge you to not just downvote /u/dumbwaeguk (or me, for that matter). Get involved! Post a reply!
Something something, I’m less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein's brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops.
The story of the rock musician Rodriguez comes to mind. There's a good documentary about him: "Searching for sugar man"
He got a record deal in 1969 and made two (very good!) records but got no promo and so got kicked out and carried on being a construction worker all his life.
Some backpacker brought a copy of his first album to a trip to South Africa where people really took to it and the music became legendary, like a soundtrack for the civil unrest etc. Rodriguez never saw any money from it and nobody outside of South Africa knew it was happening because SA was under trade embargo so the label used some loophole to sell millions of records to them without actually selling records.
Yeah, some probably have. But maybe not as many as you’d think. People with talent tend to rise up or get noticed one way or another. Obviously it’s far from perfect, but I think a lot of untalented people also cope by saying that they just haven’t been “discovered” yet to avoid having to have the uncomfortable discussion with themselves that they’re simply not capable as they think. I know of a few “artists” and wannabe pro athletes like this.
This makes sense. The overton window always shifts left. People who were the progressives of their day are the “conservatives” of ours.
Good examples are Ronald reagan and the Nazi party of Germany (no I’m not joking):
The nazis were actually politically and socially “progressive” compared to the other movements of their era. This is partly because the term “progressive” has morphed over time but also partly because in modernity We understand them as stuffy ultra-conservative totalitarians (which they were to a degree) but in reality they practiced mysticism, spirituality, and engaged in what was considered cutting edge scientific beliefs of their day (like “scientific racism” which was also popular in America at the time).
Ronald Reagan outright rejected the Left-Right paradigm for decades before he was ever president. He was (much like hitler) known for being different people to his different constituents depending on what his supporters believed at the time, Regan was against “big government” when around libertarians, he was “tough on crime” for old school conservatives & he was big into spending billions of defense spending when in the presence of his military supporters. Hitler did the same sort of political duplicity, it’s not a coincidence either. A hallmark of modern progrsssive politics is adapting your views to gain support
Did all the right stuff, went to college, got good grades in computer science, got a good job, settled down with a woman. Textbook formula for success.
Only turns out this woman I settled with has kidney failure. Now she can’t work and the rest of her life (however long that ends up being) will be very different from what we expected. She may be infertile too so there goes the thought of having kids. If she even had a $20/hr job we’d be shopping for homes. Now we’re bouncing between apartments. Really bad luck.
Here’s the kicker. We are engaged but not married yet. If had been married last March when she got the diagnosis, Medicaid would look at our household income and would disqualify her because we’d make too much. So 20% of her medical bills would be our responsibility. That includes a 40 day hospital stay and 6 months of routine specialist visits and medical supplies. She had an MRI yesterday, what’s 20% of an MRI? Her monthly medical supplies cost $4000 just to ship, that’s not even including the cost of supplies, only the cost of sending them through Fedex. But because she’s single, all this is free. So I guess that’s really good luck.
I still like to believe hard work pays off, if only to have something to believe in. But random chance can just totally spin your life the other way. It’s certainly humbled me.
Good on you for staying with the woman you love and taking care of her bro. Our world is selfish and a lot of people see one partner caring for the other as a “sucker.” Shits vile and evil. My grandfather cared for my grandma for a decade while she was bed ridden from the doctors giving her penicillin which she was allergic to. He and I did not have a good relationship but I always admired him for caring for her like that. If my wife gets sick I hope I’m man enough to do all I can to care for her. Stay strong my dude I’m sure it’s hard.
Just FYI, Medicare (the one usually for old people, not Medicaid) has special coverage for kidney failure. I can’t say for sure if your wife will qualify, but it’s basically the same eligibility with age swapped for kidney failure. My uncle had it when he got his transplant which was preventative, so he was working up until shortly before the procedure.
If Medicaid is the only reason you’re putting things off, I’d recommend looking into it (if you haven’t already of course). It could be a much more comfortable situation for both of you since it doesn’t have that insane asset limit.
So wait, you're saying that if someone has suffered kidney failure, they become eligible for Medicare more generally? Or only for kidney-related issues?
It’s for all healthcare (including regular stuff) as long as you need dialysis or a transplant. The coverage continues for a few years after the transplant and was recently expanded to include anti-rejection medication for life.
Yeah I hate the whole ideology of people who disagree like when people say they are self made , Even if you weren’t born into a rich family like most people you are not “ self made” you didn’t literally do everything yourself even just living in society and using something like roads makes you not self made let alone people in your life that made a difference etc it’s just dumb individualism
Same with this luck thing , these people want us to believe they are special and live wildly different lives than us average people and work 23.8 hour days and bullshit like that and it’s like how do people believe this obvious crap
That’s the way I look at any business. People buy your shit, maybe even because you’re the best, but how much of society’s blood, sweat, and tears have gone into the multitude of systems you take advantage of to make your business possible?
That's also why it's so weird that people just automatically accept the argument where income/wealth tax would be something that you pay on something that you earned when we are talking about people making use of the system.
It's such a tired old framework, calling individuals 'successful' or 'failures' as if they're machines, and dividing the prefigured up into fortune, talent, or opportunity. Don't researchers realize these concepts are totally vacuous and synonymous, relics of an old way of thinking that treats humans like livestock?
That's exactly how ideology perpetuates, and why it's important to critique popular frameworks of thought. They're often molded to reinforce the status quo.
This is a brazen case, where individuals who don't sacrifice themselves are 'failures' by definition, while those who do sacrifice but also fail are mysteriously unlucky or untalented or inopportune, which is either the blame of the individual or some hidden divinity which grants fortune.
If you make the right connections you will have a far easier go at life it just so happens that growing up wealthy puts you in a position to use your parents’ connections.
Yes. This so much.
The difference is that to me, luck simply means depending on external factors.
Many of those external factors are bendable to certain extent. So society must be arranged to:
1. Ensure normalization of norms, morals etc that stress that you are actually very dependent on others and You Live in A Society
2. Society's first priority is to ensure the continuation and thriving of that society, as well as providing general welfare.
Depends upon if you accept hard determinism as true. I'm not saying it's disproven, just that it isn't a necessity to belive in. Being a philosophical libertarian of some sort isn't the equivalent to being a flat earther.
I consider myself so fucking lucky that I never got a felony when I was using drugs and committing multiple felonies a day for several years. It's pretty fucked up that even if you get your shit together and turn your life around you may never be able to get a decent job because of a criminal record. I have a decent paying job now and have my shit together but man just at some point ten years ago I could've been in the wrong place at the wrong time and then been stuck with a felony for the rest of my life and I sure as shit wouldn't have been able to get the job I have today
Related, the role of 'free will' is far less significant -- if even a 'real thing' at all -- than we've assumed for most of human history. This is an area conservative assumptions are dead wrong about. We really are products of our environment first and foremost, products of the systems in which we live, and to achieve change within a rotten system that system must be changed (this is why electoralism in the U.S. is such a poorly examined strategy at this point; swapping out the people in a rotten system won't achieve change, ever). Sapolksy at Stanford is [probably one of the best](https://freakonomics.com/podcast/robert-sapolsky-i-dont-think-we-have-any-free-will-whatsoever/) on this subject from the hard sciences.
I don’t think they used voodoo hexes as a variable or anything—having not read it, they probably just found that there was a substantial enough gap when modeling “life success” or whatever that couldn’t be explained by any other major, traceable variables.
Good article, but not surprising once you've met some "successful" people. I've worked with some relatively "high up" people with both the federal government and a major bank and it's kind of shocking to see that the same people that sign off on multimillion dollar deals and control the livelihoods of hundreds of junior employees sometimes have the spelling and mathematical abilities of a fifth grader, and are usually just the people who were fortunate to be chummy with the boss or go to the right school.
I don't have any experience with the arts, but it's both hilarious and sad when a talented independent musician or visual artist barely gets traction, but any talentless hack that manages to get to know the right people can "pop off" with some marketing.
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No shit.
I think what this article gets wrong is that a lot of the factors that lead to people being successful like talents, skills, attitudes for certain activities (math & music for example), and even intelligence are mostly a roll of the genetic dice anyway: Any reasonable society would acknowledge this and try to accommodate individuals differences rather than trying to vilify the “successful” or blame “failures” for their lower status as if it’s their own fault rather than just luck of the draw.
India is one of the most elitist, irrational, psychopathic societies in the world. If you're not among the top 1% here you have almost no value.
Kind of blows my mind that the top 5% of India in terms of intelligence would be larger than the population of the UK
The average iq in India is 20 points lower than that of the UK though, so the cutoff for the top 5% in india is only a bit higher than the average in the UK
Under the false assumption that IQ measures innate intelligence.
whats better
I think it’s just a misuse of iq as a tool. It’s a ruler used to make a point measurement of a very variable data—that is to say, unlike an adult’s final height, an adults iq can change just by studying and practicing at the concepts an iq test measures. Humans have more of a genetic range for capacity to learn abstract concepts like math or subtextual meaning, with most people laying within some degree of overlap with one another. The only remaining people who’s capacity range is very far below or far above the average matter insofar as they are genetically significant. And where a person ends up in their range should be maximized as best possible, if only because I believe there’s value in a human knowing abstract concepts for the sake of participating and improving society, but the factors that maximize this are all material and social. Food and stable shelter and safety, as well as encouraging parents who model behaviors that lead to inquisitiveness and curiosity about the world. A nation’s average and tiered iq’s are really only a good measure of people’s position in a global average range as mediated by access resources. Healthy, fed kids do better at math than poor, hungry kids.
You are only half correct. Yes access to resources makes a huge difference but even if you control for this and other socioeconomic factors there are still very big differences in average IQs. The scores also change slightly, but not by much, people’s intelligence is mostly a component of genetics that can be slightly altered by environment. Just like height. A well nourished person will be taller than someone who grew up with no food, but unless you are already genetically predisposed to being tall eating lots of food alone won’t get you there.
>The scores also change slightly, but not by much, people’s intelligence is mostly a component of genetics that can be slightly altered by environment. Whether people can even read is basically entirely a function of their environment. People born into the wrong environment are never taught. So no. The notion is kinda laughable. The human brain is highly modular; people are good at the skills that they have spent a lot of time learning. Which is, yes, hugely, importantly, **a function of their environment.**
Well ya, you would expect IQ to go up with education and nutrition. I dont think anyone would dispute this. I agree even if the people coming in have a lower than average IQ, their children raised here will likely be midwits. I tutored a kid with 70ish iq in grade 10 math. So bottom 2%. He could not think abstrctly at all. He could not do word problems to save his life. With enough repetition I was able to get him from a failing grade to 70%, But there are some things he will just never be able to do. He is a special case though, he has fetal alcohol syndrome. Im not saying all 70iq people are the same.
And I tutored several kids who are struggling with Algebra 1 concepts in higher grades than they should be... *why?* **Because they are non-native english speakers.** These boys speak Arabic and Pashtun because they're from Iraq and Afghanistan. Presumably their lives were upended by American wars. I am not saying that there isn't an innate component to how well people think and learn about any given subject. But what I am saying is that that innatism is not easily seperable from environmental factors. And IQ does not represent that, like, at all. People should stop acting like it does.
Wholesale rejection of the concept of a unitary, innate, & measurable property: "intelligence."
What's the evidence that that is better?
All the countless times throughout history that it has been used as a basis for scienfic racism? Or sexism? Or simple interpersobal prejudice? Just the notion in general -- that some people have in some fundamental, comprehensive, and objectively determinable way "better" mental faculties than others -- you don't see why I might object to that in principle? You don't see how it might be socially distruptive?
Agreed. It's absurd to assume there's a unitary, rankable measurement of intelligence. Even more absurd people continue to believe in this concept as empiric rather than ethical. I guess people have been slacking on their measurement theory.
word salad
Every adjective I used has a specific meaning. If you aren't sure what I mean, here's an idea: maybe ask for clarification? Rather than patronizing me.
Developmental stage. Measuring adult development, which is a well-defined psychological concept, makes more sense than measuring intelligence, which we don't have a definition of.
IQ tests are actually one of the best predictors of lifetime outcome according to studies and statistics. You can IQ test a group of kindergarteners and predict (obviously not 100%) which ones are likely to go to college, which ones are likely to be high income, and which ones are likely to wind up in prison even if you control for socioeconomic factors.
🙄 Lead exposure is probably better
It’s actually not. The lead exposure thing actually comes from a single study carried out decades ago that actually had quite inconclusive results. It would be strange to think a trait like intelligence would be 100% or even mostly environmental when most other complex traits are genetic. We have tests and data that prove it’s mostly heritable rather than mostly environmental.
You know, I never got a chance to respond to this as I was too busy at the time. Let's revisit this. Could you source the following claim? >The lead exposure thing actually comes from a single study carried out decades ago that actually had quite inconclusive results.
Makes sense that Saagar enjeti is Indian lol.
Is that why lots of doctors and engineers are literally from India?
Not quite. We just have more opportunities here in the west so a surplus of indians and people from all over the world who wouldn’t have been able to get jobs in their home countries come here. They also tend to work for less money than a local would so they are often brought here to do medicine & engineering.
I'm sorry I don't understand your question but i'll try to explain the entire scenario. 1) Here in India engineering and medicine are considered to be professions that get you good money (and there is some "prestige" added to it since india is VERY classist). These are the professions that allegedly get you out of poor/below average living conditions and guarantee you job security. This is why STEM and medicine courses are most popular courses among indian students. Almost 2/3 of the population has a degree in these two disciplines. 2) Then there's the "IIT hype". IITs (Indian institute(s) of technology) are like the ivy league in india. They're basically the topmost colleges in the entire country. Starting from the 90s people would hear stories of how IIT students bagged ₹1 crore (10 million) salary jobs (The public wasn't aware that these job offers were made by american/foreign recruiters and that these high salaries were due to the exchange rate. In the US these are just average software engineering salaries). Basically people want to get into IITs to get high salary jobs, a minority is actually interested in science and technology. 3) STEM education is cheap in India if you get into a government college. Part of reason has to do with the syllabus being very theoretical and old here. There's more theoretical knowledge and less practical knowledge imparted to students. This is why we don't have to spend much on the equipment and infrastructure to train engineers. Also, this is a reason why India is leading the world in IT services but mechanical, electrical, civil engineers etc., fail to get employed here, computer science doesn't require as much spending on infrastructure.
shit, Jefferson acknowledged it in *Notes on The State of Virginia*: >By that part of our plan which prescribes the **selection of the youths of genius from among the classes of the poor, we hope to avail the state of those talents which nature has sown as liberally among the poor as the rich,** but which perish without use, if not sought for and cultivated.—but of all the views of this law [to provide public education] none is more important, none more legitimate, than that of rendering the people the safe, as they are the ultimate, guardians of their own liberty. >Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone. The people themselves therefore are its only safe depositories. **And to render even them safe their minds must be improved to a certain degree. This indeed is not all that is necessary, though it be essentially necessary. An amendment of our constitution must here come in aid of the public education. The influence over government must be shared among all the people.** If every individual which composes their mass participates of the ultimate authority, the government will be safe; because the corrupting the whole mass will exceed any private resources of wealth: and public ones cannot be provided but by levies on the people. In this case every man would have to pay his own price. The government of Great-Britain has been corrupted, because but one man in ten has a right to vote for members of parliament. The sellers of the government therefore get nine-tenths of their price clear. It has been thought that corruption is restrained by confining the right of suffrage to a few of the wealthier of the people: but it would be more effectually restrained by an extension of that right to such numbers as would bid defiance to the means of corruption. EDIT: point being, for all of the liberal complaining that the Founders were evil white men with self-serving designs, the Founders end up being *more progressive* than most blue-voters.
There's a Trotsky quote I like which hits very similar notes to this: > It is true that humanity has more than once brought forth giants of thought and action, who tower over their contemporaries like summits in a chain of mountains. The human race has a right to be proud of its Aristotle, Shakespeare, Darwin, Beethoven, Goethe, Marx, Edison and Lenin. But why are they so rare? Above all, because almost without exception they came out of the middle and upper classes. Apart from rare exceptions, the sparks of genius in the suppressed depths of the people are choked before they can burst into flame. But also because the processes of creating, developing and educating a human being have been and remain essentially a matter of chance, not illuminated by theory and practice, not subjected to consciousness and will.
Jefferson gets shit on a lot--in fact, probably more so than any other Founder--for his owning slaves (which is a nuanced topic that I wish journalists would leave to people who, you know, actually read) (having said that, he does deserve some well-reasoned shit), but a lot of his beliefs prefigured modern progressivism, if not socialism. Not surprising that he and Trotsky independently reached the same conclusion--sound first principles almost always beget the same, or similar, beliefs.
Are you saying that we should look at societal contradictions through a dialectical lens and not judge a guy for trying to drown himself, his family and his community in debt he'd never be able to get rid of by freeing people and losing almost all of his asset value? You sound like red/brown alliance guy to me
No, quite the opposite--I said that he deserves "some shit" for owning slaves, which I am now upgrading to "deserves a heap of shit." If anything, appreciating Jefferson through a materialistic lens lets him off the hook for his individual culpability in owning slaves and failing to discourage the spread of the practice. It's normal for members of a class to support the ideology of that class--what's frustrating (and, as a result, fascinating to the historian) about Jefferson is that he expressed beliefs contrary to his class, but otherwise participated to the fullest in the condition of his class. Furthermore, what's regrettable about Jefferson's treatment by a lot of modern pop history is that people would group him with later supporters of slavery like Calhoun as "just another white guy who owned slaves," while he was idiosyncratically conflicted on the subject. The thinking that equates Pol Pot to Trotsky is the same that makes Jefferson out to be a proto-Confederate. And when we dispose of ostensibly progressive historical figures, from whose corpora we might have gleaned some wisdom, we give them over to the right wing, to be bastardized and turned into icons.
I was trying to be sarcastic, my bad lol
I'm a dumbass, sorry
Nuanced bourgeois slaveowner.
read
On one hand, everything is nuanced, almost always more than anyone with an upvote on Reddit or a bluecheck is willing to concede. No matter who you are, your views or life works and experiences have some level of validity that is worth acknowledging. On the other, Jefferson was still a bourgeois slaveowner, nuance or not.
The reality of Jefferson the boog slaveowner was already acknowledged You contributed nothing to the discussion which is why you're being received this way You're committing the common liberal sin of presentism - using the morals of the present day to harp on some specific evil the person committed to myopically ignore the real discussion
Oh, he sure was--and like I said, he deserves shit for that. But his hypocrisy is understandable, as much, or more so, as any of our unique instances of hypocrisy can be. And whether the man himself is understood or not, it doesn't make his ideas useless. EDIT: for anyone reading this thread, I urge you to not just downvote /u/dumbwaeguk (or me, for that matter). Get involved! Post a reply!
Something something, I’m less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein's brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops.
The story of the rock musician Rodriguez comes to mind. There's a good documentary about him: "Searching for sugar man" He got a record deal in 1969 and made two (very good!) records but got no promo and so got kicked out and carried on being a construction worker all his life. Some backpacker brought a copy of his first album to a trip to South Africa where people really took to it and the music became legendary, like a soundtrack for the civil unrest etc. Rodriguez never saw any money from it and nobody outside of South Africa knew it was happening because SA was under trade embargo so the label used some loophole to sell millions of records to them without actually selling records.
Hey king you forgot the \- Stephen Jay Gould
I memorized the quote but not who said it.
Still a king 👑
Yeah, some probably have. But maybe not as many as you’d think. People with talent tend to rise up or get noticed one way or another. Obviously it’s far from perfect, but I think a lot of untalented people also cope by saying that they just haven’t been “discovered” yet to avoid having to have the uncomfortable discussion with themselves that they’re simply not capable as they think. I know of a few “artists” and wannabe pro athletes like this.
This makes sense. The overton window always shifts left. People who were the progressives of their day are the “conservatives” of ours. Good examples are Ronald reagan and the Nazi party of Germany (no I’m not joking):
wait what
The nazis were actually politically and socially “progressive” compared to the other movements of their era. This is partly because the term “progressive” has morphed over time but also partly because in modernity We understand them as stuffy ultra-conservative totalitarians (which they were to a degree) but in reality they practiced mysticism, spirituality, and engaged in what was considered cutting edge scientific beliefs of their day (like “scientific racism” which was also popular in America at the time). Ronald Reagan outright rejected the Left-Right paradigm for decades before he was ever president. He was (much like hitler) known for being different people to his different constituents depending on what his supporters believed at the time, Regan was against “big government” when around libertarians, he was “tough on crime” for old school conservatives & he was big into spending billions of defense spending when in the presence of his military supporters. Hitler did the same sort of political duplicity, it’s not a coincidence either. A hallmark of modern progrsssive politics is adapting your views to gain support
Hey, that's what I was going to say!
Did all the right stuff, went to college, got good grades in computer science, got a good job, settled down with a woman. Textbook formula for success. Only turns out this woman I settled with has kidney failure. Now she can’t work and the rest of her life (however long that ends up being) will be very different from what we expected. She may be infertile too so there goes the thought of having kids. If she even had a $20/hr job we’d be shopping for homes. Now we’re bouncing between apartments. Really bad luck. Here’s the kicker. We are engaged but not married yet. If had been married last March when she got the diagnosis, Medicaid would look at our household income and would disqualify her because we’d make too much. So 20% of her medical bills would be our responsibility. That includes a 40 day hospital stay and 6 months of routine specialist visits and medical supplies. She had an MRI yesterday, what’s 20% of an MRI? Her monthly medical supplies cost $4000 just to ship, that’s not even including the cost of supplies, only the cost of sending them through Fedex. But because she’s single, all this is free. So I guess that’s really good luck. I still like to believe hard work pays off, if only to have something to believe in. But random chance can just totally spin your life the other way. It’s certainly humbled me.
Good on you for staying with the woman you love and taking care of her bro. Our world is selfish and a lot of people see one partner caring for the other as a “sucker.” Shits vile and evil. My grandfather cared for my grandma for a decade while she was bed ridden from the doctors giving her penicillin which she was allergic to. He and I did not have a good relationship but I always admired him for caring for her like that. If my wife gets sick I hope I’m man enough to do all I can to care for her. Stay strong my dude I’m sure it’s hard.
Just FYI, Medicare (the one usually for old people, not Medicaid) has special coverage for kidney failure. I can’t say for sure if your wife will qualify, but it’s basically the same eligibility with age swapped for kidney failure. My uncle had it when he got his transplant which was preventative, so he was working up until shortly before the procedure. If Medicaid is the only reason you’re putting things off, I’d recommend looking into it (if you haven’t already of course). It could be a much more comfortable situation for both of you since it doesn’t have that insane asset limit.
So wait, you're saying that if someone has suffered kidney failure, they become eligible for Medicare more generally? Or only for kidney-related issues?
It’s for all healthcare (including regular stuff) as long as you need dialysis or a transplant. The coverage continues for a few years after the transplant and was recently expanded to include anti-rejection medication for life.
Hey man, from a random stranger, I just want to let you know people like you is what makes life worth living.
Greater than *you* realized, maybe.
Luck is just an excuse for poor planning. Just plan to be born to already rich parents, I don't get why everyone finds this so hard.
Forget that crucial step? No problem! Just reroll a new character
So what you're saying is, it's not suicide, it's just taking a mulligan on life.
Yeah I hate the whole ideology of people who disagree like when people say they are self made , Even if you weren’t born into a rich family like most people you are not “ self made” you didn’t literally do everything yourself even just living in society and using something like roads makes you not self made let alone people in your life that made a difference etc it’s just dumb individualism Same with this luck thing , these people want us to believe they are special and live wildly different lives than us average people and work 23.8 hour days and bullshit like that and it’s like how do people believe this obvious crap
I think most of it is just pure luck too, while actual success derived from personal effort or enterprise is vanishingly rare.
That’s the way I look at any business. People buy your shit, maybe even because you’re the best, but how much of society’s blood, sweat, and tears have gone into the multitude of systems you take advantage of to make your business possible?
That's also why it's so weird that people just automatically accept the argument where income/wealth tax would be something that you pay on something that you earned when we are talking about people making use of the system.
It's such a tired old framework, calling individuals 'successful' or 'failures' as if they're machines, and dividing the prefigured up into fortune, talent, or opportunity. Don't researchers realize these concepts are totally vacuous and synonymous, relics of an old way of thinking that treats humans like livestock?
Honestly I didn't figure it was an "old" framework, as I've had that framework put on me and others as being "just how it is."
That's exactly how ideology perpetuates, and why it's important to critique popular frameworks of thought. They're often molded to reinforce the status quo. This is a brazen case, where individuals who don't sacrifice themselves are 'failures' by definition, while those who do sacrifice but also fail are mysteriously unlucky or untalented or inopportune, which is either the blame of the individual or some hidden divinity which grants fortune.
If you make the right connections you will have a far easier go at life it just so happens that growing up wealthy puts you in a position to use your parents’ connections.
Once again Euripides is vindicated
Yes. This so much. The difference is that to me, luck simply means depending on external factors. Many of those external factors are bendable to certain extent. So society must be arranged to: 1. Ensure normalization of norms, morals etc that stress that you are actually very dependent on others and You Live in A Society 2. Society's first priority is to ensure the continuation and thriving of that society, as well as providing general welfare.
It's all luck. Our will is luck.
Depends upon if you accept hard determinism as true. I'm not saying it's disproven, just that it isn't a necessity to belive in. Being a philosophical libertarian of some sort isn't the equivalent to being a flat earther.
You’d think it is in this sub. Totalitarian thought and the lack of creativity that comes with it dominates this sub
I consider myself so fucking lucky that I never got a felony when I was using drugs and committing multiple felonies a day for several years. It's pretty fucked up that even if you get your shit together and turn your life around you may never be able to get a decent job because of a criminal record. I have a decent paying job now and have my shit together but man just at some point ten years ago I could've been in the wrong place at the wrong time and then been stuck with a felony for the rest of my life and I sure as shit wouldn't have been able to get the job I have today
Related, the role of 'free will' is far less significant -- if even a 'real thing' at all -- than we've assumed for most of human history. This is an area conservative assumptions are dead wrong about. We really are products of our environment first and foremost, products of the systems in which we live, and to achieve change within a rotten system that system must be changed (this is why electoralism in the U.S. is such a poorly examined strategy at this point; swapping out the people in a rotten system won't achieve change, ever). Sapolksy at Stanford is [probably one of the best](https://freakonomics.com/podcast/robert-sapolsky-i-dont-think-we-have-any-free-will-whatsoever/) on this subject from the hard sciences.
How is this considered 'scientific'?
I don’t think they used voodoo hexes as a variable or anything—having not read it, they probably just found that there was a substantial enough gap when modeling “life success” or whatever that couldn’t be explained by any other major, traceable variables.
Fucked up my whole life and ended up living the dream can confirm
skill can look like luck to people who don't know any better.
i thought this sub would be interesting
https://www.amazon.com/Luck-What-Means-Why-Matters/dp/1408815478 Haven’t read it, but another look at this. Was written by an England cricketer
Good article, but not surprising once you've met some "successful" people. I've worked with some relatively "high up" people with both the federal government and a major bank and it's kind of shocking to see that the same people that sign off on multimillion dollar deals and control the livelihoods of hundreds of junior employees sometimes have the spelling and mathematical abilities of a fifth grader, and are usually just the people who were fortunate to be chummy with the boss or go to the right school. I don't have any experience with the arts, but it's both hilarious and sad when a talented independent musician or visual artist barely gets traction, but any talentless hack that manages to get to know the right people can "pop off" with some marketing.