Comment by jlawson | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jlawson | Hacker News Reader

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The problem is that the old jobs didn't require high IQ but the new jobs increasingly do.

In the old days even the dumbest man could carry grain from one place to another or push a plow. Even the dumbest woman could churn butter or milk a cow when told to.

These low-IQ individuals do not have the mental capacity to switch to Python programming - regardless of education.

So the "IQ floor" of the economy is rising. The result is that the high IQ people are fine, but low IQ people end up simply unemployable at any job. It's only in the last 50 years that the IQ floor rose above an undeniably noticeable chunk of the population. 10% of people are under IQ 85, which is too dumb to join the US army (by law). Too dumb to be trusted with powered construction equipment.

Leftists can't conceptualize this problem because of their egalitarian worldview, and rightists either talk about bootstraps or might not even care, seeing it as a sort of justified Darwinism.

> Leftists can't conceptualize this problem [of perpetual rising unemployment due to technology] because of their egalitarian worldview, and rightists either talk about bootstraps or might not even care, seeing it as a sort of justified Darwinism.

This. So much this. And it would take a Julius Cesar for everyone to see the truth… With physical force. But this hypothetical ruler that saves the day would be an unseen actor, its ideology nonexistent as it corresponds directly with truth as it functions; in contrast to any flawed human character that reasons from humanity, that is, from emotion, prejudice, and mistaken bias. Not seeking glory and fame but instead, letting go of lustful passions, giving what must be given and withholding what must be stored or withheld—achieving balance with the Force. So this implies that the brave Darth Vader/Anakin Skywalker was actually Julius Cesar.

> So the "IQ floor" of the economy is rising

I bet this is a wrong implication. Agriculture is way harder than writing php.

> The result is that the high IQ people are fine, but low IQ people end up simply unemployable at any job

Even if this implication were true, there is a whole bunch of new jobs that don't require you to be smart.

You could do sports, train people, be a waiter or a beauty blogger or a web programmer or a politician. I would dare say that the amount of stupid work is growing.

And avg person is not dumb at all, never was. The dumbest few always would find some way of doing some service job, especially when service field is growing. All kind of grooming does not require you to be especially smart, even chimps can do that.

>agriculture is way harder than php

an illiterate man can pull potatoes out of the ground.

No Sorry. Once you understand how a loop and a decision statement works, most of the programming is already demystified. You can make bank on incremental learning and writing applications.

The stakes in agriculture are higher. Who ever thinks manual labor is easy doesn't know what they are talking about. Apart from the tiredness, fatigue part of it. You also get injured, could lose crop to disease, floods etc.

Agriculture is harder than writing code. In fact that's the whole reason why so many of us chose to write code than be a farmer.

You seem to be misunderstanding.

A person who cannot read and write in any language cannot, by definition, write source code.

However, that same person can still receive a verbal command telling them to pull a potato out of the ground. Or move a box from one place to another.

This statement has nothing to do with the detrimental aspects of manual labor. Sitting at a desk as a programmer also has detrimental aspects.

> an illiterate man can pull potatoes

You need to put it there first, and do so avoiding the eruption of soil. Agriculture is very hard and requires much knowledge. Without knowledge you'll destroy both the crop and the land.

The potato puller is not fulfilling the role of agricultural designer. He or she is literally visually identifying a potato and using physics to pull it out of the ground.

It's like the difference between programming (fulfilling tasks), and system architecture, which is something I can't do because I don't have experienxe with huge enterprise stacks.

Yes.

For a visual example, look at John Malkovich's character in the film version of Of Mice and Men. He's mentally retarded. But people tell him - "carry these bags over there". And he does it, and he's useful. There is no job like this now. He's too dumb to be a barista or a gas station attendant or a line cook.

Agree wholeheartedly. As corporations grow into the trillions of dollars range of valuations and work becomes even more complex due to automation, we soon will live in a world where it will be difficult to find a way to purchase the things needed to live.

But x% of us will live really well.

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