Comment by benrbray | Hacker News Reader

Comment by benrbray | Hacker News Reader

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I don't think it's really about computational power -- it's about practice and experience. It's about how hard those people choose to work and what things they choose to put effort into over their lifetime. All those choices accumulate over a lifetime, to the point where I agree, yeah, it'd be really hard for someone who has worked as a nurse their entire life to suddenly start over and start writing software. Just like it would be an insurmountable task for me to start over and go into medicine, or work on a construction site.

I disagree with the idea that somehow, innate intelligence sets the bar so low. There's definitely a bar somewhere, but I'd argue that most of our jobs (even in tech) don't come anywhere close to reaching that limit.

I'd argue that most of us here are of pretty average intelligence, it's just that our life circumstances have pushed us into a role where we get to exercise our brain muscles.

One thing is that having good teachers helps immensely. For a a lot of people I meet, when they reflect on their high school math and programming classes, the story is always the same: They had a lousy teacher that had them do everything by rote memorization, without explaining the underlying principles. They got the impression that that's what the whole field is like, and that they weren't smart enough, so why even bother. Occasionally, they'll be interested in hearing me explain what I do, and their response is always the same: "Wow. I wish someone had it explained it that way to me before."

I don't think that my point is getting across because you're focusing on the people that you have most commonly observed in the environment around you. Sure - people can work harder, most of us are average and we don't need to get close to our limits in our jobs. That's not who I'm talking about. I'm talking the extreme outliers on the lower end of the intelligence distribution. Those are the people for whom the innate intelligence limit is low, by definition.

People with IQ below 75 can be classified as having a mental disability. That's just under 5% of the population. Do you think those people can take your advice and just put in more effort? What about the people who score just above that threshold? Do you think they could do your job only if they had better teachers? I don't think they could.

We all have natural limitations - it's much better to recognise that some people's limitations are holding them back so much that they can't function normally in modern society. That seems healthier to me than pretending that people just need to apply themselves more.

Strictly speaking, yes, you're right that some people are mentally deficient. But no one is disagreeing with the fact that people with mental disabilities exist.

So I'm focusing instead on otherwise productive members of society who just don't happen to be scientists or engineers. Those people are definitely in a position to benefit from better educational opportunities.

My intent was to argue against what I read between the lines of the original comment I responded to -- the insidious implication that certain races or certain classes of people have innate mental deficiencies, and that we should use that observation to allocate resources in society.

Further, some technical people unfortunately have the mindset that somehow what we do is special, on a completely different level from what "normal" people do, and that "anyone who works in a non-technical position is mentally deficient". This thinking is absurd -- I've known people who sure, couldn't sit down and compose a 30-page essay, but they can strip a car down to its bare parts and reassemble it, no problem. I'd disagree with anyone who tries to say that's not real intelligence.

Maybe none of this is what you had in mind when you replied to my comment, so forgive me if I misinterpreted you. I responded in the context of the OP.

"My intent was to argue against what I read between the lines of the original comment I responded to -- the insidious implication that certain races or certain classes of people have innate mental deficiencies, and that we should use that observation to allocate resources in society."

Of course people should be judged as individuals, not members of their race or class, when applying to college etc. But differentials in IQ tests are mirrored on the SAT and ACT, on AP exams, on NAEP, and on state achievement tests. It has been shown that the SAT does not underpredict the college grades of black and Hispanic students or of lower-income students. If you evaluate all college applicants based on SAT and AP exam scores, you will end up "allocating resources" such as seats at selective colleges unevenly by demographic group, even though the process is race-blind. I think this is just, but advocates of equity do not.

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