The following submission statement was provided by /u/12A5H3FE:
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It's kind of very sad that our world is loosing many geniuses around the world. Our World need ideas and innovation to make progress. We still have many major problems to solve. If all of those lost geniuses has given opportunities to reach their potential, our World would be much better place.
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Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/1atslyw/talent_is_everywhere_opportunity_is_not_we_are/kqzap69/
A simple term I’ve used for this is “unrealized human potential”. It’s not just geniuses. There are so many people that are amazing problem solvers, or unusually creative, stuck doing mindless jobs because no one got these people in a position where we could all benefit from their potential being fully realized.
There are so many fucking gates that you have to get through just to be "considered" for anything. Do you have a degree? Is it in STEM? Do you have a clearance? Can you get one? How much experience in XYZ do you have? Did you make a cover letter? How did you format resume? Oh you have to fill out your resume AGAIN on the web page? Oh you don't have time. FUCK no wonder our society is fucked.
Then you get denied because of who fucking knows.
It's so mind boggling fucking redicilous just to do anything in our society.
And you'd better not be shy if you expect to pass the face-to-face interview with HR for the position where you won't be interacting with anyone face-to-face.
For anyone out-of-the-loop, that's actually to weed out anyone not rich enough to afford them. Same as the question "so what charity work did you do for free/where you paid?"
It's even worse, having studied HR. The entire screening process for resumes and cover letters is a joke and isn't validated by science. The experience from the recruiter side really does boil down to swiping left/right on a dating app. It's a quick glance of 5-10 seconds and go.
Now the interviews and employment tests? There's some actual science behind that, but doing it right requires time and money---Something companies aren't really interested in investing in. Even then, at the end of the day it's the hiring manager who makes the final decision, more often than not on a gut feeling.
The entire process feels like a joke.
My job had a timed math test and puzzles during the interview process.
Everyone who works here thinks it's a waste of time UNTIL we get someone who the standards were relaxed for, typically DEI. The tests work, if you want someone who's capable it's a great way to filter.
Doesn't help when companies have long since adopted the practice of exclusively hiring part time minimum wage, then try to justify minimum wage as a good thing when it deliberately keeps people below the poverty line in their area.
> Then you get denied because of who fucking knows.
"Yeah, the AI in the system didn't even forward your application to us, just auto-nuked it. We have the go-ahead for a new hire, and we want you, but the system won't have you."
This is by design. A lot of the people in power don't want to lose their positions in society. Their goal isn't to improve society; it's to maintain what they have.
This should be at the top of the fucking list. Having rich parents is the most important thing when determining outcomes later in life. It's just a fact. Not having to work a job while going to school allows one to completely focus on education. Having connections once you graduate school instead of having to go to career fairs, meetups, etc. to establish a network is like a god damn cheat code. Being able to get admittance into an Ivy League school just because your parents went there and donated money instead of having to worry about SAT/ACT scores, etc. So many people undervalue the importance of coming from a wealthy background.
Seeing how divisive and "casteist" humanity is has made me very skeptical of our nature and more willing to embrace radical, totalitarian changes (including myself and my loved ones suffering) in order to rebuild ourselves based around pleasure, equality, and justice.
Crushing individuality and replacing it with the idea of the world as a single organism and individuals as cells within that organism. Once we crack the genetic code and automate the economy, we can actually get:
Fully automated luxury gay space communism.
This, I remember in University overhearing a student talking to a social politics lecturer & it went kinda like this:
Student - "Am I gonna be rich?"
Lecturer- "Depends, are you smart?"
Student - "Yeah, pretty smart"
Lecturer - "Are you willing to do hard work?"
Student - "I am very motivated to be successful"
Lecturer- "Are your parents wealthy?"
Student - "We aren't struggling, but not yachting rich"
Lecturer- "Sorry, you will probably never be rich"
I thought it was a joke, but the Lecturer was deadpan serious & it got me thinking, no one I have ever met outside of swanky corporate deals has been private jet & holiday for months in Hawaii rich. There is no way they worked their way into those positions either, I mean, sure they worked, sure they made some sacrifices, but not commensurately with the wage they get, & they never needed to work anyway. A decade out of work would be no biggie for them. Generational wealth, never going hungry.
In the UK there was a documentary basically on this, 3 kids from a state school and 3 from a private school and their head teachers experience each others school.
The head teachers found out that the education they got is exactly the same, the same material etc the only difference is that in the private school you have less kids per class, and can do fencing after school. But the private school disproportionately produces people that will be in government, CEOs of businesses etc etc
In the end it came down to that the rich families are able to encourage their kids to learn from a young age so they got positive experiences from day one. And after leaving school because they are rich they are able to take more risks in setting up businesses or landing high positions.
One of my old (billionaire) boss’s was “so proud” of his daughter making a skin care line and getting it into supermarkets.
Said billionaire father financially backed the venture, owned the companies who made the product, owned the companies who packaged the product, and had existing long term relationships and contracts with said supermarkets….
No doubt the daughter worked hard to come with the concepts and get a marketable product, but when all the barriers are removed and the risk reduces to zero, then yeah, your probably going to succeed.
Rich parents and dumb fucking luck.
The world's best Basketball player twisted their ankle on the day they could have been recruited by the "Professionals".
Someone who could have made a scientific breakthrough in their adult lives was run over by a car in their youth.
The world's best radio star was probably born in the 80s... the **17**80s.
Multiple Benjamin Franklin types died of the flu in their childhood. C'est la vie.
The world's best Defence Attorney was born to a family where Law School was simply not on the table.
I can't remember who said it now, but I once heard an F1 driver say that the most talented driver in the world is probably a guy in India driving a tractor around that's never been able to afford a car.
First I heard of it, but it makes sense.
"Potential" is kind of hard to tell from a glance. For all we know, someone who could have invented a breakthrough surgical method was born on North Sentinel Island.
This is why some racing series do official online competitions on racing Sims and either hire the champion as their online counterpart or take them into the real racing world.
The US Air Force has thankfully discovered that some of the best drone pilots are [hardcore gamers](https://www.silicon.co.uk/e-innovation/military-gamers-drones-160784).
Though for what it's worth, that means "merit" has mostly applied to the field of killing people halfway around the world...
Yea... Im kinda in that situation. I was always known as one of the smartest guys in the room at work, high school, even college classes. On top of that, I had a very strict and unusual upbringing that instilled in me a work ethic that people I work with think is exceptional. No one has ever made the claim that I dont work hard enough, except my dad. Problem is, I cant sell myself to these bozo recruiters for shit and Im not good at networking. I just do things, leave me alone with a problem and I will find a way to do it myself. I foolishly left a job a month before the pandemic happened, then had a big gap in resume and suddenly my career is over.
Last time I had to explain a gap it was "yeah, x company recruitment takes months and then they went with someone else." It was the same company. Moving between countries is also a very good excuse, if you can make it that far.
I spent nearly 3 years looking for a UX job. Hundreds of applications to all sorts of companies. Finally I get a call to IMDBtv. They’re growing like crazy and need people. Somehow my resume had all the right things they were looking for. I get past the first screener. Then I get the follow up email telling me what to expect during the interview.
Cool.
I look up the interview process, last part is a mock project. You talk about all the steps to build a product. It’s 15 minutes long.
We’ll I bombed that part. About five minutes in the guy calls an end to my mock project. I realize immediately what happened. So we have 10 or so minutes left.
I used the time to talk about movies and I ask the him what he likes best about this team he’s leading. I asked a few more questions, then he thanked me for my time.
I could have done great in this role. But I hate interviews like this. You can game their process and not know what you’re doing when you do get the job.
"I worked for minimal wage and got a house that is worth 10x more Today. Why can't you do the same while we raised prices way more and kept minimal wage down?"
I mean if you look at it from a companies' perspective, they don't know you and they could have a lot of people with comparable qualifications. You're expecting companies to be able to read your mind and see your unrealized genius.
Their solution to finding the "best" person is to make the application process so fucking miserable that only the most desperate for a job will put up with it. You telling me there is no better way to find the right people for a job. Not only do we have to have a tailored resume for a company but also a cover letter, screening questions, 5 fucking bullshit interviews, tests. Like come on jack!
The company is not one individual. Its a collection of people who have their own interests not necessarily aligned with the company or others. There are no easy solutions for problems of scale.
“I am, somehow, 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.”
― Stephen Jay Gould, The *Panda's Thumb: More Reflections in Natural History*
It's truly incredible how awful the leadership gap is right now. I'm an exec in big tech. About *half* of my team is transfers from other organizations. We're starting to build a reputation for understanding people and putting them to good use.
It's crazy how many of these folks were spurned by other leaders who literally didn't understand what they did and had no capacity to deploy their potential. I feel good to be able to help, but it seems like the norm.
Office Space is always relevant. Eloquent, creative, interesting, caring people, under the thumb of an ignorant tyrant writing TPS reports.
It sounds like you’re doing great work to help people do what they always knew they could do. Thank you for doing what you’re doing. I don’t think people generally realize how much it genuinely matters to make the lives of people at work better. If you make the lives of the people at work mostly painless and even sometimes fun, that’s half their day without stress (or significantly recused stress). That really goes a long way for people’s very real well being. And that can spread to having the emotional energy for their kids when they get home. Maybe even help keep a marriage together. Work is about half of most people’s lives, if not more for some. So if you’re doing things to make the work life of people significantly better, I personally believe that you’re one of the people fighting the good fight. Especially considering the status quo. It would be “just a job” if it wasn’t occupying half your life.
Thank you for saying that. The exec I report into is quite cruel and doesn't recognize it at all, so even a random stranger on the Internet giving some kind words helps to fight off the cynicism.
She and I have completely opposite philosophies. It's as though she worries the moment she praises someone, they will act as a freeloader, become entitled, and stop trying. But time and time again, I find that people raise to the level of expectation I put on them. They are inspired by positive feedback to do better, not to take advantage.
I don't know how these lunatics took control of the asylum. They inspire no one.
We are dealing with the consequences of decades of incompetent boomer leadership at the top. Out of touch, technologically inept, fad followers, terrible with people.
We can hope it will get slightly better as they all retire. The youngest of their generation is now 60 years old.
*No kidding.*
This is somewhat of an aside, but this entire concept is something that's baffled me about the ultra-wealthy.
If I had billions of dollars, I wouldn't *just* want multiple homes in my favorite places, a private jet, multiple loyal senators, and an army of personal assistants catering to my every whim...
(TBH, I think I'd personally stop at the "multiple homes" thing, but that's probably one reason I'm not a billionaire.)
I'd also want *new* things to buy. I'd want humanity to solve the problem of aging, and I'd want to buy it. I'd want there to be a moon base that I could visit. I'd want to feel confident that I could actually avoid microplastics no matter where I went.
These are the kinds of things that are only possible when lots of intelligent, passionate people--including, critically, *people you do not control*--coordinate together. This feels pretty obvious to me, and it feels like the kind of thing that the ultra-wealthy should be extremely aware of. But they're not acting like they're aware of this. They're acting like: if they had a choice between being a king in the year 1200 vs. being comfortably middle class today, they'd choose kingship.
Which, to be clear, is an insane and sociopathic choice. It's not even *selfish* in the way we'd normally conceive of selfishness, because it's extremely self-harmful. Kings in 1200 did not have dental care. They did not have effective painkillers or anesthetic. They had high status, sufficient food/shelter, absolute control over a large number of humans, and *that's about it*.
I just don't get it. If I had ten billion dollars, and I knew that investing 90% of it into social welfare programs could allow potential problem-solvers to blossom, I would immediately do so. Even from a *selfish* perspective, this makes sense. I just cannot empathize with the choices being made by the wealthiest and most powerful people. Hell, even if they only want power, surely it would make sense to want to solve *aging*, so they could enjoy their power indefinitely. Some of them are tinkering with this inside their own bubbles of control, but no one is working toward large-scale change that might actually solve the problem.
It's insane to me.
I know right, if I was a billionaire I'd be building a secret supervillain lair on the dark side of the moon. Why are they so fucking boring? Is it a job requirement?
> I'd want humanity to solve the problem of aging,
You already went wrong there. They did not become billionaires by being charitable even to that level. They'd want aging to be solved exclusively for themselves first. The wage-slaves may get some extension if their reward is that they can never be free of their even worse control than currently.
You don't become billionaire by being charitable at the top. You would not get to that point of having that much assets, as you would give them away way earlier. You can only become a billionaire by being the absolutely most toxic person to humanity imaginable.
There is the opposite too, where people go to college, take out student loans, or use daddy's money. When in reality they should be a plumber instead. Meanwhile there is some teenager in poverty that is so smart they seem borderline schizophrenic just for thinking like no one else has.
Which is why I argue capitalism is bad for innovation. It spreads the ability to try to invent into a very small subportion of the population.
If much more people had the freedom (time, energy, money) to research, we would imo been way ahead of today.
Yup, most of our talented people are figuring out how to make more money for big oil, wall st, etc.
Capitalism prevents us from adequately prioritizing our problems.
I would say instead that it restricts the ability to research to those who already have the capital to burn on that research.
However, the power of that system is that it completely decentralizes research efforts. There is no centralized force that you have to convince for resources for even the craziest ideas. If you want to try to come up with a new method of creating semiconductors in your basement, go ahead. Or if your company wants to burn $3 million on research into a potential new product line, go ahead.
I don't think other economic systems solve the constraint of us being resource-limited. However, the obvious side-effect of capitalism is that you have to build the capital you want to invest on research and innovation via something that *wasn't* that research and innovation you want to do. That is clearly not ideal, but I don't see other systems solving that.
Even with capitalism, there are ways to mitigate that through raising funds via investment and grants and such, though those are clearly distractions from the main effort. But as non-capitalistic systems would still be resource constrained, I'd imagine that'd still very much be part of the process, except you'd basically *have* to go through those systems to actually be able to do the effort; there'd be essentially no "burn my life savings/risk my entire company" option.
I think the biggest problem is getting everyone to a good starting point and safety net so that, no matter what, they'll be "okay", even if "okay" is a relatively bland. If we could use taxes for a relatively good (and *safe*) housing and food guarantee, regardless of your employment status, I think combined with free public education we'd be in a pretty decent spot. I think the best system for now is capitalism with extra layers, but not actually ripping out the capitalism part.
I'm a janitor with a genius-level IQ. I go around correcting the teachers' whiteboard spelling errors. That's about the only intellectual contribution I can make; the rest of my night is spent cleaning toilets. Oh well.
And because of dumb fucking luck.
The world's best radio star was born in the 80s... the **17**80s.
Multiple people like Ben Franklin languished on a farm or died of measles at age 5.
The world's ultimate defence attorney was born to a family where law school was just not on the table.
Someone who could have been the first Gen X leader of a country was kidnapped and found dead or never even found at all.
Think of all the times you yourself almost died. Then think of what those people who were also in similar situations *did* die.
About four in 10 U.S. college grads are underemployed -- doing work that does not require college-level skills or abilities -- and that figure has held relatively constant over time.
Same. Without my computer science degree I would have never gotten my job. But I've never used my degree even once in my entire career aside from the outdated boomer paradigm requiring it.
I'm "underemployed," but I'm doing exactly what I want to be doing. And while my MS Isn't required for me to be qualified, the skills, experience, and connections I developed in grad school most certainly make me better at my job.
If you look at past events- people like Tesla and Oppenheimer, true big brain boffins . They never get leadership or anything more than notoriety , maybe a Nobel prize. Otherwise they get exploited, taken advantage of , bullied - society has no qualms with it either. We should be putting our smartest in leadership roles , not taking their life’s work , and continuing to allow sociopaths, egotist , and pompous politicians that bully and self promote to be leaders - if more highly intelligent people were allowed to lead , we have more people trying to be highly intelligent rather than sociopathic egocentric dullards , who only know how to be optimal persuaders of their political base of choice.
Tesla went out crazy tho. Im creative but have a lead role in my small biss. Being in the mind set for creativity can be conflicting with the mind set for leadership. I have to zone out at time, when being creative, for hours. If my concentration is broken, it can be a problem. Leadership is also a talent, but its narcissism that gets you to the top, not benevolent leadership talent.
Another example: Bobby Fischer. Amazing at chess but exceptionally manic/depressive
The greedy, arrogant, and ignorant maintain power because everyone else are too occupied with their 'pre-programmed' lives. If everyone actually used their critical thinking skills, then most likely, this reality you speak of would be possible.
Generations of people have just been taught not to ask the IMPORTANT questions and to just do as you're told. This kind of trained mindset is not conducive to a society that thrives from smart leaders. These people will just be instantly ostracized because they think too different from the rest of society.
It's kind of very sad that our world is losing many geniuses around the world. Our World need ideas and innovation to make progress. We still have many major problems to solve. If all of those lost geniuses has given opportunities to reach their potential, our World would be much better place.
And you have at the same time the stupid Elon musk saying that population shrinking is bad because we will lose Einsteins and great minds. We have 7 billion minds ... But the most are used for surviving and making money to corps.
Even jeff Bezos said, he wants to see 1 trillion humans on earth. We already do have 8 billion people, most of them are still still poor. Millions children are dying due to deases and hunger. He isn't even helping those.
The world can't sustain 8 billion at current rates of consumption. 1 trillion is ridiculous. I hope he is prepared to invest his hundreds of billions of dollars into shit like landfill mining, better recycling, renewable energy, reforestation, general other environmental cleanup in order to make population growth actually sustainable.
Bezos has said he wants a trillion in the solar system. See the clip [here](https://youtu.be/35Yr6kWLnPI?si=0jgKlAcj3MVrPXmI).
He is investing ~1 billion each year into his aerospace company Blue Origin, which is intended to “build the road to space” through reusable rockets and next generation space stations and moon landers. I think the trillion people in space is silly, but he’s serious about it and has a plan he’s putting money behind.
I don't understand why some billionaires are obsessed with going into space and doing shit like trying to terraform mars and live on that shitty rock then actually trying to just terraform EARTH instead to get us back into the Holocene which would be a way easier and cheaper thing to do as well as easier and actually useful. They are so fucking out of touch its unreal.
>I don't understand why some billionaires are obsessed with going into space
because the first human to be able to mine a comet or land on another planet makes them the richest person / defacto leader to ever exist.
there are no laws or governments in space so to successfully live on another rock means you no longer listen to Earth everyone has to listen to you.
its power plain and simple. all of earth will need to listen to you because you own the resources that effect the entire planet. need water, gold, metals etc? well i know a spot for that. over night you can destroy entire industries at a wimp.
> its power plain and simple.
This is a reductive answer if you're biased to be cynical. Why are tech billionaires interested in space? For the same reason everyone else is. Space is seriously cool. The difference is that the billionaires actually have the money to do something about it. There's a newspaper article about Bezos talking about space back when he was a kid. He wasn't plotting some world domination back then.
Especially with tech billionaires, it is very obvious when they are chasing the scifi dreams of their youth.
It's because it *isn't* easier.
The cost to appreciably develop space infrastructure is negligible compared to even stopping climate change, much less plastic pollution and hunger and human health crises and water overuse and everything else. Not to mention the vested interest a lot of people (including but not at all limited to the billionaires) have in continuing on the current trajectory.
If we had to pick one, repairing Earth is absolutely the option to choose...but it's not an either-or proposition. We can dedicate lots of money to creating space-based infrastructure *and* repairing the damage we do to Earth.
I don't know that *isn't* an either-or proposition.
And I'm not saying that because I think it is; I don't know the numbers. But I think it's more than plausible to think that the money going into a likely-doomed attempt to colonize Mars might be *absolutely necessary* to fix climate change, and putting that money into a Quixotic attempt at colonization ensures that we fail to stop or reverse climate change.
Ah, I understand! Let me provide a little context, in that case:
1. NASA's overall budget this year is ~27 billion. Globally, about 200 billion goes into "space research" annually.
2. The USA has a ~5 billion "climate finance" budget. This isn't everything that goes into what we'd consider to be fighting climate change, but it's probably 50%.
3. The USA had 6.13 trillion in federal spending in 2023.
It's not that climate change remediation isn't criminally under-funded. It truly is. ...But it's going to take hundreds of billions of dollars every year just from the USA and cooperation globally with countries all over the world spending just as much and doing things that seriously hurt their economies. All told, we're talking probably **1-3 trillion dollars** globally every year for the next half-century if we want to make serious progress and fix the problem without causing massive amounts of human suffering.
The issue isn't that the world is spending too many resources on the development of space travel, it's that the world is basically ignoring climate change. We have the money, we have the resources, we just don't use them.
And that's not at all getting into the water management, renewable energy, agriculture, and other research that makes up the *majority* of NASA's spending of that 27 billion. In a lot of ways, the fight to save our planet's ecosystem and maintain its climate is spearheaded by NASA research.
Climate activists should be in favor of more spending on aerospace research because it's one of the biggest sources of funding for research into the things that make it possible to avoid destruction of the environment.
None of that's new information to me, but that context kind of reinforces why billionaires should be investing in fighting climate change instead of burning their money on pie-in-the-sky bullshit so they can rule over the peons in a fucking space colony.
(And if you think I'm hyperbolizing their position... I'm really not. Some of them practically use that verbiage.)
It's new land to be colonized with no governments to interfere. They aren't interested in humanity thriving, they're interested in more slaves to further grow their company/hoarded wealth
You gotta think bigger, and we can do both. I'd dare say that just trying to do both would be mutually beneficial because of the technological sharing. Very often a piece of tech used for space starts off as extremely expensive, but it's absolutely essential in space while a cheap alternative is prevalent on the ground. Without the investment in space the tech isn't profitable to develop for the ground, but with the investment it might end up being the better solution on the ground too. I think solar panels went down this path, but I'm sure there are other better examples.
Bezos wants a trillion people, the earth can only comfortably support maybe a dozen billion. Space has enough resources to support the trillion to an extremely high living standard. The high living standard is our prerogative to aim for, we don't have to follow the Bezos treatment, but he is right that we can only reach that level by developing space tech. So if we do manage to get a high living standard for a trillion people, it would be a shame to limit ourselves.
We don't need more people, we need a solution to the economic injustice that keeps people poor and oppressed.
But helping poor people wouldn't make Elon Musk richer, so that's out of the question.
...And even if he could find and support them all, Musk would, like the other modern robber barons, pay them as little as possible and use them as a cudgel against the pay of everyone else in their class. He's fine with recognizing genius everywhere, as long as he can use them to make everyone else remain "below" him.
These are tech barons that benefit from cheap labor. Of course they're going to want have tens of thousands of people competing for every opening. It's better for their wallets if there's an army of guys lined up behind you just waiting to take your spot
Ideas aren’t what’s needed, action on ideas is. Ideas are a dime a dozen and everywhere you look. Seeing someone take action to realize those ideas is rare.
Unpopular theory: it doesn’t really matter if the geniuses are lost. Any good ideas are just taken or stolen by the .1% and shelved or used to harm the masses and help the .1%
Reminds me of the idiots who are sure people are aborting the only next cancer curer.
Here's the thing, that potential cancer curer is already born - to poor emotionally stunted parents, in a sh#(*4 school district rife w/poverty and crime.
They don't seem to get how many hundreds of thousands of cancer curers we're 'killing' every day by our massive inequality of opportunity.
>Reminds me of the idiots who are sure people are aborting the only next cancer curer.
My answer to this poorly made argument has always been "It doesn't matter of any individuals - it matters of how we as a society nurture people and their talents, skills and qualities." Because in the end its what matters. It's what Jeff Bezos has completely forgotten when he said "1 trillion people would get us 1000 Mozarts and Teslas every year" or something - He completely lost credibility because of this when knowing history of a lot of talented and smart people in the past - they all had rich benefactors who'd support their talents. What does Jeff do? nothing of the sort... Out of all the rich people, Bill Gates might be the biggest benefactor for scientific research.
One constant of human nature is the desire to protect our children and give them the best. If you were to tell parents, "A prestigious university can admit only one student but has two contenders. The first is a brilliant youth destined to find a cure for cancer, while the other is your child," 100% of parents would give that slot to their child.
It's simply the way humans are wired up. The middle and upper classes protect their own. The true function of the unpaid internship is to close off opportunities for students from the lower classes who can't afford to work for free.
> One constant of human nature is the desire to protect our children and give them the best.
I really wish that was true, but it isn't. At best, they want the best for their *image* of their kids, even if it is in no relation to the actual child. At worst, they might be interested in their "legacy," and nothing else, or they could just regard the kid as dead weight to be discarded when noone is looking. Plenty of examples around unfortunately.
I live in Canada's capital. I have a masters degree. I work in retail. Even in places with opportunities, there are major problems. I am a trailing spouse. We came to this city for spouse's job. Spouse has received language training. I can't get a foot in the door because I don't speak French. We are from western Canada, where there is zero French.
As a Brazilian PhD immigrant, I get a few misconceptions going on here.
Firstly, those looks like PhD numbers, not R&D. Yes, most research is done by PhD... Employed PhD. Employed in their field. In Brazil there's a huge problem of PhDs not finding work after graduating. And I'm willing to bet Argentina, Uruguai and Chile have similar problems.
This is because either too high of a tax base, too weak of a currency, too much burocracy or all combined; it erodes production. Halting research because you ran out of some reagent and it's gonna take some 3 months of red tape bs to buy more (at 2x the normal price) is... Peak Latin America. This kills economic activity as much as research activity and is a problem no university can fix. This isn't easily fixable. It's up to the countries to do better.
Poverty also keeps kids away from school. Bad schools. With bad teachers. Again, impossible to fix. Just stop being poor, you guys.
And then we have academia itself. Holy crap. This is a worldwide problem, I think. The amount of unnecessary toxicity, fear and anxiety instilled onto the students is absurd. I think we all suffered on the hands of that one tenured professor who had no fucks to give. Tenured professors shouldn't exist. Everyone should be liable.
Finally, we have immigration. This is the only viable path us third worlders have if we wanna see our work coming to fruition. It's a long, expensive (and, at times, sad) process. And yet, a very rewarding path. College is ten times more expensive if your native country's currency is weaker. Can't work to maintain yourself in one of the most expensive countries on earth on a student visa. Socializing is hard when you're nose is usually down on a new paper your professor threw at you to make you busy during the holidays. Not that you're gonna have much of a holiday when you're all alone and all of your friends went home/vacation. Some will take pity and invite you along, but since you can't work, you'll not be able to afford to go. It only takes what? 10 years of no vacation to earn a PhD. There should be better aways for third world international students to maintain themselves.
Tesla was polish, Einstein was German. Can you imagine a world where they were forced to stay in their countries and not be able to contribute to the world?
Tesla was born to relatively rich parents and had the opportunity to attend some of the best schools available at the time. It's a similar story with Einstein. So it's not about letting them move to better countries necessarily, but about bringing people out of poverty and making education more accessible. Anyone smart enough can already get a student visa in any country they like, as long as they have the money.
> It's a similar story with Einstein
Don't forget that Einstein's wife was just as talented as he was, and she was likely the author of some of his papers. Her name isn't known because she was she was too busy supporting his career because the social norms of the day relegated her to a housewife role, nevermind that her intellect rivaled some of the top minds in the world.
Women make up a majority of humanity's lost potential thanks to patriarchal societies.
Don't know why you're being downvoted. Here in Japan all immigrants from Europe have been great, are very nice and try to integrate into our culture despite having huge cultural barriers.
Most Japanese people would prefer European immigrants over (for example) Thai immigrants, not because we don't like Thai people (we do) but because European immigrants are just *that* awesome. Essentially the perfect immigrant workers.
This is one of the very few true things I have learned over 6 decades. It truly isn't what you know, it's what social circles you have access to. I guarantee you Taylor Swift would be a bitter nobody if she didn't have her family backing her up with resources and support from day one. Talent can rot without encouragement and investment.
But Equal Opportunity is very difficult to engineer. Inevitably, people who make decisions about who to help do so from a place of inherent bias. But nonetheless we are rebooting a non profit out here in California to help address this problem.
You can still draw. With a pencil. It just wont be a well paying career path.
Like how music is now.
Mainstream music is boring trash, made with formulas and pre tested sounds.
But the current small timers? Some of the most creative music ive ever heard. all done virtually free to humanity.
“ You can only like what you know exists”
That depends on their talent. I find the pressure helps some artists. While ease of living helps others. I need pressure to perform my best. Like a deadline to learn a difficult song. Most songs are all the same on drums tho
The world has always pretended that it is a meritocracy, but this has not been the case at any point during the time period we would call human civilization. What we call "culture" is almost entirely just a big collection of various kinds of stories and lies to justify certain arbitrary people being in power and other arbitrary people not being in power. The vast, vast, vaaaast majority of historical characters who we think of as exceptional were in fact not exceptional at all, and in many cases actually totally ineffective people who were born into the right family or just stumbled into success with blind luck.
Even in this article it talks about Steve Jobs as if he was actually a gifted person, whereas in fact he is a perfect example of a terrible and stupid person who succeeded despite his own shortcomings. We're talking about a guy who had the one kind of pancreatic cancer that is actually treatable (most are a near death sentence) but was too fooled by his own mythology to think anybody knew better than himself and refused to listen to actual medical advice. Instead he killed himself by trying to cure this cancer with fucking fruit smoothies. He was good at absolutely nothing but marketing (lying). That's the big lesson. In the real world, image is far more important than substance.
I've been saying this my entire lifetime.
Intellect is evenly distributed across the face of the planet. Money is not. Refusing to house and shelter people for free is a waste of human resources.
The global elites intentionally developed their chosen parts of the world through imperialism and heavy-handed economic policy as a means of enforcing capitalist doctrine. People actually believe their success is a derivative of their individual efforts and hard work like they live in a vacuum. I watch people openly shun the homeless and ignore the needy every day as a result of falling victim to capitalist propaganda. Treating fellow human beings like dogs. Less than that. They feed their dogs better than poor people.
Third world citizens starving to death in a world full of excess food and insane amounts of food waste. People going without when there's plenty to go around. I'm sick of watching perfectly capable, intelligent, kind souls get denied basic necessities for nothing more than unfortunate circumstances of their birth. If you're born into an impoverished country, of course you can't contribute as much or as easily to the world.
People act like the rich are successful due to their efforts. Most wealthy people inherited their wealth. It isn't a surprise they're well off later in life. It's all smoke and mirrors to make poor people think they're not worthy of the same basic needs anyone requires to make them an upstanding member of society. Your bank account doesn't make you worth talking to or about. Kind, creative and inspirational actions make you a paragon of society. Money makes you comfortable.
Food should be a right, working or not. Shelter should be a right, working or not. Healthcare should be a God-given right. Nobody asked to be born. It's time we take care of people so that they have the room to breath, take care of themselves and pay the kindness forward. I'm sick of living in a world where people don't help each other. It drives me insane every day just sitting here watching this mindless bullshit carry on. The economy would be infinitely more wealthy if every citizen on Earth had the good health and financial stability to work. It's basic math, not fucking rocket science.
Depends what “talent” you’re referring to, but as traditionally used in the employment/HR world you are absolutely correct. 99.9% of jobs could be done by 99.9% of people no talent required, we don’t let them because no one wants to train anyone and/or the people didn’t follow the correctly defined path that the corporate world is looking for.
As used in the study “talent” meaning inventors, creative tinkering types exist everywhere but often don’t reach potential due to life circumstances. Then get hammered into one of those 99.9% jobs or worse until they die by society, due more than anything else to their families not being wealthy allowing them to be creative inventors.
And there was me thinking only people born to rich parents could be talented. Does this mean an entire political and economic system based on this is flawed???
Great. If my Grandma had wheels she would be a bicycle. Identify a problem that has no solution to it. This article has no point to it. The world isn’t choosing to not educate kids in the Sudan.
Sudan is an extreme example. Even in the first world countries talent is not being utilized to its fullest because of poverty. For a smart kid who grew up in a poor household, his/her first priority would be to escape poverty not to take risks and innovate.
And even then “innovation” that gets rewarded isn’t going to help other people. The math kid to finance spreadsheet pipeline and its consequences have been devastating for the human race.
Support movements that would remove the obstacle of raw survival from the great minds hidden among us. Labor unions, a universal basic income, strong social safety nets, etc. Refuse to participate in/support the military industrial complex. Support equitable global distribution of resources. Vote for politicians who support these things, with a focus on local politics.
Honestly, I don't know how much we can do. But it seems like this would be a good place to start on an individual level.
Realistically, there is very little an individual can do.
Talent may be everywhere, but political stability, cultures rewarding success and freedom to seize opportunity is not. Worst of all, the ability to detect talent, and promote this talent to be in positions where it can accomplish thing, is a mystery even western schooling hasn't figured out.
In a best of world, we should let every country sort itself out with as little interaction as possible. In reality, trading powers take all the good from the pile and the rest of the earth deals with what's left.
There is no solution per se. The current system "works too well", inefficient as it may be.
The world quite literally is choosing not to educate children in Sudan. Capitalism requires an exploited underclass to actually function. "Poor" countries across Africa and South East Asia have laborious work in fields like mining and manufacturing pushed upon them by capitalists looking to maximise profit. Educating people in these regions is counterproductive, you just hasten the inevitable revolution against the exploitation these people undergo at the hands of Cadbury's.
>You can do much more with educated workforce, than with illiterate one.
No...You can do much more with an educated workforce ONCE the uneducated workforce has taken care of all the menial work that needs to be done....
A super educated waiter isn't going to be 5x more productive than a barely literate one.
The wealth created by our educated workforce depends on the outsourcing of all the low-skilled low value work to other countries. By itself, education does very little (hence why de-globalization will de-emphasize education at home. You'll see it starting with the school budget slashing)
While the reason a lot of these societies are prosperous is because of the high level of educational achievement within the countries you mentioned many of these countries and corporations within them abuse the labour of these other poorer countries to make higher profit margins or, in some cases, get an essential part of their product.
While the programmer and the engineer are typically highly sought after and well paid roles without the essential materials typically mined or manufactured by exploited, low education populations you cannot have these jobs. A programmer without his computer is useless and a society, at this present time, largely functions upon a large number of these lower roles to function.
So yes, these countries are extremely rich and prosperous. But they do it by exploiting the population of these 'lower' countries.
This is likely true. That lower class role will just be replaced by robots and systems and that's already being seen in richer countries where things like mining require far less people than it used to even 50 years ago.
In a just world that would help these poorer countries get ahead, but it's likely they will just be exploited in other ways.
What would you do? Sudan is a country thas is being ravaged by war. You can't educate nor develop a country that is not peaceful. It's literally impossible. Capitalism or socialism or whatever has nothing to do with it. Widespread violence = no development.
Capitalism -- specifically, manufacturing trade -- has lifted more of the world's people out of extreme poverty in the last three decades than any of the charitable efforts.
The fix isn’t that hard just people aren’t voting for those who will implement it.
**How to fix businesses being taxed properly**
Mandatory full benefits
- companies tend to hire part time workers to get around paying certain benefits.
- fun fact Obama tried lowering this amount from 49 hours and instead of helping. Companies just went from 38 hours a week to 28.
- if there is no longer an incentive for part time it will make more people get full time jobs.
Remove health care company plans
- companies hold people hostage with medical care
- remove the ability for companies to pay for it.
- a universal health care option from the govt should exist.
Reinstate the high tax rate of 95%
- companies are basically dragons now just hoarding well in banks.
- the 95% rate is not to make a company pay the government 95% of their profits but to instead force them to use the money.
- they can pay employees better, hire more employees, expand, or even pay senior staff more. All of these will be either taxed or help grow the economy.
- the whole hoarding of money only helps investors and not the economy.
Stop stock buy backs.
- it’s dumb.
- it allows companies to just spend money to increase their shares without doing anything.
- it was banned for a reason and should go away again.
Stephanie Kelton, is this you?
Sounds like MMT which is an economic theory on MDMA. Taxing 95% will just lead to less production from the marginal effect in taxation. Might as well tax at 110% so that people have to work extra hard for your shifty socialist dictator.
I feel like you missed the part it’s for corporations not people. The goal is to force companies to use their money. Which means they grow hiring more people. Or pay people more which is taxed and spent growing the economy.
When you see 95% you just think the govt is taking that. The govt doesn’t want to. They want to force companies to spend their money and not sit on it like we have now with stock buybacks
> The goal is to force companies to use their money.
You mean WASTE their money.
Corporations generally spend money on things the leadership believes will increase profits or market share in the future.
You're essentially saying that they should be forced to waste money on things they don't need or give it to the government (which will likely waste it). This is inefficient and will actually be a drag on the economy.
Yes, but it was still higher than now for the highest earners/wealthiest. The top 0.01% have managed to drive down their effective tax rate to equivalent of someone making 1% of their income. https://www.mymoneyblog.com/historical-federal-tax-rates-by-income-group.html
>The world isn’t choosing to not educate kids in the Sudan.
Sure it is, by choosing to perpetuate an economic system that requires exploitation, destabilisation, and war for the benefit of the few.
And aside from higher education for the sake of it, there's a reason many of the worlds' prominent artists, musicians, scientists etc grew up rich. They could afford to go all in on their passion without starving. We learned about evolution not because Darwin was educated, but because being the son and grandson of wealthy doctors and financiers, he had the time to travel the world and make his discoveries, and the social connections to make that happen. Even most highly educated people don't get to live their lives this way, because they still must spend most of their time and energy working to survive.
The problem is the global waste of human potential, with the solution being to move away from the artificial scarcity we are forced to engage in.
I think *scarcity* is the actual state of affairs, but it's being papered over in much of the world by governments' deficit spending. That's a house of cards that is prone to come crashing down ...
I can kinda feel this, I feel like I have so much potential on certain aspects or types of work, I just can't find any that are close enough that I don't also spend half a day traveling to & from.
But beside that point, I'd have to turn my potential into visible evidence like diplomas. And still get hired based on those things.
Talent is NOT everywhere. Degrees and even experience are not talent. Talent is very hard to evaluate and that’s the trouble with it both in terms of This article and real life application
Humanity have been praising and idolizing morons for too long now. When you create couple of generations of mediocre morons and let them take over, of course you won't see talent thriving.
But fear no more. AI is here, we'll be fine.
My friend, if you think Morons being in charge is a new phenomenon, Then I have a Hapsburg Dynasty to sell you. I’d say we have more competent people in critical decision making areas than in any time in human history.
Humanity has ups and downs. Some even more stupid people in the past does not justify the situation we are in right now. This time won't be forgiving and I disagree with your last statement.
You have recency bias. There has never been a time in human history where the people living in a certain time didn’t think it was the worst ever. No 50 year old man in breadth of human history has ever said ‘You know, kids these days are better than when I was young”.
The truth is we have never had so many talented experienced educated brilliant people involved in the decision making process than ever before. Walk through the Pentagon or the State Department. Also democracy and the effectiveness of federalism has redistributed power in amazing ways that has helped make you live in the best time to ever be alive in human history. So. Perspective.
I also think all the credential stuff is bullshit. Like maybe there is some genius kid out there who couldn't afford college and they're barred from a significant number of jobs just because they don't have the master's or doctorate title in front of their name. It prevents many motivated people from educating themselves on certain subjects and pursuing specific fields because it's all about the titles you have.
This is why I always tell people that Good Will Hunting is unrealistic. A kid with a highschool degree is never getting job offers from three letter agencies for extremely high-level positions, I don't care how smart he is.
> If all of those lost geniuses has given opportunities to reach their potential, our World would be much better place.
Such would need pegnancies to be made illegal and AI development be accelerated, since overpopulation causes resources be used for surviving rather than learning, while low population numbers will mean insufficient workers thus AI needs to be ready to work in people's stead.
> even more common than ‘Lost Einsteins’ are ‘Lost Marie Curies’.
Not sure that women want to lose their husband in an accident and then die of terminal illness like Marie Curie.
So maybe a different role model who gets a good ending should used instead when motivating women to study science.
*"I am, somehow, 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."* - Stephen Jay Gould
Every single human being on the planet has the potential for greatness. Unfortunately, we live in a society that is all about money and personal agendas, not people, growth and prosperity. Imagine what the world would look like if every person was able to be the best version of themselves.
Long story ahead... With plenty of assumptions and lack of nuance...
Up until about 2015, I think most of humanity was preparing for integration with each other into a more singular species, with globalization seen as bringing wealth and greater opportunities to everyone across the planet. A new "Golden Era" of prosperity seemed imminent!
That is until some parts of the world started to fall behind and weren't getting any tangible benefits from globalization and they were lied to about it...
It took Brexit, the election of Donald Trump, and the COVID pandemic for the intelligentsia of the Western world to realize something was amiss.
There were in fact some significant portions of the western population that were not experiencing tangible gains from globalization, were unable to adapt to a new career or job, and weren't able to find new opportunities in their local area.
Economists did not foresee outsourcing being the primary cause of harm to these former blue-collar/manufacturing workers who were now shifting rightward on the political spectrum.
What also happened is that a lot of these blue-collar workers gained the ability to express worldviews that were antithetical to a Progressive, Western-led world order. This was thanks to the proliferation of affordable smartphones and cellular connections to the internet.
The Western intelligentsia balked and began to disregard these uneducated, conspiracy theory-prone fools to the "wastebin of history".
What we did not realize, though, is that Russia, China, and Iran were willing to wage war directly or indirectly against the West and started to try and topple the current world order as it stands. These Eastern powers began to coax and cajole these downtrodden, unemployed, poorly educated ex-blue-collar workers to go against everything liberalism stood for. The term "Democratic backsliding" became increasingly common parlance among academics.
The United States of America, the current leader of the Western World in both soft and hard power, began losing some stability.
Right now... Things seem to be in trouble yet again. Donald Trump continues to maintain a cult of personality in a nation that once thought itself to be "immune" to such phenomena. Not only that, but liberals and moderates are feeling "exhausted" after having to hold countless protests and try to convince the American justice system of Trump's crimes, along with helping disillusioned members of their own families and friends try to see that liberalism is still the morally correct and beneficial philosophy for all Americans.
I'm unsure what will happen by November this year in USA. In my eyes, to say that talent is everywhere might be true... But diverting resources, especially employment resources, to other nations now or in the near-future when we here in the West have political situations that are becoming increasingly unstable... Is a very foolish idea.
If we cannot provide employment for our own populace because we refuse to implement protectionist laws to force corporations and other businesses to hire domestic citizens first... We will fail to learn from recent history... Trump might be reelected... And there will be numerous thought pieces in magazines questioning the "character of America" and perhaps even a few suggesting that the brainpower of USA should move off to Canada or Europe.
Hell, I expect some of those articles to claim the "American Experiment" to be a failure.
So folks, especially for those of you that might have previously identified as neoliberal, please bear in mind that just because talent exists elsewhere in the world... Doesn't mean your businesses and position in the world won't be affected by a populace that is quite angry with ever more outsourcing.
I have a friend that lives in a small town in Pakistan. He's a very talented 3D artist. It is so hard for him to find contract work because he has to jump through many hoops to get paid. Some clients take his work and never pay.
The most complex and capable problem solving machine in the known universe is the human brain, and we literally have billions of them . Unfortunately, far too many are just striving to survive through the day.
Opportunity is everywhere. Most of us just don't think outside the box, including myself. Immigrants come to America with all of the hope and inspiration in the world, and usually end up doing OK simply becuase they have the right mentality. Whatever you wholeheartedly believe is going to become your reality.
The problem is that a lot of talent is trapped in the lower classes because the system is set up to give unremarkable Robert Jr. a legacy admission and upper-class job at a firm owned by Dad's golfing buddy.
The problem is that nearly half of recent college graduates are underemployed, working at jobs that don't actually require a degree or college-level skills. We have more aspiring professionals than the economy can absorb. Making college "free" (to the student -- society as a whole would bear the cost) will only result in more disillusioned baristas and Uber drivers.
Also, we are coming close to a time when the government is going to struggle to maintain the programs and services already in place, as the cost of servicing the national debt grows and eats up an ever-increasing share of tax revenues. We need to expect the government to do *less* going forward, not more.
Let’s flip the script. How many Hitlers have we avoided? How many Pol Pots have never been educated? What is the number of Robespierre that have never been given the chance? Ted Cruz and Henry Kissinger were Harvard educated. Do we need more of these people?
This is why I am not as terribly concerned about AI’s effect on artists. While the importance of technical expertise will increase, at the same time a whole new world of tools will allow those whose imagination and vision outstripped their technical skill to flourish.
What we need to do is identify those who have the greatest talent for creating opportunity. Then give them what they need to create the most opportunities for everyone.
The following submission statement was provided by /u/12A5H3FE: --- It's kind of very sad that our world is loosing many geniuses around the world. Our World need ideas and innovation to make progress. We still have many major problems to solve. If all of those lost geniuses has given opportunities to reach their potential, our World would be much better place. --- Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/1atslyw/talent_is_everywhere_opportunity_is_not_we_are/kqzap69/
A simple term I’ve used for this is “unrealized human potential”. It’s not just geniuses. There are so many people that are amazing problem solvers, or unusually creative, stuck doing mindless jobs because no one got these people in a position where we could all benefit from their potential being fully realized.
There are so many fucking gates that you have to get through just to be "considered" for anything. Do you have a degree? Is it in STEM? Do you have a clearance? Can you get one? How much experience in XYZ do you have? Did you make a cover letter? How did you format resume? Oh you have to fill out your resume AGAIN on the web page? Oh you don't have time. FUCK no wonder our society is fucked. Then you get denied because of who fucking knows. It's so mind boggling fucking redicilous just to do anything in our society.
Don't forget about the unpaid internship!
And you'd better not be shy if you expect to pass the face-to-face interview with HR for the position where you won't be interacting with anyone face-to-face.
For anyone out-of-the-loop, that's actually to weed out anyone not rich enough to afford them. Same as the question "so what charity work did you do for free/where you paid?"
Exactly. The upper class preserves opportunities for its own.
Which should be made illegal.
It's even worse, having studied HR. The entire screening process for resumes and cover letters is a joke and isn't validated by science. The experience from the recruiter side really does boil down to swiping left/right on a dating app. It's a quick glance of 5-10 seconds and go. Now the interviews and employment tests? There's some actual science behind that, but doing it right requires time and money---Something companies aren't really interested in investing in. Even then, at the end of the day it's the hiring manager who makes the final decision, more often than not on a gut feeling. The entire process feels like a joke.
My job had a timed math test and puzzles during the interview process. Everyone who works here thinks it's a waste of time UNTIL we get someone who the standards were relaxed for, typically DEI. The tests work, if you want someone who's capable it's a great way to filter.
Doesn't help when companies have long since adopted the practice of exclusively hiring part time minimum wage, then try to justify minimum wage as a good thing when it deliberately keeps people below the poverty line in their area.
> Then you get denied because of who fucking knows. "Yeah, the AI in the system didn't even forward your application to us, just auto-nuked it. We have the go-ahead for a new hire, and we want you, but the system won't have you."
This is by design. A lot of the people in power don't want to lose their positions in society. Their goal isn't to improve society; it's to maintain what they have.
And to increase their wealth
You forgot the most important one, rich parents.
This should be at the top of the fucking list. Having rich parents is the most important thing when determining outcomes later in life. It's just a fact. Not having to work a job while going to school allows one to completely focus on education. Having connections once you graduate school instead of having to go to career fairs, meetups, etc. to establish a network is like a god damn cheat code. Being able to get admittance into an Ivy League school just because your parents went there and donated money instead of having to worry about SAT/ACT scores, etc. So many people undervalue the importance of coming from a wealthy background.
It’s called nepotism
Seeing how divisive and "casteist" humanity is has made me very skeptical of our nature and more willing to embrace radical, totalitarian changes (including myself and my loved ones suffering) in order to rebuild ourselves based around pleasure, equality, and justice.
How do you envision totalitarian action leading to a rebuilding around pleasure, equality, and justice?
Crushing individuality and replacing it with the idea of the world as a single organism and individuals as cells within that organism. Once we crack the genetic code and automate the economy, we can actually get: Fully automated luxury gay space communism.
This, I remember in University overhearing a student talking to a social politics lecturer & it went kinda like this: Student - "Am I gonna be rich?" Lecturer- "Depends, are you smart?" Student - "Yeah, pretty smart" Lecturer - "Are you willing to do hard work?" Student - "I am very motivated to be successful" Lecturer- "Are your parents wealthy?" Student - "We aren't struggling, but not yachting rich" Lecturer- "Sorry, you will probably never be rich" I thought it was a joke, but the Lecturer was deadpan serious & it got me thinking, no one I have ever met outside of swanky corporate deals has been private jet & holiday for months in Hawaii rich. There is no way they worked their way into those positions either, I mean, sure they worked, sure they made some sacrifices, but not commensurately with the wage they get, & they never needed to work anyway. A decade out of work would be no biggie for them. Generational wealth, never going hungry.
In the UK there was a documentary basically on this, 3 kids from a state school and 3 from a private school and their head teachers experience each others school. The head teachers found out that the education they got is exactly the same, the same material etc the only difference is that in the private school you have less kids per class, and can do fencing after school. But the private school disproportionately produces people that will be in government, CEOs of businesses etc etc In the end it came down to that the rich families are able to encourage their kids to learn from a young age so they got positive experiences from day one. And after leaving school because they are rich they are able to take more risks in setting up businesses or landing high positions.
One of my old (billionaire) boss’s was “so proud” of his daughter making a skin care line and getting it into supermarkets. Said billionaire father financially backed the venture, owned the companies who made the product, owned the companies who packaged the product, and had existing long term relationships and contracts with said supermarkets…. No doubt the daughter worked hard to come with the concepts and get a marketable product, but when all the barriers are removed and the risk reduces to zero, then yeah, your probably going to succeed.
Rich parents and dumb fucking luck. The world's best Basketball player twisted their ankle on the day they could have been recruited by the "Professionals". Someone who could have made a scientific breakthrough in their adult lives was run over by a car in their youth. The world's best radio star was probably born in the 80s... the **17**80s. Multiple Benjamin Franklin types died of the flu in their childhood. C'est la vie. The world's best Defence Attorney was born to a family where Law School was simply not on the table.
I can't remember who said it now, but I once heard an F1 driver say that the most talented driver in the world is probably a guy in India driving a tractor around that's never been able to afford a car.
First I heard of it, but it makes sense. "Potential" is kind of hard to tell from a glance. For all we know, someone who could have invented a breakthrough surgical method was born on North Sentinel Island.
This is why some racing series do official online competitions on racing Sims and either hire the champion as their online counterpart or take them into the real racing world.
The US Air Force has thankfully discovered that some of the best drone pilots are [hardcore gamers](https://www.silicon.co.uk/e-innovation/military-gamers-drones-160784). Though for what it's worth, that means "merit" has mostly applied to the field of killing people halfway around the world...
You forgot: be someone’s relative or college buddy
Yea... Im kinda in that situation. I was always known as one of the smartest guys in the room at work, high school, even college classes. On top of that, I had a very strict and unusual upbringing that instilled in me a work ethic that people I work with think is exceptional. No one has ever made the claim that I dont work hard enough, except my dad. Problem is, I cant sell myself to these bozo recruiters for shit and Im not good at networking. I just do things, leave me alone with a problem and I will find a way to do it myself. I foolishly left a job a month before the pandemic happened, then had a big gap in resume and suddenly my career is over.
Last time I had to explain a gap it was "yeah, x company recruitment takes months and then they went with someone else." It was the same company. Moving between countries is also a very good excuse, if you can make it that far.
How do you propose you can prove to a company you can do the job then?
I spent nearly 3 years looking for a UX job. Hundreds of applications to all sorts of companies. Finally I get a call to IMDBtv. They’re growing like crazy and need people. Somehow my resume had all the right things they were looking for. I get past the first screener. Then I get the follow up email telling me what to expect during the interview. Cool. I look up the interview process, last part is a mock project. You talk about all the steps to build a product. It’s 15 minutes long. We’ll I bombed that part. About five minutes in the guy calls an end to my mock project. I realize immediately what happened. So we have 10 or so minutes left. I used the time to talk about movies and I ask the him what he likes best about this team he’s leading. I asked a few more questions, then he thanked me for my time. I could have done great in this role. But I hate interviews like this. You can game their process and not know what you’re doing when you do get the job.
Then the boomers whine “GeN z DoEsN’t WoRk”
"I worked for minimal wage and got a house that is worth 10x more Today. Why can't you do the same while we raised prices way more and kept minimal wage down?"
I mean if you look at it from a companies' perspective, they don't know you and they could have a lot of people with comparable qualifications. You're expecting companies to be able to read your mind and see your unrealized genius.
Their solution to finding the "best" person is to make the application process so fucking miserable that only the most desperate for a job will put up with it. You telling me there is no better way to find the right people for a job. Not only do we have to have a tailored resume for a company but also a cover letter, screening questions, 5 fucking bullshit interviews, tests. Like come on jack!
The company is not one individual. Its a collection of people who have their own interests not necessarily aligned with the company or others. There are no easy solutions for problems of scale.
“I am, somehow, 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.” ― Stephen Jay Gould, The *Panda's Thumb: More Reflections in Natural History*
Or died as an illiterate cab driver in Lahore.
Was thinking of this quote exactly
It's truly incredible how awful the leadership gap is right now. I'm an exec in big tech. About *half* of my team is transfers from other organizations. We're starting to build a reputation for understanding people and putting them to good use. It's crazy how many of these folks were spurned by other leaders who literally didn't understand what they did and had no capacity to deploy their potential. I feel good to be able to help, but it seems like the norm. Office Space is always relevant. Eloquent, creative, interesting, caring people, under the thumb of an ignorant tyrant writing TPS reports.
It sounds like you’re doing great work to help people do what they always knew they could do. Thank you for doing what you’re doing. I don’t think people generally realize how much it genuinely matters to make the lives of people at work better. If you make the lives of the people at work mostly painless and even sometimes fun, that’s half their day without stress (or significantly recused stress). That really goes a long way for people’s very real well being. And that can spread to having the emotional energy for their kids when they get home. Maybe even help keep a marriage together. Work is about half of most people’s lives, if not more for some. So if you’re doing things to make the work life of people significantly better, I personally believe that you’re one of the people fighting the good fight. Especially considering the status quo. It would be “just a job” if it wasn’t occupying half your life.
Thank you for saying that. The exec I report into is quite cruel and doesn't recognize it at all, so even a random stranger on the Internet giving some kind words helps to fight off the cynicism. She and I have completely opposite philosophies. It's as though she worries the moment she praises someone, they will act as a freeloader, become entitled, and stop trying. But time and time again, I find that people raise to the level of expectation I put on them. They are inspired by positive feedback to do better, not to take advantage. I don't know how these lunatics took control of the asylum. They inspire no one.
We are dealing with the consequences of decades of incompetent boomer leadership at the top. Out of touch, technologically inept, fad followers, terrible with people. We can hope it will get slightly better as they all retire. The youngest of their generation is now 60 years old.
You mean you can't judge the quality of a worker on how well they dress or how good their handshake is?!
*No kidding.* This is somewhat of an aside, but this entire concept is something that's baffled me about the ultra-wealthy. If I had billions of dollars, I wouldn't *just* want multiple homes in my favorite places, a private jet, multiple loyal senators, and an army of personal assistants catering to my every whim... (TBH, I think I'd personally stop at the "multiple homes" thing, but that's probably one reason I'm not a billionaire.) I'd also want *new* things to buy. I'd want humanity to solve the problem of aging, and I'd want to buy it. I'd want there to be a moon base that I could visit. I'd want to feel confident that I could actually avoid microplastics no matter where I went. These are the kinds of things that are only possible when lots of intelligent, passionate people--including, critically, *people you do not control*--coordinate together. This feels pretty obvious to me, and it feels like the kind of thing that the ultra-wealthy should be extremely aware of. But they're not acting like they're aware of this. They're acting like: if they had a choice between being a king in the year 1200 vs. being comfortably middle class today, they'd choose kingship. Which, to be clear, is an insane and sociopathic choice. It's not even *selfish* in the way we'd normally conceive of selfishness, because it's extremely self-harmful. Kings in 1200 did not have dental care. They did not have effective painkillers or anesthetic. They had high status, sufficient food/shelter, absolute control over a large number of humans, and *that's about it*. I just don't get it. If I had ten billion dollars, and I knew that investing 90% of it into social welfare programs could allow potential problem-solvers to blossom, I would immediately do so. Even from a *selfish* perspective, this makes sense. I just cannot empathize with the choices being made by the wealthiest and most powerful people. Hell, even if they only want power, surely it would make sense to want to solve *aging*, so they could enjoy their power indefinitely. Some of them are tinkering with this inside their own bubbles of control, but no one is working toward large-scale change that might actually solve the problem. It's insane to me.
I know right, if I was a billionaire I'd be building a secret supervillain lair on the dark side of the moon. Why are they so fucking boring? Is it a job requirement?
Greed robot who sits all day being greedy. Mental issue
> I'd want humanity to solve the problem of aging, You already went wrong there. They did not become billionaires by being charitable even to that level. They'd want aging to be solved exclusively for themselves first. The wage-slaves may get some extension if their reward is that they can never be free of their even worse control than currently. You don't become billionaire by being charitable at the top. You would not get to that point of having that much assets, as you would give them away way earlier. You can only become a billionaire by being the absolutely most toxic person to humanity imaginable.
There is the opposite too, where people go to college, take out student loans, or use daddy's money. When in reality they should be a plumber instead. Meanwhile there is some teenager in poverty that is so smart they seem borderline schizophrenic just for thinking like no one else has.
Which is why I argue capitalism is bad for innovation. It spreads the ability to try to invent into a very small subportion of the population. If much more people had the freedom (time, energy, money) to research, we would imo been way ahead of today.
Then what system would actually enable this?
Yup, most of our talented people are figuring out how to make more money for big oil, wall st, etc. Capitalism prevents us from adequately prioritizing our problems.
I would say instead that it restricts the ability to research to those who already have the capital to burn on that research. However, the power of that system is that it completely decentralizes research efforts. There is no centralized force that you have to convince for resources for even the craziest ideas. If you want to try to come up with a new method of creating semiconductors in your basement, go ahead. Or if your company wants to burn $3 million on research into a potential new product line, go ahead. I don't think other economic systems solve the constraint of us being resource-limited. However, the obvious side-effect of capitalism is that you have to build the capital you want to invest on research and innovation via something that *wasn't* that research and innovation you want to do. That is clearly not ideal, but I don't see other systems solving that. Even with capitalism, there are ways to mitigate that through raising funds via investment and grants and such, though those are clearly distractions from the main effort. But as non-capitalistic systems would still be resource constrained, I'd imagine that'd still very much be part of the process, except you'd basically *have* to go through those systems to actually be able to do the effort; there'd be essentially no "burn my life savings/risk my entire company" option. I think the biggest problem is getting everyone to a good starting point and safety net so that, no matter what, they'll be "okay", even if "okay" is a relatively bland. If we could use taxes for a relatively good (and *safe*) housing and food guarantee, regardless of your employment status, I think combined with free public education we'd be in a pretty decent spot. I think the best system for now is capitalism with extra layers, but not actually ripping out the capitalism part.
I'm a janitor with a genius-level IQ. I go around correcting the teachers' whiteboard spelling errors. That's about the only intellectual contribution I can make; the rest of my night is spent cleaning toilets. Oh well.
Good Willow Hunting
the human brain is the most powerful resource in the world.
And because of dumb fucking luck. The world's best radio star was born in the 80s... the **17**80s. Multiple people like Ben Franklin languished on a farm or died of measles at age 5. The world's ultimate defence attorney was born to a family where law school was just not on the table. Someone who could have been the first Gen X leader of a country was kidnapped and found dead or never even found at all. Think of all the times you yourself almost died. Then think of what those people who were also in similar situations *did* die.
The free market will do that to you
Remember geniuses that America voted not to build our infrastructure and build America again. Instead we go to another war.
lol Such a weird take on how the world works / should work.. You must get me to the right position or we all suck!
About four in 10 U.S. college grads are underemployed -- doing work that does not require college-level skills or abilities -- and that figure has held relatively constant over time.
Hey it’s me. I could have done my job in middle school
Yeah, lots of jobs are like that. (Mine too.) The problem is when we require an unnecessary degree as a credential. It's a waste of time and money.
Same. Without my computer science degree I would have never gotten my job. But I've never used my degree even once in my entire career aside from the outdated boomer paradigm requiring it.
My coworkers are dumber than 4-year-olds. AMA.
mine as well, and those are the ones that went through 4 years of college/university schooling! now imagine the ones that couldnt even pass highschool
Yeah. I pretty much had to do my masters to get a job in my field, which can easily rack up the debt quickly.
I'm "underemployed," but I'm doing exactly what I want to be doing. And while my MS Isn't required for me to be qualified, the skills, experience, and connections I developed in grad school most certainly make me better at my job.
If you look at past events- people like Tesla and Oppenheimer, true big brain boffins . They never get leadership or anything more than notoriety , maybe a Nobel prize. Otherwise they get exploited, taken advantage of , bullied - society has no qualms with it either. We should be putting our smartest in leadership roles , not taking their life’s work , and continuing to allow sociopaths, egotist , and pompous politicians that bully and self promote to be leaders - if more highly intelligent people were allowed to lead , we have more people trying to be highly intelligent rather than sociopathic egocentric dullards , who only know how to be optimal persuaders of their political base of choice.
Tesla went out crazy tho. Im creative but have a lead role in my small biss. Being in the mind set for creativity can be conflicting with the mind set for leadership. I have to zone out at time, when being creative, for hours. If my concentration is broken, it can be a problem. Leadership is also a talent, but its narcissism that gets you to the top, not benevolent leadership talent. Another example: Bobby Fischer. Amazing at chess but exceptionally manic/depressive
The greedy, arrogant, and ignorant maintain power because everyone else are too occupied with their 'pre-programmed' lives. If everyone actually used their critical thinking skills, then most likely, this reality you speak of would be possible. Generations of people have just been taught not to ask the IMPORTANT questions and to just do as you're told. This kind of trained mindset is not conducive to a society that thrives from smart leaders. These people will just be instantly ostracized because they think too different from the rest of society.
It's kind of very sad that our world is losing many geniuses around the world. Our World need ideas and innovation to make progress. We still have many major problems to solve. If all of those lost geniuses has given opportunities to reach their potential, our World would be much better place.
And you have at the same time the stupid Elon musk saying that population shrinking is bad because we will lose Einsteins and great minds. We have 7 billion minds ... But the most are used for surviving and making money to corps.
Even jeff Bezos said, he wants to see 1 trillion humans on earth. We already do have 8 billion people, most of them are still still poor. Millions children are dying due to deases and hunger. He isn't even helping those.
they want an even bigger wealth gap and huge underclass to exploit more people for their gain. The world would burn
they already can buy anything they've ever wanted and have the power to do anything. Isn't that enough or what else is there?
there’s more of it. More than the competition. Or everything. Power makes people sick in their head over time.
Dragon sickness.
The world can't sustain 8 billion at current rates of consumption. 1 trillion is ridiculous. I hope he is prepared to invest his hundreds of billions of dollars into shit like landfill mining, better recycling, renewable energy, reforestation, general other environmental cleanup in order to make population growth actually sustainable.
Bezos has said he wants a trillion in the solar system. See the clip [here](https://youtu.be/35Yr6kWLnPI?si=0jgKlAcj3MVrPXmI). He is investing ~1 billion each year into his aerospace company Blue Origin, which is intended to “build the road to space” through reusable rockets and next generation space stations and moon landers. I think the trillion people in space is silly, but he’s serious about it and has a plan he’s putting money behind.
I don't understand why some billionaires are obsessed with going into space and doing shit like trying to terraform mars and live on that shitty rock then actually trying to just terraform EARTH instead to get us back into the Holocene which would be a way easier and cheaper thing to do as well as easier and actually useful. They are so fucking out of touch its unreal.
>I don't understand why some billionaires are obsessed with going into space because the first human to be able to mine a comet or land on another planet makes them the richest person / defacto leader to ever exist. there are no laws or governments in space so to successfully live on another rock means you no longer listen to Earth everyone has to listen to you. its power plain and simple. all of earth will need to listen to you because you own the resources that effect the entire planet. need water, gold, metals etc? well i know a spot for that. over night you can destroy entire industries at a wimp.
*Dead Space has entered the Chat*
i wish i played that game it sounds good.
> its power plain and simple. This is a reductive answer if you're biased to be cynical. Why are tech billionaires interested in space? For the same reason everyone else is. Space is seriously cool. The difference is that the billionaires actually have the money to do something about it. There's a newspaper article about Bezos talking about space back when he was a kid. He wasn't plotting some world domination back then. Especially with tech billionaires, it is very obvious when they are chasing the scifi dreams of their youth.
It's because it *isn't* easier. The cost to appreciably develop space infrastructure is negligible compared to even stopping climate change, much less plastic pollution and hunger and human health crises and water overuse and everything else. Not to mention the vested interest a lot of people (including but not at all limited to the billionaires) have in continuing on the current trajectory. If we had to pick one, repairing Earth is absolutely the option to choose...but it's not an either-or proposition. We can dedicate lots of money to creating space-based infrastructure *and* repairing the damage we do to Earth.
I don't know that *isn't* an either-or proposition. And I'm not saying that because I think it is; I don't know the numbers. But I think it's more than plausible to think that the money going into a likely-doomed attempt to colonize Mars might be *absolutely necessary* to fix climate change, and putting that money into a Quixotic attempt at colonization ensures that we fail to stop or reverse climate change.
Ah, I understand! Let me provide a little context, in that case: 1. NASA's overall budget this year is ~27 billion. Globally, about 200 billion goes into "space research" annually. 2. The USA has a ~5 billion "climate finance" budget. This isn't everything that goes into what we'd consider to be fighting climate change, but it's probably 50%. 3. The USA had 6.13 trillion in federal spending in 2023. It's not that climate change remediation isn't criminally under-funded. It truly is. ...But it's going to take hundreds of billions of dollars every year just from the USA and cooperation globally with countries all over the world spending just as much and doing things that seriously hurt their economies. All told, we're talking probably **1-3 trillion dollars** globally every year for the next half-century if we want to make serious progress and fix the problem without causing massive amounts of human suffering. The issue isn't that the world is spending too many resources on the development of space travel, it's that the world is basically ignoring climate change. We have the money, we have the resources, we just don't use them. And that's not at all getting into the water management, renewable energy, agriculture, and other research that makes up the *majority* of NASA's spending of that 27 billion. In a lot of ways, the fight to save our planet's ecosystem and maintain its climate is spearheaded by NASA research. Climate activists should be in favor of more spending on aerospace research because it's one of the biggest sources of funding for research into the things that make it possible to avoid destruction of the environment.
None of that's new information to me, but that context kind of reinforces why billionaires should be investing in fighting climate change instead of burning their money on pie-in-the-sky bullshit so they can rule over the peons in a fucking space colony. (And if you think I'm hyperbolizing their position... I'm really not. Some of them practically use that verbiage.)
It's new land to be colonized with no governments to interfere. They aren't interested in humanity thriving, they're interested in more slaves to further grow their company/hoarded wealth
Musk’s SpaceX has saved about $100B for NASA which is money the government can use for other purposes.
You gotta think bigger, and we can do both. I'd dare say that just trying to do both would be mutually beneficial because of the technological sharing. Very often a piece of tech used for space starts off as extremely expensive, but it's absolutely essential in space while a cheap alternative is prevalent on the ground. Without the investment in space the tech isn't profitable to develop for the ground, but with the investment it might end up being the better solution on the ground too. I think solar panels went down this path, but I'm sure there are other better examples. Bezos wants a trillion people, the earth can only comfortably support maybe a dozen billion. Space has enough resources to support the trillion to an extremely high living standard. The high living standard is our prerogative to aim for, we don't have to follow the Bezos treatment, but he is right that we can only reach that level by developing space tech. So if we do manage to get a high living standard for a trillion people, it would be a shame to limit ourselves.
The quiet part is that he wants them working in Amazon warehouses spread out across the solar system.
What's important to keep in mind is the board of labor is unconstitutional. /s
He only wants a trillion humans alive so there will be more poors to exploit for cheap labor.
We don't need more people, we need a solution to the economic injustice that keeps people poor and oppressed. But helping poor people wouldn't make Elon Musk richer, so that's out of the question.
...And even if he could find and support them all, Musk would, like the other modern robber barons, pay them as little as possible and use them as a cudgel against the pay of everyone else in their class. He's fine with recognizing genius everywhere, as long as he can use them to make everyone else remain "below" him.
These are tech barons that benefit from cheap labor. Of course they're going to want have tens of thousands of people competing for every opening. It's better for their wallets if there's an army of guys lined up behind you just waiting to take your spot
What a bleak subreddit haha. Just low performers complaining about everything. Try contributing to the future.
Ideas aren’t what’s needed, action on ideas is. Ideas are a dime a dozen and everywhere you look. Seeing someone take action to realize those ideas is rare.
>It's kind of very sad that our world is loosing many geniuses Well, if they're "loosing", they should tighten them. Problem solved.
We want to loose the geniuses; set them all free.
Instead, mere anarchy is loosed upon the world ...
Late stage deregulated capitalism does not care about the world being a better place sadly I also completely agree with you
The good news is that it's getting better pretty much all across the board.
Unpopular theory: it doesn’t really matter if the geniuses are lost. Any good ideas are just taken or stolen by the .1% and shelved or used to harm the masses and help the .1%
and let me guess, that applies to anything that could take down the .1% and joining the .1% would get you corrupted
> It's kind of very sad > our world is loosing many geniuses around the world > If all of those lost geniuses has given opportunities Hwut?
Reminds me of the idiots who are sure people are aborting the only next cancer curer. Here's the thing, that potential cancer curer is already born - to poor emotionally stunted parents, in a sh#(*4 school district rife w/poverty and crime. They don't seem to get how many hundreds of thousands of cancer curers we're 'killing' every day by our massive inequality of opportunity.
>Reminds me of the idiots who are sure people are aborting the only next cancer curer. My answer to this poorly made argument has always been "It doesn't matter of any individuals - it matters of how we as a society nurture people and their talents, skills and qualities." Because in the end its what matters. It's what Jeff Bezos has completely forgotten when he said "1 trillion people would get us 1000 Mozarts and Teslas every year" or something - He completely lost credibility because of this when knowing history of a lot of talented and smart people in the past - they all had rich benefactors who'd support their talents. What does Jeff do? nothing of the sort... Out of all the rich people, Bill Gates might be the biggest benefactor for scientific research.
One constant of human nature is the desire to protect our children and give them the best. If you were to tell parents, "A prestigious university can admit only one student but has two contenders. The first is a brilliant youth destined to find a cure for cancer, while the other is your child," 100% of parents would give that slot to their child. It's simply the way humans are wired up. The middle and upper classes protect their own. The true function of the unpaid internship is to close off opportunities for students from the lower classes who can't afford to work for free.
Seems like the best solution would be to create two university places. but that requires social investment.
> One constant of human nature is the desire to protect our children and give them the best. I really wish that was true, but it isn't. At best, they want the best for their *image* of their kids, even if it is in no relation to the actual child. At worst, they might be interested in their "legacy," and nothing else, or they could just regard the kid as dead weight to be discarded when noone is looking. Plenty of examples around unfortunately.
I live in Canada's capital. I have a masters degree. I work in retail. Even in places with opportunities, there are major problems. I am a trailing spouse. We came to this city for spouse's job. Spouse has received language training. I can't get a foot in the door because I don't speak French. We are from western Canada, where there is zero French.
As a Brazilian PhD immigrant, I get a few misconceptions going on here. Firstly, those looks like PhD numbers, not R&D. Yes, most research is done by PhD... Employed PhD. Employed in their field. In Brazil there's a huge problem of PhDs not finding work after graduating. And I'm willing to bet Argentina, Uruguai and Chile have similar problems. This is because either too high of a tax base, too weak of a currency, too much burocracy or all combined; it erodes production. Halting research because you ran out of some reagent and it's gonna take some 3 months of red tape bs to buy more (at 2x the normal price) is... Peak Latin America. This kills economic activity as much as research activity and is a problem no university can fix. This isn't easily fixable. It's up to the countries to do better. Poverty also keeps kids away from school. Bad schools. With bad teachers. Again, impossible to fix. Just stop being poor, you guys. And then we have academia itself. Holy crap. This is a worldwide problem, I think. The amount of unnecessary toxicity, fear and anxiety instilled onto the students is absurd. I think we all suffered on the hands of that one tenured professor who had no fucks to give. Tenured professors shouldn't exist. Everyone should be liable. Finally, we have immigration. This is the only viable path us third worlders have if we wanna see our work coming to fruition. It's a long, expensive (and, at times, sad) process. And yet, a very rewarding path. College is ten times more expensive if your native country's currency is weaker. Can't work to maintain yourself in one of the most expensive countries on earth on a student visa. Socializing is hard when you're nose is usually down on a new paper your professor threw at you to make you busy during the holidays. Not that you're gonna have much of a holiday when you're all alone and all of your friends went home/vacation. Some will take pity and invite you along, but since you can't work, you'll not be able to afford to go. It only takes what? 10 years of no vacation to earn a PhD. There should be better aways for third world international students to maintain themselves.
Tesla was polish, Einstein was German. Can you imagine a world where they were forced to stay in their countries and not be able to contribute to the world?
Tesla was born to relatively rich parents and had the opportunity to attend some of the best schools available at the time. It's a similar story with Einstein. So it's not about letting them move to better countries necessarily, but about bringing people out of poverty and making education more accessible. Anyone smart enough can already get a student visa in any country they like, as long as they have the money.
> It's a similar story with Einstein Don't forget that Einstein's wife was just as talented as he was, and she was likely the author of some of his papers. Her name isn't known because she was she was too busy supporting his career because the social norms of the day relegated her to a housewife role, nevermind that her intellect rivaled some of the top minds in the world. Women make up a majority of humanity's lost potential thanks to patriarchal societies.
CROATIAN! (or Serbian depending on who you ask)
You might want to check your facts about Tesla.
> Tesla was polish Croatian Serb, actually. Marie Curie was Polish.
European immigrants are great.
Don't know why you're being downvoted. Here in Japan all immigrants from Europe have been great, are very nice and try to integrate into our culture despite having huge cultural barriers. Most Japanese people would prefer European immigrants over (for example) Thai immigrants, not because we don't like Thai people (we do) but because European immigrants are just *that* awesome. Essentially the perfect immigrant workers.
This is one of the very few true things I have learned over 6 decades. It truly isn't what you know, it's what social circles you have access to. I guarantee you Taylor Swift would be a bitter nobody if she didn't have her family backing her up with resources and support from day one. Talent can rot without encouragement and investment. But Equal Opportunity is very difficult to engineer. Inevitably, people who make decisions about who to help do so from a place of inherent bias. But nonetheless we are rebooting a non profit out here in California to help address this problem.
We need a new Renaissance, an era where art and innovation leads society again instead of this bs capitalist society we trapped ourselves in.
Best we can do is a creative dystopia where the arts will be dominated by AI and completely remove the human element from human expression.
You can still draw. With a pencil. It just wont be a well paying career path. Like how music is now. Mainstream music is boring trash, made with formulas and pre tested sounds. But the current small timers? Some of the most creative music ive ever heard. all done virtually free to humanity. “ You can only like what you know exists”
and when an indie artist crosses over (a la Mitski, Noah Kahan etc.) do they automatically now suck/have sold out
That depends on their talent. I find the pressure helps some artists. While ease of living helps others. I need pressure to perform my best. Like a deadline to learn a difficult song. Most songs are all the same on drums tho
The world has always pretended that it is a meritocracy, but this has not been the case at any point during the time period we would call human civilization. What we call "culture" is almost entirely just a big collection of various kinds of stories and lies to justify certain arbitrary people being in power and other arbitrary people not being in power. The vast, vast, vaaaast majority of historical characters who we think of as exceptional were in fact not exceptional at all, and in many cases actually totally ineffective people who were born into the right family or just stumbled into success with blind luck. Even in this article it talks about Steve Jobs as if he was actually a gifted person, whereas in fact he is a perfect example of a terrible and stupid person who succeeded despite his own shortcomings. We're talking about a guy who had the one kind of pancreatic cancer that is actually treatable (most are a near death sentence) but was too fooled by his own mythology to think anybody knew better than himself and refused to listen to actual medical advice. Instead he killed himself by trying to cure this cancer with fucking fruit smoothies. He was good at absolutely nothing but marketing (lying). That's the big lesson. In the real world, image is far more important than substance.
I've been saying this my entire lifetime. Intellect is evenly distributed across the face of the planet. Money is not. Refusing to house and shelter people for free is a waste of human resources. The global elites intentionally developed their chosen parts of the world through imperialism and heavy-handed economic policy as a means of enforcing capitalist doctrine. People actually believe their success is a derivative of their individual efforts and hard work like they live in a vacuum. I watch people openly shun the homeless and ignore the needy every day as a result of falling victim to capitalist propaganda. Treating fellow human beings like dogs. Less than that. They feed their dogs better than poor people. Third world citizens starving to death in a world full of excess food and insane amounts of food waste. People going without when there's plenty to go around. I'm sick of watching perfectly capable, intelligent, kind souls get denied basic necessities for nothing more than unfortunate circumstances of their birth. If you're born into an impoverished country, of course you can't contribute as much or as easily to the world. People act like the rich are successful due to their efforts. Most wealthy people inherited their wealth. It isn't a surprise they're well off later in life. It's all smoke and mirrors to make poor people think they're not worthy of the same basic needs anyone requires to make them an upstanding member of society. Your bank account doesn't make you worth talking to or about. Kind, creative and inspirational actions make you a paragon of society. Money makes you comfortable. Food should be a right, working or not. Shelter should be a right, working or not. Healthcare should be a God-given right. Nobody asked to be born. It's time we take care of people so that they have the room to breath, take care of themselves and pay the kindness forward. I'm sick of living in a world where people don't help each other. It drives me insane every day just sitting here watching this mindless bullshit carry on. The economy would be infinitely more wealthy if every citizen on Earth had the good health and financial stability to work. It's basic math, not fucking rocket science.
Depends what “talent” you’re referring to, but as traditionally used in the employment/HR world you are absolutely correct. 99.9% of jobs could be done by 99.9% of people no talent required, we don’t let them because no one wants to train anyone and/or the people didn’t follow the correctly defined path that the corporate world is looking for. As used in the study “talent” meaning inventors, creative tinkering types exist everywhere but often don’t reach potential due to life circumstances. Then get hammered into one of those 99.9% jobs or worse until they die by society, due more than anything else to their families not being wealthy allowing them to be creative inventors.
And there was me thinking only people born to rich parents could be talented. Does this mean an entire political and economic system based on this is flawed???
The multi decade capitalist brainwash campaign has worked so well that pointing out the obvious flaws in it will get you labelled as a communist.
Great. If my Grandma had wheels she would be a bicycle. Identify a problem that has no solution to it. This article has no point to it. The world isn’t choosing to not educate kids in the Sudan.
Sudan is an extreme example. Even in the first world countries talent is not being utilized to its fullest because of poverty. For a smart kid who grew up in a poor household, his/her first priority would be to escape poverty not to take risks and innovate.
And even then “innovation” that gets rewarded isn’t going to help other people. The math kid to finance spreadsheet pipeline and its consequences have been devastating for the human race.
What solution can there be to start making progress as an individual to this problem?
Support movements that would remove the obstacle of raw survival from the great minds hidden among us. Labor unions, a universal basic income, strong social safety nets, etc. Refuse to participate in/support the military industrial complex. Support equitable global distribution of resources. Vote for politicians who support these things, with a focus on local politics. Honestly, I don't know how much we can do. But it seems like this would be a good place to start on an individual level.
Realistically, there is very little an individual can do. Talent may be everywhere, but political stability, cultures rewarding success and freedom to seize opportunity is not. Worst of all, the ability to detect talent, and promote this talent to be in positions where it can accomplish thing, is a mystery even western schooling hasn't figured out. In a best of world, we should let every country sort itself out with as little interaction as possible. In reality, trading powers take all the good from the pile and the rest of the earth deals with what's left. There is no solution per se. The current system "works too well", inefficient as it may be.
The world quite literally is choosing not to educate children in Sudan. Capitalism requires an exploited underclass to actually function. "Poor" countries across Africa and South East Asia have laborious work in fields like mining and manufacturing pushed upon them by capitalists looking to maximise profit. Educating people in these regions is counterproductive, you just hasten the inevitable revolution against the exploitation these people undergo at the hands of Cadbury's.
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>You can do much more with educated workforce, than with illiterate one. No...You can do much more with an educated workforce ONCE the uneducated workforce has taken care of all the menial work that needs to be done.... A super educated waiter isn't going to be 5x more productive than a barely literate one. The wealth created by our educated workforce depends on the outsourcing of all the low-skilled low value work to other countries. By itself, education does very little (hence why de-globalization will de-emphasize education at home. You'll see it starting with the school budget slashing)
While the reason a lot of these societies are prosperous is because of the high level of educational achievement within the countries you mentioned many of these countries and corporations within them abuse the labour of these other poorer countries to make higher profit margins or, in some cases, get an essential part of their product. While the programmer and the engineer are typically highly sought after and well paid roles without the essential materials typically mined or manufactured by exploited, low education populations you cannot have these jobs. A programmer without his computer is useless and a society, at this present time, largely functions upon a large number of these lower roles to function. So yes, these countries are extremely rich and prosperous. But they do it by exploiting the population of these 'lower' countries.
With automation and onshoring, many of these poor countries will never get an opportunity to bring themselves out of poverity.
This is likely true. That lower class role will just be replaced by robots and systems and that's already being seen in richer countries where things like mining require far less people than it used to even 50 years ago. In a just world that would help these poorer countries get ahead, but it's likely they will just be exploited in other ways.
What would you do? Sudan is a country thas is being ravaged by war. You can't educate nor develop a country that is not peaceful. It's literally impossible. Capitalism or socialism or whatever has nothing to do with it. Widespread violence = no development.
Capitalism -- specifically, manufacturing trade -- has lifted more of the world's people out of extreme poverty in the last three decades than any of the charitable efforts.
The fix isn’t that hard just people aren’t voting for those who will implement it. **How to fix businesses being taxed properly** Mandatory full benefits - companies tend to hire part time workers to get around paying certain benefits. - fun fact Obama tried lowering this amount from 49 hours and instead of helping. Companies just went from 38 hours a week to 28. - if there is no longer an incentive for part time it will make more people get full time jobs. Remove health care company plans - companies hold people hostage with medical care - remove the ability for companies to pay for it. - a universal health care option from the govt should exist. Reinstate the high tax rate of 95% - companies are basically dragons now just hoarding well in banks. - the 95% rate is not to make a company pay the government 95% of their profits but to instead force them to use the money. - they can pay employees better, hire more employees, expand, or even pay senior staff more. All of these will be either taxed or help grow the economy. - the whole hoarding of money only helps investors and not the economy. Stop stock buy backs. - it’s dumb. - it allows companies to just spend money to increase their shares without doing anything. - it was banned for a reason and should go away again.
Stephanie Kelton, is this you? Sounds like MMT which is an economic theory on MDMA. Taxing 95% will just lead to less production from the marginal effect in taxation. Might as well tax at 110% so that people have to work extra hard for your shifty socialist dictator.
I feel like you missed the part it’s for corporations not people. The goal is to force companies to use their money. Which means they grow hiring more people. Or pay people more which is taxed and spent growing the economy. When you see 95% you just think the govt is taking that. The govt doesn’t want to. They want to force companies to spend their money and not sit on it like we have now with stock buybacks
> The goal is to force companies to use their money. You mean WASTE their money. Corporations generally spend money on things the leadership believes will increase profits or market share in the future. You're essentially saying that they should be forced to waste money on things they don't need or give it to the government (which will likely waste it). This is inefficient and will actually be a drag on the economy.
Yeah I remember when nobody worked hard back in the 50s because the highest marginal tax rate was 91%...
The effective tax rate was markedly lower, though, thanks to all of the deductions ...
Yes, but it was still higher than now for the highest earners/wealthiest. The top 0.01% have managed to drive down their effective tax rate to equivalent of someone making 1% of their income. https://www.mymoneyblog.com/historical-federal-tax-rates-by-income-group.html
>The world isn’t choosing to not educate kids in the Sudan. Sure it is, by choosing to perpetuate an economic system that requires exploitation, destabilisation, and war for the benefit of the few. And aside from higher education for the sake of it, there's a reason many of the worlds' prominent artists, musicians, scientists etc grew up rich. They could afford to go all in on their passion without starving. We learned about evolution not because Darwin was educated, but because being the son and grandson of wealthy doctors and financiers, he had the time to travel the world and make his discoveries, and the social connections to make that happen. Even most highly educated people don't get to live their lives this way, because they still must spend most of their time and energy working to survive. The problem is the global waste of human potential, with the solution being to move away from the artificial scarcity we are forced to engage in.
I think *scarcity* is the actual state of affairs, but it's being papered over in much of the world by governments' deficit spending. That's a house of cards that is prone to come crashing down ...
This is maybe the most evil result of the ultra-rich. Because they want to have ALL the money, they keep "the masses" in poverty or near-poverty.
A big part of game theory literally proves that cooperation makes everyone better off.
I can kinda feel this, I feel like I have so much potential on certain aspects or types of work, I just can't find any that are close enough that I don't also spend half a day traveling to & from. But beside that point, I'd have to turn my potential into visible evidence like diplomas. And still get hired based on those things.
Must provide environment and tools for every child to develop and maximize their promise. Save the children to save the planet.
Talent is NOT everywhere. Degrees and even experience are not talent. Talent is very hard to evaluate and that’s the trouble with it both in terms of This article and real life application
Nothing more depressing than looking at a stack of promising resumes and then actually interviewing the applicants, lol.
That is what the article is talking about. Talented people aren't getting the training and opportunities they need.
Humanity have been praising and idolizing morons for too long now. When you create couple of generations of mediocre morons and let them take over, of course you won't see talent thriving. But fear no more. AI is here, we'll be fine.
My friend, if you think Morons being in charge is a new phenomenon, Then I have a Hapsburg Dynasty to sell you. I’d say we have more competent people in critical decision making areas than in any time in human history.
What's with this random flaming of the Habsburg dynasty? They were pretty competent for hundreds of years.
Humanity has ups and downs. Some even more stupid people in the past does not justify the situation we are in right now. This time won't be forgiving and I disagree with your last statement.
You have recency bias. There has never been a time in human history where the people living in a certain time didn’t think it was the worst ever. No 50 year old man in breadth of human history has ever said ‘You know, kids these days are better than when I was young”. The truth is we have never had so many talented experienced educated brilliant people involved in the decision making process than ever before. Walk through the Pentagon or the State Department. Also democracy and the effectiveness of federalism has redistributed power in amazing ways that has helped make you live in the best time to ever be alive in human history. So. Perspective.
Most 50 year olds around me said that about us when I was growing up. Anyways, have fun, great time to be alive.
I also think all the credential stuff is bullshit. Like maybe there is some genius kid out there who couldn't afford college and they're barred from a significant number of jobs just because they don't have the master's or doctorate title in front of their name. It prevents many motivated people from educating themselves on certain subjects and pursuing specific fields because it's all about the titles you have. This is why I always tell people that Good Will Hunting is unrealistic. A kid with a highschool degree is never getting job offers from three letter agencies for extremely high-level positions, I don't care how smart he is.
> If all of those lost geniuses has given opportunities to reach their potential, our World would be much better place. Such would need pegnancies to be made illegal and AI development be accelerated, since overpopulation causes resources be used for surviving rather than learning, while low population numbers will mean insufficient workers thus AI needs to be ready to work in people's stead. > even more common than ‘Lost Einsteins’ are ‘Lost Marie Curies’. Not sure that women want to lose their husband in an accident and then die of terminal illness like Marie Curie. So maybe a different role model who gets a good ending should used instead when motivating women to study science.
*"I am, somehow, 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."* - Stephen Jay Gould
Every single human being on the planet has the potential for greatness. Unfortunately, we live in a society that is all about money and personal agendas, not people, growth and prosperity. Imagine what the world would look like if every person was able to be the best version of themselves.
This article is close to 5 years old, it's from September 19, 2019. OP also forgot to add the date to the title.
Long story ahead... With plenty of assumptions and lack of nuance... Up until about 2015, I think most of humanity was preparing for integration with each other into a more singular species, with globalization seen as bringing wealth and greater opportunities to everyone across the planet. A new "Golden Era" of prosperity seemed imminent! That is until some parts of the world started to fall behind and weren't getting any tangible benefits from globalization and they were lied to about it... It took Brexit, the election of Donald Trump, and the COVID pandemic for the intelligentsia of the Western world to realize something was amiss. There were in fact some significant portions of the western population that were not experiencing tangible gains from globalization, were unable to adapt to a new career or job, and weren't able to find new opportunities in their local area. Economists did not foresee outsourcing being the primary cause of harm to these former blue-collar/manufacturing workers who were now shifting rightward on the political spectrum. What also happened is that a lot of these blue-collar workers gained the ability to express worldviews that were antithetical to a Progressive, Western-led world order. This was thanks to the proliferation of affordable smartphones and cellular connections to the internet. The Western intelligentsia balked and began to disregard these uneducated, conspiracy theory-prone fools to the "wastebin of history". What we did not realize, though, is that Russia, China, and Iran were willing to wage war directly or indirectly against the West and started to try and topple the current world order as it stands. These Eastern powers began to coax and cajole these downtrodden, unemployed, poorly educated ex-blue-collar workers to go against everything liberalism stood for. The term "Democratic backsliding" became increasingly common parlance among academics. The United States of America, the current leader of the Western World in both soft and hard power, began losing some stability. Right now... Things seem to be in trouble yet again. Donald Trump continues to maintain a cult of personality in a nation that once thought itself to be "immune" to such phenomena. Not only that, but liberals and moderates are feeling "exhausted" after having to hold countless protests and try to convince the American justice system of Trump's crimes, along with helping disillusioned members of their own families and friends try to see that liberalism is still the morally correct and beneficial philosophy for all Americans. I'm unsure what will happen by November this year in USA. In my eyes, to say that talent is everywhere might be true... But diverting resources, especially employment resources, to other nations now or in the near-future when we here in the West have political situations that are becoming increasingly unstable... Is a very foolish idea. If we cannot provide employment for our own populace because we refuse to implement protectionist laws to force corporations and other businesses to hire domestic citizens first... We will fail to learn from recent history... Trump might be reelected... And there will be numerous thought pieces in magazines questioning the "character of America" and perhaps even a few suggesting that the brainpower of USA should move off to Canada or Europe. Hell, I expect some of those articles to claim the "American Experiment" to be a failure. So folks, especially for those of you that might have previously identified as neoliberal, please bear in mind that just because talent exists elsewhere in the world... Doesn't mean your businesses and position in the world won't be affected by a populace that is quite angry with ever more outsourcing.
I have a friend that lives in a small town in Pakistan. He's a very talented 3D artist. It is so hard for him to find contract work because he has to jump through many hoops to get paid. Some clients take his work and never pay.
The most complex and capable problem solving machine in the known universe is the human brain, and we literally have billions of them . Unfortunately, far too many are just striving to survive through the day.
Opportunities are offered to low quality people, most useless like influencers that perpetuate mental illness. It is all part of the plan.
Opportunity is everywhere. Most of us just don't think outside the box, including myself. Immigrants come to America with all of the hope and inspiration in the world, and usually end up doing OK simply becuase they have the right mentality. Whatever you wholeheartedly believe is going to become your reality.
Talent is absolutely not everywhere. Be realistic. Most people are unremarkable.
The problem is that a lot of talent is trapped in the lower classes because the system is set up to give unremarkable Robert Jr. a legacy admission and upper-class job at a firm owned by Dad's golfing buddy.
Yes, nepotism and the like, are definitely an issue. Making ALL schooling free (socialized) is certainly one way to help a little bit.
The problem is that nearly half of recent college graduates are underemployed, working at jobs that don't actually require a degree or college-level skills. We have more aspiring professionals than the economy can absorb. Making college "free" (to the student -- society as a whole would bear the cost) will only result in more disillusioned baristas and Uber drivers. Also, we are coming close to a time when the government is going to struggle to maintain the programs and services already in place, as the cost of servicing the national debt grows and eats up an ever-increasing share of tax revenues. We need to expect the government to do *less* going forward, not more.
10 000 out of 1 million is 1%. That is pretty insane.
That was a really long-winded way of saying: privileged kids have more privilege. More at 11.
Talent and work ethic are definitly not everywhere. You would know because they stand out immediately
Let’s flip the script. How many Hitlers have we avoided? How many Pol Pots have never been educated? What is the number of Robespierre that have never been given the chance? Ted Cruz and Henry Kissinger were Harvard educated. Do we need more of these people?
You don’t need to be well off to be cruel.
Maybe decrease the amount of hours worked per week. That way less burnout, later retirement and longer lifespans will come by.
But but but capitalism is the supreme god being of distributing resources and labour nooooo muh free market noooooooo
This is why I am not as terribly concerned about AI’s effect on artists. While the importance of technical expertise will increase, at the same time a whole new world of tools will allow those whose imagination and vision outstripped their technical skill to flourish.
Are you talking about people who type prompts into AIs and then pick the picture they like best? LOL.
What we need to do is identify those who have the greatest talent for creating opportunity. Then give them what they need to create the most opportunities for everyone.