Comment by austerity | Hacker News Reader

Comment by austerity | Hacker News Reader

Even without the author's counterargument the assertion that one's genetics is an unfair advantage strikes me as absurd. Your genetics is not something you've got, but literally a part of what you are. Questioning whether one deserves to be oneself is like asking what's north of the North Pole - just because you can put these words together in a sentence doesn't mean it it makes any sense. Furthermore, intelligence is not a "good" in itself. You earn ("deserve") goods by being useful to others. If a "gifted" individual invents a technology that makes life more comfortable for the unintelligent, does he not deserve a reward regardless of what enabled him to do so?

On a different note, I don't understand how anyone can consider equality of outcome desirable, regardless of whether it's achievable or not. If your outcome is guaranteed to be equal to that of others then it by definition doesn't depend on your own choices. If it's not the ultimate unhuman antiutopian existence I don't know what is.

"does he not deserve a reward regardless of what enabled him to do so"

No. Why would that be the case? In your moral framework that equates moral desert with technological progression, sure. But not in mine, where technological progression is antithetical to social progression.

Ok, that was pretty facetious (especially the last sentence); there's utility in rewarding progress, but as another commenter mentioned, fairness is entirely subjective.

I was merely using an example that seemed relevant to this community. The point is someone has decided to use his time to the benefit of others. It seems to me that the fair reward in this case should be proportional to the benefit produced as perceived by the person/people benefiting and not depend in any way on what it took the "provider" to produce.

If you argue that fairness is subjective and utility is king you've already rejected the entire argument about genetic advantage. I would point out though that to define utility you'd still need a definition of what's "good" and with it, very likely, what's "fair" and we are back to square one.

if we insist on everybody getting the same share, no matter what, then the smart one doesnt have incentive to make progress and the lazy one simply stops trying. that'd be disaster (isnt that communism?)

the good gene is like a natural lottery. do you insist your neighbor to share his lottery money with you because he does nothing to get that money? because he's lucky, he may share with you 10%, but never share 50-50

Actually you'll find there are cultures around the globe where you are expected to share more than 50% if you receive a windfall... The less than 50% thing is very much a western world phenomenon; and a US one in particular.

yeah, but in tribes or backward society, with agriculture or hunter-gatherer ..

it's kinda hard to compare between these two kinds of society, people deal with very different things everyday

You'll find that gift cultures exist today that have long since stopped being agrarian; the Philippines and Thailand come to mind. In the big cities the gift culture is still alive and well. It is quite a different culture to the predominately protestant individualistic society that is America though.[0]

[0] http://www.researchgate.net/publication/31914331_J._Henrich_...

>the assertion that one's genetics is an unfair advantage strikes me as absurd.

Are you saying you don't see the advantage inherent to having a much higher IQ?

No. I am saying I don't see what it means for this advantage to be fair or unfair.

What is fair or unfair is entirely subjective.

Personally, it would seem a bit unfair to me if I was born with a 95 IQ, in the cosmic sense at least.

Anything above or below IQ = 100 is unfair by the very definition of IQ. But I understand the sentiment, I'd also feel cheated by the universe if I were born with below-average IQ.

The debate over fairness/unfairness seems to me like another example of the typical trap humans fall into - instead of bickering over who gets more of the pie, we should be focusing on increasing the size of that pie. If all the effort put in the discussions about meritocracy would be put towards intelligence augmentation, we'd have a world better for everyone, regardless of what gene he or she got.

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