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Comment by personjerry | Hacker News Reader

We see so much of the smart vs hard work argument. It seems heavily biased towards the argument of hard work. But, I wonder if there a way to quantify and measure so that we might be able to get an objective argument?

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As a concept, "intelligence" bundles together a huuge number of concepts. In my programming job, at different times I apparently must use different parts of this bundle to be effective; using useful parts at the wrong times can lower my effectiveness.

And a lot of it is sensitive to social context. In a culture which prioritizes ads over immortality research, massive intellectual potential is unrealized because bullshit jobs are alienating. Would you work harder to serve banner ads (which you likely block), or cheat death and usher a new era of human civilization? (http://strikemag.org/bullshit-jobs/)

I like that. But he says a couple of dumb things. Like "It’s not entirely clear how humanity would suffer were all private equity CEOs, lobbyists, PR researchers, actuaries, ..." Sure, some of those jobs do seem to add no value. But be careful what you include in a BS jobs list, because if you understand why insurance is important then you might realize that actuaries do something kind of important.

And then there's this "...success mobilizing resentment against school teachers, or auto workers (and not, significantly, against the school administrators or auto industry managers who actually cause the problems)..." because if those bad managers and administrators would just keep giving bigger raises the unions wouldn't have to shut down businesses and schools.

Graeber included a standard for bullshit in the article: does the worker feel like their job is bullshit, knowing what they do and what the output is?

Ah yes. So actuaries feel like their jobs are BS even though they are sort of important. Oh well.

The bias is understandable, though. People things are good at are the result of practice from birth, whether conscious or not. Basic neuroscience tells us that. The few people I know who I would consider geniuses in the true sense of the word (prolific, intense, profound, dominating) are constantly working and constantly thinking. This article ironically notes Mozart as an anomaly, but is well known to have considered himself a hard, practical worker, unlike the "random flashes of genius" myth perpetuated by those who came after him.

I am pretty sure psychologists, etc. everywhere are working on this problem! You cannot publish work if you cannot find ways of quantifying these! An example I'm aware of is, Angela Duckworth at U Penn who studies 'grit' https://sites.sas.upenn.edu/duckworth/pages/research

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