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Comment by azanar | Hacker News Reader

The world is bullshit.

And you certainly did your part in helping the world that direction.

You were willing to undersell yourself in allowing people to pass off your work and knowledge and skills as your own, and then you wonder why everyone around you seems to be so amazingly stupid. They're stupid because you provided them absolutely no incentive not to be. You made ignorance cheap, and as a result, it is precisely what you got.

There must've been some incentive for you, I presume. It probably wasn't the money, because you already said your fee was small. It wasn't the desire to wise these people up, because there was nothing for them to do once you were done. Why did you do this? I certainly hope it wasn't just for the sake of walking around smug amongst the uneducated masses, because then you are damning a monster you helped create.

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I'm not going to play dumb and act like I didn't realize what I was doing.

I did it partly for the money, and partly for the sake of helping someone who would probably not have a chance to improve their life (via education). We remain good friends to this day - she called just before I read your comment.

" They're stupid because you provided them absolutely no incentive not to be."

There are some people who, irrespective of the work they put in, who will never be able to learn somethings. I used to think that people were just lazy, but then I realized that many things are beyond most people. Don't believe for a second that one day, everyone will be smart, uber-rational and we'll all live in some Randian, Galt-led utopia.

Deep, critical thinking is not possible for most people. Through no fault of their own, they simply lack the mental hardware. I recognize that this view is very un-PC, but if mind is a function of matter as I believe, some people, regardless of what they do, will never be able to reason at a high level.

The logical question then, is this: How moral is it to help someone game the system? I wouldn't feel good helping an incompetent med student or civil engineer, but what about some mid-level paper pusher? But then again, if I'm willing to make exceptions, that puts me on the slippery slope: where, exactly, do I draw the line?

I'm sorry, but I don't have easy answers. Thanks for your comment, though.

I wonder about people being unable to think critically and deeply; I think that the degree that people think deeply is a gradient across a multi-dimensional space, where possible axes include: mental wiring, motivation, and practice. I've known people who capable of thinking deeply, but will do so only when cornered, and will resent whatever put them into that position. It's not that they can't; it's that they have learned that there are social consequences when they do. They take away from the mindless fun of whatever group of people they are with when they start thinking about it.

But then again, if I'm willing to make exceptions, that puts me on the slippery slope: where, exactly, do I draw the line?

You won't know until later where the line ought to be, which makes it tricky to draw one ahead of time. I worry though, not because of the morality of your actions, but because of the moral hazard they generate. You allow them to graft your abilities onto themselves, and they are put into a position where they are expected to have those abilities themselves. This is scary, because incompetence doesn't just cause damage in catastrophic, discrete instances, such as a building falling down or a bridge failing. The damage of continuous incompetence multiplying on itself can be just as catastrophic in the end. Bare in mind, our present financial catastrophe was not the result of a single isolated incident of incompetence; it took thousands of incompetent people and the better part of a decade.

"There are some people who, irrespective of the work they put in, who will never be able to learn somethings."

Yes, and we waste untold billions of dollars and years of people's lives supposedly "learning" things they could not care about less and will never be able to apply, due to the fact they will not actually learn those things. All this due to corporations demanding a piece of paper certifying the acquisition of certain kinds of knowledge, knowing full well that they piece of paper means no such thing.

In short, you were doing your small part to perpetuate an insane, wasteful, corrupt system.

> Don't believe for a second that one day, everyone will be smart, uber-rational and we'll all live in some Randian, Galt-led utopia.

Not even with properly-applied eugenics (i.e. widespread pre-fertilization gene therapy)?

How will the "properly-applied" eugenics be done? I mean, currently people get other people to write their papers for a college degree -- think of how much they'd be willing to pay if it was their kids' existence on the line!

tl;dr: Eugenics won't be properly applied because pre-eugenics people will game the system.

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