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So being "gifted" should factor in? What if I and many others care about character and empathy much more than any intellectual capacity?

It's always been the idea and should be that those who do right,act honest and work hard even if they don't work smart, should have upward mobility, as in regardless of birth you can enter the lower mid-class tier. Obviously your talent and skill should and would determine your mobility to upper and upper-middle class.

That was just one example, but yes, I’d certainly hope that being particularly gifted in some dimension of life would factor in to outcomes. Maybe that’s having a cannon of a pitching arm, outstanding musical or singing ability, or particularly strong academic performance.

Society benefits when the best scientists are working on science, the best mathematicians at math, the best musicians are performing, and even when the best athletes are playing pro sports. I’d like these talented people to be able to develop, showcase, and benefit from their talents without regard to who their parents are.

And if you’re not exceptional in that narrow band kick rocks?

If you’re the average person, I think it’s reasonable to expect an average outcome. In the modern world that should still be quite an enjoyable life, but for self-evident reasons, I would not expect everyone to have an above-average life.

Yikes. Mask really coming off here.

I hope those of us that didn't go to MIT like you have a place in this society.

He's literally saying that a 49th percentile person will definitionally only be able to have a 49th percentile life under any system.

Well, I suppose you could perform random shuffling. 50% of people will still end up with a below average outcome, though.

Except of course he only really provided examples of “gifted” people breaking through. I’m not gifted and have the college diploma to prove it - where does he think the ceiling should be for me I wonder?

I'm not even sure your argument here is in good faith, but I'll take one more shot at it.

Holding a 4-year bachelors degree puts you in about the top 1/3rd in academic outcomes (meaning you personally are 50/50 to be in the top 1/6th).

It's not for me nor anyone else to define your ceiling, but I would expect based on the limited data presented and, to the extent that academics is a predictor of outcome, that your outcome would be quite likely to be above the average. That you're engaged on news.yc is another generally positively correlated term I would think.

You're the one talking about ceilings.

His point is that true social mobility would be literally hitting the random button repeatedly. It's obviously not a workable idea.

Someone has to lose, even if you perform a magical full reset once per year, in any given year half of the people will be below average.

The goal of course is that we make sure that everyone has a decent life even if they're not at the top.

I think you've jumped on his comment and assumed that he doesn't care at all about anyone who's not in the top N% which isn't a charitable reading.

What is a 49th percentile person measured by if not the fact that they have a 49th percentile life?

Precisely.

So, tying this into your previous comment, you've said that society is better off when "parents scrimp, save, and sacrifice" for their children, but many should expect their children to have average or even subpar/unenjoyable lives, regardless of that sacrifice.

Doesn't sound like a desirable society.

What’s the alternative? That parents don’t invest their time, money, and attention on their children, instead hedonistically consuming every last bit of whatever they have for their own adult pursuits?

I see every increment of improvement a parent (or other guiding figure) helps a child to achieve as being like a small hammer tap improving the future for that child and the society in which they will go on to live.

The fact that, regardless of anything anyone does, many will lead an average life is just straightforward application of the Intermediate Value Theorem. To be clear, I said “average” not “unenjoyable”; in fact, I tried to quite explicitly/literally say the opposite, but perhaps my words were chosen poorly or otherwise misled the reader.

A large number of these small hammer taps though can improve that average greatly over time, as we’ve experienced over the generations since humans have lived in societies. In about 14 generations we went from first proving the Earth revolved around the sun to landing humans on the moon. Fourteen! Four generations from the patent of the telephone to the release of NCSA Mosaic. Four! One more generation and most of us are carrying around Star Trek communicators that we can use to argue with each other about how to best shape educational processes for societal benefit.

The pace and inexorability of academic and technical progress blows my mind. I think we should be very cautious about disrupting that in the pursuit of perfect equality of outcome.

>What’s the alternative? That parents don’t invest their time, money, and attention on their children, instead hedonistically consuming every last bit of whatever they have for their own adult pursuits?

Of course parents should invest in their kids and try to give them every opportunity. But, there's a big difference between parents investing in their kids and advocating a status quo that every parent "scrimp, save, and sacrifice" to give their kids a fighting chance. It's a poor design.

One, it will invariably leave some kids behind, especially given our current wealth disparities. And, yes, even some "gifted" kids will be left behind.

Two, giving kids opportunities shouldn't bury parents and push them to the brink. Education is too high. Housing is too high, etc. In many cities, housing costs are driven by a desire for areas with better public schools, pushing them so high that they are out of reach for many.

So, no amount of scrimping, sacrificing, etc. will allow people of certain income levels to provide their kids certain opportunities. They're doing these things just to survive.

Three, there is an opportunity threshold that provides for a minimum reasonable expectation for a good quality life. Beyond that, it's largely incremental. For too many, that minimum threshold is uncrossable, irrespective of their best efforts.

And, this doesn't even speak to the fact that stressed out parents working multiple jobs to provide these opportunities spend less time with their kids--that being a proven marker of outcomes.

The result: what you advocate is unhealthy and unworkable. This "scrimp & sacrifice" scheme is sub-optimal for both personal fulfillment and maximizing social contributions. Both things are necessary for a happy, thriving society.

Elsewhere you said you'd like to "ensure people of all conditions can develop their potential". Advocating that each parent scrimp & sacrifice is in direct opposition to this.

>To be clear, I said “average” not “unenjoyable”

You also said:

>If you’re the average person, I think it’s reasonable to expect an average outcome. In the modern world that should still be quite an enjoyable life

If average people have average outcomes, leading to an enjoyable life, then it stands to reason that "below-average" people will have below average outcomes, leading to...what exactly?

I think you want to sweep that under the rug b/c it doesn't comport with your "hey, if all parents just scrimp & sacrifice everything will be OK" proposition.

In all, your theories about how things should work necessarily omit the existence of a large portion of the population: everyone is somehow "average" and above, providing an "enjoyable" life for all, and parents investing in their kids means foregoing one extra Starbucks run per-week.

You raise several excellent points and thank you for taking the time. I was wearing slight blinders on some points.

On the average life point, I think you're reading something into the text that isn't there. I think 95% of people or more have enjoyable lives. Everyone enjoys eating and socializing with their family and friends. Absent terrible health issues, most everyone can have an enjoyable life and those who don't probably are limited by medical, psychological, or other factors which are typically not primarily educational/financial.

Stating that the average life is quite enjoyable doesn't imply to me that the 25th percentile or 10th percentile life is dire. Both of my grandfathers had relatively tough lives, certainly much more difficult than my parents or my own. Both of them also seemed to relish every month and every year and enjoy it, even if they didn't enjoy every single hour (neither do I).

It would be as if saying "the average RGB pixel color of your screen is #aaaaaa, which is still quite bright" led to the conclusion that a great many pixels on the screen were #000000 and that's unfair.

You don't get it. This isn't about society benefiting but society stabilizing. If someone is dumb as bricks and has no meaningful talents or interests they use to be able to find some hard labor,manual work or low level trade jobs that lets them enter the lower middle class (under $50k/yr iirc). If a person is talented they would fare far better. This is very practical in the richest country.

This claim would imply that, at some point in American history, every single person below the middle class was just a lazy bum who couldn't be bothered to get a good job. I'm not sure that's true and I kinda suspect you don't think so either.

I don't think so either, the operating phrase there is "even if" ,and no,that excludes lazy people and criminals. Honest,law abiding and hard working would translate to a livable life however below average it may be. And it has always been a dream that only some live up to. For many classes of society,this has never been true.

If you chronically underpay and exploit people of lower class who aren't dumb as bricks then you create a class of lazy people and criminals who act that way because they are aware that they have no other choices.

"what else is to be concluded from this, but that you first make thieves and then punish them.”

Thomas More, Utopia

> some hard labor,manual work or low level trade jobs

That kind of work is still valued, just less so than before. It makes sense to supplement low incomes with UBI or negative income tax, so that no one is denied a tolerably comfortable life. Our social safety nets are totally unfit for the present world, they're still built for the assumption that high-paying manual work is everywhere.

I don't disagree with your sentiment at all.

How would you reduce the polarization of the population between upper and lower classes?

The fact that a person in a lower economic class has a livable wage will solve many problems. Home ownership, affording a family and health care will east most economic friction. As far as social polarizarion, I think that's an entirely different topic,two people of high income can be socially and politically polarized for non-economical reasons.

I would suggest that a stable housing situation and outlook (even if not owned) might be sufficient on the housing side. Part of the renting problem in the US isn't the ownership arrangement, but rather the precariousness.

> society benefits from when parents raise their kids to be “better off” than they were.

Society doesn't benefit from this. Low-status jobs still have to be filled, at least until technology eliminates them. Making sure that your kids aren't the ones that do them isn't a benefit to anyone but you and your kids.

> I believe that having and even encouraging parents to strive, scrimp, save, and sacrifice for their children is an overall positive force for society.

This is less a thing that doctors have to do than a thing that plumbers have to do.

Low-status jobs are low-status because they don't really need to be filled, at least not at the current margin. Seeking a "high-status" job, for oneself or one's kids, is by and large a socially-beneficial activity.

>Society doesn't benefit from this. Low-status jobs still have to be filled, at least until technology eliminates them.

Its purely additive. Being well off doesn't mean you can't do these jobs, just that better options are available. Market forces will make the pay desirable if they are needed more than they currently are.

>This is less a thing that doctors have to do than a thing that plumbers have to do.

Sure, but it doesn't change the fact it's a good idea. I'd even argue that most blue collar jobs, in having less obligations and a more clock-in-clock-out mentality, frees up parents to spend more time with their children.

Why should society accommodate "the gifted" instead of the other way around? Highly talented individuals almost intrinsically less in need of society's assistance.

I want a poor, black child with outstanding talent to be able to have that talent identified, nurtured, developed, and maximized. Based on what I see in my fairly progressive town (Cambridge, MA), I don’t think we’ve gotten to even this basic level of equality of opportunity.

It is not about society’s accommodation/assistance of specifically the gifted but rather about ensuring that people of all conditions can develop their potential. Society should care about this because it’s the long-term flywheel that improves the human condition.

The pie can get bigger, too. It’s not just about dividing a fixed pie most evenly.

Because society needs their assistance.

The alternative is that you end up with nonsense like hungry grads working at FAANG to fuck the world.

Channeling people into useful pursuits pays dividends.

why should "the gifted" accommodate society if it intends to give them nothing in return for their excess productivity?

I agree on the basics, but society provides 2 things: a very comfortable salary to get good and services, but even more important than that: it alleges boredom

The practical world is full of interesting problems. Gifted humans need to really feel useful (to put their gift at use) more than they need the matching income.

there's a lot of evidence in the open source community that people don't necessarily need to be paid (a lot or at all) to do work they find interesting. it's great that some people are willing to do this, but I don't think it's fair in general for society to benefit from the work and have the only reward be the satisfaction of a job well done, unless the people doing the work are okay with that.

furthermore, there may be a lot of overlap between useful/important and interesting work, but I doubt they map perfectly. there probably needs to be some material reward for important work so that it gets done even if it's boring.

I certainly don't think we have a great state of affairs today. some people get paid huge amounts of money to do work that I feel is harmful. imo the goal should be to take care of everyone's basic needs, but also to reward people proportionately for their contribution to society.

>I believe that having and even encouraging parents to strive, scrimp, save, and sacrifice for their children is an overall positive force for society

Compared to what?

Doesn't society most benefit from members who are fulfilled via actualization of their potential? Wouldn't that mean more content people and more contributions to society?

Is requiring parents to "scrimp, save, and sacrifice" really the optimal design for achieving this?

I was referring to people mostly or wholely denied such mobility regardless of aptitude.

The other way to look at this is that you are punishing children that draw parents that don't care.

I think it's likely that society will probably work better with high mobility vs the random draw that "perfect" mobility requires, but that's a fuzzy feeling based on human groups being complex, not the distilled moralization that you are using.

I suppose the less complicated discussion is about raising the baseline outcome being better than working to make outcomes the same. Raising the baseline is about absolute outcomes rather than relative outcomes, so the latter aren't as big a piece of the discussion.

I'm not sure random draws are even better from a zoomed-out "total welfare" score. People get lot of value from preparing for the future and believing good things will probably happen, especially when it comes to their kids. The random straws outcome makes that impossible. That's a lot of utility to leave on the table.

The flip side is that parents who could not ordinarily build for their kids' futures might feel better. I wonder if that's enough to compensate.

Yes, my second paragraph is addressing random draws probably not being ideal.

But I'm saying that I think that because humans and groups of humans are complicated, not just because I think it's important to reward parents that value and plan for their children's future.

> you are punishing children that draw parents that don't care.

Worse: you are punishing poor children who don't draw parents who sacrifice everything until they rest in an early grave, while rich children who have parents who don't remember how many kids they have after a few drinks get every opportunity in the world.

This is a specifically middle-class moralization that defines merit as the product of the ability to suffer and "giftedness," and measures merit by looking at outcomes.

Rich kids such as you describe get every opportunity except one: having parents that actually care about them. Don't minimize how much it hurts to not have that. (I don't just mean psychological hurt, either. I mean things like broken relationships, drug use, and suicide - things that can destroy the ability of talent to manifest itself in any productive way.)

I’d take that any day over having rich parents who are control freaks and dress that up as “caring” (but really only caring that I get good grades and follow their standards of ‘morally upstanding’)

There’s a huge distance between the majority of parents who “care” in that way and those who truly care about their children.