Hacker News Reader

"In the past, I have made no secret of my disdain for Chef Gusteau's famous motto: Anyone can cook. But I realize, only now do I truly understand what he meant. Not everyone can become a great artist, but a great artist can come from anywhere." [1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ratatouille_(film)

> But a hundred years ago we could easily have the same conversation about simply reading and writing - they (the poor, women, or "lower class" ) luke not be taught to read. But it turns out that if you start young enough, and put enough effort in, 99% of everyone can learn

There is a thing called functional illiteracy [1], where people can write and read but mostly only their name and some very basic things like grocery lists. They also cannot comprehend texts even if they can read most words. It's more or less equivalent to being able to add numbers, maybe multiply numbers 1-10 but very far from algebra.

No first world country can claim a 99% literacy rate unless you count in these people, which would stretch things quite a bit.

1: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Functional_illiteracy

I can accept your belief, in principle, about putting enough effort in early education and that lack of such efforts contributes to poor outcomes in college. I also think though that some people just can’t grok algebra. You would agree that a mentally disabled person can’t learn algebra, right? So where is the line below which a person can’t learn algebra. I suspect it is much higher than being mentally disabled.

I am not sure what "mentally disabled" means in this context.

I would be surprised that a psychiatrist would find it a useful term - in the same way that any doctor would not look at the paralympics and see only one illness / disability but dozens of conditions.

I am fairly certain there are Rain Man like people who can do algebra or calculus but would for most people sit under the term "disabled".

Perhaps it might be good for you to ask, "the people I see who can do algebra also can act in certain other ways, socially and mathematically. How much am I looking for people who can do maths, people who can do maths like I do, and people like me who can do maths"

Edit: yes I suspect I sit to the left of you, but the important takeaway here is not that some people are more "intelligent" than others (I agree for whatever definition we choose) but that raising the education level of all in society massively benefits us all. Oh and ranking peoples value in society based on intelligence is not a good idea. It's only just above ranking on physical disability, or your parents aristocratic connections.

I used the phrase in a colloquial sense. Replace mentally disabled with intellectually disabled. That’s the proper modern term for what was once called mental retardation.

I gave no indications that people ought to be ranked in terms of value to society based on intelligence or any other criteria.

I can’t prove this a priori, but I think like the line would be pretty low in a vacuum. It’s hard to tell in the real word though, since we have so many compounding factors in people’s educational careers that affect their abilities.

Mental disability and intelligence isn't one variable. And intelligence isn't one dimensional. Asking for a threshold makes about as much sense as asking how many pawns you need to win a chess game.

I started programming with a friend, I remember our first Js and PHP, he got stuck often, stopped for months while I was getting some first contracts, he was in awe about it and I thought he is hopeless, he always kept saying we will make it. He continued to go to local meetings where most people used phyton,c ,anything but what we used. Then I moved away, couple years later, he informed me he is some sort of full stack engineer at IBM, still is. That was a big lesson to never judge one based on early results. This guy didn't understand function arguments and how return works for a long time. I was bad at geometry initially as well, but with the help and encouragement of teachers, i managed to improve beyond class average. Some other topics, there was no help nor will and I stayed well below average. Motivation and dedication and external factors like help can neutralize intelligence adv/disavantages at times, seen it happening over and over.

To address your question about "universal education advocates", they were not the reason that we got it.

Their argument was purely an philosophical one, stating that a well informed society operates better, makes better decisions, ect. And a well educated person can make better decisions for themselves and have a higher quality of life.

The reason that universal education caught on was because large businesses realised that could have more efficient factories if they didn't have to teach everyone to read. Thus college and university because the place where the 'universal education' dream could be realised. Where every person could go and receive an education that would afford them a higher quality of life and allow them to better engage with the world.

Then, factories became more specialised and 90% of universities became slaves to some "industry"

Many universities "computer science" programs are hardly that. Rather they've turned into a coding bootcamp with slightly more math.

I think we can still have discussion about functional illiteracy. That is group who can technically read, but not at level needed for every day life. Very likely there is certain part of normal distribution who can't reach that level. But how large we can expect it to be is good question to consider.

Kids are savant at learning ”muscle memory skills”.

But there is a reason 2nd graders dont do book reviews of classic literature. Even though they can absolutely read the complex words out loud on autopilot any day of the week.

Yeah. it isn't that just saying there is a difference between a 10 year old and a 19 year old

Edit: Actually, I think your premise is wrong. Children don't read words they don't understand "like muscle memory". The differences in meaning between, idk, betrothed, engaged, wedded and living in sin are superficial but they carry with them implications of social value, history and more. Children are supposed to read books and pick up context and understand meaning as they go along. We don't expect a 10 year old to grok calculus any more than we expect them to grok social/sexual arrangements. But we have different standards for 19 year olds - in the case of sexual arrangements it's obvious why. Perhaps less so for calculus.

Reading and comprehension levels are hard to guage for this reason - at a certain point the words are placeholders for political positions. And it's hard to tell if someone does not understand the word or disagrees with the politics. Please see every election for past ten years for reference

Looking at your observation that "a hundred years ago we could easily have the same conversation about simply reading and writing - they (the poor, women, or "lower class" ) luke not be taught to read." I would not be so sure that the fact that nowadays 99% of everyone can learn proves that this historical observation was mistaken.

It's known that intelligence can be significantly negatively affected by environmental factors like malnutrition (both of child and mother during pregnancy), childhood disease, pollution and injury, and there is some evidence (also mentioned in the article we're discussing) that a century or two ago the average person was significantly dumber than now, presumably because of those factors - especially to the poor and women, which often experienced more severe childhood malnutrition than their male siblings.

So it would seem plausible that a hundred years ago a nontrivial percentage of people actually were too dumb to succeed in literacy and perhaps the fix for that wasn't just starting young enough and putting effort in, but rather that we started getting much fewer kids with severe environmental damage to their intelligence.

> if you start young enough, and put enough effort in, 99% of everyone can learn

The richest kids at my highschool were also the smartest. There were one or two rich kids who didn't make honor society. There were also only a 5-6 smart kids who were middle/lower-class. Graduating class of ~500 in 1985, about 50 honor society (top 10%).