Human Capital Is Real, and Some People Are Smarter Than Other People | Hacker News Reader

Human Capital Is Real, and Some People Are Smarter Than Other People

freddiedeboer.substack.com

30 pointspaulpauper16 comments

Some gems in here (and my comments):

> I want to fight for equality in full view of reality, please.

Yeah, whatever you want to fight for, first look reality squarely in the face. If whatever your thing is can't hold up to that, don't bother fighting for it, because you're wasting your time fighting for something that won't work in reality. And we all, sooner or later, have to live in reality. If what you want does stand up, then continue to hold on to reality as you fight for it. Don't pretend that reality doesn't exist as you fight for your thing, because if you do, you won't ever get to your thing being implemented in the real world.

> My old field, writing studies, is filled with academics who believe there is no such thing as being better or worse at writing, which makes you wonder why anyone is paying their salaries.

Stronger: If nobody is better or worse, then why are they the one entitled to make pronouncements? Pronouncements such as "nobody is better or worse"? And why should we believe their pronouncements? Their statements are somewhat self-refuting - their philosophy destroys the credentials by which they expect us to listen to what they say.

> We are already asking the impossible of our education system, expecting it to reward excellence and create equality at the same time. Let’s not burden it even further by pretending we don’t know some people are better and some at worse at school.

Let's ask the possible instead: ask it to take each person as far as they can go. For those who are gifted, help them to soar with their gifts. For those who are ordinary, make the most of their ordinary talents. For those who are below that, still maximize their ability to use what they have.

> Let's ask the possible instead: ask it to take each person as far as they can go. For those who are gifted, help them to soar with their gifts. For those who are ordinary, make the most of their ordinary talents. For those who are below that, still maximize their ability to use what they have.

I think you have to define possible, because what you are describing isn't possible in our current educational model. You currently have class room with students who range from special needs to gifted in the same class. with K-12 typically having a student ratio of 30:1. There is no reasonable way, a single person can be able to manage an individualized learning plan for all of those students across that level of variance. Hell at 30:1 it's hard to manage even generic group learning, and given the abysmal pay, and non-sense localized school boards who push shit like "alternative theories to creation" as required in the curriculum.

I don't know that given all that we could call what you suggest possible, as it would mean fundamentally changing the whole system.

For the record, I support your concept, just don't think it's currently possible.

I said "possible", not "possible within our current approach".

But maybe changing our current approach isn't currently possible politically...

The article itself is interesting but it is also interesting in what it does not talk about :

- It does not define intelligence. The author acknowledges that of course intelligence is not everything but does not define it. I think a better take would be to define intelligence (as the article implicitly does but explicit is better than implicit) as the capacity to manipulate abstractions. Maybe with a better definition and with valorizing other "intelligences", emotional intelligence for one comes to mind, it would be more socially acceptable to say that we have different capabilities to manipulate abstractions. Of course the reason why it is not socially acceptable is because, that capacity is deeply connected to social statuses and being well off or not.

- It does not factor in the idea of work. It rejects it with the author's personnal story that tried to be good at something but never got good. The idea behind progressive education systems is to find the best way for people to get good by working on something while respecting their rythms, or for the more ambitous ones, to enen remove psychological/mental barriers by working around them. Of course mental abilities differ wildly but it is a moot point. Don't we want as a society the systems that works best for each according to its abilities ? And this is were I agree with the article, education systems should be layered by level of achivements and not merely by age. Of course that would make parents of "slower" kids worried for their economic status so what we have now is a kind of compromise.

- Since it does not talk about what work can achieve, it does not talk about how an economic and social environment can promote or hinder learning. Is your whole family shouting all around the place ? Do you parents oversee your education ? Do you have room/quiet place of your own ?

At first I was thrilled to see a non-reactionnary take of how taking into account abilities could make for a better education system but by the end of the article, I was more meh. Too bad.

> It does not define intelligence. The author acknowledges that of course intelligence is not everything but does not define it. I think a better take would be to define intelligence (as the article implicitly does but explicit is better than implicit)

From the article:

>> Or, in some tellings, no one knows what smart is, it’s some sort of ineffable quality we can’t pin down, or the very idea of “smart” is a racist Western imperialist hegemonic heteronormative con.

So the author clearly rejects the idea that smart can't be defined, but you're absolutely right, they never actually define it. Instead, they sneak around it with stuff like:

>> And in fact we are very good indeed at creating instruments that measure whether you can read or write or do algebra. It’s just that their results are socially inconvenient.

While I don't doubt the author that there are people out there who think the idea of differing mathematical ability, that certainly isn't a common position, and the author here isn't standing heroically for a correct but unpopular opinion by saying "some people are better at math than others".

But... being good at reading or writing or doing algebra, is that really how the author wants to define "smart"? Especially when they also say:

>> I’m not naturally talented at math. I don't like it but it's true. And easily quantifiable.

If the author considers themselves smart without being talented at math, then who cares if we're good at creating instruments that measure whether you can do algebra? What does being good at algebra mean beyond that?

I agree with you, if the author wants to say "duh, of course being smart is a real thing", then at least tell us what they mean by "smart". Is it really nothing more than "good at school", which they seem to conflate it with.

Anyway, a more interesting question is, "is there only one kind of smart"? This site is full of people who are really smart in one way, but remarkably dumb in others. (As is every forum). Just like the author is smart, but still bad at math and programming.

The article is making a great point without needing to define those terms. And obviously if you have the talent for X then the harder you work at X the more likely you are at being successful doing X. That’s kinda obviously true. The point of the article is that most people refuse to acknowledge that some people are better at abstract thinking than others. And not acknowledging this leads to bad decisions when it comes to how we educate people. It is an obvious true fact that most people refuse to acknowledge. So kudos to the author for stating something that should be obviously true to most people but clearly isn’t.

I am always very wary of obvious. If you say it's obvious, you say it needs not be explained which I already have a problem with. What is obvious, obviously varies across places and cultures. Most statements are oversimplifications of issues for purposes of communication. What gets thrown away in that process is generally quite political. How you say something, how you present information has an effect on the way an information is perceived is what living in a society that has had newspaper, radio, TV and now online information should have taught us.

Now you say "obviously if you have the talent for X then the harder you work at X the more likely you are at being successful doing X". I don't agree with this statement. It is just describing one possible path, an ideal cycle of work and reward, not all possible paths. It is absolutely possible to be good at something but not interested in it for example. Although what about all the people that had no particular talent for a domain but through work learnt to be reasonably good (which I suspect is the common fate) should have we quit because we had no "natural talent" ?

You are reading more into my comment that what is there. I said that you are more likely to be successful doing X if you have talent for it and work hard on it. Likely does not imply what you suggest.

> But how is school quality defined? It’s defined according to the summative outcomes of how students perform. I’ve been arguing for a decade that perceived school quality is simply a product of the selection effects of how a school’s population was assembled.

That's one way to define school quality, and the author is right that it's a self-reinforcing loop, but... that's not the only way to define school quality.

Another way would be: what kind of courses do they offer? How many AP or IB courses do they offer? Do they have notable extracurriculars? There's a highschool near me that has a planetarium attached. What are the credentials of the teachers? Any of the teachers have impressive accomplishments, either outside of teaching, or teaching awards? How many students per class? What kind of technology do they have for kids to work with?

There's all sorts of things that can be used to analyze a school's quality, that has nothing to do with outcomes.

This referenced article is more interesting.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/25/us/selective-high-schools...

Is this what being good at writing is - stringing together paragraphs and paragraphs of words that don't end up saying anything?

Apparently it is about being just controversial enough so that people will talk about you while appearing reasonnable enough so that people won't brush you off.

Being vague makes for the best flamewars. Everybody can jump in defending his or her own values while nothing is being really talked about.

"We shoud take X more into account !" "No X is not the only thing, there are also Y and Z that needs being taken more into account !"

This ought to be a fun flamewar

What a great read. The author is absolutely right. I always found it amusing that people will readily acknowledge musical/athletic/artistic talent but flat out refuse to acknowledge that some people are more talented at abstract thinking than others. Abstract thinking is highly valued in a capitalistic society. Perhaps that’s why some people refuse to accept that not everybody can do it?

Isn't this the person that falsely accused someone of rape and then (much later) admitted having lied about it? Why should this person not be in prison?

edit: This is indeed the person I was thinking of.

To the people downvoting me: what SHOULD happen to people who knowingly lie and accuse an innocent person of raping them when they later admit it was entirely fabricated?

> To the people downvoting me: what SHOULD happen to people who knowingly lie and accuse an innocent person of raping them when they later admit it was entirely fabricated?

Does it change anything for you to know that he did it during a psychotic episode? He's addressed it more than once on his blog [1], and I've seen no reason to doubt his account of things. He strikes me as genuinely recalcitrant, and the person he accused seems to think so as well [2].

[1] https://freddiedeboer.substack.com/p/since-you-asked

[2] https://twitter.com/bigmeaninternet/status/10471296316970475...

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