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Comment by shafyy | Hacker News Reader

> He leads OpenAI

And OpenAI has strayed away from their initial "vision" considerably.

> Why do you think this is a bad idea?

Because it's a very libertarian and capitalistic view of how life and society should work.

It's very one dimensional. 18-year-olds should not be put in an environment where their goal is to make money for a sicko in Silicon Valley who then takes a percentage of their future earnings. 18-year-olds should be encouraged to take time to enjoy their youth, travel, learn about a lot of different things and about themselves.

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> And OpenAI has strayed away from their initial "vision" considerably.

It's still very successful.

> It's very one dimensional.

It doesn't pretend to solve multiple problems. From what I understand, Altman wants to boost innovation by incentivising talented young people.

> 18-year-olds should not be put in an environment

If anything like this program were implemented, 99% of 18-year-olds wouldn't be affected by it. There are 18-year-olds that want to enjoy youth and travel and there are others that are driven to achieve things. I don't see why is it bad to boost some of the latter ones.

“ Because it's a very libertarian and capitalistic view of how life”

Why that bad? Is a very socialist or communist view on life better?

Seems like a bias rather than factually supported.

> Is a very socialist or communist view on life better?

For what it’s worth, it’s not as binary as you suggest: if one doesn’t like a capitalist idea, it doesn’t automatically imply a communist alternative.

I think at the very least, Sam’s suggestion here is fairly capitalist: students are considered resources to be invested in, with a certain ROI, and capital would automatically be allocated to just those students that are the brightest of all, and/or have the best connections.

This implies that only a very narrow group of students would receive this funding, and it’s (ideally) based purely on their potential financial contribution to society. But for a country, there are lots of other reasons why you would want better educated students: crime reduction being a good example.

the commodification of our personhood taken to the extreme. i think zizek was the first person i heard recognize this problem with capitalism today.

I think it's clear that libertarianism and extreme capitalism is not the best way to organize a society. And no, the alternative to that is not communism.

Countries who have a good social net and where the state plays some role in ensuring social welfare fare better than countries who don't. And no, GDP is not a good metric of how people in a country are doing as a whole.

Organizing a society strictly according to any ideology is a bad idea.

"Libertarianism and extreme capitalism" are great for people who are intelligent and driven. There's nothing wrong with the idea of trying to identify people like that and giving them money and leaving them alone. Actually there's something progressive about it: instead of forcing people to climb a corporate/academic hierarchy before they can make decisions, you're letting them do what they like in their intellectual prime.

That doesn't mean we should apply this way of thinking to everyone. Most people are of average intelligence and drive. Some people need assistance.

""Libertarianism and extreme capitalism" are great for people who are intelligent and driven."

It's good for people that want to rationalize their extreme wealth as "meritocracy" when it's inherently luck of the draw that any of us find ourselves where we are. A real libertarian society entails an informal economy and is what the developing world is trying to get out of. State policy is needed to maintain some kind of social order, a libertarian government is the complete inverse of a command and control economy - both are social disasters.

> rationalize their extreme wealth as "meritocracy" when it's inherently luck of the draw

Maybe extreme wealth is mostly luck, but meritocracy has merit. We all want the best when we're hiring, but want to be treated like the best when we're getting hired.

Discounting merit too much would just mess the balance between the two parties and break the process. Who would hire a person unfit to do the job? Who would spend years learning just to be treated equally to someone who didn't invest as much?

18 year olds are adults. What you're saying is very paternalistic and patronizing.

Everybody who wants to should be encouraged to enjoy their lives, travel, and learn. That's not unique to 18 year olds. And if some have already done a lot of that or are just driven for entrepreneurship, that's a choice they should be able to make.

Of course, 18-year-olds are adults in a legal sense. But they are still very inexperienced in life, heck they are not even allowed to buy beer in the US.

I'm not saying 18-year-olds shouldn't be entrepreneurs. But what Sam Altman is suggesting is just very dystopian to me, because he suggests it as an alternative to a traditional education. In his narrow view, the goal of education is only to produce people who maximize financial value.

> Everybody who wants to should be encouraged to enjoy their lives, travel, and learn

Yes. But as you probably know from your own life (if you're older than 30), this gets harder and harder. So we should especially encourage younger folks, who are still more opend-minded and have less responsibilities, to do that.

> Find the smartest and most driven 18 year olds in the world

I don't take that as saying take your typical college student, although with the admissions process, I guess you could read it that way if you wanted to. I think we're talking about taking that kid at school who everybody made fun of because he was such a damn super genius it made everybody else feel insecure.

> But as you probably know from your own life (if you're older than 30), this gets harder and harder

It's harder and easier at various times in your life. Again, I encourage everyone who's interested to do it.

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