[extropy-chat] it's all understandable, except

[Eugen Leitl]

On Mon, Nov 06, 2006 at 03:15:18AM -0800, Lee Corbin wrote:

> Since Eugen wrote this, a number of people have chimed in to agree.
> I ask, where is the evidence that the key problems are current educational
> environments or poor parenting?  Are there studies?

If you've got poorly socialized children with a migrant background 
as a majority, you will not be able to start schooling at a decent
level. It only goes downhill from there. I presume the answer to
that is to start saving for a private school -- but you will notice
that e.g. most of the U.S. doesn't do that, they do in fact quite the opposite.

A few days ago on the commute I heard on the propaganda channel radio about the
current grand coalition slapping each other on the back, mutually congratulating
themselves on their grand achievement. That being, that they have reduced
the amount of new debt this year. To "only" 30 GEUR. Perhaps
too many people misunderstand what exponential functions (compounded 
interest) means, especially if each third EUR already silently vanishes into
the debt hole. 

> The studies---your anecdotes aside---report what I said they did,
> namely that it's genes 50%, peers 50%, parents 0%, and schools, 0%.

Genes are meaningless, if you're looking at poorly socialized kids
with a migrant background entering the school system, which is already
contaminated with a couple of decades of similiar toxic problems.
Teaching is traditionally a well-paid high-prestige job in Germany,
but the schools have gotten so bad it's hard to find new personnel,
especially in hard sciences.

For genes to wield their full potential you need a stable, supportive
environment even pre-birth, and an educational system which challenges
each kid individually. The genes have remained basically the same, 
it's the parenting and schools (peers are an integral part of the 
school) which have been failing.

> And furthermore, contrary to what Eugen states, the limiting factor
> *is* what is between the ears.  Researchers on intelligence admit,

Correct, but irrelevant. The bottlenecks are elsewhere. As long as
the environment is the same no amount of perfect genes will matter.
You don't need perfect genes to be a highly productive individual.
Yes, for some things you need genius, but only in trace amounts.
Unlike Galt's Gulch and Vinge's visions a small group of supergeniuses
without the vast pyramid of support can do only very little.
Our concerns are that that supportive structure is failing. It's
hard to build buckyball circuits if there's almost no industry
and the state is effectively bankrupt (well, the state isn't,
but the citizens are left with the bill). 

> But the overwhelming part of the populace does *not* have enough
> cognitive ability, not enough for today's technical needs.

Jobs in R&D are negligible in the old West. What's the point in
entering a challenging technical field if you know that 1) the
job market will be brutal 2) you're entering a field which is
not even lower middle class, by salary standards?

Bright people are not stupid. Who in their right minds would study
e.g. chemistry right now? Who would enter something so overhyped
as nanotechnology?
 
> > Not only does demographics limit the quantity, the quality has been
> > going down monotonously since middle last century, or even before.
> 
> What do you mean by this?  IQ has been going up (cf. Flynn effect).

If Flynn shows things are stellar yet you agree that the practical
experience it telling us the opposite, then something is wrong with your
metrics. Ability to play WoW doesn't make yourself good workplace
material. 
 
> How does the job market discourage entering technical field?

Have you looked at an engineer's entry level salaries? You
have noticed that the middle class is shrinking fast?  And
that a Second Great Depression is at the door, and there's
not deus ex machina just-in-time fix to pull us out?

-- 
Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org
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