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

Tue Nov 7 08:14:23 UTC 2006

On Mon, Nov 06, 2006 at 10:33:08PM -0800, Lee Corbin wrote:
> Eugen writes first about education.  In another post I'll reply to his
> remarks concerning how totally Doomed we are.

You know, I always chuckle when I leaf through "Collapse". Those fools,
they never saw it coming, despite the signs being so damn obvious.
It was always so predictable. But, hey, it can't happen to us, because
we all have read the book and track the ecology, economy and social stats 
daily, and collectively act intelligently and proactively, and have
been doing it for a while. Right?

> I have to take your word for it in the case of Germany.  Very
> interesting. Perhaps others will comment.

Most of Germany has the triple Hauptschule, Realschule and Gymnasium
system. I'm only dealing with problems in Gymnasium, which are really
mild using U.S. public school standards for a yardstick. But still, much 
has changed since I exited the system 1987. I am told the same applies
to the decade or two that have gone before.

> But bad in what way?  Compared to German schools of the 80s?

Yep.

> Of the 50s?   Just how have they deteriorated.  Dropping standards

I don't know where exactly the peak was, I presume it was 1950s/1960s.

> to accomodate immigrants?

Immigrants are driving the problem, but there are several other reasons
for the current malaise. I don't have much time to cover them here, I'm
afraid.

> > 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.
> 
> Ah, another idealist off in dream-land.  Please, stick to what is
> feasible.

Hey, I thought my standards of having stable families, low crime and 
violence rate were reasonable. I'm glad I didn't grow up where you 
did. As to personal educational system, it can't be too hard to bin
kids, and treat high-potentials accordingly. And, you know, we have
this personal notebooks by now required at an earlier and earlier
age, and of course I don't have to tell you what really good educational
software (caveat: I have never seen something remotely approaching that
description yet) can do.

> > The genes have remained basically the same, 
> 
> Yes the genes have stayed the same.  But the skills that are needed

To recap, my point was that genes are good enough, since constant
gene pool and deteriorating capabilities illustrate the problems
lie elsewhere. Completely ordinary, even slightly dumb people can
do wonderful things, if properly motivated. Don't tell me you don't
know that most of a Ph.D. e.g. in life sciences is hard human servo
work. Ph.D. these days means only a seal of approval that the person
can learn, and work hard, so he probably can be further taught on
the job in an industrial research environment. Little more.

> have not.  We don't need manual laborers so much anymore.

Funny, I don't have seen too many busy robots on the street lately.
And I *have* heard that the industry has been complaining about 
the quality of Gymnasium folks lately. You probably don't realize
how damning that statement is. Believe me: this is *bad*. Really Bad.
These are manual labor slots which can't be filled because young
people don't have the skills. 

> Right.  I'm not talking IQ 150 and above.  There are so few of them
> anyway. And they're very idiosyncratic to boot.  I'm talking about
> the great dearth of people between 120 and 150 that are in such
> short supply.

You're still looking only a single scalar as a metric. I wish we
had IQ 100 people who were motivated and capable. From what I see in
the job market (I can't help, since I happen to be stuck in a reasonably
menial, low-paid position), the requirements are a set of a very specific
skills, a particular age, and willingness to work hard very long hours for
as little as possible (don't tell me you don't know wages have been falling
in numerical value, nevermind such irrelevant things that EUR has lost half of its
value in only six years -- if you look at its relative value to the US$
you will realize just how deep into the crapper US$ has gone since 1971, or so).

So, if IQ is not relevant in the broad job market, we're obviously 
looking at niches -- I wouldn't mind a hyperbright PI one bit, 
obviously. In fact, I wouldn't mind a reasonably bright politician
at all, provided she's reasonably capable.

> Only 1 person in 20 is as smart as George Bush (IQ about 125 or so).

Excellent. Would you hire George Bush, and trust him with anything
important? See, IQ is not worth so very much now, isn't it.

> And you can dream-up all the ideal schools you want, and you aren't
> going to change this.  Only GE or eugenics can change this.

What can I say, you're still missing the mark widely. Look
at Ashkenazi eugenics. You'll probably think the results like
http://www.masada2000.org/nobel.html are sure due to IQ alone. But
please read http://www.masada2000.org/Powerful-Jews.html
especially the very last line. Yeah, sometimes it's that simple.

> If in the 1870s the west had listened to Francis Galton instead of
> Karl Marx, the west wouldn't be in the predicament it's in.

The Old West (EU and North America) has exactly the same structural
problems. Asian tigers/dragons are not yet burdened with them, and
I'm really looking forward to what they will do in the next three
decades. However, if we pull a new and improved rehash on 1930s,
they wouldn't do so very much, and resulting ecological decline
and warfare (very possibly biological and nuclear) will make progress
difficult at best.

Such things don't happen overnight, so anyone with a bit of statistics,
economics and history should have figured it out at least 25 years ago.
No doubt many did, but nobody cared, and guess what -- collectively, we
still don't give a damn. Now that unfortunately gives "Collapse" more
signficance than you're willing to give it credit.

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