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

[Samantha Atkins]

On Nov 6, 2006, at 5:25 AM, Eugen Leitl wrote:

> 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.

Do you mean starting at K or 1st grade or later.  If started early  
enough I don't think mere migrant background is such a problem.

> 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.

Sending kids to private school packs a double penalty for the  
parents.  Yet there are studies showing that private schools on  
average deliver about twice the education per dollar than public  
schools.

>
> 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.
>


Again I don't think being from a migrant family means you are poorly  
socialized on poor school material per se.


> 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.
>

It is largely government run schooling, cultures where no one is left  
to be with the kids much of the time,  and a culture that is becoming  
ever more cynical and apathetic that are imho primary factors in the  
problem.


>> 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).
>

So what can we do to make things as much better as is possible?

>> 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?
>

It is  worse than that.  The majority of the people by a considerable  
margin are incapable of understanding many of the issues they vote  
on.  I don't think it is so largely a matter of raw intelligence as of  
severe undertraining and imho systematic mistraining.    It does not  
help that the people have been conditioned and/or conditioned  
themselves to spend much of their free time being passively  
entertained by the idiot box or endlessly playing some video or  
computer game.  The distribution of intelligence in say the US was no  
greater 100 years ago than today.  Yet we used to be an extremely  
literate society where even the "common" person read books of some  
substance.


> 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?
>

I would.  In a heartbeat.  Or what I did enter, Computer Science.   If  
there is one thing I have learned in these decades of work it is that  
the amount of money is the least important part, within reason, for  
how you end up feeling about your life and what you have done with it.

>
> 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?
>

Given that a very large monetary crisis is imminent, what can we do  
individually and in small to large groups to insure as much of our own  
wellbeing and the preservation / continuation of as much of what is  
really important to us as possible.  I believe and was one of the  
first here to say that a major financial crash is imminent.  I believe  
that most of the so-called "war on terror" is a convenient excuse to  
jockey for hard assets while building up the capacity for draconian  
levels of power over the people at home before the s**t really hits  
the fan.

So what can we do to make things better?   What shall we do in  
preparation if it is too late to do much to stop it?  What can we  
preserve and how?    How can we increase the odds that as much as  
possible of what we most care about will not be lost?

- samantha