The idea that the world isn’t the meritocracy one might believe it to be is very disconcerting to some people, especially the people who benefit from such privilege as wealth, or being the preferred race/sex in their particular culture. The idea that perhaps not everyone can just “pull themselves up by their bootstraps” is foreign to people like this.
it's got nothing to do with socialism and everything to do with capitalism. restricting the advanced workforce and research to the thin slice of a population with the opportunity (mostly well off parents, sometimes race and sex) you lose out on a tremendous amount of human resources with the potential to create value.
I’m far from a blank slatist or a socialist, but as someone who is generally considered “untalented” on the HN scale of things please continue. What is objectionable about this viewpoint?
To be honest, I find the blank slate model just cruel, because it shifts blame for failure to achieve results onto either a personal failure to work hard enough, or some ill-defined societal boogieman of oppression or structural isms. Which tends to need massive amounts of money or power in the hands of someone to try to rectify.
In reality, you just can't make chicken salad out of chicken shit, no matter how hard you try.
I don't know anything about you. Who are you again?
I grew up in bumfuck Appalachia, and there's a lot of people there that are so inbred and unfortunate that they can barely chew gum and walk at the same time. You can put people through years and years of education and spend all the money in the world on them, but you're not going to ever get them to understand calculus or read on grade-level.
Acknowledging people's individual abilities and limits is far more humane than pie-in-the-sky optimism.
Some countries have higher IQ populations than others. Eg South Korea was poorer than many African countries in the 60s, now they make smartphones.
This would have been hard to predict given a blank slate talent is everywhere thesis, but not if you know they have one of the highest IQs in the world. Same with Singapore.
Of course a really bad government (North Korea) can screw you up.
