Where should the best and brightest go?

Started by The Ellimist3 pages

Where should the best and brightest go?

Which professions would society want the largest proportion of its intellectual capital to go into?

Possible candidates:

Medical research
Engineering R&D
Physics/Mathematics
Politics and activism

2 and 3 typically advance 1.

4 seems to try it's best to hamper 1,2 &3

Originally posted by jaden101
2 and 3 typically advance 1.

4 seems to try it's best to hamper 1,2 &3

Agreed, but wouldn't an influx of intelligence help alleviate th problems we face in politics?

Incidentally this article is related.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jun/03/city-corporates-destroy-best-minds

Originally posted by Robtard
Agreed, but wouldn't an influx of intelligence help alleviate th problems we face in politics?

This

Originally posted by Robtard
Agreed, but wouldn't an influx of intelligence help alleviate th problems we face in politics?

True. But so would not voting for morons.

It's a vicious cycle. Moronic politicians enact shitty education policies that create more morons who agree with and thus vote for morons.

That's how you end up with great statistics like 13% of American science teachers teach creationism/intelligent design as fact or 20% of Americans believe the sun orbits the earth or that 75% of Republican senators and 53% of Congress deny climate change.

Originally posted by jaden101
True. But so would not voting for morons.

It's a vicious cycle. Moronic politicians enact shitty education policies that create more morons who agree with and thus vote for morons.

That's how you end up with great statistics like 13% of American science teachers teach creationism/intelligent design as fact or 20% of Americans believe the sun orbits the earth or that 75% of Republican senators and 53% of Congress deny climate change.

I think u missed his point

Originally posted by Sin I AM
I think u missed his point

To get intelligent people into politics you have to elect intelligent people into office.

Instead you have the aforementioned stats about politicians and you have a presidential race between????....

To hell. Science has no place in a clean Christian society.

Originally posted by jaden101
2 and 3 typically advance 1.

4 seems to try it's best to hamper 1,2 &3

4 is actually what keeps 1-3 going.

Using the textbook definition that politics is who gets what, when, and how.

But yeah, the complete and utter lack of ethical behavior from pretty much everybody sure doesn't help. I blame the 1980's for making Gordon Gekoing cool..

So you're saying we need to build a wall around the 1980s.

Originally posted by Tzeentch
To hell. Science has no place in a clean Christian society.

😂

The best and the brightest aren't born the best and the brightest. They become the best and the brightest through interest and study. And someone with a great interest in medicine is not necessarily going to develop an interest for automation and mechatronics.

Originally posted by Astner
The best and the brightest aren't born the best and the brightest. They become the best and the brightest through interest and study.

They may become the "best" partially through that, but by "brightest" I meant natural aptitude.

Aside from mental disabilities and physiological traits people are completely molded by their environments. Children with strict parents who treat them right and encourage them academically are going to be more suited for academia than children with abusive parents in squalid living conditions.

The problem is that these children will develop their own interests. You can't take someone who really excels at mathematics—and spends a lot of spare time on playing with mathematical problems—and expect him to be motivated as a politician.

Twin adoption studies say you're wrong, as does quite a bit of evidence, both scientific and anectodal. Intelligence is about as hereditary as height (so, very). That's why two siblings raised in identical environments can sometimes turn out drastically differently, or why twins separated at birth and reunited in adulthood almost always report being incredibly similar to one another.

The environment has a substantial impact on other things like personality traits and especially ideologies, but to suggest that it's all nurture and no nature is just empirically wrong.

Originally posted by The Ellimist
Twin adoption studies say you're wrong,

Can you post the study you found most convincing so I can have a look at it.

Originally posted by The Ellimist
That's why two siblings raised in identical environments can sometimes turn out drastically differently,

They can be raised in similar—but never identical—environments. They're not going to be in the same class in school, they're not socializing with the same people.

If one of the siblings has a friend that introduces him to a sport that he later develops into a career, then yes he's going to be different from the sibling who never had an interest for sports.

Originally posted by The Ellimist
The environment has a substantial impact on other things like personality traits and especially ideologies, but to suggest that it's all nurture and no nature is just empirically wrong.

Nature implies that it is genetic, which means that it's inheritable. But if brothers tend to turn out differently then it's not genetic.

I meant identical twins, not brothers. That is to say if there's a discrepancy between the heritability of intelligence and established genetic traits then it's likely not heritable.

Originally posted by The Ellimist
Twin adoption studies say you're wrong

So where is that study??