
It's 2059, and the Rich Kids Are Still Winning – Ted Chiang - bookofjoe
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/27/opinion/ted-chiang-future-genetic-engineering.html
======
neilv
> _In a society increasingly obsessed with credentials, being genetically
> engineered is like having an Ivy-League M.B.A.: It is a marker of status
> that makes a candidate a safe bet for hiring, rather than an indicator of
> actual competence._

Not specific to fancy MBA programs, but sometimes credentials means more than
a safe bet, but also a fraternity or cabal.

Imagine that, by default, there's a level playing field for everyone, but a
subgroup of people collude to trade favors amongst themselves. That group will
have an advantage over everyone outside the group who are playing by the
egalitarian rules.

~~~
RhysU
Imagine that, by default, there's a level playing field for everyone, but a
subgroup of people share some common background and therefore they can form
trusted connections amongst themselves at lower cost vs the overhead to
establish such connections between any two parties who don't know each other
from Adam. I claim this not nefarious situation is indistinguishable from your
sinister finger pointing.

~~~
neilv
How do you mean "trust"? Possibilities include:

1\. Trust that the person is capable at particular things. (This you might get
from credentials, which perhaps also defines a group, and accomplishments.)

2\. Trust that the person is truthful with you, and will honor agreements with
you. (This you might get from their reputation within your network/group.)

3\. Trust that the person will give preferential treatment to you/group, and
that they do this _because_ there is mutual advantage to a subgroup doing
that, separate from trust in ability and honesty. (Maybe sometimes this is
called loyalty to the group, though you might say you trust in their loyalty.
Or maybe it's merely understood.)

I'm pretty sure I've seen #3 happen in business/opportunities, read about it
in news, and heard people talk firsthand about it, in ways not always covered
by #1 and #2.

------
RcouF1uZ4gsC
>Yet we continue to ignore this because it runs counter to one of the founding
myths of this nation: that anyone who is smart and hardworking can get ahead.
Our lack of hereditary titles has made it easy for people to dismiss the
importance of family wealth and claim that everyone who is successful has
earned it.

Who your parents are has always mattered. Parents being able to give their
children an advantage in the world is, in general, a good thing. Even the
preamble to the Constitution of the United States talks about securing the
blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity.

It is human nature to want to work hard to better your offspring. It is one of
the main motivating factors for many people. Any attempt to remove this
advantage is bound to fail.

We need to stop looking at individual opportunity as much as look at the
bigger generational picture. As many have pointed out rags to riches in a
single generation is very rare. However, rags to riches in 2 or 3 generations
is not uncommon (see especially the experience with Asian immigrants). We need
it so that anyone who is smart and hard working can end up better off than
their parents, and ensure a better starting position for their own kids who if
they are also smart and hard working end up even better.

Any Procrustean policy of trying to make it irrelevant who your parents are is
always going to end in frustration.

~~~
ergothus
One change I'd like to see is in the opposite direction: We (U.S. society)
should stop assuming that someone who has wealth is automatically more
meritorious than someone without. We've taken the concept that "someone who is
smart and hard working CAN improve their situation" and flipped it to be
"someone in an improved situation MUST be smart and hard working".

We should also watch out for what we consider "smart". Someone that is a
complete manipulative and exploitative jerk can leverage that to become quite
wealthy. They will defend it as "smart", and perhaps it is, but if don't
consider that behavior valuable, we should stop pretending the wealthy cases
are exceptions.

And of course, to agree with some of your points, we shouldn't toss the baby
with the bathwater, nor paint with too wide of a brush. That said, the
American narrative and American reality are somewhat dramatically out of sync
right now, so some adjustment seems prudent. When the U.S., champion of socio-
economic mobility, is ranked rather poorly at the same compared to other
developed nations, we become delusional hypocrites, not champions.

------
goldemerald
This article isn't too surprising. Modern studies only find a small positive
connection between IQ and lifetime success (0.25 correlation). Even so, there
is no single element predictor that can better measure success compared to IQ.
I would hope that by 2059, social scientists can find an accurate way to
determine how being rich contributes to "winning".

~~~
yocheckit
Do they? My experience reading them doesn't indicate that at all, IQ is
enormously important in determining lifetime success it's just there are
different plateaus.

Once you achieve a certain IQ threshold (be it 115, 130, 145, whatever) then
other factors play a bigger role but before you hit that threshold your
outcomes statistically will be much worse than even the lowest performers who
do make the cutoff.

------
chr1
This assumes that applying edits is hard and expensive while finding what to
edit is easy and can be done without multiyear tests. But the reality is
exactly the opposite.

More likely outcome is that genetic editing companies will be paying poor
people to be able to test effectiveness of therapies on their children, and
instead of direct payments will use long term contracts taking percentage from
the child's future income.

And if you think this business model is immoral and horrible, notice that this
is the business model governments are meant to perform with taxes and social
payments, they just fail miserably because of their monopoly.

------
StavrosK
I watched a very interesting TED talk related to this the other day. The
premise is the question "Where in the world is it easiest to get rich?". The
answer won't surprise you if I tell you the answer will surprise you.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A9UmdY0E8hU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A9UmdY0E8hU)

~~~
wolco
Define rich.

~~~
StavrosK
He does.

------
katabasis
The way things seem to be heading, I'm afraid we're going to have much bigger
problems by 2059 to worry about.

~~~
politician
Unless the rich are going to start building domed cities for themselves, they
might be better off making their designer children smaller, vegan, and
tolerant of lower levels of oxygen.

~~~
aeternus
How about robot children: \- No oxygen required \- No food required \- Can be
made quite small \- 50% lower chance of uprising when compared to humans

~~~
chr1
"No food required" is quite nice. Technology for full robots may require quite
some time, but before that it is probably possible to create artificial
stomach that can replace your stomach and gut, and instead of eating 3 times a
day and going to toilet you simply could replace a bottle once a week.

------
germinalphrase
Thank you.

~~~
RandomBacon
I clicked on the "web" link under the title and opened it in a private tab,
which loaded Google search results, then I clicked on the NYT link and it
worked.

Edit: the site reloaded to cut the article then say I'm in Private mode and to
log in. I just went back, opened the NYT result again, and stoped loading the
page once the text appeared.

