
Talent is everywhere, opportunity is not - yurisagalov
https://ourworldindata.org/talent-is-everywhere-opportunity-is-not
======
petra
How many talented people , in advanced economies, with good technical degrees
, do take part in inventing important stuff ?

Very few.

Educating more kids and having more "ideas" won't change that.

We're not lacking ideas. We're lacking the right incentives to make ideas
happen.

~~~
PostOnce
Everything is a hassle. Building permits, operating licenses, legal
compliance, etc.

All those things arguably exist for good reasons, but it's a huge hurdle to
doing anything useful.

I can't have a 20 foot radio tower in town, I can't subdivide smaller than 10
acres outside of town, I can't build any facility out there to operate the
experimental tower without building permits, radio licenses, compliance with
tracking (for the police) any radio customer I might get if I qualify as a
"communication service provider", etc.

There are (major) hurdles in just about every conceivable industry, and hardly
any provision for "hey I'm a guy who wants to experiment, perhaps even
noncommercially".

You can overcome the hurdles, but how many people will just stay at their 9 to
5 and not bother because its a huge pain in the ass with no guaranteed
benefit?

I wonder how much this holds us back, it's hard to say.

~~~
jjoonathan
I'm a fan of the chemistry analogy here: you can catalyze (reduce barriers)
and you can incentivize (increase rewards). If the incentives point the wrong
way, catalyzing won't help. If the barriers are too high, incentivizing won't
help.

I strongly suspect we're in a "barriers too high" regime rather than an
"incentives are too low" regime, and that our money would be better spent
reducing barriers than increasing incentives.

~~~
bumby
I think I agree but the question seems to be how do we lower the barriers
smartly while still keeping the intent of the rules and regulations? Add to it
our own bias to put more emphasis on the regulations that concretely prevent
us from doing what we want now, rather than those that abstractly benefit us
and its easy to point to them being the problem.

It's like the "one mans trash is another mans treasure" cliche, something that
you see as an impediment I see as a social good. Finding the right balance is
tricky and unfortunately in a polarized political environment it's easy for
people to fall into the far sides of the argument.

~~~
abakker
The real question is: why did we install the protections(barriers) in the
first place? I assume that a major component of that was as a reaction to the
increasing complexity of modern life. Self sufficiency is fine, but it is
difficult to take the consequences for many things knowingly. As such, we
created, one at a time, experientially driven barriers designed to protect
people from new, novel issues.

I don’t think we need to offer more incentives or reduce barriers per se, but
I think we really ought to be talking about refactoring our laws. The amount
of legislative “technical debt” is intense and problematic.

~~~
alchemism
For the many regulations in American society, there is usually a dead body
buried underneath, possibly many dead bodies, including those of women and
children, etc.

For each and every one, someone suffered terribly or died.

~~~
thrower123
Unfortunately, many times, the dead body belonged to an idiot, whose
foolishness won them a Darwin Award, and the legacy of inconveniencing
millions of people.

We place too high a value on human life, and it's no wonder that we can't
accomplish anything when a non-zero level of risk is unacceptable.

~~~
jhayward
> _We place too high a value on human life, and it 's no wonder that we can't
> accomplish anything when a non-zero level of risk is unacceptable._

This is too close to another formulation of the same thought: "we should allow
corporations to kill people for profit, with impunity" for comfort.

~~~
thrower123
No, it's really, really not. It would be nice if we could have a discussion of
acceptable levels of risk versus inefficiency without immediately taking a
left turn into "Soylent Green is People!" territory.

~~~
jhayward
The "lefty" epithet, how handy.

You could start by telling us why the statements aren't the same, using
examples and facts.

You seem to want to have an abstract, bloodless, clinical discussion of when
it is acceptable to kill people in the name of "efficiency" (I will interpret
this as "profit").

I can tell you that is a dishonest discussion, if that's what is intended. If
you want to have it honestly you will have to first indicate an understanding
of exactly, in detail, the most evil things that will happen as a result. Also
the most devastating things that will happen and be protected from
proportionate legal recourse under your proposed or imagined regime.

It won't be a bloodless conversation.

~~~
abakker
Evil and blame free do not necessarily follow from acknowledging that some
level of risk is acceptable.

~~~
jhayward
This is a non-statement intended to deflect into the abstract and away from
actual consequences.

Policies and regulations aren't made in some Platonic ideal universe, they are
made in specific, factual circumstances.

Come back to us when you can talk about how a specific "acceptable" level of
risk does not involve enabling evil actors, and indemnified doers for a
specific policy area.

Then we'll talk about the specific things you find acceptable, and just whose
death and suffering you will trade for profit.

~~~
bumby
I don't read their statements the same way you do. The way they come across to
me is that there needs to be a discussion of risk grounded in the
understanding that in many (most?) domains, zero risk is unattainable.

It's like the idea of the FDA setting limits to the amount of insect
contaminates allowed in food. At first, it seems disturbing until you realize
that if they put a zero tolerance policy in place, there would be near-endless
grounds to sue every food manufacturer out of business.

~~~
malandrew
> in many (most?) domains, zero risk is unattainable.

Not only is it unattainable, it's actively counterproductive to try and
achieve because of unexamined and unintended consequences.

------
vinceguidry
I was talking to someone the other day that boiled it down to "everyone's
trying to solve their Red Queen problem." I was unfamiliar, and the Wikipedia
page doesn't seem to support this reading, but the idea is that everyone's
running as fast as they can just to stay in place, and the way out is
different for every person so no general approach can work for everyone. Any
solution will put people right back in the realm of running as fast as they
can to stay in place.

You pull out a bottleneck, only to reach another bottleneck. Puts the problem
squarely in the realm of myth. Sisyphus rolling a boulder up a hill. Someone
blew my mind one day when they suggested that Sisyphus didn't keep rolling the
boulder up the hill because of compulsion, he does it because he finds
exquisite meaning in it. He knows every crack, every crevice, how to move most
efficiently up that hill. This idea moves the problem from mythological to
religious. What is heaven and what is hell?

Some wind up burning out, and reverting to a simpler, more primitive form of
life. Yours truly has a hard time seeing that as anything more than a rest
stop. As humanity connects and we learn more about ourselves, our minds, and
our bodies, we'll start unlocking dizzying heights of human achievement. These
things will look like self-inflicted torture.

But at the end of the day, humans yearn for one thing, greatness, elevation,
perfection. So they'll keep pushing themselves to that next level.

~~~
jzebedee
Albert Camus - The Myth of Sisyphus
[https://web.archive.org/web/20190808163312/https://www2.hawa...](https://web.archive.org/web/20190808163312/https://www2.hawaii.edu/~freeman/courses/phil360/16.%20Myth%20of%20Sisyphus.pdf)

~~~
vinceguidry
Aha, thanks! I'd always sided with Kierkegaard, maybe I should give Camus his
fair shake.

------
james_s_tayler
I feel like this is stating the obvious and putting the emphasis on the exact
wrong end of it.

"Oh no! Think about all the potential geniuses we are missing out on! We must
be doing something wrong!"

Ok, thought about it.

My conclusion is:

"Wow, the rate of genius production has never been higher, we must really be
doing something right."

Could it be better? Sure. Is it getting better? According to Factfulness:
sure.

I just don't understand the ridiculous in-built assumption that we are somehow
wronging society and the potential geniuses themselves by them not being in a
time and a place that makes use of the quality of the substrate of those
particular individuals.

Well, sorry but nature doesn't optimize for the individual, it optimizes for
the whole.

You may as well get equally mad at something silly like "why doesn't everyone
always roll a 6?"

~~~
kirso
I think you missed the point that the opportunity is not equal, as a person if
you grew up in rural Georgia and not knowing what to do with your life because
you didn't get the memo kinda screws your future. It's about giving the
opportunity for the smart minds to work on impactful things and frankly, if I
would have that chance of a privileged kid, I would take it. Basically there
are ways how to fix it, the question is what is the most effective way...
Think about cheating on dropping the dice based on a pattern that always
grants you two threes.

~~~
james_s_tayler
Yeah, I didn't miss that point. Not at all.

I think you missed my point. Because you state:

>Basically there are ways how to fix it

My point is it's not actually broken. It's working. It's working very well.

Although it doesn't tend to, opportunity _could_ arise anywhere. So, potential
geniuses are peppered everywhere such that if opportunity were to arise there
there are people who can take advantage of it.

The assumption that it should work the other way around is ridiculous.

Opportunity isn't for geniuses. Geniuses are for opportunity.

~~~
kirso
The point of the article is that majority of people are not given opportunity
to become geniuses and frankly you don't even have to be one to make an
impact. You don't just get born a genius its a process with lots of puzzle
pieces (parents, education, environment). If your primary goal when you grow
up is to not starve to death, you can hardly allocate time to study physics
and make discoveries. However, tell it to the millions in Africa without food
and education that the opportunity is everywhere and you will get skinned
alive.

------
AlexTWithBeard
The opportunity is there. It's always there. It may not be an opportunity to
immediately become the president of an international corporation, but it's an
opportunity to improve your life and life of your future generations.

Give your children education. Make sure they grow up in a full family. Move to
a better place. All these small things add up. You won't become a millionaire
this way, but your grandkids may.

------
lopmotr
The lack of exposure to role models for girls is a load of carefully crafted
dishonesty. It gives the impression that role models are the reason for gender
differences in inventing without actually saying that. Instead, it uses the
same weasel word "can" as cosmetics advertising telling you that some chemical
"can" reduce wrinkles. It also doesn't quantify the effect because that would
probably be embarrassing. Of course role models will have some effect but it's
not the only one - sexual dimorphism is there too and all the role models in
the world won't change that. I wish people would stop lying to themselves and
others about gender differences. Men and women are not cognitively equal on
average. We have different strengths and weaknesses. There's nothing wrong
with that. You don't have to pretend that women would be just as good as men
if only society would stop misunderstanding them. It's trying to pull girls
under a spell of delusion to fool them into behaving like boys, perhaps so
that more of those who can do so will fulfill their potential. Why not be
honest and help people understand that their own individual qualities are not
the same as their group average?

------
bsenftner
One place talent is not is in the screening process of VC. Attempting to raise
money for a new venture is like returning to high school and being confronted
by the popular kids demanding to know why you should be allowed into their
club. I expected professionalism, and primarily saw immature 1%'ers so
transparent in their shallowness, it turned raising funding into a surreal
experience leaving bile in my throat.

------
jshowa3
The worst part isn't lacking opportunity. It's knowing that you lack the
ability and are forced to live your life that way without any ability to do
anything about it.

Opportunity is at least, largely changeable. Ability isn't.

Being average is the worst thing imaginable in today's society because nobody
cares about average people.

I would give up anything to have the brain of an inventor. But it's something
that has constantly haunted my mind knowing that I will always be sub-par.

It's even worse when you go through school and you're a top performer in your
school work. You're given a false sense of being one of the best, only to be
exposed in the real world as a complete fraud.

------
username90
We shouldn't worry about finding the talent who can work as researchers, first
we should worry about finding the talent who can reliably work as modern
farmers or in factories. That is what Africa is missing before it can take the
next step towards becoming a modern society.

------
macawfish
Capital is so trapped up that people don't even have the capital to take care
of basic needs.

~~~
fuzzfactor
Seems to me capital is not just ordinary resources.

More like when preservation or a positive return is intended in a businesslike
situation, even though negative returns are often encountered.

Other people's money can be used to leverage some amazing outcomes.

When capitalism is dominated by greedy capitalists, basic needs are not
intended to be taken care of, since no return on that type investment can be
recognized.

When capitalism is dominated by benevolent capitalists, basic needs are
intended to be taken care of, since huge return on that type investment can be
recognized.

~~~
fuzzfactor
pizzazzaro wrote: >So... How are we to ensure that we have these "benevolent
Capitalists"?

Good point, that's a tough one. Sometimes there will obviously be a
devastating shortage, or none available at all.

Maybe the only benevolence some cultures will be able to muster is an
incomplete removal of opportunity.

I would estimate real benevolence should be obvious to the widest of
consensus, and easily distinguishable almost universally from situations where
there is some doubt.

Not saying it's easy or possible to ensure anything, especially an anti-greed
approach during a greed-power consolidation trend lasting longer than a
lifetime.

------
eaenki
Imo

Education is overvalued, Capital is under appreciated,

And, Because Capital is trapped into networks, that Capital is squandered
among an infinite array of companies employing the talent and producing
products that don’t make you, or the planet, better, healthier, smarter or
happier. (Apple’s SJ era, Google until 2014~ and Tesla fit the useful smarter
happier paradigma, and not many other)

My solution is: take a piece of the federal budget and give $1-3MM to anyone
with a far fetched idea that has a prototype to back it up. No long processes.
If 30K -mostly students- a year get a mill to develop their thing, I suspect
we would find ourselves way into the future in just a decade. And that’s just
$30-90B/y

~~~
criddell
If I had been given $1 million when I was 22 to build something, the world
would have a pretty awesome Honda Civic with a flamethrower on the front, a
40" subwoofer in the hatch, and a dial to change the camber angle of the
wheels on the fly.

~~~
ozim
Just like Casey Neistad spent budget for Nike commercial on doing stupid shit
around the world. There was also a band of musicians that got loads of cash
from music company and they wasted it on drugs in Berlin instead of production
of an album (someone on Joe Rogan, don't remember name).

So those things happen in some people reality.

~~~
sflanagan
Instantly made me think of this:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z7hhDINyBP0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z7hhDINyBP0)

------
marmaduke
> list of innovations we need is long

but subsequent included nothing vis-a-vis the expensive, industrial lifestyle
we have these days. It is unfortunate that cultural innovation doesn't make
the list, since it would go a long way toward address some pertinent problems

~~~
everybodyknows
I'd go farther and suggest that culture is the central problem.

Only better culture can deliver peace and a modicum of justice. In particular,
a social culture in which neighbors do not seek to rob or enslave each other.

Self-driving cars, or even a cure for cancer, will not advance this central
goal. Better schools on the other hand, just might.

~~~
marmaduke
Spot on. In this vein, I think culture can be seen as a form of 'wetware'
technology. Crime, inequality and so on are technical debts of early decisions
by a few, it is a sector ripe for disruption but with very strong encumbents.

Unfortunately said encumbents know how important schools are in this.

------
kstenerud
If I hadn't had to work jobs just to keep food on the table, I'd have invented
the things I did A LOT earlier. I'd probably be finished rewriting the
internet's protocols by now, instead of only being 30% of the way there.

But that's not how this world works. Most of the early discoveries were by
affluent people or had benefactors and didn't need jobs and thus actually had
time.

------
chiefalchemist
> "The list of innovations we need is long: clean and cheap energy, better
> crops, interventions to help against the diseases that shorten and impair
> our lives. This, and much more besides, is needed to make progress against
> the big problems we face. But while the demand for innovation is large, its
> supply is limited."

Yes and no. What we need is better problem identification and more appropriate
priorities.

For example, we don't need "better crops." We need to stop wasting so much of
that we do have. Less waste means less wasted resources.

For example, less wasted food also means less chemicals and pesticides, which
likely means less disease and medical issues.

If we solved for root problem (i.e., apply The Five Whys) we'd waste less time
and resources solving for symptoms.

As for the supply of innovation being limit. IDK, I've heard that scarcity
breeds innovation. So perhaps we are innovating, but in the wrong places, at
the wrong time, for the wrong reasons.

~~~
lopmotr
Reducing waste can only go so far - zero waste - and worse, it has diminishing
returns. Improving technology, on the other hand, has no upper bound and
builds on itself to enable even more improvements.

Imagine if people had just reduced food waste instead of inventing fertilizer?
We probably wouldn't have western civilization.

~~~
chiefalchemist
Perhaps. But that's not the point. The waste isn't limited to food itself, but
the resources to grow it, transport it, and even dispose of it.

The solution of "make more" doesn't actaully address the problems

------
mLuby
Immigration isn't mentioned at all; that's shocking.

Assuming talent seeks opportunity to express itself, places looking for
success (=talent*opportunity) should to make it easy for talent to move there.

For the US, let students who earn masters/doctorates at American schools stay.

~~~
umeshunni
As an immigrant in the US, I'm not surprised. The word immigration/immigrant
has been subverted by the popular media in the US to refer mostly to "illegal
immigrants escaping violent regimes" or some such fantasy. You'll rarely see a
discussion of H1B visas or the length of the legal immigration queues
discussed in the popular media.

The popular media in the US also violently opposes opportunity or skills-based
immigration even though that's what the majority of the world does. The
liberal fantasy of immigration is a variation of the white man's burden
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_White_Man%27s_Burden](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_White_Man%27s_Burden))
where it is the US's role to save the oppressed and the downtrodden by
welcoming them to the US. Allowing immigration to be determined by talent or
education is "racist".

~~~
lazyasciiart
As an immigrant in the US, I think your perception of the issue is driven more
by your (probably pre-existing) existing attitudes on "liberals" than by the
media in the US.

------
known
Very few societies promote Self-actualization in
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow's_hierarchy_of_needs](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow's_hierarchy_of_needs)

------
prirun
One problem I see in education today is that we give lots of extra resources
to kids with learning problems, behavior problems, and physical handicaps, but
not many resources go to gifted kids because "they'll do okay on their own".
Yes, they might do "okay", but they might turn into brilliant innovators if
they were given the same extra attention that the kids below the median get.

This article is specifically about kids who score above average in math in 3rd
grade. As a society, we have chosen (or someone has) to provide extra teaching
staff to help kids that are below the median, not the ones who are
exceptional.

------
segmondy
"Talent is everywhere, opportunity is not". I keep seeing this quote, but not
attribution. Oldest I can find of it,
-[http://www.talkleft.com/story/2009/9/26/144122/317/hillarycl...](http://www.talkleft.com/story/2009/9/26/144122/317/hillaryclinton/Hillary-
Talent-Is-Universal-Opportunity-Is-Not-)

------
sdiq
I think the better question would have been, how would Steve Jobs have ended
up if he were born in Syria

~~~
moltar
Not identical example. But Elon Musk was born in South Africa. Far from Syria,
but still not a major world economic Center.

~~~
cossray
You may want to refreshen your knowledge regarding South Africa in its
apartheid days. I would confidently posit that Elon was more privileged than
your average American at that time. Of course he may want/ has created a
different picture of his young days.

~~~
dredmorbius
Certain individuals may be have been more privileged, in South Africa, during
Apartheid, presuming skin colour.

South Africa has not produced a thriving industrial or technological sector,
though there have been individual advances in certain areas, notably medicine
(heart transplants, yellow fever vaccine), and Mark Shuttleworth's Thawte,
which left the country.

Musk would have been 23 at the time of the election of Nelson Mandella. Musk's
youth certainly was under an Apartheid regime and would reflect the benefits
of being a white male under that system. He'd already left for Canada some
five years earlier, which might itself speak to your parent's observations.

------
NHQ
I have tech talents that maybe a few thousand people in the world have, and
research ability to move the needle (maybe even novel ideas in the field, if
you ask me).

I can't work in academia (no Ph.D), find capital (no connections), and the
software job market is a crazy stupid PITA (no thanks).

I know it's me, that I can have what I want if I really go for it, and that is
what I do by living simply and continuing my work.

But it would be swell if it was easier to be seen, at such a high level. I
would gladly teach, if offered the role.

Basically, it should made way-too-easy for obviously talented, experienced,
people to find some kind of work in teaching or civic developments.

~~~
burntoutfire
> obviously talented

The only "obvious" proof of talent that will convince anyone is having
impressive accomplishments in a given field. Do you have any?

~~~
fuzzfactor
Exactly.

A naturally unfair advantage at the type of research that involves
experimentation and/or discovery is a characteristic that most PhD's do not
actually have. Plenty still do, but most do not.

But without a PhD you will need to work your way up to outperforming those
with credentials by a factor of 10x to 20x.

Forget working in academia, but you will be expected to hang with them and
make progress that they can obviously recognize, without intimidation
difficulties either way.

It's doable, and can be quite rewarding in itself.

If nothing else you could end up like it says in the article. You could have a
thousand wonderful ideas just like everyone else, but you've got breakthroughs
that could grow phenomenally where 99 percent of them would require capital.
This doesn't make capital any more accessible to you than the average person
on the street. If your breakthroughs are really good you should be able to
make opportunity from the 1 percent that can be pursued without other people's
money anyway, while using the resources already at hand.

Like it says, you could be the best innovator in the world but without undue
good fortune it is extemely unlikely that ANY of your efforts will ever be
leveraged towards the masses regardless of how beneficial or not.

In the hypothetical 99 to 1 scenario, IF you can implement the full 1 percent
of your technical ability, then your odds are excellent by comparison since
only 99 percent of your life's work will be lost.

PhD's don't have as much opportunity as there was in the past either,
everybody's got to work around it.

And it's probably even more important to be careful against bad fortune, which
is a LOT worse than a simple lack of good fortune.

~~~
burntoutfire
In most cases, successful inventors of the past didn't have access to capital
either. It often took decades of relentless dedication for their ideas to come
to life. Sometimes, they even straight up risked their lives (like doctors
trying out new therapies on themselves). You could say that's unfair, but it
kind of makes sense - this way, only people with a singular focus and huge
drive make it to the other end - and it's precisely the kind of people who are
most fit to be leading the progress anyway (i.e. it's better for everyone when
people who get to do cancer research are obsessed about curing cancer and not
just very smart, normal people).

~~~
fuzzfactor
Another advantage of strong individual focus is you can end up owning your own
inventions rather than having them assigned away to some extent.

Living off your own technology is not for everyone. Most innovation is not
ground-breaking or is so marginal that it actually needs to be highly
leveraged to achieve the benefits of scale. Without a large research group to
support it is possible to get by on the lesser advances, and if momentum can
be built from that it can allow the time and space to gravitate to more
potentially impactful approaches compared to modern or established
institutional trends.

In many situations it can be a lot easier and less costly & time-consuming to
invent another sure-fire energy-saving device for instance, than it would be
to risk the resources seeking eminence. You can end up with an unfair
advantage at the inventing itself compared to those who divert any effort away
from the task, simply because you can not afford to take that kind of risk.

You also have the unfair disadvantage relative to those who basically just
toot their own horn, but everybody has that.

------
baybal2
Invention is overvalued as well as the idea of "creativity."

The biggest proof is the current China-USA standoff.

USA is on the paper the biggest nation on earth by manufacturing output, but
what was the last time you saw made in USA household goods in supermarket
without having to specifically look for them?

Why China has industrial base and USA doesn't?

Wages difference? No, not by a chance. In some places in China, the cost of
trained blue collar labour begins to exceed that of US.

An hourly rate for an experienced pick and place machine operator in South
China certainly exceeds $15 per hour, and may be closing on $20. This is what
I can tell from my own experience.

On an another hand, it is $16 in USA. [https://www.indeed.com/salaries/SMT-
Operator-Salaries](https://www.indeed.com/salaries/SMT-Operator-Salaries)

Even plain assembly line workers now get close to $15, and trained ones above
that. For any manufacturing automation specialist in China, wages are better
than in USA...

You don't see Chinese industrialists racing to setup factories in USA. Think
why now?

I was telling my own story on HN few times already. I was trying to setup an
electric scooter factory in Vancouver, Canada, and then in US northwest on
behalf of my employer.

I had to hire university grads to do plain assembly, as anybody else had hard
time to just wire a battery, throttle, BMS board, and a motor. And that with
colour coded wire harness with mechanical keys to prevent miswiring... We
spent 6 months looking for an operator for our model of pick and place
machine.

In China, those are the jobs I can hire a highschooler for.

America wastes its talent not any much less than, say, most countries
Americans call "the third world."

A very good story about that
[https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/28/technology/iphones-
apple-...](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/28/technology/iphones-apple-china-
made.html)

~~~
jeremyjh
Even if wages are comparable, are other costs of employment, such as
unemployment insurance, healthcare, pay roll tax comparable?

And even if they are comparable now, its true that it no longer matters. The
work moved to China because of low wages, and its going to stay there now
because all of the labor force and supply chain infrastructure are much better
developed. You are quite right those things no longer exist in the US, they
have atrophied.

~~~
baybal2
> Even if wages are comparable, are other costs of employment, such as
> unemployment insurance, healthcare, pay roll tax comparable?

At ~23.5% Chinese social insurance (medical, trauma and serious illness,
pension, housing fund, maternity, unemployment) costs more to employer than in
US, at least in Guangdong province.

This is why I was saying that guessing purely on numbers, lower cost of
capital, external risks, taxes, social payments, and somewhat lower wages, USA
should be a better place for manufacturing than China

------
quxbar
What's that? UBI?

------
vinniejames
Opportunity is created, not found

------
boyadjian
The talent, was originally a unity of mass and money of Antiquity, so people
who have talent, means people who have money.

~~~
inimino
> talent (n.)

> late 13c., "inclination, disposition, will, desire," from Old French talent
> (12c.), from Medieval Latin talenta, plural of talentum "inclination,
> leaning, will, desire" (11c.), in classical Latin "balance, weight; sum of
> money," from Greek talanton "a balance, pair of scales," hence "weight,
> definite weight, anything weighed," and in later times sum of money," from
> PIE *tele- "to lift, support, weigh," "with derivatives referring to
> measured weights and thence money and payment" [Watkins]; see extol.

So, no. But it's a neat folk etymology even if it isn't quite true.

~~~
southerndrift
Maybe I am missing some subtleties, but why is talent not money?

>The Homeric talent "as money" was probably the gold equivalent of the value
of an ox or a cow.[2] Based on a statement from a later Greek source that "the
talent of Homer was equal in amount to the later Daric [... i.e.] two Attic
drachmas" and analysis of finds from a Mycenaean grave-shaft, a weight of
about 8.4 gm can be established for this money talent.[2] The talent of gold
was known to Homer, who described how Achilles gave a half-talent of gold to
Antilochus as a prize.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talent_(measurement)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talent_\(measurement\))

~~~
inimino
It was a (rather heavy) weight, and only a unit "of money" by extension.

A Homeric talent was a unit of weight, hence the half-talent " _of gold_ " as
a prize. A talent of silver would weigh the same but have less value.

The Hebrew "talent" (kikar) was also a unit of weight.

The later Latin talentum borrowed the existing weight measure and the Greek
word τάλαντον and by the time of the parable of the talents, this word already
carried the rather heavy meaning of "58.9 kg." (from your link above).

So a talent in the modern metaphorical sense of "talented person" means a
person carrying a heavy weight, and a heavy responsibility. If a single talent
is almost 60 kg, imagine the unlucky person with five talents placed on them!
Perhaps it would be better to have a genius than to be talented, though
neither one makes you rich.

> For the kingdom of heaven is as a man travelling into a far country, who
> called his own servants, and delivered unto them his goods. And unto one he
> gave five talents, to another two, and to another one; to every man
> according to his several ability; and straightway took his journey.

The only thing we can say with confidence about these "goods" is that they
were heavy, and not necessarily something you want... especially if they are
to be repaid "with usury" at some future undisclosed time of reckoning, as in
the story!

~~~
southerndrift
>The only thing we can say with confidence about these "goods" is that they
were heavy, and not necessarily something you want... especially if they are
to be repaid "with usury" at some future undisclosed time of reckoning, as in
the story!

But having talents, isn't that essence of being human? Having talents and
using them? Who are we if we fear having talents?

~~~
inimino
Sure! But just because we don't fear something doesn't mean we necessarily
_want_ it. It's courageous to not be afraid of something you don't want.

------
threeisoneis
Once again, an article related to utilitarian altruism that doesn't seem to
draw a defensible conclusion from the arguments given. This particular type of
article, and the works of the effective altruism movement more broadly, always
creep up to the edge of demanding meaningful change but, in their conclusions,
shrink away from it.

They make the case that the world has a lot of issues, that a lot of people
have bad lives and that those people should have better lives, and that "we
need to do what is possible to allow everyone to live a life free of poverty,
free of hunger, and free of premature death".

But from there, the path they lay out, and advocate for, is one of continued
oligarchy. After saying that we need to eliminate poverty, hunger, and
premature death, they advocate for "[continuing] the positive developments of
the last decades with more children surviving, more children growing up free
of the worst poverty, and more children being better educated than ever
before. If I am optimistic about the future of the world and progress against
the world’s problems it is because of this."

But what if you don't agree? And how could you? While some thing seem to be
getting better (by some indicators only) global inequality continues to
increase, and the inequality in developed economies is obscene. The climate
and environment are destroyed more rapidly than ever in a continual quest for
infinite growth. The solution proposed to the horrors of our present world, of
improvement by creating more capitalism, is absurd. Capitalism is functioning
as it must. It's not capitalism's fault as an ideology - it was designed to be
this way.

The world being advocated by these altruistic technocrats is no better than
our own: if we lived in their utopia, we'd be at the mercy of our 'betters'
who would still form a separate class above the rest of society. The
suggestions for how to give back are also laughable. Donating your time or
money individually while doing nothing to challenge the system won't change
anything. It is through radical societal change, radical democracy, that a new
and better world can be achieved.

Neoliberals like this often feel the need to impress upon everyone that at
least the floor is being raised - the amount of people in extreme poverty has
gone down (by some metric) or the amount of people dying of disease has been
reduced. But the real path to liberation isn't the gradual improvement of the
bottom while the top gets fatter and richer and more powerful. The real
solution is revolution. Take the table, take the world, break free from this
failed system.

What can you do, then, if you're not going to nobly work at a hedge-fund and
selflessly donate some of your salary to cure malaria? Advocate for the real
change you want to see in the world. If you want to end climate change, start
going to the climate strikes. If you want a better life you workers at low
incomes, show them solidarity when they strike. If your boss uses your open
source library for an ICE contract, delete the code. When the world begins to
shift, and everyone looks around and wonders why everything is so wrong, don't
use data to insist that everything is good, actually. Embrace the knowledge
that something is wrong! Something is wrong! And the world is fucked if it
doesn't change. Don't let incrementalists like Max fool you into thinking
otherwise.

~~~
aisengard
> The real solution is revolution. Take the table, take the world, break free
> from this failed system.

Ah yes, violent revolution, where the lower class gets killed en masse (a
"noble sacrifice") and autocracy takes even greater hold as a result. The
wheels of the revolution larpers are always greased with the blood of the
downtrodden.

~~~
threeisoneis
I didn't advocate violence once. I did advocate democracy. I did advocate
solidarity. I did advocate protest.

Revolution is not always violent and in fact is often not violent. Your
reading of my comment as advocating violence is just your own projection.

~~~
jodrellblank
There is no way to switch off oil dependency right now without many people
dying as a consequence. Climate change protest encouraging regulatory and
subsidy movements towards renewables doesn’t _sound_ like revolution and
tearing down anything.

------
ryanmarsh
Opportunity is often missed because it looks like work.

~~~
Frost1x
The availability of opportunity itself has diminished. Fewer and fewer
opportunities are made available by those who hold the keys to the gates.
Often, when one of the now fewer gates to opportunity open, much less is
offered inside than was historically there and the risks to benefits to open
those doors is increasing across the board.

I'd say it's too simplistic to imply people don't seek opportunity because it
requires work, it's more to do with the fact the success rates are so low and
the magnitude of work is so high now compared historically that most would
rather seek other ways to add enjoyment to their lives and abandon the system.

That's not sustainable for our society to continue to be successful and it has
to change back to more sane thresholds. Implying people are lazy is a copout
to the real problem.

~~~
lopmotr
Older opportunities only looked easy because they'd be easy for us in our more
powerful position of knowledge and resources. It wasn't easy for an uneducated
medieval peasant to discover the laws of electromagnetism. Even the most
advantaged people didn't know what to look for. Plenty of failures happened in
alchemy/witchcraft/religion/etc. that people dedicated their lives to for
nothing because they didn't have our advantage of knowledge.

~~~
bsanr2
Most of the people making those discoveries were people of means, though (or
at least adjacent to, but not competing with, them).

