What's far better are things like the GI Bill, which turned WWII soldiers who (based on their high-school performance) would have been laborers into NASA engineers [1].
And it's still doing that. My anecdote: a relative who did poorly in primary school, but in the last 5 years has gone from enlisted service people to college educated engineer on the GI Bill.
Genius grants are great (the MacArthur Fellowship funded the deciphering of the Maya Writing system [2]), but should be handled by private philanthropy, which has plenty of money these days to support the 140 IQ+ talent.
I can't speak highly enough of the GI Bill providing this little bit of extra resource to those motivated enough to use it. Like the gentleman in the article you linked, I was applying for electrician jobs as my enlistment neared an end. The fact that the Post 9/11 GI Bill covered tuition plus enough allowance that my wife and I could pay rent means I'm now enjoying a career in engineering and passing that love of learning on to my children. Truly a Godsend in my opinion.
Perhaps you are using "Godsend" rhetorically, but it was hotly debated and even opposed by members of Congress who felt that the class of people who physically fought the war had no place in institutions of higher education [1].
Some members of congress opposed it on the grounds that it could in theory help African Americans:
"On March 24, the Senate passed the G.I. Bill unanimously, but the House continued to debate the unemployment and education provisions for another two months. Rankin, chair of the House veterans committee, had evolved into one of its sharpest critics. An unrepentant segregationist, he worried that African-American veterans would use the benefits to avoid work and live off the government. Rankin also didn’t see the need to give African Americans the same benefits as whites." [2]
In the end, ways were found to exclude African Americans from the benefit even after the bill passed [3]. The generational knock-on effects of that are well documented.
But the tremendous value added to the economy because of government support (however unequal) of regular "non-genius" people is pretty well demonstrated by the successes of the GI Bill.
Not much. Perhaps more than your worst imagination might conjure but not much better than that.
The US military budget is a back door for all sorts of social programs with really twisted incentives (twist may vary by program, GI Bill being among the most harmless). Because the social programs are buried in a military budget, the extent to which those programs are inclusive of those on the receiving end depends largely on the size of the receiving end (e.g. was military action taken?) and the extent to which the people on the receiving end deserve any consideration at all (e.g. language around accommodating victims of war will likely be more effective than no language around accommodating customers of weapons conducting their own wars).
By and large, neither extreme is especially beneficial to those on the receiving end of being outside our borders, unless we have a fairly lax immigration posture… which, is a laughable concept at this point. And the concept of burying social programs in a military budget laughs right along with that.
I think it’s deserving of the term ironic to point out that other historical examples of programs which work this way are largely prefixed “Soviet”, or at least were aligned that way.
Citation needed. The US invading countries like Iraq is similar to Russia invading Ukraine in net results for Europe - influx of refugees, higher oil/gas and thus everything prices.
The entire European welfare state is dependent on the fact that they don't pay to maintain trade routes internationally—the US does that for them. The huge influx of refugees came a decade after Afghanistan and Iraq, due to US, Russian, Turkish (AND EUROPEAN) meddling in MENA.
That must be fantastic news to the millions dead and tens of millions displaced by our fun ventures in the Middle East, the democracies destroyed in South America, and the countless millions suffering from proxy wars fueled with US arms.
You probably know that what the US fought for in WWII was very different for what they fought for in Iraq.
Defeating the Nazis was just and invading Iraq was unjust, but we should not differentiate how we treat those whom we sent to do the fighting, as long has they have served honorably.
I feel like this comment and a lot of other comments deal with a repulsion to this not being a very egalitarian idea, to the point of maybe missing the forest for the trees. The GI bill is awesome and lead/leads to upward mobility that can benefit all. It’s an egalitarian program available to everyone. That’s fantastic and a good thing that we have done.
Other programs like universal income could also be egalitarian and lift all boats, and might be fantastic or a horror show, depending on your stance on motivation and it’s relation to money.
A universal income for geniuses would not be egalitarian but could provide outsized benefits for its cost to society. If the government (us, collectively) own the results and IP, it might pay for itself / run a profit. If it expanded human knowledge faster than without it, it could provide a sort of compounding effect to how fast our societies advance.
I don’t know that these things would happen but they could, which seems worth exploring rather than discarding immediately due to historically-rooted moral systems.
> It’s an egalitarian program available to everyone
Is it available to everyone if it needs the beneficiary to have enlisted in the US armed forces? It excludes those that won't be accepted (based on physical attributes) and those that wouldn't want to spend a few years oversees killing people.
Absolutely. African Americans were excluded from its benefits by a viciously racist society. We should rectify that today.
But it doesn't detract at all from the fact that investment in regular "non-genius" people (whether via the GI Bill or otherwise) had a fundamentally positive impact on the society.
...then follows it with complete dismissal of their opportunity cost and our loss of their productivity. Which is what I addressed, because it undermined what seemed to be an otherwise decent statement.
1. We should correct the wrongs that we have inflicted upon African-Americans in the past, including opportunity costs.
2. We should also recognize that making an investment in all people is a net benefit for our society
I don't know how to make it any clearer than that.
The disparity of benefits provided by the GI bill yielded exactly a modern racial disparity. I think you and OP are on the short side of explaining why such an overtly racist event can be described as a net benefit. The sentiment that you believe it should be better does have any weight in this context.
You've just pointing out that 1940s America suffered from very notable racism. It's not a very surprising statement, nor was it unique to the GI bill.
Racial bias being intentional or not, the ideas of the GI bill seem like they would have worked even if they weren't targeting certain classes of people, making the idea of the bill good. That's the interesting conversation.
No, I'm pointing out that when we collectively try to help just one class of people it turns into a predictable shitshow. It's not unique to the GI bill but it is absolutely a valid criticism.
There's an old saying: if you're so smart, why are you so poor?
This sound like a call to bring back aristocracy. Meritocracy rewards actual contribution as opposed to potential contribution. Even if your IQ is 160, if what you contribute to society has minimal tangible benefit, maybe you shouldn't be given a mansion and butler.
Not to mention the practical problems of who decides who and what constitutes genius and who pays for the patronage.
The benefits of fundamental research are apparent to me. And I would also argue that much fundamental research does have obvious tangible benefits with organizations already in place to pursue them. Take Bell Labs as just one example. My claim is that we already have mechanisms - imperfect as they are - to compensate those who wish perform it. Imposing a new layer of bureaucracy to decide who is worthy and who is not of receiving public money seems, at best, wasteful and highly to open to abuse.
I disagree the premise of the article - It seems to me that more individuals than ever who choose to devote their careers to basic research are able to do so while also living a comfortable lifestyle.
> Meritocracy rewards actual contribution as opposed to potential contribution.
the word "meritocracy" has an interesting backstory that you might find interesting (tl;dr the creator of the word intended for it to be used as satire). relevant link: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2001/jun/29/comment
The idea that people need patrons is patronizing at best. If you're really a genius you'll have an employer...until you don't need one any more.
There are plenty of private endowments that recognize genius if you really feel too good to have a job. The idea that these should I stead be funded by taxpayers misses rhe forest for the trees.
Yes, that's kind of the point isn't it. It's a sad reality that the world's brightest minds have to help people with capital earn more capital (or go to some big tech company design the latest dystopian surveillance algorithm or whatever), or refuse and stay destitute.
I agree. how much money should it be. 100k/year that should be enough for most areas or only expensive areas. but would this be for all math or physics degrees or just by IQ?
It is quite a narrow discussion, all focused around this notion of letting them live anywhere.
But to me it is simple. The genius probably doesn't want to live in London per-se. They want to mingle with other geniuses. So they want to be near the best universities so they are contunially interacting with the best when they want to. But also having private spaces to think.
Really they just need a decent serviced appartment on university grounds, or in housing nearby.
Which is something the government will probably already own or could build.
Yes, that is indeed what it is _right now_. But in Europe in the 1100s farming meant producing food for your Lord, and in Italy in the 100s meant producing food for your slavemaster. But then history happened and things evolved. In our future they will evolve still.
There is little wrong with it, but it's an uncontroversial fact that human intelligence peaks around 22 and what remains after it is a slow decline, ameliorated by amassing more crystallized knowledge.
Hardest fields require this extreme raw intelligence, thus even capable people have only their 20s to produce their most groundbreaking work.
It would be cool if human aging weren't structured like this, but if this is a problem with a solution at all, a solution still needs someone extremely talented in their 20s to work on it for a few years.
Compared to the upside, I think that providing UBI to such people should be a non-issue.
This makes the assumption that “raw intelligence” is all that’s required to push at the edge of “hardest fields”
This is simply not true. Some fields require learning 10-20 years of domain knowledge before one can push at the edge. Another factor is discipline, often the young are impatient, and lack the rigour and discipline required to execute.
I think that the large leaps made by the young are through fresh ideas made from new perspectives, their minds unburdened with legacy methods.
I’m not arguing that human intelligence peaks at young adulthood, I’m arguing that contributing to “hardest fields” is NOT simply a factor of raw intelligence like your answer assumes.
Assuming that the skill, creativity, & genius that this world ought to be supporting lines up at all with the same things that would make someone successful at a hedge fund seems wildly off target to me.
Ha, as if people in America don't hate the intelligent enough already. Forget it!
The tech is there for basic income for all. The resources are there. They've been there for a long time.
What's holding us back is that the powerful LIKE US SCRAPING BY. Billionaires pay millionaires to convince the dumbest of us not to help people too much.
"We are not going to be able to operate our Spaceship Earth successfully nor for much longer unless we see it as a whole spaceship and our fate as common. It has to be everybody or nobody." - Bucky Fuller
"This crippling of individuals I consider the worst evil of capitalism. Our whole educational system suffers from this evil. An exaggerated competitive attitude is inculcated into the student, who is trained to worship acquisitive success as a preparation for his future career." - Einstein
Buckminster Fuller was a certified genius. So was Einstein. MLK, James Connolly, Helen Keller, Bertrand Russell, and many others said similar things - not that you'd hear much about that side of them in school. They supported the idea that we ought to make things better for HUMANS, for the planet, for all beings.
To try and sum up - I don't think any genius worth the title would want to be part of an elite class, while their so-called less worthy brethren can't afford school lunches, or are getting bombed by genius-made weapons.
Basic income - yes, let's do it. Basic income only for people who will feed the beast - fuck off.
I single out America because we are hurting the world the most (according to most global opinion since 2001), and because we have the most severe anti-intellectual streak (for like the last hundred years at least).
Still, even in Europe, the idea of separating potential "cream" from mere worker drones ought to make the hair rise on the back of your neck.
Again - basic income is very cool. Supporting talent is very cool. But let's not pretend that there wouldn't be huge resentment from something like the OP's proposal, everywhere and not just the US.
To address the concept of UBI up front, I'm not a fan of it. I could get into the philosophical arguments of it but tugging heartstrings is one of the first signs of a failed argument (name calling is a close second). However, I will also say that I don't see any other way to deal with the kind of job disruption we're going to see as a nation over the next 15 years with AI tech progressing. Anyone who wants to argue against roughly 40% of the country getting a UBI for 5 years or so along with new job field training hasn't thought through what roughly 150 million armed and broke Americans can lead to.
FY2019 the US saw a tax revenue of $3.46 trillion in total tax monies, with right at half of that coming from income taxes at $1.72 trillion. Meaning, taxation for UBI would be a tax increase of $350 billion on top of current income taxes if you wanted to pay every single American a $1k monthly UBI. Last census showed 20% (ok, actually 19% but rounding up to keep numbers simple) of Americans do not pay payroll taxes (this is why I did not count FICA taxes with the $1.72 income tax number, because when I say 20% I mean 20%. So I excluded people who pay FICA, have an SSI exemption, income to low, ect)) so that means the base population numbre of 350 million I used now is 280 million total Americans (and we both know that a quick glance at the current U6 number on an unemployment chart will crush the pipe dream of 280 million Americans having jobs and paying federal taxes. So now we're talking some serious tax increases. And I think a lot of people might be shocked at how many people with two UBI checks coming into their household would consider that retirement money....adding even more tax burden to the rest.
I know some people like to blame Trump, some Biden, and some point to Obama....but we've been trying the free money experiment since the Great Recession with those first moves Bush made and every President has followed since. The Federal Reserve slammed rates to zero and kept them there because there has never been an economic recovery. Which is why the Fed has also artificially supported several private markets (don't even get me started on the Federal Reserve's trading desk when they want to buy a crap ton of stocks or bonds to stop a market slide when it starts getting around +1,000 or more.), and all it's achieved is giving us terrifyingly large asset bubbles and even more scary debt bubbles. Without getting off into a novel on the topic, quite simply, the answer is no....we do not have the resources available to hand out UBI. I've heard some advocate the logic of it's fine since we can print as much money as we need. People who say this simply don't understand how the US economy and the Federal Reserve work as for every single USD that is created...there is also debt created via the interest owed on that one dollar. This is why anyone who says they can pay the debt off or not add to it is either lying or selling something. The literal only way to address the US's debt (both public as well as Unfunded Liabilities....which total $170 trillion in debt just counting Medicare and SSI) is liquidation. Sure, we could "tell" the Fed no more interest and to waive all interest owed it....but that would make the USD toilet paper globally. And if that ever happens that the world views the dollar as useless then we'll see a crash on the scale of Mad Max stuff like doom prophets on youtube always swear is happening in 5 hours.
If someone is single and needs help, you can't beat the military (I joined the Army for this precise reason) for food, clothing, shelter, income, insurance, ect. That's where I got a lot of my college education for free, but if single there are way to many grants to not be able to do a few night classes a week since there are no wife or kids at home waiting on you. If you have a family as I did (wife and two toddlers) it was even better as the Army gave us free housing and extra money for groceries and my family enjoyed my benefits. As far as the intellect argument....we live in the age of the autodidact thanks to the internet. Anyone that can't be bothered to take half an hour a day to educate themselves doesn't want or need help. I left my job in automation right after the recession and since all that had happened I decided to learn how the economy works, how the dollar works, what the Fed is and how it works, how it applies geo-politically, ect. It's why nowadays I sit at home in my boxers and trade the markets while also having a second portfolio that is more passive and functions best if left alone.
BI is affordable. Top economists have done the numbers. The people telling you we can't afford it are millionaires hired by billionaires to keep the status quo going. The top tax bracket is currently 35% - and very few actually pay anything like that. Tax the rich.
The argument that people would stop working and being productive if not under the threat of starvation has been debunked over and over and over again. The people telling you the threat of death is necessary for the economy are millionaires hired by billionaires to keep the status quo going.
Most of the "free money" America gives out is to the extraordinarily wealthy. Billionaires getting tax breaks, paying virtually nothing or even getting their money back. This is while children are going hungry, and millions are suffering from simple and treatable conditions. You speak candidly of people being forced to join the military for a chance at a better life, but it doesn't seem to all quite connect and join up in your worldview.
There are very few countries where is it seen as normal to have to join the military for "food, clothing, shelter, income, insurance, etc". And no other country's military is nearly so "active" and well funded. It cannot be overstated just how stunning the difference is between how the US perceives our military's actions, and how the rest of the world sees them. The reason for that - once again - is that millionaires are hired by billionaires to create that false narrative.
> ...we live in the age of the autodidact thanks to the internet. Anyone that can't be bothered to take half an hour a day to educate themselves doesn't want or need help. I left my job in automation right after the recession and since all that had happened I decided to learn how the economy works, how the dollar works, what the Fed is and how it works, how it applies geo-politically, ect. It's why nowadays I sit at home in my boxers and trade the markets while also having a second portfolio that is more passive and functions best if left alone.
Is this a blunt parody of privilege? Am I getting Poe's Law-ed? I'm glad you're alright, Jack, but telling society to just join the Army and use the internet to beat the market in their boxers strikes me as staggeringly callous and disconnected. Please, please tell me that was humor.
It won't work:
Left doesn't acknowledge the benefits of meritocracy.
Right is anti-intellectual and suspicious of progress.
There is no social movement supporting intellectual achievement:
the public is focused on cheap infotainment and sensationalist science
that is 'group-activity' such as "scientists from X find Y, due being funded for Z". Lone genius/inventor doesn't have such appeal as 'Big Science', which is actually collectivist mediocrity rewarding social climbers and salesmen:
Academic science has to justify itself financially and 'discoveries' are usually coming from the above(Y found but funded for Z).
In the past the idea of scientific progress was understood as necessarily, but today the status quo is more comfortable
the word "meritocracy" has an interesting backstory that you might find interesting (tl;dr the creator of the word intended for it to be used as satire). relevant link: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2001/jun/29/comment
How do you qualify a genius? We know IQ is biased and not a good measure. And you could just grind the tests like people grind leetcode and look like they know how to code...
Sure, you're just getting started, I can think of many more problems. I just kind of think it speaks to how little the author has thought about the problem? As in, "you're really not describing a remotely new idea, and consequently have clearly also not thought about the drawbacks, either."
There is a lot of research on this, and one of the largest results [1][2] shows that this association of IQ and societal contributions is robust even at the far end of the spectrum, with top quartile of already very bright SMPY cohort exceeding expectations.
Instead of plain FUD and denial of this inequality, we should develop sophisticated means of cognitive enhancement and make these available to all.
These links show the correlation between high IQ and reaching positions of power and influence. Have we established that having higher-IQ people in those positions leads to better societal outcomes?
In this discussion and in SMPY study political power is besides the point. It's the amount of quantifiable social contributions: patents and PhD theses that's interesting, and the association is obvious.
Some of the societal outcomes could be explained with elite IQ distribution as per "Smart fraction theory" though.
Ironically, the mathematician moving from a rented flat to a house would result in more irrelevant work. Home ownership consumes so much free time on petty tasks that become huge problems if you dont
Maybe it’s just me and all my friends but: when things break, pests, foundation issues, plumbing issues, door issues, lock issues, appliance issues, mold… you have to do it yourself or research & get quotes for it. Big hassel
When I rented I had one phone number to call and they had to deal with it.
What about not and just make life better for everyone?
> In a sane world, Hairer would long ago have been given a healthy grant or a generous basic income, as well as a majestic set of lodgings wherever he so desired.
Research in the US is slow because there is no money to be made from knowing how much head size affects intelligence and because we know that education, which can be monetized, has far greater effect anyway. Your political correctness bogeyman is not the source of the world's ills.
> because we know that education, which can be monetized, has far greater effect anyway
Does it, though? No matter how hard scientists try (and do they try...), they cannot prove that education causally drives increase in fluid intelligence (g). At best it's crystallized intelligence, which is not the same.
The research paints a different reality: education is about sorting, networking and acquiring crystallized knowledge.
If one really seeks to find a way to raise g, one has to search elsewhere.
Just as a null result in Swedes[1] and Danes[2] demonstrates there is no effect, at least at the level of highschool.
But even if we step away from the beaten question of pre-uni education ROI and study the real and measured Flynn effect, we can sadly conclude that it is mostly (at least after the 1950s) about so-called[3] hollow gains. The problem with these being that they do not generalize to most tests and low-level measures of g such as reaction time. It can be argued that "Flynn IQ" can be of at least some use[3], but even then, the effect is close to saturation[4] by now, and increases to the underlying g-factor would avoid the controversy altogether.
Historically, real & massive g-loaded IQ gains tended to occur when people for the first time ceased being nutrition- and sanitation- limited during their formative years. If we sidestep the question of IQ heritability, there are lesser-known potential ways[5] of increasing g in children. Clearly, this field could use much more money and human resources allocated to it, given the unquestionably valuable prosocial outcome it could deliver.
I'm all for methods to raise g, especially in healthy adults and not just in children to be born sometime in the future, but just pushing more education into anxious highschoolers (or mid-career adults, for that matter) isn't going to cut it. Some fundamental approach based on neuroscience of learning and memory[6] is sorely needed.
> Just as a null result in Swedes[1] and Danes[2] demonstrates there is no effect, at least at the level of highschool.
Why would that demonstrate there is no effect? No treatment -> no effect bolsters the case for education, as my example shows treatment -> effect. There was no change in education that would have led to large IQ increases during that period in those countries. There was in South Korea, and the effect on IQ was dramatic.
This could work, realistically, as a scheme to incentivize the geniuses to work on problems that matter. One incentive presented here is providing them with basic income to achieve their full potential.
This question is very deep and has wide implications. One thing is sure: without harnessing the natural talent of the human genius qualitative progress is impossible.
I think parent is arguing that everyone should be better off and everyone should get equal treatment. And may even be implying resources should be distributed equally....
To put it in mildly simple term, you are likely not in the same political spectrum as parent.
On the contrary, I think everyone should be able to achieve their full potential.
It's just that the shortest path to this is, likely, some sequence of Manhattan projects/X-PRIZEs culminating in a set of technologies and knowledge that could be used to uplift any consenting person and support automated labor to provide for our needs.
You cannot get to the moon by piling up equally sized chairs.
There is an interesting group of people that when you say stuff like “things could be better”, they are conditioned to instantly conclude “This is literally Mao Zedong talking to me right now, I must act swiftly to stop this dangerous ideology from spreading.”
They’re both suggesting that the government use public money to subsidize people’s daily lives. The main difference is one person is advocating for the government to administer intelligence tests and collect data around that.
One is suggesting everyone should be treated equally, and not specially "genius", what ever that definition might be. The other is suggesting there are people with higher potential where this may be worth the effort.
I still don’t get how “Give everybody free money” and “Give a subset of ‘worthy’ people as determined by a government agency free money” are that different.
They’re both kind of bog standard socialist/communist ideas, just one has the self-dealing and nepotistic downsides to these ideologies explicitly baked into it by design.
Edit: It’s kind of like arguing “feeding everybody is communism! Feeding everybody that is approved as officially My Buddies is Good Capitalism!”
We’re discussing two different scenarios in which the government collects taxes and distributes that money to people without them being employed in any way.
> What about not and just make life better for everyone?
Well, that would cost thousands to millions of times more.
I know that's a gauche point to make in contemporary America, where we don't have any concept of the difference between a program costing a million dollars and a quadrillion dollars, but I think it might be relevant here?
To prioritize people with mental health issues, disabilities, people excluded from society, etc. makes everybody better off. That seems the best investment.
I'm sure that there are a lot of smart engineers here and they are doing fine.
It's like giving free stylist to the most beautiful people, it seems a waste.
It also seems a way of gatekeeping universal income.
And does society really have a say in this decision process? Because it is pretty obvious that the ones deciding society-wide investment priorities are, for a lack of better word, the elites.
As fellow HNer noticed in today's thread https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32120063 elites are very much used to having precise control over their environment, and known&unknown unknowns irritate them.
From this POV natural geniuses are just such an instance of a hard to control variable, and so it's obvious that prioritization of geniuses would pose a problem to the elites. Who knows when a popular genius will decide to amass the political power and change the power balance?
It seems that the current packaging of the brightest into the ivory tower of the academia is a compromise, where one side gets a certain amount of income and freedom, in return for giving away broader ambition.
We live in an anti-intellectual society. I doubt geniuses will ever be given the proper resources they deserve to make powerful contributions in this world. Seems like beautiful people are the only real priority in this world. People will bend over backwards to just give you things if you are attractive, especially if you are female as well
You’re exactly right —- the genius grant would be scrapped right after they got their list of the top 100 IQ individuals and realized the makeup is quite “problematic”.
Wouldn't it be great if some smart, driven, altruistic people used a small ratio of our tax money to create something qualitatively new, with a potential of providing a better future to all of us?
However, tptb want us in the dirt. There's no other way to explain the legislative choices of the last 50 years.
And many - most, if not all - of the paths to creating a better future would fuck with their business. They pay very competent people in diverse fields to deal with such "threats" to their way of life.
And we tolerate it, because 50% are caught up in the faux wrestling match that is American politics and the other 50% have no representation outside like 6 Democrats, some tiny independent media, and a handful of ethical businesses.
And it's still doing that. My anecdote: a relative who did poorly in primary school, but in the last 5 years has gone from enlisted service people to college educated engineer on the GI Bill.
Genius grants are great (the MacArthur Fellowship funded the deciphering of the Maya Writing system [2]), but should be handled by private philanthropy, which has plenty of money these days to support the 140 IQ+ talent.
1. https://www.legion.org/magazine/242265/gi-bill-outer-space
2. https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/mayacode/about.html