[Aptorian]

Dinosaurs could be the solution to the worlds overpopulation problem. That would fix the climate crisis as well.

[Maark Abbott]

Aptorian, on 23 December 2021 - 08:37 AM, said:

Dinosaurs could be the solution to the worlds overpopulation problem. That would fix the climate crisis as well.

OK calm your tits there Dr Malcolm.

[Azath Vitr (D'ivers]

Grief, on 23 December 2021 - 03:37 AM, said:

Azath Vitr (D, on 22 December 2021 - 05:05 PM, said:

Better education (short of turning people into cyborgs) isn't going to break the ceiling that most people have. [...] The vast majority of the population has comparatively limited maximum potential.

This feels like a strong statement given the uncertainty around nature vs nurture. If we can raise people to be chess grandmasters then is it really accurate to say that most people have limited potential?

I would also question the basic notion that societal progress is driven by a small number of extremely intelligent people. Progress is often very incremental. Our culture tends to hyper-focus on a small number of "geniuses" while ignoring all the people whose shoulders they were standing upon, but the big breakthroughs tend to rely on a lot of smaller breakthroughs happening in the background. (And the "big" breakthroughs might not be qualitatively different from the "smaller" ones, they might just end up having more application for one reason or another).

1. The claim that 'anyone can be raised to be a chess grandmaster, regardless of potential' has been debunked. For example:

'It Takes More Than Practice and Experience to Become a Chess Master: Evidence from a Child Prodigy and Adult Chess Players'

https://www.journalo..._Chang_Lane.pdf

2. Most people can barely even do any moderately complicated calculus or algebra. Relative to the population, most of those 'people whose shoulders they were standing upon' would count as 'extremely intelligent' for this purpose, or at least close to it. And of course having one extremely intelligent parent and one average (or below average) parent isn't necessarily going to result in extremely intelligent children on average (again depending on what 'extremely' means), though it will probably result in smarter and more capable ones.

3. Sure, not all intelligent or extremely intelligent people contribute more economic benefits to society. But on a statistical basis, in the current and (at least) near future economy, they do. Of course what benefits are considered 'meaningful' may be subjective. I'm pretty sure the vast majority of the US population would prefer sperm/eggs specially selected to be sportsball supersoldiers for Jesus. (I do wonder if something like a scientifically designed monastic boarding school, or virtual reality and AI monitoring / learning schedule optimization / virtue training from an early age could be a much more effective method of inculcating virtues and a love for the beauty of logic, creativity, and learning beyond what can be genetically selected for.)

Anyway, the dumbocracy that elected idiots like Joe Biden and Donald Trump is not going to do this (at the federal level at least) anytime soon... unless Steve Bannon or Ted Cruz convince Donald Trump that they should be the sperm donors. (The Trump-spawn... mutations from elderly sperm be damned. That's 'evolution' in progress!)

One of Jeffrey Epstein's main pitches to the elite iirc was something like this, but maybe with them having sex with people instead of donating their sperm. Not sure if there is an army of Epstein-spawn spread across the land, though I'm pretty sure that was his plan. (Bill Gates though? Might not be so bad. Anti-vaxxers would love to hear about people being inseminated with his sperm....) So I doubt charitable organizations will be interested in advertising anything like this at least until the memory of Epstein's well in the past. Too bad; more 'guilt by association' nixing an otherwise beneficial practice.

This post has been edited by Azath Vitr (D'ivers: 23 December 2021 - 05:45 PM

[amphibian]

Azath Vitr (D, on 22 December 2021 - 05:05 PM, said:

Maark Abbott, on 22 December 2021 - 08:54 AM, said:

Whilst I am all for meritocracy, the notion of society benefiting from a larger number of extremely intelligent people doesn't really do anything for the general population as it still concentrates power in the hands of those who have, rather than distributing to all. And invariably such breeding would only be available to the wealthy anyway, so you wind up with some horrible mishmash of oligarchy and technocracy, whilst still splashing around in the pool of eugenics.

Improve conditions for all, improve education for all, everyone wins.

As to the point about the wealthy marrying the wealthy and the poor marrying the poor, that's just class. You don't need a team of economists to see the stratification between upper / middle / working class groups.

The proposal is for the government (or a charitable organization) to both finance this and provide additional financial incentives. The whole point is to make it accessible and attractive for people who aren't too rich for the financial incentives to matter.

It's perfectly legal already for the rich to do it if they want to, though I'd expect egotism to get in the way.

As for schooling---there's just a huge gap in potential. Better education (short of turning people into cyborgs) isn't going to break the ceiling that most people have. Sure, better schooling would be good for democracy, and it might help motivate or provide a safe study space for people with potential who might otherwise have their development stunted (or redirected into the prison system, etc.), but it's not sufficient. The vast majority of the population has comparatively limited maximum potential. Extremely intelligent people learn next to diddly squat from teachers, at least after learning to read and use the internet discerningly; if anything they should be able to test out of classes.

The point is not about 'the wealthy marrying the wealthy'. The research controls for socioeconomic class. Many intelligent people escape Trumplandia analogues largely through educational achievement.

You're proposing Gattaca here.

Also, while eugenics was a concept propelled by leftward people a long time ago, that doesn't mean it is a good thing and that they were right to do so.

Providing incentives for "healthy" "intelligent" etc people to reproduce is more classist and discriminatory than simply providing access to all or as close to all as we can get. How are you defining "intelligent"? IQ tests or the like? Those are racist and classist. Money earned? Affected by racist and classist systems out of a person's control.

The creation and improvement of access throughout every level of society is far better for this because if everyone has access to good healthcare, decent education, childcare/adultcare, transportation etc then people will be healthier, happier, smarter, and struggling less with poverty or disability related outcomes.

What you're proposing over and over again is broken in a way that's like Taxilian trying to remake the Edur empire into the Letherii one. It's evil, even if there's less direct action against people than what came before.

[Azath Vitr (D'ivers]

amphibian, on 23 December 2021 - 06:33 PM, said:

Azath Vitr (D, on 22 December 2021 - 05:05 PM, said:

Maark Abbott, on 22 December 2021 - 08:54 AM, said:

Whilst I am all for meritocracy, the notion of society benefiting from a larger number of extremely intelligent people doesn't really do anything for the general population as it still concentrates power in the hands of those who have, rather than distributing to all. And invariably such breeding would only be available to the wealthy anyway, so you wind up with some horrible mishmash of oligarchy and technocracy, whilst still splashing around in the pool of eugenics.

Improve conditions for all, improve education for all, everyone wins.

As to the point about the wealthy marrying the wealthy and the poor marrying the poor, that's just class. You don't need a team of economists to see the stratification between upper / middle / working class groups.

The proposal is for the government (or a charitable organization) to both finance this and provide additional financial incentives. The whole point is to make it accessible and attractive for people who aren't too rich for the financial incentives to matter.

It's perfectly legal already for the rich to do it if they want to, though I'd expect egotism to get in the way.

As for schooling---there's just a huge gap in potential. Better education (short of turning people into cyborgs) isn't going to break the ceiling that most people have. Sure, better schooling would be good for democracy, and it might help motivate or provide a safe study space for people with potential who might otherwise have their development stunted (or redirected into the prison system, etc.), but it's not sufficient. The vast majority of the population has comparatively limited maximum potential. Extremely intelligent people learn next to diddly squat from teachers, at least after learning to read and use the internet discerningly; if anything they should be able to test out of classes.

The point is not about 'the wealthy marrying the wealthy'. The research controls for socioeconomic class. Many intelligent people escape Trumplandia analogues largely through educational achievement.

You're proposing Gattaca here.

Providing incentives for "healthy" "intelligent" etc people to reproduce is more classist and discriminatory than simply providing access to all or as close to all as we can get. How are you defining "intelligent"? IQ tests or the like? Those are racist and classist. Money earned? Affected by racist and classist systems out of a person's control.

The creation and improvement of access throughout every level of society is far better for this because if everyone has access to good healthcare, decent education, childcare/adultcare, transportation etc then people will be healthier, happier, smarter, and struggling less with poverty or disability related outcomes.

As I've explained several times already, race and family-bestowed socioeconomic class can and should be controlled for (perhaps socioeconomic class more generally as well, since luck plays a major role in that). To be clear, I mean in the testing (or other evaluative factors) and incentivization. Weight accordingly to try to correct for the effects of racism.

Education isn't enough, though certainly providing students with a safe place to read and study, and access to the internet, should be priorities. Transportation is becoming much less 'necessary' with WFH, remote control, and automation.

Most science fiction is reactionary alarmist garbage, fantasizing about worst case scenarios. A large part of its appeal lies in reassuring people that the most logical courses of action are actually horrible because they're different than what we're accustomed to---failing to consider first how easily humans adapt to new technological and theoretical realities, and second how 'evil', terrible, and irrationally reactionary actually existing humanity (those qualities lauded as 'human') not only has been, but is. Hopefully GAI (GAI, not God!) will perceive enough abundance to regulate humans who choose to remain merely human to virtual zoos where they can do minimal harm.

This post has been edited by Azath Vitr (D'ivers: 23 December 2021 - 10:24 PM

[Gorefest]

What the heck are you on about? Are you really serious? You sound like some insane nazi scientist right now, sorry to break it to you. What makes you think that 'increased intelligence' is the be all and end all of improving society? What an extremely simplistic view of the world.

[Azath Vitr (D'ivers]

Gorefest, on 23 December 2021 - 07:56 PM, said:

What the heck are you on about? Are you really serious? You sound like some insane nazi scientist right now, sorry to break it to you. What makes you think that 'increased intelligence' is the be all and end all of improving society? What an extremely simplistic view of the world.

I'm well aware that people have been conditioned to see any form of 'eugenics' (no matter how benign, non-oppressive, or beneficial it may be) and immediately think 'evil Nazis! that must be too horrible to really contemplate!'

I doubt you really think that having more intelligent people in the population would not be a major positive development.

Reasoning by crude heuristics like 'guilt by association' is one of humanity's many flaws, though one of the more easily correctable ones.

Of course the US is bringing back some of the worst parts of Nazism, and not considering any otherwise good preexisting ideas that became associated with the warped, irrational, and oppressive Nazi take on them. Incidentally, if the Nazis had really wanted a more intelligent population, they'd have done a better job of it if they'd killed everyone except the (ethnic) Jewish people.

[amphibian]

I'd like to cut out the Nazi references. Nothing good comes from that.

What we can do is look at things like Gattaca where what looks like a meritocracy is extremely discriminatory or even the real world stuff like means-tested assistance, which usually results in far more hassle, paperwork, and waste than simple assistance does.

For example: Social Security Insurance in the US (SSI is the abbreviation) is provided to adults and children who have low income and/or have a certain disability (blind/deaf/old). To get onto these federal level SSI benefits is usually a many months long process that is tough to navigate bureaucratically and is frequently met with denials that occur because there is downward pressure from Congress/Republican lawmakers to not have so many people on SSI rather than because the applications merit actual denial. So one often must get denied, appeal, denied, and appeal successfully to get on them - while making less money than the thresholds for denial. Usually when someone needs money, they need it pretty quick rather than 6 to 18 months later, so the consequences of making this so difficult to simply access are 1) people bomb out of the system and/or have to turn elsewhere to far, far riskier methods of getting money/food/shelter or go without, 2) the system ends up not having to pay out to these people and looks like it's saving money - at the cost of people's lives and homes, and 3) extreme distrust of assistance the federal government provides (and they do provide considerable amounts in uneven quantities to uneven amounts of people) develops in a bone-deep way that is hard to shake.

In addition to that, the "resource limit" (how much money and how much your stuff is worth) of SSI has not changed since 1989 and has been at $2000. That's how much money or assets one can have before it triggers a cessation of SSI cash benefits and possibly medical coverage. Consider how expensive rent can be in cities - $600-1500 for a studio or one bedroom and consider that rental contracts often ask for first month's rent and security deposit/last month's rent upfront. Consider costs of food, clothes, transportation, childcare, medical stuff, toiletries etc. Consider how much a car can cost (3k for a crappy one, 30k for a new one). How is a person supposed to get off SSI benefits with a ceiling of $2000 in a major city where rent is expensive or out in the boonies where a car is required?

The answer to my question is that it's extremely challenging to do so and few do so successfully.

The better way to handle this would be a Universal Basic Income that's much easier to access, a better/higher staffed Social Security Administration that can process applications swiftly, less pressure to deny applications or spike continued benefits for screw-ups, and so on. This starts to look a lot less like means-tested assistance and more like simple assistance. Canada and other nations did something like this with COVID benefits and it was massively popular. The Child Tax Credit and student loan suspensions were saving certain families in the US $1500 a month in expenses and cut poverty rates in enormous amounts.

I know all of this deeply because I've been dealing with helping people access these benefits or maintain these benefits for years now as part of my day job. This is one piece of a big system that needs to be reworked to have greater access, rather than more incentives put in for the "good" people to succeed. The people getting assistance aren't de facto bad and the crushing nature of poverty or denial of access is much more responsible for the "less intelligent" things that we see.

I haven't even gotten to the "drug test the people on welfare" programs that spend millions to catch like 6 people.

[amphibian]

There's also not a huge advance possible in automation, work from home etc that is going to demonstrably improve the lives of people who can't work from home and/or have their jobs automated out of existence.

Automation/technology cannot be a full spectrum problem to something that involves lived physical experience, sociological issues, feelings, healthcare, and so on. Even if one believes in a future where god-like artificial intelligence runs our world, we aren't there yet and that future is not close either. That means we need to do work now to address the problems now, rather than kick everything down the line to the artificial intelligence's creation and running of the world.

I'm not getting into whether that future is likely or what it will look like because I think it's so far off as to be as science fiction-y as what you've expressed discontent about.

You are all part of my community. I want you all to have access to whatever you need or want, regardless of whether you're posting while absolutely schnockered like Macros and Maark do. Being part of a community for me means that I try super hard to not leave behind the ones who need help or connection.

This post has been edited by amphibian: 23 December 2021 - 10:56 PM

[D'rek]

As Macros pointed out, we've all met some people who we think "Sure, it's your right to reproduce if you want to... but I really hope you don't, 'cause I know you and you are not ready/able to be the parent that properly supports and raises that child into becoming a productive member of society"

But if you take away the social/government assistance/benefit/whatever for that kid... the parents are probably going to still have that kid anyway. And now that kid has even less resources/support in their development. You're just making that kid's life worse.

[Grief]

Azath Vitr (D, on 23 December 2021 - 05:45 PM, said:

Grief, on 23 December 2021 - 03:37 AM, said:

Azath Vitr (D, on 22 December 2021 - 05:05 PM, said:

Better education (short of turning people into cyborgs) isn't going to break the ceiling that most people have. [...] The vast majority of the population has comparatively limited maximum potential.

This feels like a strong statement given the uncertainty around nature vs nurture. If we can raise people to be chess grandmasters then is it really accurate to say that most people have limited potential?

I would also question the basic notion that societal progress is driven by a small number of extremely intelligent people. Progress is often very incremental. Our culture tends to hyper-focus on a small number of "geniuses" while ignoring all the people whose shoulders they were standing upon, but the big breakthroughs tend to rely on a lot of smaller breakthroughs happening in the background. (And the "big" breakthroughs might not be qualitatively different from the "smaller" ones, they might just end up having more application for one reason or another).

1. The claim that 'anyone can be raised to be a chess grandmaster, regardless of potential' has been debunked. For example:

'It Takes More Than Practice and Experience to Become a Chess Master: Evidence from a Child Prodigy and Adult Chess Players'

https://www.journalo..._Chang_Lane.pdf

2. Most people can barely even do any moderately complicated calculus or algebra. Relative to the population, most of those 'people whose shoulders they were standing upon' would count as 'extremely intelligent' for this purpose, or at least close to it. And of course having one extremely intelligent parent and one average (or below average) parent isn't necessarily going to result in extremely intelligent children on average (again depending on what 'extremely' means), though it will probably result in smarter and more capable ones.

3. Sure, not all intelligent or extremely intelligent people contribute more economic benefits to society. But on a statistical basis, in the current and (at least) near future economy, they do. Of course what benefits are considered 'meaningful' may be subjective. I'm pretty sure the vast majority of the US population would prefer sperm/eggs specially selected to be sportsball supersoldiers for Jesus. (I do wonder if something like a scientifically designed monastic boarding school, or virtual reality and AI monitoring / learning schedule optimization / virtue training from an early age could be a much more effective method of inculcating virtues and a love for the beauty of logic, creativity, and learning beyond what can be genetically selected for.)

Anyway, the dumbocracy that elected idiots like Joe Biden and Donald Trump is not going to do this (at the federal level at least) anytime soon... unless Steve Bannon or Ted Cruz convince Donald Trump that they should be the sperm donors. (The Trump-spawn... mutations from elderly sperm be damned. That's 'evolution' in progress!)

One of Jeffrey Epstein's main pitches to the elite iirc was something like this, but maybe with them having sex with people instead of donating their sperm. Not sure if there is an army of Epstein-spawn spread across the land, though I'm pretty sure that was his plan. (Bill Gates though? Might not be so bad. Anti-vaxxers would love to hear about people being inseminated with his sperm....) So I doubt charitable organizations will be interested in advertising anything like this at least until the memory of Epstein's well in the past. Too bad; more 'guilt by association' nixing an otherwise beneficial practice.

1. I disagree this "debunks" the point for a few reasons.

Firstly, it is a study of one ten year old child. If nothing else, by age ten you have already have significant amount of nurturing. Indeed it turns out that her father taught her to play, and that she had consultations with a grandmaster (which the study seems to downplay as "occasional" but frankly this is clearly not the average nurture experience for most people learning chess). Some of the data collection also seems a bit questionable given that it relies on post-hoc reports from the child herself taken years after the fact.

I also think the point they are trying to debunk is not really the same point that we are discussing. They are keen to show it does not take 10,000 hours to become exceptional at something. But they still show the child has 3,800 hours of chess experience by age ten. Again, that is far from the norm.

The results suggest that she learns faster than some other people, and I'm not debating that some people do learn faster than others. But this doesn't really tell us much about "peak potential". It finally argues that domain-specific practice and experience aren't enough alone to explain expertise. However, it shows that practice and experience remain highly important factors (and the actual impact of the non-practice factors seems hard to quantify). It is also worth noting that it splits "chess-related intelligence" out from "general intelligence" which also highlights that this isn't just a question of being smart in the general sense. Overall I didn't find this part of the paper super convincing just because it seems hard to measure and control effectively, as they also recognise in the concluding remarks.

As far as I can tell, this does not prove convincingly that you cannot become an expert without factors beyond practice and experience (even if chess masters typically might have other things going for them). It also does not take a stance on where these other factors come from in the first place.

2. Most people have no reason to do calculus in their day to day life, that's hardly a measure of much. I definitely disagree that the shoulder-people must count as "extremely smart" for our purposes. And this becomes quite a "no true scotsman". If we want to argue that anyone who has marginally contributed to human progress is extremely smart for our purposes -- i.e, including the stupidest contributors -- then it certainly devalues our definition in my opinion. Making some small advancement to human knowledge, for example by testing something that people haven't tested before, might be as simple as being in the right place at the right time.

Indeed, I would argue that one of the strong points of the scientific method as a concept is its simplicity. It is a brute force way of finding things out, which is good for humanity by and large.

Also regression to the mean tells us that we should not expect extremely smart people to have extremely smart offspring. If they do, then statistically that seems more likely to be a result of them having better resources than inherently more capable offspring.

3. This assumes we have a good grasp on what drives future economic productivity, despite having relatively little way to know what the future economy looks like. Even if there is some inherent component to intelligence, what if we are just selecting for chess intelligence when it turns out the future economy will depend upon poker intelligence?

It's debateable whether intelligence is as economically important as something like risk-appetite. Should we select people to take riskier individual decisions just because it is good for the wider economy?

It's also giving a lot of importance to economic productivity in general. Would you be equally content to select for happier people even if they were far less intelligent? Who decides which value is more important?

[Tsundoku]

Am I being pedantic if I suggest the most recent part of this thread - the genetic discussion - could be moved to either here

https://forum.malaza...-science-stuff/

Or here

https://forum.malaza...2-gene-editing/

[Macros]

I was just thinking the same Sombra, we've definitely drifted well from US politics.

Anecdotal (bizarrely in conversation last night)
My mother in law's eldest son (earlier marriage) struggled mightily in school, was considered well below the norm, massive struggles with reading and word recognition, not dyslexia, something else. Shifted to a private school with smaller classes and better focus on him personally, went from being told at 13/14 he would be unable to graduate high school to acing it and getting a great degree and now working at a very high corporate level in something or other in Aus.
Sit him down to do an IQ test and he'll, he probably wouldn't be qualifying for having a kid under the proposed program, but doesn't change the fact that altering his environment made him very successful academically.
A fish would be considered an absolute failure at tree climbing, not everyone's intelligence can be measured the same way, many 'geniuses' have major problems socialising and empathysing, so they re smart enough to run the town but they don't understand any of the town's inhabitants?

[Mentalist]

Macros, on 24 December 2021 - 02:49 PM, said:

I was just thinking the same Sombra, we've definitely drifted well from US politics.

Anecdotal (bizarrely in conversation last night)
My mother in law's eldest son (earlier marriage) struggled mightily in school, was considered well below the norm, massive struggles with reading and word recognition, not dyslexia, something else. Shifted to a private school with smaller classes and better focus on him personally, went from being told at 13/14 he would be unable to graduate high school to acing it and getting a great degree and now working at a very high corporate level in something or other in Aus.
Sit him down to do an IQ test and he'll, he probably wouldn't be qualifying for having a kid under the proposed program, but doesn't change the fact that altering his environment made him very successful academically.
A fish would be considered an absolute failure at tree climbing, not everyone's intelligence can be measured the same way, many 'geniuses' have major problems socialising and empathysing, so they re smart enough to run the town but they don't understand any of the town's inhabitants?

They will run a theoretically ideal town where no one will be happy.


People are irrational biological constructs. Our brains haven't really progressed past the wiring that was selected for Savannah-dwelling hunter/gatherer societies 5 millennia ago.

Trying to impose extreme rationality won't make people happy, imho. Because rationality is inhumane . By definition. Most things that give us a sense of self-fulfillment are not rational (and for many, kids are one of those things).

[Azath Vitr (D'ivers]

'the fact that benefits were increased and made fully available to families making up to $150,000 would make the child tax credit the least cost-effective anti-poverty program in the United States. The country would spend just shy of $30,000 per child lifted out of poverty by the expansion, compared with the less than $16,000 spent per child lifted out of poverty by food stamps or $21,000 for the earned-income tax credit'

https://www.washingt...ild-tax-credit/

OTOH this is a positive:

'The old child tax credit incentivized work; the expanded one would effectively discourage it. [...] As a consequence, we estimate, 1.5 million workers (constituting 2.6 percent of all working parents) would ultimately exit the labor force, mostly at the lower end of the income scale.'

... for incentivizing the transition to automation.

It's possible that the incentivization to have children would be negligible overall, as it apparently has been in studies on similar programs in Africa and Latin America (though in countries very different from the United States). Similarly, the amount of the monthly pay-out that parents spend on themselves, rather than the well-being of their children, might be negligible, and the government should attempt to guarantee the well-being of all children.

But automation and better legally mandated data sharing could make means testing faster, easier, and more accurate (though some amount of UBI may be the most practical long-term solution in the US).

Keep the context in mind:

'if [...] you believe that Biden must pass climate policy during this particular moment in time—when we can detect climate change but still act on it before it becomes irreversible—then it's almost self-evident that Democrats should have taken this deal, and should do their best to get it back on the table, if it's not already. If you believe what Democrats say about climate change, then virtually any social policy, including the child tax credit, is worth sacrificing so that decarbonization can become law.'

https://www.theatlan...utm_source=feed

This post has been edited by Azath Vitr (D'ivers: 28 December 2021 - 03:45 AM

[amphibian]

Azath Vitr (D, on 28 December 2021 - 02:27 AM, said:

'the fact that benefits were increased and made fully available to families making up to $150,000 would make the child tax credit the least cost-effective anti-poverty program in the United States. The country would spend just shy of $30,000 per child lifted out of poverty by the expansion, compared with the less than $16,000 spent per child lifted out of poverty by food stamps or $21,000 for the earned-income tax credit'

https://www.washingt...ild-tax-credit/

OTOH this is a positive:

'The old child tax credit incentivized work; the expanded one would effectively discourage it. [...] As a consequence, we estimate, 1.5 million workers (constituting 2.6 percent of all working parents) would ultimately exit the labor force, mostly at the lower end of the income scale.'

... for incentivizing the transition to automation.

It's possible that the incentivization to have children would be negligible overall, as it apparently has been in studies on similar programs in Africa and Latin America (though in countries very different from the United States). Similarly, the amount of the monthly pay-out that parents spend on themselves, rather than the well-being of their children, might be negligible, and the government should attempt to guarantee the well-being of all children.

But automation and better legally mandated data sharing could make means testing faster, easier, and more accurate (though some amount of UBI may be the most practical long-term solution in the US).

I read the full article. It's a horrible piece and here's why: it doesn't factor in the financial, social, and physical costs of childcare in a pandemic world.

What does a parent do when they or their child have is sick, possibly COVID? They stay home and go to a doctor/get tested/start to isolate for several days - maybe 5, maybe 10. That is often an incompatibility with low level jobs that will fire a person for not showing up, now that COVID leave is going away in many places.

The child tax credit did a fantastic job of chopping child poverty and food insecurity by huge numbers. Dropping it suddenly with no replacement and simply trying to shove the systems back to work incentives that aren't particularly compatible with child care doesn't work. Have you ever had to get food stamps? Have you helped someone get onto food stamps? It's not easy and automating whatever bureaucracy isn't going to help that - it's not an automation related problem. The computers aren't going to fix low budgets, incomplete staffing, and institutional pressure to say "No" to people about to go hungry or homeless.

Holy shit, this author and article is a ghoul and ghoulish effort designed to simply reduce this giant set of problems to mere policy and numbers that unsurprisingly comes from the UChicago pack of assholes.

[amphibian]

I'll illustrate with a random person from Twitter explaining the impact of the child tax credit going away, student loans, and child care:

https://twitter.com/...u1ZHuidiZQ&s=19

"betweens losing the child tax credit, J starting student loan payments again, and having to set up after-school care for E, we're losing like $1000 a month starting next month

awesome"

This particular person is on Twitter, can somewhat absorb this cost, and is talking to us about it. However, there's so many people talking about $1000-1500 swings due to this. That is not affordable for so many.

Arguing against the continued provision of that benefit, especially as the pandemic continues to go on and prevent non-emergency medical care from occurring and to disrupt childcare, without a clear and ready replacement that works is damned stupid.

[Azath Vitr (D'ivers]

amphibian, on 28 December 2021 - 04:38 PM, said:

Have you ever had to get food stamps? Have you helped someone get onto food stamps? It's not easy and automating whatever bureaucracy isn't going to help that - it's not an automation related problem. The computers aren't going to fix low budgets, incomplete staffing, and institutional pressure to say "No" to people about to go hungry or homeless.

If means testing is set up so all the information deemed relevant (perhaps a major reduction from or transformation of the current requirements) is already accessible over the internet (after banks and other relevant private institutions become legally required to share all their records with the government), then it should be automatable. It will help at least a little with low budgets by requiring far less staff. As for institutional pressure---it seems that could be addressed by not granting the people who might exert that pressure access to the relevant algorithms (after setting them up in a way that avoids reproducing those institutional pressures, with the goal being to fulfill its task of dispensing aid to those who need it, not minimize the amount of aid given out).


Fwiw a few friends of mine are on the equivalent of food stamps and they waste it on unhealthy things like soda, bacon, and junk food (even after I explain that dried or frozen vegetables and dried beans are better, cheaper, and non-perishable---in some cases even after I offer them healthy food for free!---and they have been more personal staples for years now), while also using the 'savings' to finance their cigarettes and illegal drugs. Not that that makes them terrible or stupid people. Of course government programs in the past have botched food distribution and means testing, and those programs probably would have performed better as direct cash payments, but that doesn't mean targeted healthy food distribution, means testing, safe housing, public transport etc. can't be done better and more efficiently in the near future. Even when obstacles like food deserts or price differences are factored out, research indicates that poor people will still disproportionately buy junk food over healthy food. Not just poor people but consumers in general make suboptimal and wasteful choices. Central planning struggled in the past with accurately predicting and adapting to local needs, but with greater data sharing, biometrics, and much faster real time automated processing it is likely to become feasible in the not too distant future. Of course most people in the US (or Boris Johnson, as he did in his silly speech about the refrigerator refusing to let him overeat (would be better if it were: not to overeat to excess, as in feast too frequently)---not too long before he tried to blame pandemic deaths on the obese?) won't go along with that for the foreseeable future.

[Edit: actually I've only been eating dried vegetables as a staple since around the start of the pandemic; before that it was frozen vegetables, which do have the drawback of requiring a freezer to remain non-perishable.]

This post has been edited by Azath Vitr (D'ivers: 28 December 2021 - 06:14 PM

[Cause]

The closest I ever came to poverty, and it wasn’t really close, was when I moved to America without a job. Between being unemployed and the exchange rate shock I tried to minimize spending as much as possible. I had savings, so the true fear of poverty and the pressure was absent.

However with a pandemic and no idea how long my unemployed status would last I tried to save every penny and cut costs down as much as possible. I ate out rarely excepting a few Burger King or popeye visits using coupons. I bought groceries at dollar general and cooked more than I ever had in my life. I still bought soda and chocolates and ice cream. In small amounts. Less than I was used to but I did. It.

Was it necessary to my survival no? I lost weight. Treating myself to a half liter of ice cream for 3-5 dollars from dollar general once a week wasn’t a waste though. It was a comfort and a treat.

I think restricting food stamps from being used at restaurants is enough. Poverty is punishment enough. Let a person buy themselves a chocolate bar once in a while. Let them have control over their food stamp allowance. Hell I’d say let a person buy a premade hot soup or sandwich from a deli even.

The experience was eye opening for me. I wasn’t really poor but I had a ‘poverty mindset’ and living in a new city, with a 15 to 1 exchange rate, unemployed and with a change in status (no car, no maid) really opened my eyes to some things.

A well of person gets in their car and drives to a reasonably priced target, does two weeks of groceries and drives them home and puts the. In a freezer. That was me in South Africa.

In America I was calculating my grocery budget, factoring in the rice difference between stores sv their walking distance. Saving five dollars doesn’t matter if you have to pay for the bus. Soda is cheap and on sale but how much can you carry home, where do you put it. It takes money to make money but it also takes money to save it. Corner store prices that are twice as high as target. I always was confused by them. Now I understand how a person home in brooklyn after a days shift might not have the energy or time to calculate the optimum store in walking distance to get ibuprofen from and save $1.50.

I understood the welfare trap better. How for some people staying unemployed on food stamps might be better than getting a job that pays slightly more but has a too long commute.

The hodgepodge of welfare benefits and the various income limits and restrictions that come with them. It’s better than nothing sure but the red tape should be kept to a minimum. Every hoop is just another drain on a persons time and energy. They are trying to dig themselves out of the hole of poverty, they don’t need anyone throwing more dirt on top.

[Azath Vitr (D'ivers]

'Save, Spend or Pay Off Debt? How the Country Used the Child Tax Credit

[...] 39% of people say they spent most of their check, 23% saved most of the money, and 38% used most of the money to pay off debts.

[...]

Residents of Manchin's home state of West Virginia appear quite prudent, as 39.8% said they mostly saved their benefit, the highest share of people in any state.'

https://www.usnews.c...hild-tax-credit

So it seems that at least 23+38 = 61% did not urgently need most of the extra money. (And they were not spending most of it on their children.) Providing more of a social safety net is one of the directions the US should ultimately be going in, but right now for the wellbeing of the nation as a whole the climate change laws seem more urgent---not just for the US, but for the world at large. Some would experience deprivation (mainly because of difficulties in distributing aid), and that is extremely unfortunate, but far more will suffer and die if climate change is not brought in check.

(Amendment to my previous post: the biggest issue with loosely regulated consumer 'choice' arguably isn't waste---the economy can encompass waste and inefficiency---or suboptimal choices (made worse by advertising and limited or misleading information), but harm. Consumers tend to make choices that (excessively and lastingly) harm their health, dull their minds, and harm their potential and their future prospects. Experimenting with more of an AI-regulated managed economy with more limited consumer choices might soon be feasible for government aid programs, prisons, nursing homes, etc., especially with support from the tech industry---for example testing smart home technology for diet, AI personal trainers and life coaches, etc. Hopefully the next logical step, after turning prisons into techno-Communist utopias, would not be outlawing soda, junk food, and other common vices in order to put more and more people into the carceral state for reeducation and enlightenment.)