Julian658 wrote:People can inherit height, ability to run fast, eye color, hand eye coordination, and intelligence. People often say that high scores in college entrance exams correlate with rich neighborhoods and that low scores correlate with low income neighborhoods. They conclude that the high score in rich neighborhoods is due to more nurturing and that low scores are due to lack of nurturing. That may or may not be true. Nurturing has more of an impact when there is a high baseline of intellect. All the nurturing in the world cannot transform a very dumb person into a rocket scientist. One could also say that those that live in rich neighborhoods have parents that are more intelligent and thats is why they live in a better neighborhood. It is always a combination of nurturing and the environment, however the talent needs to be there to be nurtured. BTW, personality traits are inherited and modified by the environment.
Do note how your examples of heritability do mostly consist of physiological features, which as I say are quite significant in performing certain tasks.
I would also like to clarify that heritability does not denote the specific genetic material which is transferred as there is a focus on variability between persons in their traits, not necessary a comparison of their genetics, as that is expensive and timely as heck. Dealing with biology at that level is very easy to fuck up after spending years in the lab.
Summary of Sapolsky's lecture explaining this point...
https://www.robertsapolskyrocks.com/behavioral-genetics-ii.htmlHeritability does not mean it's genetic. What heritability means is that the impact persists in different environments and is independent of those environments. He runs through a variety of examples that demonstrate how little can be considered truly heritable since changes in the environment will produce a change in the behavior. When it comes to human behavioral genetics, very little is deterministic because environmental changes carry so much weight in how the person develops.
He states it's not about the trait itself but rather the amount of variability around the trait. This sounds complicated until you pause and realize it's really the same thing. If you have a heritable trait for brown hair, it can't bloody well be heritable if your kids have black and red hair (too much variability). It can only be heritable if they have brown hair and the shades of brown very close to the original. Once environment is able to push the range too wide, the trait is no longer strictly heritable but rather reflects the interaction of genes and environment.
The hay-maker here is that the vast majority of "scientific" studies demand that you control for the environment. Thus, heritability has wobbly knees. It is biased toward the genetic influence appearing more important than it is.
The counter to this is that environment doesn't usually vary that drastically (think niche) and it's more realistic to control for it. This is as weak an argument as can be proposed when you recognize that if the environment has to be controlled for so that its effects don't throw off the results, you've pretty much already lost the genetically determined hypothesis.
The conclusion is simply and unalterably this: It is impossible to say what a gene does. You can only say what a gene does within the environments that it's been studied in to date.
Because heritability is a measure of variation, the fact that nearly everyone has 10 fingers to start with creates no variability in the number of fingers you have, and thus no heritability of the trait (which is 100% from your genes). However, wearing earrings in the 1950's in the US was universally common among women and verboten among men, so the heritability ends up being 100% since the one genetic factor, female or male, accounts for all of the variation.
Another example is PKU, which relates to a genetic disorder in which the body cannot break down phenylaline. It builds up to toxic levels and there you are. On the face of it this would be a 100% heritable disease since the initial comparison question "Would you rather know where this person lives or if they have a genetic mutation?" points to the gene side. But these days foods are labeled when they have phenylaline, and thus knowing where someone is living can be as powerful of an indicator as genes. Again heritability is only heritability within an environment. Remove phenylaline and the person doesn't have the problem. Remove racism, social distinctions, abuse, nutrient deficiency and you may also not have the problem.
He next puts up a chart that we'll see often - it's the bad gene + bad experiences graph. Have a bad gene and your odds go up a bit, but have both the bad gene and the bad experiences and the rate goes through the roof. Stress hormones, including glucocorticoids, play a big role in this process as they are activated and interact with the genes in question, thus providing a synergistic effect.
Math, "at which men are better than women", when actually studied in the context of gender equality within the society, does not demonstrate an inequality on the average. Instead, the greater the level of gender inequality, the greater the difference in math skills on the whole. The worst profile went to Turkey, Tunisia and South Korea. The US was in the middle. Our utopian Scandanavians were the best. In Iceland, the girls bested the boys.
In the US the gap at the high end has narrowed from 13:1 to 3:1 in the last twenty years.
Women continue to hold an edge in the verbal side, both in the worst places and the best, with the advantage increasing as the social equality level goes up.
He closes by noting some caveats about behavioral genetics. Environmental effects and modulating effects, intermediaries and whatnot. In the end, he suggests that a lot of what we see in neural freedom suggests that what's coded for is freedom from the constraints of controlled genetic behaviors more so than coding for genetically determined traits. Most any "genetic" trait will be expressed differently when the environment changes.
It pretty much captures my emphasis on the inseparability of environment and genetics, because there is too much interplay going on that a real study of such things doesn't necessarily try to restrict the influence but is more targetted in what it controls for and what is abstracted in analysis.
And the emphasis on things like wealth aren't necessarily a direct point on nurturing, I've seen studies which say you can close the literacy gap between children from poor and uneducated families with those from well off families based on how actively involved the parent is in school activities and the student's education. However, having a lower SES could contribute to not having the same conditions in which to be involved. So it can have a indirect effect in that regard of undermining the family unit, however some people bust their ass to make sure their kids get an education.
The other side however though is accessibility of a decent education, where in the U.S. funding is heavily dependent on local taxes and often results in an inequitable distribution of funding which reflects the status quo of the wealth of families in different neighborhoods. Which a policy recommendation is that when you switch the tax revenue for schools in districts in particular neighborhoods to extending the collection of school revenue to the entire county, you generally get a more equitable allocation of funding.
I definitely agree, early life is huge predictor of the rest of your life, got a lot going on in terms of experiences, and health through nutrition and what sort of home environment you have in fostering your temperament to be a healthy or psychologically stable one. Some smart people lose out because of emotional issues, a lot of students perform poorly because like an athelet that can't hack the pressure, they have poor emotional regulation and perhaps a stressful home life.
I agree with you up to a point in that there are savant and kid geniuses which seem to contradict the evidence of training and support. Have someone like Chris Langan who has a huge IQ but has pretty much being a blue collar worker all his life. However, as smart as he is, his upbringing seems to have hindered his potential a great deal because he has emotional issues and doesn't have the connections that someone with a less IQ might have but is able to do more given better opportunities.
On the other hand, while there can be a limiting factor on someones potential, it is also the case that it's not clear to what extent their potential development may be if they're not in the best conditions either. Wasted potential being the concept here. Where one might seek to blame inherent limitations on biology where it may be that there isn't an adequate environment to support success.
So I would say that can clearly call the kid savant talented, having an ability that simply defies any sense of training and environment. In the vein of Good Will Hunting, genius ability but no real support or opportunity until some professor wants to push him into a line of work with him.
However, on the other side, we do have extremes cases where one pushes children to great success through intense influence.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%A1szl%C3%B3_Polg%C3%A1r#:~:text=The%20experiment%20began%20in%201970,to%20home%2Dschool%20the%20girls.In 1992, Polgár told the Washington Post: "A genius is not born but is educated and trained….When a child is born healthy, it is a potential genius."[2]
In 1965 Polgár "conducted an epistolary courtship with a Ukrainian foreign language teacher named Klara." In his letters, he outlined the pedagogical project he had in mind. In reading those biographies, he had "identified a common theme—early and intensive specialization in a particular subject." Certain that "he could turn any healthy child into a prodigy," he "needed a wife willing to jump on board."
...
Polgár began teaching his eldest daughter, Susan, to play chess when she was four years old. "Six months later, Susan toddled into Budapest's smoke-filled chess club," which was crowded with elderly men, and proceeded to beat the veteran players. "Soon thereafter, she dominated the city's girls-under-age-11 tournament with a perfect score."[5] Judit was able to defeat her father at chess when she was just five.[9] "For me, learning chess was natural; with my sisters around me, I wanted to play," said Judit in 2008.[8]
...
In 2012, Judit told an interviewer about the "very special atmosphere" in which she had grown up. "In the beginning, it was a game. My father and mother are exceptional pedagogues who can motivate and tell it from all different angles. Later, chess for me became a sport, an art, a science, everything together. I was very focused on chess and happy with that world. I was not the rebelling and going out type. I was happy that at home we were in a closed circle and then we went out playing chess and saw the world. It's a very difficult life and you have to be very careful, especially the parents, who need to know the limits of what you can and can't do with your child. My parents spent most of their time with us; they traveled with us [when we played abroad], and were in control of what was going on. With other prodigies, it might be different. It is very fragile. But I'm happy that with me and my sisters it didn't turn out in a bad way." A reporter for the Guardian noted that while "top chess players can be dysfunctional", Judit was "relaxed, approachable and alarmingly well balanced," having managed "to juggle a career in competitive chess with having two young children, running a chess foundation in Hungary, writing books and developing educational programs based on chess."[10]
While Polgár taught the girls the game, his wife took care of the home and later "coordinated their travels to tournaments in 40 countries." His daughter Susan said in a 2005 interview, "My father believes that innate talent is nothing, that [success] is 99 percent hard work." She also described Polgár as "a visionary" who "always thinks big" and who "thinks people can do a lot more than they actually do." Although Polgár was criticized in some quarters for encouraging his daughters to focus so intensely on chess, the girls later said that they had enjoyed it all. Polgár "once found Sophia in the bathroom in the middle of the night, a chessboard balanced across her knees." "Sophia, leave the pieces alone!" he told her. "Daddy, they won't leave me alone!" she replied.[5]
Polgár's daughters all became excellent chess players, but Sophia, the least successful of the three, who became the sixth-best woman player in the world, quit playing and went on to study painting and interior design and to focus on being a housewife and mother. Judit has been described as "without a doubt, the best woman chess player the world has ever seen."[5] As of 2008, she had been "the world’s highest-ranked female chess player for nearly 20 years."[8] Susan, who became second-best woman chess player in the world, was, at age 17, the first woman ever to qualify for what was then called the 'Men's World Championship',[dubious – discuss] but the world chess federation, FIDE, would not allow her to participate.[5][better source needed]
So we see how they qualify at the start that they're born healthy, this is the same point with Ilyenkov, most people do not have such an extreme abnormality of the brain that they're inherently limited by in the way a physical limitation sets clear difficulties on ability without some proper kind of compensatory device or environmental design.
But here the emphasis is on the conditions which shape to realize that potential, a lot of potential may not be realized.
And that in itself isn't terrible because there is a gamble int trying to realize one's potential. Many kids who may train early on in a sport may teeter out as not as good at it as other kids and so they don't have a viable career path in the sport.
ANd when we think of the best athletes they epitomize not only that they have potential but they are extremely hard working. They have perhaps physiological advantages like Lebon James is a freak because he is both huge but extremely fast for his size. But as one of the best athletes in the NBA, he also approaches his job as an athlete at an incredibly intense level where it's not just about taking care of his body, but how to properly regulate emotions and mindset as any good athlete must stand the pressures constantly on them.
Now not anyone could become Lebron James or even Michael Jordan, but they both epitomize that even their extreme limits of ability require extreme effort and maintenance. People talk about how intense Michael Jordans training was, the idea being that you do all the hard work in training.
The other example being how someone with great potential may not realize it at all on the basis of inadequate conditions, perhaps they showed great promise but it'll never be known what they might've done because they pursued a different life course or they didn't have the opportunities to achieve it.
So I imagine we do have some sense that there is the combination but the limits are of course variable.
Most self made billionaires are workaholics-----and they remain active once they had made a ton of money. So let's talk about the descendants of rich people. Kids that do not have a need to work to make it in this world. Kids with all the opportunities in the world to obtain a world class education or start a business on their own.
Affluent children are more prone to substance abuse, chronic depression, and low self-esteem, in frequent measure due to parental and household pressure. Parents who are wealthy and successful often expect the same from their kids, who can, in turn, interpret that the wrong way or place too much pressure on themselves.
Research conducted at the Family Institute at Northwestern University identified that, along with several other risk factors, affluent adolescents will likely face direct challenges to their development. Parents who hire expensive tutors place too much emphasis on results and not enough on the process. Affluent teens suffer from burnout and lose joy or interest in learning because of perceived pressure.
The Problem With Rich Kids
In a surprising switch, the offspring of the affluent today are more distressed than other youth. They show disturbingly high rates of substance use, depression, anxiety, eating disorders, cheating, and stealing. It gives a whole new meaning to having it all.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/arti ... -rich-kids
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog ... al%20means.
Life can be plenty bleak even for the affluent. It scares me for my daughter and emphasizes the need to create meaningful relationships for them so that their life isn't merely consuming things but experiences shared with others.
http://rickroderick.org/304-marcuse-and-one-dimensional-man-1993/Now, I have read about many historical periods. But not one in which you can talk to young people the way you can at the college level today, and find out that they believe… nothing. Want… nothing. Hope… nothing. Expect… nothing. Dream… nothing. Desire… nothing. Push ’em far enough and they’ll say: “Yeah, I gotta get a job. Spent a lot of money at Duke.” That’s not what I am talking about here. They hope nothing. Expect nothing. Dream nothing. Desire nothing.
And it is a fair question to ask whether a society that produces this reaction in its young is worthy of existence at all. It really is. It’s worth asking that. Whether it’s worth being here at all. And my criticism of this society couldn’t get more bitter than it is in that case. It couldn’t possibly be. Remember, I am talking about the young I have encountered at Duke. These are privileged youth. At an elite southern school. Mostly white, mostly upper-middle to upper class. Now, imagine what the attitudes are like on the streets of DC if you are from another race or another social class.
Most jobs are a drag. Even rock stars that play music for a living find the work oppressive. The Beatles gave up touring, it was not fun anymore. A professional golfer, a person that plays a game for a living may find that the idea of perennial travel a drag. I have an incredibly interesting job and I continue to work past retirement age because i enjoy what i do. However, there are days when I don't want to get out of bed. I think it would not be surprising to see nihilism and destructive behavior if humans are provided with everything.
Well an issue with rockstars can even be that they get pumped by their managers and record labels to compromise on all sorts of things and worker harder and harder.
Certainly wears on one even just to be gigging on the road all the time and playing multiple shows in one day even. But there are always the monontous parts of work, however a job as a musician can still have a carved out space for creativity when they're not working like a workhorse on stage.
I however would emphasize how we work more than ever before and it takes up so much of your life that its easier for it to be a drag as you is most of your life everyday.
It's not really broken up and you may be pushed harder than you're comfortable with sustaining for a long period of time because of the type of work pressures that come or even the need to be simply 'efficient' and meet the necessary levels of production to be competitive in the case of private companies.
Some jobs have a better flow, than others.
On the other hand there can be monotony in working int he same field for so many years. Which is less the case for many people who are unlikely to have such stable work necessarily as their own parents.
However, what would be undermined in providing things is the pressure that most workers experience in the need to work to get money to provide for their needs such as paying rent or a mortgage, maintaining car and fuel, feeding the family and so on that are ongoing costs. If you can survive without having to work then yeah, a lot of people may not go to work some days.
In fact, in experiments of providing things though, you do find that many who are working just to get by do take time off such as students and mothers.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mincomehttps://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20200624-canadas-forgotten-universal-basic-income-experimentOne of the things we do know from the Mincome experiment is that basic income does not appear to discourage the recipients from working – one of the major concerns politicians have always held about such schemes. Forget found that employment rates in Dauphin stayed the same throughout the four years of Mincome, while a recent trial in Finland – which provided more than 2,000 unemployment people with a monthly basic income of 560 euros ($630, £596) from 2017 to 2019 – found that this helped many of them to find work which provided greater economic security.
However, people do want to work, because life is meaningless without some purpose and there can be positive feedback in seeing the results of your own work. Something to take pride in.
See the point about motivation, money is a great motivator when you need to have basic needs met. When you no longer worry about those needs, then what motivates you has to be something different inherent to the type of work.
I worked with inmates in a substance abuse program and if they completed the program they could have a few months taken off of their sentence, but it was a long program and many couldn't hack it as they weren't adjusted to sustained effort in their chaotic lives and drug dependence. I would talk to them about how they might be motivated to get that time off their sentence, but at the same time if they do not really enjoy the program, they're going to find each and everyday an utter drag. So what they need to find is a balance between the external reward of a reduced sentence, among finding something inherent to the program that they find worthwhile.
JUst as I explained that I enjoyed my job both because of it's actual nature, working with the inmates and counselling, along with the wage I was receiving. I wouldn't do the job for nothing, but I also would choose that job over others with similar pay because I enjoyed it.
So there is a satisfaction in balancing a decent wage with a job that you actually enjoy. And enjoyment isn't constant pleasure, but that there are enough moments that make it worthwhile like seeing co-workers you like or clients, being able to do tasks well and smoothly. It's taking pride in one's work.
I am still waiting for that day. So far socialism has not worked because by definition it requires an authoritarian repressive government that curtails freedom.
Freedom is left quite vague here because ideas of freedom have very specific content in different conceptions of it. There is of course a particular function in maintaining the status quo.
https://www.ethicalpolitics.org/ablunden/pdfs/macintyre2.pdfMaintenance of the illusion of “objectivity” is essential, and MacIntyre sees the
universities as playing a crucial role in the maintenance of this illusion. Since
academics rely for their livelihood on disproving each other’s theories, the
resulting interminable and esoteric debate continuously re-establishes the
impossibility of consensus.
“In the course of history liberalism, which began as an appeal to
alleged principles of shared rationality against what was felt to be
the tyranny of tradition, has itself been transformed into a tradition
whose continuities are partly defined by the interminability of the
debate over such principles. An interminability which was from the
standpoint of an earlier liberalism a grave defect to be remedied as
soon as possible has become, in the eyes of some liberals at least, a
kind of virtue”. (p. 335)
Far from this failure to find any firm ground undermining liberalism, MacIntyre
believes that it reinforces it, because one of the fundamental bases for liberalism
is the conviction that no comprehensive idea (to use Rawls’ term) can enjoy
majority, let alone unanimous, support. This then justifies the ban on
governments pursuing the general good.
“Any conception of the human good according to which, for
example, it is the duty of government to educate the members of the
community morally, ... will be proscribed. ... liberal individualism
does indeed have its own broad conception of the good, which it is
engaged in imposing politically, legally, socially, and culturally
wherever it has the power to do so, but also that in doing so its
toleration of rival conceptions of the good in the public arena is
severely limited.” (p. 336)
Such a ban on governments pursuing the social good of course serves a very
definite social interest.
“The weight given to an individual preference in the market is a
matter of the cost which the individual is able and willing to pay;
only so far as an individual has the means to bargain with those who
can supply what he or she needs does the individual have an
effective voice. So also in the political and social realm it is the
ability to bargain that is crucial. The preferences of some are
accorded weight by others only insofar as the satisfaction of those
preferences will lead to the satisfaction of their own preferences.
Only those who have something to give get. The disadvantaged in a
liberal society are those without the means to bargain.” (p. 336)
and consequently,
“The overriding good of liberalism is no more and no less than the
continued sustenance of the liberal social and political order”. (p.
345)
In each of the historical settings that MacIntyre investigates, he is able to show
that the type of justice and the type of rationality which appears to the
philosophical spokespeople of the community to be necessary and universal,
turns out to be a description of the type of citizens of the community in
question. Accordingly, the justice of liberalism and the rationality of liberalism
is simply that justice and that rationality of the “citizens of nowhere” (p. 388),
the “outsiders,” people lacking in any social obligation or any reason for acting
other than to satisfy their desires and to defend the conditions under which they
are able to continue satisfying their desires. Their rationality is therefore that of
the objects of their desire.
The idea here is that liberalism and such is about the sense of freedom in terms of consumptive desires but not necessarily freedom to change the very conditions in which we realize our desires i.e. never to question capitalist relations which itself has elements of unfreedom for the worker.
http://d-scholarship.pitt.edu/10867/1/VWills_ETD_2011.pdfThe implementation of such a genuine, substantive freedom of course would require
“despotic inroads117 on the rights of property, and on the conditions of bourgeois production,”
something Marx already wrote earlier, in The Communist Manifesto (Manifesto of the
Communist Party, MECW 6:504). It would neither be a realization of bourgeois freedom nor
would it even be commensurate with, or justifiable on the basis of, bourgeois freedom and
equality, even as it is bourgeois production which makes this substantive freedom first possible.
In the reformist struggles of workers under capitalism, we see a first inkling of how this
genuine, substantive freedom comes into conflict with formal, bourgeois freedom. In the first
volume of Capital, Marx writes:
"It must be acknowledged that our labourer comes out of the process of production other than he
entered. In the market he stood as owner of the commodity “labour-power” face to face with other
owners of commodities, dealer against dealer. The contract by which he sold to the capitalist his
labour-power proved, so to say, in black and white that he disposed of himself freely. The bargain
concluded, it is discovered that he was no “free agent,” that the time for which he is free to sell his
labour-power is the time for which he is forced to sell it, that in fact the vampire will not lose its hold on him “so long as there is a muscle, a nerve, a drop of blood to be exploited.” For
“protection” against “the serpent of their agonies,” the labourers must put their heads together,
and, as a class, compel the passing of a law, an all-powerful social barrier that shall prevent the
very workers from selling. by voluntary contract with capital, themselves and their families into
slavery and death. In place of the pompous catalogue of the “inalienable rights of man” comes the
modest Magna Charta of a legally limited working day, which shall make clear “when the time
which the worker sells is ended, and when his own begins.” Quantum mutatus ab illo! [What a
great change from that time! – Virgil]." (Capital, MECW 35:306)
In Capital, as in the Grundrisse, we see that the worker's freedom to enter into a contract and to dispose of his labor-power as he wills is only an illusory freedom, and that he was never in this transaction a totally “free agent” at all because he is not simply free to sell his labor-power or not, but rather is compelled to sell it if he wishes to live. That compulsion makes the worker susceptible to the most brutal working conditions. Thus, the first step in bringing about substantive freedom from oppressive working conditions and exploitative relations of production is for workers to combine together and push for laws that actually curtail the abstract freedom granted to them in bourgeois society. These measures on the part of workers are vehemently opposed by the bourgeoisie:
"The same bourgeois mind which praises division of labour in the workshop, life-long annexation of the labourer to a partial operation, and his complete subjection to capital, as being an organisation of labour that increases its productiveness, that same bourgeois mind denounces with equal vigour every conscious attempt to socially control and regulate the process of production, as an inroad upon such sacred things as the rights of property, freedom and unrestricted play for the bent of the individual capitalist." (Capital, MECW 35:361)
...
Bourgeois opposition to the attempts of workers to exert social control on production further reveals the practical contradiction between formal bourgeois freedom and the real freedom workers struggle for within capitalism, in struggles that necessarily point beyond capitalism for just this reason. While the capitalist defends “sacred” bourgeois freedom, he is at the same time also perfectly willing to defend the real unfreedom of the worker, the “complete subjection” of the laborer to capital.
However, in regards to the realization of socialism, yeah it transferred the alienation of work into the entirety of social life under the state apparatus in the USSR for example. It failed but whether this is a condemnation as the impossibility of socialism is another matter. There is a clear ideological interest in foreclosing that it has potential to be something more than what the USSR was in it's own limitations, thus generalizing things which may or may not be essential and not really discussed in any detail because it's only a vague cold war point rather than a real analysis in showing as much.
I do not disagree with this. But, many have no creativity and others will have to perform menial jobs that are alienating. Unless------ everything is automated and success is measured by creativity and productivity. That system will create a hierarchy of power and talent with some at the top, many in the middle, and quite a few at the bottom.
Indeed many people will have to be humble enough to perform some basic tasks, but the idea is that when the entirety of your day doesn't have to be spend labouring for a wage, you can engage in a multitude of work alongside work that is valuable. The idea being to break the tie to one mode of activity for one's existence in the division of labor.
For as soon as the distribution of labour comes into being, each man has a particular, exclusive sphere of activity, which is forced upon him and from which he cannot escape. He is a hunter, a fisherman, a herdsman, or a critical critic, and must remain so if he does not want to lose his means of livelihood; while in communist society, where nobody has one exclusive sphere of activity but each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes, society regulates the general production and thus makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticise after dinner, just as I have a mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, herdsman or critic.”
- Karl Marx
The idea being that one breaks the socially necessary labor time which conditions us to produce in increasingly efficient ways for profit rather than for human need.
https://kapitalism101.wordpress.com/2014/07/02/indirectly-social-labor/Marx lays out, briefly, a way to make labor directly social, breaking with capitalist value production, in his Critique of the Gotha program. In Marx’s concept of directly social labor he advocates a system which breaks with the disciplining of production by socially necessary labor time. Producers in this post-capitalist society will not be compensated according to the social average but instead compensated directly for the actual amount of labor time they expend in production. If I spend 2 hours making a widget I get a labor-certificate entitling me to purchase consumption goods equal to two hours of labor. If you spend 3 hours making the same widget you get a certificate entitling you to 3 hours of consumption goods. Regardless of productivity our labors are directly social because they are compensated in full, considered part of the total labor of society, no matter what.11
Careful readers may ask how such a society would determine the labor-content of consumption goods (the ‘prices’ at which workers ‘buy’ them with their labor-certificates) in the absence of socially necessary labor time. This calculation would be based on the average social labor-time that it took to make a commodity. The calculation could be done simply by adding up all of the concrete labor times that go into making widgets and dividing this by the number of widgets. Such a calculation would allow society to continue to make production plans and to ‘price’ commodities. But the compensation of laborers would not be done through such a process of averaging. So such a system would not eliminate the role of average labor time as an accounting unit. What it would eliminate is the role of average time in the compensation of workers.12
Earlier we used a similar example of a Wallmart executive finding the average cost of of producing a commodity to set the price of the commodity. This example demonstrated how this process of averaging, which determines the socially necessary labor time, erases all particularity of workers, treating individuals only as units of average labor time, as abstract labor. Here, in our example of a communist society with directly social labor, we also see an example of the ‘prices’ of goods being calculated through a similar calculation of average labor time. What is the difference between these two examples? The difference is that Wallmart pays the same price for all of the commodities it buys from suppliers and those suppliers in turn only pay workers to the extent that they can produce at the social average. Any wasted time is not compensated. This creates an incentive for speed-up, exploitation, and the domination of machines over humans in production. In our communist society workers are compensated for the actual amount of time they labor, not just the part that achieves the average. This means that their labor is directly social. The immediate practical implications of this are that there is not an incentive for speed-up and so machines do not loom over production demanding more and more life from the worker.
To execute such an organization of labor it would be necessary for production to be owned and planned by society and not by individual capitals competing in the market. A society of directly social labor would entail different property relations and a different organization of production. In such a system labor-certificates would not circulate independently as money nor would alternative monies emerge spontaneously. This elimination of money would not be the result of political fiat. It would be a result of the organization of the mode of production. Directly social labor has no need for money. Money does not have a role in measuring socially necessary labor time. There is no need for a money commodity to measure the abstract labor content of commodities. The products of labor do not function as commodities with values. Without money and commodities there is no capital.
Basically, need to do away with the appropriation of value to another class and make everyone a worker who is compensated in full for their labor but not directly with the products of their labor but in a similar means of exchange where one has access to the means of life but without not mediated by money.
At least this is my approximation of how it is theorized.
I have worked for myself and for an employer. My devotion to the job was exactly the same. I could be a great socialist! However, many only work hard if there is a reward. Otherwise, they do a shitty job. That is why West German engineers designed much better cars than East German engineers. BTW, in this instance they engineers likely had equal innate talent.
Indeed many may slack and so on, but to properly assess motivation one needs to consider more than the individual but the individual within their social relations.
A wolf is free.
A domesticated dog is not free.
Except I don't like the connotations of freedom from society inherent in the analogy as our freedom is always tied to other people. YOu may be thinking of freedom limited to people not standing in your way, basically the liberal idea as freedom from interference, however, your ability to do many things is entirely dependent on the social relations around you.
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/marx/However, pushing matters deeper, in an argument reinvented by innumerable critics of liberalism, Marx argues that not only is political emancipation insufficient to bring about human emancipation, it is in some sense also a barrier. Liberal rights and ideas of justice are premised on the idea that each of us needs protection from other human beings who are a threat to our liberty and security. Therefore, liberal rights are rights of separation, designed to protect us from such perceived threats. Freedom on such a view, is freedom from interference. What this view overlooks is the possibility—for Marx, the fact—that real freedom is to be found positively in our relations with other people. It is to be found in human community, not in isolation. Accordingly, insisting on a regime of liberal rights encourages us to view each other in ways that undermine the possibility of the real freedom we may find in human emancipation.
Liberalism is somewhat anti-social in this regard as it reflects the desire of a capitalist to be free from interference in their matters of production. However, this can be taken to an absurdity where one wants to act like the pursuit of one's individual desires has no bearing or implications on others. Such an attitude doesn't fly within a family for example where there are dependents, rather we abhor those who do not take the responsibility of caring for their kids and one another as even parasitic, taking but not giving back.
As I said above. The subject must have some innate talent so it can be molded by the environment. Tiger Woods was nurtured by his dad, but Tiger had
massive innate talent. There are lots of kids who received much more nurturing than Tiger and went nowhere.
I agree in the sense that they have potential, but what is talent referring to here? Because I could see it as not really specifying anything except the potential of something to be realized. As such it doesn't exist at all except as a possibility so what is talent then but the possibility of being able to do something exceptionally? It's not something already internal to the person but must be achieved otherwise how do we differentiate the person who had great potential but never achieved it with the person who does achieve it?
It seems to me to be retrospective in that we consider talented those who have proven in their actions to be talented already. There's a risk in betting on anyone to be able to achieve something and one might have an idea of what improve sth possibility but there are no such guarantees.
Consider this example.
https://iep.utm.edu/moralluc/illiams begins the drive towards this dilemma by focusing on rational justification rather than moral justification. The cornerstone of his argument is the claim that rational justification is a matter of luck to some extent. He uses a thought experiment to make this point. Williams presents us with a story based loosely on the life of the painter Paul Gauguin. Williams’ Gauguin feels some responsibility towards his family and is reasonably happy living with them, but nonetheless abandons them, leaving them in dire straits. He does so in an attempt to become a great painter. He goes to live on a South Sea Island, believing that living in a more primitive environment will allow him to develop his gifts as a painter more fully. How can we tell whether Gauguin’s decision to do this is rationally justified? We should ask first of all, what exactly Williams means by “rational justification.” He never says, but he seems interested in the question of whether Gauguin was epistemically justified in thinking that acting as he did would increase his chances of becoming a great painter. That is, the question is whether it was rational (given Gauguin’s interests) for him to do as he did.
Williams rightly observes that it is effectively impossible to foresee whether Gauguin will succeed in his attempt to become a great painter. Even if, prior to making his decision, Gauguin had good reason to think he had considerable artistic talent, he could not be sure what would come of that talent, nor whether the decision to leave his family would help or hinder the development of that talent. In the end, says Williams, “the only thing that will justify his choice will be success itself” (1993a, p. 38). Similarly, Williams claims the only thing that could show Gauguin to be rationally unjustified is failure. Since success depends, to some extent anyway, on luck, Williams’ claim entails that rational justification depends, at least in some cases, on luck.
There is such a thing as Memes. Like genes memes are passed down from generation to generation and have profound influence on behavior.
A meme (/miːm/ MEEM)[1][2][3] is an idea, behavior, or style that spreads by means of imitation from person to person within a culture and often carries symbolic meaning representing a particular phenomenon or theme.[4] A meme acts as a unit for carrying cultural ideas, symbols, or practices, that can be transmitted from one mind to another through writing, speech, gestures, rituals, or other imitable phenomena with a mimicked theme. Supporters of the concept regard memes as cultural analogues to genes in that they self-replicate, mutate, and respond to selective pressures.[ WIKI
A meme explains why an American of Italian ancestry has different mannerisms that an American of German ancestry.
The meme thing seems to be captured by my point of referntialism that it simply describes what is clearly observable b ut doesn't actually explain any mechanism by which the observable occurs. It is as explanatory as the language acquisition device proposed by Chomsky, or the concept of eruptability explaining why volcanoes erupt.
Richar d Feynman was great in explaining that knowing the name or word fo something doesn't constitute knowledge, it is arbitrary and sometimes people can be fooled by the use of words in this very way as suggesting knowledge of something.
However this is a step above as its based on something which is now and not purely an arbitrary relation between a name and thing.
I rather like the CUltural Historical Activity theories own analysis on the mediation of culture through material artefacts and activities/practices. You don't come to know things except through participating in them.
I don't believe we really have free will. Our brain is a computer with complex software. A great analyst could easily predict how we behave.
Then you simply reduce humans to a computer for a lack of distinction between a computer and person.
https://www.ethicalpolitics.org/ablunden/pdfs/Psychology_and_the_Zeitgeist.pdfA fine series of treatments of the role of tools in the formation of psychology as a science
begins with a history of psychological instruments by Horst Grundlach, showing how much the
formation and recognition of psychology as a discipline owes to psychological instruments, as
objectifications of psychological practices. Giergerenzer and Sturm take this idea further. With an
historical investigation, firstly of the use of statistics, and then of computers, as tools in
psychology, the authors show how familiarity with a tool in the psychologists’ work leads to the
adoption of the tool as a metaphor for the human mind. One of the benefits which flows from this
observation is to open up lines of critique of current theories by looking at the limitations of the
tool and at the differing strengths and weaknesses as compared to real minds.
The part played by brain-imaging tools is then placed in historical context. Roth, Münte and Heinze report on early progress in mapping correlations between activity in different areas of the brain with affective-emotional states. Rainer Bösel reports on early progress with imaging cognitive processes, and despite challenging shortfalls in spatial and temporal localization, hopes that ‘in the end, it should be possible to describe human behavior and consciousness based on the functioning of 20 billion cortical neurons’. But with no little irony, Michael Hagner responds with a history of devices claiming to image thoughts from the 19th century to the present. These products of science fiction symbolize visions of the omnipotence of modern science. But a thought is not a brain fibre, and Hagner complains that for some brain researchers “the neuronal chatter is real, and the thoughts are in the realm of fantasy.” (p. 301) Thought reflects an outside world, but neurons communicate only with one another, not with the outside world, and no representation of the outside world can be found within them.
Basically its a narrow focuses on biological processes which is unable to conceptualize a sell determining free will as mediated by objects as already outlined by Vygotsky.
Every person has a talent another person does not have. That is the beauty of diversity, we are not equal. BTW, identical twins often achieve differently according to nurturing.
I will finish the post tomorrow[/quote] Indeed the diversity of how people can flourish is great, but people should be supported in such development, not confined to what helps them earn a job because its profitable. At least that's the ideal end of communism, people who can engage in a multitude of activities.
https://www.ethicalpolitics.org/ablunden/pdfs/For%20Ethical%20Politics.pdf#page90
-For Ethical Politics