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jsteinhardt comments on What are your contrarian views? - Less Wrong Discussion

10 Post author: Metus 15 September 2014 09:17AM

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Comment author: jsteinhardt 15 September 2014 05:37:34PM 23 points [-]

[Please read the OP before voting. Special voting rules apply.]

For many smart people, academia is one of the highest-value careers they could pursue.

Comment author: bramflakes 15 September 2014 08:05:18PM *  6 points [-]

Highest value for the person, for society, or both?

Also, by "high value" do you mean purely monetary or do you mean other benefits?

Comment author: jsteinhardt 16 September 2014 01:57:20AM 3 points [-]

Society. For the second question, not quite sure what it would mean to provide monetary value to society, since money is how people trade for things within society rather than some extrinsic good.

Comment author: [deleted] 26 September 2014 01:29:03AM 0 points [-]

Yes, I think that's pretty trivially true. Academia functions monastically: the academic accepts relatively worse material income in order to have the opportunity to donate large sums of value to society.

Comment author: atorm 25 September 2014 12:15:31AM 0 points [-]

It sure isn't great for the smart people.

Comment author: gjm 15 September 2014 08:00:39PM 6 points [-]

Clarify "many"?

Comment author: jsteinhardt 16 September 2014 01:59:21AM 2 points [-]

~30% maybe?

Comment author: [deleted] 17 September 2014 04:32:58PM 4 points [-]

What about “smart people”? IQ > 100? IQ > 115? IQ > 130? IQ > 145?

Comment author: jsteinhardt 17 September 2014 06:24:11PM *  3 points [-]

Let's say IQ 145 or higher?

ETA: Although I would push things like conscientiousness into the picture as well if I were trying to be more precise; but for the sake of not writing an essay I'm happy to stick with an IQ cutoff.

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