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Notes -
Ignoring the strangely binary classification you present, it is true that there are people for whom anything in life will be much harder than for others, through no fault of their own. I don’t think we should lie to them, but is it not the most noble expression of the human spirit to strive to overcome our own limitations?
Is it not better to want to succed as Nick Vujicic has than to be a basement-dwelling NEET? Would it be a better world if no one other than Usain Bolt ran track or no one other than Elon Musk tried to start their own company? Do we not respect people more who earned what they have through the sweat of their brow rather than had everything handed to them on a silver platter?
Hmm. I mean. Running track is fine, but 99 percent of people aren’t ever going to make a living at it. Most high-school sprinters, even hardworking ones, don’t even get college scholarships out of it. Track’s fine, but don’t hang your hat on it. As for starting companies…some people shouldn’t even try it, it’s risky and a bad idea for them.
There’s a lot of variation in ‘relationship outcomes’ and I think there are a sizable number of people who simply do not make good partners. It’s like…the US Army doesn’t take people in the bottom 15 percent of IQ, because they can’t even make them into good cooks or something. There’s a similar phenomenon for relationships…something like social IQ or something like this.
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I think he’s a bit extreme, but he has a point. And it’s not just that they’re going to suck at dating or whatever, but that we as a society for whatever reason in most aspects of life oversell it, and while most of us get it quickly, for those with deficits, it can be extremely frustrating because you’re told it’s possible when it’s not. We tell kids who can barely do high school math that they can get rich doing something they love. Probably not true. A LD kid especially as we move into an AI world is probably going to be doing menial labor for very low wages. An autistic kid is told that he can date a good looking, well adjusted woman when realistically, no he won’t. Americans just seem to have a problem in general admitting that not everyone can have a good life.
I mean, fundamentally it isn't the job of society as a whole to give people this advice because society includes groups of people who need to hear contradictory things. People who are too assertive need to be told to be quiet and people who are too shy need to be told to assert themselves, people who are smart but lazy need to be told to buckle down and study engineering and medicine and people who are too dumb to master such subjects should be discouraged from going into STEM, etc. It should be the responsibility of one's parents, other relatives, and friends to give such targeted advice in private, but I would agree that among all the peoples in the world Americans seem uniquely unable to do so.
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