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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: koan who wrote (211012)	12/9/2012 2:14:37 PM
From: epicure	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 541674

Koan- the distribution of IQ is the distribution of IQ, whether we have welfare or not. You cannot get rid of stupid people with government handouts. It will help to reduce the number of intelligent people who aren't crippled by their surroundings, and I'm actually for that- that's why I want children to get more of the pie. You might not have noticed that. But government hand outs will not make the stupid less stupid. And even educated stupid people can only do so much. The stupid may always be with us, unless we want to selectively breed them out, or do something else, which I would never advocate or support. So since we can't go all Lord Draco on the stupid, we have to find ways not to encourage them. Human intelligence is a bell curve- and as far as I know, no one has succeeded in changing that. You can make life a little better for the idiots on the sad side of the curve, but you can't "cure" stupid. You just have to try to encourage stupid not to breed too much more stupid. Quite frankly that's a toughy. But we've got to at least acknowledge the problem exists. I've met plenty of stupid people- and education won't make them "smart". It might make them do things that are less stupid, but you can't take someone with a not-so-great brain and make them "smart". You can probably find something for them to do, but let's not pretend it's brain surgery. The problem in the past has been mixing up "stupid" with people who came from impoverished backgrounds. The results look similar in a child placed before you- but the impoverished background child can be educated, if the child is intelligent. In a high tech society we must find ways to occupy our stupid. That's probably something government should be involved in- and is, but not very effectively at the moment.