If your point is that giving a truly stupid person money won’t solve their problem, that’s probably correct. But not all poor people are stupid. It would be interesting to quantify “stupid” further, in support of your opinion.

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nemo44x a day ago | parent [-]

Yes, on average IQ correlates with socio-economic status. Poor people are generally not as smart as not-poor people. That doesn't mean all poor people are unintelligent, just that most are.

And my bigger point is you (a not stupid person I assume) can't give a stupid person a bag of money and expect them to make good choices with it. You're projecting your abilities, qualities, and values on them and their's are totally different. Because you don't actually have empathy for poor, stupid people but rather want to feel virtues even though you aren't helping and in fact are probably hurting them. I don't mean "you" to actually mean you, but the people that create and support these types of programs.

Instead it's better to recognize that intelligence is largely fixed to a degree and that people on the bad end of the distribution often need a paternal society to take care of them. To house, clothe, and feed them and give them meaningful work and keep them free of harmful vice. That governments job is to support this type of relationship and regulate it and set standards. Instead we let these types of people end up in prison, take to life on the streets, and/or die young and we call it freedom. All enforced by government violence - the same government that enables and actively encourages it through its actions.

At least in our modern, advanced civilization where income and outcomes are nearly 100% correlated with ability and that having below average intelligence is very much a handicap. And one where throwing money at the problem doesn't actually help at all and is actually harmful.

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tptacek a day ago | parent [-]

There is a correlation between the IQ metric (whatever it represents) and income, but it's not as simple as Internet message boards want it to be: IQ reliability falls off as the scores get higher (which makes sense: IQ isn't intended as a ranking of human intelligence, but rather as a diagnostic measure for people with cognitive impairments) and income falls off as IQ scores get higher as well. Everything is complicated, as you'd expect.

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nemo44x a day ago | parent [-]

First - sample sizes get smaller and smaller as you approach the edges. Law of low numbers begins to materialize.

Secondly - there’s no point in optimizing around the edge cases. As a whole it’s pretty reliable.

Everything is complicated isn’t a good reason to not take more effective action than what’s done today which is destructive and cruel. Letting stupid people, who are stupid by no fault of their own, fend for themselves and calling that liberty is why we have such poor outcomes for these people.

	▲	tptacek a day ago \| parent [-]
		I don't have any specific opinions here other than the limitations of the IQ/income correlation. For instance: trying to infer cognitive ability from income would be a deeply stupid thing to do. (I don't see anyone suggesting that).