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Intelligence Density and the Creative Class
Doofus writes "The Atlantic has an interesting review of some open-sourced work by Rob Pitingolo about the comparative educational attainment levels of various metropolitan areas. While people are now capable of being far more mobile than in generations past, many people remain within 100 miles or so of where they were born. For the technology-partition of the creative class, this is less likely to be the case, in my personal experience. Do we technical people put interesting work and the concentration of human educational capital ahead of other considerations when deciding on a move? Or is it more complicated? Is it more about the fact that the creative jobs are where the creative people are?"
So why would you have to move to create a concentration of "human educational capital"? We've got this think called the Internet ... you don't see all those jobs that were outsourced to India requiring that their workers move to North America or Europe.
Most of us go to where the jobs are. Google, Microsoft, Intel and Apple are all pretty large employers of creative people. If I can make $25K more per year if I move, chances are I'll move. So they end up having large concentrations of creative people because most people move where the jobs are. Good luck finding a high-paying, interesting tech job in rural America. Yes, you -can- "telecommute" but most of the time you get paid a lot less than if you go to the cube farm.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
Having a college degree makes you statistically more likely to have a job, and to be more highly compensated, but it's not at all clear to me that having a degree makes you part of a "creative class", whatever the fuck that is. Having a college degree also means you are statistically more likely to be white and to come from an affluent family. The transition from "educational attainment" to "smarter people" to "creative class" sounds great while sipping an $8 coffee and listening to indie rock, but in the real world it's pretty fucking condescending.
Carpenters are creative. ...
Mechanics are creative.
Landscapers are creative.
Welders are creative.
Stonemasons are creative.
Not all. Maybe not most. But probably not a great deal more or less than are coders, analysts, lawyers, doctors, accountants (maybe I'll give you that one!), and economists.
...not very smart. First off, it's silly to equate "smart" to "educated." Smart children of illegal immigrants who pick strawberries don't tend to go to college. Dumb children of business executives tend to go to college and get a degree in something, e.g., education, that doesn't require mastering any speficic, difficult body of knowledge. A college education is a middle-class entitlement in the U.S., like Social Security and Medicare.
The other silly thing about it is that first he tabulates the density of degree holders and finds out that degree holders are more dense where people are more dense. Wow, blinding insight. Then he tries to eliminate the effect of population density using a linear regression, which isn't the right tool for the job. If he wants to eliminate the effect of population density, he should just start with the percentage of the population that has a degree. His linear regression method produces results that obviously don't make much sense, e.g., that Oklahoma City has 544% more people with degrees than you'd expect. (See the note at the bottom of the chart.) Presumably this indicates that not only does every adult in Oklahoma City have a degree, but so do all their children, as do their dogs, cats, and major household appliances.
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Thank you. Some of the most creative people I know are carpenters, furniture makers, and other craftsmen. Or are musicians, or painters, or chefs. Most of these people went to a community college at most. Using college degrees to indicate creativity shows a misunderstanding of creativity.
I cantankerously but humbly disagree with every conclusion of this article. I don't agree that college-trained people are generally smarter. I readily agree that college educated people are better at manipulating and understanding symbols and words than the general population. But they are not better at using the vast amount of stored knowledge and experience stored in those words and books to make their lives better. They are marginally better but not greatly so.
I live in Portland Oregon USA and hear constantly about the movement of smart and creative people into smart and creative cities, of which Portland is proclaimed to be. It is simply not true. People move here because life is easy here. We are a thousand miles from any urban center of global consequence.
For example, we have a company called Wieden+Kennedy, who are a world-renowned employer of creative people. They make advertising. Everybody loathes advertising, and everyone does as much as possible to minimize their exposure to it. If a person is really creative, then why would they be wasting their creativity on advertising? Hense they are not creative: they're just people who have the annoying talent of recycling cliches to sell things that no one would buy if they weren't persuaded to do so by 'creative' people.
Real creative people make useful things and solve real problems. In Portland, 'creative' people make nothing and create real problems.
As for the relationship between technical abilities and creativity: there is very little. Look at the vast majority of postings here on Slashdot that follow every story. Dim, moronic, childish, dull, embarrassing. Not creative. If there were any intrinsic connection between creativity and technical/scientific/engineering ability, we would see it here. We don't.
Creativity is what creativity does. You can't measure it. It's not a fashion and real creativity is rarely noticed for what it is.
I look for low density and a lack of diversity in restaurants. I am quite happy that you, and many other people, want something different than me, as it makes it easier to find what I am looking for.
Since every other social study says that people with degrees flock together, living even in the same neighborhoods. Usually these studies decry how "terribly unfair" this is. Still it explains perfectly well what's happening here.
Ironically, this means that, as a university graduate, you're probably better of in one of the lesser density cities.
And frankly I resent the direct correlation made : "smart" != "university graduate". One does not imply the other, in any direction.
I think you're confusing 'smarter' with 'more prone to compulsive grade and approval seeking.'
It's pretty dumb to suck up with someone, merely because you've been trained to believe that their 'credentials' make them superior to you.
In case you didn't know, Universities are where wallpaper enthusiasts naturally congregate. There are a lot of slope-heads everywhere, including the halls of 'intellect.'
Now, go conform.
I disagree with the thesis of this post. In my experience, technical people are not the most mobile people in the work force. People involved in high level business positions, airline pilots, diplomats, or people into artsy careers (music, acting) are way more mobile than tech people when it comes to moving far away from where they were born. Stop thinking you are special just because you know how to use computers.
But less social also means it's harder to find friends in the new area, making moving much harder.