Slashdot Mirror
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?"
With employment being fungible for the vast majority where to live is driven by how one wants to live. I look for high density and diversity in restaurants. You want something else.
There's more to it than this.
you must factor in average height as well.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
The more specialised you are, the fewer job openings you have - that will use your speciality (yes, obviously you could get a lesser job, but isn't that a waste of your talents and so ultimately unsatisfactory?). That means you have to range further to find those rarer openings. So in that respect more educated people will have a tendency to be more mobile, though not always through choice. And not always viewing it as a good thing: having to move from country to country to chase the next step of career progression.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
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.
To achieve maximum flamage, these numbers should be cross referenced by religious views, political affiliation, and choice of text editor :-D
Many people in the IT field are less social and have a smaller group of friends outside of work, so picking up and moving isn't as big of a change. Not everyone fits this, but I'm sure it impacts the results.
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.
Find free books.
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.
"Until there is a robot that can stay home with Mom and look after her, help her take her meds and buy her groceries, do light household and yard work, etc."
FYI, when Mom and Dad move from "needing light assistance" to "incompetent, incontinent, and incoherent" they WILL go beyond the abilities of a single caregiver.
Make as much money as you can, research elder care LONG before they (and, eventually, you) need it, research how to save THEIR assets as well as yours, and how to avoid probate. If you are able to read this, NOW is a good time, not when the shit hits the fan. Caring for mad. dying old folks is exhausting, stresses a marriage/relationship, and is expensive.
Modern medical technology gives us the ability to suffer for many years. Get ready. You have been warned.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
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.