Anyone interested in this area check out Ted Chiang’s short story It’s 2059, and the Rich Kids are Still Winning.
Premise: In the future, scientists conduct an experiment to genetically modify poor children to improve their intelligence, so they have a better chance to succeed in life. While the experiment proves to be successful, and the children’s IQ increases, they still fail to achieve social progress, because the entire state system favors the rich only.
Makes sense. Not just because our system is shit, but also because money is only up to a point a motivator for ‘more intelligent’ people and overall doesn’t matter as much as intrinsic motivation.
There are a couple of studies on this:
Bénabou & Tirole (2003) – Shows how external incentives (including money) can undermine intrinsic motivation, especially in cognitively demanding tasks.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-937X.00253
Cerasoli, Nicklin & Ford (2014) – A 40‑year meta‑analysis demonstrating that intrinsic motivation is a stronger predictor of performance quality than monetary incentives, which mainly increase quantity.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1037/a0035661
Morris et al. (2022) – A comprehensive review of the neurocognitive basis of intrinsic vs. extrinsic motivation, showing that intrinsic motivation is tied to cognitive engagement and autonomy.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0033291722001611
Kreps (1997) – Explains how economic incentives interact with social norms and why money often fails to motivate when intrinsic or normative drivers dominate. https://www.jstor.org/stable/2950946
Big thanks to 🫵. I love getting a collection of PDFs like these, feeding them into NotebookLM (made by Google unfortunately), and have it generate a 30-minute audio sumnary in podcast format. It fills an important vacuum for wannabe nerds that have problems reading visually. 🤙
A professional audiobook version also exists within Chiang’s collection Exhalation for all the homies with eye problems from blindness to convergence insufficiency.
Anyone interested in this area check out Ted Chiang’s short story It’s 2059, and the Rich Kids are Still Winning.
Premise: In the future, scientists conduct an experiment to genetically modify poor children to improve their intelligence, so they have a better chance to succeed in life. While the experiment proves to be successful, and the children’s IQ increases, they still fail to achieve social progress, because the entire state system favors the rich only.
Makes sense. Not just because our system is shit, but also because money is only up to a point a motivator for ‘more intelligent’ people and overall doesn’t matter as much as intrinsic motivation.
There are a couple of studies on this:
Bénabou & Tirole (2003) – Shows how external incentives (including money) can undermine intrinsic motivation, especially in cognitively demanding tasks.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-937X.00253
Cerasoli, Nicklin & Ford (2014) – A 40‑year meta‑analysis demonstrating that intrinsic motivation is a stronger predictor of performance quality than monetary incentives, which mainly increase quantity.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1037/a0035661
Morris et al. (2022) – A comprehensive review of the neurocognitive basis of intrinsic vs. extrinsic motivation, showing that intrinsic motivation is tied to cognitive engagement and autonomy.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0033291722001611
Kreps (1997) – Explains how economic incentives interact with social norms and why money often fails to motivate when intrinsic or normative drivers dominate.
https://www.jstor.org/stable/2950946
Big thanks to 🫵. I love getting a collection of PDFs like these, feeding them into NotebookLM (made by Google unfortunately), and have it generate a 30-minute audio sumnary in podcast format. It fills an important vacuum for wannabe nerds that have problems reading visually. 🤙
Thanks. That was… interesting but depressing to read.
Anyway, here’s the link to anyone else who happens to be curious.
the link without the paywall
King
Monarchist
You might, I’m stuck in the United States.
Where do we find this story.
A professional audiobook version also exists within Chiang’s collection Exhalation for all the homies with eye problems from blindness to convergence insufficiency.
Maybe in one of the two links that other commenters posted to it?