alt Hacker NewsYeah - while it's not unreasonable to say there likely is a sizeable nature component to someone's propensity towards tech/math/etc, even if we assume for the sake of argument that this is only some tiny fraction of the population, we should still expand access to the resources as much as possible to catch those kids in the net. It's just better for everyone. Arguments about spending the money on food instead miss the point - if OLPC reaches even a few tech-disposed kids out of every thousand, those kids have a much better shot at being force multipliers for their own local communities and country 20 years from now.
> it's not unreasonable to say there likely is a sizeable nature component to someone's propensity towards tech/math/etc
It is unreasonable, a lazy argument of supremacists. We don't know how much (could be minimal), how many, what exactly the effects are ('propensity' is quite vague - exactly what is affected, in what ways, and to what degree?), etc. It's also the anti-democracy, anti-freedom crowd trying (again) to create intellectual cover for seizing power.