Long essay, but I agree with a lot of what's said.
I think a lot of quality time is wasted due to the rat race starting in early childhood.
I live in a bit of a bubble in the commuter belt around London (ie not the US), but I observe some of the same obsessions here as well. In particular, I started to notice that my kid's friends suddenly had a lot less time for playdates in the year or two leading up to the 11-plus exam, which is a selective school thing. There are similar exams for the private schools in the area. Of course what was happening was that their parents would hire a tutor to help them pass the tests.
The effect of this tutoring is on the whole negative. Obviously, it costs money. It also costs time that your kid would have to do other things. But also, it gives the kids the impression that school is super important, and they will be valued based on the outcome of this test. You end up with a few percent who get into the top selective schools, and everyone else is left with low expectations.
Inevitably, it also means that it becomes a game for rich parents. I went to the induction day at the fancy school, and guess what. The parents are a bunch of professionals, virtually nobody doing anything else, and most kids went to private primaries + got tutored. We must have left some poor but capable kids in the wrong school.
leovingi 1 days ago [-]
>it gives the kids the impression that school is super important
>We must have left some poor but capable kids in the wrong school.
Both of those things cannot be true at the same time. Either school is important, in which case both the parents pushing their children and the children pushing themselves are doing the right thing to improve their chances of later success, or it is NOT important, in which case it doesn't matter anyway which school the other children end up in.
lordnacho 1 days ago [-]
> Both of those things cannot be true at the same time. Either school is important, in which case both the parents pushing their children and the children pushing themselves are doing the right thing to improve their chances of later success, or it is NOT important, in which case it doesn't matter anyway which school the other children end up in.
Trying to get a less academic kid into grammar school isn't going to help them. Maybe I can provide a bit of context.
The grammar school is highly academic. The kid is certainly above my level of attainment when I was his age. I went to a non-selective international school, ending with the IB.
The kids are tested, every week, in a variety of subjects. I don't think a week has gone by without some sort of test. It is a constant grind of math, multiple sciences, humanities, and three languages. Not every kid enjoys that kind of thing, or even benefits from the pressure.
If you manage to Fosbury Flop your kid into a school like this, you're actually doing them a disservice. They will hate being constantly pushed academically, and they will not find fellowship with the kind of kid who enjoys it.
At the same time, there will be poor kids who didn't know the tricks of the exam, and didn't get in, who would have been better off at the school.
leovingi 1 days ago [-]
Thank you for the clarification. Difficult to argue about this without the context, but even with it, there are so many unique and specific cases that it can essentially be brought down to the individual level.
Some children can be pushed way too hard, some can be pushed not enough and certainly some parents can take their own personal ambitions way too far, as it sounds like in the case you are describing.
Unfortunately, at the end of the day, I don't know of any system anywhere in the world that hasn't eventually devolved into a status chase, for better or worse.
tonyedgecombe 2 hours ago [-]
Finland maybe? My understanding is they don’t have private schools.
soco 1 days ago [-]
Let me translate it in privileged language: when the poor are, like their name suggests, poor, they cannot afford the tutors and the time for pushing their capable kids through the good school. All while recognizing the shitiness of their situation.
leovingi 1 days ago [-]
So which argument are we actually discussing here? Because in the OPs post and in yours there are two different arguments that, for whatever reason, are bundled together and used as a motte and bailey.
Argument #1: Certain kids are privileged enough to be able to afford tutoring and get into good schools and this is unfair to the poor kids
Argument #2: Certain kids are being pushed UNNECESSARILY by their parents to participate in a rat race when their time would be better suited to doing something else
AnimalMuppet 19 hours ago [-]
I think those are two sides of the same argument.
If certain kids are getting in because of tutoring rather than because of talent/ability, then they are the kids that are being pushed unnecessarily to participate when they'd be better off doing something else. Those kids take up the space of kids who are poor who could benefit from that kind of instruction.
keiferski 1 days ago [-]
Real life is not an either-or logic problem. School can both be important and not all-consumingly important.
creesch 1 days ago [-]
Or, things are not as black and white and both are true in a sense. School is important, up to a certain point. I admit, this highly depends on the country and schooling system, and I have too little insight in how hiring works in the US. But in many cases that I am familiar with for the fast majority of people to have a pretty decent career you need a degree, not the most prestigious degree just the right type of degree where the sort of school you got it is less important.
watwut 1 days ago [-]
It 100% makes sense for a parent to not want their own kid to be the "poor but capable kid" who stayed in "the wrong school".
Especially since the kid who was in "the wrong school" will be blamed for "being lazy" or "less capable" when they don't perform as well as equally capable and hardworking peers in the "right school".
nickd2001 1 days ago [-]
To play devil's advocate, is a high stress, pressured, test obsessed selective school, populated by entitled kids with pushy parents, "the right school" for the poor-but-capable-kid..... ;). Will they make friends there and be happy and still want to read for pleasure and be curious about the world outside school? (OK , to be fair you might not want them to go school in a very rough area with drugs and other crime, either)
watwut 54 minutes ago [-]
Then it is wrong school. But the other issue is that you are strongly drawing here on the stereotypes - that this school will be test obsesed, kids in it will be bad entitled kids and you cant make friends with them.
Kids in real world selective schools do form relationships, are curious, interact and like the world outside. Some selective schools are like you describe ... but others are not and kids in them are happy.
anon291 19 hours ago [-]
School is important if you want to join the ranks of the 'elite'. It is not important to live a good life.
pizza234 1 days ago [-]
> Either school is important, in which case both the parents pushing their children and the children pushing themselves are doing the right thing to improve their chances of later success
There's a difference between considering something important versus an utmost priority. The parent's criticism refers to the latter, which is also typical in certain cultures (here, in the context of USA).
I've had direct experience with middle-class schools and indirect experience with an upper-class one, and the issues with the latter are very tangible. The most horrific cases involve parents of students who are not capable enough (in the given context) and will do everything in the book to ensure their children succeed, at the expense of both the children themselves and the whole system. Then, of course, if one considers study/career the one and only priority, emotional and relational needs are seen as a hindrance, creating successful but emotionally damaged adults.
Ultimately, this can be summarized with the Mexican fisherman story, I guess (which omits that the businessman is a cocaine addict, cheats on his wife, and has never spent time with his children /s).
rickydroll 19 hours ago [-]
it is called winning the birth lottery
neilv 1 days ago [-]
> “Number one people go to number one schools” is how one lawyer explained her firm’s recruiting principle to Rivera.
What a load of number two.
lordnacho 1 days ago [-]
What's sad about it is that it's a lawyer. Now I don't mean to poop on lawyers, but the kind of recruiter we are talking about sells a very specific narrative of success, which is that if you're a top kid in school, your natural path is law/consulting/finance.
I went to a famous institution, and there were loads of kids who bought into this. If you don't know quite what you want to do, it is very easy to fall into the trap of "oh I'll do this well paid thing for a while and see how it goes".
You then get there, and it's a treadmill. Nobody thinks it's a meritocracy either. But everyone looks down on taking a normal, non-elite job.
Woeps 1 days ago [-]
It's the same here in the Netherlands, I didn't go to a elite school but I am from a place where most people do.
And it's just bonkers to me this rat-race that they have been placed in because that's the only way to "happiness"/success ...
Also question, is consulting considered an elite job?
My impression is that even consulting for the big 4* is nothing special.
* are they they same everywhere? : Deloitte, EY, KPMG and PwC
lordnacho 1 days ago [-]
The Big 4 are indeed the same everywhere. I'd say most people who are near the treadmill would consider Big4 as prestigious, sure.
But there are multiple levels of prestige in consulting. The mentioned firms, and then McKinsey/Bain/Boston, which are above that level in the hierarchy.
anon291 19 hours ago [-]
> Deloitte, EY, KPMG and PwC
The sad thing is that no one's heard of the actual prestigious ones: Bain, McKinsey, and BCG. I sure hadn't when I joined Bain & Co, but all the rich kids were doing it.
red-iron-pine 16 hours ago [-]
> What's sad about it is that it's a lawyer. Now I don't mean to poop on lawyers, but the kind of recruiter we are talking about sells a very specific narrative of success,
Can't speak for other countries but in the US there are a glut of lawyers, and if you're not at a Top 14. and in the top half the class, you're not going to make the Big Money -- and the stats generally bare that out.
Doesn't mean you can't do well, but the market is packed, tolerable jobs in law are sparse, hours are long, and student loans are large.
bell-cot 1 days ago [-]
But there are billions of dollars to be made by convincing people of such things.
lotsofpulp 1 days ago [-]
Network effects convey enormous benefits. People with resources mingling with people with resources (internal or external) is likelier to yield a lot more than random groupings.
bell-cot 1 days ago [-]
Yes-ish. That line of reasoning could be used to explain why hereditary nobles and royals are the best form of government. And quite a few other counter-factuals.
OTOH, arguing that anyway might give you a far better shot at getting your hands on a few of those $billions than I'll ever have. GO FOR IT.
lotsofpulp 1 days ago [-]
Not really, the argument would be that most successful group would consist of people with various resources, whether it be innate intelligence, motivation, discipline, or inherited wealth/social network.
A group of people whose sole value is social network/wealth is probably not sufficient.
Humans have a limited amount of time and energy to work with, so some mechanism of filtering who or what to place bets on would presumably increase desirable results.
Not too dissimilar from seeking recommendations for a plumber or electrician or romantic partner from a trusted neighbor or family or friend.
bell-cot 1 days ago [-]
Back in the day, the royals and nobles had all those other things. Whether within themselves (as their sycophants proclaimed) or right at hand - because the wealth, power, and prestige of their courts could easily attract the best and brightest talents within their realms.
As the article somewhat points out, "network effect" is - at most - a means. Not an end. And the narcissistic group-think and badly limited worldview that the article describes at Ivy League schools sounds very much like the worst failings of those old noble and royal courts.
anon291 1 days ago [-]
Honestly though, I don't think he's wrong. As someone who -- in my view -- squeaked by into an elite school (probably of the second rank as described in the article) despite being raised in a 'natural growth' environment, I think some people are truly at a different level of efficacy and I'm not sure what people are going to do about it. They show sustained ability to dominate fields. Yes, I'm sure this is cultural, but it's still a difference. And there are frankly different behavioral patterns, some of which I did pick up and I think led to major differences in how I view the world, despite still firmly identifying with my more modest upbringing.
As a simple example, my parents and family have a much more fatalistic 'fate-guided' view of the world, whereas the people I met in university were extremely motivated to just change what they saw as wrong. Even though my parents nominally supported that attitude, they were never able to actually do it.
vjk800 1 days ago [-]
Indeed. I went to what was considered an elite university program in my country. Most of the people even there were borderline normal, although probably in the top 1% of the population in mathematical abilities, but some few people seemed to just do whatever the hell they pleased, and always succeed. I'm not sure what was it that drove those people. Were they just so genetically gifted, or was it just crazy high confidence in themselves combined with the same top 1% mathematical abilities that the rest of us had? Or did they have some behavioral models from home that allowed them to flow the way they did? Or did they just give it way more effort than I did, year after year?
abyssin 1 days ago [-]
If you had to make a guess about these behavioral models, what would it be?
anon291 1 days ago [-]
Not the one you responded to, but the guy above him.
I would say a few things:
1. Less social anxiety / confidence -- simply realizing that the worst thing that happens is you fail. It does help to have daddy's money for this though.
2. More calculating -- One trait I absolutely noticed in all these people was that they had planned out their entire life. This did not mean the plan always happened as expected, but the goal was clear, and always worked towards. They made lists, they met criteria, they executed extremely well. For example, they knew they needed to publish a paper. That can mean you either dazzle with a brilliant paper, which most 'normies' would say is the route you should go down. But that's not necessarily the 'elite' position. Sure, a handful might be truly smart. The rest would just crank out work and submit to as many journals as possible until they found one that matched their criteria.
3. When they get together they talk about ideas -- this one is a trait I picked up on, and it led to some strife with my own family when I went back home. It's a hard one to explain, but with Thanksgiving coming up, really pay attention to what's talked about. Is it celebrities? The current election even? I guarantee you somewhere out there, some elites are discussing the next great invention / policy / etc. It's why so many 'normies' get blind-sided by new ideas, whereas for the elites, it's normal. For example, conspiracists on Twitter believe that AI is the result of alien technology, because they are so far removed from the actual development of the thing that to them it must truly seem like magic.
ctchocula 1 days ago [-]
Reminds me of "Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people".
ta12653421 1 hours ago [-]
++1
I have read this on Quora 10 years ago, esp. when i was in a highly divese neighborhood, like: Poor people, doing-well-people, refugees, unemployed, but also academics and wealthy. So i could jump segments very often in a week, and this saying turns out to be absolutely right, in my perception.
Since then, i'm looking/hearing very thoroughly when being in a group situation.
DiscourseFan 3 hours ago [-]
A quote discussing the behavior of people?
anon291 1 days ago [-]
Yes, I truly learned a lot from them. Immediately after school, despite getting a degree in Math / Computer Science, I decided to just go for it like they did, and joined one of the Big 3 strategy consulting firms where I worked for a few months, where I learned even more about these types of people. We need to actually contend with their very real ability before we dismiss them with memes.
bilbo0s 1 days ago [-]
One of the big issues is that the people making the memes, never actually met any of the people we're all talking about. It's easy to dismiss if it's not real for you. If you've been moving between say, Cambridge and Sommerville, you understand. If you haven't, you think you can do anything that top .01% of the top 1% can do.
How do you convince someone that there are people out there so gifted at everything that they make MIT and Stanford alums look like village idiots? You likely can't.
People reading our comments will think, "That's a myth. There are no people like that."
anon291 1 days ago [-]
Well I make a lot of memes, so I'm not sure I agree with your first statement haha. I think you'd be surprised at the educational backgrounds of the people that actually make the memes (vs the ones just spreading them).
I think my basic thesis is that, if you come from a normal background, and go through these institutions, this is a major selection factor for some level of charisma. You understand the game and you understand the normal person. This is why the first 'round' of purely meritocratic admits worked. The graduates were inevitably going to be so irresistibly charming, they'd have no problem dealing with the world.
However, as time went on and they had their own children, who did not experience the normal childhood, they are at a disadvantage. They have the educational background, but not the ability to connect with people.
For example, since it's all fresh in our minds. I remember people saying that Vance was going to appear weird at the debate and Walz normal. As evidence, they used the fact that Vance was rich and thus out of touch. At the time I thought differently, simple because Vance had been to Yale and then through the Silicon Valley VC landscape and -- from what I understand -- came out successful. Thus, in my mind, he was the perfect test to my thesis.
And I think that's what we saw, not only did he come across as amazingly likeable, he even seemed to make Tim Walz like him at times. And the general consensus was that he won [1]. Normal people don't make it through these institutions without the ability to -- at least temporarily, maybe even disingenuously depending on your politics -- come across as irresistibly charming.
> How do you convince someone that there are people out there so gifted at everything that they make MIT and Stanford alums look like village idiots? You likely can't.
That's correct, as demonstrated by the people that accuse them of cheating to get where they are. Or of cheating because they worked less hard than someone else who worked very hard at the wrong thing.
I'm not really talking about the charming. I mean, if I'm being honest, the majority of people at places like Harvard have the ability to charm. What I'm going to say is illustration rather than arrogance, but charm and intelligence are just table stakes at places like Yale and Harvard. Don't misunderstand me, there are awkward people at elite schools. But you'd be surprised how many are able to out "charm" the average person.
What I'm talking about is something different entirely. I'm talking about people who are truly different. People who pick up salsa as easily as they pick up tensor analysis. Piano as easily as molecular engineering. And when they go into the military, they can reap a guy just as easily as they can analyze intel.
You might make the mistake of thinking, "Well that's not impressive. We train thousands of analysts." You're right. We do. Between DIA, CIA, FBI, etc etc, we train tens of thousands. And we might get a couple dozen that are any good. And maybe 2 of those can also compose symphonies and tape out a microprocessor on the side.
To compare it to Vance, or Obama on the other side, is to downplay it. People could see themselves being Vance or Obama. We're talking about people you meet where it's clear, there is no comparison. Which is saying something when you're already in a top 1% population in the first place.
Foreignborn 1 days ago [-]
I feel like I’m missing something, forgive me.
I’ve read your entire thread, and I don’t mean this negatively… but I can’t tell if you’re larping.
Take this example:
“[They learn] piano as easily as molecular engineering”
Pretty much anyone with a career will have one or more other interests, like playing an instrument. And yes, at elite levels. Or sports, I know multiple olympians… but like… they’re quite normal. It’s obviously impressive, sure, but… what you’re saying doesn’t reflect my experience so I feel like I’m missing something!
I have never met any ivy league elite, actor, scientist, musician or anyone else that felt like they were super human.
The only ones who felt unworldly were billionaires because they could hire so many people to work on their projects in parallel.
bilbo0s 1 days ago [-]
I didn’t say they were super human. Nothing human, is super human. They, themselves, most of all, see nothing abnormal in their abilities. I said they are different. They think differently. They learn differently.
Maybe an illustration with the benefit of hindsight. There were many renaissance men and women, but Leonardo was a bit different. That takes nothing away from anyone else, but the works of Leonardo are a bit different.
So what I’m saying, is that at MIT, most people are not Leonardo. But when you come across one, you know. Whether they make history with their gifts, is up to their own inclination.
This doesn’t mean everyone else at elite schools are any less special. But it does mean those individuals are operating at a level that many of us just don’t.
Mordisquitos 1 days ago [-]
In your second paragraph you're essentially pointing towards what social & developmental psychologist Carol Dweck [0] describes as the 'Growth Mindset' vs 'Fixed Mindset' modes of thinking.
To be fair, there is some controversy as to the validity of Dweck's model. However, you may find it interesting, even at the risk of falling into confirmation bias (given that you appear to be primed to agree with it). I myself have no strong opinion as to the validity of the model's explanatory power, but at the very least I do believe it is personally a better choice to aim for a Growth Mindset.
> To be fair, there is some controversy as to the validity of Dweck's model. However, you may find it interesting, even at the risk of falling into confirmation bias (given that you appear to be primed to agree with it)
I've heard about the idea of the 'growth mindset', and indeed my prior today would very much be on that, but by my upbringing I didn't even know that existed.
Hilift 1 days ago [-]
Something missing is deindustrialization following WW2. The US northeast (where "Ivy League" schools are located) shifted a huge amount of industry to other parts of the country, where factories had been established during the war. A few years later, the south had more electoral votes than the northeast and midwest. The votes determine leaders, not educational institutions.
Look at the electoral votes from 1956:
NY: 45
PA: 32
TX: 24
FL: 10
Today:
NY: 28
PA: 19
TX: 40
FL: 30
Texas and Florida doubled their influence.
082349872349872 4 hours ago [-]
Tangentially, I know someone who used to sell textile machinery to new factories in the southern states, which left the old northern factories vacant, which yielded cheap space near Boston in which to expand for a fresh startup called DEC.
gsf_emergency 1 days ago [-]
NYers are also still relocating to FL (& less prominently, to TX), according to VizCap
if it's still true, one reason for high-variance NYers to relocate to FL was that under FL bankruptcy laws, personal homes were exempt — which used to mean that buying something fancy in FL and domiciling there was a way to "lock in" gains for those who suspected their random walks might also hit an absorbing barrier at "zero"...
The idea of building new institutions is basically right. You can’t fix Harvard.
But can you really build new institutions without a new civilization? The point of Harvard is the golden ticket to the upper class. The upper class now sucks (imo), so you can’t just have a better school with the same function.
swed420 24 hours ago [-]
Agreed.
> But can you really build new institutions without a new civilization?
If enough people replace the pet idpol/culture war issue obsessions, which were designed to keep us divided and distracted from root class issues, instead with a unified vision of what benefits the ordinary person, then there is hope for diverging from this hellscape trajectory.
I think this is fundamentally about the obsession with meritocracy, and not just the Ivy League. The Ivy League is merely the "best" system that subsequently became the obvious choice for a meritocratic filtering process.
Which means that this issue will arise in any social structure that is attempting to optimize for merit. There have been many books critiquing this idea, but one that is both old and has stuck in my mind is from T. S. Eliot's Notes Towards a Definition of Culture. His basic point is that in a hyper competitive society driven by tests, evaluations, etc., basically no one is incentivized to preserve cultural practices – unless they somehow help one succeed in the new meritocracy. This functionally is a defense of the aristocracy, or of entrenched power that doesn't need to "earn" its wealth by competing. I'm not sure how much I agree with Eliot, but I think this is a pretty compelling point that, a hundred years later, seems quite obviously to have been accurate, if we look at the loss of knowledge traditional art forms.
The problem with my comment here, though, is that is assumes the Ivy Leagues are now, currently meritocratic. It seems pretty obvious to me that they aren't - which makes this an even more complex situation.
sapphicsnail 1 days ago [-]
It's very strange to read an article complaining about the homogenization of the cultural elite that name drops the university of every author of a book/article that supports his opinion. David Brooks himself is part of the very same cultural elite that he's complaining about.
If someone really wanted to bring about a culture with leaders drawn from different economic strata the first step should be addressing people's material needs. Parents can't help their kids if they're spending all their time working multiple jobs only to live paycheck to paycheck. It's also hard to take risks or cultivate different skills when you're saddled with college debt you can't get rid if, and when healthcare and rent are taking up a large chunk of your income. People voted for Trump because neither side is willing to do anything to actually help people. That's why people don't trust institutions or "the establishment." For all his faults, and least Trump is willing to lie to his base and promise some sort of change.
bachmeier 1 days ago [-]
> It's very strange to read an article complaining about the homogenization of the cultural elite that name drops the university of every author of a book/article that supports his opinion.
He is in general very sloppy about this kind of thing. He famously said Obama wasn't able to fit in with working people, because you can't imagine him at an Applebee's salad bar. Well, Applebee's doesn't have a salad bar, so he was ironically outing himself as the elitist. There was also the more serious problem of fabricating claims about visiting restaurants and not being able to spend $20, something that was easily debunked.
klabb3 1 days ago [-]
> David Brooks himself is part of the very same cultural elite that he's complaining about.
Thats a strengthening of the argument, not weakening. Imagine the opposite: “he hasn’t gone there, he doesn’t understand, he’s just jealous”
> For all his faults, and least Trump is willing to lie to his base
Again, that’s a weakening of the standpoint. It’s completely backwards rationalization.
> People voted for Trump because neither side is willing to do anything to actually help people. That's why people don't trust institutions or "the establishment."
This is so much in the article that it’s arguably the entire point of it. You’re basically agreeing with it, but in a contorted contrarian way.
> It's also hard to take risks or cultivate different skills when you're saddled with college debt you can't get rid if, and when healthcare and rent are taking up a large chunk of your income.
Right, but you can only get so far with a solution that amounts to getting more kids into schools that brag about how few kids they accept. There have to be more avenues and less inbreeding/nepotism/favoritism based on brand names.
At the heart of academic movement of inclusivity sits the most entrenched and extreme form of exclusivity. This is a problem worthy of its own attention, without bringing in socioeconomic everythingism. The fact that you have tons of smart and ambitious kids coming out of non-brand-name schools unable to get their resumes looked at is a disgrace and a failure. It’s demoralizing as hell.
rob74 1 days ago [-]
> For all his faults, and least Trump is willing to lie to his base and promise some sort of change
So "willing to lie" is his only redeeming trait? Poor America! That said, I think he will bring about some sort of change, but it won't be one that really benefits the people who voted for him...
onetokeoverthe 1 days ago [-]
Ivy UPENN and YALE, for the incoming pres/vp pairing. And vp's wife is also Yale. Just like the D pres husband wife team in the 90s.
Bushes, Yale. Obama, Columbia/Harvard.
keiferski 1 days ago [-]
This lines up with the idea of how great social change tends to be merely one group of elites splintering off from another and co-opting social movements, and not actual bottom-up democratic action.
onetokeoverthe 22 hours ago [-]
Yes, like the aptly named Big Game. Go Bears. or Cardinals.
Animats 1 days ago [-]
There's a much better discussion of college admissions in Malcom Gladwell's new "Revenge of the Tipping Point".
lordnacho 1 days ago [-]
Can we get a summary?
Animats 17 hours ago [-]
Legacy admits bad.
harvardTest1 21 hours ago [-]
Throwaway here with a side question:
Turns out, we have money. My spouse's side did very well. We should have about 55M by time our kids get to college.
As long as my kids don't do something stupid, the money will outgrow them. Like, they have 'made it', by all my definitions, at least.
So, my question: Do I bother with this rat race for my kids? I was part of it, I hated it, but it did turn out well enough for me (minus marrying well). We have access now to the best tutors and can more than afford great schools and programs and the like. Not a worry at all now. So, do I bother to do it?
ndriscoll 18 hours ago [-]
Educational materials are freely available now (from elite schools even), so I see university primarily as a means to acquire credentials and to meet a high-quality spouse. Your kids don't need credentials, so I suppose the question is whether those schools would help them to be surrounded by the right kinds of people, and whether they wouldn't otherwise already be.
If you feel that it's a rat race, and if the people who go there are the types that participate in it (and later make their kids participate in it) despite knowing it's pointless, are they a good fit for your kids? If not there, where would they find a better fit? They're already economically secure, so your primary concern should be maximizing the chance that they end up with a happy family life and end up as well-rounded people.
Education is still important for them to grow up as whole people of course (c.f. classical takes on "liberal arts"). But if it's merely in service to developing an impressive resume, who are they trying to impress?
On a related note, these sorts of articles are always bizarre to me as someone not in that bubble. I was a B student growing up (mostly out of apathy), went to a state school, and have worked "normal" engineering jobs. I plan to have an order of magnitude less money than you, but that's still on the line of what I'd consider to be "generational wealth". Going to an elite school was never necessary except to make sure your kids are around kids who go to elite schools. Only someone in the elite school bubble would think it's necessary or that it's normal to make your kids' lives revolve around it.
Similarly, when articles like this conflate "eminence" ("becoming a full professor at a major research university, a CEO of a Fortune 500 company, a leader in biomedicine, a prestigious judge, an award-winning writer, and the like") with flourishing in life, it's clear to me that they're just living in a different world in terms of value systems. I was always in the 99th percentile on standardized tests, and being the CEO of a Fortune 500 company sounds like a total nightmare to me. I don't even want to move from an IC to management role or to reach the top parts of the IC track for that matter. I plan to retire from such work and spend more time with my family.
AnimalMuppet 19 hours ago [-]
If I were you, I would focus on three things:
1. Raise your kids to be decent people - to have ethics, empathy, and compassion. ("We can buy anything" is likely to negatively impact this.)
2. Raise your kids to not blow it. They aren't going to have more money than they can possibly spend; they could still end up broke. Raise them to be responsible with what they have.
3. You are in the privileged position of being able to raise your kids to find out what they really want to do, and to pursue that. This means giving them a lot of things they can try early, and seeing which one floats their boat. (It also means not forcing them into forever pursuing what they liked when they were five.)
Yes, I am aware that 1 and 3 kind of contradict each other.
You could argue that raising them to be people who can make their own way without the money - that is, who can earn a decent income on their own - is part of 1, or 2, or both.
corimaith 1 days ago [-]
The biggest problem I feel with "meritocracy" is that we're incurring huge costs on society all to pick up the best and brightest, but with very little returns in terms of societal benefits.
I don't care about the guy who is higher up in the ladder than me, what I care about is the guy who builds more ladders, shorter ladders, elevators or such. And I think that most of our elites don't or can't do that.
The birthrate crisis, the competition crisis, the housing crisis, etc, I don't think these people have the capability to solve them.
anon291 19 hours ago [-]
> The birthrate crisis,
The cause of the birthrate crisis is ultimately a lack of having fallen in love with humanity. This should be the point of the 'humanities', but if you look at the subjects included in that today, they're either 'science of human management' or a shell of their former glory. It's no surprise that the technocratic class they produce is unable to inspire people to have children and seems perpetually confused how to make that happen.
FooBarBizBazz 23 hours ago [-]
I'm really sympathetic to the impulse that led to this article, but I think it's missing something central: The structure of the economy.
The word "inequality" ("inequalities", actually) appears only twice, in one short paragraph, and it's to unfocus the emphasis, away from just wealth, to also include respect.
Then the article, which bemoans an overemphasis on IQ and on the individual, suggests a variety of alternative measures by which we can determine which individuals get a slice of the decaying pie. There's something self-contradictory about this.
We are witnessing a terrible arms race all throughout society, so that a smaller and smaller number of people can have a larger and larger share of desirable things. We're fighting over who gets to extract value. Meanwhile, so much else is left to be undesirable. To be truly a bit shit. The largest firms are getting larger and larger, and you have to get into them if you want to get anywhere. Inequality between firms is way up. A handful of East India Companies is conquering all.
This "Tiger Mom" phenomenon is just the prisoner's best-response to the situation.
The solution has to be a more broad-based cultural and material plenty. We have to have enough to go around, and we have to have nice things. People wouldn't be gouging each others' eyes out if they didn't think their peers were just competitors for scarce resources.
1 days ago [-]
myflash13 1 days ago [-]
Any educational “system” strongly selects for conformity. A student can’t question the system or they’ll be sidelined early on and failed for giving the “wrong” answer. Geniuses are almost by definition weirdos who question the status quo. Yet most would get eliminated by the current educational system and it’s by-product of elites. That’s why true geniuses like Elon Musk somewhat ironically choose to rally the uneducated, not because he is intellectually aligned with them, but only because they allow much greater freedom to not conform. The truly intelligent shun intelligentsia.
gadders 1 days ago [-]
I think if people want to add extra evaluations on top of IQ, then fair enough, but they need to be of high quality and as repeatable as IQ tests, otherwise it will be a case of pseudo-science and ideological capture.
myflash13 1 days ago [-]
Perhaps the very idea of having standardized evaluations needs to be questioned. Anything that can be measured will be gamed. Nothing “repeatable” can capture the whole value of a human being.
gadders 1 days ago [-]
The aim is not to measure the value of an individual, though. A garbage collector is just as valuable as a human being as a brain surgeon.
This is about finding a way to identify people who will benefit from the best education
myflash13 24 hours ago [-]
If it was just about identifying people for education, sure. But Ivy League colleges have become a gateway for all powerful institutions and posts in society, it’s not strictly about the education.
The garbage collector might be a better president than the brain surgeon due to traits orthogonal to intelligence.
gadders 23 hours ago [-]
>>The garbage collector might be a better president than the brain surgeon due to traits orthogonal to intelligence.
Yes, I agree with that point.
I guess the linkage to break then would be between Ivy League Schools and powerful institutions.
anonnon 1 days ago [-]
As a great counterpoint to this thinkpiece (which argues the meritocracy is working as intended but having unintended consequences for society and thus fails to make any mention of quotas or the college admissions scandal from 5 years ago), consider this one: https://www.theamericanconservative.com/the-myth-of-american...
The author found evidence of widespread quotas restricting the admission of Asians (no surprise, at least not anymore), but more scandalously, also evidence of affirmative action benefiting Jews. (The author is himself Jewish, and at least back then, probably couldn't have gotten away with writing it had that not been the case.)
Brook's premise--that we did away with a nepotistic aristocracy (the "evil" WASP will-o'-the-wisp) and replaced it with a meritocracy--is false.
anon291 1 days ago [-]
> And yet it’s not obvious that we have produced either a better leadership class or a healthier relationship between our society and its elites
Part of the problem is as follows and I see it so often in politics.
We have an excellent technocratic leadership class.
But being a technocratic leader does not make you a great leader of people, and frankly -- given the way many technocratic fields in the humanities are taught -- getting too deep in them makes you actively unappealing to people.
The article derides the various social clubs at Harvard, Princeton, Yale, etc as 'non-academic', but nothing is further from the truth. Humans have an innate draw to beauty, and one thing that is beautiful to basically everyone is a rich culture with traditions, institutions, and members [1]. One way to signal that is by learning the social niceties inside and out. This is no less academic since it doesn't come from a book.
The 'grinds', as the article says, didn't get that, and they were shunned not because they focused on books, but because they were unable to have a more expansive view of academics.
It is shocking to me when I see pundits today seemingly confused why the masses find appeal in particular candidates despite the pundits being able to list ten technical reasons why he should be disqualified. They don't understand how people perceive things, and it's so painful to watch.
I feel as someone who occupies a sort of 'third space' here [2], I am really truly able to see both viewpoints. But it's so difficult to explain to a technocrat the full range of human emotion, and it sometimes appears as if they've been handicapped in their ability to feel it.
As an example (and I would recommend Camille Paglia's works), it's fascinating to me how, despite our ever growing technical ability to produce great film, the actual emotional content of the film is ever worse. We have the most scantily clad females of all time but the fully clothed actors and actresses of the past were actually more sexually enticing. We've lost the sense of awe that CS Lewis talks about in the Abolition of Man. We have the greatest visual effects, but the emotional content of the film is so thin that you just don't feel anything.
Where these feelings do exist, it's in independent (read: not produced by the Ivy type) films and media, which is why 'alternate' media has suddenly become so popular.
I'll also just leave that Donald Trump has an innate understanding of people. People are shocked that he's able to get so many seemingly random, seemingly opposed people behind him. They classify it as a trick. But it's not. People vote and support who they like, not who has the best technocratic solutions. That is neither good nor bad. It just is. It's a tale as old as time, and would be apparent if you studied the actual humanities.
Just so no one thinks I think Trump is some singular. Barack Obama is also one of these figures. And even Joe Biden is to some extent [3]
I can write a dissertation on this topic.
[1] It doesn't matter the culture. All traditional cultures are enthralling
[2] I was raised in the 'normal' way, but ended up at a second-tier 'elite' school, and then -- adopting some of the stuff I learned -- moved into strategy consulting at one of the Big 3 where I learned even more about this type. I eventually moved back into tech (and do feel my career is better for having been through these experiences).
[3] Completely off-topic, but I also think that if you go to spaces inhabited by the technocrats, you'll notice that 'detachment' philosophies like Stoicism and Buddhism are very popular, whereas the masses go for attachment. It's not a surprise to me that the Kennedy family, being Catholic, the exact opposite of Buddhism in that sense, was always seen as particularly charismatic and alluring amongst political dynasties
corimaith 1 days ago [-]
Perhaps a more crude label of what you ascribing to technocrats is the term "Soulless".
watwut 1 days ago [-]
People are surprised over Trump, because of what it applies about conservative peoples hypocrisy. Conservativism is typically approached with massive amount of naivety and undeserved trust. They lie, they complain about things they don't mind, then they state their plans out loud and pundit class is still "they cant be as bad as they say". Trump and the people he is choosing winning three times clearly show who these people are ... and pundits cant admit it. Moderate republicans cant admit it either to themselves.
The confusement is because if Trump won primaries three times, it clearly means you do not care about respectability no matter how much you pretended being outraged over minor non-issues in the past. It means you do not mind lying, actually. It means you do actually want pure destruction and are in fact motivated by misogyny and all those bad things.
But, we want to believe in good of the massive amount of people. We do not want to believe that conservative Christians will do anything just to get control over women back. Or that they actually want to destroy the democracy.
CapricornNoble 18 hours ago [-]
> It means you do actually want pure destruction and are in fact motivated by misogyny and all those bad things.
Do you genuinely think this is why Trump won the election?
How do you explain Trump pulling in massive amounts of former-Democrat stalwarts, like black and Hispanic men, or Muslims?
Do you think Muslim women went into the voting booth thinking "can't wait to destroy democracy!"? They may have miscalculated Trump's support for Zionism (Miriam Adelson donated ~$100 million to his campaign), but if anything that reinforces GP's point: human emotion is drawn to the likeable person, and likability needs to be accounted for.
^This page has a great graph depicting how minority men, in particular those under 30, wholesale abandoned the Dems this year. Those aren't demographics known for their Christian conservatism.
> People are surprised over Trump, because of what it applies[do you mean implies?] about conservative peoples hypocrisy.
Technocrats talk about hypocrits. Lovers of the humanities talk about people.
People don't operate on principles. They operate on human emotion, which is a very real force. It is no less real than facts, figure, logic, or rationality. Trump's shooting, his McDonald's stunt, his garbage vest/truck, and his ability to exude his brand are actual skills, and signs of a different kind of intelligence. Until people get that, they will be perpetually confused.
A lot of pollsters around the issue of the economy for example threw their hands in the air this election. The numbers looked good, they said, so how come people feel that it's not working? They blamed 'the vibe'. But 'the vibe' is a very real force, that one must contend with when you study human behavior and emotion.
The problem is that -- instead of studying literature, philosophy, religion, art, music, dance, etc, i.e., the real humanities -- the 'humanities' PhDs, the sociologists, the pollsters, etc, all studied statistics for human management essentially. We've lost so much by not focusing on the actual humanities
> Moderate republicans cant admit it either to themselves.
Moderate republicans -- if you mean the lincoln project crowd -- are the worst perpetrators of the problems addressed in the article
> But, we want to believe in good of the massive amount of people. We do not want to believe that conservative Christians will do anything just to get control over women back. Or that they actually want to destroy the democracy.
oof... read and believe too much of the Ivy League output I see. You know it's a grift for them too right? Just look at President Biden (a graduate of the Ivies if I'm not mistaken) being all smiles after the man he called Hitler came to the white house to take over.
MandieD 5 hours ago [-]
“President Biden (a graduate of the Ivies if I'm not mistaken)”
You’re quite mistaken there: he did his undergrad at the very public University of Delaware, and went to law school at private but definitely not Ivy League Syracuse.
watwut 1 days ago [-]
Sure, but I read and listened A LOT about principles from christians, conservatives and republicans. And they mock everybody elses emotions, except their own which are super important.
Yes emotions are real force. I am glad we are admiting it, because god, the conservatives LOVE to pretend they are being rational when they are ... not.
anon291 1 days ago [-]
Did you have something constructive you wanted to talk about either about what I wrote or the article, or did you just want to have your say on christians, conservatives, and republicans? If the former, I'm happy to engage. If the latter, I'll just let your comment stand on its demerits.
proshno 1 days ago [-]
[dead]
Rendered at 12:26:41 GMT+0000 (UTC) with Wasmer Edge.
I think a lot of quality time is wasted due to the rat race starting in early childhood.
I live in a bit of a bubble in the commuter belt around London (ie not the US), but I observe some of the same obsessions here as well. In particular, I started to notice that my kid's friends suddenly had a lot less time for playdates in the year or two leading up to the 11-plus exam, which is a selective school thing. There are similar exams for the private schools in the area. Of course what was happening was that their parents would hire a tutor to help them pass the tests.
The effect of this tutoring is on the whole negative. Obviously, it costs money. It also costs time that your kid would have to do other things. But also, it gives the kids the impression that school is super important, and they will be valued based on the outcome of this test. You end up with a few percent who get into the top selective schools, and everyone else is left with low expectations.
Inevitably, it also means that it becomes a game for rich parents. I went to the induction day at the fancy school, and guess what. The parents are a bunch of professionals, virtually nobody doing anything else, and most kids went to private primaries + got tutored. We must have left some poor but capable kids in the wrong school.
>We must have left some poor but capable kids in the wrong school.
Both of those things cannot be true at the same time. Either school is important, in which case both the parents pushing their children and the children pushing themselves are doing the right thing to improve their chances of later success, or it is NOT important, in which case it doesn't matter anyway which school the other children end up in.
Trying to get a less academic kid into grammar school isn't going to help them. Maybe I can provide a bit of context.
The grammar school is highly academic. The kid is certainly above my level of attainment when I was his age. I went to a non-selective international school, ending with the IB.
The kids are tested, every week, in a variety of subjects. I don't think a week has gone by without some sort of test. It is a constant grind of math, multiple sciences, humanities, and three languages. Not every kid enjoys that kind of thing, or even benefits from the pressure.
If you manage to Fosbury Flop your kid into a school like this, you're actually doing them a disservice. They will hate being constantly pushed academically, and they will not find fellowship with the kind of kid who enjoys it.
At the same time, there will be poor kids who didn't know the tricks of the exam, and didn't get in, who would have been better off at the school.
Some children can be pushed way too hard, some can be pushed not enough and certainly some parents can take their own personal ambitions way too far, as it sounds like in the case you are describing.
Unfortunately, at the end of the day, I don't know of any system anywhere in the world that hasn't eventually devolved into a status chase, for better or worse.
Argument #1: Certain kids are privileged enough to be able to afford tutoring and get into good schools and this is unfair to the poor kids
Argument #2: Certain kids are being pushed UNNECESSARILY by their parents to participate in a rat race when their time would be better suited to doing something else
If certain kids are getting in because of tutoring rather than because of talent/ability, then they are the kids that are being pushed unnecessarily to participate when they'd be better off doing something else. Those kids take up the space of kids who are poor who could benefit from that kind of instruction.
Especially since the kid who was in "the wrong school" will be blamed for "being lazy" or "less capable" when they don't perform as well as equally capable and hardworking peers in the "right school".
Kids in real world selective schools do form relationships, are curious, interact and like the world outside. Some selective schools are like you describe ... but others are not and kids in them are happy.
There's a difference between considering something important versus an utmost priority. The parent's criticism refers to the latter, which is also typical in certain cultures (here, in the context of USA).
I've had direct experience with middle-class schools and indirect experience with an upper-class one, and the issues with the latter are very tangible. The most horrific cases involve parents of students who are not capable enough (in the given context) and will do everything in the book to ensure their children succeed, at the expense of both the children themselves and the whole system. Then, of course, if one considers study/career the one and only priority, emotional and relational needs are seen as a hindrance, creating successful but emotionally damaged adults.
Ultimately, this can be summarized with the Mexican fisherman story, I guess (which omits that the businessman is a cocaine addict, cheats on his wife, and has never spent time with his children /s).
What a load of number two.
I went to a famous institution, and there were loads of kids who bought into this. If you don't know quite what you want to do, it is very easy to fall into the trap of "oh I'll do this well paid thing for a while and see how it goes".
You then get there, and it's a treadmill. Nobody thinks it's a meritocracy either. But everyone looks down on taking a normal, non-elite job.
Also question, is consulting considered an elite job? My impression is that even consulting for the big 4* is nothing special.
* are they they same everywhere? : Deloitte, EY, KPMG and PwC
But there are multiple levels of prestige in consulting. The mentioned firms, and then McKinsey/Bain/Boston, which are above that level in the hierarchy.
The sad thing is that no one's heard of the actual prestigious ones: Bain, McKinsey, and BCG. I sure hadn't when I joined Bain & Co, but all the rich kids were doing it.
Can't speak for other countries but in the US there are a glut of lawyers, and if you're not at a Top 14. and in the top half the class, you're not going to make the Big Money -- and the stats generally bare that out.
Doesn't mean you can't do well, but the market is packed, tolerable jobs in law are sparse, hours are long, and student loans are large.
OTOH, arguing that anyway might give you a far better shot at getting your hands on a few of those $billions than I'll ever have. GO FOR IT.
A group of people whose sole value is social network/wealth is probably not sufficient.
Humans have a limited amount of time and energy to work with, so some mechanism of filtering who or what to place bets on would presumably increase desirable results.
Not too dissimilar from seeking recommendations for a plumber or electrician or romantic partner from a trusted neighbor or family or friend.
As the article somewhat points out, "network effect" is - at most - a means. Not an end. And the narcissistic group-think and badly limited worldview that the article describes at Ivy League schools sounds very much like the worst failings of those old noble and royal courts.
As a simple example, my parents and family have a much more fatalistic 'fate-guided' view of the world, whereas the people I met in university were extremely motivated to just change what they saw as wrong. Even though my parents nominally supported that attitude, they were never able to actually do it.
I would say a few things:
1. Less social anxiety / confidence -- simply realizing that the worst thing that happens is you fail. It does help to have daddy's money for this though.
2. More calculating -- One trait I absolutely noticed in all these people was that they had planned out their entire life. This did not mean the plan always happened as expected, but the goal was clear, and always worked towards. They made lists, they met criteria, they executed extremely well. For example, they knew they needed to publish a paper. That can mean you either dazzle with a brilliant paper, which most 'normies' would say is the route you should go down. But that's not necessarily the 'elite' position. Sure, a handful might be truly smart. The rest would just crank out work and submit to as many journals as possible until they found one that matched their criteria.
3. When they get together they talk about ideas -- this one is a trait I picked up on, and it led to some strife with my own family when I went back home. It's a hard one to explain, but with Thanksgiving coming up, really pay attention to what's talked about. Is it celebrities? The current election even? I guarantee you somewhere out there, some elites are discussing the next great invention / policy / etc. It's why so many 'normies' get blind-sided by new ideas, whereas for the elites, it's normal. For example, conspiracists on Twitter believe that AI is the result of alien technology, because they are so far removed from the actual development of the thing that to them it must truly seem like magic.
I have read this on Quora 10 years ago, esp. when i was in a highly divese neighborhood, like: Poor people, doing-well-people, refugees, unemployed, but also academics and wealthy. So i could jump segments very often in a week, and this saying turns out to be absolutely right, in my perception. Since then, i'm looking/hearing very thoroughly when being in a group situation.
How do you convince someone that there are people out there so gifted at everything that they make MIT and Stanford alums look like village idiots? You likely can't.
People reading our comments will think, "That's a myth. There are no people like that."
I think my basic thesis is that, if you come from a normal background, and go through these institutions, this is a major selection factor for some level of charisma. You understand the game and you understand the normal person. This is why the first 'round' of purely meritocratic admits worked. The graduates were inevitably going to be so irresistibly charming, they'd have no problem dealing with the world.
However, as time went on and they had their own children, who did not experience the normal childhood, they are at a disadvantage. They have the educational background, but not the ability to connect with people.
For example, since it's all fresh in our minds. I remember people saying that Vance was going to appear weird at the debate and Walz normal. As evidence, they used the fact that Vance was rich and thus out of touch. At the time I thought differently, simple because Vance had been to Yale and then through the Silicon Valley VC landscape and -- from what I understand -- came out successful. Thus, in my mind, he was the perfect test to my thesis.
And I think that's what we saw, not only did he come across as amazingly likeable, he even seemed to make Tim Walz like him at times. And the general consensus was that he won [1]. Normal people don't make it through these institutions without the ability to -- at least temporarily, maybe even disingenuously depending on your politics -- come across as irresistibly charming.
> How do you convince someone that there are people out there so gifted at everything that they make MIT and Stanford alums look like village idiots? You likely can't.
That's correct, as demonstrated by the people that accuse them of cheating to get where they are. Or of cheating because they worked less hard than someone else who worked very hard at the wrong thing.
[1] https://www.politico.com/news/2024/10/02/vance-walz-who-won-... . Doesn't matter your politics, he clearly was very effective, even if you think he was disingenuous -- like I said, you don't go through Yale and VC without being able to charm.
What I'm talking about is something different entirely. I'm talking about people who are truly different. People who pick up salsa as easily as they pick up tensor analysis. Piano as easily as molecular engineering. And when they go into the military, they can reap a guy just as easily as they can analyze intel.
You might make the mistake of thinking, "Well that's not impressive. We train thousands of analysts." You're right. We do. Between DIA, CIA, FBI, etc etc, we train tens of thousands. And we might get a couple dozen that are any good. And maybe 2 of those can also compose symphonies and tape out a microprocessor on the side.
To compare it to Vance, or Obama on the other side, is to downplay it. People could see themselves being Vance or Obama. We're talking about people you meet where it's clear, there is no comparison. Which is saying something when you're already in a top 1% population in the first place.
I’ve read your entire thread, and I don’t mean this negatively… but I can’t tell if you’re larping.
Take this example: “[They learn] piano as easily as molecular engineering”
Pretty much anyone with a career will have one or more other interests, like playing an instrument. And yes, at elite levels. Or sports, I know multiple olympians… but like… they’re quite normal. It’s obviously impressive, sure, but… what you’re saying doesn’t reflect my experience so I feel like I’m missing something!
I have never met any ivy league elite, actor, scientist, musician or anyone else that felt like they were super human.
The only ones who felt unworldly were billionaires because they could hire so many people to work on their projects in parallel.
Maybe an illustration with the benefit of hindsight. There were many renaissance men and women, but Leonardo was a bit different. That takes nothing away from anyone else, but the works of Leonardo are a bit different.
So what I’m saying, is that at MIT, most people are not Leonardo. But when you come across one, you know. Whether they make history with their gifts, is up to their own inclination.
This doesn’t mean everyone else at elite schools are any less special. But it does mean those individuals are operating at a level that many of us just don’t.
To be fair, there is some controversy as to the validity of Dweck's model. However, you may find it interesting, even at the risk of falling into confirmation bias (given that you appear to be primed to agree with it). I myself have no strong opinion as to the validity of the model's explanatory power, but at the very least I do believe it is personally a better choice to aim for a Growth Mindset.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carol_Dweck
I've heard about the idea of the 'growth mindset', and indeed my prior today would very much be on that, but by my upbringing I didn't even know that existed.
Look at the electoral votes from 1956:
NY: 45 PA: 32 TX: 24 FL: 10
Today:
NY: 28 PA: 19 TX: 40 FL: 30
Texas and Florida doubled their influence.
https://www.visualcapitalist.com/mapped-the-top-5-states-ame...
But can you really build new institutions without a new civilization? The point of Harvard is the golden ticket to the upper class. The upper class now sucks (imo), so you can’t just have a better school with the same function.
> But can you really build new institutions without a new civilization?
If enough people replace the pet idpol/culture war issue obsessions, which were designed to keep us divided and distracted from root class issues, instead with a unified vision of what benefits the ordinary person, then there is hope for diverging from this hellscape trajectory.
Here's a starting point with some ideas:
https://jacobin.com/2019/03/sam-gindin-socialist-planning-mo...
Which means that this issue will arise in any social structure that is attempting to optimize for merit. There have been many books critiquing this idea, but one that is both old and has stuck in my mind is from T. S. Eliot's Notes Towards a Definition of Culture. His basic point is that in a hyper competitive society driven by tests, evaluations, etc., basically no one is incentivized to preserve cultural practices – unless they somehow help one succeed in the new meritocracy. This functionally is a defense of the aristocracy, or of entrenched power that doesn't need to "earn" its wealth by competing. I'm not sure how much I agree with Eliot, but I think this is a pretty compelling point that, a hundred years later, seems quite obviously to have been accurate, if we look at the loss of knowledge traditional art forms.
The problem with my comment here, though, is that is assumes the Ivy Leagues are now, currently meritocratic. It seems pretty obvious to me that they aren't - which makes this an even more complex situation.
If someone really wanted to bring about a culture with leaders drawn from different economic strata the first step should be addressing people's material needs. Parents can't help their kids if they're spending all their time working multiple jobs only to live paycheck to paycheck. It's also hard to take risks or cultivate different skills when you're saddled with college debt you can't get rid if, and when healthcare and rent are taking up a large chunk of your income. People voted for Trump because neither side is willing to do anything to actually help people. That's why people don't trust institutions or "the establishment." For all his faults, and least Trump is willing to lie to his base and promise some sort of change.
He is in general very sloppy about this kind of thing. He famously said Obama wasn't able to fit in with working people, because you can't imagine him at an Applebee's salad bar. Well, Applebee's doesn't have a salad bar, so he was ironically outing himself as the elitist. There was also the more serious problem of fabricating claims about visiting restaurants and not being able to spend $20, something that was easily debunked.
Thats a strengthening of the argument, not weakening. Imagine the opposite: “he hasn’t gone there, he doesn’t understand, he’s just jealous”
> For all his faults, and least Trump is willing to lie to his base
Again, that’s a weakening of the standpoint. It’s completely backwards rationalization.
> People voted for Trump because neither side is willing to do anything to actually help people. That's why people don't trust institutions or "the establishment."
This is so much in the article that it’s arguably the entire point of it. You’re basically agreeing with it, but in a contorted contrarian way.
> It's also hard to take risks or cultivate different skills when you're saddled with college debt you can't get rid if, and when healthcare and rent are taking up a large chunk of your income.
Right, but you can only get so far with a solution that amounts to getting more kids into schools that brag about how few kids they accept. There have to be more avenues and less inbreeding/nepotism/favoritism based on brand names.
At the heart of academic movement of inclusivity sits the most entrenched and extreme form of exclusivity. This is a problem worthy of its own attention, without bringing in socioeconomic everythingism. The fact that you have tons of smart and ambitious kids coming out of non-brand-name schools unable to get their resumes looked at is a disgrace and a failure. It’s demoralizing as hell.
So "willing to lie" is his only redeeming trait? Poor America! That said, I think he will bring about some sort of change, but it won't be one that really benefits the people who voted for him...
Bushes, Yale. Obama, Columbia/Harvard.
Turns out, we have money. My spouse's side did very well. We should have about 55M by time our kids get to college.
As long as my kids don't do something stupid, the money will outgrow them. Like, they have 'made it', by all my definitions, at least.
So, my question: Do I bother with this rat race for my kids? I was part of it, I hated it, but it did turn out well enough for me (minus marrying well). We have access now to the best tutors and can more than afford great schools and programs and the like. Not a worry at all now. So, do I bother to do it?
If you feel that it's a rat race, and if the people who go there are the types that participate in it (and later make their kids participate in it) despite knowing it's pointless, are they a good fit for your kids? If not there, where would they find a better fit? They're already economically secure, so your primary concern should be maximizing the chance that they end up with a happy family life and end up as well-rounded people.
Education is still important for them to grow up as whole people of course (c.f. classical takes on "liberal arts"). But if it's merely in service to developing an impressive resume, who are they trying to impress?
On a related note, these sorts of articles are always bizarre to me as someone not in that bubble. I was a B student growing up (mostly out of apathy), went to a state school, and have worked "normal" engineering jobs. I plan to have an order of magnitude less money than you, but that's still on the line of what I'd consider to be "generational wealth". Going to an elite school was never necessary except to make sure your kids are around kids who go to elite schools. Only someone in the elite school bubble would think it's necessary or that it's normal to make your kids' lives revolve around it.
Similarly, when articles like this conflate "eminence" ("becoming a full professor at a major research university, a CEO of a Fortune 500 company, a leader in biomedicine, a prestigious judge, an award-winning writer, and the like") with flourishing in life, it's clear to me that they're just living in a different world in terms of value systems. I was always in the 99th percentile on standardized tests, and being the CEO of a Fortune 500 company sounds like a total nightmare to me. I don't even want to move from an IC to management role or to reach the top parts of the IC track for that matter. I plan to retire from such work and spend more time with my family.
1. Raise your kids to be decent people - to have ethics, empathy, and compassion. ("We can buy anything" is likely to negatively impact this.)
2. Raise your kids to not blow it. They aren't going to have more money than they can possibly spend; they could still end up broke. Raise them to be responsible with what they have.
3. You are in the privileged position of being able to raise your kids to find out what they really want to do, and to pursue that. This means giving them a lot of things they can try early, and seeing which one floats their boat. (It also means not forcing them into forever pursuing what they liked when they were five.)
Yes, I am aware that 1 and 3 kind of contradict each other.
You could argue that raising them to be people who can make their own way without the money - that is, who can earn a decent income on their own - is part of 1, or 2, or both.
I don't care about the guy who is higher up in the ladder than me, what I care about is the guy who builds more ladders, shorter ladders, elevators or such. And I think that most of our elites don't or can't do that.
The birthrate crisis, the competition crisis, the housing crisis, etc, I don't think these people have the capability to solve them.
The cause of the birthrate crisis is ultimately a lack of having fallen in love with humanity. This should be the point of the 'humanities', but if you look at the subjects included in that today, they're either 'science of human management' or a shell of their former glory. It's no surprise that the technocratic class they produce is unable to inspire people to have children and seems perpetually confused how to make that happen.
The word "inequality" ("inequalities", actually) appears only twice, in one short paragraph, and it's to unfocus the emphasis, away from just wealth, to also include respect.
Then the article, which bemoans an overemphasis on IQ and on the individual, suggests a variety of alternative measures by which we can determine which individuals get a slice of the decaying pie. There's something self-contradictory about this.
We are witnessing a terrible arms race all throughout society, so that a smaller and smaller number of people can have a larger and larger share of desirable things. We're fighting over who gets to extract value. Meanwhile, so much else is left to be undesirable. To be truly a bit shit. The largest firms are getting larger and larger, and you have to get into them if you want to get anywhere. Inequality between firms is way up. A handful of East India Companies is conquering all.
This "Tiger Mom" phenomenon is just the prisoner's best-response to the situation.
The solution has to be a more broad-based cultural and material plenty. We have to have enough to go around, and we have to have nice things. People wouldn't be gouging each others' eyes out if they didn't think their peers were just competitors for scarce resources.
This is about finding a way to identify people who will benefit from the best education
The garbage collector might be a better president than the brain surgeon due to traits orthogonal to intelligence.
Yes, I agree with that point.
I guess the linkage to break then would be between Ivy League Schools and powerful institutions.
The author found evidence of widespread quotas restricting the admission of Asians (no surprise, at least not anymore), but more scandalously, also evidence of affirmative action benefiting Jews. (The author is himself Jewish, and at least back then, probably couldn't have gotten away with writing it had that not been the case.)
Brook's premise--that we did away with a nepotistic aristocracy (the "evil" WASP will-o'-the-wisp) and replaced it with a meritocracy--is false.
Part of the problem is as follows and I see it so often in politics.
We have an excellent technocratic leadership class.
But being a technocratic leader does not make you a great leader of people, and frankly -- given the way many technocratic fields in the humanities are taught -- getting too deep in them makes you actively unappealing to people.
The article derides the various social clubs at Harvard, Princeton, Yale, etc as 'non-academic', but nothing is further from the truth. Humans have an innate draw to beauty, and one thing that is beautiful to basically everyone is a rich culture with traditions, institutions, and members [1]. One way to signal that is by learning the social niceties inside and out. This is no less academic since it doesn't come from a book.
The 'grinds', as the article says, didn't get that, and they were shunned not because they focused on books, but because they were unable to have a more expansive view of academics.
It is shocking to me when I see pundits today seemingly confused why the masses find appeal in particular candidates despite the pundits being able to list ten technical reasons why he should be disqualified. They don't understand how people perceive things, and it's so painful to watch.
I feel as someone who occupies a sort of 'third space' here [2], I am really truly able to see both viewpoints. But it's so difficult to explain to a technocrat the full range of human emotion, and it sometimes appears as if they've been handicapped in their ability to feel it.
As an example (and I would recommend Camille Paglia's works), it's fascinating to me how, despite our ever growing technical ability to produce great film, the actual emotional content of the film is ever worse. We have the most scantily clad females of all time but the fully clothed actors and actresses of the past were actually more sexually enticing. We've lost the sense of awe that CS Lewis talks about in the Abolition of Man. We have the greatest visual effects, but the emotional content of the film is so thin that you just don't feel anything.
Where these feelings do exist, it's in independent (read: not produced by the Ivy type) films and media, which is why 'alternate' media has suddenly become so popular.
I'll also just leave that Donald Trump has an innate understanding of people. People are shocked that he's able to get so many seemingly random, seemingly opposed people behind him. They classify it as a trick. But it's not. People vote and support who they like, not who has the best technocratic solutions. That is neither good nor bad. It just is. It's a tale as old as time, and would be apparent if you studied the actual humanities.
Just so no one thinks I think Trump is some singular. Barack Obama is also one of these figures. And even Joe Biden is to some extent [3]
I can write a dissertation on this topic.
[1] It doesn't matter the culture. All traditional cultures are enthralling
[2] I was raised in the 'normal' way, but ended up at a second-tier 'elite' school, and then -- adopting some of the stuff I learned -- moved into strategy consulting at one of the Big 3 where I learned even more about this type. I eventually moved back into tech (and do feel my career is better for having been through these experiences).
[3] Completely off-topic, but I also think that if you go to spaces inhabited by the technocrats, you'll notice that 'detachment' philosophies like Stoicism and Buddhism are very popular, whereas the masses go for attachment. It's not a surprise to me that the Kennedy family, being Catholic, the exact opposite of Buddhism in that sense, was always seen as particularly charismatic and alluring amongst political dynasties
The confusement is because if Trump won primaries three times, it clearly means you do not care about respectability no matter how much you pretended being outraged over minor non-issues in the past. It means you do not mind lying, actually. It means you do actually want pure destruction and are in fact motivated by misogyny and all those bad things.
But, we want to believe in good of the massive amount of people. We do not want to believe that conservative Christians will do anything just to get control over women back. Or that they actually want to destroy the democracy.
Do you genuinely think this is why Trump won the election?
How do you explain Trump pulling in massive amounts of former-Democrat stalwarts, like black and Hispanic men, or Muslims?
https://www.freep.com/story/news/politics/elections/2024/11/...
Do you think Muslim women went into the voting booth thinking "can't wait to destroy democracy!"? They may have miscalculated Trump's support for Zionism (Miriam Adelson donated ~$100 million to his campaign), but if anything that reinforces GP's point: human emotion is drawn to the likeable person, and likability needs to be accounted for.
https://news.northeastern.edu/2024/11/05/voter-demographics-...
^This page has a great graph depicting how minority men, in particular those under 30, wholesale abandoned the Dems this year. Those aren't demographics known for their Christian conservatism.
https://apnews.com/article/election-harris-trump-women-latin...
Technocrats talk about hypocrits. Lovers of the humanities talk about people.
People don't operate on principles. They operate on human emotion, which is a very real force. It is no less real than facts, figure, logic, or rationality. Trump's shooting, his McDonald's stunt, his garbage vest/truck, and his ability to exude his brand are actual skills, and signs of a different kind of intelligence. Until people get that, they will be perpetually confused.
A lot of pollsters around the issue of the economy for example threw their hands in the air this election. The numbers looked good, they said, so how come people feel that it's not working? They blamed 'the vibe'. But 'the vibe' is a very real force, that one must contend with when you study human behavior and emotion.
The problem is that -- instead of studying literature, philosophy, religion, art, music, dance, etc, i.e., the real humanities -- the 'humanities' PhDs, the sociologists, the pollsters, etc, all studied statistics for human management essentially. We've lost so much by not focusing on the actual humanities
> Moderate republicans cant admit it either to themselves.
Moderate republicans -- if you mean the lincoln project crowd -- are the worst perpetrators of the problems addressed in the article
> But, we want to believe in good of the massive amount of people. We do not want to believe that conservative Christians will do anything just to get control over women back. Or that they actually want to destroy the democracy.
oof... read and believe too much of the Ivy League output I see. You know it's a grift for them too right? Just look at President Biden (a graduate of the Ivies if I'm not mistaken) being all smiles after the man he called Hitler came to the white house to take over.
You’re quite mistaken there: he did his undergrad at the very public University of Delaware, and went to law school at private but definitely not Ivy League Syracuse.
Yes emotions are real force. I am glad we are admiting it, because god, the conservatives LOVE to pretend they are being rational when they are ... not.