Is the Drive for Success Making Our Children Sick? • Hacker News Board

Re: Is the Drive for Success Making Our Children Sick?

#131

Post by meric » Mon, Jan 04, 2016, 10:49 PM UTC

Jordrok wrote: post #129

meric wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Read HN. Write code. Play games. Eat with family & friends. Repeat. Thank you, universe.

This also describes my current situation almost exactly, and generally I am pretty happy with things. I know that these are the things that make me happy and I try to keep them in balance. Sometimes though there are some nagging doubts that creep in. I worry that the balance I'm comfortable with doesn't quite line up with what society seems to expect, or at least idealize. Sometimes I feel like I "should" be doing mo…

I worry that something unforeseen and external could pop up and disrupt my current situation

When the situation changes, I'll live as the situation has changed.

I know one day it will happen, that is why now is the time to live life as it is now, or later I'll regret why I didn't take the time to enjoy what I have now.

Re: Is the Drive for Success Making Our Children Sick?

#132

Post by meric » Tue, Jan 05, 2016, 1:34 AM UTC

beccasanchez wrote: post #112

PhasmaFelis wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure what you're trying to imply, speaking of subtext. Are you saying that Asians ("certain subpopulations") actually are helping each other cheat? Or just that the elites think Asians are cheating? And, in either case, the elites want to address the problem of Asian working harder than their kids by encouraging all kids, presumably including their own, to work less? Either way, I don't see an argument agains…

the answer to your questions: yes, yes, and yes. but there is one more factor: Asians have way higher IQs than whites.

The 19th & 20th centuries were quite tumultuous for Chinese. I think it was also comparably tumultuous for Korea and Japan.

In the past 150 years in China there were 6 major wars.

1. 1850-1864 Taiping Rebellion (My grandmother's great-grandparents lived this.)

2. 1894-1895 First Sino-Japanese war (My grandmother's grandparents lived this.)

3. 1911-1912 Xinhai Revolution (My grandmother's parents)

4. 1926-1928 Northern Expedition

5. 1937-1945 Second Sino-Japanese war (My grandmother)

6. 1946-1950 Chinese Civil War

Four social upheaval movements:

1. 1919 May fourth Movement

2. 1958 Great Leap Forward

3. 1966 Cultural Revolution

4. 1978 Chinese economic reform

There were also 9 famines during this period with total deaths of 120 million people during this period.

I think these events have contributed to a certain set of attitudes in Asians in the two generations after 1970, i.e Hungry and humble, as our ancestors were during those times, literally; the ones who survived, anyway.

Re: Is the Drive for Success Making Our Children Sick?

#133

Post by analog31 » Tue, Jan 05, 2016, 4:06 AM UTC

eric-hu wrote: post #122

analog31 wrote: post #68

Many of the posts have to do with the expectations of business, society, etc. Maybe we parents have something to do with it too. I should be happy. I'm educated, have interesting and rewarding work to do, have a roof over my head, and get to play music on the side. I've got two great kids, who are both smarter than me. What's wrong with that? Why should I be neurotic about success? Why should push myself and my kids…

It seems like there's an assumption in your post and in your fears: unhappiness comes from poverty and a lack of high-demand skills. I think that's a common narrative in America, and I certainly have it somewhat ingrained. I recently moved to Southeast Asia from America. There's a stark contrast between the two places in terms of economic development and quality of goods. People here aren't any less happy. If anythin…

I certainly fear poverty. No question there. That fear could be exacerbated by the erosion of the safety net in the US, and by economic segregation. Poor people experience worse health, higher violence, more intrusive police presence, less social stability.

I don't know what it would be like to move my family to Southeast Asia. How do they treat women? I suspect that it varies from country to country. Are their education systems better? I've heard that Korea is everything bad that we've been talking about in this thread, and a friend of mine from Singapore said: "I prefer the American schools. There are fewer beatings."

My problem is that I actually like education as an end unto itself. That's my culture. I just don't want it to kill people, or burn them out.

Re: Is the Drive for Success Making Our Children Sick?

#134

Post by TulliusCicero » Tue, Jan 05, 2016, 7:22 AM UTC

bthallplz wrote: post #85

TulliusCicero wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't understand how this makes any sense, at all. If the town raises the property taxes on my rental, guess what, the rent is going to go up at least as much as the tax increase. This is only true if the rent is based on the cost of the unit in terms of purchase price and upkeep. That's true in lower cost-of-living areas, but in expensive areas, the rent is high primarily because demand is outstripping supply, n…

I do not understand your last sentence. I am assuming that if the increases in cost were not passed onto renters, they would be absorbed by the landlords themselves, which harms the landlords' profit margins. What incentive would landlords have to willfully cut into their profit margins vs. passing the increases on to the renters?

> I am assuming that if the increases in cost were not passed onto renters, they would be absorbed by the landlords themselves, which harms the landlords' profit margins. What incentive would landlords have to willfully cut into their profit margins vs. passing the increases on to the renters?

They're not doing it willfully. They're doing it because they have no choice. Let's say the current average rent in Seattle is $1,500/month. Why $1,500, and not $2,000/month? Why are the landlords willfully cutting into their profit margins by not increasing rent? We both know the answer: because the current price is based on what the market can bear; in other words, it's based on the relationship between supply and demand. They can't arbitrarily decide to raise rents without risking losing tenants and having units go unoccupied.

Now, let's say the property tax increases a bit. Will that be passed onto the tenants? Well, can the market bear it? If no, then it won't be passed on. If yes, then why wasn't the rent increased before?

Like I said before, it's different in low cost of living areas. There, the profit margin on top of the costs is relatively small. The rents in that case aren't really based on demand, because supply in those areas tends to be very flexible, you can always make more housing to match demand. For a property tax increase in those areas, the costs will be passed onto the renters, because the primary determinant of rental prices is cost.

Re: Is the Drive for Success Making Our Children Sick?

#135

Post by jamery » Tue, Jan 05, 2016, 4:33 PM UTC

I'm a little late to this discussion, but i'm a senior at irvington right now, and this article is bs. No teacher gives only 20 min of homework a night, and all of my non-ap teachers have still given me homework on the weekends this year.

Re: Is the Drive for Success Making Our Children Sick?

#136

Post by eric-hu » Tue, Jan 05, 2016, 7:06 PM UTC

analog31 wrote: post #133

eric-hu wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems like there's an assumption in your post and in your fears: unhappiness comes from poverty and a lack of high-demand skills. I think that's a common narrative in America, and I certainly have it somewhat ingrained. I recently moved to Southeast Asia from America. There's a stark contrast between the two places in terms of economic development and quality of goods. People here aren't any less happy. If anythin…

I certainly fear poverty. No question there. That fear could be exacerbated by the erosion of the safety net in the US, and by economic segregation. Poor people experience worse health, higher violence, more intrusive police presence, less social stability. I don't know what it would be like to move my family to Southeast Asia. How do they treat women? I suspect that it varies from country to country. Are their educa…

If my last post came across as a suggestion to move your family here, that was not my intention. I mentioned it to contrast happiness against economic success. In American media, the two are so frequently treated as the same, and from what I see here, they're quite different.

It seems like some societies are willing to teach people to be unhappy to achieve economic success. Singapore and South Korea are good examples of this. I question in which direction America is headed.

Re: Is the Drive for Success Making Our Children Sick?

#137

Post by PhasmaFelis » Wed, Jan 06, 2016, 12:52 AM UTC

beccasanchez wrote: post #112

PhasmaFelis wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure what you're trying to imply, speaking of subtext. Are you saying that Asians ("certain subpopulations") actually are helping each other cheat? Or just that the elites think Asians are cheating? And, in either case, the elites want to address the problem of Asian working harder than their kids by encouraging all kids, presumably including their own, to work less? Either way, I don't see an argument agains…

the answer to your questions: yes, yes, and yes. but there is one more factor: Asians have way higher IQs than whites.

Okay. So your root argument is...completely incoherent? Whatever works for you, I guess.

Re: Is the Drive for Success Making Our Children Sick?

#138

Post by beccasanchez » Wed, Jan 06, 2016, 9:14 PM UTC

PhasmaFelis wrote: post #137

beccasanchez wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the answer to your questions: yes, yes, and yes. but there is one more factor: Asians have way higher IQs than whites.

Okay. So your root argument is...completely incoherent? Whatever works for you, I guess.

if it appears incoherent to you, it is because you are illiterate

Re: Is the Drive for Success Making Our Children Sick?

#139

Post by dang » Sat, Jan 09, 2016, 6:01 AM UTC

beccasanchez wrote: post #138

PhasmaFelis wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Okay. So your root argument is...completely incoherent? Whatever works for you, I guess.

if it appears incoherent to you, it is because you are illiterate

Your comments are breaking the HN guidelines. Please post civilly and substantively, or not at all.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: Is the Drive for Success Making Our Children Sick?

#140

Post by tnecniv » Mon, Jan 11, 2016, 6:32 PM UTC

analog31 wrote: post #105

tnecniv wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I recently found a copy of my 12th grade public school math textbook. More than half of the problems are proofs. Today there are no proofs. This was a big issue for me when I entered college. We did proofs freshman year of high school as part of geometry, but they were so simplistic that I didn't know how to write a good, real proof. Then, when I got to college math, I struggled for a long while figuring out what I…

I hope the proofs made math more fun for you, not less. The similarity between proofs and programs was something that attracted my interest in both.

They definitely did, in conjunction with me better understanding what I was using this math for (my freshman and sophomore engineering courses were too handwavey. The somewhat informal way we were doing things actually hurt my understanding).

After the initial frustration with learning how to write a proper proof, everything got better.