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What Oxford taught me about posh people

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Re: What Oxford taught me about posh people

#191
I expected Oxford undergraduates to be the best from all over the world, intensely passionate about their subjects. What I found were kids more passionate about drinking and clubbing and gossiping than studying. There seemed to be some weird hierarchy about who sits where in the dining hall that was completely bizarre. 'Default' social activities organized by the various committees all involved brain-dead clubbing and irresponsible drinking - at Oxford! Or sometimes 'posh' versions of those, where you wear black tie and aimlessly wander around some area holding a glass of sparking wine until you are bored out of your skull, a.k.a. a ball. The more ambitious kids were more busy padding their CV to land a good job than doing what interests them. It was not like the world of Turing or Feynman at all.

The academic part of life was good. The tutorial system is great, lectures were OK, practicals were good. The selection of courses was great. But doing CS, there were few opportunities to socialize with people in your degree - you see them in the lectures, then you go back to your college. And that isn't great - perhaps it's good for people that are doing humanities and need to 'network', but for anyone doing anything interesting, you are not going to find too much in common with an undergrad studying English literature and more interested in drinking and pointless gossip/small talk.

And even many in the CS degree did not seem to have that 'hacker' mentality - that was mostly seen in international students.

What I found shocking is that so many students were doing poorly academically. The coursework and the exams were not super challenging, especially given that you chose so many of the courses, so you were mostly studying the actual things you wanted to study. Given that Oxford was supposed to have the very best students, passionate about their subjects, it was really odd how little so many cared.

Again, very strangely, few undergrad students from England seemed to go on to do Master's or PhDs, but many international students did. The graduate-level environment seemed much better, too.

Re: What Oxford taught me about posh people

#192
post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US raised scores of millions of immigrants from poverty to the middle class. Poor people immigrated to the US, people with nothing but a suitcase. The US has seen the most spectacular rise from poverty to wealth ever seen in history. In WW1, for example, the German soldiers knew they had lost when the Americans arrived, well equipped, tall, and fat with food. The Japanese soldiers had a similar reaction when faci…

> In WW2, the US was able to fight two major wars simultaneously, and supply the allies, and move all that stuff overseas. An incredible achievement, only possible from free markets and the wealth produced by them. The US nationalized many industries during WWII. From 'U.S. not always averse to nationalization, despite its free-market image'[1] "In times of war and national emergency, Washington has not hesitated. In…

> continent-wide natural resources

The USSR and China also had this access, and it didn't seem to do the trick for them. The US supplied the USSR.

Airplanes, tanks, food, etc. were not nationalized.

Re: What Oxford taught me about posh people

#193
post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US raised scores of millions of immigrants from poverty to the middle class. Poor people immigrated to the US, people with nothing but a suitcase. The US has seen the most spectacular rise from poverty to wealth ever seen in history. In WW1, for example, the German soldiers knew they had lost when the Americans arrived, well equipped, tall, and fat with food. The Japanese soldiers had a similar reaction when faci…

> The US has seen the most spectacular rise from poverty to wealth ever seen in history. China has arguably beaten (or is close to beating) that in very recent history.

Perhaps - but they're doing it with free markets, not communism.

Re: What Oxford taught me about posh people

#194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

China is also seeing large numbers of people rising from abject poverty to a "western" more affluent lifestyle. I don't think that this is a terribly good yardstick for fairness and freedom in a society.

This rising is due to China turning away from communism and towards economic freedom. Communism utterly failed at making China affluent. Free markets succeeded.

Sure, that's probably an important reason. But free markets can exist in an unfree and unfair society.

Re: What Oxford taught me about posh people

#195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Work, life, and social structure is extremely unfair It's always going to be unfair. Attempts to fix it always result in some other unfairness. The real thing that works is freedom, i.e. not having the law artificially holding you back. Instead of being consumed by envy of others, you can make your own life better.

That sounds rather defeatist. Is it impossible to make work, life, or social structure more fair? I doubt you think that.

Do you really want life to be more fair, though?

I think, across the board, people actually want mercy and grace. They’re not interested in fairness, they’re interested in help.

When they make mistakes, they want to be lifted up and forgiven. When they fall on hardship, even if their own making, they hope for help to recover.

Re: What Oxford taught me about posh people

#196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US raised scores of millions of immigrants from poverty to the middle class. Poor people immigrated to the US, people with nothing but a suitcase. The US has seen the most spectacular rise from poverty to wealth ever seen in history. In WW1, for example, the German soldiers knew they had lost when the Americans arrived, well equipped, tall, and fat with food. The Japanese soldiers had a similar reaction when faci…

> The US raised scores of millions of immigrants from poverty to the middle class. Emphasis here is on the past tense. There are several reasons to challenge this: 1. The USA had (and still has) unprecedented resources per population. Why is your claim not still the case? 2. Immigrants tend to be people with the means to immigrate. That's rarely people in relative poverty, unless you intended to mean slaves.

1. The USSR had (and has) much more resources per population. Japan achieved great wealth with insignificant natural resources.

2. Middle class and rich people rarely immigrate. It's the poor that do. Did you know that the reason the Titanic was built was to en-masse ship poor people to the US? The first class bit was mostly window dressing. The money was to be made by cramming poor people in below decks. In colonial times, America was populated mostly by people escaping prosecution, indentured servants, sons who weren't first born and were not going to inherit anything, teens whose parents could not support them, etc. The Chinese and Japanese people came to escape poverty.

Furthermore, South America was and is rich in resources, but it remains poor. Nothing like the US happened there.

Re: What Oxford taught me about posh people

#197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's always going to be unfair. Can I ask you a question without I swear any implicit judgement. Do you gravitate towards conservative politicians? Because I'm finding that this is the main distinction between Progressive and Conservative-minded people in today's western society. You can account for religion (there are religious leftists and atheist rightists). You can account for racism (there are plenty of racist…

> I don't want to improve my own life at the expense of others. That is not what freedom is about. Your comment implies that freedom is a zero-sum system. It most assuredly is not. Under freedom, you (selfishly) prosper by creating value that other people want to give you money for. Stealing is zero-sum, this is not stealing. (Wealth transfer programs are inherently zero-sum, and are unfair.)

And their unfairness for the collective and individual betterment is arguably a good thing.

Re: What Oxford taught me about posh people

#198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This rising is due to China turning away from communism and towards economic freedom. Communism utterly failed at making China affluent. Free markets succeeded.

Sure, that's probably an important reason. But free markets can exist in an unfree and unfair society.

I was careful to write economic freedom.

Re: What Oxford taught me about posh people

#199

I expected Oxford undergraduates to be the best from all over the world, intensely passionate about their subjects. What I found were kids more passionate about drinking and clubbing and gossiping than studying. There seemed to be some weird hierarchy about who sits where in the dining hall that was completely bizarre. 'Default' social activities organized by the various committees all involved brain-dead clubbing an…

A lot of the stuff you mention, the drinking/clubbing is just true of teenagers / young people in the UK and you probably missed out the drugs and sex.

When I went to a "top tier" uni in the 90s after watching the young ones and reading adrian mole I expected students to be going to rallies and being "intellectual". I spent more time reading about other subjects than my own and underperformed in my degree. Students were mostly over-privileged rich kids, doing exactly what you'd expect young people to do when they first got a chance of freedom.

I was lucky enough to get a full grant, which I wouldn't get now and overall I enjoyed the experience, which echoed far after I left the environment. It wasn't quite what I expected it would be though.

Re: What Oxford taught me about posh people

#200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can never make life fair for someone who is disabled. I wouldn't trade my health for a billion dollars. There are endless people taller, smarter, faster, younger, handsomer, healthier, etc., than me. Obsessing over the implicit and inevitable unfairness of that is a total waste of time and energy. More generally, no two people are the same. It's not possible to make it fair even for two people, let alone billions…

That's a strawman. No one's claiming we can achieve total equality.

Yeah but the point is that any attempt of redistribution in the name of fairness, is also equally unfair from the opposite perspective. So there is no way to make anything "more fair", if you take from one person to give to another, it's always unfair for one of them.
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