Stanford’s war on social life • Hacker News Board

Re: Stanford’s war on social life

#291

Post by brailsafe » Tue, Jun 14, 2022, 9:59 AM UTC

carapace wrote: post #107

woodruffw wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nature activities are "endemically white"? Is this a serious comment? Even if we buy into the ridiculous naturalistic fallacy here, it's completely ahistorical: our modern history is primarily the history of white countries colonizing and industrializing nonwhite countries and alienating them from nature in the process. Suburban white America is arguably even more alienated from nature than city dwellers, in its rede…

You're talking about something else. OP's referring (I think) to how black people in the USA were discouraged from "white" recreational activities like camping, hiking, skiing, and beach-going. (FWIW, back in high school a black friend of mine explained to me one day that black people don't go skiing, etc., because their lives are so dangerous already that it doesn't make sense to go do dangerous things for entertain…

The financial aspect seems much more plausible. I have to imagine that for skiing in particular, the most likely demographics are going to be whoever happens to grow up near mountains and have very high amounts of disposable income... not just for the equipment, but also to take the financial risk of recovery in the U.S. We could maybe afford some second hand cross-country skis, but we didn't live near mountains either so it didn't seem that interesting.

Re: Stanford’s war on social life

#292

Post by zbrozek » Tue, Jun 14, 2022, 10:01 AM UTC

dilyevsky wrote: post #240

namlem wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I was then told my student group would be dissolved if we used off-campus facilities" This is the craziest part to me. There doesn't seem to be any rational reason for it other than wanting absolute control for its own sake.

Liability insurance most likely

Stanford is self-insured and has weirdly inconsistent ideas around riskiness of various activities. And no risk appetite, tolerance, or ability to reevaluate once something has received its scarlet letter.

As far as I can tell, the only way to do anything is to have it tied to a grant or sports. That profit motive provides back-pressure against risk aversion. That means non-research, non-sportsball activities are doomed to being sanitized to the point of boredom.

Re: Stanford’s war on social life

#293

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Jun 14, 2022, 10:01 AM UTC

MomoXenosaga wrote: post #290

watwut wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Communal living houses (“co-ops”) encouraged casual nudity, while fraternities threw a raucous annual “Greek Week” If the access to professional social network requires participation in the above, then I see why people see issue with that. In an ideal world, your professional future would not be dependent on your willingness to walk around naked or your enjoyment of raucous party. (Neither should damage your future…

Yeah I never joined one of those bro clubs at university. The hazing humiliation is not my thing. There are 3 people who get to yell at me for no reason and one of them is a cat. I have to admit that university was a bit of a let down. Supposedly the best young elites society had to offer? Oh boy.

[deleted]

Re: Stanford’s war on social life

#294

Post by necovek » Tue, Jun 14, 2022, 10:04 AM UTC

astrange wrote: post #158

pvarangot wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah degree inflation is really hard on you if for whatever reason you buy into that. The Meritocracy Trap is a good read if you want to witness the existential horror of someone that realizes it's a thing when they come out on the other side.

The word "meritocracy" itself was invented for a book about how it's a bad idea that can't work, so it's a surprise to see anyone legitimately trying to do it. See: Goodhart's Law.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rise_of_the_Meritocracy — thanks for the pointer!

Re: Stanford’s war on social life

#295

Post by watwut » Tue, Jun 14, 2022, 10:07 AM UTC

MomoXenosaga wrote: post #290

watwut wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Communal living houses (“co-ops”) encouraged casual nudity, while fraternities threw a raucous annual “Greek Week” If the access to professional social network requires participation in the above, then I see why people see issue with that. In an ideal world, your professional future would not be dependent on your willingness to walk around naked or your enjoyment of raucous party. (Neither should damage your future…

Yeah I never joined one of those bro clubs at university. The hazing humiliation is not my thing. There are 3 people who get to yell at me for no reason and one of them is a cat. I have to admit that university was a bit of a let down. Supposedly the best young elites society had to offer? Oh boy.

Yeah, hazing is another thing. It sounds like professional social network biased toward people with weak personal boundaries. Also biased AGAINST people who show independent thinking and ability to not go with crowd. People able to resist peer social pressure are more likely to say no to hazing.

Re: Stanford’s war on social life

#296

Post by aembleton » Tue, Jun 14, 2022, 10:19 AM UTC

seu wrote: post #252

So many complaints about how their "social life" is destroyed and cultural freedoms lost for the sake of "financial interests", but then those same "freedom loving", "spontaneous" grads go later and create startups that do exactly that with other people's life, turning everything we value and cherish into one or another form of homologized business, standardizing our interactions and destroying community in city life…

Where do you live?

I certainly have the spontaneity of going to a shop - I cycled to one yesterday; much more fun than waiting for a delivery.

I share public transport - its much cheaper than getting an Uber, something I haven't done for a couple of years.

Re: Stanford’s war on social life

#297

Post by mschuster91 » Tue, Jun 14, 2022, 10:21 AM UTC

codefreeordie wrote: post #184

GauntletWizard wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most people aren't successful for the reasons they imagine, but more importantly - most people aren't unsuccessful for the reasons they imagine. The increasingly democratic views of what is and isn't successful are our society's greatest I'll, as much as I do hope people keep supporting the things they love and wish to be.

Indeed. You don't need "a good, respectable career" to have a good life. Even if you wish to have a life containing moderate wealth, you still don't need that. (Up to you whether you believe that moderate wealth is either required or desirable for a "successful" life) And even if you want "a good, respectable career", there are many paths to achieving that goal as well. I feel that we have allowed too much "program t…

> You don't need "a good, respectable career" to have a good life.

Unless you're willing to live as a hermit in the wild or as a hobo/beggar on the streets - which if it suits you is fine, not taking that away - you don't have another choice because you all but need a very well paying job simply to afford a shack to live in.

The number one thing that forces young people into the crushing grinds of big corporate life is the enormous explosion of cost of living, particularly cost of housing and corresponding with it the complete disconnect between the minimum wage and the cost of living.

And yes there are "the trades" aka manual labor which also pay somewhat well, the problem with these is that you won't make it to retirement in these jobs and enjoy your retirement. The trades are brutal on your body and that brutality is rarely acknowledged.

Re: Stanford’s war on social life

#298

Post by AmericanChopper » Tue, Jun 14, 2022, 10:22 AM UTC

astrange wrote: post #197

philwelch wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you believe the theory that jobs get less valued by society when women join them, this is going to happen here as well, since college is increasingly something women do more than men. I don't believe that theory, but I do believe a theory that has similar results: adding more workers to a field increases the supply of workers and thus reduces the market value of their work, and the main way that new workers have…

> adding more workers to a field increases the supply of workers and thus reduces the market value of their work This is the lump of labor fallacy. If you don't have "enough" software engineers, then adding more makes them all more valuable; some of them can work on productivity tools for the rest, some of them can attract new customers, some of the juniors are needed to turn into senoirs, and so on. It's similar to…

It is not related to either the lump of labor fallacy, nor how Henry Ford payed his workers. It’s simply the laws of supply and demand. If you increase the supply of something, the equilibrium prices decreases. This is true in basically all cases, except where there are highly unique confounding factors.

If your argument is based on the premise that the laws of supply and demand are wrong, then you can pretty much guarantee that it’s actually your argument that’s wrong every single time.

Re: Stanford’s war on social life

#299

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Jun 14, 2022, 10:24 AM UTC

ineedasername wrote: post #94

hoistbypetard wrote: post #22

I thought Kappa Alpha got "un-housed" as part of the fallout for hosting the party where the Brock Turner assault took place. That kind of event would have led to a frat being dissolved on my campus in the 1990s. Obviously there are many other examples in this article, but that one doesn't seem to quite fit.

I also chased down a few others that had pretty solid justification: the band seems to have had a reputation of both hazing and trying to cover for or silence sexual assault accusations. I'm not saying the article has no point to make, but I'm not sure Stanford is the hill to die on for this cause. When many of the examples the article gives fall apart on inspection it starts to look like Stanford had a lot of truly…

[deleted]

Re: Stanford’s war on social life

#300

Post by mschuster91 » Tue, Jun 14, 2022, 10:32 AM UTC

imgabe wrote: post #261

Claude_Shannon wrote: post #260

I don't see why it is being complained about. University has no moral duty to provide social life, their only goal (and, the goal of the students!) should be to teach / learn.

Of course, we should never do anything beneficial unless there is an explicit moral duty to do it. In this case, all that Standford had to do was nothing and let the emergent social life continue uninterrupted. Did they have a moral duty to interfere with the students' right to free association?

> In this case, all that Standford had to do was nothing and let the emergent social life continue uninterrupted.

And keep watching as students were routinely subjected to hazing, excessive drinking and sometimes outright criminal behavior such as overt discrimination, hate crimes, sexual assault up to rapes?

Fraternities had more than enough chances to rein in the worst of the bad behavior and they failed ridiculously at that. At some point, adults had to take over since self-regulation failed.