Bill Gates Says There Is Something Perverse In College Ratings • Hacker News Board

Re: Bill Gates Says There Is Something Perverse In College Ratings

#111

Post by seanmcdirmid » Sun, Feb 03, 2013, 1:01 AM UTC

ChuckMcM wrote: post #104

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps. Separating out the home factor of homeschooling to get some useful truth seems quite impossible.

Can you say more about this? Or can you talk about your reasoning that makes 'home factor' the dominant factor?

The biggest impact on a kid's future is their socioeconomic status and/or the determination of their parents. Schooling provided by society is not even a close second, though it does make being a good parent easier (you can delegate 6 or 7 hours a day to society, whereas you'd have to make some really tough decisions if that option wasn't available). We know this is true because social mobility is not that great even in the states; your background matters.

Home schooling tends to just reinforce what is already true about the home environment, so there doesn't seem to be any new variable their. Of course, we could argue that schools can have adverse effects and that you are avoiding those by homeschooling, but since home life is so dominant, you'd expect kids to just regurjitate what they've learned at home anyways, at least until middle or high school where teenagers begin to break free.

Re: Bill Gates Says There Is Something Perverse In College Ratings

#112

Post by ryguytilidie » Mon, Feb 04, 2013, 7:16 PM UTC

jlgreco wrote: post #59

ryguytilidie wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would not define someone who gave 25k as more generous than someone who gave 900million, no.

Would you define someone who gave away until they only had 100million remaining as more or less generous than someone who gave away until they only had 25k remaining? How about if the person with 50k gave away 25k, but the billionaire gave away double that? Who is more generousness in that case? It seems fairly plain to me that utility of what was given away is by far the most important factor in determining generosi…

I see your point, but I simply disagree. The utility to the person is much different, but after that, money is money and 900m provides much more utility to starving kids, etc than 25k does, no matter how you slice it.

Re: Bill Gates Says There Is Something Perverse In College Ratings

#113

Post by ok_craig » Thu, Feb 07, 2013, 10:43 PM UTC

Symmetry wrote: post #101

ok_craig wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the difference between philanthropy and humanitarianism? Just donating wealth vs developing it? Is that really a significant thing to distinguish?

A philanthropist is someone who gives a lot of money to charitable causes, with a connotation of noble motives. A humanitarian is someone who acts on their strong desire to help their fellow humans, with a connotation of successfully helping many people. These have a broad area of overlap, but a person can be one without being the other. One can be a philanthropist without being a humanitarian by, for example, donati…

Yeah, my point is there's a technical difference, but if the end effect is simply creating a benefit to humanity, it doesn't really seem important to distinguish between "philanthropist" and "humanitarian".

So saying Gates is the biggest philanthropist, I guess, is "objectively true" if you're being pedantic, and using philanthropist in the technical sense. My point was that it's not "objectively true" that he's the biggest benefactor of humanity, which is the more general-use term for "philanthropist."