Goodbye, MIT • Hacker News Board

Re: Goodbye, MIT

#11

Post by rkk3 » Sat, Nov 06, 2021, 11:34 PM UTC

markus_zhang wrote: post #6

sokoloff wrote: post #3

I feel genuinely conflicted about these topics. Part of me says “I agree with the letter authors completely. People should experience equal opportunity, equal Justice, and equal responsibility.” Another part of me says “that’s literally impossible (or incompatible) with different families raising their children with different circumstances.” Overall, I lean pretty strongly towards individual families raising their ch…

I think to achieve equal opportunity it makes sense to make education equal. But how to make education equal? Instead of setting up quotas maybe we should simply switch teachers. Let the teachers rotate among schools so that every kid gets a random selection of teachers and every teacher gets a random selection of students. At the same time, should also try to minimize the number of private schools, either through le…

> how to make education equal? Instead of setting up quotas maybe we should simply switch teachers. Let the teachers rotate among schools so that every kid gets a random selection of teachers and every teacher gets a random selection of students.

The lottery came back and you are moving from a school in Florida to Alaska.

Re: Goodbye, MIT

#12

Post by ipaddr » Sat, Nov 06, 2021, 11:36 PM UTC

sokoloff wrote: post #3

I feel genuinely conflicted about these topics. Part of me says “I agree with the letter authors completely. People should experience equal opportunity, equal Justice, and equal responsibility.” Another part of me says “that’s literally impossible (or incompatible) with different families raising their children with different circumstances.” Overall, I lean pretty strongly towards individual families raising their ch…

The answer and the future is kids will be raised by the state and given an equal playing field. This frees parents to work/spend and ensures the only advantage exists at the gene level. We can selectively breed those traits away .

The problem is we sent kids to school in the first place and ask them to follow a system designed for the average student but not the most typical.

Re: Goodbye, MIT

#13

Post by b9a2cab5 » Sat, Nov 06, 2021, 11:41 PM UTC

BearOso wrote: post #4

I vote completely progressive, but I agree there are demons on the left, just like on the right. The point at which common sense flies out the window and emotion becomes the driving force, it's extremism or cultism, not politics.

If you vote "completely" anything you are part of the problem. I vote for issues, not candidates or parties or political ideologies.

Re: Goodbye, MIT

#14

Post by rkk3 » Sat, Nov 06, 2021, 11:42 PM UTC

ipaddr wrote: post #12

sokoloff wrote: post #3

I feel genuinely conflicted about these topics. Part of me says “I agree with the letter authors completely. People should experience equal opportunity, equal Justice, and equal responsibility.” Another part of me says “that’s literally impossible (or incompatible) with different families raising their children with different circumstances.” Overall, I lean pretty strongly towards individual families raising their ch…

The answer and the future is kids will be raised by the state and given an equal playing field. This frees parents to work/spend and ensures the only advantage exists at the gene level. We can selectively breed those traits away . The problem is we sent kids to school in the first place and ask them to follow a system designed for the average student but not the most typical.

> future is kids will be raised by the state and given an equal playing field.

This seems dystopian...

Re: Goodbye, MIT

#15

Post by swader999 » Sat, Nov 06, 2021, 11:45 PM UTC

ipaddr wrote: post #12

sokoloff wrote: post #3

I feel genuinely conflicted about these topics. Part of me says “I agree with the letter authors completely. People should experience equal opportunity, equal Justice, and equal responsibility.” Another part of me says “that’s literally impossible (or incompatible) with different families raising their children with different circumstances.” Overall, I lean pretty strongly towards individual families raising their ch…

The answer and the future is kids will be raised by the state and given an equal playing field. This frees parents to work/spend and ensures the only advantage exists at the gene level. We can selectively breed those traits away . The problem is we sent kids to school in the first place and ask them to follow a system designed for the average student but not the most typical.

Canada tried that. It didn't go so well. Probably the worst thing you can do for society.

Re: Goodbye, MIT

#16

Post by Pensacola » Sat, Nov 06, 2021, 11:48 PM UTC

sokoloff wrote: post #8

markus_zhang wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think to achieve equal opportunity it makes sense to make education equal. But how to make education equal? Instead of setting up quotas maybe we should simply switch teachers. Let the teachers rotate among schools so that every kid gets a random selection of teachers and every teacher gets a random selection of students. At the same time, should also try to minimize the number of private schools, either through le…

Even that won’t do it. Kids show up to kindergarten with wildly different abilities to even “take turns” and participate conversationally. Kids who had less adult conversational interaction as toddlers won’t get the same out of school even with the teachers being in rotation. There’s disagreement as to whether the gap is 30 million words, but it seems quite likely to be well into the millions. https://www.edutopia.or…

All of these replies seem to co-mingle the concepts of equal opportunity and equal outcome. The foundation of a free society is personal responsibility. Personal outcomes in such a system are pretty much guaranteed not to be the same (equal), since different people will use their freedom in different ways. Sucks for kids of irresponsible parents, who truly don't have self-autonomy. But then again, our society is full of compassionate safety nets for such kids.

Re: Goodbye, MIT

#17

Post by jimbob45 » Sat, Nov 06, 2021, 11:48 PM UTC

We’re seemingly six months away from any and all diversity movements being dismissed as anti-white propaganda. It seems high time for the NAACP/BLM/ACLU to begin to walk back their extremist rhetoric before they’re deemed terrorist groups like they themselves have deemed so many other groups before.

Re: Goodbye, MIT

#18

Post by doomrobo » Sat, Nov 06, 2021, 11:50 PM UTC

> MIT’s leadership apparently took umbrage at his statement of these simple facts: that George Floyd “had not lived a virtuous life” (based on his multiple criminal convictions)

Surely the authors know that "statement of facts" has the ability to completely alter the interpretation of the rest of the content. Key questions are: why is this fact relevant in this context, what is the author conveying by bringing this in? Etc. To take a radical example, if one reads an article about a recent mass shooting followed by "statements of fact" about the declining population of whites in America, then one would reasonably conclude that the author is a white supremacist who implicitly supports the shooter. Non-white supremacists don't talk about the great replacement.

So the question is why would someone bring up the criminal record of an unarmed Black man who was extrajudicially killed by an officer of the state? What does this fact do for the reader? It's not hard to imagine what many would conclude. Editorial narrative is something I learned about in middle school, why are the authors feigning ignorance about its existence?

Re: Goodbye, MIT

#19

Post by generalizations » Sat, Nov 06, 2021, 11:51 PM UTC

ipaddr wrote: post #12

sokoloff wrote: post #3

I feel genuinely conflicted about these topics. Part of me says “I agree with the letter authors completely. People should experience equal opportunity, equal Justice, and equal responsibility.” Another part of me says “that’s literally impossible (or incompatible) with different families raising their children with different circumstances.” Overall, I lean pretty strongly towards individual families raising their ch…

The answer and the future is kids will be raised by the state and given an equal playing field. This frees parents to work/spend and ensures the only advantage exists at the gene level. We can selectively breed those traits away . The problem is we sent kids to school in the first place and ask them to follow a system designed for the average student but not the most typical.

Hope you don't mind it when people you don't like get to choose the curriculum. What happens when a fascist gets elected (again?) and decides it's time to make some adjustments to the school system?

You seem to have a lot of trust in a system that hasn't earned it.

Re: Goodbye, MIT

#20

Post by robbmorganf » Sat, Nov 06, 2021, 11:52 PM UTC

> Third, intellectual ability and achievement are the principal requirements for admission as a student or faculty member to any university.

This is the crux of the issue as I see it. The author sees achievement as a proxy for ability, and therefore achievement-meritocracy is the only acceptable system.

By contrast, MIT sees ability as only one factor among many that create achievement. If one takes the further axiom that ability is independent of protected categories like race and gender, then achievement-meritocracy does not recruit the most able students. Hence, affirmative action and reducing oppression.

Mathematically, author believes achievement=f(ability) so ability=f^{-1}(achievement) while MIT believes achievement=f(ability,identity, background) so ability=f^{-1}(achievement,identity,background)