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Princeton mandates proctoring for in-person exams, upending 133 year precedent

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Re: Princeton mandates proctoring for in-person exams, upending 133 year precedent

#131

Post by JumpCrisscross »

throwup238 wrote: post #59
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What on earth could be the objection to proctoring? There is a unique pride in being part of a community built around honor. You see this on the Swiss metro and in small-town vegetable stalls. Unproctored exams force every student to weigh the value of their honor against a better grade. That's a personal moral reckoning that might be worth the entire degree.

That’s just the propaganda they sell during college visits. When I was at Caltech the honor code didn’t inspire any pride, because the only way anyone got through that course load was by “cheating”*. No one had any time for pride (GO BEAVERS!) An honor code is an admission that your curriculum is so sadistic, not even cheating will help. Princeton just isn’t prestigious enough to keep up that charade. * At Caltech th…

> That’s just the propaganda they sell during college visits

I'm speaking generally, not just about colleges. If you've never been in a high-trust commuity, I strongly recommend travelling to find one. It's about as mind blowing as transiting from one such community to a low-trust, high-cynicism one.

Re: Princeton mandates proctoring for in-person exams, upending 133 year precedent

#132

Post by throwaway27448 »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #10

Combined with the increasing acceptance of shoplifting [1] and unprecedented corruption and criminality among our national leaders, it's hard not to read this as a moral page turning on American culture. [1] https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/04/hasan-piker-jia-to...

Idk about corruption, but the shoplifting trend has come from corporate america's wholesale looting of the country. The social contract was abandoned many decades ago.

Re: Princeton mandates proctoring for in-person exams, upending 133 year precedent

#133

Post by jdlshore »

afavour wrote: post #102
lll-o-lll wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The fish rots from the head. The old adage that the people elect the governance they deserve; comes to mind. The concepts of Virtue, Honour, Duty, and Justice have been declining in the West over a very long period (this is not a US specific thing). The rotting head reflects the rotting society. > It's a sucker's game to aspire to selflessly serve the greater good when the most powerful people in the land are braze…

> You don’t act honourably because that will “get you ahead”. You act honourably because it is right. As much as I would like to believe that’s true I don’t think it is. You act honourably because society incentivises you to. To act dishonourably is to be disadvantaged, to be shamed, to be cast out. That is the part that’s missing today.

I see where you’re coming from, but something about this framing bothers me.

I think acting honorably has to come from within. It’s something that people need to do regardless of rewards or incentives. Now, how we create a culture that actually does so… that has to come from society. But, imo, if people only act honorably because they’re rewarded for it, and they don’t when no one is looking… that’s not acting honorably at all.

Re: Princeton mandates proctoring for in-person exams, upending 133 year precedent

#134

Post by throwaway27448 »

Aurornis wrote: post #130
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #10

Combined with the increasing acceptance of shoplifting [1] and unprecedented corruption and criminality among our national leaders, it's hard not to read this as a moral page turning on American culture. [1] https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/04/hasan-piker-jia-to...

> Combined with the increasing acceptance of shoplifting [1] Hasan Piker (one of the people in that link) is a streamer who got popular for extremist takes and controversy. He's just doing what he does to stay famous in that interview. The other person is a writer for The New Yorker who apparently enjoys controversy too. This interview isn't representative of anything other than two people trying to be edgy because t…

Hasan piker has extremely bland and milquetoast takes compared to most of the left. He's just the one currently being sold to boomers as a terrorist. But any sane country would see him as a moderate (moderating between "anarchy" and the insanity of two identical corporate parties beholden to israel)

Re: Princeton mandates proctoring for in-person exams, upending 133 year precedent

#135

Post by vector_spaces »

ruler88 wrote: post #43
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #10

Combined with the increasing acceptance of shoplifting [1] and unprecedented corruption and criminality among our national leaders, it's hard not to read this as a moral page turning on American culture. [1] https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/04/hasan-piker-jia-to...

This doesn't seem particularly related?

I mean, given that belief in moral decline is essentially based on illusory perceptions anyway[1], it's not too surprising that someone handwringing about it would also hallucinate connections between two disparate phenomena they opted to characterize as examples of such.

If you opt to habitually rationalize human behavior in a manner that is detached from concern with nuance or driving forces then some amount of reality denial is probably inevitable

[1] See e.g. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-023-06137-x

Re: Princeton mandates proctoring for in-person exams, upending 133 year precedent

#136

Post by JumpCrisscross »

paulryanrogers wrote: post #31
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> fish rots from the head Does it? Did it? We elected the "brazenly corrupt pedophiles." This question seems complex and important enough to not be resolved with a truism.

Hard to say for certain. Though I do think it goes both ways. People at the bottom influence culture from bottom up, folks at the top from the top down.

> I do think it goes both ways

If we flip the snake so it goes along the political spectrum, with the biting ends being extremists, I suppose the fish does rot from the heads. Top-down versus bottom-up is a more-complicated situation, and I suspect it's closer to turbulence than anything monotonic.

Re: Princeton mandates proctoring for in-person exams, upending 133 year precedent

#137

Post by bdangubic »

alephnerd wrote: post #60
twoWhlsGud wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Princeton was that way in my lifetime (and I'm not that old : ) - corruption is not inevitable nor should honor be considered some sort of utopian dream.

> I'm not that old I'm not sure. Most HNers appear to be in their late 30s to early 40s, which is a massive generation gap. Classes and incentive structures have changed for people who graduated in the early 2010s compared to the late 1990s or early 2000s and neither would understand students who graduate in the mid-late 2020s.

exactly this

Re: Princeton mandates proctoring for in-person exams, upending 133 year precedent

#138

Post by bad_username »

tdb7893 wrote: post #117
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #10

Combined with the increasing acceptance of shoplifting [1] and unprecedented corruption and criminality among our national leaders, it's hard not to read this as a moral page turning on American culture. [1] https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/04/hasan-piker-jia-to...

I've known a lot of people who justify crimes like shoplifting by the fact that these corporations have stolen from them (and not in some abstract way, often literal wage theft) and felt like the social contract was already broken. And it's not like the leaders at the large corporations I've worked at generally seem to care about their employees or customers (I would describe most places I worked at as, at best, amor…

Justifying one's crime because other crime exists - isnot a winning position long term.

Re: Princeton mandates proctoring for in-person exams, upending 133 year precedent

#139

Post by hmmmmmmmmmmmmmm »

ruler88 wrote: post #43
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #10

Combined with the increasing acceptance of shoplifting [1] and unprecedented corruption and criminality among our national leaders, it's hard not to read this as a moral page turning on American culture. [1] https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/04/hasan-piker-jia-to...

This doesn't seem particularly related?

Lack of honour, low trust, the breakdown of the social contract. Seems all related to me.

Re: Princeton mandates proctoring for in-person exams, upending 133 year precedent

#140

Post by kiba »

lll-o-lll wrote: post #64
kibwen wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fish rots from the head. It's a sucker's game to aspire to selflessly serve the greater good when the most powerful people in the land are brazenly corrupt pedophiles. In other words: monkey see, monkey do.

> The fish rots from the head. The old adage that the people elect the governance they deserve; comes to mind. The concepts of Virtue, Honour, Duty, and Justice have been declining in the West over a very long period (this is not a US specific thing). The rotting head reflects the rotting society. > It's a sucker's game to aspire to selflessly serve the greater good when the most powerful people in the land are braze…

You don't need "virtue", "honour", and "duty" to have NOT have voted the way people did. It is plain to see which chosen leader will torch the nation and which will not, regardless of people's distaste for the establishment politicians.

It is worse than self interest. It is brazen ignorance.

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