Maybe the problem is that Harvard exists • Hacker News Board

Re: Maybe the problem is that Harvard exists

#151

Post by eastbound » Thu, Aug 10, 2023, 4:07 PM UTC

commandlinefan wrote: post #72

glimshe wrote: post #39

This is a typical "let's be all equally poor/bad" argument. Harvard is simply a private institution with excellent reputation and not a single person is required to go there or hire someone from there. Why do Harvard people "drive 20% above the speed limit"? Because selecting good people in a sea of resumes is HARD. Degrees aren't amazing proxies for productivity, but they are decent proxies. I've seen dozens of theo…

> "lets all be poor" As the parent of two exceptionally-achieving children who were rejected from the "elite" colleges - I've become a lot more sympathetic to the mindset behind this line of thinking. My kids literally couldn't have done more or tried harder - since kindergarten - than they did. They both graduated valedictorian with perfect GPAs, scored in the top 99% of the SAT, did sports, did clubs, volunteered,…

First, I’m sorry for your children.

Second, maybe we overproduce good students. Either the curriculum is too easy (imagine compared to Chinese high schools). Either everyone wants to be in the tertiary sector and society doesn’t need so many, and rejects people who are perfectly fit, randomly without fairness.

Third, were they victim of white discrimination?

Re: Maybe the problem is that Harvard exists

#152

Post by fnordpiglet » Thu, Aug 10, 2023, 4:08 PM UTC

Barrin92 wrote: post #42

fnordpiglet wrote: post #8

I find the Harvard angst interesting. I’ve never once felt someone else going to Harvard impacted my life in any way whatsoever. I’ve advanced further than everyone I know that went to Harvard in my career and not once did someone wink at the Harvard guy and pass me over. I’m sure it happens, and I’m sure there are secret clubs I don’t get invited to (well the Harvard club is pretty nice and I was invited there by a…

>I’ve never once felt someone else going to Harvard impacted my life in any way whatsoever Eight of the nine current sitting Supreme Court Judges are either Yale or Harvard Law graduates. It's pretty likely Harvard has had an impact on your life in a lot of ways because a lot of people who govern you went there. Degrees from those schools are basically licenses to occupy the highest positions in the country's adminis…

I don’t say that Harvard, or Yale, or MIT, or Stanford, or Princeton, or CMU, or Chicago, or any number of top private schools don’t influence my life in some indirect way. What I said was it hasn’t directly impacted me, and I have never felt any angst about their existence. I think legacy admissions is unfair and should end, and I think they should be extraordinarily selective and not be swayed by birth or wealth. But I don’t get upset over it, life is too short, too rich, and too little of it has to do with the school you went to, the grades you got, or any of that past your first job.

I would say I’d suggest if you plan to be a Supreme Court judge your chances are better if you went to the top law school in the land, just as going to one of the top engineering schools in the world (public!) helped my career for sure. Getting highest honors at a top engineering school that rarely gives summa cum laude helped too. But it only helped at the beginning and on the margin. What I learned at that school is what made the difference when things got real. And I learned more than the kids who got gentleman C’s at a top private school, because at a top engineering public school they hand out gentleman F’s like candy. I eat the Harvard kids for lunch in my career because I do know more, do better work, earn more revenue, and change my organizations for the better. At a certain point in your career that matters a ton more than what school you went to.

To me that’s a better way to focus your life than the advantages someone else has, because that is surmountable and has nothing to do with what you need to do next in your life.

Re: Maybe the problem is that Harvard exists

#153

Post by trgn » Thu, Aug 10, 2023, 4:08 PM UTC

satvikpendem wrote: post #40

AlotOfReading wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There were plenty of agricultural societies that were also fairly egalitarian. One interesting bias we tend have is that we identify "advanced" societies by how much they look like our own. This leads to a general bias towards deeply hierarchial, stratified societies being described/perceived favorably in media against their less familiar neighbors.

Which ones were fairly egalitarian compared to others?

I mean, it doesn't need to be extreme comparisons. We have gini-coefficient already, which captures similar.

The rankings correspond reasonably to my intuition too, when I think of which have "elite" universities. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_income_eq...

Re: Maybe the problem is that Harvard exists

#154

Post by geodel » Thu, Aug 10, 2023, 4:09 PM UTC

ryandrake wrote: post #67

fnordpiglet wrote: post #8

I find the Harvard angst interesting. I’ve never once felt someone else going to Harvard impacted my life in any way whatsoever. I’ve advanced further than everyone I know that went to Harvard in my career and not once did someone wink at the Harvard guy and pass me over. I’m sure it happens, and I’m sure there are secret clubs I don’t get invited to (well the Harvard club is pretty nice and I was invited there by a…

The existence of billionaires and millionaires negatively affects everyone else's standard of living via gentrification. Imagine you live in a community of 1000 middle class people, all making, say, $30K/yr to $60K/yr. You make $45K/year so you're about average. You can all afford homes, goods, and so on. Suddenly, 10 millionaires move in. Housing prices start to rise a little bit, grocery stores get a little more up…

Well existence of Europeans negatively affected native Americans. More generally existence of humans negatively affected most other species on earth.

Claiming superiority on narrow conditions like Modern American middle-class-ness is still claiming superiority. I don't see how it is an essentially a morally better position.

Re: Maybe the problem is that Harvard exists

#155

Post by NickM » Thu, Aug 10, 2023, 4:09 PM UTC

culturestate wrote: post #94

ryandrake wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The existence of billionaires and millionaires negatively affects everyone else's standard of living via gentrification. Imagine you live in a community of 1000 middle class people, all making, say, $30K/yr to $60K/yr. You make $45K/year so you're about average. You can all afford homes, goods, and so on. Suddenly, 10 millionaires move in. Housing prices start to rise a little bit, grocery stores get a little more up…

> Imagine you live in a community of 1000 middle class people … Suddenly, 10 millionaires move in. I’m not an economist and there are countless reasons for that, but I can’t imagine that 10 millionaires in a community of 1,000 people would materially change life for the other 990 in the way that you’re suggesting. Gentrification and unbalanced income strata are real things and real problems, but the 1% aren’t causing…

Gentrification and unbalanced income strata are real things and real problems, but the 1% aren’t causing them simply by existing.

This hits the nail on the head. It's tautological to say "the problem of inequality is caused by there being rich people that cause inequality". It pins the blame on individuals rather than the system they exist within.

Re: Maybe the problem is that Harvard exists

#156

Post by Analemma_ » Thu, Aug 10, 2023, 4:09 PM UTC

ryandrake wrote: post #67

fnordpiglet wrote: post #8

I find the Harvard angst interesting. I’ve never once felt someone else going to Harvard impacted my life in any way whatsoever. I’ve advanced further than everyone I know that went to Harvard in my career and not once did someone wink at the Harvard guy and pass me over. I’m sure it happens, and I’m sure there are secret clubs I don’t get invited to (well the Harvard club is pretty nice and I was invited there by a…

The existence of billionaires and millionaires negatively affects everyone else's standard of living via gentrification. Imagine you live in a community of 1000 middle class people, all making, say, $30K/yr to $60K/yr. You make $45K/year so you're about average. You can all afford homes, goods, and so on. Suddenly, 10 millionaires move in. Housing prices start to rise a little bit, grocery stores get a little more up…

Gentrification is a word that has lost all meaning; and this entire paragraph is a load of nonsense. Not only that, but it wouldn't have anything to do with the parent comment even it it were true. It's a complete rambling non sequitur.

Re: Maybe the problem is that Harvard exists

#157

Post by ghaff » Thu, Aug 10, 2023, 4:09 PM UTC

okaram wrote: post #140

ta8645 wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would Ivy schools pass your children over?

Ivies have about a 5% admission rate, and they probably have a much higher percentage of valedictorians than the general population. They probably reject way more than 50% of the valedictorian/800 SAT applicants they have. Unless you are super-special, you need to be at that level and be lucky

This is why I wrote in another comment that making it about Harvard somewhat muddies the discussion because Harvard probably is more likely to admit at least a slice of students that are far more about pedigree than anything else.

But as you say, you need to not only have the credentials, something else that sets you apart, and even then the Teela Brown luck gene. When you're being that selective, there's no way that you're realistically finding strong signals in all but the most exceptional circumstances to admit specific individuals.

(And things have only gotten more competitive. I would be shocked if I would get into my undergrad school today.)

Re: Maybe the problem is that Harvard exists

#158

Post by lapcat » Thu, Aug 10, 2023, 4:10 PM UTC

gonehome wrote: post #141

lapcat wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is a typical "let's be all equally poor/bad" argument. I think you missed the point of the article, which was "Harvard exists to make society less meritocratic, and it does that while subsidized by everyone else." > Because selecting good people in a sea of resumes is HARD. Degrees aren't amazing proxies for productivity, but they are decent proxies. The author discusses this: "The hardest part of Harvard is g…

> “On a personal note, I was accepted to an Ivy League school (though not Harvard) as a high school senior, but my family couldn't afford to send me there, so I had to go to a state school instead. My classmate and friend was accepted to MIT but also had to go to a state school because of money.” This does fit my hypothesis that the outliers at state schools are likely undervalued in the market by recruiters. The ave…

> the outliers at state schools are people like you with extenuating circumstances.

Being middle class is an extenuating circumstance? ;-)

Re: Maybe the problem is that Harvard exists

#159

Post by Kon-Peki » Thu, Aug 10, 2023, 4:10 PM UTC

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #56

Barrin92 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I’ve never once felt someone else going to Harvard impacted my life in any way whatsoever Eight of the nine current sitting Supreme Court Judges are either Yale or Harvard Law graduates. It's pretty likely Harvard has had an impact on your life in a lot of ways because a lot of people who govern you went there. Degrees from those schools are basically licenses to occupy the highest positions in the country's adminis…

> It's pretty likely Harvard has had an impact on your life in a lot of ways because a lot of people who govern you went there. And, in addition, because at least presently, anyone who didn't do Ivy+ is essentially never going to be a SCOTUS judge. The obvious objection is that given there are only 9 justices at a time, essentially nobody is ever going to be a SCOTUS judge anyway. But that misses the important gating…

> And, in addition, because at least presently, anyone who didn't do Ivy+ is essentially never going to be a SCOTUS judge.

For your example, you need to do a post-graduate degree (law) from the Ivy+. This article is talking about the gating functions of the undergraduate admissions departments.

The graduate school admissions officers are far more likely to consider strong candidates from "normal" universities than their undergraduate admissions colleagues are to consider strong candidates from "normal" public high schools.

Also, consider Harvard Extension. People shit on it constantly and call it the backdoor, not-so-honest way to get associated with Harvard. But in reality, it is more of a front door into a "make of it what you will" program. A significant number of the people that actually graduate use it to get into high-quality PhD programs that would have otherwise completely ignored them based on their past and their lack of "proper" pedigree.

In my mind, the undergraduate portions of these universities are pretty much lost causes. But their graduate schools are far more meritocratic and, much more importantly, fixable without burning everything to the ground. Because if you want to burn it all down and start over you are going to have to fight against all the rich and powerful people, and probably aren't going to win.

Re: Maybe the problem is that Harvard exists

#160

Post by kevinventullo » Thu, Aug 10, 2023, 4:10 PM UTC

fnordpiglet wrote: post #107

merth wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

probably nobody felt Salomon Brothers impacted their life but he changed your life more than Michael Jordan, the iPod and YouTube put together. -Big Short

Given I’ve spent a long time on Wall Street that quote doesn’t quite jibe with me ;-) I’d also say it’s false for almost anyway - YouTube directly impacts most people considerably more than Wall Street shenanigans, and that I lived the plot of the big short and know what actually happened for a first hand fact, I can assure you the big short is extraordinarily short of accuracy.

Maybe this is veering off-topic, but as someone outside of that industry who understands the basic ideas around repackaging loans, etc., I’m very curious to hear which aspects you think are inaccurate!