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Teenagers are better behaved and less hedonistic (2018)

economist.com

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Re: Teenagers are better behaved and less hedonistic (2018)

#171

Post by Benji_San »

101404 wrote: post #111
nabla9 wrote: post #104

Finland has mandatory military service for males. So every year you most of the young men (mostly age 18 to 20) into a controlled environment and go through standardized testing and observation. - Physical fitness has gone down, overweight goes up. - Intelligence peaked among those who were born in 70's and has been in slight decline last 18 years. Similar results can be seen in other developed countries. - Anxiety d…

> Finland has mandatory military service for males. How is that kind of institutionalized sexism still legal?

Jehovas witnesses in Finland were exempt from the military service until last year. Someone took it to court and the ruling was that you can't discrimate certain groups based on their religion. I think it's only a question of time before it is brought up as gender discrimination and the exemption will be removed.

There are some political interest in changing in mostly from the youth branches of the political parties but the "real" politicians mostly stick their fingers in their ears. I suppose it is more or less political suicide to try to change the statsu quo as would affect a huge amount of voters negatively.

Re: Teenagers are better behaved and less hedonistic (2018)

#172

Post by Taek »

daptaq wrote: post #121
_5yps wrote: post #27

16-year-old here. My experience is probably markedly different from most teenagers in the US (I'm an immigrant who goes to a competitive school full of other immigrants) but I find that, for the most part, this article hits the nail on the head. High School is nothing like the usual media portrayal - I've never heard anyone even talk about a party, nobody's doing anything stronger than weed, nobody's fucking or even…

> I've never heard anyone even talk about a party, nobody's doing anything stronger than weed, nobody's fucking or even dating at all. That's easy to explain: You don't have to talk about these things anymore, because of IM & co.. It's all still happening, but it's easier to hide it from the "dweebs". I've seen both sides, and it's really surprising how well this unwritten system works. At best you realize a few year…

Recent studies have been consistent with the result that teenagers are having less sex today than they used to.

Re: Teenagers are better behaved and less hedonistic (2018)

#173

Post by ChainOfFools »

_5yps wrote: post #27

16-year-old here. My experience is probably markedly different from most teenagers in the US (I'm an immigrant who goes to a competitive school full of other immigrants) but I find that, for the most part, this article hits the nail on the head. High School is nothing like the usual media portrayal - I've never heard anyone even talk about a party, nobody's doing anything stronger than weed, nobody's fucking or even…

very well articulated. it seems that the implicit obligation to be your own PR agency has frustrated your generation with most of fame's burdens, but few of its rewards.

Re: Teenagers are better behaved and less hedonistic (2018)

#174

Post by maze-le »

_5yps wrote: post #27

16-year-old here. My experience is probably markedly different from most teenagers in the US (I'm an immigrant who goes to a competitive school full of other immigrants) but I find that, for the most part, this article hits the nail on the head. High School is nothing like the usual media portrayal - I've never heard anyone even talk about a party, nobody's doing anything stronger than weed, nobody's fucking or even…

This is so sad... I cannot even begin to contemplate. When I was young blogging was something exciting and new. You could share your thoughts and interests with complete strangers and make connections to people you didn't even know -- albeit not very deep ones. Never once was it about status or signalling -- I mean surely there were people for whom this was important, but they were playing their status games with each other and didn't bother the people that wouldn't care about such nonsense.

It is a horrifying notion that you are only valued based on the output of your blog / FB / twitter account. I used to think that for every cultural movement there is a counter-movement that tries to invert the values of a previous generation. Are there people in your circle that explicitly reject this notion of self commodification and exhibitionism?

Re: Teenagers are better behaved and less hedonistic (2018)

#175

Post by allannienhuis »

pantalaimon wrote: post #118
_5yps wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Second-tier compared to the world's top universities; that is, Harvard, Stanford, Oxford and their ilk. I've seen posts on this website[0] how some big tech companies almost exclusively skim off the top. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15543371

There is plenty of work, why focus so much about the big tech companies? The notion that you have to jump through hoops to get a tech job is pretty ridiculous. If you know your stuff you’ll have no trouble to find a job even without a degree from a fancy school.

because the bug tech companies are more likely to pay big $$. There's a huge gap in salary potential between FAANG and the rest. There's always outliers among the rest, but that's generally the case. So if you're optimizing for $$ and prestige, you optimize for getting into FAANG.

Re: Teenagers are better behaved and less hedonistic (2018)

#176

Post by nogabebop23 »

_5yps wrote: post #27

16-year-old here. My experience is probably markedly different from most teenagers in the US (I'm an immigrant who goes to a competitive school full of other immigrants) but I find that, for the most part, this article hits the nail on the head. High School is nothing like the usual media portrayal - I've never heard anyone even talk about a party, nobody's doing anything stronger than weed, nobody's fucking or even…

Thanks for sharing your perspective. What's interesting is your experience doesn't follow the historical stereotype of HS, but absolutely nails an alternative one of driven immigrants, tiger moms, pressure to get into a prestigious university, the idea of a Cornell as your "safety school" - and the biggie - the extension of the perfect you on display for strangers that social media has worked hard to ingrain.

One thing that has not seemed to change: people are entirely focused on doing well at the same game, usually the one where the winners were decided long ago. This is funny/weird because often the idols they seek to emulate rejected the main game of their time, pursued something different and were the successful survivors in a completely new field. We seem to miss this point.

You self-realization and understanding of the crazy aspects of your situation is something that sets you apart from the masses; don't lose this perspective.

Re: Teenagers are better behaved and less hedonistic (2018)

#177

Post by user5994461 »

_5yps wrote: post #27

16-year-old here. My experience is probably markedly different from most teenagers in the US (I'm an immigrant who goes to a competitive school full of other immigrants) but I find that, for the most part, this article hits the nail on the head. High School is nothing like the usual media portrayal - I've never heard anyone even talk about a party, nobody's doing anything stronger than weed, nobody's fucking or even…

What's AP CP Honors? for non american readers

Re: Teenagers are better behaved and less hedonistic (2018)

#178

Post by _hl_ »

101404 wrote: post #111
nabla9 wrote: post #104

Finland has mandatory military service for males. So every year you most of the young men (mostly age 18 to 20) into a controlled environment and go through standardized testing and observation. - Physical fitness has gone down, overweight goes up. - Intelligence peaked among those who were born in 70's and has been in slight decline last 18 years. Similar results can be seen in other developed countries. - Anxiety d…

> Finland has mandatory military service for males. How is that kind of institutionalized sexism still legal?

Switzerland is in the same position. You cannot get a majority for abolishing the draft, so it is here to stay (for now). You also cannot get a majority for extending it to women, for those who support the military tend to also be those who hold more conservative values, and those who seek egalitarianism tend to be those who would want to abolish the draft.

Re: Teenagers are better behaved and less hedonistic (2018)

#179

Post by ryanmarsh »

jshaqaw wrote: post #124
_5yps wrote: post #27

16-year-old here. My experience is probably markedly different from most teenagers in the US (I'm an immigrant who goes to a competitive school full of other immigrants) but I find that, for the most part, this article hits the nail on the head. High School is nothing like the usual media portrayal - I've never heard anyone even talk about a party, nobody's doing anything stronger than weed, nobody's fucking or even…

Honestly this doesn’t sound that different from my own competitive high school experiences almost 30 years ago. The fact that you and your peers bin Duke and Cornell into the second tier bargain bin suggests that your subset of peers may not be a representative sample of the student universe.

Was waiting for someone to add that.

My friend is a high school principle in Washington state. He tells of fist fights between girls over a “diss” on Snap, girls (minors mind you) using social media to sell themselves (prostitution). I don’t know whether you’d call that more hedonistic or not but these are new twists on old problems.

Likely none of these kids at his school have much chance of getting into a T2 school.

Re: Teenagers are better behaved and less hedonistic (2018)

#180

Post by john_moscow »

_5yps wrote: post #27

16-year-old here. My experience is probably markedly different from most teenagers in the US (I'm an immigrant who goes to a competitive school full of other immigrants) but I find that, for the most part, this article hits the nail on the head. High School is nothing like the usual media portrayal - I've never heard anyone even talk about a party, nobody's doing anything stronger than weed, nobody's fucking or even…

This is actually a very accurate depiction of what is happening to the industry. Not too many problems left to solve, so the investors are desperate to fund anyone who can put up a great show and sound convincing. Now a part of this great show would be hiring a great team without actually having a problem to solve, so here you go. The credentials in most cases simply make a difference between doing close to nothing for $300K/year vs. doing the same thing at a less fancy company for $80K/year. Since what you do isn't actually important anymore, your skill or intellectual abilities aren't valued as high.

If you don't want to be a part of the bullshit show, you've got to learn to distinguish between problem-driven projects and show-driven projects. The former are scarce, and the latter are intentionally disguised to pass for the real thing, but unless you learn to see the difference, you'll be stuck in a rather depressive loop of being a prized trophy sitting on a shelf.

My bet is that the COVID-19 pandemic will bring enormous attention to biomedical research, vaccine development, immunology, etc. New discoveries will be made, that would also apply to many less critical conditions. Of course, there will be a fair share of Theranos-like scams, so have your bullshit detector up and running.

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