Every tech company I’ve worked at has been run by Ivy people but all the actual code is written by Cal State graduates and high school dropouts.
Ivy has the money, we have the brains.
Maybe the problem is that Harvard exists
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Re: Maybe the problem is that Harvard exists
#32> But we agree on the ideal, right? In dreamworld, every kid would follow their own path. There would be no “advanced classes” or “tracks” because those concepts wouldn’t exist. Aren’t “path” and “track” essentially synonyms? And why wouldn’t there be advanced classes? Somebody who wants to become a tradesperson needs to know math, but doesn’t need the same level of advanced math that somebody who is interested in pa…
"track" probably refers to "tracking", which is education jargon: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tracking_(education)
> Tracking is separating students by academic ability into groups...
Re: Maybe the problem is that Harvard exists
#33I 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…
Most of those university clubs are kinda dumb anyway. It's a country club; you can just join a different one and get the exact same benefit.
Re: Maybe the problem is that Harvard exists
#34> [We should maximize individual potential even if this causes more variance than we have now]... But we agree on the ideal, right?
Some people absolutely disagree with this ideal. One argument against gifted classes is roughly "Those kids will do alright regardless of the classroom, so we should ignore them and focus resources on less gifted kids"
Re: Maybe the problem is that Harvard exists
#35No the problem goes thusly. The university was a place of learning, education, and becoming a better person. It was focused on the pursuit of knowledge for the sake of knowledge. Then it became noticed that smart educated people went to college, and so the idea then became if you went to college you to must be smart and educated. Then because that was accepted as true many people saw college as the path to a better l…
Very true. After basic needs are met, the majority of people will spend the majority of their efforts pursuing status. So anything that confers status will become focused on that alone to the exclusion of other goals.
Re: Maybe the problem is that Harvard exists
#36There is always a ruling class. It's an emergent phenomenon which always reasserts itself after any upset. Basically a law of nature.
Wow, that's a strong claim. There are various counterexamples to this, so I'd say it's definitely not a law of nature. And anyway, nature by nature (lol) is essentially lawless. It's all random collisions of tiny molecules. So, if anything, I'd say the one law of nature is that there are no laws of nature. Thus, no, there isn't always a ruling class. It doesn't have to be that way.
What's a counter-example at a reasonable scale? By reasonable scale, I mean millions of people.
Re: Maybe the problem is that Harvard exists
#37> There’s a reasonable argument for putting the top professors together in one school, sure, and maybe even PhD students.
Who's "putting" the professors there? The entire thing seemingly hinges on the idea that Harvard's role in society is somehow intentional and planned, as opposed to emergent and organic. I just don't buy it.
The institution's stated objective may be the creation "citizen-leaders", but the influence Harvard has, and the harm this causes, is entirely predicated on our willingness to buy that narrative.
Make an argument that Harvard's importance and credibility is vastly overrated, go ahead. I'm fully on board with that. But don't go blaming the institution itself for it. There's a ton of organizations with similarly lofty goals and aspirations, but we don't consider them harmful. That's because the harm is coming from without, not within.
Harvard doesn't need to not exist for us to be able to ignore it.
Re: Maybe the problem is that Harvard exists
#38No the problem goes thusly. The university was a place of learning, education, and becoming a better person. It was focused on the pursuit of knowledge for the sake of knowledge. Then it became noticed that smart educated people went to college, and so the idea then became if you went to college you to must be smart and educated. Then because that was accepted as true many people saw college as the path to a better l…
Seems like you've got your rose tinted glasses on. The first universities were established by religious leaders to organize/control priestly power. Basically the same as today.
Re: Maybe the problem is that Harvard exists
#39This 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 theories on how to interview and triage people, but few approaches beat the cost-benefit of supporting decisions based on a degree from a solid institution.
Having managed over 100+ people, I can say that on average the people from better institutions are better employees - even though I have managed amazing people without college degrees and bad people with amazing degrees. The top schools can be pretty darn great, Harvard being just one of them.
Not very different than an Apple product being generally better than a product from some random vendor from Amazon with names like "GREAT TECH" or "SUPER QUALITY PRO".
Re: Maybe the problem is that Harvard exists
#40Earlier quoted context omitted.
Isn't pre-agricultural society supposed to have been fairly egalitarian in comparison?
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?