Who lost the most marks when cheating was stopped? • Hacker News Board

Re: Who lost the most marks when cheating was stopped?

#41

Post by Houshalter » Sat, May 06, 2017, 11:29 PM UTC

Throwaway23412 wrote: post #31

SamReidHughes wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely. Because smart people are better at making money and intelligence is a heritable trait.

The average American has more wealth than pretty much everyone on Earth. You can't seriously think that it's because Americans are all genetically smarter than everyone else?

Variation within a group can be explained by different factors than variation between groups. That is, it could be completely true that Americans with higher IQs are more likely to become wealthy. But as a group America's success is due to other factors than IQ.

Re: Who lost the most marks when cheating was stopped?

#42

Post by omginternets » Sat, May 06, 2017, 11:30 PM UTC

SamReidHughes wrote: post #25

jordansmithnz wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you suggesting that children in poorer families are born less smart than children from wealthier families?

Absolutely. Because smart people are better at making money and intelligence is a heritable trait.

I don't think anybody would seriously dispute that relationship. Rather, I think people are disputing the directionality.

You seem to be suggesting some sort of natural selection process, whereas it's also legitimate to posit that status contributes to higher IQ (or g, if you prefer) in the form of:

- fewer chemical contaminants in utero and in early life (i.e. living in a less chemically polluted environment)

- access to better nutrition

- access to better medical care

- less stress in utero and in early life

- less exposure to disease

- less exposure to psycho-physiological toxicity (e.g.: poor sleep quality due to a noisy environment)

The list goes on.

tl;dr: you're assuming causation from correlation.

Re: Who lost the most marks when cheating was stopped?

#43

Post by hkmurakami » Sat, May 06, 2017, 11:33 PM UTC

niftich wrote: post #23

Wealth correlates well with opportunity and choices; students coming from wealthier families can better afford to acquire other compensating controls -- like private tutoring, or simply eating the fail on the exam and relying on social capital and social networks to make up for it after the fact. The poor can't afford such measures and lack the social connections, so they have no choice to play outside the confines o…

Also the children of the affluent have more time since they often don't have to work.

In fact I was explicitly told by my parents to study rather than work. Their reasoning was that the whole point of them grinding their butts off working was so I could have the best education money could buy (they grew up poor in post WW2 Japan and were dirt poor immigrants in grad school in the 70's).

Worked out for me, but there's no denying that I had an enormous edge over the vast majority of my peers.

Re: Who lost the most marks when cheating was stopped?

#44

Post by Houshalter » Sat, May 06, 2017, 11:35 PM UTC

zepto wrote: post #27

SamReidHughes wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely. Because smart people are better at making money and intelligence is a heritable trait.

Only if you simplistically ignore that social status and wealth are also heritable and make it much easier to make money regardless of intelligence.

Is social status and wealth really heritable? There are studies of lottery winners that show their children and grandchildren aren't any better off.

Re: Who lost the most marks when cheating was stopped?

#45

Post by mirimir » Sat, May 06, 2017, 11:36 PM UTC

zdean wrote: post #6

jstanley wrote: post #3

> one of the consequences is precisely the reverse of its aims So... was the aim to reduce cheating, or was it just to disadvantage the richer kids? Because if the aim was really to reduce cheating, then I can't see how any of the consequences were precisely the reverse of the aims.

The aim was to show that in the absence of academic cheating, a meritocracy would emerge. What the researcher realized was that the deck was stacked against poorer students and in favor of richer students...in essence, the cheating/rigging was happening before the kids walked into school...and the academic cheating was a response to level the playing field.

Yes, that's basically it, although characterizing wealth as cheating is iffy. But I also suspect that their anti-cheating measures caught blatant stuff, like bribing and secreting answers, but missed stuff like bribing teachers and staff to get exams in advance.

Re: Who lost the most marks when cheating was stopped?

#46

Post by zepto » Sat, May 06, 2017, 11:41 PM UTC

Houshalter wrote: post #44

zepto wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only if you simplistically ignore that social status and wealth are also heritable and make it much easier to make money regardless of intelligence.

Is social status and wealth really heritable? There are studies of lottery winners that show their children and grandchildren aren't any better off.

This comment makes no sense. Wealthy families clearly pass down money and social status to their children.

Re: Who lost the most marks when cheating was stopped?

#47

Post by rickycook » Sat, May 06, 2017, 11:43 PM UTC

ChuckMcM wrote: post #29

21 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep. I was in such an exam, and there was a voluntary collection of money to bribe the invigilators. I didn't pay in and was looked down because. I didn't cheat, but I could have if I wanted. More interestingly, the teachers (which were the invigilators) rationalized this as "everybody is cheating, if you don't than the stupid kids from the country side would have bigger grades than you, so you should cheat too" (I w…

Thank you for sharing that. It seems that the 'test score' was more important than actually educating the student. My assumption was that if the education was effective then the student would have no difficultly passing the test. So I wonder a bit at what makes education ineffective. I coached at risk latino high school students briefly while attending college and for them it was pretty clear that they needed to work…

well, it's not about passing the test. considering these exams are sorting mechanisms, you don't just have to pass; you have to do better than those that are trying to do the same university course you are

*edit: and yeah, when it comes to the exam, you're no longer educating. literally the only important thing for both student and teacher at this point is the score

Re: Who lost the most marks when cheating was stopped?

#48

Post by douche » Sat, May 06, 2017, 11:44 PM UTC

Houshalter wrote: post #44

zepto wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only if you simplistically ignore that social status and wealth are also heritable and make it much easier to make money regardless of intelligence.

Is social status and wealth really heritable? There are studies of lottery winners that show their children and grandchildren aren't any better off.

Lottery winners are overwhelmingly white trash. Who would reasonably expect such people, with no experience of money, to invest their windfall reasonably?

Re: Who lost the most marks when cheating was stopped?

#49

Post by zepto » Sat, May 06, 2017, 11:47 PM UTC

eehee wrote: post #34

zepto wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only if you simplistically ignore that social status and wealth are also heritable and make it much easier to make money regardless of intelligence.

If intelligence matters at all to making money, the wealth + intelligence combo probably beats wealth on its own. Unless, of course, intelligence is "bad" for the wealthy and "good" for the poor, but I doubt that's the case...

Sure - wealth + intelligence can be highly lucrative e.g. Bill Gates

But intelligence without wealth can easily be beaten by average intelligence plus wealth and status. E.g. Trump

Re: Who lost the most marks when cheating was stopped?

#50

Post by Houshalter » Sat, May 06, 2017, 11:48 PM UTC

zepto wrote: post #46

Houshalter wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is social status and wealth really heritable? There are studies of lottery winners that show their children and grandchildren aren't any better off.

This comment makes no sense. Wealthy families clearly pass down money and social status to their children.

But it doesn't last long. After 3 generations, maybe less, there's little statistical difference between those descended from wealth and those not (all else equal!) The super wealthy may leave billion dollar empires to their children, sure. But if we are talking about the upper middle class, a moderate inheritance from your parents isn't going to make or break your life's outcome.