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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)

#411

Post by einpoklum »

kristjankalm wrote: post #381
vegetablepotpie wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish adults understood the realities of being young in 2020. Even when I graduated HS in 2007 I could tell my experience and the academic expectations I needed to live up to were much higher than it was for my mom. After I graduated I saw younger friends take more AP classes than I did and do more leadership activities than I did. Expectations are always ramping up. It is no party. Our laws and bureaucracies haven’…

First, I am relatively familiar with the admission process at Cambridge and noone gives a crap whether you were on a robotics team at high school + the rest of the extra-curricular jazz. Personal statements mostly just get ignored. Have no idea about the US thouigh, maybe its very different over there. Second, I know several people from a generation born it the 50s and 60s whose parents either directly forbade them g…

So, these days, women are not expected to stay at home. Instead, they're expected to go to work, and invest in their careers, and raise their kids, and service their (often one-parent) family unit's debt, and also be content and well-balanced.

Not sure I'd want to go back to the 1970s, but - yes, it is definitely no party, and "privilege" is a skewed way to look at it.

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

#412

Post by dodobirdlord »

sfkdjf9j3j wrote: post #389
dodobirdlord wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IQ tests are not pointless, the scores have strong correlation with lifetime achievement and are useful for population statistics about things like educational outcomes and the harms of childhood malnutrition. The meaningfulness of the test score breaks down if someone carries out a campaign of preparation, but that doesn’t make the tests useless. IQ testing gets a lot of flak from people who seem to have an axe to g…

IQ testing gets a lot of flak because its usefulness is misunderstood and overstated, and because historically it has been used by adherents of scientific racism. I get the sense from the comment about BMI and "axe grinding" that you're really trying to make a dig at what conservative leaning people might call "SJWs". If that's the case, you're doing yourself a disservice by letting ideology obscure the very real sci…

I don't broadly have beef with "SJWs", though I wouldn't use that term. BMI happens to be an easily recalled second metric that is useful for population statistics even if it's not necessarily always useful for an individual. Without some measurement like IQ we would miss things at the population level like the Flynn effect, or the massive improvements in intelligence brought about by the introduction of iodized salt.

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

#413

Post by dodobirdlord »

411111111111111 wrote: post #361
dodobirdlord wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IQ tests are not pointless, the scores have strong correlation with lifetime achievement and are useful for population statistics about things like educational outcomes and the harms of childhood malnutrition. The meaningfulness of the test score breaks down if someone carries out a campaign of preparation, but that doesn’t make the tests useless. IQ testing gets a lot of flak from people who seem to have an axe to g…

Seems you're misinterpreting my comment. Though I'm not sure how, considering I literally wrote at the end that selecting for it can make sense As I said before, the iq test mainly measures how much the participant is motivated... Or so many other reasons which are loosely correlated with professional success such as enjoying puzzles and figuring things out etc. It just doesn't say anything about "intelligence", and…

> As I said before, the iq test mainly measures how much the participant is motivated... Or so many other reasons which are loosely correlated with professional success such as enjoying puzzles and figuring things out etc.

This is wrong, and somewhat obviously so. Most people taking an IQ test have never taken one before, and have no preparation. Some of the biggest IQ datasets come from military enlistees. If IQ were not correlated with nebulously defined "intelligence" and were instead some measure of "motivation" and "enjoying puzzles" we wouldn't expect to see it improve generationally with access to better nutrition and early-childhood education. We also probably wouldn't expect to see significant improvements from the introduction of iodized salt, which alleviated shortage of iodine, critical for early brain development, on a population scale.

"Iodine deficiency during development impairs motivation and enjoyment of puzzles later in life" is a much less plausible claim than "IQ correlates with what we commonly understand to be 'intelligence'".

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

#414

Post by cameronbrown »

throwawayfang1 wrote: post #409
cameronbrown wrote: post #407

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> being slotted into the "bottom 10%" during the bi-annual performance review (which means you get fired) Jeez - that is awful. Since you're anonymous, will you say which FANG this was? I don't always hear great things about FANGs but sacking the bottom 10% of employees every 6 months does raise some eyebrows.

The only FANG that doesn't do this is Google (annual review only, no Stack Ranking, Needs Improvement rating is only for 1-4% of the company). Also, Google is the only one without an "up or out" policy limiting your maximum time between promotions to four years (i.e. you get canned for not meeting your expectations for career growth). This forced attrition policy is why FANG companies are always rapidly hiring (even…

Okay that's shitty. I've only ever worked Google (outside of retail + occasional side work) so I completely lack perspective on the wider tech industry. Generally I get the feeling I can balance work life pretty well here, though maybe at cost to career since there's always going to be people who don't, but I don't feel immediate pressure beyond that.

What's the situation like in smaller companies?

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

#415

Post by throwawayfang1 »

cameronbrown wrote: post #414
throwawayfang1 wrote: post #409

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only FANG that doesn't do this is Google (annual review only, no Stack Ranking, Needs Improvement rating is only for 1-4% of the company). Also, Google is the only one without an "up or out" policy limiting your maximum time between promotions to four years (i.e. you get canned for not meeting your expectations for career growth). This forced attrition policy is why FANG companies are always rapidly hiring (even…

Okay that's shitty. I've only ever worked Google (outside of retail + occasional side work) so I completely lack perspective on the wider tech industry. Generally I get the feeling I can balance work life pretty well here, though maybe at cost to career since there's always going to be people who don't, but I don't feel immediate pressure beyond that. What's the situation like in smaller companies?

Smaller companies generally can't "pretend to be FANG" because the very best people don't want to work there, they want to work at FANG where they can get paid 90th percentile compensation (you already know this; check levels.fyi -- it's pretty staggering how high senior engineers get paid in all-cash liquid total compensation at these companies). If you are a top software engineer, why would you sacrifice 60-80 hours per week of your time and not get duly compensated for it?

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

#416

Post by eldavido »

Gene_Parmesan wrote: post #356
lambdasquirrel wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you want to be an engineer and deal with tech culture, sure. We can be a little myopic about that here on HN. Engineering is not "status" oriented, and going to a nice school doesn't have the weight it does, if you want to be doctor and heal people, for example. School still matters. We can't all start startups.

Hell, I'm a software developer and don't even have a CS degree. Did I feel like the bar was higher for me than it may have been if I did have one? Sure, but I was still able to overcome it. Granted I'm not in an environment like the Valley (out of choice as much as anything), but I am an actual, real software dev. On the other hand, in my past life I was a lawyer. I worked my ass off in high school to get into a top…

Long before this comment, I've believed software engineering is becoming more like law. There's been a noticeable uptick in credential-obsession, more of a "tracked" career, just eveything about it is heading in a more high-comp / professionalized / careerist direction.

Probably inevitable given devs are making "real money" (biglaw or higher) in Silicon Valley, and having real influence, but still, I agree something may have been lost.

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

#417

Post by eldavido »

heymijo wrote: post #343
alexhutcheson wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FWIW, this isn't so much a story of "being young in 2020" as it is "being young in 2020 in the hyper-competitive culture of major coastal metro areas of the US". This phenomenon is actually pretty unique to a handful of metro areas, which happen to be over-represented on HN. In most of the country, bright high school students are focused on getting into their state's flagship public university, and exceptionally succ…

> being young in 2020 in the hyper-competitive culture of major coastal metro areas of the US I think you'd be surprised how many 8th graders across the country are already stressing about SAT/ACT scores in places like southeast Ohio or Branson, MO. I just pulled Branson out of a hat and here's their recommendations for ACT/SAT testingv[0]. I've seen a lot of schools across the U.S. This schedule matches up with offi…

If you look at the bigger picture it's hard to imagine this wouldn't be the case.

Not trying to start a generational food fight but realistically the world has changed since the boomers grew up. The US is facing major great power rivalry from China, we're much more internationalized (I read in the economist that only ~5% of US citizens had passports around 1990), and probably something almost nobody is talking about, the financial condition of the country is vastly different today -- our national debt just passed 100% of GDP, our state and local governments are financially stretched, GDP growth has slowed down, and environmental causes are consuming more attention, and money.

It'a almost unfathomable how much debt the US piled up at every level, from households to state and local to federal, over the past 50 years. It's a double-whammy: they weren't properly funding pensions/infrastructure/etc then, and now we have to both keep these things in good repair, AND make up for all the debt that's been accumulated (both financial and otherwise) by them not doing it over last generation.

The decline of manufacturing EMPLOYMENT (not value created) is also a big part of this. There used to be this demand for high school graduates where you could just walk into a place and get a job. Nowadays, that's a lot harder to do. Just look at how many hours of work is required to afford the basic necessities of life (food, healthcare, shelter), it's gone up a lot. Not going to pontificate on why that is, but I think it's worth acknowledging as being true.

Kind of hard to see how things wouldn't be more stressed, and stressful, today than 40-50 years ago.

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

#418

Post by baryphonic »

eli_gottlieb wrote: post #271
baryphonic wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If there was something I could impart to this generation, it would be this. I deeply admire your commitment to entrepreneurialism and to taking a bit of ownership over what you can learn in terms of "return on investment." However, I would caution you to remember still what is the most rewarding in life. Too often I see a never-ending status tournament for those in the elite schools (all of those mentioned), and it c…

>And if I may be so bold, I believe that many would be well-served by realizing that out there beyond the cosmos above us is something that deeply loves each of us. If I may be so bold, could I interest you in hearing the good word of dialectical materialism as interpreted through category-theory according to Robert Harper Thought?

How many times can Hegel, Marx & Co. be repackaged and cause immense destruction (such as we are seeing at this very moment) till otherwise intelligent people will finally let it go?

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

#420

Post by asdff »

dcolkitt wrote: post #322
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…

One hypothesis to consider is the drastic decline in teen smoking rates. Nicotine is a powerful anti-psychotic. Smoking rates among the schizotypal are nearly double the rest of the population, even when controlling for common explanatory factors. Social isolation, anxiety, depression, mild cognitive impairment and avoidant behavior are all signs of untreated schizophrenia. It's possible in the past that those with s…

I wonder how the decline of teen smoking follows the rise of other forms of stimulants, like caffeine, or other forms of nicotine consumption.
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