A generation of American men give up on college • Hacker News Board

Re: A generation of American men give up on college

#741

Post by tchaffee » Wed, Sep 08, 2021, 10:38 AM UTC

confidantlake wrote: post #725

tchaffee wrote: post #655

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The problem is that companies also want an objective hiring process Usually only at a very superficial level. Enough to comply with the law. And to be fair, some companies do have good intentions with a little extra effort and money put into diversity efforts. A truly objective hiring process would take into account that Joe and Charley who both got the same results on the coding test are not equally qualified if J…

But looking at what a candidate can do is objective. Trying to compare how tough each one had it is extremely subjective. Is being a woman harder than a minority? Is having a low iq harder than being poor? Being a single parent harder than being addicted to alcohol? Maybe Charley had depression and anxiety and never made any friends while Joe is outgoing and did allowing him to form study groups easier. Maybe Charley…

> We are here to judge how someone can do the job.

You missed the most important part of my point. Someone who crosses the finish line at the same time as someone else, but started from further back is almost always better at doing the job.

I already said it's very difficult to objectively measure. But any improvement in doing so will give you a competitive advantage in finding the best candidates.

Re: A generation of American men give up on college

#742

Post by hk2001 » Wed, Sep 08, 2021, 12:29 PM UTC

refenestrator wrote: post #567

nemo44x wrote: post #439

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Read “How to be an Anti-Raciat” by Ibram X Kendi. It was a top selling book last year and he is a leading figure of the progressive left. His academic work is cited heavily in other progressive academic literature.

There's an interesting dynamic here where imo the silent majority of progressives don't buy his approach and think it's counterproductive, but any lone soul who says so is called out, which side are you on here anyways. So this guy gets to represent himself as a spokesman for the movement and nobody really wants to contradict it under their real name.

Perhaps, but I think it’s often less a matter of being afraid of calling extremists out, and more of what I heard someone once refer to as “sane-washing”. Progressives hear extremist views and say “when they say X, what they really are saying is Y. No one actually wants X”, when in reality that’s exactly what extremists want and it gives them cover to continue to push the Overton window until it’s no longer an extremist view. The above exchange is a perfect example.

Re: A generation of American men give up on college

#743

Post by bernulli » Wed, Sep 08, 2021, 1:41 PM UTC

betwixthewires wrote: post #720

bernulli wrote: post #717

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the longest text you've ever written that you can judge 'it's not that hard' to write a 500p standard textbook? As a corollary, only very few professors actually have their own textbook and thus don't make any money whatsoever from choosing a specific textbook. Finally, why would you deny someone money for work they did, typically in their spare time? Who else do you think should give away their work for free?…

I never said anything about someone giving their work away for free. Roll it into tuition, whatever, but this predatory textbook cartel hustle has to stop. The professor is giving a class, they're going to teach all of what is in the textbook, and for those who can't write it themselves and use ones written by other professors, they can give out that PDF, they don't have to write one. I was simply responding to this:…

You verbatim wrote "As a professor, create your own PDF and give it to all the students free". How is that not giving away your work for free?

How is automatically deducting textbook cost from student tuition going to help with anything? If anything it will help maintain the status quo, because then it's even less transparent.

The alternative you propose is for professors who don't write their own books is to give other people's work (the original authors') away for free.

So your solution is that because it's easy to copy digital books, the 'problem is solved' by forcibly taking away the fruit of labor of some people at your convenience?

As I wrote elsewhere: if there were a cartel, college textbooks would vastly outprice textbooks for professionals (because they cannot be 'forced' to buy them) - that's not what I see in my field. Professional textbooks easily cost $200-$300. It's just a niche market.

Re: A generation of American men give up on college

#744

Post by hk2001 » Wed, Sep 08, 2021, 2:21 PM UTC

nemo44x wrote: post #603

unethical_ban wrote: post #565

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just so you know, chalk me up as an 'anti-woke' leftist. Which might mean "Economist(TM) centrist". I can be in support of anti-systemic-racism actions that do not act on an individual level. I can support universal healthcare, higher income equality and whatnot, without the binary race worldview that Kendi puts out.

Yes you can - you'd be a "Western Liberal", or "Liberal Scientist" or whatever else we want to name the philosophy of thought that began with the Enlightenment. And being a "leftist" in that is 100% consistent with that. We tend to refer to "liberals" as people on the left but in general a liberal is anyone who is consistent with liberal beliefs which include a fair amount of "conservatism" as well. However, there's…

I believe the Economist themselves label this as “Classical Liberalism”, given the modern connotations of “liberal” in the US.

Re: A generation of American men give up on college

#745

Post by chakkepolja » Wed, Sep 08, 2021, 3:29 PM UTC

btreecat wrote: post #634

chakkepolja wrote: post #601

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Men don't complain. It's not the male biological imperative. Consider modern "feminists" and their obesity-is-fine propaganda. No man complains about male underwear models being very fit and handsome. If anything, men want to become like them.

How is that a biological imperative and not just another form of social conditioning?

Men are the competitive gender. In past, only 40% of men survived to reproduce whereas 80% of women did.

Not in absolute terms, but imagine if more competitive men survive with higher probability in each generation, there's a good chance males will be more competitive and females will be more cooperative in next generations.

Now this theory is fringe. But not as nonsense as "Both genders are same, everything is social conditioning" bullshit we hear every day.

Re: A generation of American men give up on college

#746

Post by betwixthewires » Wed, Sep 08, 2021, 3:33 PM UTC

bernulli wrote: post #743

betwixthewires wrote: post #720

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I never said anything about someone giving their work away for free. Roll it into tuition, whatever, but this predatory textbook cartel hustle has to stop. The professor is giving a class, they're going to teach all of what is in the textbook, and for those who can't write it themselves and use ones written by other professors, they can give out that PDF, they don't have to write one. I was simply responding to this:…

You verbatim wrote "As a professor, create your own PDF and give it to all the students free". How is that not giving away your work for free? How is automatically deducting textbook cost from student tuition going to help with anything? If anything it will help maintain the status quo, because then it's even less transparent. The alternative you propose is for professors who don't write their own books is to give ot…

You can be mad because I proposed a solution to an easily solved problem that doesn't need to exist if you want to. I don't mind.

When you see "buy one get one free" do you really believe the second one is free? Think before you toss what you think are gotchas out at people. Roll it into the cost of tuition. It's really not that hard to get, yet I'm saying it a second time.

It does solve lots of problems. Material cost, outlandish distribution, marketing and production cost, and it means the prices aren't externalized and the students know what they're paying for a course up front. Those are basically all the problems with the textbook market. It solves a couple of other problems too, digital documents can't be resold, doubly so if their cost is counted in tuition, so no need to stupidly re edit the document every year just to make sure last year's edition is worthless, only edit when there is an update in the field.

Speaking of which, the fact that they do that, edit books needlessly to prevent the previous year's book from being resellable at any value, is proof positive that textbooks are a racket. Professional textbooks are a different kind of hustle, it's like law dictionaries, they know the books are valuable to professionals so they charge large prices, this fact is not proof that the college textbook racket is not a racket run by a publishing cartel. Your reasoning is as weak as a limp dishrag on this one.

Re: A generation of American men give up on college

#747

Post by zarkov99 » Wed, Sep 08, 2021, 3:46 PM UTC

Applejinx wrote: post #330

zarkov99 wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its not that the support structures do not exist, after all they never did and men did fine without them, its that college is suffused with an ideology that is anti-men, anti-merit and, for the most part, useless for anything but its own self-propagation.

You've got a fundamental difference of opinion around the basic purpose of the exercise and can't be trusted to have a rational opinion about what's really going on. What is 'merit' for? If your answer is 'distinguishing between things of worth and things that are valueless' then there's a problem, and you are prematurely contextualizing. Briefly, you cannot be trusted to dictate the contexts of value for the whole w…

Who can be trusted with a rational opinion? Why?

As to morality and practicality, merit as the optimal way to building hierarchy has worked practically. In terms of morality, what do you have that is better? And why/who says its better?

Re: A generation of American men give up on college

#748

Post by bernulli » Wed, Sep 08, 2021, 4:26 PM UTC

betwixthewires wrote: post #746

bernulli wrote: post #743

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You verbatim wrote "As a professor, create your own PDF and give it to all the students free". How is that not giving away your work for free? How is automatically deducting textbook cost from student tuition going to help with anything? If anything it will help maintain the status quo, because then it's even less transparent. The alternative you propose is for professors who don't write their own books is to give ot…

You can be mad because I proposed a solution to an easily solved problem that doesn't need to exist if you want to. I don't mind. When you see "buy one get one free" do you really believe the second one is free? Think before you toss what you think are gotchas out at people. Roll it into the cost of tuition. It's really not that hard to get, yet I'm saying it a second time. It does solve lots of problems. Material co…

Looks like you've got it all figured out, good for you!

Re: A generation of American men give up on college

#749

Post by whywhywhywhy » Wed, Sep 08, 2021, 4:53 PM UTC

twoslide wrote: post #427

whywhywhywhy wrote: post #360

Great news, the concept that you need college to succeed was one of the greatest lies told to my generation. Pleased the next generation is waking up. End of the day if the loan can't be written off, if the loan is just handed out to 18 year olds and has almost no limit then the organization that asks for the loan will inevitably balloon out of all proportion and no longer be reflective at all of the value you get ba…

Is the issue higher education (colleges/universities) or higher education finance? Sounds like the latter.

The two are linked inseparably. To have higher education without the astronomical loans that hold the current system up you'd need an entirely new system.

Re: A generation of American men give up on college

#750

Post by happythen » Wed, Sep 08, 2021, 5:16 PM UTC

exporectomy wrote: post #711

happythen wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, I just get outdoors and live with real people, and see it myself. I've been pulled over in a car with two other dudes, and watched the darkest skin guy get the crap kicked out of him because they thought he is a gangster, while we had to sit on a curb and watch. Where I went to school, counselors tried to get me to take AP classes, which I didn't want, while my friends with darker skin, and better grades, had to…

> the darkest skin guy get the crap kicked out of him On his way to a job interview? And also for many of your other darker skinned friends on their way to job interviews? And your female friends on their way to theirs? I'm not denying it happened in some isolated cases, but that it causes normal people to not get to "the door". It didn't even happen to normal people among your "dark-skinned" friends.

I think "to the door" might be a metaphor for going through life up to that point, but I like you literal interpretation better, like everyone in those stories specifically faces atrocities ONLY on the way to an interview. Because if you get shitbagged on a Tuesday and have the interview Wednesday, then really, it's an equal playing field.

Again, with the normal, who are you talking about? People are complex, all people, normal is your perception of others, check yourself.