4 ms·

Perhaps you're not from the US? There is a strong current of sentiment in some quarters of the US that this is exactly what should happen if society's playing f

Perhaps you're not from the US? There is a strong current of sentiment in some quarters of the US that this is exactly what should happen if society's playing field is every going to be leveled.

achillesheels 8y ago
And that’s how bridges collapse.
p1esk 8y ago
I care more about what people on this forum think.
kortilla 8y ago
How does letting in stupid people level the playing field? I want a doctor who is qualified to be a doctor, not someone who got by because they checked a diversity box. The reason graduating from a prestigious school is valuable is because the graduates have some expected level of quality. Letting in stupid people doesn’t do the stupid people much good, and it certainly harms the prestige of an institution that was supposed to be focused on academics. Would you add an obese minority to the olympic track team because the minority is underrepresented?
- killjoywashere 8y ago
  But it's not the Olympic track team, and we know disadvantaged kids placed into an advantaged situation demonstrate an IQ increase and perform up to par. Education is uniquely different from training and certification. I say that as someone who has been through some of the most rigorous programs in both worlds. Education has no immediate impact on the outside world. You don't get to stamp a bridge design as a PE because you went to Stuy and MIT. You have to go through on-the-job training and certification exams. Same for physicians and attorneys. Education is part of it, but you absolutely have to pass the boards to practice. Also, who would you have in mind to be the minority on a track team? Also, this is Hacker News, why would you want to be getting stodgy about educational qualifications up around here?
  - kortilla 8y ago
    You missed the point. Schools are only prestigious because of an expected quality of students. Nobody is clamoring to hire random folks that took free online MIT courses and there is a reason for that. >Also, who would you have in mind to be the minority on a track team? I don’t know, a gay Muslim, a queer Christian, what does it matter? Once you’ve started selecting for diversity rather than merit, you’ve failed no matter which minority you choose. >why would you want to be getting stodgy about educational qualifications up around here? I don’t care about education, but that’s because in my field it’s relatives easy to check expertise with hands on exercises. But that misses the whole point of the conversation. The only reason anyone cares about education on the hiring side is that it’s supposed to be an intelligence/competency signal. If you just let whoever into the MIT electrical engineering department because their skin is the right color then there really isn’t much to say for the aptitude of MIT EE grads. Finally, if disadvantaged people performed up to par when placed in school and intelligence didn’t matter, then schools could simply save hundreds of thousands of dollars by firing the admissions department and replacing it with a random number generator.
anon12345690 8y ago
no, discrimination doesnt fix discrimination. and real discrimination really doesnt fix imagined discrimination.

Perhaps you're not from the US? There is a strong current of sentiment in some quarters of the US that this is exactly what should happen if society's playing field is every going to be leveled.

achillesheels 8y ago

And that’s how bridges collapse.

p1esk 8y ago

I care more about what people on this forum think.

kortilla 8y ago

How does letting in stupid people level the playing field? I want a doctor who is qualified to be a doctor, not someone who got by because they checked a diversity box. The reason graduating from a prestigious school is valuable is because the graduates have some expected level of quality. Letting in stupid people doesn’t do the stupid people much good, and it certainly harms the prestige of an institution that was supposed to be focused on academics. Would you add an obese minority to the olympic track team because the minority is underrepresented?

killjoywashere 8y ago
But it's not the Olympic track team, and we know disadvantaged kids placed into an advantaged situation demonstrate an IQ increase and perform up to par. Education is uniquely different from training and certification. I say that as someone who has been through some of the most rigorous programs in both worlds. Education has no immediate impact on the outside world. You don't get to stamp a bridge design as a PE because you went to Stuy and MIT. You have to go through on-the-job training and certification exams. Same for physicians and attorneys. Education is part of it, but you absolutely have to pass the boards to practice. Also, who would you have in mind to be the minority on a track team? Also, this is Hacker News, why would you want to be getting stodgy about educational qualifications up around here?
- kortilla 8y ago
  You missed the point. Schools are only prestigious because of an expected quality of students. Nobody is clamoring to hire random folks that took free online MIT courses and there is a reason for that. >Also, who would you have in mind to be the minority on a track team? I don’t know, a gay Muslim, a queer Christian, what does it matter? Once you’ve started selecting for diversity rather than merit, you’ve failed no matter which minority you choose. >why would you want to be getting stodgy about educational qualifications up around here? I don’t care about education, but that’s because in my field it’s relatives easy to check expertise with hands on exercises. But that misses the whole point of the conversation. The only reason anyone cares about education on the hiring side is that it’s supposed to be an intelligence/competency signal. If you just let whoever into the MIT electrical engineering department because their skin is the right color then there really isn’t much to say for the aptitude of MIT EE grads. Finally, if disadvantaged people performed up to par when placed in school and intelligence didn’t matter, then schools could simply save hundreds of thousands of dollars by firing the admissions department and replacing it with a random number generator.

anon12345690 8y ago

no, discrimination doesnt fix discrimination. and real discrimination really doesnt fix imagined discrimination.