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Whoever downvoted my above response should look up "reductio ad absurdum". See, my MIT education was useful for something. I knows fancy logic things. To elab

Whoever downvoted my above response should look up "reductio ad absurdum". See, my MIT education was useful for something. I knows fancy logic things. To elaborate a bit more on why I think that equating income with educational value is a non-starter, using a direct argument rather than a reductio ad absurdum argument: my MIT education instilled me with values, passions, and interests that could very well be in opposition to maximising my income. I.e., if I'd gone to a lesser school, I might very well make more money because my values, passions, and interests would be different. I.e., not necessarily for the better, but perhaps oriented more towards increased income. E.g., without certain passions and interests that MIT instilled me with, there would have been a lot more jobs–some of them high-paying–that would have been appealing to me. But with the passions and interests I ended up with, these jobs were not appealing to me. E.g., I could have gotten a very high paying job right out of college programming in Cobol. But that certainly was not for me after groking the beauty of Scheme. Consequently, a study showing that I would have statistically made as much money if I had received my education at a less prestigious school, is utterly irrelevent to how I value my MIT education.

tathougies 7y ago
> reductio ad absurdum Wow. Nice misapplication of a logical fallacy. My claim was that forging connections between legacy students and merit students was not particularly beneficial to merit students. You then claimed that this would lead to the supposedly absurd conclusion that your MIT education is valueless. You cannot apply reductio ad absurdum here, because you cannot conclude 'an MIT education is valueless' from my claim that 'merit students do not need to be friends with legacy students to succeed'. Since MIT does not have legacy admissions, my claim does not apply to it. You cannot conclude anything about MIT from my claim. Nowhere have I claimed anything about college friends / connections in general, only those between legacy and merit students, which, again, do not exist at MIT. Moreover, you have committed the fallacy of petitio principii (popularly known as 'begging the question' -- you don't need to go to MIT to have an understanding of grade school logic). You have already concluded that your MIT education is worthwhile (and perhaps it is, I don't know; you certain have not proven it), and have used that to mistakenly conclude that you could apply reductio ad absurdum to my claim which -- again -- does not apply to MIT in any way whatsoever. So, we see that you've (1) misapplied a logical fallacy, (2) attempted to argue against a strawmanned version of my claim, and (3) used petitio principii in an attempt to persuade everyone of the value of an MIT education. I did not downvote you, but I am unsurprised that you were downvoted.
- nessus42 7y ago
  Your argument was based on a premise that students who are admitted via merit to elite schools do not actually benefit by attending these elite schools. You backed up this premise by citing a study showing that students who were admitted via merit to such schools but who ultimately attended less elite schools, had similar incomes to the students who attended the elite schools. This premise is false, as I have argued, because income alone is not a good measure of benefit. Any argument based on a false premise is an unsound argument. Consequently, your argument is unsound. > you don't need to go to MIT to have an understanding of grade school logic You don't need to go to MIT to understand a joke either. Especially when it is followed up with, "I knows fancy logic things."
  - tathougies 7y ago
    > Your argument was based on a premise that students who are admitted via merit to elite schools do not actually benefit by attending these elite schools No that is not at all what my argument is. My argument is (quoting from a previous comment) > legacy admissions does nothing other than to help the legacy students network with the merit students I used a study asserting > that those who get into top schools and don't attend do as well as those who do get in and attend You are attempting to attack the study over my usage of the term 'top school', which you believe applies to MIT. That is far. However, if you read the study (which you clearly did not), it is actually talking solely about Ivy League schools not any 'elite college'. Actually, if you didn't read the study at all, but had only clicked the link and read the title (as most HNers are apt to do), then you still would have known it's about the Ivy League, because it's titled The Ivy League Earnings Myth. All the ivy league schools have legacy admissions. The use of the word 'top school' was my invention. However, using that word versus just using what the study used (Ivy League) does not change the core of my argument which again is > legacy admissions does nothing other than to help the legacy students network with the merit students You are attempting to attack the study by giving your own anecdote about your experience at MIT. Attempting to extrapolate global truth from your anecdote argument is yet another instance of logical fallacy. However, even admitting your use of fallacy as an actual argument, the argument itself would fail to actually refute the study, because again -- as a non-Ivy League school -- the 'success multiplier' of an MIT education has nothing to do with that of an Ivy League one. I suggest you go back to my first comment and replace the word top school with 'Ivy League schools', and see that the arguments still follow. I apologize if my use of the term 'top school' to mean 'Ivy League' was confusing. > This premise is false, as I have argued, because income alone is not a good measure of benefit. That's a perfectly reasonable argument, but is actually orthogonal to the one you are continuing to make about 'elite schools'. > Any argument based on a false premise is an unsound argument. Consequently, your argument is unsound. Well... no. An argument based on false premise is false. In mathematics, unsoundness is a property of a logical system, not particular statements in that system: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soundness https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soundness

tathougies 7y ago

> reductio ad absurdum Wow. Nice misapplication of a logical fallacy. My claim was that forging connections between legacy students and merit students was not particularly beneficial to merit students. You then claimed that this would lead to the supposedly absurd conclusion that your MIT education is valueless. You cannot apply reductio ad absurdum here, because you cannot conclude 'an MIT education is valueless' from my claim that 'merit students do not need to be friends with legacy students to succeed'. Since MIT does not have legacy admissions, my claim does not apply to it. You cannot conclude anything about MIT from my claim. Nowhere have I claimed anything about college friends / connections in general, only those between legacy and merit students, which, again, do not exist at MIT. Moreover, you have committed the fallacy of petitio principii (popularly known as 'begging the question' -- you don't need to go to MIT to have an understanding of grade school logic). You have already concluded that your MIT education is worthwhile (and perhaps it is, I don't know; you certain have not proven it), and have used that to mistakenly conclude that you could apply reductio ad absurdum to my claim which -- again -- does not apply to MIT in any way whatsoever. So, we see that you've (1) misapplied a logical fallacy, (2) attempted to argue against a strawmanned version of my claim, and (3) used petitio principii in an attempt to persuade everyone of the value of an MIT education. I did not downvote you, but I am unsurprised that you were downvoted.

nessus42 7y ago
Your argument was based on a premise that students who are admitted via merit to elite schools do not actually benefit by attending these elite schools. You backed up this premise by citing a study showing that students who were admitted via merit to such schools but who ultimately attended less elite schools, had similar incomes to the students who attended the elite schools. This premise is false, as I have argued, because income alone is not a good measure of benefit. Any argument based on a false premise is an unsound argument. Consequently, your argument is unsound. > you don't need to go to MIT to have an understanding of grade school logic You don't need to go to MIT to understand a joke either. Especially when it is followed up with, "I knows fancy logic things."
- tathougies 7y ago
  > Your argument was based on a premise that students who are admitted via merit to elite schools do not actually benefit by attending these elite schools No that is not at all what my argument is. My argument is (quoting from a previous comment) > legacy admissions does nothing other than to help the legacy students network with the merit students I used a study asserting > that those who get into top schools and don't attend do as well as those who do get in and attend You are attempting to attack the study over my usage of the term 'top school', which you believe applies to MIT. That is far. However, if you read the study (which you clearly did not), it is actually talking solely about Ivy League schools not any 'elite college'. Actually, if you didn't read the study at all, but had only clicked the link and read the title (as most HNers are apt to do), then you still would have known it's about the Ivy League, because it's titled The Ivy League Earnings Myth. All the ivy league schools have legacy admissions. The use of the word 'top school' was my invention. However, using that word versus just using what the study used (Ivy League) does not change the core of my argument which again is > legacy admissions does nothing other than to help the legacy students network with the merit students You are attempting to attack the study by giving your own anecdote about your experience at MIT. Attempting to extrapolate global truth from your anecdote argument is yet another instance of logical fallacy. However, even admitting your use of fallacy as an actual argument, the argument itself would fail to actually refute the study, because again -- as a non-Ivy League school -- the 'success multiplier' of an MIT education has nothing to do with that of an Ivy League one. I suggest you go back to my first comment and replace the word top school with 'Ivy League schools', and see that the arguments still follow. I apologize if my use of the term 'top school' to mean 'Ivy League' was confusing. > This premise is false, as I have argued, because income alone is not a good measure of benefit. That's a perfectly reasonable argument, but is actually orthogonal to the one you are continuing to make about 'elite schools'. > Any argument based on a false premise is an unsound argument. Consequently, your argument is unsound. Well... no. An argument based on false premise is false. In mathematics, unsoundness is a property of a logical system, not particular statements in that system: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soundness https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soundness