4 ms·

Was there some dispute I didn't hear about? I'm pretty sure everyone knows that MIT is pretty great. Did Gates just copy-paste info from the recruitment packet?

• hugh3 15y ago
  It reminds me of a Point/Counterpoint from The Onion: "Why MIT Matters", by Bill Gates vs "MIT Sucks and Everyone Who Goes There Is A Huge Fag, lol" by A First-Year Engineering Undergrad at Caltech
  • robg 15y ago
    Sad that we can't take time - even just a moment - to appreciate nice things. Is the default really to assume a conflict? It's like the internet really is a fifteen year old - highly opinionated and easily slighted. I've been affiliated with MIT for three years. I hope to never leave. I wish I appreciated education as a kid and I might have arrived much sooner.
    • forensic 15y ago
      The internet used to be cool. It was full of smart people saying smart things. Now it's mainly a communication tool for 13 year olds and desperate housewives.
      • robg 15y ago
        I wouldn't go that far. I'm just surprised when the internet culture dictates the zombie response. If someone sat next to me on an airplane, heard me mention MIT, then waxed eloquent for an hour, I'd be nodding along with a big grin. Contrast that with me asking if MIT was involved in a conflict or if the speaker wanted a donation. It would make no sense. So why do we allow and enable that attitude online, especially here at HN? It's not just mean, it's vapid.
        • forensic 15y ago
          I think an airplane, and face-to-face life in general, is actually a much more exclusive and filtered place than you realize. On the internet you are interacting with people who you would never run into face-to-face. They don't have a position in the world where they ride on airplanes. They dress in such a way that you would not even consider them for a conversation. Their body language communicates hostility and fear. They generally won't even live in the same city, or even the same country. How often do you visit Montgomery, Alabama? How often do you visit Turkey and strike up conversations with the local neurotics? The internet is where these people go to dump their neural refuse. People who are seen as pathetic hobgoblins when face-to-face use the internet megaphone to spew bile everywhere.
      • quanticle 15y ago
        The internet used to be cool. It was full of smart people saying smart things. Yeah, maybe in 1992. For all practical purposes, the quality of Internet discussions been at its current state for the past two decades. Complaining about it won't make it any better.
        • sp332 15y ago
          Yup, right up until September 1993. https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Eternal_September https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Eternal_Septe... Complaining might not be productive, but reminding people that things used to be nicer is a good way to stave off despair that it can never be nice again. The Internet was nice, for years and years, and if we remember how to do it right, maybe we can make it nice again.
    • hugh3 15y ago
      Are you sure you're not overinterpreting things here? I was only pointing out that it's a bit of a silly headline, "Why MIT Matters", since nobody is out there trying to argue that it doesn't. Now, the same article with the headline "Bill Gates says nice things about MIT for its 150th anniversary" might be much better.
    • rgbrgb 15y ago
      All I was saying is that this site is for news. A piece about MIT being a good school is not news, it is utter fluff.
  • gwern 15y ago
    I was disappointed when I googled and saw the second did not actually exist.
• ZackOfAllTrades 15y ago
  It's MIT's 150th celebration now. It's why they have been so loud as of late. Probably a good way to get the donations to come in.
• MitRules 15y ago
  people would up-vote a bowel movement if "MIT" was in the title.
  • jules 15y ago
    If there is an article about bowel movements with "MIT" in the title, chances are that it's interesting.
  • robg 15y ago
    You created an account just to post that deep thought? Why troll?
    • MitRules 15y ago
      Really wasn't meant to be a troll honestly, just an observation of the sometimes undue attention MIT gets. This happens on slashdot and every other forum. There are plenty of great schools doing great things, yet media has cast MIT as `the` place for all things tech. When there's a character in a movie who's a cool techie, they went to MIT. If you're a fictional character joining the CIA, you went to MIT. I can see how my comment unduly denigrates the judgement of the community in general, I'm sorry for that. Invariably however, maybe due to the name recognition at the aggregate, MIT stories always rise the top. It was a pretty stupid way of putting it originally, sorry.
• ThomPete 15y ago
  I might be wrong, but haven't there been some talk about MIT not getting the funding they used to? I.e. maybe it's not aimed at the already converted?
  • hga 15y ago
    It's much more than "talk": the end of the Cold War (plus perhaps other things and I would expect the dot.com crash didn't help) resulted in MIT receiving a lot less money and way prior to the Great Recession it's been in what seems to be a nearly eternal retrenchment mode, with frequent administrative downsizing and layoffs (something that was previously unheard of, at least in the post-WWII period). I can remember when they changed the cleaning of most bathrooms from every day to "frequent cleaning" (they said every other day at the time). Then "At night, the ice weasels come", or the Great Recession wacked a good part of their endowment like most ever other institution like MIT. They didn't get caught out like Harvard but it's caused a lot of problems, e.g. last time I checked freezing the conversion of the old graduate student dorm into a refurbished undergraduate dorm.
• deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
• nandemo 15y ago
  Well, apparently many HNers believe that where you go to school "doesn't matter", or even that getting a degree doesn't matter anymore ("it's just a credential"). So I'm not sure that everyone knows that MIT is great.