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It's similar to issues with performance enhancing drugs. If your course is graded so the top x% get an A, and people are using drugs to get ahead, then there's

It's similar to issues with performance enhancing drugs. If your course is graded so the top x% get an A, and people are using drugs to get ahead, then there's pressure to take study drugs to level the playing field with your peers. The end state is everyone taking drugs, and nobody being any better off academically.

imtringued 5y ago
Invite friends to fail the course for you?
luckylion 5y ago
> The end state is everyone taking drugs, and nobody being any better off academically. Will society be better off though? I mean, the same point can be made for using any new technology. I use a computer so now you need to use a computer to stay competitive. Now we both use a computer, so we're at a stale mate once again. But we're both working much more efficiently on a much higher level, and society is definitely better off even if neither of us has any lasting advantage over the other. Whether that's the case with academics and stimulants, I don't know. Would Paul Erdős have made the same contributions without stimulants? Would we be settling on Mars if everyone optimized for maximum brain output?
- chii 5y ago
  > the same point can be made for using any new technology. The difference is that some technology don't harm the user, while others do. Drugs tend to harm your biology, usually - that's why taking steroids isn't recommended. So is society willing to sacrifice (some people' s) health for such progress?
  - luckylion 5y ago
    > So is society willing to sacrifice (some people' s) health for such progress? Strong yes. We accept health issues in shift workers, traffic deaths etc because of economic benefits. With moderate use, I don't think stimulants are having worse effects than that, and they have a much higher pay off. I have a vague feeling that the general rejection is similar to that regarding anti-depressants. People are much more hesitant to use drugs that target what we think of as "the mind" than anything else. Very few people refuse antibiotics, but many refuse to take anti-depressants.
danShumway 5y ago
> If your course is graded so the top x% get an A Is this... normal? I never had a single college course graded this way. If I had found myself inside of one I would have dropped out of the class and swapped to another as soon I looked at the syllabus. Forget drug abuse, think about what workplace dynamics that teaches students to embrace. I was just talking about if we were working kids too hard or something, I didn't think we were explicitly encouraging students to view learning as a contest and their coworkers as enemies. I hope we wouldn't need to wait for a drug epidemic to realize that competitive grading is a really bad idea. The people in my classes were my friends. We studied together outside of class, we worked together on group projects, we spent time figuring out our specialties and academic strengths, we sent each other links to tutorials and cheered each other on during difficult classes. Viewing those people as competitors would have been so toxic; I probably wouldn't have even learned half as much without a collaborative environment. I'm kind of horrified by the idea: if anyone here is currently a student and your professors are doing competitive grading, they're not giving you your money's worth in education, you should be in a different class.
- david_allison 5y ago
  You'll typically hear it referred to as 'curved grading'. It's not uncommon, and it's typically justified as many students would fail if the class wasn't curved. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norm-referenced_test https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norm-referenced_test ---- > I was just talking about if we were working kids too hard or something We are, the internet isn't helping. If you haven't read it, [0] is a fantastic piece showing the anxieties of modern studying. I see it as similar to how gaming has changed over the past ~20 years, the 'best' strategies have been democratized, and the general bar for skill is much higher. This is fantastic if your goal for education is a better educated workforce, and destructive if you're using academic success as a differentiator. [0] https://every.to/cybernaut/caught-in-the-study-web https://every.to/cybernaut/caught-in-the-study-web

imtringued 5y ago

Invite friends to fail the course for you?

luckylion 5y ago

> The end state is everyone taking drugs, and nobody being any better off academically. Will society be better off though? I mean, the same point can be made for using any new technology. I use a computer so now you need to use a computer to stay competitive. Now we both use a computer, so we're at a stale mate once again. But we're both working much more efficiently on a much higher level, and society is definitely better off even if neither of us has any lasting advantage over the other. Whether that's the case with academics and stimulants, I don't know. Would Paul Erdős have made the same contributions without stimulants? Would we be settling on Mars if everyone optimized for maximum brain output?

chii 5y ago
> the same point can be made for using any new technology. The difference is that some technology don't harm the user, while others do. Drugs tend to harm your biology, usually - that's why taking steroids isn't recommended. So is society willing to sacrifice (some people' s) health for such progress?
- luckylion 5y ago
  > So is society willing to sacrifice (some people' s) health for such progress? Strong yes. We accept health issues in shift workers, traffic deaths etc because of economic benefits. With moderate use, I don't think stimulants are having worse effects than that, and they have a much higher pay off. I have a vague feeling that the general rejection is similar to that regarding anti-depressants. People are much more hesitant to use drugs that target what we think of as "the mind" than anything else. Very few people refuse antibiotics, but many refuse to take anti-depressants.

danShumway 5y ago

> If your course is graded so the top x% get an A Is this... normal? I never had a single college course graded this way. If I had found myself inside of one I would have dropped out of the class and swapped to another as soon I looked at the syllabus. Forget drug abuse, think about what workplace dynamics that teaches students to embrace. I was just talking about if we were working kids too hard or something, I didn't think we were explicitly encouraging students to view learning as a contest and their coworkers as enemies. I hope we wouldn't need to wait for a drug epidemic to realize that competitive grading is a really bad idea. The people in my classes were my friends. We studied together outside of class, we worked together on group projects, we spent time figuring out our specialties and academic strengths, we sent each other links to tutorials and cheered each other on during difficult classes. Viewing those people as competitors would have been so toxic; I probably wouldn't have even learned half as much without a collaborative environment. I'm kind of horrified by the idea: if anyone here is currently a student and your professors are doing competitive grading, they're not giving you your money's worth in education, you should be in a different class.

david_allison 5y ago
You'll typically hear it referred to as 'curved grading'. It's not uncommon, and it's typically justified as many students would fail if the class wasn't curved. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norm-referenced_test https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norm-referenced_test ---- > I was just talking about if we were working kids too hard or something We are, the internet isn't helping. If you haven't read it, [0] is a fantastic piece showing the anxieties of modern studying. I see it as similar to how gaming has changed over the past ~20 years, the 'best' strategies have been democratized, and the general bar for skill is much higher. This is fantastic if your goal for education is a better educated workforce, and destructive if you're using academic success as a differentiator. [0] https://every.to/cybernaut/caught-in-the-study-web https://every.to/cybernaut/caught-in-the-study-web