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Eh. It's mostly genetics that determine academic ability (and everything else), so reaching an end goal of "total equality" would in fact make admissions all ab
by sanitycheck 3y ago
Eh. It's mostly genetics that determine academic ability (and everything else), so reaching an end goal of "total equality" would in fact make admissions all about who your parents are.
- abirch 3y agoI think it's 60-70% of academic achievement can be explained by genes. If you know kids from a big family, their academic success can vary significantly although they have the same parents.
- sanitycheck 3y agoSure, and they may not all have the same colour eyes - variation is expected. But still, we have nature (genes, 60-70%) and nurture (hey, parents again). What else is there?
- jncfhnb 3y agoLuck (excluding controllable factors by wealthy parents)
- abirch 3y agoI'd say opportunities. When there are fewer kids matriculating into college it's easier to get into a better school (see Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers) Professors and Teachers, the variability of them is huge. Friends can have a huge impact as well. Is the norm to skip classes to go work on a startup or focusing on getting good grades? Resources such as the Numberblocks which make math more visual and accessible. My pre-K kid was doing multiplication because of that show.
- chongli 3y agoYes, and identical twins raised apart show extremely similar academic achievement, far more similar than non-identical siblings raised in the same household. This strongly indicates that academic achievement is highly explained by genes but that recombination [1] causes enough scrambling to result in large variance among non-identical siblings. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_recombination https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_recombination
- Joker_vD 3y agoWhich is why only pure-blood Germans must be allowed to the higher education unlike Jews, Slavs, Gypsies and other such Untermenschen. sigh Genetics don't determine that much as some would like to believe, seriously.
- jncfhnb 3y agoYou’re implying that the beliefs here must be racially consistent, which is a straw man.
- sanitycheck 3y agoI'd thought HN was above calling people Nazis? I've said nothing about race. If we want a meritocracy we have to be comfortable with genetics playing a role in outcomes. Personally I've realised that a meritocracy would not be "fair" in the way that a lot of people assume.
- Joker_vD 3y agoAlright, let's talk about eugenics then? After all, it's not just Nazis that had eugenics programs in the newest history: the USA had forced sterilization well into the seventies, so it can't be all that bad.
- chongli 3y agoThe evidence would suggest otherwise [1]. Race is a very bad proxy for intelligence, but that doesn't mean intelligence isn't genetic. [1] https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/05/26/the-atomic-bomb-considered-as-hungarian-high-school-science-fair-project/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/05/26/the-atomic-bomb-consid...