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No, I’m reading the text of the article as written. It says: “Harvard would still be an organization designed to reduce meritocracy…” “Harvard exists to make
by amluto 3y ago
No, I’m reading the text of the article as written. It says:
“Harvard would still be an organization designed to reduce meritocracy…”
“Harvard exists to make society less meritocratic”
These are statements about Harvard’s purpose or intent, not about its effect. And I think it’s more likely that the original intent, as well and the present intent of those involved, is to foster meritocracy: admit the best students (for some, fairly clearly extremely flawed, concept of “best”), give the best ones the best grades (again, there are flaws here), and hopefully let the best ones succeed.
The article argues that it fails at this, and perhaps even that it can’t succeed, but the article states, without justification, that it was not intended to succeed.
- lapcat 3y ago> These are statements about Harvard’s purpose or intent, not about its effect. Yes, the current purpose or intent. Harvard was established 387 years ago; what was its original purpose or intent? I don't know. In fact, I don't care. It's not relevant to the current argument. Institutions change over time, and we're talking about hundreds of years at Harvard.
- sixstringtheory 3y ago> the current purpose or intent … is to make society less meritocratic? Where’s the evidence that this is what the institution is currently driving at as its mission? Versus this being an emergent effect, subjectively?
- pseudalopex 3y ago"The purpose of a system is what it does"
- sixstringtheory 3y agoOK. But the problem here is that people disagree on what Harvard does. That has to be established before we can even work backwards to a purpose, assuming this framework you suggest is even valid, which I separately doubt. My a priori assumption of the purpose of a car is to transport people. Cars kill thousands of people each year. Is the purpose of a car then to kill people?
- pseudalopex 3y agoThe 6 comments before accepted for discussion's sake at least a view on what Harvard does. Why stop now? The dominant purpose of a car is to use a system of car centered infrastructure. Why did some places replace car centered infrastructure with other systems and some not?
- sixstringtheory 3y ago> Why did some places replace car centered infrastructure with other systems and some not? Are we really gonna do this? My point was that intentions can be, and often are, different from outcomes. You don’t throw out babies with bathwater.