[HN Gopher] Mediocrity Is Now Mandatory
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Mediocrity Is Now Mandatory
Author : psim1
Score : 30 points
Date : 2021-02-07 19:27 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.wsj.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.wsj.com)
| actuallyalys wrote:
| This seems less like an argument and more like a loosely
| connected list of things that the author doesn't like, everything
| from Diversity and Inclusion departments to Bernie Sanders'
| appointment to the Senate budgetary committee--the main
| commonality is that they're somehow left or left of center. If
| you already dislike these things, maybe the idea that they're all
| related is convincing. But if not, it just seems like recycled
| complaints.
|
| Maybe there is a deep connection to mediocrity in each of these
| examples, but he doesn't really make that case, only that the
| status quo, which he asserts used to be about excellence, is
| changing.
| tamaharbor wrote:
| We are becoming the movie "Idiocracy". Sad.
| mrkramer wrote:
| "Why work when Uncle Sam provides table stakes for mob-trading
| GameStop and dogecoin?"
|
| This made my day.
| Grakel wrote:
| College will become high school. It will be free, mandatory, and
| which one you went to won't matter at all. That's not important.
| But what is important, is that like high school, it won't matter
| what you studied, or if you stood out. In fact, it's already
| happening.
| benibela wrote:
| That is how it is in Europe
| systemvoltage wrote:
| I find a similar worrying trend in Software Engineering.
| Criticisms are often supressed [1], people are afraid of saying
| anything negative to "offend" someone, right-to-be-offended is
| rampant and often go unchecked and it's sending chilling effects
| in social media, Github, work places, forums, and slack channels.
| When we used to meet in person to discuss, there is a level of
| courtesy and acceptance of dissent as a matter of intellectual
| discourse, this is being eroded in front of our eyes. Online
| discussions in the past weren't so gamified as things are today.
|
| On Github, saying something across the grain or against it can
| lead to public shaming - all beautifully souped up for public
| consumption in the form of 31 downvotes, emojified, recorded and
| attached to someone's name. Now, that person will perhaps think
| twice before saying something negative ever again, silenced and
| rejected by the public previously. Email mailing lists are far
| superior in arguing about a point than Github. Makes me furious
| just thinking about how shitty we have become. It's getting worse
| everyday. If you think that these people are just "assholes and
| always complain"; we have a mechanism for people who are truly
| assholes - be tolerant and ignore them.
|
| Folks, it's time to ditch the 'Emoji Casino' for any sort of
| serious intellectual discourse. That includes Github and anything
| that's "social". One should be judged by the merit of their words
| and thoughts, not statistics and concensus.
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25991563
| gwilikers wrote:
| Reading this, all I can think is that you are just asking for
| everyone to spare your feelings while insisting you shouldn't
| put in the effort to spare anyone else's.
| harpiaharpyja wrote:
| He isn't asking that though, so was there something you
| wanted to say about what the GP actually wrote?
| gwilikers wrote:
| > we have a mechanism for people who are truly assholes -
| be tolerant and ignore them.
|
| Why does the GP feel they can convey their criticisms to
| other parties as callously as they please, but reject that
| anyone should respond to them negatively?
| jakelazaroff wrote:
| I think the second paragraph of this article is unintentionally
| revealing:
|
| _> One high school near me just dropped freshman advanced-
| standing (honors) English "to combat the effects of academic
| 'tracking" because it "ultimately separates students of different
| socioeconomic and racial backgrounds." It turns out that middle
| schools from lower-income areas aren't adequately preparing their
| students for high school. So rather than fix that problem, they
| dumbed down high school._
|
| Rather than write about that problem, the author takes the far
| less interesting path of complaining about lowering standards.
| Much easier to advocate a return to a recent status quo than to
| dig into the sticky, uncomfortable reasons that education is
| stratified by race and class.
|
| This article is basically a case study in what it purports to
| call attention to. What could have been an interesting article is
| merely a mediocre fallacy-filled defense of conservative economic
| policies that, increasingly clearly, do not work.
| boh wrote:
| This article assumes grading and categorizations leads to non-
| mediocre results. And yet, to use the article's own example,
| Steve Jobs took classes at Reed college without actually being
| enrolled, losing the opportunity to even get a "loosey-goosey
| grade-point average" but was considered "exceptional". Being
| graded doesn't "manifest merit".
|
| These kind of articles tend to vacillate between two extremes.
| Either academia is killing creativity and producing unthinking
| drones who live for grades, or schools are too lax with their
| grading to produce exceptional students.
|
| Mediocre is synonymous with average, which logically speaking, a
| school will be more likely to produce regardless of its grading
| policy (aptitude being a moving target). Simply put, exceptional
| people/circumstances that produce exceptional results are
| exceptional because they are not the average, so expecting a non-
| average result from an education system servicing large
| populations is unlikely in any scenario. Improvements in
| education require specific solutions to specific problems,
| arguing more grades/categories are necessary in order to produce
| some vague idea of merit isn't a relevant assertion.
| greenyoda wrote:
| Archive link to complete article: https://archive.is/IB9Oz
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(page generated 2021-02-07 23:02 UTC)