Long essay, but I agree with a lot of what's said.
I think a lot of quality time is wasted due to the rat race starting in early childhood.
I live in a bit of a bubble in the commuter belt around London (ie not the US), but I observe some of the same obsessions here as well. In particular, I started to notice that my kid's friends suddenly had a lot less time for playdates in the year or two leading up to the 11-plus exam, which is a selective school thing. There are similar exams for the private schools in the area. Of course what was happening was that their parents would hire a tutor to help them pass the tests.
The effect of this tutoring is on the whole negative. Obviously, it costs money. It also costs time that your kid would have to do other things. But also, it gives the kids the impression that school is super important, and they will be valued based on the outcome of this test. You end up with a few percent who get into the top selective schools, and everyone else is left with low expectations.
Inevitably, it also means that it becomes a game for rich parents. I went to the induction day at the fancy school, and guess what. The parents are a bunch of professionals, virtually nobody doing anything else, and most kids went to private primaries + got tutored. We must have left some poor but capable kids in the wrong school.
>it gives the kids the impression that school is super important
>We must have left some poor but capable kids in the wrong school.
Both of those things cannot be true at the same time. Either school is important, in which case both the parents pushing their children and the children pushing themselves are doing the right thing to improve their chances of later success, or it is NOT important, in which case it doesn't matter anyway which school the other children end up in.
> Both of those things cannot be true at the same time. Either school is important, in which case both the parents pushing their children and the children pushing themselves are doing the right thing to improve their chances of later success, or it is NOT important, in which case it doesn't matter anyway which school the other children end up in.
Trying to get a less academic kid into grammar school isn't going to help them. Maybe I can provide a bit of context.
The grammar school is highly academic. The kid is certainly above my level of attainment when I was his age. I went to a non-selective international school, ending with the IB.
The kids are tested, every week, in a variety of subjects. I don't think a week has gone by without some sort of test. It is a constant grind of math, multiple sciences, humanities, and three languages. Not every kid enjoys that kind of thing, or even benefits from the pressure.
If you manage to Fosbury Flop your kid into a school like this, you're actually doing them a disservice. They will hate being constantly pushed academically, and they will not find fellowship with the kind of kid who enjoys it.
At the same time, there will be poor kids who didn't know the tricks of the exam, and didn't get in, who would have been better off at the school.
Let me translate it in privileged language: when the poor are, like their name suggests, poor, they cannot afford the tutors and the time for pushing their capable kids through the good school. All while recognizing the shitiness of their situation.
Or, things are not as black and white and both are true in a sense. School is important, up to a certain point. I admit, this highly depends on the country and schooling system, and I have too little insight in how hiring works in the US. But in many cases that I am familiar with for the fast majority of people to have a pretty decent career you need a degree, not the most prestigious degree just the right type of degree where the sort of school you got it is less important.
It 100% makes sense for a parent to not want their own kid to be the "poor but capable kid" who stayed in "the wrong school".
Especially since the kid who was in "the wrong school" will be blamed for "being lazy" or "less capable" when they don't perform as well as equally capable and hardworking peers in the "right school".
> Either school is important, in which case both the parents pushing their children and the children pushing themselves are doing the right thing to improve their chances of later success
There's a difference between considering something important versus an utmost priority. The parent's criticism refers to the latter, which is also typical in certain cultures (here, in the context of USA).
I've had direct experience with middle-class schools and indirect experience with an upper-class one, and the issues with the latter are very tangible. The most horrific cases involve parents of students who are not capable enough (in the given context) and will do everything in the book to ensure their children succeed, at the expense of both the children themselves and the whole system. Then, of course, if one considers study/career the one and only priority, emotional and relational needs are seen as a hindrance, creating successful but emotionally damaged adults.
Ultimately, this can be summarized with the Mexican fisherman story, I guess (which omits that the businessman is a cocaine addict, cheats on his wife, and has never spent time with his children /s).
What's sad about it is that it's a lawyer. Now I don't mean to poop on lawyers, but the kind of recruiter we are talking about sells a very specific narrative of success, which is that if you're a top kid in school, your natural path is law/consulting/finance.
I went to a famous institution, and there were loads of kids who bought into this. If you don't know quite what you want to do, it is very easy to fall into the trap of "oh I'll do this well paid thing for a while and see how it goes".
You then get there, and it's a treadmill. Nobody thinks it's a meritocracy either. But everyone looks down on taking a normal, non-elite job.
It's the same here in the Netherlands, I didn't go to a elite school but I am from a place where most people do.
And it's just bonkers to me this rat-race that they have been placed in because that's the only way to "happiness"/success ...
Also question, is consulting considered an elite job?
My impression is that even consulting for the big 4* is nothing special.
* are they they same everywhere? : Deloitte, EY, KPMG and PwC
The Big 4 are indeed the same everywhere. I'd say most people who are near the treadmill would consider Big4 as prestigious, sure.
But there are multiple levels of prestige in consulting. The mentioned firms, and then McKinsey/Bain/Boston, which are above that level in the hierarchy.
Network effects convey enormous benefits. People with resources mingling with people with resources (internal or external) is likelier to yield a lot more than random groupings.
Yes-ish. That line of reasoning could be used to explain why hereditary nobles and royals are the best form of government. And quite a few other counter-factuals.
OTOH, arguing that anyway might give you a far better shot at getting your hands on a few of those $billions than I'll ever have. GO FOR IT.
Not really, the argument would be that most successful group would consist of people with various resources, whether it be innate intelligence, motivation, discipline, or inherited wealth/social network.
A group of people whose sole value is social network/wealth is probably not sufficient.
Humans have a limited amount of time and energy to work with, so some mechanism of filtering who or what to place bets on would presumably increase desirable results.
Not too dissimilar from seeking recommendations for a plumber or electrician or romantic partner from a trusted neighbor or family or friend.
Back in the day, the royals and nobles had all those other things. Whether within themselves (as their sycophants proclaimed) or right at hand - because the wealth, power, and prestige of their courts could easily attract the best and brightest talents within their realms.
As the article somewhat points out, "network effect" is - at most - a means. Not an end. And the narcissistic group-think and badly limited worldview that the article describes at Ivy League schools sounds very much like the worst failings of those old noble and royal courts.
Honestly though, I don't think he's wrong. As someone who -- in my view -- squeaked by into an elite school (probably of the second rank as described in the article) despite being raised in a 'natural growth' environment, I think some people are truly at a different level of efficacy and I'm not sure what people are going to do about it. They show sustained ability to dominate fields. Yes, I'm sure this is cultural, but it's still a difference. And there are frankly different behavioral patterns, some of which I did pick up and I think led to major differences in how I view the world, despite still firmly identifying with my more modest upbringing.
As a simple example, my parents and family have a much more fatalistic 'fate-guided' view of the world, whereas the people I met in university were extremely motivated to just change what they saw as wrong. Even though my parents nominally supported that attitude, they were never able to actually do it.
Indeed. I went to what was considered an elite university program in my country. Most of the people even there were borderline normal, although probably in the top 1% of the population in mathematical abilities, but some few people seemed to just do whatever the hell they pleased, and always succeed. I'm not sure what was it that drove those people. Were they just so genetically gifted, or was it just crazy high confidence in themselves combined with the same top 1% mathematical abilities that the rest of us had? Or did they have some behavioral models from home that allowed them to flow the way they did? Or did they just give it way more effort than I did, year after year?
Not the one you responded to, but the guy above him.
I would say a few things:
1. Less social anxiety / confidence -- simply realizing that the worst thing that happens is you fail. It does help to have daddy's money for this though.
2. More calculating -- One trait I absolutely noticed in all these people was that they had planned out their entire life. This did not mean the plan always happened as expected, but the goal was clear, and always worked towards. They made lists, they met criteria, they executed extremely well. For example, they knew they needed to publish a paper. That can mean you either dazzle with a brilliant paper, which most 'normies' would say is the route you should go down. But that's not necessarily the 'elite' position. Sure, a handful might be truly smart. The rest would just crank out work and submit to as many journals as possible until they found one that matched their criteria.
3. When they get together they talk about ideas -- this one is a trait I picked up on, and it led to some strife with my own family when I went back home. It's a hard one to explain, but with Thanksgiving coming up, really pay attention to what's talked about. Is it celebrities? The current election even? I guarantee you somewhere out there, some elites are discussing the next great invention / policy / etc. It's why so many 'normies' get blind-sided by new ideas, whereas for the elites, it's normal. For example, conspiracists on Twitter believe that AI is the result of alien technology, because they are so far removed from the actual development of the thing that to them it must truly seem like magic.
Yes, I truly learned a lot from them. Immediately after school, despite getting a degree in Math / Computer Science, I decided to just go for it like they did, and joined one of the Big 3 strategy consulting firms where I worked for a few months, where I learned even more about these types of people. We need to actually contend with their very real ability before we dismiss them with memes.
One of the big issues is that the people making the memes, never actually met any of the people we're all talking about. It's easy to dismiss if it's not real for you. If you've been moving between say, Cambridge and Sommerville, you understand. If you haven't, you think you can do anything that top .01% of the top 1% can do.
How do you convince someone that there are people out there so gifted at everything that they make MIT and Stanford alums look like village idiots? You likely can't.
People reading our comments will think, "That's a myth. There are no people like that."
Well I make a lot of memes, so I'm not sure I agree with your first statement haha. I think you'd be surprised at the educational backgrounds of the people that actually make the memes (vs the ones just spreading them).
I think my basic thesis is that, if you come from a normal background, and go through these institutions, this is a major selection factor for some level of charisma. You understand the game and you understand the normal person. This is why the first 'round' of purely meritocratic admits worked. The graduates were inevitably going to be so irresistibly charming, they'd have no problem dealing with the world.
However, as time went on and they had their own children, who did not experience the normal childhood, they are at a disadvantage. They have the educational background, but not the ability to connect with people.
For example, since it's all fresh in our minds. I remember people saying that Vance was going to appear weird at the debate and Walz normal. As evidence, they used the fact that Vance was rich and thus out of touch. At the time I thought differently, simple because Vance had been to Yale and then through the Silicon Valley VC landscape and -- from what I understand -- came out successful. Thus, in my mind, he was the perfect test to my thesis.
And I think that's what we saw, not only did he come across as amazingly likeable, he even seemed to make Tim Walz like him at times. And the general consensus was that he won [1]. Normal people don't make it through these institutions without the ability to -- at least temporarily, maybe even disingenuously depending on your politics -- come across as irresistibly charming.
> How do you convince someone that there are people out there so gifted at everything that they make MIT and Stanford alums look like village idiots? You likely can't.
That's correct, as demonstrated by the people that accuse them of cheating to get where they are. Or of cheating because they worked less hard than someone else who worked very hard at the wrong thing.
I'm not really talking about the charming. I mean, if I'm being honest, the majority of people at places like Harvard have the ability to charm. What I'm going to say is illustration rather than arrogance, but charm and intelligence are just table stakes at places like Yale and Harvard. Don't misunderstand me, there are awkward people at elite schools. But you'd be surprised how many are able to out "charm" the average person.
What I'm talking about is something different entirely. I'm talking about people who are truly different. People who pick up salsa as easily as they pick up tensor analysis. Piano as easily as molecular engineering. And when they go into the military, they can reap a guy just as easily as they can analyze intel.
You might make the mistake of thinking, "Well that's not impressive. We train thousands of analysts." You're right. We do. Between DIA, CIA, FBI, etc etc, we train tens of thousands. And we might get a couple dozen that are any good. And maybe 2 of those can also compose symphonies and tape out a microprocessor on the side.
To compare it to Vance, or Obama on the other side, is to downplay it. People could see themselves being Vance or Obama. We're talking about people you meet where it's clear, there is no comparison. Which is saying something when you're already in a top 1% population in the first place.
In your second paragraph you're essentially pointing towards what social & developmental psychologist Carol Dweck [0] describes as the 'Growth Mindset' vs 'Fixed Mindset' modes of thinking.
To be fair, there is some controversy as to the validity of Dweck's model. However, you may find it interesting, even at the risk of falling into confirmation bias (given that you appear to be primed to agree with it). I myself have no strong opinion as to the validity of the model's explanatory power, but at the very least I do believe it is personally a better choice to aim for a Growth Mindset.
> To be fair, there is some controversy as to the validity of Dweck's model. However, you may find it interesting, even at the risk of falling into confirmation bias (given that you appear to be primed to agree with it)
I've heard about the idea of the 'growth mindset', and indeed my prior today would very much be on that, but by my upbringing I didn't even know that existed.
Something missing is deindustrialization following WW2. The US northeast (where "Ivy League" schools are located) shifted a huge amount of industry to other parts of the country, where factories had been established during the war. A few years later, the south had more electoral votes than the northeast and midwest. The votes determine leaders, not educational institutions.
Any educational “system” strongly selects for conformity. A student can’t question the system or they’ll be sidelined early on and failed for giving the “wrong” answer. Geniuses are almost by definition weirdos who question the status quo. Yet most would get eliminated by the current educational system and it’s by-product of elites. That’s why true geniuses like Elon Musk somewhat ironically choose to rally the uneducated, not because he is intellectually aligned with them, but only because they allow much greater freedom to not conform. The truly intelligent shun intelligentsia.
The idea of building new institutions is basically right. You can’t fix Harvard.
But can you really build new institutions without a new civilization? The point of Harvard is the golden ticket to the upper class. The upper class now sucks (imo), so you can’t just have a better school with the same function.
It's very strange to read an article complaining about the homogenization of the cultural elite that name drops the university of every author of a book/article that supports his opinion. David Brooks himself is part of the very same cultural elite that he's complaining about.
If someone really wanted to bring about a culture with leaders drawn from different economic strata the first step should be addressing people's material needs. Parents can't help their kids if they're spending all their time working multiple jobs only to live paycheck to paycheck. It's also hard to take risks or cultivate different skills when you're saddled with college debt you can't get rid if, and when healthcare and rent are taking up a large chunk of your income. People voted for Trump because neither side is willing to do anything to actually help people. That's why people don't trust institutions or "the establishment." For all his faults, and least Trump is willing to lie to his base and promise some sort of change.
> It's very strange to read an article complaining about the homogenization of the cultural elite that name drops the university of every author of a book/article that supports his opinion.
He is in general very sloppy about this kind of thing. He famously said Obama wasn't able to fit in with working people, because you can't imagine him at an Applebee's salad bar. Well, Applebee's doesn't have a salad bar, so he was ironically outing himself as the elitist. There was also the more serious problem of fabricating claims about visiting restaurants and not being able to spend $20, something that was easily debunked.
This lines up with the idea of how great social change tends to be merely one group of elites splintering off from another and co-opting social movements, and not actual bottom-up democratic action.
> For all his faults, and least Trump is willing to lie to his base and promise some sort of change
So "willing to lie" is his only redeeming trait? Poor America! That said, I think he will bring about some sort of change, but it won't be one that really benefits the people who voted for him...
I think this is fundamentally about the obsession with meritocracy, and not just the Ivy League. The Ivy League is merely the "best" system that subsequently became the obvious choice for a meritocratic filtering process.
Which means that this issue will arise in any social structure that is attempting to optimize for merit. There have been many books critiquing this idea, but one that is both old and has stuck in my mind is from T. S. Eliot's Notes Towards a Definition of Culture. His basic point is that in a hyper competitive society driven by tests, evaluations, etc., basically no one is incentivized to preserve cultural practices – unless they somehow help one succeed in the new meritocracy. This functionally is a defense of the aristocracy, or of entrenched power that doesn't need to "earn" its wealth by competing. I'm not sure how much I agree with Eliot, but I think this is a pretty compelling point that, a hundred years later, seems quite obviously to have been accurate, if we look at the loss of knowledge traditional art forms.
The problem with my comment here, though, is that is assumes the Ivy Leagues are now, currently meritocratic. It seems pretty obvious to me that they aren't - which makes this an even more complex situation.
I think if people want to add extra evaluations on top of IQ, then fair enough, but they need to be of high quality and as repeatable as IQ tests, otherwise it will be a case of pseudo-science and ideological capture.
Perhaps the very idea of having standardized evaluations needs to be questioned. Anything that can be measured will be gamed. Nothing “repeatable” can capture the whole value of a human being.
As a great counterpoint to this thinkpiece (which argues the meritocracy is working as intended but having unintended consequences for society and thus fails to make any mention of quotas or the college admissions scandal from 5 years ago), consider this one: https://www.theamericanconservative.com/the-myth-of-american...
The author found evidence of widespread quotas restricting the admission of Asians (no surprise, at least not anymore), but more scandalously, also evidence of affirmative action benefiting Jews. (The author is himself Jewish, and at least back then, probably couldn't have gotten away with writing it had that not been the case.)
Brook's premise--that we did away with a nepotistic aristocracy (the "evil" WASP will-o'-the-wisp) and replaced it with a meritocracy--is false.
> And yet it’s not obvious that we have produced either a better leadership class or a healthier relationship between our society and its elites
Part of the problem is as follows and I see it so often in politics.
We have an excellent technocratic leadership class.
But being a technocratic leader does not make you a great leader of people, and frankly -- given the way many technocratic fields in the humanities are taught -- getting too deep in them makes you actively unappealing to people.
The article derides the various social clubs at Harvard, Princeton, Yale, etc as 'non-academic', but nothing is further from the truth. Humans have an innate draw to beauty, and one thing that is beautiful to basically everyone is a rich culture with traditions, institutions, and members [1]. One way to signal that is by learning the social niceties inside and out. This is no less academic since it doesn't come from a book.
The 'grinds', as the article says, didn't get that, and they were shunned not because they focused on books, but because they were unable to have a more expansive view of academics.
It is shocking to me when I see pundits today seemingly confused why the masses find appeal in particular candidates despite the pundits being able to list ten technical reasons why he should be disqualified. They don't understand how people perceive things, and it's so painful to watch.
I feel as someone who occupies a sort of 'third space' here [2], I am really truly able to see both viewpoints. But it's so difficult to explain to a technocrat the full range of human emotion, and it sometimes appears as if they've been handicapped in their ability to feel it.
As an example (and I would recommend Camille Paglia's works), it's fascinating to me how, despite our ever growing technical ability to produce great film, the actual emotional content of the film is ever worse. We have the most scantily clad females of all time but the fully clothed actors and actresses of the past were actually more sexually enticing. We've lost the sense of awe that CS Lewis talks about in the Abolition of Man. We have the greatest visual effects, but the emotional content of the film is so thin that you just don't feel anything.
Where these feelings do exist, it's in independent (read: not produced by the Ivy type) films and media, which is why 'alternate' media has suddenly become so popular.
I'll also just leave that Donald Trump has an innate understanding of people. People are shocked that he's able to get so many seemingly random, seemingly opposed people behind him. They classify it as a trick. But it's not. People vote and support who they like, not who has the best technocratic solutions. That is neither good nor bad. It just is. It's a tale as old as time, and would be apparent if you studied the actual humanities.
Just so no one thinks I think Trump is some singular. Barack Obama is also one of these figures. And even Joe Biden is to some extent [3]
I can write a dissertation on this topic.
[1] It doesn't matter the culture. All traditional cultures are enthralling
[2] I was raised in the 'normal' way, but ended up at a second-tier 'elite' school, and then -- adopting some of the stuff I learned -- moved into strategy consulting at one of the Big 3 where I learned even more about this type. I eventually moved back into tech (and do feel my career is better for having been through these experiences).
[3] Completely off-topic, but I also think that if you go to spaces inhabited by the technocrats, you'll notice that 'detachment' philosophies like Stoicism and Buddhism are very popular, whereas the masses go for attachment. It's not a surprise to me that the Kennedy family, being Catholic, the exact opposite of Buddhism in that sense, was always seen as particularly charismatic and alluring amongst political dynasties
People are surprised over Trump, because of what it applies about conservative peoples hypocrisy. Conservativism is typically approached with massive amount of naivety and undeserved trust. They lie, they complain about things they don't mind, then they state their plans out loud and pundit class is still "they cant be as bad as they say". Trump and the people he is choosing winning three times clearly show who these people are ... and pundits cant admit it. Moderate republicans cant admit it either to themselves.
The confusement is because if Trump won primaries three times, it clearly means you do not care about respectability no matter how much you pretended being outraged over minor non-issues in the past. It means you do not mind lying, actually. It means you do actually want pure destruction and are in fact motivated by misogyny and all those bad things.
But, we want to believe in good of the massive amount of people. We do not want to believe that conservative Christians will do anything just to get control over women back. Or that they actually want to destroy the democracy.
> People are surprised over Trump, because of what it applies[do you mean implies?] about conservative peoples hypocrisy.
Technocrats talk about hypocrits. Lovers of the humanities talk about people.
People don't operate on principles. They operate on human emotion, which is a very real force. It is no less real than facts, figure, logic, or rationality. Trump's shooting, his McDonald's stunt, his garbage vest/truck, and his ability to exude his brand are actual skills, and signs of a different kind of intelligence. Until people get that, they will be perpetually confused.
A lot of pollsters around the issue of the economy for example threw their hands in the air this election. The numbers looked good, they said, so how come people feel that it's not working? They blamed 'the vibe'. But 'the vibe' is a very real force, that one must contend with when you study human behavior and emotion.
The problem is that -- instead of studying literature, philosophy, religion, art, music, dance, etc, i.e., the real humanities -- the 'humanities' PhDs, the sociologists, the pollsters, etc, all studied statistics for human management essentially. We've lost so much by not focusing on the actual humanities
> Moderate republicans cant admit it either to themselves.
Moderate republicans -- if you mean the lincoln project crowd -- are the worst perpetrators of the problems addressed in the article
> But, we want to believe in good of the massive amount of people. We do not want to believe that conservative Christians will do anything just to get control over women back. Or that they actually want to destroy the democracy.
oof... read and believe too much of the Ivy League output I see. You know it's a grift for them too right? Just look at President Biden (a graduate of the Ivies if I'm not mistaken) being all smiles after the man he called Hitler came to the white house to take over.
Sure, but I read and listened A LOT about principles from christians, conservatives and republicans. And they mock everybody elses emotions, except their own which are super important.
Yes emotions are real force. I am glad we are admiting it, because god, the conservatives LOVE to pretend they are being rational when they are ... not.
Did you have something constructive you wanted to talk about either about what I wrote or the article, or did you just want to have your say on christians, conservatives, and republicans? If the former, I'm happy to engage. If the latter, I'll just let your comment stand on its demerits.
Long essay, but I agree with a lot of what's said.
I think a lot of quality time is wasted due to the rat race starting in early childhood.
I live in a bit of a bubble in the commuter belt around London (ie not the US), but I observe some of the same obsessions here as well. In particular, I started to notice that my kid's friends suddenly had a lot less time for playdates in the year or two leading up to the 11-plus exam, which is a selective school thing. There are similar exams for the private schools in the area. Of course what was happening was that their parents would hire a tutor to help them pass the tests.
The effect of this tutoring is on the whole negative. Obviously, it costs money. It also costs time that your kid would have to do other things. But also, it gives the kids the impression that school is super important, and they will be valued based on the outcome of this test. You end up with a few percent who get into the top selective schools, and everyone else is left with low expectations.
Inevitably, it also means that it becomes a game for rich parents. I went to the induction day at the fancy school, and guess what. The parents are a bunch of professionals, virtually nobody doing anything else, and most kids went to private primaries + got tutored. We must have left some poor but capable kids in the wrong school.
>it gives the kids the impression that school is super important
>We must have left some poor but capable kids in the wrong school.
Both of those things cannot be true at the same time. Either school is important, in which case both the parents pushing their children and the children pushing themselves are doing the right thing to improve their chances of later success, or it is NOT important, in which case it doesn't matter anyway which school the other children end up in.
> Both of those things cannot be true at the same time. Either school is important, in which case both the parents pushing their children and the children pushing themselves are doing the right thing to improve their chances of later success, or it is NOT important, in which case it doesn't matter anyway which school the other children end up in.
Trying to get a less academic kid into grammar school isn't going to help them. Maybe I can provide a bit of context.
The grammar school is highly academic. The kid is certainly above my level of attainment when I was his age. I went to a non-selective international school, ending with the IB.
The kids are tested, every week, in a variety of subjects. I don't think a week has gone by without some sort of test. It is a constant grind of math, multiple sciences, humanities, and three languages. Not every kid enjoys that kind of thing, or even benefits from the pressure.
If you manage to Fosbury Flop your kid into a school like this, you're actually doing them a disservice. They will hate being constantly pushed academically, and they will not find fellowship with the kind of kid who enjoys it.
At the same time, there will be poor kids who didn't know the tricks of the exam, and didn't get in, who would have been better off at the school.
Let me translate it in privileged language: when the poor are, like their name suggests, poor, they cannot afford the tutors and the time for pushing their capable kids through the good school. All while recognizing the shitiness of their situation.
Or, things are not as black and white and both are true in a sense. School is important, up to a certain point. I admit, this highly depends on the country and schooling system, and I have too little insight in how hiring works in the US. But in many cases that I am familiar with for the fast majority of people to have a pretty decent career you need a degree, not the most prestigious degree just the right type of degree where the sort of school you got it is less important.
Real life is not an either-or logic problem. School can both be important and not all-consumingly important.
It 100% makes sense for a parent to not want their own kid to be the "poor but capable kid" who stayed in "the wrong school".
Especially since the kid who was in "the wrong school" will be blamed for "being lazy" or "less capable" when they don't perform as well as equally capable and hardworking peers in the "right school".
> Either school is important, in which case both the parents pushing their children and the children pushing themselves are doing the right thing to improve their chances of later success
There's a difference between considering something important versus an utmost priority. The parent's criticism refers to the latter, which is also typical in certain cultures (here, in the context of USA).
I've had direct experience with middle-class schools and indirect experience with an upper-class one, and the issues with the latter are very tangible. The most horrific cases involve parents of students who are not capable enough (in the given context) and will do everything in the book to ensure their children succeed, at the expense of both the children themselves and the whole system. Then, of course, if one considers study/career the one and only priority, emotional and relational needs are seen as a hindrance, creating successful but emotionally damaged adults.
Ultimately, this can be summarized with the Mexican fisherman story, I guess (which omits that the businessman is a cocaine addict, cheats on his wife, and has never spent time with his children /s).
> “Number one people go to number one schools” is how one lawyer explained her firm’s recruiting principle to Rivera.
What a load of number two.
What's sad about it is that it's a lawyer. Now I don't mean to poop on lawyers, but the kind of recruiter we are talking about sells a very specific narrative of success, which is that if you're a top kid in school, your natural path is law/consulting/finance.
I went to a famous institution, and there were loads of kids who bought into this. If you don't know quite what you want to do, it is very easy to fall into the trap of "oh I'll do this well paid thing for a while and see how it goes".
You then get there, and it's a treadmill. Nobody thinks it's a meritocracy either. But everyone looks down on taking a normal, non-elite job.
It's the same here in the Netherlands, I didn't go to a elite school but I am from a place where most people do. And it's just bonkers to me this rat-race that they have been placed in because that's the only way to "happiness"/success ...
Also question, is consulting considered an elite job? My impression is that even consulting for the big 4* is nothing special.
* are they they same everywhere? : Deloitte, EY, KPMG and PwC
The Big 4 are indeed the same everywhere. I'd say most people who are near the treadmill would consider Big4 as prestigious, sure.
But there are multiple levels of prestige in consulting. The mentioned firms, and then McKinsey/Bain/Boston, which are above that level in the hierarchy.
But there are billions of dollars to be made by convincing people of such things.
Network effects convey enormous benefits. People with resources mingling with people with resources (internal or external) is likelier to yield a lot more than random groupings.
Yes-ish. That line of reasoning could be used to explain why hereditary nobles and royals are the best form of government. And quite a few other counter-factuals.
OTOH, arguing that anyway might give you a far better shot at getting your hands on a few of those $billions than I'll ever have. GO FOR IT.
Not really, the argument would be that most successful group would consist of people with various resources, whether it be innate intelligence, motivation, discipline, or inherited wealth/social network.
A group of people whose sole value is social network/wealth is probably not sufficient.
Humans have a limited amount of time and energy to work with, so some mechanism of filtering who or what to place bets on would presumably increase desirable results.
Not too dissimilar from seeking recommendations for a plumber or electrician or romantic partner from a trusted neighbor or family or friend.
Back in the day, the royals and nobles had all those other things. Whether within themselves (as their sycophants proclaimed) or right at hand - because the wealth, power, and prestige of their courts could easily attract the best and brightest talents within their realms.
As the article somewhat points out, "network effect" is - at most - a means. Not an end. And the narcissistic group-think and badly limited worldview that the article describes at Ivy League schools sounds very much like the worst failings of those old noble and royal courts.
Honestly though, I don't think he's wrong. As someone who -- in my view -- squeaked by into an elite school (probably of the second rank as described in the article) despite being raised in a 'natural growth' environment, I think some people are truly at a different level of efficacy and I'm not sure what people are going to do about it. They show sustained ability to dominate fields. Yes, I'm sure this is cultural, but it's still a difference. And there are frankly different behavioral patterns, some of which I did pick up and I think led to major differences in how I view the world, despite still firmly identifying with my more modest upbringing.
As a simple example, my parents and family have a much more fatalistic 'fate-guided' view of the world, whereas the people I met in university were extremely motivated to just change what they saw as wrong. Even though my parents nominally supported that attitude, they were never able to actually do it.
Indeed. I went to what was considered an elite university program in my country. Most of the people even there were borderline normal, although probably in the top 1% of the population in mathematical abilities, but some few people seemed to just do whatever the hell they pleased, and always succeed. I'm not sure what was it that drove those people. Were they just so genetically gifted, or was it just crazy high confidence in themselves combined with the same top 1% mathematical abilities that the rest of us had? Or did they have some behavioral models from home that allowed them to flow the way they did? Or did they just give it way more effort than I did, year after year?
If you had to make a guess about these behavioral models, what would it be?
Not the one you responded to, but the guy above him.
I would say a few things:
1. Less social anxiety / confidence -- simply realizing that the worst thing that happens is you fail. It does help to have daddy's money for this though.
2. More calculating -- One trait I absolutely noticed in all these people was that they had planned out their entire life. This did not mean the plan always happened as expected, but the goal was clear, and always worked towards. They made lists, they met criteria, they executed extremely well. For example, they knew they needed to publish a paper. That can mean you either dazzle with a brilliant paper, which most 'normies' would say is the route you should go down. But that's not necessarily the 'elite' position. Sure, a handful might be truly smart. The rest would just crank out work and submit to as many journals as possible until they found one that matched their criteria.
3. When they get together they talk about ideas -- this one is a trait I picked up on, and it led to some strife with my own family when I went back home. It's a hard one to explain, but with Thanksgiving coming up, really pay attention to what's talked about. Is it celebrities? The current election even? I guarantee you somewhere out there, some elites are discussing the next great invention / policy / etc. It's why so many 'normies' get blind-sided by new ideas, whereas for the elites, it's normal. For example, conspiracists on Twitter believe that AI is the result of alien technology, because they are so far removed from the actual development of the thing that to them it must truly seem like magic.
Yes, I truly learned a lot from them. Immediately after school, despite getting a degree in Math / Computer Science, I decided to just go for it like they did, and joined one of the Big 3 strategy consulting firms where I worked for a few months, where I learned even more about these types of people. We need to actually contend with their very real ability before we dismiss them with memes.
One of the big issues is that the people making the memes, never actually met any of the people we're all talking about. It's easy to dismiss if it's not real for you. If you've been moving between say, Cambridge and Sommerville, you understand. If you haven't, you think you can do anything that top .01% of the top 1% can do.
How do you convince someone that there are people out there so gifted at everything that they make MIT and Stanford alums look like village idiots? You likely can't.
People reading our comments will think, "That's a myth. There are no people like that."
Well I make a lot of memes, so I'm not sure I agree with your first statement haha. I think you'd be surprised at the educational backgrounds of the people that actually make the memes (vs the ones just spreading them).
I think my basic thesis is that, if you come from a normal background, and go through these institutions, this is a major selection factor for some level of charisma. You understand the game and you understand the normal person. This is why the first 'round' of purely meritocratic admits worked. The graduates were inevitably going to be so irresistibly charming, they'd have no problem dealing with the world.
However, as time went on and they had their own children, who did not experience the normal childhood, they are at a disadvantage. They have the educational background, but not the ability to connect with people.
For example, since it's all fresh in our minds. I remember people saying that Vance was going to appear weird at the debate and Walz normal. As evidence, they used the fact that Vance was rich and thus out of touch. At the time I thought differently, simple because Vance had been to Yale and then through the Silicon Valley VC landscape and -- from what I understand -- came out successful. Thus, in my mind, he was the perfect test to my thesis.
And I think that's what we saw, not only did he come across as amazingly likeable, he even seemed to make Tim Walz like him at times. And the general consensus was that he won [1]. Normal people don't make it through these institutions without the ability to -- at least temporarily, maybe even disingenuously depending on your politics -- come across as irresistibly charming.
> How do you convince someone that there are people out there so gifted at everything that they make MIT and Stanford alums look like village idiots? You likely can't.
That's correct, as demonstrated by the people that accuse them of cheating to get where they are. Or of cheating because they worked less hard than someone else who worked very hard at the wrong thing.
[1] https://www.politico.com/news/2024/10/02/vance-walz-who-won-... . Doesn't matter your politics, he clearly was very effective, even if you think he was disingenuous -- like I said, you don't go through Yale and VC without being able to charm.
I'm not really talking about the charming. I mean, if I'm being honest, the majority of people at places like Harvard have the ability to charm. What I'm going to say is illustration rather than arrogance, but charm and intelligence are just table stakes at places like Yale and Harvard. Don't misunderstand me, there are awkward people at elite schools. But you'd be surprised how many are able to out "charm" the average person.
What I'm talking about is something different entirely. I'm talking about people who are truly different. People who pick up salsa as easily as they pick up tensor analysis. Piano as easily as molecular engineering. And when they go into the military, they can reap a guy just as easily as they can analyze intel.
You might make the mistake of thinking, "Well that's not impressive. We train thousands of analysts." You're right. We do. Between DIA, CIA, FBI, etc etc, we train tens of thousands. And we might get a couple dozen that are any good. And maybe 2 of those can also compose symphonies and tape out a microprocessor on the side.
To compare it to Vance, or Obama on the other side, is to downplay it. People could see themselves being Vance or Obama. We're talking about people you meet where it's clear, there is no comparison. Which is saying something when you're already in a top 1% population in the first place.
In your second paragraph you're essentially pointing towards what social & developmental psychologist Carol Dweck [0] describes as the 'Growth Mindset' vs 'Fixed Mindset' modes of thinking.
To be fair, there is some controversy as to the validity of Dweck's model. However, you may find it interesting, even at the risk of falling into confirmation bias (given that you appear to be primed to agree with it). I myself have no strong opinion as to the validity of the model's explanatory power, but at the very least I do believe it is personally a better choice to aim for a Growth Mindset.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carol_Dweck
> To be fair, there is some controversy as to the validity of Dweck's model. However, you may find it interesting, even at the risk of falling into confirmation bias (given that you appear to be primed to agree with it)
I've heard about the idea of the 'growth mindset', and indeed my prior today would very much be on that, but by my upbringing I didn't even know that existed.
Something missing is deindustrialization following WW2. The US northeast (where "Ivy League" schools are located) shifted a huge amount of industry to other parts of the country, where factories had been established during the war. A few years later, the south had more electoral votes than the northeast and midwest. The votes determine leaders, not educational institutions.
Look at the electoral votes from 1956:
NY: 45 PA: 32 TX: 24 FL: 10
Today:
NY: 28 PA: 19 TX: 40 FL: 30
Texas and Florida doubled their influence.
NYers are also still relocating to FL (& less prominently, to TX), according to VizCap
https://www.visualcapitalist.com/mapped-the-top-5-states-ame...
Any educational “system” strongly selects for conformity. A student can’t question the system or they’ll be sidelined early on and failed for giving the “wrong” answer. Geniuses are almost by definition weirdos who question the status quo. Yet most would get eliminated by the current educational system and it’s by-product of elites. That’s why true geniuses like Elon Musk somewhat ironically choose to rally the uneducated, not because he is intellectually aligned with them, but only because they allow much greater freedom to not conform. The truly intelligent shun intelligentsia.
The idea of building new institutions is basically right. You can’t fix Harvard.
But can you really build new institutions without a new civilization? The point of Harvard is the golden ticket to the upper class. The upper class now sucks (imo), so you can’t just have a better school with the same function.
Discussed previously: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42136210
https://archive.is/J7JOs
There's a much better discussion of college admissions in Malcom Gladwell's new "Revenge of the Tipping Point".
Can we get a summary?
It's very strange to read an article complaining about the homogenization of the cultural elite that name drops the university of every author of a book/article that supports his opinion. David Brooks himself is part of the very same cultural elite that he's complaining about.
If someone really wanted to bring about a culture with leaders drawn from different economic strata the first step should be addressing people's material needs. Parents can't help their kids if they're spending all their time working multiple jobs only to live paycheck to paycheck. It's also hard to take risks or cultivate different skills when you're saddled with college debt you can't get rid if, and when healthcare and rent are taking up a large chunk of your income. People voted for Trump because neither side is willing to do anything to actually help people. That's why people don't trust institutions or "the establishment." For all his faults, and least Trump is willing to lie to his base and promise some sort of change.
> It's very strange to read an article complaining about the homogenization of the cultural elite that name drops the university of every author of a book/article that supports his opinion.
He is in general very sloppy about this kind of thing. He famously said Obama wasn't able to fit in with working people, because you can't imagine him at an Applebee's salad bar. Well, Applebee's doesn't have a salad bar, so he was ironically outing himself as the elitist. There was also the more serious problem of fabricating claims about visiting restaurants and not being able to spend $20, something that was easily debunked.
Ivy UPENN and YALE, for the incoming pres/vp pairing. And vp's wife is also Yale. Just like the D pres husband wife team in the 90s.
Bushes, Yale. Obama, Columbia/Harvard.
This lines up with the idea of how great social change tends to be merely one group of elites splintering off from another and co-opting social movements, and not actual bottom-up democratic action.
> For all his faults, and least Trump is willing to lie to his base and promise some sort of change
So "willing to lie" is his only redeeming trait? Poor America! That said, I think he will bring about some sort of change, but it won't be one that really benefits the people who voted for him...
I think this is fundamentally about the obsession with meritocracy, and not just the Ivy League. The Ivy League is merely the "best" system that subsequently became the obvious choice for a meritocratic filtering process.
Which means that this issue will arise in any social structure that is attempting to optimize for merit. There have been many books critiquing this idea, but one that is both old and has stuck in my mind is from T. S. Eliot's Notes Towards a Definition of Culture. His basic point is that in a hyper competitive society driven by tests, evaluations, etc., basically no one is incentivized to preserve cultural practices – unless they somehow help one succeed in the new meritocracy. This functionally is a defense of the aristocracy, or of entrenched power that doesn't need to "earn" its wealth by competing. I'm not sure how much I agree with Eliot, but I think this is a pretty compelling point that, a hundred years later, seems quite obviously to have been accurate, if we look at the loss of knowledge traditional art forms.
The problem with my comment here, though, is that is assumes the Ivy Leagues are now, currently meritocratic. It seems pretty obvious to me that they aren't - which makes this an even more complex situation.
I think if people want to add extra evaluations on top of IQ, then fair enough, but they need to be of high quality and as repeatable as IQ tests, otherwise it will be a case of pseudo-science and ideological capture.
Perhaps the very idea of having standardized evaluations needs to be questioned. Anything that can be measured will be gamed. Nothing “repeatable” can capture the whole value of a human being.
As a great counterpoint to this thinkpiece (which argues the meritocracy is working as intended but having unintended consequences for society and thus fails to make any mention of quotas or the college admissions scandal from 5 years ago), consider this one: https://www.theamericanconservative.com/the-myth-of-american...
The author found evidence of widespread quotas restricting the admission of Asians (no surprise, at least not anymore), but more scandalously, also evidence of affirmative action benefiting Jews. (The author is himself Jewish, and at least back then, probably couldn't have gotten away with writing it had that not been the case.)
Brook's premise--that we did away with a nepotistic aristocracy (the "evil" WASP will-o'-the-wisp) and replaced it with a meritocracy--is false.
> And yet it’s not obvious that we have produced either a better leadership class or a healthier relationship between our society and its elites
Part of the problem is as follows and I see it so often in politics.
We have an excellent technocratic leadership class.
But being a technocratic leader does not make you a great leader of people, and frankly -- given the way many technocratic fields in the humanities are taught -- getting too deep in them makes you actively unappealing to people.
The article derides the various social clubs at Harvard, Princeton, Yale, etc as 'non-academic', but nothing is further from the truth. Humans have an innate draw to beauty, and one thing that is beautiful to basically everyone is a rich culture with traditions, institutions, and members [1]. One way to signal that is by learning the social niceties inside and out. This is no less academic since it doesn't come from a book.
The 'grinds', as the article says, didn't get that, and they were shunned not because they focused on books, but because they were unable to have a more expansive view of academics.
It is shocking to me when I see pundits today seemingly confused why the masses find appeal in particular candidates despite the pundits being able to list ten technical reasons why he should be disqualified. They don't understand how people perceive things, and it's so painful to watch.
I feel as someone who occupies a sort of 'third space' here [2], I am really truly able to see both viewpoints. But it's so difficult to explain to a technocrat the full range of human emotion, and it sometimes appears as if they've been handicapped in their ability to feel it.
As an example (and I would recommend Camille Paglia's works), it's fascinating to me how, despite our ever growing technical ability to produce great film, the actual emotional content of the film is ever worse. We have the most scantily clad females of all time but the fully clothed actors and actresses of the past were actually more sexually enticing. We've lost the sense of awe that CS Lewis talks about in the Abolition of Man. We have the greatest visual effects, but the emotional content of the film is so thin that you just don't feel anything.
Where these feelings do exist, it's in independent (read: not produced by the Ivy type) films and media, which is why 'alternate' media has suddenly become so popular.
I'll also just leave that Donald Trump has an innate understanding of people. People are shocked that he's able to get so many seemingly random, seemingly opposed people behind him. They classify it as a trick. But it's not. People vote and support who they like, not who has the best technocratic solutions. That is neither good nor bad. It just is. It's a tale as old as time, and would be apparent if you studied the actual humanities.
Just so no one thinks I think Trump is some singular. Barack Obama is also one of these figures. And even Joe Biden is to some extent [3]
I can write a dissertation on this topic.
[1] It doesn't matter the culture. All traditional cultures are enthralling
[2] I was raised in the 'normal' way, but ended up at a second-tier 'elite' school, and then -- adopting some of the stuff I learned -- moved into strategy consulting at one of the Big 3 where I learned even more about this type. I eventually moved back into tech (and do feel my career is better for having been through these experiences).
[3] Completely off-topic, but I also think that if you go to spaces inhabited by the technocrats, you'll notice that 'detachment' philosophies like Stoicism and Buddhism are very popular, whereas the masses go for attachment. It's not a surprise to me that the Kennedy family, being Catholic, the exact opposite of Buddhism in that sense, was always seen as particularly charismatic and alluring amongst political dynasties
Perhaps a more crude label of what you ascribing to technocrats is the term "Soulless".
People are surprised over Trump, because of what it applies about conservative peoples hypocrisy. Conservativism is typically approached with massive amount of naivety and undeserved trust. They lie, they complain about things they don't mind, then they state their plans out loud and pundit class is still "they cant be as bad as they say". Trump and the people he is choosing winning three times clearly show who these people are ... and pundits cant admit it. Moderate republicans cant admit it either to themselves.
The confusement is because if Trump won primaries three times, it clearly means you do not care about respectability no matter how much you pretended being outraged over minor non-issues in the past. It means you do not mind lying, actually. It means you do actually want pure destruction and are in fact motivated by misogyny and all those bad things.
But, we want to believe in good of the massive amount of people. We do not want to believe that conservative Christians will do anything just to get control over women back. Or that they actually want to destroy the democracy.
> People are surprised over Trump, because of what it applies[do you mean implies?] about conservative peoples hypocrisy.
Technocrats talk about hypocrits. Lovers of the humanities talk about people.
People don't operate on principles. They operate on human emotion, which is a very real force. It is no less real than facts, figure, logic, or rationality. Trump's shooting, his McDonald's stunt, his garbage vest/truck, and his ability to exude his brand are actual skills, and signs of a different kind of intelligence. Until people get that, they will be perpetually confused.
A lot of pollsters around the issue of the economy for example threw their hands in the air this election. The numbers looked good, they said, so how come people feel that it's not working? They blamed 'the vibe'. But 'the vibe' is a very real force, that one must contend with when you study human behavior and emotion.
The problem is that -- instead of studying literature, philosophy, religion, art, music, dance, etc, i.e., the real humanities -- the 'humanities' PhDs, the sociologists, the pollsters, etc, all studied statistics for human management essentially. We've lost so much by not focusing on the actual humanities
> Moderate republicans cant admit it either to themselves.
Moderate republicans -- if you mean the lincoln project crowd -- are the worst perpetrators of the problems addressed in the article
> But, we want to believe in good of the massive amount of people. We do not want to believe that conservative Christians will do anything just to get control over women back. Or that they actually want to destroy the democracy.
oof... read and believe too much of the Ivy League output I see. You know it's a grift for them too right? Just look at President Biden (a graduate of the Ivies if I'm not mistaken) being all smiles after the man he called Hitler came to the white house to take over.
Sure, but I read and listened A LOT about principles from christians, conservatives and republicans. And they mock everybody elses emotions, except their own which are super important.
Yes emotions are real force. I am glad we are admiting it, because god, the conservatives LOVE to pretend they are being rational when they are ... not.
Did you have something constructive you wanted to talk about either about what I wrote or the article, or did you just want to have your say on christians, conservatives, and republicans? If the former, I'm happy to engage. If the latter, I'll just let your comment stand on its demerits.
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