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Culture War Roundup for the week of April 10, 2023

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Perhaps this is my "thing-manipulator"-ness talking, but it seems intuitively obvious to me that if a teacher or professor is grading on a curve, they are not grading you on your capability or knowledge of the subject.

And if you look at the actual content of the test, you will note that you are entirely correct that it's not a test of "how well have you internalized the principles of economics", it's a test of "do you agree with Bryan Caplan's politics".

"Do you agree with [professor]" is the subject of every university-level exam.

Oh come now.

I had a philosophy class in undergrad with a professor who had published extensively on a particular topic in philosophy of mind, and he was quite proud to be known as one of the leading experts in his particular sub-field. For my final paper in the class I ended up disagreeing extensively with his views - and he let me know this by writing a thorough rebuttal for almost every paragraph in my paper - but he still gave me an A because he thought my paper was well argued.

some of the questions are weirdly worded too, like this one

T, F, and Explain: Evidence of severe credit market imperfections will make you more eager to continue your education, but evidence of severe externalities of education will not.

He means asymmetric information or default structure that benefits the borrower , thus incentivizes higher education, which it's plausible he is right. But it's more like an article of faith than something rigorous.