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PaperclipPerfector  8mo ago (text post)   28290 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 28, 2023

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Vivek Ramaswamy has written an article on his foreign policy doctrine, focusing on China.

He is squarely taking aim at the "neocons and liberal internationalists", in other words the two main constituents of what Obama referred to as "the Blob" dominating foreign policy in D.C. He is predictably being called an isolationist and WaPo columnists are freaking out.

WaPo columnists themselves are not relevant but they are often mouthpieces for more powerful interests. Trump was hated for many things but one underappreciated aspect of why the Blob hated him was his instinct not to start new wars. In fact, he is one of the few presidents in recent memory who did not start a new war and he tried to get out of Syria - twice - but was undermined by his own bureaucracy.

Vivek is a much smarter guy than Trump, so I wonder if the Blob would be able to run circles around him the way they did around Trump. I doubt it and I suspect they doubt it too, which is why I think a campaign to destroy Vivek is likely to ramp up before too long. Trump couldn't be controlled outright but at least he could be misled.

https://twitter.com/vivekgramaswamy/status/1696234841249857658?s=46&t=aQ6ajj220jubjU7-o3SuWQ

He’s now posting for physical fitness test for colleges in order to help black people get into college.

There probably is an edge for blacks at the extreme of the spectrum but I’m also a believer intelligence and athleticism aren’t anti-correlated. You would end up getting the superstar athletes who are 1100 SAT scores. But those guys don’t want to go to Harvard they rightfully view football as their payday and want to play in the SEC. The 1300 SAT score tennis player is likely already getting into Harvard.

Ramsy does have this popular mid-twit sounds good at first thought messenging.

I would be down with getting every kid to do a 6-ish minute mile. Upper class and wealthy people already are skinny. Obesity is one of those things I see in statistics but I know fairly close to zero people with the issue.

I just see this as more evidence that he doesn't understand the job he's actually applying for. The President doesn't set college admission policies!

He never said that the president sets admission policies though. In fact he said literally the exact opposite:

This is not formally part of my Presidential platform but it’s a serious proposal to address multiple cultural & health challenges with a single actionable step: most solutions shouldn’t come top-down from government.

Is this true? All schools are publicly funded. And the Supreme Court just did a big thing on what they can consider. Government besides the bully pulpit has a lot of rules schools have to follow.

Hell of a reach to say the President can micro-manage admissions at private colleges.

While almost all universities receive public funding in some fashion…Harvard, Yale, MIT, those are private institutions with great big investment funds. They aren’t government schools—the executive can't just unilaterally say that private colleges have to consider your Presidential Fitness Test scores.

If the president can pull title 9 out of his ass and enshrine gender bullshit in colleges he can also control admissions .

Title 9 was passed by Congress in 1972, no?

The operative part of Title IX is

“No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance.”

I mean they're able to dictate how sports programs are run and how interpersonal disputes are handled. Are you really going to say admissions criteria is beyond the pale?

I specifically did not say micromanage. But it does appear they can change who gets in from a macro perspective.

I have a new proposal.

I think there should be an additional way to get into an elite college. You can still get in because you're an Olympic swimmer, or won an international math competition for high schoolers four years in a row, or because you're the daughter of a sitting U.S. President. But for mere mortals willing to put everything on the line...

I was thinking about an idea for Ivy League admissions reform: the ruling class and those that wind up hanging around them don't have to take much personal risk to get there. In ages past, until a few months into WWI, aristocrats were expected to take personal risk by going to war; many of the sons of aristocrats pulled strings to get sent to the trenches. War is more dangerous now than it was in 1900, and warmongering isn't exactly a good or necessary thing for the United States.

Therefore, I propose Admission of the Hock. Those with SATs over 1300 or ACTs over 27 who are in the top 15 percent of their high school class are eligible for the Hock. In early March, participants are parachuted onto a frozen lake in a boreal forest in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. They're allowed anything they can carry on their back except for firearms, maps, and communication devices. No rescue beacons, either. If they survive by making it back to civilization under their own power, they receive admission to an Ivy League school.

If you want something - if you truly, honestly believe in something - that means being willing to risk your life for it and to suffer for it. There's very little of that nowadays in America outside of the combat arms. The likes of Harvard and Yale and by extension the American aristocracy would thus be leavened by large numbers of people willing to make the ultimate sacrifice to ascend the class ladder. These people would know suffering and want as they had not in their sheltered childhoods. They would understand the whims of Mother Nature; they would know viscerally for the rest of their lives that the universe will not bend to their will.

We could have special diversity-based scholarships to Hock-prep schools and Hock-prep classes for the determined but poor individuals that we want to have a better chance at the Hock. After all, that Supreme Court decision only applied to college admissions; the Matthew Henson Hock Prep Program can offer scholarships how it likes.

TL;DR If you can do the work at Fancy Elite College and graduate, but you're not a rockstar, you can get dumped into the Alaskan wilderness in winter. Make it out alive and you're in. If you add diversity, maybe there's going to be some organization focused on preparing you for the rigors and trials of the Hock. Or you could simply take your chances; good luck.

The survivors will be very fit, very determined people.

This is the third time you have copy and pasted the exact same comment.

If they survive by making it back to civilization under their own power, they receive admission to an Ivy League school.

Eh, the properly rich can game this too. You just have to make an agreement with Daddy to send out a massive search and rescue party consisting of dozens of different groups to save you (and only you, this bit is important) as soon as you are dropped. All you take with you is a ultra hi vis orange jacket which will light up and stick out from hundreds of meters away plus some LEDS so you can be seen at night (you can pass that off as a torch to whoever is checking to make sure you don't have forbidden items), some rope and enough food to last lets say 5 days. When the ordeal starts you just climb up your nearest tall tree (the rope helps with this), sit there and wait to be rescued.

We managed to find the remains of the submarine within a week searching over a much bigger volume which was in 3D too (rather than the 2D search here), if Daddy has sent enough manpower you might well be back home in time for tomorrow's dinner.

Although I suppose if you're that rich you can just buy your way in via the usual methods right now, and that's easier.

I can't believe I'm saying this but I would watch the reality show version of this.

good idea!

I like this plan - also maybe guaranteed admission for top graduates who do military service. Your option seems more intense than military service though.

Sadly this likely opens up a ton of liability for the universities, so like many other good idea it will go into the dustbin because safetyism is the silent ruler of our day.

P.S. - any reason you have such a thing for the Alaskan wilderness?

It's romantic, IMHO. I like the idea of man vs. wild. Since I was 12, I always wanted to see what I was made of in a survival situation. I now realize that I'd probably suck a bit at it - but still admire the romanticism of it all. Chris McCandless was a hero. Even if he was also a dumbass.

Since I was 12, I always wanted to see what I was made of in a survival situation. I now realize that I'd probably suck a bit at it - but still admire the romanticism of it all.

Isn't this the ultimate sign of growing older? Wishing that you did X, not doing X when you had the option, and then wanting to make X an obligation for those younger than you. A sort of vicarious living. I have seen it recently in the UK with post-National Service people suggesting the return of National Service - for people younger than them, naturally...

Maybe, but I'm only 28 - perhaps too old to gain many of the benefits of the Hock, but not too old to successfully complete the Hock.

If your second block is serious - isn't this a strong case for 'safetyism'? Unless the survival rate is very high (which it would be IMO, there'd just be an industry that preps kids for success), your society would just be randomly killing a lot of its best and most courageous people for ... not that much gain. Willingness to die isn't going to select for 'bravery, nobility, and character' in the way you want it to, imo - archetypes like the corporate ladder climber snake or the dumb and brash young man will be very motivated to do this.

Unless the survival rate is very high (which it would be IMO, there'd just be an industry that preps kids for success)

Early Hocks would probably look a lot like the early UFC. I'm no martial arts fan or anything like that, but as I understand it there were all kinds of guys fighting each other in the early days. There were boxers fighting wrestlers, karate guys fighting sumo dudes, and no weight classes. Now that guys have been beating on each other in the UFC ring for long enough, we've mostly figured out what strategies work (and which are shit). So now, MMA looks to be mostly pretty standardized. Twenty years after the first Hock, you'd just have people Hockmaxxing by following a fairly standard Hock prep course, just like (overly simplified) MMA guys get good at fighting MMA by doing most of the same shit - training boxing, BJJ and cardio. Not practicing karate or sumo or some shit like that.

Given the black obesity rate, this plan probably hurts black admissions. Sure, the top sprinter in the world is always going to be of west African descent, but that’s not what they’re looking for- and anyways reliable high school football powerhouses tend to be working class white schools(they don’t go to the NFL at as high a rate because they use their scholarships to get a degree in something requiring more study time than psychology, which trades off with performance at the 1% end), with class reasons behind black overrepresentation in the very top of athletics.

I think adding physical fitness measures as metrics for college admissions would actually decrease Black admissions on the timescale of two or three years. The second they're added, every current academic try-hard would shift priorities to working on those things, and it's actually an objective metric that can't be gamed (by applicants and admissions officers) as much as e.g. GPA or extra curricular padding. I wouldn't be surprised if switching to 1-mile time as the sole criterion of admission would select more strongly for IQ than the current system.

Even now, the savvier people deadset on prestige education brands know that excelling in some obscure sport is one of the best ways to get a meaningful edge in the admissions game.

I wouldn't be surprised if switching to 1-mile time as the sole criterion of admission would select more strongly for IQ than the current system

This is definitely not true. It would select strongly for conscientiousness

I wouldn't be surprised if switching to 1-mile time as the sole criteria of admissions would select more strongly for IQ than the current system.

You think a system based on mile time would select more strongly for IQ than a system based on test scores and GPA?

Could you make that argument, because that seems prima facie crazy to me.

Not the op but i would say the goal is not to select for IQ but for intellect/future potential. But like the OP i actually would expect a competative track meet to measure those qualities just as well if not better than our currently accepted methods.

I can absolutely believe it - remember that the system also has features like penalising you for being involved in predominantly rural or agricultural pursuits, and gives you bonuses for being an illegal immigrant. While the test scores and GPA obviously have some relevance, there are enough confounding factors to substantially reduce the actual selective effect in question. Sure, grip strength isn't as strongly tied to IQ as SAT results, but I think that all of the other "holistic" selection criteria would bog down the IQ component enough to lower it down past that 58% number.

It could arguably select for conscientiousness more strongly than test scores and GPA; mile time seems to simply be [hard work + genetics]. It might be that Tanner Johnson's genetic potential for the mile, given the willpower of a Navy SEAL, the best training, etc. at age 17 is 4:46 and no matter how hard he trains during his adult life he will not crack 4:22. His fraternal twin brother might not be quite as fortunate and has a cap at 5:32 because very mild congenital knee problems keep him from training like an animal.

I'm not that sure about IQ as such; you can't be dumb but you also don't need to be John von Neumann to be an Olympic miler.

There are obviously systems that would select more strongly for IQ than mile time, like test scores and GPA. But that's not our current system: people are first binned into categories based on their race, and only then do test scores and GPA come into play. What I'm saying is that I wouldn't be surprised if the mile time metric would manage to better select for IQ, even without the more direct signals from GPA and test scores, because it would drop the binning step. An auxiliary hypothesis needed for this to work is the mile time would still be correlated with IQ, with the delta between it and better measures being smaller than what's introduced by the binning.

There are diligence, ability to cheat, and family income effects that would be captured by mile times, which are themselves positively correlated with IQ.

The correlation between grip strength and reasoning is 0.23.

If you pick two random people their grip strength will correctly order them by IQ 58% of the time. If you only look at people with z>1 grip strength then this drops to 53%

So for any moderately selective college you’re basically operating 3% above random.

If you order by SAT you get 70% and 60% respectively.

You’ve got a long way to argue that affirmative action is so unmeritocratic that it makes such a crappy signal like mile time comparable to a decent signal like test scores.

Then we can talk about why you think “mile time with no AA” is either better or more politically feasible than “test scores with no AA”

If you start testing for something, people will start training it.

Yes and apparently adding a ton of non-IQ signal will magically make this test a better proxy for IQ.

The existing admissions process already has a ton of non-IQ signal. I'm not sure if this would be better or worse.

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Then we can talk about why you think “mile time with no AA” is either better or more politically feasible than “test scores with no AA”

I said neither that it was better nor more politically feasible than anything, just that it could be more strongly selective of IQ than our current system, which is test scores with (de facto) AA and a bunch of other stuff.

If you pick two random people their grip strength will correctly order them by IQ 58% of the time. If you only look at with z>1 grip strength then this drops to 53%.

Sure. But that's before you've made a system that rewards grip strength with social outcomes. As soon as you do that, the correlation with IQ would become greater, as people with higher IQs interested in better social outcomes would then try to optimize for grip strength and be more effective at optimizing for it. Similarly, although there's no correlation between volunteering inclinations and IQ, you would see a strong one if you look at high schoolers, as they try to pad their resumes with volunteer work for the purposes of admission. You'd see a similar response from students with a grip strength system: you'd have parents sending their kids to after school gripping programs, specialized gripping coaching, etc. Motivated high schoolers would flock to web forums devoted to developing good grip. Some ambitious students would turn to grip-enhancing drugs. A black market would develop for professional grippers who would be hired as a stand-in for students to take the Scholastic Griptitude Test.

This applies to pretty much anything. If a DEI ETS decided to make a test that focused solely on obscure figures in African American history, you'd see the groups that outperform today outperform nearly as much on the new test.

Now, that would never become as strong a signal as SAT scores, which are fairly g-loaded. But, as with my original phrasing, it wouldn't surprise me if it ended up selecting for intelligence more strongly than the actual existing system we have.

Sure. But that's before you've made a system that rewards grip strength with social outcomes. As soon as you do that, the correlation with IQ would become greater, as people with higher IQs interested in better social outcomes would then try to optimize for grip strength and be more effective at optimizing for it.

You're conjecturing that grip strength and conscientiousness are positively correlated (citation?) and that conscientiousness and IQ are positively correlated (seems contentious at best after some Googling). Take every concern I had with using terribly-correlated variables and square it because you're not even talking about a direct connection anymore.

I don't think you really comprehend how weakly these traits are connected, and how relying on interactions between those traits makes that even worse. Yes, many good traits are correlated (a.k.a. the halo effect), and yes, people who deny this are worth refuting. But to go the opposite direction and just see these traits as interchangeable proxies for each other is crazy.

Suppose you published the entire SAT answer key a week before the test. Conscientious students would memorize it and completely destroy the other students, but nobody would dare to claim that this improves the correlation of the test with IQ! This is because the SAT is already a good proxy!

For any decent metric adding in confounding factors make it worse and the only reason you can conjecture the opposite is because grip strength is such a terrible metric to begin with.

The average SAT score is 520 on each test. The average Harvard admit has an average in the low 700s (white admits average 745 and African Americans average 704). The standard deviation on each test is around 100. This puts African American Harvard admits around 1.8 standard deviations above average.

And you think social incentives will transform your 3%-above-random-chance signal into something competitive?

You're conjecturing that grip strength and conscientiousness are positively correlated (citation?)

I'm conjecturing that outcomes on any arbitrary measure that will result in better social outcomes and can be influenced by planning and hard work is positively correlated with conscientiousness and intelligence. Give a random student in China a test on US History and tell them it doesn't matter, and there'll only be a small correlation between intelligence and score. Let them know four years beforehand that if they get a perfect score on the test they'll get a million USD and a visa to the USA, and there'll be a strong correlation.

just see these traits as interchangeable proxies for each other is crazy... This is because the SAT is already a good proxy!

To quote myself in the comment you're responding to: "that would never become as strong a signal as SAT scores, which are fairly g-loaded."

But, you get at something real: I do think to some extent every objective metric is interchangeable. Choose an arbitrary objective metric to excel at and tell students that their future well-being depends on it, and conscientious students will outperform on it as much as possible, which will often be a lot for intelligent students. The questions are how much grip strength is trainable and how much intelligence helps training. If the trait is more like height, then measurements of it will fail as a proxy; if it's more like ability to play the piano, it will work well.

that conscientiousness and IQ are positively correlated (seems contentious at best after some Googling)

I acknowledge the studies on this do contradict my point, and I remain skeptical. My suspicion is that what they're measuring as conscientiousness doesn't capture what we think of as conscientiousness, but I've not had the chance to look into the studies in detail.

Suppose you published the entire SAT answer key a week before the test. Conscientious students would memorize it and completely destroy the other students, but nobody would dare to claim that this improves the correlation of the test with IQ! This is because the SAT is already a good proxy!

I'm going to bite the bullet here and say that, given a choice between our current system (which is not purely test or test-and-GPA based) and a purely memorize-the-publicized-answers test, I think the memorize-the-answers test would select more for IQ.

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Yes but we aren't asking gunners to order themselves by grip strength yet.

Part of the hypo is that we ask graduating seniors to test their mile time to get into elite schools. If you did that, high IQ high conscientiousness kids will understand the assignment and train the 1600m. This would improve the correlation for 18yo college applicants.

You think a system based on mile time would select more strongly for IQ than a system based on test scores and GPA?

The current system is dropping or de-emphasizing test scores, GPA is very gamed, and the system includes subjective factors like your personality as determined by the admissions officer's assessment of your race.

like your personality as determined by the admissions officer's assessment of your race

I would also point out that, in the recent Harvard case, interviewers who met the candidates still gave higher personality scores to Asians than to Blacks. It's only when admissions officers were evaluating the packets that Asian personalities suddenly became inferior.

To be fair GPA itself was never a great measurement. If you take easier classes you'll get a better GPA, so in some ways it's anticorrelated with IQ.

Universities can and do account for this during admissions, with the easiest classes being penalized. Internally they use a corrected GPA, which takes into account both classes taken and the rigor of the school that the applicant took the class. What makes test scores so special is that they allow universities to extract a signal from applicants who excelled in GPA at a shitty school (since there's a clipping effect in the measuring instrument).

Though even the SAT has a clipping effect, to the point where a 1550-1600 score is table stakes for admission to top universities.

Yeah, the SAT has ceiling effects. I don't really think it's being used as a talent search by the top universities to uncover the next Ramanujans. Otherwise, perfect scores on the SAT would be FAR rarer than they are now...more like one every couple years than a thousand a year or so.

it’s a fact that those who perform well on math & reading tests tend to perform more poorly on the 1-mile run, and vice versa.

I think this is false.

I don't understand how you credibly commit to defending Taiwan's independence immediately after abandoning Ukraine in what seems like a pretty symmetrical situation. Is the justification that we need Taiwan economically in a way we don't need Ukraine? But the article also commits to expanding domestic industrial capacity so we no longer need Taiwan. I don't know how, as the Taiwanese government, you read this any other way than America's independence guarantee having an expiration date in the near future.

Meant this to be a reply to the OP...

I don't understand how you credibly commit to defending Taiwan's independence immediately after abandoning Ukraine in what seems like a pretty symmetrical situation.

You don't.

What im seeing from both Vivek and a number of his cheerleaders here is a very deterministic "assume a frictionless spherical cow" sort of view of game-theory/world politics. I saw another call it "video gamey" and that struck me as accurate. They seem to model world politics as if they were playing Civ2 (not even SMAC or Civ3) against the computer. The possibility of other players even existing nevermind having thier own agendas, opinions, histories, win conditions, etc... is just not something thier model seems to account for.

Taiwan is a rich developed country, Ukraine is not.

And this matters why?

Well, it makes Taiwan more important to the international economy, which affects the entire world.

It was never about Ukraine, though. Ukraine was and is a poor and dysfunctional state that bleeds its best people like nobody's business, and handing them as much money as material to bleed the Russians is still both the pragmatic and moral thing to do.

Absolutely. See his radio interview that was also attacked by the foreign policy establishment and got a lot of negative press. Defend Taiwan for strategic reasons related to chips, once they are no longer the bottleneck they can go back to dealing with the cold civil war on their own and notionally the PRC would have less strategic reasons to invade once the US was no longer dependent on Taiwan.

China doesn't really care about the chips. They're buying them anyway, if spending a bit more because of lower efficiency of hardware they can buy.

However, Taiwan is a key naval strategic point and a renegade province.

Just speaking for myself, it’s absolutely economics and strategic interest. Taiwan makes a lot of high end computer chips — and while we’re working on building plants elsewhere my understanding is that we’re not doing very well at that. Given how absolutely vital computers are to every aspect of society, letting a geopolitical rival control such a thing is nigh on suicidal. Without chips, our military can’t function, without chips, our manufacturing can’t happen, our communications fail. Basically, the only things that we can do without computers are systems that haven’t been updated since the early 1970s.

By contrast, Ukraine isn’t a vital national interest. It’s largely agricultural, and while it exports grains, that’s not something that we cannot either grow ourselves or import from elsewhere. And as far as Ukraine being a first stop, I kinda doubt that simply because NATO has a presence there even if the countries in question aren’t literal members of NATO. We know this, and so does Putin. The specter of Russia invading Poland or Romania isn’t based on something he said he wants to do, or moves he’s made. The claim is entirely about keeping the proles on board with the money, weapons, and supplies being sent to Ukraine. It’s not much different than the lead up to Iraq — fighting them “over three” so they don’t “come here” — even if the groups in question have no interest in coming here.

I thought at least South Korea was able to compete with Taiwan on more or less equal terms in chip production?

No, TSMC dominates the semiconductor foundry market by a wide margin. The nearest competitor is South Korea's Samsung, which is still at a very distant second place. And most of TSMC's competitors cannot compete at scaled manufacturing and development of 5/3/2 nm chips.

Reminder: Ramaswamy isn't running for president, he's running for the position of interesting primary candidate. Posting polarizing takes that the sophisticated libs will dunk on gets him more attention, makes him 'A Guy', and he can take his reputation and do something with it when this is over (e: yes, including running for office in the future). He knows the things he's saying are half-baked, and he doesn't care, because you (well, people on twitter and in the media who think like you) are talking about them. It almost feels like (from a liberal perspective) everyone who talked about him for the past six months was defecting in a big prisoners dilemma - you don't have to give people attention for saying dumb stuff, just ignore them!

Although I'm not entirely sure what that says about how he'd govern if everyone else in the race dropped dead.

I think he’s seriously running for office. He might not be serious this year but on a different timeline wants a political position.

He reminds of pre-neolib AOC when she was squad founder girl. Right now yes the ideas aren’t fully baked.

Ramaswamy isn't running for president, he's running for the position of interesting primary candidate. Posting polarizing takes that the sophisticated libs will dunk on gets him more attention, makes him 'A Guy', and he can take his reputation and do something with it when this is over.

So, basically what Trump did?

Yeah same approach, but different goals - Trump went after the other primary candidates, Vivek isn't even bothering to say anything negative about Trump, who he'd have to beat in the primary to win.

This is also a smart approach - Trump has the nomination and the undying loyalty of the GOP base. If you make yourself openly anti-Trump republican voters will kick you right the fuck out. The only reason to run against Trump as a candidate is to build a name for yourself, try and score a VP position, or to grift large amounts of money from the Koch brothers and other extremely wealthy anti-Trump lobbyists.

He’s now posting for physical fitness test for colleges in order to help black people get into college.

Either he doesn't know the obesity rates or he has the incredible chutzpah of shamelessly championing the end of AA and is now trying to "solve" the problem for black people by...creating a criteria that even further benefits the very people - Asians - who gained from the end of AA.

I believe there is a stereotype of black people generally being physically stronger and fitter than white people. It might not be true, but he's a politician, he need merely play to the stereotype.

https://twitter.com/vivekgramaswamy/status/1696234841249857658?s=46&t=aQ6ajj220jubjU7-o3SuWQ

This is a pro-merit solution that rewards diverse talents: it’s a fact that those who perform well on math & reading tests tend to perform more poorly on the 1-mile run, and vice versa.

I don't think this is a fact at all. I ran track, poorly, in high school. I had a tie for the highest SATs in my year, while I was (as is tradition) the last 200m, 800m, and 2mile runner to get cut before the meet. The 100m and 200m Varsity stars were not academic superstars, but they all got into decent state schools. At any distance longer than a mile, AP kids predominated.

This is hilariously awful.

At any distance longer than a mile, AP kids predominated.

Username checks out.

At any distance longer than a mile, AP kids predominated.

I saw this at my high school. An AP statistics student looked at the (self reported) GPAs and mile times of our track team. Let's also say that my high school was pretty...homogenous. Distance runners seem like more conscientious, reserved, methodical people than sprinters.

it’s a fact that those who perform well on math & reading tests tend to perform more poorly on the 1-mile run, and vice versa.

Yeah, this is straight up false. I would expect performance to be positively correlated. The best at one thing probably won't be the best at the other, but still there will be a non-negligible positive correlation between the two.

Ramaswamy should be smart enough to know this given his achievements, if he doesn't that's a pretty big red flag of being a mindless grifter, and if he's lying then that pretty bad of him too.

It's more like, among the people who you observe getting admitted to competitive colleges, you have people who are admitted for exceptionalism in academics with no regard for athleticism either way; for exceptionalism in athleticism; and for well rounded ness. This creates a real negative correlation in college admissions even though there is a positive correlation among the general population. Simpson's Berkson's paradox.

Simpson's paradox.

I think it's Berkson's paradox in college: the unathletic without academic skill don't go to top schools!

It would indeed be Berkson’s and not Simpson’s.

Obesity rates alone surely suggest that the average Asian teenager is fitter than the average black or hispanic teenager? And even if they aren't, the kids that are motivated or forced by their moms to do 35 extracurriculars and volunteer and sign up for every possible AP class are obviously also going to be able to spend two hours a week running or in the gym if that's what they need to do to get into Harvard.

the kids that are motivated or forced by their moms to do 35 extracurriculars and volunteer and sign up for every possible AP class are obviously also going to be able to spend two hours a week running or in the gym if that's what they need to do to get into Harvard.

Assuming there’s any time left for this. I’ve often wondered how long that’s going to last and how bad it’ll get before the kids simply start to revolt. Then again, they might not- China and Korea seem a lot worse and with more obedient youths.

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