My failure to engage with the criticisms of the system was entirely intentional.
I had three reasons for ignoring the criticisms:
The critique is a fairly standard leftist/Marxist criticism of meritocracy. It’s well-trodden ground, and neither I nor (in my opinion) the author has much new to add here.
The critique is doing a lot of rhetorical work to assert the moral righteousness of the author not taking the test. Engaging it at all felt (to me, subjectively) like indulging their superiority fantasy.
The author’s argument that the university doesn’t function how it “claims” to function is weak; the university’s supposed “claim” is largely the author’s interpretation of what “special” means and what they personally think university should be for.
I grant that one can agree with their criticisms, I simply found them to be of secondary importance.
I agree that the critique is a fairly standard wokist criticism of meritocracy. I think the author’s two main failures are in adopting a self-centered moral position (“how I want the world to be is how it ought to be”), and poor training. The first is a common mistake, but leaves me wondering, “why should society cater to your whims? Why would they be better off, according to their desires?” It is not enough to say the system creates perverse incentives, if you cannot design a better system for people to adopt. That is his second issue. He does not have the mathematical training to design a better stable system, and reading more humanities papers will only reinforce that something is wrong, without helping him suggest improvements. This is why he can come across as whining or indulging in some superiority fantasy.
I think what you miss is people take different attitudes towards unnecessary suffering. I can imagine if you were hiking along a trail and came across a fallen tree, you would calmly duck under it or climb around it. It is the path you are walking on, and if you wish to reach your desired destination with the least effort, you have to pay these small prices. Others would kick the log for getting in their way, stubbing a toe and not solving anything, but then submit to the path laid out for them. The blessed few carry a hatchet, and would clear the way for those that come after them. Then there is the author, who is so indignant about fallen trees unnecessarily being in their way, but carry no hatchets, that they end up storming off the beaten path and try stomping out their own trail. It usually does not work out for them, and even if they succeed, the new trail is longer and worse than the original trail.
I think the first kind of person is defecting in this scenario, unless they put a few dollars towards fixing the trail when they leave. While broader society is not smart or informed enough to punish such defections—and thus defecting really can be your selfishly optimal move—that does mean it is not defection. Telling people to shut up and climb over the log is also defection. It is one thing to say, “the trail is not good, but there is not much you can do about it, so for your own sake, just climb over it.” Jerret Ye (@L.M.Sherlock) has published another of the author’s articles arguing essentally this. But it is entirely another thing to say, “yes, the trail is not good, but stop complaining already. Just shut up and climb over it.” This is what you are doing, and if everyone did it, the trail would never improve.
I was wrong when I said you had completely missed the author’s second narrative. I believe I was frustrated by what I saw as defection, and thought surely you wouldn’t be defecting if you knew it was defection. But that is a modelling error, because there are many other reasons you might think your comment was prosocial. Most likely, if you can shut up complainers, it makes the system more stable and helps others not go through the author’s pain. I would even agree with an argument that the author has not thought this through well enough to propose good solutions, and so it is better they say nothing at all than risk destroying an almost good thing. I do not know exactly why you wrote such a harsh critique, but I really wonder if there was a better way to achieve your goals.
I do think you and the author are playing a cooperative game here. Both of you have a goal that includes others living better lives due to your writing. In such cooperative games, honesty is usually the best policy. Just put a couple sentences at the top explaining your goals, maybe something like, “I believe these memes are harmful to spread, so I am purposefully being harsh with the author in the hopes that they and others like them put more thought into their writing before publishing.” Of course, then all your readers will wonder why you think the memes are harmful to spread, and so you woud have to explain that, but I think this kind of process would significantly improve your comment.
I do want to expand on my point about the different kinds of people. Some people find it intolerable to move around an obstacle. I am much more similar to the author in this way, and really tried to avoid attending university. I applied to many tech jobs, but failed to get interviews except at some of the lowest-paying ones. To quote the author’s experience, which matches mine,
I’m afraid the company’s HR backend probably didn’t even see my resume. A simple “filter by education,” and sorry, all those outside the selection are automatically deleted… How do you prove yourself to someone who can’t even see you? It’s impossible.
I had significantly higher quailfications on paper—a high school diploma, great standardized test scores, and better competition results—but even I could not be seen by a human. So, although I really hated wasting my time on paperwork, I went to MIT. I mostly tried to take classes I was interested in and luckily for me I was interested in a broad education. My largest frustrations were actually in some required science classes: introductory chemistry, probability, algorithms, and whatnot. I did my best to substitute them with more useful classes, but I was told for many of them, “you just have to take it. You cannot test out or substitute them.” The whole process was very frustrating, especially because I am so intolerable to unnecessary obstacles that only exist because someone never bothered to design the system a little better. What made it worse is MIT had a better system (at least for me) fifty years ago, and it had evolved to be worse in terms of free learning, but better in terms of their typical student’s income after graduation. Anyway, I remember thinking over and over, “why am I doing all this,” and I know I would have dropped out if I did not graduate early. Even still, I almost dropped out to join a startup instead of doing my final semester.
I could make this a much longer post, but what I’m trying to highlight is there are some people who see problems that should not exist, and it causes them a ton of mental anguish. You seem generally unbothered, and can go around the obstacles in stride, but it is really painful for people like me. Logically, the additional effort is merely a lot, but mentally it is intolerable. And, the author has much more difficulty in this regard than I do. Part of it is a stricter system, part of it is less natural talent the system would reward them for, and part of it is having an even stronger mental aversion than me to disfunction.
I appreciate that you took the time to re-evaluate my original post. I did have prosocial intention, and perhaps you’re right that I should have explained my intentions better.
My opinion is that the author is engaged in damaging self-deception. My goals with my response were to 1) surface this self-deception and 2) demonstrate its absurdity. In so doing, I hoped the author and people with similar inclinations wouldn’t self harm in this particular way.
My interpretation is that we don’t quite agree what the author is doing wrong. In addition to the issue you identified as moral self-centeredness (“how I want the world to be is how it ought to be”) I understand the author to also be acting in accordance with this view (“I should act as though I live in the world that ought to exist”).
I’ll adapt your analogy a little to try and make my point. A hiker warns the author that there is a branch on the ground ahead blocking the trail. This branch is too heavy for any one person to move, but is easy to walk around. The author, believing that the government should remove branches from trails, resolves not to walk around the branch, falls over it, and injures themselves. They then go home and write a long editorial claiming their injury to be the government’s fault, since they should have removed the branch.
The most important takeaway, I think, is that the proximate cause of the injury is the author’s actions even if it is the government’s responsibility to remove branches. If walking around the branch is “unnecessary suffering,” surely intentionally walking into the branch is at least doubly unnecessary. I am not at all convinced blaming the system in this situation is engaging in a cooperative game, it simultaneously minimizes the author’s agency and overstates harms caused by the system.
I should note that if the author had walked around the branch then complained about it afterwards none of this criticism would stand.
Reading your replies, it’s clear you are sympathetic to the criticisms the author has of the education system/meritocracy. That’s fine, but it seems to me that you’re accepting the premise that their suffering is the school’s fault. I’m not telling the author to “shut up and climb over the log,” I’m telling the author to take responsibility for their own actions and stop blaming others. The fact that the author finds the situation intolerable doesn’t change proximal fault at all.
In a vacuum, sure, I do think many of these systems are imperfect. The distinction between a kid who has yet to go to MIT and a kid who has gone to MIT is minor, and failure to interview the former implies an inefficiency somewhere. The difference between you and the author is that you accepted your own agency and took responsibility for the consequences of your actions.
Not super relevant, but I haven’t really revealed my own position. Simply, I think it is the job of the individual to act in their own best interest, and the job of government to align incentives such that the individual’s best interest is also the best interest of the collective. In my personal life I’m the type of person who moves branches out of the way, but it’s not something I expect of others; I’m a moral anti-realist, which I understand is not a very common position.
I think your proposal does not lead to branches getting removed. I think
The branch is easiest to remove by first moving around it, and then breaking it from the other side.
Once you are on the other side, it is individually rational to continue on your way. The branch is somone else’s problem.
I think having 後輩 or children you value could keep it your problem, enough so you still bother to remove the branch. However, your effort here would only marginally help millions of people, only one of which is the person you personally care about. It is individually more rational to focus your efforts on just the people you care about.
Alternatively, you could value removing such obstacles as a terminal goal. I think this exhibits in humans as an intolerance to such obstacles. The mental anguish significantly decreases once they are no longer bumping against the obstacle, so I think it is rather rare to find someone with a strong enough aversion to remove the branch from the other side, but was able push past a much stronger aversion to make it there.
Now, maybe the solution is to help people push past their aversions. Encourage them to still go to university, even if they believe the world ought to be different. But does this actually help fix the problem? It does not matter if they are 10x more able to fix it, if they care 10% as much. Maybe it relieves some of their suffering, but surely the system is producing much more unnecessary suffering than this proposal would relieve? Plus, it isn’t suffering of people you care about. If you are being individually rational, it seems like your best move is to tell your friends and family to work within the system, while letting the deviants do their own thing to fix it.
1. I haven’t seen his essay, and I agree that effort does not necessarily equate to high quality. Although the appendix suggests the content might be solid, the admissions committee has its own rubric. Does the essay meet those standards? That is what ultimately determines the score.
2. Even setting the essay aside and looking solely at his attitude, if I were on the admissions committee, I would also vote to reject him. He appears entirely too non-compliant. He may possess a good command of knowledge, but his personality is clearly ill-suited for the university environment. Admitting a student like that would likely just invite trouble.
However, I disagree with your advice to the author. Given that he is critiquing the system itself, your response effectively tells him: “You should submit to the system because that is the reality.” To me, this sidesteps the issue. It is akin to telling a group of democrats living under a monarchy that they should simply obey the king because “we live in the era of kings, and that’s the reality.” This is problematic because it commits the **naturalistic fallacy**—just because something *is* the reality doesn’t mean it is normatively *right*.
Addressing your specific points:
1. You label this a “standard leftist critique,” but you haven’t pointed out *why* this critique is invalid. You imply it doesn’t hold water without actually providing an argument against it.
2. Does the author have a “superiority fantasy”? I reserve judgment on this due to a lack of information. According to the author, his complaints about failure are separate from his critique of the system. The latter manifests in issues like grade inflation and the instinct for self-humiliation—which are objectively serious problems, particularly in the East Asian context.
3. Regarding your homework analogy: I believe this argument presupposes that the assignment or the evaluation system is legitimate. Because you assume it is legitimate, you view any questioning of it as unreasonable, and thus treat the critique as merely an excuse for not doing the work. You are essentially baking the answer into your premise. But the real question is: *Is* this evaluation system actually legitimate?
If a student refuses to do homework and writes an emotional, abusive rant, they indeed don’t deserve to be taken seriously. But if their writing is based on rational argumentation, it deserves to be treated seriously. Engaging with it is not “indulging” them; it is valid reflection. Otherwise, using the premise that “the system is right” to declare all opposition invalid is a clear case of **circular reasoning**. This brings us back to Point 1: you need to explain why his argument fails, rather than avoiding it.
Indeed, if one does not share the author’s view of the university (as a place for education rather than stratification), one need not agree with his solution. This depends on one’s moral stance. At least as a libertarian egalitarian, I believe the problems he points out are real. Educational stratification hinders the diffusion of resources and the realization of equality, which poses a threat to modern society.
You label this a “standard leftist critique,” but you haven’t pointed out why this critique is invalid. You imply it doesn’t hold water without actually providing an argument against it.
Whether or not the critique is valid, the action of criticizing can be invalid here. It is similar to how yelling, “fire!” in a packed theater is rarely the correct way of transmitting information about flaws in the world around you. I think most people would appreciate an explanation for why you are suppressing potentially true free speech, but the explanation does not necessarily need to come paired with the suppression. So, you can have something like this occur:
Alice: I think we ought to overthrow the government.
Bob: Shut up!
Bob may be worried about others overhearing this and turning them in, even if he agrees with Alice. But he can’t say that, at least not in a public forum. I think the issue with “standard leftist critiques” is that these memes are highly virulent, and most people are not innoculated against them. Systems are hard to fix, so people who have been infected with these memes—even if they are true—may take worse actions than if they had never heard the critique.
I didn’t miss the second narrative, rather:
I had three reasons for ignoring the criticisms:
The critique is a fairly standard leftist/Marxist criticism of meritocracy. It’s well-trodden ground, and neither I nor (in my opinion) the author has much new to add here.
The critique is doing a lot of rhetorical work to assert the moral righteousness of the author not taking the test. Engaging it at all felt (to me, subjectively) like indulging their superiority fantasy.
The author’s argument that the university doesn’t function how it “claims” to function is weak; the university’s supposed “claim” is largely the author’s interpretation of what “special” means and what they personally think university should be for.
I grant that one can agree with their criticisms, I simply found them to be of secondary importance.
I agree that the critique is a fairly standard wokist criticism of meritocracy. I think the author’s two main failures are in adopting a self-centered moral position (“how I want the world to be is how it ought to be”), and poor training. The first is a common mistake, but leaves me wondering, “why should society cater to your whims? Why would they be better off, according to their desires?” It is not enough to say the system creates perverse incentives, if you cannot design a better system for people to adopt. That is his second issue. He does not have the mathematical training to design a better stable system, and reading more humanities papers will only reinforce that something is wrong, without helping him suggest improvements. This is why he can come across as whining or indulging in some superiority fantasy.
I think what you miss is people take different attitudes towards unnecessary suffering. I can imagine if you were hiking along a trail and came across a fallen tree, you would calmly duck under it or climb around it. It is the path you are walking on, and if you wish to reach your desired destination with the least effort, you have to pay these small prices. Others would kick the log for getting in their way, stubbing a toe and not solving anything, but then submit to the path laid out for them. The blessed few carry a hatchet, and would clear the way for those that come after them. Then there is the author, who is so indignant about fallen trees unnecessarily being in their way, but carry no hatchets, that they end up storming off the beaten path and try stomping out their own trail. It usually does not work out for them, and even if they succeed, the new trail is longer and worse than the original trail.
I think the first kind of person is defecting in this scenario, unless they put a few dollars towards fixing the trail when they leave. While broader society is not smart or informed enough to punish such defections—and thus defecting really can be your selfishly optimal move—that does mean it is not defection. Telling people to shut up and climb over the log is also defection. It is one thing to say, “the trail is not good, but there is not much you can do about it, so for your own sake, just climb over it.” Jerret Ye (@L.M.Sherlock) has published another of the author’s articles arguing essentally this. But it is entirely another thing to say, “yes, the trail is not good, but stop complaining already. Just shut up and climb over it.” This is what you are doing, and if everyone did it, the trail would never improve.
I was wrong when I said you had completely missed the author’s second narrative. I believe I was frustrated by what I saw as defection, and thought surely you wouldn’t be defecting if you knew it was defection. But that is a modelling error, because there are many other reasons you might think your comment was prosocial. Most likely, if you can shut up complainers, it makes the system more stable and helps others not go through the author’s pain. I would even agree with an argument that the author has not thought this through well enough to propose good solutions, and so it is better they say nothing at all than risk destroying an almost good thing. I do not know exactly why you wrote such a harsh critique, but I really wonder if there was a better way to achieve your goals.
I do think you and the author are playing a cooperative game here. Both of you have a goal that includes others living better lives due to your writing. In such cooperative games, honesty is usually the best policy. Just put a couple sentences at the top explaining your goals, maybe something like, “I believe these memes are harmful to spread, so I am purposefully being harsh with the author in the hopes that they and others like them put more thought into their writing before publishing.” Of course, then all your readers will wonder why you think the memes are harmful to spread, and so you woud have to explain that, but I think this kind of process would significantly improve your comment.
I do want to expand on my point about the different kinds of people. Some people find it intolerable to move around an obstacle. I am much more similar to the author in this way, and really tried to avoid attending university. I applied to many tech jobs, but failed to get interviews except at some of the lowest-paying ones. To quote the author’s experience, which matches mine,
I had significantly higher quailfications on paper—a high school diploma, great standardized test scores, and better competition results—but even I could not be seen by a human. So, although I really hated wasting my time on paperwork, I went to MIT. I mostly tried to take classes I was interested in and luckily for me I was interested in a broad education. My largest frustrations were actually in some required science classes: introductory chemistry, probability, algorithms, and whatnot. I did my best to substitute them with more useful classes, but I was told for many of them, “you just have to take it. You cannot test out or substitute them.” The whole process was very frustrating, especially because I am so intolerable to unnecessary obstacles that only exist because someone never bothered to design the system a little better. What made it worse is MIT had a better system (at least for me) fifty years ago, and it had evolved to be worse in terms of free learning, but better in terms of their typical student’s income after graduation. Anyway, I remember thinking over and over, “why am I doing all this,” and I know I would have dropped out if I did not graduate early. Even still, I almost dropped out to join a startup instead of doing my final semester.
I could make this a much longer post, but what I’m trying to highlight is there are some people who see problems that should not exist, and it causes them a ton of mental anguish. You seem generally unbothered, and can go around the obstacles in stride, but it is really painful for people like me. Logically, the additional effort is merely a lot, but mentally it is intolerable. And, the author has much more difficulty in this regard than I do. Part of it is a stricter system, part of it is less natural talent the system would reward them for, and part of it is having an even stronger mental aversion than me to disfunction.
I appreciate that you took the time to re-evaluate my original post. I did have prosocial intention, and perhaps you’re right that I should have explained my intentions better.
My opinion is that the author is engaged in damaging self-deception. My goals with my response were to 1) surface this self-deception and 2) demonstrate its absurdity. In so doing, I hoped the author and people with similar inclinations wouldn’t self harm in this particular way.
My interpretation is that we don’t quite agree what the author is doing wrong. In addition to the issue you identified as moral self-centeredness (“how I want the world to be is how it ought to be”) I understand the author to also be acting in accordance with this view (“I should act as though I live in the world that ought to exist”).
I’ll adapt your analogy a little to try and make my point. A hiker warns the author that there is a branch on the ground ahead blocking the trail. This branch is too heavy for any one person to move, but is easy to walk around. The author, believing that the government should remove branches from trails, resolves not to walk around the branch, falls over it, and injures themselves. They then go home and write a long editorial claiming their injury to be the government’s fault, since they should have removed the branch.
The most important takeaway, I think, is that the proximate cause of the injury is the author’s actions even if it is the government’s responsibility to remove branches. If walking around the branch is “unnecessary suffering,” surely intentionally walking into the branch is at least doubly unnecessary. I am not at all convinced blaming the system in this situation is engaging in a cooperative game, it simultaneously minimizes the author’s agency and overstates harms caused by the system.
I should note that if the author had walked around the branch then complained about it afterwards none of this criticism would stand.
Reading your replies, it’s clear you are sympathetic to the criticisms the author has of the education system/meritocracy. That’s fine, but it seems to me that you’re accepting the premise that their suffering is the school’s fault. I’m not telling the author to “shut up and climb over the log,” I’m telling the author to take responsibility for their own actions and stop blaming others. The fact that the author finds the situation intolerable doesn’t change proximal fault at all.
In a vacuum, sure, I do think many of these systems are imperfect. The distinction between a kid who has yet to go to MIT and a kid who has gone to MIT is minor, and failure to interview the former implies an inefficiency somewhere. The difference between you and the author is that you accepted your own agency and took responsibility for the consequences of your actions.
Not super relevant, but I haven’t really revealed my own position. Simply, I think it is the job of the individual to act in their own best interest, and the job of government to align incentives such that the individual’s best interest is also the best interest of the collective. In my personal life I’m the type of person who moves branches out of the way, but it’s not something I expect of others; I’m a moral anti-realist, which I understand is not a very common position.
I think your proposal does not lead to branches getting removed. I think
The branch is easiest to remove by first moving around it, and then breaking it from the other side.
Once you are on the other side, it is individually rational to continue on your way. The branch is somone else’s problem.
I think having 後輩 or children you value could keep it your problem, enough so you still bother to remove the branch. However, your effort here would only marginally help millions of people, only one of which is the person you personally care about. It is individually more rational to focus your efforts on just the people you care about.
Alternatively, you could value removing such obstacles as a terminal goal. I think this exhibits in humans as an intolerance to such obstacles. The mental anguish significantly decreases once they are no longer bumping against the obstacle, so I think it is rather rare to find someone with a strong enough aversion to remove the branch from the other side, but was able push past a much stronger aversion to make it there.
Now, maybe the solution is to help people push past their aversions. Encourage them to still go to university, even if they believe the world ought to be different. But does this actually help fix the problem? It does not matter if they are 10x more able to fix it, if they care 10% as much. Maybe it relieves some of their suffering, but surely the system is producing much more unnecessary suffering than this proposal would relieve? Plus, it isn’t suffering of people you care about. If you are being individually rational, it seems like your best move is to tell your friends and family to work within the system, while letting the deviants do their own thing to fix it.
I agree with you in part.
1. I haven’t seen his essay, and I agree that effort does not necessarily equate to high quality. Although the appendix suggests the content might be solid, the admissions committee has its own rubric. Does the essay meet those standards? That is what ultimately determines the score.
2. Even setting the essay aside and looking solely at his attitude, if I were on the admissions committee, I would also vote to reject him. He appears entirely too non-compliant. He may possess a good command of knowledge, but his personality is clearly ill-suited for the university environment. Admitting a student like that would likely just invite trouble.
However, I disagree with your advice to the author. Given that he is critiquing the system itself, your response effectively tells him: “You should submit to the system because that is the reality.” To me, this sidesteps the issue. It is akin to telling a group of democrats living under a monarchy that they should simply obey the king because “we live in the era of kings, and that’s the reality.” This is problematic because it commits the **naturalistic fallacy**—just because something *is* the reality doesn’t mean it is normatively *right*.
Addressing your specific points:
1. You label this a “standard leftist critique,” but you haven’t pointed out *why* this critique is invalid. You imply it doesn’t hold water without actually providing an argument against it.
2. Does the author have a “superiority fantasy”? I reserve judgment on this due to a lack of information. According to the author, his complaints about failure are separate from his critique of the system. The latter manifests in issues like grade inflation and the instinct for self-humiliation—which are objectively serious problems, particularly in the East Asian context.
3. Regarding your homework analogy: I believe this argument presupposes that the assignment or the evaluation system is legitimate. Because you assume it is legitimate, you view any questioning of it as unreasonable, and thus treat the critique as merely an excuse for not doing the work. You are essentially baking the answer into your premise. But the real question is: *Is* this evaluation system actually legitimate?
If a student refuses to do homework and writes an emotional, abusive rant, they indeed don’t deserve to be taken seriously. But if their writing is based on rational argumentation, it deserves to be treated seriously. Engaging with it is not “indulging” them; it is valid reflection. Otherwise, using the premise that “the system is right” to declare all opposition invalid is a clear case of **circular reasoning**. This brings us back to Point 1: you need to explain why his argument fails, rather than avoiding it.
Indeed, if one does not share the author’s view of the university (as a place for education rather than stratification), one need not agree with his solution. This depends on one’s moral stance. At least as a libertarian egalitarian, I believe the problems he points out are real. Educational stratification hinders the diffusion of resources and the realization of equality, which poses a threat to modern society.
Whether or not the critique is valid, the action of criticizing can be invalid here. It is similar to how yelling, “fire!” in a packed theater is rarely the correct way of transmitting information about flaws in the world around you. I think most people would appreciate an explanation for why you are suppressing potentially true free speech, but the explanation does not necessarily need to come paired with the suppression. So, you can have something like this occur:
Bob may be worried about others overhearing this and turning them in, even if he agrees with Alice. But he can’t say that, at least not in a public forum. I think the issue with “standard leftist critiques” is that these memes are highly virulent, and most people are not innoculated against them. Systems are hard to fix, so people who have been infected with these memes—even if they are true—may take worse actions than if they had never heard the critique.