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 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.