Graham’s implying that at least for the vast majority of person-test combinations, the spirit of passing tests is hacking them:
Even though I was a diligent student, almost all the work I did in school was aimed at getting a good grade on something.
To many people, it would seem strange that the preceding sentence has a “though” in it. Aren’t I merely stating a tautology? Isn’t that what a diligent student is, a straight-A student? That’s how deeply the conflation of learning with grades has infused our culture.
[...]
If getting into college were merely a matter of having the quality of one’s mind measured by admissions officers the way scientists measure the mass of an object, we could tell teenage kids “learn a lot” and leave it at that.
I don’t see how, specifically, to distinguish this sort of thing from what Hotel Concierge is saying, unless you think Hotel Concierge is against trying at anything. As far as I can tell Hotel Concierge isn’t saying you shouldn’t try to be happy, or achieve outcomes you care about via delayed gratification, or be smart, or learn a lot, just that it’s a problem when people are pushed to optimize for performing simulacra of those things.
I’m not sure what you mean with “the spirit of passing tests is hacking them”. Do you mean that the tests were intentionally designed to be hackable? Because it seems like Graham is very much not saying that:
Merely talking explicitly about this phenomenon is likely to make things better, because much of its power comes from the fact that we take it for granted. After you’ve noticed it, it seems the elephant in the room, but it’s a pretty well camouflaged elephant. The phenomenon is so old, and so pervasive. And it’s simply the result of neglect. No one meant things to be this way. This is just what happens when you combine learning with grades, competition, and the naive assumption of unhackability.
I’m less confident of what Hotel Concierge’s point is (partly because it’s a damn long essay with many distinct points), but at least the end of it I’d summarize as: “Success correlates with misery, because too much perfectionism contributes to both, and it’s a problem when people are pushed and selected towards being too perfectionist”. Some relevant passages:
I think the psychopathology term for TDTPT [this means The Desire To Pass Tests] is “perfectionism.” [...]
Perfectionism—like literally everything else—is part of a spectrum, good in moderation and dangerous in overdose. [...]
And so if you select for high TDTPT, if you take only the highest scores and most feverishly dedicated hoop-jumping applicants, then there is no way around it: you are selecting for a high fraction of unhappy people. [...]
I’ve used Scantron-centric examples because Scantrons are easy to quantify, but tests are everywhere, and I promise you that the same trait that made me check my answers ten times over is present in the girl that spends two and a half hours doing her makeup, pausing every five minutes to ask a roommate if she looks ugly. TDTPT is the source of anorexia, body dysmorphia, workaholism, anxiety (“I just can’t find anything to say that doesn’t sound stupid”), obsession, and a hundred million cases of anhedonia, fatigue, and inadequacy [...]
So they’re saying that a little TDTPT is good for you, but many people have too much, and that’s bad for their mental health. Looking at that last paragraph, the examples aren’t particularly connected to the hackability of tests, as far as I can tell. That there are important tests which are testing arbitrary things certainly contribute to the problem, since being perfectionist about meaningless work is less productive and more likely to lead to burnout, but it’s not essential to the point, and it’s not something that Hotel Concierge emphasizes.
Graham’s implying that at least for the vast majority of person-test combinations, the spirit of passing tests is hacking them:
I don’t see how, specifically, to distinguish this sort of thing from what Hotel Concierge is saying, unless you think Hotel Concierge is against trying at anything. As far as I can tell Hotel Concierge isn’t saying you shouldn’t try to be happy, or achieve outcomes you care about via delayed gratification, or be smart, or learn a lot, just that it’s a problem when people are pushed to optimize for performing simulacra of those things.
I’m not sure what you mean with “the spirit of passing tests is hacking them”. Do you mean that the tests were intentionally designed to be hackable? Because it seems like Graham is very much not saying that:
I’m less confident of what Hotel Concierge’s point is (partly because it’s a damn long essay with many distinct points), but at least the end of it I’d summarize as: “Success correlates with misery, because too much perfectionism contributes to both, and it’s a problem when people are pushed and selected towards being too perfectionist”. Some relevant passages:
So they’re saying that a little TDTPT is good for you, but many people have too much, and that’s bad for their mental health. Looking at that last paragraph, the examples aren’t particularly connected to the hackability of tests, as far as I can tell. That there are important tests which are testing arbitrary things certainly contribute to the problem, since being perfectionist about meaningless work is less productive and more likely to lead to burnout, but it’s not essential to the point, and it’s not something that Hotel Concierge emphasizes.