Tbh this just goes to show there is really *no* benefits to external immigration for the natives. Even the real "engineers and doctors" are just replacing natives who could have performed those roles, and done so in a less atomised and more contextually relevant manner.
I always remember being at a private school aged 9 and turning and making an innocuous comment to a boy named "Winston Yap" - an uppity chinese 9 year old. And he gave a scathing repsonse back. I just think, how dare he? (speak that way to a native in his own country). Regardless, I think he was just jealous and he most likely grew up to be a squinty eyed 5'7" dork. But his personality sure sucked. And that's what this kind of education produces.
A robust community should aim higher than turning out hyper-credentialed drones like Winson who, ironically, lack the agency to shape society in a positive way.
Gutting education as you suggest would undermine institutions. This is only acceptable if you introduce a new institution in which people can place their trust. I think you underestimate how vital academia is to the functioning of the America state, and how quickly things would get nasty in the event of a power vacuum. Trump has 50% of the populace, and the Republican Party is now Trump. But Trump is a man, and basing an institution on a man is not a recipe for stability.
I agree with your general criticism of education as signaling, but instead of gutting education, I think we should fortify it against Goodharting. I think the best way to do that is to introduce a physical fitness requirement for college admissions, and tie this requirement to federal funding.
There is no reason why every single Ivy League graduate cannot be a Division 1 athlete. There are enough athletes in the country with sufficient test scores. Essentially, I am suggesting affirmative action for athletes, to the degree that non-athletes are completely excluded from elite universities.
This would have a few effects:
1. Because muscle growth is inversely correlated with cortisol, parents who force stressful training regimes on their children would see diminishing returns.
2. Since immigrants have a weaker culture of athleticism, they would be less competitive.
3. Black students benefit the most from athletic affirmative action. However, black students are not Goodharting (with the exception of the immigrants you refer to from Africa).
The counter-argument to my scheme is that introducing athletic requirements for universities is a fantasy that will never come true, while your proposed solution of "accelerating the decline of prestige" is much more realistic.
I still believe it is important to put forth constructive solutions which attempt to imagine better institutions, rather than hollowing out existing ones and expecting the result to be fine. Stable institutions reduce the likelihood of inter-elite conflict and civil war.
Ivies already put emphasis on appearance and athletics in admissions.
If you make Asians do push ups or fencing to get admission, they will just do that. It may or may not be better goodhearting than learning the violin.
Most people already think youth sports have reached a painful goodhearting stage with travel leagues and the rest.
Also, I can see a lot of fake female athleticism due to title 9.
A lot of this could be solved with pro-natalism. Parents of lots of kids can’t helicopter parent and getting smart people to have kids younger reduces the time they waste on credentialing. Harvard should give an admission bonus to kids that come from big families.
> "A lot of this could be solved with pro-natalism. Parents of lots of kids can’t helicopter parent and getting smart people to have kids younger reduces the time they waste on credentialing."
I think you might be confusing cause and effect, insofar as credentialism likely suppresses fertility?
At best this would not reduce black enrollment but kill Asian enrollment, at worst this would cause white Americans to adopt a competitive sports culture similar to that of Black Americans, pushing Blacks out of sports at every level. Whats left are a reduced number of elegible Black applicants, with a vastly higher number of white applicants who have almost identical athletics backgrounds, but with access to better training facilities, more expensive sports (fencing, rowing, polo etc) and with much higher test scores and GPAs.
Nope, but you probably cant understand this article if you think that blacks are over represented in athletics to the extent that they are purely as a function of genetics
"Pushing blacks out of sports at every level" seems to imply an implausible level of displacement unless you think these differences are purely cultural.
I generally agree with your conclusions, but doesn’t the chart you posted go against your claim of East Asians have inflated scores due to prepping? Sebastian Jensen has an article on why Asians score higher. It estimates Asian practice effects to account for 19% of the variance. I’d probably take that as an upper bound though since there isn’t a large conscientiousness gap. The new SAT is literally biased in their favor. Do you think fMRI based methods for estimating IQ are gamable?
I would argue that the test bias is a function of Asians being better at more preppable test, though I still stand by the conclusion that 50% of the advatage in test scores is due to g.
You vibe reasoned parts of your article. I don’t find self reports and anecdotal evidence very convincing. Most people, including Asians, don’t prep for the SAT before the PSAT. You can probably filter for those that took it in 10th grade. Those reporting massive practice effects might have just never learned the material. I wouldn’t call that practice though. My guess is just that the new SAT questions and format are more favorable to Asians due to “environmental” (partially genetic) reasons such as content covered in school. I’m not sure you have data on the new SAT verbal breakdown by passage comprehension and writing.
No offense, but you vastly overestimated agentic behavior of the masses (this is a common mistake among smart people). I don’t deny that greatly increasing your score is possible, but what I’m saying is that it doesn’t explain the observed gap. The median person likely didn’t prep at all. The next most likely categories is probably taking 1 or 2 practice tests. We would likely see a similar gap for state mandated SATs for students that have no intention of going to college. The SAT publishes the percentiles for a SAT takers and a nationally representative sample and they don’t differ too much. It’s also reasonable to assume they prep more and have intrinsically higher ability.
Mostly due to an actual cognitive advantage and test bias not due to prepping. I’m surprised to see this argument from you. Prepping is bad because it works seems Asian coded. They need to appeal to fairness and consequentialism. How about prepping is bad because it is unaesthetic and Asians have this irrational social signaling game due to ice age genes rather than it providing a large advantage. You can estimate the number of preppers fairly well off amazon purchases, commercial test prep users, and khan academy users. This is literally a Jonathan Haidt phones bad tier argument. Ugly things should be removed from soyciety is the ultimate rightist argument. I don’t see why we need to force ourselves to argue using their frameworks. We can literally use the more powerful Aporia frozen chicken argument. Just say intense prepping is child exploitation.
Are you Asian? I’m not sure why Asians are so innumerate about the proportion of the US population that actually uses test prep. Aren’t they supposed to be good with numbers? I agree that they are less impressive than whites with the same scores and have bad epistemology. Many of them literally believe in superstitions.
At one time in America, if you worked moderately hard and played by the rules that mattered, you were assured a reasonably comfortable life, at least if you were white, and even then, that wasn't obligatory, although it certainly helped. Not only that, but you could rest assured that your children would have a shot at a better life than you had.
This unspoken bargain has broken down. Unless you have family money or possess the kind of freakish talent, skill or physical attractiveness that will get you entrance into the .001%, you can either fight for a spot among the top 10% that service the truly rich, or you can be a peon, scrambling to keep your head above water.
That is why we have seen college admissions get more competitive and helicopter parenting more intense in recent years - to get and keep that 10% status, those kids are going to have to fight like the third monkey on the ramp to get onto Noah's Ark and, brother, it is starting to rain. Winning is not just the best thing, it is the only thing.
This is also why we see so many kids, whose career ambitions are or try to be a youtuber, a rapper or whatever, where mostly all that is needed is chutzpah, salesmanship and a willingness to make a fool of oneself.
Tiger parenting has a serious negative psychological impact on kids. I think a lot of Asian kids who grew up in the US will not be tiger parenting their kids.
I think the example of Ghana might be a little cherry-picked- there certainly seems to have been pretty strong economic growth in SSA more generally over the last 30-40 years?
The world-bank data I was looking at is GDP-per-capita with purchasing-parity adjustments. I do recall that SSA's economy crashed somewhat after the cold war wound down, but I'd be very surprised if there was no net improvement in living standards since the 1950s.
Tbh this just goes to show there is really *no* benefits to external immigration for the natives. Even the real "engineers and doctors" are just replacing natives who could have performed those roles, and done so in a less atomised and more contextually relevant manner.
I always remember being at a private school aged 9 and turning and making an innocuous comment to a boy named "Winston Yap" - an uppity chinese 9 year old. And he gave a scathing repsonse back. I just think, how dare he? (speak that way to a native in his own country). Regardless, I think he was just jealous and he most likely grew up to be a squinty eyed 5'7" dork. But his personality sure sucked. And that's what this kind of education produces.
A robust community should aim higher than turning out hyper-credentialed drones like Winson who, ironically, lack the agency to shape society in a positive way.
Gutting education as you suggest would undermine institutions. This is only acceptable if you introduce a new institution in which people can place their trust. I think you underestimate how vital academia is to the functioning of the America state, and how quickly things would get nasty in the event of a power vacuum. Trump has 50% of the populace, and the Republican Party is now Trump. But Trump is a man, and basing an institution on a man is not a recipe for stability.
I agree with your general criticism of education as signaling, but instead of gutting education, I think we should fortify it against Goodharting. I think the best way to do that is to introduce a physical fitness requirement for college admissions, and tie this requirement to federal funding.
There is no reason why every single Ivy League graduate cannot be a Division 1 athlete. There are enough athletes in the country with sufficient test scores. Essentially, I am suggesting affirmative action for athletes, to the degree that non-athletes are completely excluded from elite universities.
This would have a few effects:
1. Because muscle growth is inversely correlated with cortisol, parents who force stressful training regimes on their children would see diminishing returns.
2. Since immigrants have a weaker culture of athleticism, they would be less competitive.
3. Black students benefit the most from athletic affirmative action. However, black students are not Goodharting (with the exception of the immigrants you refer to from Africa).
The counter-argument to my scheme is that introducing athletic requirements for universities is a fantasy that will never come true, while your proposed solution of "accelerating the decline of prestige" is much more realistic.
I still believe it is important to put forth constructive solutions which attempt to imagine better institutions, rather than hollowing out existing ones and expecting the result to be fine. Stable institutions reduce the likelihood of inter-elite conflict and civil war.
Ivies already put emphasis on appearance and athletics in admissions.
If you make Asians do push ups or fencing to get admission, they will just do that. It may or may not be better goodhearting than learning the violin.
Most people already think youth sports have reached a painful goodhearting stage with travel leagues and the rest.
Also, I can see a lot of fake female athleticism due to title 9.
A lot of this could be solved with pro-natalism. Parents of lots of kids can’t helicopter parent and getting smart people to have kids younger reduces the time they waste on credentialing. Harvard should give an admission bonus to kids that come from big families.
> "A lot of this could be solved with pro-natalism. Parents of lots of kids can’t helicopter parent and getting smart people to have kids younger reduces the time they waste on credentialing."
I think you might be confusing cause and effect, insofar as credentialism likely suppresses fertility?
This is just an inadvertent way to make Harvard 90% White.
I’m not arguing for the removal of affirmative action here, so no.
At best this would not reduce black enrollment but kill Asian enrollment, at worst this would cause white Americans to adopt a competitive sports culture similar to that of Black Americans, pushing Blacks out of sports at every level. Whats left are a reduced number of elegible Black applicants, with a vastly higher number of white applicants who have almost identical athletics backgrounds, but with access to better training facilities, more expensive sports (fencing, rowing, polo etc) and with much higher test scores and GPAs.
Do you really think black athletics advantages are purely a function of culture?
Nope, but you probably cant understand this article if you think that blacks are over represented in athletics to the extent that they are purely as a function of genetics
"Pushing blacks out of sports at every level" seems to imply an implausible level of displacement unless you think these differences are purely cultural.
I generally agree with your conclusions, but doesn’t the chart you posted go against your claim of East Asians have inflated scores due to prepping? Sebastian Jensen has an article on why Asians score higher. It estimates Asian practice effects to account for 19% of the variance. I’d probably take that as an upper bound though since there isn’t a large conscientiousness gap. The new SAT is literally biased in their favor. Do you think fMRI based methods for estimating IQ are gamable?
https://www.sebjenseb.net/p/why-do-asians-outscore-whites-on
The original source for test bias also states that most of the gains are from the verbal section, which is known to be less affected by practice.
https://humanvarieties.org/2023/07/26/the-sat-and-racial-ethnic-differences-in-cognitive-ability/
I would argue that the test bias is a function of Asians being better at more preppable test, though I still stand by the conclusion that 50% of the advatage in test scores is due to g.
You vibe reasoned parts of your article. I don’t find self reports and anecdotal evidence very convincing. Most people, including Asians, don’t prep for the SAT before the PSAT. You can probably filter for those that took it in 10th grade. Those reporting massive practice effects might have just never learned the material. I wouldn’t call that practice though. My guess is just that the new SAT questions and format are more favorable to Asians due to “environmental” (partially genetic) reasons such as content covered in school. I’m not sure you have data on the new SAT verbal breakdown by passage comprehension and writing.
No offense, but you vastly overestimated agentic behavior of the masses (this is a common mistake among smart people). I don’t deny that greatly increasing your score is possible, but what I’m saying is that it doesn’t explain the observed gap. The median person likely didn’t prep at all. The next most likely categories is probably taking 1 or 2 practice tests. We would likely see a similar gap for state mandated SATs for students that have no intention of going to college. The SAT publishes the percentiles for a SAT takers and a nationally representative sample and they don’t differ too much. It’s also reasonable to assume they prep more and have intrinsically higher ability.
>I don’t find self reports and anecdotal evidence very convincing
OK.
>The median person likely didn’t prep at all
The average Asian scores 10 points above the median.
Mostly due to an actual cognitive advantage and test bias not due to prepping. I’m surprised to see this argument from you. Prepping is bad because it works seems Asian coded. They need to appeal to fairness and consequentialism. How about prepping is bad because it is unaesthetic and Asians have this irrational social signaling game due to ice age genes rather than it providing a large advantage. You can estimate the number of preppers fairly well off amazon purchases, commercial test prep users, and khan academy users. This is literally a Jonathan Haidt phones bad tier argument. Ugly things should be removed from soyciety is the ultimate rightist argument. I don’t see why we need to force ourselves to argue using their frameworks. We can literally use the more powerful Aporia frozen chicken argument. Just say intense prepping is child exploitation.
I don't think you know very many Asians if you think Hagwon-style after school test prep is not common before 10th grade.
A fair number even start explicit SAT prep in 6th or 7th grade to maximize age 12 SAT scores for Hopkins CTY and similar programs.
Are you Asian? I’m not sure why Asians are so innumerate about the proportion of the US population that actually uses test prep. Aren’t they supposed to be good with numbers? I agree that they are less impressive than whites with the same scores and have bad epistemology. Many of them literally believe in superstitions.
At one time in America, if you worked moderately hard and played by the rules that mattered, you were assured a reasonably comfortable life, at least if you were white, and even then, that wasn't obligatory, although it certainly helped. Not only that, but you could rest assured that your children would have a shot at a better life than you had.
This unspoken bargain has broken down. Unless you have family money or possess the kind of freakish talent, skill or physical attractiveness that will get you entrance into the .001%, you can either fight for a spot among the top 10% that service the truly rich, or you can be a peon, scrambling to keep your head above water.
That is why we have seen college admissions get more competitive and helicopter parenting more intense in recent years - to get and keep that 10% status, those kids are going to have to fight like the third monkey on the ramp to get onto Noah's Ark and, brother, it is starting to rain. Winning is not just the best thing, it is the only thing.
This is also why we see so many kids, whose career ambitions are or try to be a youtuber, a rapper or whatever, where mostly all that is needed is chutzpah, salesmanship and a willingness to make a fool of oneself.
I highly recommend this subreddit:
https://old.reddit.com/r/AsianParentStories/
Tiger parenting has a serious negative psychological impact on kids. I think a lot of Asian kids who grew up in the US will not be tiger parenting their kids.
That's a hugely comprehensive article, thank you.
Excellent article
Excellent. Thank you for your hard work.
The Case Against Education really changed my mind. Would like to hear more of your criticisms of it.
Great work. Thank you.
I think the example of Ghana might be a little cherry-picked- there certainly seems to have been pretty strong economic growth in SSA more generally over the last 30-40 years?
https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.PP.CD?locations=ZG
There is significant national GDP growth in SSA but only a small GDP per capita growth.
The world-bank data I was looking at is GDP-per-capita with purchasing-parity adjustments. I do recall that SSA's economy crashed somewhat after the cold war wound down, but I'd be very surprised if there was no net improvement in living standards since the 1950s.
There's definitely a net improvement in living standards on par with the entire world.