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Comment by 4gotunameagain | Hacker News Reader

Okay, let's play the silly analogies game.

Some people from group A enjoy running and can run fast, therefore join marathons and are good at it.

Some people from group B enjoy playing table tennis and have great reflexes, therefore join table tennis tournaments and are good at it.

Some other people realise that marathons have way more A people than B people, and since marathons are prestigious they force equal ratio of A/B people in marathons, effectively reducing the overall quality of marathons and keeping A people (who would thrive) out of them.

Everyone is unhappy, except the ones who forced the outcome and the ones who got into the prestigious sport without deserving it.

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What if some people that would usually be in the group that enjoy playing table tennis realize they actually want to run a marathon and they find out that most marathon gear is only built to help group A run better? What if there were shops that sold marathon gear but there is limited supply and since 9 out of 10 customers are group A people then those few group B that would like to buy the gear cannot because it's always sold out? What if I specifically started selling gear saying that 50% of it was reserved for group B to help them participate in marathon and that I cannot sell it to group A people? That's clearly discrimination, isn't it? And yet...

The problem is that there's so many variables in this equation that it can't simply be resolved in a simple "racism bad" or "discrimination bad" and "if they really wanted to they could but in reality they don't want to". It's a bit more complicated than that.

Getting ‘into’ the sport is not the measure of merit. It’s an imperfect filter meant to manage the finite space available and to select people who are even actually able to finish the race.

I can’t count how many Ivy League classmates I knew who thought simply being admitted was the end game that proved they were superior. Cheating was rampant. 5.0 weighted GPA perfect SAT Eagle Scouts dropped out.

People angry at the morality of an imperfect collectivist fix in favor of an imperfect collectivist filter are on grounds of curious firmness.

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