Comment by xyzelement | Hacker News Reader

Comment by xyzelement | Hacker News Reader

Something I've recognized as I grew up and had kids especially, is that your real outcomes in life are often the product of the expectations placed on you.

Eg - I grew up in a poor, 50% immigrant area in Brooklyn. The Russian and Asian immigrant kids had better outcomes than their American peers despite fewer resources because their parents kicked their ass and failure / slacking wasn't an option.

Whether perfect meritocracy exists or not isn't the point, the point is to maximize your own input to increase your own chances.

In contrast I see a lot of modern approach to problem solving is to lower expectations to make things more equal for some. But I expect that this lowering (eg: no need for SATs, no more selective magnet schools, easier admissions by race, etc) will have a negative effect, the opposite of the immigrant mentality described above.

I see a similar trend with lowering enforcement of some laws because the enforcement appears racist based on who's doing the crime. By making it "okay" you are perversely worsening those people's lives in the long run.

It's a little sad because I am sure all of this comes from a good place but it doesn't truly elevate people.

It’s called “the soft bigotry of low expectations”. I’ve come to believe that although progressives mean well, they end up hurting things more than helping. They’re blinded by what “ought to be” that they don’t consider the consequences of what “actually is”. You can’t deny reality in the end.

That's a great term for what I am describing thank you.

Basically - high expectations drive you to exercise whatever is in your power, which is often a lot (eg as exemplified by the asian American experience)

The progressive focus on the "systemic" takes away an individual's power because "hey the world is against you and unless we can change the world nothing will be good for you". I agree with you this ignores a lot of "what actually is"

> real outcomes in life are often the product of the expectations placed on you

Quote from the following article:

“But the gap between optimism and reality is far greater for white teachers and white students than for other teachers and black students, meaning white teachers' high expectations of white students could be giving them an edge.

Finally, the study looked at whether teacher expectations matter. And the study found that they do. White or black, students with similar preparation are more likely to graduate from college if their high school teachers believe that they will. This is why teacher expectations, and any racial bias, matter so much, the authors say.”

https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2017/10/24/study-finds-h...

What is it that you want for your children, and how do you plan on ensuring that they achieve that?

There is no “ensuring” in life, only giving your best

One thing I can articulate - I want my children to have high expectations for themselves and be "ambitious" about persuing hard opportunities in front of them. Versus having victim mentality.

One thing that's obvious is my wife and I both exemplify this attitude, as do our immigrant parents (eg her dad went from broke immigrant to international biz owner).

I also think raising your kid on a religious context (religion is at its base the idea that your choices matter a lot) is a positive. I say this as someone who grew up an atheist, but that's another thing we are doing.

genes matter

Unquestionably but imagine one of the Irish / Italian kids from my neighborhood was adopted by an Asian family at birth.

And the family always said "there's the harder math class? You take that one". "there's a test for the magnet school? You study for that one". "you got accepted to a more party college and a more engineering college? You go to the 2nd one"

You don't think the kid would be more likely to be a success than at baseline?

Except that studies of twins raised apart[1] calculate statistical IQ heritability in the range of 70% or more. Perhaps even more surprising, for the field of Psychology at least[2], these findings appear to be replicated across studies. Even if you're not a full-on IQ apologetic, IQ is at least deeply correlated with success in professional fields, like engineering from your example.

As a parent myself, I wish the scenario you described was true! That guardians had the capacity to simply nurture into reality an Al Einstein or Mikey Phelps, if they just Tiger Mom push their way through the young person's early years. But the data do not indicate that; to the contrary, most of that future person is already defined in their nature/genes at conception, and good parenting, at its best, will simply avoid catastrophe while nudging towards good goals.

All the rest is just to make the guardian feel better about themself.

[1] https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.2218526 [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replication_crisis

Evolution stops at the neck.

Neurons specifically.

You don't say that in polite circles, do you :) . Also hnlurker is correct, he's been down voted to obscurity, so cannot hit 'reply' to his post.

ad hominem

Reply on news.ycombinator.com