Feynman's Breakthrough, Disregard Others (2017) - <AUTHOR> https://stepsandleaps.wordpress.com/2017/10/17/feynmans-breakthrough-disregard-others/ <comment><USER2> This feels like the sort of advice that increases the _variance_ of outcomes more than the _mean_ , if that makes any sense. It'll help some people, but also really won't help others. It's like... You'd need some serious disregard for the rest of the physics community to think you can figure out a reactionless drive. This is great if you actually can, but otherwise it's going to lead you to failure.

In a lot of ways, getting advice from the outliers on the very edge of a field is like getting advice from lottery winners. That's not to say you shouldn't - but at the same time a lot of effort has to be made to separate the wheat from the chaff.

<comment><USER3> I think it would be very desirable to increase the variance of outcomes without significantly decreasing the mean.

The way research funding is structured now, researchers are incentivized towards taking small publishable steps without too much risk. This is needed of course, but it isn't going to bring about another Newton.

I think we desperately need a few more Newtons if we're to prosper in the next hundred years.

<comment><USER4> That is probably what is desirable for the field as a whole. But as an individual, not a good idea to shoot for high variance.

<comment><USER5> Anyone who wants high mean low variance career should become an accountant or a dentist: the payoff is vastly better, and it takes a comparable amount of intelligence.

This low variance attitude is why we can't have nice things. We have more "scientists" alive now than at any time in human history, and it is boring and useless with virtually no downstream results.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It is subtle that he didn't just dismiss others, per se. He specifically disregarded what they were working on. If he was brought in to consult or help, he was now working on it so would help.

That is, he did not dismiss people. Or problems brought to him. He just did not worry about reinventing wheels. Odds are, other people are working on something and have made really smart contributions. Don't worry about that. Take advantage of it when you can, but largely don't worry about it.

<comment><USER7> > He just did not worry about reinventing wheels.

That is what annoys the fuck out of me with the software community. We actually reinvent constantly but everyone praises that we never should do it. It feels like a secret master plan of a hidden lobby that want to claim novelty and creativity for themselves.

<comment><USER8> They're called consultants.

Every repackaged fad in software was pumped and sold by high paid consultants looking to sell the next buzz word to some big company who doesn't understand software.

A bunch of them even did it to "lean startups" here in Toronto and attempted to apply it to absolutely everything where it didn't fit or was just lightly repackaged agile. They use it to get gov 'innovation' credit here too which is another cancerous industry full of buzzword consultants.

Only occasionally by luck or in small hard fought increments do things actually get better via these hype trains.

<comment><USER7> Just accusing consultants it too simple. This mindset is prevalent in whole software culture. Think leftpad.

<comment><USER9> Leftpad was an example where we should reinvent the wheel.

Introducing a dependency on an NPM module for so little returned value is a lot different from a physicist or mathematician relying on a peer reviewed result from another academic.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This resembles the titular lesson from (Feynman's second set of memoirs) "Why do you care what other people think?" ... when he had a breakthrough by stopping himself from caring about expectations and just started playing with what interested him. That led to the discovery which led to his Nobel prize.

<comment><USER11> Eh, Feynman put a lot of effort into caring about what other people thought for his whole life. As Murray Gell-Mann said in his obituary, "He surrounded himself with a cloud of myth, and he spent a great deal of time and energy generating anecdotes about himself."

<comment><USER12> He's talking about a chapter from Feynman's autobiography where he explicitly practiced being an uncaring asshole and was surprised at the effectiveness.

<comment><USER13> Not sure if we talk about the same chapter, but I don't think it's fair to characterize this behavior as being an asshole. He realized that he cannot force himself to work on a big problem. Instead he needed to start small with some seemingly inconsequential problem. This later grew into a major discovery.

<comment><USER12> No I think we're talking about separate chapters. Iirc (it's been decades since I read it!) while dating after his first wife died someone advised him he was too "nice" and that women like alpha males who act like assholes. He decided to test that out both on his dates and professionally. He found it largely worked iirc—the dates were more successful, and people at work more responsive. But he didn't like the kind of person it made him into so he stopped the test.

Still I suspect the experience must have ingrained in him an understanding of the effectiveness of not caring what other people think, even if you don't have to be an asshole about it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> W-Stool I'm a bit astounded by some of the more intellectual / academic interpretations of this story. The moral of this story, if there needs to be one, is to "follow your nose" \- go where your knowledge and interests take you, and who cares what your peers think about it.

</comment><comment><USER14> Not caring about what other people think is truly freeing. The other important ting to realize is people just don't care most of the time.

<comment><USER15> > Not caring about what other people think is truly freeing.

1\. young people worry about what others think of them

2\. middle age people stop caring what others think of them

3\. old people realize that nobody is thinking of them

<comment><USER16> But #3 is a reality that slowly blossoms, not something you're born into as a young person. We are also all judging each other to different degrees, and some of these judgments do matter.

<comment><USER17> I feel like the advice "stop caring about what people think" is pretty useless for a lot of people.

Really, how much you care about what other people think depends on what phase of life you're in. In your adolescence, your social survival and who you get to date largely depends on the opinions of others.

When you hit your 30s, usually you have your own family and your own tribe, and other people just don't matter so much. You're in a different phase of life with different goals.

I guess it's possible to find a way to not care what people think in your 20s, too, but for those who DO care a lot, telling them not to care isn't helpful.

<comment><USER15> Giving advice to others is rarely helpful, even if it is excellent advice.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> > At a certain point, I looked up and said, "Dick, [James Watson] must be > either very smart or very lucky.

He ignores the third option: very dishonest. Which is what applied in this case.

<comment><USER19> Care to elaborate? Specifically, is there any doubt about Watson's contribution to the discovery of the double helix structure?

<comment><USER20> Well since Rosalind Franklin did the majority of the work, yes.

<comment><USER19> Did Watson and his co-author fail to credit her in their paper? If they credited her, but the media failed to give her attention, it's not his fault.

<comment><USER21> It's been a ongoing conversation for years how Watson and Crick disregarded Franklin's work, with a lot of evidence to support it.

Crick also wrote some scathing letters to Watson about how he was being disingenuous in this particular book [0].

[0]: [https://profiles.nlm.nih.gov/ps/access/SCBBKN.pdf](https://profiles.nlm.nih.gov/ps/access/SCBBKN.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Discussed at the time: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15497442](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15497442)

</comment><comment><USER23> I feel that these Feynman-isms can hide just how good of a scientist he was.

<comment><USER24> The root of these Feynman-isms is exactly why he was a good scientist. He goes on at length about why this is in his various books.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> If you read Feynman's nobel acceptance speech ([https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/1965/feynman/lectu...](https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/1965/feynman/lecture/)) and some of the other interviews he gave about his QED work, you get the sense that his model of working was to listen carefully to what other people in the field were asserting and then devising a method for proving (or disproving) to himself with his own calculus driven methodology. He got really really good at it, and it lead him to understand the whole field of study better than anyone else. I can see how it could lead to the crisis described in the article, because he would have to spend less time analyzing the work of predecessors and more time pursuing, and then testing, his own hypotheses.

</comment><comment><USER26> The fine print is also to master and absorb the knowledge of the other brilliant people which have come before you. Feynman certainly did this himself. His comment does not mean snooze in calculus while working on the Riemann hypothesis.

The "follow your own path" mantra is particularly important at the edge of human knowledge where established theories break down. As a physicist, I was personally surprised how much people blindly trust theoretical tools well outside their domain of original application. Even when the data is yelling at you "no that's wrong", people commonly persist because they read it in a book or heard it from a more senior professor. I believe this is the group think that Feynman was getting at.

</comment><comment><USER27> Similarly I think it was Shannon.. that was operating differently from others. He wasn't organized and tried a lot of things as he saw fit, as long as it inspired him. He also did not care much about how it looked.

</comment><comment><USER28> When you do what everyone else does, you get where everyone else gets.

</comment><comment><USER29> This trick may work much, much better for people who are massively engaged in their fields and need a new perspective. I don't think either Feynman or Crick started disregarding everything when they were noobs.

</comment><comment><USER30> "What do you care what other people think?" Is the most poignant question I've ever been asked in my life and for that I owe Mr. Feynman an inestimable debt. So few people as good questions.

</comment><comment><USER31> "Dick, this guy must be either very smart or very lucky. He constantly claims he knew less about what was going on than anyone else in the field, but he still made the crucial discovery."

Rosalind Franklin would probably disagree.

<comment><USER32> Franklin and her PhD students famous photo 51 was not enough. If it was, they would have the Nobel.

Crick's mathematical breakthrough to calculate the helix twist and playing around with molecular models was also necessary.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> A directive seemingly at odds with the spirit of social media.

</comment><comment><USER34> Who is the author of this blog? My searching hasn't been able to turn up a name.

</comment><comment><USER35> Thanks for the post. It is exactly what I need right now.</comment>


Executable Models in Software Engineering - <AUTHOR> Dear colleague,
We are Brazilian academic researchers investigating how software engineering professionals understand and use executable models in their practice.
We invite researchers, professors, industry professionals, undergraduate and graduate students to answer our form <https://forms.gle/fH1gMqGPu9EYZvZL7>. The estimated time to answer it is around 15 minutes.
We also ask you to forward this request to your colleagues.
Thank you in advance for your participation.
Bruno Lebtag (UFG) Valdemar Neto (UFG) Rodrigo Santos (UNIRIO). <comment><USER2> Clicky link: [https://forms.gle/fH1gMqGPu9EYZvZL7](https://forms.gle/fH1gMqGPu9EYZvZL7)</comment>


Tell HN: The 4-Hour (Profitable) Startup - How I Did It - <AUTHOR> http://madebyloren.com/posts/4 <comment><USER2> I don't know that this counts as a _startup_. This is not to take anything away from it -- it's a brilliant idea, and well-executed; it has everything that makes a good startup good. It just isn't one in sort of a purely technical sense, in that it's a single product with a limited lifespan.

All in all, well done, though.

<comment><AUTHOR> You're right in that its not a startup. I'm just kind of having fun and playing up a few responses from the original thread. The million dollar question here is this: is it repeatable? If so, then we've got a startup.

<comment><USER3> Next step: Weather machine

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Thanks for the write up. I totally understand where you're coming from with the "it just takes hard work and experience".

But that doesn't mean you should skimp on the details. The reason HN is so awesome is because the contributors say things like "I was able to put some money into reddit ads, I got a 5% conversion rate, and then called my friend that works at company X and it turns out they were having a sale and I'd worked with them before, so I ordered 500 tshirts priced at $6. With $5 shipping, I charged $15 and obtained a $4 margin on each shirt sold. So I made $2k." These are the kinds of blog posts that are truly awesome and valuable, and continue to be valuable over time.

Instead, you're turning this 4 hour startup into a series of articles and trying to pump out as many pageviews as you can to your blog. This first post had nothing your original HN post didn't.

Your idea was very good and you acted quickly. Congrats. I'm not trying to bust balls, it's just a pet peeve of mine. Details would be cool.

EDIT: an example is in order. your "short answer" of "I've done it before" is unhelpful for anyone aspiring to do anything remotely similar.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think you misunderstood the blog post. I don't give a shit about pageviews on my blog. I know you guys care about the details (I get the same way when hearing about other projects) and that's exactly what I'm going to deliver. In all honesty, I would have written one long post packed full of details, but my brain is running on empty right now and I just don't have it in me. Admittedly, the first blog post was a bit weak. Like the post said, I haven't slept in days. How well are your critical thinking skills after being awake for almost 3 days straight? So instead of trying to write and analyse everything in one big burst I'm splitting it up. But I'll get it all out as soon as I can, before I forget anything.

And yes - stats and hard numbers are interesting, but I think there's more to a good analysis than that. I want to help fellow hackers get better. If I told you I had a 5% conversion rate, turned a $4 margin on each shirt and and sold 500 of them, would that help you in any way at all? I think not. That won't bring you any closer to being successful. But if I told you that I optimized the conversion rate by making a dead-simple bullshit-free site, a single shirt design, and no distracting ads, then maybe you could learn a thing or two that could help with future projects. These are the things that really matter.

<comment><USER4> Looking forward to it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Yesterday, I shared what has been deemed the "4-hour startup" (<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2173155>), which was really just a little project I threw together that happened to have a significant amount of immediate success. There were lots of HN members asking about certain aspects of the project, and I absolutely plan on giving back to the community by sharing everything I did to bring the project to life. This is the first post of several in which I'll explain my steps, methods, and thought processes. I answered a bunch of questions in the original thread, but I think these posts will make things much clearer. Hope they help somebody!

<comment><USER5> Thank you for following up on this! I read the original thread and pondered all the crazy details. I want to apologize for all the flak you're catching about minute details, of which most are meaningless, and wish you luck in your current and future endeavors. Not sure why the trolls are out in force today, but you've managed to do something many startups fail to: produce revenue.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Loren, thanks for sharing, first and foremost. I appreciate this thread (and the original) a lot.

I have a related idea and I want your opinion (and others fellow HNers')... Say, you sell the T-shirt for $16 each including shipping. The twist is that if there are over a fixed number of orders then everyone gets a discount, with the earlier buyers get a deeper discount. i.e. the more people buy, the more group discount, and the earlier you buy, the more discount. Do you think, _based on this exercise and your experience_ , whether this will help make it more viral? Or would it be too complicated and hence destroy the conversation rate and virality?

<comment><USER7> That sounds dangerously close to a pyramid/MLM scheme ...

<comment><USER6> I am curious whether it is effective or not, but pyramid/MLM is not something I'm worried about. Let's say the price schedule is well defined (and visible), and that people are paying money in exchange for goods, with various level of discount due to quantity and timeliness to encourage sales. In any case, from a good<->evil scale, I don't think what I suggested is even in the league of Zynga, Groupon, and Twitter promotion (tweet this for a chance...), let alone MLM scam. Whether it could be effective or not, that's my question.

To clarify this is what it would look like, using customer #10, #212 (if exists), and #1350 (if exists) as examples under different scenario

(1) #customers < 100

customer #10 pays $16

(2) 100 <= #customers < 1000

customer #10 pays $12, customer #212 pays $14

(3) 1000 < #customers

customer #10 pays $8, customer #212 pays $10, customer #1350 pays $12

The numbers are made up (the actual numbers may not make sense, so don't try to find flaw about total profit based on these numbers). So basically customers are rewarded for (1) being an early adopter, (2) propagating the viral effect, and (3) having good taste.

Now that I think about it some more, this is similar to Amie Street for indie music (didn't quite strike it big) <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amie_Street>

What do you think?

<comment><AUTHOR> Will it work? Who knows, but it sure sounds like it could. So here's my advice to you: try it and share the results with us.

<comment><USER6> I agree but was hoping to pick your brain. It is more of a thinking out loud.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I've sold dozens of t-shirts, ties, etc on both CafePress and Zazzle. But until this article, I never realized that I could have spend an extra 3.5 hours on each of them and been a serial entrepreneur...

Which is not meant to simply be snarky and diminish his success. But this is not a startup, and not just because of its simplicity.

It is not a startup because it is not a sustainable business. It is a quick cash-in on a very temporary bit of pop culture. A startup it would be... if you create a long-term, reliable income stream from such ideas.

</comment><comment><USER9> How did you learn design?

<comment><USER10> from his blog on his shirt design web site:

[http://beetnikaesthetics.com/blog/beetnik-tutorial-a-must- re...](http://beetnikaesthetics.com/blog/beetnik-tutorial-a-must-read/)

click on the link to "25 must read t-shirt tutorials," you'll learn most techniques for shirt design there.

<comment><USER9> Thanks for that, I am more curious about how he learned design in general because of the kick-ass aesthetic sense in what he's shared of his work.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Loren, I'm interested in the other posts about this, but I'm gunna forget to check your blog again and I might miss it on HN. Get an RSS feed please. Thanks.

<comment><AUTHOR> I know, I know, I know. Lots of requests for this so I'm looking into it right now!

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Amazing how many snowpocalypse items there are out there.

<http://www.zazzle.com/snowpocalypse+gifts>

<comment><USER13> I just launched a clone site myself. Although, mine is snowmageddon. :)

<comment><AUTHOR> You should wait for my blog posts and take some notes. Your copy-cat site would look better and sales would probably increase significantly.

<comment><USER13> You seem bitter for some reason. We're on HN. You should know that ideas will get ran-through like a $2 whore.

Why did you post a "How I Did It" if you don't want people taking what you've done and iterating?

By the way, I'm getting a lot of compliments about the site design (much of it is from your site anyway!).

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm absolutely not bitter and I wasn't being sarcastic - if my response came across as sarcastic, I apologize. I don't mind people finding inspiration in my work and will gladly offer tips on design/code/etc, though I do think it makes you look kind of stupid and unoriginal if you "reiterate" word-for-word. That being said, the internet is almost free-reign as far as I'm concerned, so have at it.

Just curious, why are you hiding behind an anonymous HN username and private domain registration? Doesn't seem like you take very much pride in your work.

<comment><USER13> Sorry, I misunderstood your tone. I meant to change the copy but I posted the site before doing so. It'll be changed soon.

I actually was worried about the backlash for being so blatant. I'm mostly a lurker anyway. Honestly though, what do you think of the site design? I plan on adding more shirts when appropriate (Canadian ISP fiasco, Egyption revolution, etc.).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Thanks for being open. I think the most interesting part will be about how many hits you got and what kind of conversion rate you were seeing.

Some of my personal curiosities: How many people abandoned the purchase when confronted with the PayPal form? Do you think you could have been profitable with paid customer acquisition methods (like geo-targeted display ads), or would that have eaten into your profit too much?

</comment><comment><USER15> I was wondering: especially considering your experience with selling T-shirt, have you done enough to make sure people know that they get their shirts in the right size? Or are you preparing to set aside a specific margin for return cases?

It may just be me always having trouble with US sizes, but I'd imagine it to be a common thing for apparel vendours.

</comment><comment> clark-kent How much profit did it make? Some numbers would be helpful.

</comment><comment><USER16> It's a t-shirt not a startup. Given how much free or cheap infrastructural stuff is out there, and with services like web-based custom t-shirt printing services and PayPal, it's pretty easy and fast to do what he did. And it's not like he hand-made the shirt, mainly the logo image and even that is just a few words of text. I applaud him for seeing a money making opportunity and executing on it, but at the same time it's bad form to call this a startup. At most it's a dirt simple website and t-shirt, with a little glue and polish.

<comment><USER17> Nothing wrong with using massive amounts of leverage for profit, it's definitely entrepreneurship.

<comment><USER16> Agreed it's a form of entrepreneurship, and nothing wrong with using leverage for profit. All good stuff! I just find that calling it a startup is like calling a fish a shark. I mean, you could call a fish a shark, but it really isn't one, despite some similarities (live in water, fins, swim around.) And if the word fish meant the same as the word shark, there's no point having those as two distinct words. A distinction without a difference is existentially pointless.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> You don't have RSS feed on your website?

<comment><AUTHOR> I have no idea how they work and I've never had the desire to use an RSS feed myself. Maybe one day.

<comment><USER19> Since you're doing a custom Rails app, may I point you at this:

[https://github.com/ryanb/railscasts/blob/master/app/controll...](https://github.com/ryanb/railscasts/blob/master/app/controllers/episodes_controller.rb#L12)

[https://github.com/ryanb/railscasts/blob/master/app/views/ep...](https://github.com/ryanb/railscasts/blob/master/app/views/episodes/index.rss.builder)

That's all you'd need to do. Oh, and if you submit your feed to <http://feedburner.com/>, you can hand out their URL instead, and you'll get stats and stuff.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I just whipped up an image and uploaded to Zazzle. I'm going to submit an article called, "My 4-Minute Profitable Startup and How I Did It."

(I didn't actually. Just pretend I did. I'm 100% Lean and Agile MVP Customer- Driven Pivoting and yet flush with cash from a $100m Angel/VC convertible note series C friends-and-family IPO Dutch auction fantasy in my dreams.)

</comment><comment><USER20> Is it really a startup? Really?

<comment><USER21> "start-up - n. A business or an undertaking that has recently begun operation."

<comment><USER12> Think lemonade stand.</comment></comment></comment>


Rocket Map – Chrome extension to visualize geographic title on the page - <AUTHOR> https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/rocket-map/flnpifehdjkdpinkkcbjidfcallfbkim

<comment><AUTHOR> "Rocket Map" is a useful browser extension available for Chrome. The idea behind it is simple - help to read articles with geographical titles by placing those objects on map without leaving the page.

In the most of news there are mentions of city names and countries. It is good if you have in mind whole world map and can easily imagine distances and relative positions of mentioned objects. Most people can't do this, we too.

There are solutions similar to our extension. Our advantage is that we allow user to work with the article on the page and to aggregate geographical objects on one map from this article. You will see the story from different angle, on the map.

Install the extension and play with it. Hope you will like it!</comment>


Ask HN: Finding a summer internship - <AUTHOR>

Hi HN,
I am a current freshman at a top liberal arts college majoring in mathematics and computer science.  Normally this is pretty early for some internships, but I have a relatively large amount of experience with CS/math and was passed out of the intro sequence of 3 courses here (next semester I'm taking a systems course).
Anyway, I was wondering where I should apply for internships for this upcoming summer.  I'm primarily interested in artificial intelligence and security, if that helps at all.  At the moment, I'm thinking of applying to these places:
Google, Microsoft, Apple, Amazon, Dropbox, FundersClub, Facebook
Any/all advice is appreciated!  Thanks! <comment><USER2> If you haven't already, checkout <http://www.university.firstround.com>.

</comment><comment><USER3> Are you limited to the bay area?

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm not limited by anything except for financial concerns. I live in Arizona but go to school in southern California.</comment></comment>


Why Asian-Americans feel powerless in New York's elite high schools - <AUTHOR> https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/why-asian-americans-feel-powerless-in-the-battle-over-new-yorks-elite-high-schools <comment><USER3> Here's another, more critical take on the plan:

[https://quillette.com/2018/06/27/bill-de-blasios-plan-to- pur...](https://quillette.com/2018/06/27/bill-de-blasios-plan-to-purge-asians- from-new-yorks-top-schools/)

I think it's terrible. It's robbing poor kids of a rare opportunity to get a first-rate education, to make elites feel better about themselves.

If you insist that the racial demographics of the schools match those of the city, a much better way to do it is to keep the admissions test, but simply take the top N% w/in each racial bucket, rather than globally.

Otherwise, if you get rid of the test completely and pulling evenly from every school, you are guaranteed (1) you will not create an environment w/ the truly elite (2) you are replacing standardized tests, which are fair, with the whole teacher-grading-system, which is wildly inconsistent and generally a better measure of who behaves and who sucks up than who is academically worthy.

<comment><USER4> > _simply take the top N% w /in each racial bucket, rather than globally_

This would benefit wealthy Black/Latino kids, whose parents can afford test prep. If the goal is to have a more racially diverse student body, it accomplishes that goal. But if the goal is to help disadvantaged kids get ahead, then it's not useful.

<comment><USER5> This is already what happens with the current policies. Affirmative Action hasn't had any benefit to Black kids except those from affluent two-parent families.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The elimination of standard testing as the only application criteria for New York schools such as Stuyvesant is a travesty.

Opinion pieces on this topic consistently misrepresent the situation. Many, many, elite High schools in Nyc are applied to on the basis of a wide variety of criteria. Grades, essays, you name it. These schools have a wonderful mix of admissions processes which allows each of them to capture a portion of promising students that others may miss.

There are exactly 3 High Schools that exclusively use one standardized test. Stuyvesant, Bronx Science, and Brooklyn Tech.

Even if these schools favor people who are "good at tests" that's fine! The other amazing high schools can grab the students who are talented in other ways.

Removing those three disadvantages people who might be highly motivated and/or intelligent but have trouble meeting other vague criteria. That's terrible and discriminatory. It favors conformity in the best case, and quota filling in the worst.

</comment><comment><USER7> Test scores are race-blind and fair. Test instructors do not give more scores to a test because they see it was completed by an Asian test-taker.

It's great that schools are looking for a better "mix" of ethnicities in the incoming class, but they should encourage the underrepresented ethnicities to do better, in tests or other race-blind admission standards.

They should not put an admission "cap" based on the color of your skin

<comment><USER8> >> Test scores are race-blind and fair.

Kind of. There is a fair criticism to be made about tests being unintentionally culturally slanted towards the people that make them, often white Americans.

Of course, in this case, your point is correct, since the people that are overindexing on the tests are Asian-Americans.

<comment><USER7> Agree.

If a test contains questions that favor a particular race, then that is an outright problem, and schools should stop that.

In this case, it's actually the opposite. When a test is in English, often Asians have to learn English, which is often not their primary language at home. So by default, an English-speaking race taking a test, has a HUGE advantage over an Asian test taker.

Which is why the stereotype is that "asians are good at math". Asians are NOT particularly good in math. It's just that in math tests, it's mostly numbers. The language barrier becomes less of an issue, the playing field levels out, so you suddenly notice Asians tend to get higher scores.

I suspect it would be the same for, say, geography tests, if the same test was translated to an Asian language. Suddenly "Asians are good at geography". Not really.

If anything, tests in English are culturally slanted away from Asians where English is often not their primary language.

<comment><USER9> "Asians not particularly good at math"? How does that square with what is well known in published surveys as for instance:

"Singapore is routinely ranked at or near the top in global comparisons of mathematical ability and boasts one of the most admired education systems in the world. In a league table based on test scores from 76 countries published by the OECD in May last year, Singapore came first, followed by Hong Kong, South Korea, Japan and Taiwan. The rankings, based on testing 15-year-olds' abilities in maths and science, reinforced a sense that western children were slipping behind their Asian peers. The UK was in 20th place and the US 28th in the table. "

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is pretty standard and has been going on for decades. Asian-Americans are the last race you can openly commit racist policies against without dogwhistling. I don't know what it is, maybe it's because they are politically underreprsented or it's because they are underrepresented in popular culture in general, or their general attitude to be anti-political in nature, but it's just totally fine to withhold educational resources and outcomes for an entire race of people. It is particularly bad against Chinese-Americans, I've found.

I remember dealing with it as a young child growing up in the Midwest as a Japanese-American whose grandparents were interned in California. I didn't come to "appreciate" the level of systemic, acceptable racism baked into society against Asian-Americans until much later in life.

My feelings on it now are kind of whatever. It is what it is and I don't see it changing much. I sure don't see white activists taking up the Asian banner, though.

<comment><USER10> > _This is pretty standard... I don 't know what it is..._

Mostly _the numbers._ The "Asian" population in America is relatively small, and thus (perceived to be) easily managed. If one looks at demographic shifts, immigration policy, etc., over the course of the European expansion in to what is now America, the game should be pretty clear. Actually, Brazil is also a good example, if you look at their post-slavery immigration plan/policy.[2]

Anyway, I'm linking to an old post of mine from the Harvard discussion.[1] I highly recommend checking out _Prof. Frank Wu 's_ comments in the referenced video.

Also, it's worth noting that generally speaking, public schools are not considered to be _elite_. Elite schools are generally the exclusive ones where politicians, captains of industry, and the like send their kids to help them socialize with 'the right kind of people,' and maybe a smattering of _common folk_. I've been to those (as one of the common folk) and to elite public schools; the difference really _is_ night and day.

This whole thing is just more _divide and conquer_. It pains me to see people continue to fall for it.

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17335887](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17335887) [2] [https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/30/opinion/is-neymar- black-b...](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/30/opinion/is-neymar-black-brazil- and-the-painful-relativity-of-race.html)

<comment><USER8> >> Also, it's worth noting that generally speaking, public schools are not considered to be elite.

That's typically true but not of the NY high schools. These schools are truly elite high schools.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> If a student is not doing well in school, it makes no sense to just "give" that student a higher grade, for "equality" with the rest of the class.

You need to help that student get better, so he/she can achieve the higher grade on his/her own.

If a student can't do multiplication in a test, you don't just "give more points" to that student, for "equality" in the classroom. You need to teach that student to learn multiplication.

You need to bring that student "up" and not everyone else "down".

</comment><comment><USER5> The entire doctrine of Disparate Impact, and Affirmative Action which is borne from it, is one of the most illiberal policies in America. I really hope a constitutionalist Supreme Court can reverse this madness.

On Affirmative Action in specific, here's a great interview from Sowell about the unintended consequences that arise from the awful policy:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VVvnTByzTmA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VVvnTByzTmA)

<comment><USER11> It will be ruled unconstitutional within two years. The way to stop discrimination based on race is to stop discriminating based on race.

<comment><USER5> I really hope so, as there is so much wrong with it. To begin with, the 80% rule creates an impossible standard of "diversity" that doesn't match the reality of how different groups of people have different tendencies and preferences.

The impossible standard mixed with the conflicting doctrines of Disparate Treatment and Disparate Impact mean that every major company has to settle diversity lawsuits for hundreds of millions or into the billions of dollars, no matter what their policy is.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I wonder how de Blasio's proposal would lead to different patterns of where people live in the city - it seems that to play this game (and it sounds like many parents are very motivated to), it makes sense to send your kids to an underperforming school.

<comment><USER13> Yes. I expect the author's mother would seek out school districts with the lowest test scores (perhaps the lowest population of Asian-Americans) and send her daughter there instead. So if what the policy makers really want is to equally distribute Asian immigrants among the city's middle schools, perhaps they've hit on the policy that will do that.

<comment><USER14> > _Yes. I expect the author 's mother would seek out school districts with the > lowest test scores (perhaps the lowest population of Asian-Americans) and > send her daughter there instead._

In that situation, the parents of a child who might be considered academically bright will need to contend with the additional burden of trying to motivate their child to be _different_ (i.e. higher test scores) than the rest of their peers who, for various reasons, don't test as well.

Peer pressure is a thing, and is sometimes seen by parents as a blessing if it gives their child an incentive to study.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Yup. It's especially disheartening that most of the discussion centers around "privilege" and the supposed ease of coasting into one of these schools if parents pay for test prep. Anyone can get test prep books from the New York Public library and practice, practice, practice. The fact that so few members from some groups attend the school says far more about the importance of education in their homes than it does about lack of "endowment."

<comment><USER16> Sadly, there is little discussion of the importance of effort, hard work, persistence, and grit in the success of Asian American students...

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> First Stuy, then UofC goes test-optional, and now CMU eliminating demonstrated interest in their application process...the race to mediocrity.

<comment><USER17> Why does CMU admit more mediocre candidates if they eliminate demonstrated interest? Visiting campus doesn't really say anything about how talented/hard working a candidate is -- all it does is signal that they have enough money and time to visit.

<comment><USER18> You are right that visiting the campus is a weak signal.

However, the decision came with a plethora of other decisions, some probably fair, some more reminiscent of the _Asians-have-bad-personalities_ trick à la Harvard.

 _We 're eliminating demonstrated interest as a consideration in our admission paradigm. We'll no longer encourage supplementary submission of materials, including resumes, research abstracts, writing samples, multimedia demonstrations of talents, and maker portfolios._

[https://admission.enrollment.cmu.edu/pages/eliminating- demon...](https://admission.enrollment.cmu.edu/pages/eliminating-demonstrated- interest)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Instead of debating the criteria for entrance into these elite schools, why not look at what makes them such great schools and replicate that elsewhere? Sure, in so far as being surrounded by top students who study all the time improves the environment, the current elite is likely to remain the elite and the admissions criteria should still be discussed. But if the gap between the quality of those schools and the others wasn't so vast, it would no longer feel like the difference between being guaranteed success in life vs. being doomed to failure.

<comment><USER6> Nyc is full of amazing public high schools, as I mentioned in another comment. Moreover you can apply to virtually any public high school in NYC and be admitted based on whatever criteria they set up, meaning you aren't forced in that case to go to your zoned (regional) school.

These articles misrepresent the situation. There are only three schools that use this test, and they often get the "I studied really hard but I was bad at homework and class participation" student. Luckily there is a mechanism (for now) to catch some of the potential of these students.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> San Francisco went through a similar thing. The best public high schools in SF (namely Lowell) per predominantly Chinese-American. The NAACP sued the school district (NAACP v. San Francisco Unified School District), resulting in race- based admissions in 1983 to reduce the number of Chinese-Americans at the best schools

Then in 1994 Ho v. San Francisco Unified School District happened, and race- based admissions got thrown out.

If you look at the racial demographics of public high schools in San Francisco it is pretty interesting. Of the 10 major schools only two of them have over 10% white students. Those are the only two that only admit students that meet special requirements. One is Lowell (academically the best) with 15.2% white, the other is SOTA (an arts school that requires auditions) with 41.3% white. Lowell is 56.7% Asian, while SOTA is 19.0% Asian.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lowell_High_School_(San_Franci...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lowell_High_School_\(San_Francisco\))

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruth_Asawa_San_Francisco_Schoo...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruth_Asawa_San_Francisco_School_of_the_Arts)

</comment><comment><USER21> This is some bullshit. Trying to exert such rigid control over educational outcomes by favoring people based on their race? Talk about unfair discrimination. It's 2018 (aka $CURRENT_YEAR), haven't we grown beyond this fruitless social engineering wheel-spinning?

In a sane world, this kind of legislation would be shot down with cogent arguments from smart and knowledgeable lawmakers. The only reason such ill- conceived ideas become law is because our republic is essentially a popularity contest, and people will apparently vote for a politician who, without thinking things through (or indeed thinking at all), will gladly push legislation rife with feel-good buzzwords and catchphrases of the moment. All that matters is getting (re-)elected, fairness and justice be damned.

It's no wonder these folks are marching. This is naked social control from ideologues. Fight against it!

<comment><USER22> The suggestion is that educational outcomes are already favoring people by race, just with a veneer laid over it, and we're revisiting the question as to whether or not that's working.

<comment><USER23> I may be reading too much into your use of the word "favoring", but I think it's not safe to assume that any disparate outcome is the effect of favoring certain races. Certainly, educational outcomes differ by race but there are non-discriminatory factors that can play a large role, such as time dedicated towards academics [1]. In other words, I think it's worth asking whether it's the education system that's favoring certain groups, or if it's certain groups that are favoring academic achievement. I don't think it's right to use discriminatory policies to ensure equity of outcome if it's the latter.

1\. [https://nces.ed.gov/pubs2012/2012026/tables/table_35.asp](https://nces.ed.gov/pubs2012/2012026/tables/table_35.asp)

<comment><USER22> I agree - all I'm saying is that claiming the old system doesn't favor people by race (in the way you're meaning, where it tilts the scales in particular direction) isn't trivially demonstrable.

Higher Ed has been struggling with this for awhile. It's not clear that a major emphasis on test scores isn't just putting a quantitative spackle on a biased system, and then declaring the job done.

Especially in a system with such a complicated background as public schooling.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> There is a class if people who do not work, whose parents did not work, who themselves have parents who do not work. The type seen in the documentary "Born Rich". They get into the best universities as legacies.

You never hear talk of this idle class ensconced in inherited privilege and luxury. However, a few decades after Americans were lynching those of African descent, blowing up their little girls while they're going to church, executing them for voter registration drives etc. - a few decades after that if an attempt is made to push blacks at Stuyvesant above the 1 in 45 mark, in a city where 1 in 4 are black - then, only then do we hear about the need for meritocracy and so on. From the mouth of a man who got a "small loan of a million dollars" from his father, with his son-in-law who, according to Daniel Golden, bought his way into Harvard.

When am I going to see the articles about legacy admissions to the top colleges? I won't hold my breath.

Luxury for the idle class at the top, the rat race (with some national oppression of Africans, Lakota etc. thrown in) for everyone else. No thanks, I'll keep my sickle sharpened for a higher target.

<comment><USER25> Some rich heir being a shoe in at Harvard where he skips half his classes and takes a spot from someone with academic interests bothers me too. It's not fair.

But I'm a bit less skeeved out by a school administrator judging someone as an individual, even if it's for a crappy reason like dad being a donor, than having them admit or deny someone just based on the color of their skin.

Just as I would rather work for a boss who hired his buddy from the country club, but harbored no prejudice, than one who refused to hire blacks, Jews, Asians, etc. who met the job requirements.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> It's interesting to see the HN responses in the GPA thread -[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17441601](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17441601) when compared to this one, although both boil down to the measure of scholastic tests as a ingress criteria.

</comment><comment><USER14> The mayor, de Blasio, is trying to institute a similar system that was in place for NYC kindergarten admissions over a decade ago.

Prior to 2007, gifted and talented classes were skewed towards white and asians and the admissions process was criticized for allowing "favoritism and discrimination"[1]. A standardized test was then implemented for 4 year olds going forward, but over subsequent years people realized that this resulted in even lower hispanic and black enrollment into the coveted G&T programs[2].

de Blasio is pushing for a more ethnically diverse mix across all schools. Based on the K G&T admissions changes made in 2007, he is fairly sure this change will achieve his objective. He firmly subscribes to the idea that while certain elite schools will be by definition diluted in terms of academic achievement and excellence, the _overall_ NYC school system will benefit. He fervently believes that trying to increase the global median achievement at the expense of a lower academic peak achieved by a tiny minority of students _is worth it_ (aka YCMAOWBE[3] or TANSTAAFL[4]).

While I agree with the sentiment that one should try to fix the entire pipeline and not focus on the end product (too little too late), critics lambasting de Blasio's plan need to understand that he's simply making different trade-offs during his last term in office as mayor.

[1] [https://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/26/nyregion/26gifted.html](https://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/26/nyregion/26gifted.html)

[2] [https://hechingerreport.org/as-new-york-struggles-to-make- gi...](https://hechingerreport.org/as-new-york-struggles-to-make-gifted- admissions-equitable-one-bronx-family-searches-for-a-way-in/)

[3] [https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/you_can%27t_make_an_omelette_...](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/you_can%27t_make_an_omelette_without_breaking_eggs)

[4] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/There_ain%27t_no_such_thing_as...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/There_ain%27t_no_such_thing_as_a_free_lunch)

<comment><USER24> The parents of "gifted" white 4 year olds trying to keep black kids out due to their "gifted" 4 year olds hard work and their grind and the meritocracy...I mean it sounds like a parody.

"It's not due to racism or the to the manor born gift of idleness - <USER2> 'gifted' 4 year olds are high achievers"

<comment><USER14> I'm having trouble understanding the sentiment of your comment, but it seems you are deriding the "gifted" label bestowed by the NYC Department of Education. I agree that the label is unfortunate. From what I understand so far, the "gifted" curriculum is comparable to other high-achieving schools without the need for a "gifted" designation outside of the city and across the country.

<comment><USER24> The whole thing is so absurd it seems beyond explanation. The concept that there exists a subset of gifted, "high-achieving" 4 year olds is so ridiculous on the face of it I wouldn't even know how to dissuade someone who thought their little munchkin was part of such a 4 year old elect. Maybe the toddlers should be awarded Nobel and Pulitzer prizes for their high achieving finger paintings and playdough sculptures, alongside the more typical gold stars.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Most Hacker News readers are liberal (judging by the comments). And it seems like most Hacker News readers are disgusted by this news.

What every liberal person who read this article with disgust needs to realize is that THIS IS THE LIBERAL END-GAME AND THIS IS WHAT A MAJORITY OF LEFT- LEANING DECISION-MAKERS SUPPORT.

They don't care about merit, or fairness, or making the most out of a scarce resource. All that they care about is enforced "equality," no matter how many people suffer as a consequence.

</comment><comment><USER27> We can argue what is "fair" all we want but what policy makers really care about is votes not "fairness". "fairness" is a moving definition that is associated with the political climate.

Not that we should completely give up on fairness and let political power decide everything but I feel a bit exhausted reading these arguments going in circles for years..

</comment><comment><USER16> Around the country, there's a concerted effort to eliminate magnet schools for much the same rationale. Wealthy NY folks send their kids to private schools like Dalton, Trinity, Packer, etc... Why not make a system that seeks economic parity rather racial parity, and eliminate the moats around private schools?

<comment><USER28> How about we just improve the quality of public school education with a large tax on weapon sales?

Better schools and maybe fewer school shootings...maybe. America has never much cared for its children so yeah. _shrugs_

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> I don't agree with taking top N% as the only admittance criteria but the constant pearl clutching about this and the Harvard case really bothers me.

The idea that this one school can make or break one's future is either absurd or terrifying, and I'm not sure which is actually true.

</comment><comment><USER28> More than 50% of the global population lives in Asia and less than 5% live in North America.

It makes complete sense that wealthy-to-middle class Asians would displace white students to a lesser degree and other communities of color to a higher degree in closely located Western countries with strong schools and favorable immigration policies.

By 2050, would it be so strange that the majority of applicants and students of elite western schools would be Asian?

Other communities will be forced to attend less prestigious institutions until Asian schools hold stronger apppeal with the wealthier citizens in their countries.

</comment><comment><USER11> I can't wait for affirmative action to become unconstitutional.

</comment><comment><USER30> Call me crazy, but what if you just funded all public schools sufficiently that the advantage of going to the "good" school was lessened? Is that too socialist?

<comment><USER25> Good schools are mostly good because of their student bodies.

At a basic level you need teachers who care, books and decent accommodations. If those basics aren't being met, then spending will help. And if those needs are met, it certainly helps to have really great, special teachers who push students a little further.

But I believe if you took the kids from a selective school and swapped them with kids from a school with frequent violence and truancy, the kids from the selective school would still have far better life outcomes, and find ways to succeed despite run down classrooms, less inspiring teachers, and dated books. They would succeed if you put them in an 1800s one-room schoolhouse, or didn't even send them to school at all. They had to pass a high bar for intellectual ability and their parents care about education.

<comment><USER31> 100% agree. 100 years ago, if you didn't have access to a textbook or a teacher, you were largely shit outta luck. Today, with adequately motivated parents / students (and a moderate amount of resources, i.e. access to the internet and/or public library and the knowledge to seek things there), one can bypass these issues. One can even gain knowledge and skill that is far beyond the high-school level.

I actually wonder if the internet will magnify cultural differences over time. So the children who are motivated (whether intrinsic, parents, or culture) will get even further ahead by taking online courses, while the children who are not will fall even further behind.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Gee, all this terrible struggle over what can and can't get from some K-12 school. What a WASTE. Huge misunderstanding.

Bronx High School of Science? How about instead Stanford, MIT, Harvard, Princeton?

How to do that? Well, big secret (don't tell anyone!): How do professors at research universities stay up to date so that they can do leading edge research? Do they take refresher courses at the Bronx High School of Science? Not likely! Do they take courses at all? Essentially no.

So, what the professors do is just study the best materials and go to some seminars. In simple terms, students can do much the same starting with, say, high school ninth grade material and continuing on. If get very far in academics, then just MUST work and learn fully independently or nearly so, so might as well just start doing that ASAP, especially to get around all the terrible struggles of K-12.

Bluntly, nearly no US K-12 teacher knows any material that is worth any student struggling over. So, get THROUGH the K-12 material and get on to college level material, ASAP.

So, for a student who wants the best education in K-12 and later, first, get the basics, the prerequisites for college material, and then study the best college material. "The basics" are just high school math and science together with good skills reading and writing English. History, _belle lettre_ literature, music, etc., maybe fun and nice but for academic success close to irrelevant.

So, in K-12 years, ASAP get into fractions, exponents, compound interest, areas and volumes. Then do first year algebra, plane geometry, second year algebra, trigonometry, solid geometry. Do general science, chemistry, biology, physics. For the science, will do it all again and much more thoroughly again anyway, essentially several times more, so don't get all perfectionistic for the first pass.

Then start on college material -- first up, calculus of one independent variable and then several independent variables, heavy on intuition, light on proofs. Watch the best Internet lectures -- IMHO, Khan Academy is NOT good enough. Use several of the best regarded texts; to find those, ask some college students, TAs, or profs or look at the Web sites of calculus courses at the best universities and see what texts they are using. Likely buy the texts used -- calculus hasn't much changed in decades, highly recommended old texts should be fine and cheap! Do the homework problems and check answers in the back of the book.

Maybe wander onto a college campus or have a family friend who is a college prof and get the tests for the calculus course, take those, and beg a calculus TA or prof to grade the results.

Continue with math and science the same way -- best materials, with some informal contact with a college.

Once get to college junior level material, at some research universities, start attending public research seminars. Typically won't understand more than 10% of the material but WILL get lots of keywords that can motivate and direct studies. Maybe meet a prof or two who will volunteer to grade some homework, say, in math, physics, maybe let you have some copies of tests and grade your solutions. Also many graduate school departments publish their qualifying exams -- they are good and important sources of exercises.

When have good reason to feel confident, take the SAT aptitude tests and the STEM field subject matter tests AND then the same for the GREs. Right, still in K-12 but taking the GRE to show that you are ready for graduate school.

If really want to seal the deal, blow away the college admissions committees, publish some papers, a few should do, in good quality peer reviewed journals.

Then apply to college, maybe using some of the contacts you got from attending the research seminars. So, a friendly prof might just contact the college admissions committee and ask that you be admitted with full scholarship.

So, you enter as a college freshman but start on your Master's and maybe are a TA or research assistant for a prof.

Look, for academics, the real goal is likely not very visible at the Bronx High School of Science or any K-12 place. The real goal is in three words, research, research, and research. For that, get into a good research university, do well learning the prerequisites, attend seminars to see what some of the current research topics are, work with good profs, and do publish some good research.

If want some additional concentration on bio-medical and get an MD, fine. It's also possible to go for a law degree. Or can continue in main line STEM field academics and be a professor at a research university. Or, sure, can do what, say, A. Viterbi did and go for entrepreneurship and, then, get your name on an engineering school!

Does independent study work? It certainly did for me: I got a Ph.D. in applied math and was a college prof. Starting with first year algebra, class time was mostly a waste of time, and I learned nearly all the material, especially the good material I learned well, from independent study. My preparation for the graduate school qualifying exams, my Ph.D. research, my other, published research -- all from essentially just independent study. That's what research professors do -- learn what they need to know and then do their research, both essentially independently.

At least at one time, the math department at Princeton stated on their Web site that no courses were offered for preparation for the qualifying exams, that the courses were introductions to research by experts in their fields, and that students were expected to prepare for the qualifying exams on their own. So, the Princeton math department regards independent study as essential.

One of the best lessons I learned in math was in high school plane geometry: The teacher was the most offensive human I ever saw. So, in class, I just put my head down and slept. Then after school, I read the lesson material quickly and then looked at the exercises. I started with the last, most difficult ones and did them all until I got to the trivial ones. Then I turned to the back of the book for the more difficult supplementary exercises and did ALL of them, never let even one go. So, on the state test, I did well!

I continued to learn math that way: E.g., I never took freshman calculus, instead, got a good text and taught myself, much as I learned high school plane geometry and for a course started on sophomore calculus and did well.

E.g., as a senior, I got a famous, challenging text in topology and gave a prof a lecture a week, for each chapter, one lecture on the material and one more with solutions to the exercises.

It's not just me: Bluntly, if go very far in academics, just MUST be good at independent study. So, might as well get started in high school material, and if do that then can f'get about all the struggles with Bronx High School of Science, Dalton School, etc. Again, the K-12 teachers don't know anything worth struggle. Want to struggle a little? Okay, on YouTube, watch the lectures on quantum mechanics from MIT. Or, for a mathematician giving an introduction to bio-medical research, watch the Eric Lander lectures -- on YouTube, from MIT.

Bronx High School of Science? F'get about it. Again, get the good stuff from, say, Stanford, MIT, Harvard, Princeton, etc. Done. Any questions?

</comment><comment><USER33> 1\. I believe black and hispanic students could do just as well as asian students if their cultures were similar to that of the asian students.

Let's not kid ourselves. The asian students doing well on these tests are born into cultures that value academic achievement more than the average black or hispanic family. There's nothing inherently different about the different groups aside from their cultures.

Keep the tests, and encourage a culture of academic excellent to take root in different communities where it may not currently exist.

2\. Let's stop being so obsessed with race. Racial quotas make people think more about race when our goal should be to make people think less about race and more about individuals apart from the color of their skin.

<comment><USER34> Best comment in this thread!

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Hey look it's my high school

</comment><comment><USER36> So lets say you have a really big balancing scale[1]....

And there's a chute that's been feeding twice as much sand to one side, for hundreds of years....

What do you do to balance it?

      a) Distribute sand equally to each side
      b) Distribute substantially more sand to one side
      c) Make like the imbalance did not happen and ignore it.

If the answer is obvious to the above, then why is leveling the field for historically disenfranchised people an issue? I am referring to Black Americans and Native Americans.

Nigerian Americans are some of the most successful immigrants[2]. Asian Immigrants, Hispanic Immigrants, Indian Immigrants, Eastern European immigrants, all tend to do decent well. What do they all have in common? They are immigrants! Immigrants that don't have the baggage of hundreds of years of oppression in their new country. They used to be disadvantaged in their own country. But coming to a new country does something... a new start.

      I should know, my parents where such immigrants.

But Native Americans[3], and Native Blacks (as in not recently immigrated) continue to do the worst in the achievement scale. Maybe, just maybe... we start realizing that they both share the same initial crutch.. the scale was tipped way against them, until quite recently.[4]

 _And yes, nitpick my points away, the underlying issue is still valid.. immigrants tend to do well in a new country, imbalances can 't be corrected by neutrality going forward, and historically disenfranchised people tend to do bad in the country they are disenfranchised... see poor asians in asia or in india..._

      [1] https://www.google.com/search?q=balancing+scale
      [2] https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-01-12/africa-is-sending-us-its-best-and-brightest
      [3] http://indianyouth.org/american-indian-life/poverty-cycle
      [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multi-Ethnic_Placement_Act

<comment><USER37> Yes, we should punish children for the sins of their fathers.

Especially the immigrants, who had nothing to do with any of it.

<comment><USER36> What is the "punishment" you refer to? Removing an unfair advantage that is so innate, it's almost invisible to those that benefit it?

PS: Not that I should be indulging your vague references... but actually, we do it quite often. Did Bernie Madoff's kids/wife get the spoils of his crime? Has not pretty much every war had a form of "reparations"?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> This is an very good example of why 'people of color' is red herring no one believes. Asians, both yellow and brown, are out performing whites. Blacks are under performing everyone and 'latinos' are doing either ok or pretty badly, depending on if you split them according to skin color.

The issue in America has been and still is why are blacks doing so poorly?

Dressing it up as anything else does no one any favors.

<comment><USER38> > The issue in America has been and still is why are blacks doing so poorly?

If nothing else, enormous income differences? See the top graph here:

[https://www.financialsamurai.com/income-by-race-why-is- asian...](https://www.financialsamurai.com/income-by-race-why-is-asian-income- so-high/)

It's hard to educate yourself well if your family is poor, I hear.

<comment><USER37> >It's hard to educate yourself well if your family is poor, I hear.

Have a look at the incomes of immigrants to the US: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ethnic_groups_in_the_U...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ethnic_groups_in_the_United_States_by_household_income)

The top 20: Ethnic Group Income in US Home country GDP PPP Ratio

Indian American $110026 $7,174.00 15.3367716754948

Taiwanese American $90221 $49,827.00 1.81068496999619

Filipino American $88745 $8,229.00 10.7844209502977

Australian American $81452 $49,882.00 1.63289362896436

Israeli American $79736 $36,250.00 2.19961379310345

Russian American $77349 $27,890.00 2.77335962710649

Greek American $77342 $27,776.00 2.78449020737327

Lebanese American $74757 $19,486.00 3.83644667966745

Sri Lankan American $73856 $13,001.00 5.68079378509346

Croatian American $73196 $24,095.00 3.03780867399875

Latvian American $72690 $27,291.00 2.66351544465208

Lithuanian American $72605 $31,935.00 2.27352434632848

Austrian American $72478 $49,247.00 1.47172416593904

Iranian American $72345 $20,030.00 3.61183225162257

Slovene American $72272 $34,063.00 2.121715644541

Swiss American $71418 $61,360.00 1.16391786179922

Bulgarian American $71331 $21,578.00 3.30572805635369

Romanian American $71230 $23,991.00 2.96903005293652

Scandinavian American $71190 $70,590.00 1.00849978750531

Italian American $70726 $37,970.00 1.86268106399789

How do you explain the differences in income when you have some groups earning 15 and 10 times (!!!) what they did before emigrating and others between 2 to 5? These people were poor, not just "I can't afford an iphone poor", "I can't afford antibiotics for my children" poor, yet are now the richest ethnic groups in the US, out earning local Americans by 40-100%.

<comment><USER16> It's called hard work, persistence, and grit. It's called postponing video game or stick ball time to focus on studies, not hanging out at the mall or Friday night football games. You don't have to be wealthy to wait for marshmellows.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


What's on an airline baggage tag? - <AUTHOR> http://www.jgc.org/blog/2009/08/whats-on-baggage-tag.html

<comment><USER2> I'm pretty sure that most luggage is lost when connecting at a busy airport, and there's some kind of glitch in the baggage handling at the airport. It's doesn't have to be a system-wide failure, just a single truck-driver running late, because a loading-team is two down because of the flu, and 100 bags miss their connections. Naturally, they are given lowest priority (when running behind, better get as many bags as possible on the right flight in time - whats it worth moving one bag that's already missed its flight, instead of one that has a chance of making it).

The bag lie around until evening when the pace slows down, and the remaining bags are routed to the relevant flight. But it might be a while until a there's flight in the relevant direction, and there might not be enough room on it.

At the destination airport, the bag waits around for a courier pickup, and that might take a while, because the airline wants to get as many bags as possible on the same pickup, because it's cheaper/easier.

I may be mistaken, but I'm pretty sure: At NO point during this process doesn't the airline know exactly where the bag is. Barcodes are not at fault here, RFID won't fix it -- the problem is overloaded systems, delayed flights and overly optimistic connection-times are.

They don't tell you this, because it's simply easier not to. If they telling you one thing, they'll soon end up rationalizing every single decision they take regarding every bag to everybody. It sucks but the alternative sucks more.

Upgrading baggage handling is expensive, and there are only the carriers, which in turn means the passagers, to pay for that.

<comment><USER3> _overly optimistic connection-times_

Indeed. In almost all cases, it takes longer for a bag to move between planes than it does for a human to move between planes.

Or, for that matter, to get back onto the same plane. A couple of years ago, I was flying from Montreal to Vancouver, via Edmonton, with only 30 minutes scheduled to get between flights. It turned out that the same plane was being used for both the Montreal-Edmonton and the Edmonton-Vancouver flights; I made the connection, but my suitcase didn't -- it was taken off the plane along with all the others, went into the airport's baggage routing system, and didn't make it through in time to get back onto the plane.

<comment><USER4> "It turned out that the same plane was being used for both the Montreal- Edmonton and the Edmonton-Vancouver flights; I made the connection, but my suitcase didn't -- it was taken off the plane along with all the others, went into the airport's baggage routing system, and didn't make it through in time to get back onto the plane."

I can understand why they wouldn't bother optimizing such a rare special case. There are probably a long chain of procedures that would have to be made more complex to accomodate this.

Yet another case of choosing general scalability over local performance ;)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> "At this point I realized why people get paid at newspapers: it takes time and money to investigate things."

Umm yeah! I never understood how people get all up in arms when newspapers have decided relying in advertising isn't going to pay for good, local, investigative journalism. Personally, I have lost interest in most local papers because I can get the national, international stories from other places, including the source of the story. I keep paying for a copy of the Economist because every edition is worth it.

</comment><comment><USER6> From what I have heard, sometimes it's profitable for airlines to offload your luggage in-favor of some cargo item, since the person sending that cargo is paying more than you are or is a large customer or that cargo has to be somewhere within 24 hours.

This way, the airlines make money. Even inn cases they have to pay out a per- day amount/ compensate you for lost luggage -- they come out ahead on the money they make via sending someone else's cargo.

<comment><USER7> I've seen it. From the gate waiting for boarding I saw cargo loaded in the plane. Later they announced that not all luggage 'could' be accommodated aboard and was to follow on the next plane.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I was once waiting for my flight and watching the activity out on the tarmac. A luggage cart dropped someone's suitcase, and it sat out there for at least an hour while the carts drove back and forth around it. Eventually, someone picked it up, but I'm sure the owner was long gone. Technically, I guess that doesn't count as "lost", but I wouldn't say that they set it aside until they had time to handle it.

<comment><USER7> I had almost same experience in Copenhagen Airport. Had to leave after half an hour and the suitcase was not picked up by passing trucks yet.

Edit: Now I remember; one cart-driver did stop, picked up the suitcase, placed it outside of the driveway, and moved on.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> On a trip to Thailand in 2003 with friends, in Bangkok, my baggage was lost but after 4 hours or so, it turned up and I went to collect it.</comment>


Ask HN: Apple TV or Mac Mini? - <AUTHOR>

I'm looking at buying an Apple TV or Mac Mini to use as a home media centre.  Which one would you recommend?  And have you tried running Linux on either of them? <comment><USER2> I have several of each running for the same application.

I'd recommend the Mini. It does everything the ATV does, and much more, for not a lot of extra $$$.

The ATV is a nice little device, but you're fairly limited in what you can really do with it (no Netflix streaming, for example). One nice this about the ATV is that you can stream audio TO it from iTunes on another machine, I use that feature a lot.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you @brk</comment></comment>


Memo To VCs: Every Great Idea Doesn't Fit In An Elevator Pitch  - <AUTHOR> http://whydoeseverythingsuck.com/2008/07/memo-to-vcs-every-great-idea-doesnt-fit.html

<comment><USER2> His examples don't support his conclusion. They are all easy to describe with an elevator pitch.

Facebook - It is a social network for college students

iPhone - it is an ipod with a web browser and telephone built in

FriendFeed - we extended the Facebook news feed concept to all the places where people host content

wii - it is a nintendo with a cool new controller

data visualization apps - we made an app for visualizing data

His story about Facebook is also bad, because Zuckerburg did say "we made a social network for college students" and Peter Thiel did give him money.

<comment><USER3> You aren't giving elevator pitches for these products; you're giving the one sentence description the NYTimes would use to describe these products to my grandmother. Your sentences accurately describe what these products -are-, but they wouldn't inspire an investor to believe that they were multi-billion dollar opportunities.

Facebook - When Thiel invested in Facebook, the prototypical social network was Friendster, a massive failure. Facebook wasn't the first or the only social network for college students. What made it different from the competition? That's a more interesting question, and one that isn't easily answered in an elevator pitch, not today and not in 2004 when it was first funded.

iPhone - Let's go back to the iPod then. In the words of Slashdot's CmdrTaco when the iPod first launched: "No wireless. Less space than a nomad. Lame." Barring a prototype, how do you describe to an investor what makes the iPod different? My best attempts would fall flat: "You see, it has this little wheel..." Now we understand what the Nomad --> iPod jump is (innovative technology giving much better usability). Now we can spread hype in anticipation of the Palm/WindowsMobile/Blackberry --> iPhone jump. Now we trust that Apple is able to deliver on this hype. But who would have thought all this was possible in the years before the iPod?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> "Every great idea doesn't" != "Not every great idea does"

And now that that's out of the way: so what? Is this a serious problem? If your idea is too great to encapsulate in an elevator pitch, why not wait a few months and turn the pitch into "I'm going to completely fix the X industry. Visit URL dot TLD to look at my prototype."?

</comment><comment><USER5> Memo to self: MAKE IT FIT.

VCs don't give a crap. They should not. Neither should your banker, mother, potential business partner/co-founder, etc...

The onus is on you, the founder(s), to be articulate enough to make it fit.

The focus is on saying things the way the audience understands. That takes two things:

1) Understand your audience (three books could be written on this alone); and

2) Be articulate enough to express your idea in a way your audience will be receptive to it. This is heavily dependent on #1 above.

If the guy you're talking to says "tell me in 30 seconds what you are doing," then you better explain it well, and do so in 30 seconds. You could explain the most complex idea succinctly if you wanted to, and were articulate enough.

It's the same as writing: The introduction to your business plan, for example, is an elevator pitch. The first paragraph of a cover letter is also an elevator pitch. People will decide whether you are onto something or whether you are full of it.

This Hank Williams guy (the author of the post) might simply not be the articulate type. He says the idea "is bull." Does this satisfy the need? No, it merely invalidates it. Whatever he says, people will still expect an elevator pitch. People will still listen to your idea with a short attention span, simply because there is so much bullshit and trash out there.

Make your pitch longer and plant the seeds to your own demise, people.

So yes, my response to this "I feel like ignoring the audience" post is:

Memo to self: MAKE IT FIT.

</comment><comment><USER6> "I don't think Mark Zuckerberg could have sat a VC down and said, this is my idea, (or this is the idea I stole from the Winkelvoss brothers or whatever) please invest in me."

Well, this is exactly what he did when he got money off Peter Thiel, isn't it?

If someone can't either explain your vision or at least mock up a tangible version of it that shows what they are trying to do, then how can they expect to create the product in reality. Sure, Facebook may not have made sense until it existed in some form, nor friendfeed, but that doesn't mean they couldn't have a good elevator pitch, the pitch is often showing off part of the product, not just an idea, which by itself is largely worthless. Most VCs don't fund just ideas, there has to be at least some basic implementation already.

<comment><USER7> Not exactly.

He already had lots of traction. I think the author's supposing that Zuck went to a VC _before_ FB took off like crazy.

 _Sure, Facebook may not have made sense until it existed in some form, nor friendfeed, but that doesn't mean they couldn't have a good elevator pitch, the pitch is often showing off part of the product, not just an idea, which by itself is largely worthless. Most VCs don't fund just ideas, there has to be at least some basic implementation already._

What is this point talking to? I don't think it addresses anything in the post, and I think you might have read it incorrectly.

The author's arguing that elevator pitches don't do justice for some products; that a VC essentially won't be able to understand/grasp the power of a product until s/he sits down and uses it, a la the Nintendo Wii or the iPhone.

<comment><USER6> Post: some products don't have a elevator pitch that can describe them completely and accurately, you need the experience to fully understand the product.

Me: The nature of the VC game is funding unproven things. If the experience is the differentiator than that is what is unproven and in the risk lies the reward. Basically, if the product.

This argument may seem tangential, but I think its important. Innovating an experience is the same as innovating a technology, in the beginning is may not be as explainable (or the market size may not be known) because it hasn't yet been experienced.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I think where this argument breaks down is that VC's don't invest in elevator pitches. Elevator pitches give you a foot in the door. At some point you're going to have to have something more substantial.

I think where the elevator pitch is most useful an exercise in distilling the "one thing" your company doesn - and in the beginning it should be as much as possible a single thing. For Facebook it could have been "We make it easier for people to connect over the web". You take that and then move into more details. Use the Pitch to start a conversation at a networking event and then go from there.

</comment><comment><USER9> The most successful VCs probably live on top of the biggest buildings, meaning they have a very long elevator ride.

Also, these days you could pull your iPhone out of your pocket and show a small demo on the spot.

<comment><USER10> The tallest building on Sand Hill Road is 4-5 stories. Most are 2-3 and some folks have offices on the first floor.

<comment><USER9> Too bad - I was thinking New York style, were presumably it could take a couple of minutes to get to the top.

For a 4 stories building, I would suggest taking the stairs. One more incentive to stay fit, so that you are not too out of breath to pitch while climbing the stairs.

<comment><USER10> Also, the elevator pitch isn't delivered on their turf, it's part of how you get to their turf.

For example, a good elevator pitch survives multiple rounds of "telephone"; it still makes sense when your uncle's cousin's barber tells it to a VC as he's making change.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> ...and the pitch is not the product or the feature, the pitch is the company. I don't know why I read the 'whydoeseverythingsuck.com' entries. You don't sell an investor on the iPhone, you sell them on what makes Apple, Apple. The iPhone follows the overall Apple mission and strategy. You don't sell Facebook.com as it looks, you sell it conceptually. Concept is not distinguishing enough, then you sell on the traction, traffic trends and demographics. You seek funding from _within_ a company like Apple, or Nintendo, to make the products that have to be experienced to understand; you seek external funding to empower the company to be able to fund them.

As the oft repeated question (is your idea a business or just a feature for another company) implies... your pitch should follow.

</comment><comment><USER12> If it doesn't fit in an elevator pitch, you're probably trying to do to much.

<comment><USER13> Similarly, if it can't be distilled into an elevator pitch, you're going to have a really tough time convincing users.</comment></comment>


President Obama Should Shut Down the NSA's Mass Spying Before It's Too Late - <AUTHOR> http://time.com/4565149/obama-trump-nsa-surveillance/ <comment><USER2> Excuse me, but the open enemy of press freedom was Obama himself. The NY Times and James Risen support that view, and Ed Snowden just repeated it in his live event today.

[http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/02/freedom-...](http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/02/freedom- of-the-press-obama-first-amendment-James-Risen/385699/) [https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/aug/17/james-risen- ob...](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/aug/17/james-risen-obama- greatest-enemy-press-freedom-generation)

To the real problem of power abuse. Yes, turn it off. It is too late already. Way too dangerous to manipulate your enemies. But also repeal the AUMF, the declaration of military law, and many more of Obama's and Bush' unconstitutional executive orders. And exactly those were the first points Trump mentioned in his 100 point program.

</comment><comment><USER3> And here we have an object lesson.

When someone proposes a program or any sort, but especially in the realm of national security, ask yourself, "What would happen if the worst person in the world had access to this program?"

And people have the gall to consider libertarians crazy.

Well, f*ck you Time. Your cretinous and slavish sycophantry to fascist impulses within the two major parties has earned you the regret you deserve.

</comment><comment><USER4> I'm not sure I get it?

"He should shut down the NSA and related mass surveillance programs"

Because Trump cant start them up?

"He should physically destroy the databases where the sensitive personal information of hundreds of millions of people are illegally stored. He should release Chelsea Manning and pardon Edward Snowden."

Ok. Good ideas.

"He should support efforts in Congress to curtail location-tracking and other dangerous data collection"

The bill has been introduced, but has not passed the house or senate. Will this get to him in time? Not sure what he can really do here.

"He should declassify and reveal to the public any programs that he does not have the power to end"

Well the government takes the position that this helps our enemies, soooo... This is why Snowden and Manning have not been pardoned. This is considered serious. This might even result in Obama being labeled a traitor.

"He should drag them into the light of day so we have a fighting chance of stopping them during Trump's reign"

Snowden did drag a lot of programs into the light of day.

"He should bulldoze the data centers, computers and all, if he has to"

And he should videotape it, put it on youtube, and send me a link :) I would love to see a determined Obama bulldozing entire complexes.

</comment><comment><USER5> Well, guess what, it's too late :3

</comment><comment><USER6> assuming obama has a interest doing this ...

</comment><comment><USER7> yes, hide your dirty secrets msm</comment>


Ask HN: How much does a founder pay on exit? Is offshoring dumb? - <AUTHOR> Is it simply the following?
> Qualified dividend and long-term capital gain: Tax rate is 0% for the 10%–15% brackets; 15% for the 25%–35% brackets; and 20% for the 39.6% bracket.
Example:
> Let's say I start a company as the Founder and grow it over a period of years. I exit by selling my remaining 10% of shares for 50 million dollars (company valuation of 500m USD)
Do I simply pay a number very close to 20% (due to marginal taxation) of that 50 million dollars?
Essentially I am pretty well-versed in international taxation and have previously used offshore companies (I do not live in the USA, I have offices outside of the USA, and my customers are mostly not from the USA, etc, but I am American). For my next startup, which will be an interface for international buyers of wholesale goods, I am still deciding how to legally set up the company. Now obviously if I set up in a haven I can pay 0% tax on corporate income, but I'm planning for an exit, and when I sell my shares, I will still be liable to pay the US capital gains tax rate.
Basically my final thought is this: I may be able to save up to 15% on corporate income tax by using a haven, but if I'm planning for an exit, perhaps this doesn't matter at all. Additionally, even if not planning for an exit, if I'm able to raise money at a >15% more favorable rate in the valley as a standard Delaware c-corp, and have access to US capital markets, then perhaps it makes more sense to just form a Delaware C-corp and defer international tax minimization strategies until we have a big company. It certainly seems to me that 15% more optimistic valuations are possible in the valley as compared to Singapore or Hong Kong, for example, and the simpler corporate structure should allow investors greater confidence and security.
Any thoughts or feedback? <comment><USER2> If you are a US citizen, your personal taxes are entirely separate from the c-corporation, and accordingly whether the company is based in a tax haven is irrelevant to your personal tax liability.

</comment><comment><USER3> How are you planning on seeking financing for your company? No Silicon Valley VC will fund you unless you have a Delaware C-Corp.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you. This is basically my point/question. There are obviously HK and Singapore based VC's but I reckon Valley VC's would value the company at a valuation that's more than 15% more optimistic.

My other question is regarding the outlined example: Do I simply pay a number very close to 20% (due to marginal taxation) of that 50 million dollars (when selling my shares in a Delaware C-corp)?

<comment><USER3> Assuming you put early exercise clauses in your contract and exercise your shares immediately, yes. If you don't early exercise, you may have to pay ordinary income rates.</comment></comment></comment>