only-one1701 (u/only-one1701)

only-one1701 commented on Determinants and causal effects of admission to selective private colleges [pdf] (2023) nber.org/system/files/wor... · Posted by u/EvgeniyZh

credit_guy · 2 days ago

Sure. It also sounds like you liked the pithy answer opportunity more than you than you care about the substance of what I was saying. Which is a shame, the dialogue on Hacker News is generally better than that.

only-one1701 · a day ago

No, I believe the pithy answer also conveys a sufficient rebuttal to the "substance" of what you were saying. Or to put it more explicitly: the scenario you lay out is rare enough to be of no consequence compared to the much more frequent instances of unremarkable legacies getting a massive handicap.

only-one1701 commented on Determinants and causal effects of admission to selective private colleges [pdf] (2023) nber.org/system/files/wor... · Posted by u/EvgeniyZh

credit_guy · 3 days ago

Nice roast there, but was it really necessary?

only-one1701 · 2 days ago

I think it’s a pithy counter to the point you were trying to make.

only-one1701 commented on Determinants and causal effects of admission to selective private colleges [pdf] (2023) nber.org/system/files/wor... · Posted by u/EvgeniyZh

toasterlovin · 3 days ago

Legacy admissions actually make a lot of sense if you think that genetics affect the outcomes you care about but also that the relationship between genetics and outcomes is stochastic and messy (which it is, as breeders in the 1800s knew even before the mechanism was understood).

only-one1701 · 3 days ago

This assumes, among other dubious stuff, that the initial admission of the ur-student was merit based.

only-one1701 commented on Determinants and causal effects of admission to selective private colleges [pdf] (2023) nber.org/system/files/wor... · Posted by u/EvgeniyZh

credit_guy · 3 days ago

Just about a month ago I realized for the first time that legacy admissions result, in many cases, in better candidates rather than worse. Not always. But here's an example (from real life, without names obviously): highly qualified student, with lots of national level achievements, Cornell legacy. Applied in the early admission period to Cornell, got in. But the student had a reasonably high chance for Princeton or Yale, let's say. However, the legacy system incentivized him to apply to Cornell, even if his level was slightly higher. Why? Because if he didn't apply in the early period to Cornell, hoping for Princeton or Yale, and didn't get in, then Cornell would not have given him any preference in regular admissions. So he had to choose between nearly 100% admission at Cornell in the early round, vs 10% chance at Princeton, and then a non-negligible chance to not get into Cornell in regular.

My point: legacies are not always dumber than non-legacies. Sometimes they are stronger, and the legacy system incentivizes them to stick to the school where they are legacy.

only-one1701 · 3 days ago

Which kind of student do you think would be more likely to realize that a single data point is of no consequence: legacy or non-legacy?

only-one1701 commented on I tried coding with AI, I became lazy and stupid thomasorus.com/i-tried-co... · Posted by u/mikae1

rikafurude21 · 16 days ago

What I have come to understand is that it will do exactly what you tell it to do and it usually works well if you give it the right context and proper constraints, but never forget that it is essentially just a very smart autocomplete.

only-one1701 · 16 days ago

Buddy, if there’s one thing I never forget and wish others didn’t either, it’s that it’s very very very helpful autocomplete.

only-one1701 commented on I tried coding with AI, I became lazy and stupid thomasorus.com/i-tried-co... · Posted by u/mikae1

rikafurude21 · 16 days ago

He freely admits that the LLM did his job way faster than he could, but then claims that he doesnt believe it could make him 10x more productive. He decides that he will not use his new "superpower" because the second prompt he sent revealed that the code had security issues, which the LLM presumably also fixed after finding them. The fact that the LLM didnt consider those issues when writing his code puts his mind at rest about the possibility of being replaced by the LLM. Did he consider that the LLM wouldve done it the right way after the first message if prompted correctly? Considering his "personal stance on ai" I think he was going into this experience expecting exactly the result he got to reinforce his beliefs. Unironically enough thats exactly the type of person who would get replaced, because as a developer if youre not using these tools youre staying behind

only-one1701 · 16 days ago

I use (and like) AI, but “you failed the AI by not prompting correctly” strikes me as silly every time I hear it. It reminds me of the meme about programming drones where the conditional statement “if (aboutToCrash)” is followed by the block “dont()”.

only-one1701 commented on Goodbye, Six-Figure Tech Jobs. Young Coders Seek Work at Fast-Food Joints nytimes.com/2025/08/10/te... · Posted by u/Physkal

fakedang · 16 days ago

And somehow morons downvote you for speaking the truth.

My friends in India are all doing swimmingly well with the extremely huge increase in offshoring jobs to India. While in the 2000s it was tech support and in the 2010s it was auxiliary tech workers, today it's actual engineers, UX designers, product guys, even HR and admin functions. Turns out, everything can be sent off to India and LatAm, except for sales and department heads. While previously companies would hire right away from IITs to ship them to the US, today they're content with keeping them in India and letting them work remotely.

The impact of AI in corporate jobs is actually very minimal, but the use of it as a smokescreen for downsizing is uncountable.

only-one1701 · 16 days ago

Bingo. This, plus Section 174, are the real stories re: job depression.

only-one1701 commented on Goodbye, Six-Figure Tech Jobs. Young Coders Seek Work at Fast-Food Joints nytimes.com/2025/08/10/te... · Posted by u/Physkal

pfannkuchen · 16 days ago

Delegating executive decision making to what is essentially an automated form of Reddit and stack overflow seems like it could possibly lead to bad results.

only-one1701 · 16 days ago

Serious question: do you not think these very executives are relying HEAVILY on ChatGPT etc right now?

only-one1701 commented on A brief history of the absurdities of the Soviet Union laurivahtre.ee/empire-of-... · Posted by u/Maro

matheusmoreira · 17 days ago

> But I'm not going to chuckle at the hypothetical people we're supposed to pity for wanting this

We should.

What communists really want is to have their every need and desire magically provided for, as if they were fundamental rights. In other words, what they truly want is called post-scarcity: the absence of an economy.

Communism and socialism are economic models. There exists scarcity of goods and resources and therefore they must be economized. There's a system that chooses who gets access to said scarce resources.

Socialism is sold to people as though it was post-scarcity. People think they'd be living comfortable "secure" lives where everything is guaranteed and provided for. Ah yes, the fabled memetic fully automated luxury space communism.

People who buy into this will probably end up doing forced hard labor in a field somewhere should communists actually come to power. They will not get to do what they want, they will work wherever the state puts them to work under penalty of death by firing squad. The state has no choice, anything else means mass starvation and millions of deaths.

Pity is far too lenient a reaction towards such reality distorting naïveté. If left unchecked, they will win elections and actually install socialism in your country.

We have a better chance of achieving post scarcity by collapsing capitalism with relentless automation.

only-one1701 · 17 days ago

Idk the Nordics seem to be doing ok

only-one1701 commented on Stanford to continue legacy admissions and withdraw from Cal Grants forbes.com/sites/michaelt... · Posted by u/hhs

WalterBright · 17 days ago

I dunno about other colleges, but Caltech you earned the degree. Many students dropped out because of the workload. There were a couple that were able to coast through, but they had IQs easily over 160.

They didn't do legacy admits as far as I knew.

But what it's like today, I have no information.

only-one1701 · 17 days ago

Thats the exception then; at Stanford all you need to graduate is a pulse.