BF2S Forums Pandemic thread

@ larssen, yes i agree with you. there should be less focus on being the absolute best and more of a holistic focus on a wider range of institutions that produce quality graduates in a broader sense. no question there. i think the US/U.K. institutions can learn a lot about the european system (but not too much; for e.g. the french system is notorious for cramming and punitive exams, and still somehow produces really mediocre professors and researchers at the end of it).

a lot of the phenomenon you describe basically comes down to an anglophone bias in world rankings and perceived prestige. a graduate from an ancient university in germany or italy, whilst not qualifying from the ‘very best’, is probably going to speak 2-3 languages, be comfortable working across an entire continent, and have a much broader outlook than an egghead like dilbert or a medievalist pedant from st. andrews. there’s a concentration of pressure at these universities because of a global interest in them.

and it goes way beyond oxbridge and golden triangle, too. even supposedly second-tier universities like the university of london, manchester, bristol, edinburgh, etc, have suicidally competitive exam cultures. the entry requirements in 2008/9, when i applied for undergraduate, were insane, too. it’s only because of marketisation and the removal of the student numbers cap that it’s begun to seem marginally easier to get accepted to them. burn out (and suicide even) is still alarmingly high.

e: i should say the burnout and depression manifests most in international students. there are so many people in china trying to get into modest-sized medieval or victorian institutions in the UK. and in universities like bristol you can see actual suicide epidemics among domestic undergraduates. it's crazy stuff.

Last edited by uziq (2020-08-24 04:44:21)

grades are only more important than learning in a very narrow subset of ultra-competitive applications. top careers, corporate graduate schemes (most of which require a 'good honours' or 2:1 fyi) and top postgraduate courses (most of which require a 'good honours' or 2:1 too).

it's an inevitable consequence of society's tertiary/quarternary sectors being fucked and not growing as the politicians hoped. we have transitioned to a services economy and aim for high-levels of university education, but the services sector isn't big enough to accommodate them all. we only need so many lawyers, journalists, engineers, architects, publishers, doctors/dentists/vets, etc. plus every career field has a healthy quotient of senile boomers who are clinging on to their senior positions and pension pots for dear life. in almost all of the above-listed careers, to the best of my knowledge, career mobility is stalling on the lower rungs. people spend 10-15 years in the lower lackey roles because the retirement age keeps creeping up for the boomers. not a great picture.

it's not really the university's fault. and grade inflation, such as it exists, is in response to these market pressures.

every sector is ‘value creating’, what a meaningless phrase. if they weren’t they would be out of business. if you mean ‘productive’ then, yes, sure, like any other number of knowledge and expertise-based role in the tertiary or quarternary sector ... like i said. granted, it’s value creation is tied into actual physical services rendered and not speculation, but a country only needs so many engineers when it doesn’t have primary/secondary resource extraction and manufacturing. 

who could have predicted that western consumers and businesses would want things to be ever cheaper and more affordable, and that foreign labour markets would undercut expensive western labour? politicians didn’t shut down the mines or steel works out of sheer perversion, you know. they did it because it was no longer competitive.

uziq wrote:

@ larssen, yes i agree with you. there should be less focus on being the absolute best and more of a holistic focus on a wider range of institutions that produce quality graduates in a broader sense. no question there. i think the US/U.K. institutions can learn a lot about the european system (but not too much; for e.g. the french system is notorious for cramming and punitive exams, and still somehow produces really mediocre professors and researchers at the end of it).

a lot of the phenomenon you describe basically comes down to an anglophone bias in world rankings and perceived prestige. a graduate from an ancient university in germany or italy, whilst not qualifying from the ‘very best’, is probably going to speak 2-3 languages, be comfortable working across an entire continent, and have a much broader outlook than an egghead like dilbert or a medievalist pedant from st. andrews. there’s a concentration of pressure at these universities because of a global interest in them.

and it goes way beyond oxbridge and golden triangle, too. even supposedly second-tier universities like the university of london, manchester, bristol, edinburgh, etc, have suicidally competitive exam cultures. the entry requirements in 2008/9, when i applied for undergraduate, were insane, too. it’s only because of marketisation and the removal of the student numbers cap that it’s begun to seem marginally easier to get accepted to them. burn out (and suicide even) is still alarmingly high.

e: i should say the burnout and depression manifests most in international students. there are so many people in china trying to get into modest-sized medieval or victorian institutions in the UK. and in universities like bristol you can see actual suicide epidemics among domestic undergraduates. it's crazy stuff.

The whole rat race to be the best academically is also something that I find a little strange to be honest. It's so different to how universities positioned themselves in the past. Educational standards and degrees are becoming more uniform but so too the schools of thought. In terms of degrees, the rest of Europe has only recently changed to a more english/american model. In most places the bachelor's degree didn't even exist until a few decades ago as universities only conferred postgraduate degrees. It was 1 stretch of 4-6+ years of study. That's recognisable in the culture as well. In many continental European countries it's the norm to obtain an MA degree if you attend uni as an undergraduate is traditionally considered 'incomplete studies'. It also used to be the case that universities were much more differentiated by specific schools of thought and local intellectual specialisms. So why compete 'to be the best' if you're really doing something else? These days any given uni apparently needs to be able to do the same, everything and conform to the international consensus on what the taught degrees should be structured like. Of course there's benefits but I'm not sure how I feel about that. I suppose it's in line with the broader forces of globalism turning western cultures into a single mush in some ways.

The suicide epidemic doesn't surprise me. Some people handle the uni working environment quite well and I suppose you're one of those types. Many however don't. Especially the later phases of a masters which are more solitary seem to break people. I have a few friends who never finished their postgrad and dropped out during the thesis. I was thinking about it too at some point but pulled through thankfully.

uziq wrote:

it's an inevitable consequence of society's tertiary/quarternary sectors being fucked and not growing as the politicians hoped. we have transitioned to a services economy and aim for high-levels of university education, but the services sector isn't big enough to accommodate them all. we only need so many lawyers, journalists, engineers, architects, publishers, doctors/dentists/vets, etc. plus every career field has a healthy quotient of senile boomers who are clinging on to their senior positions and pension pots for dear life. in almost all of the above-listed careers, to the best of my knowledge, career mobility is stalling on the lower rungs. people spend 10-15 years in the lower lackey roles because the retirement age keeps creeping up for the boomers. not a great picture.

This is true I suppose and I recognise it in government. Frustrated, overly ambitious very bright people stuck in the same sort of position for a decade because career mobility has ground to a halt. If you look back esp. to the 40s and 50s you'll be astounded at what age people held roles that we now associate with later-in-life sort of responsibility.

Last edited by Larssen (2020-08-24 13:49:13)

Larssen wrote:

This is true I suppose and I recognise it in government. Frustrated, overly ambitious very bright people stuck in the same sort of position for a decade because career mobility has ground to a halt. If you look back esp. to the 40s and 50s you'll be astounded at what age people held roles that we now associate with later-in-life sort of responsibility.

Shits fucked up. People of my father's generation didn't even do degrees and were given huge responsibility at young ages. He found it hilarious that he had Oxbridge double firsts as filing assistants.
On my first real day of work I was given responsibility for about $1m of tooling and $5m of machines.

it’s become perfectly clear that trump and his inner circle knew well in advance how serious covid was, and seriously engaged in a policy of downplaying and delaying the threat posed. incredibly reckless and a dereliction of leadership.

everything he is saying publicly about being blindsided, stepping in to do a heroic job, etc, are a categorical lie. the evidence to the contrary was there in the early quiet reports from the medical/academic establishment, and now it’s coming to light in the political arena too. absolutely galling.

the question is, how long will the trump-tards, including jay, go on defending his record and echoing his statements? america is going to have to reckon with its uniquely bad performance at some point.

Trump has admitted he played down the Covid-19 pandemic, claiming that he did not want to create panic. On 7 February he told the journalist Bob Woodward in a phone call that coronavirus was “more deadly than even your strenuous flus”, but the message he gave to the public was very different.

By 27 February he was telling the public:

It’s going to disappear. One day – it’s like a miracle – it will disappear.

The president admitted to Woodward in March:

I wanted to always play it down. I still like playing it down, because I don’t want to create a panic.

insane. you have a very stupid man for a leader who is treating a nation of people more intelligent than him like children who can’t handle the truth. covid will just disappear he says, knowing that it’s deadlier than even serious flu and airborne. maybe the tooth fairy will take it in the night? be good now for santa!

pirana6 wrote:

You're thinking logically. You're assuming that they must come to reason at some point and agree that he's an idiot. None of that matters to them.

They care about one single thing and thats fucking over the dems. That's all they care about. They only tie in his accomplishments to half-reason that he's the better candidate. Any failures just... don't matter. The ONE goal is to fuck over the dems so it doesn't matter what he did or when or how. He could indeed walk down a street in America and shoot someone. Most wouldn't agree it's good, per se, but they would still vote for him to fuck over the other side.

There is some sort of syndrome, maybe related to Dunnin-Kruger, maybe simple ego-stupidity, which afflicts a lot of people.

Things went right - Its because I'm the greatest genius ever, there's no greater genius than me, and its all thanks to me with no help from anyone.

Things went wrong - Einstein, Moses and Judge Judy combined could not in a millions years foreseen or mitigated this one, I'm still the greatest genius ever but my advisers do seem a bit stupid.

You can see it in anyone, from garbage men to CEOs and even Presidents.

* Mistyped

There's something a bit more rabid about this than simple confirmation bias, lets call it the Trump-Johnson effect, there's the need to aggressively dismiss anyone who questions it.

Then there's Trump-Johnsonism by proxy - my leader is the greatest genius ever and by associating my self with him must make me a genius too.

Twelve children who likely contracted Covid-19 at three childcare operations in the US infected some of their parents and siblings, according to a study, adding to evidence that young kids can transmit the disease.

Previous studies had suggested children aged 10 years or older can efficiently transmit the virus in school settings.

The study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) published on Friday found that much younger children can also spread the virus, including a case of an 8-month-old who apparently infected both parents.

From the 12 documented cases acquired at the childcare facilities in Utah, virus transmission was found among at least 12 of 46 non-facility contacts, such as parents - one of whom required hospitalisation - siblings and an aunt.

Transmission was observed from two of three children with confirmed, asymptomatic Covid-19, researchers found, further evidence that those without symptoms can spread the virus.

From April 1 to July 10, Salt Lake County identified 17 childcare facilities, including daycare centres and day camps, with at least two confirmed Covid-19 cases within a 14-day period. Data in the CDC report involves only outbreaks in three of these.

At two of the facilities, the researchers traced the primary infection to staff members exposed to Covid-19 through a family member.

let’s run a bet on whether jay’s household gets another lick.

incredibly stupid but also AVOIDABLE.

of course you’re sending a bunch of 18 year old kids with smooth koala brains back to college towns and campuses, insisting they return to school ... but then have no social life, no clubs, no fraternities? come on. of course the teenagers are stupid but they are almost neurologically inclined to be short-termist and dumb.

this is more their fault and their responsibility than anything, i agree, but encouraging people to return to school en masse is sending all the wrong messaging if you want to curb the growth.

i’m very surprised you don’t have one. your appeals to technocracy and ‘science weirdos’ is literally the same as dominic cummings’ (so far he’s had to let go of a special advisor who said blacks are naturally slower than whites, and another one who advocated for shooting protestors).

i’d support your patreon.