The idea that "we live in a simulation" is neither scientific or falsifiable.

Empirical observation can't suffice because we cannot make observations outside of our own universe (and any purported observations of an outside universe could be explained away as part of the simulation or part of our own universe). Mathematical work can't suffice because another "true" universe could simply be explained to operate by different rules.

While the advent of computers makes this whole idea sound sexy and new, the idea that we may live in a false reality was basically the genesis of modern ("modern" as in post-medieval) when Rene Descartes used the supposition of a "Deamon" causing a false reality to get to his famous "I think therefore I am." The limitations of that approach were famously exposed by Immanual Kant's "Critique of Pure Reason."

The idea is that they make it so that unless you are specifically familiar with Havard's grading system, you don't know what the grades mean. Only a select handful of prospective employers are. For most students, there is no effective sorting.

Yale law (by the way) takes it one step further and awards no grades whatsoever in the first year, which is the only year that typically matters for law firm hiring. Years 2-3 only matter for clerkships.

Perhaps, but the fact that people in exiting positions of power are disproportionately Harvard (or other elite graduates) means it tends to be self-perpetuating. It's also very difficult to get into Harvard. You either need elite academics, a compelling story, or big wealth/power backing you (often a combination thereof). The barrier to getting in alone maintains prestige.

You see this in elite law/business schools too. Top law firms/banks/consultancies often make offers to Harbard Law/Business school graduates before they've even received any grades. In the case of Harvard law, the grades they do give are purposely obfuscated with a grading system that goes "High Honors, Honors, Pass, Fail" instead of A/B/C/D. This works because most of these law firms don't really care what your grades are. They just care you fit the mold and got into Harvard law. At that level, grades are just for people gunning for Supreme Court clerkships and the like.

Grade inflation is pretty closely tied to the extremely high cost of attending high-end private schools. When you are paying $100k+ annually, the student becomes the customer rather than the product. Part of what the student is paying for is buying their way out of the "sink or swim" academic mentality of state schools (which typically charge below cost to in-state undergraduates). You upset the customer, and you burn the bridge for future donations. Donations from wealthy alums are a key part of most private school's operating budget and endowments.

More widely available information about professors also helps this cycle. Students can look up professors and see whether they have a reputation as an easy grader. From the perspective of the student, it makes the most sense to choose only easy graders if they are looking to maximize GPA (and hence job prospects). What happens then is any professor who gains a reputation as a "hard grader" will find students avoiding their course and giving bad reviews. A professor with chronically undersubscribed courses and poor student reviews will have difficulty with promotions and tenure. Therefore, there's no incentive from the professor's standpoint to give a bad grade- it only hurts them professionally. It may not matter once they have tenure, but by the time they get tenure they've probably worked a decade under a soft grading model and don't really have an incentive to change.

Just because someone has a "Manager" title doesn't mean they aren't doing anything besides telling people what to do. Good management is intimately involved in the actual work. If done right, they are in the manager role because they have a higher-level mastery of the work and can better coordinate what needs to be done while also focusing their efforts on the most complex and highest-value tasks. If that's not happening, it may not necessarily be the manager's fault so much as bureaucracy the company foists upon managers taking up all of their time. If people are being promoted to middle management without superior mastery, then it's actually senior management that is at fault. But somehow senior management is exempt from the current fatwah against middle management.

The facts simply don't agree with your feelings. Women in Iran aren't being told to focus on their careers, but they aren't having any more babies than in the U.S.

So is that why Iran has a fertility rate of 1.67 (about the same as the U.S. and France)?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

You know, Iran- that feminist paradise with ultra woke schools and universities.

If it were just the economy, then the countries with the highest fertility rates would be places like Monaco, Luxembourg, Singapore, and Norway. In fact, no rich country (defined as a "High" human development index) is above replacement birthrates in 2025 except Israel (likely due to the high fertility rates among the Orthodox community there). Instead, the places with the highest fertility are Chad, Somalia, and the Democratic Republic of Congo (birthrates of over 5 per woman). Even among middle-income countries, only a handful are above replacement.

You are complaining about bailing your college-educated kid out. In the countries with the highest birthrates they are worried about their children literally dying of starvation/malnutrition. The reason is simple: places like Chad and Somalia are so poor they don't have access to birth control. Once people have access, they stop having so many kids.

Religious communities may buck this trend (see Israel), so there is some indication that very strong social norms can counteract it. But I don't think "Make everyone and ultra-Orthodox Jew or Mormon" is likely to change global fertility trends. Even the Mormons aren't having as many children as they used to.

Ban hormonal contraception and people will switch to copper IUDs. Ban that and people will switch to condoms. Train has left the station.

True, but you spend 18 years raising kids (often a lot more before they are fully self-sufficient) and most are only going to have a handful of years of old age frailty where they benefit from kids helping them out. Plus, there's no guarantee your kid will step up or be able to.

You really have to enjoy kids for their own sake to make it a net lifetime benefit, not for the things they may do for you at some very late date.

I think this is an effect rather than a cause of declining fertility. People don't have fewer babies because motherhood is no longer considered the aspirational default. Motherhood is no longer the aspirational default because people are having fewer babies.

You see the same decline in fertility worldwide in all different cultures with all sorts of different government policies and social norms. The only common denominator is access to birth control. That's it. The only places where fertility rates are still high are desperately poor places where even the cheapest birth control is still out of reach to a large swath of the population. As it turns out, when you give people the option of "kids or no kids", most people either choose no kids or choose to have only 1-2. No amount of social support (or money) is going to change the fact that raising kids is an incredible amount of work, and much of that work is work that you can't buy your way out of if you actually want a healthy relationship with them.

Bingo. Living in a "hacker house" (dorm) and working all the time might sound ok if you are used to college where you spent all your time on campus hanging/out or studying with the same people. It's completely unworkable for anybody with a family who has other obligations. These conditions basically guarantee you will only get people in their 20s to apply.

I can't imagine there are really that many billionaire gamers out there. Perhaps Mohammed Bin Salman (known to be an avid gamer is a mega purchaser or something. Musk is known to just play people to game for him.

In any event, $20k to a billionaire may be like $20 to me, but I certainly wouldn't pay $20 for some cheesy character skin. I might pay $20 for DLC or something that actually impacts game play.

I've played FPS games since the original Doom was the hot new thing, and I've never understood why anyone would pay real money for cosmetic player doodads.

It has been over 20 years since I took AP Spanish, but the speaking portion was actually a pretty small portion of it and was only good for something like 20% of your final score. It was possible to get a 3 or 4 on the exam and bomb the spoken portion.