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Comment by HansLandaa | Hacker News Reader

Well, there is probably a positive correlation with race because in America wealth and income are highly correlated with race. It is not a perfect correlation though and I'm sure there are many people from rural areas that would benefit from the adversity metrics. I'm not sure if any attempt to address adversity should simply be dismissed because of the correlation with race.

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In fact this sounds like the right way to adjust test score expectations -- if someone came from a place with little opportunity, but still scores reasonably well, that means a lot more than someone who had a lot of opportunity and only made use of some of it. The applications would look very similar to a college admittance board, so I think this is a positive change. Using race as a proxy for opportunity levels growing up is entirely the wrong way to approach the problem because 1) you can have people in "disadvantaged" races who had lots of opportunity who get an unfair, unneeded boost and 2) (more important imo) you don't disadvantage folks from an "advantaged" race who actually faced a lot of adversity growing up. A white kid who grows up in a trailer park going to a public school should be given a helping hand over a kid from [insert other race here] who grew up attending a $50k/year private school.

Of course, any system has its problems. I'm sure that people will find a way to game this system when they don't deserve the advantage even though it sounds like a reasonably implemented idea. Just hiding the scores doesn't fix this, because someone corrupt enough to try to game this won't care if they're doing something immoral anyway. As someone who would have benefited a lot from this growing up, I think it's a great idea. We just have to hope the inherent good ideas here outweigh the immoral system-gamers.

> A white kid who grows up in a trailer park going to a public school should be given a helping hand over a kid from [insert other race here] who grew up attending a $50k/year private school.

Or maybe it isn't a helping hand. Maybe it's just a recognition that the kid, in getting to the level he/she is at through all that adversity, may be displaying more talent than the advantaged kid.

You can think of it as social justice, giving a helping hand to those who need it. Or you can think of it as trying to adjust measures of achievement in order to measure actual talent instead.

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