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Comment by sho | Hacker News Reader

My own anecdata: the (also two) ex-McKinsey people I've known seemed reasonably decent people at heart, but both possessed a toxic combination of:

(1) being absolutely intoxicated by their own old-money-fueled prestige academic/career path, which gave them a

(2) vastly overrated sense of their own knowledge, ability, wisdom, capability, importance, and general superiority to anyone not in possession of these stellar academic/prestige institutional credentials which was

(3) completely unfounded in every way.

I'm no longer impressed by Ivy League or any of these prestige institutional credentials.

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I worked hard and got into one of these prestigious universities for my Masters, but grew up lower-middle class, on the countryside, in a not very healthy environment.

Having seen it first-hand, I can only agree. There's so much privilege at these institutions, it's almost sickening sometimes. I don't want to throw everyone in one pot, there's certainly genuine, decent people there. But there is so much self-importance and arrogance floating around, and just this casual and unquestioned attitude of superiority.

What I do want to say is that pretty much everyone I met there had a base-level above average smartness and/or work ethic. But I also mostly hung out with STEM people. Didn't get to know many managerial or related types.

Sorta like tech companies these days.

There’s some agreement among historians that education above a bachelors was started as a payola scheme between the church and landed gentry to buy their kids “advanced” credentials so they could be middle managers still not worker class.

We do love to keep our historical memes alive despite the economy having nothing to do with them. Physical statistics are what keep enough TP and food on shelves so the people do not riot.

Not an endorsement for Mentava, but there’s an indictment of our education system when their program is resulting in kids being fluent in AP math by 5th grade (or so they claim): http://mentava.com

Where are they claiming AP math by 5th grade? I seem them saying algebra by 5th grade, which is a far cry from, say, AP Precalculus let alone AP Calculus AB or AP Statistics.

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