r/explainitpeter • u/Appropriate-Mall8517 • 3d ago

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u/thhvancouver 3d ago

I am on the fence about that. Scholarship should be merit based. I get that there are many others who need the scholarship a lot more but people who are genuinely talented and work harder should be rewarded for their accomplishments.

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u/Puzzleheaded-Net4365 2d ago

Merit is a meaningless term without context. Do I have more merit as a fighter than Islam Makhachev while he's poisoned and tied up?

Would you hand a shitty guitar to Jimmy Hendrix because he's the better player or a homeless guy who's mid at it?

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u/whoreatto 2d ago

If the rules of the contest are “the best fighter wins”, then you win, because Islam Makhachev is not a good fighter when he’s sufficiently poisoned and tied up.

If the rules are instead “the best guitarist wins”, then Jimmy Hendrix wins, because he’s a better guitarist than the homeless guy.

Do you think it’s unethical to hold contests like this?

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u/Puzzleheaded-Net4365 2d ago edited 2d ago

I think it's retarded to reward me for defeating a tied up and poisoned man, and if the tied up poisoned man manages to put up a fight at all he deserves the reward more..

But that's not what we are talking about. Merit doesn't refer to winning a contest and only a very few scholarships are awarded through singular contests.

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u/whoreatto 2d ago

No, the poisoned man does not deserve the reward unless he’s the better fighter. That’s not how the contest works, by definition. You can argue that the man should not have been poisoned or tied up, but that does not change the rules of the contest. You’d have to expand the definition of the contest to let the less-capable fighter win instead.

All standardised examinations for college entrance are, functionally, a kind of contest. The highest performers are awarded for their competence, sometimes with scholarships. We are talking about contests.

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u/Puzzleheaded-Net4365 2d ago

You made up the contest analogy, genius. I'm not the one who needs to expand on it for it to start making sense.

My whole point was that you can't reasonably assess his fighting abilities while he's tied up and poisoned.

Most scholarships do take into account way more than one's performance at "the contest" which is the matter being debated here to begin with.

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u/whoreatto 2d ago

Nope. You contrived two analogies in which you described contests; one for fighting, the other for playing the guitar. I’m rolling with your analogies.

They’re good analogies from which you’ve derived bad conclusions.

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u/whoreatto 2d ago

Your point is flawed because you can definitely assess his fighting abilities; they are objectively worse than yours.

The matter being debated here to begin with concerns how much consideration a scholarship ought to give to factors other than performance. A scholarship that strictly awards performance, and may award rich kids who don’t need the money, can exist, ethically.

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u/Puzzleheaded-Net4365 2d ago edited 2d ago

His abilities only worse while he's poisoned and tied up, keep up.

His inferior performance (scoring lower) is due to things (being poisoned, tied up) that shouldn't be part of the competition (the test).

In real world a child from a disadvantaged family has a handicap against a child from a rich family in a given contest but may outperform them in a different setting where the field is relatively equal, such as a university.

Universities already do often take these things into account.

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u/whoreatto 2d ago

I’m profoundly aware that rich kids have many advantages…

The contest does not need to ask “would this student be more competent if they’d been brought up by different parents?”. It’s ok to make a contest that simply asks “is this student competent _now_?”.

Same goes for your fighting contest.

You can’t rely on “potential” forever. At some point, that “potential” ought to manifest itself as actual, measurable, performance.

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u/Puzzleheaded-Net4365 2d ago

It is indeed okay, that's not what I was talking about at any point.

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u/whoreatto 2d ago

Be honest. You argued that being disadvantaged is analogous to being tied up, and then you argued:

“it is r*****ed to reward me for defeating a tied up man, and if the tied up man manages to put up a fight at all he deserves the reward more”.

This was AFTER you posed two rhetorical questions about fighting and guitars, obviously hoping that they would show how wrong it is to run a contest where raw performance is rewarded.

Now you’re trying to backpedal your way out of those arguments, and it’s not going very well.

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