[saidajigumi]

> I suspect question comes from status anxiety. I don't really think it matters.

Depends on your perspective. If it's mere "status", then no it doesn't matter. Everyone has Buddha nature, etc., etc.

But from the perspective of "does privilege matter?" you'll get an entirely different answer, which is why people in tech are paying a lot more attention to questions like this. A very, very narrow slice of the population has any possibility of becoming a founder at all, much less of an ultra-high valuation tech startup. That slice is far from random, it encodes a lot of history we're not too proud of, and it is not just a star awarded for merit.

If you're reading this and this word "privilege" doesn't make sense in context, it's time to do some homework. There's a lot being written on the 'net about this now, but I'll throw this out as random current starting point:

http://gregorykatsoulis.com/2015/07/and-it-worked/

[zamland]

The problem is that it's a false path and the logic doesn't quite make sense. If Ivy league really matters, then you can deduce it to high school, jr high, elementary school all the way to pre-school. Therefore if you're age 4, if you don't get to the most elite pre-school, your life is over, just over. If you make it an Ivy league, then your life is set. If you've been at one of these institutions, you'll know both of these things are false.

[saidajigumi]

You are not really "getting it" re: the effects of privilege.

It's not that going to some particular school or even a set of them (Ivy or no) matters per se. The effects of privilege exist on a continuum, and tend to accumulate over time. In that article I linked, the filmmaker had fairly extraordinary privilege via a long accumulation of access, education, peer mindset, parental support, and resources. But that's perhaps an extreme example. A lesser example: just the fact that a university student was even able to consider college as a life path is also a manifestation of privilege. For the most part, it points to an accumulation of parental and peer support over the student's life. E.g. her parents valued school and encouraged schoolwork, maybe tried to get her into a better school. She had peer support for life-paths including notions of education, career, "bettering oneself", etc. Peer support is especially interesting, as it also subsumes a lot of class issues.

Memes matter, and speaking probabilistically, kids whose peers see no paths to "success" in life can expect to have a hard time finding it themselves. We've likely all seen tales of hugely successful people who rose from modest backgrounds. That's the old story. The new one, the one we're just starting to tell, is about the enormous waste of potential from all those who didn't make it.

[zamland]

I understand your points. What you're talking about is middle class and upper middle class privilege. That privilege is different than upper class, which is implied by the original poster's comments on ivy league and boarding schools like Andover. There's different granularities and levels of privilege.

[phatmanace]

+1 to this... on the effects existing on a continuum.

There was a great cartoon that the farnam street brain food blog sent out which illustrates this quite well.

http://thewireless.co.nz/articles/the-pencilsword-on-a-plate

[zamland]

The more important thing is that if you live your life like this, it will lead to vast unhappiness, and you wouldn't have been able to have any impact in your life because you think your life is done at 18 and pre-determined, which is not only a horrible way to live, but also completely not true.

[saidajigumi]

Agreed, in that the intent of this perspective is not to constrain oneself. But it's very useful as a lens to understand certain social phenomena at large.

[force_reboot]

>If you're reading this and this word "privilege" doesn't make sense in context, it's time to do some homework.

I think 99% of people on HN understand exactly what you mean by privilege here, even if they don't agree with its implications. But I would ask you to consider that telling people to "do some homework" reflects a certain privilege that liberals have in certain circles. In particular, the privilege that goes with not having one's views challenged (again, in certain circles), and therefore assuming that it is your job to educate everyone else. I certainly don't go around telling people to "do some homework" if they haven't heard of the welfare theorems of economics, even if it would be very useful for them to know it.

[giltleaf]

I think he was just saying that a lot of times "privilege" as jargon is a little different than the word's common usage. So, if you were making a point where the welfare theorem of economics made sense to bring up, you might post a link and say something like "it's important to understand this if you want to continue the conversation."

In my opinion, what he did was completely appropriate, not condescending, and helpful and I wish you wouldn't have just blindly classified the action as a liberal tendency.