"It’s not happening, but if it is happening, it’s could" - this is garbled enough that I can't tell what it's meant to be... perhaps "if it isn't happening, it could"?
I recognised it as being only one phoneme-devoicing away from the familiar formulation "it's not happening, [and] if it is happening, it's good", but if you're not familiar with that then it would be harder to parse!
I feel like you did already blog about the different kinds of lies on the left and right - or was it just a Facebook post?
I hadn't come across the idea of internships being like an open day before. I agree with you that they're like a job (or somewhere between an interview and a job). It sounds like the people who see them as an open day already feel confident they could get the eventual job, so for them the purpose of the internship is to see if *they* like *it* - and maybe assume it's the same for others - whereas for others the internship is a stepping stone towards getting the eventual job, which might otherwise be out of reach.
It sort of reminds me of something a friend said on Facebook about dating sites: that to some people they're like browsing a menu and deciding which options you prefer, while to others they're like looking through a difficult exam paper in search of a question you're able to attempt.
Yes, your analysis reminds me of an academic who once exclaimed to me that the Israel-Palestine debate would be easier if each side just had a codified look up table, so one just need yell out the shortcode rather than bother with going through the whole performance of a long argument.
I actually think that people who want to restrict internships (or at least weight the scales towards disadvantaged groups) do believe that they are vitally important for entering the career, and also that people of the relevant disadvantaged group are much less likely to have the connections etc that make it easy to get into careers and will therefore be underrepresented / contain talent that would be missed by a normal supposedly meritocratic process (which are usually actually extremely biased towards the class, neurotype etc of the interviewer or process setter).
You have conflated two elements in your argument which I think is what has caused this confusion - 'is the internship important to the person getting it', and 'is the work done in the internship important enough that it needs a maximally competent person in it'.
The more important the internship is for the person getting it - if it's the only way to access the career for them - the more we should do affirmative action about it, both to reduce inequality and to increase the pool of people who can get into the career (as advantaged groups are more likely to have the connections for direct entry).
The reason I accept for not doing general affirmative action is jobs actually do things and you need someone who is actually good at the job - but for internships and lots of entry level jobs, people are expected to be learning and not contributing so much, so it's not essential to get the very best candidate.
In my view, anything under two weeks is work experience, anything over is more like work and should be paid. But how much like work will depend on who’s running it – even in 6-8 weeks there is a limit to how up-to-speed an intern can get. The smartest firms use interns as a feed into permanent recruitment, even if that is a year away. Do it well and you get hires who perform better than average and stay longer. Having run many programmes and dealt with people trying to get their offspring or client contacts a place, you do need controls. And it is a good idea to make sure your programmes are open to, even targeted at, those who may not have much exposure to professional careers. But a whole internship programme exclusive to one group? I wouldn’t for two reasons: a) the whole cohort gets a label – most students don’t want to be labeled or thought of as only getting an internship/job because they have a certain characteristic, they just want to be treated like everyone else and simply want a job; b) a whole bunch of students in the middle who don’t have a targeted characteristic, but also don’t have special contacts to give them a leg up, miss out on a worthwhile experience.
Typo thread:
"It's could" -> "It's good"
"unrepreseneted" -> "unrepresented" (or "underrepresented"?)
"Arminiasm" -> Arminianism
"It’s not happening, but if it is happening, it’s could" - this is garbled enough that I can't tell what it's meant to be... perhaps "if it isn't happening, it could"?
I recognised it as being only one phoneme-devoicing away from the familiar formulation "it's not happening, [and] if it is happening, it's good", but if you're not familiar with that then it would be harder to parse!
Rachael gets the prize for correctly parsing my slightly peculiar brain-to-hand malfunction!
Hopefully Arminianism doesn't lose by default if you misspell it. :-)
Really interesting!
I feel like you did already blog about the different kinds of lies on the left and right - or was it just a Facebook post?
I hadn't come across the idea of internships being like an open day before. I agree with you that they're like a job (or somewhere between an interview and a job). It sounds like the people who see them as an open day already feel confident they could get the eventual job, so for them the purpose of the internship is to see if *they* like *it* - and maybe assume it's the same for others - whereas for others the internship is a stepping stone towards getting the eventual job, which might otherwise be out of reach.
It sort of reminds me of something a friend said on Facebook about dating sites: that to some people they're like browsing a menu and deciding which options you prefer, while to others they're like looking through a difficult exam paper in search of a question you're able to attempt.
Yes, your analysis reminds me of an academic who once exclaimed to me that the Israel-Palestine debate would be easier if each side just had a codified look up table, so one just need yell out the shortcode rather than bother with going through the whole performance of a long argument.
Like the Cistercian monks in the metajoke!
I actually think that people who want to restrict internships (or at least weight the scales towards disadvantaged groups) do believe that they are vitally important for entering the career, and also that people of the relevant disadvantaged group are much less likely to have the connections etc that make it easy to get into careers and will therefore be underrepresented / contain talent that would be missed by a normal supposedly meritocratic process (which are usually actually extremely biased towards the class, neurotype etc of the interviewer or process setter).
You have conflated two elements in your argument which I think is what has caused this confusion - 'is the internship important to the person getting it', and 'is the work done in the internship important enough that it needs a maximally competent person in it'.
The more important the internship is for the person getting it - if it's the only way to access the career for them - the more we should do affirmative action about it, both to reduce inequality and to increase the pool of people who can get into the career (as advantaged groups are more likely to have the connections for direct entry).
The reason I accept for not doing general affirmative action is jobs actually do things and you need someone who is actually good at the job - but for internships and lots of entry level jobs, people are expected to be learning and not contributing so much, so it's not essential to get the very best candidate.
Confession - immediately after reading this I went and indulged my own memetic trap by reading an hour-long piece about AI doomerism.
In my view, anything under two weeks is work experience, anything over is more like work and should be paid. But how much like work will depend on who’s running it – even in 6-8 weeks there is a limit to how up-to-speed an intern can get. The smartest firms use interns as a feed into permanent recruitment, even if that is a year away. Do it well and you get hires who perform better than average and stay longer. Having run many programmes and dealt with people trying to get their offspring or client contacts a place, you do need controls. And it is a good idea to make sure your programmes are open to, even targeted at, those who may not have much exposure to professional careers. But a whole internship programme exclusive to one group? I wouldn’t for two reasons: a) the whole cohort gets a label – most students don’t want to be labeled or thought of as only getting an internship/job because they have a certain characteristic, they just want to be treated like everyone else and simply want a job; b) a whole bunch of students in the middle who don’t have a targeted characteristic, but also don’t have special contacts to give them a leg up, miss out on a worthwhile experience.
Love the idea of mimetic traps - not sure what unites them... anger, aesthetics, the sense that the other side are engaged in great faslehoods?