@drterrysimpson Others have added out the poor reasoning in this post. I’ll add that you ended your “gotcha” by saying “objective merit defenders shiver the moment we introduce unobjective data.” Uh … yeah?
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Mumen rider
683 posts
I understand why many Asian families feel frustrated in elite admissions systems. In intensely competitive environments, there is a real perception — and sometimes evidence — that exceptional academic performance still does not guarantee admission.
That feeling should not be dismissed.
But admissions committees also confront another reality: if you have 100 applicants from privileged, high-performing educational pipelines with nearly identical scores, resumes, research access, tutoring, and opportunities, it is not irrational to also value the applicant who achieved similar academic success despite poverty, instability, underfunded schools, family hardship, or lack of institutional advantages.
That is not abandoning merit. It is recognizing that achievement exists in context.
And medicine especially is not merely selecting expert test takers. It is selecting future physicians who will care for human beings across every class, culture, language, and circumstance in society.
The irony is that many people who defend “objective merit” often become deeply uncomfortable the moment merit is evaluated in anything broader than a percentile ranking.
Yiatin Chu@ycinnewyork
The same has been felt by Asians when applying to selective colleges for decades. We knew our children had to accomplish way above others to earn the limited spots Ivy+ were willing to give us. The SFFA v Harvard case revealed the extent of the discrimination. Even with SCOTUS ruling that affirmative action is unconstitutional, medical schools like UCLA and Yale continue to evade. Thank goodness @CivilRights @AAGDhillon are pursuing them to comply.
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@0xJuliechen Good of you to address it. Tbh I think just a part of the outrage was about cultural appropriation but mainly it was just about your egos to be frank. As long as you don’t come off as cocky though I don’t think anyone’s going to be hating on you
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i went viral by hosting an ABG maxxing event with friends, and i am not too proud of it
here is the story:
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@atShruti There’s definitely a basis of truth in some of what you said, ignoring the cutting out friends/buying new friends thing. But your previous tweet showing your jealousy (brokies, seriously?) doesn’t give you a great base to speak on
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“Sudden Wealth Syndrome” in Silicon valley is real.
The newly rich who were bitter from years of struggle/rejections suddenly isolate their friends, become extra vindictive from their feeling of new status and power, feel like people are taking advantage of them, over spend to buy new friends but can’t trust them, look for meaning in their lives, go do all new crazy experiences with new friends but feel empty.
You can’t build character and richness in your relationships & quality of life overnight.
Deedy@deedydas
The vibes in SF feel pretty frenetic right now. The divide in outcomes is the worst I've ever seen. Over the last 5yrs, a group of ~10k people - employees at Anthropic, OpenAI, xAI, Nvidia, Meta TBD, founders - have hit retirement wealth of well above $20M (back of the envelope AI estimation). Everyone outside that group feels like they can work their well-paying (but <$500k) job for their whole life and never get there. Worse yet, layoffs are in full swing. Many software engineers feel like their life's skill is no longer useful. The day to day role of most jobs has changed overnight with AI. As a result, 1. The corporate ladder looks like the wrong building to climb. Everyone's trying to align with a new set of career "paths": should I be a founder? Is it too late to join Anthropic / OpenAI? should I get into AI? what company stock will 10x next? People are demanding higher salaries and switching jobs more and more. 2. There’s a deep malaise about work (and its future). Why even work at all for “peanuts”? Will my job even exist in a few years? Many feel helpless. You hear the “permanent underclass” conversation a lot, esp from young people. It's hard to focus on doing good work when you think "man, if I joined Anthropic 2yrs ago, I could retire" 3. The mid to late middle managers feel paralyzed. Many have families and don't feel like they have the energy or network to just "start a company". They don't particularly have any AI skills. They see the writing on the wall: middle management is being hollowed out in many companies. 4. The rich aren’t particularly happy either. No one is shedding tears for them (and rightfully so). But those who have "made it" experience a profound lack of purpose too. Some have gone from <$150k to >$50M in a few years with no ramp. It flips your life plans upside down. For some, comparison is the thief of joy. For some, they escape to NYC to "live life". For others still, they start companies "just cuz", often to win status points. They never imagined that by age 30, they'd be set. I once asked a post-economic founder friend why they didn't just sell the co and they said "and do what? right now, everyone wants to talk to me. if i sell, I will only have money." I understand that many reading this scoff at the champagne problems of the valley. Society is warped in this tech bubble. What is often well-off anywhere else in the world is bang average here. Unlike many other places, tenure, intelligence and hard work can be loosely correlated with outcomes in the Bay. Living through a societally transformative gold rush in that environment can be paralyzing. "Am I in the right place? Should I move? Is there time still left? Am I gonna make it?" It psychologically torments many who have moved here in search of "success". Ironically, a frequent side effect of this torment is to spin up the very products making everyone rich in hopes that you too can vibecode your path to economic enlightenment.
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I would not trust you to be my doctor
Jeff Anderson M.D.@JeffAnderson_
Yale School of Medicine Has a total of 553 students across All four classes. Total Black students: 44. That’s ~10 per class. Total Asian students: 157. That’s ~40 per class. There are nearly as many Asian students PER CLASS as there are Black students in the entire school. Black: 14% of America. Only 7% of Yale Med Asian: 7% of America. 28% of Yale Med. Who exactly is getting discriminated against here ? aamc.org/media/6131/dow…
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@WestsideLAGuy The US incentivizes immigrants to come in and do that work you’re mentioning 😂 meanwhile you should visit China or just … read about it and rethink what “pushes humanity forward”
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China is optimized for producing strong engineers & scientists but punishes deviants who don’t conform to the norm. American society incentivizes outliers who truly push humanity forward, a key advantage over stagnant Confucian thinking.
Aaron Bergman 🔍@AaronBergman18
I do find it weird that somehow the US keeps winning despite a much stronger culture of intense education + broadly higher IQ distribution in China And yet somehow the golden goose is always born here (OpenAI -> Anthropic this time around)
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@santa_m3 @WestsideLAGuy Alright this is just insane and I wonder where you’re forming your views. Indians, sure, I can see. But chinese - while I can see a little insular, arrogant and antagonistic are just overkill. Definitely a few higher ego tall chinese 20-somethings but no way worse than whites
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@WestsideLAGuy This depends on 'What kind of Asian'. Nobody is bothered by the Japanese or for the most part Koreans. Indians & chinese are what tick off Whites due to their cultural "differences". The latter 2 are insular, arrogant, and antagonistic.
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My unpopular take: when an area crosses a certain threshold on Asian %, cultural transformation is drastic. Result: exodus of working class Whites, attractive single Whites, White parents with school age kids.
Matthew Yglesias@mattyglesias
The Bay Area should be experiencing rapid population growth that drives up incomes for a larger number of people, while also generating spillover benefits for all kinds of banal manufacturing inputs. Instead, we have a boom with no boomtown. slowboring.com/p/why-silicon-…
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@dakotapotato789 @WestsideLAGuy You don’t think the whites happily sold their homes to move to nicer places? The ones who didn’t are facing no pressure to leave, I’m sure…
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@WestsideLAGuy I mean - look at the SGV suburbs in the 1990s. Arcadia and temple city were majority white. San Gabriel, Diamond bar, hacienda heights? All diverse - balanced. Alhambra even. Westminster was also majority white. Chino Hills was the final straw lol … and it’s only 41% Asian.
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@WestsideLAGuy To be honest, I don’t really understand this. Asians don’t discriminate against whites and don’t antagonize them. They’ll buy property to be near each other, but that’s happily enriching the whites who sell their homes. Perhaps the most competitive thing is academics and jobs.
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@shafu0x Trusting a non-autistic engineer is like trusting a skinny chef
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@davidgobaud @zachtratar Sf techies are so jealous of each other, it’s insane. Just keep raising the ceiling to claim others are just as unsuccessful as they feel
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@zachtratar there was a math error - she forgot they have another $40M+ growing in AI stock. did the math and you need $85M post-tax to not be broke in SF though 😂
x.com/davidgobaud/st…
David Gobaud@davidgobaud
@lingeshgct @atShruti ok actually with that math the number should be $85M because $500k / year isn't enough need at least $2M. glad we figured this out! $5M house is small but can get by maybe
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I am afraid that greed is taking over Tech as a dominant driver of culture. The insane levels of wealth from AI, the "permanent underclass" discussion, and now this...
As someone who had to get financial aid to go to college, it's just gross. Feeling broke at $10m = delusional.
Shruti Gandhi / Array VC preseed rounds@atShruti
They will still be SF brokie - 50% in taxes (37% federal / 13% state) $3-4m cash on a home in SF Likely needs renovation $250k- $1m Leaves you with $1-2m Many with kids or on the way Nanny -$100k/yr Day care / School - $45k/year/1 kid Camps/Extra curricular - $30-100k Tesla - $50k They will still be at the office 996 to not really enjoy any of this and and will only have money to hike and camp.
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@clairevo @sudoraohacker Hey now, she never claimed it was upper middle class. She claimed it was “SF brokie.”
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@sudoraohacker We love SF and luckily our kids don’t run into this too much in their circles, yet. But my eyes will roll right out of my head if people call a 10M secondary sale “upper middle class”
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This makes me sick and want to move my kids out of SF.
Not because it’s too expensive. But because tech striver culture is so warped, I worry it’s unhealthy for them to be around.
By any objective measure this is not “broke,” not even in SF (ELEVEN MILLION PRE TAX!!!! 3M house! Chunky nest egg! An email job that lets you pay for private school AND a f/t nanny!) This is not a “996 and camping” lifestyle. This is a “we’re taking the kids to Japan for 2 weeks with the au pair” lifestyle.
It’s not the expense that keeps people trapped, it’s the mindset.
There will always be someone with more. The only way you can be truly poor is being unable to see your blessings for what they are and let someone else decide what is and isn’t “enough.”
Shruti Gandhi / Array VC preseed rounds@atShruti
They will still be SF brokie - 50% in taxes (37% federal / 13% state) $3-4m cash on a home in SF Likely needs renovation $250k- $1m Leaves you with $1-2m Many with kids or on the way Nanny -$100k/yr Day care / School - $45k/year/1 kid Camps/Extra curricular - $30-100k Tesla - $50k They will still be at the office 996 to not really enjoy any of this and and will only have money to hike and camp.
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@atShruti This is pure cope. If serious, you need to examine how anyone with <1M is not starving and homeless on the streets
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They will still be SF brokie -
50% in taxes (37% federal / 13% state)
$3-4m cash on a home in SF
Likely needs renovation $250k- $1m
Leaves you with $1-2m
Many with kids or on the way
Nanny -$100k/yr
Day care / School - $45k/year/1 kid
Camps/Extra curricular - $30-100k
Tesla - $50k
They will still be at the office 996 to not really enjoy any of this and and will only have money to hike and camp.
The Kobeissi Letter@KobeissiLetter
BREAKING: OpenAI allowed more than 600 current and former employees to sell stock in October 2025, per WSJ. These employees collectively sold $6.6 billion worth of stock. That’s $11 million per person.
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@clairevo The weirdest/lamest thing about SF striver culture is the takes aren’t even “hahaha, you’re only driving a Toyota?” They’re more like “I have millions, live like a poor person and delude myself into needing as much to die with as possible.” Just a hoarder autist pity party
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@WestsideLAGuy @honeyNonABG Not sure why I’m seeing your shit takes all over my TL but literally the more partners someone has before marriage, the more likely they are to divorce
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@Krystal4454201 @Alt_Azn Yeah, fair. Parenting is always a responsibility no matter where they’ll grow up, but we can at least reduce their chances of being a blue haired self hating valley girl accent Asian in an asian suburb.
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@Krystal4454201 @Alt_Azn People who grew up in affluent white suburbs or affluent asian suburbs?
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@Throwaway9008 @Alt_Azn Went to UCI with people like this. Many insufferable and awful people.
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@WestsideLAGuy @honeyNonABG @RealDianeYap This is some weird redpill shit. “IQ test” implies there’s a right answer and you seem to be inplying B. Hinestly, different cultures value different things. I’d guess women like B have short term visions and are more correlated with multiple relationships/divorce.
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IQ test for the ladies.
Which of these 2 girls is more attracted to the guy?
A: numerous nice dates, deep intimate conversations, emotional connection, but no sex.
B: casual drinks on first date, fun flirty banter, nothing deep, sex on first date.
@honeyNonABG
@RealDianeYap
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@Linahuaa “Middle class” for a big city is well and far above middle class anywhere else in America, and those people are living life just fine too. You’re duluding yourself into a life of stress and (probably) frugality to build more wealth, completely missing a good milestone
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I would consider people with $5M
middle class in big cities.
I can't even find a high quality Shanghai apartment big enough for 3 kids at this price.
$5M is okay if you want to live an unemployed ordinary life in bumfuckville leeching on interests.
Otherwise you're just yet another random tech schmuck in the Bay area with this amount.
Comfortably rich territory starts at $20-30M.
It allows you to not worry about finances and open a fancy slightly loss-making restaurant to host your friends.
If you want to build things, then you pretty much need to be a billionaire.
And most billionaires nowadays got there by building (or investing in builders)
Cory in San Francisco@coryfromphilly
The billionaire discourse is very tiring. If you have just $5M at any age, you will want for nothing for the rest of your life. $5M to $1B is a difference of degree, not of kind. Yet so much focus is put into billionaires, with the aim of killing the golden goose of America.
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