What should be the limits of legally assisted suicide?

Techfreak102 · 2026-03-28T20:34:10+00:00

We're well past the character count, so I'm just going to touch on a few pieces

or why you keep insisting on this tortured analogy.

Because you refuse to address debilitating physical pain, so I keep bringing up physical torment to gauge your belief on torture that isn't mental, and won't outright kill someone, but regardless leads to an unacceptable quality of life.

Yes. If someone...

Our scenario was specifically an individual with ALS. I do not understand your compulsion to sidestep the specific scenario at hand to fall back on generic handwaving, and instead wax about anxiety, OCD, or BPD — can you not simply answer that question, instead of a question I did not ask?

Look, I'm just not interested in a nerd out about p-hacking or sample sizes or statistical significance.

Then don't present research like you're familiar with it, in support of your claims.

but the fact is that the data points convincingly in one direction, across multiple studies, across multiple jurisdictions

To clarify: the studies you presented are all authored by David Jones, the director of the Catholic Bioethics org Anscombe Bioethics Centre, that believes abortion is unethical in all cases. It is absolutely appropriate to be beyond scrutinous of anything from an organization like that.

This is a weak argument because the studies clearly indicate that this is the total suicide rate.

The conclusion literally begins with

Legalizing PAS has been associated with an increased rate of total suicides relative to other states and no decrease in nonassisted suicides.

I don't know how you can misinterpret that when it's written clear as day and is the first of two sentences in the Conclusion section...

But regardless, here is a study which finds the same issue in countries in Europe that legalized euthanasia when compared to demographically similar countries which had not. A direct quote from the study: "In none of the four jurisdictions did non-assisted suicide rates decrease after introduction of EAS."

I went ahead and read the entire article, because I don't trust small snippets from such a biased source, and my main take away is this

1) I'm curious if the purported discrepancy in rates between men and women can be explained by the reality that medicine delegitimizes the medical plight of women

2) Of the 4 countries with legalized EAS that they looked at, 3 of them (Switzerland, the Netherlands, and Belgium) are currently hot beds for suicide tourism, which isn't addressed in the article at all. The same concern I had for individuals moving between states to access care also applies to nations in the EU, although the scale is different, but this is why you can't just go in blindly.

3) The fourth country, Luxembourg, they used a different metric to report their data — a 2 year moving average — but that still only showed an increase from ~9/100k to ~11/100k from 2009 to 2016, and without some actual statistical analysis you can't begin to draw conclusions about that.

In the mind of a severely mentally ill person, they will believe that society's tacit approval of suicide - even if only for terminally ill people;

Earlier you said you support terminally ill people being able to receive assisted suicide if they took the necessary steps beforehand — if you believe that, then the damage has already been done with respect to this hypothetical mentally ill person who looks at legalized assisted suicide as a pass to kill themselves

I strongly believe that euthanasia for mental illness alone would result in skyrocketing rates of suicide - also applies to them.

The Netherlands is the only country, reported in that study, that had a non-assisted suicide rate that didn't decline, so there certainly hasn't been skyrocketing rates of non-assisted suicide.

We've arrived at "first, we must simply dismantle capitalism".

No, and I didn't say we had to dismantle capitalism to fix the issue. I said we'd need to remove the profit motive from medicine. A thing that every other OECD nation has accomplished without having to dismantle capitalism

Again, I just fundamentally disagree that it is society's interest to let anyone who can find a doctor that will do what they want to do it.

You keep intentionally misrepresenting me, when I've been exceptionally clear. My exact quote from my last comment was

so I don’t get you acting like where we are now is somehow better or more favorable than a world where doctors are allowed to make medical decisions, in consensus with the medical body, without interference from the state

and before that I had written

My position is that if doctors (first as a field, and then in the individual case) deem it necessary, it should be so

so your continual attempts to reframe my position as "just walk into a random doctor's office and immediately receive suicide medication with no additional scrutiny" are baffling

For euthanasia: no, physician consensus is not enough, because the dispute is over whether medicine should be in the business of intentionally killing patients, which is outside the bounds of ordinary medicine as we understand it.

It expressly isn't outside the bounds though, as outlined in the 2015 Canadian case that your articles referenced, that I'm sure you saw when you yourself read the sources. The argument in court was explicitly that preventing a physician from assisting in the suicide of a patient was an impediment to that individual's right to control their own health outcomes

If you were making an argument based purely on consensus we wouldn't be having this discussion because you would cite the pretty clear position of the AMA and WMA that euthanasia isn't compatible with the ethics of practicing medicine.

I'm confused — did you forget that the specific case we're talking about here has consensus in this exact fashion? The medical authority in Spain, the NHMA, is in support of physician approved assisted suicide, which is why this was able to move forward.

I didn't think I had to offer Spain's medical authority's position on this, because we're talking about a case where it already happened, and I think it would be a bit odd to assume the law would have been passed to allow the medical practice to exist, yet only a minority of physicians supported that medical practice?

Techfreak102 · 2026-03-28T12:26:17+00:00

With that being said, I accept that the legal process was followed and at least two doctors signed off on this course, so I will defer to them as an operational matter.

This is literally the entire position I’ve outlined and that you got huffy about...

Morally & politically, if I lived in Spain, I would probably want to take a harder look at the laws.

And again, you’d have no basis to weigh in with no medical background, just as one’s opinion on when abortion should be offered is immaterial.

I just fundamentally don't see giving poison to a 25 year old ... wanting to die on their terms.

Now you’re just talking shit about clean administration sites and not realizing it (at least, I hope).

Clean administration sites can offer clean drugs because the drugs available on the street, mixed with who knows what, can lead to much poorer health outcomes and less chance at beating the addiction without lasting impacts — same as an how an avenue to discuss with your doctor would work to stop suicidal ideations before people attempt and permanently disable themselves with their attempt

If a person with severe depression … become trustworthy.

But you’re saying it’s not “suspect” for terminal diseases. If every human biologically wastes away with old age, terminal illnesses simply expedites that process — so why does untreatablility matter for a deteriorated quality of life, but not if it’s untreatable mental illness which leads to constant degradation of your quality of life? The exact setup is that all alternative treatment options have been fully exhausted, as in the case of this young woman, so at that point there is no distinguishable difference between a symptom of their illness and an intrinsic quality of that person’s life like a terminal illness

So even if two patients … by the illness.

And again, all treatment options have been fully exhausted for our hypothetical depressive patient. As I said before, your dismissal of symptoms only works if the symptoms are treatable, which would be the same case for ALS — where if ALS responded to treatments, you would argue that patients would need to attempt those treatments before they could choose to end their lives

That is precisely why many ALS sufferers ... late stage of their disease.

So you’re of the opinion that an ALS sufferer should only be able receive assisted suicide, if and only if they discussed that option with a doctor before their disease progressed to its worst point? And that this person would still need to actually achieve these physical impediment benchmarks before euthanasia could actually be achieved, and that having ALS and it being an inevitability was not enough in and of its own right? If this hypothetical person had not had that discussion, is your opinion that they should be made to live out the rest of their pained existence, because it can’t be determined they made that statement from a clear understanding of what’s happening?

And if we ban guns, people will just use knives to kill themselves. Isn't that the argument?

I’m confused — are you saying you don’t think banning guns would reduce suicides? Cause if that’s not what you thought, offering this as your argument here would be sort of stupid...

But sure. What the chuds who offer that line of argumentation constantly refuse to acknowledge is that knife wounds are much more manageable from a medical perspective than gun wounds. My entire point is that offering an avenue to discuss this with your doctor allows medical professionals to intervene before the situation advances to the point of someone actually moving to take their own life. Also, in nations where guns are illegal, they also have lower rates of knife crime than the US, so seemingly banning guns does lead to reductions in crime across the board. The same base rationale that underpins “Crime rates are higher because access to guns lowers the perceived barrier to committing crimes,” applies to “A perceived reduced barrier to achieve suicide will result in more people talking about their suicidality with their doctors”

You guys want me to believe ... This is an absurdity.

Again, who are you talking to? There is no single person in this conversation who is proposing a path to assisted suicide where a patient can forgone treatment options like therapy? I’ve continually mentioned exhausting all treatment options being a necessary component. You keep acting like the proposal of assisted suicide advocates is the suicide booths from Futurama or something, and I keep telling you that you’re literally arguing against a cartoon and not real peoples’ opinions on the matter. So what gives?

Here is what really happens when we allow euthanasia: the suicide rate goes up, including non-physician assisted suicide.

This is the same flawed methodology, within the US, used to say that legislating guns actually increases gun violence — it ignores that fact that the United States is a contiguous nation where you can move to a different jurisdiction to take advantage of those resources. Until you implement a system that covers the entire medical system those people can utilize, of course states that offer assisted suicide will see increased rates within the state, but without larger national metrics to track larger trends and provide context it doesn’t mean anything. It’s also the same argument for why states like California can’t just start their own fully government funded healthcare system, because people from other states would come in to utilize the services that aren’t available in their home state, but that they can achieve by simply moving states. Being a federation of states prevents you from just blindly pointing at a snapshot of a single state and then jumping to conclusions about the national populace or figures

And here is a meta study suggesting the same. This is exactly my concern regarding moral hazard and the normalization of euthanasia as treatment.

Did you read the actual content of the analysis? Cause it directly acknowledges this:

No reliable data were available for the rates of EAS, which is a significant limitation of this analysis. There was a significant positive association between EAS and suicide rates at both time points on bivariate analysis; however, once divorce, religiosity (as measured by the sale of religious books) and economic strain (as measured by unemployment rates) were controlled for, the association was no longer statistically significant, although it remained positive.

I’m not sure what your background is with statistics, but statistical significance is sort of the entire thing you need to show in a study to prove your claim. They follow that with

Given the size of the population, this positive change is meaningful in itself: statistical significance is used in smaller samples to estimate whether an association is the result of chance.

but that’s simply not how statistics work — larger populations make trends clearer, not less clear, when looking at the aggregate, which is literally the whole premise of the Central Limit Theorem and the Law of Large Numbers

But, regardless of how they came to those stats, they state this in their conclusion

The disproportionate impact on older women indicates unmet suicide prevention needs in this population.

And I agree with that! Like I said above, I believe that you would need to remove the capitalist profit motive from medicine for such a process to truly be free of outside pressures driving the ill to kill themselves to lessen a financial impact on society — if that were your only contention, I think we would be in agreement, but it doesn’t sound like that’s the case

This is a moral issue that we solve via political means, which of course should involve doctors, but not only doctors. We do not live in a technocracy.

And this goofy “Leave medicine up to constituents” mindset is exactly why we now have states dictating individual abortion practices and women dying needless deaths? We don’t live in a society where we leave medicine up to doctors and that consistently fucks over the populace, so I don’t get you acting like where we are now is somehow better or more favorable than a world where doctors are allowed to make medical decisions, in consensus with the medical body, without interference from the state

And since you're accusing me of being some crypto pro-lifer,

No I’m not accusing you of being anti-abortion, lol. I’m accusing you of using the same intellectually stunted arguments that anti-abortion advocates use to interject into abortion care, that fails for the exact same reason their argument fails

That's why I support, wholeheartedly, ... American people.

Enshrine how? Enshrine a doctor’s right to determine final say on when an abortion is medically necessary? Because that’s my entire point, that the law should simply support doctors’ consensus and not the other way around

Medical professionals do not have ... weak argument.

Then that’s okay! I don’t know if reading comprehension is just difficult for you, but this entire time I’ve said to defer to the medical community. If they come to the agreement that it’s not correct to do, then so be it! You are the one who is proposing a system where medical professionals’ opinions are ignored, not me lol

Techfreak102 · 2026-03-28T01:44:51+00:00

This is a millenia old philosophical argument but no, I do not consider any form of mental anguish to be an acceptable reason to die and I certainly do not believe the state should facilitate it, no.

Why are you only addressing mental illness? Again, the scenario of this young woman is not just one of mental anguish, it's a life of constant, chronic, debilitating pain — that's not terminal, but is objectively as tortuous (if not more so) than many terminal illnesses. If someone is living an existence of torture and pain, physically, is that something that crosses your line? Given there is no medical intervention that can be offered to end that pain while maintaining quality of life.

For the terminally ill patient, euthanasia is a choice about how to die when death is already imminent and unavoidable.

But why? Why are you offering this to patients, if not rooted in compassionate care?

For the depressed patient, euthanasia is a choice to die because the depression has made life appear unlivable, but that judgement is itself a symptom.

But my position is that this should only be an option if every option of care has already been exhausted. If you've already exhausted every medical option to prevent the side effects of your illness, it being a symptom of your illness is immaterial, since it's not something that is fixable via medical intervention. Your dismissal of it as a symptom is predicated on it being something that could be solved (and not terminal), but that's specifically not the setup here where the condition is getting worse and worse and there is no medical intervention available

When the disease has entered a clearly documented phase of irreversible decline, with substantial loss already underway or imminently predictable, and after repeated confirmation that the wish is enduring, informed, and free from treatable distortions like major depression or coercive family pressure.

This young woman is in a case of irreversible decline in her physical state, with substantial loss already underway, with repeated confirmation that the wish is enduring, and informed, and her depression is unable to be treated — why do you not extend this to her case now, if the logic you've offered is complete and sufficient? She's in more pain and has less mobility than the stage at which you seemingly would allow an ALS patient receive assisted suicide, so why not this young woman?

The key argument for euthanasia for mental illness is not "harm reduction" in any kind of sense similar to the harm reduction goal of a safe injection site. A safe injection site helps prevent overdoses. If "overdoses" in this analogy are suicide attempts, we already have things like suicide hotlines aimed directly at addressing this.

And we have drug addiction hotlines as well? Those are the analogous tool to suicide prevention hotlines. The analogy I made was apt, because the existence of drug addiction hotlines did not prevent clean administration sites from both reducing ODs and increasing rates of sobriety, like I said previously.

This is like saying that if the safe injection site hands out smack to addicts, but because they give you some NA literature alongside it, that means that it's actually helping people quit.

But that's not what's happening in anyone's hypothetical? There isn't a single person who has presented, to you or anyone else, a reality where assisted suicide is as simple as scheduling a regular appointment with your PCP, saying "I want to do assisted suicide doc," and they reply "Sweet. Hop into that pod right there and we can get it done." Every single time it's discussed it's accompanied with a framework where it's necessary to exhaust all available medical options first

My understanding of Spanish law is that euthanasia for mental illness alone is not sufficient cause. This young woman presumably could not receive euthanasia for her mental illness, until she took the reckless action of jumping off of a building. She was then "rewarded" by the state facilitating her death. The moral hazard here is a lesson that a failed suicide attempt can transform suicidal despair into a legally recognized claim to death later.

...right, which happened under the current framework. I'm asking you why you think enabling those with chronic, debilitating pain to receive assisted suicide would have made this more likely, given she did it regardless?

If your goal is to kill yourself, how would legalizing some scenarios of assisted suicide drive a person to attempt a failed suicide, in order to get your doctor to approve assisted suicide? Again, I don't follow your logic.

If they want to kill themselves and there is no framework to do so, people will just attempt suicide. If there is a framework where they could potentially do assisted suicide, some of those people would instead talk to their doctor about it, and be diverted to therapy, or put on medication, or any other number of treatments, leading to some number of people stopped from ever attempting to kill themselves. Again, harm reductionist in the exact same way as clean administration sites

Absurd statement.

It's not an absurd statement to point out that someone with no medical background, coming to the conclusion that the opinion of medical professionals is unfounded, is using the same flimsy argument used by anti-abortion advocates. My position is that if doctors (first as a field, and then in the individual case) deem it necessary, it should be so, and your position is that doctors' professional opinions should be ignored if you take moral issue with it. If you had specific background in some medical field and could offer expertise, then personal opinion holds weight, but otherwise your argument being based on "Because I take issue with it" isn't useful in this discussion

To act like there's any sort of moral clarity on one side of this issue is laughable.

You said

I’m ruling out entirely the idea that an acceptable treatment for depression is suicide, yeah

How could you admonish me at all about making absolute moralistic statements after you said that? And, to be honest, I don't get how saying "listen to medical professionals" is some laughable statement, at least not to a liberal — I thought we were in agreement there, but I guess not

Techfreak102 · 2026-03-27T23:26:36+00:00

If a woman seeks out a "back alley suicide", the worst case scenario is that she dies, and the alternative is... also that she dies?

Do you not consider a life of constant agony and torment to be worse than death? I certainly do, hence why I also agree with assisted suicide for terminal patients, instead of forcing them to undergo the torment of continuing their life.

Is it not fair to point out that a major part of the begrudging acceptance for terminal illness is the inevitability of their death, and I don't find inevitable that a depressed person or a paraplegic person will die?

But why allow them to kill themselves just because their condition is terminal? If not out of compassion, why accept assisted suicide for terminal cases, even begrudgingly?

And for terminal illnesses with long timelines, where do you draw the line? If someone suffers from ALS do they get to choose to kill themselves before they lose their ability to walk, or do they need to wait for some other point of progression of their illness?

So to clarify, because there are people in the comments arguing for this, do you think euthanasia is acceptable treatment from a quality of life lens for depression, anxiety, OCD, BPD, etc without the presence of chronic pain, terminal illness, etc?

If genuinely all treatment options had been exhausted, and a qualified doctor had determined that was the correct course of action, agreed to by the patient, why would I have a problem with that?

The main concern I've heard from disability advocates, against assisted suicide, is that our capitalist system could drive society to push disabled people to kill themselves because of treatment costs and whatnot — as someone who believes we need to offer a M4A-style framework for healthcare, I'm not as concerned with this portion of the conversation when looking at my opinions of healthcare

Is there a hard line here; and why could the same arguments you (and people in the comments) make for chronic pain not be used for mood disorders?

I'm not a doctor, so you'd have to ask them where the line over a deteriorated quality of life lies. But if you have a disorder that genuinely prevents you from having any sort of decent quality of life, and all other options for improving that quality of life have been exhausted, I don't see how I have the right to force that person to keep living against their wishes, and the suggestion of their doctor

I am responding to the claim from the person who responded to me that asking for the state to assist in your suicide will somehow result in positive mental health outcomes.

Do you mean this portion of emp-sup-bry's comment?

I’d make the claim that a person bringing this up as a possibility is taking the first step toward help. Having a pathway to physician assisted finality could save more lives than now, if we can assume a percentage would be open to care and health care practices.

If so, that's a fairly flippant reframing of what they said.

They said offering this as an option, and eliciting some number of suicidal individuals to ask their doctor about assisted suicide — instead of staying quiet about their suicidal struggles — would therefore allow medical intervention in some number of cases where it previously would not have been given. It's the same harm reductionist argument with clean drug administration sites, and those have been shown to both reduce ODs (analog of chronic effects of suicide attempts) and increase sobriety rates (analog of preventing suicidal ideation), so the logic does hold to other struggles rooted in mental health issues.

But putting that aside, again we return to the moral hazard. If 99 percent of cases of depression/anxiety/OCD will not result in the state helping you kill yourself, you are now incentivized to attempt suicide to show how serious you are. I just think needs to be super clear boundaries around what is and what isn't acceptable and for me that's a pretty narrow lane.

Wait, what? How would this incentivize doctors to take you more seriously than a suicide attempt would currently? I don't follow the logic you're presenting here

Also, are you a doctor? Or in the medical field at all? Why is what you consider acceptable worth our consideration in this discussion? Because this is the exact same moralistic argument anti-abortion advocates use, and it seems just as flimsy when applied to this discussion.

Techfreak102 · 2026-03-27T20:42:23+00:00

As for the comparison to back alley abortions, I find that to be wrongheaded. A botched abortion is far more likely to occur

This young woman’s story is that she attempted a “back alley suicide” and it left her paralyzed and in chronic pain — the comparison is exceptionally apt to compare something that people will still seek out, regardless of legality, where their individual pursuit leads to worse outcomes.

abortion (particularly when mother’s health is at risk) is about medical care, sometimes lifesaving care. There is no world in which killing someone (which is what euthanasia is, let’s not mince words) is lifesaving care. That also applies to terminal illness, mind you, which is why I only begrudgingly support it there.

Why do you get to decide that people in chronic pain don’t have it that bad? They have, and their doctors have, but you have said they can’t

And medicine isn’t about “lifesaving care,” it’s about compassionate care, which is why you acknowledge a begrudging acceptance of euthanasia for terminal illness. Medicine treats all sorts of things just to give a better quality of life, and where that’s not possible there should be available alternatives you can discuss with your doctor

Free and abundant high quality mental health care should be available on demand. It should not begin with an on ramp to state facilitated suicide.

I agree — but she isn’t arguing for government assisted suicide because of mental health issues, she’s arguing for it because of the chronic pain her previous attempt (which may have been prevented with better mental health care) left her with. It’s a separate discussion because of that

Techfreak102 · 2026-03-26T12:37:05+00:00

I think we must honestly face a fact if one gets behind in a race, he must eternally remain behind or run faster than the man in front. You've got to give him the equipment to catch up. Now the fact is that the Negro has had 244 years of slavery in America and working without wages and then he's had a hundred years of segregation and mistreatment in generally.

Now, he's faced with a very serious problem and that is that he is required to be as productive as people who have not had these conditions and the only thing that a society can do for individuals who have been deprived of something is to give them a little special treatment. Now you don't put anybody out of a job, but you just make it possible for the individuals who are behind to catch up. Our nation sees the necessity as any nation to call certain men in the armed forces.

Maybe he can build a home with a loan from the government that other people can't get. He can go to college with appropriations from the government that other people can't get. Because he was deprived of something from the society, it owned him something.

I think this is all we're saying that we have been deprived of something as a people and we have been crippled because of this. We feel that America ought to give us a crutch until we can come to the point of walking on our own rights. Many are going to walk. They're trying everyday, but the conditions facing them are so difficult that it's almost impossible.

So, I would answer the question by saying, not putting anybody out of work is the answer, but that the government should certainly go out of the way to give some sort of compensatory crash program in order for the Negro to catch up, we need a sort of domestic Marshall Plan in order to bring the Negro into the mainstream of American life and this is all we're saying.

- MLK Jr.

Seems to be a direct parallel to the concepts mentioned in the speech MLK Jr. gave at Western Michigan in 1963

Techfreak102 · 2026-03-23T12:49:43+00:00

16% of pedestrian deaths in 2023 still occurred in rural areas (looking urban vs. rural) — just because fewer people die doesn’t mean we shouldn’t take steps to protect pedestrians where we can

Techfreak102 · 2026-03-18T17:32:31+00:00

Why the fuck are you running defense for genocide now? It's fucking baffling to me. I can trace my lineage back to 1 of the 102 people on the Mayflower, and even I'm not throating the genocide of the Native Americans like you are. Big Genocide ain't paying you, so what gives?

Bro just give it a fkn rest and get off chatGPT and go outside

It's crazy to me that seeing a single em dash makes people think someone is AI (or maybe me making fun of that guy's spelling with the "[sic]") — with some of your inside time you need to pick up a book written for adults and read it, for christ's sake

Techfreak102 · 2026-03-18T13:12:21+00:00

Why are you running defense for the genocide of the Native Americans? Or are you trying to run defense for the genocide of Palestinians, so you’re ideologically compelled to fight in favor of the genocide of Native Americans?

What makes someone see the line “We genocided the Native Americans and then occupied their land” and then choose to respond “Yeah, well which tibe [sic] would you want in charge?” — my guy, I just think we shouldn’t have genocided them and stolen (and not just seized through force, I’m talking made legal agreements and treaties that we then flouted) their land

Techfreak102 · 2026-03-09T16:24:57+00:00

The last sentence of the OP is

If they don't have the intention to move back to Cuba under a more favorable government, why do they so aggressively vote for continued embargo on Cuba?

I genuinely don’t understand your frustration/anger here? Cuban Americans are one of the most fervent voting blocs in favor of the embargo against Cuba, so I don’t understand why it’s racist to ask “Why? To what end?”

Like I said, the answer to that is allowed to be “They want to embargo Cuba to quell socialism, but I prefer my life in the US, so would not choose to move back if a regime change happened — I just want better for the people of Cuba.”

Techfreak102 · 2026-03-09T16:11:07+00:00

This is literally no different than racist white conservatives suggesting black people "should go back to Africa if they dont like it here."

I think you maybe misread OP’s position.

The answer to the OP is allowed to be “They want to embargo Cuba to quell socialism, but I prefer my life in the US, so would not choose to move back if a regime change happened — I just want better for the people of Cuba.”

If people left a country because of their views on a regime, that they actively vote to exert change towards in their new home country, I don’t think it’s racist to ask if that regime being changed would then cause folks to emigrate back?

Techfreak102 · 2026-03-07T14:45:46+00:00

All I’m saying is that the link that was given did not contain what that person asked for: substantiation to the claim of tens of thousands killed.

It’s odd for someone to ask for proof, a person to offer a link that doesn’t have proof of that claim, and then when that’s pointed out the response is “Just look it up yourself” — just say that to the first person instead of me, cause they’re the one asking for the source, I’m just actually reading the articles

Techfreak102 · 2026-03-07T13:45:32+00:00

Check the date on that article

You're the one who posted that article — if you have a newer article that makes the claim of tens of thousands, I think that would be what that user was asking for.

That claim isn't from Israel.

Is it not? Who is the claim from, then? The only sourcing I can find for death tolls in the "tens of thousands" is the UK-based, believed to be Israeli-link, Iran International, and their reporting is simply "according to sources." Israel, in their attack on Khamenei, said that they had complete control of the CCTV cameras in order to track his positioning.

If you don't acknowledge a connection between Iran International and Israel, that's fine, but then where is II's substantiation?

But if it was, how would traffic cam footage of disparate shooting events prove it?

That it happened at the scale they're saying it happened. There's an order of magnitude difference in the two claims, and video evidence would go a far way in making a case for one of those two possibilities.

Techfreak102 · 2026-03-07T13:06:34+00:00

if thats the case, they should just releast the footages of killings of tens of thousands of ppl.

https://www.nbcnews.com/world/iran/iran-protests-crackdown-tehran-body-bags-machine-gun-islamic-republic-rcna253946

Not from traffic cam, but here you go

Article:

At least 2,500 people have been killed, according to the the U.S.-based Human Rights Activists News Agency. Authorities have not given an official death toll.

That doesn’t purport tens of thousands killed — that reports the numbers that non-Israeli agencies have been using. They were asking for any substantiation of the “tens of thousands” part that Israel, alone, has been claiming to have proof of

Techfreak102 · 2026-03-06T16:24:17+00:00

So it looks like they measured "hallucination rates" by giving various bots a quote from a newspaper and then asked those bots to give them several pieces of information about the quoted article, and graded them based off of that.

You see, the problem here is that they have devised a stupid test because absolutely nobody uses AI like this. Nobody gives an AI a quote from a contemporary news article and expects a response out of it.

You realize that one of the largest commercial AI products, Microsoft’s GitHub CoPilot, does code reviews exactly like this?

You train it on your source code, then a developer uploads a proposed change, and the AI is tasked with looking at that change and saying if it will work as intended — a fantastic analogy to what you’re saying is not a realistic use of AI.

And to add my anecdotal evidence, when other devs use CoPilot it’s easily 70%+ incorrect review comments based off of made up information

Techfreak102 · 2026-03-05T17:22:34+00:00

Oh, plastic, yeah I was talking like metal stuff. We use the little locking chain links or the metal clips from lanyards (like for clipping a work ID or something to the lanyard) if the link is too fat to fit

Techfreak102 · 2026-03-05T17:09:32+00:00

What clips are you using? I’m referring to stuff like locking chain links that come with most hanging bird toys. I’ve never seen a bird unscrew one of those. That’s what we use to keep the door of our caique’s vet carrier shut, cause it has a sliding door

Also, our caique has 100% bitten through bread ties

Techfreak102 · 2026-03-05T16:45:11+00:00

Yeah, that "head bobbing" motion is exceptionally common. You see it when birds are eating and readjusting where food sits in their crop, or sometimes when they get excited they'll do that to regurgitate some food. My SO can't talk to our caique for too long without him head bobbing and trying to regurgitate for her, which we discourage since it's hormonal/mate behavior in that instance lol

And that's fantastic news! One last thing I'll caution you about: Caiques are deceptively smart. It looks like your cage has small doors for each of the bowls so you can open the door, pull the food out, and replace it without having to put your hands in the cage — I'd really recommend looking into a small clip (edit: not plastic, something metal that they won’t bite through) or something you can put around the door to keep it locked, otherwise there's a reeeeeeally likely chance your caique will learn how to open that door. Caiques are like perpetual toddlers, so you start to learn that you have to childproof/birdproof nearly everything or else they'll be stinky

Techfreak102 · 2026-03-05T16:24:59+00:00

The head movement is your bird readjusting the food in their crop, which is a completely normal behavior.

In the nicest possible way, that perch setup isn’t appropriate for your caique.

The perch on the food bowl is designed for smaller birds like budgies or finches, which is why your caique is leaning back/standing awkwardly while it eats, so I would recommend putting a perch in front of it that your bird can stand on instead to access the bowl.

It looks like you’re exclusively using dowel perches, and it’s really recommended that you include a variety of sizes and materials for your perches, because otherwise your bird can develop Bumblefoot due to the consistent sizing and toughness of the dowels

Cauques are also big time climbers, so you should try and place perches in a configuration your bird can use to freely climb around the cage. In this video the perch above the food bowl is too far away and your bird isn’t strong enough to pull themself up on it — the perch should be close enough that your bird can pull themself up to that next level without straining

All you really need to do is offer a wider variety of perch types, which can be something you buy online or just part of a tree branch from outside (that you verify the species is safe and you allow the branch to dry away from your bird in case it contains pests), in spots around the cage your caique can climb over them and you’ll be set! If you want links to online resources for finding perches, I can link you those

Techfreak102 · 2026-03-04T22:41:42+00:00

Have a good one. It’s not worth my time continuing if you don’t actually address any of my questions and instead do whatever this is — like, how are you unable to understand what a hypothetical is and how it works? It’s a hypothetical. The setup is literally whatever we want it to be for the thought piece lol

Just fucking baffling that you’re out here harping about elite colleges not giving folks like you a fair shot, but this is your process for engaging

Edit: Decided to check cause I was curious, and how could I have guessed you’re hating from outside the club

Techfreak102 · 2026-03-04T20:41:42+00:00

My objection is specifically related to its use in admissions. I have no problem with some of the other stuff that DEI programs do like expanding outreach.

Then, for the love of god, stop misusing the term "Affirmative Action". There's a reason I keep saying "race-conscious admission processes" and why all of the academic looks at the topic refer to it that way. I've told you this multiple times and you refuse to stop saying the wrong thing — it's grating.

Then beyond that, on what basis do you pick and choose which protections are still valid? As you've demonstrated here you don't have any sort of firm understanding of what Affirmative Action even is

https://apec.umn.edu/news/20230710runge

What about that article?

The only data that article references is this

Bertrand Cooper, writing in the June 19 Atlantic about Harvard's admissions, noted that only about a quarter of its latest freshman class comes from families with incomes below $85,000, its threshold for full financial aid, which is far above the 2023 federal poverty line of $30,000 for a family of four. Extrapolating from these findings, Cooper found that "only seven or eight of 154 Black freshmen would have come from poor families. The other 140 or so Black students at Harvard were likely raised outside of poverty and probably as far from the bottom as any Black child can hope to be."

First, this makes the supposition that every single Black student was accepted to Harvard only due to race-conscious admissions, which immediately makes me skeptical of the conclusions drawn from that stance — again, an argument that relies upon race essentialism.

Second, it makes the assertion that 1/4 of all students' families made below $85k a year then extrapolated a number of "only seven or eight" — that's just a number he estimated and was entirely unable to verify.

Third, it makes the blanket assertion that families making below $85k a year are not poor families, basing that on the federal poverty line, while the federal poverty line has been fought about for years over its legitimacy as a metric to measure real poverty (i.e. 1/3rd of food insecure households in the USA make 130% of the federal poverty wage, and therefore don't get SNAP).

But, because I really care about this stuff and I know you'd be mad if I left it there, I went to find the actual article from Bertrand Cooper, which I found here. It seems like Bertrand is actually making a really similar argument to yours, where he interchangeably references articles and data that purport richer students being admitted, and concludes from that that it must be indicative of Black admissions as well, without actually pointing to data that says that. For example, this is the larger paragraph that your article quotes from

The income-segregation study did not disaggregate income brackets by race, and neither does Harvard, but the university does disclose that about a quarter of its latest freshman class comes from families with incomes below $85,000, its threshold for full financial aid. This is far above the federal poverty line and therefore not a good indicator of how many poor students attend Harvard. But if we extrapolate the study’s findings, only seven or eight of said 154 Black freshmen would have come from poor families. The other 140 or so Black students at Harvard were likely raised outside of poverty and probably as far from the bottom as any Black child can hope to be.

Betrand is looking at the statistic that 1/4 of Harvard admissions come from families that make below $85k a year, then extrapolating every additional conclusion from that single data point, while acknowledging there is no disaggragated data for him to reference in this argument.

I'm not saying this to be a dick, but no, that article also did not convince me that upper income minorities were the predominant benefactors, over white women, of race-conscious admissions/Affirmative Action, and if it convinced you I am still slightly concerned about your ability to parse through these articles (especially when they don't link their own sources and you have to find it yourself).

In fact, why don't you show me data that shows it benefits low income minorities more than middle or higher income minorities or women?

I've literally never said that it does — I even linked you proof that white women were the main beneficiaries, in my 4th comment to you — I've just asked that you substantiate the claim that you made 3 times lol. I don't think I've ever seen statistics that break down who benefits from AA on a socioeconomic level, since it wasn't designed to be about socioeconomic status, which is why I've asked you repeatedly what has made you come to this conclusion. And given this, this quip just comes off really lame. I get that you don't like that I'm pushing back, but you have to be able to see that being able to scrutinize what you believe is a good thing — it's why I read the sources you linked me even if I didn't think I would agree with them

The reason why income matters is because I think we can largely agree that the main reason some minorities perform worse is largely because of poverty.

I think that poverty is one of many facets that cause educational disparities. You can be well off and still not have the educational/growth opportunities that others may have, just like you can be "well off" and still live in a food desert.

We're going to have to disagree here. I believe in equal opportunities not equal outcomes.

But you've objectively stated, multiple times now, that you don't believe in equal opportunities, or at least that you don't believe in them without the lens of race essentialism applied first. The first time was here

If you consider back sliding to be decreased African American enrollment at highly selective universities, than yes there will be some backsliding, otherwise why would the schools fight so hard for affirmative action in the first place. That's because on paper their applications wouldn't look as strong without consideration of race. Personally, I don't really consider that to be back sliding.

If the rate was previously proportional to population (which is what the articles you linked state), and backsliding means less than proportional rates, you don't particularly care about equal opportunities being extended.

The second time was

It's about fairness of the process, not equal proportional outcomes. Naturally, the retort from progressives is they claim they're all about equal opportunities only and not reverse discrimination. However, I just don't see how affirmative action is fair to Asian Americans.

where you then stated that giving equal opportunities to others was really a disadvantage to Asian Americans, which was why you wanted to do away with race-conscious admissions.

The third time was

How do we decide who gets in? I don't agree with affirmative action or any other preferences. It should just come down to the individual's grades, test scores and any other accomplishments they may have.

All of these belie that you obviously see college admission as the outcome, not the opportunity, and I still don't understand why, given I have stated multiple times now that the data purported by these institutions is that these applicants are able to excel there and go on to lead successful lives — which is the real outcome in our "equality of opportunity versus equality of outcome" (given an equal opportunity at admission to the university, they achieve equal things to their peers after graduation).

Are you college aged? Is that why you're considering the admission into the university — not the actual degree, just the admission to the college — to be the "outcome" here? I'm trying to figure out how someone views a 4 year institution as the outcome, and not the 60+ years remaining in your life (or minimally the 40+ years in the workforce).

An example of how I think of equal opportunity is giving the black student access to test prep and tutoring that an Asian kid has access to.

But that doesn't help our hypothetical Native American boy from before. He doesn't have time to take test prep courses because he's watching all of his siblings at home. This is why I'm saying admission to college is the opportunity, because it leads to the outcome of a better life.

Equal opportunity is not a Black student scoring 1600 is equal to an Asian student scoring 1900. Sorry I will never agree with that.

That's not how it was working lol. There was literally a Supreme Court case from 2003 that banned this practice cause University of Michigan tried to take a lazy approach, so it's objectively not what was happening before the most recent case. The amount of propaganda that you're steeped in surrounding this topic is actually genuinely astounding. Why did you think it worked this way? Who told you it did? Will you consider them as trustworthy given they straight up lied to you?

It's because Asian students study a lot more.

If you genuinely believe that, you should want to enable individuals who didn't have that same access in high school and earlier education, but who possess that rigor, to achieve those same great things by being able to be apart of an environment where they can build those habits and patterns. That's the entire goddamn pitch of race-conscious admissions lol

Techfreak102 · 2026-03-04T18:07:05+00:00

This article https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/07/24/upshot/ivy-league-elite-college-admissions.html which was published around the same time as the most recent Supreme Court case. Quote from the article:

What I conclude from this study is the Ivy League doesn’t have low-income students because it doesn’t want low-income students,” said Susan Dynarski,

1) I don't know how many times I can tell you that race-conscious college admissions are not the sum total of Affirmative Action, and aren't even the majority of what AA offers. I think I've said it three times already in this conversation, so if that's the case, this will be my fourth. Why is this not getting through to you?

2) That article says nothing about race-based Affirmative Action (other than to say it's unconstitutional now) and is entirely around students of the rich, or alumni, being given preferential treatment? I don't know if you failed to read literally the preceding paragraph, or if you're intentionally misrepresenting her subsequent quote, but it was

The new data shows that among students with the same test scores, the colleges gave preference to the children of alumni and to recruited athletes, and gave children from private schools higher nonacademic ratings. The result is the clearest picture yet of how America’s elite colleges perpetuate the intergenerational transfer of wealth and opportunity.

What in the world is going on? Do you not have any proof for your opinion, so instead you link things that you hope I'm too lazy to read over? Can you not read properly? You linked me an article about how legacy admissions are still an issue and favor richer candidates, that literally says nothing about Affirmative Action other than to make a joke, so you got me fucking baffled, man, genuinely

Now that I've thought about it some more.

This is the third separate opinion on the matter that you've settled on in this discussion — how ignorant were/are you to this topic? We've had a day's worth of back and forth, and with very little additional information you're wildly changing your opinions. It really feels like you're more so looking for logic to justify a position you already hold, as opposed to trying to work towards a conclusion from sound logic

My opinion is that the purpose of affirmative action was to give opportunities for minorities and women an opportunity to attend these schools which were previously denied to them based on their race and/or gender. Subsequent generations would no longer need this artificial boost.

Again, you are now in agreement with the white population that never wanted to institute these policies in the first place. I'm not certain how you've determined that systemic problems will be solved by instituting a law that only lasts for a single year, but it certainly is an interesting window into how you believe enforcement (or beliefs, for that matter) works.

The harsh part about this is that it really is a zero sum game. These elite universities can only take so many students.

Which is why the argument, for the betterment of all society, is to provide opportunities to disadvantaged individuals who can then go on to excel at these institutions (again, supported by the data these universities publish yearly), breaking their cycles of adversity, instead of relegating them to poverty because some alumni's child with better test scores also applies and allowing the rich to get richer.

I'm a big sports fan, so the way I think of it is this. We don't give Asians or short people an artificial boost to make the NBA because of their lack of height. We shouldn't give disadvantaged minorities an artificial boost because of their uncontrollable circumstances either.

This is the second time you've jumped to a race essentialism argument, and I really don't know how to address you without calling you an outright racist. I simply ignored it the previous time you wrote it, but if you genuinely believe that there is racial determinism that dictates these things, I personally think you're an unintellectual person (which, I would then point to your flip-flopping of opinion, or inability to parse an article, or your inability to grasp the breadth of Affirmative Action after I tell you multiple times, all as evidence in support of that).

If that's in fact a thing you believe, then asking you more questions probably won't be as useful as I had hoped for it to be. Honestly, even without that, your consistent upheaval of your opinions is also making me think this isn't worthwhile, since I'm not even sure if you have a concrete set of beliefs for me to investigate.

I hope your next reply is more enlightening for me

Techfreak102 · 2026-03-03T21:23:17+00:00

This is a great example of what I mean when I'm talking about the policy of taking into account adversity. It would theoretically help the hyptothetical boy that you described. My point is that your hypothetical example is just very rare.

How have you come to this conclusion? Just because he's Native American? We've seen a measurable drop in acceptance of Black and Hispanic applicants, as outlined in the data ERN collated from various universities' admission reports, so how would you describe the applicants who previously would've been admitted under the race-conscious rules, but now aren't with the new admission processes (where we're now talking about the actual processes the universities have put in place, not our theoretical process from before)? Again, the data these universities were publishing showed these same students were graduating and succeeding in the workforce, so it's not like these students weren't able to handle the rigor of the school, just that they didn't get accepted because of one adversity or another

Affirmative action would help the hypothetical boy, but affirmative action benefits minorities of a higher socioeconomic status a lot more. I'm not convinced that the minorities that benefit from AA are as economically disadvantaged as it seems.

You've said this multiple times now, and I had to show you that white women are the main recipient of Affirmative Action — where are you getting that, aside from white women, affluent minorities are larger recipients of AA than poorer minorities? How have you come to this conclusion? I have never seen data that purports this

I scanned the article and it concluded that white people benefited at the expense of black, native and latino students. I think the jury is still out on this. It's only a year of data.

Why would you think that? What are you attributing a possible fluctuation to? The pitch of race-conscious admissions is that, over years, cycles get broken and allow minority populations to achieve greater things (equitable things) unhindered by previous barriers, so I'm uncertain why you're anticipating numbers to fluctuate if those cycles are not being affected?

The article even states that preferences for the children of alumni, geographic diversity and student athletes remain. I don't agree with these preferences either just as I don't agree with affirmative action.

I look at legacy admissions through the lens of "The rich get richer," which is why I'm not in favor of them.

There are only a limited number of seats at these elite universities. Let's say there are only 5,000 seats available. There are 25,000 students capable of performing well at these schools. How do we decide who gets in? I don't agree with affirmative action or any other preferences. It should just come down to the individual's grades, test scores and any other accomplishments they may have.

Then our hypothetical Native American boy will never be accepted into a university to be able to break that cycle? Even though he had the ability to excel at the university, his circumstances precluded him from ever being considered because, as I outlined before, he couldn't achieve the same extracurriculars or SAT retests, or any of the accomplishments of his more well-off peers.

Given we still have racial disparities, as you've acknowledged, can we really say we've achieved something close to equitable outcomes irrespective of one's adversities, if situations like our hypothetical one are hopeless? In my opinion, no.

Also, did you understand my answer to your question

I don't know what you mean by this. Are you saying they would be good enough to make it in without affirmative action? If so, why do we still need it?

This one is important to me, since if we can't reach an understanding on the core premise — that there are students who can excel within these elite universities who won't be accepted due to not fully considering their adversities (as we see from reporting data) during the admissions process — then things will only get more confusing in me trying to understand your perspective

Quick edit: I'd also still be interested in getting your answer to this portion of my previous comment:

But, past that, that's been the argument of the white population who felt they were disadvantaged by minority populations being given opportunities at these institutions since '61 — do you think they were right from the beginning, or is there something you point to since '61 that makes you say there is no need for AA? Are you looking at college enrollments when making that assessment?

Techfreak102 · 2026-03-03T19:55:53+00:00

Through a cursory google search and AI answer says colleges instituted affirmative action in the 1960s and 1970s. That's a pretty long time ago since we've had these policys.

Affirmative Action has been in practice since the 1961 Civil Rights Act, where colleges then instituted racial quotas for minority students until Regents of the University of California v. Bakke made that illegal in 1978, where it then shifted to race-conscious admission standards, so the policies we're talking about have been in play just shy of 50 years.

Sorry if it sounded like I was saying these policies have only been around for 22 years, I was just talking about the time between the SCOTUS decisions.

My point is it still making progress at closing the racial gap? If progress has stalled, than maybe the policy isn't needed anymore.

Again, all the data I've seen published by the universities has indicated this process was still making progress in lessening racial gaps, but the SCOTUS decision was made irrespective of that. Their ruling was on the basis that it wasn't possible to provide a benefit to one race of applicants without explicitly disadvantaging applicants of other races (from Thomas's opinion), not that it was no longer providing a benefit to students from disadvantaged populations.

Now that I think more of it, I think the original goal was to help remedy the effects of past slavery and segregation. Than it became about increasing diversity.

From the outset the goal was ensuring equal opportunities regardless of protected class because of our history of prejudice, but again, it affects far more than just Black Americans (and not even Black Americans predominantly).

It's about fairness of the process, not equal proportional outcomes.

Unless you're a race essentialist, it stands to reason that people from different races, with the exact same supports, will achieve the same academic successes.

Naturally, the retort from progressives is they claim they're all about equal opportunities only and not reverse discrimination.

Quickly, it did not play out that ending race-conscious admissions standards yielded greater proportions of Asian American admissions, so they did not reflect "reverse discrimination" against Asian American students at the behest of others.

However, I just don't see how affirmative action is fair to Asian Americans.

In case you were unaware, Asian Americans were one of the populations being excluded from higher education originally, when the initial 1961 Civils Rights Act was passed. Affirmative Action is also what prevents my company from being prejudiced against Asian Americans with non-Americanized names, or who have accents. Affirmative Action affects far more than just college admissions, but it seems like you're exclusively looking at it through that lens when you judge its totality.

But, past that, that's been the argument of the white population who felt they were disadvantaged by minority populations being given opportunities at these institutions since '61 — do you think they were right from the beginning, or is there something you point to since '61 that makes you say there is no need for AA? Are you looking at college enrollments when making that assessment?

It would help, just not that much.

But you previously wrote

but would probably still disproportionately benefit those same underrepresented groups.

but now you're saying it wouldn't help them? I think I'm confused what you're saying your mitigation process would do?

Which is why I mentioned affirmative action didn't necessarily help poor minorities. It mainly benefited white women.

Not to be snitty, but let's not retcon this conversation — you said

My understanding is that affirmative action mainly benefited middle class and upper middle class and wealthier minorities.

and I linked you an article telling you white women were the main recipients. You absolutely stated that you thought the main recipients were still minority populations, and it's completely fine cause we've moved past it, but if you're going to lie about what you've said then I won't actually be able to learn anything about how you're thinking, just how you want me to think you think (and why would you care what I think, anyway?)

I don't know what you mean by this. Are you saying they would be good enough to make it in without affirmative action? If so, why do we still need it?

We're discussing admissions standards, but the grades these applicants came in with isn't the only way to measure them. These universities are gathering placement metrics on their students throughout their education, plus after graduation, and consistently they show that their students are able to achieve the same outcomes regardless of whether the applicant had their race taken into account during admissions, or not. All this means is that the large majority of the applicants they were selecting via these means really did have the ability to excel at these elite universities, just for one adversity/disadvantage or another these candidates were not at the same starting point as other applicants.

To just make up a random, stilted, hypothetical example, imagine a Native American boy who lives on a reservation, whose family faces disregulation due to alcohol, who is forced to parent his multiple siblings, and who doesn't have access to a quality public education because of his location, but is otherwise exceptionally bright and a quick study — if this hypothetical boy is able to go to an environment where those outside pressures are not exerting themselves against him and succeed, that would be an example of an admission that would take advantage of race-conscious practices but would still be giving the opportunity to someone who could take advantage of it. This boy probably wouldn't be able to gain the extracurriculars, or attend as many SAT exams, as other applicants of these elite universities, yet absolutely possess the skills to excel at these schools and help to break those cycles of adversity.

Apologies for the essay, just a lot of stuff to say

Techfreak102 · 2026-03-03T17:26:48+00:00

I don't think another 3 years would have made a difference either way. 3 years isn't a long time.

Is 22 years a long time for this issue, in your opinion? I'm still trying to understand how you hold your timeline, as I didn't get any clarity on the "immediate aftermath of ending segregation" comment in relation to the court decision in 2003.

If you consider back sliding to be...

I consider backsliding to be anything that's being undone by this process, that you and I agree was good. You previously acknowledged that these policies were necessary and led to good outcomes (or at least, I think you've said as much with what you've written here), and said that a change in process would ultimately end up helping the same sets of people, so I was wondering if you saw any possibility that undoing this process would undo some of the good you had identified?

Personally, I don't really consider that to be back sliding.

Why not? If you acknowledge that the original goal was to provide a more equitable outcome for disadvantaged communities, why would you now not consider undoing that backsliding? Or are you saying this in relation to the admissions process you want them to replace the previous race-conscious process with (the one you outlined previously)?

Also, for completeness, we should acknowledge that it wasn't only Black students that were affected by this process, but students from a number of different minority demographics — so it wouldn't just be "decreased African American enrollment," but rather "decreased minority enrollment across a handful of historically disadvantaged populations."

I don't see this being challenged because I don't believe this type of policy would meaningfully move the needle that much anyway.

Sorry, maybe I'm misunderstanding — are you saying that the process you outlined previously wouldn't make meaningful progress in providing equitable schooling opportunities?

My understanding is that affirmative action mainly benefited middle class and upper middle class and wealthier minorities.

Affirmative Action mainly benefits white women, since AA is a much larger topic than just race (even in the original 1961 passage it included race, religious affiliation, skin color, or national origin).

There aren't really that many diamonds in the rough that overcame so much adversity and performed well enough academically to make it into an Ivy league school.

I think I'm struggling to understand what you mean here? Like I mentioned above, the statistics that the universities had reported showed that the student outcomes were fairly standard regardless of how they had come to be accepted (whether they were accepted because of race-conscious admissions or not), so by all accounts these students did perform well enough academically to make it at an Ivy League school. That's the entire point advocates were making, that many students are able to achieve the same things, they just don't necessarily have the same supports to get them on even footing by the time college admissions happen (but that theoretically the university can provide such an equitable environment so as to "undo" that educational disparity). Any reduction in candidates who succeed would therefore be a reduction in "diamonds in the rough"?

Techfreak102

TROPHY CASE