Mahouka Koukou no Rettousei LN - Discussion about Other Topics

[Rava]

Yes, there's a thread in the anime forum about it.

[IceHism]

Is there any info on who Satou Tsutomu is besides his afterwords? Like a picture of him or a link to his direct twitter?

[guestuser]

Originally Posted by IceHism

Is there any info on who Satou Tsutomu is besides his afterwords? Like a picture of him or a link to his direct twitter?

now that you mention it why is there no photo of him.

[TrueAlchemist]

Originally Posted by IceHism

Is there any info on who Satou Tsutomu is besides his afterwords? Like a picture of him or a link to his direct twitter?

No, so far he is being anonymous.
According to non-English Mahouka fan sites, he is a average employee in Japanese company. His academic backgrounds and information on his occupation are unknown. One of Korean translators who translate Mahouka, claimed Satou Tsutomu's writing style is not well trained. Sometimes, he used the terminology that other writers especially in Light Novel do not use.

His age is assumed to be between 1964 and 1979.
Many readers believed, during the earlier volume, Tatsuya was characterised much matured than his actual age and showed conservative stands on society. Many readers assumed Tsutomu used Tatsuya's voice to express his opinion on the world, so Many readers assumed he was not " Young" writer from the beginning. But, I could not determined how people build the potential age range. I believe, the age range (1964-1979) was originally from Japanese Wiki.

[IceHism]

Originally Posted by TrueAlchemist

No, so far he is being anonymous.
According to non-English Mahouka fan sites, he is a average employee in Japanese company. His academic backgrounds and information on his occupation are unknown. One of Korean translators who translate Mahouka, claimed Satou Tsutomu's writing style is not well trained. Sometimes, he used the terminology that other writers especially in Light Novel do not use.

His age is assumed to be between 1964 and 1979.
Many readers believed, during the earlier volume, Tatsuya was characterised much matured than his actual age and showed conservative stands on society. Many readers assumed Tsutomu used Tatsuya's voice to express his opinion on the world, so Many readers assumed he was not " Young" writer from the beginning. But, I could not determined how people build the potential age range. I believe, the age range (1964-1979) was originally from Japanese Wiki.

What conservative policy does he support in particular? Currently Japan is a conservative state but I dont particularly see Tatsuya advocating much policies. It seems he is simply using the most reliable ways to obtain power to try to change the life of all magicians for the better which doesn't seem very conservative to me. Also his depiction of women is definitely not conservative in the sense that they hold many equal opportunities to male magicians which is a sharp contrast to how Japan views women today. As far as I know, Asia is not very good at this women's right thing.

I wonder why he is being incognito though.... Why would he hide himself?

[sam1]

Originally Posted by IceHism

What conservative policy does he support in particular? Currently Japan is a conservative state but I dont particularly see Tatsuya advocating much policies. It seems he is simply using the most reliable ways to obtain power to try to change the life of all magicians for the better which doesn't seem very conservative to me. Also his depiction of women is definitely not conservative in the sense that they hold many equal opportunities to male magicians which is a sharp contrast to how Japan views women today. As far as I know, Asia is not very good at this women's right thing.

I wonder why he is being incognito though.... Why would he hide himself?

Probably the allegations that he is right wing and a nationalist I saw that in the black bullet forum. Thought it doesn't seem like he is one and he is just portraying a cold war like scenario.

[TrueAlchemist]

Originally Posted by IceHism

What conservative policy does he support in particular? Currently Japan is a conservative state but I dont particularly see Tatsuya advocating much policies. It seems he is simply using the most reliable ways to obtain power to try to change the life of all magicians for the better which doesn't seem very conservative to me. Also his depiction of women is definitely not conservative in the sense that they hold many equal opportunities to male magicians which is a sharp contrast to how Japan views women today. As far as I know, Asia is not very good at this women's right thing.

I wonder why he is being incognito though.... Why would he hide himself?

You seem to miss few things. It is not conservative policy. It is conservative perspective towards the society. During the Blache crisis, he was talking with Miyuki about the equality. And, Tatsuya says, people without talents desire equality besides looking at the reality. It is very conservative perspective towards the existing system. Some readers were offended about this, and some of them stopped reading or became anti-fans. Older generations tend to have conservative perspectives like this, so people assumed he is not "Young".

For your question, it is not hard to become incognito. It is not hiding. He was not a professional writer. Even now, I doubt, he will show himself to public. If he is young and handsome, Kadokawa would force him to make a public appearance to boost profit. Even for some famous professional writers, they use pen names to produce their works while being anonymous.

And, if Sato Tsutomu is still working for a company, it would be natural for him to hide his own identity because his position in the company will be awkward regardless of his popularity.

[Echizen777]

@IceHism: Simply because he doesn't want to be publicly known like that. A lot of authors do that, I would do that too, probably, a tranquil life is better . But there is still his interview with Ono, maybe he saw him.

Originally Posted by TrueAlchemist

You seem to miss few things. It is not conservative policy. It is conservative perspective towards the society. During the Blache crisis, he was talking with Miyuki about the equality. And, Tatsuya says, people without talents desire equality besides looking at the reality. It is very conservative perspective towards the existing system. Some readers were offended about this, and some of them stopped reading or became anti-fans. Older generations tend to have conservative perspectives like this, so people assumed he is not "Young".

I am not from the right or left or anything but what is wrong with what Tatsuya said? In society the most best are chosen instead of the less good otherwise it would be favoritism. You may be less talented than someone but may have worked harder, making him a better pick than his rival. Why would someone better suited for a job would be refused while someone inferior to him at this job would be accepted?

In Mahouka talent comes fom your genes and this overwhelming difference in talent is impossible to surmount for some magicians who are less talented. The magicians from the 28 families are in their own strata. But without effort they can still be beaten by less talented ones example: Tomitsuka VS Shippou. So, efforts has its importance.

If he is young and handsome, Kadokawa would force him to make a public appearance to boost profit. Even for some famous professional writers, they use pen names to produce their works while being anonymous.

Not necessarily.

[TrueAlchemist]

Originally Posted by Echizen777

I am not from the right or left or anything but what is wrong with what Tatsuya said? In society the most best are chosen instead of the less good otherwise it would be favoritism. You may be less talented than someone but may have worked harder, making him a better pick than his rival. Why would someone better suited for a job would be refused while someone inferior to him at this job would be accepted? .

Don't kill the messenger
There are people who think like this in Asia. The society filled with the extreme competitive environment tends to drive people to criticize the society's system and demands equality. Some people believe, Sato Tsutomu used his character to criticize group of people in the society.

I am just explaining why some readers started assuming Sato Tsutomu was not "Young".

[allfictions]

Originally Posted by Echizen777

I am not from the right or left or anything but what is wrong with what Tatsuya said? In society the most best are chosen instead of the less good otherwise it would be favoritism. You may be less talented than someone but may have worked harder, making him a better pick than his rival. Why would someone better suited for a job would be refused while someone inferior to him at this job would be accepted?

It's not much the message than how it is delivered, specifically those demanding equality are secretly jealous, which could be seen as a strawman.

[Lucarion]

I just took what Tatsuya said as the way things really are. I feel like the reason for that whole controversy was because people compared magic to money, when in reality magic is more like ability.

For example,let's say the Mahouka characters went to an art school instead of a magic school--the blooms are the most talented students, and the weeds are the ones with meager art skills. Of course, people are going to prioritize the training of the talented over the untalented. And the untalented can't go crying out for equality, because that would be ridiculous--they don't deserve it as they've proven that their skills are indeed lacking in the necessary areas.

The critics are also under the wrong assumption that the mages rule Japan and are treated as an upper class, when plenty of normal people without magic still occupy the highest seats in power and can live their lives undisturbed. It's the mages who are the victims of discrimination, not the muggles. The mages are only elites in the same sense doctors are.


But what do I know? I'm just an elitist prick. I don't exactly have the patience to deal with people who refuse to see themselves for who they are, and accept the fact there are people vastly superior to themselves.

[Lucarion]

Originally Posted by IceHism

Is there any info on who Satou Tsutomu is besides his afterwords? Like a picture of him or a link to his direct twitter?

I believe someone from Random Curiosity told me he was around his 40's or maybe even 50.

I checked his wiki page and thought the math was pretty sound.

[allfictions]

Originally Posted by Lucarion

For example,let's say the Mahouka characters went to an art school instead of a magic school--the blooms are the most talented students, and the weeds are the ones with meager art skills. Of course, people are going to prioritize the training of the talented over the untalented. And the untalented can't go crying out for equality, because that would be ridiculous--they don't deserve it as they've proven that their skills are indeed lacking in the necessary areas.

As magic is the result of genetic engineering, thus circumstances outside said talented's control, your example is flawed.

And 'prioritize the training of the talented' is pretty much, excuse me the term, bullshit. For example, are you familiar with the 'Pygmalion Effect'? It is, in short, a self fulfilling prophecy in which the greater the expectation placed upon people, often children or students and employees, the better they perform. Here's an experiment which examined it directly: a class of children were given an aptitude test, and afterwards their teacher was told that child X's results showed him/her to be particularly gifted. Child X had, in fact, been drawn at random. When the experimenters followed up on the class a few months later, they found that X was performing much better than before — because the teacher was giving them more attention.

Now consider that the greater the expectations, the better the performance applies in reverse as well...see the problem?

The critics are also under the wrong assumption that the mages rule Japan and are treated as an upper class, when plenty of normal people without magic still occupy the highest seats in power and can live their lives undisturbed. It's the mages who are the victims of discrimination, not the muggles. The mages are only elites in the same sense doctors are.

Irrelevant, since it is the difference between Weeds and Blooms that is adressed here, not humans/magicians.

I don't exactly have the patience to deal with people who refuse to see themselves for who they are, and accept the fact there are people vastly superior to themselves.

Images

Seriously?

Sorry; dynamic content not loaded. Reload?

I'm not even going to point out just what is wrong with that sentence, I will simply ask you to sit back, and reflect for a loooong time on it. But here's a hint:

"Know your place"

[Lucarion]

Originally Posted by allfictions

As magic is the result of magic engineering, thus circumstances outside said talented's control, your example is flawed.

And 'prioritize the training of the talented' is pretty much, excuse me the term, bullshit. For example, are you familiar with the 'Pygmalion Effect'? It is, in short, a self fulfilling prophecy in which the greater the expectation placed upon people, often children or students and employees, the better they perform. Here's an experiment which examined it directly: a class of children were given an aptitude test, and afterwards their teacher was told that child X's results showed him/her to be particularly gifted. Child X had, in fact, been drawn at random. When the experimenters followed up on the class a few months later, they found that X was performing much better than before — because the teacher was giving them more attention.

Now consider that the greater the expectations, the better the performance applies in reverse as well...see the problem?

Irrelevant, since it is the difference between Weeds and Blooms that is adressed here, not humans/magicians.

Images

Seriously?

Sorry; dynamic content not loaded. Reload?

I'm not even going to point out just what is wrong with that sentence, I will simply ask you to sit back, and reflect for a loooong time on it. But here's a hint:

"Know your place"

OK, one, it's already been said that natural ability matters too, you may have the best CAD but if you can't use it, then nothing. Second, yes, I know about that, but this is not about the Pygmalion Effect. Blooms are students that have been tested and confirmed to possess great magical ability. It's not up for debate. They are, at least by accepted standards, better than Weeds. And that just shows that expectations affect performance, since people tend to want to meet the expectations set upon them. But imagine if that kid truly was gifted? He'd perform even better. Likewise, even a genius who didn't have any sort of expectations heaped upon him will still do better, especially in his fields of interests, than his peers who like him didn't have to be saddled with expectations.

It's as if you're saying natural talent doesn't exist.


Next, I'm going to argue that it is relevant since many of the critics of the story trivialize the Weed vs. Bloom conflict as "just a bunch of privileged kids bickering" when the truth is a lot more complex.

Know your place? Yes. Actually I think people need to do this more. I think it's important for people to be self-aware enough to know what they can and can not do, and to be able to identify and separate the people who can actually do things from the the ones who are merely peddling bullshit but can't produce any results. Talent does exist, some people are gifted, nature has as much a part in the development of an individual as nurture, and I don't like living in a world where the talented have to suffer for their gifts, set aside like they're irrelevant, and continuously misunderstood.

Look allfictions, I respect you and I like you, but tell me, do you seriously believe that people are all equal? Why do you seem to insist on making a point that people are all the same? That given the same resources and circumstances everyone is going to do the same thing and develop in the same way? That, I find ridiculous. We're all different, and part of this difference is the fact that some people are going to do better in certain areas than others.

[IceHism]

Originally Posted by TrueAlchemist

You seem to miss few things. It is not conservative policy. It is conservative perspective towards the society. During the Blache crisis, he was talking with Miyuki about the equality. And, Tatsuya says, people without talents desire equality besides looking at the reality. It is very conservative perspective towards the existing system. Some readers were offended about this, and some of them stopped reading or became anti-fans. Older generations tend to have conservative perspectives like this, so people assumed he is not "Young".

For your question, it is not hard to become incognito. It is not hiding. He was not a professional writer. Even now, I doubt, he will show himself to public. If he is young and handsome, Kadokawa would force him to make a public appearance to boost profit. Even for some famous professional writers, they use pen names to produce their works while being anonymous.

And, if Sato Tsutomu is still working for a company, it would be natural for him to hide his own identity because his position in the company will be awkward regardless of his popularity.

Hmm, this sounds like Greeeen's reason to be incognito and never show their face even in public performances. They are dentists as well as musicians and their positions as dentists would be affected if people knew what Greeeen's faces were.


I think the thing that makes this detail realistic is that in this world, magic power has been proven to be somewhat inherited. In real life, Abilities (the practical application of knowledge will be the definition i will be using) are not inherited at all. It might not be a good idea to compare this to real life.

[allfictions]

Originally Posted by Lucarion

OK, one, it's already been said that natural ability matters too, you may have the best CAD but if you can't use it, then nothing. Second, yes, I know about that, but this is not about the Pygmalion Effect. Blooms are students that have been tested and confirmed to possess great magical ability. It's not up for debate. They are, at least by accepted standards, better than Weeds. And that just shows that expectations affect performance, since people tend to want to meet the expectations set upon them. But imagine if that kid truly was gifted? He'd perform even better. Likewise, even a genius who didn't have any sort of expectations heaped upon him will still do better, especially in his fields of interests, than his peers who like him didn't have to be saddled with expectations.

It's as if you're saying natural talent doesn't exist.


Next, I'm going to argue that it is relevant since many of the critics of the story trivialize the Weed vs. Bloom conflict as "just a bunch of privileged kids bickering" when the truth is a lot more complex.

Know your place? Yes. Actually I think people need to do this more. I think it's important for people to be self-aware enough to know what they can and can not do, and to be able to identify and separate the people who can actually do things from the the ones who are merely peddling bullshit but can't produce any results. Talent does exist, some people are gifted, nature has as much a part in the development of an individual as nurture, and I don't like living in a world where the talented have to suffer for their gifts, set aside like they're irrelevant, and continuously misunderstood.

Look allfictions, I respect you and I like you, but tell me, do you seriously believe that people are all equal? Why do you seem to insist on making a point that people are all the same? That given the same resources and circumstances everyone is going to do the same thing and develop in the same way? That, I find ridiculous. We're all different, and part of this difference is the fact that some people are going to do better in certain areas than others.

The thing is, in many cases, Weeds suffer from crippling overspecialization in one ability rather than being "objectively" lesser than the Blooms, according to Magic powers standards that keep changing over time. I mean, we have a perfect example in Tatsuya for whom the system would have made him a Bloom thirty years ago, when psion count was more important.

And we should use those ever changing standards to judge whether a group is "superior" to another, and thus deserve better education? Please.

I brought up the Pygmalion Effect to show that proritizing one's education over another because they are supposedly more talented is totally subjective. We have IQ tests, while useful as a measure, on which there is no consensus on how strongly it correlates to general intelligence, how many aspects of intelligence it can measure, what the implications are sociologically speaking, "correlation does not equate causation"; we have the Dunning-Kruger effect (the people who are going to feel the greatest sense of superiority are going to be those who least warrant it); and plus the Pygmalion Effect, all those factors are supposed to reassure us that we can objectively say that someone is more intelligent than the rest, and as such deserve greater attention from the teachers? And there is absolutely no chance that we might miss a student with the potential to be a genius if given enough attention?

Allow me to doubt it. Who can make the decision of "identifying and separate the people who can actually do things from the the ones who are merely peddling bullshit but can't produce any results"? Because if the person doesn't have the knowledge to make a particular decision, they probably don't have knowledge to determine who does.

It's difficult at best to tell what a person is truly capable of, especially so people themselves. Failures commonly happens even without (or despite) external influence, primarily in two different ways: overcompensating and fatalism. When a person, for example, thinks they're annoying people because they're dull, or not strong enough to succeed at a sport, they may attempt to spice up and vary conversations beyond a comfortable range of normality of the other person or exercise so much or so hard that their body can't perform as well as it could have come game time. In a contrasting manner, a person may think they can never succeed at painting or getting a promotion so they never practice, and don't even try. This can even extend to an extreme of expending more effort in avoiding the expected failure than it would have taken for someone with their skill level or situation to actually succeed.

It bears repeating, but it's difficult at best to tell what a person is truly capable of, so I think it best to treat people with respect. Especially when education is concerned. The talks of equality ''dismiss the talented (who suffer, misunderstood, irrelevant)/dismiss the talent/permits the untalented to drag everyone down" are, quite frankly, pure fearmongering. I'm not proposing communism here ("From each according to his ability, to each according to his need", aka let everyone be equally poor), a society where everyone is treated equally is a pipe dream for the foreseeable future for obvious reasons, what I'm saying is the minimal standard should be as high as we can make it without having to make unacceptable sacrifices elsewhere. So no, I'm not saying natural talent doesn't exist, only that talent is a matter of luck, you didn't earn being born with it, so basing an entire system to satisfy a minority of geniuses against a majority of averages is just as horrific as the opposite.

It's not like high-skill jobs like doctors are filled by some caste of hereditary supergeniuses while low-end jobs like fruit-pickers are filled by a caste of hereditary morons. They're filled with people who have more-or-less the same inherent capacity at birth. The fruit-picker is stuck being a fruit-picker because he doesn't have the spare time, money, or motivation to acquire the skills to get a better job. If you doubt this, just consider the fact that many of the doctors, lawyers, executives etc. of today are the descendants of Medieval peasants. If you went back to the Middle Ages, almost everyone did the totally shit job of being a peasant farmer. The descendants of those peasant farmers are now doctors and lawyers. Yet modern people are no different from Medieval people in their inherent capabilities. Even among modern population, the Millennials are not innately more intelligent than their Baby Boomer parents or their WWII generation grandparents. They were just given better educational opportunities.*

It doesn't really change anything to have a world where everyone has the ability to do any profession "if they really wanted"**, because with the exception of borderline retarded people who are genuinely too stupid to do anything but low-skill labor and perhaps a handful of positions that genuinely require exceptional geniuses, the world is already like that***.

If you still have objections on this particular point, please adress them to the Finnish education system:

Originally Posted by Wikipedia

Education in Finland is an egalitarian system, with no tuition fees and with free meals served to full-time students. The present Finnish education system consists of well-funded and carefully thought out daycare programs (for babies and toddlers) and a one-year "pre-school" (or kindergarten for six-year olds); a nine-year compulsory basic comprehensive school (starting at age seven and ending at the age of sixteen); post-compulsory secondary general academic and vocational education; higher education (University and Polytechnical); and adult (lifelong, continuing) education. The Nordic strategy for achieving equality and excellence in education has been based on constructing a publicly funded comprehensive school system without selecting, tracking, or streaming students during their common basic education. Part of the strategy has been to spread the school network so that pupils have a school near their homes whenever possible or, if this is not feasible, e.g. in rural areas, to provide free transportation to more widely dispersed schools. Inclusive special education within the classroom and instructional efforts to minimize low achievement are also typical of Nordic educational systems.

After their nine-year basic education in a comprehensive school, students at the age of 16 may choose to continue their secondary education in either an academic track (lukio) or a vocational track (ammattikoulu), both of which usually take three years. Tertiary education is divided into university and polytechnic (ammattikorkeakoulu, often translated into English as "university of applied sciences") systems. Only universities award licentiate- and doctoral-level degrees. Formerly, only university graduates could obtain higher (postgraduate) degrees, however, since the implementation of the Bologna process, polytechnic degree holders can now qualify for further academic study by doing additional courses. There are 20 universities and 30 polytechnics in the country.

The Education Index, published with the UN's Human Development Index in 2008, based on data from 2006, lists Finland as 0.993, amongst the highest in the world, tied for first with Denmark, Australia and New Zealand.

Do I seriously believe that people are all equal? That people are all the same? Yes to the former, no to the latter.

Of course different people are going to be better in different areas, but that ability doesn't really effect the person's worth. You aren't "superior" if you can do something others can't, you are different or unique, that's all. The difference between a regular talented person and an elitist prick is that the elitist prick thinks that makes him special instead of just lucky. Any other thinking is the kind that led to the birth of toxic and godawful ideologies such as Objectivism**** (corporations should not be held down by regulations and governments and let free to do what they want because CEOs obviously know better than the plebs...despite the experiments of company towns showing exactly why this is such a bad idea, but whatever!) and the Prosperity gospel (Calvinists/some Protestants: if you are rich, you are blessed by God, if you are poor, He obviously scorns you...despite such thinking being disproven in both the Old and New Testaments, most notably the whole point of the tale of Job). Both revolves around the core point that the "incapable" fail to rise, and the "capable" achieve and excel. The only way you can be sure this true is to define your terms recursively and in hindsight: someone is "capable" if they rose, and "incapable" if they did not (notice the past tense of the verbs used). And framing the debate that way completely negates any descriptive power in the terms.

Finally, you have missed what I was trying to demonstrate by using "know your place". I was being too vague then: do your words,

[Some people should] accept the fact there are people vastly superior to themselves.

really do not remind you of familiar attitudes? Really not?

Draw the conclusions stemming from it. Those past views on who was superior to whom are obviously wrong, and based on subjective factors to determine intelligence and abilities. Which really brings back to previous points I adressed, namely determining who is intelligent is entirely subjective.

I'm sorry if I sound inflexible and/or rude, but, being Black and the son of an immigrant with a degree in engineering forced to work in because his aptitudes are not considered valid and having an high functionning autist as a friend, forgive me if I find "I just took what Tatsuya said as the way things really are" as midly annoying (stress on "midly": I'm not really offended or even angry, this is an online debate, no need to get overly agitated or invested, an online debate is not going to change someone's mind). Might I suggest you change your vocabulary? Because your words "superior" and "inferior" might be more offensive to someone less charitable than me, and it's actually quite easy to misconstruct your argument. Another reason why I'm not really angry at you for expressing your opinion, I fear that I misunderstood what you meant to convey*****.

Bottom line, my views on equality can be summed up by this:

Originally Posted by Steve Pinker

In his famous theory of justice, the philosopher John Rawls asks us to imagine a social contract drawn up by self-interested agents negotiating under a veil of ignorance, unaware of the talents or status they will inherit at birth - ghosts ignorant of the machines they will haunt. He argues a just society is one that these disembodied souls would agree to be born into, knowing that they might be dealt a lousy social or genetic hand...

Indeed, the existence of innate differences in ability makes Rawls's conception of social justice especially acute and eternally relevant. ...if people differ in talents, people might find themselves in poverty in a nonprejudiced society even if they applied themselves to the fullest. This is an injustice that, a Rawlsian would argue, ought to be rectified.

Lastly, disagreeing with Tatsuya does not hinder my reading experience, which is rather important. I can think that Blanche could actually have a point if they weren't terrorists, and, you know, actually had solutions to the discrimination in First High, I can think that Tatsuya is dead wrong and a bit of an ass in qualifying equality of "dream" and/or "lies" (fuck Civil Rights movements, amirite?), I can think that having only terrorists advocate "equality" in-universe (where are the legitimate groups? The NGOs?) look like a strawman, and keep reading just fine. This a future where human rights have been abolished after all. And he would not be the first protagonist I found morally opposed to my own morals, and still enjoy the entertainment: Eragon, Jorg Ancrath1, Anasûrimbor Kellhus2, every Grand Theft Auto protagonist ever3, Richard Rahl4, etc.


* Meredith Bower. 10 Myths About Intelligence. Discovery Channel. (Myth #5)
** I use quotes because that's really putting it in a very idealistic way. The Latin American fruit-picker might "really want" to be a doctor, but he can't because he doesn't have the time or money for med school
***As an aside, I would speculate that people would generally be happier in a position/career that their abilities are suited for
****Then again, Objectivism gave me Bioshock, which may as well be considered a re-write of Atlas Shrugged, but far more realistic. So, thanks Ayn Rand?
*****For example, an easy strawman to make would be to invoke Godwin's Law: I doubt Joseph the Jew was given the same education as Hans the blond German in Nazi Germany

1Broken Empire Trilogy: attenuating circumstances, his characterization is actually the point
2The Prince of Nothing: attenuating circumstances, he has to be the dark messiah to stop an impeding apocalypse, anti-hero à la Lelouch, and this takes place in a world where everyone are horrible
3Attenuating circumstances, compared to everyone else in the GTA world being so awful, being a self-centered asshole as a hero is not so bad
4Actually this one is a lie, I stopped reading it. After the first and second book (disregarding kicking an 8-year-old girl in the jaw), it went off the deep end when the entire world of the books became a straw map for the (more and more unintentionally villainish) protagonist to lash out against and justify his morality and his companions'. The bad taste in the villains being either expies of real life American politicians (BC and his wife HC) or a basically ''Islamocommie'' Empire are the cherries on top.

[Lucarion]

Originally Posted by allfictions

The thing is, in many cases, Weeds suffer from crippling overspecialization in one ability rather than being "objectively" lesser than the Blooms, according to Magic powers standards that keep changing over time. I mean, we have a perfect example in Tatsuya for whom the system would have made him a Weed thirty years ago, when psion count was more important.

And we should use those ever changing standards to judge whether a group is "superior" to another, and thus deserve better education? Please.

I brought up the Pygmalion Effect to show that proritizing one's education over another because they are supposedly more talented is totally subjective. We have IQ tests, while as a useful measure, on which there is no consensus on how strongly it correlates to general intelligence, how many aspects of intelligence it can measure, what the implications are sociologically speaking, "correlation does not equate causation"; we have the Dunning-Kruger effect (the people who are going to feel the greatest sense of superiority are going to be those who least warrant it); and plus the Pygmalion Effect, all those factors are supposed to reassure us that we can objectively say that someone is more intelligent than the rest, and as such deserve greater attention from the teachers? And there is absolutely no chance that we might miss a student with the potential to be a genius if given enough attention?

Allow me to doubt it. Who can make the decision of "identifying and separate the people who can actually do things from the the ones who are merely peddling bullshit but can't produce any results"? Because if the person doesn't have the knowledge to make a particular decision, they probably don't have knowledge to determine who does.

It's difficult at best to tell what a person is truly capable of, especially so people themselves. Failures commonly happens even without (or despite) external influence, primarily in two different ways: overcompensating and fatalism. When a person, for example, thinks they're annoying people because they're dull, or not strong enough to succeed at a sport, they may attempt to spice up and vary conversations beyond a comfortable range of normality of the other person or exercise so much or so hard that their body can't perform as well as it could have come game time. In a contrasting manner, a person may think they can never succeed at painting or getting a promotion so they never practice, and don't even try. This can even extend to an extreme of expending more effort in avoiding the expected failure than it would have taken for someone with their skill level or situation to actually succeed.

It bears repeating, but it's difficult at best to tell what a person is truly capable of, so I think it best to treat people with respect. Especially when education is concerned. The talks of .equality dismiss the talented (who suffer, misunderstood, irrelevant)/dismiss the talent/permits the untalented to drag everyone down" are, quite frankly, pure fearmongering. I'm not proposing communism here ("From each according to his ability, to each according to his need", aka let everyone be equally poor), a society where everyone is treated equally is a pipe dream for the foreseeable future for obvious reasons, what I'm saying is the minimal standard should be as high as we can make it without having to make unacceptable sacrifices elsewhere. So no, I'm not saying natural talent doesn't exist, only that talent is a matter of luck, you didn't earn being born with it, so basing an entire system to satisfy a minority of geniuses against a majority of averages is just as horrific as the opposite.

It's not like high-skill jobs like doctors are filled by some caste of hereditary supergeniuses while low-end jobs like fruit-pickers are filled by a caste of hereditary morons. They're filled with people who have more-or-less the same inherent capacity at birth. The fruit-picker is stuck being a fruit-picker because he doesn't have the spare time, money, or motivation to acquire the skills to get a better job. If you doubt this, just consider the fact that many of the doctors, lawyers, executives etc. of today are the descendants of Medieval peasants. If you went back to the Middle Ages, almost everyone did the totally shit job of being a peasant farmer. The descendants of those peasant farmers are now doctors and lawyers. Yet modern people are no different from Medieval people in their inherent capabilities. The Millennials are not innately more intelligent than the Baby Boomer parents or their WWII generation grandparents. They were just given better educational opportunities.*

It doesn't really change anything to have a world where everyone has the ability to do any profession "if they really wanted"**, because with the exception of borderline retarded people who are genuinely too stupid to do anything but low-skill labor and perhaps a handful of positions that genuinely require exceptional geniuses, the world is already like that***.

If you still have objections on this particular point, please adress them to the Finnish education system:


Do I seriously believe that people are all equal? That people are all the same? Yes to the former, no to the latter.
Of course different people are going to be better in different areas, but that ability doesn't really effect the person's worth. You aren't "superior" if you can do something others can't, you are different or unique, that's all. The difference between a regular talented person and an elitist prick is that the elitist prick thinks that makes him special instead of just lucky. Any other thinking is the kind that led to the birth of toxic and godawful ideologies such as Objectivism**** (corporations should not be held down by regulations and governments and let free to do what they want because CEOs obviously know better than the plebs...despite the experiments of company towns showing exactly why this is such a bad idea, but whatever!) and the Prosperity gospel (Calvinists/some Protestants: if you are rich, you are blessed by God, if you are poor, He obviously scorns you...despite such thinking being disproven in both the Old and New Testaments, most notably the whole point of the tale of Job). Both revolves around the core point that the "incapable" fail to rise, and the "capable" achieve and excel. The only way you can be sure this true is to define your terms recursively: someone is "capable" if they rose, and "incapable" if they did not (notice the past tense of the verbs used). And framing the debate that way completely negates any descriptive power in the terms.

Finally, you have missed what I was trying to demonstrate by using "know your place". I was being too vague then: do your words,

really do not remind you of familiar attitudes? Really not?

Draw the conclusions stemming from it. Those past views on who was superior to whom are obviously wrong, and based on subjective factors to determine intelligence and abilities. Which really brings back to previous points I adressed, namely determining who is intelligent is entirely subjective.

I'm sorry if I sound inflexible and/or rude, but, being Black and the son of an immigrant with a degree in engineering forced to work in because his aptitudes are not considered valid and having an high functionning autist as a friend, forgive me if I find "I just took what Tatsuya said as the way things really are" as midly annoying (stress on "midly": I'm not really offended or even angry, this is an online debate, no need to get overly agitated or invested, an online debate is not going to change someone's mind). Might I suggest you change your vocabulary? Because your words "superior" and "inferior" might be more offensive to someone less charitable than me, and it's actually quite easy to misconstruct your argument. Another reason why I'm not really angry at you for expressing your opinion, I fear that I misunderstood what you meant to convey*****.

Bottom line, my views on equality can be summed up by this:


Lastly, disagreeing with Tatsuya does not hinder my reading experience, which is rather important. I can think that Blanche could actually have a point if they weren't terrorists, and, you know, actually had solutions to the discrimination in First High, I can think that Tatsuya is dead wrong and a bit of an ass in qualifying equality of "dream" and/or "lies" (fuck Civil Rights movements, amirite?), I can think that having only terrorists advocate "equality" in-universe (where are the legitimate groups? The NGOs?) look like a strawman, and keep reading just fine. This a future where human rights have been abolished after all. And he would not be the first protagonist I found morally opposed to my own morals, and still enjoy the entertainment: Eragon, Jorg Ancrath1, Anasûrimbor Kellhus2, every Grand Theft Auto protagonist ever3, Richard Rahl4, etc.


* Meredith Bower. 10 Myths About Intelligence. Discovery Channel. (Myth #5)
** I use quotes because that's really putting it in a very idealistic way. The Latin American fruit-picker might "really want" to be a doctor, but he can't because he doesn't have the time or money for med school
***As an aside, I would speculate that people would generally be happier in a position/career that their abilities are suited for
****Then again, Objectivism gave me Bioshock, which may as well be considered a re-write of Atlas Shrugged, but far more realistic. So, thanks Ayn Rand?
*****For example, an easy strawman to make would be to invoke Godwin's Law: I doubt Joseph the Jew was given the same education as Hans the blonde German in Nazi Germany

1Broken Empire Trilogy: attenuating circumstances, his characterization is actually the point
2The Prince of Nothing: attenuating circumstances, he has to be the dark messiah to stop an impeding apocalypse, anti-hero à la Lelouch, and this takes place in a world where everyone are horrible
3Attenuating circumstances, compared to everyone else in the GTA world being so awful, being a self-centered asshole as a hero is not so bad
4Actually this one is a lie, I stopped reading it. After the first and second book (disregarding kicking an 8-year-old girl in the jaw), it went off the deep end when the entire world of the books became a straw map for the (more and more unintentionally villainish) protagonist to lash out against and justify his morality and his companions'. The bad taste in the villains being expies of real life American politicians (BC and his wife HC) and a basically Islamocommie Empire are the cherries on top.

This? Is all very good reading.

I'll refrain from answering for the reason that I want to absorb and understand everything that you've written. I don't have a full grasp of everything, and I feel like this is something I need to look into more and left simmering inside my mind for a good long while.

Also, don't sweat it bro. I'm well aware this is just an online discussion and I actually quite enjoy it when people make me reconsider and rethink the way I look at things--or at least offer me a different perspective. Whether or not I change my mind will be all up to me and my judgement.

[renuac]

Originally Posted by allfictions

Long and interesting post.

You make it sound as though the author was pushing a model for a new school system rather than describing a less-than-perfect situation. Yes, First High's system is deeply flawed. The novel agrees with you. If it didn't, it wouldn't go into lengthy explanations about how the system is a compromise, born of the tension between a lack of teachers and political/military pressure to churn out as many magicians as possible. If the novel was trying to say that this two-tier system was objective and fair, we wouldn't have so many of the main cast that fell through the systems' cracks. If the novel was trying to say that there is a single and correct way of measuring a person's worth as a magician, it wouldn't repeatedly have gone into details about how systems to evaluate skill at magic have changed. Nor would it have been at pains to explain why the current system doesn't take everything into account. Nor, if the system were being held up as perfect, would we be seeing changes in the form of new courses being introduced. From the start, the school has been set up as being flawed and ripe for being changed through contact with Tatsuya and assorted friends.

To get back to your original point about equality, yes Tatsuya made the point that those who wanted equal treatment between magicians and non-magicians in areas related to magic were delusional at best, cynically manipulative at worst, and in all cases self-serving. But the whole point with the Mibu plotline was that those students (or at least those not in Blanche's pay) had tied too much of their self-worth to the grades they got in magic and had lost sight of the fact that there was more to them than that. Surely it is a strawman in itself to ignore half of the novel's message?

A flawed evaluation system has judged Mibu as being less good at magic than Miyuki, or Mayumi, or Mari, and so, as a magician, she will never be treated as their equal. But in no way does that diminish her overall worth or mean that the honour students are better than her in all things. As messages go, that one strikes me as entirely positive.

(Re-reading your original comment, I'm actually not sure whether you were saying that the author is presenting a strawman argument or that that's what people might say about it, so apologies if I've misunderstood you.)

Your point about the Pygmalion effect is really interesting, but given the way the Japanese magic community is set up as a whole, I actually doubt it would be all that prevalent among First High students.

Spoiler for for ramblings about the Pygmalion effect in Mahouka:

I'm sure you already know this, but in many of the subsequent studies on the Pygmalion effect, the results were a lot less dramatic than the original Rosenthal-Jacobson experiment, and to the best of my knowledge, no one has yet been able to prove that there is a lasting effect of teachers on their students' long-term performances or IQ. As I recall, the general consensus is that the positive expectations of teachers influence students' self-esteem, intrinsic motivation and belief in their own abilities (among other things). Which all makes having good, supportive teachers important, definitely, but teachers aren't the only ones that can provide that; family support and social-economic background are also crucial in shaping students' expectations of themselves and their beliefs in what they can accomplish.

And the novel makes it very clear that since the vast majority of students come from magician families, they receive training at home. And since magic affinities are inherited, the type(s) of magic they train in are the ones they are genetically predisposed towards. In other words, unlike most people in real life, they receive the best support they can get in developing their skills long before reaching First High, and so are already aware of their strengths. Erika and Leo for example are nothing if not confident in their abilities in their areas of expertise. Part of the reason they got so riled up in the first arc about being looked down on is because they didn't accept that Morisaki and co. were inherently and unequivocally better than them.

Most of the conflict from the first arc comes from Course Two students being fed up of being treated as inferior by Course One students. But the thing with the Pygmalion effect is that it is insidious, students subconsciously internalise and honestly believe what they're told. So poor performing students believe that they're dumb and accept that they get bad grades because, well, they're too dumb to get good ones. The Course Two students however didn't accept the way they were being treated, which to me at least indicates that while they might acknowledge that they aren't as good at general magic as the Course One students, they have enough pride and confidence in their abilities to know that they are worth something as magic users, and to want to be recognised for it.

The fact that they were accepted into a very select magic high school probably bolsters that confidence. As we're told in novel 1, simply being admitted into First High makes you part of the elite. And presumably places high expectations on you. The counsellors are also there to help them if they loose confidence. Now whether those counsellors are any good or not is up for debate, but at least – in theory – the system has fail-safes in place to prevent poorer scoring students from giving up and dropping out.

As a side note, the Pygmalion effect is also a lot stronger when the initial performance was poor. Which makes sense: the better your initial performance, the closer you probably were to the limit of your abilities and the better your self-esteem probably already was. And no matter how low your starting point, you can only improve so much through better self-esteem, motivation, etc. before you hit those limits. The Blooms know that they are honour students. They have all the self-esteem they need as well as the motivation to stay on top. The Pygmalion effect on them isn't going to be all that significant, so any gap that appears between the two courses is going pretty one-sided rather than infinitely expanding at both ends.

Just to be clear, I am in no way defending First High's system. Why would I? The novel is clear on it's being flawed. It must be particularly bad for students like Mizuki who come from non-magician families. They seem to be a definite minority, but that doesn't excuse anything. And I have no doubt that some Course Two students are scarred for life by the treatment they receive from Course One students. But given the larger context of how Japan's magic users organise themselves, I don't think First High has the same level of systemic discrimination leading to long-term lack of self-belief that you see in too many real-world schools. Course Two students seem to survive high school with no lasting ill effects. Same as most students do in real life, going through their less-than-perfect national school systems. Unless they're lucky enough to be Finnish. ^^

(But First High's system still sucks.)

[Rava]

Originally Posted by allfictions

The thing is, in many cases, Weeds suffer from crippling overspecialization in one ability rather than being "objectively" lesser than the Blooms, according to Magic powers standards that keep changing over time. I mean, we have a perfect example in Tatsuya for whom the system would have made him a Weed thirty years ago, when psion count was more important.
[...]

I...think you meant Bloom here? Considering how sky high his Psion count is?

[millie10468]

Guys, a question. Why do people bother to give in-depth, detailed reasons as to why they like Mahouka when it's much simpler to just say "Because we like it"? Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying we shouldn't try to show the reasons why we like reading it but most of the time, the people we're telling it to are people who won't be swayed by anything we say. Can't we just go the "Taste is subjective" route and leave it at that rather than give our best reasoning only to have it discarded by other people's taste?