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Culture War Roundup for the week of March 13, 2023

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From the post

performance spectrum early in life, with remarkable consistency; that the most natural and simplest explanation for this tendency is that there is such a thing as individual academic potential; and that the most likely source of this individual academic potential is [edit] likely influenced by genes. When we look at academic performance, what we see again and again is that students perform at a given level relative to peers early in schooling and maintain that level throughout formal education. (I make that case at considerable length here.) A vast number of interventions thought to influence relative performance have been revealed to make no difference in rigorous research, including truly dramatic changes to schooling and environment. Meta-analyses and literature reviews that assess the strength of many different educational interventions find effect sizes in the range of .01 to .3 standard deviations, small by any standards and subject to all sorts of questions about research quality and randomization. Even the most optimistic reading of the research literature suggests that almost nothing moves the needle in academic outcomes. Almost nothing we try works.

Individualized tutoring shows promise (2-sigma problem), but does not scale well, I suppose. Nor does it ameliorate relative differences; if everyone is being tutored, innate differences of ability will still manifest.

Based on his blogging, he seems to think that moving money from smart, productive people to stupid, unproductive people is the best solution,

This is what any social welfare program does, but some like socialism do it more or worse than others.

Individualized tutoring shows promise (2-sigma problem), but does not scale well, I suppose.

A killer app for gpt 5?

Nor does it ameliorate relative differences; if everyone is being tutored, innate differences of ability will still manifest.

Another reason not to care about inequality - a world in which everyone is two standard deviations smarter is better, even if the variance doesn't change.