4/12/15 Today's Inquiries

Today's links are going to be very random and disorganized because I have a headache.

The Links:

So, I apologize for the long read at my first post. I've been thinking about education a lot recently because I'm looking ahead to next year when I move out of Pikeville and try again to find a job in education. I like this post about the shortcomings of the "growth mindset" in education and social policy but it's poorly written/edited. The short version is that there's a large group of people who make policy decisions based on a worldview which isn't backed up by science. The Growth Mindset means the most important factor in success is work ethic. If you're failing, work harder. If you're poor, work harder. You get the idea. The problem is, we're engaging in education in a way which reinforces privilege. Thinking back to my time in the classroom, the biggest challenge I saw students facing wasn't their failure to believe in their ability to learn. It was their lack of requisite skills to accomplish the tasks before them. Asking them to work harder or adopt a growth mindset isn't going to change their reading skills. What will? Actually teaching the kids how to read. The always smart Arnold Kling comments here.  Here's a quote from late in the essay:

We can argue all day about whether poor students do worse because they have bad health, because they have bad genes, because they have bad upbringings, or because society is fixed against them. We have argued about that all day before here, and it’s been pretty interesting.

But in this case it doesn’t matter. If the only thing that affects success is how much effort you put in, poor kids seem to be putting in a heck of a lot less effort in a surprisingly linear way. But the smart money’s not on that theory.

A rare point of agreement between hard biodeterminists and hard socialists is that telling kids that they’re failing because they just don’t have the right work ethic is a crappy thing to do. It’s usually false and it will make them feel terrible. Behavioral genetics studies show pretty clearly that at least 50% of success at academics and sports is genetic; various sociologists have put a lot of work into proving that your position in a biased society covers a pretty big portion of the remainder. If somebody who was born with the dice stacked against them works very hard, then they might find themselves at A2 above. To deny this in favor of a “everything is about how hard you work” is to offend the sensibilities of sensible people on the left and right alike...

Imagine a boot stamping on a human face forever, saying “YOUR PROBLEM IS THAT YOU’RE JUST NOT TRYING NOT TO BE STAMPED ON HARD ENOUGH”. 

No Pineapple Left Behind is a video game about our shitty education system.


Breaking news, police are more likely to shoot black people. Maybe they should have adopted a growth mindset.

Researchers at the University of Colorado at Boulder and California State University at Northridge in May reviewed a decade of empirical evidence about cops and implicit bias. They found police officers seem to possess implicit bias that might make them more likely to shoot black suspects than white ones. But this bias can be controlled through proper training, and police officers appear to perform better — meaning, they show less implicit bias — than participants from the general public.

A very long, very wonky, and very smart read about what causes recessions and why there's still disagreement about it. Here's part of the problem:

The only models that are legitimate and scientific are those that are based on representative agents to whom is imputed a fake psychology carefully crafted to drive the conclusion that the market equilibrium is Pareto-optimal.

Here's a really fun blog about what we can learn from anachronisms on television shows. I like this, instead of just complaining about inaccuracies we get to see how our perception of the past is colored by our views of the present.

Is this going to be the most important fiction book of 2015?

This post about the worst aspects of techno-libertarians fits nicely with my worldview. Horry for confirmation bias.

Hillary's announcing her run for the White House today. She's expected to raise about $2.5 billion. Is there any clearer indication who the party of the rich really is?

There's bipartisan support for job policies which will keep Americans poor.

Rand Paul and Hillary Clinton don't agree on much, but they both strongly believe more Americans should be working in low-wage, unpleasant jobs.

Paul devoted a large chunk of his announcement speech Tuesday to celebrating the "dignity of work," endorsing the notion that work is a force that gives us meaning, rather than a means by which to stay alive. "Self-esteem can't be given; it must be earned," he declared. "Work is not punishment; work is the reward."

Clinton is less blunt, but her campaign is expected to place a heavy emphasis on policies to get women into the workforce and encourage two-earner families, such as child care subsidies or paid parental leave.

The implication is clear: there are people, particularly women, who aren't working but should be, and the government should be doing all it can to push them to take jobs.

Also, Rand Paul wants to make college more affordable for the rich.

Americans are trapped in Yemen without a way home so they're suing the government to get rescued. Maybe the should email Hillary Clinton.

Yale's school of environment made this awesome granular data tool about Americans' beliefs about certain environmental issues.

The thing about the retirement crisis is that it's, you know, here. People don't have enough money to retire and maintain anything close to their existing standard of living. The 401(k) experiment failed, and even if 401(k) II Electric Boogaloo comes along and is totally awesome, that doesn't do anything for current and near retirees.
We want to structure our economy so that people who are beyond the age when they are able to work/able to find work will be able to have a dignified existence. We're currently failing at that.

Anti-vaxxer mom decides she's wrong after all 7 of her kids get whooping cough.

Everything about this movie looks amazing. It's like somebody wrote a blank check and said go nuts! Also, the 1980s are alive and well.