Zach Goldberg and Christopher Rufo on CRT teaching; Robert Bryce on energy reality; Nicholas Wade on the lab leak hypothesis; Devon Kurtz on mass incarceration
Unconscious racial bias is a real thing, and so were settler land grabs in the emergence of the USA. These topics have a proper place in school curricula.
Key challenges are:
(a) Wise pedagogy and balance to achieve an accurate, well-proportioned, and constructive education about human nature and history.
(b) Wise inculcation of ethical individualism, to encourage youths to treat one another as individuals, not tokens of groups.
The disinterested bottom half of a mediocre colleges graduating class will be teaching kids of average intelligence that would rather not be there. If they retain anything from that experience, it will be a general vibe and one or two examples of who or what should be high or low status.
So either they are going to leave with the vibe that,
1) A few mistakes aside, America is generally good and blacks have it generally fair these days.
or
2) Blacks failures are the white devils fault and America is terrible from its birth.
The closest thing to a balanced view of this is The Bell Curve, which Murray admits shouldn't be taught in K-12 and the statistical literacy required probably only belongs to a handful of the population.
Just teach kids America is good and that race pandering is bad. That's the vibe I would want them leaving K-12 with.
I would start with George Washington and the cherry tree, and then eventually, perhaps only in high school, gradually introduce some shades of gray, questions, and matters of interpretation.
I would emphasize cognitive humility: We know little about cause-and-effect in history.
And I would emphasize moral humility about the past: We weren't in their shoes, and our moral judgments are distorted by hindsight. Unlike the protagonists of history, who made their decisions under uncertainty, we know how things turned out.
I know several grade-school teachers well. I trust that it can work in the top half of high schools, at least in the hands of sane, competent teachers.
@John Alcorn: The effect of very high rate of criminality in the black black population is a real thing.
Blacks, in the US in 2019, committed murder at a per capita rate 8.2 times greater than that of the non-black population[1]. In London blacks also commit murder at a per capita rate 8 times greater than the white population[2]. Even President Obama acknowledged this fact: “𝘐𝘵 𝘪𝘴 𝘢𝘣𝘴𝘰𝘭𝘶𝘵𝘦𝘭𝘺 𝘵𝘳𝘶𝘦 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘮𝘶𝘳𝘥𝘦𝘳 𝘳𝘢𝘵𝘦 𝘪𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘈𝘧𝘳𝘪𝘤𝘢𝘯-𝘈𝘮𝘦𝘳𝘪𝘤𝘢𝘯 𝘤𝘰𝘮𝘮𝘶𝘯𝘪𝘵𝘺 𝘪𝘴 𝘸𝘢𝘺 𝘰𝘶𝘵 𝘰𝘧 𝘸𝘩𝘢𝘤𝘬 𝘤𝘰𝘮𝘱𝘢𝘳𝘦𝘥 𝘵𝘰 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘨𝘦𝘯𝘦𝘳𝘢𝘭 𝘱𝘰𝘱𝘶𝘭𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯,” Obama said. “𝘈𝘯𝘥 𝘣𝘰𝘵𝘩 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘷𝘪𝘤𝘵𝘪𝘮𝘴 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘱𝘦𝘳𝘱𝘦𝘵𝘳𝘢𝘵𝘰𝘳𝘴 𝘢𝘳𝘦 𝘣𝘭𝘢𝘤𝘬, 𝘺𝘰𝘶𝘯𝘨 𝘣𝘭𝘢𝘤𝘬 𝘮𝘦𝘯.[3]
The broad failure of the Left to acknowledge these inconvenient facts is evidence of the magical thinking prevalent among Progressives.
@John Alcorn: The effect of low exaggerate black IQ is a real thing. The broad failure of the Left to acknowledge this inconvenient fact is evidence of the magical thinking prevalent among Progressives.
Mean black IQ in the US is ≈ 1 standard deviation lower than the mean IQ of the non-black population [1].
Ref.
[1] "𝘔𝘢𝘯𝘺 𝘯𝘢𝘳𝘳𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘷𝘦 𝘳𝘦𝘷𝘪𝘦𝘸𝘴 𝘰𝘧 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘦𝘮𝘱𝘪𝘳𝘪𝘤𝘢𝘭 𝘭𝘪𝘵𝘦𝘳𝘢𝘵𝘶𝘳𝘦 𝘪𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘢𝘳𝘦𝘢 𝘧𝘰𝘤𝘶𝘴 𝘰𝘯 𝘉𝘭𝘢𝘤𝘬–𝘞𝘩𝘪𝘵𝘦 𝘥𝘪𝘧𝘧𝘦𝘳𝘦𝘯𝘤𝘦𝘴, 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘳𝘦𝘷𝘪𝘦𝘸𝘴 𝘤𝘰𝘯𝘤𝘭𝘶𝘥𝘦 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘮𝘦𝘢𝘯 𝘥𝘪𝘧𝘧𝘦𝘳𝘦𝘯𝘤𝘦 𝘪𝘯 𝘤𝘰𝘨𝘯𝘪𝘵𝘪𝘷𝘦 𝘢𝘣𝘪𝘭𝘪𝘵𝘺 𝘪𝘴 𝘢𝘱𝘱𝘳𝘰𝘹𝘪𝘮𝘢𝘵𝘦𝘭𝘺 1 𝘴𝘵𝘢𝘯𝘥𝘢𝘳𝘥 𝘥𝘦𝘷𝘪𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯; 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘪𝘴, 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘨𝘦𝘯𝘦𝘳𝘢𝘭𝘭𝘺 𝘢𝘤𝘤𝘦𝘱𝘵𝘦𝘥 𝘦𝘧𝘧𝘦𝘤𝘵 𝘴𝘪𝘻𝘦 𝘪𝘴 𝘢𝘣𝘰𝘶𝘵 1.0."; Roth, P. L., Bevier, C. A., Bobko, P., Switzer, F. S. III, & Tyler, P. (2001). Ethnic group differences in cognitive ability in employment and educational settings: A meta-analysis. Personnel Psychology, 54(2), 297–330. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1744-6570.2001.tb00094.x
The use of fossil fuels will increase at about the same rate as today for the next hundred years at a minimum. The people pushing Green energy as the future are mostly fools and charlatans. The only people in that camp to take seriously are those that are fighting for adoption of nuclear, and there damned few of those.
Re incarceration, there's a question of definition here. There are two ways of conceptualizing the problem: is it that too many people are in prison at any given time, or is it that too many people are incarcerated at least once in their life? The latter seems like it might be the more important concern, since there's evidence that being incarcerated causes more criminal behavior (although of course there are possible confounders, yada yada).
"Imagine that in a single year 12 people are given 1-month drug sentences. One serves in January, one serves in February, one serves in March, etc. In the same year, 1 person is given a 1-year sentence for murder. If you take Latzer’s approach and go count the number of inmates in jail and see what they’re in prison for than–no matter what month you pick–you’ll find 1 person in jail for drugs and 1 for murder. You would concludes that 50% of incarcerations are for drugs, and 50% are for violent crime.
But of course that’s not really true. There were twelve drug convictions in our example, not just one. So in reality the proportion of drug offense wasn’t 50%. It was more than 92%."
A key problem with this discussion of ideological indoctrination in schools is that it overlooks the degree to which this happened before anyone ever heard of CRT etc. For those of us who went to public school in earlier times: were you really never taught to regard any contested historical or moral propositions as unquestionable truths? Were you really never taught a biased account of a dubious party line about any hot button issue in a way that could plausibly affect future policy preferences? If so, you were lucky. Using schools as vehicles for indoctrination into a civic religion isn't new or uncommon; it's just that now the content of that religion is more objectionable to conservatives.
I totally agree, fwiw, that such indoctrination is a bad thing, that in a free society students should be left more free to draw their own conclusions, and that reforms to reduce indoctrination would in principle be good. But to believe that blanket state level bans on teaching particular propositions are a reasonable solution, you have to see those particular kinds of indoctrination as special or unusual in a way that just doesn't match reality.
I would add, btw, that this is only one of several cases in which an insular and self-regarding professional culture has produced an unhealthy ideological skew, and without changing that culture, legal restrictions on professional conduct may be of limited effectiveness. The country would be better off with more conservative teachers and more liberal cops.
It is explicitly the job of the state legislature to regulate and provide standards for public education in the state. The state provides positive standards for education. I don’t know why it would be unreasonable for a state to also provide negative standards against approaches the state feels are unhealthy and inappropriate. I’m sure there are more and less heavy handed and obnoxious ways to accomplish this, but that’s a matter of how to do it rather than whether the principle itself is reasonable.
Bryce: Excellent points about the need to couple permitting reform for zero carbon energy technologies with taxation of net emissions of CO2. It still seems that recent developments show that the level of taxation necessary to meet any given CO2 concentration target have fallen and that is being implicitly realized.
Just to revisit an earlier post of yours, I hear the Fed lost $3.2bn last week on their bond portfolio, which approaches 10% of its capital. Interesting times.
Every bit of that poll is nonsense. Are there teachers who cover this? Yes. Would the students be reliable indicators either way? Hell, no. What idiocy. Both the purveyors and the swallowers.
As for the origins of COVID- it is all but certain now that the virus' progenitor was brought to the Wuhan Institute and worked on to increase it's virulence, and then escaped or was deliberately released by someone. Literally all the evidence available today supports this theory, and none support this arising because someone brought a bat to the meat market directly from some cave hundreds of miles away.
I agree that the absence of evidence does not constitute evidence of absence. But the fact that China has virtually banned all research in it's territory doesn't mean that there's not been other research in other places to try to prove the natural origin hypothesis:
Matt Darling of the Niskanen center saw the Goldberg CRT results and quipped that the students were just “being taught labor economics”. I didn’t see any economists correct him.
Unconscious racial bias is a real thing, and so were settler land grabs in the emergence of the USA. These topics have a proper place in school curricula.
Key challenges are:
(a) Wise pedagogy and balance to achieve an accurate, well-proportioned, and constructive education about human nature and history.
(b) Wise inculcation of ethical individualism, to encourage youths to treat one another as individuals, not tokens of groups.
The disinterested bottom half of a mediocre colleges graduating class will be teaching kids of average intelligence that would rather not be there. If they retain anything from that experience, it will be a general vibe and one or two examples of who or what should be high or low status.
So either they are going to leave with the vibe that,
1) A few mistakes aside, America is generally good and blacks have it generally fair these days.
or
2) Blacks failures are the white devils fault and America is terrible from its birth.
The closest thing to a balanced view of this is The Bell Curve, which Murray admits shouldn't be taught in K-12 and the statistical literacy required probably only belongs to a handful of the population.
Just teach kids America is good and that race pandering is bad. That's the vibe I would want them leaving K-12 with.
I hear you.
I would start with George Washington and the cherry tree, and then eventually, perhaps only in high school, gradually introduce some shades of gray, questions, and matters of interpretation.
I would emphasize cognitive humility: We know little about cause-and-effect in history.
And I would emphasize moral humility about the past: We weren't in their shoes, and our moral judgments are distorted by hindsight. Unlike the protagonists of history, who made their decisions under uncertainty, we know how things turned out.
I know several grade-school teachers well. I trust that it can work in the top half of high schools, at least in the hands of sane, competent teachers.
@John Alcorn: The effect of very high rate of criminality in the black black population is a real thing.
Blacks, in the US in 2019, committed murder at a per capita rate 8.2 times greater than that of the non-black population[1]. In London blacks also commit murder at a per capita rate 8 times greater than the white population[2]. Even President Obama acknowledged this fact: “𝘐𝘵 𝘪𝘴 𝘢𝘣𝘴𝘰𝘭𝘶𝘵𝘦𝘭𝘺 𝘵𝘳𝘶𝘦 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘮𝘶𝘳𝘥𝘦𝘳 𝘳𝘢𝘵𝘦 𝘪𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘈𝘧𝘳𝘪𝘤𝘢𝘯-𝘈𝘮𝘦𝘳𝘪𝘤𝘢𝘯 𝘤𝘰𝘮𝘮𝘶𝘯𝘪𝘵𝘺 𝘪𝘴 𝘸𝘢𝘺 𝘰𝘶𝘵 𝘰𝘧 𝘸𝘩𝘢𝘤𝘬 𝘤𝘰𝘮𝘱𝘢𝘳𝘦𝘥 𝘵𝘰 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘨𝘦𝘯𝘦𝘳𝘢𝘭 𝘱𝘰𝘱𝘶𝘭𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯,” Obama said. “𝘈𝘯𝘥 𝘣𝘰𝘵𝘩 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘷𝘪𝘤𝘵𝘪𝘮𝘴 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘱𝘦𝘳𝘱𝘦𝘵𝘳𝘢𝘵𝘰𝘳𝘴 𝘢𝘳𝘦 𝘣𝘭𝘢𝘤𝘬, 𝘺𝘰𝘶𝘯𝘨 𝘣𝘭𝘢𝘤𝘬 𝘮𝘦𝘯.[3]
The broad failure of the Left to acknowledge these inconvenient facts is evidence of the magical thinking prevalent among Progressives.
Ref.
[1] https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2019/crime-in-the-u.s.-2019/tables/expanded-homicide-data-table-3.xls
[2] "[Commissioner for the London Metropolitan police, Cressida Dick] said 72% of homicide victims under 25 were black, and that black people were four times more likely to be a victim of homicide and eight times more likely to be a perpetrator"; https://www.theguardian.com/law/2020/jul/08/one-in-10-of-londons-young-black-males-stopped-by-police-in-may
[3] https://abcnews.go.com/US/obama-murder-rate-african-american-community-whack/story?id=40592847
@John Alcorn: The effect of low exaggerate black IQ is a real thing. The broad failure of the Left to acknowledge this inconvenient fact is evidence of the magical thinking prevalent among Progressives.
Mean black IQ in the US is ≈ 1 standard deviation lower than the mean IQ of the non-black population [1].
Ref.
[1] "𝘔𝘢𝘯𝘺 𝘯𝘢𝘳𝘳𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘷𝘦 𝘳𝘦𝘷𝘪𝘦𝘸𝘴 𝘰𝘧 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘦𝘮𝘱𝘪𝘳𝘪𝘤𝘢𝘭 𝘭𝘪𝘵𝘦𝘳𝘢𝘵𝘶𝘳𝘦 𝘪𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘢𝘳𝘦𝘢 𝘧𝘰𝘤𝘶𝘴 𝘰𝘯 𝘉𝘭𝘢𝘤𝘬–𝘞𝘩𝘪𝘵𝘦 𝘥𝘪𝘧𝘧𝘦𝘳𝘦𝘯𝘤𝘦𝘴, 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘳𝘦𝘷𝘪𝘦𝘸𝘴 𝘤𝘰𝘯𝘤𝘭𝘶𝘥𝘦 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘮𝘦𝘢𝘯 𝘥𝘪𝘧𝘧𝘦𝘳𝘦𝘯𝘤𝘦 𝘪𝘯 𝘤𝘰𝘨𝘯𝘪𝘵𝘪𝘷𝘦 𝘢𝘣𝘪𝘭𝘪𝘵𝘺 𝘪𝘴 𝘢𝘱𝘱𝘳𝘰𝘹𝘪𝘮𝘢𝘵𝘦𝘭𝘺 1 𝘴𝘵𝘢𝘯𝘥𝘢𝘳𝘥 𝘥𝘦𝘷𝘪𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯; 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘪𝘴, 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘨𝘦𝘯𝘦𝘳𝘢𝘭𝘭𝘺 𝘢𝘤𝘤𝘦𝘱𝘵𝘦𝘥 𝘦𝘧𝘧𝘦𝘤𝘵 𝘴𝘪𝘻𝘦 𝘪𝘴 𝘢𝘣𝘰𝘶𝘵 1.0."; Roth, P. L., Bevier, C. A., Bobko, P., Switzer, F. S. III, & Tyler, P. (2001). Ethnic group differences in cognitive ability in employment and educational settings: A meta-analysis. Personnel Psychology, 54(2), 297–330. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1744-6570.2001.tb00094.x
The use of fossil fuels will increase at about the same rate as today for the next hundred years at a minimum. The people pushing Green energy as the future are mostly fools and charlatans. The only people in that camp to take seriously are those that are fighting for adoption of nuclear, and there damned few of those.
Re incarceration, there's a question of definition here. There are two ways of conceptualizing the problem: is it that too many people are in prison at any given time, or is it that too many people are incarcerated at least once in their life? The latter seems like it might be the more important concern, since there's evidence that being incarcerated causes more criminal behavior (although of course there are possible confounders, yada yada).
Since drug sentences are shorter, the number of people in prison for drugs at any given time is not reflective of the number of people who are ever sent to prison for drugs. See this piece by the moderate conservative blogger Nathaniel Givens: https://difficultrun.nathanielgivens.com/2016/08/18/mass-incarceration-is-not-a-myth/
"Imagine that in a single year 12 people are given 1-month drug sentences. One serves in January, one serves in February, one serves in March, etc. In the same year, 1 person is given a 1-year sentence for murder. If you take Latzer’s approach and go count the number of inmates in jail and see what they’re in prison for than–no matter what month you pick–you’ll find 1 person in jail for drugs and 1 for murder. You would concludes that 50% of incarcerations are for drugs, and 50% are for violent crime.
But of course that’s not really true. There were twelve drug convictions in our example, not just one. So in reality the proportion of drug offense wasn’t 50%. It was more than 92%."
Off topic, but just read this and thought everyone would enjoy: https://open.substack.com/pub/kvetch/p/the-sublime-transgression-of-an-appalachian
You will never listen to "A Boy Named Sue" the same way again.
A key problem with this discussion of ideological indoctrination in schools is that it overlooks the degree to which this happened before anyone ever heard of CRT etc. For those of us who went to public school in earlier times: were you really never taught to regard any contested historical or moral propositions as unquestionable truths? Were you really never taught a biased account of a dubious party line about any hot button issue in a way that could plausibly affect future policy preferences? If so, you were lucky. Using schools as vehicles for indoctrination into a civic religion isn't new or uncommon; it's just that now the content of that religion is more objectionable to conservatives.
I totally agree, fwiw, that such indoctrination is a bad thing, that in a free society students should be left more free to draw their own conclusions, and that reforms to reduce indoctrination would in principle be good. But to believe that blanket state level bans on teaching particular propositions are a reasonable solution, you have to see those particular kinds of indoctrination as special or unusual in a way that just doesn't match reality.
I would add, btw, that this is only one of several cases in which an insular and self-regarding professional culture has produced an unhealthy ideological skew, and without changing that culture, legal restrictions on professional conduct may be of limited effectiveness. The country would be better off with more conservative teachers and more liberal cops.
It is explicitly the job of the state legislature to regulate and provide standards for public education in the state. The state provides positive standards for education. I don’t know why it would be unreasonable for a state to also provide negative standards against approaches the state feels are unhealthy and inappropriate. I’m sure there are more and less heavy handed and obnoxious ways to accomplish this, but that’s a matter of how to do it rather than whether the principle itself is reasonable.
I was taught that:
1) Slavery was the primary cause of the civil war
2) The south was bad, more specifically the planters were bad
3) Nonetheless, all wars have multiple causes and the motivations of the human heart are complex
4) We owe something to blacks, but a system of racial spoils may not be an appropriate answer to that
5) Race hustlers of any race are huckster pieces of shit
I admit that I was more "right wing" coded when I was younger, so maybe people on the left got a different message. But that's what I remember.
And of that 146,000 imprisoned only for drug related charges, a large fraction of them are probably violent criminals who simply pleaded down charges.
Bryce: Excellent points about the need to couple permitting reform for zero carbon energy technologies with taxation of net emissions of CO2. It still seems that recent developments show that the level of taxation necessary to meet any given CO2 concentration target have fallen and that is being implicitly realized.
Just to revisit an earlier post of yours, I hear the Fed lost $3.2bn last week on their bond portfolio, which approaches 10% of its capital. Interesting times.
Every bit of that poll is nonsense. Are there teachers who cover this? Yes. Would the students be reliable indicators either way? Hell, no. What idiocy. Both the purveyors and the swallowers.
As for the origins of COVID- it is all but certain now that the virus' progenitor was brought to the Wuhan Institute and worked on to increase it's virulence, and then escaped or was deliberately released by someone. Literally all the evidence available today supports this theory, and none support this arising because someone brought a bat to the meat market directly from some cave hundreds of miles away.
Re Wade lack of COVID bat evidence trail:
China has banned any research, and removed any data it could think of removing.
this can be construed as indirect admittance if guilt etc. obviously. but it makes Wade's lack of data unconvincing. because research has been nipped.
No, it doesn't. If such evidence were in the Chinese government's hands they would have tripped over themselves releasing it.
nope. the Chinese government doesn't even want you to think that animal spillage started in China!
your logic is sound, obv. but this isn't how the Chinese censors think ....
I agree that the absence of evidence does not constitute evidence of absence. But the fact that China has virtually banned all research in it's territory doesn't mean that there's not been other research in other places to try to prove the natural origin hypothesis:
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02596-2
The fact that this research has not produced substantive results in favor of that hypothesis should also be taken into account.
given that much of the theorised routes of development are in China + lots of the researchers are Chinese, it means that our data is lacking a lot.
it's this enough to make lack of findings a weak claim? I'm not sure. but possibly so......
Matt Darling of the Niskanen center saw the Goldberg CRT results and quipped that the students were just “being taught labor economics”. I didn’t see any economists correct him.
https://twitter.com/besttrousers/status/1583444432464273408?s=46&t=VZ_dIlUN0hhIS_VqU9AL3w