EDUCATION. via Nassim Nicholas Taleb (NNT) Distilling the conversation with @bryan_caplan hosted by Tyler Cowen 1) There has been a traditional separation between: + “liberal education” for free men, (liber), who didn’t work for a living, & +”technical education”, for those who labor. 2) For instance, mathematics as taught for “liberal” education, was theoretical mind exercise. Euclid’s theorem was never used in building. Meanwhile builders (parts of guilds with trade secrets) were using their own heuristic, richer, geometry. (see #Antifragile) 3) The Anglo-Saxon world conflated the two, with aristocrat-envy: + Education to be civilized. (Literature, philosophy, poetry, abstract math, history, stamp collecting, etc.) + Education to learn to do things. (Engineering, medicine, accounting, law, belly dancing, plumbing) 4) So we need to separate “things to learn to be civilized” and “things you learn to do things” with separate institutions. The only overlap I could find was mathematics, though not a strong argument since applied math is a v. different animal. 5a) The problem of the peer review system is selecting professors on theories abt subject never checked for basic knowledge of subject. It is common for people to know the “post colonial gender theory” of Levant, teach it, but never the actual facts. 5b) The French solved the problem with knowledge exams for educators (“aggregation”); you never end up having people judged solely by peers (See #SkininTheGame ). 6) The educational model is now imploding as the only thing people seem to learn at colleges is ideology by losers who became professors because they aren’t good enough to create things & got together to BS in a citation ring #RentSeekers (not just in economics, but everywhere) 7) Finally, we can split education: + Taught by nonskininthegame people (math, poetry, etc.) + Taught by skininthegame people (engineering, medicine, belly dancing, plumbing, finance, law, burglarizing, computer “science”, accounting, …) In SEPARATE institutions. 8) The idea that liberal education makes free thinkers is about the greatest myth: empirically, liberal education creates the exact opposite of “thinkers” and “free”: indoctrinated and slaves.Nassim Nicholas Taleb added, Patrick Lee Miller 9) Remember that the “University” system for this “liberal education” (trivium/quadrivium) was historically closely associated with, and supervised by, the Church. Technical education was left to free thinkers. 10 In #Antifragile I document the confusion Business =>Technology => Science, far far far far more frequent than the reverse. Problem is that academic, not practitioners, write the books.
Form: Quote Commentary
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Education (To Taleb)
EDUCATION. via Nassim Nicholas Taleb (NNT) Distilling the conversation with @bryan_caplan hosted by Tyler Cowen 1) There has been a traditional separation between: + “liberal education” for free men, (liber), who didn’t work for a living, & +”technical education”, for those who labor. 2) For instance, mathematics as taught for “liberal” education, was theoretical mind exercise. Euclid’s theorem was never used in building. Meanwhile builders (parts of guilds with trade secrets) were using their own heuristic, richer, geometry. (see #Antifragile) 3) The Anglo-Saxon world conflated the two, with aristocrat-envy: + Education to be civilized. (Literature, philosophy, poetry, abstract math, history, stamp collecting, etc.) + Education to learn to do things. (Engineering, medicine, accounting, law, belly dancing, plumbing) 4) So we need to separate “things to learn to be civilized” and “things you learn to do things” with separate institutions. The only overlap I could find was mathematics, though not a strong argument since applied math is a v. different animal. 5a) The problem of the peer review system is selecting professors on theories abt subject never checked for basic knowledge of subject. It is common for people to know the “post colonial gender theory” of Levant, teach it, but never the actual facts. 5b) The French solved the problem with knowledge exams for educators (“aggregation”); you never end up having people judged solely by peers (See #SkininTheGame ). 6) The educational model is now imploding as the only thing people seem to learn at colleges is ideology by losers who became professors because they aren’t good enough to create things & got together to BS in a citation ring #RentSeekers (not just in economics, but everywhere) 7) Finally, we can split education: + Taught by nonskininthegame people (math, poetry, etc.) + Taught by skininthegame people (engineering, medicine, belly dancing, plumbing, finance, law, burglarizing, computer “science”, accounting, …) In SEPARATE institutions. 8) The idea that liberal education makes free thinkers is about the greatest myth: empirically, liberal education creates the exact opposite of “thinkers” and “free”: indoctrinated and slaves.Nassim Nicholas Taleb added, Patrick Lee Miller 9) Remember that the “University” system for this “liberal education” (trivium/quadrivium) was historically closely associated with, and supervised by, the Church. Technical education was left to free thinkers. 10 In #Antifragile I document the confusion Business =>Technology => Science, far far far far more frequent than the reverse. Problem is that academic, not practitioners, write the books.
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Fact and Fiction of Nazi Aryan History
FROM QUORA —“Leaving racial supremacy theories aside, what is the fact and what is the fiction behind the Nazi version of Aryan history?”—CONTROVERSIAL 1) The Nazi propaganda was absolutely pseudoscientific nonsense. We have to understand that the Nazi program was aesthetic – a sort of secular religion – to inspire people who were utterly hopeless and defeated. It was the most successful pseudo-religious program after Marxism – and it was invented largely to oppose marxism (bolshevism) as was all fascism. So the nazis were speaking in a sort of secular religious prose of nationalism the same way that today’s american and western postmodernists speak in a sort of secular religious prose (“Political Correctness”). These are outright falsehoods, and todays academy (postmodernists) openly admit that they are speaking falsehoods because “all that matters is power, not truth, and truth is a weapon of the aristocracy”. The problem arises when we try to treat these movements with anglo-empirical-legal understanding rather than continental-fictional-philosophical understanding, which is simply religious “fictions” (falsehoods) or political ‘ideologies’. It’s inspirational, like myth and religion, not historical or scientific. 2) HOWEVER, first, the late 19th century archeologists were correct, in that the indo europeans were of Aryan (PIE) origins, and that that origin was in Europe (or at least in Ukraine), and that these people moved westward in waves, and brought with them aryanism (paternal, aristocratic, sky worshipping, expansionary, militaristic, technological) civilization, and that they settled in what is today’s poland, spread, and spread into high (Denmark,German) middle (Celtic), and lower (Ital and Hellenic) civilizations, without major impact on old europe (balkans) who were the first major metalworkers. How do we know? a) neoteny (domestication) (morphology, endocrine expression, personality traits) c) verbal acuity (appears we have been trading spatial for verbal for a long time) b) demographic distribution (very little underclass, if any). c) Selection for long winters, close quarters, indoors. In other words, the dozen or so minor races began local speciation, and the delta is highest in Haplogroup I(nordics), and gentility highest (apparently) in slavs. Manorialism began in today’s Holland in the 7th or 8th century, and served to extend the meritocracy of scandinavians, high germans, and baltics. It spread southward (via the Hajnal line). And the germanic prohibition on capital punishment was eliminated first by romans, but by the 12th century reversed, and capital punishment was aggressively used through the end of the 19th century. The far east and far west achieved higher rates of neoteny, albeit from different generations of homo sapiens sapiens, with greater selection pressure on the most northern peoples. (Something happens with cro-magnon generation and we don’t know yet what that was.) The simple difference of lactose tolerance meant 40% more calories from the same food source for doing nothing, and this, with bronze, wheel, horse, voluntary militia, and Individual Sovereignty is the reason for indo european expansion. The steppe and desert (Tribal peoples) did not go thrugh this process and instead under fertile crescent food production, expanded the underclasses. So the asymmetry of our cultures is due in large part to the differences in selection pressures resulting in asymmetric distribution of classes. In other words, far east and far west reduced underclasses, and everyone else increased them. The difference between far east and far west is western verbal acumen, and easter spatial acumen. The reason for this I think I understand, but is due to the time at which each group left africa.
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Fact and Fiction of Nazi Aryan History
FROM QUORA —“Leaving racial supremacy theories aside, what is the fact and what is the fiction behind the Nazi version of Aryan history?”—CONTROVERSIAL 1) The Nazi propaganda was absolutely pseudoscientific nonsense. We have to understand that the Nazi program was aesthetic – a sort of secular religion – to inspire people who were utterly hopeless and defeated. It was the most successful pseudo-religious program after Marxism – and it was invented largely to oppose marxism (bolshevism) as was all fascism. So the nazis were speaking in a sort of secular religious prose of nationalism the same way that today’s american and western postmodernists speak in a sort of secular religious prose (“Political Correctness”). These are outright falsehoods, and todays academy (postmodernists) openly admit that they are speaking falsehoods because “all that matters is power, not truth, and truth is a weapon of the aristocracy”. The problem arises when we try to treat these movements with anglo-empirical-legal understanding rather than continental-fictional-philosophical understanding, which is simply religious “fictions” (falsehoods) or political ‘ideologies’. It’s inspirational, like myth and religion, not historical or scientific. 2) HOWEVER, first, the late 19th century archeologists were correct, in that the indo europeans were of Aryan (PIE) origins, and that that origin was in Europe (or at least in Ukraine), and that these people moved westward in waves, and brought with them aryanism (paternal, aristocratic, sky worshipping, expansionary, militaristic, technological) civilization, and that they settled in what is today’s poland, spread, and spread into high (Denmark,German) middle (Celtic), and lower (Ital and Hellenic) civilizations, without major impact on old europe (balkans) who were the first major metalworkers. How do we know? a) neoteny (domestication) (morphology, endocrine expression, personality traits) c) verbal acuity (appears we have been trading spatial for verbal for a long time) b) demographic distribution (very little underclass, if any). c) Selection for long winters, close quarters, indoors. In other words, the dozen or so minor races began local speciation, and the delta is highest in Haplogroup I(nordics), and gentility highest (apparently) in slavs. Manorialism began in today’s Holland in the 7th or 8th century, and served to extend the meritocracy of scandinavians, high germans, and baltics. It spread southward (via the Hajnal line). And the germanic prohibition on capital punishment was eliminated first by romans, but by the 12th century reversed, and capital punishment was aggressively used through the end of the 19th century. The far east and far west achieved higher rates of neoteny, albeit from different generations of homo sapiens sapiens, with greater selection pressure on the most northern peoples. (Something happens with cro-magnon generation and we don’t know yet what that was.) The simple difference of lactose tolerance meant 40% more calories from the same food source for doing nothing, and this, with bronze, wheel, horse, voluntary militia, and Individual Sovereignty is the reason for indo european expansion. The steppe and desert (Tribal peoples) did not go thrugh this process and instead under fertile crescent food production, expanded the underclasses. So the asymmetry of our cultures is due in large part to the differences in selection pressures resulting in asymmetric distribution of classes. In other words, far east and far west reduced underclasses, and everyone else increased them. The difference between far east and far west is western verbal acumen, and easter spatial acumen. The reason for this I think I understand, but is due to the time at which each group left africa.
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Do Smart People Lack Common Sense (Intelligence)
–“DO SMART PEOPLE LACK COMMON SENSE?”– Well, there are a couple of issues here we can discuss. 1) IQ increases the rate at which you learn, and the degrees of indirection between what’s learned. 2) IQ is the most dominant personality trait, with industriousness second, and all others comparatively far less influential. 3) By and large, after the age of 22, we effectively sort by IQ. Or at least every 1/2 standard deviation (7 points). And it applies (generally) to all walks of life. 4) People with average IQ’s tend to collect information from peers. People with high IQ’s rely less on the opinions of others. 5) So average people network more and pursue less risky, or novel (innovative) ends, and smarter people do the opposite. 6) This is why science has been so important because as we have learned science and reduce errors, the ‘habits’ of scientific thought have been adopted by mainstream people and they ‘calculate’ together fairly successfully. 7) My point of view, is that together we create a sufficiently homogenous set of habits that we believe we understand far more than we do – (overconfidence) – when all we are doing is habituating norms that survived evolution and markets. 8) Roughly speaking, 140 innovates, 130 explains 120’s apply, 110’s organize, 100’s do, 90’s follow, 80s do the best they can and are generally angry about it, and 70s stumble through life despite the fact that no matter what they do it seems not to work. That’s an exaggeration, but it’s close enough that it serves as a general rule of understanding. We are just as specialized as ants, but the similarity of emotion, want, and language convinces us that we are more similar than we are. Hence why we generally choose every aspect of our lives so that we function with people within six degrees of separation.
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Do Smart People Lack Common Sense (Intelligence)
–“DO SMART PEOPLE LACK COMMON SENSE?”– Well, there are a couple of issues here we can discuss. 1) IQ increases the rate at which you learn, and the degrees of indirection between what’s learned. 2) IQ is the most dominant personality trait, with industriousness second, and all others comparatively far less influential. 3) By and large, after the age of 22, we effectively sort by IQ. Or at least every 1/2 standard deviation (7 points). And it applies (generally) to all walks of life. 4) People with average IQ’s tend to collect information from peers. People with high IQ’s rely less on the opinions of others. 5) So average people network more and pursue less risky, or novel (innovative) ends, and smarter people do the opposite. 6) This is why science has been so important because as we have learned science and reduce errors, the ‘habits’ of scientific thought have been adopted by mainstream people and they ‘calculate’ together fairly successfully. 7) My point of view, is that together we create a sufficiently homogenous set of habits that we believe we understand far more than we do – (overconfidence) – when all we are doing is habituating norms that survived evolution and markets. 8) Roughly speaking, 140 innovates, 130 explains 120’s apply, 110’s organize, 100’s do, 90’s follow, 80s do the best they can and are generally angry about it, and 70s stumble through life despite the fact that no matter what they do it seems not to work. That’s an exaggeration, but it’s close enough that it serves as a general rule of understanding. We are just as specialized as ants, but the similarity of emotion, want, and language convinces us that we are more similar than we are. Hence why we generally choose every aspect of our lives so that we function with people within six degrees of separation.
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The Experiment Failed.
–“I never understood how letting everyone vote is a good thing”–Peter Sorrentino Well, I think originally jefferson’s idea was that being as inclusive as possible decreased the chances of concentrating power. Universal white males in 1856 White women in 1920 Minorities in 1965. So you can see what happens rather rapidly. The experiment has been a failure. We just need to rule. Return to rule for money and profit. 😉 Militia > King (General) > Judge > Sheriff > Family > Individual.
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REGIONS SUCCEED FOR REASONS —“There is a sizeable body of research on what mak
REGIONS SUCCEED FOR REASONS
—“There is a sizeable body of research on what makes some regions consistently able to produce high-growth companies compared with other regions. Overall, what appears to matter most is a density of smart people of prime entrepreneurship age (mid-career) with an orientation towards entrepreneurship and the pursuit of enterprise in knowledge-intensive activities—plus a bunch of other stuff that we aren’t measuring very well in a systematic way (namely, network and culture).”—
Source date (UTC): 2018-04-26 17:27:00 UTC
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THE MARKET FOR DRONE OPERATORS COWEN: Drones? SRINIVASAN: Underrated. COWEN: Why
THE MARKET FOR DRONE OPERATORS
COWEN: Drones?
SRINIVASAN: Underrated.
COWEN: Why? What will they do that we haven’t thought of?
SRINIVASAN: Construction. There’s different kinds of drones. They’re not just flying drones. There’s swimming drones and there’s walking drones and so on.
Like the example I mentioned where you can teleport into a robot and then control that, Skype into a robot and control that on other side of the world. That’s going to be something where maybe you’re going to have it in drone mode so it walks to the destination. You’ll be asleep and then you wake up and it’s at the destination.
Drones are going to be a very big deal. There’s this interesting movie called Surrogates, which actually talks about what a really big drone/telepresence future would look like. People never leave their homes because, instead, they just Skype into a really good-looking drone/telepresent version of themselves, and they walk around in that.
If they’re hit by a car, it doesn’t matter because they can just rejuvenate and create a new one. I think drones are very, very underrated in terms of what they’re going to do.
Source date (UTC): 2018-04-26 17:15:00 UTC
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“I never understood how letting everyone vote is a good thing”–Peter Sorrentino
–“I never understood how letting everyone vote is a good thing”–Peter Sorrentino
Well, I think originally jefferson’s idea was that being as inclusive as possible decreased the chances of concentrating power.
Universal white males in 1856
White women in 1920
Minorities in 1965.
So you can see what happens rather rapidly.
The experiment has been a failure.
Source date (UTC): 2018-04-26 16:03:00 UTC