Stray Thoughts

Philosophy

* Does philosophy involve a higher level of cognition that almost all other animals and many humans are capable of? Or, it is a wasteful side effect of high cognitive abilities?

Culture Wars And Cultural Evolution

* Two important cultural alternatives to the emerging culture of the global establishment, at a very high level of generality, are the cultures of white conservatives in the U.S. and Islam. Those macro-cultural families, like all other living cultures are constantly transforming internally. What is going on in each? Where is each one headed? What promising opportunities and threats are associated with these changes?

* A lot of this dependents upon what we can do to change our economy to offer a better deal to people who have less education and less capacity to attain it. Getting men into pink collar jobs could help too.

Education

* Socio-economic and educational attainment are significantly influenced in the U.S. by family wealth (which impacts the rate of college completion and the type of college attended relative to academic ability), not just genetics. Another powerful demonstration of this fact is the huge disparity in college attainment between black men and black women who have extremely similar intelligence related genes - disparities in the way conduct is treated (often discriminatorily) and manifests (men are more violent than women) between men and women are likely a major cause. One seems something similar in people who earn GEDs, most of whom went to prison and/or dropped out of high school for prolonged periods due to conduct or pregnancy issue. GED earners have IQs similar to or in excess of average high school graduates, but the GED is a far less valuable educational credential. 

* Most students who need remedial work before college are deficient in mathematics, which is notable because on one hand, it is hard to fake mathematics competence, but on the other hand, it is a fairly compact body of information which is more amenable to improvement with instruction than reading and writing skills.

* Insufficient mathematics mastery is also a major barrier to people pursuing STEM majors (and in some programs that require calculus for it, such as Miami University of Ohio, economics and business majors). The two most failed course in higher education are Calculus I and Chemistry 101, both of which approach 50% and both of which are highly quantitative subjects where non-mastery of the subject matter can't be faked. In part, this is because high school graduates are ill prepared for these subjects and, in part, this is because these classes are ill taught, often in large sections with teaching assistances who aren't fluent in English, with a sink or swim attitude. There is also some evidence that these courses and quantitative STEM majors generally have a minimum threshold of math ability that many students are simply incapable of surpassing, which suggests that college course advising is also weak and unrealistic in these areas. In some cases, Calculus and/or Chemistry may be an inappropriate tool to weed out students because it is not really relevant to higher subject matter in the field.

* Students who are not sufficiently academically strong have immense college dropout rates, and show less value added in terms of knowledge and competencies gained even in the cases where they manage to graduate. Much of the benefit of "some college" is a pure sorting effect rather than value added from attending college. Society would be better off if the threshold for starting a college education were higher and higher education resources were concentrated on those with a greater likelihood of benefitting from college. We waste a lot of resources in our society providing college instruction to students who aren't ready for it academically (although they might be ready at some future point). This also isn't a terribly costly policy, since on average, lower income students are less academically successful.

* Society would also be better off it education aid were more heavily need based. Too few academically able low income students go to college and their extremely valuable human capital is underutilized. Too many high income students who aren't academically ready for college wastefully attend it and inappropriate receive signaling related economic benefits as a result.

* The K-12 education system wastes the time of a huge share of its students and the system by trying to shoehorn students who will not realistically be academically ready for college into a watered down college preparatory program. Meanwhile, the state of vocational education for "mid-level" occupations that don't require a four year college degree, but require some education or skill development beyond the standard watered down college preparatory program, is overall dismal although there are occasional bright spots that have happy and economically successful students.

* High schools have bad incentives to offer AP/IB/concurrent enrollment college courses to students who aren't ready for those classes, and to encourage students who aren't academically ready to succeed in college to attend college.

* Education programs that are most effective in "value added" involve behavior modification with some buy-in in the form of student/parent choice.

* School choice programs are mostly beneficial, where they work, not because they great more excellent schools, but because they more swiftly shut down more mediocre schools that undermine student performance.

* IQ needs to be nurtured through schooling and some kinds of education, like STEM education, like learning to solve a Rubik's Cube, permit improvements in capabilities that cannot be achieved regularly in any other way. But, IQ and heredity are not very influential with regard to competencies that reside not in the individual, but in group interactions. We can't consistently make kids who are dumb a lot smarter in relative terms, but we can socialize all children much better than we do on average.

Criminal Justice

* We overuse pre-trial incarceration in a way that impairs substantive rights based on wealth.

* We inappropriately use incarceration for debt collection.

* We overused incarceration in cases of technical violations of parole conditions and "technical" escapes such as walk aways from half way houses.

* Drug crime sentences are inappropriately long relative to their seriousness as are federal child pornography sentences.

* We do a poor job of treating substantive abuse and mental health issues that are very common among incarcerated people.

* The importance of traumatic brain injury (TBI) as a cause of crime and misconduct while incarcerated cannot be exaggerated. It is one of the dominant factors and that should spawn pervasive efforts across society to make more serious attempts to prevent TBI.

* Both minority street gangs and the white supremacy movement are nurtured by existing misadministration of prisons and jails which is the norm in American practice today.

* We do a dismal job of holding bad cops and bad prosecutors accountable and getting them out of the criminal justice system.

* High IQ and college degrees are stunningly protective against incarceration in prison, despite the substance abuse and mental health issues still present in those populations.

* Castration or the equivalent is underused to a recidivism reducing sanction that could greatly reduce incarceration.

* Prison conditions in the U.S. often fail to meet international human rights standards.

* Juvenile secrecy does more harm than good in most cases, so do mandates that employers not ask about criminal records in employment applications.

* Felon disqualification from voting is counterproductive.

* The number of people who ultimately obtain shorter sentences or acquittals through post-conviction appeals, collateral review of judgments in the courts, and the commutation and pardon process is pretty stunningly small compared to naive intuition.

* The trial penalty in the criminal justice system is too high.

* The incentives discouraging criminal defendants from testifying in their criminal proceedings are too great.

Personal and Public Health

* I've lost about 30 pounds since starting a diet in April. It has not been easy and has required prescribed medication assistance. Basically, I have followed a fairly strict low carb diet which the drugs have helped reinforce and have helped me to continue to follow. I've only modestly increased exercise so far. I've also caught up on deferred dental work this summer and fall.

* How long will it take for culture to evolve enough to rebalance diet and exercise to avoid the obesity and related health issues that traditional patterns of diet and exercise prevented until certain aspects of modern culture that made us more sedentary and changed our diets arose? I think that eventually this will happen and the public is responsive to health recommendations for diet albeit on a lagged basis as statistics on how what we eat has changed over the decades.