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I think it's worth pointing out that education is a filtering mechanism, if a terribly inefficient one. After basic maths and literacy are learned, it imparts

I think it's worth pointing out that education is a filtering mechanism, if a terribly inefficient one. After basic maths and literacy are learned, it imparts little on the average student. A collage degree is a proxy for a reasonable IQ and moderately high conscientiousness. Thinking of education as an inefficient filtering mechanism helps illustrate why our frenzy for more education is misguided. Certainly more efficient filtering mechanisms (like a test-based credentialism where instruction and assessment are separated) would be very useful but they will not increase the amount of people with the mental characteristics (high intelligence and conscientiousness) that are becoming increasingly valuable in the modern economy, nor will it decrease the portion that lack these things. Panning does not create gold. I think a good assumption is this separation was and is a basicly unavoidable result of technology and economics, not any policy or set of policies. We wrestle not with flesh and blood:http://slatestarcodex.com/2013/03/07/we-wrestle-not-with-flesh-and-blood-but-against-powers-and-principalities/ http://slatestarcodex.com/2013/03/07/we-wrestle-not-with-fle...

nickff 11y ago
What you are describing is the signaling model of education (, which I agree with).[1] [1] http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2011/11/the_magic_of_ed.html http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2011/11/the_magic_of_ed....
greggman 11y ago
But more panning in more places finds more gold does it not? Maybe I misunderstood your point. Stories like that of Jaime Escalante suggest that there's a huge number of undiscovered talent and/or that better teaching makes more talent. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jaime_Escalante https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jaime_Escalante
- Moshe_Silnorin 11y ago
  That's impressive, but seems more like filtering. Taking the top 15 students in a high school and teaching them calculus doesn't prove that one can make people more intelligent through education, as 15 out of thousands is a huge filter - though still helping those kids was very nobel. As for the higher numbers later in his career, you have to imagine that with his fame intelligent students from other districts were likely filtered to his school. I also don't see a pass rate for the later years. I've investigated many of the claims that one can teach intelligence. From Dual-N-Back to Head Start, they have all proven to have negligible effects on future outcomes and no effect on measured G. I think there are also pretty solid theoretical reasons to think that "learning how to learn" is not possible, as intelligence is that capacity that enables you to learn, you are strictly limited by your intelligence even when learning how to learn. There is also increasing evidence in the literature that the theorized transfer effect (that learning one skill increases your capacity to learn other unrelated skills) does not exist. These are not conclusions that I relish; I advocate them because I think they're true. Better a bitter truth than a sweet fiction.
  - eli_gottlieb 11y ago
    >There is also increasing evidence in the literature that the theorized transfer effect (that learning one skill increases your capacity to learn other unrelated skills) does not exist. Interesting. Presuming that such a "transfer effect" is hypothesized to work the same way as transfer learning (in statistical learning, machine learning, cognitive science, etc.), this would be one of the first times mathematical models have predicted a cognitive capability should be commonplace that human beings failed to actually exhibit.
  - darkmighty 11y ago
    Your argument is hardly related to what he presented. Intelligence is almost defined by your innate ability to learn, not by your actual acquired skills and abilities or knowledge. His example showed you can make a group of motivated students very skilled and knowledgeable in calculus. He wasn't raising their IQ. However, I'm pretty sure I could find studies pointing to a raise in whatever intelligence metric for those with a college education (specially mathematics or physics heavy) versus a control group that went on to menial jobs. Actually I'll just post the first few Google hits (only glanced by they severely contradict your claims): 1) http://ije.oxfordjournals.org/content/39/5/1362.full http://ije.oxfordjournals.org/content/39/5/1362.full Causal relation between education and intelligence metrics observed 2) http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1465-7295.2010.00312.x/abstract http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1465-7295.2010.... Correlation between education attainment and IQ --- Moreover, there's the even more glaring correlation (and causal relationship) between success and higher educational attainment, specially in technical fields, where obviously you need a lot of hard to learn knowledge, skills and general ability to learn (that is, I also dispute your claim that education has no effect on ability to learn). I can ellaborate and dig more if someone is interested/skeptical.
danieltillett 11y ago
Education alone does tend to make people better neighbours. There is true value in education, but unfortunately the only market demand is for people who are intelligent, conscientious and educated in certain fields. Hit all three and you are in demand otherwise a life of dead end jobs awaits you.
- Moshe_Silnorin 11y ago
  Education is a proxy for IQ and conscientiousness. People with these characteristics (and importantly the wealth this provides) tend to make better neighbours. Zuck dropped out of college, yet I very much doubt he'd be a terrible neighbour, nor would a neighbourhood full of Harvard dropouts be bad.
  - thrownaway2424 11y ago
    The scuttlebutt around the neighborhood is actually that Zuck is a bit of a jackass, neighbor-wise. http://sfist.com/2016/01/13/zuckerberg_neighbor_wages_campaign.php http://sfist.com/2016/01/13/zuckerberg_neighbor_wages_campai...
    - Moshe_Silnorin 11y ago
      Most of the problems seem to be externalities of his fame and wealth. Say Facebook didn't work out and he got a job at Google, I doubt he would be considered a bad neighbour.
  - eli_gottlieb 11y ago
    >nor would a neighbourhood full of Harvard dropouts be bad. I think that surveying Alston or Cambridge might not lead to this conclusion.
  - danieltillett 11y ago
    Yes education correlates quite tightly with intelligence and conscientiousness, but just raising education levels on their own makes for better neighbours. Education is a good thing for all - the problem is we don’t have the jobs to go with all this education.
ThrustVectoring 11y ago
Note that employers aren't allowed to measure and discriminate on IQ, but they are allowed to look at which college a candidate went to. Colleges, on the other hand, are allowed to measure and discriminate based on SAT score, which is highly correlated with IQ. And since college education is mostly a positional good (it helps you compete against people with worse education for limited jobs), there's a pretty fantastic charitable opportunity for an enterprising lawyer to start suing employers over requiring or looking at college degrees.
- tosseraccount 11y ago
  What? Employers can't test for intelligence? Do you have a link that backs up your assertion that "employers aren't allowed to measure and discriminate on IQ".
  - Moshe_Silnorin 11y ago
    Griggs v. Duke Power Co: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Griggs_v._Duke_Power_Co https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Griggs_v._Duke_Power_Co. You could argue this is the principal cause of our horrifically wasteful college boom.
  - Spooky23 11y ago
    These tests are considered to be racially and culturally biased, so they are not suitable for employment decision making.
  - digbyloftus 11y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Griggs_v._Duke_Power_Co https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Griggs_v._Duke_Power_Co. >The effect of this decision has been to eliminate aptitude tests from the hiring process. During the intervening years, the college diploma has become the "de facto" tool by HR departments to winnow the flood of applications. Many jobs today require a college diploma, while before Griggs the same job did not.
    - Slothrop99 11y ago
ap22213 11y ago
"Education is a proxy for IQ and conscientiousness." Tell that to over 30% of my gifted class who weren't able to attend college (at least not until much later in life). Education is generally a proxy for wealth, a certain type of culture, and supportive parents, in my experience.
- Moshe_Silnorin 11y ago
  I didn't say it is a perfect proxy. It provides some evidence. Modern credentialism is so awful that even a terrible idea like tattooing people's IQs on their foreheads would probably work much better and be much cheaper.
orionblastar 11y ago
I worked a programming job for a law firm. I earned an associate's degree because I could not afford a four year degree. I majored in data processing with the programming option. When I applied for the job only an associates was required and it was 1997. After the Dotcom bubble burst in 1999-2000 HR decided to rewrite job descriptions. So they had me rewrite the job description for my position. I wrote that it needed an associates, and experience in programming etc. HR took it and changed one thing, a bachelors instead of an associates. I suddenly was no longer qualified for the job I held. I was forced to work extra hours for no extra pay because I was salaried. I was under a lot of stress and assigned other people's projects until I was overwhelmed with them. I worked in St. Louis MO and my wife didn't want me to relocate and be in a different state so my job search was limited and nobody was hiring. From the stress I developed a mental illness in 2001 and became disabled on short term disability. When I returned from short term disability I was fired for having a panic attack at work. They lost my doctor's notes that excused me and used them against me. I tried another job in 2002 they used me to get their project to the next level, migrating from Excel to SQL Server for their database and optimizing the code. After the project was done, I was fired. I ended up on disability in 2003, I went back to college to earn a bachelors but I was never medically cleared to go back to work. I am 47 now, and I feel like my career is over. I had offers to work in the west coast but I could not relocate because of my wife not wanting me to leave out of state. I'm sure the working environment is different in SV and west coast companies. But if other white men of a middle age had the stress that I had when working, I can see them developing a mental illness or turning to drug use. I never turned to drug use, but I had problems sleeping and waking up due to the stress. I had friends who didn't go to college but learned programming by experience, they were expert programmers but lost their jobs because they didn't have college degrees and ended up working in retail jobs to make ends meet like Sam's Club. I've known people with college degrees that didn't know what they were doing and I mentored them at work to get them started in programming. It is possible to earn a degree and still have problems doing the job they are hired for. For example programming classes teach how to write short programs that are very small, but writing larger more complex programs and how to debug them is not taught. That takes experience in the real world.
- mback00 11y ago
Dr_tldr 11y ago
This sounds a lot like the "Just World" fallacy under the cover of genetics. At one point 99% of the population was illiterate and living in thatch huts, and no doubt members of the elite at that time also considered this to be an expression of natural order as well. But as it turns out, almost all of those peasants were capable of learning to read, doing algebra, engaging in abstract reasoning, labor coordination, and operating some fairly complex machinery. Many of them were even capable of becoming software engineers. We know this, because pretty much all of us came from them, and if we can do it, they could've done it, given the proper environment. Someone advancing your argument 1000, 100, or even 50 years ago would've wrong, what makes your argument different? Of course we shouldn't expect equal outcomes from all people, but to suggest that we've now reached such a level of access and fairness in society that everyone still at the bottom can't possibly be elevated any further seems... unintelligent.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- danieltillett 11y ago
  You might enjoy reading A Farewell to Alms [1]. More importantly your two positions are not excludable. It is possible that the elite of the past were wrong and some segment of the population is incapable of being raised any higher. I personally doubt this is the case, but it has not been ruled out. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Farewell_to_Alms https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Farewell_to_Alms
  - noir_lord 11y ago
    Given the variance in intelligence I think there probably is an upper limit to how you can "raise" someone. I also suspect that we are a long way off that, hell who knows what the future looks like, we could end up with neural implants that allow everyone to boost their intelligence/recall. I'm not stupid but I know there is an upper bound on my intelligence that is lower than many other peoples, not everyone can be Einstein or Hawking. The more interesting problem is how do we optimise for people reaching their maximum potential or if that is even necessary.

nickff 11y ago

What you are describing is the signaling model of education (, which I agree with).[1] [1] http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2011/11/the_magic_of_ed.html http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2011/11/the_magic_of_ed....

greggman 11y ago

But more panning in more places finds more gold does it not? Maybe I misunderstood your point. Stories like that of Jaime Escalante suggest that there's a huge number of undiscovered talent and/or that better teaching makes more talent. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jaime_Escalante https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jaime_Escalante

Moshe_Silnorin 11y ago
That's impressive, but seems more like filtering. Taking the top 15 students in a high school and teaching them calculus doesn't prove that one can make people more intelligent through education, as 15 out of thousands is a huge filter - though still helping those kids was very nobel. As for the higher numbers later in his career, you have to imagine that with his fame intelligent students from other districts were likely filtered to his school. I also don't see a pass rate for the later years. I've investigated many of the claims that one can teach intelligence. From Dual-N-Back to Head Start, they have all proven to have negligible effects on future outcomes and no effect on measured G. I think there are also pretty solid theoretical reasons to think that "learning how to learn" is not possible, as intelligence is that capacity that enables you to learn, you are strictly limited by your intelligence even when learning how to learn. There is also increasing evidence in the literature that the theorized transfer effect (that learning one skill increases your capacity to learn other unrelated skills) does not exist. These are not conclusions that I relish; I advocate them because I think they're true. Better a bitter truth than a sweet fiction.
- eli_gottlieb 11y ago
  >There is also increasing evidence in the literature that the theorized transfer effect (that learning one skill increases your capacity to learn other unrelated skills) does not exist. Interesting. Presuming that such a "transfer effect" is hypothesized to work the same way as transfer learning (in statistical learning, machine learning, cognitive science, etc.), this would be one of the first times mathematical models have predicted a cognitive capability should be commonplace that human beings failed to actually exhibit.
- darkmighty 11y ago
  Your argument is hardly related to what he presented. Intelligence is almost defined by your innate ability to learn, not by your actual acquired skills and abilities or knowledge. His example showed you can make a group of motivated students very skilled and knowledgeable in calculus. He wasn't raising their IQ. However, I'm pretty sure I could find studies pointing to a raise in whatever intelligence metric for those with a college education (specially mathematics or physics heavy) versus a control group that went on to menial jobs. Actually I'll just post the first few Google hits (only glanced by they severely contradict your claims): 1) http://ije.oxfordjournals.org/content/39/5/1362.full http://ije.oxfordjournals.org/content/39/5/1362.full Causal relation between education and intelligence metrics observed 2) http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1465-7295.2010.00312.x/abstract http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1465-7295.2010.... Correlation between education attainment and IQ --- Moreover, there's the even more glaring correlation (and causal relationship) between success and higher educational attainment, specially in technical fields, where obviously you need a lot of hard to learn knowledge, skills and general ability to learn (that is, I also dispute your claim that education has no effect on ability to learn). I can ellaborate and dig more if someone is interested/skeptical.

danieltillett 11y ago

Education alone does tend to make people better neighbours. There is true value in education, but unfortunately the only market demand is for people who are intelligent, conscientious and educated in certain fields. Hit all three and you are in demand otherwise a life of dead end jobs awaits you.

Moshe_Silnorin 11y ago
Education is a proxy for IQ and conscientiousness. People with these characteristics (and importantly the wealth this provides) tend to make better neighbours. Zuck dropped out of college, yet I very much doubt he'd be a terrible neighbour, nor would a neighbourhood full of Harvard dropouts be bad.
- thrownaway2424 11y ago
  The scuttlebutt around the neighborhood is actually that Zuck is a bit of a jackass, neighbor-wise. http://sfist.com/2016/01/13/zuckerberg_neighbor_wages_campaign.php http://sfist.com/2016/01/13/zuckerberg_neighbor_wages_campai...
  - Moshe_Silnorin 11y ago
    Most of the problems seem to be externalities of his fame and wealth. Say Facebook didn't work out and he got a job at Google, I doubt he would be considered a bad neighbour.
- eli_gottlieb 11y ago
  >nor would a neighbourhood full of Harvard dropouts be bad. I think that surveying Alston or Cambridge might not lead to this conclusion.
- danieltillett 11y ago
  Yes education correlates quite tightly with intelligence and conscientiousness, but just raising education levels on their own makes for better neighbours. Education is a good thing for all - the problem is we don’t have the jobs to go with all this education.

ThrustVectoring 11y ago

Note that employers aren't allowed to measure and discriminate on IQ, but they are allowed to look at which college a candidate went to. Colleges, on the other hand, are allowed to measure and discriminate based on SAT score, which is highly correlated with IQ. And since college education is mostly a positional good (it helps you compete against people with worse education for limited jobs), there's a pretty fantastic charitable opportunity for an enterprising lawyer to start suing employers over requiring or looking at college degrees.

tosseraccount 11y ago
What? Employers can't test for intelligence? Do you have a link that backs up your assertion that "employers aren't allowed to measure and discriminate on IQ".
- Moshe_Silnorin 11y ago
  Griggs v. Duke Power Co: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Griggs_v._Duke_Power_Co https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Griggs_v._Duke_Power_Co. You could argue this is the principal cause of our horrifically wasteful college boom.
- Spooky23 11y ago
  These tests are considered to be racially and culturally biased, so they are not suitable for employment decision making.
- digbyloftus 11y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Griggs_v._Duke_Power_Co https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Griggs_v._Duke_Power_Co. >The effect of this decision has been to eliminate aptitude tests from the hiring process. During the intervening years, the college diploma has become the "de facto" tool by HR departments to winnow the flood of applications. Many jobs today require a college diploma, while before Griggs the same job did not.
  - Slothrop99 11y ago

ap22213 11y ago

"Education is a proxy for IQ and conscientiousness." Tell that to over 30% of my gifted class who weren't able to attend college (at least not until much later in life). Education is generally a proxy for wealth, a certain type of culture, and supportive parents, in my experience.

Moshe_Silnorin 11y ago
I didn't say it is a perfect proxy. It provides some evidence. Modern credentialism is so awful that even a terrible idea like tattooing people's IQs on their foreheads would probably work much better and be much cheaper.

orionblastar 11y ago

I worked a programming job for a law firm. I earned an associate's degree because I could not afford a four year degree. I majored in data processing with the programming option. When I applied for the job only an associates was required and it was 1997. After the Dotcom bubble burst in 1999-2000 HR decided to rewrite job descriptions. So they had me rewrite the job description for my position. I wrote that it needed an associates, and experience in programming etc. HR took it and changed one thing, a bachelors instead of an associates. I suddenly was no longer qualified for the job I held. I was forced to work extra hours for no extra pay because I was salaried. I was under a lot of stress and assigned other people's projects until I was overwhelmed with them. I worked in St. Louis MO and my wife didn't want me to relocate and be in a different state so my job search was limited and nobody was hiring. From the stress I developed a mental illness in 2001 and became disabled on short term disability. When I returned from short term disability I was fired for having a panic attack at work. They lost my doctor's notes that excused me and used them against me. I tried another job in 2002 they used me to get their project to the next level, migrating from Excel to SQL Server for their database and optimizing the code. After the project was done, I was fired. I ended up on disability in 2003, I went back to college to earn a bachelors but I was never medically cleared to go back to work. I am 47 now, and I feel like my career is over. I had offers to work in the west coast but I could not relocate because of my wife not wanting me to leave out of state. I'm sure the working environment is different in SV and west coast companies. But if other white men of a middle age had the stress that I had when working, I can see them developing a mental illness or turning to drug use. I never turned to drug use, but I had problems sleeping and waking up due to the stress. I had friends who didn't go to college but learned programming by experience, they were expert programmers but lost their jobs because they didn't have college degrees and ended up working in retail jobs to make ends meet like Sam's Club. I've known people with college degrees that didn't know what they were doing and I mentored them at work to get them started in programming. It is possible to earn a degree and still have problems doing the job they are hired for. For example programming classes teach how to write short programs that are very small, but writing larger more complex programs and how to debug them is not taught. That takes experience in the real world.

mback00 11y ago

Dr_tldr 11y ago

This sounds a lot like the "Just World" fallacy under the cover of genetics. At one point 99% of the population was illiterate and living in thatch huts, and no doubt members of the elite at that time also considered this to be an expression of natural order as well. But as it turns out, almost all of those peasants were capable of learning to read, doing algebra, engaging in abstract reasoning, labor coordination, and operating some fairly complex machinery. Many of them were even capable of becoming software engineers. We know this, because pretty much all of us came from them, and if we can do it, they could've done it, given the proper environment. Someone advancing your argument 1000, 100, or even 50 years ago would've wrong, what makes your argument different? Of course we shouldn't expect equal outcomes from all people, but to suggest that we've now reached such a level of access and fairness in society that everyone still at the bottom can't possibly be elevated any further seems... unintelligent.

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
danieltillett 11y ago
You might enjoy reading A Farewell to Alms [1]. More importantly your two positions are not excludable. It is possible that the elite of the past were wrong and some segment of the population is incapable of being raised any higher. I personally doubt this is the case, but it has not been ruled out. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Farewell_to_Alms https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Farewell_to_Alms
- noir_lord 11y ago
  Given the variance in intelligence I think there probably is an upper limit to how you can "raise" someone. I also suspect that we are a long way off that, hell who knows what the future looks like, we could end up with neural implants that allow everyone to boost their intelligence/recall. I'm not stupid but I know there is an upper bound on my intelligence that is lower than many other peoples, not everyone can be Einstein or Hawking. The more interesting problem is how do we optimise for people reaching their maximum potential or if that is even necessary.