Oceans Yet to Burn

[Oceans Yet to Burn]

[mitigatedchaos]

The Mitigated Chaos Plan for School

@silver-and-ivory

…that’s true.

I don’t know what a good solution would look like, but it doesn’t have to involve any more high-IQ individuals than we have now, just a better distribution of resources schools already have.

I want to test solutions to the current system, and to find many different possible set-ups that are different from the one we have now. (They might not scale well, of course.)

Even improvement in a limited geographical area or to some minor aspects, for relatively affluent middle-class individuals, would be really valuable to me.

Roight, let me suggest my plan, which would only help matters that you want tangentially most likely.

Are you familiar with Spaced Repetition?  It’s used in programs like Anki.  The basic summary is this: your brain flags things as important by whether or not you use them, and forgets them gradually over time.  Spaced repetition brings the item up again at a certain point in the forgetting, so that your brain goes “oh hey this came up again, it must be important, I better remember it!”

Gamification is also a thing, and I have a theory that a big part of why people don’t like school stuff is that it doesn’t feel applicable, or that it will ever be applicable.  But while I do not enjoy math for its own sake, I feel almost no resistance to doing math when I have to in order to accomplish some other task.

I’d like @argumate to read this post, too, and probably a few of the others as well.

So here’s my proposal:

1. This will be primarily implemented as a computer program.  It will be implemented on a custom computer system that is not easily compromised.

2. All textbooks will be presented in both a fuller, contextualized format, and as semi-atomic facts of information, ready for use for spaced repetition memorization.

3. Exercises will be split between grinding and synthesis.  Synthesis exercises will sometimes be in the form of game-like programs that have a complex problem which the students must integrate their knowledge of the subject to perform.  (That is, students must be able to take the knowledge and use it and apply it, not just repeat it.)  Other times, for other subjects like English, they will be items like essays that are manually graded by teachers.  Students earn resource points to attempt synthesis exercises through grinding exercises, which are the rote learning component intended to reinforce the knowledge and speed up processing (e.g. of doing math).  If you fail the synthesis exercise, you may have to do more grinding to attempt it again.

4. The computer program will conduct a review of all the subjects the student needs to know, based on spaced repetition algorithms and data about the student and their previous performance.  This prevents the constant information loss that is pervasive in the American school system.

5. All of this is individualized.  Students go at their own pace, and graduate when it has all been completed, or are pushed out of the school system at 21.

6. Homework is mostly rare or non-existent.  Instead, students will stay another hour or two at school.  Homework is for doing exercises, which we are having them do at school.

7. The school day will be broken up by various social activities to let students’ brains relax in between blocks of studying, which will still be somewhat unified by subject of study to make #8 easier.

8. In addition to grading work, teachers will also act as tutors to individual students.  Students will be grouped in classes with students who are in a similar position of progress within the system.  Teachers will go around the room answering various questions and helping students with items they are having trouble with.  There may be some small lecturing sections, maybe.

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The following is less necessary, but additional depending on your balance of Nationalism/Capitalism/Technocracy/etc.

9. Students will be awarded points based on a mix of (about 1/3 each) progress, attendance, and and percentile academic standing within their school.  These points can be spent on a very larger variety (over 100) of uniform parts, snacks, media, and other items at participating retailers.  This has the virtue of aligning the school’s social hierarchy more closely with the desired outcome of learning & academic performance, as well as giving students practical experience with small amounts of “money”.

10. Research shows that teaching math below a certain age doesn’t actually accelerate learning progress on it much at all, so for very young students, the system will focus on “moral/social” education and socialization and potentially language skills.  

[Oceans Yet to Burn]

Never give someone else direct write access to your mind.

[Oceans Yet to Burn]

[argumate]

while some extremist blogs are an endless source of entertainment I’m feeling a bit uneasy about contributing to possible dogpiles and trust that people won’t send them anonymous obnoxious shit; if you’re not willing to put your own name on something it’s probably best not to send it in the first place.

[mitigatedchaos]

Endorsed, more or less.  As a matter of public record, don’t send mean anons to people I’m arguing with.

[Oceans Yet to Burn]

The Trustee Model of Child Care

There is an idea, in some circles, that parents effectively own their children.  This risks leading to various abuses, and also doesn’t line up with all moral intuitions.  On the other hand, most children do not have the capabilities, including executive function, to adequately evaluate and act on long-term preferences that will become important when they become adults.

I propose a rather simple-but-vague model that has no doubt been proposed before.  The child is effectively held in a trust owned by their future self.  The duty of the parents, therefore, is to safely deliver a well-developed adult to be inherited at the point of hand-off.  They are the trust’s operators, not the trust’s owners, and thus they have a variety of duties, abilities, and limitations.

A parent can have vaccines administered.  They can’t remove a significant portion of the child’s body, or demand a tattoo of their choice.  They can enact ordinary disciplinary measures, but not abusive ones.  They can require that the child attend school and do well at it, but they are not allowed to engage in pure ideological indoctrination.  And, if they fail to meet the terms, they can be removed from administration of the metaphorical trust.

The exact details might vary.  In many ways this is what people are acting on already - thus why Child Protective Services exists in the first place - but it isn’t explicitly specified.  I outline it here mostly so that it can be brought up as a counter-model when people suggest either ownership of children, or treating children as atomistic adults with fully-formed executive functioning and experience.

[Oceans Yet to Burn]

What happens if people can’t own nations?

What’s the plan here for open borders, dissolution of nations stuff?

I mean, let’s stop and think about this for a minute.

Presumably, open borders will still be accompanied by democracy by geographical area.  In the interests of fairness, voting will also be extended to migrants.

However, there is no limit on the number of people that can move into an area in a given timeframe, as this would end up being considered some form of discrimination.  This means that in any year, the people living somewhere could effectively have themselves replaced with a migrant population that then changes all the laws to suit them.

Since the residents lack the ability to exclude people from the government, they lack the ability to control it, and thus don’t effectively own it, since the ability to exclude is one of the core things that ownership is about.

Which, sure, people have been saying “it’s not YOUR government!” and talking about how people don’t have the right to exclude those of other cultures (while either letting cruelties like FGM off the hook, or pretending it isn’t cultural).

But if they don’t own it, why in the world would they fight for it?  Why would they fight to defend a government that doesn’t belong to them, doesn’t care about them, and at any time could be taken away from them and looted by others?  In a war, why wouldn’t they just leave the territory?  If environmental issues become a problem, why not just contribute to them until it’s unprofitable, and then flee?

Some modern countries are already having problems getting enough personnel to staff their armies as it is, and we’re not even halfway this far into Globalism.

Who will fight and die to protect their access to consumer products?  Who will fight to protect the rights of others that don’t care about them or their values at all?  For a territory that isn’t even really theirs?

All you’re left with are mercenaries.  And mercenaries are a terrible option, known all the way back in the days of Machiavelli.

But there are other group memberships that people might be willing to fight for.  Ethnic groups, as have been a source of fighting for dominance throughout the ages.  Religions, which promise eternal reward after death.  Drug cartels and other criminal organizations, with the promise of great payout for the desperate in this life, regardless of whether it’s true.  Right-wing and left-wing paramilitaries that are dedicated to ideology.

And, as this starts spiraling out of control, sub-national organizations that, ostensibly, originated for mutual defense.  

Having defeated the nation-state, the monopoly on violence loosens, and the fighting shifts to the sub-national level.

[Oceans Yet to Burn]

Patching Prediction Markets

The following assume the prediction markets are being used to help evaluate the standing of government bureaucrats or employees in another very large organization.  In this instance, the resource being bet is not currency per se, but a “credibility score” used in hiring and other decisions.

Reselling Shares of Predictions

One issue with making bets is that they may take longer than your lifespan in order to pay out.  Shares of bets on, for example, global temperature in the year 2100 should be something that can be traded by itself.  In this sense these kinds of bets become a long-term investment that can be used to hold one’s credibility score, particularly if bet payoffs are indexed to prediction market inflation.

Catastrophe Bets Reserve Catastrophe Goods

A basket of catastrophe goods are held in reserve for those who make predictions of incidents which would cause the prediction market to end.  This might include gold, guns and ammo, priority access to bunkers, and so on.  These would be distributed by the market operator in preparation for the event, but are only held by the bettor unless the actual catastrophe kicks in.

Prohibition of Close Involvement

Based on the level of control someone has over the outcome of a scenario being bet on (1/N?), they may be prohibited from betting on it.

Alternatively,

Prohibition of Betting Against Own Success

If you’re on a project, you can only bet on it succeeding, not coming late or failing.  Colluding with outsiders to get payment for the project failing is a punishable offense, and these will be monitored and punished.

Alternatively,

Randomization of Selection of Betting Participants with Self Recusal

Spread bets over the organization at random to lower the probability that any participant has too much control over the outcome and is thus able to sabotage it.  This may result in a hit to accuracy, depending on the estimating capabilities of your organization.

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There are probably other mechanisms that can be added to try and get better / less corrupt behavior from the prediction markets.

[Oceans Yet to Burn]

Sex Shaming & Status War

The road to ending “slut shaming” of women probably goes through the town of “destroy the norm of giving men status for being sexually successful, and of treating male virgins as disgusting losers”.

I say this because I think some of the desire to enforce sex norms on women relates to the nature of sexual access as a status good for men.  

If a low-partner man gets into a relationship with a high-partner woman, he is considered lower status for it, under multiple frameworks.  Under a “promiscuous women are low-value” framework, it lowers his value by suggesting he had to ‘settle’ for a woman other men could extract sex from but didn’t consider worthy of commitment.  Under a “anyone having a high partner count means they are high-value” framework, it suggests that the woman is higher value than he is (which is risky if men are judged more on status than women are), and that the way for him to raise his value is to have lots of meaningless sex with lots of people.

If a low-partner man and a high-partner man are in the same community, the low-partner man is lower status than the high-partner man is, since masculinity is contingent on success, and success with women is counted as one category of success.  (In fact, one of the socially damaging aspects of virginity / lower partner count is that it is considered “unmasculine”.)

This creates a strong motivation for status war.  If low-partner men can attack promiscuity in women, they can create a situation where women have partner counts closer to their own.  Failing that, they can lower the status of such women so that they’re at least not higher status than themselves.

Unless their sexual success is decoupled from their social status, men will always have a motivation to wage status war through “slut shaming”.

The way to alter the status of high-partner men is not through straight men themselves, since their value in this respect is conferred by women.  (Low-partner men are already low status, so they have less social power to alter these very norms.)  It’s through the actions of women.

One way to do this is for women to start treating promiscuous men the way promiscuous women were treated in the past.  If women started treating high-partner men like hot potatoes that are disgusting, low-status (like male virgins are now), and aren’t worthy of sex (not just commitment, as getting a woman to commit isn’t considered special), it would radically alter the status dynamic in male communities.

Another possibility is if commitment from women somehow became more difficult to get, and thus was considered special and more valuable than sex, but it’s unclear under what conditions this would emerge as a stable equilibrium.  Current conditions don’t favor it or any obvious paths to it.  The traditional norm is the opposite - women trade sex to get commitment.  If this could be changed, it would increase the status of a man the woman finally ‘settled’ for.  (It appears to be true in the opposite direction currently.)

Another way to do it is to treat low-partner and high-partner men the same in a very noticeable way so that men will start internalizing that being high-partner isn’t the same as getting the “approval from women” they need to prove their masculinity and raise their status.  This doesn’t mean in fields unrelated to sex.  The status comes from sex, so they have to be treated as equally sexually desirable, perhaps even the virgins.

All of these courses of action have their own problems.  Depending on the balance of nature vs nurture, some or all of them may not even be feasible.  They may do secondary damage.  They may just not be enjoyable to a lot of people.