> Seniority doesn't come from churning out code quicker. Its more long the lines of communication, leading others, empathy, toughness when needed, not avoiding uncomfortable situations or discussions and so on. No room for llms there.
they might be poor at it, but if you do everything you specified online and through a computer, then its in an LLMs domain. If we hadnt pushed so hard for work from home it might be a different story. LLMs are poor on soft skills but is that inherent or just a problem that can be refined away? i dont know
isnt it more embarrasing that they believed the sun needed help to reappear? that they mistook the feelings in their head to be real, kind of how people think they can feel or talk to a god? we love to pat ourselves on the back but never take a look at how stupid we actually are, most people most of the time. i feel regularly embarrassed at the mistakes we make
Many of these indigenous knowledge systems are essentially memory palaces. It's a way to memorize large amounts of information and map that information on some sort of tangible metaphor. Modern western astrology is pretty divorced from the original practice(s), but the original practice actually used a sidereal clock and actually corresponded to the positions of stars. The stars being an important component for navigation, agricultural calendars, etc. Astrology served as a memory palace to store this sort of information.
These metaphors are quite common across the world and over time gain many layers of knowledge. Go a little more east and you'll commonly see the 4 winds, the 4 cardinal directions, the 4 tastes, 4 [insert characteristics of medicinal properties] etc all mapped onto each other.
The most embarrassing part of humanity imo is the arrogance and disregard with which people sometimes approach other cultures
Additionally, ritual serves a purpose both for individuals and within a broader society - for instance, a bloodletting during a solar eclipse emphasizes both the vulnerability of society to outside affairs (a solar eclipse is a hauntingly humbling experience even to the modern viewer) and the noble’s obligation to society (literally shedding blood to help protect their society). Similar can be seen with some rituals around hunting and gathering - “never kill the first deer/take the first herb you see” serves as a conservation act.
There’s an old line - “religion is the finger that points to the moon” - to your point about religion as a memory palace, most of these practices survived not because the sun god blessed them, but because they had tangible and durable benefits to the societies that practiced them.
While I can understand how the GP's interpretation/wording isn't helpful at all and I understand it being down voted, there still is a kernel of truth in there.
I think their comment is coming from a place of having a very very HN typical but maybe taken to an extreme rational and fact driven "belief" system.
For example, you say that a solar eclipse is a "hauntingly humbling experience even to the modern viewer". Personally, I can understand that rationally. I can understand that many if not most people can or will feel like that.
But I've witnessed multiple solar eclipses in my lifetime and while they were "cool", I had no "hauntingly humbling experience" whatsoever. It's something that happens and that we have a good scientific understanding of as to why and how it happens. End of story.
I can absolutely appreciate how (think final moments of "Pillars of the Earth") great it must have been to know these things, calculate them or at least understand what's happening when it's happening and use them for "population control". Does it benefit societies? Yes, probably on a general/global level. Like how are you gonna rationally explain and get a large populace to deal with end of winter / start of growing season food scarceness? The best and easiest way is to have them believe in your religion and that fasting is something your god requires/encourages. I firmly believe that that's why many major religions include this.
But as "me" in the modern world, it appalls me that someone thinks they can just tell whatever the eff they want and I'm supposed to do it coz "they speak for <$DEITY>".
> But I've witnessed multiple solar eclipses in my lifetime and while they were "cool", I had no "hauntingly humbling experience" whatsoever. It's something that happens and that we have a good scientific understanding of as to why and how it happens. End of story.
The fact that a giant celestial body blocking out the source of the energy that powers all life on this planet inspired no awe in you - that an object a quarter the diameter of our planet a couple hundred thousand miles away from us slid in front of the only real source of light and energy our planet has and temporarily cast us into night, with no ability for us to do anything at all to influence affairs whatsoever except to wait for the event to pass, that that inspired no awe or reflection in you about our place in the universe, our limitations as people, the degree to which we're subject to forces we have no impact over at all - I don't really think that's a testament to your superior apprehension of what you were looking at compared to the people who treated it as something worthy of reflection and introspection.
The fact that a giant celestial body blocking out the source of the energy that powers all life on this planet inspired no awe in you
No. Why? We live on a larger giant celestial body than that ourselves and there are many others out there that are even larger. And there's giant tiny space rocks flying around and one could randomly come "out of nowhere" and end all life as we know it on the planet and no Bruce Willis would be able to save us.
with no ability for us to do anything at all to influence affairs whatsoever [...] that inspired no awe
That's exactly it. We can't do anything about that in any way. We also know it's gonna be over soon. No need to start praying or sacrificing animals or something.
reflection in you about our place in the universe
Why do I need a solar eclipse if I want to think about what we (think we) know about the universe and where we stand? I can still appreciate the eclipse, the fact that there's that giant celestial body you were talking about doing that.
our limitations as people
Again, why do I need an eclipse for that? Why does it automatically mean I need to think about my limitations?
I don't really think that's a testament to your superior apprehension of what you were looking at compared to the people who treated it as something worthy of reflection and introspection.
I never claimed any "superior apprehension" like that. Your opinion is your opinion and you're free to have it as well as share it and who would I be to tell you that you can't have it. But don't claim it's universally a "hauntingly humbling experience". You can have this event make you reflect and introspect but you have no right to claim that everyone has to and otherwise they're somehow inferior.
That attitude towards this issue, while natural, brings nothing positive to you. You should try to embrace our limitations, use them to play in your favor if needed, and be amazed at the diversity and curiosity of human thought. We will conquer the darkness, bit by bit.
I had to broaden my view here recently a little bit myself. Worshipping deities has been around for a long time (8000 years?) and mostly involved no crusades, they certainly aren’t universal.
I value objectivity and truth as much as the next nerd, but would never set not-being-wrong as my highest value. Such a path can only lead to misery and alienation.
jesus christ dont say that around here, youll be swamped by fanatical emacs users describing various bits of lisp theyve written over the years and what they each do. it will send you insane
> you can point the finger at them with no issues.
yeah sure, if your business is one of the 500 startups on HN creating inane shit like a notes app or a calendar, but outages can affect genuine companies that people rely on
I've been involved in public outages (i.e. major newspapers wrote articles about it) on one more than one occasion due to an outage, one was nearly 5 minutes long, the other only 20 seconds, both were terrible.
i love how after having actual law professionals take a look at his appraisal, he has to retract all the things he said about law, leaving you with how he noticed emjois werent rendered on a printout. typical internet know nothing
Otherwise intelligent people think software is sentient now. People believe weird things. We need to have compassion rather than write them off as idiots.
In addition to people believing weird things, such views are often highly tied to an environment.
Levitation is pure non-sense for people "in-doctrinated" (literally: ~ to have a doctrine within) by the contemporary, science-oriented environment.
Similarly, dismissing the existence of God(s) − or thinking about it, of levitation[0] − would have been unthinkable for people genuinely "in-doctrinated" by many (all?) historical religions.
Amusingly, contemporary science, which is often defined in opposition to blind religious ways, essentially operates like your garden-variety religion: faith practically required (among others, who can reproduce/prove (beyond a doubt) well-established results), hierarchy(ies)/rating system(s), esteemed texts, key public figures, etc.
Usually, the deeper people understand their own in-doctrination, the more prudent they are regarding what they may consider true or not.
fun fact: if you get some chronic illness, you have good chances to become an idiot. Every time your body stops working in some major way, your thinking is also affected (you become a de facto idiot).
They don’t. The movements pushing these ideas are against the idea of aptitude testing. Many of them are even against the idea of having advanced classes for those who are ahead.
It’s not a niche ideology, sadly. It’s going mainstream. A core part of Zohran Mamdani’s platform was his goal to phase out gifted education programs, for example.
Gifted education programs for kindergarten. I don't necessarily agree with that either but it's important to be accurate when talking about proposed policies. The man isn't talking about taking away AP algebra. Most kindergarteners still need to be told not to eat their boogers.
Kindergarten is where the phase out starts. That’s how you phase something out. You don’t take it away from everyone all at once because that triggers outrage. You disallow it for new kindergarten students one season, then next year remove it from 1st grade so they can’t go into accelerated programs and so on. He explicitly uses the phrase “phase out” for this reason.
Read more of his platform documents, including the ones before everything got watered down for his website.
The “it’s just for kindergarten” is just positive spin on the first step of the goal of phasing it out in general.
The phase out starts with kindergarten and “early grades”. In some places he’s said up through second grade which some assume is an upper limit, but really it’s just the natural length of phasing out gifted programs one year at a time over the 4-year course of a mayoral term due to the necessary delays to eliminate the program after his election date (kindergarten next school year, then 1st grade the next, then 2nd grade)
Assuming he wants to eliminate all gifted programs because he said he wants to eliminate some of them is a type of ZDS. You also edited your earlier comment to say
> You disallow it for new kindergarten students one season, then next year remove it from 1st grade so they can’t go into accelerated programs and so on
I don't know how it works in NYC now, but it doesn't have to be like that. When I went to school you could always get into the gifted program at the beginning of any school year if your teacher put you up for it. You didn't have to be in the program since kindergarten.
> I don't know how it works in NYC now, but it doesn't have to be like that. When I went to school you could always get into the gifted program at the beginning of any school year if your teacher put you up for it. You didn't have to be in the program since kindergarten.
Sorry, I should have been more clear.
The gifted program for kindergarten will be eliminated in the first year of the phaseout.
The following year it will also be eliminated for first grade.
The following year it will be eliminated for second grade as well.
This is the phase out. Students who start in kindergarten next year won’t have the option of the gifted program because it will be eliminated for the following grade every year.
It doesn’t matter that they didn’t get into it in Kindergarten because it won’t exist in 1st grade when they get there, and so on.
Up to what grade though? The article you provided says Mamdani supports gifted programs starting in the 3rd grade. That's different from your original assertion that he's "[phasing out] gifted education programs", implying that they would end completely for everyone.
My original understanding was it was kindergarten only and that was inaccurate. He's following a plan proposed by de Blasio, which I didn't know about, that's phasing it out up to the 2nd grade. Extrapolating from that to "Mamdani will remove all gifted education" is the ZDS I'm referring to.
I agree with you overall about the value of gifted programs. But it's important to not spiral into hyperbole.
Also, they used to start that young. My gradeschool in the 90s would identify gifted students in kindergarten and give parents the option to move them to SWAS (school-within-a-school) starting in first grade.
There is a well-known effect where segregating kids into gifted VS non-gifted harms the education of the non-gifted while only having a marginal impact on the gifted:
Basically, non-gifted kids learn from the gifted ones. It's that whole, "positive influence from peers" thing.
In the long term, having gifted programs results in a handful of accelerated students and a lot more struggling ones (at the end of mandatory education).
> Basically, non-gifted kids learn from the gifted ones. It's that whole, "positive influence from peers" thing.
In other words, let’s drag the smart students down, disallow them a better education, and instead force them to teach their peers because we don’t think their teachers are doing a good job?
Honestly, nothing has done a better job of solidifying my understanding of a material than trying to explain it to other people. We should be giving students more opportunities to do this, not less.
On the contrary, the study you cite found no significant effect either way for either group. From the last page: "we find that gifted grouping does not help or hurt the
achievement growth of gifted students nor does it help or hurt the achievement
growth of non-gifted students"
(emphasis mine.) This certainly does not imply that separating gifted tracks results in a lot more struggling students.
Based on what GP said, it isn't clear that the implementation of "allowing advanced students to learn advanced topics" is successful either. It seems like the current gifted/non-gifted system isn't working.
I mean that's nice and all. But then you can also get behavioral issues from gifted students who feel stifled. Their needs aren't less important than the other students'.
Kids usually don't learn "school" things like math, reading, and science from each other. They learn behaviors. Kindness, cooperation, competition, integrity, working hard, not being disruptive etc. Having a gifted track for part of the day doesn't disrupt that learning.
There is a silver lining though, when everyone is in the same class, better off people don't think they can escape and push to make the program better for everyone.
Teachers only really teach the middle third - the top third can be ignored because they can do it for themselves while being bored.
The bottom third can’t be helped because they won’t be helped without a huge amount of energy by the teacher (for little rewards), and so won’t do it for themselves while being bored.
The middle third is all that gets schooled because they can at least be bumped up a little higher towards where the under-achieving top third thus rests.
> better off people don't think they can escape and push to make the program better for everyone.
Your solution is to make the smart kids suffer so maybe they can force the educators to do better? That’s insane. It’s also not going to happen.
Do you know what will happen? Any parent with the means will scrape together cash to pull their students out and go to private schools. Or they’ll hire tutors after school and force their kids to sit down and learn what they should have been learning during the day.
This fantasy where the smart kids rally together to overhaul the system because we banned them from taking advanced classes is a delusion.
I was in a gifted program in grades 5-7, stopped going mainly because I had to travel to another school to attend and it was inconvenient.
I didn't "suffer" being in classes with folks who weren't at my level. The teaching staff did a great job and I never felt like I was being shortchanged. My undiagnosed ADHD means I goofed around a lot, but several of my friends told me after high school that they appreciated me because I helped them see learning from a different angle than their parents or the teachers.
Great that it worked for you. I believe everyone should have the choice.
However, please don’t force your experience to be the only allowable experience for others. If some students want to take advanced classes, we should let them.
Refusing to allow students to learn at a faster rate is insanity.
As someone else mentioned somewhere in this thread, what about public schooling prevents students from learning by themselves? In my experience, the best students I know generally didn't become so due to public or private schooling, but simply personal interest and drive (and perhaps talent, but that is also school-independent).
But you can't tailor one program for kids with different abilities. You shouldn't even try. You should give each individual what they need to succeed to the best of their ability. That's the core of inclusion and equity. You know, the classic comic of the three kids trying to look over the fence?
AFAICT many private schools are worse than public schools. Parents put kids into private schools so that they get good grades and extra-curriculars to let them get into the good universities. So that's what private schools sell -- good grades. It's less important that they have the education that the good grades imply.
I have no doubt schools like that exist, but in every location I’ve lived and interacted with parents the private school educations they sent their kids to were no question a cut above.
I think this idea that private schools are no better are even worse is a wishful thinking narrative. Private schools, especially the more expensive ones, naturally select for parents who are more involved. More involved parents are highly correlated with better student outcomes. That alone means private schools are correlated with better outcomes. It honestly doesn’t really matter if it’s cause and effect or correlation, parents send their kids to private schools because they want them in the mix with other students selected into the higher performing environment.
>The average private school mean reading score was 14.7 points higher than the average public school mean reading score, corresponding to an effect size of .41 (the ratio of the absolute value of the estimated difference to the standard deviation of the NAEP fourth-grade reading score distribution). After adjusting for selected student characteristics, the difference in means was near zero and not significant.
For math:
>The average private school mean mathematics score was 7.8 points higher than the average public school mean mathematics score, corresponding to an effect size of .29. After adjusting for selected student characteristics, the difference in means was -4.5 and significantly different from zero. (Note that a negative difference implies that the average school mean was higher for public schools.)
In the context of the specific discussion here, it doesn't really matter that the effect goes away when controling for selected student characteristics. First off this was from 2006, we would have to see if any of that has changed. The 2024 numbers are here[1]. But in any case they are not worse than public schools, although they may be no better or slightly worse than a public school in a rich neighborhood or similar.
Considering private schools cost tens of thousands of dollars and get to choose who they admit, as good (in reading) and worse (in math) than schools with similar demographics seems pretty damning, doesn't it?
Damning for who? Education is just one reason parents choose public schools for their children. Depending on the school (eg. Catholic schools) it may be the last thing they care about. Also you should look at the cost per pupil for public schools. It is very high in many states, with the average being $18,000 per student in 2021.[0]
That’s why it isn’t a reliable indicator of aptitude. A student who earns all A’s at a top level public school and a student who earns all A’s at a low level public school aren’t necessarily operating at the same academic level.
They asked what else could be used. I told them, then I explained why it wouldn't work as well as a standardized test.
And the variance can happen even in "top level" public schools, for certain definitions of "top level". I went to one of the best high schools in the nation (as rated by college acceptance rates, SAT/ACT scores, etc). There were still teachers people wanted to avoid because they were seen as harsher graders. So you can have grade inflation even at "top level" schools as private schools aren't above selling grades.
they might be poor at it, but if you do everything you specified online and through a computer, then its in an LLMs domain. If we hadnt pushed so hard for work from home it might be a different story. LLMs are poor on soft skills but is that inherent or just a problem that can be refined away? i dont know