Erik Hoel, a neuroscientist and novelist, writes essays on consciousness, scientific progress, AI, and culture.
Commenters cite it for his arguments on consciousness and why Einsteins are no longer produced, calling his reaction to the consciousness letter excellent.
> On the ruins of Bulgaria’s communist utopian cyber-economy, the most prolific and feared virus writer of all, named the Dark Avenger, emerged to wreak havoc on the world’s computers at the moment Francis Fukuyama had proclaimed the end of history. Was it really?
Oh, yes, kind of:
> “The [US] capitalists behaved like socialists while the [Soviet] socialists behaved like capitalists.” In other words, the United States’ internet precursor ARPANET was achieved through strong government support and subsidies, whereas the Soviet attempts were torpedoed by the “self-interest” of its bureaucrats and experts. The Bulgarian case is different because it did succeed—partly due to the fact that Petrov’s protagonists were able to outplay the capitalists at their own game. They copied the code and then rewrote it.
It is the end of history predicted by Karl Marx, but it had played in a different way that he thought. It played in a way Fukuyama described in retrospect. Capitalism is no longer "pure" capitalism, and communism is no longer "pure" communism. The thesis and the antithesis mated and gave rise to something in between. Or rather they morphed both, but the transformation of capitalism was more successful. Though China probably wouldn't agree with this last statement.
But looking at USA it use a lot of government funds spent on different projects with a goal to spur up progress. ARPANET is just one example, the other one is Apollo project or commercialization of space which is…
Bad article. The thesis may even be valuable, but it’s riddled with falsehoods trying to prove the point. It reads more as the usual person disliking the idea of IQ and trying to bash its foundation. Some actual facts are:
1. Einstein was a great student (as common sense would expect) [1]. Top in his class in ETHZ, and the supposed failed exam is because he tried to do the exam earlier than intended. He had great, although not flawless, grades all the way through. He wasn’t a mindless robot and clearly got some feathers ruffed by not showing up for classes, but his academic record is exactly what you would expect from a brilliant but somewhat nonconformist mind. He may not have been Von Neumann or Terence Tao, I suppose.
2. The main “source” of the article is an even more flawed blog post [2], which again just bashes on IQ with no sliver of proof that I can see other than waving hands in the hair while saying “dubious statistical transformations”, as if that wasn’t the only possible way to do these kinds of tests. Please prove me wrong and show me some proper study in there, I can’t see it but I’m from mobile.
Disappointing. What’s the point of it? Quote actual scientists, for example Higgs, who are on record saying that modern academic culture is too short term focused. Basically everyone I’ve ever spoken to about it in academia agrees. Might be a biased sample, but I think it’s more that everyone realizes we’ve dug ourselves into a hole that’s not so easy to…
I agree with you, and I think AI-based tutors and software assisted personalized education could help a lot in this regard [1]; however, I'm not that optimistic in terms of implementing this in the USA.
About two years ago I chatted with a professor at ASU who was developing AI tutors and other sorts of systems and was able to show in research papers that they enhanced the learning of the class overall. However, he claimed that adoption among teachers and schools was largely rejected because teachers hated having imbalanced knowledge among the students.
China is apparently pursuing this education strategy, though: https://www.technologyreview.com/2019/08/02/131198/china-squirrel-has-started-a-grand-experiment-in-ai-education-it-could-reshape-how-the/
Speaking as a parent with a child in private school, even there they have a strong resistance to teaching kids who already knows materials from the current year, where I was explicitly told those topics wouldn't be covered for two more years rather than embracing my child's curiosity and interests. K-12 education seems extremely non-optimal except for enabling parents to work, but my complaints about education aren't new [2] and our K-12 education certainly doesn't cultivate geniuses [3].
[1] https://slejournal.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/s40561-020-00140-9
[2] https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/freedom-learn/201107/what-einstein-twain-forty-eight-others-said-about-school
[3]…
You're downvoted but learning material has improved a lot since then. Spaced repetition + today's resources should remove a couple years from the 10.
People can even practice programming on their phone with termux. Anyone can program anytime instead of having to wait to use the family computer for just an hour like back in the day. It's so easy to get mileage in.
The complexity of frameworks has increased, but the fundamentals haven't changed and the learning material on the fundamentals is more available and free.
This medium article[1] argues there is a decline of genius.
> I think the most depressing fact about humanity is that during the 2000s most of the world was handed essentially free access to the entirety of knowledge and that didn’t trigger a golden age.
But I believe we are in a golden age, innovations are made every year, life keeps getting better. Change is so frequent that it has become mundane and we don't appreciate it.
Many people are taking advantage of the quality of learning resources, and it's speeding up the development of everything.
[1] https://www.theintrinsicperspective.com/p/why-we-stopped-making-einsteins
There's a famous post by Erik Hoel that calls the human version of this Aristocratic Tutoring [1] (Scott Alexander is unconvinced [2]).
In the 1980s, a researcher called Benjamin Bloom claimed a z=2.0 (that is 2σ) advantage for a combination of mastery learning (don't move on the the next topic until you've mastered the current one) and 1-on-1 tutoring. Later replications show there is definitely something going on, but the effect size is much lower, for example around z=0.7 in a 2020 paper [3].
I'm still open on AI tutoring, though the Dartmouth results look impressive. Someone please try and replicate this.
There's a saying that AI helps the best students get better, and the worst ones get worse. (Anthropic sort-of agrees [4].) It'll be interesting to see how that turns out.
[1] https://www.theintrinsicperspective.com/p/why-we-stopped-making-einsteins
[2] https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/contra-hoel-on-aristocratic-tutoring
[3] https://www.nber.org/papers/w27476
[4] https://www.anthropic.com/research/AI-assistance-coding-skills
> As in gifted and talented individuals who form a community, or all these folks from this ethnic background you think are talented? Because if it's the former then I'm surprised they've got a community going
"A recent analysis in Nature caused a stir by pointing out that the vast majority of Nobel Prize winners belong to the same academic family. Of 736 researchers who have won the Big Recognition, 702 group together into one huge connected academic lineage (with lineage broadly defined as when one scientist “mentors” another, usually in the form of being their PhD advisor)."
> getting the calipers out and go measure some skulls
Please, just stop.
[0]: Yes, scientific progress depends on like a thousand people https://www.theintrinsicperspective.com/p/yes-scientific-progress-depends-on
[1]: How to win a Nobel prize https://www.nature.com/immersive/d41586-024-02897-2/index.html#section-J5DGxuc7ca