IQ or Effort?

Tino and Steve Sailer already gave us the lowdown on the US education system. US Education system beats other systems.

But the killer post by Tino is this one:

Homework time by race.

Clearly IQ is the main issue in school success....unless you think that 3x effort factor makes a difference for some reason.

Goes along with my QoTY:

Speaking of that quote of how amateurs practice until they can get it right, but the real pros keep practicing until they can't get it wrong, I am about 90% sure that it was the Finnish magic maven Iiro Seppänen who once wrote that you need to keep practicing some "simple" trick over and over even though you think you have already fully mastered it, because this process will eventually make you realize something important.

Effort is the whole deal. How many hours have you been working on it is the ONLY question. And the business of Mastery is entirely about this practice. Heck, TJIC discussed it too. Practice is it. Unfortunately for those of us who like to talk/read/write...reading/writing/talking gives practice only at that. Not at doing, or even really at understanding.

What have you done so much of that you understand the above is true for it. Let's call it the 10,000 hour mark.

Me: Teach (near 50K hours). Math problems. Debug software. Read, Learn, Argue. Look for amazing people.

What are my most excellent commenters masters of?

QoTD

Falkenstein:

I just try to remember that having good prejudices is as important as the having good empirical evidence

Great post. Worth reading.

USA vs. elsewhere

First there was Milton Friedman on Swedes:

A Scandinavian economist once stated to Milton Friedman: "In Scandinavia we have no poverty." Milton Friedman replied, "That's interesting, because in America among Scandinavians, we have no poverty either."

Then Tino came out with a wealth vs. country of origin, showing that for roughly any nationality, folks who moved from there to America were doing better.

Now Steve Sailer just did it for education. Who knew that even by the simplest metrics, the US education system doesn't suck as bad as a lot of folks (me included) thought. Net result: Moving from anywhere to USA improves education outcomes on average.

USA produced better education outcomes, and better monetary outcomes than anywhere in the world (more or less), if you control for genetics. Doesn't mean I don't think our system sucks. But it does indicate that other systems suck worse.

The missing component

I have been insisting for an awful long time on this blog that social fitting in (monkeybrains/status) explains most opinions of most people most of the time...and a lot better than any sort of truth-fitting algorithm. But a piece of the puzzle was missing.

I was talking to my wife today about the homeschooling groups, as we've lived in Austin, TX, Downers Grove, IL, and now in SLO, CA. The types of people attracted to homeschooling/unschooling are very similar between the 3 areas...but the particular behaviors of the three different areas homeschool moms could hardly be more different. That's hers to talk about though...

What it comes down to is that the social environment is nearly 100% determining opinions/approaches to life. As expected. But it doesn't seem to be getting through to my blog audience, and then I realized.

In addition to IQ, attractiveness, patience and self-confidence, the other huge factor in predicting folks' futures is their personality, currently best measured using the Big-5 personality type inventory.

The big 5 personality traits are OCEAN (Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism).

3:1 says that every reader of this blog is mid-low on extraversion and unusually low on agreeableness.

Here's the problem. Agreeableness is roughly the measure of how much getting to agreement with other folks matters. And folks in the left 97.5% of the distribution get ALL their opinions from their social group. Of course, they also find it a lot easier to get along with their social group than most of the people I know as well.

QoTD

Brad Spangler:

If Miley Cyrus continues experimenting with psychedelic drugs, she runs the risk that her music might become interesting.

QoTD computing edition

Slashdot points to ASF president Jim Jagielski:

And so, the JCP is dead... All that remains is a zombie, walking the streets of the Java ecosystem, looking for brains...

Two Quotes

Sonic Charmer:

Here’s my rule of thumb for ‘progressive’ legislation/government action: it will have the opposite effect from the rhetoric its supporters use to push it.

commenter Michael @ Kling's place (further commentary by Kling):

For me, it is recognizing that irrationality whereby most people are libertarian with regards to their own lives and people they like, statist with regards to people they don't know, and positively fascist about people they dislike, stereotype, or don't understand. In other words, they see no reason why they should be restricted, but feel it would good for others to be limited to achieve a general benefit, and are furious to hear that other people are not shackled down by rules, heavier taxes, and intense oversight.

Some libertarians, especially left-libertarians might find many formalists/HBD-ers to be suffering from this problem. On the other hand, the idea that there are progressives who DON'T suffer from this is absurd.

QoTD

Arnold Kling:

I am willing to start with a discussion of how to benefit the poor and get rid of unjustified privilege. Where I refuse to give ground is on making the assumption that government technocrats are wise and that we can elect politicians who are benevolent.

Links

• Scott Sumner on QE2: Do opponents have ANY good arguments?
• Penelope Trunk echoes me on girls and risk and its impacts. End of the article. HT: TJIC.
• Tyler Cowen: Theory of Advertisements as status-conferring, and why online ads don't.
• Eric Crampton on Brad Delong's Econ 101 takeaways.
• Matt Ridley: Self-Sufficiency = Poverty.

Linguistic Revisionism

Communication very frequently fails between folks because different folks use words differently. This problem is exacerbated when folks try to intentionally shift the meaning of the word. I've watched the progressive elements attack and try to shift the notion of the word "rights", and I've participated in the Randian attacks on the words "selfishness" and "greed". I know that the American left has confiscated the word "liberal", which was a great word to describe folks like Milton Friedman or Frederich Hayek. And I've argued before on this blog that definitions are tricky, and that appropriating existing well defined words is tricky.

Here's Foseti pointing to Mangan trying to redefine reactionary. And again, I say nonsense. If you use reactionary to mean anything very far from the current, very well accepted definition, you run the risk of confusing everyone you talk to. Here's the standard line from wikipedia, which I've heard used to describe reactionaries for the past ~25 years:

The term reactionary refers to viewpoints that seek to return to a previous state (the status quo ante) in a society. The term is meant to describe one end of a political spectrum whose opposite pole is "radical". While it has not been generally considered a term of praise it has been adopted as a self-description by some such as H. L. Mencken^[1] or Gerald Warner^[2].

Here's Free Dictionary:

Characterized by reaction, especially opposition to progress or liberalism; extremely conservative

Fact: The Amish, the Orthodox Jews, and many Christian Fundamentalists are reactionary. Anyone who denies this is misusing the term...and will only confuse folks they talk with. Formalist is a lovely label that is unused outside the Formalist community, and I recommend heartily that the Reactionary Formalists choose that label rather than reactionary in the interests of clear communication.

Having said that...I think that a modern left-libertarian/anarchist is on the opposite side. "Radicals for Capitalism" is a good description.

The big difference, I think, between we radicals and the reactionaries, is that while we all believe that the current system is broken...the reactionaries think that prior systems give us a guide for what would work, while we radicals think that prior systems give us a guide for what would NOT work.

Monkeybrains question

Is the status hierarchy EVER called out by the high-status folks? Or are folks who are high-status in their system naturally unable/unmotivated to see the monkeytribe for what it is?

PoTD

But not of today. Here's Roy Childs, 40 years ago, with a long revisionist history of regulation. (HT: Kling)

Summary: Regulation exists almost entirely as a creature of, by, and for big business. They are the beneficiaries, they write the laws. The consumer-protection features of regulation were an after-the-fact addendum glued on, in order to increase political palatability, but which did not fundamentally change the mechanism.

He also touches on the brainwashing function of schooling, as advocated by big business.

Regulation exists to benefit BIG business, and protect it from competition. Here's his ending:

To a large degree it has been and remains big businessmen who are the fountainheads of American statism. If libertarians are seeking allies in their struggle for liberty, then I suggest that they look elsewhere. Conservatives, too, should benefit from this presentation, and begin to see big business as a destroyer, not as a unit, of the free market. Liberals should also benefit, and reexamine their own premises about the market and regulation. Specifically, they might reconsider the nature of a freemarket, and ponder on the question of why big business has been opposed to precisely that. Isn’t it odd that the interests of liberals and key big businessmen have always coincided? The Marxists, too, might rethink their economics, and reconsider whether or not capitalism leads to monopoly. Since it can be shown scientifically that economic calculation is impossible in a purely socialistic economy, and that pure statism is not good for man, perhaps the Marxists might also look at the real nature of a complete free market, undiluted by state control.

Libertarians themselves should take heart. Our hope lies, as strange as it may seem, not with any remnants from an illusory “golden age of individualism, which never existed, but with tomorrow. Our day has not come and gone. It has never existed at all. It is our task to see that it will exist in the future. The choice and the battle are ours.

It's 100 paragraphs, so I can't fairly require you to RTWT...but I wouldn't discourage it either.

How much of truth is communicable?

The question, poorly formed, has been rattling around in my head for a while. And it sits at the center of A LOT of questions in education and epistemology.

If I write code for 20 years, and then wish to communicate to you (who hasn't been writing code) what I've learned in those 20 years, what level of fidelity can we expect on the information transfer?

Let's try: In the business of writing (modern business) software, there is exactly one issue: Maintainability. Everything else is subsidiary.

How much of what I just said is useful information? How much could you start using? How much of that knowledge is implicit...with the words just serving as a marker?

Claim: MOST knowledge is experiential. Very little theoretical knowledge can be apprehended without experience. Childrearing experts without kids...I don't care if they're the reincarnation of Maria Montessori...they're missing huge chunks of the picture, and can safely be ignored. Ditto education theorizers who haven't spent several hundred hours teaching. Marriage counselors with an extra-low rate of marital harmony. People talking entrepreneurism without having tried to run a business.

Claim 2: This is the core problem with education. Talk + Powerpoint don't work.

By Request -- Beverages

Loyal reader Johan asks my opinions on Alcohol and Coffee.

I don't drink, and I am within a week of done with coffee, hopefully forever.

Summary:

1. I qualify as a supertaster. My taste buds, of all types, seem to be extra-strong. Bitter tastes are effectively intolerable...and both Alcohol and Coffee tend to be quite bitter according to this taster. If I drown the alcohol or coffee in enough surrounding taste, I can drink it...but it remains difficult. This trait is shared with at least 3 other family members (mom, uncle, 1 son).
   1. Of the hundred-ish alcoholic beverages I've tasted, exactly two have not tasted 90% of bitter horrible things, and 10% of whatever they were supposed to taste like. Beer is so bitter it makes me sick in a drink or two. In wines, even a super-sweet Reisling tastes mostly of alcohol, and a smidge of sugary stuff in with the alcohol.
   2. Coffee is tolerable only as a trace element in the milk-sugar mix I like to drink. Caffeine is a nasty addiction that has taken 2-3 weeks to kick.
2. I am a control freak. Both my experimentation with tipsiness and my experimentation with other mind-altering substances have been bad for my control-freakishness. They edit my brain, and I don't like it. I don't like the brain-pain need for caffeine either.
3. I've been very happy to conserve half the cost of eating out for the last 20 years by not ever having alcoholic beverages. Almost the entire savings have been reinvested in eating out again.

On the other hand, this is my approach, based on my quirkiness. I don't expect that it's better. Indeed, health-wise, it seems that moderate alcohol consumption is just healthier than teetotaling. If I could tolerate the stuff, I might try it. Moderate drinkers, and the moderately overweight outlive everyone else except the Mormons. It's the healthy place to be.

Similarly, I'm fairly convinced that caffeine is the first nootropic drug. And with almost no side effects. Almost 100% upside.

UPDATES (within hours of my post):

See LeanGains here for more on alcohol and fitness.

See Futurepundit here on caffeine.

PoTD + Commentary

What should a 4yo know?
Beautiful. Read it. This is a full half, maybe 3/4, of the child-raising thing that you should know. I want to stress how right I think it is, before talking about the other quarter of wrongness...Please, take this as an endorsement of the article.
But part of it is wrong:

That every child learns to walk, talk, read and do algebra at his own pace and that it will have no bearing on how well he walks, talks, reads or does algebra.

False. 10,000 hours.

That being the smartest or most accomplished kid in class has never had any bearing on being the happiest.

But Ceteris Paribus, wealth is a major driver of happiness and best-ness has a pretty serious correlation with wealth...especially in a winner-take-most global marketplace like the one we live in.

Overall, Great article.

Causes of Crime

Foseti responds to my anti-drug war rant, and says, among many intelligent things, this:

Libertarians suffer from several delusions about crime, Aretae concisely provides one:

The problems Foseti is worried about are caused by the illegality of drugs, just like the problem [of organized crime in the '20s] was caused by the illegality of alcohol. The drug war creates massive incentives to behave illegally, just as prohibition did in the 20s.

This is obviously false. [...example]

If you look at the modern analysis of crime, what works to reduce crime, and what causes crime... we've got 5 solid explanations that I'm aware of:

1. A culture of crime is created when big chunks of economic activity are not subject to protection via the agents of the state, and need to evolve their own (usually violent) norms. Global Drug War. Prohibition. Also, when you do something every day that risks arrest (Smoke crack, or deliver drugs), the very idea of the law as important dies.
2. The Broken Windows Theory. Norms of rule-breaking are un-enforced, creating a cascade effect. A culture of crime is created by neglect.
3. IQ/Testosterone. All violent crime everywhere (+/- 10%) is committed by Puberty-30 year old males with low IQs. Also correlated: no family (read not enough sex), no other outlet for violent tendencies. Testosterone provokes aggression. Low IQ provides poor impulse control.
4. Enforcement. Crime follows, shockingly well, an EV distribution. Value of Crime - probability of getting punished * cost of getting punished. Seems as if probability of getting punished is the primary driver where cost of getting caught is low for low income folks. OTOH, abolish jail time, and bring back caning, and we'd see a bit of a switch, I think.
5. Opportunity Cost. If you get caught...what are the costs. If you're single, lower class and low-education...your job prospects tend to SUCK. The cost to you of going to jail are substantially lower than the cost to a middle class guy trying to support his 3 kids and wife. Indeed, the idea that jail has a positive value to some folks (free food, medical care) is worth looking at seriously. Further...once you're smoking crack, and outside legal recourse, what worse is it to shoplift?

So...while I am sympathetic to Foseti's dismissal of my position...it's one of 5 major contributors to the crime problem.

Aretae's 100% politically impossible crime solution:

• Kill the drug war, which is the largest single driver of criminality in the country, and which creates large swaths of criminals where there were none before. Without this fix, the incentives to crime are simply too large. All other "victimless" crime as well.
• Abolish prison. Fines, corporal punishment, exile, death.
• Giuliani-style aggressive, showy petty-crime enforcement.
• Speedy trial (instant), public caning.

Pithy sound bites aside ...

[j]ust as Newtonian rules only make sense at low speeds, Misesian [i.e. libertarian] rules only make sense in a secure order.

Human nature is...and economic analysis is often useful. If you want a solution to the modern crime system, the incentives need to change. And abolishing the drug war is a sine-qua-non part of the solution.

Morning Links

• Infidelity in Russia. Roissysphere alert.
• Naomi Wolf likes the Tea Party. Freedom vs. Tyranny is the axis.
• Hans Rosling: Super-video. Wealth is THE metric.
• Bronnie Ware: Deathbed regrets. Serious. Useful data. Edit your life? HT: Ben Casnocha. Claim: multiple modules + monkeybrains explains this easy. So does Robin Hanson's near/far line.
• Seth Roberts on Cold Showers. First info. Self-experimentation. When I was in Tallinn, Christmas '96...I hung out with a bunch of Finnish kids who also strongly advocated Cold-Shocks to the system. Steam-spa + naked snow-rolling.

US Manufacturing

So...The US is the worlds largest manufacturer...our manufactured volume is up 600-odd percent in 60 years, and we're tremendously more efficient, doing so with far fewer employees than it used to take. What's our manufacturing problem?

It's as if the US economy has relegated Industry to the same area as Agriculture...a small and important part of the economy, but honestly, it doesn't take very many people to feed or provide goods for the entire rest of country.

No food would be bad. 2% of our population producing 10x as much food as 98% of the population could produce 100 years ago...less bad.

QoTD + Discussion

Sonic Charmer:

‘Capitalism’ is the derogatory label that socialists (successfully) attached to ‘freedom’.

I don't agree 100%, but it's a beautiful, half-true line. Reason for disagreement: The left-libertarian line.

Historically, large chunks of "Capitalism" have looked a lot more like Corporatism, where government picks winners from among the rich than like Laissez Faire freedom. In Socialism, Fascism, Mercantilism, Corporatism, the historical USA, and in IP Law...the government picks who wins, or slants the rules so the big guy wins, or doesn't have any rules so the big guy with the big stick wins. It's mostly lovey lovey with Government and Big Business and Big Labor, and a little disagreement about how to divide the economy between the big players. Laissez-Faire and freedom are fundamentally destructive to established concerns...which is why they haven't much been tried anywhere there's a government.

Essential Reading

• McArdle on Health Care Costs: If you remove the government subsidy to health spending (Pre-Tax Dollars for health insurance), American spending is in line with that of the rest of the world.
• Ben Casanocha: 30 steps to Mastery. This is all there is.
• Falkenstein: Economists as dark-ages doctors. This is bad news for the idea of technocracy.
• Robin Hanson: Cuckoldry and Rape. Again.

Drug War

Foseti is really managing to get my goat today. Here he is again on the drug war:

If it weren’t for drug offenses, most crimes would go unpunished. Perhaps this is a failure of modern policing methods or the modern criminal justice system. Regardless, it seems to be fact.

Wow...and if we didn't have income tax law, we couldn't have punished Al Capone for running Alcohol, and then laundering the money that he had to in order to spend it, and hiring a private defense force because the police wouldn't protect alcohol-related contracts. Yeah...the income tax law was great for use as a workaround for the problem that the alcohol law caused.

The problems Foseti is worried about are caused by the illegality of drugs, just like the problem was caused by the illegality of alcohol. The drug war creates massive incentives to behave illegally, just as prohibition did in the 20s.

Zero positive value...just a way for the government to cause problems, and blame insufficient powers for lack of ability to solve them. It's not like Alcohol isn't more dangerous on most counts than several classes of illegals.

1895 8th grade test

It's made the rounds again....latest one I saw at Foseti's place.

My immediate reaction:

What a worthless test to compare on. I'm glad that even those folks stuck with our schools don't have to learn so much irrelevant crap.

Quick, what's the conversion from Bushels to Cubic Feet?

Why the heck should I care? This is a lovely test of whether you know the facts that are relevant in 1895 to the average citizen, coupled with a bunch of information that does't matter except to pointy-headed academics.

I know there are those who believe that it is good and right to annoy kids with worthless crap in order to build character...but I'm not one of them. Further...any competent 12yo with a good handle on google could finish that test in 15 minutes(typed answers). And a decent teacher could....fir memorization practice...teach much of it in a week. completely unimpressive comparison point.

Given that ~10% of the population would then attend high school...8th grade was then the ultimate achievement for most, which many did not complete...and we have a final test for 8th graders that consists entirely of the ability to memorize? Gosh they must have been really stupid. Flynn effect confirmed.