Just discovered this via Roger's Bacon and Astral Codex Ten. I have to comment because of my matching avatar (chosen in homage to Bill Watterson). Astral Codex Ten is full of those usual complaints about school being bad/useless and, as this article admits, they are mostly correct. But I also resonate with the contrarian view - my school experience, though bad, had some good side effects. Being shunned as brainy, and therefore socially isolated (which at least was better than the bullying) meant I had to get used to being "alone with my thoughts". This is actually a good skill to have (now I call it meditating), and I've read that for many people it's such a scary state that they would rather do self harm than suffer it. See also - social media.
haha i've changed avatars since then (might change back for the new year though) but we love to see it
q: did roger mention this in an ACX comment or...?
yeah, i think there are multiple second-order effects that go unnoticed and while most of them are bad, i'm just trying to point out that some of the good ones might not be able to come from anywhere else at scale
The problem with this line of thoughts is "why not outside of school" (e.g. practice solitude without school)? The only value of school that is not "fostering solitude" is understanding organizational theory and sociology e.g. Gervais Principle. Roger's Bacon has a section dedicated to those eponymous laws.
Counter-bet: social media and self-harm are done by those that are already pro-social independent from their attractiveness/aesthetics/coolness, the outcasts who can endure solitude are least affected. e.g. It is cool and edgy to hurt/cut yourself as a war scar, but to be suicidal-or-philosophical is seen as pathetic.
The worst musing: what if your kid is already a savant in the dark arts of people? Does that mean they shouldn't mog (one-up, out-chad) others at school?
Just wrote a big long comment and then accidentally refreshed page. TLDR favorite post so far. Being contrarian to contrarian takes is based. Look forward to more spicy takes that defy the dissident ingroups default of “mainstream bad”.
Just discovered this via Roger's Bacon and Astral Codex Ten. I have to comment because of my matching avatar (chosen in homage to Bill Watterson). Astral Codex Ten is full of those usual complaints about school being bad/useless and, as this article admits, they are mostly correct. But I also resonate with the contrarian view - my school experience, though bad, had some good side effects. Being shunned as brainy, and therefore socially isolated (which at least was better than the bullying) meant I had to get used to being "alone with my thoughts". This is actually a good skill to have (now I call it meditating), and I've read that for many people it's such a scary state that they would rather do self harm than suffer it. See also - social media.
haha i've changed avatars since then (might change back for the new year though) but we love to see it
q: did roger mention this in an ACX comment or...?
yeah, i think there are multiple second-order effects that go unnoticed and while most of them are bad, i'm just trying to point out that some of the good ones might not be able to come from anywhere else at scale
The problem with this line of thoughts is "why not outside of school" (e.g. practice solitude without school)? The only value of school that is not "fostering solitude" is understanding organizational theory and sociology e.g. Gervais Principle. Roger's Bacon has a section dedicated to those eponymous laws.
Counter-bet: social media and self-harm are done by those that are already pro-social independent from their attractiveness/aesthetics/coolness, the outcasts who can endure solitude are least affected. e.g. It is cool and edgy to hurt/cut yourself as a war scar, but to be suicidal-or-philosophical is seen as pathetic.
The worst musing: what if your kid is already a savant in the dark arts of people? Does that mean they shouldn't mog (one-up, out-chad) others at school?
they should attempt to become an elite athlete tbh
"Manipulative nerds need sports, manipulative jocks need to read a book" wait this quote sound familiar
Just wrote a big long comment and then accidentally refreshed page. TLDR favorite post so far. Being contrarian to contrarian takes is based. Look forward to more spicy takes that defy the dissident ingroups default of “mainstream bad”.
lmao hate when that happens. and thank you, a real contrarian turns on his own opinions to garuntee peak defiance.
p.s: if it's spicy takes you want, you'll probably enjoy the latest post.