Afton

For some reason it never occurred to me to ask the obvious question "why would we think that just making them do it is the right training for this?". It just seems intellectually lazy to say that "you have to learn" to do something, but the 'learning' is just the demand that you do it. It may be optimal for some things, but it seems very unlikely to be the correct, final answer.

Thanks for this insight.

> [1] Students sit all day, and sitting is exhausting.

> [2] High School students are sitting passively and listening during approximately 90% of their classes.

> [3] You feel a little bit like a nuisance all day long.

People wonder why high school aged students are unruly, unpleasant, and filled with deep negative emotions (anger, disdain, need-to-rebel). I look at this list (especially [2] and the lack of autonomy that follows) and the reason seems really clear. The basic model seems broken.

This may be different in non software companies that have software hitting needs.

Are they less parasitic if they just sit on their money, or are they parasites just for having the money in the first place?

1. It's been the default answer for millenium, and there has only been pushback on this for the last 50-ish years.

2. Because individual variation is often larger than the group variance?

3. (Related to 2.) Because it's often not a useful answer. E.g. Suppose it were proven that women were worse at math than men. Would that change how we taught boys and girls? It almost certainly would, and it almost certainly would be detrimental for the little girls. [note: There is a lot more that could be said here, that I won't say because it would take too long]

These aren't reasons to not do the research, but they are reasons that we should be deeply suspicious of research that satisfies our cultural biases.

Don't get me wrong, I'm in the unschooling/homeschooling camp, but this isn't evidence of enthusiasm. :)

Things might be different in the States or elsewhere.

Your point about how every variation makes a language is correct. The term is idiolect. Language (like 'English'), is an abstraction over idiolects. But getting people who want to argue about "correct English" to an understanding of idiolects is more work than I can put into a comment during a work day. I'll try and dig up a general description of the issue and link it here.

Edit: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idiolect#Idiolect_and_language is the best I could do on short notice.

No one is arguing that there is or isn't a class and racial component to who speakers of AAVE are. They are primarily black and poor. But that point is irrelevant. Kids raised where people speak AAVE will grow up speaking AAVE. Simply declaring it 'not a language' gets you nothing. It's not 'just slang', it's a system of speaking with its own set of rules, just like any other language.

Source: I am typically underweight, and I have sleep apnea.

Is 'the same reason' that it's false? Your common sense and mine appear not to jibe.

I've been learning the uke for a year now, and after a few months, I've been irritated by my uke on some chords. Talked about it with my uke teacher, she pointed out that the string (the E string) isn't quite right (if it's in tune on the open string, then the G on that string is sharp). These things matter more than you might think.

on phone, but sources are a quick search away.

Nope, you can learn of a new skill by browsing. And that's quintessentially shallow work.

I'd also point out that HN ( like the original reddit) was full of "hard" articles, that would take me hours to really understand and work through. While this kind of article still pops up occasionally here, its more common to just see easily digested blog posts now. I assume this is a normal consequence of HN's increased readership and regression to the mean.

The problem that this blog post addresses may be more generally applicable than the author thinks, but the existence of HN is hardly a counterexample.

For a while this summer I'd write out simple math problems for my daughter to do when she got up. I stopped when I realized that I was doing harm by consistently getting the difficulty of my questions wrong. These kinds of articles make it seem easy, but I find it quite difficult.

For obvious reasons, I'm continuing to try to help my children with math (and other things!), but like most things, it seems to require patience, careful thought, and practice.

Disclosure: I work at MS, but not on this product and have no special insight into their workings.

What is an 'array of Unicode code-points'. I actually reread the article thinking that my unicode chops were getting rusty if I didn't know what that meant, but after rereading it, I still don't know what you mean.

[I wrote a half a dozen 'do you mean _____' suggestions, but I think I'll just let you explain. :) ]

All of the entrepreneurial options come with massively higher risk, and since you say that the consequences of not making the 45K is high, this seems like a no-brainer. Get a job.

Then there's the fact that the article is thin wrapper around a PI article about anonymous comments made on an anonymous (purportedly) MS employee's blog.

The only value that this article could possibly bring is to discuss Steve Balmer in general, and for that a self-post like "Hey, do you guys like the job Balmer is doing" would do a better job, and it would almost certainly sink like a stone. I'm actually embarrassed for this community that this made it to #1. Must be a slow news day.