programjames

As someone in the Gen Z age bracket, I believe that they really do have a worse economy than their parents/grandparents due to no fault of their own, and that they're also much lazier than their parents/grandparents generations.

1. Social Security and housing has turned into a huge transfer of wealth from Gen Z to the Boomer generation. I don't believe I will ever receive Social Security benefits, and yet nearly 15% of my salary goes into Social Security. Also, people who own houses vote to keep their housing prices high (through zoning laws), which is... not how "investments" are supposed to work. It'd be like the US government hoarding all the gold when prices get too high. If a house is a place to live (in which case, zoning laws are perfectly fine), property taxes should be high enough that renting out a house is a much worse investment than say, government bonds. If a house is an investment, the protection racket needs to stop.

2. On the other hand, I've seen so many of my peers just... not study. Kids who easily got a 36 on the ACT, but would do the bare minimum in and outside of school. Now they're working pretty normal, white-collar jobs that pay about a median starting salary, but I know they could have easily made $150k+/year in tech if they'd just studied at any point between middle school and college. They probably won't struggle financially, but they won't ever really "make it" ($10m?) either. And, if this is the top of the class, you can imagine what it's like for those without the same natural ability.

So, on the one hand, I absolutely agree that Gen Z should have an easier time with housing, and shouldn't have to pay for their ancestors' unwise debts, but on the other hand, part of the reason they're struggling so much now is because they didn't spend the first twenty years of their life doing the only thing they were asked to do.

I find it funny how people say GPT-5 "bombed". I noticed a significant improvement in maths and coding with GPT-5. To quantify were I've found the models useful:

- GPT 3.5: Good for finding reference terms. I could not trust anything it said, but it could help me find some general terms in fields I was unfamiliar with.

- GPT 4: Good for cached, obscure knowledge. I generally could trust the stuff it said to be true, but none of its logic or conclusions.

- GPT 4.5: Good for reference proofs/code. I cannot trust its proofs or code, but I can get a decent outline for writing my own.

- GPT 5: Good for directed thinking. I cannot trust it to come up with the best solution on its own, but if I tell it what I'm working on, it's pretty decent at using all the tricks in its repertoire (across many fields) to get me a correct solution. I can trust its proofs or code to be about as correct as my own. My main issues are I cannot trust it to point out confusion or ask me, "is this actually the problem we should be solving here?" My guess is this is mostly a byproduct of shallow human feedback, rather than an actual issue with intelligence (as it will often ask me at the end of spending a bunch of computation if I want to try something mildly different).

For me, GPT 5 is way more useful than the previous models, because I don't have a lot of paper-pushing problems I'm trying to solve. My guess is the wider public may disagree because it's hard to tell the difference between something better at the task than you, and something much better.

Shouldn't you expect Zoomers to be more than double millenials? They're 20 years younger, which means money is 4x cheaper.

I'll just grant you that most societies are wholly unequipped to deal with long lifespans, and there will be tons of murder, exploitation, and suffering if we fixed our biology. First, how is that any different than the current situation? Second, do you expect societies to quickly evolve to fix all of these problems (or at least tame them), much like societies had to do after the invention of fire, agriculture, steel, gunpowder, or steam?

I interpret "Computer Engineering" as electrical engineering for computers (e.g. the people making the new iPhone). I don't know if I mean "Computer Science" or "Software Engineering", because I was just using the article's terminology which may differ between all three of us (they call it "Computer Science").

> “show me the connection” is a request for evidence.

Evidence... yes, that narrowed it down a lot. You're looking for evidence! In a debate! I never could have guessed! Luckily for you, @TMWNN did, and tried to help twice, but clearly they didn't know you were looking for evidence, not whatever they provided.

In case it wasn't clear, I'm being sarcastic. You asked for evidence of a connection, they gave you it twice, and yet it clearly wasn't the evidence you actually wanted because you wouldn't just tell them what you actually wanted!

Also, btw, I never said this guy was prominent. I meant what I said, not something slightly different to further a not-so-hidden agenda.

EDIT: This rant isn't directed at you specifically. It's more just frustration at a phenomenon I see a lot on Reddit and (to a lesser extent) Hackernews. I'm fine if you feel personally attacked, I'm just putting this edit here so you don't feel specifically attacked.

This is what was actually said:

>> I provided a citation for the ABB grades, which is relevant to the comment I replied to.

> An extremely tenuous connection. Abaraonye (and even less his words on Kirk) had absolutely no relevance to the criteria by which the Times assesses universities, thus had no impact on Oxfords placement, thus has no relevance to the conversation.

>> I provided a recently prominent example of someone recently admitted to Oxford with lower than 3 A grades on the A-Levels. I only mentioned Kirk's murder as context because, as I keep repeating, the person a) only became prominent because b) he publicly cheered said murder c) after debating Kirk in person. I don't know what else you can ask for here.

> Perhaps a demonstration of any kind of connection between his grades and his views on Kirk? The implication in what you're saying is that an ABB student is saying bad things than a 4 A* student would never say. I'd love to see anything backing that up. There are plenty of ABB students who said nothing of that nature and I'd wager you could find 4 A* students (albeit with a lower profile) who did. Absent that connection it just looks very much like you're using the person's grades as a tenuous excuse to bring them up.

Do you see how this comes across to a third party as @TMWNN vaguely hinting about ideological picks doing ideological things, you knowing this is what they're doing, but then stubbornly refusing to acknowledge that and just repeatedly saying, "show me the connection!" when you know very well what it is?

This is what worries me about the left. Why must you refuse to even acknowledge someone can hold views antithetical to your own? My best guess is the left has stricter ideological purity tests, and just saying something that can be misinterpreted as accepting anti-left views is dangerous. So, you cannot have an honest conversation with a racist because just saying, "maybe you think some races are superior, but..." could be weaponized in inter-party fighting as a tacit endorsement of racism. And so, you pretend to stick your head in the sand as if racists aren't out there, and the person vaguely hinting at racist things is literally babbling nonsense instead of sensible-through-a-racist-lens ideas.

The issue with this kind of discourse is it's entirely ineffective. I like to say, 'racism is stupid, because people usually only use race as the explanation when they're not smart enough to figure out the actual problem.' The solution to racism isn't to pretend the problem doesn't exist (to deviate from racism for a bit: OBVIOUSLY Abaronye's comments are a symptom of Oxford losing prestige; don't pretend you couldn't make that connection), it's to offer a better explanation. This is why I said,

>>> It's very strange to say, "there's just no connection at all," instead of, "I don't think his lower offer letter was due to affirmative action, but probably due to skills in other areas (heck, he's the president-elect of the Oxford Union!)."

Obviously the right has issues with obfuscation and dishonesty too. They're just worse at it. @TMWNN's vague hints were... anything but subtle. I don't like to play these obfuscation games, because pretty much tautologically they make it harder to agree on reality. But I find it very worrying when calling out obfuscation and explicitly writing down what everyone is already thinking is met by digging one's heels in and moving over to another patch of sand. Why not just actually try to reach common knowledge? Why do I have to drag you around, kicking and screaming, before you'll even acknowledge your actual point?

> My point still stands: there’s no actual evidence for OP’s assertion.

You're making this out to be some kind of final stand, when this is the first time you have even gotten close to putting your point in writing. But which assertion are you referring to? There are lots of implied ones, and no explicit ones (again, why obfuscation is frustrating). I think your point is:

> Abaraonye was admitted on his merits, and there is no actual evidence for OP's implicit assertion that he is an affirmative action admit.

If so, why wasn't this your entire reply to @TMWNN?? It's rude to start a debate without doing your due diligence of actually saying what you mean, and giving your best effort to parse what they mean!

No? That was me. Also, it's very strange to say, "there's just no connection at all," instead of, "I don't think his lower offer letter was due to affirmative action, but probably due to skills in other areas (heck, he's the president-elect of the Oxford Union!)."

If you already believe he got in on merits, then obviously this is all a coincidence. But obviously the other guy you're arguing with believes he got in due to ideological fit, so it's no coincidence he espouses the ideology. You're dismissing your antagonist's cruxes as if they never existed. That's so rude.

Why does MIT get a 91.6/100 for the "International Student Ratio" while Peking University gets 37.3/100, when they have nearly identical undergraduate ratios? EDIT: Ah, it also includes graduate students.

I think Harvard and MIT students mostly say, "Cambridge," rather than Boston. Then, when the inquirer frowns in confusion, they mumble, "Boston".

From [1], these are the rankings for CS:

1. Stanford 2. UC Berkeley 3. MIT 4. Caltech 5. Harvard

I'm a little surprised MIT and Caltech are lower than Stanford and UC Berkeley. I know that MIT has a culture of sending its undergraduates to different graduate schools (so, if the top CS students go to MIT for their undergrad and professorships, they often would not have a PhD from MIT, lowering their prestige rating), but that does not explain why Caltech would be lower than Stanford/Berkeley. I know Stanford has a decent CS program, but I'm wondering if there's a gaming network effects thing going on, since both Stanford and Berkeley attract more hustlers.

If you're measuring the value in dollars, it would be very surprising if people maxxed on the INT stat rank higher than those on the USD stat. But, for example, if your goal is to secure a professorship at a top university, or do the most cutting-edge research at a national lab, I think the network value of knowing a smart person far exceeds that of a rich person.

Clearly you need to reread The Bible:

> To the one who is victorious and does my will to the end, I will give authority over the nations—that one 'will rule them with an iron scepter and will dash them to pieces like pottery'—just as I have received authority from my Father. (Revelation 2:26–27)

Any good Sanctuarian[^1] would know this refers to the AR-15, and Americans' right to bear arms.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rod_of_Iron_Ministries

I believe you're being purposefully dense here. I get it, and probably do the same sometimes, but the connection is pretty obvious: someone gets in (allegedly) due to ideological fit instead of merit, and then becomes one of the most prominent voices for that ideology at the campus. It shows "wokism" has finally solved the reproduction crisis, and for people opposed to certain aspects (like affirmative action), that's pretty worrying.

Alternatively, the gap between the classes for access to educational resources has significantly declined in the past twenty years (due to stuff being posted online).

TLDR; Train an "energy" model that checks if the output is correct (rather than just outputting something), and gradient descent to find good outputs. Using transformers.

Negligence is enough for libel against private citizens in the USA.

I wouldn't expect behaviors from mass shooters to carry over to serial killers.

Note: the police do not have the suspect in custody. The comments about, "here's the assassin being arrested," are libel.

Note: it was an assassination, not a mass shooting. There was only one shot.

We can only ever have proxies. The issue (at least here) isn't Goodharting, it's that the proxy does not even measure what the researchers claim it measures. For example, pretty much the only study of its name, "High-Achieving Students in the Era of NCLB" (Lovelass, Parkas, Duffett) uses the NAEP, which only releases 10th, 20th, ..., 90th percentile scores. Gifted programs are ~95th percentile. Or, look at this lovely graph of 36 ACT scores:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Percent_ACT_Composite_S...

When it increases by 30x in 30 years, it becomes very apparent that standardized tests are simultaneously being gamed by the students and the testwriters. Students (and school districts and states) are choosing the "easier" tests that make them look proficient, so testwriters are making their tests easier to get a bigger market share. And all along, the tests that only care about separating out the top show declining scores every year...

- [AMC Historical Results](https://artofproblemsolving.com/wiki/index.php/AMC_historica...)

In my experience, the "top tier of kids" is more cultural than school-specific. Even in schools like TJHST there's usually 10–30 students in the school that really care about achieving, while the other 90% don't put in much effort (beyond your typical public schooler). There are a few feeder (public) schools on the coasts, but most of the private schools differentiate by extracurriculars (fencing, rowing, horseback riding) rather than academic excellence.

Gifted programs dropped from ~72% of elementary schools to ~65% by 2013, and probably have continued declining. Given it takes 10+ years to educate a child, the school culture to change, and so on, we should expect to see quite a lag between policy and outcomes.

Homeschool or China.

This was trending long before the pandemic.

The core problem is actually very simple. Education studies do not measure what they claim to measure. When they say, "education outcomes improve when..." they usually mean the pass rate, i.e. they only measured a signal among the bottom 20% of students. When they say, "test scores improve when..." they are, at best, measuring up to the 90th percentile. When they say, "the white/black attainment gap," or "socioeconomic disadvantages," they're usually just fishing for funding money, and their study will not actually attempt to measure either of those things. From a review of the literature on No Child Left Behind (NCLB) in 2015: > Only one study specifically examined the achievement gap for students from low socioeconomic backgrounds (Hampton & Gruenert, 2008) despite NCLB’s stated commitment to improving education for children from low-income families. African American students were often mentioned in studies of general student achievement but none of the reviewed studies focused specifically on the effects of NCLB for this subgroup. Again, this is a curious gap in the research considering the law’s emphasis on narrowing the Black-White achievement gap. Other groups of students underrepresented in the research on NCLB include gifted students, students with vision impairments, and English proficient minority students.

("A Review of the Empirical Literature on No Child Left Behind From 2001 to 2010", Husband & Hunt, 2015)

Everything you see going wrong is downstream of this. Yes, harmful ideologies have done a lot of damage to the education system, but it could easily survive this if we had actual signifiers of success.

The core problem is actually very simple. Education studies do not measure what they claim to measure. When they say, "education outcomes improve when..." they usually mean the pass rate, i.e. they only measured a signal among the bottom 20% of students. When they say, "test scores improve when..." they are, at best, measuring up to the 90th percentile. When they say, "the white/black attainment gap," or "socioeconomic disadvantages," they're usually just fishing for funding money, and their study will not actually attempt to measure either of those things. From a review of the literature on No Child Left Behind (NCLB) in 2015:

> Only one study specifically examined the achievement gap for students from low socioeconomic backgrounds (Hampton & Gruenert, 2008) despite NCLB’s stated commitment to improving education for children from low-income families. African American students were often mentioned in studies of general student achievement but none of the reviewed studies focused specifically on the effects of NCLB for this subgroup. Again, this is a curious gap in the research considering the law’s emphasis on narrowing the Black-White achievement gap. Other groups of students underrepresented in the research on NCLB include gifted students, students with vision impairments, and English proficient minority students.

("A Review of the Empirical Literature on No Child Left Behind From 2001 to 2010", Husband & Hunt, 2015)

Everything you see going wrong is downstream of this. Yes, harmful ideologies have done a lot of damage to the education system, but it could easily survive this we had actual signifiers of success.

The conclusion I drew is that even schools in the "top 2 states for K-12 education" are piss poor at education.

Are your kids old enough to run amok at home instead of going to school? Would the police arrest you if you left them home alone instead of sending them to school?