this article — the first time the man building the most fascinating project in education has spoken to the press in decades — is fascinating

what do you do when your school won't teach your child past "grade level"?

bulid a new education system from scratch.

https://twitter.com/JeremySternLA/status/1958526518940094501

the section on learning science was fun for me - interesting to see topics I've focused on for years through fresh eyes. I strongly disagree with the writer that they're intuitive, in part because the takeaway that teachers in front of classrooms are bad is not true at all!

this is interesting for having been written by Tao, but it doesn't feel attuned to the present day. Tao writes of the scientific ecosystem as basically functional and neutral without grappling with the way his colleagues have eaten the seed corn of expertise.

https://twitter.com/martinmbauer/status/1957549094114611264

I sympathize with his position. He has spent his life focused almost exclusively on pure mathematics professionally. but around him, universities and many of his fellow researchers became explicitly political actors in a way that was destined to draw a political response.

Checking sources is a superpower--you would not believe the stuff people sneak into things.

As one example: the book "Keeping Track" is by far the most influential anti–ability grouping book. Key to its argument is a claimed finding that 90% of students can master course material under the right circumstances to argue that all students should be placed into the same courses.

Where does that footnote - footnote 7 - lead? Benjamin Bloom's "All Our Children Learning." Not to a specific page. Not to a specific note within it. The entire book.

So let's dig in! What does Bloom say?

He notes his belief that around 90% of people differ in rate of learning rather than the level of learning theoretically possible, but that it will take some students more time, effort, and help to reach that level than others (sometimes prohibitively so). Some, he'll note, might take several years on high school algebra, while others can do it in a fraction of a year.

Then he provides suggestions. How do you structure a school so that students can learn at appropriate paces to meet his "90%" goal? He has a few ideas:
1. Give each student an individual tutor.
2. Let students go at their own pace.
3. Guide students towards or away from specific courses.
4. Provide different tracks for different groups of learners.

Did you catch that?

Bloom says: obviously kids learn at different paces, so if you want them to master the material, either let them rush ahead individually or group them by ability. If we do that, everyone's level will improve.

Oakes takes that, strip-mines the entire book down to a claim she paraphrases as "under appropriate learning conditions, more than 90 percent of students can master course material," and then uses it to argue that we should not let kids rush ahead individually or group them by ability.

This book has been cited more than 10000 times. It is by far the most influential single thing ever written on ability grouping. And it cites sources it knows nobody will examine to argue for the polar opposite of what those sources advocate.

Check sources.


oh, for crying out loud. I meant to quote tweet this! this is what I was responding to

https://x.com/JeremiahDJohns/status/1950885667027792242

and I’m proud to be an American, where at least I know that even if my country’s president is now suing and pressuring people over all sorts of lawful speech and corporations are bending the knee like cowards, it’s still better than dystopian UK law I know I’ve been UKposting a lot lately but like

aaaaaaaaaa

brusselssignal.eu/2025/07/new-uk…

The Anatomy of Ideological Capture: How Wikipedia Whitewashes Mao

Recently, I posted a passing aside making fun of how Wikipedia frames Mao's legacy, assuming that what I saw was self-evident. I got predictable pushback from Maoists and tankies, which didn't surprise me. What surprised me was the number of generally good-faith left-leaning people in my circles who treated my assertion as absurd, asserted that the article was fine and balanced, and accused me of just wanting propaganda for my side.

Now, I should be clear—brace yourself for controversy—I am no fan of Mao. I toss him in a bin alongside Hitler and Stalin as one of the three most catastrophic leaders of the twentieth century, one who had such an extraordinary combination of malice and will to power that he killed more people than perhaps any other one individual in history. As far as I'm concerned, his name is mud, and the good that has come to China should be recognized as a result of Deng Xiaoping, a man he purged twice, doing everything possible to reverse his policy short of undermining his own claim to rule.

But I digress. That's not what I'm objecting to. I'm not asking Wikipedia to make a prosecutor's case against the man; I can do that myself. I'm upset because the section looks precisely how I would approach a statement were I Mao Zedong's defense attorney.

First: start with glowing praise, every word technically defensible. Lead with all your good facts, looking for every convenient data point or stock line. Phrase them in ways that most everyone reading will instinctively parse as good. He's important, influential. He's a political intellect, a theorist, a military strategist, a poet, a visionary. He drove imperialism out of China, he unified China, he ended civil war (don't press too hard on the details of that war!). Find reforms you can claim for him, find a sympathetic survey or two, note that he reduced poverty. Spend a whole paragraph laying out nothing but praise for him.

But people know he killed people! What do you do with that? Well, any lawyer whose client has some bad facts will tell you precisely what you do with it. You don't hide it—that just lets the other side bring it up. Makes you look dishonest. Be upfront about it, but massage it a bit. Tell the story from your protagonist's view. Make it land smoothly. You start by sandwiching it between good facts, naturally. Everyone's just had a paragraph about how great this guy is. Now you're ready to slide in that tens of millions of people died.

But wait! Mostly, you can add, it was starvation (probably unintentional!), but also mumble mumble mumble executions etc. But he didn't usually give direct orders to kill! And according to one sympathetic writer, most deaths were unintentional, and the rest were "necessary victims in the struggle to transform China." Use his voice! Then, yes, yes, it's been described as autocratic and totalitarian, and people called him a tyrant. Yada yada yada, we know this. Anyway, he was compared to the first emperor of a unified China. Isn't that neat?

Finally, tie it off with a neat bow: Forget about the deaths, the population grew! His strategies continue to be used; his ideology is popular and influential today!

It's a picture-perfect defense. Would it be made stronger by omitting the killings? No! You've given people just enough to say that you're being honest, presenting a nuanced, thorough picture of a complicated man.

Enough about Mao. People objected to my Hitler comparison because we're supposed to treat mass murderers who win and whose ideas remain popular as fundamentally different to mass murderers who lose. Very well. Commenters proposed Franco. Let's see what happens when you have a mix of defense and prosecution on a case, with the prosecution winning out.
How do you start out this time? He's controversial. He ruled for a long time, he suppressed opposition, he ran propaganda campaigns. Hard to evaluate in a detached way—and look, his citizens were subjected to constant messages that he was good. You can't trust their objectivity! When you praise him, note that he's "significant"—who can deny that! but it's not Good, per se—and a successful counter-revolutionary—good if you hate revolution!

None of the glowing praise to start things off. None of the fawning. Mao ran propaganda campaigns as well, Mao suppressed opposition as well—but it only merits mention with Franco.

Onward! Note again that he's controversial and divisive. Present the supporter's case, making sure to frame it in ideological terms rather than the absolute-good terms used for Mao's positives. Good if you like anti-communism and nationalism, good if you hate socialism. And supporters credit those ideological stances for Spain's economic success! Add a bit about who praises and supports him and who opposes him.

Next, find someone readers will have particularly divided opinions about, and be sure to contextualize him. While Philip Short is just Philip Short, William F. Buckley, Jr. is an American Conservative Commentator. Be sure to note that he praised Franco in explicitly divisive ideological terms, and recontextualize his statement: Franco wrested government "from the democratically elected government of the country."

Then present the critics' case unsparingly and directly, using examples everyone will agree are bad things: thousands of deaths,political repression, complicity in Axis crimes.

(The legacy section continues for many more paragraphs of minutia, most of it negative.)

---

Do you see the difference? Do you see the shape of each? Franco is presented unsparingly, his crimes understood, with most praise presented in divisive ideological terms and criticism presented in universal terms. Mao's entry is practically a coronation speech for a paragraph, followed by carefully mitigated bad facts before ending strong.

Maybe it's obsessive or neurotic or what-have-you to write all of this, but—to use the internet's erstwhile favorite term of abuse—I genuinely feel gaslit. You guys are reading the same article as I am, aren't you? You're seeing the same paragraphs I am. It's propaganda! It's clearly propaganda! You're not reading a thoughtful, nuanced, balanced take on a complex individual, you're reading propaganda for a mass murderer and then telling me I'm being silly and ideologically captured when I point out it's a bit weird.

Propaganda does not stop being propaganda because it acknowledges bad facts. A defense attorney does not stop being a defense attorney when they let some criticism slip in. Glowing praise followed by a concession to reality does not a balanced portrait of a mass murderer make.
Look out for people like this. They think you are stupid, they think words are a game of “I’m-not-touching-you,” they see truth only as another tool to use when convenient.

This quip is as true for commies as it is for antisemites

https://x.com/TrueAnonPod/status/1949513726828122264

thank you Wikipedia for helping me understand Mao's legacy as a political intellect, theorist, military strategist, poet, and visionary who drove imperialism out of China, improved literacy, and significantly reduced poverty

very enlightening always heartwarming to see austere religious scholars get the recognition they deserve

From "After the Spike": "The year 2012 may well turn out to be the year in which the most humans were ever born—ever as in ever for as long as humanity exists."

Going to live-tweet interesting bits. Twenty-six countries have fallen below replacement rate since 1950.

None has returned.

in 1930, researchers studied ability grouping and concluded you needed to adjust the curriculum to make it work

in 1960, more confidently so

then in 1990, they studied grouping without changing curriculum, concluded it was useless, and advocated to get rid of ability grouping

over time the field got better and better at studying the form of ability grouping that everybody had known was pointless for sixty years while just sorta disregarding the form that kept getting results

as a matter of fact Terence Tao himself was one subject of a longitudinal study of twenty or so kids like him. the amount to which they were accelerated varied hugely. the ones who (like him) were given appropriate academic placement did much better than the many who were not.

https://twitter.com/ctjlewis/status/1942637481494733143

Tao is “Adrian” in this.

It’s not “woke teachers”—this problem has been around for a very long time—but the education system in western countries is systematically unserious about talent identification and cultivation.

journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.4219/je…

male sexuality is the most destructive and perverse force known to man and has to be policed, constrained, and controlled

https://twitter.com/razibkhan/status/1928960078855409683

perhaps to win young men back we should figure out how to rebuild the social technologies held within traditional faiths, centered around policing, constraining, and controlling the sexuality of men towards positive ends, in a way suited to the needs of the day

https://twitter.com/greenplusane/status/1929199279609938181

One informative experience moving between reading academic research and legal cases is watching the same names pop up as authors in research disputes and experts in court cases.

As one example, James Kulik performed some of the most influential meta-analyses lending support for ability grouping, notably arguing against Robert Slavin, who would release competing meta-analyses slicing the same data slightly differently to question it. Here, he's mentioned in Georgia State Conference of Branches of NAACP v. Georgia, 775 F.2d 1403 (11th Cir. 1985), which remains one of the most influential precedential cases on the question and found that ability grouping tended to be a legitimate educational practice. He did good work; it makes sense to see him called to testify in support of the practice, and it makes sense that the court found his arguments persuasive!

But it feels odd, you know, knowing that so much legal precedent depends on who found the right academic to make the right case in the right courtroom before the researchers wander back to their own field's journals and keep firing arguments back and forth. How many quiet battles take place first in the academic literature, then on the witness stand? How much of our law rests on the lightly examined testimony of whichever academic sold their story the best? As another example: In the famous case Larry P. v. Riles, the court found that IQ tests were biased against black students and therefore could not be used to place students in remedial courses.

But...

I’ve been torn on the extent to which the Afrikaner refugee claim is legitimate vs a political stunt, and they’re obviously receiving favored treatment compared to most refugees, but this statement has enough ominous lines that it persuades me towards the refugee case.

https://twitter.com/MbalulaFikile/status/1922237764788961358

If a country is upset people left because it had plans to “transform” their position and hold them “accountable,” I think they’re at the very least not insane to want to leave!

one reason I react so strongly to calls for violence is that I get the sense that for a lot of people, violence is how you show true seriousness—and they want to skip all the steps of living humbly for a cause and jump straight to dying nobly for it, no matter the cost to others you feel strongly enough about this to call for violence? cool! do you feel strongly enough to do a thousand more useful and less glamorous substantive things, things that don’t threaten to throw everyone else into chaos?

no? then sit down.

This podcast is a great listen, and it demonstrates the greatest strength and the greatest weakness of Abundance.

At every step, Newsom nods along and says how much he loves it. And at every step, Newsom nods along and explains why he's already "done" it or why he won't do it.

https://twitter.com/ezraklein/status/1904962816785924408

What does Abundance need? More specific demands and a more pugilistic attitude.

It's simply too agreeable right now. It doesn't need endless hypothetical allies, it needs to provide specifics about who's blocking what and why, then to get them out of the way.

Good book so far!

https://twitter.com/JeremiahDJohns/status/1901961775743942793

My banner art is set in (alt-history) 1905. Why? I couldn't have given a better reason than this.

This is the paradox of the dissident right: For all the time they spend calling others degenerates, much of their behavior is almost uniquely repulsive to those whose traditions they make idols of.

People like Captive Dreamer bring shame to their families and their traditions.

https://twitter.com/RichardHanania/status/1901386961820242413

More on this:

https://x.com/tracewoodgrains/status/1769844589362352251

Just watched a 4-hour argument between an archaeologist and a pseud (Flint Dibble and Graham Hancock) so I'd know what a random tweet was talking about. Now I can't find the tweet so instead I'll blast my thoughts to the public, bc it Says A Lot About Society.

The argument was on the Joe Rogan podcast, and probably everyone else has already heard of it, but I sure hadn't.

First: the pseud has a much, much larger platform than the archaeologist. He's had Netflix shows, been on Joe Rogan, and plays a large role in shaping the public conversation around the topic. The archaeologist has the heft of institutional credibility, but has much less personal influence than the pseud.

Second: the pseud sucks. He sucks. His m.o. is to play at god-of-the-gaps, wiggling his eyebrows suggestively at anything he can assert is underexplained while dismissing sound evidence as inconsequential and demanding to be taken seriously the whole time. He frames a narrative of himself vs Orthodox Academics, and rather than treating academia as a perpetual argument, treats every Orthodox Academic as an attorney defending the Client of Orthodoxy. This, in his eyes, justifies any tactic necessary to make his case: selective evidence, innuendo, anything and everything to persuade people towards his pre-determined conclusion, like the worst and most dishonest sort of online arguers. He openly states this.

Third: the intersection with politics and culture is fascinating and predictable. The archeologist accepts the progressive culture that dominates academia as the air he breathes, which is why eg he is now primarily active on Bluesky. In the entire conversation, the one strong point the pseud has is when he points out how he's been framed as Perpetuating White Supremacy. And there's actually a really interesting conversation that could be had there: academia has drifted towards a moral consensus alongside its focus on truth claims, and when criticizing opponents, academics often mix moral and truth claims while asserting the same authority from both.

Inevitably, this means that people wary of their moral uniformity will trust them less; this gave the pseud an opening to claim he was a victim of Cancel Culture and of vicious smears. One of the core challenge for people who take truth seriously today is that most of the people with actual legitimate expertise in hard fields pair that expertise with confidence in a moral consensus not at all shared by many of the people they need trust from, and interpretations in line with that moral consensus. Many, unimpressed by the moral claims, will turn instead to those who align more with their moral frames even if what those people say on factual matters is nonsense.

Fourth: it's been a while since I saw this sort of good, old-fashioned beatdown of a pseud. The highlight was probably the numerology section, where - in response to claims about how extraordinary numerical coincidences connected the Great Pyramid to the radius of the earth - the archeologist showed how the same coincidences could be applied to the weed number. Good, clean fun.

The coda of this is that the pseud went back to Joe Rogan and together they found the one time in a four-hour conversation the archeologist misstated the evidence and mocked him behind his back. They lamented how the archeologist "played fast and loose with the truth", how he was arrogant, just wanted to win, didn't want to get to the truth, and how this proved there was an arrogant establishment in archeology that would use dirty tricks to cling to a narrative while the pseud was just curiously exploring questions. No matter that the pseud had been embarrassed on topic after topic. No matter that all he had was furtive gesturing and innuendo in the face of serious research. All he had to do was note one error after-the-fact (something the archeologist agreed was in error), then come back and trumpet it to "show" that the archeologist was a mendacious liar trying to keep him down the whole time.

Quite the microcosm.

anyway, here's the argument

The way Darryl Cooper broke into mass consciousness is rather awkward for everyone whose introduction to him was “God’s Socialist” or “Fear and Loathing in the New Jerusalem”

He is a much more complex and sympathetic figure than the standard range of grifters and ne’er-do-wells

https://twitter.com/nfergus/status/1899067194652418457

The trouble is that in a certain light, he is exactly who everyone thinks he is

and in another equally important light, he is very much not who everyone thinks he is

his podcast contains some of the most humanizing examinations of thorny history anywhere. and yet

Look, Pete. I like you, but you had your chance to settle Brigida v. US Department of Transportation, and you didn't. Now is not the time for you to try to spin it into a political victory. You failed. Take accountability.

https://twitter.com/PeteButtigieg/status/1885013865676562491

https://x.com/tracewoodgrains/status/1853578599502094803

Not to pick too much of a feud with an institution I quite like, but to pick a feud with an institution I quite like, young liberals need to snap out of reflexive revulsion and mockery every time someone raises a conservative-coded problem.

Look. I get it. "DEI this" and "DEI that" are annoying. And anything that becomes an Approved Conservative Explanation will be embraced by some of the most obnoxious and unpleasant people in the world. One time an unambiguous white supremacist called it DEI when I pointed out he was lying about Asian IQ graphs. That stuff's real. It happens.

But you know what else is real? The 2014 air traffic control hiring scandal as one of the clearest and most pressing causes for the ATC shortage @CNLiberalism dismisses here. With explicitly racial motivation, people actually substantially weakened the test used to hire air traffic controllers. Then, with explicitly racial motivation, they actually replaced it with a blatantly rigged "biographical questionnaire." Then, with explicitly racial motivation, one person leaked the answers to this questionnaire to people in a race-based organization.

All of this actually, unambiguously happened. As a direct result of it, the air traffic control hiring pipeline was shattered. People who had spent years in school planning to become ATCs—fully qualified, ready to go, having already passed relevant tests—were dismissed with no chance of appeal. Those same people have been fighting for justice for a decade now.

I've spoken with several of these people fighting for justice. They're not fringe firebrands. Their politics are all over the spectrum; their backgrounds are everything from a woman working passionately to get more women involved in aviation to a moderate Latino man who spent years fighting through courts to get his FOIA requests approved so he could piece together the story to instructors who watched the government trample and dismiss their livelihood, then cover it up, lest it interfere with Diversity Goals.

You know who's stood in their way? Look, I hate it as much as you do, but it wasn't the crank conservatives. It was the Reasonable, Centrist, Smug Liberals who, every time they heard a conservative-coded criticism, refused to air it in their media, turned their brains off, and mocked it.

I was glad to have some small role in bringing their story back to prominence during the Biden administration, when Buttigieg--one of the politicians I respect most--was in charge of the FAA and had his name on the lawsuit that's been trying to settle this for years. He could have repaired it. He could have been honest, could have fixed what Trump 1 failed to do. He did not.

So now--guess what? The conservatives get a dunk. They get to score a point. They win a round in this game of politics, and liberals lose. They have the opportunity to fix something that everyone who understands the story knows is a massive scandal, something that makes liberals look terrible, and you know what? If they actually settle this lawsuit, patch things up with the CTI schools that the FAA screwed over all those years ago, bring justice to the individuals harmed, and repair a broken pipeline? Good. Let them rub that in our faces. Let them drink liberal tears, because in this case, the libs deserve it.

@SeanDuffyWI is the new US Secretary of Transportation. As one of his first acts, he should settle the class action lawsuit formerly known as Brigida v. Buttigieg, soon--presumably--to be known as Brigida v. Duffy, issue an official apology to the victims of years of knowing incompetence on the part of the FAA, and repair a broken pipeline. No more excuses. No more waiting. It's been a decade. The time is now.

And if all liberals can do while that's going on is call it "tiresome"? Look: the Obama admin made that bed, the Biden admin failed to fix it, and I don't really care how "tired" people are of hearing the phrase DEI, there is a problem that needs fixing and someone had better fix it. If the New Liberals can't help with that, can't even face it down honestly, then they need to step aside so others can. For those just tuning into the story now:

https://x.com/tracewoodgrains/status/1752091831095939471

I’m not clued-in enough to AI to understand why R1 is a big deal, but a lot of the bright sorts on my timeline are incredibly excited about it

like, I understand the “comparable to o1” part but after that I get a bit lost in the weeds

has anyone legibilized it yet?

https://twitter.com/jxmnop/status/1882169838027882884

hm this is helpful

https://x.com/yishan/status/1882300555911122969