Show Notes
First you get to college via the wrong metrics, as previously discussed in #12. Then things get easier.
I’m still digging out from under everything that happened the four days I was gone. Normal AI posting should resume tomorrow, likely with a report from the conference.
Is Our Children Learning
The declines in NAEP scores and other tests seem to be concentrated on the weakest students. The bottom of the distribution is falling through the floor and the rest is mostly holding up. This does not match anecdotal reports coming out of schools, which suggest widespread declines, although those are presumably untrustworthy and it's traditional to think children are in general getting dumber. That doesn’t mean they aren’t but we need systematic evidence.
It's Bad, But It's Not That Bad
This really would be far worse than I think if it was true.
Tyler Cowen: It is worse than you think:
Of 360,000 children aged 15 in Zambia only five (not 5%, 5 total) could read at “globally proficient levels.”
The source is PISA.
I mean, in addition to this meaning essentially college-level reading skills, it's very obviously not true. [...] --- Outline: (00:30) Is Our Children Learning (00:59) It's Bad, But It's Not That Bad (02:10) Standardized Tests Help Disadvantaged Students (04:26) Do Not Saturate Your Benchmarks (05:23) Holistic Admissions Turn Childhood Into Kayfabe (08:30) Holistic Admissions Should Mostly Be Positive Selection (09:40) Beware Stolen Valor (10:39) The Name Game (11:00) Fair Weather College (11:31) Disability Accommodations Are Now Mostly A Scam (13:19) Harvard Has Some Grade Inflation (21:06) Fighting Grade Inflation with GAAP Accounting (24:38) Not Fighting Grade Inflation (25:11) Is Our Children Learning? (26:22) Biting All The Bullets (28:00) Good Luck, Have Fun (28:53) Cheaters Gonna Cheat Cheat Cheat Cheat Cheat (35:06) Most College Students Fake Wokeness ---
First published:
October 6th, 2026
Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/QXmyxaQnB57reu7ie/childhood-and-education-21-grades-and-standards
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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.
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More from LessWrong posts by zvi
Last week at a small conference, there was talk about a future event referred to as The Hackening. As in, within 6 to 12 months, many predicted that due to advanced AIs and AI agents the internet would become a severely hostile place. Some worried that this could rise to the level of ‘assume any phone connected to the internet is rooted’ and several people urged doing general crisis preparations on a personal level, in case of disruptions in supply lines, power, water or internet.
It was the probably worst day in cybersecurity history. So far. Not only is there a critical flaw in PHP that due to a leak was announced a day before the fix would be available, sending most of the internet scrambling for solutions and likely dooming a lot of long tail websites permanently, there were several other unrelated incidents. The floodgates seem to have been opened. I have a market on whether there will be an even worse day before the end of the year.
Anthony Cimino offered the closest thing to an official response we have seen on the leaked Anthropic draft bill I covered on Saturday.
Nick Cammarata of Goodfire makes a bold claim: Neural Networks are Already Clean. This was his follow up after various resulting online discussions.