mwengler comments on Please don't vote because democracy is a local optimum - Less Wrong

-9 [deleted] 05 November 2012 08:09PM

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Comment author: mwengler 11 November 2012 01:25:23PM 0 points [-]

1) you never see a rational rich person sending their children to inner city public schools and making them pay for their own community college

Socialization of your children does matter, keeping them in desirable company is a good goal since on most measurable matters they have more impact than you as a parent do.

OK so you have just deepened our understanding of what successful programs applied to poor children must include to make the early intervention worthwhile.

Comment author: [deleted] 11 November 2012 01:37:42PM 2 points [-]

Keep them away from bad company? Hard problem if many kids are bad company.

Comment author: mwengler 11 November 2012 01:43:42PM 0 points [-]

Keep them away from bad company? Hard problem if many kids are bad company.

Perhaps a hard problem in some theoretical world where we have tried and failed. But we don't even try, what we do instead is tend to try to contain in a very rough way the poor in one place.

In New York City, you are not allowed, essentially, to take disruptive influences out of your classroom. Indeed, if they self-select to not show up, truancy officers will go and bring as many of them back to disrupt the schools as possible.

It would be TRIVIAL to start removing bad company from classrooms in most real public situations. All you would have to do is actually say you were going to do it and start doing it, the low hanging fruit here is rotting on the branches where they are pulled by the weight of the fruit down to the ground.

Comment author: [deleted] 11 November 2012 05:47:39PM *  4 points [-]

The thing is the kids who are bad company benefit from being in good company. We feel sorry for them and we thus try to integrate them with other kids as much as possible.