Vassar's essay may benefit from a thorough rewrite, in my opinion. Certain sentences seem to make desperate attempts at describing the intension of his personal views. For example, the following lines required several rereads.
Some of those programs allocate attention to things that can be understood fairly rigorously, like a cart, a plow, or a sword. Other programs allocate attention to more complicated things, such as the long-term alliances and reproductive opportunities within a tribe. The former programs might involve situational awareness and detailed planning, while the latter programs might operate via subtle and tacit pattern detection and automatic obedience to crude heuristics.
Although, it is easy to see how one develops such a style of exposition, spending most waking hours trawling through research.
However, more to the point, the conclusion that I came to was that Vassar was advocating educational reform, moving towards something similar to the Montessori approach, and for what it's worth, I wholeheartedly agree.
Would agree about my reading of his short essay?
Mildly. The essay seems suggestive of a 10th point, which I described above. However, the truth lies with the original author, not me.
How solid do you think his argument is?
8/10. The most striking segment of his argument, in my opinion, is the following line.
However, with their attention placed on esteem, their concrete reasoning underdeveloped and their school curriculum poorly absorbed, such leaders aren't well positioned to create value.
Michael Vassar has written a provocative response to this year's Edge question: "What *should* we be worried about?". But, I'm confused about his post. My attempt to summarize his point of view follows:
1. People have physiological needs (food, shelter, safety etc.) and social needs (esteem, love, respect etc.).
2. People have mental programs to try to achieve both needs.
3. Modern society has been exceptional at fulfilling people's physiological needs but not very good at fulfilling their social needs.
4. Thus, mental programs that were meant to achieve physiological needs do not develop very well relative to mental programs meant to achieve social needs .
5. Mental programs for achieving physiological needs are more precise and hence harder to hack. Mental programs for social needs are fuzzy and vague and thus more easily hackable.
6. Thus, and because of (4), people are more hackable.
7. This manifests operationally as a few powerful people (the rich, the politicians etc.) hacking the majority into submitting to their will.
8. But even the powerful do not have significantly better mechanisms for precise thought. It is just that their social weirdness (need for power, lack of empathy etc.) allowed them to be the hacker instead of the hacked.
9. Thus for most of our useful innovations, we are forced to rely on the rare people who are capable of precise abstract thought because they worry less about their social needs.
So, I guess Vassar's point is that this pattern is what we should worry about as it systematically suppresses useful innovators.
Would agree about my reading of his short essay?
How solid do you think his argument is?