Noah Smith steelmans Dweck's idea beyond recognition, almost unto triviality. Smith says that the growth mindset is a belief about the effectiveness of effort at the margin rather than on average. But how do economists understand "at the margin"? I'm not an economist, but it seems to be roughly "improvement per additional resource invested." And how much can innate ability improve per additional resource invested? Does that question even make sense?

Scott, despite his admitted biases, steelmans Dweck in a very useful way. He points to the difference between implicit and explicit beliefs, and tentatively notes that Dweck's thesis about belief-in-effort seems to work better if we interpret that as implicit-belief-in-effort. As I suggested on Scott's blog, though, this actually takes the sting out of some of Scott's worries about Dweck.