There's been some discussion of how to improve the structure of LessWrong at the site software level - for example adding subreddits or modifying how main and discussion work. One roadblock to this that's been mentioned is a shortage of programmer hours. I'd like to volunteer mine.

I recently finished a course on web development in which, among other things, I build a Reddit clone using Ruby on Rails and Backbone.js. It's been several months since I've written any Python, and I'm somewhat wary of the time required to get familiar with the LessWrong codebase, but I think think the time would be worth it for me: it could potentially improve LessWrong a lot and would let me tick off my "have contributed to an open source project" box.

Of course, before any of that happens, there needs to be some agreement on what changes we think would be a good idea. So... discuss.

EDIT: For context, it's been suggested that part of the benefit of subforums is it could defuse debates over "what topics are appropriate for LessWrong." We could even have an "off-topic" subforum, a common feature of online discussion forums - I think bringing the format of LessWrong more into line with what's standard on other websites could help newbies be less confused here.

The title is the best name I could come up for a problem I have had for years, and have been waiting for someone else to come up with a solution. 

There is a lot of awesome content on the web. Some of it is about events you could be at, right now, that you really want to be at, and could. If only you knew. 

An example: I think Roger Waters is one of the most brilliant people alive, and I would like to witness every single concert of his, every time he is less than 100km away from me. Yet, I have only been to two of those, because I was only notified of those. 

So I wish I could know if events I love are taking place. But I do not want to know about Meetups not even close to where I live. And I don't want to know at what time Roger went to the toilet, or if his T-shirt collection for groupies is out, or anything else that people responsible for his (hipothetical) rss feed or email list want me to buy. 

Two questions are relevant here:

1) How can you in general have access to the information you want about events, without drowning in an information ocean or getting web addicted. 

2) Do you know ways to get access to info about events, in particular of the following kinds that I happen to want to be notified?  (in SF bay or in some city independent way)

• Ecstatic Dance
• Roger Waters, Deep Purple, Guns, Royksöpp, Evanescence, The Coors.   
• Legacy and Vintage MTG
• Intellectual stars lectures
• CFAR/MIRI/Leverage/CEA/FHI/GWWC/80000k/IERFH/SENS/THINK etc... hosted events
• Crazy parties (crazy ranging over what would interest Iron Man's character or Jimmy Hendrix)
• Video Games Live (orchestra)
• Pop stars of the past - Psy, Britney, Backstreet, Madonna etc...
• Ultimate Frisbee
• Coursera courses
• Hiking expeditions
• Awesome nature documentaries (Life, Frozen Planet etc...)

Feel free to post your own interests in the comments. 

Here is how I noticed the problem: Looking back into my life I began wondering what were the main determinants of whether I did or not go to some kinds of events. And again and again the result was "because I had a friend who used to tell me about that kind of thing back then". 

Even now, most of what I do is basically determined by other people's tastes. It's simple. I've locked all possible advertisement away - I'm a serious anti-ad freak, it takes me less than half a second to switch radio stations if a person talks instead of music playing, and I block the front chair video away in airplanes in which it can't be turned off, I feel pain when any advertisement reaches my senses - but I did not block people away (yeah, I don't punch people's faces when they tell me about cool future events). So I'm left with the intersection between what interests me, and what interests them enough that they tell me about it. 

This can't be right. The alternative, having to, as they say at MIT, drink from a fire hose, doesn't sound any good either.   

One of the things people say to startup minded people is that they should start by noticing a need they have, something they'd be willing to pay for, and create something to satisfy that need. I'm usually not eager to pay for stuff, but here is something I'd pay for:

I'd be happy to pay $200 to someone who solved this problem somehow. Pointing an app, creating a system, summoning a submissive gnome... I don't mind. As long as there was a way for someone to get news of things they care about without having their brains stung by the atrocities of voracious marketeer capitalist addiction systems. And I don't think I'm the only anti-ad freak out there who'd pay some money for this, ADblock is, after all, the most used browser app in the world. 

It is basically the reverse of the Groupon concept. Instead of stealing your attention to make you more interested in things you don't need and causing you to feel an emotional void for not having things while your pocket empties as well - yeah, I really don't like ads - the idea would be to inform you of things you already think you need, giving you a warm feeling inside of being served of all those delicious potential hedons you've been eagerly waiting to purchase. 

I'm no entrepreneur, so who's up? 

Hi from Castify.

We're continuing our work to turn the Less Wrong sequences into audio. Could you spare about 30 seconds to help us decide which one to do next? 

Inspired by: On learning difficult things

In his recent post, user So8res says his number one piece of advice for learning something difficult is to have study partner to learn with you. 

Since there is a decent amount of interest here in going through the MIRI course list, it might be worth finding other people here to learn and study this with, and to form pairs or groups. 

So here is a space for finding and organizing such partnerships!

Of course, part of the reason I wrote this is because I am interested in learning these books with people. My background: I'm currently a second year Ph.D. student in mathematics (number theory). I'm still pretty new to the type of math emphasized here. I have Probabilistic Graphical Models, Category Theory for Computer Scientists and The Logic of Provability (by George Boolos -- not on the course list, but good to get background for the Robust Cooperation paper and for understanding Loeb's theorem) all lying around. I'm also taking a class on numerical analysis. Part of my problem is that I start lots of projects and then end up fizzling out on them, and I hope having a partner will help with this. 

I've already been going through MIRI's publications with a friend from the local LW community, which has been really nice. I'm still interested in finding more partners <insert poly joke here> for going through books on the course list specifically. I'm also willing to explain things I understand, or let someone explain things to me (I've found that explaining things to someone else is a very good way of solidifying your understanding of something) when I have time. 

Some things to consider:

• What is the best online format for doing this? I've been doing this sort of thing with Workflowy + Mathflowy but there is probably something better. 
• Does a pair dynamic, or a group dynamic seem more likely to work? I'm hoping that there can be a collection of pairs all centered in a common community, or something like that.
• If a central community seems like a good idea, how should it be centralized?
• Probably some other issues/meta stuff.

Hi all, I'm leaving Lesswrong for a few months to pursue a Masters, and this Text below will never be finished. It is just a story of what is it like to grow up outside where everything is going on, a country where humanities are sad and terrible, and people are fun, but not quite wise. 

Original Summary: Two things (Note: Were going to) permeate this text, an autobiographical short account of what is it like to grow up far from where things are happening, and an outside view account of some of the people and institutions (MIRI,LW,Leverage Research, FHI,80k,GWWC) whom presently carry, as far as I can see, the highest expected value gamble of our time. I have visited all those institutions, and my account here should be considered just a biased, one subjective perspective data point, not a proper evaluation of those places. Other people who come from developing world countries might have interesting stories to tell, and I'd encourage them to do so (Pablo in Argentina, many in India, China and elsewhere)

(NOTE: There is nothing about the institutions here, only the growing up part was written by the time I decided to halt this writing)

Far away, across the sea

As is the case with most outliers, outcasts, and outsiders in general, a large amount of sociological facts were determinant of me being the first person in Brazil acquainted with the cluster of ideas to which the institutions mentioned belong. Jonatas, the other Brazilian who entered this world early on (2004), has a very similar story to tell. The prerequisites seem to have been: young, middle class, children of early adopters, inclined towards philosophy, living in a cosmopolitan area, with a particular disregard for authority (uncommon in Brazil), high IQ (aprox 4 SDs above Brazilian average) beginning to get stuck in a nonsense university system in the humanities. Due to expected income considerations and a large variance in income among Brazilians, most of the high IQ people go for Medicine, Engineering, Law and sometimes physical sciences. Thus many of the humanities become just signalling that you praise the right authorities (right here meaning whomever your advisor or professor was compelled to praise by his professor) and the cycle rolls on and on. 

So I was left with good resources (time, curiosity, intellectual eagerness) and internet access. The web changed it all. It was hard to capture the signal among the noise in the intellectual world there, and my path was reading an interview in a magazine with this guy who thought so differently that he seemed amazing, a biogeographist is what the magazine called him (I had to invent a meaning for that), that was Jared Diamond. Then Guns Germs and Steel, and, buying books, waiting two months for them to come, I slowly built a foundational knowledge of the Third Culture people, those whom John Brockman currently gathers on The Edge website. 

It seemed they were sensible and smart people, Dawkins, Dennett, Pinker, and many others. Yet in our closed country in the humanities, no one had any idea of what that was all about. Understandably, I frequently thought I was wrong, or crazy, since that is what others thought about me. The neodarwinians were a huge problem in the moral punishing intellectual world I was living, they were enough to make you an outcast, an untouchable perhaps. But they were not the worse, the worse was yet to come.

 The worse was when I found Aubrey de Grey and Nick Bostrom. I should call those early years the schizophrenic ones, because only focusing all my brainpower in being schizophrenic could I possibly survive among my peers while considering the opinions and thoughts of those two individuals sensible and worthy. It has recently been pointed out in one the best posts here that:

 Any idiot can tell you why death is bad, but it takes a very particular sort of idiot to believe that death might be good.

- Yvain 

That very particular sort of idiot composes 98% of our humanities academy, the intelligence that is valued is the subtle and sophisticated one that makes small benefits salient while concealing obviously enormous costs, or the one that signals capacity while making the world a worse place. 

At the young age of eighteen I was learning Freudian babble during the day, reading Russell at late afternoon, since he was both sensible and acceptable among my peers, being a 100 years old Lord, and subscribed to the Shock Level 4 email group controlled by Eliezer at night, noticing that something really big was going on and not having anyone around to talk about it. I'd be thinking about the Simulation Argument, and my friends would be thinking about what the teacher's password was for that particular behaviorist explanation that was discredited 70 years ago, and how they hated it because the Freudian alternative obviously felt right. It takes schizophrenia to survive in the wild. 

The Path Became Smooth

Time went by, memes were spread and slowly but steadily it was possible to come out of the closet about a lot of my beliefs and thoughts. The classes on how to write ambiguous commentaries on Hegel didn't stop, but the sanity waterline was being raised, specially among my colleagues who were pursuing exact science degrees. 2008 was the shifting point, suddenly I met one other Transhumanist, and eventually a rationalist, and near the end an utilitarian. Schizophrenia was no longer that necessary. Fast forward to now 2013 and you have many of those ideas, such as Singularity, ending ageing, considering cognitive science a part of psychology, brain machine interface, etc... all on the cover page of major magazines and being topic of conversation on TV shows.  

Some few people started actually caring about that. Meanwhile something else was growing, the Effective Altruist movement.

(here this abruptly finishes, and won't be continued)

Related to: Scholarship: How to Do It Efficiently

There has been a slightly increased focus on the use of search engines lately. I agree that using Google is an important skill - in fact I believe that for years I have came across as significantly more knowledgeable than I actually am just by quickly looking for information when I am asked something.

However, There are obviously some types of information which are more accessible by Google and some which are less accessible. For example distinct characteristics, specific dates of events etc. are easily googleable¹ and you can expect to quickly find accurate information on the topic. On the other hand, if you want to find out more ambiguous things such as the effects of having more friends on weight or even something like the negative and positive effects of a substance - then googling might leave you with some contradicting results, inaccurate information or at the very least it will likely take you longer to get to the truth.

I have observed that in the latter case (when the topic is less 'googleable') most people, even those knowledgeable of search engines and 'science' will just stop searching for information after not finding anything on Google or even before² unless they are actually willing to devote a lot of time to find it. This is where my recommendation comes - consider doing a scholarly search like the one provided by Google Scholar.

And, no, I am not suggesting that people should read a bunch of papers on every topic that they discuss. By using some simple heuristics we can easily gain a pretty good picture of the relevant information on a large variety of topics in a few minutes (or less in some cases). The heuristics are as follows:

1. Read only or mainly the abstracts. This is what saves you time but gives you a lot of information in return and this is the key to the most cost-effective way to quickly find information from a scholary search. Often you wouldn't have immediate access to the paper anyway, however you can almost always read the abstract. And if you follow the other heuristics you will still be looking at relatively 'accurate' information most of the time. On the other hand, if you are looking for more information and have access to the full paper then the discussion+conclusion section are usually the second best thing to look at; and if you are unsure about the quality of the study, then you should also look at the method section to identify its limitations.³

2. Look at the number of citations for an article. The higher the better. Less than 10 citations in most cases means that you can find a better paper.

3. Look at the date of the paper. Often more recent = better. However, you can expect less citations for more recent articles and you need to adjust accordingly. For example if the article came out in 2013 but it has already been cited 5 times this is probably a good sign. For new articles the subheuristic that I use is to evaluate the 'accuracy' of the article by judging the author's general credibilty instead - argument from authority.

4. Meta-analyses/Systematic Reviews are your friend. This is where you can get the most information in the least amount of time!

5. If you cannot find anything relevant fiddle with your search terms in whatever ways you can think of (you usually get better at this over time by learning what search terms give better results).

That's the gist of it. By reading a few abstracts in a minute or two you can effectively search for information regarding our scientific knowledge on a subject with almost the same speed as searching for specific information on topics that I dubbed googleable. In my experience scholarly searches on pretty much anything can be really beneficial. Do you believe that drinking beer is bad but drinking wine is good? Search on Google Scholar! Do you think that it is a fact that social interaction is correlated with happiness? Google Scholar it! Sure, some things might seem obvious to you that X but it doesn't hurt to search on google scholar for a minute just to be able to cite a decent study on the topic to those X disbelievers.

This post might not be useful to some people but it is my belief that scholarly searches are the next step of efficient information seeking after googling and that most LessWrongers are not utilizing this enough. Hell, I only recently started doing this actively and I still do not do it enough. Furthermore I fully agree with this comment by gwern:

My belief is that the more familiar and skilled you are with a tool, the more willing you are to reach for it. Someone who has been programming for decades will be far more willing to write a short one-off program to solve a problem than someone who is unfamiliar and unsure about programs (even if they suspect that they could get a canned script copied from StackExchange running in a few minutes). So the unwillingness to try googling at all is at least partially a lack of googling skill and familiarity.

A lot of people will be reluctant to start doing scholarly searches because they have barely done any or because they have never done it. I want to tell those people to still give it a try. Start by searching for something easy, maybe something that you already know from lesswrong or from somewhere else. Read a few abstracts, if you do not understand a given abstract try finding other papers on the topic - some authors adopt a more technical style of writing, others focus mainly on statistics, etc. but you should still be able to find some good information if you read multiple abstracts and identify the main points. If you cannot find anythinr relevant then move on and try another topic.

P.S. In my opinion, when you are comfortable enough to have scholarly searches as a part of your arsenal you will rarely have days when there is nothing to check for. If you are doing 1 scholarly search per month for example you are most probably not fully utilizing this skill.

1. By googleable I mean that the search terms are google friendly - you can relatively easily and quickly find relevant and accurate information.
2. If the people in question have developed a sense for what type of information is more accessible by google then they might not even try to google the less accessible-type things.
3. If you want to get a better and more accurate view on the topic in question you should read the full paper. The heuristic of mainly focusing on abstracts is cost-effective but it invariably results in a loss of information.

Alright guys. The main complaint of the discussion article was simply "hoax", yelled as loudly or as quietly as the user felt about it. Hopefully this won't get the same treatment.

We have been evaluating educational,  grant-funded programs for 20 years. Throughout these years, we have witnessed a slow change in how students are selected for academic services.  Traditionally, students were targeted for academic services and opportunities based on demographic characteristics—usually race and, until recently, family income status (based on free or reduced priced lunch). Wealthier, white students are given challenging lessons and tracked into the advanced courses, while their non-white and poorer peers are tracked low and given remediation services. The latter students are often referred to as “at-risk,” though we are finding more and more that the greatest risk these students face is being placed into inappropriate remedial courses which eventually bar them from access to advanced courses.  After students have been labeled “at-risk,” and then tracked inappropriately and provided unnecessary (and often harmful) remediation, their downward trajectory continues throughout their education. The demographic gap this creates continues to expand, despite the lip service and excessive tax and grant funds paid to eliminate—or at least lessen—this very gap. This “at-risk” model of assigning services is slowly being replaced by a “pro-equity” model. The driving force behind this change is the availability and use of data.

The literature is full of documentation that certain demographic groups have traditionally had less access to advanced math and science courses than equally scoring students belonging to demographic groups thought to be “not at risk.” Some examples from research follow.
•    Sixth grade course placement is the main predictor of eighth grade course placement, and social factors--mainly race---are key predictors of sixth grade course placement (O’Connor, Lewis, & Mueller, 2007).
•    Among low-income students, little is done to assess which are high achievers. Few programs are aimed at them, and their numbers are lumped in with “adequate” achievers in No Child Left Behind reporting. As a result, little is known about effective practices for low-income students (Wyner, Bridgeland, & DiIulio  Jr., 2007).
•    In a California school district, researchers found that of students who demonstrated the ability to be admitted to algebra, 100% of the Asians, 88% of the whites, 51% of the Blacks, and 42% of the Latinos were admitted (Stone & Turba, 1999).
•    Tracking has been described as “a backdoor device for sorting students by race and class.” Many researchers agree (Abu El-Haj & Rubin, 2009).
•    When course grades are used to determine placement, studies show that some students’ grades “matter” more than others. Perceptions of race and social class are often used to determine placement (Mayer, 2008).
•    Studies show that when schools allow students the freedom to choose which track they’ll take, teachers and counselors discourage many previously lower tracked students from choosing the higher track  (Yonezawa, Wells, & Serna, 2002).
•    The sequence of math students take in middle school essentially determines their math track for high school. In North Carolina, this is true because of math prerequisites for higher level math (North Carolina Department of Public Instruction, 2009).

We are seeing a move toward using objective data for placement into gateway courses, such as 8th grade algebra. Many school districts are beginning to use Education Value Added Assessment (EVAAS) and other data system scores that predict success in 8th grade algebra for criteria to enroll. This pro-equity model is replacing the traditional, at-risk model that relied on professional judgment.  One example of this is in Wake County, North Carolina. Superintendent Tony Tata attributed a 44% increase in the number of students enrolled in algebra to the use of the predictive software, EVAAS, to identify students likely to be successful. The success rate in the course increased with the addition of these students (KeungHu, 2012).

Although the pro-equity model of using objective data to assign students to more rigorous courses has proven successful, many people resist it. These people cling to the at-risk model, dismissing the objective data as inconclusive. Many of the overlooked students who were predicted to succeed, yet were placed in lower tracks (disproportionately minorities), are “weaker,” according to the old-school staff, and allowing these students into the gateway 8th-grade algebra course would be a disservice to them. (Not allowing them into this course ensures their bleak academic future.)  Review of the data had shown that strong students were being overlooked, and this objective use of data helps identify them (Sanders, Rivers, Enck, Leandro, & White, 2009).

The changes in education began with concern for aligning academic services with academic need. Aligning opportunities for rigor and enrichment is only just beginning. In the past, a large proportion of federal grant funds were for raising proficiency rates. In the at-risk model, grant funds were provided for services to the minority and poor demographic groups with the goals of raising academic proficiency rates. When we first started evaluating grant-funded programs, most federal grants were entirely in the at-risk model. The students were targeted for services based on demographic characteristics. The goals were to deliver the services to this group. Staff development was often designed to help staff understand children in poverty and what their lives are like, rather than helping them learn how to deliver an effective reading or math intervention. The accountability reports we were hired to write consisted of documentation that the correct demographic group was served, the program was delivered, and staff received their professional development. Proficiency rates were rarely a concern.

In 2004, the federal government developed the Program Assessment Rating Tool (PART) to provide accountability to grant-funded programs by rating their effectiveness.  The PART system assigned scores to programs based on services being related to goals, showing that the goals were appropriate for the individuals served, and student success measured against quality standards and assessments. PART rated programs that could not demonstrate whether they have been effective or not because of lack of data or clear performance goals with the rating “Results Not Demonstrated”  (U.S. Office of Management and Budget and Federal Agencies, n.d. "The Program Assessment Rating Tool") . In 2009, nearly half (47%) of U.S. Department of Education grant programs rated by the government are given this rating, thus illustrating the difficulties of making this transition to outcome based accountability (U.S. Office of Management and Budget and Federal agencies, n.d. "Department of Education programs"). The earliest changes were in accountability, not in program services or how to target students. Accountability reports began asking for pre- and post-comparisons of academic scores. For example, if funds were for raising the proficiency rates in reading, then evaluation reports were required to compare pre- and post-reading scores. This was a confusing period, because programs still targeted students based on demographic information and provided services that often had no research basis linking them to academic achievement; professional development often remained focused on empathizing with children in poverty, although the goals and objectives would now be written in terms of the participants raising their academic achievement to proficiency. We evaluators were often called in at the conclusion of programs to compare pre- and post-academic scores, and determine whether participants improved their scores to grade-level proficiency. We often saw the results of capable students treated like low-achievers, thought to have no self-esteem, and provided remedial work. Such treatment damaged the participants who had previously scored at or above proficient prior to services.

 A typical narrative of an evaluation might read:

 The goal of the program was to raise the percentage of students scoring proficient in reading. The program targeted and served low-income and minority students. Staff received professional development on understanding poor children. Services offered to students included remedial tutorials and esteem-building activities. When the program ended, pre-reading scores were obtained and compared with post-scores to measure progress toward the program objective.  At that time, it was discovered that a large percentage of participants were proficient prior to receiving services.

Rather than cite our own evaluations, we found many examples from the school districts reporting on themselves.

Accelerated Learning Program.

The following is a direct quote from a school system in North Carolina:

. . . Although ALP [Accelerated Learning Program] was designed primarily to help students reach proficiency as measured by End-of-Grade (EOG) tests, only 41.1% of those served showed below-grade-level scores on standard tests before service in literacy. In mathematics, 73.3% of students served had below-grade-level scores. ALP served about 40% of students who scored below grade level within literacy and within mathematics, with other services supporting many others. . . . Compared to those not served, results for Level I-II students were similar, but results for Level III-IV students were less positive. One third of non- proficient ALP mathematics students reached proficiency in 2008, compared to 42.1% of other students. (Lougee & Baenen, 2009).

Foundations of Algebra

This program was designed for students who fit specific criteria, yet it served many students who did not. Students who were below proficient or almost proficient were to be placed in courses to eventually prepare them for Algebra I. When criteria for placement are not met, determining program effectiveness is difficult, if not impossible. Students were likely entered into the program based on teacher recommendations, which were subsequently based on demographic factors such as race. The teachers “mistook” these students for below-proficient students when they were not. Had objective data, such as actual proficiency scores, been consulted, the proper students could have been served. The report indicates a success, as a higher percentage of these students than similar students who were not served enrolled in Algebra I. However, it is not known if this comparison group includes only students who actually meet the criteria, or if they are a heterogeneous mix of students of varying abilities. Missing data also makes program effectiveness evaluation difficult (Paeplow, 2010).

Partnership for Educational Success (PES)

This program was purportedly for students who are “at risk,” which is defined as students who scored below grade level on EOG (below proficiency)  and have been “identified by the PES team as having family issues that interfere with school success.” What is meant by “family issues” is unclear. The majority of students served are Economically Disadvantaged (ED) (91.3%) and Black (71.5%). More than half the students served, according to the evaluation, were at or above grade level on their EOGs when they began the program, thus making program effectiveness difficult to judge. The family component is an integral part of the program, and outside agencies visit families. Many community organizations are involved. But if the staff could miss so easy a datum as EOG scores for so many students, one has to wonder about such a subjective criterion as “family issues.” The program appears to have targeted ED students, with little regard to prior performance data. Data for many students (43.5%) was missing. Teachers indicate that parents of the targeted families have become more involved in the school, but little else has changed (Harlow & Baenen, 2004).

Helping Hands

Helping Hands was initiated based on data indicating that Black males lag behind other groups in academic achievement. The program is supposed to serve Black males, and most of the participants fit these criteria. The program is also designed to improve academics, and to curtail absenteeism and suspensions. Although the percentage of selected participants who needed improvement in these areas was higher than it was for the overall population of the students served, not all students served demonstrated a need for intervention. Many students were at grade level, were not chronically absent, and had not been suspended. Yet they were served because they were Black and male (Paeplow, 2009).

At Hodge Road Elementary School, students were tutored with remedial work in an after-school program. The only criterion the students had to meet to be allowed into the program was the inability to pay full price for their lunch. Their academic performance was irrelevant. (To be fair, these criteria were instituted by No Child Left Behind, and not the school system.) Most students were already reading and doing math at or above grade level (the two subjects for which tutoring was provided). The evaluation shows that giving remedial coursework to students who are at or above grade level, as if they were below grade level, can actually harm them. In the final statistics, 11.1% of Level III & IV 3rd through 5th graders scored below grade level after being served, compared with only 2% of a comparable group who were not served. An astonishing 23% of students in kindergarten through 2nd grade served who were at or above grade level prior to the tutoring scored below grade level afterward, compared with 8% of comparable students who were not served (Paeplow & Baenen, 2006).

AVID

AVID is a program designed for students who may be the first in their families to attend college, and who are average academic performers. The program, developed in the 1980s, maintains that by providing support while holding students to high academic standards, the achievement gap will narrow as students succeed academically and go on to successfully complete higher level education. Fidelity of implementation is often violated, which, as proponents admit on AVID’s own website (www.AVID.org) may compromise the entire program. Student participants must have a GPA of 2.0-3.5. We were asked to evaluate Wake County Public School Systems AVID program. Many students chosen for the program, however, did not fit the criteria (Lougee & Baenen, 2008). Because AVID requirements were not met, a meaningful evaluation was not possible.

This AVID program was implemented with the goal of increasing the number of under-represented students in 8th grade algebra. This was at a time when no criteria for enrollment in 8th grade algebra existed (i.e., a target to help the students reach didn’t exist), and high scoring students in this very group were not being referred for enrollment in algebra. Under these conditions, the program makes no sense. In summary, the goal of this program is to enroll in 8th grade algebra more low-income, minority, and students whose parents didn’t go to college. Only students recommended by teachers can enroll in 8th grade algebra. The data showed that very high-scoring, low-income and minority students were not being recommended for 8th grade algebra. Why do we think that students whose parents didn’t go to college can’t enroll in 8th grade algebra without being in an intervention program first? (Also, how it is determined that the students’ parents did not attend college is not addressed.) The program is for low-average students. They served high-average students. Then they still didn’t recommend them to be in 8th grade algebra. This program is very expensive. We have evaluated this program in many school districts and we find the same results, typically, as this report.

During this era, the interventions typically have not been related to the desired outcomes by research. For example, self-esteem-building activities were often provided to increase the odds of passing a math class, or to improve reading scores. Sometimes programs would be academic, but claims for success were not research-based, nor was the relationship between the activities and the desired outcomes. Although many interventions were at least related to the academic subject area the program  was trying to impact, it was not unheard of to see relaxation courses alone for increasing math test scores, or make-overs and glamor shots for raising self-esteem, which in turn would allegedly raise reading scores.

During the last decade, education has slowly moved toward requiring accountability in terms of comparing pre- and post-scores. We saw this causing confusion and fear, rather than clarity. More than once, when we reported to school districts that they had served significant numbers of students who were already at or above proficiency levels, they thought we were saying they had served high-income students instead of their target population of low-income students. We have seen many school systems assess their own programs, write evaluation reports like the examples above, and then continue to implement the programs without any changes. We have worked with some educators whose eyes were opened to the misalignment of services and needs, and they learned to use data, to identify appropriate interventions, and keep records to make accountability possible. We’ve seen these innovators close their achievement gaps while raising achievement of the top. But, those around them didn’t see this as replicable.

Race to the Top will impact the rate of change from the at-risk to the pro-equity model. Teacher and principal evaluations are going to include measures of growth in student learning (White House Office of the Press Secretary, 2009).  EVAAS will be used to measure predicted scores with observed scores. If high-achieving students who are predicted to succeed in 8th grade algebra are tracked into the less rigorous 9th grade algebra, they are not likely to make their predicted growth .

We are moving out of this era, and the pace of change toward identifying student needs using appropriate data is picking up. North Carolina’s newly legislated program, Read to Achieve, mandates that reading interventions for students in K-3 be aligned to the literacy skills the students struggle with, and that data be used to determine whether students are struggling with literacy skills. Schools must also keep records for accountability. Although this approach seems logical, it is quite innovative compared with the past reading interventions that targeted the wrong students (North Carolina State Board of Education; Department of Public Instruction, n.d.).

Education Grant programs are now requiring that applicants specify what data they will use to identify their target population, and how the intervention relates to helping the participants achieve the program goals. Staff development must relate to delivering the services well, and accountability must show that these things all happened correctly, while documenting progress toward the program objectives. It is a new era. We are not there yet, but it is coming.

 References
Harlow, K., & Baenen, N. (2004). E & R Report No. 04.09: Partnership for Educational Success 2002-03: Implementation and outcomes. Raleigh, NC: Wake County Public School System. Retrieved from http://www.wcpss.net/evaluation-research/reports/2004/0409partnership_edu.pdf
KeungHu. (2012). Wake County Superintendent Tony Tata on gains in Algebra I enrollment and proficiency. Retrieved from http://blogs.newsobserver.com/wakeed/wake-county-superintendent-tony-tata-on-gains-in-algebra-i-enrollment-and-proficiency
Lougee, A., & Baenen, N. (2008). E & R Report No. 08.07: Advancement Via Individual Determination (AVID): WCPSS Program Evaluation. Retrieved from http://www.wcpss.net/evaluation-research/reports/2008/0807avid.pdf
Lougee, A., & Baenen, N. (2009). E&R Report No. 09.27: Accelerated Learning Program (ALP) grades 3-5: Evaluation 2007-08. Retrieved from http://www.wcpss.net/evaluation-research/reports/2009/0927alp3-5_2008.pdf
Mayer, A. (2008). Understanding how U.S. secondary schools sort students for instructional purposes: Are all students being served equally? . American Secondary Education , 36(2), 7–25.
North Carolina Department of Public Instruction. (2009). Course and credit requirements. Retrieved from http://www.ncpublicschools.org/curriculum/graduation
North Carolina State Board of Education; Department of Public Instruction. (n.d.). North Carolina Read to Achieve: A guide to implementing House Bill 950/S.L. 2012-142 Section 7A. Retrieved from https://eboard.eboardsolutions.com/Meetings/Attachment.aspx?S=10399&AID=11774&MID=783
O’Connor, C., Lewis, A., & Mueller, J. (2007). Researching “Black” educational experiences and outcomes: Theoretical and methodological considerations. Educational Researcher. Retrieved from http://www.sociology.emory.edu/downloads/O%5c’Connor_Lewis_Mueller_2007_Researching_black_educational_experiences_and_outcomes_theoretical_and_methodological_considerations.pdf
Paeplow, C. (2009). E & R Report No. 09.30: Intervention months grades 6-8: Elective results 2008-09. Raleigh, NC: Wake County Public School System. Retrieved from http://www.wcpss.net/evaluation-research/reports/2009/0930imonths6-8.pdf
Paeplow, C. (2010). E & R Report No. 10.28: Foundations of Algebra: 2009-10. Raleigh, NC: Wake County Public School System. Retrieved from http://assignment.wcpss.net/results/reports/2011/1028foa2010.pdf
Paeplow, C., & Baenen, N. (2006). E & R Report No. 06.09: Evaluation of Supplemental Educational Services at Hodge Road Elementary School 2005-06. Raleigh. Retrieved from http://www.wcpss.net/evaluation-research/reports/2006/0609ses_hodge.pdf
Sanders, W. L., Rivers, J. C., Enck, S., Leandro, J. G., & White, J. (2009). Educational Policy Brief: SAS® Response to the “WCPSS E & R Comparison of SAS © EVAAS © Results and WCPSS Effectiveness Index Results,” Research Watch, E&R Report No. 09.11, March 2009. Cary, NC: SAS. Retrieved from http://content.news14.com/pdf/sas_report.pdf
Stone, C. B., & Turba, R. (1999). School counselors using technology for advocacy. Journal of Technology in Counseling. Retrieved from http://jtc.colstate.edu/vol1_1/advocacy.htm
U.S. Office of Management and Budget and Federal Agencies. (n.d.). The Program Assessment Rating Tool (PART). Retrieved from http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/expectmore/part.html
U.S. Office of Management and Budget and Federal agencies. (n.d.). Department of Education programs. Retrieved from http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/expectmore/agency/018.html
White House Office of the Press Secretary. (2009). Fact Sheet: The Race to the Top. Washington D.C. Retrieved from http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/fact-sheet-race-top
Wyner, J. S., Bridgeland, J. M., & DiIulio  Jr., J. J. (2007). Achievement trap: How America is failing millions of high-achieving students from low-income families. Jack Kent Cooke Foundation, Civic Enterprises, LLC. Retrieved from www.jkcf.org/assets/files/0000/0084/Achievement_Trap.pdf
Yonezawa, S., Wells, A. S., & Serna, I. (2002). Choosing tracks:“Freedom of choice” in detracking schools. American Educational Research Journal , 39(1), 37–67.

I recently published Mortal, a novella-length My Little Pony fanfiction meant to introduce anti-death concepts to an unfamiliar audience. Short description:

Twilight Sparkle's friends have lived long and happy lives. Now their time is coming to an end, but Rainbow Dash, at least, will not go gently. Twilight has the power to save her friend's life. Is it worth violating the natural order?

This is a character-driven melodrama. It's not particularly rationalist, but it's very, very transhumanist. Unlike, say, Friendship is Optimal, I wouldn't necessarily recommend this one to people who don't already know the source. It assumes familiarity with the characters and the world.

I am going to talk about how I put together the story and how people reacted to it. This will contain spoilers.

This line exists so you can break out of the automatic "read everything on the page" mode if you want to avoid the spoilers.

This story was structured as something of a bait-and-switch. I watched the reaction to a previous transhumanist horsefic (yes, there's more than one), and I was struck by how easily readers matched the explicitly anti-death narrative to the "immortality is a curse" trope. Rather than fight against this trend, I decided to work with it. The first act is meant to look like a story about learning to accept the inevitability of death. Starting in chapter 3, I break further and further away from that mold until the protagonists finally rebel against the status quo.

The first chapters got a lot of people invested who I suspect would've been turned off by a less familiar opening. Once I was into the third act, I stopped being subtle and used every trick in the book to make the pro-death characters look like the unreasonable ones. Judging by the comments, there's no shortage of readers who were angry at having their expectations flouted, but quite a few seem thoughtful, and some explicitly changed their mind on the subject.

Introduction:

Today there is an almost universal prejudice against individuals with a certain sexual orientation. I am not talking about common homophobia; the prejudice I would like to bring to your attention is so rarely considered a prejudice that it has no particular name. Though the following words will most likely be met with harsh criticism, the prejudice referenced above is the prejudice that almost all of us have against pedophiles. At first thought, it may seem that having a phobia of pedophiles is no more a prejudice for a mother, than having a fear of lions is a prejudice for a mother chimpanzee, but I hope at least to show that the issue is not so clear.

This text does not at any point argue that pedophiles are regular people like you and I, they may well not be. If the hypothesis to be presented is true, however, it follows that the trauma children experience when molested would not happen if we didn't hold the moral judgments towards pedophiles that we do. If this is true then the best thing for us to do as a species for our children is, paradoxically, to stop making the moral judgements we make towards pedophiles. Of course, intuition would have us believe that we hold those moral judgements towards pedophiles precisely because of how traumatic a molestation is for children; this is an attempt to show that that causal interaction goes both ways and forms a loop.

This isn't a defense of pedophilia, nor is it a suggestion that we should stop morally judging pedophiles as a culture, it's an analysis of how circularity can enter the domain of social morality undetected and spread rapidly. We will take a memetic approach to figuring this out, and always ask "how it is useful for the meme to have such and such property?" rather than "how is it useful for us to have a belief with such and such property?".

I will apologize here and now for the graphic nature of this text's subject. But know that part of what I claim is that the reason the following considerations are so rarely even heard is precisely because of their graphic nature. Nowhere in this text is there an argument that can even be loosely interpreted as a defense of individual acts of pedophilia, but the reader may well conclude that in the end, less children would have been seriously hurt if we had refrained from involving our moral attitudes in our dealings with pedophiles.

Inherently Traumatic?:

Let's ask a simple question: "would a feral child be traumatized if molested at a young age?" Notice there was no mention of sodomy in that question. Sodomy is clearly as traumatic to a child as any intense pain caused by another would be. But what about molestation? How can an infant tell the difference between being cleaned and being molested? These two actions could be made to appear behaviorally identical to the child. How does the brain know to get traumatized from one and not from the other? Clearly, children are more frequently traumatized by molestation than by being cleaned. They must somehow make the distinction, either during the act, soon after the event, or retroactively upon remembering the event in adulthood. 

In any case, that distinction must either be learned or inherited. Though we are genetically designed to avoid certain stimuli, e.g., fire, sharp things, bitter chemicals, etc. it is unlikely that getting your genitals touched is one of those stimuli. There might be genes which give you a predisposition to being traumatized when molested as a child, but it is unlikely that we have a sense built into our bodies that distinguishes between acceptable and unacceptable genital touching before puberty. Again, any molestation that causes pain does not apply, we are considering only those cases of molestation which don't cause any physical pain.

If we somehow conclude that any given human does indeed react in a neurologically distinct way when touched on the genitals before puberty by an adult that isn't one of that human's parents, then certainly that sort of molestation would be out of the question. But at the risk of being far to graphic, the fact is that an infant or even a very young child would be largely incapable of distinguishing between grabbing a finger and grabbing an adult male genital. There is clearly nothing inherently evil about the foreskin of a male compared to the skin on his finger. The only difference is the adults intention, which children, or at least infants, are largely insensitive to. What then is the justification for not allowing pedophiles to come to our houses and have our infants reach out and grab their genitals as our infant's instincts would have them do?

It could be argued that children might be traumatized simply by being forced to do something that they do not want to do, and that is certainly likely. But does that mean that we should allow our children to be involved in sexual acts with adults if they are consenting? If we were to argue that children cannot consent, then we would have to ask "can they be non-consenting?" What we generally mean by saying that "children cannot consent." is that they can't consent responsibly because they lack the information to do so. This is granted, but they can simply consent. Children can be made to be the main actors in cases of molestation and even consensual sex. Again, at the risk of being far to graphic: it is not uncommon for one child to molest another, nor is it uncommon for young friends of the same gender to naively engage in games of a sexual nature. Even in the case of molestation from an adult to an infant: if the adult presents his/her genitals the infant will naturally grab. How this grabbing is to be distinguished by the infant from the thousands of other skin covered objects that he/she will grab through out his/her life remains a mystery to me.

Hypotheses:

Infants and children are not designed by evolution to avoid being involved in non-painful forms of sexual encounters which they are willing participants in. By "willing participant" all that is meant is not being forced to engage in the sexual act. The trauma that often follows sexual encounters with adults for children is caused by the reactions of the children's parents. There would be no trauma in the children if the parents and other role-models of said children saw sex with children as a routine part of growing up.

Experiments to Falsify:

(1): Take two appropriately large and randomized samples of infants and children. Have the control monitored by a brain imaging device while cleaned by their parents. Have the variable do the same only have researchers dressed in normal clothes do the cleaning as opposed to the parents. If there is a difference observed in the neurological behavior of these two groups which is larger than the difference between a group of children that are simply looking at their parents and looking at strangers, then there is likely a mechanism from birth which identifies sexual acts. All subjects must be sufficiently young so as to have no learned association with their genitals and sex.

(2): Find a closed population which has no concept of sex as a demonized act or of children as being too young to have sex with. Determine this by extensive interviews with the adult population designed to get them to be contradictory. After finding this population if it exists, show that the stability of those children which were involved in non-painful sexual acts with adults is lower than those children which were not involved. If this is accomplished it will suggest that the behaviors of parents of victims of molestation is not the source of the trauma caused in children after being molested.

Experiments to Verify:

(1): Setup the same control and variable as in (1) above. If we get the result that there is no significant difference between the neurological behavior of the control and the variable, then it becomes less likely that there is anything in children which allows them to tell the difference between non-painful acts of molestation, and cleaning of the genitals.

(2): Find a population as described in (2). Show that those individuals which engaged in sexual acts at a young age have no lower stability than those which did not. 

A Meme not a Gene:

If molestation is not inherently traumatic, why do we feel the need to protect our children from it? There are many possible reasons, but one of the most biological might be our jealousy. We are built to not let others have sex with loved ones, yes. But are we really biologically built to not let others have sex with our children? It'd be a strange adaptation to say the least. Why have children, and prevent them from reproducing? It might well be a side-effect of our evolved jealously. 

But more seems to be at play here then a confusion of jealousy. As my evidence for this I propose that you recall how salacious and downright offensive you found it when I mentioned that an infant would instinctively grab a genital if presented. It doesn't have to be your own infant in your mind to be repulsed by imagining the situation. It is a repulsive situation to imagine for almost anyone I have met that is not a pedophile, and even most pedophiles. If it is not our child we're imagining, just some random token child, and it is just some token child molester we are imagining, the image still repulses us greatly, which suggests that it does not come from biological design since our genetic fitness is not at all increased by worrying about the children of others.

We likely started demonizing pedophiles well after the development of language if the hypothesis stated above is correct. If trauma isn't caused in children from sexual acts with adults before learning about the taboo nature of sex, then it is likely the taboo nature of sex that causes such events to be traumatic. But sex is not taboo because of our genetic history, sex is taboo because of our memtic history.

Why the Meme is such a Success (Imagining Patient Zero):

Let's imagine a hypothetical culture which has demonized sex but doesn't really have an accepted attitude towards pedophiles. Suppose one parent catches another adult engaged in sexual behavior with his/her children. The parent, confused by and scared of sexual action, quickly pulls away the child while attacking the other adult and tells the child that he/she is not to do that anymore or go near that person. The child reacts negatively to this, now knowing that sex is demonic. We have all seen this sort of behavior before, if a child bumps his head and his/her parents say "Oh that's ok, come on, we gotta get going." in a lovely mommy voice the child is more likely to get up and keep on trucking. But if the parents react with "Oh God! Grab the ice pack, grab the ice pack!" yelling urgently, the child cries and may well act is if he/she is much more hurt than he/she really is.

When this hypothetical parent next sees his/her fellow parent friends he/she tells them of the event and how horrific it was for him/her, and how traumatic it was for his/her child. The other parents then warn their children of the strange man/woman that lured the first child and tell their own children never to go near that man/woman's house. The children of course need to find out why for themselves and go there anyway. Another child gets involved in acts of a sexual nature with the town pedophile. This catches the attention of a passerby, who by now knows of what goes on in that house, and how evil it is. This passerby alerts the others that it is happening again. At this point the town decides to do something about it. They lynch the pedophile. This becomes the talk of the town and of the local ruling government body.

Now all of the adults in the town know how to react to pedophilia: as if it would be a demonizing traumatic event for their children. Acting as such when one of their children is inevitably molested, causes that child to find it traumatic. News of the trauma it caused to the child spreads and the whole process is repeated, strengthening the believe that children become traumatized when molested. 

This thought experiment is likely not very much like what really happened to produce this meme in the first place. To actually understand how that happened we would have to trace the memetic evolution of our ancestors for much further than we have the ability to do now. But this hypothetical does at least give us a way of imagining how a belief like "Sexual acts with children and adults causes trauma in the children involved." might start off false and become truer as it becomes more widely accepted, and more widely accepted as it becomes truer. In the end holding that belief is going to cause more suffering in our children than if we didn't hold it provided the hypothesis above is correct. But we believe it anyway, and our moral judgements stray that way anyway, regardless of whether or not we have any benefit from the belief.

The true benefactor here is the meme itself. The meme of fearing and hating pedophiles need not be useful for us as a species, it needs only to be good at getting itself spread. Luckily for the meme, as it gets itself spread the belief associated with it becomes truer. This meme has a belief built in that is a self-fulfilling prophecy so that the more widespread the meme becomes the better its chances of replicating. It's a feedback loop, the meme predisposes us to act a certain way towards molested children, acting towards molested children this way makes them find the event traumatic, the observed trauma of the molested children enforces the meme.

Conclusion:

We can and do hold very basic moral attitudes as a culture which are completely unexamined. Even the most basic moral judgements that we make, like "pedophilia is wrong" are not on as firm of footing as we would like to believe them to be. But when we sharpen the issue and we are faced with the bluntness of the situation, things can become even more difficult. Our biases are very firmly rooted in us. Even I, who will tell you that I'm on the fence about the utility of demonizing pedophilia, am absolutely repulsed and ethically offended upon the thought of such an act. But I consider it important that we think sharply about the utility involved in such basic and unquestioned moral judgements and report our progress. If we find that those most basic moral judgements haven't been beneficial to us as a whole, we should start to wonder about whether or not ensuring utility really is the point of our moral system. Alternatively, our moral system might have little benefit to us and evolve only because it benefits the memes which it is. Our whole theory of ethics, might be the result of nothing more than the continued warfare of memes for our brains. Sometimes the memes convince us to adopt them by being beneficial, sometimes they just trick us into thinking they are right, and other times they make themselves true by the mere virtue of spreading themselves. This last class of memes we can call "self-proving memes" and it is this class of memes that the hypotheses above suggests the fearing and hating pedophiles meme belongs to. If that hypotheses is falsified by any of the suggested experiments or any other applicable experiment, we should still consider that the hypothesis has never even been suggested outside this text. Is this more likely because the hypotheses is so stupid, or because it is so rooted in us not to question such simple facts?