bramflakes

The soon-to-be-resigning Dominic Cummings, advisor to the Education Secretary of the Coalition government, has released a 250-page manifesto describing the problems of the British educational establishment ("the blob" in Whitehall parlance) and offering solutions. I post this here because both his analysis and recommendations are likely to be interesting to LW, in particular an increased emphasis on STEM, broader knowledge of the limits of human reasoning and how they relate to managing complex systems, an appreciation for "agenty"-ness in organizational leadership, whole-brain emulation, intelligence enhancement, recursive self-improving AGI, analysis of human interactions on a firm evolutionary-psychological basis, and a rejection of fashionable pseudoscientific theories of psychology and society. Relevant extracts: > This essay is aimed mainly at ~15-25 year-olds and those interested in more ambitious education and training for them. Not only are most of them forced into mediocre education but they are also then forced into dysfunctional institutions where many face awful choices: either conform to the patterns set by middle-aged mediocrities (don’t pursue excellence, don’t challenge bosses’ errors, and so on) or soon be despised and unemployed. Some of the ideas sketched here may help some to shape their own education and create their own institutions. As people such as Linus Torvald (Linux) or Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook) have shown, the young are capable of much more than the powerful and middle-aged, who control so many institutions, like to admit.2 A significant change in education and training could also help us partly ameliorate the grim cycle of predictable political dysfunction. > > Although it is generally psychologically unpleasant to focus on our problems and admit the great weaknesses of our institutions, including what we in politics and our leaders do not understand, it is only through honest analysis that progress is possible. As Maxwell said,