I love the xkcd book vibes of this post.

Incidentally, female chimps seem to live 25% longer than males—imagine human women lived until 90 while men died at 71.

Arithmetic error? both 71*1.25 and 71.5*1.25 to the nearest integer are 89, not 90. The error might (low-confidence, 10%) have been caused by calculating a 12.5% increase of 80 (exactly 90) and also dividing 80 by 1.125 (~71.1).

Why? Links appreciated.

There are some positive feedback loops in school that cause gaps in ability between students in a subject to widen. There are also some negative feedback loops (e.g., intervention), but the net effect is still the gap widening. Therefore, the system's behavior is chaotic (small differences in students' abilities eventually lead to big differences). If this is true, it means that some variation between students' successes is extremely difficult to predict.

Three examples of these positive feedback loops:

Suppose that Student A has less knowledge in a particular subject and is therefore performing worse than Student B in that subject. Then, it is likelier than not that:

• If A and B put the same effort into studying, B is positively reinforced for the studying more frequently and more intensely than A.
• When A studies the subject, the information is going to be more quickly forgotten than when B studies.
• The act of studying the subject becomes more aligned with B's self-concept than with A's self-concept.

(ergo B studies more than A)

I have low confidence in this model, but I could not come up with a simple, testable prediction that the model makes.

I would agree that the vibe is off.

A

typo?

It naturally follows that Eliezer Yudkowsky is so smart he can simulate himself and his environment.

Eliezer Yudkowsky never makes a rash decision; he thinks carefully about the consequences of every thought he has.