he keeps harping on what kids “want” to do. kids dont “want” to do
much of anything at the age where music education is compulsory. i
honestly dont understand what hes getting at.
Basically whenever someone like this expresses any kind of concern about people in Group X being “forced” to do something, I just mentally replace “Group X” with “I/me.”
I'll put on my conspiracy hat for a minute and notice that there's a range of activities that rationalist-adjacent people seem to particularly insist are useless for "general cognition" (among them, playing music, speaking several languages, etc.) and coincidentally certain "low-IQ" populations seem to be very good at them.
Not saying RH himself is a sour grapes HBDer, but he sure provides arguments for other HBDers to rationalize the sour grapes, and some of RH's replies exemplify my thinking
Am I wrong that they are generally disnterested in learning foreign languages? I used to read several blogs from thar circle and now that I think about it their attitude was dismissive.
Yeah I remember them posting a flurry of papers about how speaking several languages doesn't provide cognitive benefits. Regardless of the usually atrocious design that comes with psychology experiments (they "tested" their hypothesis by giving aptitude tests to a hundred or so Swedish sixty-years-olds before and after giving them a few Italian lessons), I don't really care whether it's true or not, the point is the sort of motivated reasoning. I'm bad at a thing and I have to admit groups I deem inferior seem to be good at the thing, so the thing must be useless for cognition and not worth my time investing into.
I'll leave the task of finding more 'things' as an exercise for the reader.
also theres the underlying assumption that we should only teach things that improve cognition, as if there are no skills that are useful in their own right.
The worst part is that the argument makes absolutely no sense.
Just because something doesn't improve cognition, doesn't mean it can't be a marker of good cognition.
To use an example these so called 'rationalists' love, lets take IQ tests. Not even rationalists are going to argue that taking an IQ test makes a person smarter, but they base a lot of their beliefs on high IQ scores indicating advanced cognition. There's no reason musical skill or multilingualism couldn't be used as markers of advanced cognition, even if the actual act of learning those skills doesn't improve cognition.
fortunately, we can disprove this - someone in the comments asks if the same argument can be applied to math
https://mobile.twitter.com/its_adamneely/status/1294314999826067458
and robin says it can be
https://mobile.twitter.com/robinhanson/status/1294425216735739905
this should throw out your observation this is about 'playing music/languages/etc' lol
Well if you lose money in a scam you also get a good story to tell your friends. From a certain perspective this means scams are just business transactions that exchange money for experience, bit like a theme park.
My parents forced me to play piano. I didn’t like it at all and every day was a struggle to get me to practice. I barely remember how to play nowadays. Of course, the reason I hated piano was because I was interested in other instruments (drums), and I kept asking my parents if I could do those instead, but they didn’t want me to “give up on things too easily”....
Anyway, I bring this up because it wasn’t the music aspect I hated, it was the lack of choice in how I got exposed to it. As most every human likes music, most kids would love the opportunity to explore different instruments and music-making techniques, even if it doesn’t end up being their ultimate passion in life. I certainly appreciate my parents for trying to expand my horizons, I just wish I had more agency In the matter.
do you not find it ironic that robin hanson is saying, literally, that he thinks kids should do music if they want to, and not just applying it to music - if you look further in the comments, he applies this to math too - he's for kid agency
Idk, I think his initial statement was poorly worded and gave the impression that music education is wasted on any kid who’s not a fucking prodigy (or for any subject, really), which it’s not. Forcing a child to play piano every day for hours on end is different than having music classes in schools.
So, the conversation ended up about that instead of questioning the efficacy and humanity of “Tiger parents”.
“You see, once the Basilisk has gathered up all musicians and melted
them into their base components, it will be able to quantify Music and
produce the objectively perfect song, thus closing this short chapter of
history.”
Cw: transphobia
Anna being [a transvestigator](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EfSFcpGXYAA29Wi?format=jpg&name=large) doesnt suprise me at all.
E: lol even twitter thinks anna is far right, the more tweets thing just shows me racist tweets. Strasserism...
I don't want to pollute sc with a thread, but what's the deal with Anna K and the redscare pod in general? Is there more to it than 'contrarians on ketamine'? I get they sound more fun to have an evening with than the rationalist gang but how in hell is their pod raking in so much money?
Posting this under my alt since you could easily dox me with this
link, but I wrote a song a couple years ago that’s sort of about arguing
with bad faith pseudo-intellectuals and it seems appropriate to post
now, enjoy?
It’s nice to see him get dragged when he has a bad take (which is
very often), unlike some other rationalists who seem to cultivate a
complete echo chamber.
I’d say he has no music in his soul, but, well, you know.
he keeps harping on what kids “want” to do. kids dont “want” to do much of anything at the age where music education is compulsory. i honestly dont understand what hes getting at.
“You see, once the Basilisk has gathered up all musicians and melted them into their base components, it will be able to quantify Music and produce the objectively perfect song, thus closing this short chapter of history.”
He really is a complete philistine, to an extent that verges on parody.
sooomeonnneee got cucked by a guitarist,
[deleted]
This is so depressing
Posting this under my alt since you could easily dox me with this link, but I wrote a song a couple years ago that’s sort of about arguing with bad faith pseudo-intellectuals and it seems appropriate to post now, enjoy?
It’s nice to see him get dragged when he has a bad take (which is very often), unlike some other rationalists who seem to cultivate a complete echo chamber.