Monday, June 16
Daily News Stuff 16 June 2025
According To Keikaku Edition
According To Keikaku Edition
Top Story
- Why Johnny (class of '27) can't read. (Substack)
Only 5% of college English majors were able to understand the first seven paragraphs of Dickens' Bleak House.
Now it's understandable that someone might not fully grasp the specifics of social roles in 19th century England - at least not if they haven't read Dickens or Austen or other great authors of the period before - but it is worse than that.
Much worse.
Paragraph from Bleak House:As much mud in the streets, as if the waters had but newly retired from the face of the earth, and it would not be wonderful to meet a Megalosaurus, forty feet long or so, waddling like an elephantine lizard up Holborn Hill.
And here's the response. Note that this is from a college English major:[Pause.] [Laughs.] So it’s like, um, [Pause.] the mud was all in the streets, and we were, no . . . [Pause.] so everything’s been like kind of washed around and we might find Megalosaurus bones but he’s says they’re waddling, um, all up the hill
And this is when the students had access to freely look up anything with which they were unfamiliar.
Kowalski, analysis:Like this subject, most of the problematic readers were not concerned if their literal translations of Bleak House were not coherent, so obvious logical errors never seemed to affect them. In fact, none of the readers in this category ever questioned their own interpretations of figures of speech, no matter how irrational the results. Worse, their inability to understand figurative language was constant, even though most of the subjects had spent at least two years in literature classes that discussed figures of speech.
Full depressing article here.
Tech News
- By why male models? (arXiv)
Using AI for writing essays fries your brain.
But the above study is a year old and the students had all been in college for two years or more at the time, so that's probably not the full answer.
Edit: Turns out the above study (the first article, not this one) was originally conducted in 2015. So no, AI is not the answer. Their brains were already fried.
Their brains were already fried.
- Don't buy an RTX 4090; it's probably fake. (Tom's Hardware)
And expensive. Not a good combination.
- Could this city (Vienna) be the model for how to tackle the housing crisis and climate change? No. (NPR)
Apart from anything else - Vienna has a pretty mild climate most of the time, rarely getting very cold and never getting extremely hot - there's something more important hidden away in a footnote:About half of Vienna's 2 million residents live in social housing. Here, at Biotope City, the social housing has solar panels. Vienna is using social housing to cut greenhouse gases and help adapt to climate change.
It's a nice pod, but it's still a pod.
- Facebook's Llama 31 can recall 42% of the text of the Harry Potter novels if you prompt it with the text of the Harry Potter novels. (Understanding AI)
Yeah. How about that.
I think the author has been using too much AI and has progressed from the second article to the first.
Musical Interlude
Disclaimer: Why Genesis can't read.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at
06:41 PM
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1
On the one hand, reading comprehension is a behavior, and I am inclined to by default distrust behavior research.
On the other hand, it most definitely fits my preconceptions, and what I think are first principles guesses.
One of my key findings earlier, is that what communists and moderns describe as thinking, is often very different from what I consider to be thinking.
In thinking, I try to be a generalist (1), and I try to be able to do everything myself without communicating with anyone (2), or relying on anyone else's results.(2) The trades I make are in being wrong on all points some of the time, and some points all of the time, but having my own chain of sourcing or ensemble of models in case I'm being lied to beyond my ability to deduce. Being incorrect, especially on topics that are not pressing for my own decisions, is okay, but I do not want to lie to people. I see connects between ideas, and ways that some ideas can be used to test others.
Communists tend to define smart as saying the things that they currently politically think are correct, and to be constantly updating ideas individually to fit fashion. The key think is that they are not meant to do any complicated model thinking to evaluate ideas against each other. (Forex, engineering education clearly makes people more dangerous by way of equipping them better to make machines intended to cause harm (weapons.) If the poors are inclined to crime, and therefore do not need to buy firearms, why do they have any need to learn to read and to write? But, gun control is in fashion with communists, because they do not want individuals of the public to be able to protect themselves from wrong doing. Education 'access' is in fashion with communists, because they have turned primary, secondary, adn tertiary schools into instruments they use to cripple potential thinkers.)
(The problem with American education is many other things, but is also the communists. I'm having trouble finding sourcing on this that is not being misinterpretted by nutjobs.
But, US reading and math scores have been steady to declining in reading and math since Obama pushed in his racist, facist, insane common core program. (Minorities worst hit.) Much of the top search results for this are written up by education majors, and misunderstand the result to conclude that they need to double down harder on the same mistakes.)
Anyway, I have seen what I consider to be many examples of an opposite style of thinking from mine, and I do not consider it to be thinking.
I have for years thought that the public schools must be intentionally throwing out cripples, or Education majors must be very ill equipped to understand the object of their study.
(1) this is hard, and I pretty concistently make mistakes
(2) LOL, I suck.
On the other hand, it most definitely fits my preconceptions, and what I think are first principles guesses.
One of my key findings earlier, is that what communists and moderns describe as thinking, is often very different from what I consider to be thinking.
In thinking, I try to be a generalist (1), and I try to be able to do everything myself without communicating with anyone (2), or relying on anyone else's results.(2) The trades I make are in being wrong on all points some of the time, and some points all of the time, but having my own chain of sourcing or ensemble of models in case I'm being lied to beyond my ability to deduce. Being incorrect, especially on topics that are not pressing for my own decisions, is okay, but I do not want to lie to people. I see connects between ideas, and ways that some ideas can be used to test others.
Communists tend to define smart as saying the things that they currently politically think are correct, and to be constantly updating ideas individually to fit fashion. The key think is that they are not meant to do any complicated model thinking to evaluate ideas against each other. (Forex, engineering education clearly makes people more dangerous by way of equipping them better to make machines intended to cause harm (weapons.) If the poors are inclined to crime, and therefore do not need to buy firearms, why do they have any need to learn to read and to write? But, gun control is in fashion with communists, because they do not want individuals of the public to be able to protect themselves from wrong doing. Education 'access' is in fashion with communists, because they have turned primary, secondary, adn tertiary schools into instruments they use to cripple potential thinkers.)
(The problem with American education is many other things, but is also the communists. I'm having trouble finding sourcing on this that is not being misinterpretted by nutjobs.
But, US reading and math scores have been steady to declining in reading and math since Obama pushed in his racist, facist, insane common core program. (Minorities worst hit.) Much of the top search results for this are written up by education majors, and misunderstand the result to conclude that they need to double down harder on the same mistakes.)
Anyway, I have seen what I consider to be many examples of an opposite style of thinking from mine, and I do not consider it to be thinking.
I have for years thought that the public schools must be intentionally throwing out cripples, or Education majors must be very ill equipped to understand the object of their study.
(1) this is hard, and I pretty concistently make mistakes
(2) LOL, I suck.
Posted by: PatBuckman at Tuesday, June 17 2025 01:53 AM (rcPLc)
2
I saw that article on reading comprehension a while back. My opinion is that it's just the current state of the progression (or deterioration) of education in the USA.
In the introduction to Harlan Ellison's 1978 book, Strange Wine, he includes an anecdote from a high school teacher who noted that students preferred television shows to books "because they were more real." Questioning the students about this revealed that their vocabularies were deficient, and that they were not bothering to look up definitions of words they encountered that they didn't know. Instead, they were coming up with their own definitions on the fly. Thus, television was "more real" because they didn't have to make up the story themselves as they went along.
As for @PatBuckman's comment about education majors, I've seen studies that show students who major in education to be among the least academically capable (this is all I could find with a quick search: https://www.joshuakennon.com/sat-scores-ranked-by-intended-college-major-show-teachers-are-below-average/), and there have been news stories in the past about how even requirements that teachers know the subject matter they teach have been removed.
In the introduction to Harlan Ellison's 1978 book, Strange Wine, he includes an anecdote from a high school teacher who noted that students preferred television shows to books "because they were more real." Questioning the students about this revealed that their vocabularies were deficient, and that they were not bothering to look up definitions of words they encountered that they didn't know. Instead, they were coming up with their own definitions on the fly. Thus, television was "more real" because they didn't have to make up the story themselves as they went along.
As for @PatBuckman's comment about education majors, I've seen studies that show students who major in education to be among the least academically capable (this is all I could find with a quick search: https://www.joshuakennon.com/sat-scores-ranked-by-intended-college-major-show-teachers-are-below-average/), and there have been news stories in the past about how even requirements that teachers know the subject matter they teach have been removed.
Posted by: wheels at Tuesday, June 17 2025 03:25 AM (WHbFG)
3
I asked my (mensa) wife one day what Aristophanes's "The Frogs" was about. She said , "Frogs."
Posted by: normal at Tuesday, June 17 2025 08:16 AM (XUcVo)
4
Big if true.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Tuesday, June 17 2025 10:14 AM (PiXy!)
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