sorry gang. this piece as emailed had some text left over beyond what was intended to be the last meme about diversity hires. was going to add that to the piece but decided to break it out as a separate topic to be addressed later.
Hey Cat, your (and other Stackers too) regular free posting has thoroughly disproven that "you get what you pay for" means low quality.
Keep'em coming, they're always a good read, no matter if one agree with claims or not, and partaking of quality writing despite differences of opinion is by far more enjoyable than is partaking of confirmation bias-social network echo chamber-whatever it's called in any form.
I noticed and don't care. Great piece. I would like so see capitalization though, I find I lose the context sometimes due to not seeing the beginning of new sentence, even with the periods.
Any time an artist gets too focused on form the creative beauty is lost. Dhalgren felt like 'anti-art' at a certain point. I made my self suffer by finishing it, thought I 'had to' read it, ya know? I was young and thought this was part of developing myself. All it developed in me was a revulsion with any self-conscious art.
Capitalization? What's that? As you can see from the grammar test, we are busy learning very important stuff. Maybe they teach that in graduate school.
Is the absence of capital letters a nod to the archie and mehitabel comics created by newspaperman Don Marquis? The premise the was that a cockroach, however literary, had no ability to depress the shift key.
Gato, love your work but you're off on this one. The second section is in fact weighted. Harder questions are worth more than easier questions, and it's mathematically impossible to get an 800 on either section if you test into the "dumb kids second half."
You're not wrong that it still ultimately compresses the range.
Is what you are saying is that the first section is static and is the data which the adaptive second section is based upon? And if the second section is adaptive, why would it have a 'dumb kids second half' versus adaptive questions based on the test taker exact responses question by question? Is it just a decision tree or is there something more exotic going on?
Cat Man Du - "you cannot validate credentials by nerfing the tests to get them and rigging the tests for objective reality will not change that reality one whit"
The beginning of the end? What is substitution of NRT norm related for CRT criterion related grading systems. The bell curve destroyed education and this corrosive plan was initiated decades ago Mr Mulder.
that's actually a really interesting and massively multifactoral question.
many in the black community refused the shot likely as a result of (well founded) longstanding mistrust of government programs around health.
many in the middle has school and work requirements to get the jab and thus got a lot more pressure to do it.
but at the high end, many with PhD's etc also ha much lower jab rates as they could see what junk the data was and understood ideas like "you cannot have a vaxx against a virus that mutates like this" in the life sciences and biotech industries (places i know an awful lot of people) uptake for the jab was really low. people were incredibly skeptical of it and the data. (doctors, on the other hand, took it in droves. draw your own conclusions there...)
it's a really complex set of data with a lot of cross currents.
I work in the pharmaceutical industry. Nothing shocked me more than the rush by my colleagues -- including MDs, PhDs, and many with both -- to get this shot. One told me how she wept with joy when she got her first shot. The biopharm industry went hard for shot mandates.
I would add that individuals who have experienced side effects of any vaccine or medication were likely to be more wary. Mule-like stubbornness is in there too...
It became glaringly obvious to me that raw intelligence without a balance of common sense and intellectual curiosity set many bright people up for the Pied Piper.
I did take the SAT but in the early '70's you "just did it" to go to college, which, of course was a waste of time, paying people (for the most part) to strut their stuff and say essentially nothing. I left college, started typing as a receptionist and although I had to end an abusive marriage (drugs)... I cared for my child and was offerred promotion to project manager for a much larger company within less than 10 years in a completely unrelated field. I am "white" (imagine that!) I was against mandated vax from the start because of my own sensitivity to vaccines, medication in general and lost a lot of supposed friends and even some family. So SAT... waste of time, vax... if you want to likely destroy your life knowingly.
I work in the information security industry, a subset of broader tech, which we all know is fairly far on the left. Anecdotally, the ones that _didn't_ take the shot among my circle are generally those that are the more independent workers -- those that don't need micromanaging or coddling.
The ones that did? They're the interchangeable cogs, the ones without the free-thinking creative streak. They still trust authority for some reason unknown to me, which is incredibly odd in this space given the basic premise of all information security is to never trust any data that has not been explicitly validated by you.
most are just dummies who take their cue from the MSM...er ventriloquist. They can switch out "dummies"...but the show is still run by the same "persons".
Here's my 2 cents (FWIW, HAHA). I retired from Los Alamos Lab as a tech. Los Alamos has the highest concentrations of Ph.D.s of any non-university city. The Ph.D.s there were very compliant getting the shots and, woe to her who did not have one and questioned the narrative. These were the retired Ph.D.s I know, not the ones still working who were mandated to get the shots. Yeah, complex with cross currents.
An acquaintance who is a tech PhD and really smart said he thought MRNA was cool and took it because of that. Never underestimate the power of propaganda and peer pressure. Or maybe he lied and took the vaccine to keep his job but did not want to admit it.
Don’t forget the black celebrity (actually can’t remember the name lol) who publicly stated early on that the vaxx would make a man’s balls fall off. I think that had a tremendous influence in the black community.
I don't know about the SAT per se (virtually everyone in our state takes it) but I have noted among friends and colleagues that those with degrees, especially advanced degrees, have largely had common sense educated out of them. Tradesmen have to solve real-world problems and utilize logic to do it even if they haven't been specifically trained in the rules of logic.
Yes, I think almost everyone in our state takes the SAT, too.
Back in the day, only those planning to go to college/university took it, but now it is forced upon nearly all students as part of the "everyone can and needs to go to college/university" mentality. Almost every school district - and maybe state board of education - has a mission statement that includes something like "every student will graduate high school prepared to enter a 4-year college/university."
So comparing "took the SAT" with "took the shots" as 'tired old grey mare' did really doesn't mean anything.
Well. I did take the test many many many moons ago, and got a 720 in English and 430 in math, which was an extremely accurate assessment of my capabilities, but I never needed a test to educate me on that and proceeded to use my instincts everywhere.
Because the higher the IQ, the more vested interest in the staus quo you have, and the more conformist to the current social normative paradigm you are.
High IQ-people are the most easily fooled: they know they are smarter, therefore no-one can fool them easily, therefore they need not look for someone trying to, since most others are less intelligent and therefore less able to fool them.
Which means they fool themselves in advance.
Speaking of The Shot (I feel it needs capitalisation), have you looked at the Uppsala-study from 2023? Vulgarising/summarising their findings, one could say that the higher the IQ (and attendant education, career, income, fitting into society-factor and so on) the more likely a person was to take The Shot.
Back in the 60s, I was IQ tested and declared to be 'gifted' - thus cementing my outsider status. Maybe I was fooled about some things. With the current state of the human race, it's hard not to be fooled by something.
But not by the covid 'jab'/'shot' or the rest of that madness.
I only had to read the abstract and the start of the Introduction of that study to realise that they had their heads in their arses, as we would like to say.
"1. Introduction
The primary policy tool to end the COVID-19 pandemic in most Western countries was to achieve a high vaccination rate as quickly as possible (
Randolph and Barreiro 2020
; ( (say what?)
Sridhar and Gurdasani 2021
). While many individuals took the first opportunity to get vaccinated, others were slower, and a non-negligible share refrained vaccination, thus putting both themselves and others at an unnecessary risk of severe COVID-19 infection. This suggests that a one-size-fits-all approach, such as the information-based opt-in vaccination strategy adopted in many countries, was effective in that it resulted in a high and prompt vaccination rate in a large share of the population. However, it also suggests that it was ineffective for a smaller, but still substantial part of the population.
Just read that second part again, and realise that they are going to argue against giving people information to help them make a choice.
The abstract is also a doozy
"Abstract
We examine the relationship between cognitive ability and prompt COVID-19 vaccination using individual-level data on more than 700,000 individuals in Sweden. We find a strong positive association between cognitive ability and swift vaccination, which remains even after controlling for confounding variables with a twin-design.
The results suggest that the complexity of the vaccination decision may make it difficult for individuals with lower cognitive abilities to understand the benefits of vaccination.
Consistent with this, we show that simplifying the vaccination decision through pre-booked vaccination appointments alleviates almost all of the inequality in vaccination behavior."
"Our findings also imply that if everyone got vaccinated as quickly as individuals with a high cognitive ability, the pandemic would likely have ended earlier, with fewer lives lost and with lower costs for society."
In recent weeks, I have had two very high-IQ friends tell me that they think Kamala Harris has brought a breath of fresh air to American democracy and the election, and that they like CNN because it still does real journalism.
Rickard, so funny you mentioned this. Three of my family/friends, brag about their high SAT scores, impressive careers, and homes - as well as their perpetual covid booster jabs. But they don’t brag the fact they continue to get covid a few times each year. One PhD friend lives with her mom, (who was home battling covid) so she goes down to CVS to get another booster. WTF is wrong with these “geniuses”??
This question reminded me of a GK Chesterton essay called The Common Man. This quote nails it, “And the actual catastrophes we have suffered, including those we are now suffering, have not in historical fact been due to the prosaic practical people who are supposed to know nothing, but almost invariably to the highly theoretical people who knew that they knew everything. The world may learn. by its mistakes; but they are mostly the mistakes of the learned.”
It's not just raw intelligence, it's also a question of character, upbringing and attitude towards authority. I don't know you from Adam (and I don't know him either!), but I guess because you are visiting this site that you have some stubborn characteristics that make you question things more than those around you.
I grew up under communism, and my experience is that intellectuals who fit into the political status quo are cowards. Like my folks who trembled before the PTB lest they lose their comfortable and well liked perch.
Those who remain mavericks... take dares, and make up their own mind.
Doing well in school generally requires being a good follower, and good followers are more likely to do what authority figures in government tell them to do. Becoming a doctor, in particular, means many many years of doing exactly what you're supposed to do. They are trained for this mindset in fact.
Those who are or think they are *too smart*, ego, book smart or both, lose any common sense they might of once had by never resorting to using it, has been my observation.
No kidding. Back in the 60's, the Nuns were drilling this kind of stuff as early as 2nd grade. But then they didn't care if our feelings were hurt when we made a mistake. I guess we're all damaged goods now.
Exactly. I remember taking tests like this in grade school in the seventies. I would have aced it in the 3rd or 4th grade. Anyone still struggling with tests like these in my middle school would have been placed in remedial classes
I took 10+ years off from Petroleum Engineering & taught high school Math in a large suburban school. This is anecdotal, but I think no more than 25% of my students had any business attending college. It's time to turn off the taxpayer funded student loan spigot. Unless the student is after a real degree. Because the taxpayers are interested in a return on their investment. The bell curve analysis is OUTSTANDING!
I taught as an adjunct at a community college. I think you’re probably overestimating the number of people who should be in college. This is what happens though when government money gets involved. I complained to the department administration that maybe we needed some minimum standards for my classes (advanced computer art courses) and they told me they didn’t care if the students failed or not. They just wanted the federal dollars. Not exaggerating.
I had students that needed functional living, who were mentally challenged and unstable, who had outbursts and screamed at other students, one who threatened me and found out I was the *wrong* person to screw with, and several who had their mothers bringing them to class. These students were given federal financial aid including Pell grants and stafford loans to attend class in a program that has little market- which is why I wound up going back to school for accounting. I caught a glimpse of one girl’s loan balance for the program - $27k ($35k in today’s dollars). For something that isn’t getting you a job. Your tax dollars at work.
I taught community college in two different US states in the 90s and then again around 2017. Whew, the students had changed. a whole lot Emotional outbursts. Some had an excessive sense of entitlement. Tears in the classroom because one was afraid of using a computer - despite my ever-so-patient and non-judgemental attitude.
The community college I worked for looked at students as a profit centre. I tried to advocate for them, but got tired of bashing my head against a brick wall.
My advice to parents: Don't send your kids to college/university. Help them figure out something they want to do - hopefully a useful skill, even as 'lowly' as growing food - and I am a gardener. Young people need to find a niche where they belong. You don't have to mortgage your future to do that. Be creative. Avoid getting in debt with an organisation that thinks of you and your kids as profit centre.
I live in Switzerland, a boringly sensible country, and we still have the old system where only a small percentage of students go to college. Everyone else is catered for with a wide range of apprenticeships and training schemes to help them find their niche. It's not perfect, but it seems to work, and there is no sociable stigma about not going to college.
I live in the French part, Ryan, and haven't spent much time over in Swiss Germany. However, I agree - amazing scenery. Have a great time and go easy on the cheese!
Med Schools are feeling it now on their Step 2 tests. They converted Step 1 to pass fail. But the Step 2 is still a grim reaper for diversity students.
Yet the diversity med students will still be rewarded with plum residencies and fellowships due to DEI. As long as they are required to "practice" in diversity communities, that would be more than "fair." It would be just.
Reagan said the most terrifying 7 words you could ever hear were, "I'm from the government and I'm here to help." These have been replaced by "Shaqueena and Latifa now have the controls"
As you have said many times, we are entering a new era of trust economy. I have discouraged my kids from going to college until they have really tried to succeed in the world. The metrics for hiring are going to change dramatically; I suspect they already have. If my kids apply for an entry level position with real upward mobility (rather than retail-type teen jobs), I’m just going to tell them to type “HOMESCHOOLED” in 64 pt font and hand it over.
Another flashing neon indicator of civilizational collapse.
Add in a thoroughly debauched currency, a hopelessly corrupt bureaucracy, an ineffective and completely compromised press, ruined law enforcement, two-tier justice, an unserious and unprepared military, and a degraded government that no longer even bothers with the veneer of legitimacy or fiscal responsibility and you get late-Soviet rule by criminals at best, complete chaos at worst.
Yep. Schools often do a lousy job of imparting knowledge to kids, let alone skills, but probably the worst casualty on the curriculum is history teaching. History is now lumped in with geography as humanities or social science, and the curriculum is heavily politicised. In the schools I have contacts with - and these are private ones - the only history the kids get is how evil white people were (and are). A people that doesn't know its own history or the history of how civilisations wax and wane is doomed. The only one you missed out, Lon, was sexual perversion. Acceptance and celebration of that is a massive indicator of the approaching end.
I scored mediocre on my SAT exam. My nursing board exam was good old fashioned pen and paper which I passed the first time 😅. My highest degree is a masters in nursing education. My skills at being a critical care nurse were critical thinking and clinical judgment. When it came to the COVID gene therapy, I assessed the data , listened to supposed experts state natural immunity was “no longer a thing”, and realized “the science “ had lost its fucking mind!
I watched many so called intelligent and unintelligent people run to be injected with an experimental technology. They were brainwashed. I think the interesting research is not so much on intelligence but the ability to withstand peer pressure or brainwashing or mass psychosis (whatever you want to call it). Those are the people who, when the shit went down, were drawn to each other, and unified against a common denominator and I’m guessing it’s a pretty diverse group (at least it was at the protest rally in DC January 2022!)
I’ll say the things that I’m seeing in sophomore college students are an inability to multiply a number x2 in their head, an inability to pronounce medical terminology, and an inability to read an analog clock! College is not for everyone!
[Part of a sentence right after Jeff's picture got eaten.]
Well, the good news is that really smart kids without the need for social validation will go to trades schools and end up owning their bosses' companies within five years of graduating. Everyone else is fucked.
First and foremost, thank you for all that you do, I have been reading your Substack for years now, and I love your work. Pretty much all of it resonates for me.
This is my first time commenting, but I just had to share because this article hit very close to home. I have home-schooled both of my children for the entirety of their schooling (my daughter is now 21, and my son is 17 and he just graduated a year early). My son plays high level hockey, and decided he should take his SAT's in the hopes of playing college hockey. Having a score is helpful for scholarships. My daughter didn't feel the need to take these tests, and is doing very well for herself, so this was my first experience shoving one of my kids into this testing la-la land.
My son signed up to take the June 1st test because he wanted to be done with everything else first, and give himself time to "study." That didn't happen, he finished high school close to the beginning of May and got busy with other things. He proceeded to study the evening before the test, taking the pretest first (he did this on his on-line login that was required to take the actual test). He received a 1320 on it, finishing at about 10pm at night, and then stayed up too late studying the English portion to hopefully get a better score on it. Math is his strength. I have no clue if they adapted the actual test to this pretest, they had sent several emails to us for it, pushing that he take it beforehand. They were very pushy, and I wouldn't put anything past the school systems. Who knows.
The next morning he headed off early. Took the first portion of this digital adaptive test that he said was way too easy (our state, New Mexico, has one of the worst school systems in country). Had a ten minute break. And sat down for the second portion. Just like with the pretest, the second portion became exponentially more difficult. Needless to say, after very little studying and not enough sleep, he ended up with a 1280. 93% percentile in our state. 90% in the USA....I put no significance on this stuff. I home-schooled my children because I have no faith in the system. Never have. This is just the data they came back to us with. Could he have studied a little harder and done better, possibly. I do feel it helps to give a very real situation to back your data, and thought you and your readers may find a first hand story intriguing. He said that second portion had questions that were seriously hard on it, and who knows what those questions were or what level of math and english they jumped to. No excuses on our end, but he definitely seemed to fall into the exact category you are speaking about in your article.
They are definitely messing with our children to create a safe space and justify DEI. The proof is in the pudding. Would my kid have scored higher with the paper test? Absolutely. FYI, he is a white boy that didn't choose his skin color, but has certainly worked extremely hard at everything he puts his mind to. My heart breaks for him in this society, but I am extremely proud watching him push past all of the bs and succeed anyway.
Please comment more often, Stephanie. That was very instructive. All the best to your boy. I'm sure he'll make it despite the challenges our crazy society throws in his way.
Thank you guys! It has been a long, long time that I have gotten myself into the middle of posting anywhere (I haven't been on social media in probably almost 10 years now). But I love this community on Substack, so you just might see me more often...we shall see.
A friend sent me a test for 8th graders from over a hundred years ago. We would have failed. There is a problem with money in our education—too much of it is going to the wrong people.
Had a cashier get stuck when I presented 51 and change for a 11 and change order. She later exclaimed, "you must be good with numbers." Me: "I'm only a PARTIAL product of the California educational system. The rest is from out of state."
So, how long did the deer in the headlights look last? 🤣😂🤣
About 30 years ago I went Christmas shopping with my Mom. She wanted my help buying some toys for my sons. She paid the Walmart cashier with six $50 Bill's. Then the fun ensued. We let her struggle for a minute or so, then I helped her. Taught her to count by 50's. Although I don't think she understood what I was saying. She trusted us & entered $300 into the register, & we were on our way. My Mom is 88 years old. We laugh every Christmas at the funny tale of "The 6-$50 Bills" 🤘😎🤘
That's a leptokurtotic distribution if my recollection of statistics isn't faulty. Be clear, the purpose of this change to the standardized tests is to help the universities avoid the scrutiny and punishment of the courts. Numerous legal cases have found discrimination in admission standards at universities and colleges and the universities know they have been caught discriminating based on race and sex. The court rulings make it harder for them to continue to do so, although they are figuring out how to get around the new rules.
But jinking the test? That fixes 'the problem' upstream from university acceptance process. So now they can claim to be unbiased, lol. Don't panic though, universities have been discriminating against white and Asian men for decades and favoring minorities and women. This only changes things by degree, it's just a new sort of 'cover' for their social project.
In other words, equity. No matter how knowledgeable or dumb you are, we should all get the same score, or close to it. Nobody at the top tiers would support this. Which can only mean...
sorry gang. this piece as emailed had some text left over beyond what was intended to be the last meme about diversity hires. was going to add that to the piece but decided to break it out as a separate topic to be addressed later.
bad editing on my part.
"bad editing on my part."
No problem, adaptive editing... you still get an A+
Hey Cat, your (and other Stackers too) regular free posting has thoroughly disproven that "you get what you pay for" means low quality.
Keep'em coming, they're always a good read, no matter if one agree with claims or not, and partaking of quality writing despite differences of opinion is by far more enjoyable than is partaking of confirmation bias-social network echo chamber-whatever it's called in any form.
If that makes sense?
I noticed and don't care. Great piece. I would like so see capitalization though, I find I lose the context sometimes due to not seeing the beginning of new sentence, even with the periods.
Just be grateful that Gato doesn't do a full e e cummings and drop punctuation as well.
Not as bad as Delany’s Dhalgren…I lost my taste for experimental writing long ago.
I have never read it. I'll keep it off my list.
Any time an artist gets too focused on form the creative beauty is lost. Dhalgren felt like 'anti-art' at a certain point. I made my self suffer by finishing it, thought I 'had to' read it, ya know? I was young and thought this was part of developing myself. All it developed in me was a revulsion with any self-conscious art.
Yep. That's hard to read.
Capitalization? What's that? As you can see from the grammar test, we are busy learning very important stuff. Maybe they teach that in graduate school.
Is the absence of capital letters a nod to the archie and mehitabel comics created by newspaperman Don Marquis? The premise the was that a cockroach, however literary, had no ability to depress the shift key.
Yes and neither does a cat. It’s a clever, funny feature we have all grown to love about Gato ❤️
Excepting of course "CAPITALS AT LAST" in the archie and mehitabel compendium
Na no way to caps, it’s his stick mang
It's a "tool". A handy one...that I use myself, at times, to communicate with my employees.
It surprising no one ever considers that.
The rate that you put forth incredibly detailed and cogent posts requires the occasional error. Don’t sweat it.
Gato, love your work but you're off on this one. The second section is in fact weighted. Harder questions are worth more than easier questions, and it's mathematically impossible to get an 800 on either section if you test into the "dumb kids second half."
You're not wrong that it still ultimately compresses the range.
Is what you are saying is that the first section is static and is the data which the adaptive second section is based upon? And if the second section is adaptive, why would it have a 'dumb kids second half' versus adaptive questions based on the test taker exact responses question by question? Is it just a decision tree or is there something more exotic going on?
go to your room!
Still, this was great.
Cat Man Du - "you cannot validate credentials by nerfing the tests to get them and rigging the tests for objective reality will not change that reality one whit"
The beginning of the end? What is substitution of NRT norm related for CRT criterion related grading systems. The bell curve destroyed education and this corrosive plan was initiated decades ago Mr Mulder.
Did you fail your Standardized CAT test, El?
Riddle me this cat…why is it that people who probably never took sat were also the least likely to take the shot?
that's actually a really interesting and massively multifactoral question.
many in the black community refused the shot likely as a result of (well founded) longstanding mistrust of government programs around health.
many in the middle has school and work requirements to get the jab and thus got a lot more pressure to do it.
but at the high end, many with PhD's etc also ha much lower jab rates as they could see what junk the data was and understood ideas like "you cannot have a vaxx against a virus that mutates like this" in the life sciences and biotech industries (places i know an awful lot of people) uptake for the jab was really low. people were incredibly skeptical of it and the data. (doctors, on the other hand, took it in droves. draw your own conclusions there...)
it's a really complex set of data with a lot of cross currents.
I work in the pharmaceutical industry. Nothing shocked me more than the rush by my colleagues -- including MDs, PhDs, and many with both -- to get this shot. One told me how she wept with joy when she got her first shot. The biopharm industry went hard for shot mandates.
I would add that individuals who have experienced side effects of any vaccine or medication were likely to be more wary. Mule-like stubbornness is in there too...
Yes
It became glaringly obvious to me that raw intelligence without a balance of common sense and intellectual curiosity set many bright people up for the Pied Piper.
Yes.
I did take the SAT but in the early '70's you "just did it" to go to college, which, of course was a waste of time, paying people (for the most part) to strut their stuff and say essentially nothing. I left college, started typing as a receptionist and although I had to end an abusive marriage (drugs)... I cared for my child and was offerred promotion to project manager for a much larger company within less than 10 years in a completely unrelated field. I am "white" (imagine that!) I was against mandated vax from the start because of my own sensitivity to vaccines, medication in general and lost a lot of supposed friends and even some family. So SAT... waste of time, vax... if you want to likely destroy your life knowingly.
I work in the information security industry, a subset of broader tech, which we all know is fairly far on the left. Anecdotally, the ones that _didn't_ take the shot among my circle are generally those that are the more independent workers -- those that don't need micromanaging or coddling.
The ones that did? They're the interchangeable cogs, the ones without the free-thinking creative streak. They still trust authority for some reason unknown to me, which is incredibly odd in this space given the basic premise of all information security is to never trust any data that has not been explicitly validated by you.
most are just dummies who take their cue from the MSM...er ventriloquist. They can switch out "dummies"...but the show is still run by the same "persons".
Here's my 2 cents (FWIW, HAHA). I retired from Los Alamos Lab as a tech. Los Alamos has the highest concentrations of Ph.D.s of any non-university city. The Ph.D.s there were very compliant getting the shots and, woe to her who did not have one and questioned the narrative. These were the retired Ph.D.s I know, not the ones still working who were mandated to get the shots. Yeah, complex with cross currents.
An acquaintance who is a tech PhD and really smart said he thought MRNA was cool and took it because of that. Never underestimate the power of propaganda and peer pressure. Or maybe he lied and took the vaccine to keep his job but did not want to admit it.
Interestingly, he did not like masks.
Don’t forget the black celebrity (actually can’t remember the name lol) who publicly stated early on that the vaxx would make a man’s balls fall off. I think that had a tremendous influence in the black community.
Because good old fashion horsesense is earned through the experience of separating hay from horseshit.
⬆️⬆️⬆️⬆️⬆️⬆️⬆️🎯🎯🎯
I don't know about the SAT per se (virtually everyone in our state takes it) but I have noted among friends and colleagues that those with degrees, especially advanced degrees, have largely had common sense educated out of them. Tradesmen have to solve real-world problems and utilize logic to do it even if they haven't been specifically trained in the rules of logic.
Yes, I think almost everyone in our state takes the SAT, too.
Back in the day, only those planning to go to college/university took it, but now it is forced upon nearly all students as part of the "everyone can and needs to go to college/university" mentality. Almost every school district - and maybe state board of education - has a mission statement that includes something like "every student will graduate high school prepared to enter a 4-year college/university."
So comparing "took the SAT" with "took the shots" as 'tired old grey mare' did really doesn't mean anything.
this is true. the point is to maladapt so that they are more dependent on government. it starts with student loans.
we might just adapt our species into extinction.
Well. I did take the test many many many moons ago, and got a 720 in English and 430 in math, which was an extremely accurate assessment of my capabilities, but I never needed a test to educate me on that and proceeded to use my instincts everywhere.
Because the higher the IQ, the more vested interest in the staus quo you have, and the more conformist to the current social normative paradigm you are.
High IQ-people are the most easily fooled: they know they are smarter, therefore no-one can fool them easily, therefore they need not look for someone trying to, since most others are less intelligent and therefore less able to fool them.
Which means they fool themselves in advance.
Speaking of The Shot (I feel it needs capitalisation), have you looked at the Uppsala-study from 2023? Vulgarising/summarising their findings, one could say that the higher the IQ (and attendant education, career, income, fitting into society-factor and so on) the more likely a person was to take The Shot.
Link, in case you care to have a gander:
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhealeco.2023.102802
Back in the 60s, I was IQ tested and declared to be 'gifted' - thus cementing my outsider status. Maybe I was fooled about some things. With the current state of the human race, it's hard not to be fooled by something.
But not by the covid 'jab'/'shot' or the rest of that madness.
I only had to read the abstract and the start of the Introduction of that study to realise that they had their heads in their arses, as we would like to say.
"1. Introduction
The primary policy tool to end the COVID-19 pandemic in most Western countries was to achieve a high vaccination rate as quickly as possible (
Randolph and Barreiro 2020
; ( (say what?)
Sridhar and Gurdasani 2021
). While many individuals took the first opportunity to get vaccinated, others were slower, and a non-negligible share refrained vaccination, thus putting both themselves and others at an unnecessary risk of severe COVID-19 infection. This suggests that a one-size-fits-all approach, such as the information-based opt-in vaccination strategy adopted in many countries, was effective in that it resulted in a high and prompt vaccination rate in a large share of the population. However, it also suggests that it was ineffective for a smaller, but still substantial part of the population.
Just read that second part again, and realise that they are going to argue against giving people information to help them make a choice.
The abstract is also a doozy
"Abstract
We examine the relationship between cognitive ability and prompt COVID-19 vaccination using individual-level data on more than 700,000 individuals in Sweden. We find a strong positive association between cognitive ability and swift vaccination, which remains even after controlling for confounding variables with a twin-design.
The results suggest that the complexity of the vaccination decision may make it difficult for individuals with lower cognitive abilities to understand the benefits of vaccination.
Consistent with this, we show that simplifying the vaccination decision through pre-booked vaccination appointments alleviates almost all of the inequality in vaccination behavior."
Let's correct the inequality! jaja
and later on this gem
"Our findings also imply that if everyone got vaccinated as quickly as individuals with a high cognitive ability, the pandemic would likely have ended earlier, with fewer lives lost and with lower costs for society."
based on what exactly?
Their imagination, I think.
In recent weeks, I have had two very high-IQ friends tell me that they think Kamala Harris has brought a breath of fresh air to American democracy and the election, and that they like CNN because it still does real journalism.
😳🤯🙄
Rickard, so funny you mentioned this. Three of my family/friends, brag about their high SAT scores, impressive careers, and homes - as well as their perpetual covid booster jabs. But they don’t brag the fact they continue to get covid a few times each year. One PhD friend lives with her mom, (who was home battling covid) so she goes down to CVS to get another booster. WTF is wrong with these “geniuses”??
Very well evaluated. Thank you. It seems then, that it is possible to just be too intelligent.
So, I really am a square peg in a round hole. 🤔 Does that mean I'm thinner than I think, to fit that odd shaped hole?
This question reminded me of a GK Chesterton essay called The Common Man. This quote nails it, “And the actual catastrophes we have suffered, including those we are now suffering, have not in historical fact been due to the prosaic practical people who are supposed to know nothing, but almost invariably to the highly theoretical people who knew that they knew everything. The world may learn. by its mistakes; but they are mostly the mistakes of the learned.”
excellent!
I took the ACT (alternative to SAT back in the 70s). Got good score. Went to university. Went on to get a masters degree.
Never got the shot. Watch those stereotypes, please.
It's not just raw intelligence, it's also a question of character, upbringing and attitude towards authority. I don't know you from Adam (and I don't know him either!), but I guess because you are visiting this site that you have some stubborn characteristics that make you question things more than those around you.
I grew up under communism, and my experience is that intellectuals who fit into the political status quo are cowards. Like my folks who trembled before the PTB lest they lose their comfortable and well liked perch.
Those who remain mavericks... take dares, and make up their own mind.
🙌👍
Doing well in school generally requires being a good follower, and good followers are more likely to do what authority figures in government tell them to do. Becoming a doctor, in particular, means many many years of doing exactly what you're supposed to do. They are trained for this mindset in fact.
It's pretty remarkable how many of the great male inventors and pioneers either never went to school or hated it and flunked.
Maybe I have ADHD. 🤔
Those who are or think they are *too smart*, ego, book smart or both, lose any common sense they might of once had by never resorting to using it, has been my observation.
My missus has 2 Degrees, and Masters and PhD.
But she cannot tie her own shoelaces . . .
I know there's one and probably more, well, well known, highly intelligent buisness entrepreneur who admittedly took the jab...
"...pretending this is college work instead of middle-school..."
Sorry, but this was grade school level grammar for me.
When I was teaching in a public school in the 90s, we would have expected our kids to know this in 4th grade, at least.
No kidding. Back in the 60's, the Nuns were drilling this kind of stuff as early as 2nd grade. But then they didn't care if our feelings were hurt when we made a mistake. I guess we're all damaged goods now.
Yeah, like Grade 4...
Exactly. I remember taking tests like this in grade school in the seventies. I would have aced it in the 3rd or 4th grade. Anyone still struggling with tests like these in my middle school would have been placed in remedial classes
I took 10+ years off from Petroleum Engineering & taught high school Math in a large suburban school. This is anecdotal, but I think no more than 25% of my students had any business attending college. It's time to turn off the taxpayer funded student loan spigot. Unless the student is after a real degree. Because the taxpayers are interested in a return on their investment. The bell curve analysis is OUTSTANDING!
I taught as an adjunct at a community college. I think you’re probably overestimating the number of people who should be in college. This is what happens though when government money gets involved. I complained to the department administration that maybe we needed some minimum standards for my classes (advanced computer art courses) and they told me they didn’t care if the students failed or not. They just wanted the federal dollars. Not exaggerating.
I had students that needed functional living, who were mentally challenged and unstable, who had outbursts and screamed at other students, one who threatened me and found out I was the *wrong* person to screw with, and several who had their mothers bringing them to class. These students were given federal financial aid including Pell grants and stafford loans to attend class in a program that has little market- which is why I wound up going back to school for accounting. I caught a glimpse of one girl’s loan balance for the program - $27k ($35k in today’s dollars). For something that isn’t getting you a job. Your tax dollars at work.
I taught community college in two different US states in the 90s and then again around 2017. Whew, the students had changed. a whole lot Emotional outbursts. Some had an excessive sense of entitlement. Tears in the classroom because one was afraid of using a computer - despite my ever-so-patient and non-judgemental attitude.
The community college I worked for looked at students as a profit centre. I tried to advocate for them, but got tired of bashing my head against a brick wall.
My advice to parents: Don't send your kids to college/university. Help them figure out something they want to do - hopefully a useful skill, even as 'lowly' as growing food - and I am a gardener. Young people need to find a niche where they belong. You don't have to mortgage your future to do that. Be creative. Avoid getting in debt with an organisation that thinks of you and your kids as profit centre.
You're forgetting how pampered today's students are. Those outbursts and crying jags could just be them trying to manipulate you to get their way.
$35k to feed the student's ego.
I live in Switzerland, a boringly sensible country, and we still have the old system where only a small percentage of students go to college. Everyone else is catered for with a wide range of apprenticeships and training schemes to help them find their niche. It's not perfect, but it seems to work, and there is no sociable stigma about not going to college.
You live in Switzerland?!
We're heading there next week for the third time. We're going to stay in gimmevald overlooking the lauterbrunnen valley.
We love it there. God's country...
I live in the French part, Ryan, and haven't spent much time over in Swiss Germany. However, I agree - amazing scenery. Have a great time and go easy on the cheese!
Med Schools are feeling it now on their Step 2 tests. They converted Step 1 to pass fail. But the Step 2 is still a grim reaper for diversity students.
Waiting to weed them out until later in the process makes them more money.
They use ChatGPT and AI for questions to improve their score
As expected.
Yet the diversity med students will still be rewarded with plum residencies and fellowships due to DEI. As long as they are required to "practice" in diversity communities, that would be more than "fair." It would be just.
Reagan said the most terrifying 7 words you could ever hear were, "I'm from the government and I'm here to help." These have been replaced by "Shaqueena and Latifa now have the controls"
And what's the outcome of these foolish policies/practices? :
Destruction of purpose, production, principles AND pride...the good kind.
This is a stew for prejudice...the bad kind.
It's only "prejudice" if one PRE-judges. If an individual does not measure up or meet standards, that's simply REALITY and just cause for rejection.
To be clear I not supporting dumbing down tests
Yeah. I know
As you have said many times, we are entering a new era of trust economy. I have discouraged my kids from going to college until they have really tried to succeed in the world. The metrics for hiring are going to change dramatically; I suspect they already have. If my kids apply for an entry level position with real upward mobility (rather than retail-type teen jobs), I’m just going to tell them to type “HOMESCHOOLED” in 64 pt font and hand it over.
Homeschoolers are my best employees at my restaurant.
That's good to hear, Josh.
Upward mobility is killed in most of the jobs.
It is a wise man who said that there is no greater inequality than the equal treatment of unequals.
Felix Frankfurter
Another flashing neon indicator of civilizational collapse.
Add in a thoroughly debauched currency, a hopelessly corrupt bureaucracy, an ineffective and completely compromised press, ruined law enforcement, two-tier justice, an unserious and unprepared military, and a degraded government that no longer even bothers with the veneer of legitimacy or fiscal responsibility and you get late-Soviet rule by criminals at best, complete chaos at worst.
The implosion is not long off.
Yep. Schools often do a lousy job of imparting knowledge to kids, let alone skills, but probably the worst casualty on the curriculum is history teaching. History is now lumped in with geography as humanities or social science, and the curriculum is heavily politicised. In the schools I have contacts with - and these are private ones - the only history the kids get is how evil white people were (and are). A people that doesn't know its own history or the history of how civilisations wax and wane is doomed. The only one you missed out, Lon, was sexual perversion. Acceptance and celebration of that is a massive indicator of the approaching end.
This. There is no better cautionary tale than history.
Perhaps that's why the educational system avoids it these days?...
I scored mediocre on my SAT exam. My nursing board exam was good old fashioned pen and paper which I passed the first time 😅. My highest degree is a masters in nursing education. My skills at being a critical care nurse were critical thinking and clinical judgment. When it came to the COVID gene therapy, I assessed the data , listened to supposed experts state natural immunity was “no longer a thing”, and realized “the science “ had lost its fucking mind!
I watched many so called intelligent and unintelligent people run to be injected with an experimental technology. They were brainwashed. I think the interesting research is not so much on intelligence but the ability to withstand peer pressure or brainwashing or mass psychosis (whatever you want to call it). Those are the people who, when the shit went down, were drawn to each other, and unified against a common denominator and I’m guessing it’s a pretty diverse group (at least it was at the protest rally in DC January 2022!)
I’ll say the things that I’m seeing in sophomore college students are an inability to multiply a number x2 in their head, an inability to pronounce medical terminology, and an inability to read an analog clock! College is not for everyone!
Inability to get from point A to point B without a smartphone... in their hometown.
Your reply is OUTSTANDING, but your last sentence is EPIC!
See if they can understand military time. 😏
😂🤣😂🤣
Mrs. "the Knife"
[Part of a sentence right after Jeff's picture got eaten.]
Well, the good news is that really smart kids without the need for social validation will go to trades schools and end up owning their bosses' companies within five years of graduating. Everyone else is fucked.
see pinned comment
Why do the hard work of actually teaching and requiring effort from students when you can simply change the scores? This is a genius move! /s
In all seriousness, if the ACTs are smart, they will allow the College Board to self sabotage themselves and take greater share.
First and foremost, thank you for all that you do, I have been reading your Substack for years now, and I love your work. Pretty much all of it resonates for me.
This is my first time commenting, but I just had to share because this article hit very close to home. I have home-schooled both of my children for the entirety of their schooling (my daughter is now 21, and my son is 17 and he just graduated a year early). My son plays high level hockey, and decided he should take his SAT's in the hopes of playing college hockey. Having a score is helpful for scholarships. My daughter didn't feel the need to take these tests, and is doing very well for herself, so this was my first experience shoving one of my kids into this testing la-la land.
My son signed up to take the June 1st test because he wanted to be done with everything else first, and give himself time to "study." That didn't happen, he finished high school close to the beginning of May and got busy with other things. He proceeded to study the evening before the test, taking the pretest first (he did this on his on-line login that was required to take the actual test). He received a 1320 on it, finishing at about 10pm at night, and then stayed up too late studying the English portion to hopefully get a better score on it. Math is his strength. I have no clue if they adapted the actual test to this pretest, they had sent several emails to us for it, pushing that he take it beforehand. They were very pushy, and I wouldn't put anything past the school systems. Who knows.
The next morning he headed off early. Took the first portion of this digital adaptive test that he said was way too easy (our state, New Mexico, has one of the worst school systems in country). Had a ten minute break. And sat down for the second portion. Just like with the pretest, the second portion became exponentially more difficult. Needless to say, after very little studying and not enough sleep, he ended up with a 1280. 93% percentile in our state. 90% in the USA....I put no significance on this stuff. I home-schooled my children because I have no faith in the system. Never have. This is just the data they came back to us with. Could he have studied a little harder and done better, possibly. I do feel it helps to give a very real situation to back your data, and thought you and your readers may find a first hand story intriguing. He said that second portion had questions that were seriously hard on it, and who knows what those questions were or what level of math and english they jumped to. No excuses on our end, but he definitely seemed to fall into the exact category you are speaking about in your article.
They are definitely messing with our children to create a safe space and justify DEI. The proof is in the pudding. Would my kid have scored higher with the paper test? Absolutely. FYI, he is a white boy that didn't choose his skin color, but has certainly worked extremely hard at everything he puts his mind to. My heart breaks for him in this society, but I am extremely proud watching him push past all of the bs and succeed anyway.
Please comment more often, Stephanie. That was very instructive. All the best to your boy. I'm sure he'll make it despite the challenges our crazy society throws in his way.
Excellent comment and insights. It would be great to hear from you more often.
What a great post. I don't see any problems for your son, especially if he treats life like a hockey game.
Thank you guys! It has been a long, long time that I have gotten myself into the middle of posting anywhere (I haven't been on social media in probably almost 10 years now). But I love this community on Substack, so you just might see me more often...we shall see.
Good luck to your boy!
A friend sent me a test for 8th graders from over a hundred years ago. We would have failed. There is a problem with money in our education—too much of it is going to the wrong people.
And no one but homeschoolers teaching about how use, save and prosper with money
Had a cashier get stuck when I presented 51 and change for a 11 and change order. She later exclaimed, "you must be good with numbers." Me: "I'm only a PARTIAL product of the California educational system. The rest is from out of state."
So, how long did the deer in the headlights look last? 🤣😂🤣
About 30 years ago I went Christmas shopping with my Mom. She wanted my help buying some toys for my sons. She paid the Walmart cashier with six $50 Bill's. Then the fun ensued. We let her struggle for a minute or so, then I helped her. Taught her to count by 50's. Although I don't think she understood what I was saying. She trusted us & entered $300 into the register, & we were on our way. My Mom is 88 years old. We laugh every Christmas at the funny tale of "The 6-$50 Bills" 🤘😎🤘
Her: What does partial mean?
My wife has had a similar experience - and we're not in the USA.
The girl at the counter was adding up the goods of the customer in front of my wife, and the store had a "30% off everything".
The girl proceeded to add the "30% off" with every good. . .
🙄 Ugh!
That's a leptokurtotic distribution if my recollection of statistics isn't faulty. Be clear, the purpose of this change to the standardized tests is to help the universities avoid the scrutiny and punishment of the courts. Numerous legal cases have found discrimination in admission standards at universities and colleges and the universities know they have been caught discriminating based on race and sex. The court rulings make it harder for them to continue to do so, although they are figuring out how to get around the new rules.
But jinking the test? That fixes 'the problem' upstream from university acceptance process. So now they can claim to be unbiased, lol. Don't panic though, universities have been discriminating against white and Asian men for decades and favoring minorities and women. This only changes things by degree, it's just a new sort of 'cover' for their social project.
"Leptokurtotic distribution". I'm saving that term for my next work meeting.
While your at it, throw in 'orthogonal'.
In other words, equity. No matter how knowledgeable or dumb you are, we should all get the same score, or close to it. Nobody at the top tiers would support this. Which can only mean...
The inmates are running the asylum.
Equality = equality of opportunity; Equity = equality of outcome. We are here.
This is the stuff Mark Cuban says isn't happening.