What if I told you that you that I had a reform proposal that would give us nearly all of the same benefits we gain from spending on Medicine and Education in First World Nations but for half of the cost? While this is a radical and bold course of action that would require substantial political capital to acheive, I’m not as madly optimistic as to expect the funding freed up to be spend on Efficient Charity or Existential Risk Mitigation (that is what Altruistic Piracy is for). Even slightly lower taxes resulting in higher economic growth lifting more people out of misery is not the expected result. I do expect it to be spent on things with some sorts of returns and that this is on net very good. I should remind you that even for the most inane use with some positive value you can expect pretty drastic net effects, these are not small numbers after all, developed countries usually spend more than 10% of their GDP on Healthcare and over 5% on Education. How many trillions is that for the entire Western world?
Certainly enough to buy mountains of non dead Third World babies if that’s your thing. So are you ready to hear my reform proposal?
Cut societal spending on Medicine and Education by half.
One reason that people believe Hanson’s claim that half of US money spent on medicine is wasted is that other First World Nations spend half as much per person. You seem to imply that Hanson claims that France wastes half of its spending and the US 3⁄4. He certainly does not do that explicitly.
The link “Gregory Cochran on Education” is actually by Henry Harpending (the other really is Cochran). As Harpending concedes in the comments, he really is missing something and this is not at all evidence of waste.
The link “Gregory Cochran on Education” is actually by Henry Harpending (the other really is Cochran).
Thank you for the correction.
As Harpending concedes in the comments, he really is missing something and this is not at all evidence of waste.
If you want to see evidence of waste of our spending on education all you need to do is look at the data, judging in it education at the very least on the university level seems to be a positional good. Moving down the ladder to high school even very basic things like Algebra or foreign languages don’t pass the cost benefit test. See Bryan Caplan’s writing on related matters.
Moving even lower I’ve made the argument elsewhere that we probably don’t even need obligatory primary school to maintain acceptable levels of literacy. Now my opinion on acceptable levels is basically 85%+, since I think that the current “literacy” numbers of 97%+ in the first world are bullshit at least in terms of functional literacy anyway and that in the absence of public schooling the smart fraction’s actual literacy in systems like that of Colonial America seems to have been better than today anyway. The primary function of public school is indoctrination and teaching children how to accept terrible work place conditions anyway. I say we could do pretty well with less of both today.
The link was more me provoking people to a discussion than a full argument. I’m writing a series of articles on this matter where I will make it.
Arguably, mandatory algebra is a good idea because it may be difficult to identify career-algebra-users in advance, and they may have a disproportionately large positive impact on society relative to their numbers.
I also seem to recall something about taking a high school algebra class improving one’s thinking skills (even if you don’t do well, apparently), but I haven’t been able to find the cite for that.
Here in America we like to maintain the illusion that everyone’s cognitive ability is equal and with the right education the playing field will be level. This is indeed false, but I do wonder if it’s a useful illusion. I’ve noticed that reading research relieving me of this illusion has caused me to become less empathetic and more cynical. Another reason to promote this illusion: research on fixed vs growth mindsets.
since I think that the current “literacy” numbers of 97%+ in the first world are bullshit at least in terms of functional literacy anyway and that in the absence of public schooling the smart fraction’s actual literacy in systems like that of Colonial America seems to have been better than today anyway.
The fact that many of the best selling books of all time were published a long time ago should be no surprise even without the supposition that people used to be more literate. The number of books published back then was much, much smaller. A book’s distribution is likely to be better when it’s one book out of seven to come out that year, rather than one book out of three thousand.
Note that the link you provided doesn’t even attempt to argue that literacy rates were as high back then as they are now, it acknowledges the opposite.
Note that the link you provided doesn’t even attempt to argue that literacy rates were as high back then as they are now, it acknowledges the opposite.
Funny I don’t recall arguing about that there. I was talking about the literacy of the smart fraction. To quote from the link:
In the extensive NAAL survey, only 13% of adults attained this level. Thus, the proportion of Americans today who are able to understand Common Sense (13%) is smaller than the proportion that bought Common Sense in 1776 (20%).
It seems proportionally more Americans bought Common Sense than could understand it today properly according to the educational metric given. Now people buying material they can’t understand for various reasons isn’t that uncommon and of course the inference we draw from a particular survey may be problematic for various reasons. But the sheer size of the proportion is pretty striking and decent evidence that literacy among clever people was at the very least not much worse than today and was plausibly perhaps even better.
Yes, but he reaches that conclusion on extremely tenuous grounds.
“search, comprehend, and use information from continuous texts,” is categorized into four levels: below basic, basic, intermediate, and proficient. Proficient, the highest level, is defined as “reading lengthy, complex, abstract prose texts as well as synthesizing information and making complex inferences.” As an example of this level of performance, they cite comparing the viewpoints in two texts. This level seems to be roughly the level required to read Common Sense.
Seems on what basis? You don’t have to be able to make complex inferences to be able to read Common Sense. Ideally, you should be at this reading level in order to make informed opinions based on complicated political texts, but then, you should also be at this level in order to try and parse the Bible, and readership of that certainly isn’t restricted to the ‘Proficient’ category. I can certainly attest that one hundred percent of any of my English classes in high school could have read Common Sense and written an essay on the content, many of them would simply have been uninsightful and full of regurgitated cached thoughts.
Besides, Payne was following the usual standards of writing of his day. Literate people of the time got used to text that was dense and relatively opaque compared to most writing today, because that’s how people were taught to write. Many people in modern audiences can’t parse Shakespeare, and Shakespeare performed for the lower classes of his time, we’ve simply moved past the point when the modes of communication he used were current.
I would not regard this as “decent evidence” that literacy among clever people was at least as high then as today. Peer and political pressure can easily account for people buying a text that’s above their reading proficiency. You could just as easily say that the higher proportions of families today which own their own bibles (books were expensive, many families didn’t have their own, Common Sense was just a pamphlet) means literacy levels today are higher. I would regard this as extremely tenuous evidence on which to claim that “the smart fraction’s actual literacy in systems like that of Colonial America seems to have been better than today anyway.”
You make a potent counterexample with the Bible, upvote.
Besides, Payne was following the usual standards of writing of his day. Literate people of the time got used to text that was dense and relatively opaque compared to most writing today, because that’s how people were taught to write. Many people in modern audiences can’t parse Shakespeare, and Shakespeare performed for the lower classes of his time, we’ve simply moved past the point when the modes of communication he used were current.
I think the difference is at least in part that literacy was more limited, so material made for the lowest common denominator ended up shooting for a higher target than that produced in eras of wider media consumption.
The link was more me provoking people to a discussion than a full argument. I’m writing a series of articles on this matter where I will make it.
I’m not complaining that you didn’t make a full argument, I’m complaining that the Harpending link was worthless. It would be better if you had omitted it. Provoking people with bullshit does not suggest that you are interested in the truth. At least Harpending has the humility to admit when he is wrong. Like you, he assumed that if he drew an example at random it would support his case, but he had the humility when presenting it to ask for analysis of the particular case. The fact that he and you are wrong in the belief that randomly pulling examples supports you is evidence that you are overconfident.
If you are familiar with the literature you know this is basically true.
Well, if you are familiar with the literature, why not cite a survey or something? After the Harpending example, why should I trust your description of the literature? But thanks for the links in this comment.
Actually, I like simple arguments like Cochran’s much more than the education research literature. Mainly I distrust it because it is politicized and incompetent, but on this particular point, I imagine that most of the (US) literature is worthless because (US) schools lie about their spending. It is widely known that poor urban districts have larger budgets per student than rich suburban districts, but this is an illusion because suburban buildings are off budget, especially in the richest districts. Probably some of the literature, like the nameless commenter, isolates instructional spending, which is a much more reasonable comparison, in addition to evading the deceit.
I imagine that most of the (US) literature is worthless because (US) schools lie about their spending
I’ve finally had time to read that interesting and long paper. It is strong to call most of the US literature worthless because of those points, it gives your argument much more weight than I previously thought it had. Thank you for sharing it!
I see you ignored the Caplan links. Regardless I really should give extensive references from the literature. I will do so in the articles which I will likely publish on the matter in my new blog and will share links here.
Your reply makes it clear to me that I used too harsh a tone.
I was hoping to solicit your comment on Caplan’s particular arguments rathern than to flaunt your lack of comment on them as some kind of counter point to the points you touched on, which it obviously isn’t. If I have offended please accept my apologies.
There’s a serious conditioning problem in responding at greater length to bad arguments than to good arguments.
I am generally sympathetic to your position on both education and healthcare, so I don’t think I have much to learn by engaging with it, at least not with this kind of evidence. As I complain below, Caplan does not propose anything. I may engage elsewhere with your vague proposal.
As to the particular Caplan articles. Yes, foreign language instruction in the US is a disaster and should be dropped, or narrowed or something, but I don’t believe that the comparison to Europe is pure revealed preference. As to Algebra 1, meh. He talks in terms of cost-benefit comparison, but doesn’t offer any alternatives. If the purpose of school is babysitting, teaching conscientiousness, or IQ testing, then it doesn’t matter much what subjects you teach. Maybe if math is more unpleasant than other subjects, that’s a strike against it, but he describes foreign language as also painful.
If I were making micro-changes to the US curriculum, I might require several years of math without requiring any particular level for graduation. I think that there is a serious problem of people moving on without understanding the prerequisites. If you want to get people out of school earlier, then, sure, a lot of them shouldn’t reach Algebra 1.
Whether the study Caplan cites is a good measure of the benefit of the class depends on what you think the purpose of the class is, which depends on what you think the purpose of school is. But I certainly don’t think school is very consciously designed around any goal, let alone the three I suggest, so, yes, it could achieve these goals better, or at least more cheaply.
he really is missing something and this is not at all evidence of waste.
To quote a different commenter:
The jury has been in for decades on spending; it simply doesn’t make a difference. So when you see spending so conspicuously out of whack, you don’t expect Wyoming to be better, you ask what is different about Wyoming.
If you are familiar with the literature you know this is basically true.
I am not familiar with the literature on education, but there’s a matter of causal inference that I do feel able to comment on, if only hypothetically.
The quoted assertion that the amount spent made little difference does not follow from the fact that Wyoming spends twice as much as Utah for similar results. One cannot conclude absence of causation from absence of correlation alone, without considering confounding factors. One such factor was mentioned by another commenter there, already referenced by the commenter you quoted: the population of Wyoming is much more rurally scattered. This would make even the same education cost more to provide.
To take a limiting and hypothetical case, if every school is aiming to reach a certain uniform standard, the better they actually succeed at that by varying their expenditure, the less visible dependence there will be between educational expenditure and educational results.
If I emigrated to Alaska, I expect I would have to spend much more on heating my house than I do at present. But my indoor temperatures would end up much the same. That does not mean that the extra money I spent was wasted. It just means that it is colder in Alaska.
What if I told you that you that I had a reform proposal that would give us nearly all of the same benefits we gain from spending on Medicine and Education in First World Nations but for half of the cost? While this is a radical and bold course of action that would require substantial political capital to acheive, I’m not as madly optimistic as to expect the funding freed up to be spend on Efficient Charity or Existential Risk Mitigation (that is what Altruistic Piracy is for). Even slightly lower taxes resulting in higher economic growth lifting more people out of misery is not the expected result. I do expect it to be spent on things with some sorts of returns and that this is on net very good. I should remind you that even for the most inane use with some positive value you can expect pretty drastic net effects, these are not small numbers after all, developed countries usually spend more than 10% of their GDP on Healthcare and over 5% on Education. How many trillions is that for the entire Western world?
Certainly enough to buy mountains of non dead Third World babies if that’s your thing. So are you ready to hear my reform proposal?
Cut societal spending on Medicine and Education by half.
Great “Charity” Storm by Robin Hanson
Hanson on Medicine
Henry Harpending on Education
Gregory Cochran
One reason that people believe Hanson’s claim that half of US money spent on medicine is wasted is that other First World Nations spend half as much per person. You seem to imply that Hanson claims that France wastes half of its spending and the US 3⁄4. He certainly does not do that explicitly.
The link “Gregory Cochran on Education” is actually by Henry Harpending (the other really is Cochran). As Harpending concedes in the comments, he really is missing something and this is not at all evidence of waste.
Thank you for the correction.
If you want to see evidence of waste of our spending on education all you need to do is look at the data, judging in it education at the very least on the university level seems to be a positional good. Moving down the ladder to high school even very basic things like Algebra or foreign languages don’t pass the cost benefit test. See Bryan Caplan’s writing on related matters.
Moving even lower I’ve made the argument elsewhere that we probably don’t even need obligatory primary school to maintain acceptable levels of literacy. Now my opinion on acceptable levels is basically 85%+, since I think that the current “literacy” numbers of 97%+ in the first world are bullshit at least in terms of functional literacy anyway and that in the absence of public schooling the smart fraction’s actual literacy in systems like that of Colonial America seems to have been better than today anyway. The primary function of public school is indoctrination and teaching children how to accept terrible work place conditions anyway. I say we could do pretty well with less of both today.
The link was more me provoking people to a discussion than a full argument. I’m writing a series of articles on this matter where I will make it.
Arguably, mandatory algebra is a good idea because it may be difficult to identify career-algebra-users in advance, and they may have a disproportionately large positive impact on society relative to their numbers.
I also seem to recall something about taking a high school algebra class improving one’s thinking skills (even if you don’t do well, apparently), but I haven’t been able to find the cite for that.
Here in America we like to maintain the illusion that everyone’s cognitive ability is equal and with the right education the playing field will be level. This is indeed false, but I do wonder if it’s a useful illusion. I’ve noticed that reading research relieving me of this illusion has caused me to become less empathetic and more cynical. Another reason to promote this illusion: research on fixed vs growth mindsets.
The fact that many of the best selling books of all time were published a long time ago should be no surprise even without the supposition that people used to be more literate. The number of books published back then was much, much smaller. A book’s distribution is likely to be better when it’s one book out of seven to come out that year, rather than one book out of three thousand.
Note that the link you provided doesn’t even attempt to argue that literacy rates were as high back then as they are now, it acknowledges the opposite.
Funny I don’t recall arguing about that there. I was talking about the literacy of the smart fraction. To quote from the link:
It seems proportionally more Americans bought Common Sense than could understand it today properly according to the educational metric given. Now people buying material they can’t understand for various reasons isn’t that uncommon and of course the inference we draw from a particular survey may be problematic for various reasons. But the sheer size of the proportion is pretty striking and decent evidence that literacy among clever people was at the very least not much worse than today and was plausibly perhaps even better.
Yes, but he reaches that conclusion on extremely tenuous grounds.
Seems on what basis? You don’t have to be able to make complex inferences to be able to read Common Sense. Ideally, you should be at this reading level in order to make informed opinions based on complicated political texts, but then, you should also be at this level in order to try and parse the Bible, and readership of that certainly isn’t restricted to the ‘Proficient’ category. I can certainly attest that one hundred percent of any of my English classes in high school could have read Common Sense and written an essay on the content, many of them would simply have been uninsightful and full of regurgitated cached thoughts.
Besides, Payne was following the usual standards of writing of his day. Literate people of the time got used to text that was dense and relatively opaque compared to most writing today, because that’s how people were taught to write. Many people in modern audiences can’t parse Shakespeare, and Shakespeare performed for the lower classes of his time, we’ve simply moved past the point when the modes of communication he used were current.
I would not regard this as “decent evidence” that literacy among clever people was at least as high then as today. Peer and political pressure can easily account for people buying a text that’s above their reading proficiency. You could just as easily say that the higher proportions of families today which own their own bibles (books were expensive, many families didn’t have their own, Common Sense was just a pamphlet) means literacy levels today are higher. I would regard this as extremely tenuous evidence on which to claim that “the smart fraction’s actual literacy in systems like that of Colonial America seems to have been better than today anyway.”
You make a potent counterexample with the Bible, upvote.
I think the difference is at least in part that literacy was more limited, so material made for the lowest common denominator ended up shooting for a higher target than that produced in eras of wider media consumption.
I’m not complaining that you didn’t make a full argument, I’m complaining that the Harpending link was worthless. It would be better if you had omitted it. Provoking people with bullshit does not suggest that you are interested in the truth. At least Harpending has the humility to admit when he is wrong. Like you, he assumed that if he drew an example at random it would support his case, but he had the humility when presenting it to ask for analysis of the particular case. The fact that he and you are wrong in the belief that randomly pulling examples supports you is evidence that you are overconfident.
Well, if you are familiar with the literature, why not cite a survey or something? After the Harpending example, why should I trust your description of the literature? But thanks for the links in this comment.
Actually, I like simple arguments like Cochran’s much more than the education research literature. Mainly I distrust it because it is politicized and incompetent, but on this particular point, I imagine that most of the (US) literature is worthless because (US) schools lie about their spending. It is widely known that poor urban districts have larger budgets per student than rich suburban districts, but this is an illusion because suburban buildings are off budget, especially in the richest districts. Probably some of the literature, like the nameless commenter, isolates instructional spending, which is a much more reasonable comparison, in addition to evading the deceit.
I’ve finally had time to read that interesting and long paper. It is strong to call most of the US literature worthless because of those points, it gives your argument much more weight than I previously thought it had. Thank you for sharing it!
It is very useful to get people to make extensive responses, which can be pretty educational.
I don’t think I was randomly pulling examples.
I see you ignored the Caplan links. Regardless I really should give extensive references from the literature. I will do so in the articles which I will likely publish on the matter in my new blog and will share links here.
You see what you want to see.
Your reply makes it clear to me that I used too harsh a tone.
I was hoping to solicit your comment on Caplan’s particular arguments rathern than to flaunt your lack of comment on them as some kind of counter point to the points you touched on, which it obviously isn’t. If I have offended please accept my apologies.
There’s a serious conditioning problem in responding at greater length to bad arguments than to good arguments.
I am generally sympathetic to your position on both education and healthcare, so I don’t think I have much to learn by engaging with it, at least not with this kind of evidence. As I complain below, Caplan does not propose anything. I may engage elsewhere with your vague proposal.
As to the particular Caplan articles. Yes, foreign language instruction in the US is a disaster and should be dropped, or narrowed or something, but I don’t believe that the comparison to Europe is pure revealed preference. As to Algebra 1, meh. He talks in terms of cost-benefit comparison, but doesn’t offer any alternatives. If the purpose of school is babysitting, teaching conscientiousness, or IQ testing, then it doesn’t matter much what subjects you teach. Maybe if math is more unpleasant than other subjects, that’s a strike against it, but he describes foreign language as also painful.
If I were making micro-changes to the US curriculum, I might require several years of math without requiring any particular level for graduation. I think that there is a serious problem of people moving on without understanding the prerequisites. If you want to get people out of school earlier, then, sure, a lot of them shouldn’t reach Algebra 1.
Whether the study Caplan cites is a good measure of the benefit of the class depends on what you think the purpose of the class is, which depends on what you think the purpose of school is. But I certainly don’t think school is very consciously designed around any goal, let alone the three I suggest, so, yes, it could achieve these goals better, or at least more cheaply.
So what is it that I want to see?
To quote a different commenter:
If you are familiar with the literature you know this is basically true.
I am not familiar with the literature on education, but there’s a matter of causal inference that I do feel able to comment on, if only hypothetically.
The quoted assertion that the amount spent made little difference does not follow from the fact that Wyoming spends twice as much as Utah for similar results. One cannot conclude absence of causation from absence of correlation alone, without considering confounding factors. One such factor was mentioned by another commenter there, already referenced by the commenter you quoted: the population of Wyoming is much more rurally scattered. This would make even the same education cost more to provide.
To take a limiting and hypothetical case, if every school is aiming to reach a certain uniform standard, the better they actually succeed at that by varying their expenditure, the less visible dependence there will be between educational expenditure and educational results.
If I emigrated to Alaska, I expect I would have to spend much more on heating my house than I do at present. But my indoor temperatures would end up much the same. That does not mean that the extra money I spent was wasted. It just means that it is colder in Alaska.