flâneur

Scott Langille

47 followers · 30 following · 1954 views

on the atlas — 107

highlights — 165

  • Burnout is one such unbounded downside risk, so I look very carefully for the signs — primarily pessimism, defensiveness and a lack of agency.
    Do Thing, Do One Thing
  • Just as inviting people over forces you to clean up your apartment, writing something that other people will read forces you to think well. So it does matter to have an audience.
    The Age of the Essay
  • Defending a position may be a necessary evil in a legal dispute, but it's not the best way to get at the truth, as I think lawyers would be the first to admit. It's not just that you miss subtleties this way. The real problem is that you can't change the question.
    The Age of the Essay
  • building systems with memory, where every pull request teaches the system, every bug becomes a permanent lesson, and every code review updates the defaults
    My AI Had Already Fixed the Code Before I Saw It
  • most of the technical problems of pedagogy are increasingly becoming a solved problem—we have good resources and tools, and AI is becoming a powerful substitute to 1-on-1 tutoring. But most people don’t have the cultural scaffolding to use these resources well
    Can we scale cultures that support learning?
  • the more ambitious project of building better cultural infrastructure
    AI tutors will be held back by culture - by Henrik Karlsson
  • Teaching and tutoring systems, on the other hand, are substitutes, which implies that we can expect teaching to lose value over the coming decade
    AI tutors will be held back by culture - by Henrik Karlsson
  • Cultures and tutoring systems are complements. The more powerful AI tutors become, the more valuable cultures that support learning will be
    AI tutors will be held back by culture - by Henrik Karlsson
  • they didn’t just have tutors, they also grew up in milieus where the people around them valued and pursued those particular types of excellence
    AI tutors will be held back by culture - by Henrik Karlsson
  • The culture we are immersed in shapes our tastes, desires, motivations, beliefs, and so on
    AI tutors will be held back by culture - by Henrik Karlsson
  • If introduced in schools, I doubt most children would leverage these systems to grow significantly faster. That is not what they are motivated to do; it is not what their culture motivates them to do
    AI tutors will be held back by culture - by Henrik Karlsson
  • the key problem now is figuring out how to scale access to high-growth cultures
    AI tutors will be held back by culture - by Henrik Karlsson
  • Yes, people who live in high-growth cultures, and who are motivated to learn, will be able to leverage AI tutors to accelerate their progress. But the rest, lacking access to these cultures, will use the systems to distract themselves and wriggle out of work.
    AI tutors will be held back by culture - by Henrik Karlsson
  • My working thesis for the future of education is that the curation of cultures that support learning and growth is the main bottleneck right now, and scaling better cultures a promising path to give more people the opportunity to live fulfilling lives.
    Can we scale cultures that support learning?
  • uriosity, as it is intrinsically-driven, is minimally compatible with extrinsic motivations. It's hard to tell students to "follow their curiosity" when grades and degrees are held over their heads
    Why Education | Scott Langille
  • I think it starts with curiosity, which ought to be kindled, not extinguished.
    Why Education | Scott Langille
  • Consuming content does not equate to learning.
    Why Education | Scott Langille
  • Most attention in education is towards learning content, but I strongly believe that I can make an impact on the way that learning is facilitated.
    Why Education | Scott Langille
  • No one is expecting you to be a great dancer at your wedding. No one is expecting your first business to be a billion dollar behemoth. No one is expecting you to be a great writer after your first article. No one, except your ego.
    Freedom in Obscurity - by Zac Solomon - startup social
  • She wanted to “work without hype or expectation and to receive totally unvarnished feedback.” She created Galbraith, to give herself the freedom that we take for granted every day. The freedom of obscurity.
    Freedom in Obscurity - by Zac Solomon - startup social
  • “If your ideas are any good” he’s quoted as saying, “you'll have to ram them down people's throats.” And yet, we think that the moment that we hit the dance floor, all eyes will be on us. The moment we hit publish, the world will take notice. That everyone with an internet connection will read, listen, and judge our every action.
    Freedom in Obscurity - by Zac Solomon - startup social
  • It is also why the Income Share Agreement (ISA) model for education practiced by some companies like Bloom Tech (formerly Lamda School) may be fundamentally flawed. As evidenced by the recent Consumer Financial Protection Bureau ruling
    The Art of Training Young People - by Benjamin Parry
  • Just don’t sacrifice everything to learn how to think and end up only rearranging your prejudices.
    SSC Gives A Graduation Speech | Slate Star Codex
  • It is not the hand that makes the designer, it’s the eye. Learning to design is learning to see.
    Learning to See
  • In general, more advanced design is also less visible unless you’re looking for it.
    Learning to See
  • Visual and functional beauty are not completely independent. Why is that? A designer who is able to find the functional essence of a product will also likely find it in the visual aspects—they are usually interconnected, sometimes almost inevitably so.
    Learning to See
  • Also, while your intuition grows with training and experience, your need for conscious control over the design process gets smaller and smaller the better you get at it.
    Learning to See
  • these interfaces work, so they are well designed.
    Learning to See
  • By observing great examples of design with your own eyes, attempting to duplicate them with your own hand, you will feel, see, and eventually understand the invisible lines behind a great product at a deeper and deeper level. Some of these lines are more obvious, while others may be so delicate that the very designer that drew them might not consciously realize exactly why and how they happened.
    Learning to See
  • The best way to learn to see is copying the masters. That applies to art as well as to any form of design.
    Learning to See
  • you will always see more with practical experience than from passive observation. There is no better training than imitation.
    Learning to See
  • The downside is that the more you learn to see, the more you lose your “common” eye, the eye you design for.
    Learning to See
  • Concentrate your resources on a small number of high-conviction bets
    What I Wish Someone Had Told Me - Sam Altman
  • Take risks on high-potential people with a fast rate of improvement.
    What I Wish Someone Had Told Me - Sam Altman
  • a center of intellectual conversation, as well as a debate stage for social issues, playing host to many members of the Republic of Letters
    Salon (France) - Wikipedia
  • The admissions process today “not only allocates opportunity—by deciding who gets into where—but it also allocates values by determining what matters in preparing for, applying to, and selecting a college,” said Lloyd Thacker, the founder and executive director of the Education Conservancy. It’s “become a formative process during which the signals sent by a host of stakeholders are shaping their attitudes, their values, and behaviors in very troubling ways. Far too many students are learning to do whatever it takes to get ahead—even if that means sacrificing individuality, health, happiness, e…
    What Values Really Matter in the College Application Process? - The Atlantic
  • Instead of preparing themselves for college—or more importantly, for life—students spend all of their pre-college years preparing themselves for the moment of admission.
    What Values Really Matter in the College Application Process? - The Atlantic
  • skyrocketing spending on merit aid to what they describe as “the bidding wars”: “Since top students are in high demand, colleges may have to bid against each other, raising the aid offered these students to well beyond their financial need.”
    How the U.S. News Ranks Make Applying to College A Commercial Experience - The Atlantic
  • “Financial aid used to be a charitable act—just given to needy kids, kids who needed it the most,” The Education Conservancy’s Thacker said. “Now, we said, ‘We can use financial aid to serve strategic institutional interests, such as improving our rank, our status, and our prestige.”
    How the U.S. News Ranks Make Applying to College A Commercial Experience - The Atlantic
  • As Thacker put it: “The signals that kids are hearing are: You gotta go to the one best school; the one best school is the one that’s hardest to get into; and how do I know what it is? It’s the one that’s most highly ranked.”
    How the U.S. News Ranks Make Applying to College A Commercial Experience - The Atlantic
  • In 2015, roughly 70 percent of U.S. freshmen said reputation was “very important” when it came to selecting a college
    How the U.S. News Ranks Make Applying to College A Commercial Experience - The Atlantic
  • a coalition of colleges has recently banded together to produce a new type of application designed to equip students—particularly those who aren’t familiar with the admissions process—with the information they need early on when applying
    How the U.S. News Ranks Make Applying to College A Commercial Experience - The Atlantic
  • Financial aid used to be a charitable act. Now it’s used to serve strategic institutional interests, such as improving rank, status, and prestige.
    How the U.S. News Ranks Make Applying to College A Commercial Experience - The Atlantic
  • The constraints that made schools the only viable means of mass education – we no longer need to let them limit our thinking. Yet so far, online education has operated as if these constraints were still in place.
    Apprenticeship online - by Henrik Karlsson
  • There is always a tension between giving novices access to work environments and doing productive work. For apprenticeships to work, the architecture, unlike that of the meat cutters, needs to be constructed in such a way that the novices can observe the experts, while at the same time, unlike GitHub, shielding the experts from excessive demands on their attention.
    Apprenticeship online - by Henrik Karlsson
  • This is the problem of scarcity of expert attention.
    Apprenticeship online - by Henrik Karlsson
  • For apprentices to learn effectively, educators must, in a sense, let go of control. Instead of controlling the transfer of knowledge through lectures and curricula, they need to focus on ensuring apprentices have meaningful access to the environment, handing out appropriate tasks – and trusting the learner to extract knowledge out of what is going on.
    Apprenticeship online - by Henrik Karlsson
  • Instead of putting novices in free contact with the environment, trusting their instincts to imitate, educators tightly control the transfer of knowledge through a curriculum
    Apprenticeship online - by Henrik Karlsson
  • In cultures where adults are unwilling to teach, it is common to see people alter how they work to make it more transparent
    Apprenticeship online - by Henrik Karlsson
  • What governs what children learn is not what they are taught - that matters less. What matters is what culture they are in.
    Apprenticeship online - by Henrik Karlsson