Scott Alexander examines the effectiveness of education by analyzing knowledge retention, questioning the value of schooling beyond basic skills. Longer summary

Scott Alexander analyzes the effectiveness of education by examining how much factual knowledge people retain after schooling. He presents survey data showing that many adults, including college students, struggle to recall basic facts taught in school. The post explores why this might be, discussing the Ebbinghaus Forgetting Curve and spaced repetition. Scott proposes that people mainly remember information they encounter regularly in daily life, rather than what they learned in school. He concludes by questioning the usefulness of most schooling beyond basic skills, suggesting that cultural osmosis might be more effective for long-term knowledge retention. Shorter summary

Scott Alexander examines why skills plateau, proposing decay and interference hypotheses to explain the phenomenon across various fields. Longer summary

Scott Alexander explores why skills plateau despite continued practice, focusing on creative artists, doctors, and formal education. He presents two main hypotheses: the decay hypothesis, where knowledge is forgotten if not regularly reviewed, and the interference hypothesis, where similar information blends together, making it difficult to learn new things in the same domain. The post discusses how these hypotheses explain various learning phenomena, including the ability to learn multiple unrelated skills simultaneously. Scott also considers edge cases and potential applications of these theories, such as mnemonic devices and language learning strategies. Shorter summary

Scott Alexander discusses unintentional plagiarism in his writing, reflecting on how writers blend their influences at various levels of recognition. Longer summary

Scott Alexander reflects on unintentional plagiarism in his writing, sparked by realizing a sentence in his previous post about plagiarism was unconsciously inspired by a Miss Manners quote. He discusses how writers often blend their influences, sometimes resulting in recognizable 'chunks' of others' work appearing in their own. Scott extends this idea to writing style, worldview, and reasoning methods, suggesting they are all 'slurries' of one's influences, with some elements more recognizable than others. Shorter summary

The post reviews research on adult neurogenesis, initially presenting evidence for its existence and importance, then reveals a new study suggesting it doesn't occur in humans, examining the implications of this potential field-wide error. Longer summary

This post reviews the literature on adult neurogenesis, initially presenting numerous studies that claimed to find evidence for the generation of new neurons in adult human brains. These studies linked adult neurogenesis to various aspects of brain function, including memory, learning, and depression. However, the post then reveals a new study suggesting that adult neurogenesis doesn't actually occur in humans, or is so rare as to be insignificant. The author examines how this field-wide error could have occurred, discussing the extrapolation of rat studies to humans and the role of confirmation bias. The post ends by reflecting on the implications of this for scientific research and the replication crisis. Shorter summary

Scott Alexander explores why medical residency test scores plateau after the first few years, proposing theories related to knowledge retention and individual differences in learning. Longer summary

The post discusses the plateau in standardized test scores for medical residents across different specialties. Scott Alexander analyzes data from internal medicine, psychiatry, and surgery residencies, noting that while scores improve significantly in the first year or two, they tend to level off in later years. He explores various potential explanations for this plateau, including ceiling effects, decreased motivation, and changes in teaching methods, but finds these unsatisfactory. The author proposes that the plateau might be related to how knowledge is reinforced and retained, drawing parallels to spaced repetition learning techniques. He suggests that individual differences in memory, intellectual curiosity, and integration of knowledge may contribute to the differences in scores among residents at the same level. The post concludes by considering the implications of this plateau effect for understanding learning and education more broadly. Shorter summary

A person repeatedly wakes up in a Matrix-like pod, being told different versions of reality about the concept of 'family' in a series of nested scenarios, ultimately revealed to be an alien experiment. Longer summary

This fictional story describes a series of nested simulations or scenarios where the protagonist repeatedly wakes up in a Matrix-like pod. Each time, they are told a different version of reality regarding the concept of 'family'. The story explores themes of conformity, belief systems, and the malleability of memory and perception. It ends with a twist revealing that the entire experiment was conducted by aliens seeking to understand optimal social arrangements, particularly regarding the concept of family. Shorter summary