Top all-time · #1704
Fredrik deBoer
Personal blog · fredrikdeboer.compoliticsother
Fredrik deBoer is a personal blog at fredrikdeboer.com about politics. Since 2014, 45 different Hacker News readers have linked it 61 times, most often “Selection bias is the most powerful force in education”. No feed was found, so read it on the site itself.
Most-linked posts?
- Selection bias is the most powerful force in education7 people · 7 mentions · first linked 2017-08-14
- Recalibrating your sites3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2017-08-16
- Only the Club Remains2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2020-10-30
- Why people still go to grad school2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2016-04-25
- Critique drift2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2015-04-30
- Ending the Charade2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2020-07-07
- Grit, or the Moralist's Fable About Education2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2020-08-10
- Scott Alexander Is Not in the Gizmodo Media Slack2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2021-02-16
- /2016/07/20/whos-in-and-whos-out-thats-still-the-only-question/2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2016-07-22
What Hacker News says?
Freddie deBoer dishes out a savage burn to the NYT that is, in itself, enough reason to cancel your subscription. No amount of shade is too deep to throw on the NYT at this point, from their cancellation process to their editorial policies: https://fredrikdeboer.com/2021/02/15/scott-alexander-is-not-...
Comment linking /2021/02/15/scott-alexander-is-not-in-the-gizmodo-media-slack/
on “Before buying a NYT subscription, here's what it'll take to cancel it”Submitted Selection bias is the most powerful force in education as a story · 385 points
HN discussion>> Journalists have essentially become socialites. They don't want to publish articles that will rock the boat Here's how Frederik deBoer puts it ( https://fredrikdeboer.com/2020/10/30/only-the-club-remains/ ): "The social capture of media plays a huge role in how media operates, dictating what gets reported and which voices are heard. To some degree this is overt – if you you have drinks with the right people in me…
Comment linking /2020/10/30/only-the-club-remains/
on “My Resignation from the Intercept”Submitted I don’t know what to do, you guys as a story · 152 points
HN discussion"Should you undertake political violence in response to the age of Trump? I don’t know; what political violence, by whom, against which targets, towards what end, as part of what larger strategic campaign? If you don’t have answers to those questions then the debate is useless. Should you undertake direct action? I don’t know; what direct action, by whom, in what sites, towards what end, as part of what larger polit…
Comment linking /2017/01/25/make-every-question-a-strategic-question/
on “Time to Take a Stand”Submitted Why people still go to grad school as a story · 122 points
HN discussion"I would genuinely enjoy someone explaining how dismissing the right-wing as sexist is any different than dismissing all of feminism as sexist because there exist sexist feminists." You just said OP is demonstrating othering and slander and then you expect intellectual honesty? And then you get ferociously downvoted? I think you're better off spending time with the following writer than expecting a serious response…
Comment linking /2017/01/11/i-know-my-own-group-by-defining-whos-not-in-it/
on “First they came for the Iranians”Submitted You Can’t Choose to Be Trad as a story · 13 points
HN discussionI didn’t see anything about this in the article, so I ask here in the hopes that someone more knowledgeable can comment: how are they controlling for selection bias? Is there any way to select into or out of this school, or is it purely the standard districting system? Even if it’s the latter in many other places it’s still possible to move into the area. Do we know to what extent that has been happening? Edit: Oops…
Comment linking /2017/03/29/why-selection-bias-is-the-most-powerful-force-in-education/
on “LeBron James school that was considered an experiment is showing promise”Submitted The problem with building a reputation on the internet as a story · 10 points
HN discussionI tend to think of Strunk and White like training wheels: eventually you should take them off and break the rules (as George Orwell said in his similarly-maligned "Politics and the English Language", "Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous") in pursuit of clear, beautiful prose, but for a beginner the rules can be a lifeline. If nothing else, their constraints provide a new writer a fra…
Comment linking /2015/12/07/teaching-style-to-freshmen-why-how/
on “Ask HN: What book have you given as a gift?”Submitted Scott Alexander Is Not in the Gizmodo Media Slack as a story · 9 points
HN discussionMilo Yiannopoulos vs Ben Dreyfuss. http://fredrikdeboer.com/2016/07/20/whos-in-and-whos-out-tha... (And this is from a socialist)
Comment linking /2016/07/20/whos-in-and-whos-out-thats-still-the-only-question/
on “Reddit is still in turmoil”Submitted The Supervillain's Guide to Saving the Internet as a story · 9 points
HN discussion(squeezing eyes shut and focusing my psychic powers) This college I've never heard of will turn out to have tiny enrollment, and the entire effect size will be selection bias + random noise. >Olin College, a small engineering school in Needham, MA, which graduates around 75 students per year, turns out an alumni population where 2.77% of alumni found a successfully venture-backed startup, more than five times the ra…
Comment linking /2017/03/29/why-selection-bias-is-the-most-powerful-force-in-education/
on “Olin College Produces Founders at Five Times the Rate of Stanford”Submitted Free speech rights and ability as a story · 5 points
HN discussionAs De Boer puts it, if there's any possibility at all that an education result came from sample bias, it's definitely sample bias. The standard narrative for "better schools" is that a trial program works great, everyone gets excited, and then it declines to mean the instant it's expanded. If they had lotteried people in entirely at random and still gotten better outcomes, I'd at least be curious. https://fredrikdeb…
Comment linking /2017/03/29/why-selection-bias-is-the-most-powerful-force-in-education/
on “High-quality schools can increase academic achievement among the poor (2010)”Submitted Only the Club Remains as a story · 4 points
HN discussionCurate what you consume. https://fredrikdeboer.com/2017/08/16/recalibrating-your-site...
Comment linking /2017/08/16/recalibrating-your-sites/
on “We Live in Fear of the Online Mobs”Submitted Ending the Charade as a story · 4 points
HN discussionCounterpoint: http://fredrikdeboer.com/2014/12/05/dear-very-serious-journa...
Comment linking /2014/12/05/dear-very-serious-journalists/
on “Chris Hughes Purges The New Republic”Submitted The involuntary admission barrier to care as a story · 4 points
HN discussionMany researchers out there state that it just doesn't matter very much: https://fredrikdeboer.com/2017/07/31/the-academic-success-se...
Comment linking /2017/07/31/the-academic-success-sequence-get-lucky-at-birth-mostly/
on “For a baby’s brain to benefit, read the right books at the right time”Submitted Trade Schools Are No Panacea as a story · 4 points
HN discussionTeaching to the test is so much work, the smart teacher will just lobby administration to get the weaker students removed from the class. https://fredrikdeboer.com/2017/03/29/why-selection-bias-is-t...
Comment linking /2017/03/29/why-selection-bias-is-the-most-powerful-force-in-education/
on “Improving the way kids are taught to read”Submitted The irresistible force vs. the ironized object as a story · 3 points
HN discussionThe Left has been calling it out non-stop. In the US, it's establishment liberals (in Europe, they'd mostly qualify as right-of-center) that have been defenders of the status quo. Take a look at: https://www.jacobinmag.com/ http://fredrikdeboer.com/published-writing/ https://www.dissentmagazine.org/ http://coreyrobin.com/ Just to start with. There's a huge rift between what's called the Left, and what actually is th…
Comment linking /published-writing/
on “Globalization’s losers are revolting”Submitted Ending the Charade (Of Culture Wars) as a story · 3 points
HN discussionIndeed. Fredrik deBoer wrote a good post about this kind of vague certainty as a more general aspect of a certain kind of politics: http://fredrikdeboer.com/2016/12/06/condescending-certain-an...
Comment linking /2016/12/06/condescending-certain-and-incoherent/
on “The trouble with FreeBSD”Submitted Xkcd and the will to be the underdog as a story · 3 points
HN discussion
