Thinking More Deeply: Building Innovation Engines

Innovative Thinking
In research and development, the most revolutionary discoveries are often hidden beneath the flash and whiz-bang of fancy products, processes, and therapies. But here are two examples of discoveries of a more subtle and important type:

A TEAM of North-East academics and industry experts have "cracked the DNA code of plastic" which could mean massive cost and energy savings for business. Researchers at Durham University and the University of Leeds have collaborated with the Tees Valley chemical process sector to solve a long-standing problem that is set to revolutionise the way new plastics are developed.

Before the discovery, industry would develop a plastic and then find a use for it, or try hundreds of different recipes until they stumbled across the right mix. _Source

Alert readers will see the similarity between this new innovation engine for creating plastics-on-demand, and approaches to "rational design" of drugs and proteins. This type of breakthrough often sets the stage for large numbers of rapid-fire innovations to follow.

University of Utah chemists developed a method to design and test new catalysts, which are substances that speed chemical reactions and are crucial for producing energy, chemicals and industrial products. By using the new method, the chemists also made a discovery that will make it easier to design future catalysts. The discovery: the sizes and electronic properties of catalysts interact to affect how well a catalyst performs, and are not independent factors as was thought previously. Chemistry Professor Matt Sigman and doctoral student Kaid Harper, report their findings in the Friday, Sept. 30, 2011, issue of the journal Science.

“It opens our eyes to how to design new catalysts that we wouldn’t necessarily think about designing, for a broad range of reactions,” Sigman says. “We’re pretty excited.” _Physorg

This is another example of a discovery that could potentially set off a chain reaction of new discoveries and revolutionary products.

Some people intuitively understand the deeper nature of such discoveries, and the infinitely larger potential of such developments to revolutionise entire fields and societies. Others, failed by modern dumbed-down educational systems, may need to think about the idea for a while.

A great deal of attention is given to the concept of "higher order effects (PDF)," but too little attention is given to "higher order causes."

The modern mass production methods of education do not generally help students to learn how to think. Ideologically driven educators assume that if the student is indoctrinated in the proper ideology, she will then naturally think in the "correct" manner. And so indoctrination replaces education, and graduates and future leaders become lifelong incompetents, because they never learned to think.

This is not just about logic and resolving contradictions. It is also about generative thinking, lateral thinking, problem solving, and growing beyond ideology. A society whose graduates can think rationally and generatively is less likely to fall into a quagmire of malaise such as currently entraps much of the advanced world.

Generative thinkers do not merely solve problems as they arise. They also solve problems that lead to other problems -- before they arise. They do this by thinking more deeply, and further out of the ideological box.

Let's be clear: Although ideology can make a person's life easier and his choices more automatic, an honest person who is bound tightly by ideology cannot truly think -- the cognitive dissonance becomes too great. Thus the heated and perpetually unresolved arguments one sees in religion, politics, and on environmental issues.

It is always a pleasure to confront an ideological opponent, and to mutually penetrate beneath the level of ideology to a generative level and mode of thinking. The productive output of such sessions can be much greater than any number of brainstorming sessions occurring within a circle of "self-anointed truth-bearers."

Generations of children are being short-changed and mind-stunted by inappropriate educational methods. This stunting and starving of brains occurs from kindergarten through university, and beyond. Those who have been paying attention understand that this is not happening by accident, just as the "energy starvation agenda" of modern governments is not happening by accident.

If a society is marinated in ideological thinking -- as virtually all human societies have been -- change can be very slow in coming. Since the converging problems of debt and demographic decline in the west are occurring at a rate which will probably not allow the needed changes to occur at high enough levels, it is up to persons at more local levels to instigate necessary changes to the best of their ability.

Do not make the mistake of thinking that a magical singularity will miraculously solve the human world's problems. Singularities help those who help themselves. Humans will have to make this transition from ideological thinking to generative thinking.

What proportion of humans will need to move beyond conventional thinking? Al Fin futurologists estimate that at least 10% and perhaps as many as 20% of humans within a society will have to forsake ideology and learn to think for themselves. The odds of finding such an innovation-rich environment by accident are very poor.

Talpiot: Seizing the Day

The applicant pool consists of nearly ten thousand top scorers of a test taken by all graduating high school seniors. 150-200 potential applicants are then subjected to a two-day series of tests.[1] These include further IQ exams as well as group-tasks designed to test one's social dynamics, all conducted under the supervision of trained psychologists and military personnel. For example, teams of applicants are given a specific task then the instructions are changed while the test is in progress, such as shortening the alloted time or changing the assigned tasks.[1] Final applicants appear before a panel of professors, military leaders, and other examiners where they are asked questions such as to explain the theory of relativity or mechanisms of solar heating.[1] Final acceptance into the program entails a high security clearance rating, given by the Air Force. _Talpiot (wikipedia)

Talpiot is a program for bringing the best of the best of Israeli youth together into an intensive mental, physical, and military training regimen. 5,000 youth apply every year, and 50 are accepted. Out of those 50, only 40 will complete the training, and be commissioned as lieutenants in the IDF. They spend 9 years total, including education, training, and military commitment.

Those who survive go on to careers as officers in some of the military's most prestigious operations, mostly in research and development projects, Schlachet said. From there, the 500-odd Talpiot grads have tended to find their way to the upper echelons of business and academia, he said.

"You learn self-confidence, not to be afraid of anything. No subject is too complex to go after, and no answer should be taken for granted," said Talpiot grad Gilad Almogy, 38, Applied Materials' top executive in Israel.

The Nasdaq-traded biotech company Compugen was formed by three of Almogy's Talpiot comrades. A fourth, Mor Amitai, now runs the company.

Amitai says some of the most complicated work he ever did was during his time in Talpiot. "The experience of sometimes succeeding, almost always as part of a team, involving something that really seemed impossible, I think this is something we took with us," he said. _USAToday_via_SteveHsu

Talpiot is run by the Israeli Defense Force with the aim of creating an elite officer corps which is capable of responding to any threat by the innovative use of the most advanced technologies -- or any tool within reach. If these elite soldiers later become leaders in business, technology, finance, and other vital areas of society, it should come as no surprise to anyone who is paying attention.

During the training, the youngsters are taught to flirt with insubordination (PDF). Rather than listen to their superiors, they are taught to find answers on their own. The aim is to create self-confident, self-sufficient self starters capable of innovative thinking on the fly, in the middle of a crisis that doesn't yield to SOPs and conventional operations.

Israel is a tiny country thriving in a hostile environment. The country is famous for scientific and technological innovation and achievement far beyond what its small population would lead one to expect. Part of the reason for this overachievement is the survival imperative. Part of the reason is the significant proportion of famously high IQ European Jews who provide much of the leadership for all segments of Israeli society. When you combine high IQ with the will to survive, you come up with programs such as Talpiot.

Israel can not afford to waste its most talented youth -- as western nations such as the US seem intent on doing. At least, Israel's military cannot afford to lose these tough and talented innovators. Not if the country is to survive.

While western nations are busy drowning in debt, demographic decline, political correctness, green dieoff.org-motivated energy starvation, cultural decay, and other methods of slow suicide, at least a few segments of some national governments still recognise the need to promote the best of human potential and ability.

Militaries are often the last bastion of competence in countries whose cultures are in decay. At least, militaries that have to work and maintain an acceptable level of competence. But militaries tend to settle into conventional thinking and lowest common denominator policies, like all bureaucracies and institutions. That is why it is important to feed a constant flow of brutally tested innovative thinking into the mix, and give it freedom to work.

The difference between the Talpiot approach and conventional academia could not be more stark. Academia is about status, tenure, and publishing as much crap as possible. Talpiot is about sound, rapid innovation to get good results. The Talpiot must start with the best of the best, and winnow the field from there. No affirmative action. No social promotion. No special preferences for "disadvantaged groups." Just unrelenting tests for competence, ability, and ingenious thinking.

In other words, these cadets are not only smart, but they also have to be good. And they especially must have grit -- character.

Obviously this system will not work for the average youth. Even most above-average students would fall by the wayside in a rigorous program such as Talpiot. But the concepts involved in the program are key to revitalising western education. No nonsense. No grade inflation. No social promotion. No affirmative action. Focus on results, competence, and character.

Getting from here to there, however, will require a bit of demolition and reconstruction. Such an overhaul is not possible on a national level, but could be done locally, under careful leadership.

More on Talpiot via Steve Hsu

Brave New Baby: Genius Training for Infants

Image Source
We have heard of the "better baby" and even the "superbaby." But those approaches to creating the "brave new baby" have been around for a while, and yet, here we are. Still looking for workable ways of training smarter, more cognitively capable children.

University of London researchers have come up with a new approach, beginning with 11 month old infants:

The researchers trained 11-month-old infants to direct their gaze toward images they observed on a computer screen. For example, in one task, a butterfly flew only as long as the babies kept their eyes on it while other distracting elements appeared on screen. Infants visited the lab five times over the course of 15 days. Half of the 42 babies took part in training, while the other half watched TV. Each child was tested for cognitive abilities at the beginning and end of the study.

Trained infants rapidly improved their ability to focus their attention for longer periods and to shift their attention from one point to another. They also showed improvements in their ability to spot patterns and small but significant changes in their spontaneous looking behavior while playing with toys.

"Our results appeared to show an improved ability to alter the frequency of eye movements in response to context," Wass said. "In the real world, sometimes we want to be able to focus on one object of interest and ignore distractions, and sometimes we want to be able to shift the focus of our attention rapidly around a room -- for example, for language learning in social situations. This flexibility in the allocation of attention appeared to improve after training."

The fact that the babies' improvements in concentration transferred to a range of tasks supports the notion that there is greater plasticity in the unspecialized infant brain.

...The findings reported online on Sept. 1 in Current Biology, a Cell Press publication, are in contrast to reports in adults showing that training at one task generally doesn't translate into improved performance on other, substantially different tasks. _ScienceDaily

Study abstract from Science Direct

This type of research is likely to continue and intensify -- particularly in parts of the world with more authoritarian government control. It is likely to continue because it is quite probable that infant brains can eventually be functionally shaped to approximate a preconceived "ideal." Infant brains are highly plastic, and experience incredibly rapid shaping and re-shaping of local neuronal assemblies and white matter pathways.

Of course there are ethical approaches to this type of research, which should be freely carried out in more open societies. And of course individual parents are free to incorporate elements of such research into their child's overall, well-rounded upbringing. It is likely that there are easily devised "games" which the baby would enjoy playing, which could lead to a faster-thinking, more imaginative child. Perhaps even a child capable of multi-tasking in many ways.

But experimenting parents should beware. The super-baby which you raise may rapidly grow beyond your ability to comprehend and control. Children are essentially amoral creatures who are capable of incredible destruction if given too much power too soon, without superb training in executive function.

It is not wise to train a child in particular areas of genius without incorporating safeguards, executive function training, and ethical training into the overall program. This training should resemble an assortment of games and engaging interactional narratives to the very young child.

At the Al Fin Institute for the Brave New Baby, we are concerned about current trends toward a dumbed-down future. We will share the results of our research into brave new babies as it becomes available.

Taken from a recent posting on Al Fin the Next Level

Earth Shattering Odds

As I was catching up on my blog reading tonight (still yet to completely get there since Europe) I came across an article comparing the different proposed methods for dealing with an asteroid headed for Earth. Here's how it closes:

The researchers do note that the asteroids they used in their calculations are not immediate threats.The asteroid Apophis is expected to fly harmlessly by Earth on April 13, 2036, with only a 1-in-233,000 chance of hitting our plane

When I saw that number I wasn't comforted. It felt a little too likely. So I compared it to the chances of winning the South Carolina Education Lottery:

Not sure if this makes me more nervous about asteroids or people who play the lottery.

Emptying the Bottle: Late-August '11 Links

Here is a list of the worthwhile links I've Bookmarked recently:

• Exchangeable credits for skipping class to prevent skipping class.


• The misunderstood history of negative campaign ads [video].


• Turning good workers into criminals and criminals into bad workers.


• Ability to change your mind = Ability to Reason [graphic].


• Less than 3 percent of spending in the U.S. goes to China.


• How a secret roll of the dice can account for lying in large samples.


• Wishing someone luck (if they believe in it) can improve performance.


• Explainxkcd.com, explaining nerd humor to the rest us (via Justin).


• When it comes to group work, be sure to put someone in charge.


• Are youth the most discriminated people in America today [video]?


• Spoiling the ending makes for a better story [audio].


• The richer you are the busier you are (earlier).

As always, feel free to email me anything interesting you come across.

Great Television Shows Make You Smarter

Whether it's LOST, The Wire, or my recent European trip find Mad Men, complex TV series' may be more than just entertaining. In a recent post Jonah Lehrer shows how the Flynn Effect, the measurable increase in IQ from generation to generation, is not just because of improvements in education and diet. If the top 5%, who have had access to plenty of food and education for decades,  has also increased, then there must be some other "environmental stimulation”:

One frequently cited factor is the increasing complexity of entertainment, which might enhance abstract problem solving skills. (As Flynn himself noted, “The very fact that children are better and better at IQ test problems logically entails that they have learned at least that kind of problem-solving skill better, and it must have been learned somewhere.”) This suggests that, because people are now forced to make sense of Lost or the Harry Potter series or World of Warcraft, they’re also better able to handle hard logic puzzles. (The effect is probably indirect, with the difficult forms of culture enhancing working memory and the allocation of attention.) As Steven Johnson argued, everything bad is good for us, especially when the bad stuff has lots of minor characters and subplots.

In the name of self improvement, is there any other "homework" I should be watching?

Life Update and a Short Break

Wanted to do a quick recap of what has been going on for me personally the last month, since the blog has been on hold. As you already know my life has been going through some pretty big transitions. I had my last shows at the Dirty South Improv Theater, I moved all of my belongings to Greenville, and I left my old high school. The good news is I'm in talks with some close improv friends about starting a company in Greenville and I've gotten a new high school teaching job. I will continue teaching US History and AP US History at Southside High School. Also for the next three weeks I'll be going on a European tour for my wedding anniversary and to visit family. If you have any tips we'll be in Madrid, Granada, Tangier, and Amsterdam (with some possible day visits to Paris and Brussels). See you in late July!

Maybe Instead of Killing Them All, We Should Send Them to China?

US law schools are pumping out new graduates like a torrent of toxic waste. Elie Mystal thinks that Obama should create an "Americorps" for law graduates. But Al Fin legal scholars think the fallout from the US lawyer glut has become so bad for the US economy and US society, that extreme measures are called for.

No, Al Fin law scholars don't favour the Shakespearean solution of "first kill all the lawyers!" Instead, these legal gurus recommend sending all US law school graduates to China to act as bank examiners, construction inspectors, labour union organisers, environmental overseers, and political activists. It is time to restore international equilibrium! The program should run for roughly 30 years, after which we can send US law graduates to China to help sweep up -- clean up the mess their predecessors have made. By then, the US should have recovered from its own lawyer-instigated collapse, and be ready to provide foreign aid to a much-diminished China.

From: The Best Colleges

Excess attorneys are toxic to any society, but particularly to societies which have no means by which to dispose of the excess. Automatic deportation of US law graduates to China upon graduation would solve a whole host of problems, according to the legal sages of Al Fin.

What I Get Out of Blogging

Last year I did my best to describe why blogging is great for everyone. One of the first benefits I mentioned was how useful it is as a learning/memory tool. Justin Landwehr recently made list of what I'd like to call six reasons why blogging helps you remember what you read:

#1. Write them down. There is a Big increase in retention from doing this. And handwriting seems to be more effective than typing.

#2. Question them. Or have others question them. I remember ideas much better when I have given them a mental colonoscopy.

#3. Re-visit them. This chart was huge in helping me understand how memory works:

(Accompanying article in WIRED, 4/21/08)

My approach is to type up all the ideas from my notebook, typically about 3 months after they were originally written. I have also experimented with a program called Mnemosyne that is like a flash-card program based on this memory principle. I found that it did increase retention, but not so much that I felt compelled to go out of my way to use the program.

#4. Explicitly connect them to other ideas. Based on my experience, this is significantly more effective than re-visiting. I do both, but I find that the ones that are explicitly connected to other ideas I remember more clearly and for a longer time.

This is a really important point that often goes overlooked: Ideas need other ideas to tell them what they mean.

#5. Give them an intuitive place in your mind. Organize them into “chapters”. Memory champions do things like organize ideas into an imagined hotel or landscape.

#6. Explain it to someone. Bonus points if it’s someone who will scrutinize the idea. Double bonus points if it’s someone you respect.

I'm actually kind of curious how non-bloggers remember anything they read.

Emptying the Bottle: Mid-May '11 Links

Here is a list of the worthwhile sites I've Bookmarked recently:

• Why Bollywood (bottom up change) is better for fighting radical Islam [video].
• Justin Scott's thoughts on bin Laden with which I totally agree (earlier).
• Why MySpace eventually lost most of its traffic to Facebook.
• How politicians get around answering uncomfortable questions.
• NY Hasidic newspaper cuts Hillary Clinton from the situation room photo.
• Winning the lottery hurts (especially if you're the type who plays the lottery).
• Interview with the simple billion (here's his house) Warren Buffett's son [audio].
• Is depression just over self reflection and if so what are the benefits?
• Voting is correlated with satisfaction, not unsatisfaction (earlier).
• Early start times for schools can increase car accidents for students (eariler).
• What you see is what you hear, even when you know it's wrong [video].
• Wisdom of the crowd only works if the crowd don't interact.

As always, feel free to email me anything interesting you come across.

Life is the Education, Not College

Update 25May2011: An article describing the Peter Thiel Fellowship -- which pays fellows $100,000 not to attend college -- providing further details and information on this theme.

Humans begin learning as soon as the central nervous system begins to develop in the womb. Learning during infancy and early childhood is more intensive than any other learning in a person's life. Over historical and pre-historical time, most humans learned about life from observation, imitation, apprenticeship, and experimentation -- and just doing it. Only recently has it been thought necessary for every child to receive a formal, government-approved education before being released into the real world.

And still it is life that is the real education, not schools, not colleges. Schools can only prepare a student for a few of the things he will confront in real life, the rest is up to the lifelong student's capacity to adapt and grow in the real world.


Don't Let Your Schooling Get in the Way of Your Education

There is a significant mismatch between what schools "teach" and what life will demand of a student. School curricula do not generally provide the education a person needs to confront the real challenges to be faced. While a child may be forced to attend school up to a certain age or level, there is no guarantee that he will learn even the barest of necessities. In today's climate of indoctrination-by-school, what the child learns in school may be both patently false and outright counter-productive to his life prospects -- besides being a total waste of his time and a distraction from his true education.

Too much of the time, the actual "education" a child receives from lower education is an induction into delinquency and basic groupthink. Proceeding to "higher education," advanced studies in binge drinking, fornication, and an indoctrination into dysfunctional ideology and advanced groupthink, help to complete the blunting of the once-promising prospects which the child may have possessed.

Most bright and observant people have come to doubt whether it is in the best interests of families and society to pay the huge and ruinous price to maintain the modern system of "education." Particularly when a better education is readily obtainable at a minimal cost via the internet, libraries, used book stores, and real life.

The raucous marching of the paid, truant, and quasi-violent drones in Madison, Wisconsin, was but a gentle preview of the truly violent clashes to come, between the entitled establishment and the embattled taxpayer.

Most Americans think college is not worth the money

Winds of change in college infrastructure portend massive changes in how advanced education will be provided

In place of "unions" in the cartoons, one could also write "tenured professors" and "university administrations." A sense of entitlement runs deep and rampant in "educational" circles, and in societies with topheavy governments in general.

Are We There Yet?

Whenever my students are given a task I put a timer on the overhead. That way there is no discrepancy over how long they have been working (or not working). But I've always wondered if I'm making the experience worse or better from their point of view:

"Rather than weakening affective episodes over time, duration knowledge actually intensifies them, rendering a positive experience more pleasurable and a negative experience more aversive," the authors explain.

The authors conducted a field study in a Taiwanese "cram school," an after-school program designed to help middle school students meet academic goals. They told half the students that the session would last 60 minutes and told the other half that the session would be similar to after-hours sessions they had attended in the past (which vary from 30-90 minutes). "The results show that whereas students predicted that duration knowledge would improve their negative experience, in fact it rendered the experience worse."

The authors also conducted a lab experiment where participants listened to 30-second song clips sung either by a pop star or one of the researchers "who sings abominably." They found that people who knew the duration of the experience had more intense reactions in both directions.

Or maybe not:

In subsequent experiments the authors found that counting down during a positive experience weakens the enjoyment of participants but helps improve negative experiences. "Counting down an activity directs attention away from the activity to its end," the authors write.

"Duration knowledge prompts people to consider the state in which the ongoing experience terminates: an undesirable future state for pleasurable experiences and a desirable one for unpleasant experiences," the authors conclude.

I don't know what to believe.

The Limits of Moral Math

One concept I come back to regular is moral math. The idea that we are constantly calculating how good/bad we can/should be. Perhaps there are limits to how much we are willing to sacrifice to feel moral. Here's an environmental example:

For those students for whom the environment was not important to their self-esteem, receiving negative feedback on the ecological footprint questionnaire actually prompted them to be less likely to write to their politician about environmental issues (relative to the students who received positive feedback about their footprint). In other words, for people who aren't green minded, alarming feedback on a footprint questionnaire can actually make them less sympathetic to green causes.

So:

it's been shown that if changing their behaviour seems too difficult, many people change their attitudes instead, in this case ditching their pro-environmental beliefs (as a way to reduce what's known as 'cognitive dissonance', which is when there's a mismatch between our attitudes and behaviour).

But we can combat this by actively writing down our intentions:

The researcher found that the percentage of people who agreed to volunteer didn't differ as a function of whether the instructions invited active or passive responding. Yet there was quite an astonishing difference in the percentage of people who actually showed up to participate in the project several days later. Of those who agreed to participate passively, only 17 percent actually appeared as promised. What about those who agreed to participate through active means? Of those, 49 percent kept their promises. In all, the clear majority of those who appeared as scheduled (74 percent) were those who had actively agreed to volunteer for the program.

On the first day of class I ask my students to write down and get signed by a parent their desired/expected grades. Now I just need to find a way to make them not discount it.

Human Capital or Capital, Comic Book Edition

I recently shared an article about how college debt has just outgrown credit card debt. My general response was that the average $24,000 in college debt doesn't seem that bad, especially if the average starting salary of a college graduate is $48,351. I also know what it's like to pay off school debt in similar income-to-debt proportion above.

But this got me thinking. What's better for an economy, smart people or effective machines? I came across a great thought experiment in this BBC article about Superman. Apparently the last son of Krypton is considering separating himself from the United States. So here's my question, who would be better for US economic growth, Superman (as capital) or his nemesis Lex Luthor (human capital).

In spite of my love for the Man of Steel, I think that Mr. Luthor would be better for long term economic growth. Here's why: Superman is a great asset to any economy. He's super strong, super fast, super everything. He could decrease crime easily. He could do construction is a fraction of the time. He could even help during natural disasters, which we seem to have plenty of recently.

But Superman dies. Although he ages very slowly, he does get older which mean he will eventually die. Lex Luther on the other hand can use his extreme intelligence to create a second Industrial Revolution bring us unimaginable prosperity. This is shown perfectly in my favorite comic book of all time Red Son.

It's a re-imagining of the Superman story as if he was born in Soviet Russia, not the United States. In this alternate storyline Lex Luther (though still power hungry) is the good guy protecting the American way. After Superman is "defeated" (I don't want to spoil too much), Luther goes on to lead America and Earth into great wealth. Whether in comic books or in life, human capital has more long term value than simple capital:

They found that intelligence made a difference in gross domestic product. For each one-point increase in a country's average IQ, the per capita GDP was $229 higher. It made an even bigger difference if the smartest 5 percent of the population got smarter; for every additional IQ point in that group, a country's per capita GDP was $468 higher.

Especially the smartest people:

researchers analyzed test scores from 90 countries and found that the intelligence of the people, particularly the smartest 5 percent, made a big contribution to the strength of their economies.

Why Men's Acheivements are More Public

An article I shared a while back discussed reasons why women are less likely to blog (mostly that women need/want less outside praise for their achievements). I wonder, does this apply to other parts of their life? This study suggests yes:

Two ecologically valid studies involving anticipated public performance offer insight into women's tendencies to avoid placing their abilities under a spotlight. First, in an experimental study, women felt less comfortable than did men and experienced more personal risk when they anticipated that their test scores would be public. Second, in a naturalistic observational setting, students taking an experiential forensic psychology course were required to perform intellectually challenging activities in public. Women displayed more concern about the course requirements than did men, and subsequently dropped the course in disproportionate numbers.

Could this also be why women are less likely to do speak up in my class, pursue leadership positions or do improv?

Motivation as Intellegence

There are clearly different kinds of smart, but I may have missed the most obvious type, motivation. Here are two experiments using IQ tests. In the first they discovered that financial rewards (only $1-10) elicited on average 10 points on the IQ scale of 100. In the second experiment they showed that researchers could predict future success just by measuring how often students looked unmotivated (yawning, heads on the table, or looking around). The researchers suggest that motivation could account for 84% of the differences between years of schooling or ability to find a job. So, "IQ tests are measuring much more than just raw intelligence--they also measure how badly subjects want to succeed both on the test and later in life". Yet another reason to teach patience and motivation in schools.

Every Player Should be a Coach

One of the biggest changes in my life over the last couple of years is my transition from a follower to a leader. Not in that vague interpersonal kind of way, but in real and tangible ways. Just a couple of years ago I was the student sitting in classes. Now I'm the teacher planning and executing lesson plans. Not too long ago I was still a part of my college improv team, taking direction from the leadership there. Now I'm teaching and coaching old and new improvisers.

I can say, without a doubt in my mind, that I've learned more being a leader than a follower. I've learned more about US History in three years as a teacher (see my series on learning by teaching) than in four years as a student. I learned more about economics in three years as a blogger than in four years as a student. I learned more about comedy in my years at the Dirty South Improv Theater than I did in my four years at Mock Turtle Soup. But this is not just the experience of one person, it's supported by research.

Author Dan Pink points to three experiments where "subjects were more likely to come up with the answer on behalf of another person than for themselves; the farther away the other person was imagined to be, the more likely the participants were to come up with the correct answer." But here's the catch, I couldn't have done one without the other. My years of history and economics classes were vital to my current teaching. My years of improv workshops were vital to my current coaching. The transition between a player and a coach is tough, but let me assure you, it you want to be great, it's worth it.

This was cross-posted at the The College Improv Resource.

Making Students More Honest

Cheating is a big problem for educators. Almost all students has cheated in some way. Worse, many are able to convince themselves it's either not that bad or not cheating at all. This is specifically a problem for my AP US History class debates where students asked be unbiased jury members. That's why, along with a jury selection method, I've come up with a very specific way to remind them of my integrity standards. Before each debate we
read this aloud:

I, insert your name, promise to judge the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help me insert the name of your favorite president.

As I've suggested in the past, it helps:

In Experiment 1, 108 youngsters, aged 8-16 years, were left alone in the room and asked not to peek at the answers to a test. The majority of participants peeked at the test answers and then lied about their transgression. More importantly, participants were eight times more likely to change their response from a lie to the truth after promising to tell the truth. Experiment 2 confirmed that the results of Experiment 1 were not solely due to repeated questioning or the moral discussion of truth- and lie-telling. These results suggest that, while promising to tell the truth influences the truth-telling behaviors of adolescents, a moral discussion of truth and lies does not.

Via Eric Barker.

Economics of Education

From Freakonomics Radio:

So of all the topics that economists have studied, I would say one we are most certain about are the returns to education. And the numbers that people have come up with over and over are that every extra year of education that you get will translate into an 8% increase in earnings over your lifetime. So someone who graduated from college will earn about 30% more on average than someone who only graduated from high school. And if anything, the returns to education have gotten larger over time. They’re as big as they have ever been. And I think it makes sense that the returns to education now are higher than they’ve ever been because of how the economy has changed. It used to be that with a low education, you could get a good manufacturing job, lifetime employment. But now with the Chinese competition for instance, almost all the manufacturing jobs are gone, because there are Chinese workers willing to work, who are able to do these jobs at wages that are one-fifth or one-tenth of what an American worker would demand to do it.

Nothing overly surprising. But it does show why education is and will continue to be very important.

Music in the Classroom

While my students work on their individual work (usually previewing the content I am about to lecture), I play music. Mostly from my own personal collection, which means there's a lot of rock and roll. Here's a justification for it:

Results indicated that state positive affect and quality-of-work were lowest with no music, while time-on-task was longest when music was removed. Narrative responses revealed the value of music listening for positive mood change and enhanced perception on design while working.

For my US History classes I have an end goal of having a collection of music throughout history so they can listen to the music of the time period they are studying. For one, it will give them a richer understanding of history. I also think it will help me convince them that life (and also music) has only been getting better.