I do think it’s actually a problem that the pandemic seems to have permanently lowered the potential of an entire cohort. The problem is all the evidence suggests it’s the pandemic that caused it, not our response being too aggressive.
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I would also argue that AI, and people's apparently lax attitude toward AI being used to essentially replace critical thinking in children and young adults, is also a contributing factor to the ceiling being lowered here. Still nothing to do with the pandemic response, of course.
sep 1, 2025, 10:41 pm • 0 0 • view
Yes this is the important part. We're failing this generation of kids while adults argue stupid shit about why instead of looking at the evidence
sep 1, 2025, 7:34 pm • 28 1 • view
The pandemic cost them a year but kids have lost years of education before, to teacher strikes and such, and managed. LLMs (and the rest of the attention algorithms) being perversely sold as the solution to learning loss salted the wound so it wouldn’t heal.
sep 1, 2025, 9:08 pm • 13 1 • view
We don’t know and won’t know for decades and we should be studying that. I bet Trump killed a bunch of studies on the topic
sep 1, 2025, 10:00 pm • 0 0 • view
These kinds of things have happened all over the world, happen on smaller scales across the US. There is no evidence of long term learning loss, only delays. Aka hitting arbitrary benchmarks. Only the kids whose lives were uprooted- caregiver death or permanent disability- have long term effects.
sep 1, 2025, 9:18 pm • 3 1 • view
And there was always the opportunity to invest money and resources into providing support for those kids after the fact, which obviously nobody on the right has ever had as a goal.
sep 2, 2025, 12:22 am • 1 0 • view