Tomas McIntee

Mathematician, social scientist, novelist. n.Erdős = 3. Alum UC-Irvine (Ph.D.) & Appalachian State (assorted other degrees).

[Tomas McIntee @MathIntee]

@David_J_Bier Your premise was false (legal immigration to the US occurs).

Your form of argument was obviously generally invalid (“If you make X illegal, then X crimes are your fault”) & in particular (tighter law / policy has meant less illegal immigration).

It was a deranged statement.

[Tomas McIntee @MathIntee]

@sc_cath Ariely’s work being fraudulent means he should be fired with cause.

Arday’s work being prima facie worthless & fraudulent, plus his entire biography being blatantly fabricated, means everyone who approved / published / hired / promoted him should be fired with cause.

[Tomas McIntee @MathIntee]

@jonatanpallesen There are a lot of open access mandates attached to funding now.

Some journals still make out like bandits with open access fees, but it’s a significant improvement over completely inaccessible research products.

Peer review still isn’t functioning well.

[Tomas McIntee @MathIntee]

@jonatanpallesen Boil down the sources and the claim to temporary psychosis is based on “because she said so.”

A functional justice system does not let people off the hook just because they make a non-falsifiable claim.

If the insanity plea meant permanent lockup in a sanitarium, it could work.

[Tomas McIntee @MathIntee]

@LJS527 @DerekPederson3 The EC makes a handful of the most populous states overwhelmingly important. I have a whole book on this.

Most of the presidential campaign takes place in the six largest swing states.

Back when New York was a swing state, it decided a lot of elections.

[Tomas McIntee @MathIntee]

@worst_account Given that he was a transparently unqualified fabulist, anyone he supervised/evaluated or who supervised/evaluated him should be scrutinized.

One bad apple can spoil a whole barrel. Get them all out.

[Tomas McIntee @MathIntee]

@InterstellrNews The Klingon Empire is kind of dysfunctional.

Rapid technological progress has been rare on Earth - not unusual for a human society to be stagnant for a couple of centuries.

Earth also got tech transfers from Vulcan, Andor, and Tellar, who were more advanced than Earth.

[Tomas McIntee @MathIntee]

@Jxs_b Speaking as an actual tourist, ~95% of what I was interested in seeing of London was English stuff.

As for the remainder, I came away with the disappointed impression that we have better Indian food in the US.

Though the vegan curry sausage rolls were nice.

[Tomas McIntee @MathIntee]

@MichaelFKane I'm descended from William Henry Harrison.

His claim to fame among the presidents is fairly simple, and his main legacy was the oft-ignored lesson that one should be careful about picking vice presidents.

[Tomas McIntee @MathIntee]

Every few years, we get a new flashy education study that catches on because it purportedly improved educational outcomes & performance gaps.

Then it gets scaled & fails to replicate, usually making things slightly worse.

[Tomas McIntee @MathIntee]

Fellow UC-Irvine alum, but very incorrect on actual gap closing, which is an area of clear policy failure.

NAEP long term trends show no evidence of a decrease in racial gaps in the US since 1990.

Some environmental interventions that may have helped through 1990 follow.

[Tomas McIntee @MathIntee]

There is essentially no evidence that [insert post-1970 educational intervention] helped.

Although there are some ed trends that seem to have been counterproductive, as exhibited by the “Mississippi Miracle” of ending social promotion & returning to phonics.

[Tomas McIntee @MathIntee]

@pencilskirt2_ The data supports the presence of widespread anti-male bias in grading in primary and secondary school in the US.

Pretty much every study with blinded grading pops this up.

[Tomas McIntee @MathIntee]

@lawrencepatihis NAEP long term trends show gap expansion since 2008 and arguably 1990.

Education literature is stuffed with non-replicated results that promised to close the gap while also improving overall educational results.

[Tomas McIntee @MathIntee]

@lawrencepatihis There haven’t been “tremendous gains.”

There have been limited number of intensive, non-scaled experimental interventions with unaffordable per-student costs showing improvement for all students (mostly not gap-closing improvement) concentrated in childhood.

[Tomas McIntee @MathIntee]

@lawrencepatihis Even if you believe that Jensen must have been wrong on moral grounds, his pessimism about wasting incredible amounts of money on failed interventions was warranted.

[Tomas McIntee @MathIntee]

@lawrencepatihis The dogmatic assumption that Jensen must be wrong has been part of a policy priority that cost literally trillions of dollars in public expenditures.

& probably cost the private sector trillions in net economic production, too.

These failed interventions have been expensive.