michael pham

research at a central bank. rl hobbyist. prev math + econ @swarthmore

[michael pham @michael_pham8]

@yacineMTB how can a peasant like me build a harness that can compete with their self improving harnesses that are being self improved by unreleased rsi

[John Arnold @johnarnold]

A week later, I'm still thinking about NHJ's article on NYC schools. It was courageous but a huge missed opportunity to call for real reform.

She blames school choice, inequality, segregation, the wealthy and herself. But she seems reluctant to criticize the actors and policies implicated by the failures she documents, perhaps because those conclusions would be uncomfortable for many of her ideological allies.

- She describes absentee teachers, poor instruction, unresponsive administrators, and students who graduate without mastering the material. But she never calls for greater accountability at the district, school, principal, and teacher levels.

- She documents teachers failing to fulfill basic responsibilities but doesn't explore whether tenure and other employment protections allow chronic teacher absenteeism and poor performance to persist.

- She laments the concentration of disadvantaged students but doesn't consider whether NYCPS should consolidate under-enrolled schools, thus allowing more resources towards instruction and increasing socioeconomic diversity.

- She describes her daughter earning As in honors classes despite substantial gaps in her knowledge. Yet she doesn't consider the value of standardized testing as a check on grade inflation and identifying learning gaps before they compound.

- She describes how experienced teachers choose to work in better schools but doesn't salute the districts that have had “reform superintendents” like DC, Dallas, Denver, and Houston that have used cash bonuses to incentivize the best teachers to work in the most disadvantaged schools.

- She notes that eliminating homework harmed her daughter, but doesn't examine how the movement against homework is largely driven by equity advocates who argue that it can turn unequal home circumstances into unequal academic outcomes.

- She condemns school choice yet uses it to secure a better school fit for her daughter, without noting it’s the only realistic escape valve for families who can’t move or afford private school.

- She describes the “impossible balancing act” of teaching students at vastly different levels but doesn't explore how academic tracking can help students at both ends of the academic spectrum.

- She describes disruptive students who harm the classroom environment but doesn’t ask for stronger disciplinary actions to protect other students.

- She documents a school that lowered academic expectations in pursuit of equity but doesn't acknowledge how doing so perpetuates the very achievement gaps those policies seek to eliminate.

Hannah-Jones’ story was powerful. She supplied the evidence for a broad examination of why schools are failing disadvantaged students. It could have been the strongest call in a generation for urban school district reform.

Segregation and poverty are real obstacles. But they cannot become explanations that absolve everyone else of responsibility. We can’t wait to solve all societal issues before demanding higher performing schools.

[michael pham @michael_pham8]

@MikeAndIke29 yea lol why did he waste a 2 min warning

[michael pham @michael_pham8]

@BillAckman credit

[michael pham @michael_pham8]

@florianederer your sprinting abilities peak at ~30 so it would be pretty demoralizing training to sprint faster and getting slower. Meanwhile ~40 is peak marathon shape so one can get faster at endurance running going into their 40s esp if didn’t train before

[michael pham @michael_pham8]

@ryancbriggs that’s the whole point of longtermisn

[michael pham @michael_pham8]

@Paleobront @ben_golub he’s an economist, I think he’s referring to AER, econometrica, jpe, qje, and restud. All notoriously slow and admitting based on institutional prestige/networks

[michael pham @michael_pham8]

@NickyDied @MikeBlazers we’ll see next week in la.

[michael pham @michael_pham8]

@JeffAnderson_ @FiSurgi Funny thing is either they had a very favorable environment or they won the genetic lottery. Their parents are 5’ 6” and 5’ 11”.

[michael pham @michael_pham8]

@NickyDied @MikeBlazers Crazy thing is they were still dogging an fcs team with their third strings. Levels to this

[michael pham @michael_pham8]

@phl43 the counterfactual may have been that everyone and their momma got to edit the monorepo

[michael pham @michael_pham8]

@smatta1701 @NateSilver538 Wrong. Effective altruism is the natural enemy of the left and right because the right doesn’t believe in an existential threat other than immigration and the left doesn’t believe that tech bros/billionaires can have benevolent intentions.

[michael pham @michael_pham8]

@alz_zyd_ they can reason but not plan

[michael pham @michael_pham8]

@theinformation Who else would be paying for billions in rl envs and evals?

[michael pham @michael_pham8]

@cookinquack In an alternate universe Oregon brings back chip Kelly as oc and wins a chip

[michael pham @michael_pham8]

@tomough yup whether or not you believe their estimates, as someone who was in ea who’s talked to a lot of these ea ai ppl, their p(doom before 2100 from ai) is legitimately 0.1-0.5

[michael pham @michael_pham8]

Small open source models don’t need H100s. They’re maybe 1 year behind sota. Qwen3.8-27B is as good as Opus 4.6 Max (which was publicly released this earlier this year) on coding benchmarks. Qwen3.8-27B doesn’t need a crazy inference stack, it can on my 3090 consumer gpu when quanticized. Its ~20gb of weights take under a minute to download and get running!

[michael pham @michael_pham8]

@menhguin I don’t see how a sota ~30B model couldn’t already do this today short of it being aligned to not do so and agent payment infra for spinning up the cloud instance not existing yet

[michael pham @michael_pham8]

@isaeminhafalir there is no money in academic econ for labs to make rl envs for solving mwg proofs