David Perkins
@tecknow.grumbleware.com
Gay, disabled, curmudgeon, nerd. 40+ (he/him)
Blog updates at @grumbleware.com
Blog updates at @grumbleware.com
You're probably right. I wonder what the separation is? I also wonder if you can leverage the ability to reliably read a complex math expression to help them learn to repeatably read a sentence.
I bet you can, but it would end up looking like training them out of 3-cueing.
I bet you can, but it would end up looking like training them out of 3-cueing.
November 12, 2025 at 6:42 AM
You're probably right. I wonder what the separation is? I also wonder if you can leverage the ability to reliably read a complex math expression to help them learn to repeatably read a sentence.
I bet you can, but it would end up looking like training them out of 3-cueing.
I bet you can, but it would end up looking like training them out of 3-cueing.
Some kids are never taught to read a sentence the same way twice and that makes programming nearly impossible. I imagine it impacts basically all math and instruction-following too.
November 12, 2025 at 5:43 AM
Some kids are never taught to read a sentence the same way twice and that makes programming nearly impossible. I imagine it impacts basically all math and instruction-following too.
I've listened to interviews about this before (probably with the same person) and it really seems like, as far as they're concerned, only fiction exists?
I help people learn to program and learning about 3-cueing helped explain some huge hurdles that some students faced.
I help people learn to program and learning about 3-cueing helped explain some huge hurdles that some students faced.
November 12, 2025 at 5:43 AM
I've listened to interviews about this before (probably with the same person) and it really seems like, as far as they're concerned, only fiction exists?
I help people learn to program and learning about 3-cueing helped explain some huge hurdles that some students faced.
I help people learn to program and learning about 3-cueing helped explain some huge hurdles that some students faced.
Sorry about the wonkiness, I use speech to text when I'm not near a keyboard and sometimes I don't have the motor skills to go back and edit it.
November 12, 2025 at 2:31 AM
Sorry about the wonkiness, I use speech to text when I'm not near a keyboard and sometimes I don't have the motor skills to go back and edit it.
Phonics and whole word and other evidence-based methods of teaching reading are about supporting the process of orthographic encoding. Kids and adults don't continue sounding out gamiliar words forever.
November 12, 2025 at 2:14 AM
Phonics and whole word and other evidence-based methods of teaching reading are about supporting the process of orthographic encoding. Kids and adults don't continue sounding out gamiliar words forever.
Phonics teaches lots of key words that are hard to sound out with basic phonic rules. As sight words. There is no purity test.
And even setting that aside, the ability to sound out most words frees up cognitive resources for dealing with the exceptions.
And even setting that aside, the ability to sound out most words frees up cognitive resources for dealing with the exceptions.
November 12, 2025 at 2:14 AM
Phonics teaches lots of key words that are hard to sound out with basic phonic rules. As sight words. There is no purity test.
And even setting that aside, the ability to sound out most words frees up cognitive resources for dealing with the exceptions.
And even setting that aside, the ability to sound out most words frees up cognitive resources for dealing with the exceptions.
You could have started with the observation that many people taught with phonics can distinguish those words and then ask how they were taught or expected to figure it out? But you didn't do that either.
November 12, 2025 at 2:14 AM
You could have started with the observation that many people taught with phonics can distinguish those words and then ask how they were taught or expected to figure it out? But you didn't do that either.
If you were actually curious, you could just look up how phonics was actually taught? Or maybe investigate some of the other alternatives besides three queuing, like whole word? What do whole word and phonics have in common with each other but not with three queuing? Maybe the answer is there?
November 12, 2025 at 2:09 AM
If you were actually curious, you could just look up how phonics was actually taught? Or maybe investigate some of the other alternatives besides three queuing, like whole word? What do whole word and phonics have in common with each other but not with three queuing? Maybe the answer is there?
If you don't accomplish your goals, then you don't have those goals. Might not be the standard that we want to apply to us, or that we use against other people, but it is absolutely how huge proportions of people operate, and you have not actually made any case that they cannot or should not.
November 10, 2025 at 7:31 PM
If you don't accomplish your goals, then you don't have those goals. Might not be the standard that we want to apply to us, or that we use against other people, but it is absolutely how huge proportions of people operate, and you have not actually made any case that they cannot or should not.
Are you under the impression that because I'm willing to view what the Democrats do with complexity, other people are required to do the same? Or to view my support of them with equal consideration? They are not.
November 10, 2025 at 7:31 PM
Are you under the impression that because I'm willing to view what the Democrats do with complexity, other people are required to do the same? Or to view my support of them with equal consideration? They are not.
Sorry, Are you under the impression that my goal here is to refuse to grant them that complexity? I already said I continue to support them. I don't even disagree that the threats brought to bear were worth responding to. I'm not projecting any of this onto the Democrats.
November 10, 2025 at 7:31 PM
Sorry, Are you under the impression that my goal here is to refuse to grant them that complexity? I already said I continue to support them. I don't even disagree that the threats brought to bear were worth responding to. I'm not projecting any of this onto the Democrats.
And even if someone were willing to try, the consequences of ending the shutdown and the subsidies will be greater on a larger number of people than any action I could ever personally take.
People are entitled to treat you in accordance with the effects you have on their life.
People are entitled to treat you in accordance with the effects you have on their life.
November 10, 2025 at 7:15 PM
And even if someone were willing to try, the consequences of ending the shutdown and the subsidies will be greater on a larger number of people than any action I could ever personally take.
People are entitled to treat you in accordance with the effects you have on their life.
People are entitled to treat you in accordance with the effects you have on their life.
The idea that the results of our actions don't reveal our goals only makes sense. If the person we're talking to imagines us with enough complexity to allow goals, actions, and consequences to be different. We are not entitled to demand that of other people, and most people will not grant it.
November 10, 2025 at 7:15 PM
The idea that the results of our actions don't reveal our goals only makes sense. If the person we're talking to imagines us with enough complexity to allow goals, actions, and consequences to be different. We are not entitled to demand that of other people, and most people will not grant it.
At a minimum, because they abandoned that goal, it isn't a goal that we share. It's also entirely possible to argue that since I'm not going to withdraw my support for Democrats over this, I don't have that goal either. Hence, I'm lying when I say that I do.
November 10, 2025 at 6:38 PM
At a minimum, because they abandoned that goal, it isn't a goal that we share. It's also entirely possible to argue that since I'm not going to withdraw my support for Democrats over this, I don't have that goal either. Hence, I'm lying when I say that I do.
At the moment question support for the expanded ACA subsidies. That was the Democrats' stated goal for the shutdown. It ended without accomplishing that, therefore it wasn't their actual goal. I support the Democrats as the best available option, so what does that say about me?
November 10, 2025 at 6:38 PM
At the moment question support for the expanded ACA subsidies. That was the Democrats' stated goal for the shutdown. It ended without accomplishing that, therefore it wasn't their actual goal. I support the Democrats as the best available option, so what does that say about me?
The Democrats are responsible for producing a constant stream of high quality evidence that my support for Democrats means I'm lying about my positions. It's true, that's not everything. But it's not nothing.
November 10, 2025 at 6:22 PM
The Democrats are responsible for producing a constant stream of high quality evidence that my support for Democrats means I'm lying about my positions. It's true, that's not everything. But it's not nothing.
So the engineers assumption must be that it will collapse until that possibility is foreclosed.
Null hypotheses are how you encode your goals.
I assume corruption because that's what I seek to prevent. What's the evidence it was prevented?
Null hypotheses are how you encode your goals.
I assume corruption because that's what I seek to prevent. What's the evidence it was prevented?
November 10, 2025 at 5:29 PM
So the engineers assumption must be that it will collapse until that possibility is foreclosed.
Null hypotheses are how you encode your goals.
I assume corruption because that's what I seek to prevent. What's the evidence it was prevented?
Null hypotheses are how you encode your goals.
I assume corruption because that's what I seek to prevent. What's the evidence it was prevented?
Implicit collusion operates without coordination, and I never said there couldn't be evidence for it, I said it wasn't helpful to demand evidence for the thing you're trying to reject.
The onus is on the engineer to show that the bridge won't collapse under foreseeable conditions, even rare ones.
The onus is on the engineer to show that the bridge won't collapse under foreseeable conditions, even rare ones.
November 10, 2025 at 5:29 PM
Implicit collusion operates without coordination, and I never said there couldn't be evidence for it, I said it wasn't helpful to demand evidence for the thing you're trying to reject.
The onus is on the engineer to show that the bridge won't collapse under foreseeable conditions, even rare ones.
The onus is on the engineer to show that the bridge won't collapse under foreseeable conditions, even rare ones.
You are asking people to present evidence in favor of a null hypothesis. That's not how evidence works. That's not how design works. That's not how anything works.
You enumerate all of the things you don't want to be true and then you try to gather enough evidence to the contrary to reject them.
You enumerate all of the things you don't want to be true and then you try to gather enough evidence to the contrary to reject them.
November 10, 2025 at 5:05 PM
You are asking people to present evidence in favor of a null hypothesis. That's not how evidence works. That's not how design works. That's not how anything works.
You enumerate all of the things you don't want to be true and then you try to gather enough evidence to the contrary to reject them.
You enumerate all of the things you don't want to be true and then you try to gather enough evidence to the contrary to reject them.
If the protests are among the biggest but they still don't work then that's strong evidence in favor of giving up. Giving up is an outcome to be avoided at all costs, therefore premises that would enable it should be denied.
I'm sure you already know this.
I'm sure you already know this.
October 16, 2025 at 5:18 PM
If the protests are among the biggest but they still don't work then that's strong evidence in favor of giving up. Giving up is an outcome to be avoided at all costs, therefore premises that would enable it should be denied.
I'm sure you already know this.
I'm sure you already know this.
It's not particularly difficult to reason that even someone with the best of motivations might want to downplay the protests. For the same reason that giving counter-evidence to a conspiracy theorist only reinforces their commitment to their conspiratorial beliefs.
October 16, 2025 at 5:18 PM
It's not particularly difficult to reason that even someone with the best of motivations might want to downplay the protests. For the same reason that giving counter-evidence to a conspiracy theorist only reinforces their commitment to their conspiratorial beliefs.
I think a lot of people - correctly! - recognize that they wouldn't be allowed to hold a position like that, so they won't accept it from someone else. And anyway, it's not useful to them because they can't agree with or copy it. And Sanders, despite everything else, knows his audience.
October 5, 2025 at 5:25 PM
I think a lot of people - correctly! - recognize that they wouldn't be allowed to hold a position like that, so they won't accept it from someone else. And anyway, it's not useful to them because they can't agree with or copy it. And Sanders, despite everything else, knows his audience.
If we were to decide to de-prioritize,say car ownership or home, those would be economic policies with a massive social element. You'd need to determine how to overcome social resistance to do the economic policy at all.
Which we are largely failing at.
Which we are largely failing at.
September 29, 2025 at 6:22 PM
If we were to decide to de-prioritize,say car ownership or home, those would be economic policies with a massive social element. You'd need to determine how to overcome social resistance to do the economic policy at all.
Which we are largely failing at.
Which we are largely failing at.
We are capable of rejecting the common argument that in our grandparents or great-grandparents generation. Only rich people had fridges or microwaves or whatever, therefore, people who have those things can't be poor. Right?
Social conditions have material consequences.
Social conditions have material consequences.
September 29, 2025 at 6:22 PM
We are capable of rejecting the common argument that in our grandparents or great-grandparents generation. Only rich people had fridges or microwaves or whatever, therefore, people who have those things can't be poor. Right?
Social conditions have material consequences.
Social conditions have material consequences.
Hey, can you think of anything bad that might happen to someone because their neighbors perceive them as poor, regardless of how they would be perceived in a different community? Because I can. And as long as that's the case, the threat of feeling poor exists outside the person who perceives it.
September 29, 2025 at 6:22 PM
Hey, can you think of anything bad that might happen to someone because their neighbors perceive them as poor, regardless of how they would be perceived in a different community? Because I can. And as long as that's the case, the threat of feeling poor exists outside the person who perceives it.