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**Update:** one of the readers of my blog has posted [this excellent response post of his own](https://www.threemonkeymind.com/key-lime-pie-variation/), in which he explores the “experiment with variations” part of the SDI method I described. He writes:
> My purpose here is to show you that:
>
...(read more)
> is it really fair to praise a school as ‘top-class’ or ’the *best* school in city X’
Of course it’s fair. That this school *is* top-class cannot be seriously disputed. (I will leave it to others to substantiate this claim, if desired; it would be unseemly to focus overlong on the *objective* me...(read more)
> if you can be spending most of your time correcting your own lecturers when they get things wrong
If you’re sufficiently smart and academically inclined, you can find yourself correcting *some* of your teachers without the school, *or even those teachers*, being bad. Finding very skilled teache...(read more)
You said, “You don’t embrace any kind of deontology, but deontology can prevent Omelas, Uility Monstering, etc.”
> I didn’t see any mention of bullying or the like in the OP?
I didn’t say otherwise. The purpose of my description was to paint a picture of the environment, not necessarily to respond to specific things in the OP.
> (Leaving aside the fact that putting forward “just select the smartest kids ...(read more)
> incidentally, Google has never even heard of utility monstering
Au contraire: here is the [Wikipedia article on utility monsters](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utility_monster), and here is [some guy’s blog post about utility monsters](https://atheistethicist.blogspot.com/2009/01/robert-nozicks...(read more)
> The right answers are the ones dictated by the weighing up of harm based on the available information (which includes the harm ratings in the database of knowledge of sentience).
I disagree. I reject your standard of correctness. (As do many other people.)
The question of whether there is an...(read more)
> I have always judged it by the woeful stuff that makes it across into other places where the subject often comes up
Well, that hardly seems a reliable approach…
I should, perhaps, clarify my point. My list of terms wasn’t intended to be some sort of exhaustive set of prerequisite topics, but...(read more)
**Update:** one of the readers of my blog has posted [this excellent response post of his own](https://www.threemonkeymind.com/key-lime-pie-variation/), in which he explores the “experiment with variations” part of the SDI method I described. He writes: > My purpose here is to show you that: > ...(read more)
http://rot13.com/
> is it really fair to praise a school as ‘top-class’ or ’the *best* school in city X’ Of course it’s fair. That this school *is* top-class cannot be seriously disputed. (I will leave it to others to substantiate this claim, if desired; it would be unseemly to focus overlong on the *objective* me...(read more)
> if you can be spending most of your time correcting your own lecturers when they get things wrong If you’re sufficiently smart and academically inclined, you can find yourself correcting *some* of your teachers without the school, *or even those teachers*, being bad. Finding very skilled teache...(read more)
TAG said this, not me.
> I didn’t see any mention of bullying or the like in the OP? I didn’t say otherwise. The purpose of my description was to paint a picture of the environment, not necessarily to respond to specific things in the OP. > (Leaving aside the fact that putting forward “just select the smartest kids ...(read more)
See the graphs I posted on this month’s open thread for some relevant data.
> incidentally, Google has never even heard of utility monstering Au contraire: here is the [Wikipedia article on utility monsters](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utility_monster), and here is [some guy’s blog post about utility monsters](https://atheistethicist.blogspot.com/2009/01/robert-nozicks...(read more)
> The right answers are the ones dictated by the weighing up of harm based on the available information (which includes the harm ratings in the database of knowledge of sentience). I disagree. I reject your standard of correctness. (As do many other people.) The question of whether there is an...(read more)
> I have always judged it by the woeful stuff that makes it across into other places where the subject often comes up Well, that hardly seems a reliable approach… I should, perhaps, clarify my point. My list of terms wasn’t intended to be some sort of exhaustive set of prerequisite topics, but...(read more)