sticklebat

Probably not GRE (expectations for grad school are very different, usually), but for the ACT/SAT it depends on the school. Some schools want different things, and some emphasize things like creativity, innovation. Spending all your time studying for a test doesn’t demonstrate those at all. Most schools are looking for more than just good grades and high test scores. That’s why they have essays and recommendations, to get a more thorough picture of the student.

Think old, old money. I believe there's a family, still worth billions, whose money originally came from managing the mail system of the Holy Roman Empire. Its pretty difficult to account for wealth that pre-dates modern capitalism.

And yet you know of them somehow, and if you do, then so do relevant governments. More importantly, this is just a ridiculous notion. Super secret “old, old money” isn’t so easy to hide in such vast quantities, unless it’s hidden so well that it’s functionally useless. What form do you think their wealth takes? Is it land? Stocks or bonds? Modern currency? None of those are easy to hide, and being derived from old money doesn’t make it any easier. You might be able to keep a dragon’s horde of precious metals, gems, or cultural artifacts under wraps, but only if it’s just sitting there. If you’re selling enough of it to live like a billionaire then that’s not going to stay secret for very long, either.

We have the potential to give a grand majority of students some levels of education through distance learning.

More over, some school communities believe that they can provide better educations remotely than in person with appropriate safety measures (blended learning, social distancing, cohorts, mask wearing, etc.). There’s such an emphasis on the importance of in-person learning that people have lost sight of the fact that safe in-person learning under these circumstances provides little to none of the benefits of traditional learning, at least for older kids.

It’s important to provide in person options strictly for kids that really need it, either because of special needs, a lack of technological access, or age. But that can be provided to those kids better if we aren’t trying to do it for everyone, so taking a targeted approach can provide a better experience for everyone.

E.g. at my high school school, over 80% of students and parents (and the number has been rising as more and more details about what in-person school is going to look like), and 100% of staff would prefer if the whole school went remote only, with the exception of special needs, but we aren’t being allowed to by the city.

I think we have to keep wrestling with the mind-body problem while recognizing that there cannot be, and should not be, a single, universally true solution.

You sound very certain about that. And yet in the Scientific American column you linked to, you said you’re with Voltaire when he said: “doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is an absurd one.” So much for consistency!

It’s considered one of the top ten opera houses in the world, it was built over 100 years ago when Argentina was one of the wealthiest countries in the world, and Buenos Aires is not “the edge of the world.” The fact that a major metropolitan city has a very nice, historic opera house is not that crazy and not indicative of insane wealth accumulation among a small number of people today. It doesn’t even remotely demonstrate the point they were trying to make.