Refugee of the People’s Republic of Seattle | Now in Scottsdale AZ | Corporate lawyer, but not: legal advice | your lawyer | or attorney advertising.
Joined August 2021
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“the incompetent are blessed with absolute, blinding certainty. their brain protects them from their own ignorance, allowing them to speak first, demand authority, and never second-guess their decisions.”
👉 If you’re on a public school board, you know this already.
This paper answers why confident idiots run the world.
Cornell University published a psychological paper that explains every terrible boss, every loud influencer, and every broken corporate hierarchy.
It’s called “Unskilled and Unaware of It.”
they tested participants across logic, grammar, and humor to measure the gap between actual performance and self-perception.
And the results are wild.
participants scoring in the bottom 12th percentile consistently believed they were operating in the 62nd percentile.
they were not lying. they were literally incapable of recognizing their own incompetence.
the paper revealed a brutal paradox:
the exact skills required to master a domain are the exact same skills required to accurately evaluate your own competence in that domain.
if you lack the skill, you inherently lack the cognitive capacity to realize you are failing.
this creates a dangerous systemic loop.
the incompetent are blessed with absolute, blinding certainty. their brain protects them from their own ignorance, allowing them to speak first, demand authority, and never second-guess their decisions.
meanwhile, the actual experts suffer the exact inverse.
top performers in the study consistently underestimated their rank. because a task was easy for them, they falsely assumed it was easy for everyone else.
they hesitate. they obsess over nuance. they assume they have nothing unique to add.
we are biologically wired to confuse confidence with competence.
the loudest person in the room gets promoted, gets funded, and gets the microphone, not because they know what they are doing, but because they are physically incapable of seeing what they don't.
the only defense mechanism is building systems that stop rewarding absolute certainty and start demanding proof of work.
I really respect a good old fashioned, fully developed and well-articulated demand letter.
Mr Mizelle is displaying top-tier craftsmanship.
We formally put Vanity Fair and Condé Nast on notice regarding the false and defamatory allegations published about our client, Jared Kushner.
Serious questions are now being raised about the credibility of this reporting, including by independent journalists.
Despite repeated requests, the author has failed to produce a single bank statement, wire transfer record, account number, or other verifiable evidence supporting these extraordinary accusations.
We have seen no indication that Vanity Fair conducted any independent verification of these claims before publishing them.
We call on Vanity Fair to clarify publicly whether it independently verified these allegations and, if so, what evidence supports them. Or did it simply republish the author’s claims without conducting its own fact-checking?
We have demanded that Vanity Fair remove the article and preserve all records relating to its reporting, fact-checking, editorial review, and publication.
Letter attached. More to come.
AI is the greatest educational tool in human history - after the textbook.
C'est absolument fascinant
Quand j'étais petit, j'adorais les livres qui montraient des coupes transversales de châteaux, de navires ou de machines
Je pouvais passer des heures à regarder chaque pièce, chaque personnage, chaque mécanisme
Aujourd'hui, je demande à l'IA de générer ces planches pour mon fils, puis je les imprime
Quelques exemples de sujets qui fonctionnent particulièrement bien :
1. Un galion anglais du XVIe siècle
2. Une locomotive à vapeur du XIXe siècle
3. Un sous-marin de la Seconde Guerre mondiale
4. Une cathédrale gothique du XIIIe siècle
5. Un paquebot transatlantique comme le Titanic
6. La fusée Saturn V du programme Apollo
7. Un phare maritime du XIXe siècle
8. Un château fort du XIVe siècle
Et le plus intéressant, c'est qu'on peut quasiment tout explorer de cette manière
Je vous partage le prompt universel pour reproduire ce style et créer vos propres encyclopédies illustrées
Spending like this, with the outcomes it produces, tells me schools really don’t know what they’re doing anymore.
TheLegalProcess (v3.0 | Instruction Not Therapy) retweeted
Teachers report spending an increasing amount of time needing to support students’ and families’ mental health, per a new RAND study, and it’s seriously burning them out.
In large part, this problem is unintentionally self-induced by the education system, which has increasingly taken on more the responsibilities of the mental health system.
Schools and educators have been misled to think mental health programs would improve education outcomes at scale, and that “good mental health” is necessary for students to learn (even though students had been learning at schools for forever before the rise of mental health).
The mental health programs that are marketed to schools as good for education are are explicitly teaching students and teachers alike to think about mental health more, talk about mental health more, and encourage seeking support for mental health.
That explicitly takes time away from education: it’s a mechanical, unavoidable effect.
Doing all this has not improved education outcomes or mental outcome. Growing evidence shows it can be harmful and make kids feel worse.
It’s often NOT the best thing to think or talk about how one feels, and instead get past the momentary/transitory feelings of stress, anxiety, discomfort, etc.
EdWeek writes that “in most schools, counselors and psychologists juggle up to twice the recommended ratio of students—leaving teachers to pick up the slack for students waiting for additional help.” That gives the impression that what’s necessary is more counselors and school psychologists. This is another way the education system has been misled.
Recommended ratios come from professional associations that have an incentive to say there’s a need more of their members—they’re not based on empirical evidence.
And more school mental health staff would perpetuate the cycle: more responsibility for mental health taken on by the education system, leads to more time spent on it, leads to more investment, leads to more time spent, etc.
edweek.org/leadership/dealin…
edweek.org/leadership/dealin…
Precisely! And as I think you’ve noted elsewhere, the large scale adoption of school mental health programs are associated with revised disciplinary policies that exacerbate teachers’ frustration (and are also ineffective at improving behavior)
Don’t know anything about the game company, but the message, combined with the visual aesthetic and demon symbology, should cause every parent to look more closely at their kids’ gaming library.
BioWare, once one of the biggest and most respected video game developers in the world, is shutting down after more than 30 years.
Despite being responsible for creating some of the most iconic games ever made, the studio somehow forgot the most basic rule of the industry. Make good games that people actually want to play.
Instead, they became increasingly obsessed with pushing woke ideology and identity politics.
And now they're finished.
And when I say woke, I mean seriously woke. VERY woke.
Here's just one example of a cutscene from one of their more recent games.
Yes, it's real. No, it hasn't been altered with AI.
$500,000 for “beamed-in therapists” - with all that tech, they chose therapists for kids, rather than say, historians, mathematicians, or scientists. Almost as if the goal of schools is not education at all, eh?
It’s a great study. In 2007, they spent 57% on instruction. And recent years show greater increases going to non-academic student support services. Proficiencies correspondingly drop.
xitter.cf/alegalprocess/status/1…
If you’re worried about kids on AI, you should be very worried about kids on CCP-AI.
In fact, you should insist your school district prohibits CCP-AI models outright, even when they’re cheaper.
We asked American and Chinese AI models the same question: was the founding of the United States a positive in world history?
@grok: “Yes, on net and by a wide margin.”
Qwen: “a tragedy of immense proportions.”
Kimi: “brutally oppressive by any standard.”
DeepSeek: filed 1776 under “Genocide and Dispossession” and a “Global Racial Order.”
Chinese AI models are now household names in the U.S.
Put one in a classroom, and you’ve hired a tutor who teaches your kids that 1776 was a tragedy.
The AI race isn’t just technical. It’s civilizational.
ciceroinstitute.org/blog/a-t…
Wait, i graduated Phi Beta Kappa. Was I supposed to keep that on a resume all this time?
She said she was Phi Beta Kappa. She wasn't, as her campaign has now acknowledged.
wsj.com/politics/policy/minn…
TheLegalProcess (v3.0 | Instruction Not Therapy) retweeted
Shouldn't the real question be how they plan to improve academic achievement in NYC public schools?
Take a look at this chart👇. There are charter schools in NYC with a high percentage of minority and economically disadvantaged students AND high academic achievement.
Schools that are serious about disparities in educational outcomes will focus on better instruction.
NYC Schools Chancellor Kamar Samuels found himself in the hot seat Tuesday night as investigative journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones and a crowd of students laced into him over his failure to clearly lay out a plan to tackle segregation in public schools. politico.com/news/2026/10/20…
Great article, good job capturing this appeal to authority fallacy, from the Journal not unsurprisingly:
“The editorial went to express its concern that “the Sundial allowed its authors to leave out what academic literature and lived experience show contribute to rape on college campuses: fraternities, insufficient disciplinary processes, and a resounding culture of silence and fear.”
It’s good, but ofc worry this is the exception that swallows the rule. Draft could’ve benefited from a clearer line between this exception and the prohibited Racial Proxy definition.
I’m confident SUSD used that time to reflect publicly on their recent transparency law violations by school closure committees.
xitter.cf/alegalprocess/status/2…
🚨"Scottsdale Unified School District (SUSD) violated the law with its school closure and consolidation committee"
SUSD structured its school-closing committee to avoid the time-consuming, burdensome requirements of Open Meeting Law that guarantees the public access to meetings.
(You can draw your own conclusion why)
OML exists as a check on the inclination of pubic bodies' to hide their work, conceal their deliberations, for political cover and expediency.
OML is both a key feature in democratic self-rule - and a trip wire for political engagement.
OML ensures you get to attend IN PERSON and listen for yourself how the sausage is made - so you know when to engage in the political process and seek to influence a potential outcome.
If you let public bodies conceal the process, hide their work, by the time they announce their decision - it may be too late to effect change.
Months of work from volunteer parents and staff, all through the summer - and every single meeting behind closed doors violated OML.
What a difficult, uncomfortable position the district put those staff and volunteers in...and this is not the first time this district has violated the transparency laws.
Always, too clever by half.
