Nevertheless, some people thought I was denying the Bloody Obvious Position. Other people thought I was accusing Carol Dweck of denying the Bloody Obvious Position (see eg here). This despite my making sure to say:
I want to end by correcting a very important mistake about growth mindset that Dweck mostly avoids but which her partisans constantly commit egregiously.
I believe the Bloody Obvious Position. Dweck believes the Bloody Obvious Position. I acknowledge that Dweck believes the Bloody Obvious Position. There are a lot of growth mindset partisans online who don’t believe the Bloody Obvious Position, and I satisfied my urge to yell at them, but now they’ve been yelled at, and the more important issues debated by reasonable people still remain.
Noah Smith steelmans Dweck’s idea beyond recognition, almost unto triviality. Smith says that the growth mindset is a belief about the effectiveness of effort at the margin rather than on average. But how do economists understand “at the margin”? I’m not an economist, but it seems to be roughly “improvement per additional resource invested.” And how much can innate ability improve per additional resource invested? Does that question even make sense?
Scott, despite his admitted biases, steelmans Dweck in a very useful way. He points to the difference between implicit and explicit beliefs, and tentatively notes that Dweck’s thesis about belief-in-effort seems to work better if we interpret that as implicit-belief-in-effort. As I suggested on Scott’s blog, though, this actually takes the sting out of some of Scott’s worries about Dweck.
Also see this reply by econblogger Noah Smith.
Scott has responded to this in his latest update:
Noah Smith steelmans Dweck’s idea beyond recognition, almost unto triviality. Smith says that the growth mindset is a belief about the effectiveness of effort at the margin rather than on average. But how do economists understand “at the margin”? I’m not an economist, but it seems to be roughly “improvement per additional resource invested.” And how much can innate ability improve per additional resource invested? Does that question even make sense?
Scott, despite his admitted biases, steelmans Dweck in a very useful way. He points to the difference between implicit and explicit beliefs, and tentatively notes that Dweck’s thesis about belief-in-effort seems to work better if we interpret that as implicit-belief-in-effort. As I suggested on Scott’s blog, though, this actually takes the sting out of some of Scott’s worries about Dweck.