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Or just fund public schools at the level that private schools do and have reasonable class sizes.

I would agree. The testing used to stream kids is noisy at best and systematically biased at worst against kids with educated parents.

> n impoverished school where the majority of the effort goes to controlling poor behaviour

I think this is the real issue, irrespective of 'gifted' status. I failed the 11+ in the UK but spent my entire teenage years bored out of my mind and in fear for my physical safety. At 16 I switched to a school where classes were less chaotic and thrived. I graduated with a high 2:1 from Cambridge, so although I'm not 'gifted' in any precocious sense, and probably wouldn't have been picked up by these programmes, I was capable of some kind of academic achievement.

The focus on one end of the bell curve who visibly suffer more than others in the middle obscures the real problem: public schools are underfunded and understaffed. There's a reason why private education provides class sizes of 10-15: At that level teachers are _able_ to respond to the individual needs of all children.

Hiving off <5% into special classes for gifted might be good for those children, but it is socially regressive and ignores the problem for those who remain in sink schools.

> it's probably enough to act with genuine, directed enjoyment and curiosity.

This is true, but I think you are seriously underestimating how difficult this can be, and how easy it is to lose track of what it actually, genuinely is that gives you enjoyment.

This is amazing. The only problem is I now want all these features within the OS X file open dialog for opening saving files within applications.

This is my hobby horse! A confounder would be an unobserved (unmeasured) variable that influences both the allocation to treatment and the outcome. In this case unfiltered air elsewhere is contaminating the magnitude of the treatment effect (in a conservative direction) but wouldn't undermine the validity of a properly conducted experiment.

> I don't think that's a safe assumption to make.

I agree, but the reality is we don't know. Also there's evidence that cultural norms do substantially shape our opportunities (e.g. Denmark vs Saudi Arabia) and we should be mindful of this always. This cuts both ways too — men in Scandinavia are much more likely to be involved in child rearing through choice, and this is something men in other cultures miss out on.

Except that many girls are made to feel abnormal for expressing an interest in stereotypically male activities (as are boys in reverse).

The key is to acknowledge first that our society is incredibly gendered (and racist) in ways we often oblivious to.

I'd have more sympathy for critiques of feminism (and similar policies designed to help minorities) if even basic indices of equality like pay for equal work were fixed, and there wasn't clear evidence of discrimination on grounds of gender in interviewing, police treatment etc.

They don't get better prices because they are operating in a system where access to key drugs is a key differentiator. Penny pinching on access drugs (as does NICE in the UK on behalf of the NHS) wouldn't be a good look for an insurance company as they pitch for your business. The only way negotiations with Pharma companies will work is is you actually refuse to pay over-inflated prices, again as-does NICE. And the only way this can be justified is to have a centrally mandated $ per unit 'utility' (aka QALY) beyond which you won't pay.

Private insurers aren't motivated to do any of this because high drug prices don't hurt their bottom line.

No, specifically they say:

> The most admired arguments are made with data, > but the origins, veracity, and malleability of those data > tend to be ancillary concerns.

That's a concern I often share: "the data" can so often be a "winner's history".

>(can't quit your job and travel the world if you have kids to support).

I think the real reason is that there will be someone to look after you when you're old and sick.