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Culture War Roundup for the week of January 1, 2024

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You seem to be assuming that kids will know to find all the resources on their own, and generally do the executive function things a parent would likely be much better at. Parental encouragement, purchase of supplies (robot, pencils), and setting up the house comfortably for the hobbies (desks, quiet space) all matter greatly on top of what you can get by googling "learn to code"

It seems like part of the problem with the Caplan take, is that people imagine wildly different parameters for the parental Overton window.

Parents will obviously buy pencils. The few children so deprived they don't even get pencils from home are given them at school (along with paper, snacks, and some other things).

Most parents can and will get desks and a lower end robot, keyboard, hard drive, or whatever. This is especially true if the kid is credibly using it for educational purposes. Some parents also have better connections, more money, more home space, and time to take the kid to clubs, but this seems in some sense intrinsic -- most parents won't be able to change these things just by wanting to.

A quiet space can be surprisingly hard! Maybe the kid should go to the library?