This one is a little outside my normal area, but I feel that my ideas are interesting and have merit. My position is that in distributed systems, things like "Self selection" can be very significant even if the forces are very small. Notice that I am a gardener and have been a Bee keeper for many years. A hive of Bees is a perfect example of a distributed system. That is there is no central governmental control of the hive and it is left to each Bee to conduct him or her self for the sole benefit of the hive. The Queen Bee is not the boss or in direct control of the hive. All she is is a egg laying machine and if she is not doing her job to the satisfaction of the hive, they will kill her and hatch new Queen. The reason that I point out how a Bee hive works is that I feel that many aspects of our human system are based on a similarly distributed system and thus follows similar rules. Now how does "Social Self Selection" fit into all this?
I have trying to figure out why our country and particularly our educational system has changed and changed to the worse here in the USA in such a short period of time. I think that it is clear that the quality of our teachers in our public schools have significantly declined over the past 40 years. You may disagree, but that is my observation. Since I am familiar with public schools around the world and have an opportunity to compare, I find that the quality of their teachers have not declined, but may have actually improved. Agree or not, those are my observations and I want to know why. I have presented similar positions before, but did not go into why the decline occurred. I think that is has been mostly due to "Self Selection". For the past 40 years kids of lower teaching competence have "Self Selected" to become teachers rather than assembly line workers.
I belonged to a fraternity while in college and to this day the students that I met and associated there are still some of my closest friends wtih whom I still share many common values. That has not been true of any group or association before or since. Was it just luck? I don't think so. I knew a lot of students from other houses and still communicate with many to this day, but I did not at the time have a similar relationship with them nor do I today. We "Self Selected" ourselves in the individual fraternities and it was very efficient where few exceptions got thru. The whole process took a couple of weeks, but it was through. This is what i contend is happening right here under our noses all the time.
Did you read the book "Bell Curve" It was one of the most interesting books that I have ever read. One key point from the book was about college graduates and non-college graduates, but would apply to many segments of our population. The research states that, "if you are a college graduate, then 90% of your best friends will also be college graduates". With me so far? The other side of this is that, "if you are not a college graduate, then 90% of your best friends will also not be college graduates". Interesting. If you don't think that this is true, then test yourself and your friends. You could do this with marriages too and the results would be similar. What is the force that causes this to happen? The force is so small that most of us are not even aware that it is having any impact on our decisions and judgements, but it is clear that is has.
Try this one. In a chemistry class, we mixed several different liquids of different colors together that had very near the same density. We let the bottle stand for a while and it did not take very long for the colors to separate according to their densities. The force on each molecule was so small that it could not be measured, but it was enough to, over time, to cause each to find the location in the density chain where it was most comfortable. Now in a population of 300 million don't you think we have the same thing going on?
Years ago, I had the good fortune to have sat and had a cup of coffee with Linus Pauling. You know, they only person to ever earn two Nobel prizes. He told me that he lived in a small town in Oregon and his first prized gift was a chemistry set. Back in those days, you could get all the chemical refills at your local drug store. Myself, like Pauling prized my first chemistry set as did most of the kids of my age. Now the reason that I bring this up is that at one time the Chemistry set was the most prized gift and now it is not even in the top 100. What has happened? Do you think it is some kind of evil conspiracy or something a little more simple like "Self Selection"? It might be both, but Self Selection is in there some place. Some thing significant has changed and we should what to find out why.
Now do you see why I am taking the position that "Self Selection" has cause the USA to have ended up with lower quality public school teachers? I have mentioned the "Brain Drain" that has benefited the USA over the past 60 years. Weren't those the result of "Self Selection"? The affect was to cause the average IQ of the USA to be raised to above 100. The change may have been small, let's say just an additional 1%, but as you can start to see, even small changes can make a big difference in how a distributed system works. What would happen if the brain drain stopped or reversed? I would expect it to have a significant affect.
We just had another example of how something that did not seem all that significant could almost bring down the economy of the USA. And what would that have been? How about the affect on the real estate market when our government said that they would insure new home loans with no money down and would not require any verification of the borrower's ability to pay back the loan. It would be like sitting a jar of honey about 100 yards from a Bee hive. Within 30 minutes there would be over a thousand Bees fighting for the honey. Isn't this about what we had?
If you agree that we have had adverse "Self Selection" in our public school teachers, how do we reverse the process or at least not let it get any worse. You know that to get better, we have to first stop getting worse and we have not been able to do that yet.
When I was in public school, it was common for a teacher to take papers home to grade them. Do you think teachers do that today? Some thing has changed and it has not been for the better.
