Vivienne Ming
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socos.org
Vivienne Ming
@socos.org
Professional Mad Scientist
socos.org
We are a dynamical systems problem. Stop trying to change people and start changing the physics of their experiences.

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#MetaLearning #RobotProof #EnvironmentalDesign #MadScience #FutureOfWork
November 30, 2025 at 4:14 PM
In this week's paid newsletter, developing an operating manual for the external cortex. I break down how to design environments, in schools and offices, that act as a prosthetic for executive function and drive complex cognition to emerge.
November 30, 2025 at 4:14 PM
It turns out, you can't "teach" the most important skill of the 21st century—Meta-Learning—but you can engineer it.
November 30, 2025 at 4:13 PM
The prose is dense, baroque, and feels constantly on the verge of collapsing under its own sheer creative weight. It is a masterpiece of unrestrained imagination.
November 28, 2025 at 4:33 PM
The plot follows a renegade mad scientist (my favorite kind) commissioned to help a de-winged bird-man fly again. Naturally, his scientific hubris accidentally unleashes a flock of interdimensional dream-eating moths.
November 28, 2025 at 4:33 PM
It is the foundational text of the "New Weird"—a sprawling, steampunk, bio-punk nightmare set in New Crobuzon, a city populated by cactus people, sentient insect-women, and criminals surgically "remade" into grotesqueries.
November 28, 2025 at 4:33 PM
We aren't just addicted to the device; we are addicted to the distraction. We can engineer environments that save us from our own dopamine loops.

Read More at academy.socos.org/architecting...
#EdTech #AttentionEconomy #PhoneBan #CognitiveLoad #Policy
Architecting Meta-Learning [RR]
We must stop trying to teach meta-learning and start architecting environments that force it to emerge. <<Support my work: book a keynote or briefing!>> Want to support my work but don't need a keyno...
academy.socos.org
November 27, 2025 at 6:17 PM
Initially resistant, students became supportive of the policy once they experienced the benefits. This might be a lesson in "paternalistic libertarianism" or perhaps just good design: sometimes you have to remove a dominant choice to expose people to the benefits of other choices.
November 27, 2025 at 6:16 PM
Most fascinating, the“students exposed to the ban were substantially more supportive of phone-use restrictions”. This casts doubt on studies using 'willingness-to-pay' to value social media: our 'willingness' is not a fixed number, but a fluid state that shifts based on our recent experiences.
November 27, 2025 at 6:16 PM
The gains were highest for “lower-performing, first-year, and non-STEM students”, possibly interacting with factors like working memory or executive control.
November 27, 2025 at 6:14 PM
A massive randomized controlled trial involving 17,000 students found that a strict ban—physically collecting phones during class—raised grades by nearly 10% of a standard deviation.
papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....
Removing Phones from Classrooms Improves Academic Performance
Widespread smartphone bans are being implemented in classrooms worldwide, yet their causal effects on student outcomes remain unclear. In a randomized controlle
papers.ssrn.com
November 27, 2025 at 6:14 PM
Our institutions must never be cynical sorting mechanisms for biological talent; they are engines that can override biological lottery tickets and lift all of society. Disassembling the infrastructure of high-quality universal education is the dissolution of our very capacity.
November 26, 2025 at 3:13 PM
Specifically, a “1 SD increase of school quality decreases the impact” of genetic disadvantages “by 6%.” This is important because reading comprehension tracks strongly with meta-learning development and human capital accumulation.
November 26, 2025 at 3:12 PM
By combining genetic data (polygenic indices) “on mother-father-child trios” with causal estimates of school quality, researchers found that better schools significantly dampened the impact of genetic predisposition on reading scores.
November 26, 2025 at 3:12 PM
Too bad child-centered, self-directed learning is more expensive…oh wait, it isn’t: “a cost analysis suggested three years of public Montessori preschool costs less per child than traditional programs, largely due to Montessori having higher child:teacher ratios in PK3 and PK4.”
November 25, 2025 at 9:40 PM
It turns out that if you treat children like autonomous agents rather than empty vessels, they build the cognitive scaffolding necessary to fill themselves up.
November 25, 2025 at 9:40 PM
I have no particular allegiance to Montessori, specifically. It is the environment—self-directed choice and mixed-age peers—that causally lifts meta-learning, the architecture of learning itself.
November 25, 2025 at 9:40 PM
Crucially, this causal effect appeared later—a "sleeper effect" suggesting that the Montessori environment wasn't just filling a bucket with facts, but building a better bucket.
November 25, 2025 at 9:40 PM
Early in preschool, Montessori children showed no obvious academic differences to their traditional school peers, but by the end of kindergarten, they had meaningfully “higher reading, short-term memory, theory of mind, and executive function scores.”
www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...
November 25, 2025 at 9:39 PM