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" In 1958, my father graduated from secondary school as the highest-achieving student in the state of Kansas, earning a five-year scholarship to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He turned it down. For someone raised in a remote farming town, this would have been his opportunity to transform his life, a ticket to a bigger world. "

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" Why did I go back to school? After working with giant snails as the manager of an abalone farm, who wouldn't be fascinated with the inner workings of the mind? They are a very contemplative species. "

Vivienne Ming

Back

School

Mind

" The tax on being different is largely implicit. People need not act maliciously for it to be levied. In fact, at its heart is a laudable sentiment: 'prove it to me.' The problem is that we are requiring different levels of proof without realising it. "

Vivienne Ming

Need

People

" Human behavior is an enormously complex set of things, and that mixture of underlying things is different for different people, so it's not just complex, it's meta-complex. "

" We are bad at valuing other people, and we are worse the more different they are than us. "

Vivienne Ming

Worse

People

" The bias tax is actually a loss in economy. "

" After I transitioned, a lot of people said, 'I like you so much more now,' because before, I was unhappy. Making that change was a big part of becoming me. Whoever you are, as a gay man or a lesbian or a trans woman, embrace it. Turn it into an asset. "

Vivienne Ming

Change

Gay

" Discrimination is not done by villains. It's done by us. "

Vivienne Ming

Discrimination

Done

" Passing on a full scholarship to MIT would be irrational for me, but to my father and his parents, what would have been the point of spending five years at one of the world's most prestigious universities if he just ended up back on the farm? "

Vivienne Ming

World

Farm

" If a hero is a person on which you've made an explicit choice model yourself, mine is my father for showing me how to live a life of substance. "

Vivienne Ming

Hero

Father

" What drives success, and the most successful students, is internal motivation. "

" If you tell someone, 'Hey, your daughter is going to win a Nobel Prize someday,' it makes it less likely. If you say, 'Your son is in danger of dropping out in the ninth grade,' it could make it more likely. "

" Once you identify the intrinsically motivated people, you realize that fancy degrees can actually be a negative - that some of the people who have them are more focused on how others perceive them. "

" Gender transition isn't about gender. It's about literally making yourself a better person because you know that's a better you. "

" The tax on being different is massive. "

" Before I came out, people always asked me math questions. But once I became a woman, they stopped. There's unintended discrimination. "

Vivienne Ming

People

Woman

" I have had a small handful of truly blatantly discriminatory experiences for being transgender, but the vast majority are simply the differences between being a man versus being a woman in science and business. "

" When I went back to finish my undergrad, after a long and ignoble absence, my very first class was Intro to C for Cognitive Modeling. Unlike any educational experience before, I aced the class. "

" I'm not enthusiastic about educational games or apps generally. "

" Who wants to get a worse diagnosis of their cancer, just to keep a human doctor in the job? "

" If you have a diverse workforce, then you have a much better chance of picking up on things that a lack of diversity would hide from them. "

Vivienne Ming

Diversity

Hide

" I want to literally make people smarter by jamming things in their brains. "

" Because of the tax on being different, individual actors in the labour market from different backgrounds can rationally value the same opportunities differently. "

" AI might be a powerful technology, but things won't get better simply by adding AI. "

" Looking at where you went to school is a proxy; you assume, because someone went to a good school, therefore they must have the qualities you desire, even though that's not actually really true. "