Position statement and revision
Write down what you think intelligence is before you know anything, then revise it in week 11 and account for what moved. The memo is what gets marked.
Due: 7 May 2027 · Weight: 20%
This assessment runs in two parts, ten weeks apart.
Part one — the position statement, end of week 3#
Around 500 words on what you currently think intelligence is and where you think it starts. No reading. No citations. No research.
Write it before you do any of the week 2 reading, and do not go back to it.
It is not marked. Submitting it is a hurdle: without it you cannot submit the revision, and the revision is the assessment. It also cannot be extended past the end of week 3, because a statement written in week 8 has already been contaminated by the thing it is supposed to predate.
Most of these will be wrong in interesting ways. That is the design, not a failure of the cohort. You are recording your own prior before the evidence arrives, so that in ten weeks there is something to measure against.
Part two — the revision, week 11#
Three documents:
- the original, unaltered
- a revised version
- a memo of roughly 1200 words
The memo is what is marked. The revised statement itself is not graded on its quality, which matters — otherwise anyone who happened to be right in week 3 would be penalised, and anyone who wrote deliberately badly would be rewarded.
The memo answers three questions:
- What did you change, and what specifically changed it? Name the paper, the week or the argument. “I understand more now” is not an answer.
- What did you keep, under pressure to change it? This is the question that separates a revision from a capitulation.
- What is still weakest in the revised version?
How this is marked, plainly#
Both over-revision and under-revision fail.
Changing nothing means the course did not reach you. Changing everything means you never held any of it in the first place — a memo that abandons every claim is telling me there was no position to revise. What is being assessed is the shape of the revision, not its extent.
Question three is where the marks concentrate. A revised statement presented as now-correct has missed the entire course. One that says clearly what remains unsupported is doing, on itself, what week 12 does to the field.
The rules that apply to this task#
Extensions, late penalties, academic integrity and what you may use a language model for are on the policies page, which governs all four assessments. Nothing on this page overrides it.
The spec
The brief poses the problem and leaves room for a response. The spec is the fixed part: what a marker checks. Some lines can be checked mechanically; the rest call for judgement.
- the position statement was submitted by the end of week 3
- the original is resubmitted unaltered alongside the revision
- every change in the memo cites the specific paper, week or argument that caused it
- the memo names at least one claim you kept under pressure, and at least one weakness that remains
How it is marked
| Criterion | Weight |
|---|---|
| Did you identify the claims the course actually undermined | 30% |
| Is each change tied to something specific rather than to having read more | 30% |
| Did you leave alone what did not need changing, and can you say why | 20% |
| Do you name what is still weakest in the revised version | 20% |