Drawing the Bow

From Razib's interview with Leonidas Romanos-Davranoglou about Maniots, Greeks, Albanians and their deep ancestry this fascinating bit rolled past, that several Indo-European descendant cultures have the motif of the hero returning and being recognised only when he draws his bow. The story of Odysseus we know, but they also mentioned also Arjuna in the Mahabharata in India. Heck it's only 3000 miles as the crow flies.  I wish they had mentioned the others specifically. There was no known contact until later, strongly suggesting that both cultures drew the story from the steppe.

I'll have more on this interview just because it is interesting 

Twa Corbies

Another great example of how to reply when folks are hyperventilating about how unsuitable the lyrics to rap or heavy metal songs are for teenagers these days. They han't heard na-thin' yit. Like most traditional songs, it comes from there or there, with roots all the way back to there, but it is Scots dialect, a Germanic language unrelated to Gaelic. It is close enough to English that you should be able to work it out.  If something seems opaque, say it aloud and see if that helps. 

 

As I was walkin’ all alane
I heard twa corbies makkin a mane;
Tha tain unto the other ane say-o,
“Where sall we gang and dine the day-o,
Where sall we gang and dine the day?”

“It’s in ahint yon auld fail dyke
I wot there lies a new-slain knight;
And naebody kens that he lies there-o
But his hawk and his hound and his lady fair-o,
Hawk and his hound and his lady fair.”

“His hawk is tae the huntin gane,
His hound tae bring the wildfowl hame;
His lady’s ta’en another mate-o
Sae we mun mak our dinner sweet-o,
Sae we mun mak our dinner sweet.”

“It’s ye’ll sit on his white hause-bane
And I’ll pike oot his bonny blue een;
Wi ae lock o his gowden hair-o
We’ll theek our nest when it grows bare-o,
Theek our nest when it grows bare.”

“There’s mony a ane for him maks mane
But nane sall ken where he is gane;
And o’er his bones when they lay bare-o
The wind sall blaw for evermair-o,
The wind sall blow for evermair.”

Ogden Nash

 Behold the duck, it does not cluck

A cluck it lacks

It quacks

It is specially fond of a puddle or pond 

When it dines or sups

It bottoms ups 

Anadromous

Thinking about gender stereotypes and behavior because of the previous post, I thought of the analogy of anadromous fish, who move from sea water to freshwater in order to breed, and wondered if that could apply to male-female mating behavior. As with the gamma bias, men exaggerate both some masculine qualities and some feminine ones in order to look acceptable to women, and women do the same in return.  This runs deeper than agreeing to go camping while also looking fetching versus men engaging in dangerous displays while also being available for discussions about "where our relationship is going." Anything to do with courtship tends to have layers within layers.

I think I'll put this analogy about fish to the female substackers I read, who would do a better job with it than I would. 

Alpha, Beta, Gamma, and Delta Bias

 I had not heard of these until today, though the concepts of the first ones are familiar to me.

Alpha bias - exaggerating differences between males and females based on stereotypes rather than data

Beta bias - minimising differences between males and females based on stereotyples

Androcentrism is usually discussed with these as a package. This is using males as the test subjects and assuming that the results apply equally to females without checking whether that is, in fact, true.

The concepts seem solid and understandable enough, but I find it amusing that the example taken for alpha bias is Freud's psychoanalytic framework, which is wrong on entirely other grounds, and the example for beta bias is Kohlberg's Theory of Moral Development which is also wrong for reasons unrelated to gender.  The male-female misunderstandings of both do highlight the other problems and cause them to jump off the page, though.

Gamma bias  is a newer idea and suggests that both alpha and beta biases can both be operative at once: societies and even individuals can overemphasise gender stereotypes in some domains and downplay them in others.  This seems likely, and a step up from the usual internet oversimpolifications.  I thought of CS Lewis praising Joy Davidman for her masculine qualities and she retorting immediately whether he would be pleased to have her praise him for his feminine ones. He was man enough to report this to his audience.

Delta bias is also from 2020 and is a further refinement of gamma, of celebrating gender atypical behavior. The discussion at the link is interesting, and a more subtle way of looking at things

Delta bias can be illustrated in terms of the three male archetypes as defined by (M. Seager et al., 2014). Each of these archetypes can be shown in contemporary public media and political discourse to be simultaneously celebrated if exhibited by females but denigrated if exhibited by men.

That is, when females display stereotypical male behavior it is lauded, but when males display it, it is condemned. It is thus not the behavior which we approve of or disapprove of, but which sex is displaying it.  Once one has grasped it, the tendency is to say "Well of course," but a second reflection reveals that we don't acknowledge that often.  It is obvious enough to notice, but not dramatic enough to shout from the rooftops.

Punk and Hippy Cosplay

Quick observation on Punks and Hippies. 

An oversimplification, but worth considering.  Relatedly, look at how many Heavy Metal artists turned out to be golden retrievers at heart while the folkies were Dobermans. As I have written in other contexts, why would wolves hide in wolves' clothing?

Bee Gees Madrigal

 

Mail Order Annie

 Story song

 

Thinking Outside The Box

Thinking outside the box is overrated, I have claimed. I would refine that to saying that many people who claim to be outside the box and have others claim that, are just in a less-common box, usually smaller. They are just disruptive jerks, sarcastic and condescending. 

Real thinking outside the box is more valuable.  I should not have dismissed the concept on the basis of the people who claim to have the quality. The entertainment industry includes both.  The posers have some value in that domain, because they take other people's innovations that are really out there and start making them more cliched with their imitative nature. But someplace early in that cultural journey from incomprehensible to trite, there is a sweet spot that is both refreshingly new and understandable. 

Not What We Teach Them

Students don't learn what we teach them.  I have repeated this many times to conservatives who complain what kids these days are being taught in school.  It's not the curriculum, it's the culture. 

I have a friend who mentions every other time we get together that if people were given more and better science education they wouldn't believe so much crap. It sounds inviting, but there is ample contradictory evidence. This APA study shows that students still believe psychology myths immediately after completing introductory psych courses, even when those beliefs were actively corrected by the professors.  To be fair, anti-myth advocacy did seem to help a little, at least in the short term. What students learn in class does not seem to be the primary driver of their opinions. Opinions come from social networks.

I think the arrow of causality goes in the other direction. People who believe that experiments, logic,m and evidence can bring us closer to the truth will enter fields that adhere to that. Not foolproof by any means, but a tendency.

BTW I did not download the whole study so I am not sure what myth is being referenced some entries above.  Most of them I can tell, but some are ambiguous - many psychology professors believe in priming and implicit bias, for example, and those are myths - while others on the list don't give enough information.  It is interesting that females are more likely to believe the myths and keep believing them.  I choose to think this supports my theory of opinions having large social components.

Recent Links

 The Myth of Assimilation at Aporia.  We assert many things in America which are not true.

To begin with, the story rests on a quiet omission: a very large share of European immigrants didn’t assimilate at all. They went home.

Between roughly 1850 and 1920, return migration was a defining feature of transatlantic mobility. The return rate of European immigrants during this period was 25–40%. In some decades it reached 60–75% (Bandiera et al., 2013). Italians are the canonical case: between 1890 and 1920, more than half returned to Italy (Klein, 1983). This return migration was negatively selected — the poorer and less successful immigrants were the most likely to leave (Abramitzky et al., 2019). What we now remember as “successful assimilation” is partly explained by survivorship bias. America did not lift entire populations into the middle class. It retained those who were already capable of doing well and quietly shed the rest. 

Maternal Mortality by Lyman Stone.  No other country measures this the same way we do.  Also...

 Here, you can see that mortality rates are extremely similar across groups, with perhaps two notable exceptions: women under 21, and women over 40. This tells us that most of the effect we saw above of lower mortality for pregnant women was a product of the age difference between pregnant and nonpregnant women— but not all of it!

Free Will is Undefeated A lot has been written.  Rob Henderson adds to it with some things I had not considered before. 

 Stuart Doyle offers a useful analogy that challenges this claim. Suppose we ask whether an apple is red. The determinist looks closer. He realizes the apple is nothing but atoms. Because no individual atom is red, he concludes the apple can’t really be red. The error is obvious. Color exists at the scale of the apple, not at the scale of an atom.

We have evolved to consciously hold multiple choices in our minds and pick one. Why would this happen if choice were not real? 

The Hidden Crimes of Parolees. Advocacy groups will tell you that they are re-incarcerated for "merely technical" violations like missing an appointment.  City Journal shows how this is not so.  The numbers are being jiggered.

How Protests Are Organised

 Data Republican describes the specific organisations and tactics of the interrelated protest groups.

And...quelle surprise, Open Society Foundation provided $5M of the $20M funding foundation across the network. Delaney Hall was suddenly called off - an informative story in itself - when Scott Bessent declared that funding foundations would be held liable if their grant recipients were violent.

Hero

 

Multicity Flights

We are going to Orkney in the fall, which is serviced only by Loganair. We are stopping in Reyjavik for a few days on the way home. There are just too many moving parts on these flights. A lot of the problem comes from airlines wanting the other legs of the flights and punishing you for going away.  Timing of flights is also ugly.

I am tempted to book each leg separately.  I expect to pay somewhat more, but is it insanely more? 

Bass Harbor Lighthouse

When we went to Acadia, we went down to Bass Harbor to see the frequently-photographed, frequently-painted lighthouse. I am quite sure I have seen one in impressionist style painted by a friend, or posted by a friend. Perhaps it was on Facebook.  I have feeling I have not seen it in the last year or two. The painting was less bright, likely at sunrise or sunset.

It is this angle and less than this much of the surrounding area as in this photo. This group goes to many of the internet places I go and includes some of my friends.  Does this look like any painting you are familiar with?  It's driving me nuts.

 

Things We Make

 One of my book groups is doing The Things We Make: The unknown history of invention. We are unexcited, but it has some value.  It has too many extraneous anecdotes, but they are at least entertaining, and I believe accurate. I think I can save you the trouble of learning its lessons though.  His main points are that processes and process improvements are as valuable as objects, and that the era of the solo inventor is over: Everything is interactive and cooperative now.

The latter is only half true.  David Foster remembered reading a similar claim sixty years ago - just before Apple and Microsoft took over the world. So don't sell the bicycle shop just yet, Orville.  With so much available online and via AI, we may instead be on the precipice of an era of solo inventors again.

Or not. As Yogi Berra supposedly said "Prediction is hard, especially about the future." 

The Baal Shem Tov and Purpose in Life

 Reposted from 2015

The story is told that the Baal Shem was granted the privilege of meeting in this life the person he would live next to in heaven.  He was directed to go into a tavern in a small village not all that far from his home, and saw an enormous glutton there, with copious food and drink before him. The Master of the Good Name watched from the next table, marveling at the amount of food the man swallowed, wondering what this meant. Perhaps it is a lesson from G-d that I should not disdain the pleasures of this world.  This man is clearly extreme in his earthly joy, but if he goes to heaven, G-d must approve. He sat beside him.

"You must be a wealthy man," he observed, "to afford to eat so well."

"I cannot afford what you see here," the glutton contradicted. "I will die in debt to the butcher, the tavern-keeper, and the greengrocer, and my family will be embarrassed by me."

"Your wife does not approve, then?" asked the Baal Shem.

"I have no wife," the fat man growled, barely pausing in his dinner. "I have not the time."

"Then you must greatly enjoy the pleasures of the table." the Besht concluded.

"I hate food," the man replied "and I hate drink as well. Every moment of my life is a weariness to me, always eating rich food and drinking good wine."

Rabbi Yisroel ben Eliezer sat silently for many minutes, observing, thinking. Finally, he gave it up and asked the man "Then I do not understand.  You hate food, yet you eat more than any three men I have known.  You hate drink, yet your glass is immediately empty and you call for more. What is the meaning of all this?"

The man shifted in his chair for a moment, as if to draw breath for another assault on the plates before him.  "There was a pogrom, and my father was brought before the great men of the district and set on fire as a torch to light their banquet. I was there and watched from the shadows."

The Baal Shem bowed his head slightly in sadness and softly said "And so a banquet of your own somehow erases this?"

"Not at all," said the impossibly fat man angrily. "He was a poor, skinny man, a sick chicken, who gave off almost no light, even in death. It was prophesied in a dream that I too would die in the same manner. When they burn me I will give off a light that will go on for days, glorious to behold."

Perceptions and Career Choice

From Slate Star Codex over a decade ago, concerning ability versus perception in career choices.

Okay. Imagine a study with the following methodology. You survey a bunch of people to get their perceptions of who is a smoker (“97% of his close friends agree Bob smokes”). Then you correlate those numbers with who gets lung cancer. Your statistics program lights up like a Christmas tree with a bunch of super-strong correlations. You conclude “Perception of being a smoker causes lung cancer”, and make up a theory about how negative stereotypes of smokers cause stress which depresses the immune system. The media reports that as “Smoking Doesn’t Cause Cancer, Stereotypes Do”. 

Relatedly, a recent discussion of Tradwives and career choices. N3 is on a roll lately.  I hope it continues.

Hidden in the Replication Crisis

 Nonreplicable Findings are cited more than replicable ones. My cynical self whispered that these are things that people want to be true, evidence be damned, because it would be so cool if it were.  I was therefore pleased to read in the next paragraph that Stewart-Williams calls it Steve's Law, that Boring findings and non-PC findings are more replicable than interesting or PC ones.* The paper's own abstract says something similar

Abstract:  We use publicly available data to show that published papers in top psychology, economics, and general interest journals that fail to replicate are cited more than those that replicate. This difference in citation does not change after the publication of the failure to replicate. Only 12% of postreplication citations of nonreplicable findings acknowledge the replication failure. Existing evidence also shows that experts predict well which papers will be replicated. Given this prediction, why are nonreplicable papers accepted for publication in the first place? A possible answer is that the review team faces a trade-off. When the results are more “interesting,” they apply lower standards regarding their reproducibility.

*Also at the link are odd studies showing that birds are more afraid of women than men - currently unexplained. 

Links from 2015

 Capgras Delusion. Definition here. Very nice guy, BTW. I found he was from near my neighborhood and we had childhood friends in common. Complete remission of symptoms on a little medication, and kept asking us how he could have ever developed such a crazy idea as that his identical twin brother had been replaced by an imposter.

Myths About Scandinavia 

 Unexpected Reunion

Learning While Speaking  I teach myself things all the time

Prayer Breakfast  President Obama reminded those gathered that Christians have violence in their history.  Governor Jindal answers that we need no longer worry about the dangers of Medieval Christians but have serious danger from Muslims now.