Curiosity

I went to my monthly lunch with my friends from St. Paul's Advanced Studies 1970. These are some of the smartest people I have ever known. MIT, Williams, Bucknell - plus graduate degrees. They are the math and chemistry mavens, I was the Theatre & Speech major at the bottom of my undergraduate class. We are all 73. One is still working, in closely-guarded Minotaur AI stuff and has to keep learning incomprehensible new things for his job - but his exit is in sight. The others are now all hobbies, travel, humor, and pontificating. I sort of get it.

I keep bringing and sending interesting things to them.  Today is was Tyler Cowan's interview with Terence Tao. Paragraph after paragraph of fascinating concepts. New takes on old subjects.  Introductions to new subjects. Deep humility from a child prodigy who is now 51, perhaps the greatest living mathematician. None were interested.  Okay, it is old friends talking, and I am as much a nostalgist as any of them, or more. I have tried these high-concept things before, seldom with success - or never. I usually just send along the link after, because these things are just so fascinating, that how could they not...

But never a comment, never a followup - I doubt that they read them, on any subject. To me it seems that their lives have narrowed, gotten smaller. But...but...they are smarter than I am.  How did this happen at the tender age of 73?  I think of other groups of smart old people, of which I am in many and see the same pattern. They may have some interest in developments in their own field, but little outside of it. I don't try to be curious about new things. That is one of the bits of advice that Weird Trick businesses tell you about staving off Alzheimer's: Learn new things! Pick up a musical instrument.  Learn a new language.  Do crossword puzzles. None of those things have any causative effect, BTW.  They are only associations. People who are dementing gradually stop picking up new instruments. You can't force it, same as with exposing children to a wide range of cognitive skills, which looks like it should work, but doesn't.

It was always this way. I was math/folksinger in highschool. I switched from math to theater to medieval literature in college.  I spent my career in mental health, and early only, applied to divinity school, took course for an MSW, and I swear there was some other subject I looked at grad school for.  If I had to do over, I would major in evolutionary psychology and writing, but with an eye toward making a living in sports statistics, which was up and coming them. But most likely, if I had to do over again I would find some seventh thing to concentrate on and switch to.  Early computer games, maybe. Historical linguistics.

I have been moderately proud of this over the years, but also aware that there is more dilettante than Renaissance Man about this. Over the last decade, I have become even more suspicious of it. It is quite involuntary, like a dog distracted by smells. Curiosity is something I have, not something I pursue. My friends are more likely to be right than I am.  Picking up something new has what use, in the end?  Who benefits? Just a previously useful tendency, likely squandered, now gone rogue.  I think it still has entertainment value. Distribution of knowledge, not so much. 

Here, have an almond cluster that used to be popular in the late 1700s. Take two, they're small. The word for them comes from Arabic via Italian...

12 Things

 12 Things Everyone Should Know About Their Emotions A guest post at N3 by Evolutionary Psychologist Rob Kurzban

8. Admiration is for learning.
Admiration feels like an emotion that’s directed at other people. And in some sense, it is. But admiration’s job is actually all about you. Humans everywhere face a crucial adaptive problem: They have to learn from other people to succeed wherever they find themselves, whether in the arid heat of a desert, the frozen winds of the tundra, or the city streets of Bangalore. A key part of solving that problem is figuring out who, specifically, to learn from. Admiration does this job, directing our attention to the people who have succeeded, so we can learn the secrets of their success.

Right on schedule, Razib just dropped a podcast interview with him.  When people have a book come out, they make the rounds of podcasts, as they used to do with radio and TV shows.  And bookstores, which I think still do that, at least for local authors.

Commenter Earl Wajenberg has a book just about to come out, but I don't have a podcast to bring him on.  Maybe we can find one.  We'll keep you posted. 

Beg, Borrow, and Steal

 White people getting down again.  Always a favorite for me.

Charlie's Boys

My grandfather Carl (upper right) and his brothers in Lower East Pubnico, Nova Scotia, in 1934. His father, Charles Seward Wyman (not pictured) was a blueberry farmer who ran the general store. 5'4" and the only man in town who could pick up a railroad tie unassisted, or so the story goes.  Probably an exaggeration a lie, but told convincingly. That's who we are.

Carl had moved to Massachusetts in the early 20s because of some epidemic in NS. He was out hunting with a MicMac friend when he got word not to go home, but go live with his uncle in Peabody, MA... temporarily. He was living in Jamaica Plains by this time above, and working as a chauffeur at North Station in Boston, where he drove such luminaries as Henry Cabot Lodge II, who treated him well, and Calvin Coolidge, who didn't.  Cheap bastard, he said. About this time he was building his first home in Westford, MA, which the bank later foreclosed on in the Depression.  But banks had learned it was better to absorb the losses and ride it out when Grandpa Wyman built his second one in 1936, a Cape Codder that is still standing on Greenwood Dr, off Rt 27 near the South Chelmsford and Acton borders. He was the egg man for Chelmsford and West Lowell even up until the time I visited in the 60's.  Maybe into the 70s. Grew lots of strawberries as well.  My father once remarked in admiration that he had no enemies, which neither he nor I could say.

Very strong Coastal New England accent, which is how I knew that it extended up that far when I first read Hans Kurath in college.  Didn't talk that much, but I remember him saying Ayuh! Ayuh! with a smile at just about anything I said. That's all a grandson asks for, really.

SNL

 The algorithm often feeds you not what they have discerned you like, but what lots of people have liked.  "SNL destroys Trump in Cold Open over Midterms."

SNL is the original OnlyFans.  For those of you watching at home... 

One Link Per Site

I have essay sites I try to keep up with, sometimes reading a post closely, sometimes skimming a few posts. I recommend all of these in general, but decided to pick one from each to make things a little simpler.  I have so many these days, and I'm sure you do too. And I do not even need to be smart anymore, or at least not informed.

I will scrape the October and November links from Astral Codex Ten separately. 

Unsupervised Learning, with Razib Khan.  To Have and Have Not: Genetic Determinants of Social Status. This is Gregory Clark being his usual controversial self. It is only part of the podcast, and you have to be a subscriber to read a copy, but it is about a half-hour, rather than the usual 12-min preview that Razib does. Clark runs the numbers for centuries of England, but the work has replicated in Denmark and Poland.

Anthropologist John Hawks. Among the bonobos, it is the females who hunt, not the males. This was very unexpected.

Nature-Nurture-Nietzsche Across 6 million subjects in 118 countries, women experience more pain of all kinds than men. So there.

Exhibit Asterisk Your Lying Eyes.  What magicians teach us about persuasion.

Rob Henderson. Women have become more likely to marry men with less education than them.  In fact, it started happening slowly two decades ago.

David Foster. What, Precisely, Is the Issue With "Elites?'

Steve Sailer  Sailer takes issue with Richard Hanania (who I find more tiresome every day myself) about Indians vs. Israelis. Only the first part is free, but it's got some interesting thoughts in it.

The Age of Arthur by Bernard Mees Who Was Sir Mordred?

Data Republican. Power Argues With Power Just Wow. She has reportedly been identified.  Does she live in New England? She would be welcome here.

Cremieux Recueil He seems to gravitate to mythbusting and counterintuitive knowledge.  Well, Bully for him, then.  Obesity and Poverty Part II Everything you thought you knew is not supported by the data.

Aporia  A challenge to the genetic origin of racial differences in IQ, based on the HSV-1 Hypothesis.  Way over my head, but what I can understand looks like it has something to it.  I will try to be alert to what people smarter than me say about this.

Dead Language Society. What is the AI Accent, and why do we hate it?

In the To Be Continued category.  David Reich has put forward a speculative (for him) preprint about the erosion of the Out-of-Africa hypothesis.  I had thought it was solid. Apparently not. The idea is we have many more Eurasian ancestors, but the out-of-Africa population from 50K y/a brought improvements to enough important genes that it out-competed the Eurasians within the process of interbreeding, not by eliminating them.  It is similar to the idea of explaining "What happened to the Neanderthals/Denisovans?" by claiming that We are the Neanderthals/Denisovans! The O-O-A population interbred with us, bringing better stuff. We remained, but their genes gradually increased in us, so that thousands of years later it looks like they lived and we died. No, we just captured their best genes and kept on living throughout Eurasia.  Not at all what I expected. 

I could probably afford more subscriptions, but I just don't have the time.  When would I daydream? When would I obsess over my terrible fantasy football teams? When would I get irritated waiting for the dog to poop? Not to mention shopping and cooking, going down the rabbit holes of maps, going to doctor's appointments, doing PT exercises and learning my anthems? 

 

Bad Data is Good Data

Bethany's old statistics site was "Bad Data, Bad!" a wonderful title. No one wants misbehaving data. The claim is that one can lie with statistics, but I have always felt that if you grab them by the collar, shove them against the wall, and make them tell you who their friends are, you can get the truth out of them.

But even bad data can be informative. If the same bad data keeps being brought forward in an argument, it tells you that they have nothing better. The joke in Russia during WW2 and the invasion by Germany was that "We are winning glorious victory after glorious victory - a little closer to Moscow every day." Gun control is full of these sorts of arguments. If you purchase a gun for your house, the most likely person to be killed by it is a family member. Well, yes. This is like the Burns and Allen routine where Gracie is reading the paper and says to George "It says here that most accidents occur within five miles of home." He pauses and says, "That sounds about right." Gracie pauses even longer and then says "Gee, do you think we should move?"

The majority of school shootings involve guns. Hmm, yes. The majority of school stabbings involve knives, bombings involve bombs, arson involves fire, etc.  There are fewer shootings in Europe, because guns are outlawed. They do still have people driving vans into crowds in Christmas markets, however. Lots of fires these days. Plus, they do have some shootings anyway. They didn't used to so much, but the numbers went down long before the laws changed. As with New England, they would commit various crimes, but homicide didn't tend to be one of them.  This is changing, both there and here.  I wonder why?

America has a high crime rate and a high incarceration rate. This is supposed to show that we are locking people up to much and making them criminals. Yet what happens when the incarceration rate goes up? Does crime go up?  No, it goes down. Fancy that. Maybe it's about something other than our incarceration rate driving crime, then.  Maybe the incarceration rate is fine. There are lots of nominations what else it might be, but first, first, we send incarceration to the back of the line for the moment.

I keep seeing the same genetics vs environment arguments. The same heresies keep coming up in the church every century, with different branding. Everyone whoever went to school is an expert on education, all bringing up the same bad ideas over and over. (And don't think teachers are exempt from believing theories without evidence.  They may in fact be worse than anyone. Except administrators, right, I forgot. And Ed School professors may be worst of all, worse even than overinvolved parents.) 

I would like to give everyone something encouraging about what to do about this life of playing whack-a-mole. I don't have anything. I am not quite like Cassandra, because I am not always right, but I completely get how maddening her life must have been. I don't know how to defeat this. Reasoning doesn't work.  Bullying doesn't work. Bribery doesn't work. The promise of being one of the very few In The Know sort of works for a while, but it's impossible to keep up with. I see, and I understand, but all my actions make things worse. I remind myself that people pay money to play whack-a-mole, and I must just have that gene - or more likely, collection of genes that each create some 1% tendency toward whacking moles, even though I rather like moles in the wild. I don't fancy bullying or bribery.  I pretend I am reasoning.

Too Many

 I have been so inundated with posts that I decided to do a links post of my own, with one piece for each of them - Exhibit Asterisk, Razib Khan, and the rest.  It is close to finished. Often it was hard to choose. But over at Grim's it was impossible. The first three out of just the usual fare all insisted on being in the collection.  I stopped there.  You need to make him a habit.

Tolkien's own tune for the Dwarves' song at the beginning of The Hobbit about smashing the plates. Marvelous!  I didn't know it even existed!

And in true Tolkien fashion, Grim looks out at recent changes in the possible struggles we have before us and concludes that what is needed is courage. To Make Peace, To Make War. 

Thomas Doubting comments thoughtfully on Grim's essays on Epitectus, asking whether it is true that our body is not our own, and what the consequences of that are. 

Parental Behaviors and Childhood Aggression

What I have been saying, from Nature-Nurture-Nietzsche. We have long assumed that how we parent has a large effect on children. Meh. Remember that parents contribute genes long before, and genes hang around in the child much longer, not to mention 24/7/365. 

Inconsistent parental discipline is linked to greater aggression in children. But does the former cause the latter? It seems not. A new behavior-genetics paper finds that much of the link is due to genetic confounding: The same gene variants associated with inconsistent parental discipline are also linked to childhood aggression. Moreover, to the extent that the link is environmental, it seems that children’s aggression leads to inconsistent discipline, rather than the other way around. 

(Link) 

Duet

 

Gas Prices

How much of "We are hurting, we are struggling, the president (any president) is ruining our lives" boils down to gas prices, which people see every day on big signs? There is the claim that it's housing costs, but those were a little higher a couple of years ago. People point to groceries, but there was a lot of wailing and general brouhaha about eggs not so long ago and eggs are back down, as predicted. Milk is the same. Hamburg is still up, maybe that is the impression-leader. We have an expensive war, but not in terms of American lives, and the same could be said of Ukraine, Venezuela, etc. It's not really driving prices higher, except for the very noticeable gas prices, which will be temporary.

I am not at all claiming that this is uniquely unfair to Republicans.  It has been true all my life, though perhaps more true now. It makes no sense, as the price is volatile in response to many circumstances that are ignored. But otherwise sensible people seem to be easily convinced that "Gas prices are up = the economy is bad" regardless of what else is happening. I think it is visibility, both in terms of signage and in terms of how often we purchase it. Memories are short, also.  I remember a FB post from about 2015 extolling President Obama for bringing gas prices down. But he still holds the record for inflation-adjusted at $5.08 in 2012. The prices we see are mostly about inflation.  The ultra-cheap prices of $0.36/gal in 1970?  $2.96 now. 

It makes me crazy. 

Voting For Nice People

I am very suspicious of nice people in positions of power.  This shows up often in local elections, where you know that Samantha is a jerk and Charles is a stuffed shirt and their opponents are nice women who volunteer at the schools (and so supposedly know what's going on there) and have sons who made Eagle Scout this year or whatever. I am slightly inclined to vote against such people. They choose their positions on the basis of niceness, because it is important to them. They like other nice people and programs which sound like they should do good things for people who deserve good things being done for them, with no supporting data whatsoever.

They are the most easily swayed by other Nice People.

This is not a suggestion that you should actively seek out jerks. It might be a suggestion that you give a second look (but never a third) to the weird people. 

The practical people are little better, if at all. They are too easily swayed by charlatans who are not nice but put up the banners of how great this would be if it were true.  The name Elizabeth Holmes may come to mind here.

If, if, and if.

There is an analog to the discussion going on over at Grim's about treason. Most of us grew up in good times in nice places and the idea of treason in out schoolbooks - even out college textbooks - was right out.  We could trust the government at least that much, that it shouldn't be overthrown. Plus, the overthrowing people were clearly lying and playing a secret hand. Well, sure. Usually you don't have to examine the core premises that closely. The good guys are 80% good and the bad guys are 80% bad, let's go to Disney World and not think about it. But when we get down to 60-40, it can become situation by situation, issue by issue, region by region. "Treason" turns out to be one of those things where we say "It depends."

So too with nice people and practical people.  First, assume that neither is neither, though they at least want to be.  Only then can you move forward. The ambiguities of local elections are not a distraction, they actually highlight the real national problem. Eschew niceness.  Eschew practicality.