When you see an older person not figuring out the parking lot or not shopping correctly, or holding up the line; when a person in a driveable cart at the supermarket is not one of the nice ones but one of the rude or oblivious ones; when the person crossing the street is taking a Very Long Time, when a disabled person is just barely figuring things out but is moderately gumming up the works, remember: if they were not doing this for themselves, someone else would have to do this for them, and that would either be a government or charity person we are all paying for, or it would be a friend or family member who likely has more productive (productive for the society, not for their souls or families or whatever) things they could do with their time.
Be grateful for each of those people that you see that they are doing for themselves, and pray that you be like them in that when your time comes.
Saturday, December 21, 2019
Snowflakes
Jonathan Haidt, in The Coddling of the American Mind, identifies very specifically the increase in snowflake activity to the high school graduating classes of 2013 and 2014. There was some beforehand, but it leapt up in that group and has remained high since. They have higher rates of anxiety disorders, depression, and suicide, but not other mental illnesses. Conservatives tend to notice the increase in annoying, unreasonable college students who are offended by everything, encouraged by school administrators (who are obviously not from that age cohort, but are heavily drawn from the hothouse flowers of the previous two generations, not accidentally).
Haidt would say that it is largely not their fault. That was the first cohort that had ubiquitous social media before their personalities were formed, and they were raised in a different fishbowl. Conservatives tend to be dismissive ans say they should just toughen up, get a job, stop whining, whatever. Many of them are not actually able to do that. They believe that social media bullying can destroy them, can give them status, and can largely dictate their social outcomes. For many of them, that is true. That is the only world they know. You and I can shrug it off - some of us could shrug off even a sudden explosion of national hatred against us on the basis of a misunderstood incident, though that is a lot to ask even of the fully-formed.
Let me insert an anecdote here. Son #5 was in the class of 2014. He came to us in the second half of 6th grade. As with sons 3 & 4 who arrived later in childhood, we went into full-court press for the first two years of parenting, so I went to many of his activities. I chaperoned a field trip, and noticed that a majority of girls, but few boys, had their own phones. They would take selfies of themselves in the front of the bus and send them to their friends in the back of the bus, then run back to see the pictures arrive on the friend's phone, giggling and laughing together. Rinse, Repeat. I thought it was ridiculous, and enjoyed telling the story of it, tolerantly chuckling at how silly middle-schoolers were, especially girls when they were moving into this social-networking mode (as they have for thousands of years at this appropriate developmental time), and noting a different ridiculousness of the boys grinning stupidly, unable to crack the code of what was going on but wishing they were in on it somehow. I saw it as merely the modern technological version of the various age-cohort bonding and mating dances that had been going on for generations. I thought it was unhealthy, but not horribly worse than what had gone before.
It has turned out to be horribly worse than what has gone before. Most children are not so devastatingly affected by what has happened (reasons below), but a much larger percentage than in previous generations have simply gone under. As with unwed parenting driving terrible consequences, first in black and later in white young people, or successively more dangerous drugs picking off a slightly larger percentage of the otherwise functional each decade, the difference at the margin matters.
There are protective factors, often related to quantity of time spent interacting with actual people, and especially with people not in their narrow age group. Family, sports, scouts, neighborhoods, choir, dance, church, hobbies, and most of all, time spent away from their devices, whether they use it to play alone, play with others, do something physical. For those who have it worst, Haidt advocates exposing them to Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, which can teach them that hearing uncomfortable, challenging, or even painful things is not catastrophic. CBT is a good thing, and that is the type of help it gives. It is closer to a coaching than an analytic model of therapy.
If there is a consistent fault that conservatives and libertarians show, it is the idea that "those blind people could see if they really wanted to." There are certainly shirkers, malingerers, and quitters in the world who need a firm hand. But there are plenty of others who need encouragement, instruction, and patience. That we don't bother to give it to them may be our laziness and irresponsibility, not theirs. Hesitate before condemning, and seek out those who might be rescued.
Haidt would say that it is largely not their fault. That was the first cohort that had ubiquitous social media before their personalities were formed, and they were raised in a different fishbowl. Conservatives tend to be dismissive ans say they should just toughen up, get a job, stop whining, whatever. Many of them are not actually able to do that. They believe that social media bullying can destroy them, can give them status, and can largely dictate their social outcomes. For many of them, that is true. That is the only world they know. You and I can shrug it off - some of us could shrug off even a sudden explosion of national hatred against us on the basis of a misunderstood incident, though that is a lot to ask even of the fully-formed.
Let me insert an anecdote here. Son #5 was in the class of 2014. He came to us in the second half of 6th grade. As with sons 3 & 4 who arrived later in childhood, we went into full-court press for the first two years of parenting, so I went to many of his activities. I chaperoned a field trip, and noticed that a majority of girls, but few boys, had their own phones. They would take selfies of themselves in the front of the bus and send them to their friends in the back of the bus, then run back to see the pictures arrive on the friend's phone, giggling and laughing together. Rinse, Repeat. I thought it was ridiculous, and enjoyed telling the story of it, tolerantly chuckling at how silly middle-schoolers were, especially girls when they were moving into this social-networking mode (as they have for thousands of years at this appropriate developmental time), and noting a different ridiculousness of the boys grinning stupidly, unable to crack the code of what was going on but wishing they were in on it somehow. I saw it as merely the modern technological version of the various age-cohort bonding and mating dances that had been going on for generations. I thought it was unhealthy, but not horribly worse than what had gone before.
It has turned out to be horribly worse than what has gone before. Most children are not so devastatingly affected by what has happened (reasons below), but a much larger percentage than in previous generations have simply gone under. As with unwed parenting driving terrible consequences, first in black and later in white young people, or successively more dangerous drugs picking off a slightly larger percentage of the otherwise functional each decade, the difference at the margin matters.
There are protective factors, often related to quantity of time spent interacting with actual people, and especially with people not in their narrow age group. Family, sports, scouts, neighborhoods, choir, dance, church, hobbies, and most of all, time spent away from their devices, whether they use it to play alone, play with others, do something physical. For those who have it worst, Haidt advocates exposing them to Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, which can teach them that hearing uncomfortable, challenging, or even painful things is not catastrophic. CBT is a good thing, and that is the type of help it gives. It is closer to a coaching than an analytic model of therapy.
If there is a consistent fault that conservatives and libertarians show, it is the idea that "those blind people could see if they really wanted to." There are certainly shirkers, malingerers, and quitters in the world who need a firm hand. But there are plenty of others who need encouragement, instruction, and patience. That we don't bother to give it to them may be our laziness and irresponsibility, not theirs. Hesitate before condemning, and seek out those who might be rescued.
Education Programs
Well, that didn't work.
My belief is that there is much you cannot change. The things you can change aren't as much fun for the chattering classes.
Intelligence does not change. It mostly occurred when the sperm fertilised the egg. After that you can damage intelligence but cannot raise it.
However, 1) Knowledge can change; 2) skills can change; 3) content matters (computation, reading, accurate history and science, excellence vs pandering in the arts); 4) IQ is a real thing, but it isn't everything, and 4A) IQ isn't much of anything in many fields, beyond a threshold minimum;* 5) Educators have damaging assumptions based on how they got their own educations and jobs, which are not representative of the population as a whole, and 5A) they mostly aren't smart enough to see that; 6) we should keep trying new ideas, because eventually we will hit upon good things by accident; 7) our current education system, preschool through PhD does work for a small but constant percentage of students, and that is fine, especially in STEM and other highly-measurable disciplines, even though 7A) those students mostly succeed by self-teaching - thank God we let them; 8) Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy may apply to education more than any other field.
*For example, the selling of shoes, software, stained glass, steaks, saxophones, and sex all have different minimums, but once that minimum is reached, other knowledge and skills become much more important to career success.
My belief is that there is much you cannot change. The things you can change aren't as much fun for the chattering classes.
Intelligence does not change. It mostly occurred when the sperm fertilised the egg. After that you can damage intelligence but cannot raise it.
However, 1) Knowledge can change; 2) skills can change; 3) content matters (computation, reading, accurate history and science, excellence vs pandering in the arts); 4) IQ is a real thing, but it isn't everything, and 4A) IQ isn't much of anything in many fields, beyond a threshold minimum;* 5) Educators have damaging assumptions based on how they got their own educations and jobs, which are not representative of the population as a whole, and 5A) they mostly aren't smart enough to see that; 6) we should keep trying new ideas, because eventually we will hit upon good things by accident; 7) our current education system, preschool through PhD does work for a small but constant percentage of students, and that is fine, especially in STEM and other highly-measurable disciplines, even though 7A) those students mostly succeed by self-teaching - thank God we let them; 8) Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy may apply to education more than any other field.
*For example, the selling of shoes, software, stained glass, steaks, saxophones, and sex all have different minimums, but once that minimum is reached, other knowledge and skills become much more important to career success.
Friday, December 20, 2019
#3 - The Sadness Of NPR Christmas
This is one of the most-visited because I have pushed it hard over several Christmases. So sue me. I think I was on to something.
*****
Update 2018: Because of the discussion of Unitarians, and Richard Johnson's link in the comments to a blog post complaining about Garrison Keillor's treatment of them, I thought I would bring forward this post from 2006 (reprinted 2012) and another from 2007, below. They aren't about Unitarians, but do touch on the idea of who we criticise, and whether it is affectionate or not. The Unitarian pastor at Richard's link has picked up that Keillor, in writing about Unitarians and Christmas, is no longer being kind. I remember that essay and its controversy when it came out, and it was surprisingly traditionalist about Christianity for Keillor, and I wondered what had come over him, climbing all over Jews and Unitarians like that. One would expect him to be closer to the other side of the controversy. Theologically and culturally, he probably was (is). Yet he was a professional nostalgist, and those groups had been changing the mix at Christmas for a long time. He still had affection for the Christmases of his youth, as he remembered them.
I am not impressed with the Unitarian pastor's assertions, BTW, though she does seem like a nice enough person. What Unitarians were like 150-200 years ago is irrelevant to today, far less relevant than for churches with more stable doctrine. Early Unitarians still had a lot of Jesus going on, they just defined him as not a part of any Trinity. Also, you will note that she was fine with Keillor making fun of other groups for years - he turned bitter around the early 90's, so she had been okay with a lot of his venom - but only drew the line when it was her own group. Well, we all tend to be like that. But we should try to be better, also disliking unfair criticism about people who aren't us.
*******
Year-round, NPR tends to the bittersweet, the witty rather than uproarious, the world-weary rather than the cynical, the poignant, the melancholy, the wistful. These are the attitudes of the Arts & Humanities crowd, roused to righteous anger only against those who try and rouse them to righteous anger, charmed by everything but tending to observation rather than full-bore participation. NPR has the best describers of the vignettes of daily life, of which Garrison Keillor is the archetype.
Christmas kills them. They can access faith only via nostalgia, and that well soon runs dry. Real traditions include Mom, and going to church, and immersing yourself in that whole crowd of idiot relatives. Far better to have your Christmas carols instrumental, where the mood can grip you without the trouble of the lyrics. The programs at NPR are dignified, properly appalled at the deterioration of the season into commercialism and "Grandma Got Run Over By a Reindeer;" into the violent games or garish decorations.
This works well enough for that percentage of their audience that still holds to the Christian faith. We fear no nostalgia, and deplore many of the same things about the season. Instrumental carols and lights that don't blink are fine with us. Their secular audience must be okay with this approach as well. Perhaps with NPR guiding the tour they can trust that however close the bus gets to the edge of the road it will not go over into actual religious assertion. They can stay in their seat and admire the view.
I don't have the same sense in my bones for what the Jewish storytellers are experiencing, but it seems much the same. They grew up slightly alienated from the culture's holiday, but having something of their own to build nostalgia around. Now they seem alienated from that as well. And those who had little or no faith tradition - they're trying to find something worth saving in all this. Something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue, and a sixpence in your shoe - which is supposed to be for weddings, but they all try to make a holiday out of the same sort of homey elements.
Emotional distance has its advantages, and these makeshift Christmases don't seem to be tragic. There is a sort of courage about them, and shafts of real joy, and the nobility of those who refuse at least to be hypocrites. But story after story in December, as these deeply artistic and sensitive people try to capture the season, carries the theme of searching, of something missing, of arranging the dried flowers as beautifully as possible because no new ones will bloom.
Those of us who are believers are tempted to throw up our hands and say "Oh for Pete's sake! Relent for just a few days a year and allow yourself to be immersed in the faith of your youth. You'll get more out of Christmas that way. It'll do you good. Why is Jesus the one thing you can't keep?" But I think it is our own inattention to the season, our own taking it for granted, that causes us to think this way. We are so aware of how many things pull us away from Christ at Christmas that we have forgotten how dangerous it is for those outside to look in. They sense, as we should know but have forgotten, that to step inside might mean never coming back. If emotional distance does not bring warmth, it at least brings memories of warmth, with no danger of burning.
*****
Update 2018: Because of the discussion of Unitarians, and Richard Johnson's link in the comments to a blog post complaining about Garrison Keillor's treatment of them, I thought I would bring forward this post from 2006 (reprinted 2012) and another from 2007, below. They aren't about Unitarians, but do touch on the idea of who we criticise, and whether it is affectionate or not. The Unitarian pastor at Richard's link has picked up that Keillor, in writing about Unitarians and Christmas, is no longer being kind. I remember that essay and its controversy when it came out, and it was surprisingly traditionalist about Christianity for Keillor, and I wondered what had come over him, climbing all over Jews and Unitarians like that. One would expect him to be closer to the other side of the controversy. Theologically and culturally, he probably was (is). Yet he was a professional nostalgist, and those groups had been changing the mix at Christmas for a long time. He still had affection for the Christmases of his youth, as he remembered them.
I am not impressed with the Unitarian pastor's assertions, BTW, though she does seem like a nice enough person. What Unitarians were like 150-200 years ago is irrelevant to today, far less relevant than for churches with more stable doctrine. Early Unitarians still had a lot of Jesus going on, they just defined him as not a part of any Trinity. Also, you will note that she was fine with Keillor making fun of other groups for years - he turned bitter around the early 90's, so she had been okay with a lot of his venom - but only drew the line when it was her own group. Well, we all tend to be like that. But we should try to be better, also disliking unfair criticism about people who aren't us.
*******
Year-round, NPR tends to the bittersweet, the witty rather than uproarious, the world-weary rather than the cynical, the poignant, the melancholy, the wistful. These are the attitudes of the Arts & Humanities crowd, roused to righteous anger only against those who try and rouse them to righteous anger, charmed by everything but tending to observation rather than full-bore participation. NPR has the best describers of the vignettes of daily life, of which Garrison Keillor is the archetype.
Christmas kills them. They can access faith only via nostalgia, and that well soon runs dry. Real traditions include Mom, and going to church, and immersing yourself in that whole crowd of idiot relatives. Far better to have your Christmas carols instrumental, where the mood can grip you without the trouble of the lyrics. The programs at NPR are dignified, properly appalled at the deterioration of the season into commercialism and "Grandma Got Run Over By a Reindeer;" into the violent games or garish decorations.
This works well enough for that percentage of their audience that still holds to the Christian faith. We fear no nostalgia, and deplore many of the same things about the season. Instrumental carols and lights that don't blink are fine with us. Their secular audience must be okay with this approach as well. Perhaps with NPR guiding the tour they can trust that however close the bus gets to the edge of the road it will not go over into actual religious assertion. They can stay in their seat and admire the view.
I don't have the same sense in my bones for what the Jewish storytellers are experiencing, but it seems much the same. They grew up slightly alienated from the culture's holiday, but having something of their own to build nostalgia around. Now they seem alienated from that as well. And those who had little or no faith tradition - they're trying to find something worth saving in all this. Something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue, and a sixpence in your shoe - which is supposed to be for weddings, but they all try to make a holiday out of the same sort of homey elements.
Emotional distance has its advantages, and these makeshift Christmases don't seem to be tragic. There is a sort of courage about them, and shafts of real joy, and the nobility of those who refuse at least to be hypocrites. But story after story in December, as these deeply artistic and sensitive people try to capture the season, carries the theme of searching, of something missing, of arranging the dried flowers as beautifully as possible because no new ones will bloom.
Those of us who are believers are tempted to throw up our hands and say "Oh for Pete's sake! Relent for just a few days a year and allow yourself to be immersed in the faith of your youth. You'll get more out of Christmas that way. It'll do you good. Why is Jesus the one thing you can't keep?" But I think it is our own inattention to the season, our own taking it for granted, that causes us to think this way. We are so aware of how many things pull us away from Christ at Christmas that we have forgotten how dangerous it is for those outside to look in. They sense, as we should know but have forgotten, that to step inside might mean never coming back. If emotional distance does not bring warmth, it at least brings memories of warmth, with no danger of burning.
Grades
Grading with an easier hand might encourage more people to take STEM courses, especially women. I can make a defense for grading on a curve with new material, or a new approach, when norms have not yet been established. But grades are not a prize, a punishment, or a gift, as we used to always think when we were students ourselves and kept rationalising that the teacher "doesn't like me." Grades are a measurement.
I had a Sociology 101 professor who told us Day One: "I have been teaching this course for fifteen years. I know what you should have learned by the end of the semester. I don't grade on a curve."
People would have fewer fevers if nurses graded our temperatures along a curve. We'd all be healthier right away!
I had a Sociology 101 professor who told us Day One: "I have been teaching this course for fifteen years. I know what you should have learned by the end of the semester. I don't grade on a curve."
People would have fewer fevers if nurses graded our temperatures along a curve. We'd all be healthier right away!
The Gospel According to Bart
I have been nervous about reading Bart Ehrman's Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed The New Testament and Why. This is not because I feared my faith in the New Testament would be weakened, thus weakening my faith in Jesus, but because I feared I would get in over my head but would want to bring up what I learned in some context and make a botch of it. That may only mean I feared public humiliation when shooting off my mouth, but I like to think that my real reason is that putting a botched argument forward, only to see it destroyed, would be detrimental to anyone present whose faith might be weakened. I wouldn't want to face God with that one. I thought I understood this but I didn't, and now Jack may have had his faith in scripture undermined. Entirely my fault.
I know that I know little about textual criticism, and so was likely to A) Misunderstand what Ehrman was writing, in ways great and small and B) Misunderstand what any of his critics were saying in answer, in ways great and small. Yet I was curious. His book had come on the scene over a decade ago and got everyone all worked up. I wanted to know what it was about, but not enough to learn basic textual criticism in preparation. So the nervousness just sort of hovered in the background, wondering if a time would arise when I would find that I had missed a great deal of important thinking and would have to tackle the matter anyway, starting in a hole.
I needn't have worried. I should have just jumped in. According to Daniel B. Wallace's essay The Gospel According to Bart, over at Bible.org, Ehrman's book includes a very good introduction to textual criticism in its first chapters. Wallace criticises the book for slanting much of the discussion, mostly by omission of important contrary information, but he acknowledges that the introduction to the topic is generally well done. Actually, Wallace's essay in criticism gives a fair bit of introduction itself, enough to show me that I knew more than I thought. Still not very much. Let's not get carried away here. But I knew already that the story of the Woman Taken In Adultery was most likely added well after the first documents, and probably did not happen at all. Many Bibles include notes on disputed passages in the footnotes.
I recommend the essay for those who want to catch up on this. It isn't short, but at 12,000 words it is doable, and Wallace writes engagingly about what he admits most people find to be a boring topic. In short, his criticisms of Ehrman seem to be these: that Ehrman goes from fundamentalist to inverted fundamentalist in a flash, as if there is nothing between literalist acceptance of what grandpa was taught and complete suspicion of the entirety of the NT; that some of the major difficulties he relies on (such as the woman caught in adultery) have been long known and accepted without difficulty, even by evangelical scholars - that is, they don't change anything; that other variant readings which Ehrman insist on as certain are not generally accepted; that even where he thinks Bart Ehrman gets it right, and our usual translations are in error, and the impact on understanding that passage is substantial, it changes our understanding of the book in question very little, and our understanding of the NT even less.
For example, Wallace thinks Ehrman has a good case that in Mark 1:40-41, Jesus was angry rather than "moved with compassion" when the leper asked to be healed, and that we underemphasise Jesus's indignation at being doubted throughout Mark's gospel. The translators at the NIV thought so too. Dr. Ehrman isn't bringing anything earth-shattering here, even though he keeps saying that it's earth-shattering.
Bart Ehrman is likely a smarter man than I am, and certainly more knowledgeable about the Bible. But I think i handled my fundamentalist-shaking moment better than he did. Some time in the late 70s or early 80s I heard a Christian speaker laugh that there are people who are so literalist, that they believe when Samson picks up the jawbone of an ass and slays a thousand in Judges 15, that has to be exact. If archaeology at Rameth Lehi revealed the jawbone of a camel with 1001 nicks in it and the remains of 1001 soldiers, their faith would be in ruins. Hahaha. I remember thinking at the time. Wait a minute. I am sorta that guy. Over the next few hours I decided I didn't need to be that brittle about the scriptures.
I know that I know little about textual criticism, and so was likely to A) Misunderstand what Ehrman was writing, in ways great and small and B) Misunderstand what any of his critics were saying in answer, in ways great and small. Yet I was curious. His book had come on the scene over a decade ago and got everyone all worked up. I wanted to know what it was about, but not enough to learn basic textual criticism in preparation. So the nervousness just sort of hovered in the background, wondering if a time would arise when I would find that I had missed a great deal of important thinking and would have to tackle the matter anyway, starting in a hole.
I needn't have worried. I should have just jumped in. According to Daniel B. Wallace's essay The Gospel According to Bart, over at Bible.org, Ehrman's book includes a very good introduction to textual criticism in its first chapters. Wallace criticises the book for slanting much of the discussion, mostly by omission of important contrary information, but he acknowledges that the introduction to the topic is generally well done. Actually, Wallace's essay in criticism gives a fair bit of introduction itself, enough to show me that I knew more than I thought. Still not very much. Let's not get carried away here. But I knew already that the story of the Woman Taken In Adultery was most likely added well after the first documents, and probably did not happen at all. Many Bibles include notes on disputed passages in the footnotes.
I recommend the essay for those who want to catch up on this. It isn't short, but at 12,000 words it is doable, and Wallace writes engagingly about what he admits most people find to be a boring topic. In short, his criticisms of Ehrman seem to be these: that Ehrman goes from fundamentalist to inverted fundamentalist in a flash, as if there is nothing between literalist acceptance of what grandpa was taught and complete suspicion of the entirety of the NT; that some of the major difficulties he relies on (such as the woman caught in adultery) have been long known and accepted without difficulty, even by evangelical scholars - that is, they don't change anything; that other variant readings which Ehrman insist on as certain are not generally accepted; that even where he thinks Bart Ehrman gets it right, and our usual translations are in error, and the impact on understanding that passage is substantial, it changes our understanding of the book in question very little, and our understanding of the NT even less.
For example, Wallace thinks Ehrman has a good case that in Mark 1:40-41, Jesus was angry rather than "moved with compassion" when the leper asked to be healed, and that we underemphasise Jesus's indignation at being doubted throughout Mark's gospel. The translators at the NIV thought so too. Dr. Ehrman isn't bringing anything earth-shattering here, even though he keeps saying that it's earth-shattering.
Bart Ehrman is likely a smarter man than I am, and certainly more knowledgeable about the Bible. But I think i handled my fundamentalist-shaking moment better than he did. Some time in the late 70s or early 80s I heard a Christian speaker laugh that there are people who are so literalist, that they believe when Samson picks up the jawbone of an ass and slays a thousand in Judges 15, that has to be exact. If archaeology at Rameth Lehi revealed the jawbone of a camel with 1001 nicks in it and the remains of 1001 soldiers, their faith would be in ruins. Hahaha. I remember thinking at the time. Wait a minute. I am sorta that guy. Over the next few hours I decided I didn't need to be that brittle about the scriptures.
Thursday, December 19, 2019
Post 6600 - School Discipline
Here is something you can use going forward, a rule of thumb: When someone claims that what they are putting forward is not an opinion but is a fact, nine times out of ten it's an opinion. There are some naive sorts who are new to the game and are genuinely trying hard to pare all opinion from their writing, or at least key parts of it. I once was one myself. It's not impossible. It's just not very usual, especially among professional writers. If they say it's not an opinion, it's an opinion.
Worse, the opinion they are trying to sell as a fact is usually the key item, the debateable point on which everything else rests. As in the linked essay, where the paragraph immediately before the declaration that he has not begun to state an opinion assumes that it is the discipline which is at fault. Which is his entire point. He is assuming what he purports to prove.
Not the students, or lead paint, or parents, or how much sleep the kids get, or the previous schools, or drug use, or nutrition, or any of a dozen other possibilities are an explanation. It's the discipline. There may even be a negative correlation between what is claimed to be not-opinion and the amount of opinion it actually relies on.
Worse, the opinion they are trying to sell as a fact is usually the key item, the debateable point on which everything else rests. As in the linked essay, where the paragraph immediately before the declaration that he has not begun to state an opinion assumes that it is the discipline which is at fault. Which is his entire point. He is assuming what he purports to prove.
Not the students, or lead paint, or parents, or how much sleep the kids get, or the previous schools, or drug use, or nutrition, or any of a dozen other possibilities are an explanation. It's the discipline. There may even be a negative correlation between what is claimed to be not-opinion and the amount of opinion it actually relies on.
Wednesday, December 18, 2019
Diagnosing Trump
I continue to only catch most news about the impeachment proceedings
largely by accident. I don't read those articles at Maggie's and even
at Grim's I skip most of those, even though I usually read everything
there. I see the headlines. Occasionally I will follow up with one. I
also have little temptation to read any more opinions on what drives
Trump or what his personality is. I think it has all been said. I
decided today that I would try to come up with something new myself,
just to provide value-added for my friends.
Donald Trump is a lot like a manic. Lots of politicians are, good ones and bad ones. Manics have an uncanny ability to find the insult that irritates you most and puts you back on your heels. They are overconfident, but if they keep it just under control they can make it work for them - and for you, as manics have been both the best and the worst leaders in wartime or other crises. When they lie, it is usually bullshit, exaggeration, and bluster more than calculation or sociopathy. They remember some things in surprising detail and forget others in moments. They are very good at talking themselves out of corners. They are genuinely interested in others and like them, though they can turn and hold grudges as well. Bill Clinton was a lot like that.
I would have a better feel for whether my guess is true if I hung around with him for a couple of hours.
Donald Trump is a lot like a manic. Lots of politicians are, good ones and bad ones. Manics have an uncanny ability to find the insult that irritates you most and puts you back on your heels. They are overconfident, but if they keep it just under control they can make it work for them - and for you, as manics have been both the best and the worst leaders in wartime or other crises. When they lie, it is usually bullshit, exaggeration, and bluster more than calculation or sociopathy. They remember some things in surprising detail and forget others in moments. They are very good at talking themselves out of corners. They are genuinely interested in others and like them, though they can turn and hold grudges as well. Bill Clinton was a lot like that.
I would have a better feel for whether my guess is true if I hung around with him for a couple of hours.
After the Countdown
The 100 most-visited posts series is going to finish up just before the end of the year, which is only partly accidental. I have adjusted the speed over the last two months. I will not be out of things to do in addition with keeping up with current posting, however. I have a couple of other categories of interest which rely on things I have saved, and that will keep me going a while longer after the first of the year.
I would dearly love providing the service of on-the-spot reporting about the NH Primary in February, but I have no enthusiasm for it at all. I have not gone to any events. My eldest, who was a history major, is strong believer in getting his daughters out to see history happening live, both for memory and discussion purposes, but I don't think he has done that much this time around either. (The older girl, now 12, is still annoyed that Carly Fiorina isn't president.)
I would dearly love providing the service of on-the-spot reporting about the NH Primary in February, but I have no enthusiasm for it at all. I have not gone to any events. My eldest, who was a history major, is strong believer in getting his daughters out to see history happening live, both for memory and discussion purposes, but I don't think he has done that much this time around either. (The older girl, now 12, is still annoyed that Carly Fiorina isn't president.)
Second Article of Impeachment
Dershowitz believes the SCOTUS has validated Trump's contention that the judicial branch is the final arbiter of subpoena power, by accepting the case at all, regardless of how it rules later. He believes the second article should therefore be withdrawn, or if it is not, Democrats who care about precedent show vote against it, regardless of how they vote on the first article.
I'm not getting how it's abuse of power when the president says "Let the court decide."
I'm not getting how it's abuse of power when the president says "Let the court decide."
Expertise
Update: The first comment is very worth reading, and thinking about.
Journalists should do a better job matching experts to their actual expertise. Agreed. This article is by a law professor. And this also goes for economists. Nobel winners, such as Paul Krugman, are top-shelf experts in narrow aspects, but that does not mean they are more knowledgeable about economic issues in general than a thousand other guys and gals. There is a general store of knowledge that most lawyers have, or most economists, or most physicists, or music professors have. As the article notes, sometimes their most valuable information is that they know the vocabulary and can search out information and identify experts far more quickly than laymen can, and know at least some common pitfalls to avoid.
It does get trickier in other fields. Clergy are usually trained within a denomination, and know a good deal about that, and about how their family tree has looked at things. They may or may not know much about other religions, or other denominations, or particular areas in history. Historians likewise know some broad categories that apply and some good questions to ask, such as whether it is more helpful to look at continuity or change in a particular place, or to ponder whether developments were inevitable or highly dependent on notable individuals, whether social or economic history actually tells us more than wars or successions tell us. They may know little about many times and places in history. Psychologists end up all over the map. They might have extensive general knowledge of the field or very little. Knowing very little about the field in general may not be a bad thing, either. It's a bad thing if CNN is interviewing you as an expert when you aren't anything like that, but it's not terrible if you have particular, difficult niche such as forensic evaluation and you focus on that.
Journalists should do a better job matching experts to their actual expertise. Agreed. This article is by a law professor. And this also goes for economists. Nobel winners, such as Paul Krugman, are top-shelf experts in narrow aspects, but that does not mean they are more knowledgeable about economic issues in general than a thousand other guys and gals. There is a general store of knowledge that most lawyers have, or most economists, or most physicists, or music professors have. As the article notes, sometimes their most valuable information is that they know the vocabulary and can search out information and identify experts far more quickly than laymen can, and know at least some common pitfalls to avoid.
It does get trickier in other fields. Clergy are usually trained within a denomination, and know a good deal about that, and about how their family tree has looked at things. They may or may not know much about other religions, or other denominations, or particular areas in history. Historians likewise know some broad categories that apply and some good questions to ask, such as whether it is more helpful to look at continuity or change in a particular place, or to ponder whether developments were inevitable or highly dependent on notable individuals, whether social or economic history actually tells us more than wars or successions tell us. They may know little about many times and places in history. Psychologists end up all over the map. They might have extensive general knowledge of the field or very little. Knowing very little about the field in general may not be a bad thing, either. It's a bad thing if CNN is interviewing you as an expert when you aren't anything like that, but it's not terrible if you have particular, difficult niche such as forensic evaluation and you focus on that.
Tuesday, December 17, 2019
Vocabulary
Similar to the previous post, my wife is quite pleased this moment by what just happened while listening to "Says You" on NPR. They play a variant of the Dictionary Game, in which contestants make up possible definitions for a word. The real definition is inserted into the possibles, and they try to guess which one is correct. In our version, you get a point for guessing correctly, and a point for each person you fool with your made-up definition. We haven't played in years, because it takes too long to play with Tracy, trying to find a word she doesn't know. Even when she says she doesn't know, the definition she makes up is close enough that we realise in retrospect she actually did know it. She guessed that wherry was a light boat.
Tonight she knew both words they offered for definition: "perry," which I also knew, and "eyas," which I did not.
Tonight she knew both words they offered for definition: "perry," which I also knew, and "eyas," which I did not.
Rubik's Cube
I hadn't realised that was 40 years ago. I had one of the first cubes in the US, smuggled out before it was quite legal - though I doubt many cared, and a few had already gone to some mathematicians worldwide. A Hungarian emigre who worked at IBM in Manassas with a friend of mine in 1980 had visited family back home and seen the cubes in stores, and thought he knew people who would like it. My friend and his wife were already scheduled to come visit us and nabbed one of the very few the guy had brought out in his suitcase.
I loved it, both the puzzle of the pattern and the mechanism of it. I quickly figured out how to get the top level right, slowly worked out the second level, but never got the third level on my own. Early on I had shown it to a pal who was a math major at Williams, who immediately offered some possible ways to solve it, and I knew he was doing things in his brain I had no understanding of. It is an example I keep returning to when I talk about some cognitive functions being hardwired. Yes, he had been exposed to a lot of mathematics, but so had I, and neither of us had seen anything like it previously. He clicked it into his brain and started rotating it there, even as he toyed with it and saw what it did. Beyond me.
Now that I can watch the real experts, the kids who can devote a lot of time to repeated trials hoping for it to all come together for a perfect run, I am even more convinced.
Yes, they were much slower when they first learned. Yes, obsessive practice has taught them to see the cube and its pattern in a different way. I don't care. They are doing something I not only cannot do, I cannot even imagine how they are doing it.
I loved it, both the puzzle of the pattern and the mechanism of it. I quickly figured out how to get the top level right, slowly worked out the second level, but never got the third level on my own. Early on I had shown it to a pal who was a math major at Williams, who immediately offered some possible ways to solve it, and I knew he was doing things in his brain I had no understanding of. It is an example I keep returning to when I talk about some cognitive functions being hardwired. Yes, he had been exposed to a lot of mathematics, but so had I, and neither of us had seen anything like it previously. He clicked it into his brain and started rotating it there, even as he toyed with it and saw what it did. Beyond me.
Now that I can watch the real experts, the kids who can devote a lot of time to repeated trials hoping for it to all come together for a perfect run, I am even more convinced.
Yes, they were much slower when they first learned. Yes, obsessive practice has taught them to see the cube and its pattern in a different way. I don't care. They are doing something I not only cannot do, I cannot even imagine how they are doing it.
#4 - On The New Hampshire Accent/Dialect
My fourth-most visited post over the years, even though it is not very thorough. From January 2007.
*******
Taking some “r’s” out and adding others in is the notorious characteristic of the New Hampshire/Northeastern Massachusetts dialect.(Correction 2019: Includes RI and coastal Maine) The new datter gave him a new idear. Or to use Fritz Wetherbee’s excellent phrase: Mistah waitah, now or late-ah, bring a glass of be-ah he-ah. Though these forms may be slowly disappearing, merging into that standard American accent from Medina, Ohio, they can still be heard, particularly among older and rural residents. I was in fifth grade before I read the word parka, and concluded it must be the correct form of our word pahker. In the women’s name “Martha,” you get the same even trade: Mahther.
Even among youngah folk, you might catch an added r in special situations if you listen closely. When the next word begins with a vowel, a soft r sound will be inserted: Lawrand order. Linderand I went downtown. Cuber is just south of Flohridder, and Nashuar is west of Reveah.
From Worcester to Portland you still might hear an older person ask for a tonic, meaning a soft drink or get a milk shake made without ice cream (with ice cream it’s a frappe). Forty years ago, no one in NH ever ate a hero, hoagie, submarine, or Italian sandwich. We ate grinders, and have since also allowed the word subs, though grudgingly. You can still drink from a bubbler (and surprisingly, they also kept it in Wisconsin), originally a brand name – but that’s “bubblah” here . Everywhere else in the country you have to drink from a fountain or drinking fountain. Older folks still say dungarees and sneakers, as well.
Everyone used to go down cellah in northern New England, but the use of basements for bathrooms in city schools or the bottom floor of buildings with elevators has pushed cellar into a more specialized use: the bottom floor of a house, if less-finished or unfinished. It's still mixed. Basement was so closely associated with public lavatories that in 1950 a child in Manchestah could ask “Wheah’s the basement?” and be told “It’s up on the second flo-ah.”
We say many vowels a little more precisely in other cases. Flohridder has the “oh” not “aw” sound, and a crayon or centaur is just that, not a crayan or a centarr.
New Hampshah Hospital is located in CONcuhd, even though no one ever conquhd CONcuhd NH. If that sounds strange, well, they don’t always have much concord in conCORD NC or CA either, do they? BUHlin and MI-lan ahnt close to BerLIN or MiLAN, neither in pronunciation nor geography, but Lebanun is a pronunciation wicked close to Lebanon, ahn't it? (Update 2019: I wrote about the origins of "wicked" in our dialect a few years later.)
You won’t see a blowdown or a hahd-top road, anymoah, but youah mothah’s sistah, who lives kittycorner across the street will still be yoah aunt, pronounced just like it’s spelled, thank you. We had a perfectly good second-person plural all to ourselves, but now you guys all ovah the North are using it. Jeezum crow, stop stealing ouah regional distinctives, wouldja? (Additional note 2019: As "you guys" became more common, it became more controversial. I don't know if that would have happened had it remained merely a New England phrasing.)
Monday, December 16, 2019
How to be a Dane
This is what is insufferable about Europeans.
In terms of population, this is like "How to be a real native of Connecticut, or Massachusetts." It is an all-white country that has been all-white for much longer than any American state. It is not very different from any of its neighbors, and in fact shares a very similar state church, economy, education system, and political history, not to mention a genetic similarity that is greater than any American state, and maybe any American county. To hold to my analogy above, it is more similar to its neighbors than the New England states are to each other, even though the latter actually share a country.
Everything that is said about what makes a Dane special could be said about Swedes or Norwegians and no one would blink. I think one could disguise this by making it about just about any white western Europeans, though I may be pushing my luck with that. I don't dislike Danes at all. The few I have known personally have been great favorites of mine, and the ones I read about are people I believe I could see eye-to-eye with about many things. But when Europeans - and the NW Europeans are particular offenders in this - speak about how they get things right while the benighted American cowboys with their guns and their fascination with cars and money and McDonalds are just impossible boors, this is what they mean. They like their own foods better than ours. They like their customs better than ours. Insofar as they are all white except for a few places that have changed recently, they have a comfortableness in their own skin, a calmness, a maturity, that Americans do not have. They see everything clearly except themselves.
Well of course they do. Wouldn't we all, in their shoes. I wish they would talk to more Eastern Europeans, frankly.
In terms of population, this is like "How to be a real native of Connecticut, or Massachusetts." It is an all-white country that has been all-white for much longer than any American state. It is not very different from any of its neighbors, and in fact shares a very similar state church, economy, education system, and political history, not to mention a genetic similarity that is greater than any American state, and maybe any American county. To hold to my analogy above, it is more similar to its neighbors than the New England states are to each other, even though the latter actually share a country.
Everything that is said about what makes a Dane special could be said about Swedes or Norwegians and no one would blink. I think one could disguise this by making it about just about any white western Europeans, though I may be pushing my luck with that. I don't dislike Danes at all. The few I have known personally have been great favorites of mine, and the ones I read about are people I believe I could see eye-to-eye with about many things. But when Europeans - and the NW Europeans are particular offenders in this - speak about how they get things right while the benighted American cowboys with their guns and their fascination with cars and money and McDonalds are just impossible boors, this is what they mean. They like their own foods better than ours. They like their customs better than ours. Insofar as they are all white except for a few places that have changed recently, they have a comfortableness in their own skin, a calmness, a maturity, that Americans do not have. They see everything clearly except themselves.
Well of course they do. Wouldn't we all, in their shoes. I wish they would talk to more Eastern Europeans, frankly.
Terrence Tao
He is considered by some to be the smartest man alive. He has attacked mathematics problems that have eluded others and made progress in frighteningly short periods of time. He won the Fields Medal in 2006, for work he had done before age 30 - though it should be noted that mathematicians often show their best work early.
Yet knowing more about him, it raises questions about what "smart" is. He confessed great relief at getting to a level of education while still very young where he didn't have to do anything but mathematics. To the school writing assignment "What has been going on at your house lately?" he could only manage to list the objects in his home. Fascinating to think about, really.
He has made unexpected progress on a problem that other mathematicians warn each other away from, because of its deceptive simplicity. Many brilliant minds have crashed up against the rocks of this question, apparently. I like this discussion of the problem, because I have enough numbers-obsession and understanding of integer trends and relationships to dimly grasp what is happening and why it might swallow a beautiful mind whole, yet can still appreciate that understanding is far beyond me. The graphic of the mathematical progression that tops the article is worth string at for many minutes. If you like that sort of thing, that is. It softly instructs me to come over to the Dark Side to fulfill my destiny. Many of those numbers are friend of mine.
He attacked from an angle that shows almost no chance of getting to an ultimate proof, yet gets much farther on a practical level than any others have previously managed. That in itself takes a certain sort of brilliance, to realise when perfection is not going to be available, but half a loaf - or in this case 99.99% of a loaf - is available elsewhere.
Yet knowing more about him, it raises questions about what "smart" is. He confessed great relief at getting to a level of education while still very young where he didn't have to do anything but mathematics. To the school writing assignment "What has been going on at your house lately?" he could only manage to list the objects in his home. Fascinating to think about, really.
He has made unexpected progress on a problem that other mathematicians warn each other away from, because of its deceptive simplicity. Many brilliant minds have crashed up against the rocks of this question, apparently. I like this discussion of the problem, because I have enough numbers-obsession and understanding of integer trends and relationships to dimly grasp what is happening and why it might swallow a beautiful mind whole, yet can still appreciate that understanding is far beyond me. The graphic of the mathematical progression that tops the article is worth string at for many minutes. If you like that sort of thing, that is. It softly instructs me to come over to the Dark Side to fulfill my destiny. Many of those numbers are friend of mine.
He attacked from an angle that shows almost no chance of getting to an ultimate proof, yet gets much farther on a practical level than any others have previously managed. That in itself takes a certain sort of brilliance, to realise when perfection is not going to be available, but half a loaf - or in this case 99.99% of a loaf - is available elsewhere.
Sunday, December 15, 2019
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