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February 27, 2005

Shanghai Nights

ot into Shanghai Saturday afternoon. The hotel Internet connection is plagued with problems, so I haven't been able to get online until visiting the corporate office. This may be my only chance to post before returning later in the week, so here's a rundown.

We arrived, checked in, and went right to Yu Gardens to shop. Bought a bunch of cashmere scarves for gifts, and a travel case to schlep them back in. We had the usual fun haggling prices down t 1/3 the original offered.

Oh, and I bought my wife a couple of watches. Hope they last more than a month.

Then we went to the Grand Hyatt for dinner. This is the tallest building in Shanghai offering spectaculat views of the Oriental Pearl Radio Tower, the Bund, and all the buildings in the new area of Pudong. (You can see some of the pictures if you go here.)

We ate sushi in a Japanese restaurant on the 56th floor, which also has an interior gallery where you can look up a 100-foot diameter central core that goes up another 40-50 stories with views of room halls that reminds me of the circular Galactic Senate in Star Wars. Awe-inspiring and a little dizzying.

My compatriots put away champaigne, beer, wine, scotch, and three bottles of cold saki. I don't drink, so I kept up with my San Pellegrino. We laughed for over 2 hours and probably upset the neighbors. But only two of us were Americans (one Korean, one Japanese, and one Taiwanese), so we may have dodge a cultural bullet.

Sunday we went to the first half of the Peking Opera doing Mu Guiying Takes Command. Here's a synopses: She Taijun, widow of a famous general of the Song Dynasty can not sit idle when she learns that the Western Xia regime has invaded the Song Empire. She sends her great-grandchildren Yang Wenguang and Yang Jinhua to the capital city for information. There they break into the martial arts competition arena and kill Wang Kun, the son of the defense minister who wants to take command of the Song troops in order that his family may usurp the power of the empire. The emperor then learns that they are descendants of the Yang family and agrees to put their mother, Mu Guiying, in command of the troops. She is reluctant to take command because she knows that the emperor is a capricious person. Widow She, however, persuades her daughter-in-law to take command, putting aside her private resentment in order to save the country.

It was everything we thought Chinese Opera would be. But 90 minutes of a 3-hour opera was enough. Some of the vocals were remarkably piercing and sinus cleansing. The lead actor (all the female parts are male actors, trained from the age of 5 to be women; I know, interesting...) won many applause lines for his/her ability to do a kind of chrysanthemum unflowing of the hands. I only heard about this after, so I missed out on the reason for the applause.

Today and the next two days is work work work. I'll check back in if I can. Got an org assessment to do.

Cheers


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February 24, 2005

The Lonely Traveller

ere I am in Taiwan, travelling with several business associates and 50+ local managers (all very nice people), staying at a very nice hotel (the Ambassador), eating at the nicest restaurants, and leaving tomorrow for an even nicer hotel in Shanghai (the Renaissance) with a suite even and even more managers, with the prospect of shopping at Yu Gardens or the Fashion district, and getting a 1-hour reflexology foot massage at a good place recommended by United Airlines flight attendants...

...and all I can think about is missing my wife of 7 years. Why is traveling always so lonely without her?


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February 23, 2005

Blogging from Taiwan

'm in Taiwan today. The time stamp on this post is Wednesday evening about 8:00 pm, but it is Thursday noon here in Hsin-Chu (about an hour outside of Taipei).

So I recommend that, until I have time to work up another post, you read the archives for January.

I mean, really, you haven't read all those long posts yet, have you? Why not catch up now?


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February 22, 2005

Propositions Three and Seven

N THE COUNTRY of the blind, the one-eyed man is, as we all know, king. And across the way, in the country of the witless, the half-wit is king. And why not? It's only natural, and considering the circumstances, not really a bad system. We do the best we can.

But it is a system with some unhappy consequences. The one-eyed man knows that he could never be king in the land of the two-eyed, and the half-wit knows that he would be small potatoes indeed in a land where most people had all or most of their wits about them. These rulers, therefore, will be inordinately selective about their social programs, which will be designed not only to protect against the rise of the witful and the sighted, but, just as important, to ensure a never-failing supply of the witless and utterly blind. Even to the half-wit and the one-eyed man, it is clear that other half-wits and one-eyed men are potential competitors and supplanters, and they invert the ancient tale in which an anxious tyrant kept watch against a one-sandaled stranger by keeping watch against wanderers with both eyes and operating minds. Uneasy lies the head.

Unfortunately, most people are born with two eyes and even the propensity to think. If nothing is done about this, chaos, obviously, threatens the land. Even worse, unemployment threatens the one-eyed man and the half-wit. However, since they do in fact rule, those potentates have not much to fear, for they can command the construction and perpetuation of a state-supported and legally enforced system for the early detection and obliteration of antisocial traits, and thus arrange that witfulness and 20-20 vision will trouble the land as little as possible. The system is called "education."

Such is our case. Nor should that surprise anyone. Like living creatures, institutions intend primarily to live and do whatever else they do only to that end. Unlike some living creatures, however, who do in fact occasionally decide that there is something even more to be prized than their own survival, institutions are never capable of altruism, heroism, or even self-denial. If you imagine that they are, if, for instance, you fancy that the welfare system or the Federal Reserve exists and labors for "the good of the people," then you can be sure that the minions of the one-eyed man and the half-wit are pleased with you.

Furthermore, any institution that still stands must, by that very fact, be successful. When we say, as we seem to more and more these days, that education in America is "failing," it is because we don't understand the institution. It is, in fact, succeeding enormously. It grows daily, hourly, in power and wealth, and that precisely because of our accusations of failure. The more we complain against it, the more it can lay claim to our power and wealth, in the name of curing those ills of which we complain. And, in our special case, in a land ostensibly committed to individual freedom and rights, it can and does make the ultimate claim--to be, that is, the free, universal system of public education that alone can raise up to a free land citizens who will understand and love and defend individual freedom and rights. Like any politician, the institution of education claims direct descent in apostolic succession from the Founding Fathers.

Jefferson was in favor of education, indubitably, but he meant the condition, not the word. He held that there was no expectation, "in a state of civilization," that we could be both free and ignorant. The modifier is important; it is to suggest that we might indeed be "free" and ignorant in savagery. Free at least from the conventional and mutually admitted restraints to which civilized people bind themselves.

Using Jefferson's terms, we can derive exactly eight propositions to think about:

1. We can be ignorant and free in savagery.

2. We can be ignorant and free in civilization.

3. We can be ignorant and unfree in civilization.

4. We can be ignorant and unfree in savagery.

5. We can be educated and free in savagery.

6. We can be educated and free in civilization.

7. We can be educated and unfree in civilization.

8. We can be educated and unfree in savagery.

Jefferson asserts that the second is impossible, thereby implying the possibility of the first and the sixth. The fifth and the eighth seem unlikely, for if we are indeed educated it will be both a result of civilization and a cause of civilization. The fourth is just a quibble, for the "freedom" at issue is not freedom from natural exigencies, to which all are subject, but from the devised constraints possible only in a state of civilization. The truth of the third and the seventh, unhappily, is recommended by knowledge and experience.

Omitting those propositions that seem impossible or meaningless, we are left with:

1. We can be ignorant and free in savagery.

3. We can be ignorant and unfree in civilization.

6. We can be educated and free in civilization.

7. We can be educated and unfree in civilization.

And, of those four, Propositions 1 and 6 are explicitly Jefferson's, while 3 and 7 are implicitly Jefferson's. They describe conditions not only perfectly possible but perfectly real. Unfreedom, the forced submission to constraints beyond those mutually admitted by knowing and willing members of a civilization, is not unheard of. Indeed, it is, in greater or less degree, the current condition of all humanity.

Civilization is itself an institution and has, like all institutions, one paramount goal, its own perpetuation. It was Jefferson's dream that that civilization could best perpetuate itself in which the citizens were "educated," whatever he meant by that, and we do have some clue as to what he meant. He wrote of the "informed discretion" of the people as the only acceptable depository of power in a republic. He knew very well that the people might be neither informed nor discreet, that is, able to make fine distinctions, but held that the remedy for that was not to be sought in depriving the people of their proper power but in better informing their discretion.

And to what end were the people to exercise the power of their informed discretion? The answer, of course, shouldn't be surprising, but, because we have been taught to confuse government and its institutions with civilization in general, it often is. Jefferson saw the informed discretion of the people as one of those checks and balances for which our constitutional democracy is justly famous, for it was only with such a power that the people could defend themselves against government and its institutions. "The functionaries of every government," wrote Jefferson, although the italics are mine, "have propensities to command at will the liberty and property of their constituents." Jefferson knew--isn't this the unique genius of American constitutionalism?--that government was a dangerous master and a treacherous servant and that the first concern of free people was to keep their government on a leash, a pretty short one at that.

Consider again Propositions 3 and 7: 3. We can be ignorant and unfree in civilization, and 7. We can be educated and unfree in civilization. Imagine that you are one of those functionaries of government in whom there has grown, it seems inescapable, the propensity to command, in however oblique a fashion and for whatever supposedly good purpose, the liberty and property of your constituents. Which would you prefer, educated constituents or ignorant ones? Wait. Be sure to answer the question in Jefferson's terms. Which would you rather face, even considering your own conviction that the cause in which you want to command liberty and property is just--citizens with or without the power of informed discretion? Citizens having that power will require of you a laborious and detailed justification of your intentions and expectations and may, even having that, adduce other information and exercise further discretion to the contrary of your propensities. On the other hand, the ill-informed and undiscriminating can easily be persuaded by the recitation of popular slogans and the appeal to self-interest, however spurious. It is only informed discretion that can detect such maneuvers.

And that's how government works. There is nothing evil about it. It's perfectly natural. You and I would do it the same way. In fact, the chances are good that we are doing things that way, since more and more of us are in fact functionaries of government in one way or another and dependent for our daily bread on some share of the property of our constituents, and sometimes (as in the public schools) upon the restriction of their liberty.

It was the genius of Jefferson to see that free people would rarely have to defend their freedom against principalities and powers and satanic enemies of the good, but that they would have to defend it daily against the perfectly natural and inevitable propensities of functionaries. Any fool can see, eventually, the danger to freedom in a self-confessed military dictatorship, but it takes informed discretion to see the same danger in bland bureaucracies made up entirely of decent people who are just doing their jobs. But Jefferson was optimistic. As to the liberty and property of the people, he saw that "there is no safe deposit for them but with the people themselves; nor can they be safe with them without information." And he was convinced, alas, that the people could easily come by that information: "Where the press is free, and every man able to read, all is secure."

That sounds so simple. A free press, and universal literacy. We have those things, don't we? So all is secure, no? No.

Just as we cannot assume that what we call "education" is the same as Jefferson's "informed discretion," we cannot assume that Jefferson meant what we mean by "press" and "able to read." In our time, the press, in spite of threats real or imagined, is in fact free. And, if we define "literacy" in a very special and limited way, almost everyone is able to read, more or less. But when Jefferson looked at "the press," what did he see? Or, more to the point, what did he not see? He did not see monthly periodicals devoted entirely to such things as hair care and motorcycling and the imagined intimate details of the lives of television stars and rock singers. He did not see a sports page, a fashion page, a household hints column, or an astrological forecast. He did not see a never-ending succession of breathless articles on low-budget decorating for the executive couple in the big city, career enhancement through creative haberdashery, and the achievement of orgasm through enlightened self-interest. He did not see a nationwide portrayal of "the important" as composed primarily of the doings and undoings of entertainers, athletes, politicians, and criminals.

He would not, I think, have been unduly dismayed by all that. Of course, he would have been dismayed, but not unduly. Such things are implicit in the freedom of the press, and if enough people want them, they'll have them. (Jefferson would surely have wondered why so many people wanted such things, but that's not to the point just now.) Jefferson did, naturally, see "the press" giving news and information, but, more than that, he also saw in it the very practice of informed discretion. In his time, after all, Common Sense and The Federalist Papers were simply parts of "the press." And "every man able to read" would have been, for Jefferson, every man able to read, weigh, and consider things like Common Sense and The Federalist Papers. He would have recognized at once our editorial pages and our journals of enquiry and opinion, but he would have found it ominous that hardly anyone reads those things, and positively portentous that this omission arises not so much from casual neglect as from a common and measurable inability to read such things with either comprehension or pleasure.

Thus Jefferson is cheated. The press is free and almost everyone can make out many words, but all is not secure. Wait. That's not quite clear. Some things are secure. The agencies and institutions of government are secure. The functionaries whose propensity it is to command our liberty and property, they are secure. And, as the one-eyed man is the more secure in proportion to the number of citizens he can blind, our functionaries are the more secure in proportion to those of us who are strangers to the powers of informed discretion. It is possible, of course, to keep educated people unfree in a state of civilization, but it's much easier to keep ignorant people unfree in a state of civilization. And it is easiest of all if you can convince the ignorant that they are educated, for you can thus make them collaborators in your disposition of their liberty and property. That is the institutionally assigned task, for all that it may be invisible to those who perform it, of American public education.

Public education does its work superbly, almost perfectly. It works in fairly strict accordance with its own implicit theory of "education," an elaborate ideology of which only some small details are generally known to the public. This is hardly surprising, for the rare citizen who actually wants to know something about educationistic theory, a dismal subject, finds that it is habitually expressed in tangled, ungrammatical jargon, penetrable, when it is at all, only to one who has nothing better to do. I hope, little by little, to dissect and elucidate that theory, for it is in fact even more frightening than it is dismal. For now, I can take only a first but essential step and urge you to consider this principle: The clouded language of educational theory is an evolved, protective adaptation that hinders thought and understanding. As such, it is no more the result of conscious intention than the markings of a moth. But it works. Thus, those who give themselves to the presumed study and the presumptuous promulgation of educational theory are usually both deceivers and deceived. The murky language where their minds habitually dwell at once unminds them and gives them the power to unmind others.

We will, with appropriate examples, explore the evolution of that strange trait, especially in that portion of the educational establishment where it is most evident: that is, among the people to whom we have given the training of teachers and the formulation of educational theory. In the cumbersome and complicated contraption we call "public education," the trainers of teachers have special powers and privileges. Although in law they are governed by civilian boards and legislatures, they are in fact but little governed, for they have convinced the boards and legislatures that only teacher-trainers can judge the work of teacher-trainers. That wasn't hard to do, for boards and legislatures are made up largely of people who have, in their time, already been blinded by the one-eyed man, having been given, as helpless children, what we call "education" rather than practice in informed discretion. The very language in which the teacher-trainers explain their labors will quickly discourage close scrutiny in even a thoughtful board member, perhaps especially in a thoughtful board member, who has after all, other and more important (he thinks) things to do.

It is not strictly true that the public schools are a state-supported monopoly. There are other schools. But the teacher-trainers are certainly a state-supported monopoly. There are no other teacher-trainers than the ones we have, and they are all in the business of teaching something they call "education." No one knows exactly what that is, and even among educationists there is some mild contention as to whether there actually exists some body of knowledge that can be called "education" as separate from other knowable subjects. You may want to make up your own mind as to that, for in later chapters you will see examples of what is actually done by those who teach "education." But for now we must consider the usually unnoticed effects of the monopoly they enjoy.

The laws of supply and demand work in the academic world just as they do in the marketplace, which is to say, of course, that what is natural and reasonable will not happen where government intervenes. Our schools can be usefully likened to a nationalized industrial system in which the production of goods is directed not by entrepreneurs looking to profit but by social planners intending to change the world. Thus it is the business of the schools, and the special task of the educationists who produce teachers, to generate both supply and demand, so that the nation will want exactly what it is they intend to provide.

Within the academic marketplace, there are many enterprises other than educationism, however. Historically, they have not seen themselves in competition with one another, although I'm sure that the faculties of the medieval universities were not reluctant to claim that their disciplines were more noble than the others. Individual professors, of course, must indeed have competed for students, by whom they were paid, but the students, many of whom were to become professors themselves, were free to devote themselves to whatever discipline seemed good. But between one discipline and another there seems to have been, rather than competition, sectarianism.

A similar sectarianism has been revivified by our current educational disorders. If you ask a professor of geography why we seem to be turning into a nation of ignorant rabble, he will not be able to refrain from pointing out that we don't teach geography anymore and that high school graduates aren't even sure of the name of the next state, never mind the climatic characteristics of the Great Plains or the rivers that drain the Ohio Valley. Professors of physics will allude to the all-too-inevitable consequences of ignorance of the laws of motion and thermodynamics. You can easily devise for yourself the comments of professors of mathematics, languages, history, literature, and indeed of any who teach those things we think of as traditional academic disciplines. Their views will be, of course, at least partly predictable expressions of self-interest; however, they will also be correct, and, if taken all together, will indeed tell us much about our present troubles.

The academic world is like any other group of related enterprises in which everybody can provide something but nobody can provide everything. For the building of houses, for instance, we need many different things, and they are not easily interchangeable. When we need copper tubing, we need copper tubing, and we can't make do with wallboard instead. If houses are built, therefore, many people making many different things will be able to produce what is both useful and profitable. And, while the makers of copper tubing won't have to worry about competition from the makers of wallboard, they will have to be mindful of other makers of copper tubing and also of the makers of plastic tubing. That will be good for the whole enterprise.

Suppose, though, that the copper-tubing people should, through quirk or cunning, secure for themselves some special legal privilege. First they persuade the state, which already has the power to license the building of houses, to prohibit the use of plastic tubing. That's good, but so long as the state is willing to go that far, the copper-tubing makers seek and achieve a regulation requiring some absolute minimum quantity of copper tubing in every new house. Now you must suppose that the copper-tubing lobby has grown so rich and powerful that the law now requires that fifty percent of the mass of every new house must be made up of copper tubing.

Houses could still be built. Walls, floors, and ceilings could be made of coils and bundles of copper tubing smeared over with plaster or stucco. Copper tubing could be cleverly welded and twisted into everything from doorknobs to windowsills and produced in large sizes for heating ducts and chimneys. The houses would be dreadful, of course, and, should you ask why, you will discover that craftsmen in the building trades are more direct and outspoken than college professors. They'll just tell you straight out that these are lousy houses because of all that damn copper tubing. If the professor of mathematics were equally frank, he'd tell you that our schools are full of supposed teachers of mathematics who have studied "education" when they should have studied mathematics.

This is, I admit, not an exact analogy. The manufacture of copper tubing actually does have some relationship to the building of houses, while the study of "education" has no relationship at all to the making of educated people. The analogy would perhaps have been better had I chosen, instead of the manufacturers of copper tubing, the manufacturers of gelatin desserts. To grasp the true nature of the place of educationism in the academic world, you have to imagine that houses are to be made mostly of Jell-O--each flavor equally represented--and that the builders must eat a bowl an hour.

(Well, that analogy fails, too. Jell-O is at least a colorful and entertaining treat with no known harmful side effects. The same cannot be said of the study of "education.")

Our public system of education, from Head Start to the graduate schools of the state universities, might also be called a government system. Those who teach in its primary and secondary schools are required by law to serve time, often as much as one half of their undergraduate program, in the classes of the teacher-trainers. Should they seek graduate degrees, which will bring them automatic raises, they will still have to spend about one half their time taking yet again courses devoted to things like interpersonal relations and the appreciation of alternative remediation enhancements. The educationistic monopoly is strong enough that in at least one state (there are probably others, but I'm afraid to find out), a high school mathematics teacher who is arrogant enough to take a master's degree in mathematics will discover that he is no longer certified to teach that subject. If he wants to keep his job, he must take a degree in "mathematics education," which will, of course, permit him to spend some of his time studying his subject. Even where there is no such visibly monopolistic requirement, the laws and regulations of the public schools, which have been devised by educationists in the teachers' colleges, provide an effective equivalent.

The intellectual climate of the public schools, which must inevitably become the intellectual climate of the nation, does not seem to be conducive to the spread of what Jefferson called informed discretion. The intellectual climate of the nation today came from the public schools, where almost every one of us was schooled in the work of the mind. We are a people who imagine that we are weighing important issues when we exchange generalizations and well-known opinions. We decide how to vote or what to buy according to whim or fancied self-interest, either of which is easily engendered in us by the manipulation of language, which we have neither the will nor the ability to analyze. We believe that we can reach conclusions without having the faintest idea of the difference between inferences and statements of fact, often without any suspicions that there are such things and that they are different. We are easily persuaded and repersuaded by what seems authoritative, without any notion of those attributes and abilities that characterize authority. We do not notice elementary fallacies in logic; it doesn't even occur to us to look for them; few of us are even aware that such things exist. We make no regular distinctions between those kinds of things that can be known and objectively verified and those that can only be believed or not. Nor are we likely to examine, when we believe or not, the induced predispositions that may make us do the one or the other. We are easy prey.

That these seem to be the traits of the human condition always and everywhere is not to the point. They just won't do for a free society. Jefferson and his friends made a revolution against ignorance and unreason, which would preclude freedom in any form of government whatsoever. If we cannot make ourselves a knowledgeable and thoughtful people--those are the requisites of informed discretion--then we cannot be free. But our revolutionists did at least provide us with that form of government which, unlike others, does grant the possibility of freedom, provided, of course, the public has the habit of informed discretion. That possibility is all we have just now.

Proposition 3 is in effect. We are largely a nation of ill-informed and casually thoughtless captives. Even when we are well-informed and thoughtful, however, we cannot be free where the character of the nation and its institutions must reflect the ignorance and unreason of the popular will. But if we are well-informed and thoughtful, we can take comfort in the fact that our form of government is carefully designed to preclude that condition described in Proposition 7. As long as we remain a constitutional republic, we cannot ever be both educated and unfree. It just won't work, and that may be the single greatest insight of the makers of our revolution.

Therefore, whatever it is they do in the teachers' colleges of America has had and will always have tremendous consequences. By comparison with the attitudes and intellectual habits and ideological predispositions inculcated in American teachers, the acts of Congress are trivial. Indeed, the latter proceed from the former. If, as a result of the labors of our educationists, we were obviously clear-sighted and thoughtful and thus able to enjoy the freedom promised in our constitutional system, then we would know something about those educationists. If, on the other hand, we are blind and witless, then we would know--if there are any of us who can know--something else about them. To know anything at all about those educationists, however, we must look at what they do, at what they say they do, and even at how they say what they do.

from The Graves of Academe by Richard Mitchell.

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February 21, 2005

New Blog Showcase

ew Blog Carnival Showcase Extravaganza No. 2 is up at Celebrity Cola.

WitNit says, Check it out!

*** The next Time Travel class will be held two weeks ago.


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175 Japanese Warning Signs

t takes a minute to recognize that it's a gymnastics warning sign. There's 175 more at this website.

*** If it moves, fondle it.


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Karl Rove: Criminal Mastermind


ashington, D.C. (WitNit Newswire) -- Karl Rove, President Bush's chief strategist, has once again been exposed as a criminal mastermind, reports Democrats in Congress and throughout the land.

"We now have solid evidence supporting our rumors," said Congressman Erasmus B. Burnan, D-Vermont, at a press conference today.

"Rove was responsible for the Osama bin Laden tape that won Bush the election. He forged the National Guard documents that brought down Dan Rather. And he inspired the brainwashing that led to the mistakes John Kerry made in his campaign.

"Karl Rove has also been linked to the Paris Hilton video and to the release of multiple Hollywood star phone numbers being transmitted on the Internet."

Karl Rove was reached for comment, saying only, "Huh?"

Congressman Burnan continued: "He has conspired with Saddam Hussein only to betray him. He drank whiskey with Hunter S. Thompson and then shot him only to make his death look like a suicide. And he is positively linked to prostate cancer in men and women."

Karl Rove, when asked about these statements, said, "Wha...?"

"He is also the devious mind behind this." Congressman Burnan held up a photo taken in Karl Rove's white house office. A closet door is shown open with thousands of socks spilling out.

"Yes, my fellow Americans. Karl Rove is the culprit behind the nationwide epidemic of socks lost in dryers."

Karl Rove could not be reached for comment.

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*** Why should we bother to reply to Kautski? He would reply to us, and we would have to reply to his reply. There's no end to that. It will be quite enough for us to announce that Kautski is a traitor to the working class, and everyone will understand everything. Vladimir Lenin


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Evil Dictionaries and Money, Part 3

ontinued from Evil Dictionaries and Money, Part 2.

*********

The fairytale continues:

Big Tony and Vito had a good thing going. But they wanted more. As time went on they noticed something else: People not only exchanged the redeemable paper notes like they were money, they began treating it as if it were money.

Until now, money was defined by several of its distinguishing characteristics in that it functioned: 1) as a unit of account; 2) as a medium of exchange; 3) as a store of value; that is, it intrinsically held value so that if someone would not take it in exchange for something, it still held value and could be used as a commodity in some way; 4) as a standard of deferred payment.

Big Tony the banker and Vito the politician loved gold and silver. And they grew envious. All this gold and silver was sitting in Big Tony's bank, just sitting there doing nothing, while the people who owned it were out there exchanging paper notes as if they were the real thing. They had to erase from the definition of money #3: as a store of value.

So they got an idea: Why not make it official? Why not make the paper notes themselves money?

They knew that people might catch on if they did it all at once, so they decided to do it in stages. They knew that to cook a frog, you don't drop him in boiling water. He'll just jump out. But if you put him in lukewarm water and slowly turn up the heat, he won't jump out until it's too late. His ass is cooked!

The $100 notes now stated: This certifies that there is on deposit in Big Tony's Bank one hundred dollars in gold payable to the bearer on demand.


They knew, as stated, that if the note would pay to the bearer on demand One Hundred Dollars in Gold, that the note itself was not One Hundred Dollars in Gold.

The first step was to change the statement to: This certifies that there is on deposit in Big Tony's Bank one hundred dollars payable to the bearer on demand.

Of course, since the note said that it would pay to the bearer on demand One Hundred Dollars, it was not One Hundred Dollars, but at least it no longer talked about Gold.

And almost nobody caught on. Never mind that saying, This note will pay to the bearer on demand One Hundred Dollars made no sense. It was like saying, This note will pay to the bearer on demand One Hundred Gallons. A unit of measure is not the thing itself. If someone asked you, "Would you give me a gallon?" you would rightly ask, "A gallon of what? Gas? Milk? Paint?" A gallon by itself means nothing.

Same with dollar. It used to be if someone said they would give you a dollar, you would answer, "A dollar of what? A dollar of gold? A dollar of silver? A dollar of what?"

Of course there were a few cranks who talked about a government and banking conspiracy, but they were shrill and silly looking and spoke a language that most people didn't understand, so it was easy to paint them as nutcases (especially since some of them were nutcases, so all you had to do was point to them and paint everyone who talked that language with the same brush).

Big Tony and Vito knew that the next step would be a bit more awkward, so they decided to print up some extra money to found an Economics Think Tank to begin writing papers on how there was only a limited supply of gold and silver and that in order for the economy to grow the city would have to consider alternatives to the Gold Standard and the use of precious metals as money. There simply was not enough to go around.

Meanwhile, Vito wrote and had the legislature pass the Federal Reserve Act to create a banking system that appeared to be separate from the government and from banks. There were still some people complaining, but the newspapers didn't report on their concerns. The newspaper editors and journalists and columnists were always on Big Tony's and Vito's party list, and they were kept informed of the complexity of the economy and the need to "adapt to a new age of economics."

The Federal Reserve introduced its own Federal Reserve Notes that stated: This note is legal tender for all debts public and private and is redeemable at the Federal Reserve Bank in lawful money.

Once again, nobody but a few cranks and nutcases noticed the difference, or thought about the fact that if the notes were redeemeable in lawful money, the notes themselves were not in fact lawful money.

Meanwhile, there was an economic crisis, and Vito and his fellow politicans announced that to fix the economy, they had to go off the Gold Standard, withdraw gold from circulation, but people could still use silver and the Federal Reserve would redeem notes for silver.

The cranks and nutcases complained, but most people didn't understand the nature of coin, credit and circulation, so they just went along.

Big Tony and Vito waited a few years, supported more enlightened economists who wrote papers and books and developed new economic theories based on systems without gold and silver as a standard, and then took the next step.

They waited until a big-wig celebrity was killed and a foreign policy crisis dominated the news, before printing up new Federal Reserve Notes that said simply, This note is legal tender for all debts public and private. The face of the note read One Hundred Dollars. No mention of redeeming the note. No mention of gold or silver, or anything on deposit.

At the same time, they announced the need to begin withdrawing silver from the economy. Because there was just not enough to go around, you see.

Meanwhile, people deposited their redeemable notes in their banks, and when they withdrew money they received non-redeemable notes. When they brought in their silver coins, they exchanged them for non-redeemable notes.

So if a father turned around and presented the new Federal Reserve notes and said, "Oh, I just remembered, it's my daughter's birthday and I want to give her silver dollars," the bank teller replied, "I'm sorry sir, but the government has to withdraw silver from circulation due to the growing economy and there being so little silver to go around, but here, you can have these brand new dollar coins that are just as good, they contain a mixture of copper and nickel with a nickel finish that looks exactly like silver, well almost, and she'll be happy with these, and they even have the same little mill marks on the edge to make them look real, because you know that they never put these mill marks on copper and nickel coins, because nobody would bother to shave them for their content being that they are base metals and not as valuable as silver or gold."

Yeah. That's what they would say...or imply.

Meanwhile, the bankers and politicans got the gold and silver, and the people got their non-redeemable paper money with all kinds of dollar amounts printed on them.

And there were more wars, more parties, more mysterious inflationary forces, more ignorance about the nature of money, and more gold and silver jewelry showing up in the possession of politicians and bankers. And the old politicians and bankers died, and the new politicians and bankers took over, brought up in universities with all the new economic theories and international monetary policies, and down they forgot as up they grew about the true nature of money.

And the people lived happily ever after.

More to come in Evil Dictionaries and Money, Part 4.

***All the perplexities, confusion and distress in America arise, not from defects in their Constitution or Confederation, not from want of honor or virtue, so much as from the downright ignorance of the nature of coin, credit and circulation. John Adams, letter to Thomas Jefferson


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Nipple Napping Nipped

t seems that the nature of required fetishes in San Francisco is continuing to be nurtured"
Two former employees of the Gorilla Foundation, home to Koko the "talking" ape, have filed a lawsuit contending that they were ordered to bond with the 33-year-old female simian by displaying their breasts. [...] One example: "On at least two incidents in mid-to-late June 2004, Patterson intensely pressured Keller to expose herself to Koko while they were working outside where other employees could potentially view Keller's naked body. ... On one such occasion, Patterson said, 'Koko, you see my nipples all the time. You are probably bored with my nipples. You need to see new nipples. I will turn my back so Kendra can show you her nipples.' " [...] The suit, in any case, says that Patterson would interpret hand movements by Koko as a demand to see exposed human nipples. She warned Alperin and Keller that their employment with the foundation would suffer, the suit says, if they "did not indulge Koko's nipple fetish."

During at least three visits, the suit says, "Patterson communicated to Alperin that exposing one's breasts to Koko is a normal component to developing a personal bond with the gorilla."


Read the whole thing. By the way, Patterson is a woman.

*** If you make one or two ridiculous assumptions, you'll find everything I say or do totally justified. Ashleigh Brilliant


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February 20, 2005

The God Game, Part 4

his post completes this portion of The God Game. You should have already read Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3.


The Satan Manuever

Here's my favorite picture of Satan:

I first noticed the Satan Maneuver some years ago while watching a televised interview of an evangelical minister. The minister claimed that the earth was created 6,000 years ago. The interviewer asked the minister about scientific discoveries of fossils that were undoubtedly millions of years old. How could the minister account for those age-old fossils? The minister replied simply, "Satan put them there."

We can imagine the nonplussed look on the face of the interviewer. Where could he go from there? It is important to understand what the minister accomplished with this answer. He had introduced a magical explanation into a forum that was assumed, up to that point, to be one where arguments were supported by evidence and reason. By introducing this Satan Maneuver, the minister destroyed that forum and replaced it with one that precluded, by its very nature, any argument based on evidence and reason.

In fairness to the minister, he may very well constantly dwell in a forum based on magic and faith, with no desire to ever be involved in a forum of evidence and reason. However, scholars and others who enter into a debate that implicitly promises a forum of evidence and reason have an obligation to avoid any introduction of any form of Satan Maneuver?that is, any explanation that introduces a magical explanatory element that negates arguing from evidence and reason, especially when they become uncomfortable with evidence and arguments that threaten to weaken or overthrow their closely held arguments or positions.

The Satan Maneuver appears in Shakespeare studies. When confronted with internal evidence that Shakespeare may have had a high-level education, whether in law or the classics, some scholars produce a rabbit out of the hat by falling back on Shakespeare's genius, or some other form of magical aptitude based on nothing but sheer speculation.

For example, A. L. Rowse in his Shakespeare The Man explains Shakespeare's comprehensive and wide-ranging experience with classical and contemporary literature and history thus: "He had a marvellous capacity from the outset for making a little go a long way; his real historical reading came later ? he was very much a reading man, and he read quickly."

How he has grasped Shakespeare's "marvellous capacity" or knows his reading ability, Rowse does not say. But his meaning is clear; Shakespeare gleaned his incredible wealth of knowledge by having a capacious mind that magically (through the mystery of "genius") grasped knowledge quickly and easily.

British Shakespearean scholar Allardyce Nicoll makes a similar claim in his book Shakespeare: "In the wonder of his genius he was able to grasp in lightning speed what could be attained only after dull years of work by ordinary minds."

Thus can scholars magically explain away the lack of high education and the absence of leisure that would seem to be needed for a writer of Shakespeare's accomplishments to refine his skills and accommodate the range and depth of his accomplishments.

By introducing such statements, these scholars destroy the possibility of presenting arguments in favor of a university education, or the kind of experience and access that comes with the aristocratic and noble classes. The forum of reason, argument, and evidence dissolves. Genius in the form of a quick mind and capacious memory explains all, the magical ability to immediately and photographically apprehend everything, sans education, sans experience, merely from reading books.

Another form of the Satan Maneuver is the "Universal Tavern of Second-Hand Knowledge." When confronted with the enigma of Shakespeare's knowledge of law, Italy, foreign languages, or anything else that could possibly require unusual study or physical access, some may argue that "Shakespeare would have picked such things up by visiting a tavern and querying travelers or lawyers or multilingual scholars or?" fill-in-the-blank.

Again, such an argument based on the second-hand acquisition of knowledge would harm any ability to rely on evidence and reason to make a case that the plays show the kind of knowledge that would require direct experience.

Rationalist skeptics commit a Satan Maneuver with the mind when they invoke its power to explain away out-of-body experiences, near-death experiences, and the like. "We know the power of the mind to produce powerfully real hallucinatory experiences, and that's all that is happening. It's just chemicals in the brain."

Again, something that can explain anything explains nothing, when it comes to working scientifically.

Just like the evangelical fundamentalists who magically invoke Satan to explain away evidence and reasonable arguments, the rationalist skeptic falls back on the mind to explain away any reported experiences that may lead one away from purely materialist explanations for the nature of human experience. The mind is the skeptic's Satan.

Now, if you haven't already done so, go to 1. How the Mind Works, which continues this series.


*** Me... a skeptic? I trust you have proof...

***The remarkable thing about Shakespeare is that he really is very good, in spite of all the people who say he is very good. Robert Graves


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February 19, 2005

The Annotated: "Women and science: the real issue"

got caught yesterday relying on the L.A. Times for objective reporting when in fact they were Bush bashing. It seems that Larry Summers, President of Harvard U., has been the target of something similar.

Harvard has published on the website of the Office of the President the transcript of his remarks at the NBER Conference on Diversifying the Science & Engineering Workforce. In effect, he is accused of a neanderthal approach to viewing women pursuing careers in the sciences. Did anything in any of the reporting give you any hint that Summers opened his talk with this? (My emphasis.)

I asked Richard, when he invited me to come here and speak, whether he wanted an institutional talk about Harvard's policies toward diversity or whether he wanted some questions asked and some attempts at provocation, because I was willing to do the second and didn't feel like doing the first. And so we have agreed that I am speaking unofficially and not using this as an occasion to lay out the many things we're doing at Harvard to promote the crucial objective of diversity. There are many aspects of the problems you're discussing and it seems to me they're all very important from a national point of view. I'm going to confine myself to addressing one portion of the problem, or of the challenge we're discussing, which is the issue of women's representation in tenured positions in science and engineering at top universities and research institutions, not because that's necessarily the most important problem or the most interesting problem, but because it's the only one of these problems that I've made an effort to think in a very serious way about. The other prefatory comment that I would make is that I am going to, until most of the way through, attempt to adopt an entirely positive, rather than normative approach, and just try to think about and offer some hypotheses as to why we observe what we observe without seeing this through the kind of judgmental tendency that inevitably is connected with all our common goals of equality. It is after all not the case that the role of women in science is the only example of a group that is significantly underrepresented in an important activity and whose underrepresentation contributes to a shortage of role models for others who are considering being in that group.

Update: More here.

What follows are my annotations to a Boston Globe article on February 12. My annotations are bracketed and in italics. Women and science: the real issue By John Hennessey, Susan Hockfield and Shirley Tilghman February 12, 2005

HARVARD PRESIDENT Lawrence Summers's recent comments about possible causes of the under-representation of women in science and engineering have generated extensive debate and discussion -- much of which has had the untoward effect of shifting the focus of the debate to history rather than to the future. [Yes, let's not think that history has anything to do with the future. Good God, if you start actually thinking that you can learn from experience, how are you ever going to get people to buy into every new and crazy scheme to reshape society and culture?]

The question we must ask as a society is not "can women excel in math, science, and engineering?" -- Marie Curie exploded that myth a century ago -- but "how can we encourage more women with exceptional abilities to pursue careers in these fields?" [Of course, it's a good question. It's also a good question to ask, Is it okay that women choose to do things other than what we want them to do?] Extensive research on the abilities and representation of males and females in science and mathematics has identified the need to address important cultural and societal factors. [Never underestimate the value of extensive research. Oops, wait a minute. Isn't extensive research code for "history"? Is history trying to sneak its nose under the tent of the future?] Speculation that "innate differences" may be a significant cause for the under-representation of women in science and engineering may rejuvenate old myths and reinforce negative stereotypes and biases. [Yes, let's never allow any investigations into possible uncomfortable truths; i.e., that there actually may be innate differences between men and women. A university should never be used for "speculation" and "hypotheses" and "open discussion" and "exploring the merits of an idea." There is much more serious work to be done in the university, like, uh, making sure people think and say the right things.]


Why is this so important? Our nation faces increasing competition from abroad in technological innovation, the most powerful driver of our economy, while the academic performance of our school-age students in math and science lags behind many countries. [There's that "history" thing sneaking in again. Please, let's not look at why American students lag behind those of other countries in math and science. No, no, no. We have teacher's unions to take care of that.] Against this backdrop, it is imperative that we tap the talent and perspectives of both males and females. [Yes. Let's homogenize men and women into a single category. And while we're at it, we might as well pasteurize them as well.] Until women can feel as much at home in math, science, and engineering as men, our nation will be considerably less than the sum of its parts. [And until men can feel as much at home bearing children and breast-feeding them, our nation will be considerably less than the parts of its sum.] If we do not draw on the entire talent pool that is capable of making a contribution to science, the enterprise will inevitably be underperforming its potential. [Let's not forget the "enterprise." That old reliable "enterprise" that is prone to underperforming, in an inevitable fashion.]

As the representation of women increases in every other profession in this country, if their representation in science and engineering does not change, these fields will look increasingly anachronistic, less attractive, and will be less strong. [And to be sure, representation is more important than anything else as we progessively move forward to remold society.] The nation cannot afford to lose ground in these areas, which not only fuel the economy, but also play a key role in solving critical societal problems in human health and the environment. [Yes. "Areas" that "play a key role in solving critical societal problems in human health and the environment." You see, this issue affects the entire planet. Global Warming is clearly one result of ignoring this issue.]


Much has already been learned from research in the classroom and from recent experience on our campuses about how we can encourage top performance from our students. [Darn that "history." Would somebody call the SPCA and lock it up?] For example, recent research shows that different teaching methods can lead to comparable performance for males and females in high school mathematics. [Yes, and recent research also always shows whatever we want it to show, espiecially when we don't give our sources.] One of the most important and effective actions we can take is to ensure that women have teachers who believe in them and strong, positive mentors, male and female, at every stage of their educational journey -- both to affirm and to develop their talents. [And "we" should be taking this action right now! Could "we" please raise his or her hand and take responsibility for this?] Low expectations of women can be as destructive as overt discrimination and may help to explain the disproportionate rate of attrition that occurs among females as they proceed through the academic pipeline. [Studies, please. Get your red hot studies. A dime a dozen. But not the kind that count as history, please.]

Colleges and universities must develop a culture, as well as specific policies, that enables women with children to strike a sustainable balance between workplace and home. [Yes, it's the responsibility of colleges and universities to take charge of these women's lives. Let's not actually rely on women to make their own decisions. They need our help, our plans, our schemes. They need, they need, they need. What better way to empower them?] Of course, achieving such a balance is a challenge in many highly demanding careers. As a society we must develop methods for assessing present and future productivity that take into account the long-term potential of an individual and encourage greater harmony between the cycles of work and life -- so that both women and men may better excel in the careers of their choice. [Whew! We have 21st century grandiose schemes to beat out every 20th century grandiose scheme already implemented!]


Although we have a long way to travel in terms of recruiting, retaining, and promoting women faculty in scientific and engineering fields, we can also point to significant progress. [But not in a historical way.] According to the National Science Foundation, almost no doctoral degrees in engineering were awarded to women in 1966 (0.3 percent), in contrast to 16.9 percent in 2001. And in the biological and agricultural sciences, the number of doctorates earned by women rose from 12 percent to 43.5 percent between 1966 and 2001. [Good for women! Oops, I got carried away by the "history."]

Our three campuses, and many others, are home to growing numbers of women who have demonstrated not only extraordinary innate ability, but the kinds of creativity, determination, perceptiveness, and hard work that are prerequisites for success in science and engineering. [Good for women! Oops, I got carried away again by the "history."]

These figures demonstrate the expanding presence of women in disciplines that have not, historically, been friendly to them. It is a matter of vital concern that the future holds even greater opportunities. [I try, but I can't divine meaning in that last sentence. But it is a rousing closer! Big picture! Vast! Worthy of the New Deal, the Great Society, the Matter of Vital Concern. And someone ought to be taking money from some people to implement this progrssive scheme! Power to women! They need all the help they can get to be empowered!]

John Hennessey is a computer scientist and president of Stanford University. Susan Hockfield is a neuroscientist and president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Shirley Tilghman is a molecular geneticist and president of Princeton University.

© Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company


*** This article fills a much-needed gap.


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February 18, 2005

Feisty Repartee

hanks to Straight White Guy for pointing me to Christina at Feisty Repartee. Cool blog. Cool noir. She's instigating the writing of a Blog Noir novel and gets added to my Daily Reads. Check it out! (And Eric, your blog is growing on me so you get added too!) *** You know how to whistle, doncha Steve? Just put your lips together, and blow.
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Random Morsels

his week's Penguin Dope Slap goes to President George W. Bush. Take that, George:

If this story in the L.A. Times is to be believed (and let's face it, the Times has had some problems with credibility lately), Bush is blocking Gulf War POWs from collecting Iraqi compensation for torture by Saddam.

The latest chapter in the legal history of torture is being written by American pilots who were beaten and abused by Iraqis during the 1991 Persian Gulf War. And it has taken a strange twist.

The Bush administration is fighting the former prisoners of war in court, trying to prevent them from collecting nearly $1 billion from Iraq that a federal judge awarded them as compensation for their torture at the hands of Saddam Hussein's regime.

The rationale: Today's Iraqis are good guys, and they need the money.

Read the whole thing. (You may have to do the free registration.)

Update: Halfmoonray has changed my mind about the above...the L.A. Times failed to provide the full context. (See comments.) But George still gets the dope slap for the following:

Update: George Will reminds us that President Bush and Congressional Republicans are spending money at such a rate that they make drunken sailors look thrifty. (And I mean even when you take out military spending...The Republicans are out-spending the Socialists on social programs.)

Update: Read David Brooks for more on budget decadence.

*****

Ahhh, life in Japan:

Some blogs to check out:


Oh...My...Gawd! Baby Got Book. (Video)

*** Does the name Pavlov ring a bell?

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February 17, 2005

Hillary wants ex-felons

"WASHINGTON - Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (news - web sites), a possible White House candidate in 2008, joined 2004 nominee John Kerry (news - web sites) and other Democrats Thursday in urging that Election Day be made a federal holiday to encourage voting. AP Photo

She also pushed for legislation that would allow all ex-felons to vote. "

Yes, that Hillary Clinton...She sure knows her constituency, doesn't she?


*** I have given up my search for truth and am now looking for a good fantasy. Ashleigh Brilliant


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2. How the Mind Works

ou can jump to Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7 Part 8 Part 9

Now, there's another way the mind works that's even more profound, but few people realize it. The mind has a kind of thermostat that keeps us sane. A thermostat tries to keep the temperature in a certain range. If the temperature goes too high, it kicks in to cool the system down. If the temperature gets too low, it kicks in to heat the system up.

The mind has a deep, innate mechanism that continually tries to make sense of the world, to keep it within a comfortable range. It's part of the subconscious mind that regulates how we see the world. It holds a certain picture of the world and of ourselves that we label as sane. Then it goes to work making sure that everything we perceive fits in with our picture of a sane world and a sane self.

But this picture is not the same for everybody. Different people have different pictures about what is sane and what is crazy. Most of us have enough of a similar picture that we can get along with each other. But people with a picture that deviates too much from our common picture begin to look insane to us. This fact often accounts for the strife between political ideologies.

Here's an example. Everybody tends to accept certain authorities as true authorities. We tend to believe in experts who tell us something about ourselves. In elementary school they have these tests that are supposed to tell us what we are good at or weak at. Usually verbal and math, right?

So suppose a student in elementary school takes one of these tests, and the teacher, an authority figure, tells her that she's weak in math. She takes that in. "I'm weak in math. Thanks for telling me. I might have tried."

For the student, that becomes the "truth," whether or not the test is accurate. Their internal picture of themselves sets the thermostat. Once that truth gets embedded, the student's mind will reaffirm that truth every time she fails a test.

And if she does well on a test? She looks at that as a mistake, or the thermostat in her mind will, and the next time she takes a test she'll do poorly. Her subconscious picture will help her correct for the mistake of success. Her mental thermostat has been set to, "I'm weak in math." Being good at math does not fit her picture of herself, and anything that contradicts that picture is seen as an error, a fluke. Even success. Success cannot possibly mean anything good.

It's the same with some poor people who win the lottery. People picture themselves as poor, get lots of money, only to throw it away on parties and extravagant purchases, rather than investing it. They see themselves as poor. They're comfortable with that picture because it's a picture that they are familiar with. They know the rules. Suddenly they have wealth. This puts them in an uncomfortable world. It's new, it's different. It's not like what they're used to. So they become spendthrifts and end up back in the lifestyle they are used to. They return to the comfort zone set by their internal thermostat.

You're probably thinking, "Well, that can't be right. There are plenty of poor people who become wealthy." Sure. But it's usually through their own efforts. They hold a picture of themselves that gets them beyond their circumstances. They daydream of a different life. They get comfortable with that daydream, grow into it, and if they work hard enough they gradually manifest that dream. They transition into the new picture quite easily.

They have managed to reset their thermostat, take on a new picture of themselves, a new self-image, and live a different life.

Lottery winners could do that as well, it's just that few ever see themselves wealthy. They see themselves as poor people with money to spend.

So do I believe that people can't be helped? That they can only get ahead as rugged individualists? People can be helped. But the best way to help them is to encourage them to adopt a new picture of themselves and their life, and then work to create it for themselves. With some help if necessary, but they have to supply their own creative efforts. They have to participate in resetting their subconscious thermostat.

Frankly, most people like where they are. Especially if they don't have to work hard for handouts. (I have a relative who is a perfect example of this. He's smoked pot from the age of 14. He's now 47. He has been collecting Social Security for years because he convinced a government psychiatrist along the way that he was mentally disturbed. "I'd look at him and say, the files, the files, they have files on me." And he'd laugh at the psychiatrist's stupidity.)

People who have an understanding how the mind works can manipulate a population. Happens all the time. Marketing companies and political consultants know how to implant images and craft group images that idolize their products and candidates and demonize the competition.

They're not always successful. It's a more complex process than I'm describing. But I think everyone should be aware that they have a subconscious mind that is programmable like a computer, to a certain degree.

But you also have the power to alter your thoughts, talk to yourself in new and positive ways to change the picture. And protect yourself from others who try to program you.

How to Quit Smoking

I used to smoke two packs of cigarettes a day. I wanted to quit. It's hard to quit, even though research shows that the physical addiction is gone after several days of non-smoking.

Why do so many go back to smoking after that? Because even though they have given up smoking, they still hold the image of themselves as smokers. They are smokers who are not smoking.

I quit smoking by becoming a non-smoker first.

I spent months visualizing myself without cigarettes, even though I still smoked. I pictured my life without smoke, without dirty ashtrays, without a cigarette between my fingers, even while I was smoking.

And I adopted the attitudes of a non-smoker. Smoking is awful, it pollutes the air, kissing smokers is like licking an ashtray. The usual stuff.

When I finally quit, I didn't crave cigarettes because non-smokers don't crave cigarettes and I was already a non-smoker.

The problem with most people who quit and still crave cigarettes is that they are still smokers who aren't smoking. The outer picture may have changed, but they still hold onto the subconscious picture of themselves as smokers. And so they still crave cigarettes.

What kind of person are you? What ways do you picture yourself that hold you back from what you want to be? There is no easy way to change, and not everything will submit to your efforts.

I know this sounds simplistic. But you have nothing to lose by becoming aware of the processes involved. And trying a few experiments. If you have the discipline.

More of this stuff to come in 3. How the Mind Works.

*** Are we having a relationship, or just doing research on each other? Ashleigh Brilliant


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February 16, 2005

1. How the Mind Works

ou can jump to Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7 Part 8 Part 9

First, you can get more context for these posts by reading all of the The God Game posts, Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 Part 4 (although, perhaps not immediately apparent).

Also, I want to acknowledge Lou Tice and The Pacific Institute for contributing to my understanding of such things as the Reticular Activating System and its psychological counterparts. If you want a deep understanding of this and other goal-setting topics, fly to Seattle and take their seminars. They are the real deal.

*******
I claimed in The God Game, Part 3 that there is evidence that the mind possesses the ability to "partition reality."

We all seem to think that we perceive the "truth" every day all around us. But actually, we don't. We only perceive truth as we believe it to be. And as I will point out, we have little awareness of how what we believe to be the truth is highly filtered.

Here's a quick example, which you may have already been exposed to in a psychology class. Read the following sentence one time:

FINISHED FILES ARE THE RESULT
OF YEARS OF SCIENTIFIC STUDY
COMBINED WITH THE EXPERIENCE
OF MANY YEARS OF EXPERTS.

Good. Now, read it again, only once, and count the number of letter F's in the sentence. I'll wait for you.

If you are like most people, you counted three F's in that sentence, right? In Finished, Files, and Scientific.

Would you believe me when I tell you there are seven F's in that sentence? Go back and find them. I'll wait.

This is no trick. There are seven F's. Isn't it strange that you can be looking directly at something, be told something is there, and not see it? Look again.

If you still only see three F's then my point has been made. The other four F's are in the four OF's in the sentence.

Ahhh, that's better. Strange, isn't it?

My guess is that since we read the F in the word 'OF' as a 'V', somehow our mind blinds us to them as F's. The concept gets in the way of the truth. It creates a kind of blind spot. The mind is a very interesting thing. Have you ever thought about how the mind must filter our environment for us? For our own good?

You had no idea that your brain had placed a kind of filter on your perception. You thought you were seeing the absolute truth. You weren't, and you had no idea that you possessed such a blind spot. Even when told directly that it was there. Doesn't it make you wonder what other blind spots you have?

You may ask, "What difference does it make? If they're blind spots that I don't know I have, so what? How can I know, since I'm blind to the blind spots?"

Exactly.

The mind possesses a remarkable filtering system. If it didn't, you'd go crazy. Think of all the information coming in through all your senses. The sights, the sounds, the tactile sensations. Think of all those little hairs on your body. If you focus on any part of your body, you would become aware of the sensation there.

But once you focus on something else, that tactile sense fades from your conscious awareness. That's because there is a part of your brain that functions like an executive secretary, a kind of censor of what's not important. It determines what information gets through to your conscious awareness, what information at any given moment is of value.

That's why when you read a book and begin letting the story fill your imagination, the outer world begins to fade away. You don't hear the traffic outside or someone calling for you. They have to speak more loudly to get through.

As we focus on something important, things that are less important fade away. Important information gets through. Whatever is considered valuable or threatening.

This explains why a teenager can be watching television and a parent can call them to dinner and not be heard. The value of the parent's voice goes down in proportion to how important the TV show is.

This explains why a new mother sleeps through other sounds, but when the baby starts crying, she wakes up right away. The other sounds are not threatening so they don't get through the censor, but the sound of the baby gets through.

Have you ever been at a noisy party where the whole room is chattering away and you can't make out any of the conversations? Then someone mentions your name and that somehow gets through? Same principle. That's also why people at dinner can have cross conversations with each other and still carry on. As you focus on something important like your own conversation, the others fade.

I once had a neighbor with a barking dog. It kept half the neighborhood awake, but the owners were never bothered by it. The barking constituted a threat to the peace of mind of the neighbors so it got through the mental filter. But the owners loved their dog and were probably comforted and felt protected by its barking. They would have no problem sleeping through the night. If their neighbors knew there were burglars in the area, they might sleep better if they knew that the barking dogs were protection.

You see, it depends on how you psychologically evaluate the sensation. This principle should be of particular importance to teachers. They have an obligation to make the material valuable to the students. Because the moment a student thinks what is being taught is no value to them, their minds shut down.

The teacher and the course material fade away. The student can be looking right at a teacher as the teacher explains something and not get it. (We have all experience this. We lose interest, our minds wander, the filters kick in because we become interested in our own thoughts or fantasies, and minutes go by where nothing the teacher/boss/television/politician says gets through.)

Next, I will give you a tip on how to quit smoking in 2. How the Mind Works.


*** Why do writers write? Because it isn't there.


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February 15, 2005

Great Practical Minds of Philosophy

ichard Mitchell of Underground Grammarian fame is one of the great practical minds of philosophy. Few write with his sharp perception and wit.

Another such mind is Daniel N. Robinson, currently a member of the Philosophy faculty at Oxford University, where he has lectured annually since 1991.

I am now listening to his superb American Ideals: Founding a "Republic of Virtue", a 12-tape lecture series from The Teaching Company. I have devoured all of his Teaching Company tapes (often acquired on eBay) and recommend them highly, including Great Ideas of Philosophy, Great Ideas of Psychology, and Greek Legacy: Classical Origins of the Modern World.

In an age the workshop approach to teaching predominates, where students are expected to review each others work, Daniel N. Robinson reminds us of what a great lecturer can accomplish, compressing more thought and intelligence and inspiration into 30 minutes than an entire semester of workshopping and peer-review feedback.

Here is a 2-minute excerpt from his American Ideals: Founding a "Republic of Virtue":

*****

The great British writers in politics and morals, the great Scottish writers in moral philosophy, and the philosophes in France constituted the community of thought from which the American founders drew inspiration and ideas.

The men who assembled in that room, many of them farmers, were not rustics. And when [Edmund] Burke will address Parliament and say, "Look, these are well-read people. London booksellers do better selling there than they do in all of England, these people know the law, they read the law," Burke knew whereof he spoke.

So you did have this: For all the divisions, for all the argumentation, you had an assembly of the thoughtful, an assembly of instructed minds.

Jefferson's writings outside of politics make clear, abundantly clear, and there's no voice raised to dispute this, that you cannot have this kind of government except with an educated and instructed people, that the core of Republican virtue is education itself.

And if I might reflect briefly on our own times, I would say that the deplorable state of education, particularly in the primary and secondary schools, and the rather trite nature of what we are pleased to call "higher" education, has to be worrisome.

A self-governing people must be particularly adept in weighing arguments and comprehending them, and in uniting their own ideas and contrasting their own ideas with the best that history could produce.

The men assembled in Philadelphia by and large could do that, and could do it with great agility, though not that many of them had degrees of any sort at all.

*****

You can read an excerpt of one of his lectures, Descartes and the Authority of Reason, from Great Ideas of Philosophy.

Here's my favorite picture of Descartes:


*** Indisputably I am; occasionally I think.


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Posted by witnit at 2:30 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

February 14, 2005

WitNit at the Blog

(with apologies to Casey at the Bat) The outlook wasn't brilliant for the WitNit blog that day: The meter read just 30 hits, with nothing more to say. And when ol' Frank J. (wham!) passed out, and so did Straight White Guy, Our WitNit looked around and thought, "I'll never let this die."

Some straggling readers hung right in, not leaving like the rest,
They clung to hope which springs eternal in the human breast;
"If he could get an Instalanche," they thought, "he'd go whole hog.
"We'd pay to have our patron ads, with WitNit at the blog."

But Hugh preceded WitNit, and so did Lileks' Bleat;

The former was a master, while the latter was so neat.
So upon WitNit's readers sat grim melancholy's face,
For there seemed little chance of WitNit getting some prime space.

The blogosphere was crowded—it made one all agog;
With Power Line and Little Green Footballs here at the blog;
And there stood Daniel Drezner, and wiley Dave Kopel,
And in the corner spitting bullets Blue-Eyed Infidel.

Then from his several readers' throats there rose a whimpy yell;
It skittered through the valley, it scampered in the dell;
It whispered to the mountain and sank into the bog,
For WitNit, mighty WitNit, was advancing to the blog.

There was ease in WitNit's manner as he stepped into his place;
There was pride in WitNit's bearing and a smile lit WitNit's face.
And as Austin Bay peered at him, he button'd his London Fog,
And VodkaPundit had no doubt 'twas WitNit at the blog.

With Captain's Quarters watching, he sat down in his house;
And Horsefeathers applauded when he grabbed his wireless mouse;
Defiance flashed in WitNit's eye, his mouth looked grim and mean.
His fingers slammed the keyboard as the words formed on the screen.

With brainy Michelle Malkin standin' next to BuzzMachine

And Blair and Simon, Iowahawk and Chrenkoff lookin' lean,
Ol' WitNit let loose with some wit that leapt out from his head—
"Glenn doesn't like those lawyer jokes. Strike one!" Ann Althouse said.

From James Taranto, Mickey Kaus, there came a muffled roar,
Like beatings of the storm-waves on a stern and distant shore;
"Come on, Witnit, give 'em hell!" shouted Postrel with good reason;
With Armor Geddon at his side our WitNit feared no treason.

With a smile to Kim du Toit, great WitNit's visage shone;
He laughed with ol' Ben Volokh; he bade the blog go on;
He signaled to the router, and the HTML flew;
But WitNit's humor missed the Heh and Bitchgirls cried, "Strike two!"

"Fraud!" cried TalkLeft, Spoons, and Quare, and Oxblog answered "Fraud!"
One flash of scorn from WitNit, and the multitude was awed.