Geoff's Miscellany

This is a good, brief listen for a big education:

I've wondered this for a while. Why do folks with doctoral degrees, who look down on others for their stupidity, nevertheless reject the value of IQ tests? Why do academics who believe in the power of ethnic solidarity and identity politics also believe that human beings are born as blank slates? Why do academics who oppose fascism, support larger government all the time? Why do academics who believe in the sexual revolution decry rape culture which is essentially the direct result of that revolution (devolution)?

When using rhetoric or dialectic, your currency is words, they're backed by definitions which reflect concepts or terms, and they're used to buy emotions and thoughts.

When you're using dialectic, you want to be sure that you and your conversation partners agree about definitions. For instance, I was a part of a classroom management discussion recently, and the author of the material we were using eschewed the use of threats, manipulation, and shame. But those words all have conceptual overlap with these terms, "explaining consequences," "persuading," and "social proof." The author of the materials was even against explaining consequences to students because he believes that changing student behavior only happens through the poorly defined concept of "relationality." Here's the point. Teachers were very confused about whether or not they had any discipline tools at all. The author of the material was also a Christian who talked a lot about showing grace to students, but he defined grace in a confusing way. So the main way available to teachers who need to manage their classrooms is basically forgiving them for things.

The abysmal truth is that few read before or during college:

“The desire to appeal to incoming students who have rarely if ever read an adult book on their own also leads selection committees to choose low-grade “accessible” works that are presumed to appeal to “book virgins” who will flee actual college-level reading. Since common reading programs are generally either voluntary or mandatory without an enforcement mechanism, such “book virgins” have to be wooed with simple, unchallenging works. This was our conclusion two years ago: the lay of the land is still much the same.”

Mortimer Adler says that the core of good reading can be expressed in these four questions the reader asks a piece of writing:

1. WHAT IS THE BOOK ABOUT AS A WHOLE? You must try to discover the leading theme of the book, and how the author develops this theme in an orderly way by subdividing it into its essential subordinate themes or topics.

Writer's Block

You've had it, I've had it. It's not pleasant.

As far as I can tell, there four reasons for writer's block:

1. Trying to sound profound (This is part of the game in fiction and poetry.)
2. Poor research
3. An inability to make an argument
4. Nothing to actually say
5. Bonus Reason Five: You're just procrastinating.

I have very little to say to help poets and fiction authors to overcome writer's block. What I will say is this: Write about something else. Literally just write a narrative or a poem about something entirely unrelated to the project that has left you stumped. Write a narrative about your trip to the bank or a rhyme about your wait in the grocery line. That helps me come up with sermon illustrations and illustrations for speeches on engineering topics as well.

I don't watch the Big Bang Theory and I intentionally don't watch shows with laugh tracks. BBT has a laugh track and I just decided to watch a bit of it without the laugh track:

Very little to none of that is funny. But why are there laugh tracks? Well, they work. People laugh out loud more, even when they rate material just as funny as the group that has no laugh track and does not laugh out loud. But I think more work needs to be done on longer exposure to laugh tracks. Even brief interventions can change views, which is upstream from behavior. Also, parody works wonders at promoting negative viewpoints about the target of the parody, which can ultimately change behavior.

Too long won't read:
In my experience, evolutionary theory holds a weird pride of place as the litmus test of a good education in common conversation. When one is discovered to be religious, they are often asked, "but you believe in evolution...don't you?" Darwinian theory and its modern permutations have their uses, but those uses are not practical for young people. On the other hand, learning basic home economics, learning about nutrition, gardening, andexercise in biology, how to read, basic civics, and logic.

John Henry Newman was talking about his own era, but his thoughts are relevant today:

It were well if none remained boys all their lives; but what is more common than the sight of grown men, talking on political or moral or religious subjects, in that offhand, idle way, which we signify by the word unreal? “That they simply do not know what they are talking about” is the spontaneous silent remark of any man of sense who hears them. Hence such persons have no difficulty in contradicting themselves in successive sentences, without being conscious of it. John Henry Newman, The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated (London: Basil Montagu Pickering, 1873), xvii.

Yet, despite its advantages, logic is not typically a part of the curriculum in most fields. It was not a part of my training in seminary nor was it a part of my undergraduate degree. Logic is not a requirement for my engineering degree either (though you have to learn it intuitively in computer programming, circuits, and mathematics). I learned logic in high school from a rogue English teacher who was not following the curricular guidelines and it has been a study of mine since then. I talked to a logic professor just last year after watching a debate he moderated. We discussed how amazing it is that essentially the same syllogistic rules work for inference in all fields and apparently in all physical space. He said, “That is troubling for me as an atheist. But have you read about Graham Priest’s paraconsistent logic?” This is precisely the trouble. Instead of teaching the thing that works and is supremely useful, we find logic replaced by theoretical substitutes apparently for the rhetorical purpose of making the universe seem less orderly.

[37]“It appears, Socrates, that you are the sort of friend to help me if I am in any way qualified to make friends: but if not, you won’t make up a story to help me.”“How do you think I shall help you best, Critobulus, by false praise, or by urging you to try to be a good man? [38] If you don’t yet see clearly, take the following cases as illustrations. Suppose that I wanted to get a shipmaster to make you his friend, and as a recommendation told him that you are a good skipper, which is untrue; and suppose that he believed me and put you in charge of his ship in spite of your not knowing how to steer it: have you any reason to hope that you would not lose the ship and your life as well? Or suppose that I falsely represented to the Assembly that you are a born general, jurist and statesman in one, and so persuaded the state to commit her fortunes to you, what do you suppose would happen to the state and to yourself under your guidance? Or again, suppose that I falsely described you to certain citizens in private as a thrifty, careful person, and persuaded them to place their affairs in your hands, wouldn’t you do them harm and look ridiculous when you came to the test? [39] Nay, Critobulus, if you want to be thought good at anything, you must try to be so; that is the quickest, the surest, the best way. You will find on reflection that every kind of virtue named among men is increased by study and practice. Such is the view I take of our duty, Critobulus. If you have anything to say against it, tell me.”“Why, Socrates,” said Critobulus, “I should be ashamed to contradict you, for I should be saying what is neither honourable nor true.”