Geoff's Miscellany

Let us walk becomingly, as in the daytime, not in carousing and drunkenness, not in sexual immorality and sensuality, not in strife and jealously, but put on the Lord Jesus Christ and make no provision for the passions of the flesh. (Romans 13:13-14)^[1]

Here’s the answer I gave her in the moment:

Introduction

Anyhow, well over a year later, I was working on a writing project (still am) and was looking for a more practical application of Carol Dweck’s mindset ideas that I had found in her book on motivation in education. In the process, I came across Mike Cernovich’s book Gorilla Mindset. It had a title that seemed cheesy, although most people want the things it claims to provide. I found, a preview on Scribd (or was it a pirated version?). After I looked through the exercises at the end of each chapter and saw how similar they were in design to the ones I was writing for something else, I went ahead and bought a kindle edition of the book. I was pleasantly surprised by the quality of the book. It didn’t merely provide a model for what I was trying to do myself, but it provided legitimately helpful insight into improving one’s life and happiness.

Virtuous Minds: Intellectual Character Development by Philip E. Dow

I don’t know much about the author of this book except that he is a Cambridge Ph.D. and a school superintendent. But if the content of this book is any indication, I can make three probably inferences: he is a man of deep reflection, a man who loves to teach, and a man who loves his students. In these senses, he is a true philosopher.

Mindset: The New Psychology of Success by Carol Dweck

This is a review and appreciation of Carol Dweck’s book on mindset. The topic of mindset is important to me because I’m a teacher and I often struggle with my own sense of melancholy and of having a static self. The negatives: The worst part about the book is that Dweck never properly defines what mindset is. There is never a sentence or paragraph in which she says, “the technical definition of mindset is…” She associates mindset with beliefs (1) and a way of seeing the world (244). From reading the book I did manage to come up with my own technical definition of mindset: the beliefs, attitudes, and processes a group or individual uses to respond to the world around them. The other part of the book I didn’t like is that it gives too many examples. I’d give a long list of evidence to prove this, but I’d be doing the same to you in my review. In all seriousness, I prefer things to go this way: explanation, evidence (enough to be convincing), followed by how-to. In some cases, the evidence given by way of examples makes the book too clunky. But I’m not the one who wrote an excellent book on mindset, she did! A final negative is that Dweck leaves out a lot of information about the importance of IQ. While I suppose that most of the people reading the book would have an above average IQ, any book on the relationship of mind and achievement ought to mention the importance of IQ. I do see why she left it out: 1) she wants people to succeed, so supplying them with self-limiting beliefs is the opposite of her goal 2) it’s bad marketing to psyche people out of the lessons you intend to teach them. The positives: The key distinction Dweck makes is between a growth and a fixed mindset. The growth mindset is a set of beliefs, attitudes, etc, that tend toward personal growth and the growth and improvement of those around you. The fixed mindset is simply the opposite. Because these are beliefs, ultimately, about the self they have wide ranging implications. Dweck applies mindset principles to school, romance, friendship, business, coaching, sports, and parenting. If you read the book, the chapters that don’t directly apply to you can be safely skipped. The relationship chapter is particularly good. Recently my pastor told me that he was impressed by the ‘stoic culture’ my wife and I had developed for problem solving, fighting, and disagreement in general. While I hadn’t read Dweck’s book when we were trying to learn to approach life that way, the flawed mindsets she outlines in her book are roughly similar to the patterns we explicitly tried to avoid and the positive mindset she recommends is our own almost verbatim, “To me the whole point of marriage is to encourage your partner’s development and have them encourage yours” (160). Another major positive for educators is that Dweck sees that education is not merely about information nor about social programming. Instead education is about training people to take ownership of their own learning while providing a nurturing atmosphere for the inevitable difficulties and failures they will experience (201-202). A good teacher provides extremely high standards and criticizes the students’ work with a view to improving it, not the students themselves. I would suggest that the most powerful chapters in the book are “Parents, Teachers, and Coaches: Where do mindsets come from?” and “Changing Mindsets: a workshop.” These two chapters are really worth the price of the book.

A lot of people want to be in leadership roles just like a lot of people want to be a body builder.

But the problem is that very few people want to put in the work necessary to be a good leader, nor the work necessary to be a big bodybuilder.

To be a good leader one needs to:

When I was in high school, I found a little red book on hypnosis in my school library. I flipped through the pages, saw a section on inducing sleep states, and read it. When I was a kid I always struggled to sleep. The method in the book, though it was meant for trained psychiatrists to utilize on patients worked swimmingly. I used to have very few good nights of sleep. After reading those few short paragraphs, I found myself having very few nights of bad sleep. The change was remarkable.

In a NYT article examining the increasing death rates among white males, it was concluded that:

Reference group theory explains why people who have more may feel that they have less. What matters is to whom you are comparing yourself. It’s not that white workers are doing worse than African-Americans or Hispanics.

In the fourth quarter of 2015, the median weekly earnings of white men aged 25 to 54 were $950, well above the same figure for black men ($703) and Hispanic men ($701). But for some whites — perhaps the ones who account for the increasing death rate — that may be beside the point. Their main reference group is their parents’ generation, and by that standard they have little to look forward to and a lot to lament.

I haven’t done a science fact of the day lately. Work is time consuming. Don’t forget, science facts of the day are my thoughts on and descriptions of what scientists say. In other words, it’s a fact that some scientists have said it. What I write is not necessarily a fact of nature nor something I even take to be the case.

In an article at Big Think, an author describes this analysis of online dating data.

David Bentley Hart’s Reflections on the Early Christians I don’t agree with everything he says here, but it does remind us of how powerful the rhetoric of the New Testament can be.

Amy Cuddy Reviews the Science of ‘Power Posing’ after unfair criticism Cuddy’s research conclusions on endocrine and power posing seem like common sense to me. When I try to stand with better posture I feel more alert, less depressed, and more quick-witted.

There’s not much to comment on here. This is a great song. Enjoy.