Geoff's Miscellany

Miscellaneous Musings

Thoughts

Mental Models

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There are many models we can use to understanding the world. When I took college history my professor told us that there were several paradigms for interpreting the events of history: economic, philosophical, national, geographical, and religious. He would say that some of these paradigms are more appropriate to a situation than others, but that none of them were right or wrong because every major human event involves all of these paradigms. Outside of academics there is still significant need for good mental models. Most of us just use one.

It’s important to have more than one model because if we try to simple view things as they appear to us we’ll inevitably reduce our experiences to the model most convenient to us or believe whatever our brains make up to bring sensibility to a world too big to interpret.

What I mean by a mental model is a sort of simplified way of interpreting things that, alone would be a distortion of reality, but is necessary to think of exclusively in order to see the insights it offers. An example would be seeing the world as a machine. The world is manifestly not a machine. But to see it as a machine helps physicists find efficient and material causes of things.

Other models include:

  1. Everything is sales.
  2. Everything is tribal.
  3. Everything is sex.
  4. Everything is true or false.
  5. Everything is economics.
  6. Success is having energy.
  7. Everything is moral.
  8. Everything is spiritual.

None of these are complete and life is more than each of them. But your brain cannot interpret the whole universe at once. But it can interpret more of the universe at once through an incomplete filter.

What mental models have I left out?

Politics is Pro-Wrestling

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How is politics pro-wresting?

  1. It’s fake, most of the people are lying and often the enemies are friends in the locker room (though in the history of pro-wrestling real fights break out amongst the giant, steroid infused alpha-males because they’re all vying for attention from the promoter and the fans for more money).
  2. It’s fun. Most of the people are doing it for fun/because they like it.
  3. It’s based on spectacle.
  4. It’s tribal. People get so emotionally attached to personae that principle, results, and data have very little to do with their allegiance to this or that person/party.
  5. People think it’s real.
  6. People get hurt in real life because of it.
This explains Trump’s rise (what happens below is a description of Trump in terms of pro-wrestling, not in terms of political support, policy, or morality):
  1. He admited it’s all fake and then started claiming to hate the people he pretended to befriend in the locker room (Clinton’s, etc). This way he can lie with a twinkle in his eye and his fans love him for it.
  2. He’s clearly having fun. And he’s been sued for having American flags too big for city ordinances on his properties…so he may (whether he’s right or wrong) really be a patriot. And because his character (him in real life?) loves high stakes games, he’s playing really hard.
  3. Trump creates spectacle on purpose…he even released a tape of himself pretending to be his own public relations manager to create controversy a few weeks ago.
  4. Trump, like Hillary with women, has decided to act as a tribal leader. But his act attempts to make him the leader for every caste of Americans who feel cheated by politics and Wall Street. In fact, I’ve checked his twitter mentions and people tweet him regularly thanking him for how his books have changed their lives. These tweets are remarkably similar to the ones sent to Hulk Hogan.
  5. Trump, by pulling back the curtain, has alerted the American public to just how awful all these people who run for office typically are. Think of all the people who claim to be too principle-based to make petty attacks, while they pettily attack Trump (this really has been for the best).
  6. Trump has criticized the war in Iraq, let people whose family members have been murdered by illegal immigrants speak at his rallies, and named specific companies who are moving their factories overseas to save on manufacturing costs as a result of cheap labor provided by bad trade deals made by congress. These people have really been hurt. In wrestling real injuries addsto the belief that it’s real. In politics, it makes people mad because politicians and their concern for the citizenry is clearly fake but the results hurt people who aren’t even playing.
Previously, I wrote about how reality is a simulation, like pro-wrestling.

The World is a Simulation

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The world probably isn’t a simulation.

Your senses give you access to the real world, but that access is still mediated.

Your perceptions can be inaccurate, your inferences can be wrong, and there can be data you missed out on.

A great deal of your worldview is false.

Another significant amount of it is not quite false, but simply fictional. It could turn out to be true, but we don’t know.

I’m not a global skeptic, I think that you and I can know things about the world through a sort of give and take between our minds, the minds of others, and the rest of the cosmos.

But just as viewing the world as a machine helps physicists ignore data to the contrary to find material and efficient causes in the world. But the world isn’t a machine.

Similarly, viewing the world as a simulation can help you control your life.

How so?

If so much of your worldview is false or simply made up, then you can choose which parts are significant, which parts to rewrite, and which parts simply do not exist (insofar as you give them no thought).

Eventually, as Dallas Willard reminds us, reality is the merciless “what” that we crash into when we’re wrong.

But the model (not complete or necessarily true in itself) of the universe, it being a simulation (rather your worldview being the simulation of the real world outside your mind), can be helpful.

If your down or feel like you can’t get out of a rut, decide to play the version of the simulation where you make good choices all day.

These are some thoughts.

On Rhetorical Aims and Defense Against the Dark Arts

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There are two modes of public discourse that deal with syllogisms:

  1. Rhetoric – the art of persuasion
  2. Dialectic – the art of discovering/explaining what must or may be true or false based upon facts and reasoning.

The thing about these that is important to remember is that dialectic is not always effective when used as rhetoric. Many people have no patience for examining things as they are. But rhetoric can use the skills of dialectic to appeal to those who enjoy feeling smart but do not, perhaps, understand how logic works or who do not understand the facts of the case. One may look at the relationship between  rhetoric and dialectic thus:

  1. Pure dialectic – Exact discourse using facts and logic (think math lectures)
  2. Truthful Rhetoric – Rhetoric that appeals to emotions while being backed up by careful research or absolute truth.
  3. False-Dialectic – Attempted dialectic that the wielder does not realize is actually rhetoric.
  4. Sophistry – the intentional use of emotional rhetoric to convince people to act/feel/believe without reference to the truth.

There are three modes of persuasive rhetoric:

  1. Deliberative
    Meant to persuade people to act.
  1. Judicial
    Meant to convict or defend people based on their deeds.
  1. Epideictic
    Used to raise support for and adherence to group values. In other words, it is meant to inspire or please the hearers. A secondary use is to portray a person, group, or idea as honorable or shameful.

You’ll find it useful to be able to distinguish between each type of rhetoric (note: many authors cannot even do this).

For instance, Christians often use epideictic rhetoric that is designed to inspire deeper commitment to Christ amongst believers to share the gospel with outsiders.

Similarly, in political races, people might have a tendency to read articles that are designed to increase loyalty to an already accepted candidate and mistake the article for a sound piece of truthful deliberative rhetoric (meant to convince people to vote for so-and-so) and then use this same rhetoric to talk to friends who buy into a different platform. Both people might be using rhetoric meant to inspire the committed of their camp to greater devotion and invective meant to shame those in the camp who are thinking of leaving against one another. This will quite literally have the effect cementing each person deeper in the opposing camp.

If you want to test, for instance, what type of rhetoric you use and where it is on “truthful rhetoric to sophistry” scale that you might ask these questions:

  1. Pure Dialectic
    1. Am I considering evidence contrary to my conclusion and fitting my conclusion to this evidence or explaining the evidence in a way that allows it to still stand?
    2. Am I doing/teaching a programing language or mathematical proof?
  2. Truthful Rhetoric
    1. If I play fast and loose with my language for purposes of appeal, are my premises defensible if I qualify and explain them?
    2. Is my emotional appeal intentionally based upon aiming at the feelings that the facts should result in rather than the feelings that are expedient for my purposes?
    3. Am I willing to make my evidence available for examination by other parties, even if for rhetorical purposes, I leave it out?
  3. False-Dialectic
    1. Am I simply repeating what somebody else said without having investigated the facts or followed the logic myself?
    2. Is there no potential counter evidence to my conclusions?
    3. Am I using emotional buzz words whose referent is hard to pin down?
    4. Could the premises in my argument be just as easily applied to another point of view?
    5. Do I actually believe my premises, dilemmas, and so-on?
    6. Do I feel shocked that somebody reasonable disagrees with me?
  4. Sophistry
    It’s hard to do this by accident.

Now for the types of rhetoric. Beware, this is where you’ve got to be brutally honest with yourself. If you’re claiming to attempt to persuade people to act, but you keep answering “yes” to epideictic style questions, it is likely that you’re using rhetoric meant to inspire people with whom you already agree. Similarly, if you’re using shaming tactics to convince people of facts, then you’re trying to use epideictic or deliberative rhetoric for judicial purposes. This may be effective, but it takes true/false out of the debate. It turns you into a sophist at best and a jerk at worst:

  1. Deliberative
    1. Do I want people to act in a certain way?
    2. Am I appealing to moral principle or future consequences?
    3. Am I arguing from principles to which my audience ascribes to practical conclusions which I think are good?
  2. Judicial
    1. Am I referencing testimonial evidence about the past?
    2. Am I referencing physical evidence?
    3. Am I referencing character/trait evidence of the persons or artifacts involved?
  3. Epideictic
    1. Am I making assertions without reference to evidence?
    2. Am I making claims which I know people like me will applaud?
    3. Am I saying things meant to make people not like me seem shameful?
    4. Am I trying to make an individual/group/idea look, not guilty or innocent, true or false, good or bad, but shameful or honorable?

Now, the reason all of this is important is that you want to know how to be a morally good rhetorician and you need defense against the dark arts. Here are some good reasons to have an instinct for what a piece of rhetoric is attempting and then the types of rhetoric being used or the types of rhetoric to use to avoid being disgusting (see how I used a shame word):

  1. Epideictic appeals can effectively manipulate emotions enough to get you or I to act in a way that does not align with our principles by an intentionally murky appeal to them. This happens in drug advertisements.
  2. Epideictic appeals, which feel so effective because of the nature of the language used, can be done sophistically without reference to any truth value at all. When I’ve been a character witness, I was appalled that this form of rhetoric was used by the prosecutor when the nature of the apparently shameful deed was precisely what was in question.
  3. Many times, in the case of persuading others concerning what is true or false, people will still appeal to the utility of believing this or that thing. While I think that utility is a good tool to persuade people to consider your case, utility does not determine truth. “Of course God is real. You don’t want to go to hell do you?”
  4. Judicial style rhetoric, because it requires arguments concerning probability, time, and cause/effect is very susceptible to sophistry because when reasoning to the best explanation of the facts, one might have a tendency to theorize before all the facts come in. Such a theory can prejudice one’s interpretation of new evidence. In the legal system, this is especially interesting because one could be in the position of trying to cast doubt upon the guilt of a truly guilty person or reason to the explanation that somebody is indeed guilty when they are not. Jurors who are not trained in careful reasoning may have a difficult time interpreting evidence well. Learning to use this rhetoric with a strong dialectic background and learning to interpret it is very important for justice (see how I’m using deliberative rhetoric to convince you to study dialectic?). Note: I know of at least three lawyers who semiregularly read this stuff. Am I off base?

Scott Adams on Marriage

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Introduction

One of my favorite blogs lately has been blog.dilbert.com. Adams is funny, he’s an ideas guy, and he uses systems instead of goals to set himself up for success. His system, with his blog, is to market his books with provocative explanations of persuasion from a hypnotism point of view, get feed back based on comments, and then repeat with further explanations that demonstrate his own rhetorical capacity by performing the very rhetorical techniques he is describing.

But that’s not all. His system gains a larger audience that he then uses to bounce more provocative ideas, but these ideas are seemingly meant to actually improve civilization. He’s written about gun safety, diet, and in this case marriage. In his book on failure he catalogs the dozens of big ideas he’s pursued until their death.

I highly recommend that you read his post on marriage: here.

To summarize:

Marriage is the worst thing that has ever happened to civilization. This is because:

  1. It leads to poverty.
  2. It leads to malnutrition.
  3. It leads to obesity (lack of exercise).
  4. It leads to terrorism(!).
  5. It leads to emotional fatigue.
  6. It’s bad for children in the context of schooling.
  7. It usually ends in divorce.

He close with this note:

The tell for cognitive dissonance in the comments and on Twitter will be the oversized anger followed by an insult of the author’s intelligence. People who object for real reasons will mention them. Also look for “Wow” and other dismissive responses without reasons.

My Thoughts

  1. Evidence that Scott would permit:
    1. Numerically, if marriage were pursued on a monogamous basis, terrorism would not be seen as a result.
    2. Marriage can work like a master mind, two people working together ot pursue the goals of the household that could range from the production of children, the lifting up of society around them, religious ends, the running of a beneficial business, etc.
    3. Many species are monogamous. If we are evolved, probably, by natural selection for this purpose, it may help us be happy and successful if done well.
    4. Promiscuity leads to a load of ills and is especially deleterious to women. Watch this video by Stefan Molyneaux. He has no religious agenda, he’s an atheist.
    5. The public school system is simply terrible. It is feasible that it simply cannot be repaired, even by a marriageless civilization.
    6. A promiscuous (marriage-less) society would likely lead to men checking out of fatherhood unless every child were tested for paternity. Men are far less likely to be interetested in raising a child whose paternity they are suspicious of. This is based on what we see in modern relationships.
  2. Evidence that Scott would not permit:
    1. The biblical ideal is happy monogamous marriage. Many people dispute this, but in the New Testament the one partner only exchange of sex and bonding into “one flesh” meaning one life, is clear. If we buy into the idea that revelation is progressive, then the New Testament ideal is normative.
    2. The natural law argument for marriage based on the final cause of human sexuality seems, to me, to be conclusive.

Conclusion

I think I’ve met Scott’s standards for avoiding cognitive dissonance.

I’m not sure what he thinks.

The Fourth ‘C’

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Over at the Bold and Determined blog there is a post about the Three Cs of a morning routine (their post is great, read it).

They are:

  1. Coffee
  2. Cardio
  3. Cold Shower

These are all good ideas. I’m not a fan of aerobics or cardio as a form of fat loss or as a way to “get in shape” for that you need sprints and weight training (which exercise your heart, btw). But caffeine has tremendous neuro-protective capacity, it improves working memory, focus, alertness, etc. It’s great stuff. I would switch the coffee and cardio order though. I prefer to be fully awake before consuming my coffee. But these guys are more successful in life than I am, so their advice might be better.

Not only would I change the order, I would add a fourth.

The Fourth C

The fourth C is calling, which is not the same as career.

Career is what you do to make money. Calling is what leaves a legacy that is unique to you, your circumstance, and your abilities. I wrote about the difference here: Career vs Calling.

In the mornings you get up, get your body and brain moving and while the rest of the world sleeps you work on your calling.

If you’re a teacher, you write lectures to put online in order to build a legacy for the future.

If you’re a home school parent you plan the day’s lessons.

If you’re going back to school to learn a new skill, you perfect if before you hit your 9-5.

If you’re a pastor you practice your Greek and Hebrew.

If you’re a student, you work on your blog to practice writing.

What will you do with your extra time in the morning?

If you don’t wake up early enough for a 4-C morning, what’s stopping you? Here’s how I wake up: How to become a morning person