I started this blog for a couple of reasons. One, I wanted a place to express my frustrations at the illogic of people I see all around me all the time. But another big reason was to keep myself writing, to keep me in the habit of writing so I can make progress on the other writing projects I have. But I fell into the same trap here that I have with my other projects. I got busy and didn’t post for a good while. Then I got into the recurring pattern of telling myself that I would make up for it by writing a lengthy, thoughtful post to make up for my lack of writing. But the longer I delayed, the more I avoided doing it. I felt guilty about not writing, which I responded to by wanting to do more to make up for it, but then getting daunted by the project, so I put it off, then feeling more guilty about not writing, etc. until it became such an incomprehensibly huge thing I could not face it and gave up.
For all my desire to be logical, I can’t help but fall into emotional traps that I know full well. I let my guilt and fear of not being able to accomplish what I wanted be the very thing that stopped me from accomplishing anything.
So, what can I do about it? Accept it? That would mean that I am doomed to stay in this rut, failing at what I want to do. Not accept it? That would be stupid, denying reality is hardly logical, albeit very human. Clearly, the only sensible alternative is to accept the past, recognize my patterns and try to break out of them.
The first step I think is to stop thinking of writing anything as a project and just do the standard advice of breaking it down into smaller, easily digestible pieces. So, forget about writing a big, time-consuming piece. Just post something, even if it is just a small, WTF statement or something I found interesting for some reason.
I have been reading Don’t Believe Everything You Think by Thomas Kida. Interesting book, but what I found interesting today was a list of supposedly commonsense sayings that people use all the time, quoting as if they contain the wisdom of the universe. They demonstrate just how little people actually think about what they believe is true. There is a saying to support any position you want to take, so how precisely can these common sense sayings really mean anything?
Better safe than sorry/nothing ventured, nothing gained
Two heads are better than one/too many cooks spoil the broth
A penny saved is a penny earned/you can’t take it with you
Look before you leap/he who hesitates is lost
Opposites attract/birds of a feather flock together
Where there’s smoke, there’s fire/don’t judge a book by its cover
Absence makes the heart grow fonder/out of sight out of mind
The hard part is that they are all true, but only in the right conditions. None of them are all encompassing. But that doesn’t stop people thinking that they can apply them in all aspects of their lives. Almost every situation needs to be looked at on its own merits. There are very few things that pithy sayings are going to help to determine what really needs to be done. Depending on shortcuts like these is not only intellectually lazy, but doomed to failure because it prevents people from expending the effort to figure out what really needs to be done.
Wednesday, February 9, 2011
Wednesday, November 3, 2010
The Failure of Thought in Politics
The November elections are over and the Republicans and Tea Party activists have by and large won.
So let's give them what they want. Let's turn the clock back to, say, the 1920s, when money flowed like wine.
Ah, the good old days, with flappers and parties all the time. You remember those times, right? Those great times before medicare, medicaid, social security, or interstates? Let's not forget the 60 hour work weeks with no vacation time or pensions, no child labor laws to speak of and absolutely no health protections of any kind and you were as likely to find rat carcasses in your sausage as pork. Health care was for the rich and education beyond grade school was for the well off. We paid a pittance for the military and nobody thought twice about beating up a black for daring to want to eat with whites, much less having the audacity to want to vote. Women were second class citizens, but at least they had it better than blacks.We had a comparatively small national debt, but corporations actually paid taxes. The maximum tax rate was lower than it is now. It was only 25% for much of the 20s.
Course, everything went completely to hell at the end of the decade, but wasn't it fun before that?
So let's give them what they want. Let's turn the clock back to, say, the 1920s, when money flowed like wine.
Ah, the good old days, with flappers and parties all the time. You remember those times, right? Those great times before medicare, medicaid, social security, or interstates? Let's not forget the 60 hour work weeks with no vacation time or pensions, no child labor laws to speak of and absolutely no health protections of any kind and you were as likely to find rat carcasses in your sausage as pork. Health care was for the rich and education beyond grade school was for the well off. We paid a pittance for the military and nobody thought twice about beating up a black for daring to want to eat with whites, much less having the audacity to want to vote. Women were second class citizens, but at least they had it better than blacks.We had a comparatively small national debt, but corporations actually paid taxes. The maximum tax rate was lower than it is now. It was only 25% for much of the 20s.
Course, everything went completely to hell at the end of the decade, but wasn't it fun before that?
How to Give a Good Lecture
I attend a lot of lectures. Unfortunately, I attend very few that are good. Chiefly, I think, that is because most lecturers don't pay attention to the vital point of a lecture. Most people view lectures as a learned expert (i.e. themselves) bestowing information upon their audience. The problem here is that it becomes all about the lecturer. If you are a demagogue, that's what you want. But if you want to teach, it is a terrible attitude.
To begin with, if you are lecturing, you are already failing at optimal teaching strategies. Numerous studies have indicated that lecturing is probably the worst way to impart information. The ability of people to tune into a lecture is limited. Generally, they will only remember the beginning and the end of the lecture. Everything in between is a waste of time. So if you are talking for 50 minutes, 30 minutes of that lecture was not heard. As a result, if you are forced to lecture, you have to break up the lecture into small chunks of really no more than 15 minutes. Ask questions, have them stand up and dance, whatever, but break it up!
But if you are required to give a lecture, you still need to remember what the whole point of the lecture is and it is not to show people you can talk for an hour about the subject. Any fool can do that. A good lecture is centered on the needs of the audience and requires three things: understandability, relevance, and digestibility. Without all three, the lecture, and by extension the lecturer, is a failure.
First, the lecture must be understandable. If the audience can't understand what you are saying, you are wasting their time. This may require learning to speak clearly for some. For others, it may require learning to speak loudly enough to be heard. For most, it requires talking at the level of the audience. The more the audience has to think to interpret what you say, the less they can think about what you are trying to convey. This means using words they can understand or defining terms they might not know, providing enough background material to make your points clear, making sure your visuals mean something and are legible. I have attended far too many talks with slides showing dense, unreadable tables or pictures that related in some way to what the person was talking about, but were not labeled well enough to understand how. The slides need to be clear enough that people can understand them quickly, or you spend the time to walk them through it. The lecture also needs to have a story, it needs to follow a plan. Lecturers often know what they want to say and throw together some slides that might relate, then make it up as they go along, so the lecture is rambling and repetitive. Take the time to organize it.
Second, the lecture must be relevant. I could give the world's best lecture on fairies and unicorns, but if I am supposed to be teaching anatomy to med students, the lecture is a failure. Make sure everything you say has a point to the topic at hand. If it does not, throw it out. You can tell stories to make things interesting, but make sure the stories are illustrative of the points in the talk. Don't go off about what you think of someone's political views or the last football game. Nobody paid to hear that crap. Save that sort of talk for the bar after class. If the talk does not address the needs of the audience, even if those needs are as simple as being entertained for a while, the talk fails.
Third, the talk must be digestible. By this I mean how well is the information retained. The talk may be relevant and understandable, but if it makes so little impact that no one remembers it ten minutes later, there was no point. This is not remembering the lecture though. It is about remembering the ideas of the lecture. A good lecture is like a good story. The style of writing is transparent to the material. Many people get this confused. A lot of people will say William Faulkner and James Joyce are great writers. That they may be, but they are terrible story tellers. Most people who read their material emote over how well the stories were written. Ask them what the story was about though, and they will say, "I have no idea, but wasn't it written beautifully?"
Speakers often do the same thing as highly stylized writers, they turn the talk into an advertisement for themselves. This is demagoguery, not lecturing. Hitler was a classic example of this. Listening to his speeches caused a huge groundswell of emotion. But if one read the talk without the style and personality of the man, the speeches made no sense. Hitler knew this. That was his intent. He said so in his memoirs. Demagogues use this to manipulate people and this makes them dangerous. Most politicians are demagogues. Their talks are not designed to convey information, they are designed to manipulate people emotionally. A good lecturer does not try to bury the content behind a good talk, the talk should enforce the content over the lecturer.
In sum, make sure that the lecture is aimed at the point of the lecture. Lectures should be about bringing information to your audience, not manipulating them. Any manipulation should be centered around conveying the information in as clear and concise a manner as possible in the most memorable fashion. Above all, the lecture should be honest. Your intent and the information contained within it should be clearly stated.
So stop preaching, talking at the audience, rambling off on pointless and irrelevant topics and lecture like you mean it.
Monday, October 11, 2010
Why the Tea Party is Not a Viable Party
The Tea Party (or TPers from here on) is not a viable party and most of them don't even realize why. This is a real puzzle to me as it should be obvious to everyone.
To be a viable party that will get things done, they have to have a vision for what they want. Herein lies the problem. TPers don't stand FOR anything. The TP consists of a bunch of angry people. I can understand being angry. There is a lot to be angry about. But TPers are simply against what they see as things going wrong. They are against taxes, immigration, abortion, gay rights. They are not for anything. They have no vision, they only dislike what they see. You can't lead if you don't have anywhere to go.
A lot of the impetus for the TP was anger over the bank bailouts. Of course, it turned out that the bailouts wound up not costing very much at all. of the $700 Billion that was put aside for it, the government only wound up losing less than $30 Billion according to the latest announcents from the Congressional Budget Office. The reason for this is that when the banks found they had to be owned by the Federal Government and follow much stricter rules, they suddenly found they weren't so broke as they thought after all. Amazing how that worked. I admit I didn't like the bailouts either, but it seems I was wrong about their effect. What I don't like is that we wasted an opportunity to put in place meaningful regulatory controls, that the banks have for the most part gone back to their old practices. But this is not something the TPers are making noises about, which they should be.
TPers talk a lot about tax rates being too high. Of course, our tax rates are much lower now than they were in the past. So I would like to know how low is acceptable. Sadly, I have been told by some that paying any taxes is too much. This amount of greed and lack of any social conscience just sickens me. How is the government supposed to pay for the military that is so important, for the social security and medicare checks, for education, roads, and on and on and on. People don't seem to realize just how much they take from the Federal government, and yet they don't want to contribute.
TruthandPolitics has a nice chart showing the top tax brackets since 1913. Right now it is 35% for anything over $311,950. this is lower than almost any other time. Between 1988-92,the top tax bracket was slightly lower, but you have to go back to 1931 to find a lower rate otherwise. But from 1917-1925 it was higher than it is now. So for almost 100 years, there have only been 16 years with a lower maximal tax rate than now. And how much higher has it been? During WWII the maximal tax rate hit 94% because we were in a war and we needed it. Even though we have been at war in Iraq and Afghanistan, no one seems to want to pay for it. We keep getting tax cuts instead. In 1932, the tax rate jumped from 25% to 63% and went up from there. It didn't drop below 70% again until 1981. In all honesty,we don't pay nearly what we used to pay in taxes. It is no wonder that our government is running a deficit. I won't even get into the fact that corporate taxes have virtually vanished, while the slack has been picked up by the middle class. That is a whole other kettle of worms.
As far as immigration goes, theTPers are trying to cut their own throats. A passing familiarity with economics and how the country works indicates that poor immigrants are a sizable reason our economy thrives. The vast majority of jobs they take are jobs that Americans refuse to do for pay that is below minimum wage. If we paid people what they were supposed to get paid, if Americans took those jobs, our food prices would skyrocket. Orange juice would be a luxury. Unless people are willing to grow their own food, they should realize the US is using illegal immigrants as slave labor. This is widely known, and yet we turn our backs on the situation for cheap food.
Our country was founded on immigration. I would think a better alternative would be to make it easier for people to come in and get them to start paying taxes. But then we would have expensive food and we can't have that, can we? You can't have your oranges and your orange juice too. Choose. Humane treatment or cheap food?
Much ballyhoo has been made by the TPers about abortion being funded by Obamacare. This is a lie. Congress went to great lengths to ensure that no Federal money would go towards abortion. Yet the leaders of the TP seem to ignore that and intentionally spread lies.
The leaders of the TP know what they are saying is not right. But the TP is a party of anger and it is so easy to manipulate angry people. Anger clouds one's judgement and leaves one susceptible to manipulation. Decisions made in anger are almost always bad. People know this. but they are letting themselves be used. It is just sad that they can't see the cheats stealing from them. I mean, how clear does it have to be? Sarah Palin charges $100,000 for a speech. This amount is way out of line for speaking fees. If she truly believed what she was saying and she truly backed the TP movement, don't you think she would at the very least try to NOT bankrupt her constituents? The TP movement, outside of Palin's astounding speaking fees, is funded by primarily a few very wealthy individuals (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/29/opinion/29rich.html). They are doing this so they can take control of a large section of government. They don't care about the political and religious beliefs of the common person. They care about lining their pockets. But as the saying goes, there are none so blind as those who will not see.
To be a viable party that will get things done, they have to have a vision for what they want. Herein lies the problem. TPers don't stand FOR anything. The TP consists of a bunch of angry people. I can understand being angry. There is a lot to be angry about. But TPers are simply against what they see as things going wrong. They are against taxes, immigration, abortion, gay rights. They are not for anything. They have no vision, they only dislike what they see. You can't lead if you don't have anywhere to go.
A lot of the impetus for the TP was anger over the bank bailouts. Of course, it turned out that the bailouts wound up not costing very much at all. of the $700 Billion that was put aside for it, the government only wound up losing less than $30 Billion according to the latest announcents from the Congressional Budget Office. The reason for this is that when the banks found they had to be owned by the Federal Government and follow much stricter rules, they suddenly found they weren't so broke as they thought after all. Amazing how that worked. I admit I didn't like the bailouts either, but it seems I was wrong about their effect. What I don't like is that we wasted an opportunity to put in place meaningful regulatory controls, that the banks have for the most part gone back to their old practices. But this is not something the TPers are making noises about, which they should be.
TPers talk a lot about tax rates being too high. Of course, our tax rates are much lower now than they were in the past. So I would like to know how low is acceptable. Sadly, I have been told by some that paying any taxes is too much. This amount of greed and lack of any social conscience just sickens me. How is the government supposed to pay for the military that is so important, for the social security and medicare checks, for education, roads, and on and on and on. People don't seem to realize just how much they take from the Federal government, and yet they don't want to contribute.
TruthandPolitics has a nice chart showing the top tax brackets since 1913. Right now it is 35% for anything over $311,950. this is lower than almost any other time. Between 1988-92,the top tax bracket was slightly lower, but you have to go back to 1931 to find a lower rate otherwise. But from 1917-1925 it was higher than it is now. So for almost 100 years, there have only been 16 years with a lower maximal tax rate than now. And how much higher has it been? During WWII the maximal tax rate hit 94% because we were in a war and we needed it. Even though we have been at war in Iraq and Afghanistan, no one seems to want to pay for it. We keep getting tax cuts instead. In 1932, the tax rate jumped from 25% to 63% and went up from there. It didn't drop below 70% again until 1981. In all honesty,we don't pay nearly what we used to pay in taxes. It is no wonder that our government is running a deficit. I won't even get into the fact that corporate taxes have virtually vanished, while the slack has been picked up by the middle class. That is a whole other kettle of worms.
As far as immigration goes, theTPers are trying to cut their own throats. A passing familiarity with economics and how the country works indicates that poor immigrants are a sizable reason our economy thrives. The vast majority of jobs they take are jobs that Americans refuse to do for pay that is below minimum wage. If we paid people what they were supposed to get paid, if Americans took those jobs, our food prices would skyrocket. Orange juice would be a luxury. Unless people are willing to grow their own food, they should realize the US is using illegal immigrants as slave labor. This is widely known, and yet we turn our backs on the situation for cheap food.
Our country was founded on immigration. I would think a better alternative would be to make it easier for people to come in and get them to start paying taxes. But then we would have expensive food and we can't have that, can we? You can't have your oranges and your orange juice too. Choose. Humane treatment or cheap food?
Much ballyhoo has been made by the TPers about abortion being funded by Obamacare. This is a lie. Congress went to great lengths to ensure that no Federal money would go towards abortion. Yet the leaders of the TP seem to ignore that and intentionally spread lies.
The leaders of the TP know what they are saying is not right. But the TP is a party of anger and it is so easy to manipulate angry people. Anger clouds one's judgement and leaves one susceptible to manipulation. Decisions made in anger are almost always bad. People know this. but they are letting themselves be used. It is just sad that they can't see the cheats stealing from them. I mean, how clear does it have to be? Sarah Palin charges $100,000 for a speech. This amount is way out of line for speaking fees. If she truly believed what she was saying and she truly backed the TP movement, don't you think she would at the very least try to NOT bankrupt her constituents? The TP movement, outside of Palin's astounding speaking fees, is funded by primarily a few very wealthy individuals (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/29/opinion/29rich.html). They are doing this so they can take control of a large section of government. They don't care about the political and religious beliefs of the common person. They care about lining their pockets. But as the saying goes, there are none so blind as those who will not see.
A Solution to the Gay Marriage Problem
I had a conversation with a coworker today about whether or nor homosexuals should be allowed to get married. He did not think they should be allowed. I think that it is discriminatory to prevent them. Because of the legal issues that have been created around marriage, it makes no sense to me that they are not allowed.
But then it struck me the obvious answer, at least to me, to fix the whole problem. I haven't heard anyone mention it yet and I am surprised it really just struck me today.
The problem to me is that marriage is an inherently social and religious contract. The main reason most people are against homosexuals getting married is that it conflicts with their own moral and religiouss code. Actually, to be honest, it doesn't really conflict with their religious code, but few people seem to really understand their own religious tenets, people just use their religion to promote their own personal beliefs and so they create religious tenets to support their own beliefs, but that is a digression.
Back to the point, is that our society has created legal arrangements based on these social contracts, and therin lies the problem. Because of the many legal ramifications of marriage, by barring homosexuals from getting married, we have created a second-class citizen that is being denied their rights simply onthe basis of who they love. Not only is this against American principles, but it goes against most people's religious beliefs unless one allows a certain amount of cognitive dissonance. But let's leave it with the fact that it is clearly discriminatory to homosexuals, despite the fact that it hurts no one.
The solution? I don't think government should be involved in marriage at all.We should return marriage into a strictly social and religious contract and remove all legal arrangements tied into marriage. Instead, we should only have civil unions for everyone. The government should only recognize civil unions, endowing them with all the legal arrangements given to marriages today.The sex of the individuals within the union should not be a concern.
Marriages could then be returned to a social contract. This way, if a church or social group does not choose to recognize such unions, they would be under no obligation to perform marriages for anyone they do not wish to. If a person chose to be married in a church, by a religious leader,they would be married in the eyes of that church and society in general. However, the government would recognize no difference between a civil union decreed by a Justice of the Peace and a marriage by a church.
This may sound like a simple game of semantics, but the entire issue is one of semantics caused by the confusion and intermixing of a social contract with legal issues. If we separate the two, then the problem does not exist.
Some people might say it is not so simple, there are legal issues involved. But that is exactly my point. We have created legal issues around the idea of marriage in which the government should not be involved.
For those that think homosexuals should not even be allowed civil unions, I have to ask what reason can you give other than homophobia? What they do has nothing to do with your religious or moral views, it does not hurt your marriage, it does not affect you in any way, so what right do you have to deny them the same rightsand privileges you enjoy?
This problem has been created through muddled thinking and hatred. It is time we put both aside.
But then it struck me the obvious answer, at least to me, to fix the whole problem. I haven't heard anyone mention it yet and I am surprised it really just struck me today.
The problem to me is that marriage is an inherently social and religious contract. The main reason most people are against homosexuals getting married is that it conflicts with their own moral and religiouss code. Actually, to be honest, it doesn't really conflict with their religious code, but few people seem to really understand their own religious tenets, people just use their religion to promote their own personal beliefs and so they create religious tenets to support their own beliefs, but that is a digression.
Back to the point, is that our society has created legal arrangements based on these social contracts, and therin lies the problem. Because of the many legal ramifications of marriage, by barring homosexuals from getting married, we have created a second-class citizen that is being denied their rights simply onthe basis of who they love. Not only is this against American principles, but it goes against most people's religious beliefs unless one allows a certain amount of cognitive dissonance. But let's leave it with the fact that it is clearly discriminatory to homosexuals, despite the fact that it hurts no one.
The solution? I don't think government should be involved in marriage at all.We should return marriage into a strictly social and religious contract and remove all legal arrangements tied into marriage. Instead, we should only have civil unions for everyone. The government should only recognize civil unions, endowing them with all the legal arrangements given to marriages today.The sex of the individuals within the union should not be a concern.
Marriages could then be returned to a social contract. This way, if a church or social group does not choose to recognize such unions, they would be under no obligation to perform marriages for anyone they do not wish to. If a person chose to be married in a church, by a religious leader,they would be married in the eyes of that church and society in general. However, the government would recognize no difference between a civil union decreed by a Justice of the Peace and a marriage by a church.
This may sound like a simple game of semantics, but the entire issue is one of semantics caused by the confusion and intermixing of a social contract with legal issues. If we separate the two, then the problem does not exist.
Some people might say it is not so simple, there are legal issues involved. But that is exactly my point. We have created legal issues around the idea of marriage in which the government should not be involved.
For those that think homosexuals should not even be allowed civil unions, I have to ask what reason can you give other than homophobia? What they do has nothing to do with your religious or moral views, it does not hurt your marriage, it does not affect you in any way, so what right do you have to deny them the same rightsand privileges you enjoy?
This problem has been created through muddled thinking and hatred. It is time we put both aside.
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