Thoughts for the Day: Wednesday 9 June 2021

 

Time of the Magicians

Wolfram Eilenberger

Wittgenstein called upon one of philosophy’s most distinguished images of the inescapable problem of epistemology: the extent to which we, trapped as we are entirely within the internal space of our own experiential subjectivity, can have any reliable knowledge whatsoever of the outside world, or connect with the interiority of others.

Collingwood's the Idea of History

Peter Johnson

What Collingwood tends to think of as the animal side of human nature – feelings, appetites, desires and, even, more contestably, the emotions – is something which it is not possible to know historically. There can be no history of love, only a history of thought about love; no history of dreams, only a history of dreams as consciously recounted. A history of the feelings is, then, close to being an oxymoron, since, as Collingwood writes in a dramatic passage, ‘we shall never know how the flowers smelt in the garden of Epicurus, or how Nietzsche felt the wind in his hair as he walked on the mountains; we cannot relive the triumph of Archimedes or the bitterness of Marius’ (IH 296).

The Inevitability of Tragedy

Barry Gewen

“There exists in our society,” Arendt complained, “a widespread fear of judging.” The genuine statesman had no choice but to judge, and judgment, Kissinger said, demanded “character and courage . . . vision and determination . . . wisdom and foresight.” And where did correct judgment come from? Insofar as policy depended on nonquantifiable choices, there was no avoiding questions of morality. “All political action,” Strauss said, “implies thought of the good.” Kissinger wrote that “the great human achievements must be fused with enhanced powers of human, transcendent and moral judgment.” If artificial intelligence came to dominate or replace human thinking, “What is the role of ethics?”

Conservatism

Edmund Fawcett

The term “individualism” had no settled use. As an innocuous moral shorthand, it picked out four profound and well-attested convictions with long pedigrees in the common tradition. First of all, morally speaking, people mattered as people, not as men or women, Jews, Christians, or Muslims, blacks or whites, rich or poor. Nobody went naked in society. Everyone had to wear something. Their particular social clothes, however, were morally irrelevant. Second, everyone mattered equally. If social clothing was morally irrelevant, nobody could properly be excluded from society’s concern, denied its protections, or exempted from its demands. Third, everyone had a sphere of privacy that was no one else’s business and on which neither state nor society might intrude. And fourth, everyone had in them seeds of capability and personal growth, which could not be left untended without moral loss.

David and Goliath

Malcolm Gladwell

Arreguín-Toft then asked the question slightly differently. What happens in wars between the strong and the weak when the weak side does as    David    did and refuses to fight the way the bigger side wants to fight, using unconventional or guerrilla tactics? The answer: in those cases, the weaker party’s winning percentage climbs from 28.5 percent to 63.6 percent. To put that in perspective, the United States’ population is ten times the size of Canada’s. If the two countries went to war and Canada chose to fight unconventionally, history would suggest that you ought to put your money on Canada.

The Three Languages of Politics

Arnold Kling

The three axes allow each tribe to assert moral superiority. The progressive asserts moral superiority by denouncing oppression and accusing others of failing to do so. The conservative asserts moral superiority by denouncing barbarism and accusing others of failing to do so. The libertarian asserts moral superiority by denouncing coercion and accusing others of failing to do so.

Thoughts of the Day: Saturday 17 October 2020

 

                                            Fukuyama; more than just "The End of History"

Political Order and Political Decay

Francis Fukuyama

Democracies exist and survive only because people want and are willing to fight for them; leadership, organizational ability, and oftentimes sheer good luck are needed for them to prevail.

The Three Roosevelts

James MacGregor Burns

Lister had said to his friend, “My dear Pasteur, every great benefit to the human race in every field of its activity has been bitterly fought in every stage leading up to its final acceptance.”

Words Like Loaded Pistols

Sam Leith

Young people, he says, are impatient, changeable, and appetitive—“and of the bodily appetites they are especially attentive to that connected with sex and have no control over it.”

Sugar Has 56 Names

Robert H. Lustig

Glucose consumption will make your pancreas release more insulin and make you gain weight, while fructose consumption will drive the accumulation of liver fat, causing insulin resistance, leading to chronic metabolic disease.

Re-Weaving the Rainbow

David Lavery

Professor Howard Fulweiler, in his essay, "The [Other] Missing Link: Owen Barfield and the Scientific Imagination," delivered at the 1983 Los Angeles MLA seminar on Owen Barfield, opens with a reference to Thomas Berger's novel, Little Big Man, in which the old Indian, Lodge Skins, tells his adopted grandson "that the Indians believe everything in the world is alive, while the white men think everything is dead." Had Barfield been there, he would have said that such mechanical thinking on the part of the white men was new, the result of something called the Scientific Revolution, which began a few centuries ago and which has given rise to philosophical and scientific hypotheses which separated mind from matter, man from nature, and doomed the reality of the spirit-world.

Meditations of a Buddhist Skeptic

B. Alan Wallace

For each of these four kinds of mental balance, we will identify the “middle way” of homeostasis as the freedom from three kinds of imbalance: deficit, hyperactivity, and dysfunction.

Blink

Malcolm Gladwell

We live in a world saturated with information. We have virtually unlimited amounts of data at our fingertips at all times, and we’re well versed in the arguments about the dangers of not knowing enough and not doing our homework. But what I have sensed is an enormous frustration with the unexpected costs of knowing too much, of being inundated with information. We have come to confuse information with understanding.

A Secret History of Consciousness

Gary Lachman

As William James and Henri Bergson would argue around the same time, without the selective activity of the mind there would be no “world,” only a formless chaos.

Bounce: How Champions Are Made by Matthew Syed

I have to say that Bounce was a bit like taking a refresher course, having already read Geoff Covlin's Talent Is Overrated, Daniel Coyle's The Talent Code (entry #6), and Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers, all three of which Syed acknowledges as worthy predecessors. So I didn't learn a great deal new from reading Bounce. But a refresher, with some new information added, is worthwhile, and so I found this book. I should also note that all four books draw on the pioneering work of academic psychologist Anders Ericsson.

If you want to develop a talent or a skill, practice deliberately (with a focused intention) for 10,000 hours, and you'll have gone a long way toward achieving your goal. Throw in outstanding peers and quality coaching, and you'll really go far. This formula for success replaces that idea that some are simply "talented". None of these authors gives much credence to genetics. It's about learning. Deliberate practice—practicing to improve specific skills and to cure weaknesses-is what allows real learning and significant improvement. Drive a car with no special thought to the matter and you'll be the same driver after 10,000 hours of driving. But do it in deliberately challenging ways and environments with the intention of improving and you could be the next Mario Andretti. (I know. I date myself.)

Seyd does go into some topics that his predecessors didn't, such as placebo effect, in other words, the power of belief. (Although he doesn't delve into it, the placebo effect raises some really interesting issues about the mind-body relationship and causation.) I also enjoyed his chapter on "choking", which any athlete or other performer has experienced. What it amounts to is that we "think" when we shouldn't. We try to teach the centipede to walk when it should (and does) just walk. This ties in to the power of ritual in performance, which is another fascinating subject full of bizarre anecdotes. As an old jock, I can attest to the power and command of rituals. In the last section, Seyd touches on drug enhancement, what's good and fair and human and what isn't (not clear) and genetics (are blacks better runners?). On the latter topic, Seyd takes down the idea that blacks, specifically sprinters from west Africa via  the U.S. and Jamaica and distance runners from Kenya (and later Ethiopia) have any special genetic endowments. It's simply the outlier effect—chance, environment, reward, opportunity, etc.—that makes all of the difference.

It was a fun, easy, and instructive book, valuable for anyone who has to perform. Like us humans. 

David & Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits & the Art of Battling Giants by Malcolm Gladwell

Let me ask you a series of questions:

Can a team with only mediocre offensive skills and limited physical gifts regularly beat teams that are more talented?

Are larger classes sometimes better for learning than smaller ones?

Might an accomplished young woman interested in science find career success by attending a state university instead of the Ivy League school that admitted her?

Might a guy with dyslexia (a serious disorder that affects reading ability) do well in a legal career?

Can a physician with a very troubled youth develop a breakthrough protocol for treating a fatal childhood disease by ignoring colleagues and forcing patients (and parents) to push through the pain?

Can an oppressed minority gain rights and dignity through tricking the oppressor into dumb moves?

Can the campaign of a heart-broken father to limit crime after the murder of his daughter backfire into promoting more crime?

Can forgiveness provide a stable and fulfilling way of responding to horrific loss?

Can a small group of dissenters thumb their noses at Vichy and Nazi officials and openly harbor Jews, saving them from internment and death?

Can David beat Goliath?

If you’ve ever read any Malcolm Gladwell, you will know that the counter-intuitive answers to some of these questions are Gladwell’s answers. Gladwell opens his latest book, David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits and the Art of Battling Giants by explaining how David’s victory over Goliath was not so great an upset as we've come to believe. David, as an expert with the sling (not an unusual talent in that time), held a real advantage over the armor-clad, pituitary case (Goliath) that he faced. Like the game of rock-scissors-paper, each strategy entails an effective counter-strategy. So a girls basketball team, coached by an Indian immigrant father with no basketball experience, used the unorthodox strategy of an aggressive full-court press to win games and go the national tournament. (Gladwell journeys into basketball lore to describe the education of Rick Pitino about the value of the press. I must add that the press is under-utilized still. I loved it.) If you don’t have rocks, use paper.

As Gladwell often does in his writing, he weaves insights from social science into real life tales, and in doing so, he challenges the easy assumptions we tend to make. In two segments involving education, he challenges a couple of common assumptions, assumptions that cost a lot of money and that have very serious repercussions. First, he explores the assumption that smaller class size always improves student achievement. Gladwell finds that class size, like many things in life, has a sweet spot—a Goldilocks point—that is neither too large nor too small. In smaller classes, there may not be enough variety to facilitate a desired give-and-take for discussion and projects. Thus, the class never reaches its full learning potential. Gladwell concludes (and I intuitively agree) that outstanding teachers are the key to educational success, not simply more teachers. Rather than paying outstanding, experienced teachers to retire early to hire some additional new, untested teachers, we should work to keep outstanding teachers working as long as possible. (Yes, I’m thinking of C, for an example, although she’s still working.)

Another very interesting point involving education addresses the issue of college choice. Gladwell uses the instance of a young high-school student interested in science who goes to Brown (an Ivy) rather that her home-state University of Maryland. Because of the intense competition and high-skills range, Gladwell’s young woman abandons science as her major. She tried to make it as a big fish in a big pond, but as statistics show, this is tough. Those who succeed tend to be those who succeed in comparison to their peers in a particular environment, whether at State U or an Ivy League college. For young people making excruciating decisions about where to go to study or where to go to continue playing a sport, this is vital information. (Of course, the Ivy League works well for some, as I know a couple of Ivy League grads whom I think have done quite well.)

Another tale that interested me especially was that of David Boies, one of the premier trial and appellate lawyers in the nation. Boies has dyslexia, which makes reading very difficult. To compensate, he learned to learn by listening—listening very carefully. Boies didn’t go to college until a bit later in life. He ended up graduating from Yale Law. (I guess his Ivy League choice worked out okay, too.) One strategy he used in law school was to read the synopsis of a case rather than a whole opinion (a lesson there, I think). And he listened—very carefully. (I suspect that careful listening is a skill that most of us, including lawyers—or especially lawyers?—too often fail to practice.) Boies chose litigation as a field because it didn’t require as much reading as corporate law would have. (Still, there’s still plenty to read in litigation.) Interestingly, unlike most lawyers, Bois doesn’t read for pleasure, either, reporting that he only reads about a book a year. Boies learned to compensate for his disadvantage and by doing so, cultivated skills that allowed him to rise to the top of his field.

From the list of questions at the beginning of my review, you can discern some of the other topics Gladwell addresses. Gladwell has mastered this genre. Gladwell, along with Michael Lewis, Daniel Pink, and a few others, has learned how to weave nonfiction narrative into social scientific insights in a manner that is both instructive and entertaining. Gladwell’s counter-intuitive insights and arguments challenge us to consider what things may not work the way that we easily assume they do.

And Now, for the Rest of the Story . . . A Review of Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell

The late radio newscaster and commentator, Paul Harvey, did a bit for while called “The Rest of Story”.  He’d would start of a tale of adversity, come to an opportune moment, and break for a commercial pitch (usually, a cleaner called Bon Ami--emphasis on the first syllable). He’d then return with an announcement (and a voice he could have trademarked), “And now, for the rest of the story!”, wherein he reveals the protagonist’s triumph over the adversity earlier described. Malcolm Gladwell has done something similar in his book, Outliers: The Story of Success. However, unlike Harvey’s tales, it isn’t simply a matter of the hero’s pluck and perseverance, but also of plain ol’ good luck. 

Not that Gladwell diminishes the value of hard work; indeed, it’s the sine quo non of success (see, for example, his discussion of the 10,000-hour rule). Nor does he ignore “talent”, that God-given set of personal characteristics that we receive via our particular gene pool. It’s just that talent along doesn’t tell us much about what distinguishes the pretty good from the exceptional. What distinguishes the exceptional is luck (or in terms from Machiavelli’s melodious Italian, Fortuna). Luck can take the form of extraordinary early access to computers (Bill Gates & Bill Joy); year of birth (highly successful Jewish lawyers in NYC in the 1970s and 1980s), or the color (or even tone) of your skin. This outlook is the anti-Bush, anti-Romney tale. For instance, Jeb Bush speaks of how he overcame obstacles to achieve business success, while Romney touts himself (or did, who cares now?) as a self-made man. Not that either man didn’t work hard, I’m sure that they did, but each received benefits from family and upbringing and wealth that very few Americans could match. They are among the fortunate few, although they steadfastly refuse to acknowledge it (although, except that we may suffer the plague of Jeb, who cares a whit about Mitt Romney anymore?). (Hypothesis: what separates wealthy Dems (e.g., a Ted Kennedy) from Republicans, like a Bush or Romney, is an appreciation of at least ancestors having come up through the ranks and that good fortune has made the difference in their life’s course.) 

Like Gladwell’s other books, he relies on strong academic sources mixed with well-written and structured narratives. Indeed, Gladwell tells one narrative and then alters it with a “and now for the rest of the story” addendum. This way of approaching this topic makes for fun and compelling reading. Gladwell relates how rice paddy agriculture and the Chinese language for numbers can help account for extraordinary mathematical success by students from these Asian cultures and how culture brought from the Scottish highlands by Scotch-Irish settlors in the U.S. South can account for greater violence there, and so on. 

One thing I took away especially is the importance of school: of teachers and resources. Indeed, the whole book screams at us to provide opportunities for persons to realize their potentials in whatever their fields of endeavor or interest. Something as arbitrary as birthdays greatly influence ultimate success in many athletic fields simply because, when size provides an advantage, the older kids enjoy an edge that gets translated into more opportunities for play, which translates into more hours of practice, and . . . well, you get the picture. Scarily, Gladwell suggests that if Canadians changed their hockey league qualifications from yearly breaks to six-month breaks, they’d double the number of first-rate hockey players that they produce. If we as a society should learn anything from this, it’s that opportunity—the ability learn and grow—should serve as one of the highest social values. Sadly, I don’t think that we’re doing this.

A fun and easy read; instructive and ultimately inspiring, I recommend this book. 

Malcolm Gladwell is scheduled to participate in #JLF in 2014.