Shawn wrote about the cult of the modern and designer dog breeds in a recent blog post. I´d like to tack on some similar thoughts. I would call this a counter-post, but ¨contra¨ is more daring.
Everything that´s new is also shallow. Some shallow things become complex things through evolution, but most don´t. We have appetites for both the new/shallow and the old/complex, but too much of one or the other is bad. In the cases of the US and Korea, it´s safe to say that the perceived value of the new/shallow is unsustainably high.
An affinity for the new is coincident with the impulse for differentiation. The more my tastes diverge from the tastes of the past or of my family, the more different I feel as a person. The sense of freedom and independence that comes along with this is good.
But there´s also the fact that human nature doesn´t change. If we get to the point where our consumer choices and personal tastes define us -- and where it becomes impossible to understand people at historical or geographical distance -- then we´re just deluding ourselves into thinking we´re more different than we are. This mindset doesn´t lead to liberation. It leads to atomization and isolation, which are the most un-human of human conditions.
Luana and I were in a 500-year-old town over the weekend. When we arrived on Friday, we didn´t know how to get to the beach, so we started walking. Within five minutes, a couple on the road stopped to offer a ride -- luckily for us, it turned out the beach was 5 kilometers away. The couple showed us around and found us a place to stay. The next night, a lady who worked at the place we were staying found us in town and introduced us to her family, which was everyone. We ran into both of them at the bar in town on Sunday afternoon, where the old folks were playing samba. Sometime in the late afternoon, the young people took over. They played the same music, but without the rust and fog of their predecessors.
I guess my lesson was that people who connect with the past are also naturally more inclined to extend their sympathy in the present. In any event, it´s about overcoming those superficial differences and connecting with the truth, which is that all people are more or less the same.
As for the US, I have to imagine that consumerism and the false idea that every new generation is essentially different will subside. In an honest and transparent system, such ideas have to lose in favor of ones that correspond better to the ways humans behave and feel. We just have to hope that when things change it´ll be in the context of a natural correction rather than a crisis.
Tuesday, 18 December 2007
Thursday, 13 December 2007
the next post
I exaggerated grossly when I said in my last post that I could see the signs of a healthy Brazilian economy all over the place. I have no idea what a healthy economy really means.
I think that what I meant was that I find a lot of people who are living in the moment in Brazil. Living in the moment is the opposite of living in suffering, and it´s the opposite of living in fiction.
To live in the moment, to seize the day, all that stuff is common advice, but it´s also the best advice. Everything that´s good -- art, surprise, feelings -- is in the moment, and everything that´s bad -- especially anxiety and physical pain -- is about fearing the future (in the case of pain, it´s the fear that your body will break), which doesn´t exist, or regretting the past, which also doesn´t exist. Obviously, physical pain is much harder to master than is anxiety.
So my definition of a healthy economy is one where people are able to engage in their lives without thinking too much about the future. Of course, planning is great; it´s obsessing and fantasizing that´s the problem. The future is fictional, and the more we obsess about it, the more we delude ourselves, and the more we commit foolish errors. Let me get to examples.
People pursuing the fantasy of wealth for its own sake end up destroying people on the end of the transactions and creating a toxic business environment. This is my completely naive diagnosis of the American business landscape. Once they get beyond subsistence, the more people or businesses focus on future wealth as a primary goal the less inclined they are to care about present values -- quality, respectful relationships, business as a service to the world rather than a zero-sum game, etc. And sure enough, this kind of thinking leads to deception and lies in exchange for short-term gains, which is what the whole subprime crisis seems to be about.
Organized religion can also be about organized fiction and I don´t need to go into that.
I´m getting tired and this post is way too rambly.
building homes
pride in work
pro-intellectualism
awareness of the world
general aversion to capitalist values -- growth for its own sake
sense of attachment to history, family, and pride in country
I think that what I meant was that I find a lot of people who are living in the moment in Brazil. Living in the moment is the opposite of living in suffering, and it´s the opposite of living in fiction.
To live in the moment, to seize the day, all that stuff is common advice, but it´s also the best advice. Everything that´s good -- art, surprise, feelings -- is in the moment, and everything that´s bad -- especially anxiety and physical pain -- is about fearing the future (in the case of pain, it´s the fear that your body will break), which doesn´t exist, or regretting the past, which also doesn´t exist. Obviously, physical pain is much harder to master than is anxiety.
So my definition of a healthy economy is one where people are able to engage in their lives without thinking too much about the future. Of course, planning is great; it´s obsessing and fantasizing that´s the problem. The future is fictional, and the more we obsess about it, the more we delude ourselves, and the more we commit foolish errors. Let me get to examples.
People pursuing the fantasy of wealth for its own sake end up destroying people on the end of the transactions and creating a toxic business environment. This is my completely naive diagnosis of the American business landscape. Once they get beyond subsistence, the more people or businesses focus on future wealth as a primary goal the less inclined they are to care about present values -- quality, respectful relationships, business as a service to the world rather than a zero-sum game, etc. And sure enough, this kind of thinking leads to deception and lies in exchange for short-term gains, which is what the whole subprime crisis seems to be about.
Organized religion can also be about organized fiction and I don´t need to go into that.
I´m getting tired and this post is way too rambly.
building homes
pride in work
pro-intellectualism
awareness of the world
general aversion to capitalist values -- growth for its own sake
sense of attachment to history, family, and pride in country
Wednesday, 12 December 2007
just to take up space
i felt bad that i only had one post in november, so i´m just writing to take up space so i can say i did more than one in december.
the dollar fell again relative to the brazilian real -- it´s at 1.75 reais per dollar. i see the signs of a stable and growing brazil all over the place, but maybe i´ll get into that in the next post.
the dollar fell again relative to the brazilian real -- it´s at 1.75 reais per dollar. i see the signs of a stable and growing brazil all over the place, but maybe i´ll get into that in the next post.
Monday, 3 December 2007
consumer reports
A few weeks ago, I read a really interesting book about Toyota and the policies behind its reputation for excellence and dominance of the auto market. I had bought the book for a dollar on clearance at Borders, a few days after one of my first posts about how the decline of US auto manufacturing was worrisome to me.
-- 30 minute interruption because a guy randomly walks in and asks me to do a computerized drawing of a construction plan ... what the hell, i accede --
This book -- The Elegant Solution by Matthew May -- talks about how, from the start, quality was never a question at Toyota. A basic principle from the inception of the company was that good business is about maximizing quality and minimizing cost. Notice how quality is the goal, not revenue -- though the implication is that rational people will always buy high-quality stuff for a good price. Quality is sustainable and attainable, and it adds value to the world. Maximizing revenue without attention to quality, on the other hand, is evil. It´s all about cutting corners and being manipulative, and it eventually burns out and hurts everyone, just like GM and Chrysler and subprime loans have.
In the book, May invites readers to take Totoya´s philosophy into their own places of work. As a starter, he says we should think about how a job isn´t just a job, but is something that adds value to the world. If we want to take pride in our work, we should start out by reminding ourselves of its positive benefit on the world. As I read this, I stopped to think about whether this could really apply to all jobs. In the end, pretty much any job I could think of provided a worthy service to the world. Except advertising.
I remember when, in the last year of high school, my good friend Max told me he was thinking about studying advertising. To be a good advertiser, he told me, you have to be creative and sharp and you have to have a good understanding of American demographics and tastes. This is all true, I replied, and I had no doubt that some of the funniest and most creative Americans work in advertising. But, I also reminded Max, advertising is fundamentally about tricking people. It´s about fooling them to buy certain products against their independent judgment. What could be more degrading? Max agreed -- he´s doing civil engineering now.
Luana is a huge fan of this Japanese snack food company called Yoki. I think they´re the Japanese equivalent of Frito-Lay. As we were munching on surprisingly addictive ham-flavored corn shells -- enriched with 10 vitamins! -- I told her how nice it was to be able to open up a bag and see it completely full. Opening bags of junk food in the US -- rarely more a third full -- can be so depressing. But it´s exactly what you come to expect when you know that Frito-Lay is pumping its money into ads, manipulating the American consumer to crave a decidedly bad product. And if Frito cuts prices by putting less food in the same bag, we know the competitors are going to be screwed if they don´t do the same. If a competitor put more food in the same bag for a slightly higher price, Americans wouldn´t have the willpower to do the math and determine the smartest buy. (Grocery stores do a great service by calculating price-per-ounce ratios, but snack bags from vending machines and counter lines fall outside of this system).
As I told Luana about this frustrating state of affairs, she reminded me that if advertising is evil, it is a necessary evil. How else could people learn about new products? My response that word-of-mouth and impartial consumer reports are sufficient sounded characteristically naive. But then again, I wondered, doesn´t the internet make reliable and effective consumer reports laughably easy? There are already tons of smart consumers who turn to internet for product reviews. If there were just one centralized, user-friendly site dedicated entirely to consumer reports, I imagine that we´d have a stronger shield against advertisement.
Web advertisement is much simpler and much less manipulative because it just places product links in places where people are likely to find them helpful. When Google becomes the epicenter of all our media, I think we´ll all be refreshed to encouter this less intrusive kind of advertising in our lives. As in other parts of the world, manipulative advertising -- especially in politics -- will be viewed as an insult to intelligence.
No major updates from Brazil. Things are the same. I skimmed through Antonio Damasio´s Descartes´Error (much of which I read in college) last week and now I´m reading Peter Brown´s The Rise of Western Christendom. See everybody in three weeks!
-- 30 minute interruption because a guy randomly walks in and asks me to do a computerized drawing of a construction plan ... what the hell, i accede --
This book -- The Elegant Solution by Matthew May -- talks about how, from the start, quality was never a question at Toyota. A basic principle from the inception of the company was that good business is about maximizing quality and minimizing cost. Notice how quality is the goal, not revenue -- though the implication is that rational people will always buy high-quality stuff for a good price. Quality is sustainable and attainable, and it adds value to the world. Maximizing revenue without attention to quality, on the other hand, is evil. It´s all about cutting corners and being manipulative, and it eventually burns out and hurts everyone, just like GM and Chrysler and subprime loans have.
In the book, May invites readers to take Totoya´s philosophy into their own places of work. As a starter, he says we should think about how a job isn´t just a job, but is something that adds value to the world. If we want to take pride in our work, we should start out by reminding ourselves of its positive benefit on the world. As I read this, I stopped to think about whether this could really apply to all jobs. In the end, pretty much any job I could think of provided a worthy service to the world. Except advertising.
I remember when, in the last year of high school, my good friend Max told me he was thinking about studying advertising. To be a good advertiser, he told me, you have to be creative and sharp and you have to have a good understanding of American demographics and tastes. This is all true, I replied, and I had no doubt that some of the funniest and most creative Americans work in advertising. But, I also reminded Max, advertising is fundamentally about tricking people. It´s about fooling them to buy certain products against their independent judgment. What could be more degrading? Max agreed -- he´s doing civil engineering now.
Luana is a huge fan of this Japanese snack food company called Yoki. I think they´re the Japanese equivalent of Frito-Lay. As we were munching on surprisingly addictive ham-flavored corn shells -- enriched with 10 vitamins! -- I told her how nice it was to be able to open up a bag and see it completely full. Opening bags of junk food in the US -- rarely more a third full -- can be so depressing. But it´s exactly what you come to expect when you know that Frito-Lay is pumping its money into ads, manipulating the American consumer to crave a decidedly bad product. And if Frito cuts prices by putting less food in the same bag, we know the competitors are going to be screwed if they don´t do the same. If a competitor put more food in the same bag for a slightly higher price, Americans wouldn´t have the willpower to do the math and determine the smartest buy. (Grocery stores do a great service by calculating price-per-ounce ratios, but snack bags from vending machines and counter lines fall outside of this system).
As I told Luana about this frustrating state of affairs, she reminded me that if advertising is evil, it is a necessary evil. How else could people learn about new products? My response that word-of-mouth and impartial consumer reports are sufficient sounded characteristically naive. But then again, I wondered, doesn´t the internet make reliable and effective consumer reports laughably easy? There are already tons of smart consumers who turn to internet for product reviews. If there were just one centralized, user-friendly site dedicated entirely to consumer reports, I imagine that we´d have a stronger shield against advertisement.
Web advertisement is much simpler and much less manipulative because it just places product links in places where people are likely to find them helpful. When Google becomes the epicenter of all our media, I think we´ll all be refreshed to encouter this less intrusive kind of advertising in our lives. As in other parts of the world, manipulative advertising -- especially in politics -- will be viewed as an insult to intelligence.
No major updates from Brazil. Things are the same. I skimmed through Antonio Damasio´s Descartes´Error (much of which I read in college) last week and now I´m reading Peter Brown´s The Rise of Western Christendom. See everybody in three weeks!
Monday, 12 November 2007
november
No news. Everything´s pretty much the same. I got my tourist visa renewed last weekend, which means I´ll actaully be able to stay in Brazil legally until I go back to the states for Christmas.
I went to church last night with Luana. The husband of the other employee here at school is the pastor of the Presbyterian church. We´d agreed to go a couple weeks ago but then ditched, so it was harder to dodge the second invite.
I guess most of the things I´ve been thinking about have to do with trying to observe things without attaching words or concepts to them, so I have a tough time putting the church experience into words. But all in all, it was nice to step in to a room where everyone was loved and accepted on the basis of their mere shared humanity. It´s so important to remember that all of our instincts for physical aggression and competition via hatred are pretty useless in a safe world. It´s actually okay -- and advantageous -- to accept everyone as family, or as Peter Singer puts it, to open up our circles of ethical consideration to the world. Sorry about the terrible writing style.
I went to church last night with Luana. The husband of the other employee here at school is the pastor of the Presbyterian church. We´d agreed to go a couple weeks ago but then ditched, so it was harder to dodge the second invite.
I guess most of the things I´ve been thinking about have to do with trying to observe things without attaching words or concepts to them, so I have a tough time putting the church experience into words. But all in all, it was nice to step in to a room where everyone was loved and accepted on the basis of their mere shared humanity. It´s so important to remember that all of our instincts for physical aggression and competition via hatred are pretty useless in a safe world. It´s actually okay -- and advantageous -- to accept everyone as family, or as Peter Singer puts it, to open up our circles of ethical consideration to the world. Sorry about the terrible writing style.
Thursday, 18 October 2007
bored
i´m alone and there´s not much to do here, so i´m throwing away my reais in the internet cafes.
i´ve never been more convinced, after reading schlesinger´s essay on the topic and evaluating the current disgrace in the white house, that the office of the vice president should be abolished.
it also interesting to put the current situation in context and realize how conservative our government has been since kennedy. there actually hasn´t been a public-minded democrat since then. in the profile on justice john paul stevens in the current nyt magazine, he made the comment that every justice appointed since him (which happened in 1975) has been progressively more conservative, with the exception of ginsberg, i think.
i think the next discussion topic will be about trying to understand why this conservative period has lasted so long, appearing to break the 30-year rhythm that´s been more or less constant since the eighteenth century.
i´ve never been more convinced, after reading schlesinger´s essay on the topic and evaluating the current disgrace in the white house, that the office of the vice president should be abolished.
it also interesting to put the current situation in context and realize how conservative our government has been since kennedy. there actually hasn´t been a public-minded democrat since then. in the profile on justice john paul stevens in the current nyt magazine, he made the comment that every justice appointed since him (which happened in 1975) has been progressively more conservative, with the exception of ginsberg, i think.
i think the next discussion topic will be about trying to understand why this conservative period has lasted so long, appearing to break the 30-year rhythm that´s been more or less constant since the eighteenth century.
Sunday, 14 October 2007
to sao paulo and back
Luana went to Sao Paulo last Monday, and I left Tuesday and got back tonight. It´s about 22 hours by bus, but the time passes remarkably quickly when you´re a complete poindexter and you´re reading Arthur Schlesinger´s Cycles of American History.
I was thinking about the relationship between intellect and action on the ride to Sao Paulo. I´ve always felt san impulse to retain critical distance and skepticism -- and along with it, a deep uncertainty about everything. And uncertainty is the cause of stifling indecision. I was thinking about how curiosity leads to uncertainty which leads to indecision, and the metaphor occured to me -- being in eucalyptus farmland -- of the intellect as a tree. Damn that sounds lame.
Trees are useful, but they take a long time to grow. They´re also nice to admire and enjoy. Some trees we chop down and use to make paper and houses, and others we leave alone for their own sake. Similarly, our intellectual growth is slow, and usually pursued for pragmatic ends -- to acquire useful knowledge -- and at times as an end on its own. Making a decision based on our knowledge of a situation is like cutting down a tree. It´s acknowledging that the suspension of skepticism and the possibility of false certainty -- preventing the tree from growing -- are worth the practical benefit of avoiding permanent indecision -- the value of a tree for wood. Allowing all the trees in the intellectual forest to grow permanently, as Pragmatism reminds us, will keep us from heat and shelter.
But cutting down a tree can also be productive. When we dissect a dead tree we can better understand living ones, just as making decisions helps us revisit our understanding of ourselves and our world. There´s significant value in both cutting trees and letting a few patches grow forever and undisturbed. Similarly, it´s important to retain deep and ultimate curiosity and uncertainty, while making decisions on a daily basis that require a degree of certainty. I get afraid that part of being a responsible adult is leveling the entire forest.
I like the Buddhist conception of conventional truth versus ultimate truth, which parellels the paradox of the scientific method that produces very useful laws and models while never being able to definitively prove any of them. Thinking of personal truth as trees is a good way for me to model this. I guess the task is to keep from picking the apples from -- not to mention killing -- the oldest and most pristine trees in the deepest part of the forest.
Luana´s still in Sao Paulo so I´m alone for this week. That means a lot of quiet time and a lot of eggs.
I was thinking about the relationship between intellect and action on the ride to Sao Paulo. I´ve always felt san impulse to retain critical distance and skepticism -- and along with it, a deep uncertainty about everything. And uncertainty is the cause of stifling indecision. I was thinking about how curiosity leads to uncertainty which leads to indecision, and the metaphor occured to me -- being in eucalyptus farmland -- of the intellect as a tree. Damn that sounds lame.
Trees are useful, but they take a long time to grow. They´re also nice to admire and enjoy. Some trees we chop down and use to make paper and houses, and others we leave alone for their own sake. Similarly, our intellectual growth is slow, and usually pursued for pragmatic ends -- to acquire useful knowledge -- and at times as an end on its own. Making a decision based on our knowledge of a situation is like cutting down a tree. It´s acknowledging that the suspension of skepticism and the possibility of false certainty -- preventing the tree from growing -- are worth the practical benefit of avoiding permanent indecision -- the value of a tree for wood. Allowing all the trees in the intellectual forest to grow permanently, as Pragmatism reminds us, will keep us from heat and shelter.
But cutting down a tree can also be productive. When we dissect a dead tree we can better understand living ones, just as making decisions helps us revisit our understanding of ourselves and our world. There´s significant value in both cutting trees and letting a few patches grow forever and undisturbed. Similarly, it´s important to retain deep and ultimate curiosity and uncertainty, while making decisions on a daily basis that require a degree of certainty. I get afraid that part of being a responsible adult is leveling the entire forest.
I like the Buddhist conception of conventional truth versus ultimate truth, which parellels the paradox of the scientific method that produces very useful laws and models while never being able to definitively prove any of them. Thinking of personal truth as trees is a good way for me to model this. I guess the task is to keep from picking the apples from -- not to mention killing -- the oldest and most pristine trees in the deepest part of the forest.
Luana´s still in Sao Paulo so I´m alone for this week. That means a lot of quiet time and a lot of eggs.
Tuesday, 2 October 2007
trying to put some thoughts together
For a long time I've had the notion that the world is a thing that can -- and must -- be forcibly improved by educated humans. I was going to try to write a formal essay about why that whole notion is misguided, but I'm in an uncomfortable molting phase right now and don't really have the clarity to do that.
My major observation right now is that academic reading and writing can introduce a lot of abstractions. The good side of abstractions is that they are (1) rewarding because they're perfectly rational in a way that nothing in our non-linguistic/concrete world is and (2) helpful because they allow us to model the world so we can manipulate it. Economic and scientific models allow us to create the technology and institutions that give people more of what they want.
The bad side of abstractions is that they also create new desires that can never be fulfilled. We have words like God, heaven, spirit, consciousness, and progress that don't actually mean anything useful, but people spend their whole lives thinking and acting like they have to figure them out. And when we -- and by this, I'm thinking especially about intellectuals or educated people -- get used to abstraction, it gets really addicting. Then we start applying analyses and generalizations to things that don't merit them. This results in nonsense phrases like "making the world a better place," which presupposes the world is a single entity that fluctuates in moral status depending upon our piety. I agree that countries can become more just, that economies can provide people with more of what they want, and then health care can decrease debilitation and increase freedom (and they will continue doing so, I have no doubt), but none of these guarantees that world is heading closer to or farther from perfection. People can get better -- by obeying the Golden Rule more faithfully -- but that's it.
Steven Pinker's analysis of politics in The Blank Slate helped me a lot to understand that there is no such thing as "the world." In his brilliant dissection of modernism, he showed how recent political ideology, social theory, and art theory are anti-scientific: they are based on assumptions about how a culture or government can create and recreate human nature, when the data shows otherwise. All of the most important patterns of our behavior are already in our genes and they all have evolutionary explanations. The job of government is to administer justice, not to create utopias. And again, my best notion of justice right now is the power to give people what they want, and enforcing the Golden Rule by means of inalienable rights.
Part of my problem with Thomas Friedman -- as much as I found The Lexus and the Olive Tree to be informative and engaging -- was that he tended to conflate economic development with justice. In other words, he tended to view getting wealthy as an end itself for countries, instead of as a means to justice. Rich countries are also naturally more free and have more resources to devote to health care, so they are by rule generally more just. But there's also this big problem, which is the "hedonic treadmill" effect: rising means create rising expectations. Being richer gives people lots of choices which can increase anxiety instead of decrease it: the paradox of choice. Furthermore, when people are more anxious and less sure of themselves, being good -- obeying the Golden Rule -- gets harder. When people don't know what they want any more, then they get even more confused when it comes to other people. Thus, a country can get less just and its citizens less moral if, in the process of getting richer, the people start wanting more things that they don't have and can't buy.
The tendency to view wealth as an end in itself is the most frustrating characteristics of people who study economics and are in business. The lesson from the Cold War, as both Friedman and Pinker pointed out, is that capitalism undoubtedly beats communism. But only Pinker understood the broader lesson: science beats ideology. Ideology is absolute certainty, and science is the opposite. Capitalism is not an ideology as much as a scientific model based on generally accurate models of human interaction. But as our understanding of human interaction changes, so does capitalism. Thus, a bunch of new economic models are developed in coordination with psychological research. On the other hand, communism was based on very bad models of human interaction and human nature and that's why it couldn't last.
Anyway, the reasoning that greed is good for everyone, and furthermore, that wealth is an end in itself, is a misinterpretation of capitalism as ideology. Again, real capitalism has nothing to do with what's good and what's not. It's just a model that often -- but not always -- helps people to get what they want. So, why do people tend to view wealth as an end and take capitalism as ideology? After all, most people understand that money is just numbers and few are truly rapacious. But it's what money can buy that matters: health, security, and to a large extent, the conditions favorable for happiness. Psychology research shows, though, that this is only true to a certain extent. Once people get these basics, there's no guarantee that more money buys more happiness. My guess is that those who take capitalism as ideology and are excited about the world's economic and technological development have some kind of utopia or armageddon scenario in mind. Once all the US solves its inequality problems, and all the countries get to be like the US, something big and important will happen and our lives will get better. Human nature will evolve and everyone will live in bliss. And this is exactly the kind of thinking that Pinker so forcefully discredited in his book.
To be fair, I'm also excited about the world's economic development because there are so many people in the developing world experiencing a degree of suffering I'd never wish upon myself. But I also don't think that my own life or country will necessarily be better off for it. My own life will be better if the proportotion of things I have to things I want -- material things hopefully comprise only a small subset of this -- is higher than it is today. Today, though, it's pretty high, so I'm not expecting it to improve. The whole task of progress in life is not to get this ratio higher and higher, but to try to keep it where it is.
Summary: Economic progress is making people more free and helping governments be more just, and that's good. But there's no guarantee that this will continue forever and there's plenty of reasons to believe that it could backfire. People are only good to the extent that they live by the Golden Rule. Economic cooperation and good government promotes goodness, but it certainly doesn't guarantee it. Whether people adopt the Golden Rule probably depends on how much they're exposed to it, so if we want to make other people better we must live by it. In this sense, being good and making the world better are the same thing. We can make personal progress by learning to understand ourselves and others more, so we can more accurately interpret the Golden Rule. What is understanding ourselves? It's about clarifying what we want and figuring how to get it or to abandon the desire.
You can never make the world a better place, you can only be a good person. Progress is personal.
Second Summary. Things to live by:
1. The negative golden rule -- don't do to others what you wouldn't wish upon yourself
2. The present moment is the only thing that exists
My major observation right now is that academic reading and writing can introduce a lot of abstractions. The good side of abstractions is that they are (1) rewarding because they're perfectly rational in a way that nothing in our non-linguistic/concrete world is and (2) helpful because they allow us to model the world so we can manipulate it. Economic and scientific models allow us to create the technology and institutions that give people more of what they want.
The bad side of abstractions is that they also create new desires that can never be fulfilled. We have words like God, heaven, spirit, consciousness, and progress that don't actually mean anything useful, but people spend their whole lives thinking and acting like they have to figure them out. And when we -- and by this, I'm thinking especially about intellectuals or educated people -- get used to abstraction, it gets really addicting. Then we start applying analyses and generalizations to things that don't merit them. This results in nonsense phrases like "making the world a better place," which presupposes the world is a single entity that fluctuates in moral status depending upon our piety. I agree that countries can become more just, that economies can provide people with more of what they want, and then health care can decrease debilitation and increase freedom (and they will continue doing so, I have no doubt), but none of these guarantees that world is heading closer to or farther from perfection. People can get better -- by obeying the Golden Rule more faithfully -- but that's it.
Steven Pinker's analysis of politics in The Blank Slate helped me a lot to understand that there is no such thing as "the world." In his brilliant dissection of modernism, he showed how recent political ideology, social theory, and art theory are anti-scientific: they are based on assumptions about how a culture or government can create and recreate human nature, when the data shows otherwise. All of the most important patterns of our behavior are already in our genes and they all have evolutionary explanations. The job of government is to administer justice, not to create utopias. And again, my best notion of justice right now is the power to give people what they want, and enforcing the Golden Rule by means of inalienable rights.
Part of my problem with Thomas Friedman -- as much as I found The Lexus and the Olive Tree to be informative and engaging -- was that he tended to conflate economic development with justice. In other words, he tended to view getting wealthy as an end itself for countries, instead of as a means to justice. Rich countries are also naturally more free and have more resources to devote to health care, so they are by rule generally more just. But there's also this big problem, which is the "hedonic treadmill" effect: rising means create rising expectations. Being richer gives people lots of choices which can increase anxiety instead of decrease it: the paradox of choice. Furthermore, when people are more anxious and less sure of themselves, being good -- obeying the Golden Rule -- gets harder. When people don't know what they want any more, then they get even more confused when it comes to other people. Thus, a country can get less just and its citizens less moral if, in the process of getting richer, the people start wanting more things that they don't have and can't buy.
The tendency to view wealth as an end in itself is the most frustrating characteristics of people who study economics and are in business. The lesson from the Cold War, as both Friedman and Pinker pointed out, is that capitalism undoubtedly beats communism. But only Pinker understood the broader lesson: science beats ideology. Ideology is absolute certainty, and science is the opposite. Capitalism is not an ideology as much as a scientific model based on generally accurate models of human interaction. But as our understanding of human interaction changes, so does capitalism. Thus, a bunch of new economic models are developed in coordination with psychological research. On the other hand, communism was based on very bad models of human interaction and human nature and that's why it couldn't last.
Anyway, the reasoning that greed is good for everyone, and furthermore, that wealth is an end in itself, is a misinterpretation of capitalism as ideology. Again, real capitalism has nothing to do with what's good and what's not. It's just a model that often -- but not always -- helps people to get what they want. So, why do people tend to view wealth as an end and take capitalism as ideology? After all, most people understand that money is just numbers and few are truly rapacious. But it's what money can buy that matters: health, security, and to a large extent, the conditions favorable for happiness. Psychology research shows, though, that this is only true to a certain extent. Once people get these basics, there's no guarantee that more money buys more happiness. My guess is that those who take capitalism as ideology and are excited about the world's economic and technological development have some kind of utopia or armageddon scenario in mind. Once all the US solves its inequality problems, and all the countries get to be like the US, something big and important will happen and our lives will get better. Human nature will evolve and everyone will live in bliss. And this is exactly the kind of thinking that Pinker so forcefully discredited in his book.
To be fair, I'm also excited about the world's economic development because there are so many people in the developing world experiencing a degree of suffering I'd never wish upon myself. But I also don't think that my own life or country will necessarily be better off for it. My own life will be better if the proportotion of things I have to things I want -- material things hopefully comprise only a small subset of this -- is higher than it is today. Today, though, it's pretty high, so I'm not expecting it to improve. The whole task of progress in life is not to get this ratio higher and higher, but to try to keep it where it is.
Summary: Economic progress is making people more free and helping governments be more just, and that's good. But there's no guarantee that this will continue forever and there's plenty of reasons to believe that it could backfire. People are only good to the extent that they live by the Golden Rule. Economic cooperation and good government promotes goodness, but it certainly doesn't guarantee it. Whether people adopt the Golden Rule probably depends on how much they're exposed to it, so if we want to make other people better we must live by it. In this sense, being good and making the world better are the same thing. We can make personal progress by learning to understand ourselves and others more, so we can more accurately interpret the Golden Rule. What is understanding ourselves? It's about clarifying what we want and figuring how to get it or to abandon the desire.
You can never make the world a better place, you can only be a good person. Progress is personal.
Second Summary. Things to live by:
1. The negative golden rule -- don't do to others what you wouldn't wish upon yourself
2. The present moment is the only thing that exists
Saturday, 29 September 2007
my phone number and slow essay update
we got a new sim card for luana´s cell phone, and it doesn´t charge us for receiving calls, so feel free to call any time! there are really decent rates available through the third-party service NobelCom. it´s just nobelcom.com
011 (international prefix calling from the US) + 55 (brazil country code) + 73 (area code) + 91325752 (phone number) =
011-55-73-9132-5752
011 (international prefix calling from the US) + 55 (brazil country code) + 73 (area code) + 91325752 (phone number) =
011-55-73-9132-5752
Tuesday, 18 September 2007
life summary blus a brainstorm
Obviously, this is long, long, long, long overdue. In the past week, I've been getting that sinking feeling that my life will cease to be blog-worthy if I stop blogging about it. The only way to escape from that vicious cycle is to first pretend that my life is blog-worthy, then hope the prophesy fulfills itself. This verbose writing style is already annoying ...
Bloggable items:
1. Trip to Prado
2. Lifestyle -My schedule -Luana's schedule -Food -Video games -Music
3. Neighborhood kids
4. Work updates
5. Book reviews
The book reviews is what I really want to do, so I might have to give the abridged versions of the other items.
1. Trip to Prado
Luana and I went to the beach town of Prado to celebrate the two-year anniversary of the day when Luana attended to me at Ropahrara Exotic Clothing. We wanted to leave on the 6:10am bus on a Friday morning (I don't work on Fridays) but were derailed by a surprise visit from the Student Center owners. The bad news from above was that they didn't seem willing to renew the internet subscription at the school, leaving me permanently consigned to pay-as-you-go internet service. The good was that they had come down with an extra mirror, which they donated to our room.
We ended up leaving on Friday afternoon and arriving in Prado a few hours later. Since it's winter here and winter is low season, there was nobody in town and most of the bed & breakfasts were closed. We finally found a really gorgeous and not too expensive one right on the beach and enjoyed our first moqueca (local fish stew) and our first night of air conditioning since I arrived in Brazil. The next day was partially cloudy and the beach was basically deserted, but of course, that really didn't matter. We amused ourselves by trying to lure these bright red crabs out of the mud with junk food (see pictures). There was a great moment when one crab scurried across the marsh with a Frito in each of his claws, but I failed to capture it on camera.
When I went to pay for the bed & breakfast on Sunday, the credit card reader wasn't working. The owner drove me to the only bank in town to withdraw cash, and sure enough, the only ATM that reads MasterCard at the bank was also not working. This led to a truly awkward moment when I returned to the owner's car:
Me: So, are there any other banks in town by any chance?
Owner: No, just Banco do Brasil.
Me: Because none of the ATMs would read my card.
Owner: Now what?
Me: Um ... what do you think?
[long pause]
We eventually arranged for me to give him all my cash and for him to give me his bank account number so I could wire him the balance of the payment. It turned out that someone he knew was driving all the way back to where we were going, so I didn't even need to hold onto cash for the bus ride home. We went back to the bed & breakfast and settled things at the front desk, and when we were ready to go and I asked the owner about riding shotgun with his friend, the owner said that the guy had already left, which lead to another awkward moment:
Me: So, you were saying something about a guy who could give us a ride?
Owner: Oh yeah, but he just left as we were pulling in.
Me: Uh ... I know this is annoying, but I guess now I need some money back to pay for the bus.[pause as the owner gets annoyed and grumbles]
Then he gave me back 50 reais and I adjusted my debt on our handwritten receipt that included his bank account number. At about that time, Luana realized that her bank card would work at the ATM, which was a relief to everyone. The owner drove us back to the bank, with our bags, and sure enough, Luana was able to take out the balance of what we owed and we officially settled the deal. The owner took us to the bus terminal and we got in just as our bus was pulling out.
The next bus didn't leave for another five hours or something, but it was sunny so we didn't really care. We set up shop at a park nearby and relaxed, Luana practicing juggling a soccer ball and me finishing the Steven Pinker book. Even on a Sunday, the whole town was completely empty without tourists. When we stopped to eat lunch, the restaurant staff served us and then continued to do their off-season chores. So when we went to pay, there was actually nobody around except for an old blind guy who couldn't help us find the staff. I found the hostess doing something else down the street, paid her on the spot, and then we rushed to catch our bus and that was the end of the excursion.
2. Lifestyle
MY SCHEDULE
Today was a more or less typical day:
8:00 iPod alarm sounds with a playlist from a Belltower Stein Club
8:54 I reluctantly get up, get dressed, and grab a piece of bread
8:57 I leave for school
9:04 I arrive at school to find that my 9:00 student has rescheduled for Wednesday. I make an immediate 180-degree turn back home
9:20 I go back to sleep
11:00 I get up and do lazy stuff and then play Luana in PlayStation soccer. A kid from across the street wants to make some money and tells another kid to tell us that he's willing to offer his services to clean our floor and bathroom. Luana semi-seriously jokes that if we paid him, she'd no longer have anything to do.
2:00 We go out for lunch at our favorite restaurant, a pay-by-the-kilo buffet, and eat many barbequed chicken hearts
3:00 I have a beginner class with the 12-year-olds 4
:00 Intermediate class with three women professionals (an agricultural engineer, an architect, and one other job that I forget)
5:45 Beginner class with five girls who just finished or are finishing high school
7:15 Beginner class with mixed adults and adolescents, which turns out to be fruitfully diverse. They're the easiest class by far.
8:30 Advanced class with two middle-aged professional men (a lawyer and a businessman) 9:40 I pack up and buy some eggs for breakfast on the way home. Luana's in bed playing video games already.
11:48 Current moment
LUANA'S SCHEDULE
Luana's schedule is a lot more flexible because she doesn't work. She splits her time between doing random fun stuff (playing guitar and violing, drawing, playing video games), studying English, and doing chores. Washing clothes by hand is a pretty serious time-consumer, and she also cooks a few meals a week, and this is frequently done to the tune of the J-pop music she plays from her iPod. She's also kept busy by the stray kids and animals that drop by. When I asked her what else I should write about her lifestyle, she also wanted me to say that she's studying medicine and alchemy (this is while she plays her goofy alchemy-themed PlayStation RPG). Her lifestyle is undeniably domestic, but it's pretty much mutually agreeable so far.
FOOD
Despite the substantial hindrance of having no refrigerator, we manage to have most meals in our room. We go out for meals probably four or five times a week. Our diet consists of a lot of eggs, a lot of rice, some Ramen, some pasta, and a lot of meats and vegetables sauteed with garlic and onions; all in all, it's completely satisfying. Luana does more cooking than me on average, but I've learned how to chop food and make rice, and I also made one real meal, which was fried fish with rice and fresh tomato sauce. I tend to make eggs in the morning, and Luana tends to make stuff at night. She's got more experience and is a far superior chef, but we're both really learning. I got savvy about using my long guitar fingernails to cut garlic and haven't been able to get the smell off my hands for a week.
VIDEO GAMES
Needless to say, videogames are our way out -- out of our little town, out of our reality, and out of the physical and mental strains of living in a developing country. Perhaps video games seem less indulgent here because everyday life has fewer artifial layers as it is. Anyway, Luana is a master a Star Sweep -- a sophisticated variation on the Tetris theme -- and I'm pretty good at soccer. We're each training in the other's game of specialty but we both have a long way to go until Star Sweep or soccer become competitive.
We've only had the PlayStation up and running for just over a week. When we first arrived, the Student Center had donated a TV for us to use in our room, and I bought a new Playstation within four days of arriving. When we hooked it up, though, it only showed up in black and white, even thought the TV normally displayed colors. We messed around with the settings and nothing fixed the problem, so I gave up and started playing my Final Fantasy in black and white. But when I tried to save, the memory card started acting fucked up and overwrote and deleted some of my saved files. Then Luana tried to play her games, but her games are all pirated and our PlayStation hadn't yet been altered to read pirated games. Requiring the service of a serious game dealer to hack our PlayStation and sell us a new memory card, we went to a local game parlor and got the number of the guy in the nearby big city (Teixeira) who does all the video game pirating.
We eventually arranged to meet up with the guy in Teixeira, who sold us some more pirated games, a pirated controller, some memory cards, and got his buddy to hack our PlayStation. We told him about the black-and-white problem, and he told us that it was a result of our TV being really old and not having any modern video standards installed. Luckily, he dug an ancient electronics piece out of his bag that was designed to remedy the problem. Great success!
I had to stay in Teixeira to observe classes, but Luana went home. Then I missed my bus and got stranded in the bus terminal and had to catch a later bus, which was remarkable only in the presence of an ederly couple across the aisle from me, the male of whom was blasting static from his transistor radio (we were traveling across farmland and dead zones with no radio reception) for the entire ride. When I finally made it back to Itabatan, I ran into Luana in the street. Giddily indignant, she complained that once she had finally hooked up the newly-hacked system and weird electronics converters, the TV actually exploded, smoke and all.
She was on her way to buy a new TV so we could play our PlayStation once and for all. I had to go teach a class, but when I got home, the delivery guys were pulling up with a new 16-inch LG TV. The smoke from the expired TV had cleared, but the acrid smell of the cathode ray tube (or whatever) explosion was still in the air. Since the new TV was installed, our room's energy consumption has spiked, which also hasn't escaped our landlord: he stopped by on Saturday to tell us that we were going to have to pay an extra 20 reais this month to cover unexpected electricity usage.
MUSIC
There's not much live music here, which is a little disappointing since the Bahia state in Brazil is generally known as being at the heart of the African-influenced elements of Brazilian culture. We listen to a lot of different music, thanks to mp3 players and my big external hard drives, and we play our instruments from time to time. Now that I've finished two big books, my next personal task is to spend my free time writing and playing and guitar and take a hiatus from reading.
Finally, I should make it clear that my lifestyle isn't ideal at all. It's bare-bones, and I sincerely miss having a bigger bathroom and a dinner table and refrigerator, not to mention having a movie theater and parks and all the comforts of first-world life. This town is really a dry and lifeless business hub and has no culture or nature to offer, and I'd have no desire to live here for more than a year, especially compared to the many other culturally rich cities in Brazil. I can't wait to get back to the US.
3. Neighborhood kids
It's fun to have six-year-olds who are always in the neighborhood, always playing in the street, and who frequently invite themselves in to chat. Luana gets along with them better than I do, and I'm perceived as something between Mickey Mouse and ET. They're cute, and the way in which they are independent and manage to talk to adults is something I rarely see in the US, though my experience is limited.
4. Work updates
Argh. Teaching is hard and only intermittently gratifying. One problem is attendance. Having to repeat lessons destroys the sense of progress in the classroom. Another problem is the four-year myth: that to learn English, you have to study for four years. You just sign up one day, and as long as you've passed four years of English, you'll end up ready to work in the US. First of all, most adults don't have the stability to study for four consecutive years at the same English school. Also, it tends to lead to the same illusion that college students face: it's finishing and getting the degree (or at Harvard, the worthless foreign language citation) that matters, not the learning that takes place along the way. As a teacher, I'm required to pave through two pages of textbook every class -- one textbook a semester -- to give the illusion of progress. Another problem is that studying for only two hours a week is just too little time to ever build conversational skills. And finally, having 30 hours of teaching a week, with five different private students and seven different classes, means I have to juggle a lot of variables. Only gradually can I settle into a useful rhythm and dynamic with each class. I'm still in the phase of blindly trying lots of things to find what sticks and what ... licks? sucks?
It's telling about how bad the system is that even though this particular school, Student Center, has been around for fifteen years, it only has six intermediate/advanced students who manage to have conversations in English without reverting to Portuguese. And every single one of them learned conversational English somewhere outside of Student Center! Ouch!
The business model of Student Center also leaves a lot of room for creative consulting. In Itabatan, there is a lot of demand for English since there is a lot of international business via the eucalyptus industry. And Student Center and its competitor CCAA, have the market completely cornered, which means they can offer mediocre service and very little accountability without suffering loss of clients. There's a lot of incentive to get new students but very little reason to actually invest in their education, since they'll have to wait four years until they learn English, and by then, they'll all be long gone anyway. To keep new students coming in, Student Center is actually very cheap (under 50 reais a month), but then can't afford internet, and relies on vulnerable American volunteers (I make 400 reais a month) for much of the teaching responsibilities.
Any of you business people out there should make quick work of this case study. Please send suggestions. Here's my current solution.
-Right now, history determines prices and nobody's doing economics, as far as I can tell. All of the school's owners are also English teachers. If the other English school in town is also cheap and bad, then the Student Center has to either be bad and cheaper, or be demonstrably better and a little more expensive. Currently, only a small percentage of the students who enroll even learn conversational English. I wouldn't mind at all if the school raised prices, enrollment thinned out, but the remaining students were more dedicated and the school ended up being able to afford internet access. If even five students a year graduated with English proficiency, this would be a huge boost to the school's reputation and could create more demand and more people would be willing to pay for a good education.
-To solve the scheduling problems, allow students to drop in whenever they want and pay by the hour. Each one can work independently in textbooks, which is helpful for introducing grammar and vocabulary, and then everyone can come together for thirty minutes of every hour to do English-only activities -- listening to music, watching movies, and having conversations. Right now, all the students are stratified by their textbooks. Not only is textbook level a bad indicator of ability, but mixed-ability classrooms could also be mutually beneficial. This way, I could also concentrate my time into more normal nine-to-five blocks instead of having to work really long days with odd gaps in the middle and two-person classes.
5. Book reviews
I really REALLY don't know where to start with doing the book reviews, so I should do some brainstorming.
Pinker's Blank Slate
-work of genius, staggering encyclopedic knowledge and impressive coverage of intellectual landscape-this is the psychology book to end all psychology books. it's every psychologist's dream book. it's covers all the tendrils of psychology with unbelievable eloquence: politics, violence, education, personality, philosophy, child development, and art criticism
-dissects every one of the most controversial topics in social science with such tact that it doesn't seem controversial-view of human nature that is really going to change the way people see themselves
-no utopias, no God, no transcendence, no magical consciousness, no magical free will, no ghost in the machine, just knowing and enjoying our condition as complex animals in the world
-makes all top-down ideology (based on unsupported assumptions about human nature) look ridiculous, wasteful, and unnecessary: Marxism, utopianism, invisible-handism
-strong support for the idea that being moral is just about expanding our natural circle of consideration (which usually is limited to family and friends) to all people
-society's problems are caused by viral ideologies (from above) and misassumptions of human nature and by sociopaths who probably can't be saved (Stalin, Manson, etc.)
-this whole viewpoint is not just correct, it is revolutionarily different from the way almost everyone -- including intellectuals like Friedman and most academics -- sees themselves in the world. while it's right, pinker knows he can't proselytize because he'd come across as a mad scientist. he needs people to stand up and independently support this viewpoint. if they do, politics will never look the same.
My criticisms
-he has a more conservative personality, which means he strongly prefers talking about patterns and mechanisms to enjoying spontaneity. thus he spends more energy making generalizations than pointing out all the rich ways in which people deviate from the norms. there's also the danger of talking about human averages as human truths. he talks about how identical twins are usually very similar, but i'd like to know about cases when they're not at all similar. what would that show us about effects of the environment?
-i originally thought that my luana model would outdo his model, but i seriously misunderestimated the depth of his analysis. he put together the pieces in a more convincing way than I ever could have. i originally was a stronger supporter of connection, but after reading his analysis, a hybrid model makes more sense to me. i'll get into this later...
Thomas Friedman's Lexus and the Olive Tree
-He does a good job of capturing the tone of discussion among the big power players in globalization today, which are many of the same voices i heard at Harvard: bankers, fund managers, smart people in development organizations, and high-level beaurocrats. the problem is he comes across as incredibly arrogant as he tries to dumb down the economics to a fourth-grade level. are any fourth-graders really reading a book like this? -he also has a pretty weak appreciation of history and an insufficiently nuanced explanation of what "progress" and "rising standards of living" -- which is what the free markets are supposed to provide -- really mean. he worships the free market too much and doesn't offer any serious criticisms of when a free market can go wrong and when any hard sacrifices need to be made to restrain it. his lack of intelligent analysis is pretty apparent at the end of the book when he finally lists his first criticisms of the American economic landscape -- the well-known problems in health care, education, social security funding -- without actually acknowledging that they might be endemic to the system. he constantly bashes the Western European "welfare states" without paying any attention whatsoever to lessons that they've learned in developing so-called security nets that might be useful to the US. i'm a big fan of Germany, and i was pretty insulted that Germany was only referenced on a few scattered places, even though it's the biggest economy in europe, it's engaged in globalization, and it has solved a lot of transportation and environmental issues in ways that should embarrass the US. -
i'm in a town right now that is very much typical of an emerging economy (quick growth, international business, no culture or community) and i think i'll offer stories in the future to put a more realistic face on globalization.
Bloggable items:
1. Trip to Prado
2. Lifestyle -My schedule -Luana's schedule -Food -Video games -Music
3. Neighborhood kids
4. Work updates
5. Book reviews
The book reviews is what I really want to do, so I might have to give the abridged versions of the other items.
1. Trip to Prado
Luana and I went to the beach town of Prado to celebrate the two-year anniversary of the day when Luana attended to me at Ropahrara Exotic Clothing. We wanted to leave on the 6:10am bus on a Friday morning (I don't work on Fridays) but were derailed by a surprise visit from the Student Center owners. The bad news from above was that they didn't seem willing to renew the internet subscription at the school, leaving me permanently consigned to pay-as-you-go internet service. The good was that they had come down with an extra mirror, which they donated to our room.
We ended up leaving on Friday afternoon and arriving in Prado a few hours later. Since it's winter here and winter is low season, there was nobody in town and most of the bed & breakfasts were closed. We finally found a really gorgeous and not too expensive one right on the beach and enjoyed our first moqueca (local fish stew) and our first night of air conditioning since I arrived in Brazil. The next day was partially cloudy and the beach was basically deserted, but of course, that really didn't matter. We amused ourselves by trying to lure these bright red crabs out of the mud with junk food (see pictures). There was a great moment when one crab scurried across the marsh with a Frito in each of his claws, but I failed to capture it on camera.
When I went to pay for the bed & breakfast on Sunday, the credit card reader wasn't working. The owner drove me to the only bank in town to withdraw cash, and sure enough, the only ATM that reads MasterCard at the bank was also not working. This led to a truly awkward moment when I returned to the owner's car:
Me: So, are there any other banks in town by any chance?
Owner: No, just Banco do Brasil.
Me: Because none of the ATMs would read my card.
Owner: Now what?
Me: Um ... what do you think?
[long pause]
We eventually arranged for me to give him all my cash and for him to give me his bank account number so I could wire him the balance of the payment. It turned out that someone he knew was driving all the way back to where we were going, so I didn't even need to hold onto cash for the bus ride home. We went back to the bed & breakfast and settled things at the front desk, and when we were ready to go and I asked the owner about riding shotgun with his friend, the owner said that the guy had already left, which lead to another awkward moment:
Me: So, you were saying something about a guy who could give us a ride?
Owner: Oh yeah, but he just left as we were pulling in.
Me: Uh ... I know this is annoying, but I guess now I need some money back to pay for the bus.[pause as the owner gets annoyed and grumbles]
Then he gave me back 50 reais and I adjusted my debt on our handwritten receipt that included his bank account number. At about that time, Luana realized that her bank card would work at the ATM, which was a relief to everyone. The owner drove us back to the bank, with our bags, and sure enough, Luana was able to take out the balance of what we owed and we officially settled the deal. The owner took us to the bus terminal and we got in just as our bus was pulling out.
The next bus didn't leave for another five hours or something, but it was sunny so we didn't really care. We set up shop at a park nearby and relaxed, Luana practicing juggling a soccer ball and me finishing the Steven Pinker book. Even on a Sunday, the whole town was completely empty without tourists. When we stopped to eat lunch, the restaurant staff served us and then continued to do their off-season chores. So when we went to pay, there was actually nobody around except for an old blind guy who couldn't help us find the staff. I found the hostess doing something else down the street, paid her on the spot, and then we rushed to catch our bus and that was the end of the excursion.
2. Lifestyle
MY SCHEDULE
Today was a more or less typical day:
8:00 iPod alarm sounds with a playlist from a Belltower Stein Club
8:54 I reluctantly get up, get dressed, and grab a piece of bread
8:57 I leave for school
9:04 I arrive at school to find that my 9:00 student has rescheduled for Wednesday. I make an immediate 180-degree turn back home
9:20 I go back to sleep
11:00 I get up and do lazy stuff and then play Luana in PlayStation soccer. A kid from across the street wants to make some money and tells another kid to tell us that he's willing to offer his services to clean our floor and bathroom. Luana semi-seriously jokes that if we paid him, she'd no longer have anything to do.
2:00 We go out for lunch at our favorite restaurant, a pay-by-the-kilo buffet, and eat many barbequed chicken hearts
3:00 I have a beginner class with the 12-year-olds 4
:00 Intermediate class with three women professionals (an agricultural engineer, an architect, and one other job that I forget)
5:45 Beginner class with five girls who just finished or are finishing high school
7:15 Beginner class with mixed adults and adolescents, which turns out to be fruitfully diverse. They're the easiest class by far.
8:30 Advanced class with two middle-aged professional men (a lawyer and a businessman) 9:40 I pack up and buy some eggs for breakfast on the way home. Luana's in bed playing video games already.
11:48 Current moment
LUANA'S SCHEDULE
Luana's schedule is a lot more flexible because she doesn't work. She splits her time between doing random fun stuff (playing guitar and violing, drawing, playing video games), studying English, and doing chores. Washing clothes by hand is a pretty serious time-consumer, and she also cooks a few meals a week, and this is frequently done to the tune of the J-pop music she plays from her iPod. She's also kept busy by the stray kids and animals that drop by. When I asked her what else I should write about her lifestyle, she also wanted me to say that she's studying medicine and alchemy (this is while she plays her goofy alchemy-themed PlayStation RPG). Her lifestyle is undeniably domestic, but it's pretty much mutually agreeable so far.
FOOD
Despite the substantial hindrance of having no refrigerator, we manage to have most meals in our room. We go out for meals probably four or five times a week. Our diet consists of a lot of eggs, a lot of rice, some Ramen, some pasta, and a lot of meats and vegetables sauteed with garlic and onions; all in all, it's completely satisfying. Luana does more cooking than me on average, but I've learned how to chop food and make rice, and I also made one real meal, which was fried fish with rice and fresh tomato sauce. I tend to make eggs in the morning, and Luana tends to make stuff at night. She's got more experience and is a far superior chef, but we're both really learning. I got savvy about using my long guitar fingernails to cut garlic and haven't been able to get the smell off my hands for a week.
VIDEO GAMES
Needless to say, videogames are our way out -- out of our little town, out of our reality, and out of the physical and mental strains of living in a developing country. Perhaps video games seem less indulgent here because everyday life has fewer artifial layers as it is. Anyway, Luana is a master a Star Sweep -- a sophisticated variation on the Tetris theme -- and I'm pretty good at soccer. We're each training in the other's game of specialty but we both have a long way to go until Star Sweep or soccer become competitive.
We've only had the PlayStation up and running for just over a week. When we first arrived, the Student Center had donated a TV for us to use in our room, and I bought a new Playstation within four days of arriving. When we hooked it up, though, it only showed up in black and white, even thought the TV normally displayed colors. We messed around with the settings and nothing fixed the problem, so I gave up and started playing my Final Fantasy in black and white. But when I tried to save, the memory card started acting fucked up and overwrote and deleted some of my saved files. Then Luana tried to play her games, but her games are all pirated and our PlayStation hadn't yet been altered to read pirated games. Requiring the service of a serious game dealer to hack our PlayStation and sell us a new memory card, we went to a local game parlor and got the number of the guy in the nearby big city (Teixeira) who does all the video game pirating.
We eventually arranged to meet up with the guy in Teixeira, who sold us some more pirated games, a pirated controller, some memory cards, and got his buddy to hack our PlayStation. We told him about the black-and-white problem, and he told us that it was a result of our TV being really old and not having any modern video standards installed. Luckily, he dug an ancient electronics piece out of his bag that was designed to remedy the problem. Great success!
I had to stay in Teixeira to observe classes, but Luana went home. Then I missed my bus and got stranded in the bus terminal and had to catch a later bus, which was remarkable only in the presence of an ederly couple across the aisle from me, the male of whom was blasting static from his transistor radio (we were traveling across farmland and dead zones with no radio reception) for the entire ride. When I finally made it back to Itabatan, I ran into Luana in the street. Giddily indignant, she complained that once she had finally hooked up the newly-hacked system and weird electronics converters, the TV actually exploded, smoke and all.
She was on her way to buy a new TV so we could play our PlayStation once and for all. I had to go teach a class, but when I got home, the delivery guys were pulling up with a new 16-inch LG TV. The smoke from the expired TV had cleared, but the acrid smell of the cathode ray tube (or whatever) explosion was still in the air. Since the new TV was installed, our room's energy consumption has spiked, which also hasn't escaped our landlord: he stopped by on Saturday to tell us that we were going to have to pay an extra 20 reais this month to cover unexpected electricity usage.
MUSIC
There's not much live music here, which is a little disappointing since the Bahia state in Brazil is generally known as being at the heart of the African-influenced elements of Brazilian culture. We listen to a lot of different music, thanks to mp3 players and my big external hard drives, and we play our instruments from time to time. Now that I've finished two big books, my next personal task is to spend my free time writing and playing and guitar and take a hiatus from reading.
Finally, I should make it clear that my lifestyle isn't ideal at all. It's bare-bones, and I sincerely miss having a bigger bathroom and a dinner table and refrigerator, not to mention having a movie theater and parks and all the comforts of first-world life. This town is really a dry and lifeless business hub and has no culture or nature to offer, and I'd have no desire to live here for more than a year, especially compared to the many other culturally rich cities in Brazil. I can't wait to get back to the US.
3. Neighborhood kids
It's fun to have six-year-olds who are always in the neighborhood, always playing in the street, and who frequently invite themselves in to chat. Luana gets along with them better than I do, and I'm perceived as something between Mickey Mouse and ET. They're cute, and the way in which they are independent and manage to talk to adults is something I rarely see in the US, though my experience is limited.
4. Work updates
Argh. Teaching is hard and only intermittently gratifying. One problem is attendance. Having to repeat lessons destroys the sense of progress in the classroom. Another problem is the four-year myth: that to learn English, you have to study for four years. You just sign up one day, and as long as you've passed four years of English, you'll end up ready to work in the US. First of all, most adults don't have the stability to study for four consecutive years at the same English school. Also, it tends to lead to the same illusion that college students face: it's finishing and getting the degree (or at Harvard, the worthless foreign language citation) that matters, not the learning that takes place along the way. As a teacher, I'm required to pave through two pages of textbook every class -- one textbook a semester -- to give the illusion of progress. Another problem is that studying for only two hours a week is just too little time to ever build conversational skills. And finally, having 30 hours of teaching a week, with five different private students and seven different classes, means I have to juggle a lot of variables. Only gradually can I settle into a useful rhythm and dynamic with each class. I'm still in the phase of blindly trying lots of things to find what sticks and what ... licks? sucks?
It's telling about how bad the system is that even though this particular school, Student Center, has been around for fifteen years, it only has six intermediate/advanced students who manage to have conversations in English without reverting to Portuguese. And every single one of them learned conversational English somewhere outside of Student Center! Ouch!
The business model of Student Center also leaves a lot of room for creative consulting. In Itabatan, there is a lot of demand for English since there is a lot of international business via the eucalyptus industry. And Student Center and its competitor CCAA, have the market completely cornered, which means they can offer mediocre service and very little accountability without suffering loss of clients. There's a lot of incentive to get new students but very little reason to actually invest in their education, since they'll have to wait four years until they learn English, and by then, they'll all be long gone anyway. To keep new students coming in, Student Center is actually very cheap (under 50 reais a month), but then can't afford internet, and relies on vulnerable American volunteers (I make 400 reais a month) for much of the teaching responsibilities.
Any of you business people out there should make quick work of this case study. Please send suggestions. Here's my current solution.
-Right now, history determines prices and nobody's doing economics, as far as I can tell. All of the school's owners are also English teachers. If the other English school in town is also cheap and bad, then the Student Center has to either be bad and cheaper, or be demonstrably better and a little more expensive. Currently, only a small percentage of the students who enroll even learn conversational English. I wouldn't mind at all if the school raised prices, enrollment thinned out, but the remaining students were more dedicated and the school ended up being able to afford internet access. If even five students a year graduated with English proficiency, this would be a huge boost to the school's reputation and could create more demand and more people would be willing to pay for a good education.
-To solve the scheduling problems, allow students to drop in whenever they want and pay by the hour. Each one can work independently in textbooks, which is helpful for introducing grammar and vocabulary, and then everyone can come together for thirty minutes of every hour to do English-only activities -- listening to music, watching movies, and having conversations. Right now, all the students are stratified by their textbooks. Not only is textbook level a bad indicator of ability, but mixed-ability classrooms could also be mutually beneficial. This way, I could also concentrate my time into more normal nine-to-five blocks instead of having to work really long days with odd gaps in the middle and two-person classes.
5. Book reviews
I really REALLY don't know where to start with doing the book reviews, so I should do some brainstorming.
Pinker's Blank Slate
-work of genius, staggering encyclopedic knowledge and impressive coverage of intellectual landscape-this is the psychology book to end all psychology books. it's every psychologist's dream book. it's covers all the tendrils of psychology with unbelievable eloquence: politics, violence, education, personality, philosophy, child development, and art criticism
-dissects every one of the most controversial topics in social science with such tact that it doesn't seem controversial-view of human nature that is really going to change the way people see themselves
-no utopias, no God, no transcendence, no magical consciousness, no magical free will, no ghost in the machine, just knowing and enjoying our condition as complex animals in the world
-makes all top-down ideology (based on unsupported assumptions about human nature) look ridiculous, wasteful, and unnecessary: Marxism, utopianism, invisible-handism
-strong support for the idea that being moral is just about expanding our natural circle of consideration (which usually is limited to family and friends) to all people
-society's problems are caused by viral ideologies (from above) and misassumptions of human nature and by sociopaths who probably can't be saved (Stalin, Manson, etc.)
-this whole viewpoint is not just correct, it is revolutionarily different from the way almost everyone -- including intellectuals like Friedman and most academics -- sees themselves in the world. while it's right, pinker knows he can't proselytize because he'd come across as a mad scientist. he needs people to stand up and independently support this viewpoint. if they do, politics will never look the same.
My criticisms
-he has a more conservative personality, which means he strongly prefers talking about patterns and mechanisms to enjoying spontaneity. thus he spends more energy making generalizations than pointing out all the rich ways in which people deviate from the norms. there's also the danger of talking about human averages as human truths. he talks about how identical twins are usually very similar, but i'd like to know about cases when they're not at all similar. what would that show us about effects of the environment?
-i originally thought that my luana model would outdo his model, but i seriously misunderestimated the depth of his analysis. he put together the pieces in a more convincing way than I ever could have. i originally was a stronger supporter of connection, but after reading his analysis, a hybrid model makes more sense to me. i'll get into this later...
Thomas Friedman's Lexus and the Olive Tree
-He does a good job of capturing the tone of discussion among the big power players in globalization today, which are many of the same voices i heard at Harvard: bankers, fund managers, smart people in development organizations, and high-level beaurocrats. the problem is he comes across as incredibly arrogant as he tries to dumb down the economics to a fourth-grade level. are any fourth-graders really reading a book like this? -he also has a pretty weak appreciation of history and an insufficiently nuanced explanation of what "progress" and "rising standards of living" -- which is what the free markets are supposed to provide -- really mean. he worships the free market too much and doesn't offer any serious criticisms of when a free market can go wrong and when any hard sacrifices need to be made to restrain it. his lack of intelligent analysis is pretty apparent at the end of the book when he finally lists his first criticisms of the American economic landscape -- the well-known problems in health care, education, social security funding -- without actually acknowledging that they might be endemic to the system. he constantly bashes the Western European "welfare states" without paying any attention whatsoever to lessons that they've learned in developing so-called security nets that might be useful to the US. i'm a big fan of Germany, and i was pretty insulted that Germany was only referenced on a few scattered places, even though it's the biggest economy in europe, it's engaged in globalization, and it has solved a lot of transportation and environmental issues in ways that should embarrass the US. -
i'm in a town right now that is very much typical of an emerging economy (quick growth, international business, no culture or community) and i think i'll offer stories in the future to put a more realistic face on globalization.
Thursday, 30 August 2007
You Tube, You Lose
I tried to put the first video clip from Europe on YouTube at an internet cafe yesterday. It was a 33-megabyte clip, and after my hour had expired, only 20 megs got uploaded.
I did some disappointing math: at the rate of about 20 megs an hour, my 20 GIGS of footage will take around a thousand hours to upload. At the rate of about a dollar an hour that I pay for internet access, and using the internet for a maximum of an hour a day, I would eventually get all the footage uploaded in around three years, at the cost of a thousand dollars. Um, no thanks.
Then Luana reminded me that Sean also has the raw footage, plus unlimited high-speed internet access. Problem solved.
Also, if anyone is interested in calling, Luana´s cell phone number is 11-8646-3203. The country code for Brazil is 55. Cheap phone cards can be bought online at www.nobelcom.com.
We´re going to Prado beach over the weekend, where I´ll be finishing the Pinker books (The Blank Slate and The Language Instinct) and preparing the big forthcoming review, in addition to finally eating Moqueca.
I did some disappointing math: at the rate of about 20 megs an hour, my 20 GIGS of footage will take around a thousand hours to upload. At the rate of about a dollar an hour that I pay for internet access, and using the internet for a maximum of an hour a day, I would eventually get all the footage uploaded in around three years, at the cost of a thousand dollars. Um, no thanks.
Then Luana reminded me that Sean also has the raw footage, plus unlimited high-speed internet access. Problem solved.
Also, if anyone is interested in calling, Luana´s cell phone number is 11-8646-3203. The country code for Brazil is 55. Cheap phone cards can be bought online at www.nobelcom.com.
We´re going to Prado beach over the weekend, where I´ll be finishing the Pinker books (The Blank Slate and The Language Instinct) and preparing the big forthcoming review, in addition to finally eating Moqueca.
Wednesday, 29 August 2007
mailing address and pictures delivered as promised!
No big news. Luana and I are going to Prado, a beautiful beach that´s met by a freshwater river (though, are there any salty rivers?) over the weekend. We spent the majority of my five-hour lunch break yesterday watching footage from the Europe trip. I´m starting today to upload the videos to YouTube, but with the lousy internet speed, I´ll be lucky to be able to upload two minutes of video in an hour. And there are like 20 hours of video. So this will be a very slow-revealing series, which I guess will keep fans (by which I mean Mom, Dad, Sean, and Molly) tuned in for a long time. Search on YouTube for muldoon2007 (my username) to get to my channel and all the videos.
ALso, I uploaded some pictures on previous posts and now have my mailing address. It´s
Student Center
Avenida Salvador 1017
Centro Itabatan, Mucuri
Mucuri, BA CEP: 45830000
ALso, I uploaded some pictures on previous posts and now have my mailing address. It´s
Student Center
Avenida Salvador 1017
Centro Itabatan, Mucuri
Mucuri, BA CEP: 45830000
Tuesday, 28 August 2007
August 27 slightly delayed blog
Luana and I spent the weekend at a massive campout for Seventh-Day Adventists. I can't tell whether the experience was more or less weird than it sounds. In any event, there was no doubting that the double mattress in our room was like heaven last night compared to the camping setup. I slept about twelve hours last night and would have missed my first tutee in the morning, had she not arrived forty minutes late. I was nonetheless energized, having eaten my first of undoubtedly many fried egg sandwiches this morning. Each one -- two eggs on fresh French bread -- costs the equivalent of 10 American cents.
Okay, so on my way home from work on Thursday, I ran into Mara, one of my intermediate English students, who was headed to a friend's house nearby. Having left work early due to yet another cancellation, I tagged along and met her group of friends, all of whom are around my age and fun to talk to. After the cursory cultural exchange moment -- Brazilians always ask whether we Americans understand the complexity of the country beyond Ipanema, Carnaval, and the jungle -- they invited me (and Luana as well) to the campout that was going to take place this weekend. They said that it was really more about meeting people than about religion, and since we didn't have any plans for the weekend, it seemed like a good option. Luana wasn't feeling great and thought that Adventists were especially strict, so she didn't really want to go. I'm completely ignorant about Protestant denominations -- are Adventists even Protestant? -- but Mara and her friends were definitely not hard-core conservative types. So I eventually subdued the dissent and convinced Luana that in any case, it would be worth it to get out of Itabatan for a few days.
The bus left from the Adventist church in Itabatan on Friday and made it to Moroba, in the neighboring state of Espirito Santo, in about four hours. Luana and I sat across the aisle from the local pastor, Robismario, who was probably the most immature adult I've ever seen, seriously. When one of the adults was walking through the aisles to give out candy to pious or well-behaved kids, Robismario earnestly waved his hands in the air indicating his interest in the candy and snatched it at the first opportunity. When someone threw candy in an up-for-grabs lottery, Robismario naturally towered over his neighbors and won the candy. He had to be pleaded by the adolescents nearby to share some of it. Oh, and on the way home (I'm getting ahead of myself), Robismario broke tradition and refused to allow the bus to stop for lunch. This led to a near-mutiny, which the more responsible adults quelled by holding a vote. The pro-food coalition naturally won and the adults convinced Robismario to allow the bus to stop. Once at the restaurant, those had voted against stopping -- because they either weren't hungry or wanted to support Robism‡rio -- stayed in the bus. Robismario, of course, was among the first off the bus and in line for food. Ha!
I don't want to make a generalization about Adventists, though. Mara and her friends were a lot of fun and were the leaders of the pro-food coalition. Like they had said, the religious stuff was a very minor part of the whole experience. For them and the hordes of young people at the campout, it was a chance to meet new people outside the bounds of small-town life, and especially to find like-Godded romantic partners. Which brings me to the part about the whole thing that struck me the most about the whole weekend, which was how incredibly good people looked, despite the fact that we were all sleeping in tents on a dirt out in the middle of nowhere. People dressed to impress. I mean, there were showers, but they were in outdoor shacks and without any hot water, yet everyone (except Luana and me, who haven't been weaned off hot water) took showers every morning. Then they went back to their tents, slipped into their Sunday dresses and suits, whipped out the pocket mirrors, hooked up their electric hair straighteners to stray outlets, and went to church. It was really amusing and impressive to see people in high heels hiking across the campground. Being my lazy self, I brought my camera but only took a few lousy pictures.
The religious activities at the event primarily involved half-singing along to the two theme songs, which I presume are exclusively Adventist songs. But seriously, there were many small events and services, and these two songs were very well-represented. On Sunday morning, Luana and I went to find a place to sit after packing up our tent, and we ended up in church. At one point, a youth trio -- they were called the Trio Life -- went up to the stage to sing. There was a problem with their backing track, so another lady took the stage to entertain the crowd while they fixed the technical difficulties. She ended up singing what she called a crowd favorite, which was of course one of the two theme songs: "Jesus Amem." By the time she was done, the Trio Life went up, the backing track played, and sure enough, it was an alternative arrangement of "Jesus Amem." Nobody in the audience seemed to find this as funny as I did.
There was a truly passionate and profound sermon, which was given by a pastor from Rio Grande do Sul, a state in the extreme south of Brazil. It was about optimism, about enjoying the good things in life and not complaining about the bad things. It related the story of a parishioner who was always complaining to a group of followers of Moses from the Old Testament. The followers were crossing the desert in search of Canaan, and the only ones who survived were the ones who avoided complaining ... or something like that. I can't quite tell since my Portuguese isn't that great and my knowledge of the Old Testament is much worse. Anyway, I can't agree more. Complaining is completely futile and completely counterproductive. Similarly, being optimistic isn't just a convenient personality trait, but a vital component of success and personal growth. One of these days I'll finally get around to writing the complete Logic of Optimism essay, though I imagine the same message is to be found in most motivational speeches, self-help books and great success stories.
Speaking of writing, I've been itching to write my review of Steven Pinker's book, The Blank Slate. I'm only about a hundred pages into the book, but I think it's really fascinating and at the same time completely unsurprising. It's incredible how many popular psychology books rehash the same famous studies and findings. What's generally annoying to me about the book is that it is so one-sided: Pinker makes it clear that it is a Nature-Nurture book and that he's on the side of Nature. Of course, he acknowledges that nothing in human behavior is completely determined or completely unrelated to biology, but wherever there is room for debate, he chooses to err firmly on the side of determinism and mechanism instead of creativity or flexibility. He also does a bad job of dismissing connectionism, which is really what the Luana model is about and which is much simpler and more elegant than Pinker's metaphor of the mind as a giant toolbox with all these tools that sometimes work together and sometimes don't.
Okay. More later. I have to go to class now.
Okay, so on my way home from work on Thursday, I ran into Mara, one of my intermediate English students, who was headed to a friend's house nearby. Having left work early due to yet another cancellation, I tagged along and met her group of friends, all of whom are around my age and fun to talk to. After the cursory cultural exchange moment -- Brazilians always ask whether we Americans understand the complexity of the country beyond Ipanema, Carnaval, and the jungle -- they invited me (and Luana as well) to the campout that was going to take place this weekend. They said that it was really more about meeting people than about religion, and since we didn't have any plans for the weekend, it seemed like a good option. Luana wasn't feeling great and thought that Adventists were especially strict, so she didn't really want to go. I'm completely ignorant about Protestant denominations -- are Adventists even Protestant? -- but Mara and her friends were definitely not hard-core conservative types. So I eventually subdued the dissent and convinced Luana that in any case, it would be worth it to get out of Itabatan for a few days.
The bus left from the Adventist church in Itabatan on Friday and made it to Moroba, in the neighboring state of Espirito Santo, in about four hours. Luana and I sat across the aisle from the local pastor, Robismario, who was probably the most immature adult I've ever seen, seriously. When one of the adults was walking through the aisles to give out candy to pious or well-behaved kids, Robismario earnestly waved his hands in the air indicating his interest in the candy and snatched it at the first opportunity. When someone threw candy in an up-for-grabs lottery, Robismario naturally towered over his neighbors and won the candy. He had to be pleaded by the adolescents nearby to share some of it. Oh, and on the way home (I'm getting ahead of myself), Robismario broke tradition and refused to allow the bus to stop for lunch. This led to a near-mutiny, which the more responsible adults quelled by holding a vote. The pro-food coalition naturally won and the adults convinced Robismario to allow the bus to stop. Once at the restaurant, those had voted against stopping -- because they either weren't hungry or wanted to support Robism‡rio -- stayed in the bus. Robismario, of course, was among the first off the bus and in line for food. Ha!
I don't want to make a generalization about Adventists, though. Mara and her friends were a lot of fun and were the leaders of the pro-food coalition. Like they had said, the religious stuff was a very minor part of the whole experience. For them and the hordes of young people at the campout, it was a chance to meet new people outside the bounds of small-town life, and especially to find like-Godded romantic partners. Which brings me to the part about the whole thing that struck me the most about the whole weekend, which was how incredibly good people looked, despite the fact that we were all sleeping in tents on a dirt out in the middle of nowhere. People dressed to impress. I mean, there were showers, but they were in outdoor shacks and without any hot water, yet everyone (except Luana and me, who haven't been weaned off hot water) took showers every morning. Then they went back to their tents, slipped into their Sunday dresses and suits, whipped out the pocket mirrors, hooked up their electric hair straighteners to stray outlets, and went to church. It was really amusing and impressive to see people in high heels hiking across the campground. Being my lazy self, I brought my camera but only took a few lousy pictures.
The religious activities at the event primarily involved half-singing along to the two theme songs, which I presume are exclusively Adventist songs. But seriously, there were many small events and services, and these two songs were very well-represented. On Sunday morning, Luana and I went to find a place to sit after packing up our tent, and we ended up in church. At one point, a youth trio -- they were called the Trio Life -- went up to the stage to sing. There was a problem with their backing track, so another lady took the stage to entertain the crowd while they fixed the technical difficulties. She ended up singing what she called a crowd favorite, which was of course one of the two theme songs: "Jesus Amem." By the time she was done, the Trio Life went up, the backing track played, and sure enough, it was an alternative arrangement of "Jesus Amem." Nobody in the audience seemed to find this as funny as I did.
There was a truly passionate and profound sermon, which was given by a pastor from Rio Grande do Sul, a state in the extreme south of Brazil. It was about optimism, about enjoying the good things in life and not complaining about the bad things. It related the story of a parishioner who was always complaining to a group of followers of Moses from the Old Testament. The followers were crossing the desert in search of Canaan, and the only ones who survived were the ones who avoided complaining ... or something like that. I can't quite tell since my Portuguese isn't that great and my knowledge of the Old Testament is much worse. Anyway, I can't agree more. Complaining is completely futile and completely counterproductive. Similarly, being optimistic isn't just a convenient personality trait, but a vital component of success and personal growth. One of these days I'll finally get around to writing the complete Logic of Optimism essay, though I imagine the same message is to be found in most motivational speeches, self-help books and great success stories.
Speaking of writing, I've been itching to write my review of Steven Pinker's book, The Blank Slate. I'm only about a hundred pages into the book, but I think it's really fascinating and at the same time completely unsurprising. It's incredible how many popular psychology books rehash the same famous studies and findings. What's generally annoying to me about the book is that it is so one-sided: Pinker makes it clear that it is a Nature-Nurture book and that he's on the side of Nature. Of course, he acknowledges that nothing in human behavior is completely determined or completely unrelated to biology, but wherever there is room for debate, he chooses to err firmly on the side of determinism and mechanism instead of creativity or flexibility. He also does a bad job of dismissing connectionism, which is really what the Luana model is about and which is much simpler and more elegant than Pinker's metaphor of the mind as a giant toolbox with all these tools that sometimes work together and sometimes don't.
Okay. More later. I have to go to class now.
August 23 delayed blog
I'm at my computer in my room in Brazil. I tried to plug it in to charge, but the electricity is unreliable at best, so I'll have to charge it somewhere else. This also means I'll have to stop writing in an hour or so when the battery dies.
My room is a room. Actually, two rooms: a room room and a bathroom. My employer is paying somewhere around $75 a month for the room, which I think also includes water and electricity. The details of my job compensation are under permanent negotiation, but that's a good thing. I get surprise perks like a borrowed gas stove and TV and flexible hours and frequent cancellations which allow me to stay in my room. Like this morning, when I was supposed to give private lessons at 8:30am and 2:30pm, but both students cancelled and freed up my entire day until 5:30 or 5:45. Back to the room: I've got a double-size matress on the floor where Luana and I sleep, which faces our borrowed TV now hooked up to our new and overpriced PlayStation 2. What's the name of the piece of furniture that hold clothes in drawers?! I always forget. Closet? No. Bookshelf? No. Cabinet? I'm going to check my Microsoft Word thesaurus. It's not a trunk or a chest -- it's just some drawers. Whatever. My books are stacked next to the TV. I'm hoping to read most of them while I'm here, since I have three-day weekends every week. Maybe I should say three-day vacations and four-day vacat-ends. Back to the room ... we have a few things taped to walls, then we have our guitars and violin and mandolin on the floor, Luana's extra clothes in her suitcase, and then a small bathroom. It's got an electric showerhead for hot water, but we're starting to appreciate the wisdom of cold showers. When the electrician came to install the showerhead, he told us that his youthful appearance at age forty was due primarily to his habit of only taking freezing cold showers. He also said that eight minutes should be long enough to wash an elephant, which I thought was funny in light of the fact that I'm used to taking 20-minute showers.
Fuck, I might as well just take pictures and save my thousand words. Enough describing the room.
My room is a room. Actually, two rooms: a room room and a bathroom. My employer is paying somewhere around $75 a month for the room, which I think also includes water and electricity. The details of my job compensation are under permanent negotiation, but that's a good thing. I get surprise perks like a borrowed gas stove and TV and flexible hours and frequent cancellations which allow me to stay in my room. Like this morning, when I was supposed to give private lessons at 8:30am and 2:30pm, but both students cancelled and freed up my entire day until 5:30 or 5:45. Back to the room: I've got a double-size matress on the floor where Luana and I sleep, which faces our borrowed TV now hooked up to our new and overpriced PlayStation 2. What's the name of the piece of furniture that hold clothes in drawers?! I always forget. Closet? No. Bookshelf? No. Cabinet? I'm going to check my Microsoft Word thesaurus. It's not a trunk or a chest -- it's just some drawers. Whatever. My books are stacked next to the TV. I'm hoping to read most of them while I'm here, since I have three-day weekends every week. Maybe I should say three-day vacations and four-day vacat-ends. Back to the room ... we have a few things taped to walls, then we have our guitars and violin and mandolin on the floor, Luana's extra clothes in her suitcase, and then a small bathroom. It's got an electric showerhead for hot water, but we're starting to appreciate the wisdom of cold showers. When the electrician came to install the showerhead, he told us that his youthful appearance at age forty was due primarily to his habit of only taking freezing cold showers. He also said that eight minutes should be long enough to wash an elephant, which I thought was funny in light of the fact that I'm used to taking 20-minute showers.
Fuck, I might as well just take pictures and save my thousand words. Enough describing the room.
The important thing is my job, which is teaching English. Now, to be a college-educated native English speaker teaching in a Brazilian language school is like being Leonardo Da Vinci teaching kindergarten. It's a breeze. All the books and materials are of good quality and I just guide students through them. The same few kinds of activities -- games, translations, invidivual readings, whatever -- happen over and over again, which means that I do not have to prepare at all for class. I just walk in, pick up the materials, and go. Of course, I try to do some new and different things that require some extra work, but I don't have to, and nobody would notice or care if I didn't.
I'll probably have more stories to tell about the English classes. It's only been three days (four if you count today, when I walked in only to find my classes cancelled), but I already kind of know the students pretty well. I'm all about conversation, since pretty much everyone learns a language for the sake of communication, unless they're really intellectual and learning Latin, which can be good, too. I have some private students and I already know them quite well: in the course of the first two hours, it's usually possible to cover family, occupation, brief life history, religious views, and a person's conception of her situation in society. Last night, I talked for a solid hour about the details of the eucalyptus industry with a guy who works in the big eucalyptus company here in town. By next week, our conversations are inevitably going to move more directly towards intimate life details, since it's the next easiest thing to talk about. If I were a local, we could talk like locals and gossip, but since I'm not, all we can really talk about is our lives. Then I'll get to play psychologist, which is something I've always wanted to do but never until now felt like I could ever do. My whole new Luana model at least gives me a basis for talking about emotions and minds.
Luana's making lunch now. Our first meal at home! I'm hungry.
I think it'll be good to do a real blog, to actually recount events and my thoughts about them as they happen.
Online in Itabatan, Bahia, BRAZIL
I´ve finally got my system down for writing and communicating in Brazil. As of now, there´s no internet at the school where I work, which means I have to pay for internet time at cafes. So I think the best solution is to (1) write blog entries offline on my laptop and then post them when I get online and (2) arrange regular times when I´ll be online so I can do Skype. The weekend would probably be best for me, because I don´t have any classes on Friday, Saturday, or Sunday. If anybody could leave comments on this post with times they´d be available, then I´ll get back with a set time that´s most mutually convenient. Okay?
Now I´ll post two blogs that I wrote offline. Coming soon: pictures and my mailing address.
Love,
Mickey
Now I´ll post two blogs that I wrote offline. Coming soon: pictures and my mailing address.
Love,
Mickey
Tuesday, 14 August 2007
Give Dennis a Chance
Most people I know never even take the time to read Kucinich's campaign platform.
Anyway, I'm not saying that he's my guy for sure, or that he's completely perfect. Come on, he's tiny and maybe slightly Napoleonic. But the "electability" escape is an insult to our faculties of reason. You know what, people could make Kucinich electable: he's got perfectly sensible stances on the issues, he's experienced, he's tough, and he's been a fighter his whole life. But if nobody makes any noise, the media coverage defaults to people like Bush and Hillary and Obama because they're they've got the most celebrity status. Plain and simple.
For people who don't think Kucinich is genuine, check out his record. He was a strong opponent of the Iraq war from the start, unlike Hillary. He and Gravel are the only full supporters of gay marriage, which is the only genuinely liberal position on the matter. His efforts as mayor of Cleveland standing up to the Cleveland Trust Company sent him into "political Siberia," only to be applauded years later when it became clear that he was right.
Now to the issues:
I'm not sure what the Wikipedians meant by "free love," but I'm sure Kucinich could find a more politically correct way to express his policy. If he's for removing antiquated legal barriers to unrestricted sexual behavior, then I'd guess that the majority of young people -- not just in the north, but across the country -- would find his policy appealing. Can any liberal American honestly say that certain types of (non-coerced) should be banned? Also, it was our parents' generation -- the now-powerful baby boomers -- who invented free love! And besides, we're talking about winning the Democratic nomination, not charming every single voter in every corner of every state.
I'm not sure what to say about reparations -- maybe Pfoho people who have thought about the issue more could chime in -- but I definitely think they are worth considering. Even if they aren't the best idea, I am very much in support of creative thinking for combating the lasting racial inequities, beyond affirmative action and British-style rigid schooling and testing (by that I mean No Child Left Behind and the KIPP etc. schools that are its champions. They are frighteningly strict and anti-progressive me.)
About Iraq, I think that an international peacekeeping force is the only way to go, and it has to be strong and fierce, but much less American and partisan. Clearly, abandoning the country would leave it in utter chaos, and this isn't what Kucinich is advocating. But keeping American forces there will perpetuate the notion that Americans are occupiers and not peacekeepers. My best hope is that an international force could more effectively do something like what Charles de Gaulle did in Senegal when it was considering independence -- organize a national referendum, giving citizens the option to choose either a particular system of government and power structure imposed by the UN, or to have all the forces pull out and leave the country in perpertual chaos. I still harbor hope that the ravaged citizens could choose order. Either way, the US could never pull such a move off on its own.
Visas and immigration are complicated and require quite a bit more investigation. I asked my mom, who happens to be an immigration lawyer, about the L-1 visa, and she said that it really is being exploited a lot by foreign companies, even though it also serves a perfectly permissible purpose. What it's supposed to do is allow experts about specific business or technology to cross borders to train branches of multinational corporation. What some Indian companies do is they create nominal but useless branches in the US, then send their employees to work here on L-1 visas, which means they can get paid a ton more than they would in India. To eliminate the visas altogether might be extreme, but to brush off the issue entirely is worse.
Finally, Kucinich supports impeaching Cheney, which I think is an honorable thing to do. Cheney is a crook and he deserves to be punished to the full extent of the law. To get Cheney on an orderly show trial would help us heal the wounds that he and Bush created, and help us pass more of the blame for the Iraq mess on their shoulders, since they are the ones who masterminded the malicious deception about WMDs in the first place.
We have to resist celebrity worship and other regressive heuristics if we want our most important decisions -- voting included -- to mean anything.
Anyway, I'm not saying that he's my guy for sure, or that he's completely perfect. Come on, he's tiny and maybe slightly Napoleonic. But the "electability" escape is an insult to our faculties of reason. You know what, people could make Kucinich electable: he's got perfectly sensible stances on the issues, he's experienced, he's tough, and he's been a fighter his whole life. But if nobody makes any noise, the media coverage defaults to people like Bush and Hillary and Obama because they're they've got the most celebrity status. Plain and simple.
For people who don't think Kucinich is genuine, check out his record. He was a strong opponent of the Iraq war from the start, unlike Hillary. He and Gravel are the only full supporters of gay marriage, which is the only genuinely liberal position on the matter. His efforts as mayor of Cleveland standing up to the Cleveland Trust Company sent him into "political Siberia," only to be applauded years later when it became clear that he was right.
Now to the issues:
I'm not sure what the Wikipedians meant by "free love," but I'm sure Kucinich could find a more politically correct way to express his policy. If he's for removing antiquated legal barriers to unrestricted sexual behavior, then I'd guess that the majority of young people -- not just in the north, but across the country -- would find his policy appealing. Can any liberal American honestly say that certain types of (non-coerced) should be banned? Also, it was our parents' generation -- the now-powerful baby boomers -- who invented free love! And besides, we're talking about winning the Democratic nomination, not charming every single voter in every corner of every state.
I'm not sure what to say about reparations -- maybe Pfoho people who have thought about the issue more could chime in -- but I definitely think they are worth considering. Even if they aren't the best idea, I am very much in support of creative thinking for combating the lasting racial inequities, beyond affirmative action and British-style rigid schooling and testing (by that I mean No Child Left Behind and the KIPP etc. schools that are its champions. They are frighteningly strict and anti-progressive me.)
About Iraq, I think that an international peacekeeping force is the only way to go, and it has to be strong and fierce, but much less American and partisan. Clearly, abandoning the country would leave it in utter chaos, and this isn't what Kucinich is advocating. But keeping American forces there will perpetuate the notion that Americans are occupiers and not peacekeepers. My best hope is that an international force could more effectively do something like what Charles de Gaulle did in Senegal when it was considering independence -- organize a national referendum, giving citizens the option to choose either a particular system of government and power structure imposed by the UN, or to have all the forces pull out and leave the country in perpertual chaos. I still harbor hope that the ravaged citizens could choose order. Either way, the US could never pull such a move off on its own.
Visas and immigration are complicated and require quite a bit more investigation. I asked my mom, who happens to be an immigration lawyer, about the L-1 visa, and she said that it really is being exploited a lot by foreign companies, even though it also serves a perfectly permissible purpose. What it's supposed to do is allow experts about specific business or technology to cross borders to train branches of multinational corporation. What some Indian companies do is they create nominal but useless branches in the US, then send their employees to work here on L-1 visas, which means they can get paid a ton more than they would in India. To eliminate the visas altogether might be extreme, but to brush off the issue entirely is worse.
Finally, Kucinich supports impeaching Cheney, which I think is an honorable thing to do. Cheney is a crook and he deserves to be punished to the full extent of the law. To get Cheney on an orderly show trial would help us heal the wounds that he and Bush created, and help us pass more of the blame for the Iraq mess on their shoulders, since they are the ones who masterminded the malicious deception about WMDs in the first place.
We have to resist celebrity worship and other regressive heuristics if we want our most important decisions -- voting included -- to mean anything.
The State of Politics at Harvard
Why are the most educated students in the world sometimes incapable of working together and supporting each other, even though they know it pays off in the long term?
Why do students continue to issue vacuous threats to the Pfoho community when the it's the very house community that provides our only sustained moral education at Harvard?
Why aren't more students supporting Dennis Kucinich?
Why are politically-minded students obsessing with national politics and policies when the most creative and difficult decisions are made at the state level?
Why are we students craving power at the national level when we can barely handle our immediate relationships?
Why do students continue to issue vacuous threats to the Pfoho community when the it's the very house community that provides our only sustained moral education at Harvard?
Why aren't more students supporting Dennis Kucinich?
Why are politically-minded students obsessing with national politics and policies when the most creative and difficult decisions are made at the state level?
Why are we students craving power at the national level when we can barely handle our immediate relationships?
Saturday, 11 August 2007
Email exchange about business
1) trade deficits are not bad for the us or for any other country. we are still gaining from comparative advantage (other countries make things better/cheaper/etc. and we gain from that as we give them what we are relatively better at (like human capital, which isn't included in trade balances)). remember the corn for beer example? even if china can make everything more cheaply than we can, if the cost of corn relative to beer for us is less than taht in china, it makes sense for us to make the corn (relative vs. absolute advantage). there is a LOT to be said about why trade deficits are NOT bad, although you don't actually want them to be ginormous b/c of the way we pay for them and thus end up investing more in other countries (which is ironic, b/c when other countries invest a lot in us we tend to cry about it, too, although why would that be bad? it's nice if someone else wants to give us capital).
I'm sure you know a whole lot more about trade deficits that I do, but I'm just going on what I read in the papers, which is that people are worried about trade deficits with countries like China. Isn't it at least a little troubling, just the idea that they make much more stuff that we want, and not vice versa? I buy the idea that we have intangibles and human capital that don't go on the ledgers, but there's a limit to that, and there's a limit to which the US has these magical human factors that makes it competitive. I mean, other countries have better educational systems that are improving, and we have an incredible elite tier of universities (which are the sources of so much American innovation and creativity) and many underperforming universities. And can an entire export economy really survive on human capital alone? I don't know, it sounds unsustainable. Richer countries are going to find a way to import our innovators and our best educators and then leave all the uneducated people out to dry.
If we take the cases of Germany or Japan after the Industrial Revolution, both countries hired out the English innovators in technology and eventually adopted their techniques, getting better and better while the English basked in their glory until their industries got bloated and bad. Japan, example, had to erect tariff walls to protect the new industries (this wasn't to their comparative advantage in the short term), but it developed a very strong sense of dedication and teamwork and soon enough the industries were good enough to lower the tariff walls (This is all taken straight from David Landes' "Wealth and Poverty of Nations"). I'm afraid the US is finding itself in England's former place, thinking that the free market and intangible human factors will carry the country to eternal prosperity, even as other countries start doing things better than we can. On the other hand, if we take Germany's approach to industrialization and recognize that we need help from businesses that are beating us, we'll have a chance of being competitive. Again, to avoid competition by saying that we have special comparative advantage in these magical intangibles makes me skeptical. I mean, do we think that this human capital will ever disappear or show up in other countries? I wrote about Hollywood in my blog.
2) self-interest should NOT lead to poor quality - rather it should improve quality as in the case of software, as Mickey notes. That's why the Japanese and European companies do so well, right? they fight to protect their reputation as suppliers of high quality goods (self-interest) by producing high quality goods and using advertising, and so their market share is increasing while american market share is decreasing. this is competition driven by self-interest and it is good that american market share is decreasing b/c our car companies for example are shitty. so if they want to get more market share, they need to up their quality - this is all driven by the invisible hand, driven by self-interest & competition blah blha.
Also, the governemtn of coruse has its role and should prevent some of these mega-mergers to prevent the loss of some of the comeptition within the us.
i think maybe mickey thinks self-interest leads to poor quality b/c this is of cousre what can happen if one company has significant market power, but that is why self-interest shoudl defeat this, right? consumer self-interest and the self-interest of other companies trying to make it should be able to defeat this, excep tin teh case of extremely high barriers to entry or natural monopolies (and in these cases the govt should step in).
Let's clarify what I mean by self-interest. I'm talking about the idea that for businesses, profit/growth is good, and more profit/growth is better. Maybe self-interest wasn't the right term for that. But I think we're mostly on agreement about this point -- that mega-size businesses are bad, especially mega-size business that only care about the bottom line. Not only do they stifle competition, but they force us consumers to accept bad products and lower standards. When the product gets so bad that foreign countries don't want to buy it (like cars and food), then I think it might be an economic problem, plus it's degrading to the consumer. My opinion is that our insurance, pharma, agro, car (GM), media (ClearChannel) and retail (WalMart) companies are already too big and not restricted enough by the government.
I'm not sure if saving the car industry is just a simple matter of "upping the quality" -- it's about changing work ethic, educating better engineers, negotiating better labor relations, etc. -- and I think the car makers are going to have a very hard time doing that, because it's about changing business culture. It's about creating high standards and trust to enable cooperation, and once businesses have been soiled by excessive focus on the bottom line, I'm not sure how easy it'll be to turn around (We agree that new American companies with new cultures -- especially in software -- are doing this best. But they have it easy, because they only have to employ highly-educated workers and robots).
3) that leads me to how the farming system is propped up by subsidies. this is NOT what economists want. it's stupid and fucks over developing countries who could sell us much cheaper produce. this is a restriction on free trade nad of course fucks over american consumers. it only helps farmers but they have a stron globby and therefore congress will not let go of these terrible subsidies. yes, this is driven by self-interest, and i agree that if consumers would have the "spirit of cooperation" as mickey indicates, they could probably defeat these lobbies. that said, this will probably not happen soon b/c each consumer is hurt by like a penny in comparison to the million dollar loss this would entail to the lobbies (ie each individual consumer does not feel a compelling urge to fight this whereas farmers' livelihoods are propped up by the subsidies so they do). this just sucks and makes me sad.
Agreed, our farm subsidies are ridiculous. But who's doling them out? Ignorant people in Congress supported by ignorant people in the states. How do we stop reactionary lobbying? By freeing politicians from dependency on campaign contributions. Our campaign finance situation is a true disgrace.
4) Europe and germany in particular have their own issues. ridiculous unemployment rates etc. etc. also, the US doesn't produce terrible goods - we jsut don't have the advantage in manufacturing and agriculture anymore, as our advantage tends to lie in intangible goods like human capital. look at even the entertainment industry - sure bollywood and european cinema export a lot fo films, but i would say the US is relatively dominant in the movie industry.
Germany definitely isn't perfect, and I saw that the unemployment rate has been hovering around 8 and 9 percent, with the US between 4 and 5 percent. But compared with the advantages of the generous welfare system, health coverage, vacation days, unemployment doesn't hurt nearly as much as in the US. Once more, I'm skeptical about whether we really have any long-term advantage in the intangibles.
5) money doesnt' buy happiness but a shitload of social science data does show that people are happier the richer they are in comparison to those around them. ask shanshan for her thesis.
Happiness is so hard -- SO HARD!! -- to measure. I took a psych class about measuring happiness. I take the perspective that I can only assess my own well-being, and I assume that others act like me, and I have a very hard time filling out happiness surveys. From my own experience, I've seen so many people who are relatively wealthy and insecure, and many people who are relatively less wealthy but more satisfied with life. I know happy super-rich people, miserable super-rich people, and everything inbetween. I think that the only healthy generalization is that money buys happiness, up to a point.
6) in the repeated prisoner's dilemma, cooperation can arise from self-interest naturally as in a repeated game it is in your interest to play the "good" strategy as there is possible punishment tactics.
Agreed, which is why I think the deserters -- exploitative or excessively selfish businesses -- have to fail or change eventually. I just worry that they'll bring ordinary people and good business down with them.
I'm sure you know a whole lot more about trade deficits that I do, but I'm just going on what I read in the papers, which is that people are worried about trade deficits with countries like China. Isn't it at least a little troubling, just the idea that they make much more stuff that we want, and not vice versa? I buy the idea that we have intangibles and human capital that don't go on the ledgers, but there's a limit to that, and there's a limit to which the US has these magical human factors that makes it competitive. I mean, other countries have better educational systems that are improving, and we have an incredible elite tier of universities (which are the sources of so much American innovation and creativity) and many underperforming universities. And can an entire export economy really survive on human capital alone? I don't know, it sounds unsustainable. Richer countries are going to find a way to import our innovators and our best educators and then leave all the uneducated people out to dry.
If we take the cases of Germany or Japan after the Industrial Revolution, both countries hired out the English innovators in technology and eventually adopted their techniques, getting better and better while the English basked in their glory until their industries got bloated and bad. Japan, example, had to erect tariff walls to protect the new industries (this wasn't to their comparative advantage in the short term), but it developed a very strong sense of dedication and teamwork and soon enough the industries were good enough to lower the tariff walls (This is all taken straight from David Landes' "Wealth and Poverty of Nations"). I'm afraid the US is finding itself in England's former place, thinking that the free market and intangible human factors will carry the country to eternal prosperity, even as other countries start doing things better than we can. On the other hand, if we take Germany's approach to industrialization and recognize that we need help from businesses that are beating us, we'll have a chance of being competitive. Again, to avoid competition by saying that we have special comparative advantage in these magical intangibles makes me skeptical. I mean, do we think that this human capital will ever disappear or show up in other countries? I wrote about Hollywood in my blog.
2) self-interest should NOT lead to poor quality - rather it should improve quality as in the case of software, as Mickey notes. That's why the Japanese and European companies do so well, right? they fight to protect their reputation as suppliers of high quality goods (self-interest) by producing high quality goods and using advertising, and so their market share is increasing while american market share is decreasing. this is competition driven by self-interest and it is good that american market share is decreasing b/c our car companies for example are shitty. so if they want to get more market share, they need to up their quality - this is all driven by the invisible hand, driven by self-interest & competition blah blha.
Also, the governemtn of coruse has its role and should prevent some of these mega-mergers to prevent the loss of some of the comeptition within the us.
i think maybe mickey thinks self-interest leads to poor quality b/c this is of cousre what can happen if one company has significant market power, but that is why self-interest shoudl defeat this, right? consumer self-interest and the self-interest of other companies trying to make it should be able to defeat this, excep tin teh case of extremely high barriers to entry or natural monopolies (and in these cases the govt should step in).
Let's clarify what I mean by self-interest. I'm talking about the idea that for businesses, profit/growth is good, and more profit/growth is better. Maybe self-interest wasn't the right term for that. But I think we're mostly on agreement about this point -- that mega-size businesses are bad, especially mega-size business that only care about the bottom line. Not only do they stifle competition, but they force us consumers to accept bad products and lower standards. When the product gets so bad that foreign countries don't want to buy it (like cars and food), then I think it might be an economic problem, plus it's degrading to the consumer. My opinion is that our insurance, pharma, agro, car (GM), media (ClearChannel) and retail (WalMart) companies are already too big and not restricted enough by the government.
I'm not sure if saving the car industry is just a simple matter of "upping the quality" -- it's about changing work ethic, educating better engineers, negotiating better labor relations, etc. -- and I think the car makers are going to have a very hard time doing that, because it's about changing business culture. It's about creating high standards and trust to enable cooperation, and once businesses have been soiled by excessive focus on the bottom line, I'm not sure how easy it'll be to turn around (We agree that new American companies with new cultures -- especially in software -- are doing this best. But they have it easy, because they only have to employ highly-educated workers and robots).
3) that leads me to how the farming system is propped up by subsidies. this is NOT what economists want. it's stupid and fucks over developing countries who could sell us much cheaper produce. this is a restriction on free trade nad of course fucks over american consumers. it only helps farmers but they have a stron globby and therefore congress will not let go of these terrible subsidies. yes, this is driven by self-interest, and i agree that if consumers would have the "spirit of cooperation" as mickey indicates, they could probably defeat these lobbies. that said, this will probably not happen soon b/c each consumer is hurt by like a penny in comparison to the million dollar loss this would entail to the lobbies (ie each individual consumer does not feel a compelling urge to fight this whereas farmers' livelihoods are propped up by the subsidies so they do). this just sucks and makes me sad.
Agreed, our farm subsidies are ridiculous. But who's doling them out? Ignorant people in Congress supported by ignorant people in the states. How do we stop reactionary lobbying? By freeing politicians from dependency on campaign contributions. Our campaign finance situation is a true disgrace.
4) Europe and germany in particular have their own issues. ridiculous unemployment rates etc. etc. also, the US doesn't produce terrible goods - we jsut don't have the advantage in manufacturing and agriculture anymore, as our advantage tends to lie in intangible goods like human capital. look at even the entertainment industry - sure bollywood and european cinema export a lot fo films, but i would say the US is relatively dominant in the movie industry.
Germany definitely isn't perfect, and I saw that the unemployment rate has been hovering around 8 and 9 percent, with the US between 4 and 5 percent. But compared with the advantages of the generous welfare system, health coverage, vacation days, unemployment doesn't hurt nearly as much as in the US. Once more, I'm skeptical about whether we really have any long-term advantage in the intangibles.
5) money doesnt' buy happiness but a shitload of social science data does show that people are happier the richer they are in comparison to those around them. ask shanshan for her thesis.
Happiness is so hard -- SO HARD!! -- to measure. I took a psych class about measuring happiness. I take the perspective that I can only assess my own well-being, and I assume that others act like me, and I have a very hard time filling out happiness surveys. From my own experience, I've seen so many people who are relatively wealthy and insecure, and many people who are relatively less wealthy but more satisfied with life. I know happy super-rich people, miserable super-rich people, and everything inbetween. I think that the only healthy generalization is that money buys happiness, up to a point.
6) in the repeated prisoner's dilemma, cooperation can arise from self-interest naturally as in a repeated game it is in your interest to play the "good" strategy as there is possible punishment tactics.
Does the US have a comparative advantage in culture?
There's an argument that the decline of US manufacturing and agriculture industries is economically undisturbing because the US no longer has a comparative advantage in those industries, in the context of the global economy. What does the US have comparative advantage in, we must ask? I guess, in culture: Hollywood, video games, music, and advertising. Also, the computer industry, which really means Apple and Microsoft.
I think that the US really does have a comparative advantage in software development, since it requires a set of skills that American students are uniquely prepared to deliver: equal parts analytical ability, math, creativity, teamwork, dedication, and design sensibility. Our counterparts in other countries do well with the analytical stuff and might make more efficient code monkeys, but Americans make the best innovators, by my estimation. It's not for no reason that Google, Miscroft, Apple, Blizzard (World of Warcraft), Electronic Arts, DigiDesign (ProTools), and many of the open-source projects are firmly based in the US.
But software development is a small industry (in terms of employment) in the US, since collaboration and production is so cheap and efficient. I mean, all the great accomplishments of the entire industry -- the best games, the best operating systems, the best programs -- can be stored on a single hard drive. Software development is an industry that works best when concentrated in a few huge companies -- or often, when done mostly by open-source volunteers who really care about quality over profitability. In any event, it's hard to imagine software development carrying an entire economy or employing a lot of people.
What about Hollywood? Sure, Hollywood makes the biggest worldwide blockbusters, but is that really because of an identifiable comparative advantage? I think not. Our blockbusters make it big because they have massive budgets -- for advertising, star power, special effects, and distribution. But what if the huge budgets thin out over time? What if Americans stop shelling out $10 for movie tickets? What if American movies no longer set the pace around the world? Let's imagine that Bollywood movies start to get more sophisticated and earn more money banking on the growing Indian middle class. The studios have no problem importing American or Japanese special-effects teams, and all of a sudden the next worldwide blockbuster is produced in India.
American production teams don't go out of business, but they have to thin out their own budgets, cutting on effects and advertising. Without that muscle, they can't push American movies around the globe. Maybe quality goes up (blockbusters are no longer feasible) or quality goes down (power concentrated exclusively at Disney or Universal), but either way, movies cease to be such major exports. The "comparative advantage" evaporates, like the French "comparative advantage" in films disappeared when the US got rich after the World Wars.
Tastes in cultural products depend very much on advertising and distribution bullying. We can't take the American cultural supremacy for granted.
I think that the US really does have a comparative advantage in software development, since it requires a set of skills that American students are uniquely prepared to deliver: equal parts analytical ability, math, creativity, teamwork, dedication, and design sensibility. Our counterparts in other countries do well with the analytical stuff and might make more efficient code monkeys, but Americans make the best innovators, by my estimation. It's not for no reason that Google, Miscroft, Apple, Blizzard (World of Warcraft), Electronic Arts, DigiDesign (ProTools), and many of the open-source projects are firmly based in the US.
But software development is a small industry (in terms of employment) in the US, since collaboration and production is so cheap and efficient. I mean, all the great accomplishments of the entire industry -- the best games, the best operating systems, the best programs -- can be stored on a single hard drive. Software development is an industry that works best when concentrated in a few huge companies -- or often, when done mostly by open-source volunteers who really care about quality over profitability. In any event, it's hard to imagine software development carrying an entire economy or employing a lot of people.
What about Hollywood? Sure, Hollywood makes the biggest worldwide blockbusters, but is that really because of an identifiable comparative advantage? I think not. Our blockbusters make it big because they have massive budgets -- for advertising, star power, special effects, and distribution. But what if the huge budgets thin out over time? What if Americans stop shelling out $10 for movie tickets? What if American movies no longer set the pace around the world? Let's imagine that Bollywood movies start to get more sophisticated and earn more money banking on the growing Indian middle class. The studios have no problem importing American or Japanese special-effects teams, and all of a sudden the next worldwide blockbuster is produced in India.
American production teams don't go out of business, but they have to thin out their own budgets, cutting on effects and advertising. Without that muscle, they can't push American movies around the globe. Maybe quality goes up (blockbusters are no longer feasible) or quality goes down (power concentrated exclusively at Disney or Universal), but either way, movies cease to be such major exports. The "comparative advantage" evaporates, like the French "comparative advantage" in films disappeared when the US got rich after the World Wars.
Tastes in cultural products depend very much on advertising and distribution bullying. We can't take the American cultural supremacy for granted.
two short principles
1. We're all connected, physically (since we're all matter and there's no way to find an exact physical barrier between me and you), socially (part of civilization), and psychologically (we're all humans so we all feel the same basic emotions, and our good and bad sentiments are both contagious). Thus, the Golden Rule must be rational:
a1. "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." — Jesus (c. 5 B.C. - A.D. 32 ) in the Gospels, Matthew 7:12, Matthew 22:39, Luke 6:31, Luke 10:27
a2. "What you do not wish upon yourself, extend not to others." — Confucius (ca. 551 - 479 B.C.)
b. others = you, yourself
c. Substituting (b) into (a):
Do unto yourself as would have [others] do unto you.
What you do not wish upon yourself, extend not to yourself.
It's hard to argue with those statements.
2. Hard questions in society often boil down to Prisoner's Dilemmas. In iterated Prisoner's Dilemmas (when we play more than once and we can punish people who defect), cooperation is ALWAYS the best solution. It's always better to establish good faith and to be screwed, than to establish bad faith and expect the worst. Again, we can always punish people who really don't know how to reciprocate good faith: the only people who really fit that that description are sociopaths. Good faith and trust are what make great relationships, families, schools, institutions, and societies. Bad faith is what characterizes social systems and relationships that are doomed to failure. Both good faith and bad faith are contagious: people who want their relationships and instutitions to succeed have to choose good faith.
Is that it??
a1. "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." — Jesus (c. 5 B.C. - A.D. 32 ) in the Gospels, Matthew 7:12, Matthew 22:39, Luke 6:31, Luke 10:27
a2. "What you do not wish upon yourself, extend not to others." — Confucius (ca. 551 - 479 B.C.)
b. others = you, yourself
c. Substituting (b) into (a):
Do unto yourself as would have [others] do unto you.
What you do not wish upon yourself, extend not to yourself.
It's hard to argue with those statements.
2. Hard questions in society often boil down to Prisoner's Dilemmas. In iterated Prisoner's Dilemmas (when we play more than once and we can punish people who defect), cooperation is ALWAYS the best solution. It's always better to establish good faith and to be screwed, than to establish bad faith and expect the worst. Again, we can always punish people who really don't know how to reciprocate good faith: the only people who really fit that that description are sociopaths. Good faith and trust are what make great relationships, families, schools, institutions, and societies. Bad faith is what characterizes social systems and relationships that are doomed to failure. Both good faith and bad faith are contagious: people who want their relationships and instutitions to succeed have to choose good faith.
Is that it??
Thursday, 9 August 2007
Email to friends about the Luana Model
Pam and I took a philosophy class called "Personal Identity and Self-Knowledge." It was all about different philosophical constructions of the self and for me, it was one of the most important classes in my intellectual development at Harvard. My favorite author was this guy Derek Parfit, who had the view that the self is an illusion: there's no criterion by which you can establish that one discrete "soul" stays with a particular body over the course of time, or that ultimately distinguishes "me" from "you" apart from our bodies, which are completely recycled every so many years. This is also the Buddhist perspective, which I tried to convice Shawn about, and which Scott is probably already familiar with. It's part of what I meant what I wrote that nothing is certain, but unity.
Okay, so Parfit said that the whole idea of self vs. other is an illusion, which meant that the whole classical Self-Interest Theory in economics must also be an illusion. That was in the 70s. Thomas Nagel (who we read in the Pinker/Dershowitz class) made similar arguments in moral philosophy, arguing that altruism is not only good, but rational. Anyway, I think those ideas are proving themselves to be true in economics, as people realize more that (1) after a certain point, money doesn't buy happiness, (2) decision-making often comes to down to Prisoners' Dilemmas where cooperation beats pure selfishness, and (3) the pursuit of profit for its own sake leads to low quality and low expectations and is eventually unsustainable, even though it pays off in the short term.
The spirit of cooperation was the genius of the Marshall Plan and of the economic strength of the EU and it's really what's missing in American business and economics today. I don't need to tell you guys how weak the dollar is in comparison to the Euro. But also, the US isn't producing high-quality goods for the international market, and that's what's really frightening. We've got a terrible trade deficit, we rely on subsidies and protection for agriculture, and good fresh food is harder for the average American to get. My take on all this is that American companies are obsessed with Self-Interest and classical economics, which means that they're willing to lower standards of quality and raise prices as long as there's still demand, until we have these giant agro or pharma or media conglomerates producing shitty or overpriced products that only Americans are willing to buy because they don't know any better. Germany makes better cars, food, hotels, chemicals, transport systems, radio stations, beer, etc., all decently priced. And I think it's because they really understand the spirit of cooperation and shared goals, as opposed to selfish goals. My guess is that it'll take a brand new economic model or a distaster (unemployment, social security or health care system crises) in the US for us to learn this the hard way. The Self-Interest Theory -- profit for its own sake -- leads us down a one-way path to lower quality standards, worker-management hostility, and unchecked imperialism and exploitation in underdeveloped countries. I was talking to Adam the other night about how our mega multinational corporations are in many ways similar to the old charter companies from imperial Britain, since they operate solely to create profit and growth with little concern for their human impact. Sure, we've got corporate responsibility, but it's always an afterthought. It took violent uprisings in Jamaica and India for the British Empire to take responsibility for its companies, and I think it would be the right thing for our government to take responsibility for the impact our international businesses are having on the world. The disaster of the Middle East and the lost opportunities to create prosperity there are perfect examples.
I know this is kind of rambly, but it's fresh in my mind because Silpa and I were talking about it today. She's studying intro economics at LSE and it's clear that the whole notion that greed and growth and profit are desireable as ends in themselves are still part of our thinking about business and society. My point to her was that (1) self-interest theory is incomplete and leads to low standards and (2) we should appaled when businesses lower standards. Don't we all want our products and services -- food, cars, schools, healthcare, clothes -- to be better, not cheaper? There's an argument that competitors can always create better goods and charge more, such that those who want better goods can pay more for them. And of course that's the way things work. Europeans are willing to pay a little more for their cars and clothes, and it's so nice to be able to enjoy those things as part of the normal lifestyle, without feeling like I'm getting ripped off for imported designer fancy gourmet shit. But the whole climate in the US of mergers and acquisitions and growth and megacorporations obviously makes competition very hard and makes it much more convenient for people to make consumer decisions based solely on price and not on quality. The big companies in Europe and Japan -- Ikea, Nokia, Daimler, Toyota, Sony -- got big because they developed reputations for quality at a good price, not just because they delivered the cheapest shit possible, like Walmart. The computer industry in the US (Apple, Microsoft) is an exception, because quality is so self-evident and so important. The car industry is similar, and like I said earlier, that fact that American car makers are losing market shares is pretty troubling.
Okay, that's it. For you guys doing battle out there in the business world, please tell me how wrong I am. I know I didn't get to explaining much of the Luana Model, since most of it is about psychology, but I hope you guys trust that there's some intellectual meat lurking behind the stage. For you guys who did neuroscience or psychology, my whole point was that Hebbian conditioning and Skinnerian behaviorism explain basically all of human growth and learning, including language and memory. The "cognitive revolution" in psychology that supposedly defeated behaviorism was nothing more than a detour that Chomsky steered us toward, as we understood what language was all about. But I think that problem evaporates if we understand that language is learned by conditioning, grammar learned by pattern detection, and memory nothing more than connections between sensory perceptions. Time really is an illusion -- Einstein proved it.
Okay, so Parfit said that the whole idea of self vs. other is an illusion, which meant that the whole classical Self-Interest Theory in economics must also be an illusion. That was in the 70s. Thomas Nagel (who we read in the Pinker/Dershowitz class) made similar arguments in moral philosophy, arguing that altruism is not only good, but rational. Anyway, I think those ideas are proving themselves to be true in economics, as people realize more that (1) after a certain point, money doesn't buy happiness, (2) decision-making often comes to down to Prisoners' Dilemmas where cooperation beats pure selfishness, and (3) the pursuit of profit for its own sake leads to low quality and low expectations and is eventually unsustainable, even though it pays off in the short term.
The spirit of cooperation was the genius of the Marshall Plan and of the economic strength of the EU and it's really what's missing in American business and economics today. I don't need to tell you guys how weak the dollar is in comparison to the Euro. But also, the US isn't producing high-quality goods for the international market, and that's what's really frightening. We've got a terrible trade deficit, we rely on subsidies and protection for agriculture, and good fresh food is harder for the average American to get. My take on all this is that American companies are obsessed with Self-Interest and classical economics, which means that they're willing to lower standards of quality and raise prices as long as there's still demand, until we have these giant agro or pharma or media conglomerates producing shitty or overpriced products that only Americans are willing to buy because they don't know any better. Germany makes better cars, food, hotels, chemicals, transport systems, radio stations, beer, etc., all decently priced. And I think it's because they really understand the spirit of cooperation and shared goals, as opposed to selfish goals. My guess is that it'll take a brand new economic model or a distaster (unemployment, social security or health care system crises) in the US for us to learn this the hard way. The Self-Interest Theory -- profit for its own sake -- leads us down a one-way path to lower quality standards, worker-management hostility, and unchecked imperialism and exploitation in underdeveloped countries. I was talking to Adam the other night about how our mega multinational corporations are in many ways similar to the old charter companies from imperial Britain, since they operate solely to create profit and growth with little concern for their human impact. Sure, we've got corporate responsibility, but it's always an afterthought. It took violent uprisings in Jamaica and India for the British Empire to take responsibility for its companies, and I think it would be the right thing for our government to take responsibility for the impact our international businesses are having on the world. The disaster of the Middle East and the lost opportunities to create prosperity there are perfect examples.
I know this is kind of rambly, but it's fresh in my mind because Silpa and I were talking about it today. She's studying intro economics at LSE and it's clear that the whole notion that greed and growth and profit are desireable as ends in themselves are still part of our thinking about business and society. My point to her was that (1) self-interest theory is incomplete and leads to low standards and (2) we should appaled when businesses lower standards. Don't we all want our products and services -- food, cars, schools, healthcare, clothes -- to be better, not cheaper? There's an argument that competitors can always create better goods and charge more, such that those who want better goods can pay more for them. And of course that's the way things work. Europeans are willing to pay a little more for their cars and clothes, and it's so nice to be able to enjoy those things as part of the normal lifestyle, without feeling like I'm getting ripped off for imported designer fancy gourmet shit. But the whole climate in the US of mergers and acquisitions and growth and megacorporations obviously makes competition very hard and makes it much more convenient for people to make consumer decisions based solely on price and not on quality. The big companies in Europe and Japan -- Ikea, Nokia, Daimler, Toyota, Sony -- got big because they developed reputations for quality at a good price, not just because they delivered the cheapest shit possible, like Walmart. The computer industry in the US (Apple, Microsoft) is an exception, because quality is so self-evident and so important. The car industry is similar, and like I said earlier, that fact that American car makers are losing market shares is pretty troubling.
Okay, that's it. For you guys doing battle out there in the business world, please tell me how wrong I am. I know I didn't get to explaining much of the Luana Model, since most of it is about psychology, but I hope you guys trust that there's some intellectual meat lurking behind the stage. For you guys who did neuroscience or psychology, my whole point was that Hebbian conditioning and Skinnerian behaviorism explain basically all of human growth and learning, including language and memory. The "cognitive revolution" in psychology that supposedly defeated behaviorism was nothing more than a detour that Chomsky steered us toward, as we understood what language was all about. But I think that problem evaporates if we understand that language is learned by conditioning, grammar learned by pattern detection, and memory nothing more than connections between sensory perceptions. Time really is an illusion -- Einstein proved it.
Email to my dad about the Golden Rule
...We drove past a five thousand year old stone circle today and I thought about you. This is a very very old culture and I´m finally starting to understand its acquired wisdom: they actually live by the Golden Rule. I think that the Golden Rule is the Big Answer in spirituality and life: treat the rest of the world exactly like you´d want to be treated, because there really is nothing different between me and you. We all have certain desires and feelings, and your love and desire to be loved, to be challenged, to have good food, and to be healthy are exactly the same as my desires and feelings.
The mechanism of evolution works on civilizations exactly as it works on organisms: things that work stay, and things that don´t eventually die off. Luckily, living by the Golden Rule works for all groups: it certainly works for families -- and what is the rest of the world but an extended family? It just takes time and luck for a group to evolve to that realization, and even more luck for the group not to be destroyed by force. Which, I think, is the only way to kill the Golden Rule. There´s absolutely nothing we can do to speed up the whole evolution process. We just have to live by the Golden Rule ourselves. That´s my one thought about morality...
The mechanism of evolution works on civilizations exactly as it works on organisms: things that work stay, and things that don´t eventually die off. Luckily, living by the Golden Rule works for all groups: it certainly works for families -- and what is the rest of the world but an extended family? It just takes time and luck for a group to evolve to that realization, and even more luck for the group not to be destroyed by force. Which, I think, is the only way to kill the Golden Rule. There´s absolutely nothing we can do to speed up the whole evolution process. We just have to live by the Golden Rule ourselves. That´s my one thought about morality...
Description of Luana Model in failed submission to Plastic.com
I wrote out a thing this morning that, as silly as it sounds, is trying to be a unified theory. I would like to present it to Plastic, which is the only place I've ever been able to turn for honest analysis of current issues.
I don't have any credentials, so I'm sorry if that's a deterrent for some of you. I graduated a few weeks ago from Harvard with a degree in Psychology and a 3.5 GPA; I wasn't an outstanding student at all. I just took introductory courses in pretty much every subject I could: psychology, computer science, philosophy of identity and self, Confucianism, behavioral neuroscience, mechanics and relativity, music theory, linear algebra, ethics, and history. I also worked briefly in the memory laboratory of Daniel Schacter, doing fMRI of emotional and non-emotional memory processing. While my grades weren't great, I had the great opportunity to take classes or participate in conversations with some of the most respected scholars in the world: Steven Pinker, Alan Dershowitz, Daniel Gilbert, Paul Davies, Louis Menand, Tu Weiming, Howard Gardner, Daniel Schacter, Hans Tutschku, David Hubel, Christof Koch, Ned Block, and other people who I've forgotten about. I hope that this didn't sound pretentious, but my only real credential is that I've heard all these people speak in person.
There are lots of troubles at the top of academia today. In science, there's the problem of the unified theory of everything in physics and the problem of consciousness in psychology. In all the humanities, there are tons of conflicts arising from analysis and theories. The Harvard Literature and English departments have deep rifts, the former emphasizing Literary Theory and the latter emphasizing close reading. The only person really making progress is Louis Menand, who puts it all together in his teaching and his writing, which integrates history, literature, and cultural studies. Taking a class with him allowed me to understand the importance of integration.
Now to my model. I'm traveling in Europe with my brother and sister right now, so I've had lots of time to observe and think, and very little time to write. Now as always, I'm paying for my internet connection. So it's all hastily done but, I think, on the right track.
The big problems in psychology are consciousness, memory, and language. They are supposed to be things that distinguish us from monkeys. I propose that (1) since there is no universal acceptable definition for consciousness, it must be a nonsense word, (2) language is the natural product of a big brain and highly refined speech control in our mouths, and (3) that all of the connections we make ARE memory. This is why it's impossible to "find" memories in the brain. I think that we learn everything, including language, simply by the process of Hebbian conditioning, and thus, that the Behaviorist psychologists were right all along. Learning a language is just making connections between sounds and things, and keeping those connections by repeating words. Learning a grammar is learning a way of reasoning or parsing the world, and we pick up grammar with pattern detection, which is what humans are really good at. My thought is that all languages (or at least the ones that spread) really do have a universal grammar, and that's Boolean logic, plus concepts for spacetime. We know that spacetime is one thing, but the fact that we use time and space words and treat them as coordinate systems makes us really believe in the past and the future and in a here/there distinction. All the great thinkers (I think) were able to really overcome the illusions of time, space, free will, and the self vs. other problem. If there is a unified theory in physics, my guess is that it's simple: it's impossible to distinguish any one thing from another, since the only thing that does the distinguishing is language. We give names to help parse the world, but everything is connected and interdependent. The great Buddhist philosopher Nagarjuna, and to a lesser extent, the English philosopher Derek Parfit, understood this. Parfit anticipated huge repercussions for the whole self-interest theory of economics as a result, and that's exactly what's happening as economics merges with behavioral psychology and game theory. Wittgenstein also understood this, and he took the interesting position of advocating the use of "it" instead of "I" to avoid the self-other distinction.
I don't have any credentials, so I'm sorry if that's a deterrent for some of you. I graduated a few weeks ago from Harvard with a degree in Psychology and a 3.5 GPA; I wasn't an outstanding student at all. I just took introductory courses in pretty much every subject I could: psychology, computer science, philosophy of identity and self, Confucianism, behavioral neuroscience, mechanics and relativity, music theory, linear algebra, ethics, and history. I also worked briefly in the memory laboratory of Daniel Schacter, doing fMRI of emotional and non-emotional memory processing. While my grades weren't great, I had the great opportunity to take classes or participate in conversations with some of the most respected scholars in the world: Steven Pinker, Alan Dershowitz, Daniel Gilbert, Paul Davies, Louis Menand, Tu Weiming, Howard Gardner, Daniel Schacter, Hans Tutschku, David Hubel, Christof Koch, Ned Block, and other people who I've forgotten about. I hope that this didn't sound pretentious, but my only real credential is that I've heard all these people speak in person.
There are lots of troubles at the top of academia today. In science, there's the problem of the unified theory of everything in physics and the problem of consciousness in psychology. In all the humanities, there are tons of conflicts arising from analysis and theories. The Harvard Literature and English departments have deep rifts, the former emphasizing Literary Theory and the latter emphasizing close reading. The only person really making progress is Louis Menand, who puts it all together in his teaching and his writing, which integrates history, literature, and cultural studies. Taking a class with him allowed me to understand the importance of integration.
Now to my model. I'm traveling in Europe with my brother and sister right now, so I've had lots of time to observe and think, and very little time to write. Now as always, I'm paying for my internet connection. So it's all hastily done but, I think, on the right track.
The big problems in psychology are consciousness, memory, and language. They are supposed to be things that distinguish us from monkeys. I propose that (1) since there is no universal acceptable definition for consciousness, it must be a nonsense word, (2) language is the natural product of a big brain and highly refined speech control in our mouths, and (3) that all of the connections we make ARE memory. This is why it's impossible to "find" memories in the brain. I think that we learn everything, including language, simply by the process of Hebbian conditioning, and thus, that the Behaviorist psychologists were right all along. Learning a language is just making connections between sounds and things, and keeping those connections by repeating words. Learning a grammar is learning a way of reasoning or parsing the world, and we pick up grammar with pattern detection, which is what humans are really good at. My thought is that all languages (or at least the ones that spread) really do have a universal grammar, and that's Boolean logic, plus concepts for spacetime. We know that spacetime is one thing, but the fact that we use time and space words and treat them as coordinate systems makes us really believe in the past and the future and in a here/there distinction. All the great thinkers (I think) were able to really overcome the illusions of time, space, free will, and the self vs. other problem. If there is a unified theory in physics, my guess is that it's simple: it's impossible to distinguish any one thing from another, since the only thing that does the distinguishing is language. We give names to help parse the world, but everything is connected and interdependent. The great Buddhist philosopher Nagarjuna, and to a lesser extent, the English philosopher Derek Parfit, understood this. Parfit anticipated huge repercussions for the whole self-interest theory of economics as a result, and that's exactly what's happening as economics merges with behavioral psychology and game theory. Wittgenstein also understood this, and he took the interesting position of advocating the use of "it" instead of "I" to avoid the self-other distinction.
The Original Luana Model
The Luana Model
1. Shoulders of giants
-Einstein
-Heisenberg
-Darwin
-All the shoulders they and anyone ever stood on. Duh!!!
2. Humans are animals that evolved through the process of natural selection from earlier species. Thus, there should be no unexplainable gap in evolution beteween humans and other animals.
3. Neurons make connections, that's it.
4. Conditioning (behaviorist/Hebbian) is the basis for all learning and development in all animals including humans.
5. As in conditioning, we only learn things that we didn't already know, and that are associated with reward or punishment. Rewards are things that feel good, like sex and approval and good food and good music, and good family and good friends, and our first time using a new drug. We can tell when something feels very good because we can laugh and cry when it's done. We laugh because it doesn't make sense and we cry because we know it's real. Punishments, as we know from behaviorism and history (especially forced reparations from Germany after WWI, are always detrimental to development). Punishments include bodily harm, and social rejection or disapproval. Thus, the happiest people are the ones who are punished the least and the meanest people are the ones who are punished the most. Punishment is also known as fear conditioning, and it's very easy to do to animals and humans for evolutionary reasons. Luckily, fears can always be overcome! The one greatest success in clinical psychology is helping people overcome their fears. Our favorite people are the ones who are afraid the least. Since everyone can overcome their fears, everyone can be our favorite person!
6. We can judge other people's emotions by their body language, since body language is universal. Same goes for judging dogs' emotions, since they show good body language. This is the ingenius contribution of the psychologist Paul Ekman.
7. Paying attention is just dedicating energy to the brain, so it can make more connections. We learn so easily when we're young because we have so much energy to devote to our brain.
8. Positive reinforcement via rewards is a virtuous cycle. The more we learn, the more we pay attention; the more we pay attention, the more we learn. Getting in this virtuous cycle is called being in a state of flow. All great thinkers and learners and leaders, and all children, experience the state of flow. This is the ingeniuous contribution of the psychologist and philosopher Mihaly Czikmenthalyi (not sure about spelling!). I thank Howard Gardner for teaching about flow and my dad for giving me Mihaly's book on flow and creativity.
9. Negative reinforcement is a vicious cycle. The more we're punished, the more fear we feel. The more fear we feel, the more we want to punish others. I thank the Confucian scholar Tu Weiming for the idea of virtuous and vicious cycles as the Confucian notion of the Good and the Bad.
10. Positive reinforcement is associated with the sympathetic nervous system ("rest and digest") and negative reinforcement is associated with the parasympathetic nervous system ("fight or fright"), or vice versa, I forget which is which. I thank John Dowling for the convenient rhyme to remember the difference between the two types!
11. Nothing is certain, but everything is connected. No absolute, but unity. I thank my dad for buying me Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, which I loved, and which mentioned Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. I checked out the Critique from the library in high school but I never read a page. I thank Kant for the title which helped me trust in the idea that nothing is certain.
12. It is very hard to understand the great thinkers who write in a language that is not our own. This is because all the great thinkers stumble upon item (11) but can only express it in their own language. The problem is that reason itself is bound to grammar. In order to understand that even reason/certainty is fallible, you have to disprove it in your own grammar/reasoning. Some of the great thinkers also realize this grammar problem, so they choose not to write anything. My dad told me that he thought that Yeshua (later called Jesus) only ever wrote one thing, the Venn diagram, in the sand before he died. This is one symbol that represents unity or the idea of dialectics and synthesis. The Venn diagram simultaneously resembles 0 and I, like the infinite sign and the Mobius band. For some reason, people only kept a fragment of the original symbol, which is what we know as the fish. People who really understood phrase (11) include Socrates, Yeshua, Buddha, Nagarjuna, Mohammed, Kant, Einstein, Hegel, Godel, Escher, Bach, the Dalai Lama, and enlightened people everywhere. The one truly great thinker who never understood this was Darwin, and it was because he could never get over the grief of having lost his beloved daughter. But phrase (11) is the one and only natural conclusion of the theory of evolution. I thank the class Reason and Faith for picking up the personal story of Darwin.
13. I am in Germany now and I think it's the most enlightened place I've ever been! My guess is that German is the youngest of the language families, and not having been contaminated that much by other languages (though Germans now are afraid of it being contaminated by English), it has the simplest and most efficient grammar. From (12), this leads to a simple and efficient style of reasoning. I also guess that ancient Tibetan had very efficient grammar, and this is why people like the Dalai Lama who study ancient Tibetan are also so enlightened. To be enlightened is to understand that reason and faith are not at all incongruous. The terrible moral crime of Nazism taught Germans that order and unity must go together. Nazism was complete faith in reason and rejection of the unity of mankind.
14. The Scientific Revolution happened when people realized that by experimentation, they could rapidly contribute to the evolution of ideas. The scientific method is, at its very core, a way to speed up evolution by creating more variation and keeping what works. I thank Ms. Brackett in 6th grade for teaching me the scientific method and being the best science teacher in the world. All weather is created by variable distribution of heat on the earth caused by the sun; see, I remember! One addition: heat = energy = mass/gravity/spacetime = life = neurons = connection = love
15. The internet is one big fucking brain, making connections just like brains do. We connect with the internet just like we connect with humans: by asking it questions and hoping for satisfying answers. When we connect with someone or something, we call it love.
16. There are only certain questions we can ask if we want a satisfying answer. Computer programmers and mathematicians (all logicians) ask questions in Boolean grammar (and, not, or, equal) and there only two satisfying answers (yes and no). People, in addition to asking logic questions, ask questions about spacetime (where, when), names (who, what), and reason (how, why). But there are only a few satisfying answers:
who/what/when/where? here/now
how/why? because
Be and cause at the very same time!! It's so easy!!
17. Humans love asking questions and getting satisfying answers, but we also love surprise. The emotion of hope is our desire for surprise. This simple emotion explains everything irrational about what we do: beliefs we know we shouldn't hold (that's Dad), pulling for sports teams even when they're no good (that's Sean, the ultimate Cubs fan), playing the lottery (that's Grandpa), and loving unconditionally (that's Mom and Luana).
LIFE IS A SURPRISE PARTY! AMERICA NEEDS A SURPRISE PARTY IN 2008!
1. Shoulders of giants
-Einstein
-Heisenberg
-Darwin
-All the shoulders they and anyone ever stood on. Duh!!!
2. Humans are animals that evolved through the process of natural selection from earlier species. Thus, there should be no unexplainable gap in evolution beteween humans and other animals.
3. Neurons make connections, that's it.
4. Conditioning (behaviorist/Hebbian) is the basis for all learning and development in all animals including humans.
5. As in conditioning, we only learn things that we didn't already know, and that are associated with reward or punishment. Rewards are things that feel good, like sex and approval and good food and good music, and good family and good friends, and our first time using a new drug. We can tell when something feels very good because we can laugh and cry when it's done. We laugh because it doesn't make sense and we cry because we know it's real. Punishments, as we know from behaviorism and history (especially forced reparations from Germany after WWI, are always detrimental to development). Punishments include bodily harm, and social rejection or disapproval. Thus, the happiest people are the ones who are punished the least and the meanest people are the ones who are punished the most. Punishment is also known as fear conditioning, and it's very easy to do to animals and humans for evolutionary reasons. Luckily, fears can always be overcome! The one greatest success in clinical psychology is helping people overcome their fears. Our favorite people are the ones who are afraid the least. Since everyone can overcome their fears, everyone can be our favorite person!
6. We can judge other people's emotions by their body language, since body language is universal. Same goes for judging dogs' emotions, since they show good body language. This is the ingenius contribution of the psychologist Paul Ekman.
7. Paying attention is just dedicating energy to the brain, so it can make more connections. We learn so easily when we're young because we have so much energy to devote to our brain.
8. Positive reinforcement via rewards is a virtuous cycle. The more we learn, the more we pay attention; the more we pay attention, the more we learn. Getting in this virtuous cycle is called being in a state of flow. All great thinkers and learners and leaders, and all children, experience the state of flow. This is the ingeniuous contribution of the psychologist and philosopher Mihaly Czikmenthalyi (not sure about spelling!). I thank Howard Gardner for teaching about flow and my dad for giving me Mihaly's book on flow and creativity.
9. Negative reinforcement is a vicious cycle. The more we're punished, the more fear we feel. The more fear we feel, the more we want to punish others. I thank the Confucian scholar Tu Weiming for the idea of virtuous and vicious cycles as the Confucian notion of the Good and the Bad.
10. Positive reinforcement is associated with the sympathetic nervous system ("rest and digest") and negative reinforcement is associated with the parasympathetic nervous system ("fight or fright"), or vice versa, I forget which is which. I thank John Dowling for the convenient rhyme to remember the difference between the two types!
11. Nothing is certain, but everything is connected. No absolute, but unity. I thank my dad for buying me Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, which I loved, and which mentioned Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. I checked out the Critique from the library in high school but I never read a page. I thank Kant for the title which helped me trust in the idea that nothing is certain.
12. It is very hard to understand the great thinkers who write in a language that is not our own. This is because all the great thinkers stumble upon item (11) but can only express it in their own language. The problem is that reason itself is bound to grammar. In order to understand that even reason/certainty is fallible, you have to disprove it in your own grammar/reasoning. Some of the great thinkers also realize this grammar problem, so they choose not to write anything. My dad told me that he thought that Yeshua (later called Jesus) only ever wrote one thing, the Venn diagram, in the sand before he died. This is one symbol that represents unity or the idea of dialectics and synthesis. The Venn diagram simultaneously resembles 0 and I, like the infinite sign and the Mobius band. For some reason, people only kept a fragment of the original symbol, which is what we know as the fish. People who really understood phrase (11) include Socrates, Yeshua, Buddha, Nagarjuna, Mohammed, Kant, Einstein, Hegel, Godel, Escher, Bach, the Dalai Lama, and enlightened people everywhere. The one truly great thinker who never understood this was Darwin, and it was because he could never get over the grief of having lost his beloved daughter. But phrase (11) is the one and only natural conclusion of the theory of evolution. I thank the class Reason and Faith for picking up the personal story of Darwin.
13. I am in Germany now and I think it's the most enlightened place I've ever been! My guess is that German is the youngest of the language families, and not having been contaminated that much by other languages (though Germans now are afraid of it being contaminated by English), it has the simplest and most efficient grammar. From (12), this leads to a simple and efficient style of reasoning. I also guess that ancient Tibetan had very efficient grammar, and this is why people like the Dalai Lama who study ancient Tibetan are also so enlightened. To be enlightened is to understand that reason and faith are not at all incongruous. The terrible moral crime of Nazism taught Germans that order and unity must go together. Nazism was complete faith in reason and rejection of the unity of mankind.
14. The Scientific Revolution happened when people realized that by experimentation, they could rapidly contribute to the evolution of ideas. The scientific method is, at its very core, a way to speed up evolution by creating more variation and keeping what works. I thank Ms. Brackett in 6th grade for teaching me the scientific method and being the best science teacher in the world. All weather is created by variable distribution of heat on the earth caused by the sun; see, I remember! One addition: heat = energy = mass/gravity/spacetime = life = neurons = connection = love
15. The internet is one big fucking brain, making connections just like brains do. We connect with the internet just like we connect with humans: by asking it questions and hoping for satisfying answers. When we connect with someone or something, we call it love.
16. There are only certain questions we can ask if we want a satisfying answer. Computer programmers and mathematicians (all logicians) ask questions in Boolean grammar (and, not, or, equal) and there only two satisfying answers (yes and no). People, in addition to asking logic questions, ask questions about spacetime (where, when), names (who, what), and reason (how, why). But there are only a few satisfying answers:
who/what/when/where? here/now
how/why? because
Be and cause at the very same time!! It's so easy!!
17. Humans love asking questions and getting satisfying answers, but we also love surprise. The emotion of hope is our desire for surprise. This simple emotion explains everything irrational about what we do: beliefs we know we shouldn't hold (that's Dad), pulling for sports teams even when they're no good (that's Sean, the ultimate Cubs fan), playing the lottery (that's Grandpa), and loving unconditionally (that's Mom and Luana).
LIFE IS A SURPRISE PARTY! AMERICA NEEDS A SURPRISE PARTY IN 2008!
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)