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< | If I wait for this to be perfect, I will never post it. Please forgive the (hopefully temporarily) unorganized nature of my writing and thinking. I hope to put on this page some ideas that can link together in interesting ways, and I hope to continue to add ideas and organize my thoughts as the semester goes along. Please feel free to add ideas that you also find helpful, useful, or funny. |
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> | If I wait for this to be perfect, I will never post it. Please forgive the (hopefully temporarily) unorganized nature of my writing and thinking. I hope to put on this page some ideas that can link together in interesting ways, and I will continue to add ideas and organize my thoughts as the semester goes along. Please feel free to add ideas or perspectives that you also find helpful, useful, or funny. Pretty pictures and good music will also be appreciated. |
| | Inequality |
| | Synthesis: Ideas can be thought of as tools, capital, and power. We can combine and and rearrange ideas/tools to build other, better tools. The relationships between ideas make them that much more powerful… |
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< | (I think) what Eben is trying to do is trying to get us to collaboratively synthesize ideas...if we start the process now, then maybe at some point we would have enough ideas that we wouldn’t have to play the game “the establishment” incentivizes us to play… |
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> | (I think) what Eben is trying to do is to get us to collaboratively synthesize ideas...if we start the process now, then maybe at some point we would have enough ideas that we wouldn’t have to play the game “the establishment” incentivizes us to play… |
| | Ideas can be copied and synthesized cheaply…free hammers for everyone! I can give you my ideas for cheap, which creates positive sum gains... |
| | The problem is that much of this information is too disorganized to be useful... |
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< | Just because rationalization within the law gives a false sense of certainty (when what you really have is internal coherence... “analytic truths” are themselves just tools) |
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> | Just because rationalizations within the law gives a false sense of certainty (when what you really have is coherence... “analytic truths” are themselves just tools), that doesn't mean rationalizing/theorizing can't serve a useful function... |
| | Capitalism |
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< | FA Hayek: Communism with a central planner fails because the planner can't adapt quickly enough to new information, information aggregation in the form of prices allow markets to adapt more quickly to change…whereas the structure of the current system doesn’t adapt quickly at all… |
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> | FA Hayek: Communism with a central planner fails because the planner can't adapt quickly enough to new information, whereas in capitalist economies, the information aggregation in the form of prices allow (in theory) allow markets to adapt more quickly to new information...… |
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< | I’d like to make an analogy between Hayek’s argument against centrally planned economies, and the current educational system. Again, maybe the educational system is failing for one of the same reasons communism failed: a “central planner” can’t adapt quickly enough to new information, and it cuts off a lot of people’s potential… in the process... |
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> | I’d like to make an analogy between Hayek’s argument against centrally planned economies, and the current educational system. Maybe the educational system is failing for some of the same reasons central planning fails: a “central planner” can’t adapt quickly enough to new information, so it is terrible at correcting inequality/inefficiency, and it it cuts off a lot of people’s potential… in the process... |
| | Pain also creates needs... |
| | Reasons to play the game |
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< | (1) For many people success is the final arbiter of truth, so it makes sense to pursue traditional power, even if you want to change the game: no one cares about your ideas if you’re a loser. For example, if Eben was a homeless person we passed by on the way to class instead of a law professor, we would be less inclined to take his ideas seriously, no matter how good they were. |
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> | (1) For many people success is the final arbiter of truth, so it makes sense to pursue traditional power, even if you want to change the game: no one cares about your ideas if you’re a nobody. For example, if Eben was a homeless person we passed by on the way to class instead of a law professor, we would be less inclined to take his ideas seriously, no matter how good they were. |
| | (2) Assuming that we’re too stupid to change the game (perhaps because we've been crippled by the educational system), playing the game is probably our best option
(3) Going along with institutional forces guiding our decisions is like floating with the stream and not against it, stupidly. We have our own problems to deal with… |
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< | (4) Even if we end up going into meaningless jobs instead of changing the world…hey, lots of people don’t change the world and yet can still be very happy...and they find meaning in spending time with family and friends and whatnot instead of in the maniacal pursuit of non-traditional power... |
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> | (4) Even if we end up going into meaningless jobs instead of changing the world…hey, lots of people don’t change the world and yet can still be very happy...and they find meaning in spending time with family and friends and whatnot... |
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< | (5) The system may suck, but if everyone just does what they're supposed to do, then everything should be okay...if everyone refused to work for the man, the system would collapse and poor people would suffer the most, like they always do. |
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> | (5) The current system may not be perfect, but if everyone just does what they're supposed to do, then everything should be okay...if everyone refused to play the game, the system would collapse and poor people would suffer the most, like they always do...and there's no guarantee that getting rid of the old system would ensure that a better system would take its place. |
| | Reasons not to play the game |
| | (3) Eben’s career could offer more variety, whereas most careers require specialization for the sake of “efficiency”…our brains are highly adaptive generalists |
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< | (4) It’s possible that we can be happy with what we've been given |
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> | (4) In terms of resourcefulness, it's possible that we can be happy with what we've been given...maybe "enough" is "enough" |
| | Collaboration/Associational thinking |
| | And if the outcome is built into the process, then I suppose that's a good thing... |
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< | But language is rather linear... |
| | http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/boroditsky09/boroditsky09_index.html
Education |
| | If we have kids sit down for 7 hours a day, should we be surprised when we end up with a sedentary society? |
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< | If you think of religion as “way of life” instead of a “belief system” (William James would say that a belief is just a habit of action) is there really a separation of church and state? Or is that simply another legal fiction that keeps the peace, but is false in practice? |
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> | If you think of religion as a "way of life" instead of a “belief system” (although William James would say that a belief is just a habit of action) is there really a separation of church and state? Or is that simply another legal fiction that keeps the peace, but is false in practice? |
| | Grades and organic growth...we need to "evaluate" kids, right? So how do we get kids to stop comparing themselves to others... |
| | It is a sad society in which philosophy is regarded as useless…the theory is that you can’t pass on “wisdom” because recognizing patterns in experience can’t come without experience…do things, but we can’t give people perspectives on living well…that would just cross some line...it's as though we're prohibited from giving kids the skills, habits, ideas, character to live well, in the long run… |
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< | No control over internal states: therefore we ignore internal states: but what you think about and they way you think about them matter, greatly. |
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> | Other people's internal states are too difficult to control externally: therefore we ignore internal states or use blunt instruments, like coercion: but what you think about and they way you think about them matter, greatly. |
| | Nature is good for people's brains, art is good for people's brains, stimulation in the immediate environment is important... |
| | Brains are too complex to “educate” through force and coercion… Learning by doing is much more effective...we all know that taking lots of practice tests helps to consolidate and organize information in our heads...but teachers don't like to give practice tests or give much feedback... |
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< | Not to mention, the world is too complicated to |
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> | Not to mention, the world is too complicated for us not to focus on helping kids develop the things that will be useful/beneficial in the future as opposed to the things that might be useful/beneficial. |
| | Embodied cognition… |
| | If you’re aiming to lose weight, that’s stupid…it’s just one indicator of how healthy you/your lifestyle are. |
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< | The country is aiming for weight loss instead of health, worrying about the wrong things. Like worrying about grades instead of growth...confusing the signals for the value that's supposed to underly those signals...aim to be healthy and your weight will take care of itself... |
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> | The country is aiming for weight loss instead of health, worrying about the wrong things. Like worrying about grades instead of growth...confusing the signals for the value that's supposed to underlie those signals...aim to be healthy and your weight will take care of itself... |
| | http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HX1qZ2WmjDE |
| | Is the current educational system good only because it's better than watching TV all day? (Incidentally, what needs does TV fulfill? Why do sad people watch so much TV?) |
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< | "Signalling model" of education versus organic growth models...you can't rush organic growth... |
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> | "Signalling model" of education versus organic growth models...you can't rush organic growth...and the kind of growth that we want won't necessarily happen on the arbitrary schedules we create for it...and it's not as though we don't immediately forget large chunks of what we "learn" in terms of memorization anyway...the semester ends, but life goes on... |
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< | Fear, risk, uncertainty...body language...ventromedial prefrontal cortex...what Eben means by courage... |
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> | Fear, risk, uncertainty...body language, bodily intelligence, white matter, the present...ventromedial prefrontal cortex...what Eben means by courage... |
| | How can we create conditions that allow kids to become emotionally healthy, content, caring, and "other-centered" adults (as opposed to unhappy, self-centered adults) |
| | But the point is that if you’re going to use 8 hours of someone’s time inefficiently every single day, it isn’t as though you aren’t encroaching on the private realm already… |
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< | We are taught in schools to ignore (1) the complexity of it all and (2) important features of human nature… |
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> | We are taught in schools to ignore (1) the complexity of it all and (2) important features of human nature…...to ignore either is a bad habit |
| | An unexamined life isn’t worth living, an unreflective educational system isn’t worth going through…
Of the infinite number of things you could be doing, thinking about what you could be doing is one of them…At least some of the time should be spent thinking about how to make whatever you’re doing, better. |
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< | If often becomes clear that there is no good reason for doing things a certain way other than that that is the way that they have been done…Granted, there are often good reasons to do things in some way that aren’t clear until you’ve done them yourself…but nonetheless, much of what people do on a daily basis is remarkable for its absurdity… "foolish consistencies" etc. |
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> | If often becomes clear that there is no good reason for doing things a certain way other than that that is the way that they have been done…Granted, there are often good reasons to do things in some way that aren’t clear until you’ve done them yourself (Incidentally, many people have a habit of rejecting ideas that don't fit within the rationalizations they already have...they call this "critical thinking")...but nonetheless, much of what people do on a daily basis is remarkable for its absurdity. "foolish consistencies" etc. |
| | It’s amazing to me that we presume to teach children…as though we ourselves know what’s going on…I’d argue that philosophy should be taught in public schools, so at least people would question what they know and what they think they know, etc. |
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< | The way we educate kids today is insane…INSANE… And it may always be insane, because there are always massive improvements that can be made...but in particular, today, it is a depressingly stupid system |
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> | The way we educate kids today is insane…INSANE… And it may always be insane, because there are always massive improvements that can be made...but in particular, today, it is a remarkably stupid system...although all the "free money" available is heartening... |
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< | Inefficiencies in the way we pass on information…wisdom, supposedly can’t be passed on, because there’s something about recognizing patterns within experience, and kids don’t have much experience...so how can we impart "wisdom" without imparting our biases? |
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> | There are massive inefficiencies in the way we pass on information…wisdom, supposedly can’t be passed on, because (I think) wisdom involves seeing patterns within experience, and kids don’t have much experience...so how can we impart "wisdom" without imparting our biases? |
| | Complex, adaptive systems |
| | With all our talk of formal systems, you can never design a perfect educational system...it would break down at some point. Which is why we shouldn’t be aiming for perfect but rather a system that improves consistently. The most beautiful and effective systems have some sort of adaptive/self-corrective mechanism/failsafe... scientific experiments (often, I know this is simplistic) have to be repeatable and peer reviewed…the change has to be built into the system, because once it is in place, it becomes institutionalized, rigid, and formal…but all formal systems fail, because they can’t capture all of the available information…If the system can’t adapt itself prospectively, the system will be forced to adapt/break down through “exogenous” circumstances… |
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< | Federalism is to a large extent, not serving its purpose…large complex systems are unstable…the way you govern an empire is to divide and conquer, so disturbances can be contained in their respective regions… It takes too long to steer a large ship...especially when that ship is a "representative democracy"... |
| | (I think) Eben mentioned something to the effect that the problems of today/tomorrow require systems engineers…not legislators who prefer to work within the current system
There are simply too many ideas and too many improvements that can be made…the educational system itself should be better today than it was yesterday, and so forth…yet it will be largely the same tomorrow…
Yet, there's no reason for it not to be better tomorrow. If I was more cynical, I would wonder whether the current system serves more of a crippling function in order to maintain an orderly society in which people are dependent upon capitalism… |
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< | One possible solution would be to have kids do what we’re doing now. Maybe kids in schools should be synthesizing large, diverse bodies of knowledge to improve the system under which they’re operating, thereby not only teaching them to synthesize (and giving them ownership over their lives AND creating "capital" in the form of ideas) but also to actually improve the system under which they’re operating in the process...they would be playing positive sum games from a young age...We would have children being able to ask, freely, “what if?” One possible way of changing the game... |
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> | One possible solution would be to have kids do what we’re doing now. Maybe kids in schools should be synthesizing diverse bodies of knowledge to improve the system under which they’re operating, thereby not only teaching them to synthesize (and giving them ownership over their lives AND creating "capital" in the form of ideas) but also to actually improve the system under which they’re operating in the process...they would be playing positive sum games from a young age...We would have children being able to ask, freely, “what if?” One possible way of changing the game... |
| | Miscellaneous |
| | Religion |
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< | Values and social change…what is the function of values? |
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> | Values and social change…what function do values have? |
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< | As a practical matter, I assume pragmatism, liberalism, and “metaphysical” atheism…in a (supposedly) representative democracy, one must appeal to reasons other people can see...… |
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> | As a practical matter, I assume pragmatism, liberalism, and “metaphysical” atheism…in a (supposedly) representative democracy, we must appeal to reasons other people can see... |
| | But I think there are fundamental human needs that the system simply chooses not to recognize…religion isn’t going anywhere…it is a fact of existence in America…
And if you're talking about the history of radical social movements, how can you not talk about religion? |
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< | There are some moral ideas that are more easily expressed through a non-materialistic standpoint…on a non-materialist level, why should I care about a person that is “functionally” useless? |
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> | There are some moral ideas that are more easily expressed through a non-materialistic standpoint… from a materialist standpoint, why should I care about a person that is “functionally” useless? |
| | If we suppose that religion fulfills some fundamental human needs, we could stop arguing either/or and start thinking “okay, but/and” |