So the Pillowfight Fairy, after doing much reading of the books that we picked up at the library today, was sketching on a Magna-Doodle.
"See this butterfly? Soon it will have oobleck on it."
...
It's been a while since I've read that book. As I read it, it occurred to me that it would actually make a pretty good movie--probably better than any other Dr. Seuss-inspired movie made to date.
Especially if it was directed by someone like Tim Burton.
And the Fairy? She's started to think up some pretty gruesome ideas lately, of which oobleck on the butterfly is but one example among many. So, do you think this is just a natural thing, or is it a result of me reading all those Norse myths and Grimm's Fairy Tales to her? (Not that those options are mutually exclusive, of course.)
Thursday, October 11, 2007
Wednesday, October 10, 2007
Consensus ≠ Science
We have a video that the kids ask to see from time to time, containing all of the Schoolhouse Rock songs ever written. Now, most of these songs were written in the 1970s and 1980s, and times have changed since then; as a result, we note that several things said in these songs are a little out of date. It's interesting to read between the lines and note some of the fears that motivated the creation of these songs--like the song Energy that obliquely warned us that we'd all freeze if we didn't start conserving. And the songs about America were completely and un-ironically pro-American and pro-assimilation, which is something frankly refreshing to watch these days. (Although my wife is a little put off by the feminist viewpoint put forth in the song about suffrage. But that's for her to blog about, not me. I'm too chicken.)
Well, the song in the Science section about the importance of a eating well (with the Orwellian title "I'm a Machine, You're a Machine") contains a very interesting line about what constitutes a healthful diet. Schoolhouse Rock recommends a high-protein and low-carbohydrate diet (plus exercise).
When I first heard this song, I wasn't sure that I heard that right. High-protein, low-carbohydrate? Atkins hadn't published his stuff back in the seventies when this song was written! Where did that come from?
It turns out, this is one of those cases where the "conventional wisdom" of what constitutes a healthful diet swings widely from generation to generation, and from century to century. Those big cattle drives we read about from the Old West? They were done because the US developed a huge appetite for meat in the late 19th century. In the lean years during and after the Civil War there wasn't all that much food to go around, and an entire generation grew up slightly stunted growth-wise; that generation in turn developed an obsession with protein. If you have it, better eat it, because you don't know when you'll have it again. All that meat also was a status symbol; eating meat showed that you could afford meat, which meant that you and your family weren't likely to go hungry in the near future.
By the early seventies the scientific consensus was starting to swing in the other direction. I don't remember a whole lot from the seventies--I turned nine in 1980--but I do remember growing up thinking that all that meat and fatty food would make you unhealthy; that the healthful way to eat was to eat lots of fruits and vegetables; eat pasta, potatoes, and breadstuffs for energy; and eat only a little protein and fat.
Aside from the fruits and vegetables--which just about everyone agrees are good for you--this advice was exactly the opposite of what that Schoolhouse Rock song was telling us to do.
I remember the first time I was exposed to the idea of the "High-Protein, Low-Carb diet". One of my co-workers in the late nineties would order a double hamburger, discard the top bun, cut the rest in half; stack the whole thing together, and get rid of one half of the bottom bun. He said his doctor had told him to do this, to help him lose weight. (He did have serious heart issues, and had to carry around the nitroglycerine tablets just in case.) At the time, I thought that was the weirdest thing I'd ever heard of. I'm not so sure about that anymore; I'm no weight-loss expert, and I've never dieted, but I think there's probably something to the idea that cutting the carbs from the diet will actually result in weight loss before cutting the fat will. I'm not going to get into that argument here; that's something for another time, and as I said, I'm no expert.
But a slightly larger point is that the experts don't agree with each other.
And an even more important point that, is that even when the experts agree with each other, it doesn't mean they're right!
I saw an article at the New York Times (hat tip to the Instapundit) that I found highly interesting, entitled Diet and Fat: a Case of Mistaken Consensus. This article looks into how the low-fat consensus came into being and shouldered aside earlier "conventional wisdom" regarding diet, even though there wasn't a whole lot of evidence supporting it. In a very small nutshell, the problem is that scientists are people too, and every bit as vulnerable to social and political pressure as the rest of us poor souls. In fact, scientists may even be more vulnerable to social and political pressure than the rest of us, because in order to do their jobs, they have to convince someone (often the government) to pay for their research--and they have to convince their peers that their research is actually worth publishing. The Peer Review system, which--don't get me wrong--is necessary to weed out junk science--can also weed out entirely legitimate ideas that don't match the consensus. If you make yourself unpopular among your scientific peers, you can't publish your work, and your scientific career goes kablooey.
The article charts the rise of the low-fat consensus. Basically, one strongly-opinionated proponent of the low-fat model wound up getting into positions of authority within the American Heart Association, along with some allies; then, they managed to make a consensus by throwing the weight of the AHA behind research and researchers that supported the party line. Eventually, those scientists that doubted the consensus were marginalized and ignored. All this happened without the weight of scientific evidence in favor of the consensus position.
...
The problem is that we mere non-scientist plebians don't often have the expertise to determine for ourselves, first-hand, what is good science and what is junk. We have to rely on experts. But there are frequently experts on every side of every argument you can think of. What do we do?
We often try to answer this question by figuring out which side has more experts than the other side. If nine out of ten dentists agree that you shouldn't chew aspen bark, then we assume that's probably good advice.
The trouble is, that's a really lousy way to conduct scientific research. Our knowledge of the world is constantly changing. Theories old and new are constantly being tested, updated, pondered, and discarded. And every new advance in science originated in the mind of some individual scientist who looked at the data in a slightly different way than those who came before, and came to new conclusions. Initially, every advance in science starts out as a non-consensus position.
Consider the recent news item that some scientists have proposed a new theory about the human appendix. As I understand it, this theory rejects the consensus notion that the appendix is just a useless organ, a leftover from far back in our evolutionary past where it actually did something that helped us survive. This theory proposes that the purpose of the appendix is to preserve some intestinal bacteria--which is crucial in helping us digest our food--in times of famine or disease, when our digestive tracts get emptied and/or flushed out. With the appendix there keeping some of these bacteria around, we can start digesting normally again the moment the food supply becomes available.
Is this theory correct? Who knows? I'm in no position to judge it. But the point is, it might be right. And if it is, then it gives a perfect illustration of one scientist having an idea that flies in the face of consensus, and the consensus being wrong.
The author Michael Crichton--who wrote the Andromeda Strain, Jurrasic Park, and many others--delivered a very interesting speech some years back warning (among other things) that the scientific community has been embracing consensus as a guiding principle of late; and that this has been degrading the quality of the science produced, and undermining the faith of the public in scientists and the in institutions of science. The speech, whimsically entitled Aliens Cause Global Warming, contained this section (which we should all memorize):
This is something that we all need to remember. Any time you hear a scientist or politician say, "The science is settled!" just think to yourself that this person has lost any credibility to speak on scientific matters. Science is never settled. Declaring that it is, merely makes one impervious to any subsequently collected evidence to the contrary. The most that anyone has the right to say is, "Based on our best understanding and the evidence we've collected to date, the most likely explanation is X." Anything more leaves the realm of science.
And based on our best understanding and the evidence we've collected to date, it's not a high-fat diet that will do you in, it's a diet that consistently takes in more calories than your body burns. And it is often the low-fat diets that do this; the lack of fats leave the person hungry, causing him or her to eat a lot more than he or she would have on a richer diet. But as I mentioned above, this assessment may still change when new research comes in on the matter. In the meantime, don't let anyone browbeat you into eating what they want you to by claiming that 9 out of 10 experts agree with them. Nine out of 10 times, the research will be pointing somewhere else by the time the decade is out.
Well, the song in the Science section about the importance of a eating well (with the Orwellian title "I'm a Machine, You're a Machine") contains a very interesting line about what constitutes a healthful diet. Schoolhouse Rock recommends a high-protein and low-carbohydrate diet (plus exercise).
When I first heard this song, I wasn't sure that I heard that right. High-protein, low-carbohydrate? Atkins hadn't published his stuff back in the seventies when this song was written! Where did that come from?
It turns out, this is one of those cases where the "conventional wisdom" of what constitutes a healthful diet swings widely from generation to generation, and from century to century. Those big cattle drives we read about from the Old West? They were done because the US developed a huge appetite for meat in the late 19th century. In the lean years during and after the Civil War there wasn't all that much food to go around, and an entire generation grew up slightly stunted growth-wise; that generation in turn developed an obsession with protein. If you have it, better eat it, because you don't know when you'll have it again. All that meat also was a status symbol; eating meat showed that you could afford meat, which meant that you and your family weren't likely to go hungry in the near future.
By the early seventies the scientific consensus was starting to swing in the other direction. I don't remember a whole lot from the seventies--I turned nine in 1980--but I do remember growing up thinking that all that meat and fatty food would make you unhealthy; that the healthful way to eat was to eat lots of fruits and vegetables; eat pasta, potatoes, and breadstuffs for energy; and eat only a little protein and fat.
Aside from the fruits and vegetables--which just about everyone agrees are good for you--this advice was exactly the opposite of what that Schoolhouse Rock song was telling us to do.
I remember the first time I was exposed to the idea of the "High-Protein, Low-Carb diet". One of my co-workers in the late nineties would order a double hamburger, discard the top bun, cut the rest in half; stack the whole thing together, and get rid of one half of the bottom bun. He said his doctor had told him to do this, to help him lose weight. (He did have serious heart issues, and had to carry around the nitroglycerine tablets just in case.) At the time, I thought that was the weirdest thing I'd ever heard of. I'm not so sure about that anymore; I'm no weight-loss expert, and I've never dieted, but I think there's probably something to the idea that cutting the carbs from the diet will actually result in weight loss before cutting the fat will. I'm not going to get into that argument here; that's something for another time, and as I said, I'm no expert.
But a slightly larger point is that the experts don't agree with each other.
And an even more important point that, is that even when the experts agree with each other, it doesn't mean they're right!
I saw an article at the New York Times (hat tip to the Instapundit) that I found highly interesting, entitled Diet and Fat: a Case of Mistaken Consensus. This article looks into how the low-fat consensus came into being and shouldered aside earlier "conventional wisdom" regarding diet, even though there wasn't a whole lot of evidence supporting it. In a very small nutshell, the problem is that scientists are people too, and every bit as vulnerable to social and political pressure as the rest of us poor souls. In fact, scientists may even be more vulnerable to social and political pressure than the rest of us, because in order to do their jobs, they have to convince someone (often the government) to pay for their research--and they have to convince their peers that their research is actually worth publishing. The Peer Review system, which--don't get me wrong--is necessary to weed out junk science--can also weed out entirely legitimate ideas that don't match the consensus. If you make yourself unpopular among your scientific peers, you can't publish your work, and your scientific career goes kablooey.
The article charts the rise of the low-fat consensus. Basically, one strongly-opinionated proponent of the low-fat model wound up getting into positions of authority within the American Heart Association, along with some allies; then, they managed to make a consensus by throwing the weight of the AHA behind research and researchers that supported the party line. Eventually, those scientists that doubted the consensus were marginalized and ignored. All this happened without the weight of scientific evidence in favor of the consensus position.
...
The problem is that we mere non-scientist plebians don't often have the expertise to determine for ourselves, first-hand, what is good science and what is junk. We have to rely on experts. But there are frequently experts on every side of every argument you can think of. What do we do?
We often try to answer this question by figuring out which side has more experts than the other side. If nine out of ten dentists agree that you shouldn't chew aspen bark, then we assume that's probably good advice.
The trouble is, that's a really lousy way to conduct scientific research. Our knowledge of the world is constantly changing. Theories old and new are constantly being tested, updated, pondered, and discarded. And every new advance in science originated in the mind of some individual scientist who looked at the data in a slightly different way than those who came before, and came to new conclusions. Initially, every advance in science starts out as a non-consensus position.
Consider the recent news item that some scientists have proposed a new theory about the human appendix. As I understand it, this theory rejects the consensus notion that the appendix is just a useless organ, a leftover from far back in our evolutionary past where it actually did something that helped us survive. This theory proposes that the purpose of the appendix is to preserve some intestinal bacteria--which is crucial in helping us digest our food--in times of famine or disease, when our digestive tracts get emptied and/or flushed out. With the appendix there keeping some of these bacteria around, we can start digesting normally again the moment the food supply becomes available.
Is this theory correct? Who knows? I'm in no position to judge it. But the point is, it might be right. And if it is, then it gives a perfect illustration of one scientist having an idea that flies in the face of consensus, and the consensus being wrong.
The author Michael Crichton--who wrote the Andromeda Strain, Jurrasic Park, and many others--delivered a very interesting speech some years back warning (among other things) that the scientific community has been embracing consensus as a guiding principle of late; and that this has been degrading the quality of the science produced, and undermining the faith of the public in scientists and the in institutions of science. The speech, whimsically entitled Aliens Cause Global Warming, contained this section (which we should all memorize):
I want to pause here and talk about this notion of consensus, and the rise of what has been called consensus science. I regard consensus science as an extremely pernicious development that ought to be stopped cold in its tracks. Historically, the claim of consensus has been the first refuge of scoundrels; it is a way to avoid debate by claiming that the matter is already settled. Whenever you hear the consensus of scientists agrees on something or other, reach for your wallet, because you're being had.
Let's be clear: the work of science has nothing whatever to do with consensus. Consensus is the business of politics. Science, on the contrary, requires only one investigator who happens to be right, which means that he or she has results that are verifiable by reference to the real world. In science consensus is irrelevant. What is relevant is reproducible results. The greatest scientists in history are great precisely because they broke with the consensus.
There is no such thing as consensus science. If it's consensus, it isn't science. If it's science, it isn't consensus. Period.
This is something that we all need to remember. Any time you hear a scientist or politician say, "The science is settled!" just think to yourself that this person has lost any credibility to speak on scientific matters. Science is never settled. Declaring that it is, merely makes one impervious to any subsequently collected evidence to the contrary. The most that anyone has the right to say is, "Based on our best understanding and the evidence we've collected to date, the most likely explanation is X." Anything more leaves the realm of science.
And based on our best understanding and the evidence we've collected to date, it's not a high-fat diet that will do you in, it's a diet that consistently takes in more calories than your body burns. And it is often the low-fat diets that do this; the lack of fats leave the person hungry, causing him or her to eat a lot more than he or she would have on a richer diet. But as I mentioned above, this assessment may still change when new research comes in on the matter. In the meantime, don't let anyone browbeat you into eating what they want you to by claiming that 9 out of 10 experts agree with them. Nine out of 10 times, the research will be pointing somewhere else by the time the decade is out.
Tuesday, October 9, 2007
Of Four-Year-Olds and Chapter Books
So my wife and I have decided to go with a Classical Education approach to our homeschooling, following the philosophy laid out by Jessie Wise and Susan Wise Bauer in The Well Trained Mind. Part of this philosophy relies upon the use of great books. The idea here is that one should never give a child any book that is not well-written. The books should be of a difficulty level that stretches the child's abilities, but with a story that's engaging enough that it captures the child's attention.
There is a fine balancing act here. There are plenty of picture-books out there that are perhaps fun to read, but don't contain any great ideas or great stories, which can be considered the literary equivalent of whipped cream; kids will read these things all day, but will not necessarily benefit from them. Charlotte Mason famously referred to these books as twaddle. On the other end of the spectrum are books filled with great ideas, but which are too advanced for the little ones to get. Pride and Prejudice may be a great novel, but the Pillowfight Fairy would be bored out of her mind if we tried to read it to her. (She has been subjected to the video--specifically the great BBC version with Colin Firth--but very much against her will.)
So when we go to the library, we let her pick out some books that look interesting to her, but Mommy and Daddy pick out some books too, with the hope that we'll grab one or two that hits the zone: that make her interested in the story, even though they have big words and few pictures.
So we've been thinking a lot about Vikings lately in our family. It started when I put that silly helmet on the Pillowfight Fairy and got thinking about Valkyries. But eventually I started telling the Fairy about Thor, and how his name is cognate to our word thunder, and how he carried a big hammer around, and how Thursday is named after him... and she showed some interest in finding out more. So on this last library trip I picked up a book entitled Norse Stories, by Robert Hull. Note that Amazon lists this book as being at a 9- to 12-year reading level. This is a book that I've been reading to the Fairy; not one that I've been expecting her to read herself.
The first few chapters were a bit of a bust, it would appear. They involved Odin trying to get wisdom. How thrilling.
But tonight we got to the part of the story that she liked. You see, Odin is rather grim and serious. But Thor and Loki are fun.
The story we read tonight was the one where Thor and Loki went to the giants' stronghold and challenged them to various contests. The giants cheated at all these contests, and used magic to cover up their perfidy. So in the drinking game, Thor's drinking horn was magically connected to the ocean, so it kept getting filled up from the back end and Thor couldn't empty it. And in Loki's competitive eating match, he was pitted against a fire that had been enchanted into giant-form. And then Thor was pitted in a wrestling match against an old woman who was actually old age in disguise. This story is one of the more famous ones in Norse Mythology, and one of the few truly humorous ones.
And the Fairy was pretty well sucked in right at the beginning. The chapter begins with the following lines:
So we actually found a chapter book, with few pictures (but reasonably-well drawn ones, I hasten to add), that the Fairy could sit through. Of course, we also used a little trick: we had her working on a craft project while I read to her. She was trying to do some needlework at the time. This worked pretty well, but she kept making mistakes because she was drawn in to the story.
Rather odd to say it, but this means her mistakes were a good sign. It means that she was actually enjoying the story. We actually managed to get a good book that hit the right balance between meaty and tasty. Now the challenge is to keep doing this every time we go to the library.
There is a fine balancing act here. There are plenty of picture-books out there that are perhaps fun to read, but don't contain any great ideas or great stories, which can be considered the literary equivalent of whipped cream; kids will read these things all day, but will not necessarily benefit from them. Charlotte Mason famously referred to these books as twaddle. On the other end of the spectrum are books filled with great ideas, but which are too advanced for the little ones to get. Pride and Prejudice may be a great novel, but the Pillowfight Fairy would be bored out of her mind if we tried to read it to her. (She has been subjected to the video--specifically the great BBC version with Colin Firth--but very much against her will.)
So when we go to the library, we let her pick out some books that look interesting to her, but Mommy and Daddy pick out some books too, with the hope that we'll grab one or two that hits the zone: that make her interested in the story, even though they have big words and few pictures.
So we've been thinking a lot about Vikings lately in our family. It started when I put that silly helmet on the Pillowfight Fairy and got thinking about Valkyries. But eventually I started telling the Fairy about Thor, and how his name is cognate to our word thunder, and how he carried a big hammer around, and how Thursday is named after him... and she showed some interest in finding out more. So on this last library trip I picked up a book entitled Norse Stories, by Robert Hull. Note that Amazon lists this book as being at a 9- to 12-year reading level. This is a book that I've been reading to the Fairy; not one that I've been expecting her to read herself.
The first few chapters were a bit of a bust, it would appear. They involved Odin trying to get wisdom. How thrilling.
But tonight we got to the part of the story that she liked. You see, Odin is rather grim and serious. But Thor and Loki are fun.
The story we read tonight was the one where Thor and Loki went to the giants' stronghold and challenged them to various contests. The giants cheated at all these contests, and used magic to cover up their perfidy. So in the drinking game, Thor's drinking horn was magically connected to the ocean, so it kept getting filled up from the back end and Thor couldn't empty it. And in Loki's competitive eating match, he was pitted against a fire that had been enchanted into giant-form. And then Thor was pitted in a wrestling match against an old woman who was actually old age in disguise. This story is one of the more famous ones in Norse Mythology, and one of the few truly humorous ones.
And the Fairy was pretty well sucked in right at the beginning. The chapter begins with the following lines:
Now, as I was reading this, the tongue-in-cheek nature of this passage struck me. The sense of humor underlying the story feels familiar. Where have I heard this tone before? Let me see now...Thor and Loki were sitting under Yggdrasil. Thor was finishing his breakfast of oats and herring.
Thor wiped his hand across his mouth. "I'm going," he said to Loki.
"Where to?"
"Jotunheim. Giant-splintering."
"To Jotunheim? Now?"
"My hammer Mjollnir is restless. Idleness irritates him. He wants to be wielded. He hungers to harm giants, to be hurled at some furlong-length frost-face. He longs to crack some cliff-heads."
Loki was curious. It would be entertaining to visit giant-land in the company of large-hearted, not-so-large-brained Thor.
Hmmmm... now I know this isn't the first time somebody has discovered a link between Norse Mythology and Winnie the Pooh. And I'm quite proud of my daughter; the Fairy discovered this link, quite fairly, well before I did. ;-)"Good-morning, Christopher Robin," he called out.
"Hallo, Pooh Bear. I can't get this boot on."
"That's bad," said Pooh.
"Do you think you could very kindly lean against me, 'cos I keep pulling so hard that I fall over backwards."
Pooh sat down, dug his feet into the ground, and pushed hard against Christopher Robin's back, and Christopher Robin pushed hard against his, and pulled and pulled at his boot until he had got it on.
"And that's that," said Pooh. "What do we do next?"
"Giant-splintering," said Christopher Robin."We are all going on an Expedition," said Christopher Robin, as he got up and brushed himself. "Thank you, Pooh."
So we actually found a chapter book, with few pictures (but reasonably-well drawn ones, I hasten to add), that the Fairy could sit through. Of course, we also used a little trick: we had her working on a craft project while I read to her. She was trying to do some needlework at the time. This worked pretty well, but she kept making mistakes because she was drawn in to the story.
Rather odd to say it, but this means her mistakes were a good sign. It means that she was actually enjoying the story. We actually managed to get a good book that hit the right balance between meaty and tasty. Now the challenge is to keep doing this every time we go to the library.
93rd Carnival of Homeschooling up
Just wanted to let all my readers know that the 93rd Carnival of Homeschooling is up over at Apollos Academy . My post Virtue, Peer Pressure, and Homeschoolers is featured, as is my lovely bride's post Toys: the love-hate relationship.
There's a lot of good stuff there. For one thing, there are a couple of posts referring to this recently-released report from the Fraser Institute (of Canada). The report gives a brief overview of the history and the current state of homeschooling in North America (both US and Canada), and summarizes the existing research about how well homeschooled children are doing academically and socially.
And one of the contributors this week is one that I've never seen before, entitled Play the Dad? No, Be the Dad! One of his posts (not from the Carnival--it's one of the other posts on the site) links to this video clip, which had me laughing so hard there were tears in my eyes:
Hope you enjoy. As I said, there's a lot of good stuff there.
There's a lot of good stuff there. For one thing, there are a couple of posts referring to this recently-released report from the Fraser Institute (of Canada). The report gives a brief overview of the history and the current state of homeschooling in North America (both US and Canada), and summarizes the existing research about how well homeschooled children are doing academically and socially.
And one of the contributors this week is one that I've never seen before, entitled Play the Dad? No, Be the Dad! One of his posts (not from the Carnival--it's one of the other posts on the site) links to this video clip, which had me laughing so hard there were tears in my eyes:
Hope you enjoy. As I said, there's a lot of good stuff there.
Monday, October 8, 2007
So This Is Why There Are So Many Messed Up People Out There
While I was perusing what the Instapundit was offering up today, I came upon his post mentioning this article, entitled Neurotic Software Has a Winning Personality.
The upshot as I understand it is that some "Austrian Researchers" (watch out for those guys; they're nothing but trouble) wanted to create an artificial intelligence (AI) routine that was smart enough to play a computer strategy game, that also modeled human emotions. That is, their software would try to figure out when it was supposed to be happy, angry, cautious, apathetic, etc.; and then, it would behave in ways that a person who was happy, angry, cautious, apathetic, etc. would behave.
Then once they created their basic "human emotion" model, they used it to create several personalities. Now, a big part of our personality is expressed through our emotions. That is, some people are just happier most of the time; some are angrier most of the time, some are naturally cautious, or naturally exuberant, or naturally apathetic and nihilistic, or even just confused.
And even though we go back and forth between these moods, it takes different kinds of triggers for different people to effect a mood shift. So to describe all this, these researchers started drawing ideas from the field of Behavioral Psychology, in which one common Personality Model breaks down each person's personality into five variables:
Guess which one won.
That's right, the most neurotic of the models performed best. It won all its scenarios against the AI opponent that comes built in to the computer game. Not only that, but it won each scenario significantly faster than the second-best of the AI players being tested, the aggressive one.
So, let's think about this for a second. The AI player following the neurotic strategy is designed to spend much of its time in a state of confusion; it's designed to make frequent mistakes about the availability of resources (the article mentions the timber resource as a good example). It's designed to have sudden, wide swings of simulated emotion, but on the whole to spend a majority of the time in a bad mood. It's designed to behave in a bi-polar fashion, switching its behavior suddenly and frequently.
And it wins.
A couple of thoughts present themselves:
The upshot as I understand it is that some "Austrian Researchers" (watch out for those guys; they're nothing but trouble) wanted to create an artificial intelligence (AI) routine that was smart enough to play a computer strategy game, that also modeled human emotions. That is, their software would try to figure out when it was supposed to be happy, angry, cautious, apathetic, etc.; and then, it would behave in ways that a person who was happy, angry, cautious, apathetic, etc. would behave.
Then once they created their basic "human emotion" model, they used it to create several personalities. Now, a big part of our personality is expressed through our emotions. That is, some people are just happier most of the time; some are angrier most of the time, some are naturally cautious, or naturally exuberant, or naturally apathetic and nihilistic, or even just confused.
And even though we go back and forth between these moods, it takes different kinds of triggers for different people to effect a mood shift. So to describe all this, these researchers started drawing ideas from the field of Behavioral Psychology, in which one common Personality Model breaks down each person's personality into five variables:
- Conscientiousness--how self-disciplined and organized is the person?
- Agreeableness--how compassionate is the person toward others?
- Neuroticism--how easily does the person slip into negative emotions?
- Openness to experience--how easily does the person assimilate new experiences?
- Extraversion--how much does the person seek contact with others?
Guess which one won.
That's right, the most neurotic of the models performed best. It won all its scenarios against the AI opponent that comes built in to the computer game. Not only that, but it won each scenario significantly faster than the second-best of the AI players being tested, the aggressive one.
So, let's think about this for a second. The AI player following the neurotic strategy is designed to spend much of its time in a state of confusion; it's designed to make frequent mistakes about the availability of resources (the article mentions the timber resource as a good example). It's designed to have sudden, wide swings of simulated emotion, but on the whole to spend a majority of the time in a bad mood. It's designed to behave in a bi-polar fashion, switching its behavior suddenly and frequently.
And it wins.
A couple of thoughts present themselves:
- I think this counts as one more piece of evidence that Reason is highly overrated, something I've believed for a long time. Don't get me wrong; it has its time and place. And I'd much rather be a happy person than a neurotic one. But just because someone isn't guided by reason doesn't mean they won't succeed at what they're doing. Indeed, one's very lack of reason can be a significant factor in one's success. After all, your very randomness means that you will frequently change strategies that aren't working. And occasionally you will hit upon winning strategies by nothing more than pure chance. This means that in truly complex situations where the right answers are not easy to find, like in human societies--or wars--you are likely to land on a winning strategy sooner than one who is more methodical.
- Thus far, what we're describing is very similar in concept to Darwinian Evolution. Darwinian Evolution is driven by two phenomena: mutation, which introduces variety into the species; and natural selection, which weeds out the weaker of the varieties and permits the fitter ones to propagate into the future. Neurosis acts much like mutation, in that it causes the player to make frequent changes in strategy; and it also acts like natural selection, in that the player drops old strategies at the first sign of failure and replaces them with something new. This process can in fact yield quite successful strategies, without a whole lot of wisdom driving the process.
- If something causes people to be successful, it becomes commonplace. This is the whole idea behind natural selection: if being random, disorderly, bipolar, and undisciplined leads to a certain degree of success in, say, finding mates--and I do remember the high-school and college social scene, and this does happen--then one must expect randomness, disorderliness, bipolarity, and lack of discipline to become commonplace. If the Prima Donna gets what she wants, we all get more Prima Donnas.
- Ergo, our society develops a large number of messed up people, because at some level, it pays to be messed up.
It also seems to me that this dynamic works on much larger stages than interpersonal relations. One of the reasons there are so many messed up societies in the world, so many failed states, so many terrorist-supporting states, so many dictators nursing cults of personality, goes to the successes potentially brought by neurosis. After all, just consider: when a civilized nation is in conflict with a state run by a power-mad dictator, where do the sympathies of the "world community" typically lie? For the last several decades, the very fact that there was a conflict was laid at the door of the civilized nation. Power-mad dictators aren't expected to behave rationally, so it's considered incumbent upon the civilized nation to make accomodations to keep the peace.
(Boy, this turned into a depressing post. I didn't mean it to when I started it, really....)
I'm going to have to ponder what this all means at length. More on this when I'm through pondering....
Sunday, October 7, 2007
When God Gave Us the Sabbath, I Don't Think This Is What He Meant
Ok, so here was my schedule today:
6:00 Up, shower, dress.
6:30 Breakfast, greet kids for morning.
7:00 I drive in to Church by myself.
7:30 Start practicing to sing at Church. We sing through entire service.
8:30 First Service starts at Church. Of course, we sing through entire service again.
9:45 Take two girls to class. (Mommy takes the boy).
9:55 Go to my Adult Bible Class.
10:40 Go collect my two girls, hand them off to Mommy.
10:50 Head back to auditorium, get miked-up again.
11:00 Second Service starts at Church. We sing through entire service again.
12:15 Go find what has happened to my family, head over to the multi-purpose room.
12:20 Start of "Deacon's Appreciation Luncheon." Mainly, formalities begin at this point. Meanwhile, girls are dying of hunger, as it's an hour after their normal lunchtime.
12:40 Actual lunch starts. Most of the food--although pretty good by adult standards--is considered inedible by the girls.
1:15 Our three kids, and all the other kids , head off to the child care. (Without having had dessert, which hasn't yet been served; they are quite upset.) Now the "Deacon Appreciation" part of the luncheon starts. There's a whole lot of talking. I realize they're there to appreciate me, so I do my best to appear engaged, but (as my wife could tell easily) fail miserably.
2:15 It ends. I pilfer two pieces of German Chocolate Cake and go find my kids. The girls happily tuck into the cake. I walk the now ironically-named Happy Boy around in his stroller to help his mood.
2:30 The girls have eaten the cake, so we all go pile in the cars to head home. It's way past everyone's naptimes, and now they're hopped up on sugar.
2:50 We get home and start up naptimes. The Adrenaline Junkie (who, incidentally, fell asleep on the way home) goes down for her nap, and the Happy Boy is only too happy to be back in his crib. The Pillowfight Fairy doesn't often take naps these days (though she should get back in the habit, in her daddy's humble opinion); but she is nevertheless usually able to keep things toned down for the remainder of the quiet time.
3:00 Finally! I get to lie down. I set an alarm clock--just to be safe--and fall fast asleep. Complete bliss! Mommy isn't so lucky, though; when the Adrenaline Junkie fell asleep in the van on the way home, she spoiled her nap, in the same way that eating food between meals can spoil your dinner. She keeps getting up and waking Mommy up.
4:30 My alarm goes off. I slowly, groggily make myself presentable. I find I can easily sing the third A below middle C.
4:40 I get in the car and head back to Church.
5:00 I meet with several people who are picking out songs for this year's Christmas musical production. We look through lots of songs. I'm still a bit groggy; and as a result, my ability to make artistic and intellectual evaluations is a wee bit impaired; I have difficulty approaching the task with anything more than a blanket sense of apathy.
6:00 The evening services start in the auditorium. Aparently, the Pillowfight Fairy--who hadn't taken a nap yet, like Daddy thinks she should--fell asleep in the van on the way to Church.
6:25 I escort the Adrenaline Junky to class. Mommy takes Happy Boy to the Nursery, and the Pillowfight Fairy and all the other grade-schoolers follow the Childrens' Minister (as though he were the Pied Piper) out to their classes.
6:30 I go back to the Auditorium, where I'm the one now running things. I start teaching two new songs to about 20-30 adults. One of these songs will be used in upcoming worship services; the other will be part of the Christmas program. At one point in the latter song, it splits into seven parts; I have to teach each of these parts, one part at a time, to the appropriate singers.
7:25 We actually did a good job learning the music! The singers have got the notes, and are starting to work on dynamics and phrasing. But time's up, so everyone is dismissed, and I go get the two girls from their widely-separated classrooms. Mommy goes to get the Happy Boy.
7:35 After schmoozing for a few minutes with family and friends, we pile back into the cars and head home.
8:00 I help glue back together a craft project that the Pillowfight Fairy brought home from church, that was already falling apart thus breaking the Fairy's heart. Apparently the glue they used doesn't stick spongy foam to aluminum foil very well. So we get out the same craft glue we used on Uncalibur-ated and Årþørsgrößtetüðpik and redo the thing. The Fairy now wants to wear it, but the glue is still wet.
8:05 I start making popcorn, which is a multi-generation Sunday-night tradition in my family. Mommy starts feeding the Happy Boy his last bottle of the day.
8:20 We start eating the popcorn. Happy Boy shows great interest. So, because he doesn't have molars yet, we start picking off bits of popcorn pieces that are just the white stuff, with no kernel shell. He decides he wants more. We've never seen him eat so much solid food before....
8:50 We put the Happy boy down to sleep and start getting the girls ready for bed--changed, teeth brushed, etc....
9:05 We say the prayers and put the girls to bed.
9:15 I start writing this blog post.
Now I ask you: Is this what God had in mind when he prescribed that we should have one day a week as rest? Hmmmm?
Obviously, I've got to cut back on the blogging. ;-)
P.S. 10:10 Finished writing this blog post checked emails, and started submitting things to the upcoming Carnival of Homeschooling.
6:00 Up, shower, dress.
6:30 Breakfast, greet kids for morning.
7:00 I drive in to Church by myself.
7:30 Start practicing to sing at Church. We sing through entire service.
8:30 First Service starts at Church. Of course, we sing through entire service again.
9:45 Take two girls to class. (Mommy takes the boy).
9:55 Go to my Adult Bible Class.
10:40 Go collect my two girls, hand them off to Mommy.
10:50 Head back to auditorium, get miked-up again.
11:00 Second Service starts at Church. We sing through entire service again.
12:15 Go find what has happened to my family, head over to the multi-purpose room.
12:20 Start of "Deacon's Appreciation Luncheon." Mainly, formalities begin at this point. Meanwhile, girls are dying of hunger, as it's an hour after their normal lunchtime.
12:40 Actual lunch starts. Most of the food--although pretty good by adult standards--is considered inedible by the girls.
1:15 Our three kids, and all the other kids , head off to the child care. (Without having had dessert, which hasn't yet been served; they are quite upset.) Now the "Deacon Appreciation" part of the luncheon starts. There's a whole lot of talking. I realize they're there to appreciate me, so I do my best to appear engaged, but (as my wife could tell easily) fail miserably.
2:15 It ends. I pilfer two pieces of German Chocolate Cake and go find my kids. The girls happily tuck into the cake. I walk the now ironically-named Happy Boy around in his stroller to help his mood.
2:30 The girls have eaten the cake, so we all go pile in the cars to head home. It's way past everyone's naptimes, and now they're hopped up on sugar.
2:50 We get home and start up naptimes. The Adrenaline Junkie (who, incidentally, fell asleep on the way home) goes down for her nap, and the Happy Boy is only too happy to be back in his crib. The Pillowfight Fairy doesn't often take naps these days (though she should get back in the habit, in her daddy's humble opinion); but she is nevertheless usually able to keep things toned down for the remainder of the quiet time.
3:00 Finally! I get to lie down. I set an alarm clock--just to be safe--and fall fast asleep. Complete bliss! Mommy isn't so lucky, though; when the Adrenaline Junkie fell asleep in the van on the way home, she spoiled her nap, in the same way that eating food between meals can spoil your dinner. She keeps getting up and waking Mommy up.
4:30 My alarm goes off. I slowly, groggily make myself presentable. I find I can easily sing the third A below middle C.
4:40 I get in the car and head back to Church.
5:00 I meet with several people who are picking out songs for this year's Christmas musical production. We look through lots of songs. I'm still a bit groggy; and as a result, my ability to make artistic and intellectual evaluations is a wee bit impaired; I have difficulty approaching the task with anything more than a blanket sense of apathy.
6:00 The evening services start in the auditorium. Aparently, the Pillowfight Fairy--who hadn't taken a nap yet, like Daddy thinks she should--fell asleep in the van on the way to Church.
6:25 I escort the Adrenaline Junky to class. Mommy takes Happy Boy to the Nursery, and the Pillowfight Fairy and all the other grade-schoolers follow the Childrens' Minister (as though he were the Pied Piper) out to their classes.
6:30 I go back to the Auditorium, where I'm the one now running things. I start teaching two new songs to about 20-30 adults. One of these songs will be used in upcoming worship services; the other will be part of the Christmas program. At one point in the latter song, it splits into seven parts; I have to teach each of these parts, one part at a time, to the appropriate singers.
7:25 We actually did a good job learning the music! The singers have got the notes, and are starting to work on dynamics and phrasing. But time's up, so everyone is dismissed, and I go get the two girls from their widely-separated classrooms. Mommy goes to get the Happy Boy.
7:35 After schmoozing for a few minutes with family and friends, we pile back into the cars and head home.
8:00 I help glue back together a craft project that the Pillowfight Fairy brought home from church, that was already falling apart thus breaking the Fairy's heart. Apparently the glue they used doesn't stick spongy foam to aluminum foil very well. So we get out the same craft glue we used on Uncalibur-ated and Årþørsgrößtetüðpik and redo the thing. The Fairy now wants to wear it, but the glue is still wet.
8:05 I start making popcorn, which is a multi-generation Sunday-night tradition in my family. Mommy starts feeding the Happy Boy his last bottle of the day.
8:20 We start eating the popcorn. Happy Boy shows great interest. So, because he doesn't have molars yet, we start picking off bits of popcorn pieces that are just the white stuff, with no kernel shell. He decides he wants more. We've never seen him eat so much solid food before....
8:50 We put the Happy boy down to sleep and start getting the girls ready for bed--changed, teeth brushed, etc....
9:05 We say the prayers and put the girls to bed.
9:15 I start writing this blog post.
Now I ask you: Is this what God had in mind when he prescribed that we should have one day a week as rest? Hmmmm?
Obviously, I've got to cut back on the blogging. ;-)
P.S. 10:10 Finished writing this blog post checked emails, and started submitting things to the upcoming Carnival of Homeschooling.
Friday, October 5, 2007
These Would Have Made Good Muppet Labs Sketches
...and for all I know, they may be in the running for Ig Nobels next year.
Of the many websites I peruse to keep myself informed of what goes on in the world, there's one I go to that's pretty good about keeping up-to-date on rocketry, astrophysics, energy sources, basic physics research, and so on. It's called Space Daily. Most of the time I check it, I just scan the headlines and say, "Meh...." But occasionally there's an article that catches my fancy.
Today there were two. And since on this blog I get to bloviate about whatever tickles my fancy at the moment, you're going to be bloviated to.
The first article describes a new crew-escape system that is being developed for use with the new generation of manned space vehicles the US is designing. Now, this particular crew-escape system is part of the launch gantry. The idea is, if something goes wrong on the launch pad, they need to get the crew away from the rocket (which is basically a huge bomb) and into a nearby hardened bunker as fast as they can. The best solution that anyone has come up with involves a set of purpose-designed tracks that start at the top of the gantry, head straight down until they reach ground level 380 feet below; then they gently level out, and continue for a while until stopping in front of the bunker. There would be a couple of connected train cars designed to run on these tracks. Upon being given the order to evacuate the rocket, the astronauts would leave the capsule, step into these cars, and....
And if you've been thinking that this whole thing sounds a lot like a roller coaster, give yourself a kewpie doll. That is exactly what it is. In fact, NASA is consulting with various firms that design and build roller coasters for advice about how to put this thing together. Of course, the NASA stuffed shirt guy says "It's obviously not a thrill ride..." but I suspect he'd find it pretty thrilling if he had to ride it. I know I'd love to give it a try!
(Yeah, that'll happen just after I win my Ig Nobel Prize.)
And then there's the other article, entitled Physicists Tackle Knotty Puzzle. This one attempts to answer the age-old questions: why is it that every time you try to coil up some rope, or twine, or string, or electrical cord, or Christmas Lights, it always gets tangled up into a mess of knots? How many knots does it form? How bad do the knots get? And why?
I've been wondering about this a lot as I've been working on the Backyard Thingy this summer, as I've been stretching lots of lines to help guide my forms for concrete and to put down barriers to hold the pavers in place. I find that I usually can't re-use any of the lines. I mean, when I'm done with a guide line, I gently remove it from its stakes, pull out the knots, and carefully coil it up--but the moment I try to uncoil it to use it again, it tries to imagine it's a bird's nest. I usually throw it away after wasting ten minutes trying to undo it, while thinking to myself: "Meh... String is cheap."
Of course, reading the article reminded me of a chapter in one of the greatest Victorian-Era novels ever written, entitled Three Men in a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog). In the book, three friends (all hypochondriacs) take a trip in a boat up the river Thames, with all intentions of roughing it, to try to improve their health. In one chapter, it talks about all the joys of towing boats by hand, and describes in detail what happens to the tow-cables:
At any rate, physicists are now starting to get a handle on this phenomenon. Behold the march of progress.
Of the many websites I peruse to keep myself informed of what goes on in the world, there's one I go to that's pretty good about keeping up-to-date on rocketry, astrophysics, energy sources, basic physics research, and so on. It's called Space Daily. Most of the time I check it, I just scan the headlines and say, "Meh...." But occasionally there's an article that catches my fancy.
Today there were two. And since on this blog I get to bloviate about whatever tickles my fancy at the moment, you're going to be bloviated to.
The first article describes a new crew-escape system that is being developed for use with the new generation of manned space vehicles the US is designing. Now, this particular crew-escape system is part of the launch gantry. The idea is, if something goes wrong on the launch pad, they need to get the crew away from the rocket (which is basically a huge bomb) and into a nearby hardened bunker as fast as they can. The best solution that anyone has come up with involves a set of purpose-designed tracks that start at the top of the gantry, head straight down until they reach ground level 380 feet below; then they gently level out, and continue for a while until stopping in front of the bunker. There would be a couple of connected train cars designed to run on these tracks. Upon being given the order to evacuate the rocket, the astronauts would leave the capsule, step into these cars, and....
And if you've been thinking that this whole thing sounds a lot like a roller coaster, give yourself a kewpie doll. That is exactly what it is. In fact, NASA is consulting with various firms that design and build roller coasters for advice about how to put this thing together. Of course, the NASA stuffed shirt guy says "It's obviously not a thrill ride..." but I suspect he'd find it pretty thrilling if he had to ride it. I know I'd love to give it a try!
(Yeah, that'll happen just after I win my Ig Nobel Prize.)
And then there's the other article, entitled Physicists Tackle Knotty Puzzle. This one attempts to answer the age-old questions: why is it that every time you try to coil up some rope, or twine, or string, or electrical cord, or Christmas Lights, it always gets tangled up into a mess of knots? How many knots does it form? How bad do the knots get? And why?
I've been wondering about this a lot as I've been working on the Backyard Thingy this summer, as I've been stretching lots of lines to help guide my forms for concrete and to put down barriers to hold the pavers in place. I find that I usually can't re-use any of the lines. I mean, when I'm done with a guide line, I gently remove it from its stakes, pull out the knots, and carefully coil it up--but the moment I try to uncoil it to use it again, it tries to imagine it's a bird's nest. I usually throw it away after wasting ten minutes trying to undo it, while thinking to myself: "Meh... String is cheap."
Of course, reading the article reminded me of a chapter in one of the greatest Victorian-Era novels ever written, entitled Three Men in a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog). In the book, three friends (all hypochondriacs) take a trip in a boat up the river Thames, with all intentions of roughing it, to try to improve their health. In one chapter, it talks about all the joys of towing boats by hand, and describes in detail what happens to the tow-cables:
(The entire book is available online through Project Gutenberg, here. This excerpt is from Chapter IX, which in my opinion is the funniest in the book.)
There is something very strange and unaccountable about a tow-line. You roll it up with as much patience and care as you would take to fold up a new pair of trousers, and five minutes afterwards, when you pick it up, it is one ghastly, soul-revolting tangle.
I do not wish to be insulting, but I firmly believe that if you took an average tow-line, and stretched it out straight across the middle of a field, and then turned your back on it for thirty seconds, that, when you looked round again, you would find that it had got itself altogether in a heap in the middle of the field, and had twisted itself up, and tied itself into knots, and lost its two ends, and become all loops; and it would take you a good half-hour, sitting down there on the grass and swearing all the while, to disentangle it again.
That is my opinion of tow-lines in general. Of course, there may be honourable exceptions; I do not say that there are not. There may be tow-lines that are a credit to their profession - conscientious, respectable tow-lines - tow-lines that do not imagine they are crochet-work, and try to knit themselves up into antimacassars the instant they are left to themselves. I say there MAY be such tow-lines; I sincerely hope there are. But I have not met with them.
This tow-line I had taken in myself just before we had got to the lock. I would not let Harris touch it, because he is careless. I had looped it round slowly and cautiously, and tied it up in the middle, and folded it in two, and laid it down gently at the bottom of the boat. Harris had lifted it up scientifically, and had put it into George's hand. George had taken it firmly, and held it away from him, and had begun to unravel it as if he were taking the swaddling clothes off a new-born infant; and, before he had unwound a dozen yards, the thing was more like a badly-made door-mat than anything else.
It is always the same, and the same sort of thing always goes on in connection with it. The man on the bank, who is trying to disentangle it, thinks all the fault lies with the man who rolled it up; and when a man up the river thinks a thing, he says it.
"What have you been trying to do with it, make a fishing-net of it? You've made a nice mess you have; why couldn't you wind it up properly, you silly dummy?" he grunts from time to time as he struggles wildly with it, and lays it out flat on the tow-path, and runs round and round it, trying to find the end.
On the other hand, the man who wound it up thinks the whole cause of the muddle rests with the man who is trying to unwind it.
"It was all right when you took it!" he exclaims indignantly. "Why don't you think what you are doing? You go about things in such a slap-dash style. You'd get a scaffolding pole entangled you would!"
And they feel so angry with one another that they would like to hang each other with the thing.
Ten minutes go by, and the first man gives a yell and goes mad, and dances on the rope, and tries to pull it straight by seizing hold of the first piece that comes to his hand and hauling at it. Of course, this only gets it into a tighter tangle than ever. Then the second man climbs out of the boat and comes to help him, and they get in each other's way, and hinder one another. They both get hold of the same bit of line, and pull at it in opposite directions, and wonder where it is caught. In the end, they do get it clear, and then turn round and find that the boat has drifted off, and is making straight for the weir.
At any rate, physicists are now starting to get a handle on this phenomenon. Behold the march of progress.
Thursday, October 4, 2007
2007 Ig Nobel Prize Winners Announced!
Oh, you've never heard of the Ig Nobel Prize? Well, for one thing, don't confuse them with all those hoity-toity prizes that the Norwegians hand out this time each year.
Back in the early nineties, some guys at MIT decided to create their own version of the awards. It grew, and now every year on the first Thursday in October, they hold a big awards ceremony at Harvard. Originally these awards were intended to be given to feats of science that either could never, or should never, be duplicated. Now they say that their job is to highlight resarch that "first makes you laugh, then makes you think." I first heard about them in the late '90's, when I stumbled across the web site of one of the past winners--a certian George H. Goble, who discovered the quickest way known to man to fire up a charcoal grill to the point where it's ready to cook.
(You see, he was an engineering professor at Purdue, and he had a bunch of other engineering professor friends, and--well, it got a little competitive. The previous record holder used something like acetylene and had his grill ready to cook in about 40 seconds from a cold start. Then Professor Goble got it down to three seconds, by pouring pure liquid oxygen on top of the pile of briquettes with a smouldering cigarette on top. The reaction was enough to blast briquettes clear out of the grill, would kill all the grass for several feet around, and would frequently burn through the bottom of the grill. But if the grill survived, it was ready to cook.... Mr. Goble won the Ig Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1996.)
Personally, I'd rather wind up with one of these than a Nobel. Not that there's much chance of either happening, but still...
The page listing all the past recipients of this award is here. Note that since the 2007 winners were announced just a little earlier tonight, their site is being hammered with huge numbers of hits from around the world, so it's loading pretty slowly. And be forewarned: many of the past prizes were given for things that aren't appropriate for a family website (but are nevertheless really really funny).
Here are my favorites from this years crop of winners:
PHYSICS: "L. Mahadevan of Harvard University, USA, and Enrique Cerda Villablanca of Universidad de Santiago de Chile, for studying how sheets become wrinkled."
Apparently Lakshminarayanan Mahadevan, and Villablanca's sister, were in attendance to accept the award.
BIOLOGY: Prof. Dr. Johanna E.M.H. van Bronswijk of Eindhoven University of Technology, The Netherlands, for doing a census of all the mites, insects, spiders, pseudoscorpions, crustaceans, bacteria, algae, ferns and fungi with whom we share our beds each night.
What's so funny about this one are the Dutch titles of the published articles: "Huis, Bed en Beestjes" and "Het Stof, de Mijten en het Bed." To get the full effect, read the titles out loud in a Swedish Chef accent.
LINGUISTICS: Juan Manuel Toro, Josep B. Trobalon and Núria Sebastián-Gallés, of Universitat de Barcelona, for showing that rats sometimes cannot tell the difference between a person speaking Japanese backwards and a person speaking Dutch backwards.
Well, heck: neither can I.
LITERATURE: Glenda Browne of Blaxland, Blue Mountains, Australia, for her study of the word "the" -- and of the many ways it causes problems for anyone who tries to put things into alphabetical order.
Hey, my wife is a librarian by trade: this is a big deal.
NUTRITION: Brian Wansink of Cornell University, for exploring the seemingly boundless appetites of human beings, by feeding them with a self-refilling, bottomless bowl of soup.
I'm just trying to imagine how they designed a double-blind experiment to study this.
AVIATION: Patricia V. Agostino, Santiago A. Plano and Diego A. Golombek of Universidad Nacional de Quilmes, Argentina, for their discovery that Viagra aids jetlag recovery in hamsters.
My wife just said, "Poor hamsters;" but I suspect they were pretty happy, actually.
Anyway, here are some of my favorites from previous years:
1999 IG NOBEL PEACE PRIZE: Charl Fourie and Michelle Wong of Johannesburg, South Africa, for inventing an automobile burglar alarm consisting of a detection circuit and a flamethrower.
1999 MANAGED HEALTH CARE: The late George and Charlotte Blonsky of New York City and San Jose, California, for inventing a device (US Patent #3,216,423) to aid women in giving birth -- the woman is strapped onto a circular table, and the table is then rotated at high speed.
1998 BIOLOGY: Peter Fong of Gettysburg College, Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, for contributing to the happiness of clams by giving them Prozac.
1995 MEDICINE: Marcia E. Buebel, David S. Shannahoff-Khalsa, and Michael R. Boyle, for their invigorating study entitled "The Effects of Unilateral Forced Nostril Breathing on Cognition."
Back in the early nineties, some guys at MIT decided to create their own version of the awards. It grew, and now every year on the first Thursday in October, they hold a big awards ceremony at Harvard. Originally these awards were intended to be given to feats of science that either could never, or should never, be duplicated. Now they say that their job is to highlight resarch that "first makes you laugh, then makes you think." I first heard about them in the late '90's, when I stumbled across the web site of one of the past winners--a certian George H. Goble, who discovered the quickest way known to man to fire up a charcoal grill to the point where it's ready to cook.
(You see, he was an engineering professor at Purdue, and he had a bunch of other engineering professor friends, and--well, it got a little competitive. The previous record holder used something like acetylene and had his grill ready to cook in about 40 seconds from a cold start. Then Professor Goble got it down to three seconds, by pouring pure liquid oxygen on top of the pile of briquettes with a smouldering cigarette on top. The reaction was enough to blast briquettes clear out of the grill, would kill all the grass for several feet around, and would frequently burn through the bottom of the grill. But if the grill survived, it was ready to cook.... Mr. Goble won the Ig Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1996.)
Personally, I'd rather wind up with one of these than a Nobel. Not that there's much chance of either happening, but still...
The page listing all the past recipients of this award is here. Note that since the 2007 winners were announced just a little earlier tonight, their site is being hammered with huge numbers of hits from around the world, so it's loading pretty slowly. And be forewarned: many of the past prizes were given for things that aren't appropriate for a family website (but are nevertheless really really funny).
Here are my favorites from this years crop of winners:
PHYSICS: "L. Mahadevan of Harvard University, USA, and Enrique Cerda Villablanca of Universidad de Santiago de Chile, for studying how sheets become wrinkled."
Apparently Lakshminarayanan Mahadevan, and Villablanca's sister, were in attendance to accept the award.
BIOLOGY: Prof. Dr. Johanna E.M.H. van Bronswijk of Eindhoven University of Technology, The Netherlands, for doing a census of all the mites, insects, spiders, pseudoscorpions, crustaceans, bacteria, algae, ferns and fungi with whom we share our beds each night.
What's so funny about this one are the Dutch titles of the published articles: "Huis, Bed en Beestjes" and "Het Stof, de Mijten en het Bed." To get the full effect, read the titles out loud in a Swedish Chef accent.
LINGUISTICS: Juan Manuel Toro, Josep B. Trobalon and Núria Sebastián-Gallés, of Universitat de Barcelona, for showing that rats sometimes cannot tell the difference between a person speaking Japanese backwards and a person speaking Dutch backwards.
Well, heck: neither can I.
LITERATURE: Glenda Browne of Blaxland, Blue Mountains, Australia, for her study of the word "the" -- and of the many ways it causes problems for anyone who tries to put things into alphabetical order.
Hey, my wife is a librarian by trade: this is a big deal.
NUTRITION: Brian Wansink of Cornell University, for exploring the seemingly boundless appetites of human beings, by feeding them with a self-refilling, bottomless bowl of soup.
I'm just trying to imagine how they designed a double-blind experiment to study this.
AVIATION: Patricia V. Agostino, Santiago A. Plano and Diego A. Golombek of Universidad Nacional de Quilmes, Argentina, for their discovery that Viagra aids jetlag recovery in hamsters.
My wife just said, "Poor hamsters;" but I suspect they were pretty happy, actually.
Anyway, here are some of my favorites from previous years:
1999 IG NOBEL PEACE PRIZE: Charl Fourie and Michelle Wong of Johannesburg, South Africa, for inventing an automobile burglar alarm consisting of a detection circuit and a flamethrower.
1999 MANAGED HEALTH CARE: The late George and Charlotte Blonsky of New York City and San Jose, California, for inventing a device (US Patent #3,216,423) to aid women in giving birth -- the woman is strapped onto a circular table, and the table is then rotated at high speed.
1998 BIOLOGY: Peter Fong of Gettysburg College, Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, for contributing to the happiness of clams by giving them Prozac.
1995 MEDICINE: Marcia E. Buebel, David S. Shannahoff-Khalsa, and Michael R. Boyle, for their invigorating study entitled "The Effects of Unilateral Forced Nostril Breathing on Cognition."
1995 PUBLIC HEALTH: Martha Kold Bakkevig of Sintef Unimed in Trondheim, Norway, and Ruth Nielson of the Technical University of Denmark, for their exhaustive study, "Impact of Wet Underwear on Thermoregulatory Responses and Thermal Comfort in the Cold."
Well, now. After all that, I have no idea how to end this post. So, um... I hope you enjoy. But if you choose to click on the link to the Ig Nobel site to read the whole list, be forewarned that some of them will make you go ewwww....
Tuesday, October 2, 2007
Virtue, Peer Pressure and Homeschoolers
Like most conscientious parents, Tonya and I want our kids to grow up to be good. Yes, we want our kids to grow up academically and intellectually well-rounded; to have enough wisdom that they can successfully choose a well-fitting profession, and enough subject-matter mastery and competence that they can successfully see it through. But more than that, we want them to be good--to treat the people around them with compassion, especially those who are unpopular; to stand up for what is moral and ethical, even when it puts their careers in jeopardy; and to be unafraid to tilt at the occasional windmill, even when they're all alone, when there's no chance of success, the cost is high, and when everyone else is mocking them, but when it's nevertheless the right thing to do. There are after all some battles worth fighting even when it's obvious that defeat is inevitable.
But how does one develop these kinds of virtues in a child? This is not an easy question. I'm of the firm belief that virtues don't just spring up fully-grown. I want my children to have courage--the ability to keep their heads, to recognize and do what they need to, even in the face of danger or chaos. I want my children to have fortitude--the ability to keep doing what's right even in the face of severe hardship or adversity. I want my children to have honesty--the ability to tell the truth, completely and readily, even when such truth-telling will make them unpopular and even get them in trouble. But when I look at my three kids--and especially the one who'll be five at the end of this month, who's oldest and who thus has the most developed personality--I don't see much courage or fortitude yet. And as far as honesty goes, I don't think she tells too many outright fabrications yet, but I suspect we'll see more of them as she ages and starts testing more limits.
So yes, my kids were born with their share of Original Sin.
I note that all of these virtues that I've mentioned so far (and there are many others) tend to find opportunity for expression when the individual in question is swimming upstream, so to speak. After all, when everyone else nearby is being courageous, it's easy to be courageous right alongside them--if for no other reason than to avoid appearing as a coward. When everyone else is Speaking Truth To Power it's easy for you to do so as well. And in a tough situation, nobody wants to be the first to complain that This is so hard! for fear of appearing like a wimp. So in all of these cases, a person can easily do the right thing, even if he or she hasn't properly developed his or her virtues. But doing the right thing when everyone else finds the idea contemptible is much harder. When your entire company is looking to benefit from an underhanded deal, it takes a great deal of courage to tell the truth and do the right thing.
So in this sense, peer pressure is the opponent of all the virtues, because it can undermine any of them. And therefore, in learning to be virtuous, one must learn how to resist peer pressure.
...
Every homescooling parent knows the experience of being accosted by friends, relatives, or even perfect strangers, and having had the "Socialization Question" thrown in their faces--If you don't put your kids in a traditional school setting, won't your kids fail to acquire necessary social skills and cultural references, and be completely unable to interact with normal people when they grow up? Though I may take my own crack at this question in later posts, I think it's been answered well enough by plenty of people in the homeschooling community that I don't need to tackle the whole Question here.
(For any of my readers who aren't well versed in the lore of homeschoolers, peruse any dozen or so of the archived Carnivals of Homeschooling, and you'll find numerous takes on this question, ranging in tone from scientific (Studies have shown...), to weary (Ok, let's go over the evidence again...), to downright snarky (Yeah, like I really want my kids to wind up like those mall rats I see over there...).)
But there is one variant on The Socialization Question that I think is fair, and needs to be considered at length--and not just by homeschoolers, but by all parents who care about the moral well-being of their children. This version of the question goes like this:
And it's important to note that this is indeed a fair question, and a serious one. But because it's a variant on the Socialization Question, I think we homeschoolers have a tendency to circle the wagons when this question comes along. And that's a mistake, in my opinion; this is a question for which we all need to have an answer. And when I say all, I don't just mean homeschoolers--this question affects public schoolers, private schoolers, Christian schoolers, the whole lot of us.
...
Here's my crack at answering this question.
First, there's an unstated assumption in the question that needs to be brought into the daylight. The assumption is that resistance to peer pressure is learned through resistance training, like bodybuilding. An athlete trains for strength by successively increasing the weights he or she lifts. As one weight level is mastered, more weights are added and the training continues at the new weight level. Exercising with these progressively heavier weights over time leads to progressively enhanced strength.
Is this a good model for developing the ability to say no to one's peers--Teach them to assert themselves against small temptations, then when they've mastered that, allow them to be subjected progressively to more potent temptations until they're deemed strong enough to handle anything they're likely to face in the adult world?
I'm not sure this is such a good idea. There may well be examples you can point out of people who faced great temptations in their younger days, overcame them, and have much stronger faith now. But for every one of these, I bet I can point to a person who "fell in with the wrong crowd", who faced temptations in their younger days and didn't overcome them, and whose parents are today wondering where they went wrong. The problem here is that the temptations that supposedly have the power to build a young person's moral strength, also occasionally have the power to destroy a young person's moral strength, and can do lasting damage.
And as a Christian, I can't help but note that this is not a character-building model endorsed anywhere in the Bible that I can remember. Now it is certainly the case that those who do overcome temptation are praised for doing so; but I can't remember any scriptural exhortation to put ourselves or our children intentionally in situations where we will be tempted to do the wrong thing, so that we can gain moral strength from the experience. Quite the contrary: numerous times the Bible uses the word flee in discussing what to do about temptations: Flee fornication (1 Cor 6:18), flee the worship of idols (1 Cor 10:14), flee materialism (1 Tim 6:11), flee youthful lusts (2 Tim 2:22). And one of the heroes of the Bible is honored for doing exactly that: the young Joseph, when in danger of seduction by Potiphar's wife, fled (Gen 39).
Furthermore, the Bible is loaded with warnings about picking the wrong peers. One obvious one is 1 Cor 15:33: "Do not be decieved: Bad company ruins good morals." And the book of Proverbs in particular is loaded with advice not to put oneself in bad situations by picking peers that could lead one astray.
If anyone can come up with a Biblical argument in support of the idea that we should intentionally subject ourselves or our children to situations where we will be tempted by our peers to do the wrong thing, all with the intention of making us stronger, I would like to hear from you. But I'm not seeing it anywhere.
...
So how is, say, a teenager supposed to build resistance to peer pressure?
The first thing that we adults need to realize is that most teens in our society inhabit a whole different world than the one we live in. I highly recommend this essay by Paul Graham--who, incidentally, is not a particular supporter of the homeschool movement--to get a sense of the problem. Society in Junior High, High School, and to some extent College operates under a whole different set of rules than adult society. A few illustrating points:
But how does one develop these kinds of virtues in a child? This is not an easy question. I'm of the firm belief that virtues don't just spring up fully-grown. I want my children to have courage--the ability to keep their heads, to recognize and do what they need to, even in the face of danger or chaos. I want my children to have fortitude--the ability to keep doing what's right even in the face of severe hardship or adversity. I want my children to have honesty--the ability to tell the truth, completely and readily, even when such truth-telling will make them unpopular and even get them in trouble. But when I look at my three kids--and especially the one who'll be five at the end of this month, who's oldest and who thus has the most developed personality--I don't see much courage or fortitude yet. And as far as honesty goes, I don't think she tells too many outright fabrications yet, but I suspect we'll see more of them as she ages and starts testing more limits.
So yes, my kids were born with their share of Original Sin.
I note that all of these virtues that I've mentioned so far (and there are many others) tend to find opportunity for expression when the individual in question is swimming upstream, so to speak. After all, when everyone else nearby is being courageous, it's easy to be courageous right alongside them--if for no other reason than to avoid appearing as a coward. When everyone else is Speaking Truth To Power it's easy for you to do so as well. And in a tough situation, nobody wants to be the first to complain that This is so hard! for fear of appearing like a wimp. So in all of these cases, a person can easily do the right thing, even if he or she hasn't properly developed his or her virtues. But doing the right thing when everyone else finds the idea contemptible is much harder. When your entire company is looking to benefit from an underhanded deal, it takes a great deal of courage to tell the truth and do the right thing.
So in this sense, peer pressure is the opponent of all the virtues, because it can undermine any of them. And therefore, in learning to be virtuous, one must learn how to resist peer pressure.
...
Every homescooling parent knows the experience of being accosted by friends, relatives, or even perfect strangers, and having had the "Socialization Question" thrown in their faces--If you don't put your kids in a traditional school setting, won't your kids fail to acquire necessary social skills and cultural references, and be completely unable to interact with normal people when they grow up? Though I may take my own crack at this question in later posts, I think it's been answered well enough by plenty of people in the homeschooling community that I don't need to tackle the whole Question here.
(For any of my readers who aren't well versed in the lore of homeschoolers, peruse any dozen or so of the archived Carnivals of Homeschooling, and you'll find numerous takes on this question, ranging in tone from scientific (Studies have shown...), to weary (Ok, let's go over the evidence again...), to downright snarky (Yeah, like I really want my kids to wind up like those mall rats I see over there...).)
But there is one variant on The Socialization Question that I think is fair, and needs to be considered at length--and not just by homeschoolers, but by all parents who care about the moral well-being of their children. This version of the question goes like this:
Since your child is being raised in a sheltered environment, how is he or she going to learn how to resist peer pressure? We all know kids who were raised in good homes by loving parents, who then went off to college and completely self-destructed, losing their values, their discipline, their self-respect, their virginity, and their faith within a few years (or even months!) of leaving home. They couldn't possibly comprehend how hard the peer pressure would hit them when they finally left home, and so were completely unprepared for it. What makes you think your homeschooled child will be able to withstand the test? He or she has never been really tested before.
And it's important to note that this is indeed a fair question, and a serious one. But because it's a variant on the Socialization Question, I think we homeschoolers have a tendency to circle the wagons when this question comes along. And that's a mistake, in my opinion; this is a question for which we all need to have an answer. And when I say all, I don't just mean homeschoolers--this question affects public schoolers, private schoolers, Christian schoolers, the whole lot of us.
...
Here's my crack at answering this question.
First, there's an unstated assumption in the question that needs to be brought into the daylight. The assumption is that resistance to peer pressure is learned through resistance training, like bodybuilding. An athlete trains for strength by successively increasing the weights he or she lifts. As one weight level is mastered, more weights are added and the training continues at the new weight level. Exercising with these progressively heavier weights over time leads to progressively enhanced strength.
Is this a good model for developing the ability to say no to one's peers--Teach them to assert themselves against small temptations, then when they've mastered that, allow them to be subjected progressively to more potent temptations until they're deemed strong enough to handle anything they're likely to face in the adult world?
I'm not sure this is such a good idea. There may well be examples you can point out of people who faced great temptations in their younger days, overcame them, and have much stronger faith now. But for every one of these, I bet I can point to a person who "fell in with the wrong crowd", who faced temptations in their younger days and didn't overcome them, and whose parents are today wondering where they went wrong. The problem here is that the temptations that supposedly have the power to build a young person's moral strength, also occasionally have the power to destroy a young person's moral strength, and can do lasting damage.
And as a Christian, I can't help but note that this is not a character-building model endorsed anywhere in the Bible that I can remember. Now it is certainly the case that those who do overcome temptation are praised for doing so; but I can't remember any scriptural exhortation to put ourselves or our children intentionally in situations where we will be tempted to do the wrong thing, so that we can gain moral strength from the experience. Quite the contrary: numerous times the Bible uses the word flee in discussing what to do about temptations: Flee fornication (1 Cor 6:18), flee the worship of idols (1 Cor 10:14), flee materialism (1 Tim 6:11), flee youthful lusts (2 Tim 2:22). And one of the heroes of the Bible is honored for doing exactly that: the young Joseph, when in danger of seduction by Potiphar's wife, fled (Gen 39).
Furthermore, the Bible is loaded with warnings about picking the wrong peers. One obvious one is 1 Cor 15:33: "Do not be decieved: Bad company ruins good morals." And the book of Proverbs in particular is loaded with advice not to put oneself in bad situations by picking peers that could lead one astray.
If anyone can come up with a Biblical argument in support of the idea that we should intentionally subject ourselves or our children to situations where we will be tempted by our peers to do the wrong thing, all with the intention of making us stronger, I would like to hear from you. But I'm not seeing it anywhere.
...
So how is, say, a teenager supposed to build resistance to peer pressure?
The first thing that we adults need to realize is that most teens in our society inhabit a whole different world than the one we live in. I highly recommend this essay by Paul Graham--who, incidentally, is not a particular supporter of the homeschool movement--to get a sense of the problem. Society in Junior High, High School, and to some extent College operates under a whole different set of rules than adult society. A few illustrating points:
- Stuffing a freshman in a trash can or a locker might buy you a brief suspension, but can greatly improve your social standing. But just try that as a software engineer on a young intern--you'll lose your job, and quite possibly go to jail.
- Knowing how to sing Opera, as a high schooler, gets you mocked. Knowing it as an adult, garners some admriation, and questions from friends on what they should do if they want to improve their voices.
- Very often, those people at the bottom of the social scene in High School--nerds, geeks--see their social status take a huge upward correction the moment they graduate and move on to college. Twenty years later, they're in high-paying engineer jobs.
- And the opposite often happens. Those at the very top of the High School social scene--cheerleaders and jocks--often are so invested in that social scene that they can't transition to the adult world. Twenty years later, some of them will have morphed into the Al and Peg Bundys, constantly looking back wistfully on High School as the best times of their lives.
Now let's take a step back and consider the teen who's trying to stand up for what's right, against his peers. When a teen asserts himself against his peers, it is not necessarily the case--as some optimistic souls occasionally say--that this very act of assertiveness will gain him their respect. Very often the exact opposite happens. A person who says "no more" or "I will not" can become very unpopular very quickly. If the temptation being resisted is a sexual one, the very act of resisting can make the person into an object of mockery overnight. He can lose friends by standing up to them. He can, in certain circumstances, get himself beaten.
But this becomes a whole lot easier to take, if our teen isn't totally immersed in the teen culture. The fact is, so many of the moral laws we attempt to teach our children, really are Natural laws; that is, God gave us these laws because things fall apart in the real world if we don't obey them. All those commands about sexual purity, to grab one example among many, fall into this category. The less contact our kids have with the real world, the less sense these laws will appear to make to them. But the more our teens are in the real world, the more these natural laws make sense, the easier it becomes to see just how shallow and artificial the teen social scene is.
Consider the case where a young lady, age 16, is given an ultimatum from a peer: "If you keep spending time with her, I'm not going to consider you my friend anymore." Now suppose our young lady happens to have one foot in the real world--that is, she has friends who are World War II veterans; she has friends who are Vietnam veterans; she just got back from a four-week mission trip to Guatemala; she has many friends she made down at the local Battered Women's shelter; she has been to several city council meetings, has met the mayor, and knows one or two of the city council members; she's written pointed letters to her local congressman, and gotten real responses back; and she plays second trumpet in the local community orchestra. This young lady is in a good position to come back to her peer and say, "You know, I'd really like to be your friend and all, but you need to get over yourself. You're not all that." Because she has so many connections to the real world, her peer-dependence is much weaker than it would have been if the only people she knew were just like this "peer".
...
Understanding this fact, does bring good news to homeschoolers, but this good news is qualified with a challenge. The good news is that the homeschooling family is very well positioned to give a child the kind of real-world experiences that will impart the needed perspective, so the child can understand why the virtues we instill in them are important. After all, our kids aren't locked up with their peers for seven hours a day, and their homework for four more, every day; we can use this time to give our kids experience in the real world. It's a whole lot easier to do as Moses said:
You shall put these words of mine in your heart and soul, and you shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and fix them as an emblem on your forehead. Teach them to your children, talking about them when you are at home and when you rise. Write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates...
Deuteronomy 11:18-20
...when you actually have your children with you more than an hour or two a day.
But then, there's the challenge: while I believe in general that it's good for children to be with their parents, we parents must take this responsibility seriously. We must expose them to the real world, and show them how it works. We must get our kids involved in the community if we are to give them the experiences and perspective they need. We Christians can sometimes develop a bunker mentality about the world around us--they're all out to get us!--and there is sometimes a very real temptation to shut the rest of the world out. We can't afford to do this, if we want our children to go forth and conquer, and not get smashed up the first time they leave home.
And yes, I'm preaching to myself here. ;-)
92nd Carnival of Homeschooling Is Up
The Carnival of Homeschooling is up at Tami's Blog. My post Hotojoho! about our Medieval Helmet project, is featured there. Enjoy!
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