Listening to candidates speak, I notice that practically all of them claim to have definitive answers about how to resolve certain vexing problems. None of them gets to really core matters, or even matters that turn on moral questions, apart from reproduction. I want to see a candidate who:
Will commit to surrounding himself or herself with expert advisors. These should be people free of obvious self-serving bias. People drawn from relevant academic disciplines.
Will employ critical thinking tools to address problems.
Will not be afraid to touch on moral questions. Chiefly I’m thinking about questions of economic justice. But I’m also tired of the neo-liberal technocrats who occupy positions of authority in both parties who believe that the market alone can sort out the truth.
Can you rebuild an advisory circle centered on expertise? Do you think critically? Will you address the underlying moral questions of our day?
“When the following wind of privilege is misread as merit, then the inequalities that result are legitimized.”
This quote succinctly captures why the meritocratic system is so damaging to society. It is one thing to claim that distributing resources based on merit is justified. But it must be understood that merit develops as a result of pre-existing conditions. We know from research on the development of expert performance that expertise should not be regarded as a genetically-predetermined condition in any but a handful of fields. Even the orientation toward the concept of expertise as a learned and practiced set of abilities is itself pre-conditioned by one’s family background. The playing field is not level, so opportunity is not equal. If opportunity is unequal distributing resources on the basis of differences between individuals that depend so heavily on htose pre-conditions is inherently unjust.
This is an interesting study nicely summarized in The Bulletproof Musician.
Learners exposed to two different study methods - blocked vs interleaved practice - preferred the blocked practice method, a learning method known to be less effective. Rather than attribute it to laziness, the authors of the study hypothesized that learner’s simply don’t know what method of practice (study) is more effective so that interpret the more difficult method (interleaved) as being harder.
Word has it that Trump might want to attend the Victory Day military parade in Moscow. Это наша победа - “This is our victory!” has never seemed more fitting.
Trump has no idea about the cultural significance of День победы in Russia. It is a cultural holiday of greatest significance to former Soviet Union. It is a patriotic holiday; but the President of the United States should shy away from celebrating the patriotism of another country.
One of the favourite mantras of the techno-optimist is that “the wisdom of crowds will save us.” That with a million collective inputs, we will find solutions that make the world a better place.
Is this true?
Why is it that wisdom and not madness is the state of crowds? There are too many examples of foolishness in crowds. I don’t think we can have the wisdom of crowds without their madness.
Just this week, Facebook conferred trusted status on Breitbart, the Nazi lie-peddling rag. Facebook gladly accepts ad revenue from politicians like Trump and friends who purposely lie to pander to ignoramuses in their base. As Silverman points out, there is no longer any neutrality.
This month I worked very hard on re-establishing some important habits, including habit-tracking, that had lapsed after some setbacks. The stats are a little odd because I didn’t start tracking everything until sometime well into the month.
Habits Russian In an effort to complete the 10,000 word Brown Russian vocabulary list by the end of May 2020, I need to do at least 15 words a day. This month, I logged 395 new Russian words in Anki.
