Active learning

You're innocently walking down the street when aliens zap away the sensory neurons in your legs. What happens?
a) Your walking movements show no significant change.
b) You can no longer walk.
c) You can walk, but the pace changes.
d) You can walk, but clumsily.

A look at how active learning is transforming education, particularly in the sciences.

Black lives matter -Explained

Over at the intertubes, one redditer had a wonderful way of explaining racial inequality and the need for a 'Black lives matter' movement. I quote the full text (with minor edits), so you don't have to visit Reddit and spend the better part of 6 hours jumping from one sub-reddit to another.

Imagine that you're sitting down to dinner with your family, and while everyone else gets a serving of the meal, you don't get any. So you say "I should get my fair share." And as a direct response to this, your dad corrects you, saying, "everyone should get their fair share." Now, that's a wonderful sentiment -- indeed, everyone should, and that was kinda your point in the first place: that you should be a part of everyone, and you should get your fair share also. However, dad's smart-ass comment just dismissed you and didn't solve the problem that you still haven't gotten any!The problem is that the statement "I should get my fair share" had an implicit "too" at the end: "I should get my fair share, too, just like everyone else." But your dad's response treated your statement as though you meant "only I should get my fair share", which clearly was not your intention. As a result, his statement that "everyone should get their fair share," while true, only served to ignore the problem you were trying to point out. That's the situation of the "black lives matter" movement. Culture, laws, the arts, religion, and everyone else repeatedly suggest that all lives should matter. Clearly, that message already abounds in our society. The problem is that, in practice, the world doesn't work the way... Societally, we don't pay as much attention to certain people's deaths as we do to others. So, currently, we don't treat all lives as though they matter equally.
Just like asking dad for your fair share, the phrase "black lives matter" also has an implicit "too" at the end: it's saying that black lives should also matter. But responding to this by saying "all lives matter" is willfully going back to ignoring the problem. It's a way of dismissing the statement by falsely suggesting that it means "only black lives matter," when that is obviously not the case.

In summary, saying "all lives matter" as a direct response to "black lives matter" is essentially saying that we should just go back to ignoring the problem.

The blind leading the blind

What do you make of Chetan Bhagat, considering he's often credited to have gotten more and more Indians to read through his books?

I don't know. Is it that you write third rate books and people can't do much better than to read those third rate books? Is it really an achievement? What is the achievement exactly?

We can't count Chetan Bhagat as an airport novelist. He's not an airport novelist -- he apparently writes about important, relevant things. In other countries when they are having kind of a moment in which they are writing about significant things, you see some great literature come out. Chetan Bhagat is not great literature. 

...

Chetan Bhagat doesn't find an audience because no one outside India can read him. He might just be a symptom of the fact that in English, India is basically a semi-literate country and Chetan Bhagat is the best it can do.

It doesn't seem to me that we need to look for a deeper explanation.

- Aatish Taseer

Human engineering

Read this awful article on a magazine called NewPhilosopher, where the author, Clive Hamilton, scoffed at the idea of human engineering. His article was a rebuttal of sorts to a paper by three bio-ethicists who published a paper titled, "Human engineering and climate change", where they discuss possibilities such as genetic engineering. One of the methods they discuss is genetic modification to obtain night vision (like cats) which would absolve the need for street lights. (I personally think that is an inspired idea)

I can't believe that the NewPhilosopher outright scoffed at the idea going so far as to calling it bizzare and laughable.  They write "Why not genetically modify people to make them white in order to cool the Earth by increasing its reflectivity?" - It's like they haven't even heard of reductio ad absurdum

He writes, "...the question of why anyone who is unwilling to buy a smaller car or switch to green power would be willing to genetically engineer their children".

Why is human engineering so absurd? Because it wouldn't work. So are a lot of plans of reducing emissions, but you wouldn't laugh at a guy who proposes smaller cars.

Of course some bio ethicists are going to write a paper saying what if the choice is between total annihilation and reinventing ourselves as a species . We know that in the past when threatened with extinction, various species have adapted by growing big, growing small, getting a hard shell, etc. One of evolutions tricks is that the size of humans will decrease over several generations if there is a resource drought.The problem is that humans may not have the luxury of waiting for hundreds of thousands of years to develop gills or something to adapt to new earth. So, perhaps human engineering and gene manipulation will not be optional. We will come to a time when changing a lightbulb is not going to be enough to save the human species and drastic changes, including some forms of human engineering will be necessary. You don't wait until after it becomes a reality to talk about the ethics of it. What can we do, what should we not. These discussions should happen now. And in magazines that call themselves NewPhilosopher. (What kind of a magazine are they, really?)

If Clive Hamilton can do nothing to contribute to this conversation but point fingers and sneer, maybe he should be sent to the naughty corner. No cat eyes for you.

I have a dream

The internet is an amazing place. This is what someone called Ian McLean wrote on a Youtube post by Hank Vlogbrother Green.

Dream interpretation isn't really a thing, scientifically speaking. There are some theories, but all we're really sure of is that your dreams often (though by no means always) reflect stuff you've been thinking about in the last couple of days. I prefer to think that when you're asleep, you brain basically plays video games using your memories as source material. So, sometimes, it's playing Road Simulator. And then you dream about being a road. Probably not that often, though. Road Simulator isn't a very good game.

Meaning

In ordinary usage the word “meaning” implies intention, intention implies design, and design implies a designer. Any entity, any process, or definition of any word itself is put into play as a result of an intended consequence in the mind of the designer. This is the heart of the philosophical worldview of organized religions, and in particular their creation stories. Humanity, it assumes, exists for a purpose. Individuals have a purpose in being on Earth. Both humanity and individuals have meaning.

There is a second, broader way the word “meaning” is used and a very different worldview implied. It is that the accidents of history, not the intentions of a designer, are the source of meaning. There is no advance design, but instead overlapping networks of physical cause and effect. The unfolding of history is obedient only to the general laws of the Universe. Each event is random yet alters the probability of later events. During organic evolution, for example, the origin of one adaptation by natural selection makes the origin of certain other adaptations more likely. This concept of meaning, insofar as it illuminates humanity and the rest of life, is the worldview of science.

Whether in the cosmos or in the human condition, the second, more inclusive meaning exists in the evolution of present-day reality amid countless other possible realities.

Humanity … arose entirely on its own through an accumulated series of events during evolution. We are not predestined to reach any goal, nor are we answerable to any power but our own. Only wisdom based on self-understanding, not piety, will save us.

- E.O. Wilson on The meaning of human existence

Subjective optimization

I am reading a book called "You are now less dumb" by David McRaney. Like Incognito, it is a brilliant work on the inner workings of the brain. It is so filled with Aha! moments that I am having Ahagasms. Repeatedly.

Take for instance, the section on subjective optimization. A couple of psychologists set up this study where a bunch of students enroll for a photography course. The instructor tells the students to take pictures of what they find the most memorable and beautiful moments of their university life and to showcase two of the best pictures from the lot. This is before the time of widespread use of digital cameras, smartphones, Instagram, etc. The students develop film rolls (you remember those things from the ancient past?). And this is where the scientists come with a  twist. They split the students into two groups. One group is asked to choose one of the two photos which will be printed out and given to the students as souvenir. The other photo will be left behind with the instructors (and they will have no copy of it). Essentially, the student has to pick photo A or photo B then and there and he or she gets to keep the picture they chose and not the other which is lost forever.

With the other group, the scientist offers the same choice between photo A and B but they get to take their time and even reverse their decision once it has been made.

A little whiles later, the two groups are asked about their choice. The group that was forced to make a pick instantly across the board expressed happiness about their pick. The lost photo was forgotten. They had settled for one and it was the right one. On the other hand, the group that was allowed time to choose were more likely to be unhappy about their choice and were filled with regret. Maybe they should have picked the other one. They wished that they could go back in time and change their choices.

As McRaney puts it, "Getting locked into a situation with no hope of escape activates subjective optimization", i.e. "seeing life as it is as being the best that it could be" . This great tool of the psychological immune system makes what you get stuck with seem better than that which you no longer can obtain. Scientists find that it is relatively very easy to induce subjective optimization in a lab setting; offer the participant a series of possible outcomes and rig the system to ensure that they get a crappy outcome and observe how that suddenly changes to a desirable outcome as if by magic.

The book further explores this topic with another study on song choices and I am sure there are plenty of research papers in this field. But the Aha! moment for me was that this explains the relative success of arranged marriages. The strictly confined choice of partner allows the mind to make metaphorical lemonade out of lemons. They are more likely to be happy with the person they are stuck with than a system where people are free to choose their partners (and change their minds). Folks who marry someone out of their volition will be more likely to rue their choice and wonder if they made a mistake by not choosing this girl or that guy from their past. That is not to argue for or against arranged marriage but one more piece of the puzzle falls into place. I understand it better.

What can fiction do that can’t be achieved by neuroscience?

The texture of consciousness is the language of literature, not the data of science.

Robert Burton

Steinbeck's letter to his lovestuck son

There are several kinds of love. One is a selfish, mean, grasping, egotistical thing which uses love for self-importance. This is the ugly and crippling kind. The other is an outpouring of everything good in you — of kindness and consideration and respect — not only the social respect of manners but the greater respect which is recognition of another person as unique and valuable. The first kind can make you sick and small and weak but the second can release in you strength, and courage and goodness and even wisdom you didn’t know you had...

But I don’t think you were asking me what you feel. You know better than anyone. What you wanted me to help you with is what to do about it — and that I can tell you.

Glory in it for one thing and be very glad and grateful for it.

The object of love is the best and most beautiful. Try to live up to it.

If you love someone — there is no possible harm in saying so — only you must remember that some people are very shy and sometimes the saying must take that shyness into consideration.

Girls have a way of knowing or feeling what you feel, but they usually like to hear it also.

It sometimes happens that what you feel is not returned for one reason or another — but that does not make your feeling less valuable and good...

And don’t worry about losing. If it is right, it happens — The main thing is not to hurry. Nothing good gets away.

Steinbeck (Nov. 10  1958)

Source: http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2012/01/12/john-steinbeck-on-love-1958/

Nerval and his afternoon stroll with Thibault, his pet lobster

Why should a lobster be any more ridiculous than a dog? Or a cat, or a gazelle, or a lion, or any other animal that one chooses to take for a walk? I have a liking for lobsters. They are peaceful, serious creatures. They know the secrets of the sea, they don't bark, and they don't gobble up your monadic privacy like dogs do. And Goethe had an aversion to dogs, and he wasn't mad!

Tribalism

If a modern Republican President started raising taxes, disarming nuclear weapons, disbanding regiments, legalising gay marriage and introducing universal healthcare the Republican base would desert him in droves. They might actually burn him in effigy.

Whereas a Democrat President can continue black-sites, embrace drone warfare and expand the war on terror to multiple countries, kill an American citizen without due process, invade the airspace of an ally and assassinate an unarmed man instead of arresting him, give the banks a free pass, actively silence whistleblowers, deport illegal immigrants, block sane drug laws, not close Guantanamo, essentially  be as dodgily right wing as he wants and "liberals" will not only vote for him but ecstatically endorse him.

And these "liberals" will look down their nose at the bible-thumping conservatives and call them IRRATIONAL and TRIBALISTIC.

Because Sarah Palin. Michelle Bachmann. That's why.

Shut up

Ezra Pound - On types of writers

When you start searching for ‘pure elements’ in literature you will find that literature has been created by the following classes of persons:

1. Inventors: Men who found a new process, or whose extant work gives us the first known example of a process.
2. The masters: Men who combined a number of such processes, and who used them as well as or better than the inventors.
3. The diluters: Men who came after the first two kinds of writer, and couldn’t do the job quite as well.
4. Good writers without salient qualities: Men who are fortunate enough to be born when the literature of a given country is in good working order, or when some particular branch of writing is ‘healthy’. For example, men who wrote sonnets in Dante’s time, men who wrote short lyrics in Shakespeare’s time or for several decades thereafter, or who wrote French novels and stories after Flaubert had shown them how.
5. Writers of belles-lettres: That is, men who didn’t really invent anything, but who specialized in some particular part of writing, who couldn’t be considered as ‘great men’ or as authors who were trying to give a complete presentation of life, or of their epoch.
6. The starters of crazes

Until the reader knows the first two categories he will never be able ‘to see the wood for the trees’. He may know what he ‘likes’. He may be a ‘compleat book-lover’, with a large library of beautifully printed books, bound in the most luxurious bindings, but he will never be able to sort out what he knows to estimate the value of one book in relation to others, and he will be more confused and even less able to make up his mind about a book where a new author is ‘breaking with convention’ than to form an opinion about a book eighty or a hundred years old. He will never understand why a specialist is annoyed with him for trotting out a second- or third-hand opinion about the merits of his favourite bad writer.

Quixotic

Remember that there are two kinds of beauty: one of the soul and the other of the body. That of the soul displays its radiance in intelligence, in chastity, in good conduct, in generosity, and in good breeding, and all these qualities may exist in an ugly man. And when we focus our attention upon that beauty, not upon the physical, love generally arises with great violence and intensity. I am well aware that I am not handsome, but I also know that I am not deformed, and it is enough for a man of worth not to be a monster for him to be dearly loved, provided he has those spiritual endowments I have spoken of.” 
― Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Don Quixote Part 1 Of 2

Grey souls

“Rien n'est tout noir, ni tout blanc, c'est le gris qui gangne. Les hommes et leurs âmes, c'est pareil... T'es une âme grise, joliment grise, comme nous tous..."

Philippe Claudel, Grey Souls

Power of Vulnerability - Brene Brown

Vulnerability is not weakness, nor is it optional. We can't opt out of the uncertainty, exposure, and emotional risks that are woven through our daily experiences. Like it or not, vulnerability is coming, and we have to decide if we’re going to open up to it or push it away. The only choice we really have is how we're going to respond to feeling vulnerable. And contrary to popular belief, our shields don't protect us. They simply keep us from being seen, heard, and known.

If there's anything I've learned over the past decade and experienced firsthand over the last year, it's this: Our willingness to own and engage with our vulnerability determines the depth of our courage and the clarity of our purpose. Even if letting ourselves be seen and opening ourselves up to judgment or disappointment feels terrifying, the alternatives are worse: Choosing to feel nothing -- numbing. Choosing to perfect, perform, and please our way out of vulnerability. Choosing rage, cruelty, or criticism. Choosing shame and blame. Like most of you reading this, I have some experience with all of these alternatives, and they all lead to same thing: disengagement and disconnection.

One of my favorite quotes is from theologian Howard Thurman. He writes, "Don’t ask what the world needs; ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is more people who have come alive."

Vulnerability is not easy, but it’s the surest sign that we’ve come alive.

http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/en/brene_brown_on_vulnerability.html

Fingernails; Nostrils; Shoelaces by Charles Bukowski

The gas line is leaking, the bird is gone from the
cage, the skyline is dotted with vultures;
...
I walked miles through the city and recognized
nothing as a giant claw ate at my
stomach while the inside of my head felt
airy as if I was about to go
mad.
it's not so much that nothing means
anything but more that it keeps meaning
nothing,
there's no release, just gurus and self-
appointed gods and hucksters.
the more people say, the less there is
to say.
even the best books are dry sawdust.

Mute

No love can survive muteness