People lie with statistics and graphs, sometimes intentionally, sometimes unintentionally. Our job is to think critically about what we sePeople lie.
People lie with statistics and graphs, sometimes intentionally, sometimes unintentionally. Our job is to think critically about what we see, to look at the things that don't make sense in how the data presented.
Thinking critically about data is more difficult than we expect it to be. We are seduced by patterns, seeing them even when nothing is there. People make mistakes, both in their arithmetic and their reasoning. We look for what we expect to find and create theories to explain what we found (without treating these data as a pilot).
I believe in science, in data. I love numbers (the Count is my favorite Sesame Street character).
[image] The Count
Science isn't the problem, numbers aren't the problem either, but we need to be careful not to jump to conclusions, to hold ourselves honest, even when we are the reader. There's often too much weight put on the process (sales, publications and careers, awards, promotions, our theories)....more
I like the concept: a column in the New York Times examining the ethics of, well, everything.
I'm less sure about its execution. Randy Cohen is a smartI like the concept: a column in the New York Times examining the ethics of, well, everything.
I'm less sure about its execution. Randy Cohen is a smart and funny guy, but he's not a philosopher, nor an ethicist, and the basis for his decisions is frequently unclear and always inconsistent. He doesn't seem to have a steady ethical framework. He emphasizes intent, considers consequences, and wants proportional consequences. He acknowledges the role of duty and values – but sometimes recognizes only one set of values or one of several competing duties. He may identify only one of several options to address a problem – although he is scrupulous in asking for feedback from diverse parties before drawing a decision.
For example, one reader asked how she should respond to a real estate agent, an Orthodox Jew, who refused to shake her hand after they signed a contract, as he did not touch women, per Orthodox teachings. She noted that she opposes gender discrimination, but also supports freedom of religious expression. Cohen responded to the discrimination, but not the religious expression: "If this involved only his own person—adherence to laws concerning diet or dress, for example—you should of course be tolerant. But his actions directly affect you. Sexism is sexism, even when motivated by religious convictions. I believe you should tear up your contract" (p. 307).
It seems to me that Cohen's response was directed to the wrong place and clearly disproportional in its consequences. The realtor was an individual, attempting to live a godly life, albeit a man who had not examined himself or his values well. The buyer wanted to find an ethical middle ground – feminist but respectful of religious expression – but was given a response that ignored the one set of values for the second. Why? Were there other options? I understand the desire to tear up the contract, but two unethical actions from opposing parties does not make a right. Perhaps she could have been quietly assertive in helping the realtor see how his behavior affected her. This would have honored her feelings and both sets of values, while offering a more proportional consequence to his actions and that would maintain the relationship.
In fact, Cohen later reported a less confrontational alternative given by several Orthodox rabbis, "who noted that while Orthodox Judaism does bar such physical contact, it also discourages giving offense or causing embarrassment to another person," as refusing to shake the buyer's hand would do (p. 310). Such a solution – shaking hands if the other party initiated it – would have maintained the relationship, built bridges, and extended respect for both parties' perspectives....more
I love Oliver Sacks and his writing, so this book of six interviews from a 30 year period (1987 – 2015) made my heart sing. I have loved Sacks' deeplyI love Oliver Sacks and his writing, so this book of six interviews from a 30 year period (1987 – 2015) made my heart sing. I have loved Sacks' deeply humane writing, his empathy, and compassion. As he was described in the RadioLab interview, "the generosity of his curiosity becomes profoundly moving and transformative when he’s treating his patients" (Kindle 1053).
One of his consults was with a woman who was 88 and living in a nursing home. She awoke hearing a song on the radio – when there was none. Sacks eventually determined that she'd had a stroke or some other neurological event, which had caused musical epilepsy. "Now a normal doctor might say, “Okay, we’ve got the diagnosis,” and think that the songs would probably fade and it would pass, so they would be done. But Oliver did not stop. He doesn’t stop" (Kindle 1064).
You know how nobody remembers anything that happens to you when you’re one or two or three? Well, there was a theory once, not honored much today, but it said that those earliest memories get locked away deep in our brains in a special safe that we can never open. So let’s suppose, Mrs. O. C., that your stroke, by some crazy chance, opened the lock that none of us can break, and released those first memories in you, just for a little while. So that the voice you’re listening to … maybe that isn’t a radio voice. Let’s say that it’s your mother’s voice, that’s your missing mother. And so at the ripe old age of eighty-eight, you finally get to be back in your mother’s arms… (Kindle 1075)
Brilliant!
I love the ways Sacks wedded neurology, medicine, science, and poetry as few others have been able to do. Most popular science writers dumb down the science; Sacks assumed that we were as smart and capable and wise as he was.
I enjoy listening to interviews with interesting people, although reading these interviews was not as fresh and exciting an experience as either reading Sacks' essays or listening to interviews. Interviews, especially when presented as transcripts, have difficulty exposing the heart and mind of the interviewed. The last three interviews struck me as the most interested and interesting of the bunch.
Finally, what this book did is make me want to read more Sacks. Or, maybe, to reread the loving and surprising Insomniac City: New York, Oliver, and Me.
…that’s what he does: he listens closely. (Kindle 1084) ...more
I consider myself truthful, but… I tell white lies to protect people's feelings. I lie to get people to leave me alone. Sometimes I don't want to sharI consider myself truthful, but… I tell white lies to protect people's feelings. I lie to get people to leave me alone. Sometimes I don't want to share the truth (e.g., I only brushed my teeth once a day when 10, but knew that my dentist wanted to hear 3. I said 2 when asked.). Sometimes I just don't know the answer to a question (e.g., the number of calories I've consumed today).
Social scientists of all stripes rely on a lot of survey research, but I mistrust survey data for the reasons in the last paragraph (and others). I like observational or experimental data when it's an option. Still, when we want to know about sex, politics, drugs, embarrassing things, etc., we can't follow people into the bedroom or polling booth. What can we do instead?
Seth Stephens-Davidowitz makes a compelling case that big data – often, but not only internet searches – can tell us a lot about sexual preferences, racist attitudes, relationships, effective and ineffective speeches, and more. "Words are data. Clicks are data. Links are data. Typos are data. Bananas in dreams are data. Tone of voice is data. Wheezing is data. Heartbeats are data. Spleen size is data" (p. 97). Did you know that heterosexual men say that use 1.6 billion condoms each year, although fewer than 600 million are sold?
Our conventional wisdom about all sorts of things is wrong. We may believe that abortions have dropped as states have changed their laws when, in fact, people are searching for abortion pills, how to perform coat hanger abortions, and clinics in other states.
Does that mean that big data will replace surveys? Probably not, the best way to answer difficult questions will continue to be to combine all available data, rather than relying on a single kind of data....more
I read Flamingo's Smile – and many of Stephen Jay Gould's other collections of essays when they were first first published in Natural History 35 or soI read Flamingo's Smile – and many of Stephen Jay Gould's other collections of essays when they were first first published in Natural History 35 or so years ago. I was dismayed when he died, as his descriptions of science and the scientific process were so erudite, engaged, and engaging that I couldn't imagine anyone else taking his place. (They haven't, at least for me and in this genre.) Who else would start a discussion of the paradox of siphonophores – are they an organism or a colony? – by discussing Pirates of Penzance and end with a joke? His questions and his analyses keep me reading.
When an inquiry becomes so convoluted, we must suspect that we are proceeding in the wrong way. We must return to go, change gears, and reformulate the problem, not pursue every new iota of information or nuance of argument in the old style, hoping all the time that our elusive solution simply awaits a crucial item, yet undiscovered. (pp. 77-78)
Should I be reading 35-year-old science essays? Probably not, if I want to learn evolutionary science, but if I want to understand scientific thinking better and read good, smart scientific writing, YES!
The enemy of knowledge and science is irrationalism, not religion (p. 102). ...more
Molly Bang deconstructs images and how their shape, size, orientation, and color affect our emotional responses to an image. Bang starts small: a red Molly Bang deconstructs images and how their shape, size, orientation, and color affect our emotional responses to an image. Bang starts small: a red triangle representing Little Red Riding Hood. Here, she reflects on the feeling inherent to this simple shape.
The figure is not exactly fraught with emotion, yet I knew I felt things about it that I didn't feel for others.
It isn't huggable. Why not? Because it has points. It makes me feel stable. Why? It has a flat, wide, horizontal base. It gives a sense of equanimity, or balance, as well, because its three sides are equal. If it were sharper, it would feel nastier; if it were flatter, it would feel more immobile; and if it were an irregular triangle, I would feel off balance. What about its color? We call red a warm color, bold, flashy; I feel danger, vitality, passion. How can one color evoke such a range of disparate, even conflicting, feelings? (p. 4).
Bang describes a number of simple, but increasingly complicated thought experiments. How does changing the wolf's size, rounding its points, and changing its color impact how we see it?
[image] From Picture This
Bang's simple experiments are effective, more so than only talking about the roles of shape, size, orientation, and color. She encourages her readers to continue to play with images, recognize and use the underlying principles of illustration, and deconstruct what makes them effective.
If I taught in introductory art history course, I would use this book for the first several weeks of the semester, then move to more complicated pieces. What makes these effective? And, with PhotoShop – or other apps – how can we change an image to understand both it and what makes art effective? Are there other versions of an image that would be more effective?
[image] Four versions of the Mona Lisa: by Leonardo da Vinci, Bernardino Luini, Philippe de Champaigne, and a version stored by the Prado Museum in Madrid
I am currently taking a teaching workshop that I think is fairly ineffective and disappointing. Part of the difficulty is that the presenter talks too much and has us experiment too little.
Both Bang and this workshop presenter teach me the same lessons: sometimes less is more, sometimes doing is more important than talking. I will try to remember. ...more
I'm not sure that I would have read Leopold if I'd better known what it was: a compilation of Aldo Leopold's writings, journals, and letters from throI'm not sure that I would have read Leopold if I'd better known what it was: a compilation of Aldo Leopold's writings, journals, and letters from throughout his life. If I'd picked it up in a bookstore or a library, I would have set it aside as too long or as having sections that were too obtuse and unlikely to interest me.
I skimmed and skipped over Leopold's journal entries, which focused on his hunting (how many ducks, deer, etc. Leopold and his hunting companions tracked or killed). This vegetarian tree hugger was not fascinated either by the text or the photos in this section.
Leopold's letters sometimes went over my head, as he wrote to colleagues, legislators, or heads of game or conservation organizations. I enjoyed his letters to his family members, especially his mother, but I loved his passionate and sometimes sharp advocacy. This was from a letter to Ducks Unlimited:
When Tom Main dropped out I hoped for an improvement, but the June “Ducko-logical” now convinces me that there is no change. Your staff continues its incredibly expert job of taking a given set of facts and so twisting the emphasis as to create an overall impression that is false. (p. 1226)
The Sand County Almanac, which is at the beginning of Leopold is much more accessible. Here he talks his way through the year, describing what he sees around him. This is from January:
The mouse is a sober citizen who knows that grass grows in order that mice may store it as underground haystacks, and that snow falls in order that mice may build subways from stack to stack: supply, demand, and transport all neatly organized. To the mouse, snow means freedom from want and fear. (p. 22)
Leopold clearly loves to observe, smell, and listen to his world and considers how it fits together. Sand County Almanac is a love letter to his Wisconsin home.
It’s hard on such a day to keep one’s mind on grouse, for there are many distractions. I cross a buck track in the sand, and follow in idle curiosity. The track leads straight from one Jersey tea bush to another, with nipped twigs showing why.
This reminds me of my own lunch, but before I get it pulled out of my game pocket, I see a circling hawk, high skyward, needing identification. I wait till he banks and shows his red tail.
I reach again for the lunch, but my eye catches a peeled popple. Here a buck has rubbed off his itchy velvet. How long ago? The exposed wood is already brown; I conclude that horns must therefore be clean by now.
I reach again for the lunch, but am interrupted by an excited yawp from the dog, and a crash of bushes in the swamp. Out springs a buck, flag aloft, horns shining, his coat a sleek blue. (pp. 87-88)
I enjoyed Leopold's natural history in his Sand County Almanac but Leopold is much more than this. He is a systems thinker who questions hunters, farmers, loggers, and businesses that think for the short- rather than the long-term. Yes, he loves to hunt, but he is as concerned about the hawk as the hare, the wolf as the deer; the river as the willow-eating, river-damaging cattle. As he asks,
Biologically speaking, the determining characteristic of rational beings is that their evolution is self-directed. …[T]he opposite example of the potato bug, which, blindly obedient to the law of increase, exterminates the potato and thereby exterminates itself. Which are we? (p. 396)
Which are we? Which do we want to be?
Leopold's love of nature and his commitment to creating a sustainable and healthy environment cause him to be compared with Henry Thoreau, Rachel Carson, and other nature writers. That passion and love are why I hung in over the long run....more
Although it was not clear to me in the title or even in the earliest chapters, Neurotribes is a history of the diagnosis and treatment of autism spectAlthough it was not clear to me in the title or even in the earliest chapters, Neurotribes is a history of the diagnosis and treatment of autism spectrum disorders. If I had known what I was getting into, I probably wouldn't have read it, at 542 pages. Still, I enjoyed this as a philosophy of science, as the descriptions of varying perceptions of autistics, as they currently like being called, over the course of the almost 100 years that they have been described.
These varying descriptions and their implications are themselves fascinating. Kanner was the dominant early voice in the US.
Kanner: "Overambitious parents like the Tripletts had “stuffed” the impressionable minds of their children with useless information to cast themselves in a culturally favorable light and bolster their own egos" (p. 190). He "turned the detailed notes that parents had provided to him—which were so helpful in developing a clear picture of their children’s development—into a weapon, citing them as a “telling illustration of parental obsessiveness.”" (p. 190)
Asperger preceded Kanner, but his view of autistic children was more benign. It was also lost during WW2 and rediscovered later.
Asperger: “Not everything that steps out of the line, and is thus ‘abnormal,’ must necessarily be ‘inferior.’” "This boy’s difficulties—which particularly affect his relationships with himself and other people—are the price that he has to pay for his special gifts” (p. 128).
It matters how we see these children (and adults), right? Are they low functioning, severely affected, or profoundly impaired or a “high-octane boy,” as one parent argued? Are the parents the cause of problems, as Kanner and Theodore and Ruth Lidz argued, or are they their children's supports?
Some more quotes:
Rudolf Ekstein: "Tommy’s precocious interest in science was likely the result of “early childhood intensive sexual traumata” caused by seduction by his mother or a nursemaid" (p. 211).
Bernard Rimland: “Brightness gone awry” (p. 272)
Ivar Lovaas (who believed you should punish self-injury): "Once you had taken it upon yourself to physically strike a child, you were morally responsible for his fate. “No one punishes who isn’t prepared to devote a major part of his life to that child. Nobody punishes a child who doesn’t also love that child,” he told a reporter. “Once you lay your hand on a child it morally obligates you to work with that child. You see, that is one of the reasons that people stay away from punishment—they don’t want to commit themselves. After you hit a kid you can’t just get up and leave him; you are hooked to that kid.”" (pp. 312-313)
George Rekers and Ivar Lovaas: "It’s easier to change a child’s behavior than it is to destigmatize that behavior in society—whether it’s limp wrists or flapping hands." (p. 323)
Barry Morrow: “What Bill taught me... is that not only do people like Bill need society, society needs people like Bill.” (p. 363)
Judith Gould: “We were not surprised when people started saying it was an epidemic. Obviously, by broadening the spectrum, you’re going to get higher numbers." (p. 421)
Temple Grandin: "A “handicap” rather than a mental illness, invoking the humanizing language of disability over the stigmatizing lexicon of psychiatry" (p. 426).
Oliver Sacks: Their autism, “while it may be seen as a medical condition, and pathologized as a syndrome, must also be seen as a whole mode of being, a deeply different mode or identity, one that needs to be conscious (and proud) of itself.” (p. 430)
Walter Spitzer: "Autism as “a terminal illness . . . a dead soul in a live body.”" (p. 431)
Jim Sinclair: “Being autistic does not mean being inhuman. But it means that what is normal for other people is not normal for me, and what is normal for me is not normal for other people.”[I'm like] “an extraterrestrial stranded without an orientation manual” (p. 437)
Laura Tyroncik: “Neurotypical syndrome is a neurobiological disorder characterized by preoccupation with social concerns, delusions of superiority, and obsession with conformity... There is no known cure.” (p. 441)
Jim Sinclair: “Saying ‘person with autism’ suggests that autism is something bad—so bad that it isn’t even consistent with being a person...We talk about left-handed people, not ‘people with left-handedness,’ and about athletic or musical people, not about ‘people with athleticism’ or ‘people with musicality’ . . . It is only when someone has decided that the characteristic being referred to is negative that suddenly people want to separate it from the person.” (p. 441)
Susan Moreno: "Her life had been enriched in ways that she could never have predicted by coping with the challenges of raising Beth." (p. 444)
Ivar Lovaas: "a normal child trapped within the “autistic shell,” waiting to be rescued.
Dan Grover: “The goal is to alleviate those with Asperger’s from this pressure that they need to conform,” Grover said in the press release. “What is best is to learn how to use your uniqueness to your advantage and find your place in the world.” (p. 455)
Ari Ne'eman: "Not “symptoms” of his autism, but problems built into the ways that society treats people who don’t meet the standard expectations of “normal.”" (p. 458)
Carol Greenberg: “When I look at my son,” she says, “I think, ‘He’s not broken. He’s just neurologically outnumbered, like me.’” (p. 467).
Do we understand autism? We have, at least, some interesting and useful understandings – and some that are not....more
I would have liked The Ten Most Beautiful Experiments more if I'd read it as part of a class, where my instructors demonstrated the experiments and taI would have liked The Ten Most Beautiful Experiments more if I'd read it as part of a class, where my instructors demonstrated the experiments and talked their way through them. I wanted to see, to feel, to smell. As it was, I often felt that I missed the details of most of the stories told here. I certainly couldn't have replicated that research based on George Johnson's descriptions or the drawings included, most of which were from the original researchers, as with this one from Sir Isaac Newton's journal.
[image]
For me, the most compelling parts of the stories was the "messy" parts of science:
* The ways that professors steal credit for work that their students have done – or that their students lay greater claim to that work their advisors believed they deserved (e.g., Robert Millikan and Harvey Fletcher).
* The important roles of scientific rivals or supportive colleagues in the progress of that science (e.g., Galvani and Volta): Though neither man could quite see it, their experiments complemented each other, for they were dancing around a single truth (p. 74). Conversely, Lady Ada Lovelace was an effective and important muse to Michael Faraday, and Alexander Graham Bell was an important benefactor to A. A. Michelson.
* It's not just the observations that matter, but what you do with them (e.g., Lavoisier, Priestley, and Scheele). Could Priestley and Scheele recognize their data's meaning? (Of course, data doesn't come with clear labels.) Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier did.
* The experimental mindset is central and essential to the work and to the personality of the researcher, illustrated in the story of Lavoisier's execution by guillotine – surely hyperbole. He wondered whether death by guillotine was painless. Lavoisier tested this hypothesis, so the story goes, by beginning to blink his eyes as soon as he felt the blade touch his neck and as many times as he could, while an assistant in the crowd would count his blinks. Such a mindset touches everything. Or, as in the drawing above, Sir Isaac Newton was so intensely curious about vision and light as to poke a stick in and around his own eye to observe what happened.
* Memory is often treacherous. Johnson described several cases of clear misremembering, as in Wilhelm Roentgen's first reports of x-rays of the hand, which so excited Robert Millikan that he misremembered this report as happening at the German Physical Society on Christmas Eve, but it instead took place in the following January.
* But Johnson described other cases of "misremembering," which seem much more to be "cooking the books," where researchers appeared to comb their data for support for their preconception (e.g., Robert Millikan).
*Or in yet other cases, the experimental method appears to be "smoothed over" rather than an accurate description of the initial research. Stillman Drake, for example, argued that Galileo probably sang in order to assess time in his experiments, but “Even in [Galileo's] day, it would have been foolish to write, ‘I tested this law by singing a song while a ball was rolling down a plane, and it proved quite exact.’" (p. 15).
I doubt that Johnson hoped that I would draw these conclusions, although he probably would not have been surprised either. Science is a very human endeavor....more
Food Rules is a quick and useful read from Michael Pollan, a food writer, whose other books I've enjoyed. Food Rules did not disappoint. This is not aFood Rules is a quick and useful read from Michael Pollan, a food writer, whose other books I've enjoyed. Food Rules did not disappoint. This is not a compendium of the research on nutrition and diet, but a series of 64 heuristics to guide healthy eating, which together can be summarized as Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants. (He actually discusses these in a slightly different order.)
Pollan says that much of what we eat doesn't "deserve to be called food—I call them edible foodlike substances" (p. 5). How do you distinguish food from non-food? Aphorisms in this section include #19, "If it came from a plant, eat it; if it was made in a plant, don’t," and #20, "It’s not food if it arrived through the window of your car."
Most, but not all of these aphorisms are followed by explanations. In response to #25, "Eat your colors," Pollan observed, "The colors of many vegetables reflect the different antioxidant phytochemicals they contain—anthocyanins, polyphenols, flavonoids, carotenoids. Many of these chemicals help protect against chronic diseases, but each in a slightly different way, so the best protection comes from a diet containing as many different phytochemicals as possible" (p. 58). He gave us enough information to make sense, not so much that he obfuscated. His goal is to provide easy and memorable guidelines to healthy eating.
If you want detailed explanations of why you should eat in a particular way, buy one of Pollan's other books. Still, I read Food Rules in one sitting (laying) as bedtime reading. I hadn't yet read #49, "Eat slowly," and instead gobbled. As the oldest of five children of a mother who cooked for four (not seven), gobbling made sense.
I knew that I should put Food Rules down (I need my beauty sleep), but as it was interesting, well-written, and entertaining, I didn't want to. I need to savor both my food and reading. Luckily, Pollan offered helpful guidance to help me slow down and memorable aphorisms that will make me repeatedly return to Food Rules, even if I never open this book again. ...more
All About Love is, not surprisingly, all about love. And, relative to other writers, bell hooks really does consider all of it. As she says, It is farAll About Love is, not surprisingly, all about love. And, relative to other writers, bell hooks really does consider all of it. As she says, It is far easier to talk about loss than it is to talk about love. It is easier to articulate the pain of love’s absence than to describe its presence and meaning in our lives (p. 26). She meant to more firmly describe what it is.
hooks, like many academic writers, described love as a verb, rather than the noun used in popular music or Hallmark cards. It is how we love, rather than only what we feel. It is an active act rather than a passive experience. M. Scott Peck described love as “the will to extend one’s self for the purpose of nurturing one’s own or another’s spiritual growth.” Erich Fromm also emphasized the spiritual connection with another person, but also the importance of self-love. How, he asked, can one love someone else well if not also loving oneself? Thomas Merton considered how loving gives life meaning. Robert Sternberg talked about love as characterized by passion, intimacy, and commitment, which seems both an accurate definition and a fairly bloodless one.
hooks saw love as comprised of a rich number of ingredients: care, affection, recognition, respect, commitment, trust, and honest and open communication. Love is not just something one does with a single other person; instead, hooks posited that it is an attitude one takes toward life and that such an attitude, while not guaranteeing a perfect, committed relationship, can transform life.
Individuals who choose to love can and do alter our lives in ways that honor the primacy of a love ethic. We do this by choosing to work with individuals we admire and respect; by committing to give our all to relationships; by embracing a global vision wherein we see our lives and our fate as intimately connected to those of everyone else on the planet. (pp. 119-120)
All About Love reads as the result of hundreds of rich conversations with friends, audiences, random strangers, and books, informed both by those people who were interested in what love means, but also those who were more cynical, those who concluded that love is only a myth. It is this diversity of perspectives that has hooks looking at love in multiple ways in different situations.
In a world that seems more and more dichotomous in opinion, a world that often shoots from the hip, it is refreshing to find a book that develops a sustained, thoughtful, and complex description of a complex and often elusive subject....more
Some people watch every football game because they follow a team. I rarely watch any sport – unless I am in the room with someone who is watching – buSome people watch every football game because they follow a team. I rarely watch any sport – unless I am in the room with someone who is watching – but I love watching the Olympics, where amateurs at the top of their sport compete. It's not just sports, though, I love watching people who excel at whatever they do, particularly when they perform with passion and write/speak about what they do in a thoughtful way. Watching excellence in any form can bring me to tears. (Good tears.)
Ken Bain's What the Best College Teachers Do meets this aim for me and, although I appear to have first read this 10-15 years ago (my copy is marked up in my hand), Best College Teachersstill has a freshness that I generally find only in a first read – and also a familiarity that was comforting.
How did Bain define "best college teachers"? He focused not on what they did, but on how their students were transformed by their time together. These best college teachers "achieved remarkable success in helping their students learn in ways that made a sustained, substantial, and positive influence on how those students think, act, and feel" (p. 5). As many teachers tend to focus on performance on exams or grades as a measure of their success, this is an interesting definition. He was particularly interested in those faculty who were able to help students exceed expectations.
The students of these faculty didn't talk only about what they learned or remembered, but what they came to understand. They talked about courses that "transformed their lives," "changed everything," and even "messed with their heads." If you've ever taken a course with one of these unusual faculty members, you can probably articulate some pieces of what they did differently, although may not have really understood other parts.
According to Bain, the best teachers focus on a "sustained and substantial influence" on how people think, act, and feel. They consider their goals rather than only the things they want to teach. They expect a lot from their students, but primarily in terms of "the kind of thinking and acting expected for life" (p. 18). They help students learn by asking them to consider beautiful or important questions and problems, that will "help them grapple with ideas, rethink their assumptions, and examine their mental models of reality...in challenging yet supportive conditions [where] learners feel a sense of control...; work collaboratively...; believe that their work will be considered fairly and honestly; and try, fail, and receive feedback from expert learners" throughout the process, rather than only in a final grade or judgment (p. 18). They are able to motivate students to grapple with ideas in a safe environment, rather than only to parrot for an exam (or a grade). Bain described these teachers as treating students with simple decency and approaching life and teaching with a sense of awe and curiosity.
These teachers recognize that "teaching is engaging students, engineering an environment in which they learn" (p. 49) Bain describes these teachers as having a growth mindset about their skills as a teacher and their students' skills as learners (although writing before Dweck's Mindset was written). Teaching isn't easy (although some parts may be). These "best" teachers recognize that it is often a struggle to identify good goals, strategies for meeting those goals, and engaging students in this process.
The best teaching can be found not in particular practices or rules but in the attitudes of the teachers, in their faith in their students' abilities to achieve, in their willingness to take their students seriously and to let them assume control of their own education, and in their commitment to let all policies and practices flow from central learning objectives and from a mutual respect and agreement between students and teachers. (p. 79)
[My daughters' biology teacher when they were freshmen in high school was not a "best." He asked about the Great Men of Science – and meant just that – using aged mimeographs when no one else did. They had to forbid me from going in to complain.]
In case you can't tell, I found What the Best College Teachers Do engaging and inspiring, both because it points toward a high bar, but also because Bain described a strategy for clearing (or nearing) that high bar....more
Change is hard, yet there are things that can make it easier – or more difficult. I don't buy potato chips, as I can't just eat just one, and a quart Change is hard, yet there are things that can make it easier – or more difficult. I don't buy potato chips, as I can't just eat just one, and a quart of ice cream sitting quietly in my freezer is not quiet and, instead, seems to scream my name.
There are also things that we can do at the institutional or governmental level to facilitate good decision-making. Absence of intentional influence is not the same as no influence.
Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth, and Happiness was written by Richard Thaler, who won the Nobel Prize in Economics, and Cass Sunstein, an attorney and director of Harvard's Program on Behavioral Economics and Public Policy. Both come from the school of thought, behavioral economics, which believes that we are not Econs (rational beings slavishly following economic principles), but Humans. We Humans are often misled by cognitive and perceptual biases, overconfident about our abilities (most of us believe ourselves above average), and loss averse in irrational ways. Fundamentally, we are not Computers, but irrational beings.
We are also beings faced with making many very difficult decisions: choosing health insurance plans, saving energy (and the planet), eating in health-promoting ways, investing wisely, and choosing a home mortgage are among the choices discussed in Nudge.
Thaler and Sunstein describe themselves as libertarian paternalists. They want to preserve choice and the freedom to choose (libertarian), while also believing "it is legitimate for choice architects to try to influence people’s behavior in order to make their lives longer, healthier, and better" (p. 5). Nudges are helpful, but Thaler and Sunstein believe we should be allowed to ignore nudges.
Better governance requires less in the way of government coercion and constraint, and more in the way of freedom to choose. If incentives and nudges replace requirements and bans, government will be both smaller and more modest. So, to be clear: we are not for bigger government, just for better governance. (p. 14)
Here are places where a nudge might be useful. Rather than making me make my retirement choice at random – should I contribute more to stocks or mutual funds? – why not recommend an option based on my age at hire, the number of years I expect to work, and the degree of risk I believe acceptable? When my employer annually asks me what charities I would like to automatically donate to, why not repopulate these fields with last year's choices (my employer leaves these blank)? I could still change my charities or amounts donated. Why not tell my parents which prescription drug plan would be best for them based on their current medications, expected future health, and willingness to accept risk? Why not tell college students that they tend to overestimate the amount that other students drink, thus drinking more themselves?
Although I was curious about the various kinds of nudges that Thaler and Sunstein would prescribe, I was also interested in their descriptions of politics, especially as I have been confused and dismayed by our present administration and why they attracted any votes. I haven't found Jonathon Haidt's books on political values terribly convincing or helpful. Thaler and Sunstein helped:
Democratic Party has shown a great deal of enthusiasm for rigid national requirements and for command-and-control regulation. Having identified serious problems in the private market, Democrats have often insisted on firm mandates, typically eliminating or at least reducing freedom of choice. Republicans have responded that such mandates are often uninformed or counterproductive—and that in light of the sheer diversity of Americans, one size cannot possibly fit all. (pp. 255-256)
Of course, Thaler and Sunstein are right, but also wrong. Democrats put limits on pollution; increase taxes to support education, the arts, and anti-poverty programs; and support gun control and affirmative action. Although Republicans want no part of the above – at least as Democrats frame solutions – Republicans focus on other types of control, more social as opposed to environmental (e.g., abortion, feminist issues, stem cell research, three strikes prison terms).
In other words, Thaler and Sunstein's delineation doesn't really hold up.
In sum, though, Nudge was clear, interesting, and helpful. Time well used....more
I especially appreciate books that help me see the world differently, whether they are mysteries, literary fiction, vampires, or nonfiction. When theyI especially appreciate books that help me see the world differently, whether they are mysteries, literary fiction, vampires, or nonfiction. When they are as thoughtful and engaging as this one, I have found a treasure.
Anne Fadiman's book, The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down: A Hmong child, Her American Doctors, and the Collision of Two Cultures, does just that. She probably hears the Hmong family better than she hears Lia Lee's doctors, but Fadiman tries to understand both.
Lia Lee had a series of seizures starting from age three months, but perhaps due to a misdiagnosis, experienced a severe seizure that put her in a coma. While expected to die, she lived an additional 26 years, adored by her parents and family – and also by Fadiman. Lia's life, especially her early life, was characterized by significant strife between her parents and the medical system. Some of these challenges:
* Who should be grateful to whom? The Hmong, for the welfare they received in the US? Or the US, for whom the Hmong had fought long and hard, at cost of life and country?
* How do you judge the "success" of a refugee group? Their use of welfare or social indices like crime, child abuse, illegitimacy, and divorce, all of which were especially low for the Hmong?
* What is the cause of illness? Some biological force run amok, like Lia's physicians believed, or soul loss, as the Hmong believed?
* Surgeons believed that removing cancer kept a person alive, but the Hmong believed this would be at risk of his soul, at risk of his physical integrity in the next life. What Hmong would risk that?
* US doctors believed they were helping Lia, while the Lees thought their treatments were killing her.
* Like her doctors, Lia's parents wanted her healthy, but "we are not sure we want her to stop shaking forever because it makes her noble in our culture, and when she grows up she might become a shaman" (pp. 260-261).
How should we handle these differences? When we perceive difference as threatening– including threatening our cosmology of the world – we tend to reject it and see the other person or culture as wrong or inferior. If we do, how can we work effectively with someone different from ourselves? She argues:
“As powerful an influence as the culture of the Hmong patient and her family is on this case, the culture of biomedicine is equally powerful. If you can’t see that your own culture has its own set of interests, emotions, and biases, how can you expect to deal successfully with someone else’s culture?” (p. 261)
Ah! If you can’t see that your own culture has its own set of interests, emotions, and biases, how can you expect to deal successfully with someone else’s culture? Good question.
Fadiman argues that we should take a step back, acknowledge other perspectives, and listen. This attitude of cultural humility can be difficult to adopt, especially if you prefer thinking in terms of right and wrong, but it can be useful.
I admit it: I bought Joy of X: A Guided Tour of Math, from One to Infinity for the title, although the concept also engaged me (the joy of it). I loveI admit it: I bought Joy of X: A Guided Tour of Math, from One to Infinity for the title, although the concept also engaged me (the joy of it). I love watching people doing anything that they are passionate about: skating and gymnastics during the Olympics, performing, philosophy, science, cooking.
And, apparently, Mathematics. The goal is to give you a better feeling for what math is all about and why it’s so enthralling to those who get it.
As Steven Strogatz said, this is a guided tour, but an idiosyncratic one. All sorts of things are fair game: Sesame Street, Google searches, the OJ Simpson trial, flipping your mattress ... and children's questions.
Today is the 100th day of school. [My son] was very excited and told me everything he knows about the number 100, including that 100 was an even number. He then told me that 101 was an odd number and 1 million was an even number, etc. He then paused and asked: “Is infinity even or odd?” (p. 249)
And, then, Strogatz explored why. In exciting detail, as he did in each essay. These details are engaging. A book that includes things like this, for example, is a book worth reading:
Years later he would explain that he had contemplated suicide at the time but decided against it once he realized that attending MIT and killing himself didn’t commute. He could always go to MIT and commit suicide later if he had to, but not the other way around. (p. 27).
And, in the process, Strogatz demystified Mathematics.
The naive view is that we make our definitions, set them in stone, then deduce whatever theorems happen to follow from them. Not so. That would be much too passive. We’re in charge and can alter the definitions as we please—especially if a slight tweak leads to a tidier theorem, as it does here. (p. 204)
The River of Consciousness, the last book Oliver Sacks compiled before his death, is classic Oliver Sacks. He tells swimmingly-good stories, often eveThe River of Consciousness, the last book Oliver Sacks compiled before his death, is classic Oliver Sacks. He tells swimmingly-good stories, often eventually examining neurological phenomena, but weaving together widely-disparate data to tell his story. In his essay Speed, for example, Sacks talked about plant growth, photography, a horse's gallop, changes in time perception with age, the apparent compression and expansion of time under various conditions, myoclonic jerks, etc. He referred to William James, H. G. Wells, Karl Ernst von Baer, Hannah Arendt, and many others. You get the picture.
Sacks loved to examine errors and kept lists of his own mishearings in his journal (he was very deaf and made many). His assistant confusingly talked about being off to "choir practice" – which he later learned was the chiropractor. When on another day she jokingly said she was off to choir practice, he heard "firecrackers." While Freud and many of the rest of us see such mistakes in pejorative ways, Sacks saw them as opportunities to understand general phenomena. Everything – everything – is grist for the mill. For example, If a mishearing seems plausible, one may not think one has misheard; it is only if the mishearing is sufficiently implausible, or entirely out of context, that one thinks, “This can’t be right,” and (perhaps with some embarrassment) asks the speaker to repeat himself" (Loc. 1390-1392). And why, he asks, do we mishear words, but not music? Why do we mishear lyrics and not the notes?
Sack's discussion of plagiarism is similarly interesting – and goes in a direction different than most of us would take it (I am currently grading papers and have a very different perspective). Brian Williams, for example, was suspended from NBC for six months for exaggerating his role in a helicopter episode in Iraq. Sacks, however, in talking about President Reagan telling a story that was "an almost exact duplicate of a scene in the 1944 film A Wing and a Prayer" concluded that "Reagan had apparently retained the facts but forgotten their source (Loc. 1192-1195). Elizabeth Loftus would be happy with Sacks' analysis.
Sacks continues his discussion of plagiarism: What would it be like if we remembered everything and its source?
"Confusion over sources or indifference to them can be a paradoxical strength: if we could tag the sources of all our knowledge, we would be overwhelmed with often irrelevant information. Indifference to source allows us to assimilate what we read, what we are told, what others say and think and write and paint, as intensely and richly as if they were primary experiences. It allows us to see and hear with other eyes and ears, to enter into other minds, to assimilate the art and science and religion of the whole culture, to enter into and contribute to the common mind, the general commonwealth of knowledge. Memory arises not only from experience but from the intercourse of many minds" (Loc. 1353-1358).
And this: "What is at issue is not the fact of “borrowing” or “imitating,” of being “derivative,” being “influenced,” but what one does with what is borrowed or imitated or derived; how deeply one assimilates it, takes it into oneself, compounds it with one’s own experiences and thoughts and feelings, places it in relation to oneself, and expresses it in a new way, one’s own" (Loc. 1565-1567).
I have read perhaps five of Sacks' books and will likely read more as I run across them. The first of these – The Man Who Mistook His Wife For a Hat – was one of a handful of books that shook my world and made me look at it differently.
The world is a poorer place without Oliver Sacks (1933-2015)....more
He is all pine and I am apple orchard. My apple trees will never get across And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him. He only says, "Good fences mak
He is all pine and I am apple orchard. My apple trees will never get across And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him. He only says, "Good fences make good neighbours." (From Robert Frost's, Mending Wall)
Walls: Travels Along the Barricades is a travelogue of sorts written by Marcello di Cintio, a Canadian, in 2015. Walls was written before Mr. Trump trumpeted the US need for a wall. It was written before many of us knew that the US already has a wall along some parts of its southern border, significantly increasing the death rate among refugees, who have been diverted into the desert. It was written before many of us were aware of excluding walls other the Great Wall in China and the walls in the West Bank.
di Cintio visited eight walls throughout Africa, Europe, and North America. He concluded that walls exclude, incarcerate, desecrate, humiliate, and divide. They separate families and define (or steal) social identities: Us and Them. They feed racism by preventing chance meetings and engagement with anyone but members of your own community. Walls do not appear to decrease violence – and appear to increase it. They have meaning, symbolizing a people's struggles, and they create solidarity. Walls may create emotional borders rather than only physical ones. They make people mentally and physically ill (apparently due to stress). Some walls are transformed and undermined by becoming a repository for art, messages, and music.
di Cintio is admittedly anti-walls, but attempted to talk to people on both sides of the wall (he was more successful in some places than others). I appreciated that. Some states and countries made crossing the border very difficult. He clearly found some arguments difficult to listen to.
Some of the people he interviewed (e.g., Governor Mooshahary of Shillong) argued that “the fence is good for the nation” (p. 89), but he observed that walls are better at keeping poor farmers from their lands and fruit sellers from their market than stopping terrorists. Others, like gun-carrying, truck-driving Bill, who lives on the Mexico/Arizona border, said, “Historically, defensive things like this—the Great Wall, the Maginot Line, the Berlin Wall—none of them worked. And they were all put up by losers.” (p. 162).
“You got some lard-ass in Dubuque, Iowa, or some damn place,” Bill said, “and he’s got his big fat American ass sitting on an overstuffed couch, looking at a wide-screen TV, eating super-saturated fats, and he sees a picture of this fence and thinks, ‘That’ll stop ’em.’ Well, it’ll stop him, but not some kid coming up from five hundred miles south who is twenty years old and wants to work.” (p. 163)
di Cintio admitted that walls are for the peoples there rather than people like him (or many of us reading this) who could easily walk back and forth across the wall: As much as I learn about the walls, and as much as I try to empathize with those who inhabit their shadows, the truth remains that the walls are not meant for me (p. 148).
Books like this one help us see and understand oppression and its many manifestations and consequences. Writers as lucid and interesting as di Cintio make what could have been only a political rant very interesting.
How can one talk about walls without quoting Frost? This is another part of his poem, Mending Wall:
Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder If I could put a notion in his head: "Why do they make good neighbours? Isn't it Where there are cows? But here there are no cows. Before I built a wall I'd ask to know What I was walling in or walling out, And to whom I was like to give offence. Something there is that doesn't love a wall, That wants it down." I could say "Elves" to him, But it's not elves exactly, and I'd rather He said it for himself. I see him there Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed. He moves in darkness as it seems to me, Not of woods only and the shade of trees. He will not go behind his father's saying, And he likes having thought of it so well He says again, "Good fences make good neighbours." (From Robert Frost's, Mending Wall)
We are a notably unhealthy people obsessed by the idea of eating healthily (p. 3).
Michael Pollan's Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four MealsWe are a notably unhealthy people obsessed by the idea of eating healthily (p. 3).
Michael Pollan's Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals is a critique of industrial farms: they raise animals shoulder to shoulder standing in their own manure, feeding them foods that they are not designed for and which make them ill, and then use chemicals to compensate for these sins. Who knew that we are corn-eaters – not directly, like Mexicans, but through our cattle and chickens, and in processed foods.
“When you look at the isotope ratios,.. we North Americans look like corn chips with legs.” Compared to us, Mexicans today consume a far more varied carbon diet: the animals they eat still eat grass (until recently, Mexicans regarded feeding corn to livestock as a sacrilege); much of their protein comes from legumes; and they still sweeten their beverages with cane sugar." (p. 23)
Pollan looks at industrial and pastoral farms, briefly flirts with being a vegetarian, then becomes a hunter/gatherer. He doesn't "look" the way I would, but goes out in the field, visiting and working farms, learning to hunt (and kill), and to gather wild mushrooms. Each major step on his journey is punctuated with a meal.
Our typical, industrial farm, Pollan argues, is not healthy for us (making us obese), not healthy for the animals (making them ill), and not healthy for the soil and environment (using vast amounts of oil to raise food in a monoculture). He may something good about this kind of farming, but I've forgotten it. This farming is good for conglomerates – making them rich – but not farmers or consumers.
His week on Joel Salatin's pastoral farm is fascinating – even for me, a vegetarian of more than 40 years. Salatin is a libertarian, deeply suspicious of government and governmental intervention. However, hw is a scientist's kind of farmer. He recognizes that everything is connected, so considers how to balance the activity and placement of cattle, chickens, pigs, and trees, each entering an environmental niche at a time that makes sense for the animals and farm, keeping all healthy while being largely chemical-free. As Salatin argues:
"Society is not bearing the cost of water pollution, of antibiotic resistance, of food-borne illnesses, of crop subsidies, of subsidized oil and water—of all the hidden costs to the environment and the taxpayer that make cheap food seem cheap. No thinking person will tell you they don’t care about all that. I tell them the choice is simple: You can buy honestly priced food or you can buy irresponsibly priced food.” (p. 243)
Finally, Omnivore's Dilemma is an ode to mindful, grounded eating, praising the food from Salatin's farm, but also that hunted and gathered in Sonoma and the Bay Area of California. He drools not just as be eats, but as he prepares to do so (although some of what he must do brings him close to losing his lunch), For Pollan, a meal that is eaten in full consciousness of what it took to make it is worth preparing every now and again, if only as a way to remind us of the true costs of the things we take for granted (pp. 409-410). He ends up in favor of locally-grown and harvested foods, foods with few chemicals, foods where we own the costs of eating.
Pollan convinces me – not to eat cow, as some parts of Omnivore's Dilemma would be well-served with Sinclair Lewis's The Jungle. He does convince me to invest in local farms. I had been considering dropping my CSA membership in favor of the farmer's market, but decided against this so I support local farmers (mine is a cooperative of 12 Amish farms and includes a handwritten letter by one farmer each week). We have been decreasing our consumption of processed foods, but Omnivore's Dilemma will likely speed up this process. And, I will hesitate – I can't promise more – the next time I am looking at vegetables from half-way around the world.
As Claude Lévi-Strauss argued, food must be “not only good to eat, but also good to think” (quoted on p. 289). Pollan's food-writing is thoughtful, and I enjoyed Omnivore's Dilemma as much for the writing as the content. And, he is dryly humorous.
A part of good science is to see what everyone else can see but think what no one else has ever said. (p. 345)
Michael Lewis's The Undoing Project: A FA part of good science is to see what everyone else can see but think what no one else has ever said. (p. 345)
Michael Lewis's The Undoing Project: A Friendship That Changed Our Minds is actually three books for the price of one. Read it as a discussion of science and the way it works, the ways psychology has been tipped upside down by Amos Tversky and Danny Kahneman*, and finally, as an intimate portrait of friendship.
When I first started studying psychology (in the 1970s), I saw a fascinating field – what visual illusions say about perception and cognition, for example – but I saw the field as following a regular and predictable forward progression. You learned some, then more, then still more. Maybe my statement here reflects my relative naiveté at the time.
Thomas Kuhn turned things upside down as he began talking about paradigm shifts in science in books like The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. While my professors framed behavior in terms of basic learning theory, people like John Garcia and Marty Seligman – and later Kahneman and Tversky – turned the field upside down. Garcia, for example, demonstrated that some things are almost impossible to learn and others impossibly easy (if you've ever gotten sick after going to a bar, you know what I mean). People are neither automatons (as B. F. Skinner argued), nor hyper-rational decision-makers.
Why should, for example, people's estimates of the number of African countries in the United Nations predict estimates of African countries in the United Nations? It doesn't make sense, but this is what we do.
We see ourselves as rational and are blind to these errors that infect every part of our lives. As Don Redelmeier observed:
“It’s not that people think they are perfect. No, no: They can make mistakes. It’s that they don’t appreciate the extent to which they are fallible. ‘I’ve had three or four drinks. I might be 5 percent off my game.’ No! You are actually 30 percent off your game. This is the mismatch that leads to ten thousand fatal accidents in the United States every year.” (p. 346)
Lewis tells a fascinating story about friendship, too. When Tversky and Kahneman were working well together, things were wonderful, with both of them much smarter and better than they would be individually.
“I have the image of balancing precariously on the back legs of a chair and laughing so hard I nearly fell backwards.” The laughter might have sounded a bit louder when the joke had come from Amos, but that was only because Amos had a habit of laughing at his own jokes. (“He was so funny that it was okay he was laughing at his own jokes.”) In Amos’s company Danny felt funny, too—and he’d never felt that way before. In Danny’s company Amos, too, became a different person: uncritical. (p. 158).
The problem, though, is that most people don't think in terms of effective teams, but good and better. Such distinctions can undermine a relationship and the team. Lewis also described this part of their friendship.
Lewis does not just look at the main players, as science occurs in a broader context. Part of the brilliance of The Undoing Project, which is both smart and accessible (at least relative to Thinking Fast and Slow, which is accessible relative to their journal articles, which are relatively accessible for journal articles), is that he tells both the big story – Kahneman and Tversky's effects on psychology, economics, medicine, law, public health, baseball, etc. – but also the personal story. Lewis is brilliant at getting people to talk about Tversky and Kahneman, their own work, the process of science, and the beauty of collaborations – and at threading this all together into a coherent narrative.
* Kahneman and Tversky could not identify who contributed more to any single project, so alternated lead authors on papers. Thus, I'm also alternating. ☺...more
I pick up a lot of books on sale, often on a whim. I like breaking out of my bubble and hearing someone else's perspective, but Ken Stern's title – ReI pick up a lot of books on sale, often on a whim. I like breaking out of my bubble and hearing someone else's perspective, but Ken Stern's title – Republican Like Me: A Lifelong Democrat's Journey Across the Aisle – seemed glib rather than thoughtful, and its cover, with its red MAGA-like cap, reinforced my initial prejudice. I was prepared to dislike this book.
If I had avoided Republican Like Me based on my initial prejudices, I would have been wrong. This is a thoughtful exploration of political perspectives from a former CEO of NPR. His title, Republican Like Me, appears to be patterned after John Howard Griffin's classic Black Like Me, published in 1961. Griffin colored his skin and went undercover to learn what it was like for Blacks in the US. Stern did not go undercover as a Republican, but he did determine to step outside his political bubble and listen to Republicans in a way that most Democrats don't do (and vice versa). Stern went hog hunting and to conservative churches, coal towns, and Trump rallies. He read and listened to right-wing media. He talked to both experts and common people.
A LOOONG time ago I attempted to step outside my bubble by listening to Rush Limbaugh. All that did was raise my blood pressure and ire and reinforce my prejudices – if that's who conservatives are, I concluded, I didn't want to listen. I am particularly impressed, therefore, that Stern was able to spend a year stepping outside his bubble and was willing to hear the truth in what was said. He admits to being changed by his experience – although still self-describes as a liberal.
I have some lovely friends who are Republicans, people with whom I agree more than I disagree, but with whom I had to bite my tongue after the election. And, while Democrats like myself typically describe Republicans using words like “disgusting,” “greedy,” “crazy,” “selfish,” and “bastards” (p. 237 – Stern reports that Republicans describe Democrats with similarly pejorative language – this isn't a fair description of many Republicans. Republicans are more likely, on average, to be generous and volunteer in the community. (This may reflect their religiousness rather than their political bent.)
Who is most representative of Republicans? Limbaugh or my friend? I tend to conclude Limbaugh, when I should conclude it is my friend.
Liberals are generally very interested in diversity and tolerance (racial, ethnic, gender), but much less interested in viewpoint diversity. Shame on us. Recently, a board I am on voted to add a "diversity" position and, in our discussion, down counterarguments about the decision (e.g., about costs, about process), by suggesting that any other viewpoint was a prejudiced one. (One person was told, "Don't be an Old White Man.") A good group, good intentions, but poor process. As Stern observed, In law school, none of us would have ever been caught dead saying anything against blacks or Hispanics or Jews or gay people, but rubes, southerners, white trash, hillbillies, and Republicans were all fair game. It rankled (p. 31).
And yet (I kept saying that a lot while reading Republican Like Me), and yet, we are more alike than different. Stern quotes Sam Adams, the first openly gay mayor of a US city, who collaborated very effectively with Kevin Palau, an evangelical religious leader: "There are things we don’t agree on as a liberal Democrat and as an evangelical leader. . . . We can agree to disagree on gay marriage and disagree on abortion but we probably agree on eight out of ten things that are important to society. . . . So we can act together genuinely in our communities on those eight of ten and break out of the trap that has been built around us” (p. 68).
Stern observed that we are more alike than different politically, but also in our mistakes. Liberals have made indefensible decisions about GMOs, global warming, etc. The world is facing complicated problems and members of both political parties have oversimplified the problems we need to struggle with.
Even if I agreed with President Trump's politics, I hope I would vote against him based on his behavior. How can good people vote for him? Stern noted that evangelicals willingly vote[d] for Trump because he is a better bet on the issues they care about... [E]vangelicals voted for Trump in the usual proportions, notwithstanding his obvious moral failings, his string of marriages, and his only passing familiarity with the truth. It was for most of them a practical, not a passionate, vote (p. 87). And, while I would like to say that I would do otherwise if the tables were turned, I'm not so sure that I would.
Republican Like Me was an important book to read – and moreover, a thoughtful and interesting one. I was very glad I stepped outside my comfort zone to read it....more
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