Re-opening The American mind

On the 25th anniversary of Alan Bloom's The Closing Of The American Mind, Sean Collins urges us to re-read the book without misinterpreting it. 

Like traditional moralists, Bloom rails against rock music, but for a very different reason: ‘My concern here is not with the moral effects of this music – whether it leads to sex, violence or drugs. The issue here is its effect on education, and I believe it ruins the imagination of young people and makes it very difficult to have a passionate relationship to the art and thought that are the substance of liberal education.’

Just because William Bennett – a prominent conservative back-to-old-morals type – was a follower of Bloom’s, it doesn’t mean Bloom ought to be put in that same category. This pigeonholing of Bloom leads to overlooking the subtleties of his arguments. Indeed, Bloom’s ideas pose serious challenges to both the left and the right.

Take his discussion of relativism. Bloom writes that openness is an essential feature of the academy: ‘The university is the place where inquiry and philosophic openness come into their own. It is intended to encourage the non-instrumental use of reason for its own sake, to provide the atmosphere where the moral and physical superiority of the dominant will not intimidate philosophic doubt.’ However, over time openness was transformed into a mindless relativism: ‘Openness used to be the virtue that permitted us to seek the good by using reason. It now means accepting everything and denying reason’s power.’ If the university preaches that all truths are relative, what’s the point of searching for truth? Openness, ironically, leads to the ‘closing’ of the American mind.

Quote of the Day

"Just explained the Higgs Boson to my friend even though I don't understand it myself. He was very convinced. I bet this is how religions get started."

- Rob DenBleyker

How The Dog Became The Dog

Review of Mark Derr's new book How The Dog Became The Dog: From Wolves To Our Best Friends

"When did the strange relationship between humans and dogs begin? According to journalist Mark Derr in How the Dog Became the Dog, prehistoric wolves had an inner pet just waiting to be drawn out by the right kind of human. Contrary to the popular notion that dogs are the descendants of trash-grubbing wolves that were friendly or naive enough to strike up an association with ancient people, Derr contends that wolves and Pleistocene Homo sapiens struck up a mutually beneficial relationship as soon as the two species met in prehistoric Eurasia. 
The difference between wolf and dog doesn't seem so much anatomical or genetic as the result of a change in status that came with domestication, and that hasn't been preserved in the fossil record. Derr tries to fill in some of the substantial gaps with fictional passages of people and their canid companions through history, but these momentary distractions from what is unknown just serve to confound the book's central question. Derr's wandering, circuitous story of dog origins only highlights how much we have yet to learn about our curious relationship with the domesticated, carnivorous beasts we have invited into our homes."

Quote of the Day

“A great man shows his greatness by the way he treats little men.”

- Thomas Carlyle

The 11 Ways That Consumers Are Hopeless At Math

We let our emotions get the best of us:
In a brilliant experiment from Poundstone's book, volunteers are offered a certain number of dollars out of $10. Offers seen as "unfair" ($1, let's say) activated the insula cortex, "which is otherwise triggered by pain and foul odors." When we feel like we're being ripped off, we literally feel disgusted -- even when it's a good deal. Poundstone equates this to the minibar experience. It's late, you're hungry, there's a Snickers right there, but you're so turned off by the price, that you starve yourself to avoid the feeling of being ripped off. The flip-side is that bargains literally make us feel good about ourselves. Even the most useless junk in the world is appealing if the price feels like a steal.


We're compelled by a strong sense of fairness:
I've already explained how our brains light up differently based on seeing a bargain vs. a rip-off. The shopper's brain is motivated by a sense of fairness. Again, it comes back to the idea that we don't know what things should cost, and so we use cues to tell us what we ought to pay for them. An experiment by the economist Dan Ariely tells the story beautifully. Ariely pretended he was giving a poetry recital. He told one group of students that the tickets cost money and another group that they would be paid to attend. Then he revealed to both groups that the recital was free. The first group was anxious to attend, believing they were getting something of value for free. The second group mostly declined, believing they were being forced to volunteer for the same event without compensation. 

- More Here

Quote of the Day

"Barbarism is never finally defeated; given propitious circumstances, men and women who seem quite orderly will commit every conceivable atrocity. The danger does not come merely from habitual hooligans; we are all potential recruits for anarchy. Unremitting effort is needed to keep men living together at peace; there is only a margin of error left over for experiment however beneficent. Once the prisons of the mind have been opened, the orgy is on. … The work of preserving society is sometimes onerous, sometimes almost effortless. The more elaborate the society, the more vulnerable it is to attack, and the more complete its collapse in case of defeat. At a time like the present it is notably precarious. If it falls, we shall see not merely the dissolution of a few joint-stock corporations, but of the spiritual and material achievements of our history."

- Robbery Under Law by Evelyn Waugh (via FS)

Reverse Dunning-Kruger Effect

You may be familiar with the Dunning-Kruger effect, whereby people who lack a certain skill are so unskilled as not to realise they're unskilled. (The most famous victim of this was the bank robber who told police, "But I wore the juice" – he thought smearing lemon juice on his face made it invisible to cameras, and was too inept a robber to realise how inept a robber he was.) Often, though, the reverse applies: a skill you do possess becomes so second-nature that it's rendered invisible, and you forget it's a skill.

Most of these, to be sure, aren't marketable. (Though who knows? Selsberg's "giving come-hither looks" and "bantering at barbecues" could surely be monetised.) But it's still cheering, in a slightly pathetic way, to conduct an inventory of one's own. Moreover, it highlights the oddness of the notion of "self-esteem". As the psychologist Paul Huack has noted, "cultivating self-esteem" invariably means tying one's sense of worth to being good at certain key things, which makes happiness conditional on not screwing up. The best bet is to replace "self-esteem" with self-acceptance. But if you must link your wellbeing to possessing skills, you might as well shoot for a comprehensive list – one that includes "sensing how many sheets the stapler can handle" and "offering guests something to drink right away". "The sum of these small virtuosities," Selsberg contends, "makes humanity human."

- Oliver Burkeman reviews  Andy Selsberg's new book You Are Good At Things: A Checklist

Wisdom Of The Week

Knowledge comes into us through a variety of channels that can be blocked by our concern for status, and the successful knowledge-seeker will be one who keeps those channels open. The process requires that we be able to “listen,” either literally or figuratively, to what others say. If what they say shows them to be superior to us in knowledge, we will be hampered in our learning if our first reaction is to try to show that we know as much as they or more. The process also requires that we be corrigible, that we be open to the possibility that our opinions are in some way misguided. If, whenever our status as knowers is threatened by the specter of correction, we feel that we must prove ourselves to have been in the right, we will have closed off an avenue of knowledge and crippled ourselves as inquirers. It can be particularly galling, if one lacks intellectual humility, to be corrected in a public forum; and the galling can obstruct the process of learning.

Subramanyan Chandrasekhar was once asked why he could innovate in physics well beyond retirement age, while most physicists do innovative work only when young. He said, “there seems to be a certain arrogance toward nature that people develop. These people have had great insights and made profound discoveries. They imagine afterwards that the fact that they succeeded so triumphantly in one area means they have a special way of looking at science which must be right. But science doesn’t permit that. Nature has shown over and over again that the kinds of truth which underlie nature transcend the most powerful minds.” Chandrasekhar seems to be saying that early success in knowing “puffs up” the scientist, so that his enlarged ego makes it hard to see the way forward on new problems. The humble self-forgetting love of knowing can remove this impediment.


- Robert Roberts on Intellectual Humility

Quote of the Day

"Surveys of economists find that they expect 90,000 to 100,000 jobs to have been added in June. The jobs report, however, has frequently defied expectations in the past. On average, economists’ forecasts miss by about 70,000 jobs in one direction or another."

- Waiting for Jobs, Jobs, Jobs

Quote of the Day

"I begin with the assumption that suffering and death from lack of food, shelter, and medical care are bad. I think most people will agree about this, although one may reach the same view by different routes. I shall not argue for this view. People can hold all sorts of eccentric positions, and perhaps from some of them it would not follow that death by starvation is in itself bad. It is difficult, perhaps impossible, to refute such positions, and so for brevity I will henceforth take this assumption as accepted. Those who disagree need read no further."

- Peter Singer