Quote of the Day

“A man should swallow a toad every morning to be sure of not meeting with anything more revolting in the day ahead.”

- Nicholas Chamfort

The Campus Tsunami - David Brooks on Sebastian Thrun & Co

What happened to the newspaper and magazine business is about to happen to higher education: a rescrambling around the Web.Many of us view the coming change with trepidation. Will online learning diminish the face-to-face community that is the heart of the college experience? Will it elevate functional courses in business and marginalize subjects that are harder to digest in an online format, like philosophy? Will fast online browsing replace deep reading?

If a few star professors can lecture to millions, what happens to the rest of the faculty? Will academic standards be as rigorous? What happens to the students who don’t have enough intrinsic motivation to stay glued to their laptop hour after hour? How much communication is lost — gesture, mood, eye contact — when you are not actually in a room with a passionate teacher and students?

The doubts are justified, but there are more reasons to feel optimistic. In the first place, online learning will give millions of students access to the world’s best teachers. Already, hundreds of thousands of students have taken accounting classes from Norman Nemrow of Brigham Young University, robotics classes from Sebastian Thrun of Stanford and physics from Walter Lewin of M.I.T.

Online learning could extend the influence of American universities around the world. India alone hopes to build tens of thousands of colleges over the next decade. Curricula from American schools could permeate those institutions.

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Quote of the Day

"There’s the Nudge book, the Sway book, the Blink book… they are all about the ways in which we screw up. And there are so many ways, but what I find interesting is that none of these books identify what, to me, is the single, central, most important way we screw up, and that is, we tell ourselves too many stories, or we are too easily seduced by stories. And why don’t these books tell us that? It’s because the books themselves are all about stories. The more of these books you read, you’re learning about some of your biases, but you’re making some of your other biases essentially worse. So the books themselves are part of your cognitive bias."


- Tyler Cowen

For A Happier Life, Shake Off Your Misplaced Optimism

Seneca should be the author of the hour. Living in a time of financial and political upheaval (Nero was on the Imperial throne), Seneca interpreted philosophy as a discipline to keep us calm against a backdrop of continuous danger. His consolation was of the stiffest, darkest sort: “You say: ‘I did not think it would happen.’ Do you think there is anything that will not happen, when you know that it is possible to happen, when you see that it has already happened ... ?” Seneca tried to calm the sense of injustice in his readers by reminding them – in AD62 – that natural and man-made disasters will always be a feature of our lives, however sophisticated and safe we think we have become.

Because we are hurt most by what we do not expect, and because we must expect everything (“There is nothing which Fortune does not dare”), we must, argued Seneca, hold the possibility of the most obscene events in mind at all times. No one should make an investment, undertake to run a company, sit on a board or leave money in a bank without an awareness, which Seneca would have wished to be neither gruesome nor unnecessarily dramatic, of the darkest possibilities.

Given our financial prowess, we have for too long thought of ourselves as in control of our destiny. We have trusted in the mathematical geniuses who promised us “risk management” and fashioned derivatives so complex we dared not look inside. Such trust could not be further from a Stoic mindset. We must, stressed Seneca, expand our sense of what may go wrong in our lives: “Nothing ought to be unexpected by us. Our minds should be sent forward in advance to meet all the problems, and we should consider, not what is wont to happen, but what can happen. What is man? A vessel that the slightest shaking, the slightest toss will break. A body weak and fragile.”

- Alain de Botton author of The Consolations of Philosophy

Quote of the Day

“What need is there to weep over parts of life? The whole of it calls for tears.”

- Seneca

College Football = Dog Fighting - Malcolm Gladwell

What do you think is the single most compelling reason to abolish college football? Corruption? Head injury? Lost focus on academics?
Malcolm Gladwell: The factor that I think will be decisive is the head-injury issue. Colleges are going to get sued, and they will have to decide whether they can afford their legal exposure. That said, the issue ought to be how big-time college sports subverts the academic mission of university education. 
Well, boxing and horseracing didn't end. They have persisted, just in vastly less popular forms than before. They have gone into slow and irreversible decline. I suspect that the same will happen with football. It's going to wither as the supply of talent slowly dries up. I heard on ESPN Michael Wilbon—who is one of the most influential sports journalists in the country—say that he will not let his kids play pro football. If Wilbon won't, who will?


Should the NFL be banned too?
Gladwell: As long as the risks are explicit, the players warned, and those injured properly compensated, then I'm not sure we can stop people from playing. A better question is whether it is ethical to WATCH football. That's a harder question.

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Quote of the Day

"The discovery process is remarkably social, and the social interactions come in amazingly diverse forms. Sometimes it's overhearing a conversation on Twitter between two complete strangers; sometimes it's the virtual book club of something like Findings; sometimes it's going out to lunch with a friend and bouncing new ideas off them. It's the social life of information, in John Seely Brown and Paul Duguid's wonderful phrase -- we just have so many more ways of being social now."

- Steven Johnson is the author of Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation

What I've Been Reading

The Virtues of Our Vices: A Modest Defense of Gossip, Rudeness, and Other Bad Habits by Emrys Westacott.
I have been trying hard to implement Tyler Cowen's advice on the importance of reading at-least one book a year on a subject we disagree - a title like "The virtue of our vices" made it irresistible. 
Deducing Aristotelian moderation, Emrys makes a convincing case and at times he did succeed in making me uncomfortable. May be, I might not fully shed my preconceived notions on any of the vices but this book definitely will help me become more of a pragmatic than a polemic or a moralist.


"Part of my purpose, though, certainly is to shake up some of our default opinions and conventional wisdom on the issues discussed. And in doing so I hope that we can become not just more self-critical but also, paradoxically, more forgiving, both of ourselves and of others. For we live in interesting times, and this makes everyday moral life more complicated than it is in societies where the rules and the social roles are relatively fixed and not subject to critical questioning."

On Rudeness:

The perennial complaint that civility is declining while rudeness is on the rise is thus probably misplaced. The problem is not that people today are trampling underfoot the time-honored rules of polite behavior. The problem is, rather, that these rules are in flux, and there is consequently some confusion about what they are and what abiding by them signifies. Inevitably, in these circumstances, it will often happen that one person's confusion leads to another person's taking offense. But confusion and anxiety are part of the price we pay for living in a dynamic culture. Offense, too, is an unavoidable by-product of moral progress. The struggle to claim equal rights for ethnic minorities, women, and gays would never have got off the ground if people had eschewed any action likely to cause offense.

Similarly, although many people do not like to be talked about in a way that damages their public reputation, some may not mind, agreeing with Oscar Wilde that “there is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.”

On Gossip:

Really, what is being criticized here is shallow living—something we are continually discovering new ways to achieve. But there is no reason to suppose that engaging in gossip is at odds with the attempt to live less superficially. On the contrary, since one of the benefits gossip can bring is a deeper understanding of human nature and social institutions, it is more plausible to think that a willingness to talk about people—which at times will involve gossiping—may be an integral part of the “examined life.” This is why we find Socrates, in Platonic dialogues like the Meno and the Gorgias, freely discussing the failings of others in the course of his philosophical inquiries. A deeper reason we might have for viewing gossip as a spiritually unhealthy practice is that we conceive of the ideally good or beautiful life as one free from any trace of maliciousness, schadenfreude, or pleasure taken in someone else's failings. Moral purity of this kind is one of the hallmarks of the saint.
But achieving a better understanding of the character, motives, actions, and relationships of someone we know—whether it be an acquaintance or a public figure—is something most of us desire, as is a deeper understanding of human beings in general. And gossip is indispensable to our achieving such insight.

A healthy interest in our fellow human beings is thus, to use one of Hume's categories, a quality that is useful to both ourselves and others. Besides, all things being equal, we should be grateful for the opportunities for pleasure that life offers us, not have a bad conscience about them. Talking to people about people is one of these. To refrain from it for fear of moral corruption is a form of moral neurosis.

On Snobbery:

You can dislike certain things about yourself; and you can be unhappy about other people's noticing them. You can wish that others were more charitable in their interpretation of your actions, even that they were more susceptible to being duped by you. But holding true opinions about one's fellow human beings, while it may sometimes indicate that a person is cynical, or suspicious, or untrusting, or coldhearted, can rarely, if ever, be deemed a moral failing in itself.

Unfortunately, hypersensitivity to any hint of antiegalitarianism sometimes leads to a knee-jerk, wholesale condemnation of anything that is thought to have a snobbish tinge to it, and accusations of “elitism” start flying around. But as with blanket condemnations of gossip or rudeness, this response is too crude and takes in too much. It is a mistake to advocate never talking about others for fear of “gossiping,” or to fetishize manners to such an extent that one cannot recognize when rudeness might be acceptable. And similarly, it is a mistake to forgo expressing or arguing for our tastes, preferences, considered opinions, and values merely out of a fear that we might appear snobbish or be tempted onto some slippery slope.

Marx's critique of ideology taught us to look out for the class interests that underlie people's beliefs; and we certainly should continue to be alert to the ways elitist views may serve the interests of the socioeconomic elite. At the same time, just because a practice, a point of view, or a cultural product is favored by the elite does not mean there must necessarily be something wrong with it. It can still be enlightening, amusing, beautiful, stimulating, edifying, or true. Snobbery, as we have defined it, is objectionable; but the way to avoid it is not to eschew entirely any thought, word, or deed that might conceivably be thought snobbish. The better solution is to cultivate humility, self-awareness, and a willingness to think hard and honestly about these matters. And let's face it, the snobbery-alert patrol won't be out of work any time soon. They can expect to be gainfully employed at least until the end of the next millennium, or until we realize an egalitarian utopia—whichever comes sooner.

On Humor:

The moral dubiousness of a joke is inversely proportional to the social standing of those it targets. The more powerful the “victim,” the less likely we are to object; the more vulnerable the victim, the more questionable the humor.

One assumes that such saintly types would not find sick jokes funny. The perfectly good heart is so dripping with kindness and compassion that no spark of morally dubious humor can kindle a smile. Our own amusement reminds us of our distance from this ideal, so it is accompanied by a moment of self-criticism, experienced as guilt. Such feelings should not be ignored, but nor should they always be our guide. The saintly ideal may sometimes serve a valuable purpose, but it should not be the only or even the main benchmark against which we judge ourselves. No doubt it would be good in many ways if most of us were less callous and more humane than we are (although comedians would find it harder to make a buck). But our ethics has to be one tailored to flesh-and-blood human beings trying to get by in a complex world, not to saints.

As with gossiping or rudeness, when humor causes undeserved harm to those who are vulnerable, either directly or indirectly, that is a good reason for criticizing it. But we should not leap onto our moral high horse too quickly. Nor should we be too hard on ourselves for what we find amusing. The lines of acceptability with regard to humor, as with social etiquette, are constantly in motion. So to those who earnestly peer at everything through moral spectacles, who are instantly suspicious of anything that might cross some line of political correctness or moral probity, the message is simple—lighten up!

The default position for most of us in a modern, pluralist, liberal democracy is that we should respect other people's beliefs. Respectfulness is a virtue, and it is associated with tolerance, which everyone agrees is a good thing. To not respect someone's beliefs is generally viewed as a failing; it can be hurtful or alienating, and evinces a closed mind. But this common response is too simple. Not all beliefs are worthy of respect, and withholding respect is sometimes in order. There are different kinds of respect, and a belief may deserve some of these but not others. Already, alarm bells may be ringing in some readers’ minds, since it is often assumed that respect for a person's beliefs is inseparable from respect for him as a person; so to deny the former is to withhold the latter. But I will argue that this view is mistaken. Moreover, it supports an attitude that, in the name of respect and tolerance, sometimes condones intellectual slovenliness.

Why should I respect your opinion:

People are free to believe what they want, of course, but not every belief deserves to be taken seriously as a candidate for truth. Withholding epistemic respect at times is one of the ways we express our current intellectual values and try to advance a little further toward a more rational society.

The idea that we have an obligation not to criticize a person's beliefs is foreign to a contemporary liberal outlook. There may be specific occasions when criticizing a belief someone cherishes would be tactless, rude, or hurtful; so we can allow that there may be times when silence is the morally preferable option. But in the context of any kind of public forum where ideas are up for discussion, no one can reasonably demand that his beliefs be protected from dissent. More plausible is the principle that people's beliefs be treated with respect in the sense that they should not be ridiculed, scorned, or insulted. Here the constraint is only on the manner in which they are criticized. But although the principle sounds reasonable, it is surprisingly difficult to defend as a general rule. To be sure, we may agree that we should not cause anyone unnecessary pain, and insulting someone's cherished beliefs may do this. But sometimes the pain caused is not gratuitous but an unavoidable consequence of something that really needs to be said. Besides, we also cherish freedom of expression and the benefits it brings. The fact that some people may be offended by what is said hardly seems a strong enough reason to curtail free speech. Moreover, rhetorical freedom is an important aspect of the right to free speech. Very often, the critique of a belief is more powerful and more persuasive because of the way ridicule, irony, sarcasm, and wit are employed. Think of the contributions to important debates made by the likes of Swift, Voltaire, Hume, Paine, Nietzsche, and Mencken.

Quote of the Day

"For all the lofty rhetoric about "locavores" and "slow food," this food snobbery is pessimistic, paternalistic, and most of all it is anti-innovation. Neither the consumer nor the businessperson is trusted to innovate; there is a false nostalgia for primitive agriculture, based on limited transportation and the arduous conversion of raw materials into comestible commodities. Rarely is it admitted, much less emphasized, that cheap, quick food — including its embodiment through our sometimes obnoxious agribusiness corporations — is the single most important advance in human history."

- An Economist Gets Lunch: New Rules for Everyday Foodies by Tyler Cowen

The Globalization Of Animal Welfare - Peter Singer

"Concern for the welfare of animals is not a new idea. In the fourth century BC, the Chinese Taoist philosopher Zhuangzi said that compassion should permeate relations not only between humans but also between all sentient beings. Buddhist teachings consider caring for all sentient beings a central ethical precept. The Indian emperor Ashoka, who ruled in the third century BC, issued edicts against the unnecessary killing and mutilation of animals, including hunting for sport. He also established animal hospitals and promoted, but did not require, a vegetarian diet. In seventeenth-century Japan, Tokugawa Tsunayoshi, the so-called Dog Shogun, enacted various rules protecting animals, especially dogs. The Hebrew Bible requires that the Sabbath be a day of rest for oxen, as well as for humans, and other texts command Jews to relieve the suffering of animals, even if they belong to an enemy. The Koran, too, encourages Muslims to treat animals with kindness; the Prophet Muhammad is said to have cut off the sleeve of his shirt rather than disturb a cat who was sleeping on it..."

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