Scratchpad

On extraordinary things

irrationality, ordinary, surprise —

6 Jan 2010

From Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 8:

14. Whatever man thou meetest, put to thyself at once this question: What are this man's convictions about good and evil? For if they are such and such about pleasure and pain and what is productive of them, about good report and ill report, about death and life, it will be in no way strange or surprising to me if he does such and such things. So I will remember that he is constrained to act as he does.

15. Remember that, as it is monstrous to be surprised at a fig-tree bearing figs, so also is it to be surprised at the Universe bearing its own particular crop. Likewise it is monstrous for a physician or a steersman to be surprised that a patient has fever or that a contrary wind has sprung up.

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Forests and trees

thesis —

5 Jan 2010

As expected, my thesis proposal went over poorly, not because the subject matter didn't grab everyone's attention (it did, quite impressively, I must say—clearly a solid topic), but because I was accused of being too vague, not focusing on specific cases in great depth, etc. etc. All of reasons B that I mentioned in my last blog post. And, in some ways, they are legitimate criticisms, but they also miss the point quite widely. I think the real message of why I intentionally chose not to take this approach was made clear by one colleague in particular who became quite perturbed, almost angry, with my thesis. "You can't make generalizations about violence. These...these classifications you've put on here, what are they, revenge, altruism, self-defense...these are meaningless, they've got nothing to do with specific situations, you could lump any sort of violence under these." Well, yes, that was kind of my point and where I was going with it, so I was a bit taken aback by the insistence. (I mean, if you could actually lump all violence into my categories, I haven't forgotten anything, hooray!) But this was nonetheless a slightly startling and irritating criticism since we were asked at the beginning not to suggest that people write the thesis we would write, but rather to grapple with it on its own terms. "Like, for instance, take the Bosnian war with the Serbians [note this was not his actual example, but I'm changing it here to protect his identity]. I mean, they're protecting their homeland. The Serbians invaded their country, so they were acting in a perfectly acceptable manner!" It took about 15 seconds to sink in. Oh yeah. He's Bosnian.

I don't really think a better argument can be made for why I have chosen not to focus on specifics. My thesis is not intended to justify any position in war. War happens. War will continue to happen with or without me rooting for it. My thesis means only to take a step back from our specific situations and ask what it is that they share on a larger level. I do not wish to write about conflicts, I wish to write about conflict. Or, to put it another way, I do not wish to write about trees, I wish to write about forests. There are already more than enough treatises on trees. I will be reading many of them in order to ask what does this birch share in common with this pecan tree and this aspen. Perhaps the birch is more like the aspen than the pecan in its morphology, but we might in the end agree that all three have leaves and roots and that if you put them all together they share enough in common that they create a coherent whole that is called a forest. This means that I might lose the nuance and fine detail of a masterwork to the lonely and stately oak, but painting with such loving detail is simply a different task than the one I have set out to do and so to say that I am at fault for not doing it simply makes no sense.

It was also suggested that perhaps painting forests was too great a task and that I might instead focus deeply on one tree and extrapolate theories from that, but this also seems to make little sense because, were we to choose the mesquite with nothing to compare it to, we might mistake its thorniness as a characteristic of all trees and thus our forest, when in fact that thorniness is an outlier within the bound of things called trees. Leaves define trees and bark defines trees but thorns do not define trees. It is thus necessary to put together, if not a comprehensive range of trees, at least a small number that will allow us to begin making tentative conclusions concerning those things which they share and those things which appear to be distinctive to certain trees. With time we can add more trees to our big picture and thus make it more accurate, but certainly we cannot start with only one if we wish a general theory of forests.

Note: It was pointed out to me after posting this that my treatment of my colleague above might be perceived as harsh or unprofessional. I should be clear that I have nothing but respect for him and we get along well. That I should occasionally be irritated by a comment in class is a) human and b) not a condemnation of my colleague. I'm simply politely disagreeing with what he said.

A work can be problematic for a lot of reasons. One of them is that it tries to accomplish too much or makes generalizations. Another one is that it is unable to be objective. Or that a methodology (any methodology) has flaws. This is true of every work. What matters, then, is not that our work is unproblematic, but that we know the problems up front and admit to their limitations and explain why we've chosen one flawed methodology in favor of another.

Given that, saying that my anonymous friend's comments were problematic does not seem to me like I am stepping out of line, being ungenerous, or treading on thin ice. I really am not intending to say anything more or less than, "here is a really great example of the specific problem I developed my thesis to avoid, even if I must trade it for other problems in doing so."

But I do hope y'all will keep telling me when you think I am being inappropriate. This scratchpad is intended as a place for me to hash out ideas, figure out where in the process I am not getting it, or make research notes to myself. I often find stories the most useful way of thinking about problems, but this is not a diary of day to day life. And I most certainly do NOT intend it as a place to talk shit about people. That is bad form and, honestly, just plain unproductive.

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Befuddlement

violence —

3 Jan 2010

One of the things I've always found maddening about research is trying to wade through the unbelievable libraries worth of material written on any single subject to separate the wheat from the chaff and, having done that, synthesize it in any meaningful way.  Somehow this seems to go beyond the ordinary difficulty everyone has in identifying and juggling sources to me becoming truly bewildered by the minutiae involved.  Am I stupid because I read 30 papers and start to get the nagging suspicion that they are all saying the same thing, and that that thing is not very much at all?  I have been told, alternately, that, a) no, this is why I will make a great academic—I have an uncanny ability to peel away the piled on layers of argument and get to the heart of what a paper is really saying which makes it unlikely that I will be dazzled by beautiful bullshit or fall into the trap of pedantry (but that I also have the generous ability to see what makes a paper good even when specific arguments might fall short)—and b) I will make a shit academic because I have no head for details, get lost in complex or finely nuanced arguments, and can't synthesize endless amounts of data efficiently.

I must admit, I'm currently feeling a little on the B side.  I've been reading and reading possible sources for the thesis and—am I missing something?—I'm just not feeling any real excitement here.  It feels like nearly every one of them is missing the forest for the trees and surely that can't be right that so many of them would suck so bad.  I must be having one of those lack-of-synthesis moments.  I think I have to momentarily forget everything I have "learned" the last few months and step back and just devise some of these answers from plain ol' common sense/experience (omfgbbq it's theory, I'm a theory head against my will), and then ask what I am missing if I derive things that way.  So.  The question is, "what are the ordinary reasons that people engage in violence?"

What else? Others?

Should do a followup entry examining each of these more in depth. Dammit. Why didn't I write that bit down right when I got home after my walk and it was still fresh in my mind?

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A thought

academia, interdisciplinarity, reading —

10 Nov 2009

Discovered today while doing research for Conzen:

When asked (by Alan Kay, no slouch himself) how in one PhD thesis he managed to invent interactive computer graphics, lay the foundation for object‐oriented programming, invent Computer Aided Design, develop the foundations of constraint programming methods, and prototype novel human computer interfaces, Ivan Sutherland replied "I didn't know it was hard."

Becoming well‐read in the key works in a field is a double edged sword: afterwards we know much about what has, is, and could be done, but we also know what is hard. The key is to then not shy away from the hard problems and big visions, not to pursue the easy answers on small problems that will matter little in a few years, not to have the confidence to go for it!

It has been my experience that a compromise road is to read not within a field but across fields; in many cases the hard problems of one field have already been solved by another field. As we drown in too much information, most shrink to reading within a narrow field; I encourage you instead to read widely, when possible, and
deeply, when necessary. This is not to say that you should not read deeply; it is a certainty that it will be necessary. It is simply to say that, without intent, you will likely never read widely.

-Robin Harrap

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The Difference Is, We're Right, Take 492

authority, decision making, legitimacy, morality, truth —

27 Aug 2009

Morality not absolute in sense that to kill is always wrong, rather, morality involves submitting to legitimate authority. Should authority be legitimate, its demands are by definition legitimate and to be moral is to follow them (it just occurred to me when writing this that "morality," generally and in all cases, might be best defined as that which allows us to interact most cooperatively within society or groups). This would seem to be the thought process happening behind the phrase "the difference is, we're right." Morality is not subjective per se, in that this one rule is absolute to all peoples, but it is subjective in the sense that each believes their own authority to be legitimate and others to be illegitimate.

Those on the other side might ask whether a legitimate authority would ever make the request to kill other people because they see not killing as a higher level moral imperative than submission, and those in the middle would ask whether a strict set of guidelines might not be laid out defining when killing could be considered just and unjust (ie - just war theory).

I'm currently leaning towards the last idea myself. Possibly even the second. I still cannot wrap my head around the idea that the first makes any sense at all. Of course, the authorities that I tend to align myself with most are that of humanity first and the law second. Aligning oneself with a smaller subset of people inevitably leads to conflict with other groups that would make the first proposition (killing to protect the authority system) logical in certain instances. Of course, logical decisions do not always turn out to be correct decisions, given that the foundations of any decision are inevitably based on an incomplete set of information.

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Action vs. Speech

action, punishment. law, speech —

16 Aug 2009

I was confronted recently with a disagreement over the proper course of action to take now that Mike Vic has been taken back up into football. One camp insisted that he should not be permitted to play on various grounds--he is a role model and can't be allowed to play lest we send a message to children that abusing animals is okay, he committed a crime and it is perfectly reasonable to expect him to "live with the consequences" of that for the rest of his life, etc. The other camps included 1) the legal system has already doled out punishment to him and it is not appropriate for ordinary citizens to dole out punishment, therefore, he should be allowed to live life normally and 2) god is the only person who may pass judgment on individuals and therefore no living person can take that onto themselves.

I tend to fall into the law camp, myself, but I was intrigued by one statement concerning how it is that individuals might be able to protest his reinstatement to the NFL. The rationale was that, although the legal system has dealt with him appropriately already, the First Amendment provides us with the freedom of speech to speak out against his reinstatement. And I've become terribly fascinated by this because it raises the question for me of when does speech end and action begin, and does the First Amendment really permit action, or merely speech? Theoretically speaking, saying that he should not be reinstated to the NFL is merely speaking, but if in fact enough people speak this opinion and it ends up happening that his offer is rescinded, then those people have no longer merely spoken but have acted supra-law, effectively punishing Vic above and beyond the punishment meted out by the courts.

Giving it a tentative stab, I'd say that there's some sort of a difference between speech (action) intended to alter the system itself and speech (action) intended to circumvent the system. Or perhaps it is between constructive action (literally, building, altering, repairing) vs destructive action (punishing, overthrowing). Perhaps, too, it is the level of violence involved. A putative action is inherently more violent than a protestive action, which is in turn more violent than a persuasive action.

Meh. Still a bit of a muddle over the finer points of this one, though I am more certain of the larger generality of not "taking the law into our own hands." It does remind me of one of the only problems I had with Mill, however, in which he stated that although it was not appropriate to punish those with whom we disagreed, it was possible and desirable to give them the cold shoulder, not offer them jobs, not associate with them, etc., which leads to the problem of in-group/out-group norms and consolidation of power over arbitrary markers. Shutting out, in other words, is a form of semi-violent action when viewed from a societal level and not simply a personal level (Arendt's banality of evil, I believe).

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Thought of the day

authority, obedience, violence —

9 Aug 2009

Harming people for your own ends makes you a sociopath. Harming people on behalf of others makes you normal.

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I believe I doing the right thing by studying everyday

academia, access, personal, research —

17 Jul 2009

No updates in a while. I move to Chicago in a month and a half and start up school a month after that. So I've started with the research. It's been keeping me busy. (The title of the post, incidentally, comes from a very apt, funny and sad Google search that someone used to find my site.)

One thing I swore when I created the scratchpad was that I would use it to jot down research notes and make my research process open and accessible. Although I don't realistically think more than 2 or 3 good friends actually read the thing, it was kind of a romantic idea. So I'm a little disappointed with myself that I've turned to a private, pen-and-paper research journal out of a niggling fear that I might get "scooped" if I put all my research up in real time. Sigh. The best intentions are inevitably overpowered by selfish, personal safety concerns. Stupid greed.

At any rate, the work currently has me reading Carl von Clausewitz's On War. I may put up some thoughts on it in the next few days.

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Idiocracy

culture wars, reformers —

29 Jun 2009

I'm glad I'm not the only person who detested this movie.

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Help!

to do —

26 Apr 2009

I've been thinking recently about a study I heard about a few years back that basically observed that, if people were in a situation of complete equality, they were unhappy. Given a small degree of inequality, people were generally happy. Given a great degree of inequality, people became unhappy again. I think I heard this study detailed on NPR, but don't hold me to that.

I'm currently tooling around the etherwebs to try and find this piece, but if either of my two readers happens to know of it offhand, please let me know.

Update:

Good lord, I just Google Scholared "+inequality +happiness" and got a crapton of papers about this very topic. I guess no need to find the one that originally sparked my query when I have 100 others to wade through.

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