Are the admins good at formatting posts?
He has to show that these behaviors or emotions are the result of mental modules that have been subject to evolution.
Oh lord.
1. Shut up. I've been under a lot of stress, biting people on the heels.
As summarized here, Haidt's theory reminds me of Chomsky's theory of language, including all its inherent problems.
I need clarification. Everything else comes from modules that output guilt. I assume "everything else" is everything else in some class of things rather than being Everything Else. But I can't sot out what that class of things actually is.
emotional responses to, say, big eyes
I assume "everything else" is everything else in some class of things rather than being Everything Else. But I can't sot out what that class of things actually is.
Everything covered by Haidt's remaining modules, I think.
That is, I take rob to be combining Haidt's six modules into just two: shame and guilt. The ones he mentions explicitly as belonging to shame go there and the rest go in guilt.
Or maybe what Stormcrow is looking for is that "some class of things" here is something like "the class of ways in which we form opinions or intuitions about what is morally right and wrong"?
I don't know what a "module" is in this context, but that's not going stop me from asking a question:
Let's get straight what he needs to show here. He can't just point out the existence of common behaviors or emotional responses. He has to show that these behaviors or emotions are the result of mental modules that have been subject to evolution.
Why does he "have" to show this? Maybe he wants to show it. But is it not useful (and a hell of a lot more reasonable) to just provide a framework for thinking about people's behaviors and emotions, instead of trying to claim that this framework somehow consists of evolutionary something-or-other?
Or maybe what Stormcrow is looking for is that "some class of things" here is something like "the class of ways in which we form opinions or intuitions about what is morally right and wrong"?
Hm, yeah, maybe. Answering that would require actually reading Haidt's work, though.
But is it not useful (and a hell of a lot more reasonable) to just provide a framework for thinking about people's behaviors and emotions, instead of trying to claim that this framework somehow consists of evolutionary something-or-other?
This is the part that makes me think of Chomsky, who sets up his theory the exact same way but who has (AFAIK) never provided any kind of satisfactory answer to this question.
Why does he "have" to show this?
Because there's an enormous institutional bias in our society towards explanations that present human systems as inevitable, "natural," and immutable.
/curmudgeon
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I still don't know the rules of basketball, but yay Celtics!
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I still don't know the rules of basketball
First you get two basketball clubs...
I haven't read the book, but from the way Helpy-Chalk says it, I assume the book makes the 'six sets of evolutionarily determined modules' claim in so many words. He doesn't have to show it because the theory requires it to makes sense at all, I think he just has to show it because he's claiming it.
Presumably he wants his theory to be the product of innate because he wants it to have explanatory (or maybe I mean causal?) force, rather than to just be one interesting descriptive way to slice things up.
And as far as Chomsky goes, he wants language to be innate because he believes that language defines what's fundamental and unique about human cognition, right? It's not so much that it's necessary for his theories of linguistics as that it's necessary for his theories of cognition generally.
... not that those are extricable.
7 and 8 are right. I meant the "everything else" to be all of the other potential modules Haidt has identified.
If I were making a claim about all the actual moral modules or possible explanations of moral intuitions, I would be claiming more than Haidt does.
He doesn't have to show it because the theory requires it to makes sense at all, I think he just has to show it because he's claiming it.
Yes. This is what I meant.
Family demands. Can't catch up on the thread any more.
18: And as far as Chomsky goes, he wants language to be innate because he believes that language defines what's fundamental and unique about human cognition, right?
He wants language to be innate because he doesn't think it's otherwise possible to learn language at the age people typically do.
Hearing language alone doesn't give a child the information it needs to figure it out. There must be an inborn linguistic structure in the mind that provides constraints on the conclusions people draw from the input. This assumption is being strongly questioned now, but was taken as gospel by many linguists for most of the post-war period.
Hearing language alone doesn't give a child the information it needs to figure it out.
Right, right. I forgot about this (kinda ridiculous as I've seen it presented) argument.
But I assume teo is including that argument among the unsatisfactory ones (which seems reasonable, since it's not a very good argument).
This sort of thing always smacks of "But now, at long last, they will have to obey me, their true master! Bow before me, puny automata whose political inclinations I find disagreeable! I wield the burning sword of sociology! The streets shall run black with the ink of my enemies' remaindered books!"
Am I going to have to read Haidt for the "Factor Analysis: Triviality or Myth?" paper?
27: it was impossible not to think about your comments on the Big Five when reading about this stuff.
(And now I have retreated to reading a sci-fi book about genetically engineered mud I found via your blog; get out of my head, Cosma!)
20: I meant the "everything else" to be all of the other potential modules Haidt has identified.
Ah, ok, thanks. So shame and guilt. And nice red uniforms. I guess I'm still not seeing why shame and guilt alone would span the lot (is at an attempt at the most parsimonious possible set?). I can see the desire to base it on more "primitive" concepts that can be tied more directly to human emotional responses but not seeing those two rather negative ones would be controlling.
genetically engineered mud
This reminds me of the weird Craig Venter hagiography the NYTimes had this week. In between all the breathless "he rides motorcycles really fast! he's a badass!" and "his science will either save the world or destroy it!" stuff, the only recent progress it concretely identified seemed to be genetically engineering algae to be yellow instead of green.
28: I had the exact same thought.
Though I thought Cosma's comments about Red Plenty and the computational complexity of convex programming were completely wrong-headed, so I still have the illusion of intellectual independence.
30: Long article. Buy, yeah, from the parts I did read the "I (and you, dear reader) am not worthy" feel to the thing was a bit much. I thought this very recent blog post from John Horgan* at SciAm might have been in reaction, but it came out a few days before.
Craig Venter is the Lady Gaga of science. Like her, he is a drama queen, an over-the-top performance artist with a genius for self-promotion. Hype is what Craig Venter does, and he does it extremely well, whether touting the decoding of his own genome several years ago or his construction of a hybrid bacterium this year.*Not a guy I generally like, nor is the post** really that good, but I'm using it anyway.
**But an interesting thing I learned from following a link was that Edward Teller was Stanley Miller's (amino acids from "primordial soup" in a flask guy) original thesis advisor, He switched to biochemical stuff under Harold Urey when Teller left U of C.
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Anyone in Santa Fe for a meetup in June? Or any recommendations for what to see there in a free afternoon?
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|| http://www.myspace.com/music/player?sid=33768372&ac=now Wanna see something that's really scary? |>
33: There are a lot of art galleries, especially along Canyon Road, which can make a nice afternoon's walk. The Georgia O'Keeffe museum is nice if a little small to justify the admission fee they charge. A couple years ago I asked for suggestions about places outside Santa Fe, and ended up going to Pecos as teo suggested. But there are several other suggestions in that thread if you scroll down enough.
33: In town, I heartily recommend The Shed for at least one meal. And the Loretto Chapel is a nice little relatively quick tour.
I can see the desire to base it on more "primitive" concepts that can be tied more directly to human emotional responses but not seeing those two rather negative ones would be controlling.
I think it makes sense to focus on the negative emotions, because the enforcers seem to play a bigger role in governing our moral behavior than the positive moral emotions, like pride/admiration.
One problem might be that I am lumping disgust together with shame. My only motivation for doing that was that both are associated with putting people into grand hierarchies.
It may be that I should abandon efforts at serious parsimony and classify modules based on the moral emotion they have as their output, without an effort to single out any moral emotions as the most important. There are few enough moral emotions, and they can be well defined enough psychologically, to create a manageable classification scheme.
What I see in Haidt and attempt to naturalize cultural and historical differences by concocting explanations from brain physiology and evolution. Psychology and economics are remarkably individualistic, ahistorical, and acultural, and when they are dominant (as they tend to be) a lot gets missed.
In the US among educated people there's a general idea that if an idea isn't scientifically grounded it's not worth anything, so if you want to say certain kinds of things you have to express them in seemingly scientific language. (In the same way, in Christian societies you find a Bible verse. In the early 19th c., American progressives did both at once.)
The "discoveries" of evolutionary economics about individual motivation are unsurprising. People are not mad-dog utility-maximizers! And they're not terribly deeply grounded. A bunch of OK experiments, small samples though, and all based on tiny proxies for big traits. (EG, giving a dollar to a panhandler = altruism).
I sort of like the 4-5-6 foundations because it makes you think about why certain kinds of arguments, even within the US, don't even register with certain types of people. Or internationally, it helps make some kind of sense of honor killing, the caste system, etc.
The part I haven't seen so far is an acknowledgement that some of the foundations probably should be suppressed and minimize. The Old Adam, not the Noble Savage. A key example is the whole complex of feud / vendetta / honor / honor-killing / chastity / family solidarity. This complex leads to an infinite cycle of pointless violence and prevents the development of a political order beyond the clan.
A lot of futile L-R political debate in the US either involve people with two different definition of fairness ("everyone gets what is theirs" vs "everyone gets what they need"). A lot of others are between people talking about Harm and Fairness arguing with people for whom purity, hierarchy, and solidarity are dominant (i.e., Nazis).
Ugh, Haidt. I haven't read the book and I don't like most of what passes as moral psychology. Nevertheless:
Even if we assume that there are 6 (or whatever) dimensions or characteristics that can be used to classify political viewpoints, that shows absolutely zero about the underlying cognitive architecture, which I guess is what Cosma was alluding to. There's good evidence for dispositions to care about things that are human-neonate like, and for members of our family and ingroup in preference to others, and to be disgusted by certain sorts of things, and so on. And there are reasonable sounding evolutionary reasons why those should exist. But that's a far cry from saying that these are full-blown systems for processing political categories. Reading back the sociopolitical categories of, say, classical liberalism (like 'freedom' and 'fairness') into the brain is patently ridiculous, since those seem pretty damn obviously to me to have been historically contingent creations.
I'm not that friendly towards the shame/guilt taxonomy either, again, because there's no compelling evidence for any such systems. Some of us feel shame/guilt, but that falls way short of saying there are shame/guilt systems. Beyond that, I don't get a bunch of little things about the taxonomy: why do disgust and shame go together? are you really saying that guilt never results from impure behaviors or unfair acts? etc. (Moral psychology done right along these lines would look much more like Bernard Williams' 'Shame and Necessity', for my money.)
But even starting with Haidt's categories is a mistake, since they're a dog's breakfast. I don't see any reason to think that the 'moral emotions' are a *thing*, from the brain's point of view. For that matter, I doubt that morality is a *thing* from the brain's point of view, either. Trying to put this slop into fewer buckets isn't a promising move.
I don't think that Haidt claims that full-blown political categories are wired in the brain, just [dispositions or evaluations or whatever] which political categories need to deal with. I pretty much took it for granted that no system could satisfy all of them, and that cultural and political differences would be different mixes and hierarchies of these whatevers.
Serious question: May people who are not wankers listen to Social Distortion?
42: Yeah, that term was supposed to be shorthand for his list of 4-6 'foundations'. Even those seem to be at the wrong grain of analysis. Even if Haidt dropped the 'systems' commitment of his view, those don't strike me as being especially well thought out constructs.
Beyond that, I don't get a bunch of little things about the taxonomy: why do disgust and shame go together? are you really saying that guilt never results from impure behaviors or unfair acts?
I shouldn't have lumped shame and disgust together. Doing that violates the principle I started out with, that we should divide up the moral emotions based on more primitive psychological categories, rather than modern political ones.
(Moral psychology done right along these lines would look much more like Bernard Williams' 'Shame and Necessity', for my money.)
I am actually reading that book right now. But Williams assumes a shame/guilt distinction, too, although he seems to be drawing on older ideas of the distinction from people like Ruth Benedict.
Mostly I'm getting my ideas about shame and guilt from this book.
I take it for granted that the same input can trigger different moral reactions. So what causes shame in some people will cause guilt or disgust in others.
I don't think that Haidt claims that full-blown political categories are wired in the brain, just [dispositions or evaluations or whatever] which political categories need to deal with
That's what he said when he started out his endeavor. He assumes there are these basic mechanisms and then shows that different political groups are better or worse at manipulating these mechanisms. Recently, though, he's been reversing the direction of his inference. He's inferring the existence of different mechanisms based on what political groups seem to be manipulating.
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Humiliation from the Edgers
missed 4 of 29
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In addition to the Santa Fe recommendations already given (all of which are good), don't skip the more obvious stuff, which is also worthwhile. The Plaza, the Palace of the Governors, and the new-ish New Mexico History Museum right around there are all worth seeing, as is Museum Hill (which has the Folk Art Museum, the American Indian Arts Museum, and the Wheelwright Museum). For places to eat, the Baking Company is great, and pretty far off the usual tourist track.
39: In the US among educated people there's a general idea that if an idea isn't scientifically grounded it's not worth anything, so if you want to say certain kinds of things you have to express them in seemingly scientific language.
Not among all educated people in the U.S., John. Sheesh. That said, what is the point of this "modules" terminology in Haidt? (It seems to lead to people saying things like "modules that output guilt," which seems like a very strange way of talking.) Does "modules" add anything? Doesn't it just mean axes or dimensions or something? But perhaps there's a history behind the use of "modules" in moral psychology.
That said, what is the point of this "modules" terminology in Haidt?
Classically, it means that it's a psychological faculty characterized by encapsulated information processing. In effect, it doesn't interact with other psychological faculties in holistic ways.
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/modularity-mind/
52: Thanks. I'm not a fan of this branch of philosophy of mind, but I certainly don't say that as someone awfully well versed in it.
It sounds like I might be interested in Prinz.
The most thorough and up-to-date critique is due to Prinz (2006), who argues that perceptual and linguistic systems rarely (if ever) satisfy the criteria of modularity.
I continue to read along.
"Quineanness" is an awesome word, and I never would have guessed it meant that.
I confess I had Fodor on the list of annoyingly bad guys, but he's coming out pretty good here.
The "Massive Modularity" section is amazing:
The centerpiece of Carruthers (2006) consists of three arguments for massive modularity: the argument from design, the argument from animals, and the argument from computational tractability.
This all seems a bit primitive. It seems kind of stupid, but I'm just getting a grip on this, so forgive me.
"The mind is computationally realized."
What does that possibly mean?
I'm done with what's no doubt an annoying live-blog of my reading of CB's link to the SEP in 52. Sorry for all that.
Wow, the SAT history questions linked in 49 are amazingly bad. You could almost not design a better way to ensure that people won't grasp relevant concepts of history than to train them for a multiple-choice test.
It's particularly maddening to see the subjective answers masquerading as objective truth.
I take it Haidt is some kind of so-called modest modularist? He's not going to go all the way to massive modularism? Or yes, he is? But he's not going to argue directly for it, because that's not his field; he's just adopting the model.
The brain does have functional modules, pretty much as close to certain as as anything in neuroscience.
62: Hi, Sifu. I don't want to fight with you. Are you versed at all in this modularity debate? In particular I'm interested in the bit quoted in 58 from the SEP piece: "The mind is computationally realized."
That's a really strong claim, and it's only the massive modularity position. I take it from your 62 that you wouldn't want to make quite that strong a claim.
Which are the functional modules, demonstrated by neuroscience? (I'm not skeptical or making fun: they probably have to do with perception?)
I don't really gets what's controversial about the claim. The brain is an information processing device, to a first approximation, and is functionally specialized to some degree. These two claims are entirely uncontroversial in mainstream cognitive science. There are many, many lines of converging evidence for those two claims.
Here is a reasonable-seeming place to start.
It sounds like I might be interested in Prinz.
He's pretty hot.
Well, in other circles, the brain is not likened to a computer, that's all, and the whole being is not reduced to a brain. "To a first approximation" is doing a lot of work there.
Cognitive science does suffer from the outside perception that it reduces the being to a computational device, I'm afraid. I had the idea that it was stopping doing that quite so much. Maybe not.
There are many, many lines of converging evidence for those two claims.
This is a problem. If you go with a particular line of explanation, a particular descriptive apparatus, of course you are going to find evidence to support your form of description. But it's just one among many forms of description.
60 It's particularly maddening to see the subjective answers masquerading as objective truth.
It seems like they're usually pretty careful to ask objective questions. But then a couple of the "which of the following is the most important..." type questions seem a little sketchy.
I don't see it as reductive, particularly. We may be operating from different perspectives on what "a computational device" entails.
68.last: I have no idea what that means.
I say the brain is a pony. Surely I will find evidence to support this descriptive apparatus.
If you were going to reduce me to any single body part, I think I'd prefer you go with the brain.
We may be operating from different perspectives on what "a computational device" entails.
Possible. I'll take a look at the link in 66.
Seriously, though, and somewhat in passing, the mind/body distinction according to which the operating system is the brain, and in the terms of this discussion the computational device, while the body follows (or something) strikes me as quite retrograde.
76: I would not describe any part of the nervous system as an "operating system".
64: Hi, Sifu. I don't want to fight with you.
The new "don't tase me, bro!"
Anyway, for anyone who wants to debate six of something, Haidt frankly seems a bit on the pedestrian side; may I cordially propose instead the six "qualities" of John Ralston Saul's "On Equilibrium." He's claiming humanistic rather than strictly scientific authority about his six qualities and why it's worthwhile to maintain them in "equilibrium," so instead of debating the merits of his scientific claims you can debate the quality of humanistic as opposed to strictly-scientific claims, and we can all have some jolly good fun in dissecting the problems with such an enterprise while engaging with the deep-thinking computer programmers in our midst.
The Lord Catsock, that is, Castock should provide a link, at the very least.
Haidt explicitly endorses the "massive modularity thesis." in a footnote on page 341. He's also explicitly aligned with Peter Carruthers. One of the papers outlining the 5-foundation version of his theory was published in the three volume series The Innate Mind edited by Carruthers, Laurence and Stich. When he describes what he means by modules, he cites other people in that collection, including Dan Sperber.
I'm not sure how universally the language of innate, evolved modules is. It grows basically out of Chomsky's nativism. Teofilo's comparison to Chomsky early in this thread makes perfect sense. Everyone seems sick of Chomsky. Talk of innate evolved modules lead Tweety to exclaim "oh lord" right away in this thread. On the other hand, as Tweety says in 62, the existence of modules is pretty orthodox in all of cognitive science.
69: right, more than a little sketchy.
And then there are gems like this:
Which of the following best describes the pattern of immigration into Britain's North American colonies during the years 1620 to 1770?
(A) Largely English in the seventeenth century, non-English in the eighteenth century (B) Chiefly of English origin during the whole period (C) Largely non-English in the seventeenth century, English in the eighteenth century (D) Predominantly from southern and eastern Europe, especially after 1700 (E) Predominantly from Asia, Africa and Spanish America especially after 1650
Explanation Between 1620 and 1700, immigrants to Britain's North American colonies came overwhelmingly from England; it has been estimated that the ancestry of the British North American colonial population was 80 percent English and Welsh in 1700. Between 1700 and 1770, however, this changed as the population became far more diverse. In the eighteenth century, non-English peoples such as Africans, Germans, Scots, Scots-Irish, Irish and Dutch came to the British North American colonies in large numbers, as a whole exceeding the number of English immigrants. In other words, immigrants to British North America in the seventeenth century were mostly English, while immigrants in the eighteenth century were mostly non-English.
"A" is given as the correct answer, which apparently rests on an assumption that the reader will interpret "English" in the strict technical sense rather than the colloquial sense that many Americans use it today (=British, meaning that the "Scot, Scots-Irish, and Irish" part of the list above would be counted as Brits.)
And that's not even mentioning the usual obnoxiousness of allowing Europeans to have national origins but "Africans" to be lumped together (and oddly labeled as voluntary "immigrants") without nationality. Bah.
I have to say that while I found Haidt's explanation of the worldview to be a pretty useful description when I first encountered them several years ago, I've gotten increasingly disenchanted. It seems like he has moved from describing phenomena to facilitate inter-personal understanding, to issuing normative proclamations under the guise of science.
Understanding that socially conservative people are often more focused on "purity" issues is helpful when you're talking to the general public about immigration, but there's a big difference between understanding why someone may be characterizing other people as dirty vermin and implicitly suggesting they should be allowed to continue doing so.
(To be clear, this is based on having most recently read an essay in some weekly newsmagazine, which exasperated me enough that I didn't save a copy of it. I haven't read Haidt's book.)
80: Thanks for the clarifications, rob.
80.2: actually, it was evolutionary arguments for the innateness of modules for higher/social cognitive function. Modularity per se is 1. fine by me and 2. not necessarily tied to nativism.
79: Not so. Links undermine self-reliance, and thereby (potentially, arguably) undermine the "ethics" pillar of Saul's schema. We are all on this wondrous knowledge-machine called the Interwebs, after all, where one need merely click "Search;" I could well be accused of deliberately unbalancing debate by supplying my own pre-selected "link."
(=British, meaning that the "Scot, Scots-Irish, and Irish" part of the list above would be counted as Brits.)
I've never heard of regular Irish counted as British, let alone English.
85: Oh, pooh on you, then. I'll check later, then.
77: Why not? (Don't tase me, bro.)
88: Thanks. And I did begin to look independently, and I've heard of him in connection with The Doubter's Companion.
"The part I haven't seen so far is an acknowledgement that some of the foundations probably should be suppressed and minimize. The Old Adam, not the Noble Savage. A key example is the whole complex of feud / vendetta / honor / honor-killing / chastity / family solidarity. This complex leads to an infinite cycle of pointless violence and prevents the development of a political order beyond the clan. "
I agree with this.
I find Haidt's ethical broderism unconvincing. He is clearly an atheist liberal but spends the entire book trolling atheist liberals. Haidt understands the theoretical benefits of the purity/loyalty/respect foundations but he really doesn't feel any of them. He isn't disgusted by untouchables or anything.
Maybe six people who aren't atheist liberals will give a shit. You can't troll somebody who doesn't read your book.
92: Oh but you can. That's the beauty of having summaries of your book on the Internets. Apparently you do not subscribe to the quality of Imagination.
86: To be clear, such lumping in irritates-to-enrages the actual Irish people I know, but in my experience it's reasonably common among the general public. It's not that they couldn't articulate the difference if you sat them down and talked it through, but that in daily conversation they don't distinguish. I hear it most often when individuals are telling me about someone else (an author, a speaker, etc.) and report them as "British" or "English," or in a broader sense when I have to explain to a group a demographic term like "UK excluding Ireland."
Regular Irish (what the fuck does that mean anyway?) are awkwardly British in that time period. And Scots-Irish is a strange term that seems far more popular in the US than either Scotland or Ireland, the places you might expect to meet the Scots-Irish.
Scots Irish is a thing in the US because they immigrated before assimilating as Irish and that fixed the identity.
92: Maybe six people who aren't atheist liberals will give a shit.
This is in reference to Haidt? He's had columns and editorials in the NYT in the recent past. Well, at least one lengthy one, that I noticed.
I would say that there are lots of usages of British that include the Irish. Don't think they date from that time period though. If I were to refer to the British Army (1801-1922), that would include the Irish regiments.
As for the alleged "awkward Britishness," those who had reason to immigrate to the US in the first, large wave had no reason to identify as British and lots of reasons not to. The first ones set the tone.
I find Haidt's ethical broderism unconvincing. He is clearly an atheist liberal but spends the entire book trolling atheist liberals. Haidt understands the theoretical benefits of the purity/loyalty/respect foundations but he really doesn't feel any of them
This is exactly why I started reading the book. I would like to do some normative ethics within Haidt's framework, or some better supported framework in that vein. Haidt totally embodies the line attributed to Robert Frost, that a liberal is someone too broadminded to take his own side in an argument.
What I'd really like to do is come up with an argument that one of these modules is simply faulty. It doesn't accurately respond to moral reality, or it doesn't lead to intuitions that we can universally prescribe, or something like that. Purity is probably the easier target, but I'm actually gunning for hierarchy. If I could get a clear shot, I would write up my results and try to publish them.
The problem is that I've got a lot of other responsibilities, and I'm not even sure what my target is here.
Keir, you're introducing actual reality in this discussion. My point was that in a national standardized test designed for, and mostly taken by, millions of 16-to-24-year-old Americans, the question is poorly written and misleading.
(My extremely superficial understanding of history is that Scotland became formally a part of Britain in the very early 1700s and Ireland in the very early 1800s, but I wouldn't waste a second defending my vague notion to someone who knows what they're talking about.)
I have to say that there is almost no-one I know that would describe the Ulster Scots as assimilating as Irish.
There's nothing wrong with Scots-Irish as a term; it just rings all my weird diaspora obsessions bells.
Oh god lord yes. Definitions of Britishness between 1600 and 1900 is the kind of thing you can build scholarly industries on, and the good kind that involves lots of arguments and catty remarks.
I don't think I know anyone IRL who refers to themselves as Scotch-Irish, but it's definitely used in the US as a term of art. Wikipedia claims:
It was not until a century later, following the surge in Irish immigration after the Great Irish Famine of the 1840s, that the descendants of the earlier arrivals began to commonly call themselves Scotch-Irish to distinguish them from the newer, largely destitute and predominantly Roman Catholic immigrants
and this is in line with the anti-Catholic prejudices that still persist in the US today (albeit much more muted).
100: I'll try to think about this, but in all honesty the entire framework seems faulty to me in the first place, so that arguing in those terms seems problematic. I don't know.
Also: Scotland becomes part of a United Kingdom of Great Britain in 1707 (with the Act of Union) but arguably there's a British identity before that, and particularly usage of North Britain for Scotland predates the Act of Union. (Often following the Union of Crowns.)
In general anyone who claims that a group of people living on those isles either is or isn't British is contradicted by at least one solid authority.
This is why the history of Britishness is a fascinating and important story about identity and so-on, and also complete inappropriate for stupid multi-choice questions.
I think it's fair to have a question that students who can't distinguish between English and British might miss. Not an easy question, but not so unreasonable either.
There's also the trouble with the word "largely". I have a general sense that in the early days the colonies were almost entirely settled by English people (in the restricted sense of "English") and that over time the fraction of non-English people grew. But when did it become over 50%? Clearly in the 19th century. But in the 18th? What year marked the crossover point? And couldn't "largely" just mean, say, a third?
The brain is an information processing device, to a first approximation,
I don't really understand what this statement means. It seems to me that no amount of pure information processing will get you to a motivation, but the brain pretty clearly motivates us to do things.
Also, the Wikipedia link in 66 was interesting, but it was odd that the two theories posited there (modularity and distributed processing) were presented as in opposition. It doesn't seem to me that they contradict each other at all. Many (most?) complex systems would seem to have attributes of both.
108: The question also implies that the student should conceive of enslaved people as "immigrants."
But there isn't always a clear distinction between British and English in that time period. Often English is used to mean what we would now strictly speaking call British.
Yeah, that is a bit odd. I'm with you on the criticism that if you want to include the slave trade than it'd be better to use a clearer word than immigrant. Though another part of me wants to say that the slave trade was a kind of immigration, and that maybe the problem is jumping to conclusions about what kind of immigrant you're talking about when you say "immigrants" with no modification.
Immigrant does have a connotation that the new country is the draw, as oppose to "emigrant." So it does seem like there should be a more neutral term used here when they have in mind all new arrivals. But I feel like that's a pretty delicate point, and there's a trade-off between readability and precision.
Forced migration is not immigration.
There are ways to charitably interpret what we *think* the test-writers were trying to get at, but these tests are sold to the public as highly professional, empirically valid proxies for measuring student knowledge. When they write sloppy and/or ignorant questions, it really undermines their case.*
*I'm not denying that I have other biases here, but now it's very late and I'm going to bed.
The brain does have functional modules,
Now this does seem pretty clear and true, but the problem comes when people go from claiming that the brain has functional modules to saying that everything the brain does is the result of a decontextualized 'module'. A big issue in psychology is taking some extremely abstract higher-order concept like intelligence, guilt, fairness etc. and treating it like some unitary elemental function (often measured off a pencil-and-paper test using a factor analysis). It's an attempt to escape from cultural context and make naturalistic science claims, avoiding the taint of social theory. Connected to what Emerson was getting at in 39.
here's a trade-off between readability and precision.
Absolutely. Which is why they can use the word "migration."
(I'm being snappish at the test designers, not you.)
The problem is that "migrant" has its own unwanted connotations (impermanent migration). But yeah, rewriting so that you can use a different part of speech and say "migration into" would clearly be an improvement.
I never had AP history - too elitist for my high school - but I'm pretty sure that if you've taken AP history, you've had the English/non-English distinction drilled into you in exactly the context given in the question. I had to stop for a moment and think "this is an AP test, not a general knowledge test" before deciding that they meant English to be just English.
There's no excuse for lumping Africans together in there as immigrants without any elaboration.
I believe these questions are from the SAT II, not the AP test.
I bet there's a passage in one of the widely used AP-oriented textbooks that includes a statement that closely resembles that question.
Taking the choices:
(A) Largely English in the seventeenth century, non-English in the eighteenth century
(B) Chiefly of English origin during the whole period
(C) Largely non-English in the seventeenth century, English in the eighteenth century
(D) Predominantly from southern and eastern Europe, especially after 1700
(E) Predominantly from Asia, Africa and Spanish America especially after 1650
E is obviously wrong. D is to catch people who are confused about centuries. B doesn't work unless you don't think about Englishness and have never heard of Germans. So you've got A and C and since the colonies really started picking up non-English people only a bit after they were established, you've got your answer.
Although the real answer should be F for "fuck this, I'm going to go read something by Linda Colley."
120: Oh, you're right. I never took the history subject test. Too many boring facts. That does make the question much, much worse.
I just took the test. Got two wrong, both about the early twentieth century. The questions certainly contained lots of questionable assumptions, but they didn't strike me as unusually bad for this sort of test.
I got the Northwest Ordinance one wrong and then decided not to further embarrass myself. Although I'd argue that the process of territories becoming states was already in the making and not a direct consequence of the act, which just made that process more likely to happen instead of infighting and the end of the Confederation.
Also, I associate it with the land survey and there was no way I was going to think before entering an answer.
Looking through the questions, I think this is the most egregious:
From 1870 to 1930, the trend in industry was for hours to be generally reduced, while both money wages and real wages rose. What factor was primarily responsible for this trend?
(A) A reduction in profit margins
(B) Minimum wage laws
(C) Restriction of the labor supply
(D) Increased output per hour of work
(E) Right-to-work legislationExplanation
Difficulty: Hard
The best answer to this question is choice D. To arrive at this answer, you must be aware that the trend referred to in the question came about primarily because of technological advances that resulted in increased productivity. None of the other answer choices satisfactorily accounts for all the conditions described in the question.
I wonder how much effort it took to come up with five choices that did not include "the labor movement."
That one absolutely blew me away too.
Hey VW, did you end up deciding not to come to the Aleutians? Tomorrow is the seventieth anniversary of the Japanese invasion, which reminded me.
125,126:Been thinking about fa's comment for an hour or so. Not very Marxian, economistic, or dialectical, dudes. Liberal-political instead of materialistic and objective.
Labor can only take what part of the surplus Capital needs to give it in order to efficiently reproduce itself. Taylorism doesn't force square pegs into round holes. The "labor movement" was part of what made the assembly line and Fordism possible, in other words, a technological advance that increased productivity. The self-organization of labor increases efficiency and advances science. Capital creates nothing, reification and fetishism does not give it a brain.
When labor actually tried to take part of the surplus beyond what it contributed to productivity, in the 60s & 70s, it got slapped down. Politics is irrelevant.
The opposition and co-operation of labor and capital is what reproduces capital.
Given time, I could find a quote, but the basic idea is to think like a Marxist or economist. Politics does not create the economy, it is created by the economy.
But the problem with multi-choice questions is deeper than the inevitable issues to do with the precise question asked, but rather a structural one: there is no way to talk about problems with the terms and concepts of the question, which is always at least a theoretical possibility with essay questions. And that lack is I think pretty shocking when discussing history.
Standardized multiple-choice testing is the only thing in this world I'm actually good at, so I reject 129 and all arguments like it. Multiple-choice = objective truth.
I think that I got 4 wrong, but my test score is 5 wrong. I accidentally hit something on my iPhone for one of the questions.
I certainly employed the "this is the sort of answer that the kind of people who write these tests" strategy.
Re:Loyalty (purity?)
1) Digby yesterday
Last Thursday, Public Policy Polling revealed a 36-point swing in black support for gay marriage among Maryland voters, who will have the chance to legalize the practice in a November referendum, since PPP's last poll on the subject in March. Then, 56 percent had been opposed to the new marriage law and 39 percent supported it. In May, PPP found the numbers nearly reversed: 55 percent supported, and 36 opposed. By all indications, black voters weren't abandoning Obama over an issue on which they disagreed, but adjusting their opinions to match his...
2) FDL this morning
Anybody remember "Tbogg?"
For the first time in my life, I agree with Josh Trevino.The Obama administration is not callously going in and killing civilians and to assert that they are is pure hyperbole
Interestingly, Chris Lightfoot's project to create an objectively-defined political survey, using a battery of agree/disagree statements and principal components analysis, eventually discovered that there seemed to be two statistically significant axes, one (much the strongest) describing authority vs. liberty and a much weaker one relating to the economic left-right split, although that one was pretty loosely defined.
In partisan terms, Tories, UKIP, and BNP voters all clustered on the authoritarian end, overlapping completely (the BNP looks a bit more egalitarian economically, but nowhere near enough to be statistically significant, and the subsample is tiny). Labour, Lib Dems, Greens, and Scottish & Welsh nationalists were at the other, overlapping but a bit less. There wasn't much difference between those groups on the economic equality axis, although they were more egalitarian than the Tories.
Dsquared pointed out that the authority-liberty axis seems very similar to Altemeyer's "The Authoritarians" and also Adorno's F-type personality. I would expect that if you plotted a shame-guilt axis, they would cluster at the shame end.
Final thought: Chris did the fieldwork, or rather YouGov did the fieldwork as an add-on to their national opinion poll through the good offices of fellow old-time British blogger Anthony Wells, in 2005, deep in the boom years but before the full vulgarity of the second-stage-of-the-rocket. I would expect to find, if the experiment was repeated, that the variance on the economic/egalitarian axis would have skyrocketed and that on the liberal one would have fallen somewhat. But I wouldn't expect it to be a one for one change. Imagine the two axes as curves on a chart. The steeper the slope, the greater the range of opinion. If politics in general gets more intense, you'd expect both to steepen.
My extremely superficial understanding of history is that Scotland became formally a part of Britain in the very early 1700s and Ireland in the very early 1800s...
I realize I may be grinding an axe because I was raised in a town whose founder's sole claim to fame was extraordinary persistence in the cause of shooting at British people (Transatlantic Division) and because I now live in Pittsburgh, which is where white ethnicities go to be enshrined after they die out in other places, but I don't even see the Irish/British question as requiring thought. I mean, nobody has trouble separating somebody Polish from a Russian despite the fact that large parts of Poland were Russian territory when many of the Polish came to the U.S. There's lot of similar cases and while not all of Ireland regarded the United Kingdom as nothing more than an occupation, those people (who could vote and eat) didn't leave except in very small numbers.
(Technically, Scotland became part of Britain while Ireland became part of the United Kingdom and never Britain.)
That is, the question of who to separate the Irish from the British or English, not the SAT question listed about. That SAT question doesn't strike me as unreasonable, but it is hard.
I got the immigration question right, but I probably vastly overestimated Dutch and German 18th century immigration. I missed the one on pragmatism vs transcendentalism. Got NW Oregon right, Polk was really something.
Multiple choice is ok, you just have to make the questions really hard. Like quotes from Jonathan Edward and Cotton Mather.
I don't trust essay questions, one thing I have learned in the last decade is the skill in bullshitting around ignorance acquired on the road thru academia. The main purpose of a college degree.
I assume the Slate Article referenced in 132 has been linked already here, but I'll do it anyway.
Technically, Scotland became part of Britain while Ireland became part of the United Kingdom and never Britain.
Technically, Scotland was always part of Britain, which is a geographical expression. Scotland and Enland merged to form the United Kingdom of Great Britain in 1707, and Ireland was dragged into the mix as part of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland in 1805.
Missed one (the migration from 1915-1980), though had to guess on a couple. I agree that the question in 125 stood out as particularly terrible.
I found the "hard" questions to be noticeably easier than the "medium" questions.
I got the immigration question wrong, because the Philadelphia area started as a Swedish colony, and only became a British colony towards the end of the 17th century.
Only missed on the 54 40 question. I misrecalled the decade.
These are mostly typical, annoying, ETS questions. They expect you to have the subject knowledge & the know-how to watch out for the tricks.
The work hours Q doesn't have the labor movements in the choices. So, what is the possible reading of the question that gives a correct answer? The use of the word "immigration" is meant to keep a person from thinking of slaves. Same with the use of "English". These tests do test knowledge, but more so they test knowledge of how the tests work.
120: We called those achievement tests when I took them.
The labor movement one appalled me. I liked the one where you had to identify the quotations.
I think that someone ought to be able to write a satirical novel with an ETS employee as the protagonist. Someone halfway between Nancy and Jessica Mitford would have the right sensibility.
138 is right about the relative difficulty.
I didn't really like the option they gave for the Monroe doctrine, but it's been so long since I read it that I don't trust my own working definition which is something like, "we'll leave everyone in the world alone unless you start messing around in the Americas."
I actually just looked at Sifu's link in 66 to the wikipedia page on functional specialization in the brain: all good and fine.
What's problematic in Haidt (and the predecessors he cites, I assume, but it's been a long time since I read Sperber) is the migration of the notion of brain modularity to 'mental' modularity: as though there is a fairness module, and a loyalty module, and so on.
I am, possibly, just quibbling about the "module" language. However, I doubt that neuroscience is ever going to locate the fairness module in the brain. There doesn't seem to be me to be any evidence, from what neuroscience has so far discovered, that we might also have 'mental' modules of this sort. It remains a very bizarre way of talking.
However, I doubt that neuroscience is ever going to locate the fairness module in the brain.
Give me 1,000 very fair people and an unsafe work site filled with metal rods and explosives.
In a hypothetical world, I'll give you those, and also give you 1,000 very loyal people in the same situation.
I actually don't care much about the brain aspect or the evolution aspect. I think that Haidt's six foundations give insight into the differences between the ways different sorts of people, even within the US, respond to ethical situations. Liberal argument just assumes fairness-harm and keeps repeating the same arguments over and over again to people who care less about fairness-harm than purity-hierarchy-solidarity. Knowing this doesn't solve any problems, but it locates them.
147: I was making a joke about an industrial accident from long ago. Guy got a metal rod blasted into his brain and lived but with a changed personality.
149. I remember reading about that. Is there any documented example of somebody suffering that kind of trauma and emerging as a changed but better person? Because I've never heard of one.
I have seen claims of becoming a better person after brain damage:
http://news.sky.com/home/uk-news/article/15748586
I am pretty skeptical.
If you were a depressive a teeny tiny amount of right frontal lobe damage might make you more optimistic.
Only got the 54 40 question because of the They Might Be Giants song.
Just keep trying smaller rods in a variety of places until you figure it out. Science.
Saw a case in the peer-reviewed literature about a guy who had a huge tumor that made him a paedophile. He molested his step-daughter, got arrested and convicted for it, then collapsed the day before either being sentenced or going to prison; I don't remember which. Doctors found the tumor, removed it successfully, and he's no longer a paedophile. I think the charges were dropped, too.
156: IIRC, he started molesting again, and they found the tumor had returned.
I wonder how much effort it took to come up with five choices that did not include "the labor movement."
Didn't they pick 1870 to 1930 because it was before the modern labor movement (the CIO, the sit-down strikes, etc.)? Lots of labor agitation during that period but was it successful?
149. I remember reading about that. Is there any documented example of somebody suffering that kind of trauma and emerging as a changed but better person? Because I've never heard of one.
There was a girl in the class behind me in high school who was in a car accident and had a brain injury that didn't seem to affect her ability to do intellectual work but would -- she and her parents were warned -- affect her personality. From what I could tell, the effects were all to the good. She'd been a vindictive bitchy kick-down kiss-up type before and was to all appearances transformed into a pleasant friendly laid-back person afterwards.
156: They based a L&O: SVU on this case.
Haidt was just on Bill Moyers' show. He didn't utter the word "module" once.
I was making a joke about an industrial accident from long ago.
My perhaps favorite Q&A moment ever came from a guy at an Oliver Sacks lecture last year who started his non-question by declaring, "I have devoted the last two years of my life to learning everything I can about Phineas Gage."
It actually doesn't look that funny written out, but it was clear from the follow-up that the guy was an obsessed oddball and not say, someone writing a book on Gage.
Not that obsessed oddballs can't write books. Newton, for example.
clew: There's a really nice hike that leaves from the St. John's parking lot, if you're into that sort of thing.
156, 157: This is the case. He appears to have made advances on his stepdaughter, but apparently did not physically violate her. She told her mom, who told the police.
IIRC the tumor was removed a second time and again the symptoms subsided. That part of the story isn't in the linked article, though.
Is there any documented example of somebody suffering that kind of trauma and emerging as a changed but better person?
It is easier to break a machine by hitting it than it is to get it to work properly.
In fact, now that cathode ray TVs receiving network broadcasts are basically dead, I think the last piece of technology you can fix by banging on it is gone.
So, update from lunch:
My friend was pleasant and warm and we had a really nice lunch, except I was on edge because I felt like I needed to address the elephant in the room. As we were paying and leaving I said "I was getting the impression that you didn't want to be friends any more." She opened up and was very honest: at my wedding, she mentally wrapped up our friendship and ended it, assuming that I was moving forward with husband and kids, and that was that. Apparently she's been ditched by other friends as they got married/had kids, and has come to expect it.
Over the next two years, I usually gave her 1-2 weeks advance notice when we were coming to town, which she took as further evidence that I considered our friendship a perfunctory obligation. Obviously we'd booked the flight over a month earlier, so it would have been more considerate of me to give her a longer advance notice.
I apologized for taking her for granted, and she said she'd appreciated my email and the apology. And that going forward, "we can give things a try."
I am sorry that I didn't give her more advance notice, and I'll do that differently in the future. Aside from that, I guess we'll see.
(She does consider herself to be very close to my mom, and I'm not sure exactly why you'd end a perfunctory relationship with your dear friend's daughter, but whatever. I'm happy to reassure her that I value her friendship if that's what she's missing.)
The cockles of my heart are warm and it's a very cool evening.
166.last --- certain kind of battery operated things often responded well to a good bang, as it loosens up the electrons.
It just isn't true that British doesn't mean Irish. In some cases it did and does. The Irish troops at Waterloo under Wellington would be referred to as British, for instance. (More strikingly, they might be referred to as English in many cases.) This is because national identities are fluid and complex things that don't boil down to xs are ys and ys are not zs.
So apparently this "Uppity Wisconsin" blog broke a story about Scott Walker fathering a child out of wedlock when he was 20, and now that site is hacked, and the sites that linked the story are also hacked/ddos'd or something. Source is a U of Minn. scientist. Weird, weird, weird.
Irish troops fighting in a British army isn't really a hard concept.
Witt's point was about an American context. Nobody ever confused a Catholic Irish person with somebody English in that context and few of the more confused are aware that British isn't a synonym for English.
168: Over the next two years, I usually gave her 1-2 weeks advance notice when we were coming to town, which she took as further evidence that I considered our friendship a perfunctory obligation.
Huh? Were you staying at her place, or something? Outside of that, 1-2 weeks sounds like a perfectly normal amount of notice to me.
Glad you found out what was going on here, though.
171: Googling brought up a Kos summary. I have no idea but two days ahead of the election from a source I never heard of.... I'll see what comes up tomorrow before deciding.
174: Nope, staying at my parents' house. I do think she might have said "Hey, I tend to plan things in advance. Could you give me more notice when you're coming to town?" rather than using it to confirm that I'm a jerk. But mostly, whatever. No problem.
One reason this is interesting, though, is because the question of national identity in Ireland is one of the most fascinating examples of the hilariously messy and contradictory nature of the creation of national identities. (And one of the most heavily written about by large numbers of people with axes to grind.)
If the English would have given more than one week of notice before Cromwell, it might have been different.
It was when the English got married to the Scottish and started having baby colonies, that's when it all went sour.
Now I feel like I should invade Canada or be labeled a sell out.
It is, after all, the centenary of the war of 1812.
176: I'm impressed that your reaction to finding this out is not "gaaa! you're a crazy person who needs special lab-condition handling" but is more along the lines of "I guess it's not really personal -- and I can learn your bizarre ways without taking it as a personal failing that I don't already know them."
181: The last invasion of Canada that could have possibly made any military sense.
Also, in other sort-of-ethnic news, I --- by necessity, even --- made the soup that MFK Fisher calls sludge for dinner the other night, and it was really pretty good, actually. I find if you add some kind of hot spice that makes it go further. Also, you can put in quite a bit of oats before it gets unbearably porridgy.
182: Well, thanks. I'm happy to give this episode a free pass, but I don't know how much patience I'd have if there are more mysterious dramas in the future.
Also this thread makes me think Eminem's accusing us about Dr. Draidt.
Rather, the title of the OP does.
I should probably go get my accumulated list of topics and figure out something to post.
I'm up, I'm up! I have to start my summer course today. It's one I've taught before, but I just realized our summer session has three more days in it here, and I have a hole in my syllabus. It's not a subject I have loads and loads of books waiting to fill. Grr.
Shhh. I'm eating and haven't finished my second cup of coffee.
There is a book I can think of that could go in there, but I hate it so fucking much.
Hi Heebie! I'm awake!
Hey, howcome if you are consistently attracted to guys, that's a part of your sexual identity (making you gay or straight depending) but if you are consistently attracted to people who treat you with cool indifference, that's just some kind of coincidence?
Don't say its because gender orientation is more fixed than attraction to people who treat you with cool indifference. I bet there are people out there who could change their gender orientation, but never stop falling for the aloof and disdainful.
And don't say its because falling for people who treat you with cool indifference is dysfunctional. I bet there are some people who consistently fall for the flighty and irresponsible, and who actually need that kind of spontaneity in their life.
I'm afraid you'll think I'm hitting on you if I don't answer, but I really have no idea.
Nice try at filling up the side bar, heebie. 190 was a tactical error, though.
194: Wait, who says it's a coincidence? Isn't that where the notion that people have 'types' comes from? Don't see why that sort of preference should be less entrenched than any other one (and I always suspect people who say they don't have a type are either lying or not paying attention).
but if you are consistently attracted to people who treat you with cool indifference, that's just some kind of coincidence?
It's because they're awesome and intriguing and they get that I'm a fraud, and so I must win them over. They also don't want to join any club that would have me as a member.
But "having a type" doesn't get become a centerpiece of your self-image, or the subject of support groups or awareness campaigns. It may be more than a coincidence, but its not a sexual identify, either.
And don't say its because falling for people who treat you with cool indifference is dysfunctional.
Well, once this is ruled out I don't have much to say in the matter.
I think there actually are support groups for "Women Who Love Too Much" and that sort of thing.
199: It's not really a type, because you're not really attracted to the other person as a three dimensional person. You're just attracted to mastering them and obtaining them so that you can feel better about yourself. And so it can get in the way of locating someone that you're actually compatible with.
You just need their extra time and their kiss.
I bet there are some people who consistently fall for the flighty and irresponsible, and who actually need that kind of spontaneity in their life.
I know plenty such people. In my experience they tend to end up in long term relationships with aloof and disdainful partners because eventually all that flighty irresponsibility gets too tiring. Sad, in a way.
I don't think you can equate "type" with orientation, although it's definitely real. I don't know anybody who's locked themselves into a relationship against their orientation as they've come to understand it who hasn't been very unhappy and eventually run for the hills. But plenty of people are content with partners who aren't their "type", and at most it's reflected in the type of porn they watch.
To the OP: I don't understand the desire to resurrect Haidt's project. As best as I can reckon, the useful part of his oeuvre could be adequately stated in one medium-length op-ed piece.
I think of my normal employed wife as my type but sometimes I get bored with her and turn to porn to spice things up. "Blow off that job interview you slut. Oh yeah, now max out that credit card on shit you don't need you irresponsible whore."
I don't understand the desire to resurrect Haidt's project.
Because I'm a Humean about ethics who is interested in current moral psychology.
The Humean League would be a good name for a Human League cover band formed by Scottish philosophers.
When I write my Haidt-style op-ed, it'll say that conservatives are identifiable by their authoritarian outlook, and the only differences among them involve whether the Ultimate Authority is God, Guns or Money.
Conservatism is a more coherent political orientation than liberalism because those three sources of authority don't have to conflict, and anyway, the important thing to a conservative is submission to authority. As despicable as Mormons are to a Baptist, they're still much preferable to atheists.
208. nattarGcM is no doubt working on it.
I feel like we've discussed this before, Rob, because I know I've said that I am not as guided by gender as I am by personality in sexual decision-making. But I have also found that most people feel that their gender is extremely important to how they see themselves, and are not particularly gratified by the attentions of someone who doesn't care about their manliness/womanliness.
Certainly, it seems very obvious to me that neediness and bossiness are extremely attractive qualities to a lot of people. Needy, bossy people never seem to struggle to find sexual/romantic partners. As a cold, aloof person, I prefer to date other cold, aloof people, but they always abandon me suddenly (and without even informing me) for someone who places extraordinary and bizarre demands on them.
It recently happened to a friend, too. She's going out for months with a super-aloof guy who acts freaked out if she so much as touches his arm in front of anyone he knows, and then he disappears, and a mutual friend reports that his ex-wife, who cheated on him and left him, has now been abandoned in Switzerland, pregnant with the other guy's baby, and she wants him to move there and help her raise the baby. He gets on a plane the next day.
Some people really need to say "I told you so" regardless of the effort.
I feel like we've discussed this before, Rob
We have. I posted the same question on FB. It looked like hb-gb wanted action , so I reposted it here.
Certainly, it seems very obvious to me that neediness and bossiness are extremely attractive qualities to a lot of people. Needy, bossy people never seem to struggle to find sexual/romantic partners.
This is true. It's a combination that makes the other person feel very secure - "They desperately need me and there are clear rules for life!"
214: A lot of bossy people don't set clear rules at all. Their primary impulse is to tell you that you are doing it wrong, so no matter how you are doing it, they will tell you to do it a different way.
206: The porn of women ignoring you is surprisingly compelling.
I have been talking to my friend about this for a while now, and about the weird feelings that emerge from being rejected over and over for other people who are assholes. Her situation is much more recent than any of mine, but it's basically the same scenario over and over. She's experiencing the phase when one thinks, "Maybe if I started being a gigantic cunt to everyone I date, they would stop treating me like garbage." It does start, at a certain point, to feel weird if everyone you sleep with chastises you for being needy if you call once a week or say hi to them in public, but will gladly endure abuse and micromanagement from someone else. But, as I keep reminding her, people who are assholes have to *be* themselves. I'd rather be celibate.
215.1 is definitely true. Keep 'em running.
Yikes, 211.last is a real perspective-changer. No matter how much of a dishrag I've been, I'll never match that guy for total, cringing emotional submission. (Let's hope.)
218: That behavior is less rare than you might imagine. In fact, I'd guess that if you asked any of my five or six super-aloof exes who left me under similar circumstances for similar people, none of them would describe it as anything other than the irresistible power of True Love. For people like me who don't organize our lives around dyadic partnerships, aloof people seem really appealing, but we can't compete with psychopaths.
That behavior is less rare than you might imagine.
But people reacting with shock and horror to such stories aren't just basing it on they themselves not having experienced something so horrible, but on also not knowing many (if any) other people that's happened to. It's not because I don't know anybody who doesn't "organize [their life] around dyadic partnerships."
Wow is that an unparseable sentence. Take two:
1. Nothing like that has happened to me. (Though I have been treated badly by exes, just nothing that extreme.)
2. I don't know anyone else that's happened to.
3. I don't think #3 is the case only because I'm so very couples focused or something.
I didn't intend to claim that all people who aren't dyadic are attracted to the same kinds of people; my best friend here has fucked around really successfully for twenty years without anything like this happening. Her type is quite different from mine, though.
my best friend here has fucked around really successfully
What counts as "successfully fucking around"?
I once pressed a socially conservative female student on what she meant when she said a "successful marriage." She acted as if I had revealed I was from another planet. How could you not know what a successful marriage is. You know, it is one where you stay together. She couldn't understand why I found that definition unsatisfying.
By that standard the counterpart definition for "successfully fucking around" would simply be getting laid a lot. But that also can't be right.
It depends on how 'aloof' gets cashed out, but aloofness leads some people to figure you're a safe place to park themselves until something they're really hot for turns up. That's crappy but I can at least understand it. I have a much harder time putting myself in that guy's motivational shoes.
Still, I guess it's nice that crazy people who need to use people can find crazy people who need to be used. Better than them inflicting themselves on the rest of us.
Successfully would mean, to me, that she enjoys the time she spends with the people she sleeps with and doesn't seem to feel embarrassed or angry about anyone, the way they treated her, or the way she treated them. She's friends with most of the people she's slept with afterward, and their sexual history together doesn't have to be a secret from anyone else. Those are all things I wish I had, which is, I guess, why I think of her as having been more successful in sleeping around.
That is all to say, I think, that no one ever expected her to disappear when it became convenient for them. For my other friend who is going through the rough time right now, this is the part that is really driving her nuts--the expectation from several men in a row that suddenly, with no warning and no explanation, they seem to want her to die, or be erased from their history somehow.
If we're supposed to get upset about people all of a sudden wanting us to die, I don't think I could face work.
I have a friend much like the one described in 225. She slept around a lot (including with me) and maintains friendships with a fair number of her partners. She's one of my closest friends, and the nature of our friendship is colored by the fact we've slept together - Once you've been naked together and seen each other's O-face keeping up a facade that isn't mutually maintained is difficult. For me at least.
keeping up a facade that isn't mutually maintained is difficult
What does this mean? A facade of what?
A facade of not picturing her naked whenever you see her?
The worst was the guy who took my virginity, who vacillated between wanting to show me off as an intimate partner, bragging about our relationship and exuberantly kissing me in front of his friends, and wanting me to pretend we were barely acquaintances, and certainly had never been lovers. The problem was that he never told me which one I was supposed to be, so he'd be angry at me one day for seeming cold and distant, and angry the next for spoiling his (totally invisible) game with someone else. After about seven years of it, I just couldn't take it anymore. If you're expecting me to put on a show, you have to tell me which show we're doing so I can practice my lines.
229: The facade where we pretend to be well adjusted mature responsible adults without weird craziness lurking beneath the surface.
Did the bastard at least return your virginity?
One should always remember to print one's name on one's virginity when lending it out.
Just writing "NCC-1701" on it is nonspecific.
Although at least enterprising.
Should I assume 235 is some kind of "where no man has gone before" joke? Sexist.
It is, after all, the centenary of the war of 1812.
A much bigger deal in Canada than in the States, for obvious reasons. Not that it's a huge deal in Canuckistan, far from it; it's just that, in the US, it's not even a thing.
(Note to unfogged commenters from outside North America: if you encounter someone from NA and you're not sure whether he or she is American or Canadian, there is a quick and easy way to determine nationality. Just ask: "Who won the War of 1812?" Guaranteed to flush out the Canadian every time).
You can also tell because the Canadian will have a giant fucking Canadian flag patch sewn on a backpack and a hideous "Roots Canada" sweatshirt.
Harper's cultural heritage program seems to involve defunding organizations and institutions that might use or foster independent thought and upping funding for things like war of 1812 commemorations.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LsRK3DNoa_Q
You can also tell because the Canadian will have a giant fucking Canadian flag patch sewn on a backpack and a hideous "Roots Canada" sweatshirt.
Well, right.
But some people (whether Canadian or American) do not choose to display such obvious markers of national identity (it's not every American, after all, who sports a "God Bless America" Caterpillar hat). Absent direct evidence, in the form of backpacks, sweatshirts, and baseball caps, "Who won the War of 1812?" will quickly establish nationality, is what I'm saying.
"Roots Canada" has some very nice handbags and satchels, btw. Made in Canada of Italian leather, and not hideous at all.
Absent direct evidence, in the form of backpacks, sweatshirts, and baseball caps, "Who won the War of 1812?" will quickly establish nationality, is what I'm saying.
It'll also flush out Americans wearing all that Canadian crap to make people think they're Canadian.
243: So awesome. I love the northern/nordic-themed backdrops and headgear.
But since my parents currently enjoy universal health care coverage without even a thought to the possibility of personal bankruptcy, I guess this bunch of hosers actually, if somewhat surprisingly, won the battle for liberty and equality:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZIwzRkjn86w
Oh man, Johnny Horton. My dad used to sing the beginning of this one all the time. I think this one (which I had not heard before just now) is more appropriate for me, though.
Weird: I don't think I've ever heard of Johnny Horton (before this thread), but I have definitely heard that Alaska song.
We used to have a bunch of hand-me-downs from a Canadian family, which meant half my kids' clothes had big Canadian flags, or "Roots Canada" logos. I assume it was some sort of insidious plot -- I should probably ask my kids who won the war of 1812.
I have definitely heard that Alaska song.
It was apparently the theme song for a John Wayne movie, so maybe that's it.
I'm pretty ignorant of the history of the war of 1812, but it didn't really seem to me that one could say that either side had won. One of my ancestors worked with the commission that determined the boundary line in the northeast. That stub is kind of lame, because it doesn't even mention that his brother's widow Mary wrote "Mary had a Little Lamb" and was editor of Godey's Lady's Book.
In the War of 1812 the winners were Britain and the U.S. The losers were Tecumseh and his Confederacy. The result of the war was that Britain was secure in Canada, the U.S. was free to expand into the Northwest Territory, and the survivors of the Confederacy fled to the great plains.
Oh man, Johnny Horton. My dad used to sing the beginning of this one all the time.
My dad used to sing the Battle of New Orleans all the time. He especially likes the "ran through the briars and ran through the brambles" part.
Roots Canada
As long as they got LeVar Burton back, I'm sure it was fine.
247, 254: As a kid whenever a score in a game we were playing went to 18-14 the opening stanza chorus were pretty much mandatory.
I heard the 70s version quite a bit back then.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3YDSYOixmK0
Oddly enough it was covered in Britain by a popular Scottish guitarist and was a huge hit. Horton's version was totally ignored (as far as I remember, but I was eight at the time).