"How do you deal with schizophrenic homeless people on the sidewalk?"
What do they think you do at your job? Do they have an accurate idea (or any idea)?
"Mom's a teacher"
or
"Mom does fancy math"
or
"Mom's one of those lazy tenured radicals who are diluting our traditional values and corrupting the youth"
"Are you better off now than you were four years ago?"
"Say a young physics professor was asked to speak to rich high school students; what should he say?"
For the benefit of the 27% crazification factor who will answer earnestly, the kids are 2 and almost 4 years old.
"Why do you suppose all the important grown ups in your life have decided to ask you impertinent questions today?"
"What's your greatest weakness?"
What do they think you do at your job? Do they have an accurate idea (or any idea)?
I like this one.
Joey sometimes asks me odd questions ("Is lightening hotter than the sun?") and then says "I thought that since you teach philosophy, you would know."
"If you microwave an egg in a plastic cup and the cup melts, should you still eat the egg?"
"What would you say if I told you I'd invented a totally novel sex act?"
10: explain that you're an unnatural philosopher, and the natural philosophers are the ones that know all the cool stuff.
(Answer: yes, several times hotter.)
"What should you do if a girl shows up on your doorstep high on meth?"
It is?! Lightening is hotter than the sun? That doesn't seem right.
Per the first Google hit (Discovery), it's hotter than the sun's surface, but much cooler than anywhere in the interior.
Lightening, like shortening, is a food product without a caonical temperature.
Seriously, asking questions to find out what was going on in the goofy little mind was useless in my family at that age. He just didn't have the verbal capacity.
Alternative exercise: give them cameras (can be a cell phone) for a few minutes, show them what button to push, give a vague instruction like "take pictures of things you like" and see what they come up with. We were charmed by the results -- mostly photos of people from the waist down, the toddler eye perspective. We resolved to pay more attention to footwear.
"What do you love the most?"
"What scares you the most?"
"What do you want above anything"
"What do you hate the most?"
20: Sure, but if you do it yearly, it would be fun to watch them grow, wouldn't it?
This is the FPP whose parents recorded 20 second video of us between 1970 and 1995 and spliced it all together to get our childhoods on time-lapse photography, remember. (Far more impressive in the pre-digital age. Kind of a hollow achievement now.)
Also, Hawaii is a nonstop chatterbox. Her answers may be nonsensical, but I'm pretty sure we can capture ten minutes of monologue without her pausing to catch her breath.
OK, you're in a desert, walking along, and you see a tortoise...
For a time-lapse that they and others will look at later, what's the best/worst thing that happened this month. For understanding their worldview, personal questions, 21 seems right.
Oh, forgot the fifth question which is apparently "what do you expect of life?"
"take pictures of things you like" and see what they come up with
We came up with lots of butts and underwear.
At the bus stop my kids and one of their friends and his 4 year old brother like to tell me questions to ask my phone (via Siri.) Often it's things like what's the biggest X in the world, where X has been house, nose, carrot, car, watch etc. Today they did bug, but Siri heard it as butt, so another parent walking by might have thought I was some kind of pervert showing pictures to little kids. Also carrot doesn't work, Siri interprets it as ^
At first I thought 21 was going to be
Why isn't my link working? I meant to link to James Lipton's questions from Inside the Actor's Studio.
Why isn't my link working?
I don't think h-g's kids are technically advanced enough yet to answer that question.
How much candy can you eat in one sitting? No getting up from the table, unlimited water.
Ask them where babies come from and why things work that way.
Why is there something rather than nothing?
Is string theory as an approach to unify quantum mechanics and general relativity dead?
Who do you love more, the Analogy Ban or the Sanctity of Off-Blog Communication?
I think asking them to explain what you and Jammies do at work is the best idea. Also I think you should post the answers.
"Who wants to sex Mutombo?"
"How many five-year-olds could you take in a fight?"
"How do you spell 'lightning'?"
I think this is a great project.
Have them explain a picture they've drawn.
Ask them about each other and the impending sister.
Ask them what they like to do at school.
Ask them for a detailed critique of JRoth's architecture.
"Why can't you read yet?"
"What is wrong with you?"
"Name three ways in which you have failed today"
Ask them for definitions or uses of common things that they've heard in passing but probably don't really understand. The misconceptions in a kid's head are hilarious. What's a Catholic? What's Congress? What is gasoline for? What is money? What's inside a computer?
When are you going to get a job?
What's for dinner?
Where's our anniversary present?
Do Mommy and Daddy sometimes make funny noises at night?
You can have this marshmallow now or two marshmallows and a car when you graduate from college. Do you take the marshmallow?
If a chicken and a half can lay an egg and a half in a day and a half, how many pancakes does it take to shingle the roof of a doghouse?
Heh. My guess posting this was that I'd get useful answers from sir kraab and Witt, and entertaining answers from the rest.
52: Right about Sir Kraab, and wrong about everyone else.
52. There's the problem. They're all giving questions.
Why am I me, and why not you? Why am I here, and why not there? When did time begin, and where does space end? Isn't life under the sun just a dream? Isn't what I see, hear, and smell just the mirage of a world before the world? Does evil actually exist, and are there people who are really evil? How can it be that I, who am I, wasn't before I was, and that sometime I, the one I am, no longer will be the one I am?
What is Geebie Family Day?
What WAS daddy doing with that toilet?
Kid D says:
What's your favourite colour? (because it would be interesting to see how it changed)
Do you like your bedroom?
Who's your favourite family member?
[My kids constantly discuss their favourite sibling. Possibly because I quite often tell them who is the current best child.]
You could use this opportunity to improve your performance as a customer-centered parent.
Is there something I could do to make your experience as a child more enjoyable?
"Canst thou draw out Leviathan with a hook?"
What have you got in your pocketses? Nassty filthy children.
Will you still need me, will you still feed me...
If I'd been out till quarter to three, would you lock the door?
Do you really think your future is more important than my present?
"Are you now, or have you ever been, a member of an organization that advocates the violent overthrow of the United States government?"
"Isn't it great when all your anarchist friends turn into reactionary assholes who try to bully you into signing loyalty oaths?"
"Hath not a Jew eyes?"
"What's it all about, Alfie?"
"Do you have five dollars I can borrow?"
Can you call spirits from the vasty deep?
How much wood could a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood?
That one's easy- A woodchuck would chuck all the wood that it could chuck, if a woodchuck could chuck wood.
How much work would a network net if a network could work nets?
Paging A White Bear. And Megan.
"Hast seen the white whale?"
"Is there no sin in it?"
"What hath God wrought?"
"Hast seen the white whale?"
An actual favorite in our house! Jane very much likes to tell us that she has seen the white whale. We thought we had her trained up to say "From Hell's heart I stab at thee!" but, alas, she has lapsed.
What name did Achilles take when he hid amongst the women?
What was the rule that regulated the succession to the priesthood of Diana at Aricia?
For a while I had my grandmother memorize my dissertation title, and I would say, "Hey, want to see my grandmother do a trick? Grandma, what's my thesis title?" and she would obligingly rattle off a string of nonsensical words, and everyone would obligingly be entertained.
CAAAAAAN YOOOOU FEEEEEEEEL IIIIIT?
An actual favorite in our house! Jane very much likes to tell us that she has seen the white whale.
This is so awesome.
Who killed the pork chops? What price bananas? Are you my angel?
What price bananas?
Do you have no bananas?
At long last, do you have no bananas?
Is your drum at long last just my thumb?
What may I know? What must I do? What may I hope?
A Man, being born blind, and having a Globe and a Cube, nigh of the same bignes, Committed into his Hands, and being taught or Told, which is Called the Globe, and which the Cube, so as easily to distinguish them by his Touch or Feeling; Then both being taken from Him, and Laid on a Table, Let us Suppose his Sight Restored to Him; Whether he Could, by his Sight, and before he touch them, know which is the Globe and which the Cube?
He knows, now can he have them both already?
If you had need of a ladle, would not your father give you a ladle?
Is it not cold and wet, does your father not shake and sweat?
If I told you that you had a beautiful body, would you hold it against me?
Have you never been happy just to hear your song?
Now I have "interview the kids" in my head to the tune of m.youtube.com/#/watch?v=kpl42nuJXDU
Where are the Snowdens of yesteryear?
(Or, if you prefer: ou est les Neigedens d'antan?)
re: 100
Molyneux. Sweet. We should all interrogate kids with classic 17th century philosophical problems.
What colour is the boathouse at Hereford?
106- The media lab takes your sexism into the future.
"Who is the Brown Bomber? How much is a shave and a haircut?"
If he can't answer, shoot him. He's a Nazi.
What is the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow?
When are we having drinks in San Francisco next week?
What colour is the boathouse at Hereford?
I'll know I've done my job as a parent when my daughters ambush me with a cup of coffee.
111: not just 17th century! There's a talk on Molyneux' Problem at Stanford soon (maybe even today), not that I can go.
106- The media lab takes your sexism into the future.
It somehow seems that the word "disseminate" would have been avoided in this context.
When are we having drinks in San Francisco next week?
Can someone make this a post? I'll be in SF and free to meet up the evening of 4/1, and during the day of 4/7.
Update: Jane now claims NOT to have seen the white whale. Shenanigans!
When Thing 2 was Jane's age, she once said that "a shark pooped on my head," but now she claims not to remember anything about the incident. When it comes to marine biology, you just can't trust them.
Wikipedia's entry on Molyneux's problem is surprisingly poor, offering responses that are either nonsense or that miss the philosphical problem in favor of the uninteresting practical answer.
You don't think it's cool that they actually went and answered Molyneux's question? I think it's pretty cool.
But I don't think the question they answered is the one Molyneux meant to ask*. "Can the human brain, after a lifetime of sensory deprivation, immediately establish a correspondence between appearance and shape?" is different than "Is coincidental stimulus required to establish a correspondence across sensory modalities?".
*It goes without saying that I don't know what I'm talking about.
Ask them for a detailed critique of JRoth's architecture.
I actually think this is an outstanding question. Maybe "What do you like best about our house?" for the two-year-old and "What do you like best about the way our house is built?" for the four-year-old.
There have been dozens of cases of restored sight where the doctors thought to ask Molyneux's question, and, in practice, the answer turns out to be no.
I wrote a paper on Locke on Perception for a volume that will come out sometime in the next 20 years. §2.5 is on Molyneux's problem, if you feel like giving constructive, destructive, or comic criticism.
Clicking the link in 128, I realized that I have a weirdly visceral negative reaction to seeing double-spaced text that isn't easy to overcome. I think it's because I associate it with student, rather than published, papers?
Is the newly sighted man allowed to see while feeling *other* things (with other shapes) first? I guess that would reduce some of the interest.
. I think it's because I associate it with student, rather than published, papers?
No, it's not that. Who hurt you, essear?
131: Not in the theoretical versions, I don't suppose. In the real life cases, I don't think it makes much difference. It takes a while to be able to recognize 3-d figures by sight.
Why is the Molyneaux problem a philosophy question at all? Just because historically, philosophers asked it, I suppose.
In Molyneux' day there was no understood distinction between philosophy and science, or rather science was seen as a branch of philosophy, as it had been in the European tradition since Thales or before. You can argue that hypotheses about the nature of matter belong to science these days, but Thales' hypothesis is still regarded as philosophical.
In Molyneux's day they also couldn't generally cure people who had been blind since birth.
The first test case was cataract surgery 40 years after Molyneux posed the problem. The SEP article is good.
126: it is of course the case that with empirical work you're answering a partial subset of the question addressed by a thought experiment. It seems very likely based on this work that crossmodal integration (at least when it comes to the integration of visual and tactile stimuli, which incidentally isn't so enormously easy a problem for regular sighted people) is a product of experience, but the experiment was on five kids of varying ages and levels of impairment, and who knows (among other things) what has happened to their brains across years of blindness. That said, as far as Molyneux's problem as originally phrased goes, they definitely specifically answered it. (Okay, they used lego shapes rather than spheres and cubes.) That's pretty rad! You don't generally see people putting dudes with lists of translations and grammatical rules into locked rooms or showing Polynesians buckets of rabbit bits.
It's really good I am not in philosophy because I would just be irritated most of the time. Fucking Locke!
The SEP article is indeed pretty good. And of course the empirical answer to "does crossmodal sensory integration require coincident stimulus, as a general rule" is "it's complicated".
Also, though, that whole "let's go cure super poor blind kids in slums in India and get research funds to pay for it all" thing is pretty awesome even if they hadn't found any interesting conclusions.
Fucking Locke!
You make a fair point.
The interview went great, IMHO. We'll upload it when we get home.
Why is the Molyneaux problem a philosophy question at all?
Why wouldn't a question about perception be philosophical?
It seems like a neurology question, and I know I'm being so 2013 and that's not the context in which it was asked. But were it posed in 2013, no one would knock on the philosophy department door to answer it.
It seems like a neurology question
No it doesn't!
Oh, also:
It's really good I am not in philosophy because I would just be irritated most of the time.
Ditto.
I suppose I must have read what beamish reports in 132 amd 136 supra in Gallagher's book (you know, the one cited in the SEP article—allow me to wonder aloud whether Sifu might like it, in fact), since it's fairly recent and discusses Molyneux, but … I couldn't remember!
Why wouldn't a question about perception be philosophical?
Because it's empirically testable, and those questions tend to migrate to other departments?
Recently via Facebook I encountered someone (Ken/ny Eas/war/an, who might even read here? in which case, no offense intended) who had written a philosophy paper on why physical theories typically depend on second, rather than higher, derivatives. He was unaware that this was something physicists might already have well-formed opinions about.
I guess I feel like a lot of questions that would at one time have been well-suited for philosophy eventually sort of become the prerogative of people with much more experience in a particular subject.
And of course since it only showed up on my feed because a mutual friend had commented on it, it appears there's no way for me to see the discussion anymore. Isn't Facebook awesome awful? Why do we put up with it?
Multisensory integration is genuinly sort of an interesting case; for one thing, neuroscience hasn't done that great a job of turning up areas that definitively do the job. There's plenty of empirical work on the features of multisensory integration -- what kind of time lags people will tolerate to consider an auditory and visual stimulus to be the same object, for instance -- but without a really striking neuroscientific theory of what's happening there probably still is room for a sort of introspective, phenomenological approach, and it seems likely that whatever the empirical truth turns out to be it will have been predicted in fairly good detail by some philosopher or other. That's certainly been the case for much of the rest of research into perception. The issue, of course, is that figuring out which philosopher is right is NP-hard, as it were.
150: if you look at the wall of the original poster in question it should be visible there.
It isn't. Lots of other things are, though. I've never really figured out the default Facebook friends-of-friends policy.
154: because those are medical specialties that deal with the diagnosis and treatment of disorders.
He was unaware that this was something physicists might already have well-formed opinions about.
Why, then?
Because it's empirically testableanswerable, and those questions tend to migrate to other departments?
156: Well, there are several possible answers, but I think the most general and compelling one is that we expect the laws of nature to depend on all derivatives, it's just that we're usually working in some kind of approximation where dependence on higher derivatives is small.
158: is that related on some level to the vanishing coefficients thing you've talked about before re: quantum effects?
158: is it actually a convention? or is it context-dependent, based on how much precision the physicist wants, and just some big typical cases are all 2nd derivatives?
the integration of visual and tactile stimuli, which incidentally isn't so enormously easy a problem for regular sighted people
I'm curious what this means.
Although after restoration of sight, the subjects could distinguish between objects visually as effectively as they would do by touch alone, they were unable to form the connection between object perceived using the two different senses.
Does distinguish mean recognize? If not, they may not have fully developed their visual abilities yet.
The results of the touch-to-vision tests were barely better than if the subjects had guessed. However, such cross-modal mappings developed rapidly, in the course of a few days.
A few days to build a correspondence between different sensory modalities is pretty impressive. Couldn't the doctors have only allowed them to see things they couldn't touch and vice versa for those few days? For science? Maybe fit them with cangues?
As I was lying half-zonked-out in bed I reflected that needing some time to get accustomed to a three-d visual world only makes sense: after all, people who remain blind as to the eyes need to learn how to use tactile-visual substitution systems and I don't see why it would be any different when sight is supplied by the conventional means. (People who know something about all this may now scoff.)
I'm curious what this means.
If you feel something, how well can you tell what it will look like, and vice versa?
In what sense is it hard for people?
If you feel (but don't see) something with a complex shape (like, say, some lego pieces stuck together), you won't necessarily be easily able to pick it out of a lineup of other things with complex shapes.
And likewise for seeing something and then have to judge it by feel later. You'll be better at it than these kids were, but you won't necessarily be perfect. It's hard!
But can you see its hardness, or do you have to feel it?
Its hardness is epistemically transformative, nosflow. You have to experience it.
But I'm asking about the modality of the experience.
Its hardness transcends sensation.
[...]
That's what she said.
160 or is it context-dependent, based on how much precision the physicist wants, and just some big typical cases are all 2nd derivatives?
This is pretty much it. Basically 2-derivative treatments of a problem are usually the leading approximation, and often things depending on higher derivatives are many, many orders of magnitude smaller.
And likewise, for seeing something and then having to judge it by sight later. I guess I don't really have a well-posed question, but is there something that indicates that there is a unique difficulty with mapping between senses that isn't there in most mental processes.
The lack of question mark is only one way that wasn't well-posed.
172: it's not particularly unique; we're bad at lots of things. Finding a one to one correspondence between sensory modalities without other cues isn't something that comes up much ecologically; in general if you're touching something you have the ability to look at it as well.
It will be fun to have these recordings when your kids are older, HG. A friend of mine recently played a tape for us of his dad giving him and his brother the sex talk when they were like 5 and 6--extremely cute stuff. This friend is always saying that, because he's a science type, he doesn't really like reading; in the tape, at 5, he demands to know whether his father is about to read them a long, boring book. It's very cute.
because he's a science type, he doesn't really like reading
!!?!?!?!
While you science-types are here: is In Search of Memory worth reading? I considered it but then I saw some Jonah Lehrer books on the shelf nearby and figured I'd better not buy something I knew nothing about.
Dunno anything about it, but it looks neat to me.
Not a science person, but I mostly liked it. Not enough memory, though. MOAR MEMORY, PLEEZ!
I really liked the old "In Search Of" shows where Spock spouted off about all sorts of truly dubious shit.
RWM was very happy that essentially every time she brought in a science speaker and a teacher asked "what should you do now if you want to work in X" they said "read." Apparently this blew the minds of the high school teachers, who had the (weirdly common) belief that being good at math and science meant you probably didn't like reading-related things.
176: I know, I know. I keep trying to convince this person that these ideas about science types and not reading don't make any sense.
How about having them conduct a study.
A couple of science people recently contacted me about a study and I am in the midst of writing them a long, advice-y e-mail. But what I really want to say is: "I am going to call your PI and make sure he knows exactly how ill-prepared your junior colleague is, before she does too much harm."
But instead I am venting here.
Now I'm trying to imagine what was in the email received.
"After waiting two to three months required for the testicles to regrow..."
"This study wasn't rejected by any IRB of which we are aware."
"All analysis was conducted in MS Excel."
I was about to say that there's a limit to how far networking as a teenager can take you, but then I thought about it for a second and realized just how false that was in my case.
OT: Can somebody lawyery tell me if courts often issue decisions in major criminal cases on Sunday.
If 186 was to me, that wasn't the problem. They sent me an initial e-mail, which I didn't respond to within 3 days because I was traveling. They left 8 hang-up calls on my voicemail (which I know because I have caller ID), and then showed up at my office without an appointment.
I met with them for a few minutes and gave some basic advice, which the older and more experienced one seemed to be attentive to. The younger one just seemed utterly clueless, including about the deadlines and requirements of her own study.
Protip: If you are conducting a study requiring the collection of genetic material from people who may not be inclined to trust you, do your homework.
Do they know you have power over them now?
But you're going to their PI, hoping to fuck with their careers? Rather than talking to them directly? Why? Did they do something truly awful to you? Or is it just the hangup calls and the fact that they're not as prepared as you deem appropriate?
Q-tip: if you are collecting genetic material from people not inclined to trust you, use something that looks more specialized and professional than a Q-tip.
I use the "Are you thirsty? Good, because I'm going to slip this glass you just drank out of into my purse." gambit that I learned from Veronica Mars.
No, no, no, I'm not writing anything to their PI. I'm writing to the two people who visited me, and just sending an e-mail about their study, with all of the (free) advice they asked for.
I'm just irritated at the unprofessionalism, so I'm venting here. I have no intention of contacting the PI, in part because his comments, as paraphrased by his junior staff, do not indicate a particular interest in understanding the population he's trying to study.
(To be honest, their careers never crossed my mind -- my role is to protect vulnerable people from exploitation, not to babysit 25-year-olds who should have long since learned better.)
Vent away! Just include more amusing details, please.
And to be clear, the unprofessionalism is the not knowing about their own study or about the people they allegedly want to study -- not the hangup phone calls or the showing up without an appointment. That's just garden-variety rudeness.
I've never quite understood what you do for a living, but back when I had a phone, I used to get endless hangups. It was a bit annoying, but usually better than the messages I often received. As for people showing up without appointments, the dratted public thinks they have a right to my time -- because they pay for it, I guess. I'm currently awash in "Help me, I'm doing a History Day project!" e-mails and spontaneous meetings. Now that I think about it, I'm not even sure if these projects have cleared IRB.
HOW DO YOU NOT KNOW WHEN YOUR OWN STUDY DEADLINE IS? Even approximately?
How do you manage to refer straightfaced to a cockamamie "racial group" that never existed biologically and hasn't existed as a social term for at least 30 years?
How do you keep moving the goalposts in the course of a five-minute conversation, so the goal of studying "X Nationality Jewish large families" becomes "X Nationality 4-person nuclear families"?
How do you fail to grasp the point so baldly that your response to hearing the Yale debacle cited as an example of community mistrust is to respond, "We're not psychologists?" (No, you're just taking people's genetic material. No reason at all that should make them paranoid!)
Fail badly to grasp the point, not baldly. I just *thought* the point was bald, obv.
If you want to put them in touch with the students working on History Day projects here, let me know. These kids seemed to have pretty decent genetic material. At least their organs were delicious.
No, but thanks for letting me vent. I feel better now.
(My job has nothing to do with this. This was a "goodness of your heart" request. Which I was/am trying to accommodate because the ostensible subject of the research really would be of great value to the public health if it pans out.)
I've often wondered why nobody has even been stabbed by or stabbed a project coordinator, if that's what this is about.
In answer to your question upthread, Moby, I have no idea. But if I were a judge in a small Midwestern town about to release an inflammatory verdict, I would sure pick a moment when half the town was going to be in church.
Maybe because nobody can figure out the grant rules to see if knives are capital equipment or supplies.
206 to 204.
205: Or still hung-over. It's St. Patrick's Day weekend. I guess maybe the point was to keep whatever blow-up happens out of the school for at least 22 hours.
My job has nothing to do with this. This was a "goodness of your heart" request.
Now I'm even more confused about what you do.
I mean, aside from the ninja librarian gig on the weekends or whatever.
181 Apparently this blew the minds of the high school teachers, who had the (weirdly common) belief that being good at math and science meant you probably didn't like reading-related things.
Yeah, I kind of remember that from grade school. Teachers always imagined that the world was sorted into mathy types or verbal types and that these were mutually exclusive. In fact, I'm dimly recalling one middle school English teacher making some kind of claim about how God gives everyone different gifts and so it isn't possible for one person to be good in all their classes.
That teacher failed to account for the sports and beauty axes.
What about the dumb unathletic ugly people of the world?
They are possessed of an innate kindness and simple wisdom.
Alternatively, they have the grit, aggression, and concrete goals needed to survive in a less effete era.
That might be covered under "simple wisdom."
212
What about the dumb unathletic ugly people of the world?
Seems like their genes must be good for something or they would have died out.
What about the dumb unathletic ugly people of the world?
Hewers of wood and drawers of water?
"All analysis was conducted in MS Excel."
Yeeeaaaargh, this is so goddamn common with a lot of our collaborators. I had someone recently try to join two ~2000 item lists manually in Exhell. Surprise, they messed up and ended up requesting the wrong material for follow-up. Do you even care about discovering something or are we just doing this as an exercise?
Excel ain't so bad for a first pass.
I mean, assuming you use it correctly.
That teacher failed to account for the sports and beauty axes.
The ninja librarian accounts for the verbal and beauty axes. And the shuriken of shushing.
220: Somebody once showed me how to run a regression in Excel. It seemed a clumsy way to do it.
Yeah, it doesn't seem very good for that, I admit.
You can use the Excel solver plugin to do minimization of residuals, but it's really slow and dumb.