Paraphrasing the Canon

Paraphrasing the Canon

The job of the teacher is not to transmit, unchanged, the words of the tradition.   The job of the teacher is paraphrasing, putting the words of texts in contexts that provoke, confuse, delight, and startle the audience, all while keeping the original kernel intact.

(Parables leave out details but maintain the point.)  

As people evolve, as cultures evolve, as the environment evolves, our words must evolve.   This, of course, is bound to create some resentment.  More on that later.

Thinking Clearly About Taxes

The first thing to get straight is the different types of taxes
income tax
capital gains tax
property tax
Payroll tax
Sales tax
Estate tax
Corporate taxes
State and Federal fees for X,Y, and Z

The next thing to get straight is the different types of income tax systems
Progressive
Flat
(the only alternative to income tax systems is a sales tax system)

The third thing to get straight is tax history.
We used to be taxed at much higher rates at some points.
There were some times with incredible growth under this system.
We used to be taxed at much lower rates at some points.
There were some times with incredible growth under this system.

The fourth thing to get straight is what happens when tax rates are changed.
Republicans believe it will increase economic growth and (perhaps) tax revenues. They believe that the top earners are the investors in new businesses that spur economic growth. Therefore they would (probably) prefer to cut the top rates and leave others unchanged.
Democrats believe that targeted tax cuts are more effective at this than across the board rate drops. Dems believe that taxes are more like dues.
Everyone intelligent accepts that poor and rich people will react to having additional money in different ways. The poor spend it locally. The rich may spend it, save it, or invest it.

The fifth thing to get straight is who you can trust about taxes.
Neither party.
Snopes.com, politifact.com, factcheck.com
The tax policy institute and the Club for Growth are informative but dangerous. They both have an agenda.
The CBO, GAO, and the OMB are more reliable.
Media matters, fair.org - can be trusted to bust republican lies about em
MRO.org, drudge report - can be trusted to bust liberal lies about em

Waiting for Superman, my notes

This piece comes off primarily as a hit piece on teacher's unions and the concept of tenure.

It follows some individual students in difficult situations and displays the reality of the "lottery" that high performing schools hold. In essence, this lottery means that open spots in charter schools and excellent schools must be assigned randomly.

The problem is that the film shows current problems but glosses over their sources. It proposes a villain.

Tenure comes from a number of sources
1. Teachers are tasked with teaching the most up to date information available about a given subject. This, quite naturally, contradicts the ideas of some parents. When the latest and best information contradicts a belief that people feel strongly about, a la evolution, ignorant people try to get the teacher fired.
2. Teachers are tasked with teaching all children. This, quite naturally, means that teachers frequently teach one or two children who are difficult to handle. Some of these children resent the teacher and try to hurt him/her by making false statements about the teacher.
3. Teachers are tasked with communicating with every child's parent. This, quite naturally means teachers frequently must communicate with one or more parents who are difficult to handle. These parents believe that educating a child is the teacher's responsibility, not a shared one. Some of these parents try to get a teacher fired if a child fails, even if the child only showed for school one of every three days.
4. Without video cameras running in classrooms, no objective data about a teacher's classroom performance is available.

To sum up
1. Teachers must sometimes teach facts that contradict popular beliefs.
2. Teachers must sometimes deal with difficult children, who lie to try to get a teacher fired.
3. Teachers must sometimes deal with difficult parents, who refuse to take responsibility for their child's learning. These parents also attempt to get a teacher fired.
4. There is no objective data available about how teachers teach.


Here is an excellent criticism of the movie: http://www.wsws.org/articles/2010/oct2010/wfsm-o07.shtml

Rules for Mental Health

1. Feelings prove nothing.
2. One person's experience proves nothing.
3. The truth of an idea is not what convinces people. The utility of an idea is what convinces people, and the economics of an idea is what convinces people to convince people.
4. Curiosity didn't kill the cat, curiosity got the cat killed.
5. No one is straight. Everyone is bent, and some of us are crooked.
6. For every event, construct three separate explanations before you decide on them.
7. To be intelligent, construct at least 5 and include another that says none of the above.
8. Since we naturally avoid unpleasant information, seek it out. Read magazines which oppose your positions on issues, but remember the research on cognitive dissonance.
9. Since all individuals are biased, getting a random sample is a great way to counteract bias.
10. Since we are biased because of our limited experiences, having a wide background of experiences also counteracts bias.
11. Meaning is context dependent, since context can be infinitely extended, there is no final meaning.
12.Innocence is not the absence of experience. Innocence is the absence of second thought.
13. The mind is a muscle. The reason some people hate to think is the same reason other people hate to work out.

The Economics of Ideas

The concept:

Whether an idea is commonly supported, well researched, etc., doesn't always tell you very much about it's truth.

What that tells you is that someone finds that idea profitable.

The explanation:

I have a friend who is a New York Yankees fan. However, when the New York Yankees win the world series, he doesn't bother to call and brag. He knows what I would say.

I would say, "so what? They outspend almost everyone. It takes more than that to impress me."

The funny thing is that I feel the same way about ideas. There is a "degree of difficulty" which I place on any new information I come across. This degree of difficulty tells me how to react to it.

In politics, my thinking works like this:

The court of public opinion is much like a regular court. Each side in a debate, or point of view, finds an intelligent speaker to present their point of view.

Much like a court of law, those with more money hire more people and better speakers to present their case.

Unlike a court of law, there is no requirement that both sides get to speak. On tv, those without the ability and desire to pay, don't speak.

Therefore

Since there is more money to be made by arguing for the interests of the wealthy than there is in arguing for justice, fairness, and empathy, those arguments will be made more often in public.

Since there is more money to be made researching ideas that support the powerful, ideas that support the powerful will be studied more often, and supported by more data.

Examples:
T

Thinking in Third Person

"Speak the truth of today and don't worry about tomorrow. If tomorrow contradicts today, tomorrow can stand up for itself."


When a student asked me why I forced him to write in the third person, I said something that surprised me, something I think is highly debatable. For that reason, I think it is a good idea to discuss it. After all, science advances through the process of elimination, why shouldn't the softer sciences?

I said, "We teach students to write in third person because we are hoping that they will learn to think in third person."

To begin with, to think in third person is ridiculous. We are always human beings, from a culture, from a father and a mother, from a hometown, and from DNA which, like a snowflake, has never been duplicated.

I think many of us think of objectivity like a light switch. Either we are objective or we are not. Either we are fair or we are biased. But it is not a light switch. Even if it was, postmodernism has reminded us that human beings don't have the ability to turn it on.

Instead of imagining objectivity like a light switch, what if we entertain the idea that it is a dimmer. Even if the switch is broken, even if it cannot get to total light or total darkness, compared to the alternative, it is much better to have your hand upon the switch.

That is what we hope to teach you.
This is a skill that does not come naturally; evolution doesn't prepare you to think like this. Presenting your ideas to diverse groups of people, people who do not share your culture, your parents, or your hometown, people who will not accept your ideas because of how you look or who you are, is how you prepare to think like this.

This is why writing about "boring" topics are better practice that writing about something you choose.
This is what businesses want from you, to think about a situation clearly. No one will pay you to keep talking about and thinking about yourself.









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-Noone speaks Standard English
-Noone writes Standard English
-Everyone has a limited perspective
-Everyone has a biased perspective.
-Everyone writes from a birds "I" view.

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The brain is a jump to conclusions machine.   Trying to explain one's thoughts in detail is one method of thinking more objectively.   A second method is by focusing on the evidence before creating an interpretation of the evidence.

Rules for Mental Health

RULES FOR MENTAL HEALTH

1.Assume the writer of any book is as smart as you are. 2. Assume any human being has the same good intentions as you do. 3. Remember that 1 and 2 are assumptions, and you may have to revise them at a later date. 4. Study reading until you can read between the lines. 5. Remember that a book is a mirror, what you see depends on who you are, where you've been, and where you want to go. 6. To understand a subject, read what the smartest person on each end of the debate. A conservative and a liberal intellectual. Notice that they largely agree on the facts. They disagree on the interpretation of the evidence, on the conclusions to draw from the facts. 7. Study cognitive biases. Notice how studying them doesn't prevent you from falling victim to those biases. 8. Study gender differences. Notice how studying them doesn't help you understand the opposite sex very much. 9. Accept that there is never enough evidence to justify absolute certainty. Certainty in religion is an act of faith. Certainty in ideology is an act of faith. 10. Accept that human beings probably do not have the ability to accurately judge what we need. We have a limited perspective and instinctive biases. 11. Write a list of your biggest fears. 12. Pick 2 and face them. 13. If you are republican, subscribe to a Dem magazine. If you are a Dem, subscribe to a republican one. Read it. 14. Complex problems demand complex solutions. Complex solutions require complex explanations. Anyone who responds to a complex problem with a bumper sticker cannot possibly be right. 15. Learn about Robert Cialdini and the 6 weapons of influence. 16. Learn about optical illusions. 17. Learn a completely new skill. While you are learning, remember what it feels like to be a novice. Notice how awkward and embarrassing it is. Notice how it seems to come so effortlessly to the people around you. Remember that when you are trying something where you are the expert.