Frank Kogan

Continuing a thought from the last entry's comment thread, my opinions on political issues, on macroeconomics, on global warming, on a whole bunch of stuff, aren't based on much knowledge but rather based on whom I've decided to believe; in effect I've farmed out the ideas to others, owing to lack of time. And the result is that my opinions are the ones that Someone Like Me would have — I vote my hairstyle — and often the people who disagree with me on these issues are the ones who make me the most wary; and so these issues, the ones that I don't understand, are where my own views are most resistant to change. That's because the views are based on my social identity not on my knowledge, and people opposing them represent a potential threat of deep social conflict: conflict between types of people. Someone not believing in global warming somehow represents to me the possibility of my being killed in a civil war or a genocide, even if the particular person I'm disagreeing with happens to be sweet and kind, and even though I hardly know the science or the evidence for global warming.*

Not to say that the ideas I do think my way to and through have nothing to do with my social identity or that people's reflected-upon and well-worked ideas don't nonetheless cluster by social type, since they usually do. But at least I've got a sense of the uncertainties as well as the certainties, and of where potential counterarguments and counterevidence might be coming from.

*Of course, if I did know the science, the person who disbelieved in global warming might nonetheless represent the exact same threat. Whereas if we both knew the science, while this is no guarantee we wouldn't feel the social threat, we might not be arguing from the depths of our insecure social selves. [And yeah, I know that People Who Are Like Me don't think it's possible for someone to both know the science and disbelieve in man-made global warming; but as I said, I don't know the science, so I don't know this.]

Near unanimous opinion online that Dia Frampton had a Cher Lloyd a-star-is-born moment several days ago on NBC's The Voice with her twisting and half wispy, half guttural version of Kanye West's "Heartless." It continues to grow for me the more I listen, her voice scooping into the soil and rising up to what I'll describe incongruously as a dark alto trill, throat-grabbing, breathtaking. Much richer than Kanye's Autotuned original. Kanye's voice seemed aligned with the lyrics' analytical puzzlement - the song circling around among Yes, she really is cold and heartless, No, they say she's cold and heartless but they'll never understand our love, I don't understand our love, as you ditch me and then play me, and voices say "heartless." Dia lets the lyrics take care of all this while she goes for earth-flow and splatter and high-pitched reflection.

NBC runs online a little too soft, so I recommend you push the volume a little:



( But what's bugging me is the narrative that Dia and NBC have concocted )

Piece in the New York Times about smiling ("More to a Smile Than Lips and Teeth" by Carl Zimmer), with this potent passage:

Dr. Niedenthal herself is now testing the predictions of the model with her colleagues. In one study, she and her colleagues are testing the idea that mimicry lets people recognize authentic smiles. They showed pictures of smiling people to a group of students. Some of the smiles were genuine and others were fake. The students could readily tell the difference between them.

Then Dr. Niedenthal and her colleagues asked the students to place a pencil between their lips. This simple action engaged muscles that could otherwise produce a smile. Unable to mimic the faces they saw, the students had a much harder time telling which smiles were real and which were fake.

The scientists then ran a variation on the experiment on another group of students. They showed the same faces to the second group, but had them imagine the smiling faces belonged to salesclerks in a shoe store. In some cases the salesclerks had just sold the students a pair of shoes — in which they might well have a genuine smile of satisfaction. In other trials, they imagined that the salesclerks were trying to sell them a pair of shoes — in which case they might be trying to woo the customer with a fake smile.

In reality, the scientists use a combination of real and fake smiles for both groups of salesclerks. When the students were free to mimic the smiles, their judgments were not affected by what the salesclerk was doing.

But if the students put a pencil in their mouth, they could no longer rely on their mimicry. Instead, they tended to believe that the salesclerks who were trying to sell them shoes were faking their smiles — even when their smiles were genuine. Likewise, they tended to say that the salesclerks who had finished the sale were smiling for real, even when they weren't. In other words, they were forced to rely on the circumstances of the smile, rather than the smile itself.

( I wonder how much of understanding requires the ability to mimic what you're trying to understand )

This is what happens when I don't pay attention to local politics or local news. Stuff like this appears on the ballot and I almost don't notice.

"Shall the voters for the City and County of Denver adopt an Initiated Ordinance to require the creation of an extraterrestrial affairs commission to help ensure the health, safety, and cultural awareness of Denver residents and visitors in relation to potential encounters or interactions with extra-terrestrial intelligent beings or their vehicles, and fund such commission from grants, gifts and donations?"

(The political climate being what it is, I'm surprised the initiative doesn't contain a provision requiring the immediate impoundment of the alien spaceship and mandating inordinate fees for the spaceship's release.)

The Democratic Party of Denver has taken no position on this issue, by the way. I can see why the Democrats haven't, this being a damned if you do, damned if you don't predicament: If they oppose the measure, they risk offending people who hate extraterrestrials on principle, whereas if they support it, they risk offending the many Denver residents who believe themselves to be from another planet. (I think I read somewhere that Colorado has the highest per capita number of such people in the nation.)

Paul Krugman ("The New Economic Geography, Now Middle-Aged"), arguing in favor of economists' tendency to simplify and go abstract, to use mathematical modeling and quantitative methods: "The geographers themselves probably won't like this: the economics profession's simultaneous love for rigor and contempt for realism will surely prove infuriating."

( I don't think Krugman is fair to himself when he says contempt for realism )

Until the 1930s and to some extent into the 1940s, institutional economics, with a strong emphasis on "historico-institutional factors," was a major force in American economics. But when the Depression struck, there was a desperate need for answers – and the answers wanted were to the question, "What do we do?" not "How did we get here?" Faced with that question, the institutional economists couldn't deliver; all they could offer was, well, persuasive discourse on the complex historical roots of the problem.

The person who did deliver was John Maynard Keynes. Now, Keynes is a protean figure, whose writings can be read to provide support for many schools of thought. But The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, despite occasional historical asides, essentially presents an abstract, ahistorical model of the economy; at its core is a little two-equation equilibrium model of the level of employment. And here's the thing: Keynesian economics, unlike institutional economics, was able to answer the question about what to do: it told you to boost demand with deficit spending.

( How would things be different if X happened instead of Y? )

Int: In Philosophy And The Mirror of Nature, you attacked Putnam's early philosophy. What do you think of his more recent work?

Rorty: I think our views are practically indistinguishable, but he doesn't. He thinks I'm a relativist and he isn't. And I think: if I'm a relativist, then he's one too.

Int: Why do you think Putnam sees you as a relativist?

Rorty: Beats me. I wrote an article about it, but that was as far as I got.

. . .

Int: Do you disagree with any of Davidson's views?

Rorty: I can't think of anything we really disagree about that doesn't seem to me a verbal issue, but Davidson may have a different view of the matter. Well, one thing is that he keeps saying truth is an absolutely central concept, and I can't see what makes it central or basic. I take Davidson to be saying that truth, belief, meaning, intention, rationality, cognitivity - all these notions are parts of a seamless web, and that seems to me a useful point to make, that you can't have any of these notions without all the others. It's just that he then wants to say, "And truth is in the middle." I can't see why you have to have a middle.

Int: Putnam has also criticized you for deemphasizing truth.

Rorty: Putnam keeps saying that you have to have what he calls "substantive truth." I take Davidson to be saying: there's not much pointing in saying truth is substantive. I don't think Davidson has any better idea than I do what Putnam means by that. Nonetheless, he somehow attaches a weight to the notion that I can't seem to attach to it.
--Interview with Richard Rorty in January 1995 by Joshua Knobe

( It rains when you're here and it rains when you're gone )

Tom asks over on his Blue Lines tumblr:

People make statements all the time about which music they like and why they like it.

Some of these statements will be false.

Is there any advantage to trying to guess which, or in assuming that certain people or groups are lying? Rather than simply assuming good faith?

I said in response that emphasizing motive has more risks than advantages. Not that - if we're aware of the risks - motive should be off the table; motives can matter, but their relevance is greatly exaggerated.** These were my reasons***:

( They put the world off at a distance without realizing they're doing so )

**EDIT: Actually, I think there's something crucially important - in a lot of my thinking, anyway, which is an attempt to tunnel down to insights and impulses that are half-expressed and half-masked by the actual reasons we give and arguments we make - ...something crucially important that I hesitate to call "motive" but that I might end up placing in the category "real reasons" or "more reasons." That's what I'm trying to suggest in that cryptic sentence, "sometimes subterranean 'real' reasons can turn out to be better than the merely good ones." But most people who focus on motive don't care diddly-squat about tunneling down to insights and impulses. I elaborate on this thought down in the comments.

***The reasons I give in my post hardly encompass all my motives for making the post, however.

Tom posted this on his Blue Lines tumblr (the main motive being to make a funny about rolling joints, I think):

( The Trade-Off )

But given that 2009 has the capacity to do better what I and people like me were already doing in 1989 (even though 2009 isn't as different in kind as that list implies), with many more people doing it and with everybody having the capacity to do it more often, so that 2009 might be considered something of the fulfillment of my 1989 dream,* how come the convo in 2009 isn't smarter than it was in 1989, how come my writing isn't far better now than it was then, how come my ideas haven't developed exponentially rather than circling around the same old same old, how come the music isn't better, etc.?

*1986, actually

Compiled the Jukebox averages for the songs I like (designated YES) versus the Jukebox averages for the songs I dislike (NO) to see how different I am from everybody. I've still kept a MAYBE designation for songs I'm not sure of, though the fact I haven't ditched them yet makes it a good bet that they'll hold on.

My affinity is once again slightly ahead of my disaffinity, though the gap is narrowing and someday alienation and isolation will triumph, hurrah! This time a couple of last-minute consensus likes (Nina Sky) and dislikes (Merriweather) I agreed with helped collegiality to keep disaffection at bay, even if just barely.

( Il Si, il Brutto, il Non )

Celebrity blogpost that I kept reading after this first sentence even though on principle I shouldn't have:

"If you have something to say to me, say it to my face - that's what i have believed my whole life - don't be a coward and say it to others first, let alone all the media in the world..."

Also, check her "currently listening" which is quite um...