At a certain point, it is necessary to trust yourself that your work is good enough and ought to be accepted. Some self-doubt is appropriate—after all, there is little logical certainty to be had, and no matter how much data you gather or how many books/articles you read, there are always more data to be gathered and more books/articles to read. But, as a matter of practicality, eventually you must believe in yourself and believe that the work you have done is good work. At that point, it’s necessary to challenge your readers to reject your work. You don’t want to get rejected, of course. You want to take the attitude that your work should be accepted, and that if someone is going to reject it, they better have damn good reasons for rejecting it.
Eventually, it’s necessary to force the issue with your reviewers—professors, editors, grant reviewers or whoever. It’s necessary for your work to be reviewed, regardless of outcome. In this post, I frame that in terms of “make them reject you,” not “make them accept you,” because I want to focus on the common emotional dynamic that many authors face where expectation of a negative response starts to impede progress. If your progress is delayed by thinking “they’re going to reject it,” then you might benefit from thinking “I have done good work, and I believe that my work should be accepted, and if they don't accept it, they better have a good reason, not some overly general complaint.”
In this post, I am generally writing to people who have brought their project to a certain level of accomplishment—people who have been basically diligent in their research and writing. If you haven’t completed a first draft yet, it’s probably better to finish the first draft and solicit feedback, expecting a critique, rather than “making them reject you”—getting a first draft returned with feedback isn’t a rejection, it’s an opportunity to improve the work. Still, even during the early stages of a project, it’s good to think “I am going to do good work, and when I’ve finished, they better have damn good reasons if they reject me,” because it’s easy to get hung up thinking “they’ll reject me” at any point in a project.
I’m writing this post because I was recently talking with a scholar at the very end of a dissertation who was trying to respond to unreasonable expectations. A complete draft had been provisionally accepted, and in my eyes, it easily surpassed the quality necessary for a doctoral dissertation. But the scholar was getting hung up on comments from some of the reviewers—getting hung up trying to make plans to respond to unreasonable complaints. And what was really needed was that the scholar assert that the work in the dissertation was done responsibly and to a reasonable standard. No work is perfect; every work has limits. At a certain point complaints that are logically defensible in the abstract become completely unreasonable in the context of the real practice of research.
When I say unreasonable, I’m thinking of one comment this scholar had received, in particular. One professor had said: “You didn’t come up with these ideas. Where did you get them?” There are contexts in which this might be a reasonable complaint—if, for example, the professor is absolutely certain of a specific source that uses the idea in question—but it is not a generally reasonable complaint inasmuch as the expectation and primary criterion for scholarly success is to come up with something new. The presumption that the scholar did not come up with the ideas is problematic.
A complaint like that must be met with confidence. It must be met with “These are my ideas. I have not read them anywhere else or heard them anywhere else. If you know of someone who has used them, please tell me.” This doesn’t work, of course, if you want to claim that some well-known, established idea as your own—“every action has an equal and opposite reaction,” for example—but if ideas are really yours, it’s necessary to claim it, and to force the other person to prove you wrong. Say: “I have never seen this before, and I looked for things like it. Have you ever seen it? If so, where? Because I would like to see that source.” Such a response: 1. claims that you have been diligent; 2. forces the reviewer to specify, thus revealing whether the complaint is reasonable (there’s a source you should have used and didn’t) or unreasonable (it’s just an excuse to complain); and 3. it presents you as wanting to use the information (i.e., you want their advice, and you avoid conflict). This kind of response can help defuse complaints that are driven by emotional rather than intellectual motivations. And remember, it’s perfectly possible to independently come up with an idea that someone else has also had (e.g., Newton, Leibniz, and calculus)—it’s not a crime to assert “I haven’t seen that source, and came up with the idea on my own.”
A similarly unreasonable complaint is an open ended “how do you know no one else has done this?” A good scholar takes steps to find all possible resources that touches on the issues in their work. But no scholar, no matter how good, can read everything written. There are simply too many publications for any one person to read or even review them all. A good scholar will take steps to know what has been published in the literature, and then, having taken those steps, should proceed to do his or her own work. At some point the scholar has to leave previous publications behind. It should be enough to take diligent action to survey the literature and then to say “I have taken appropriate steps to review the literature, but that does not guarantee that my search did not miss something.” On a certain level, this problem is something like the more general problem of induction: no matter how many observations an empirical scientist may take, it is always possible that the next observation will not follow the pattern set by previous observations. No matter how many articles you may read on a subject, you cannot guarantee that there will not be some other article that you did not find in previous searches. New articles are published every day--even if you did all the work as of yesterday, that could have changed with new publications.
It must be admitted that it is appropriate for a professor to ask what you have done to ensure that you haven’t missed anything. And it’s not right to be unduly arrogant about the work you have done. But when complaints like “how do you know there isn’t some work you haven’t seen” is combined with a less reasonable complaint like “these ideas aren’t yours; where did they come from,” then it’s appropriate to start to read that complaint as being unreasonable rather than just reasonable.
Ever since David Hume elucidated the problem of induction in the 18th century, empirical science has struggled to negotiate the problem that the next observation may break the pattern of previous observations. You’ve only seen white swans and never a black one? That doesn’t prove that there are no black swans, but still… You’ve only seen books/articles that address one aspect of an idea, but not another? It doesn’t prove that there are no works that address the other idea, but…
At a certain point—when work has been executed diligently and carefully—you have to ask whether their complaints are reasonable, and you have to assert that your work is worthy. You have to force their hands: make them either reject your work or accept it, but don’t let them implicitly reject it by getting you hung up on unanswerable and unreasonable questions.
At a certain point, you have to force them to take their own stand and explicate their concerns, and if they reject you, either they have good reasons (I mean reasons that seem good to you and worth responding to, as opposed to unanswerable, unreasonable questions like “how do you know you’ve read everything?”) or you challenge their rejection (with, of course, an explanation of why your work ought not respond to their complaint).
Monday, July 2, 2018
Tuesday, June 26, 2018
What are they thinking? Part 2: Speaking the same language
Last week, I wrote about the importance trying to understand the reasoning used by people who do things that seem inexplicable within our own reasoning schemes. I used two examples, one of a scholar struggling to communicate with her advisor, the other of the Democratic bewilderment at the behavior of GOP voters (who supposedly vote against their own best interests). That previous post wasn’t necessarily focused in reaching some point, but I suppose that I might summarize it as follows: people’s decisions are made with respect to their own sets of reasons; the fact that some decision seems unreasonable to you, implies that you do not understand the reasoning that guided the decision. Advisors want their students to graduate, and people vote for what they perceive to be their own best interests. Assuming anything else is silly.
People are sometimes wrong about their beliefs, and people sometimes draw bad conclusions from good evidence. I’m not denying that people make mistakes. In the case of the scholar who can’t get her advisor to approve her work, I think the advisor is making a mistake. But my thinking that it is a mistake doesn’t change what the advisor believes. In the case of GOP voters, it may be that they would benefit in some ways from voting for non-GOP candidates, but that doesn’t mean that they weigh the costs and benefits of their decisions in the same way that you would.
The question of this post is on how to communicate with people who are seeing the world radically differently, and, if possible, to convince such people to consider seeing the world more as you do. For both the scholar trying to convince her advisor, and for the politician trying to convince a potential voter, the issue is how does one sway the ideas so that the other will do as desired?
I have framed this in terms of Democrats trying convince Republicans because I don’t hear the Republicans saying “why do they vote against their best interests,” but the same dynamic is surely applicable--every single person has some desire to get others to act in ways that serve their own personal interests. I want people to act in ways that serve my interests, and you want people to act in ways that serve your interests—in a way, that’s exactly what “interests” are: the things that we want to happen. When person A sees person B do something that A feels is not in his/her bet interest, A is motivated to get B to do otherwise. Democrats want to get people who didn’t vote Democratic in the past to vote Democratic in the future. Republicans want to get people who didn’t vote Republican to vote Republican in the future. And, of course, every scholar wants to convince their readers to accept their work.
The first step in getting people to see things your way is to make sure that you speak their language, and I mean “language” in a general sense to mean not only the large-scale language that determines their vocabulary and sentence structure (e.g., English vs. French), but also the more personal intellectual structures that shape their ideas. If, for example, a scholar has a deep reliance on the idea of “objective truth”, that belief will shape the language that they use and how they interpret language, too: such a scholar might not be able to hear or absorb ideas and language shaped by the assumption that there is no objective truth. Or a profoundly religious person might see the world through a lens of religious belief that makes little or no sense to a less religious person, and that difference in perspective may mean that each person views the ideas of the other as incoherent or wrong-headed.
Understanding the underlying logical structures that people are using creates an opportunity to begin to work with people and to begin to shape their reasoning. The problem with speaking someone else’s language is that it will only make sense if you accept some of their underlying reasoning—and that can be uncomfortable. But, if you can keep in mind that your effort is to communicate, then you can begin to build the necessary communicative bridges that will help you reach the person who understands the world very differently.
So, to summarize: 1. Remember that people are reasoning with respect to their own sets of ideas; assuming that they are incoherent or working against their best interests doesn’t provide insight into the reasoning that is guiding their decisions. 2. Understanding their reasoning, allows you to begin to speak their language, and unless you speak their language, they probably won’t understand you—and if they don’t understand you, you’re not going to have success convincing them that your work is good.
Tuesday, June 19, 2018
What are they thinking?
What I’m thinking about is two separate issues that have at least one point of intersection. One of these issues is the struggle of a scholar to get her Ph.D. accepted by her committee. This scholar does work of exceptionally high quality. I know plenty of people who did worse work and got a Ph.D., including myself. The other issue is the more general political trope common on America’s political left of asking why so many people vote for GOP candidates who propose policies that are clearly to their detriment, at least in some ways.
In both cases, we could ask ourselves: “what are they thinking?” In the case of my scholar and her committee, she can reasonably ask “what are they thinking?” with respect to her dissertation, when by many standards her work obviously qualifies, and the reception her work receives from many scholars not on her committee confirms this. In the case of the GOP voters, we might ask “what are they thinking?” with respect to those GOP voters who have no health care, who need health care, who can’t afford health care, and who also regularly vote for candidates who are hostile to government action to provide health care for everyone.
Now, “what are they thinking?” can be asked from a point of curiosity—of wanting to know what they are thinking? But it can also be asked from a more settled position—a position of greater belief in one’s own rightness—as a paraphrase of “how silly they are to think that!”
This post is about the importance of asking that question from the first perspective, not the second. I don’t mean to say that you should not believe your own opinions—if you think someone is doing something silly or wrong, you may very well be right. People do all sorts of silly things. And if you’re just sitting back watching, thinking what they do is silly works just fine. But if you’re involved—if you have some need to interact with or convince these people—as the scholar needs to convince her committee, and the political left wants to convince people to vote for candidates who align with the left—then that second version of the question is not going to help you get what you need.
If you need to communicate with people, and you want to get them to cooperate with you, there is great value in sincerely and openly asking “what are you thinking?” And there is great danger in the second version: “how could anyone be so silly as to think that?”
In the case of the scholar, it’s a little hard to dismiss her committee as silly, but taking them seriously is not quite enough to convince them that they should be on board with a project. It’s necessary to find out and understand what they are thinking so that you can create the necessary communicative bridges that will help them understand what you’re thinking. (As I write that, it occurs to me that if you’re thinking “what are they thinking?” about someone, they may well be thinking the same thing as you are—certainly the political right speaks of the political left as foolish/immoral/etc., which are flavors of “how could anyone be so silly to think that?”)
To communicate, and to persuade people to accept your way of thinking, you need to present to them ideas that make sense to them—and that means understanding what they think, so that you can suit your communication to their ideas.
If, for example, the scholar of my example wants her committee to accept her work she needs to convince them of its value (and the fact that other people find it valuable doesn’t help with that), and that means understanding what they value and framing your work with respect to ideas that they are already using. And then figuring out how to make some conceptual bridge to the ideas that you are using.
This can be particularly difficult if the ideas that you are using are radically different from the ideas that they are using. For the scholar, part of her struggle is getting her committee to accept her research methodology. In thinking about her situation, I was thinking about Thomas Kuhn’s Structure of Scientific Revolutions and his idea that different scientific paradigms are “incommensurable”—that is to say that there is no absolute, objective standard by which all paradigms can be measured—what makes sense in one paradigm doesn’t make sense in others. In the scholar’s case, one of the crucial structures of her research doesn’t really play any role in the research paradigms used by her committee—the question, then, is how to bring this structure into her dissertation in a way that her committee accepts it. Ultimately, I think that the route is through understanding and focusing on what the committee wants. Yes, it may be true that what they want doesn’t make sense from the scholar’s paradigm, but focusing on that difference in view doesn’t suggest a good strategy for moving forward. What does, is to look at what the committee thinks is important, and then use that to create as much common ground as possible—then, once the common ground has been created, it becomes easier to start to make a bridge to her own work—how can she frame her choices in terms of questions that the committee thinks important? How can the ideas that are important to the committee be used to explain the choices she made that led her work to diverge from their expected paradigm?
There’s another dynamic that can play a role, too: if you think “how can they be so silly to think that?" about someone with whom you interact, you’re likely to antagonize them. Recently, while reading articles that brought up the “voting against their own interest” idea, I have been flashing back to a popular song from my youth: The Suicidal Tendencies’ Institutionalized. The song relates interactions between child and parents, and near the end, the parents say “We’ve decided it’s in your best interest that…” And the song narrator cries “My best interest? How do you know what my best interest is?” Knowing what is in someone’s best interests is complicated—in the song, maybe the parents really do know their child’s interests, or maybe the parents are wrong. Regardless of what the song narrator’s best interests really are—whether the parents are right or the child—we can certainly say that most people, like the child in the song, will resent having someone else tell them what their best interests are. And that is especially true if they think that the other person/people doesn’t/don’t understand them. Politicians are not going to win voters by saying “I know what you want better than you do.” Politicians are more likely to win voters by saying “your interests are valuable; here’s my plan to address them.” Or, if possible, to shift people fro one set of ideas to another: “your interests are valuable, but here’s something else that might be valuable to you, too.” This second is what the scholar needs to do with her committee, certainly: she needs her dissertation to be able to say “here’s something you care about; I want to work on that problem because it’s something we both care about; But I am going to take a very different approach, so please give me a moment to explain why I’m taking this approach, even though it may not make sense to you at first glance.” If she can convince her committee that the problem she is working on is a problem that they care about, and get them to focus on that problem, then that focus on the problem can serve as the conceptual landmark that helps the committee orient themselves with respect to the unfamiliar ideas that the scholar needs them to accept in order to accept her thesis.
This is not the most focused post ever—there is more to be said than I want to write now—but I’ve already gone well over one thousand words, which is generally my target for blog posts, so I’m going to call it a wrap.
In both cases, we could ask ourselves: “what are they thinking?” In the case of my scholar and her committee, she can reasonably ask “what are they thinking?” with respect to her dissertation, when by many standards her work obviously qualifies, and the reception her work receives from many scholars not on her committee confirms this. In the case of the GOP voters, we might ask “what are they thinking?” with respect to those GOP voters who have no health care, who need health care, who can’t afford health care, and who also regularly vote for candidates who are hostile to government action to provide health care for everyone.
Now, “what are they thinking?” can be asked from a point of curiosity—of wanting to know what they are thinking? But it can also be asked from a more settled position—a position of greater belief in one’s own rightness—as a paraphrase of “how silly they are to think that!”
This post is about the importance of asking that question from the first perspective, not the second. I don’t mean to say that you should not believe your own opinions—if you think someone is doing something silly or wrong, you may very well be right. People do all sorts of silly things. And if you’re just sitting back watching, thinking what they do is silly works just fine. But if you’re involved—if you have some need to interact with or convince these people—as the scholar needs to convince her committee, and the political left wants to convince people to vote for candidates who align with the left—then that second version of the question is not going to help you get what you need.
If you need to communicate with people, and you want to get them to cooperate with you, there is great value in sincerely and openly asking “what are you thinking?” And there is great danger in the second version: “how could anyone be so silly as to think that?”
In the case of the scholar, it’s a little hard to dismiss her committee as silly, but taking them seriously is not quite enough to convince them that they should be on board with a project. It’s necessary to find out and understand what they are thinking so that you can create the necessary communicative bridges that will help them understand what you’re thinking. (As I write that, it occurs to me that if you’re thinking “what are they thinking?” about someone, they may well be thinking the same thing as you are—certainly the political right speaks of the political left as foolish/immoral/etc., which are flavors of “how could anyone be so silly to think that?”)
To communicate, and to persuade people to accept your way of thinking, you need to present to them ideas that make sense to them—and that means understanding what they think, so that you can suit your communication to their ideas.
If, for example, the scholar of my example wants her committee to accept her work she needs to convince them of its value (and the fact that other people find it valuable doesn’t help with that), and that means understanding what they value and framing your work with respect to ideas that they are already using. And then figuring out how to make some conceptual bridge to the ideas that you are using.
This can be particularly difficult if the ideas that you are using are radically different from the ideas that they are using. For the scholar, part of her struggle is getting her committee to accept her research methodology. In thinking about her situation, I was thinking about Thomas Kuhn’s Structure of Scientific Revolutions and his idea that different scientific paradigms are “incommensurable”—that is to say that there is no absolute, objective standard by which all paradigms can be measured—what makes sense in one paradigm doesn’t make sense in others. In the scholar’s case, one of the crucial structures of her research doesn’t really play any role in the research paradigms used by her committee—the question, then, is how to bring this structure into her dissertation in a way that her committee accepts it. Ultimately, I think that the route is through understanding and focusing on what the committee wants. Yes, it may be true that what they want doesn’t make sense from the scholar’s paradigm, but focusing on that difference in view doesn’t suggest a good strategy for moving forward. What does, is to look at what the committee thinks is important, and then use that to create as much common ground as possible—then, once the common ground has been created, it becomes easier to start to make a bridge to her own work—how can she frame her choices in terms of questions that the committee thinks important? How can the ideas that are important to the committee be used to explain the choices she made that led her work to diverge from their expected paradigm?
There’s another dynamic that can play a role, too: if you think “how can they be so silly to think that?" about someone with whom you interact, you’re likely to antagonize them. Recently, while reading articles that brought up the “voting against their own interest” idea, I have been flashing back to a popular song from my youth: The Suicidal Tendencies’ Institutionalized. The song relates interactions between child and parents, and near the end, the parents say “We’ve decided it’s in your best interest that…” And the song narrator cries “My best interest? How do you know what my best interest is?” Knowing what is in someone’s best interests is complicated—in the song, maybe the parents really do know their child’s interests, or maybe the parents are wrong. Regardless of what the song narrator’s best interests really are—whether the parents are right or the child—we can certainly say that most people, like the child in the song, will resent having someone else tell them what their best interests are. And that is especially true if they think that the other person/people doesn’t/don’t understand them. Politicians are not going to win voters by saying “I know what you want better than you do.” Politicians are more likely to win voters by saying “your interests are valuable; here’s my plan to address them.” Or, if possible, to shift people fro one set of ideas to another: “your interests are valuable, but here’s something else that might be valuable to you, too.” This second is what the scholar needs to do with her committee, certainly: she needs her dissertation to be able to say “here’s something you care about; I want to work on that problem because it’s something we both care about; But I am going to take a very different approach, so please give me a moment to explain why I’m taking this approach, even though it may not make sense to you at first glance.” If she can convince her committee that the problem she is working on is a problem that they care about, and get them to focus on that problem, then that focus on the problem can serve as the conceptual landmark that helps the committee orient themselves with respect to the unfamiliar ideas that the scholar needs them to accept in order to accept her thesis.
This is not the most focused post ever—there is more to be said than I want to write now—but I’ve already gone well over one thousand words, which is generally my target for blog posts, so I’m going to call it a wrap.
Tuesday, June 12, 2018
My problem with non-objectivist philosophies
Frequently, I quote from the opening verse of the Tao Te Ching: “the Tao that can be named is not the absolute Tao.” It’s an epistemological statement of limitation—a statement about our ability to know and communicate ideas—and one that reflects my understanding of our ability to know things. Knowledge, I believe, is not absolute. I do not, in short, accept the existence of “objective knowledge”—but that has implications for a scholar, philosopher, or researcher, and it becomes a problem.
Objective knowledge (if there is such a thing) is, by definition, true for everyone. That’s a great standard on which to drive a research agenda: “I’m going to discover something that everyone can agree upon!”
But if there is no objective knowledge—as generally asserted by post-modern and other philosophies (e.g., American Pragmatism, Hume's Skepticism, the Tao Te Ching)—what then prevents the slip of research into knowledge that is only meaningful for the individual? If there is no objective knowledge, what makes my work valuable to anyone else?
This is one of the struggles for non-objectivist scholars: on the one hand, the limitations of knowledge are made central to any argument, and on the other, there is a desire to do work that is meaningful and even useful to others.
A lot of research strives to serve important social goals, but if the work is only “true” for a select group of people and not for others, can that serve the larger social goal? This idea of being able to generalize is central to research methods, even those that accept limits to objective knowledge: the point of those methods are to give research work a foundation that others will accept, too.
For me, personally, I want to espouse ideas that will be “true” for everyone—ideas that any person would accept, given the evidence. When I write about issues in writing and research, I want to write things that help others, and that requires other people to be able to apply my ideas to their view of the world. But at the same time, one of the ideas that I write about is how ideas are limited, and how they are imperfect and uncertain, and that makes it difficult to make any claims.
So how to do I convince other people that my work has meaning and value to them? This is especially difficult when dealing with people who generally accept the idea of objective truth. After all, objective truth is a very comforting notion—even if the objective truth is unpleasant, it is, at least, certain and undeniable. A truth that is contingent on my limited knowledge and perspectives, on the other hand, is much more easily dismissed.
The problem, then, with non-objectivist philosophies, is how to convince others that they are meaningful and useful without resting on the idea that the claims are universally true.
My answer is generally driven by pragmatic concerns: because logical, certain proof is out of reach, and because I need to commit to something in writing (otherwise, I don’t write), I do my best. I accept what I accept for the best reasons that I can find and go from there.
On a certain level, that’s fine: personally, I’m ok making decisions in the face of uncertainty, and even though I’m sometimes wrong, I don’t belabor the decisions that were the best decisions I could make. But on another level, it’s a big problem if the audience doesn’t like what you have to say, or doesn’t accept what you have to say, especially if they want something certain—something solid that, if not objective, at least makes a claim to objectivity.
I don’t really have the answer to convincing a hostile audience. But I suppose on place to look is at your own concerns: what benefits might accrue from your research? If you suggest looking at some field of endeavor from a new perspective, what benefits could accrue? What can motivate interest in that view beyond just saying “here’s a different way of looking at things?” Focusing on benefits can reveal problems: if using a new perspective leads to doing things “better” in some way, that area of improvement could be viewed as a problem that you are addressing.
On advantage of focusing on benefits of a new idea is purely emotional for a writer—focusing on benefits keeps attention on the strong points of work, and helps sustain confidence.
I don’t have an answer for this. Without the anchor of objective certainty, how does one prevent the slippage towards ideas that are meaningful to the individual alone? If I am certain of anything, it is that there is no certain knowledge, but where does that lead me?
Somehow the scholar/philosopher/researcher who rejects objectivist philosophies needs to be able to make some claim that will convince their audience that their work is worth the time. But I’m not sure of the means of accomplishing this.
Objective knowledge (if there is such a thing) is, by definition, true for everyone. That’s a great standard on which to drive a research agenda: “I’m going to discover something that everyone can agree upon!”
But if there is no objective knowledge—as generally asserted by post-modern and other philosophies (e.g., American Pragmatism, Hume's Skepticism, the Tao Te Ching)—what then prevents the slip of research into knowledge that is only meaningful for the individual? If there is no objective knowledge, what makes my work valuable to anyone else?
This is one of the struggles for non-objectivist scholars: on the one hand, the limitations of knowledge are made central to any argument, and on the other, there is a desire to do work that is meaningful and even useful to others.
A lot of research strives to serve important social goals, but if the work is only “true” for a select group of people and not for others, can that serve the larger social goal? This idea of being able to generalize is central to research methods, even those that accept limits to objective knowledge: the point of those methods are to give research work a foundation that others will accept, too.
For me, personally, I want to espouse ideas that will be “true” for everyone—ideas that any person would accept, given the evidence. When I write about issues in writing and research, I want to write things that help others, and that requires other people to be able to apply my ideas to their view of the world. But at the same time, one of the ideas that I write about is how ideas are limited, and how they are imperfect and uncertain, and that makes it difficult to make any claims.
So how to do I convince other people that my work has meaning and value to them? This is especially difficult when dealing with people who generally accept the idea of objective truth. After all, objective truth is a very comforting notion—even if the objective truth is unpleasant, it is, at least, certain and undeniable. A truth that is contingent on my limited knowledge and perspectives, on the other hand, is much more easily dismissed.
The problem, then, with non-objectivist philosophies, is how to convince others that they are meaningful and useful without resting on the idea that the claims are universally true.
My answer is generally driven by pragmatic concerns: because logical, certain proof is out of reach, and because I need to commit to something in writing (otherwise, I don’t write), I do my best. I accept what I accept for the best reasons that I can find and go from there.
On a certain level, that’s fine: personally, I’m ok making decisions in the face of uncertainty, and even though I’m sometimes wrong, I don’t belabor the decisions that were the best decisions I could make. But on another level, it’s a big problem if the audience doesn’t like what you have to say, or doesn’t accept what you have to say, especially if they want something certain—something solid that, if not objective, at least makes a claim to objectivity.
I don’t really have the answer to convincing a hostile audience. But I suppose on place to look is at your own concerns: what benefits might accrue from your research? If you suggest looking at some field of endeavor from a new perspective, what benefits could accrue? What can motivate interest in that view beyond just saying “here’s a different way of looking at things?” Focusing on benefits can reveal problems: if using a new perspective leads to doing things “better” in some way, that area of improvement could be viewed as a problem that you are addressing.
On advantage of focusing on benefits of a new idea is purely emotional for a writer—focusing on benefits keeps attention on the strong points of work, and helps sustain confidence.
I don’t have an answer for this. Without the anchor of objective certainty, how does one prevent the slippage towards ideas that are meaningful to the individual alone? If I am certain of anything, it is that there is no certain knowledge, but where does that lead me?
Somehow the scholar/philosopher/researcher who rejects objectivist philosophies needs to be able to make some claim that will convince their audience that their work is worth the time. But I’m not sure of the means of accomplishing this.
Monday, June 4, 2018
At what point do you stop trying to improve your work?
I have a friend who is a songwriter and musician. He writes a lot of songs, and some of them are absolutely beautiful. We’ve been friends for nearly a decade, and in that time, he has not released a single album-length recording, and has released perhaps a handful of single tracks. I have a number of recordings that he has made, and when I hear them (I listen to my music library on “shuffle”), I never think “Boy, this needed more time in the studio.” What I think is “he worked on this years ago, and it was good enough to be released, but now he’s on to new projects, and this will never get released.” But, to my friend, there’s always a reason that it’s not ready.
Lately he’s been saying that he’s got things set up so that he will start finishing albums. But, to me, the recordings that he thinks are unfinished are already good as they are and all they need are packaging and promotion. In any event, I am very much hoping that he will actually finish and release some projects—it would certainly help his business to have recordings that he could sell.
Making the decision to stop working on a project is emotionally difficult but necessary.
Last night, I was at the creative writers’ group that I sometimes attend—I dabble with sci-fi/fantasy, but with my serious efforts directed towards two books on research writing to follow up my first dissertation book (Getting the Best of Your Dissertation)—and I got into a similar dynamic with one of the writers: pushing him to finish, while he said he was trying to make changes to improve it. At one of the first meetings I attended, he shared a draft of the last chapter of the first volume of the epic he’s writing. That was several months ago, and he’s still “knocking off rough edges,” while I’m pushing him to try to finish it, and make some moves to get it published (he’s planning on self-publishing on the Internet).
It’s not that I can’t see possibility to improve the work. It’s that I see greater desirability in finishing a work and moving on to the next. It’s always tempting to try to improve on the weaknesses that you can see in your own work, but is that always a good choice?
One way I view his work is through the lens of what I could imagine doing better. I understand that he is viewing his work through that lens—it makes sense; it’s what leads to writing well and improving.
But another way I view his work is through the lens of what will help him become a better and more successful writer. And through that lens, I think he’ll learn more, produce better work, and possibly even earn a few bucks, if he stops trying to improve his work, and starts going through the steps to actually get his work self-published. Maybe it’s worth proofreading, but trying to make changes to make the work better? I think that’s not the most productive use of his time and effort.
And yet another way that I view his work is through the lens of how his work compares to other stuff—especially to the worst stuff I’ve read. His work does not compare favorably to my absolute favorites, but that’s a pretty stringent standard. If I think about all the things I’ve read, though, his work appears in a different light. I’ve read some really lousy writing. I’ve read some lousy writing from authors who have had many books published and who have followings. Compared to these writers, suddenly his works shows as a totally viable project comparable or superior in quality to many.
During the writers’ group meeting, this author and another member were talking about a movie they had both seen and that they both thought was poorly written. If you see enough movies or read enough books, you’re going to be in a position to say “this one is better and that one is worse.” It’s easy to do. And in criticizing those relatively weak works, it’s worth remembering that they were published (which is how you saw them).
When writing (or working on another creative process), it’s easy to get focused on the work and on what you’d like to do better. Trying to improve your work is good. But there is no clear-cut criteria by which you can be certain that you have done enough. So, at what point do you stop trying to improve the work?
People can get stuck trying to improve their work. To break out of that trap, finding some outside criteria for comparison is useful. When are you going to stop working, and take steps to have the work become more public? If you have been working on a project for a long time, and you don’t have someone to give you feedback, ask yourself how your work compares to some of the worst examples of what you’re doing—such a comparison might give you confidence to move forward and share your work with more people.
Lately he’s been saying that he’s got things set up so that he will start finishing albums. But, to me, the recordings that he thinks are unfinished are already good as they are and all they need are packaging and promotion. In any event, I am very much hoping that he will actually finish and release some projects—it would certainly help his business to have recordings that he could sell.
Making the decision to stop working on a project is emotionally difficult but necessary.
Last night, I was at the creative writers’ group that I sometimes attend—I dabble with sci-fi/fantasy, but with my serious efforts directed towards two books on research writing to follow up my first dissertation book (Getting the Best of Your Dissertation)—and I got into a similar dynamic with one of the writers: pushing him to finish, while he said he was trying to make changes to improve it. At one of the first meetings I attended, he shared a draft of the last chapter of the first volume of the epic he’s writing. That was several months ago, and he’s still “knocking off rough edges,” while I’m pushing him to try to finish it, and make some moves to get it published (he’s planning on self-publishing on the Internet).
It’s not that I can’t see possibility to improve the work. It’s that I see greater desirability in finishing a work and moving on to the next. It’s always tempting to try to improve on the weaknesses that you can see in your own work, but is that always a good choice?
One way I view his work is through the lens of what I could imagine doing better. I understand that he is viewing his work through that lens—it makes sense; it’s what leads to writing well and improving.
But another way I view his work is through the lens of what will help him become a better and more successful writer. And through that lens, I think he’ll learn more, produce better work, and possibly even earn a few bucks, if he stops trying to improve his work, and starts going through the steps to actually get his work self-published. Maybe it’s worth proofreading, but trying to make changes to make the work better? I think that’s not the most productive use of his time and effort.
And yet another way that I view his work is through the lens of how his work compares to other stuff—especially to the worst stuff I’ve read. His work does not compare favorably to my absolute favorites, but that’s a pretty stringent standard. If I think about all the things I’ve read, though, his work appears in a different light. I’ve read some really lousy writing. I’ve read some lousy writing from authors who have had many books published and who have followings. Compared to these writers, suddenly his works shows as a totally viable project comparable or superior in quality to many.
During the writers’ group meeting, this author and another member were talking about a movie they had both seen and that they both thought was poorly written. If you see enough movies or read enough books, you’re going to be in a position to say “this one is better and that one is worse.” It’s easy to do. And in criticizing those relatively weak works, it’s worth remembering that they were published (which is how you saw them).
When writing (or working on another creative process), it’s easy to get focused on the work and on what you’d like to do better. Trying to improve your work is good. But there is no clear-cut criteria by which you can be certain that you have done enough. So, at what point do you stop trying to improve the work?
People can get stuck trying to improve their work. To break out of that trap, finding some outside criteria for comparison is useful. When are you going to stop working, and take steps to have the work become more public? If you have been working on a project for a long time, and you don’t have someone to give you feedback, ask yourself how your work compares to some of the worst examples of what you’re doing—such a comparison might give you confidence to move forward and share your work with more people.
Friday, June 1, 2018
Beware false equivalency: The difference between recent statements by Samantha Bee and Roseanne Barr
To think clearly, to understand the world, to make good decisions, it is important to be careful not to conflate things that are unlike. If two things are really equal, then we want to respond to them equally. And if two things are distinct, we want to respond to those differences. Assuming that two things are similar because they have one point of similarity is poor reasoning and can lead to problems and injustices.
I am motivated to this discussion because of the false equivalence that is being drawn between Roseanne Barr’s tweet about Valerie Jarrett and Samantha Bee’s comments about Ivanka Trump. The two comedians should be treated differently because their actions were radically different. Both Bee and Barr insulted someone, but not all insults are equal. In the Bee vs. Barr comparison, there are at least five important points of difference:
1. Context
Bee was delivering a comic monologue—a format known for pushing against the boundaries of acceptable discourse.
Barr was making a tweet in response to someone else’s complaint about Jarret—a format in which the terms of service explicitly forbid insulting and harassing speech.
2. Truth/Accuracy
Bee called Ivanka a “feckless cunt.” While it may be debatable whether these terms apply to Ivanka, they are not categorically false.
Barr associated Jarrett with the Muslim Brotherhood, a connection that has no basis in reality, but is part of the on-going right-wing attempt to portray the Obama administration as Muslim infiltration of America. Associating Jarrett with the Muslim Brotherhood is categorically false.
3. Misogyny, racism and speaker
Bee, a woman, used a term that can be viewed as misogynistic. It may be wrong for women to use misogynistic terms, but, in the same way that members of a racial group can use derogatory terms for their own group, women can use misogynistic terms. African Americans who use the n-word cannot be censured for racism in the same way the white people using the n-word can. Bee used a term that could be considered misogynistic, but being a woman, Bee is not clearly being misogynistic. (And Bee’s history does not suggest she is a misogynist.)
Barr, a white woman, used a common racist trope to demean Blacks—that of comparing a Black person to an ape, suggesting that the Black is less human, less evolved. Barr is not a member of the group she was insulting. Had a Black person made Barr’s tweet, it would have been received differently (although for the other reasons mentioned in this post, it would still have been less acceptable). Barr made a comment that could be considered racist, and as Barr is not Black, she cannot be given the benefit of a doubt about her racism. (And her history certainly suggests a fair share of racism.)
4. Crudity vs. Bigoted Stereotypes
Bee was crude. She was not misogynistic. It would be quite surprising for a media company to fire someone for crudity, especially a comedian, given that crudity is a standard part of comedy.
Barr was racist (but not crude). It is not at all surprising that a media company would want to fire someone for racism, because media companies don’t want to alienate massive segments of the population.
5. Behavior vs. Personal characteristics
Bee insulted Ivanka for her behavior—for speaking about how important families are, for example, while completely supporting her father’s administration which is, among other unpleasant behavior, separating children from their parents to punish the parents for trying to enter the U.S. Ivanka has a choice in how she acts, what she posts to social media, and what she says and does about her father. Ivanka, like any adult, should be open to criticism for her behavior: if Ivanka wants to talk about how important families are while also supporting policies that rip families apart, she (and any administration official) can be criticized for that inconsistency of her behavior. *(Just as we can criticize both Barr and Bee for their behavior.)
Barr, by contrast, insulted Jarrett’s personal characteristics (or at least tried to do so). Saying someone is an ape (or like an ape, or descended from Planet of the Apes) is not referring to anything the person did, but rather is merely drawing on well-worn racist tropes, and, as Barr herself noted, insults a person’s appearance (Barr said she was making a joke about Jarrett’s looks).
To summarize these five important differences:
1. Bee was in a context where crude language is appropriate; Barr was in a context where her comments were inappropriate.
2. Bee made an arguably true claim—an opinion; Barr made a demonstrably false claim.
3. Bee used a term that could be considered insulting to a group to which she belongs; Barr used an idea that could be considered insulting to a group to which she does not belong.
4. Bee was crude but not bigoted; Barr was bigoted.
5. Bee criticized Ivanka for things Ivanka does; Barr insulted Jarret for her appearance and race (and, falsely, her religion).
A final point that should not be relevant to whether Bee or Barr keep their jobs: It should also be noted that Ivanka Trump is a member of her father’s administration—she is a government official. The Constitution's First Amendment is specifically designed to protect those who make critical statements about the government and the actions of government officials. Bee’s comments are exactly the kind of statement the First Amendment is supposed to protect. Barr’s statement is not concerned with the behavior of the government or a government official—it’s just racist insult, not criticism of action. Barr’s statement does not warrant the same legal protection that Bee’s does. But if the Constitution of the U.S. is important to you, then you might view the two insults in this light: one is what the First Amendment is meant to protect, the other is not. Political discourse and personal insults are different things--Bee was engaged in the first, Barr in the second.
I am motivated to this discussion because of the false equivalence that is being drawn between Roseanne Barr’s tweet about Valerie Jarrett and Samantha Bee’s comments about Ivanka Trump. The two comedians should be treated differently because their actions were radically different. Both Bee and Barr insulted someone, but not all insults are equal. In the Bee vs. Barr comparison, there are at least five important points of difference:
1. Context
Bee was delivering a comic monologue—a format known for pushing against the boundaries of acceptable discourse.
Barr was making a tweet in response to someone else’s complaint about Jarret—a format in which the terms of service explicitly forbid insulting and harassing speech.
2. Truth/Accuracy
Bee called Ivanka a “feckless cunt.” While it may be debatable whether these terms apply to Ivanka, they are not categorically false.
Barr associated Jarrett with the Muslim Brotherhood, a connection that has no basis in reality, but is part of the on-going right-wing attempt to portray the Obama administration as Muslim infiltration of America. Associating Jarrett with the Muslim Brotherhood is categorically false.
3. Misogyny, racism and speaker
Bee, a woman, used a term that can be viewed as misogynistic. It may be wrong for women to use misogynistic terms, but, in the same way that members of a racial group can use derogatory terms for their own group, women can use misogynistic terms. African Americans who use the n-word cannot be censured for racism in the same way the white people using the n-word can. Bee used a term that could be considered misogynistic, but being a woman, Bee is not clearly being misogynistic. (And Bee’s history does not suggest she is a misogynist.)
Barr, a white woman, used a common racist trope to demean Blacks—that of comparing a Black person to an ape, suggesting that the Black is less human, less evolved. Barr is not a member of the group she was insulting. Had a Black person made Barr’s tweet, it would have been received differently (although for the other reasons mentioned in this post, it would still have been less acceptable). Barr made a comment that could be considered racist, and as Barr is not Black, she cannot be given the benefit of a doubt about her racism. (And her history certainly suggests a fair share of racism.)
4. Crudity vs. Bigoted Stereotypes
Bee was crude. She was not misogynistic. It would be quite surprising for a media company to fire someone for crudity, especially a comedian, given that crudity is a standard part of comedy.
Barr was racist (but not crude). It is not at all surprising that a media company would want to fire someone for racism, because media companies don’t want to alienate massive segments of the population.
5. Behavior vs. Personal characteristics
Bee insulted Ivanka for her behavior—for speaking about how important families are, for example, while completely supporting her father’s administration which is, among other unpleasant behavior, separating children from their parents to punish the parents for trying to enter the U.S. Ivanka has a choice in how she acts, what she posts to social media, and what she says and does about her father. Ivanka, like any adult, should be open to criticism for her behavior: if Ivanka wants to talk about how important families are while also supporting policies that rip families apart, she (and any administration official) can be criticized for that inconsistency of her behavior. *(Just as we can criticize both Barr and Bee for their behavior.)
Barr, by contrast, insulted Jarrett’s personal characteristics (or at least tried to do so). Saying someone is an ape (or like an ape, or descended from Planet of the Apes) is not referring to anything the person did, but rather is merely drawing on well-worn racist tropes, and, as Barr herself noted, insults a person’s appearance (Barr said she was making a joke about Jarrett’s looks).
To summarize these five important differences:
1. Bee was in a context where crude language is appropriate; Barr was in a context where her comments were inappropriate.
2. Bee made an arguably true claim—an opinion; Barr made a demonstrably false claim.
3. Bee used a term that could be considered insulting to a group to which she belongs; Barr used an idea that could be considered insulting to a group to which she does not belong.
4. Bee was crude but not bigoted; Barr was bigoted.
5. Bee criticized Ivanka for things Ivanka does; Barr insulted Jarret for her appearance and race (and, falsely, her religion).
A final point that should not be relevant to whether Bee or Barr keep their jobs: It should also be noted that Ivanka Trump is a member of her father’s administration—she is a government official. The Constitution's First Amendment is specifically designed to protect those who make critical statements about the government and the actions of government officials. Bee’s comments are exactly the kind of statement the First Amendment is supposed to protect. Barr’s statement is not concerned with the behavior of the government or a government official—it’s just racist insult, not criticism of action. Barr’s statement does not warrant the same legal protection that Bee’s does. But if the Constitution of the U.S. is important to you, then you might view the two insults in this light: one is what the First Amendment is meant to protect, the other is not. Political discourse and personal insults are different things--Bee was engaged in the first, Barr in the second.
Monday, May 28, 2018
Emotion, reason, and LeBron James
This is a follow up on last week’s post about unresolvable questions in which I discussed evaluating basketball players and LeBron James, in particular.
After the Cavaliers’s win last night, James has once again led a team to the NBA Finals—this for the 8th straight year. This adds to his impressive resume and his claim to be greatest of all time (GOAT). In my previous post, I argued that questions like “who is greater: James or Jordan?” were unresolvable.
At the same time, winning the conference finals 8 times in a row is—well, if Jordan had chosen to continue playing basketball instead of trying baseball, maybe he could have matched that feat. Perhaps Jordan was the more talented, but maybe those 8 straight trips to the Finals is the more impressive career? This also reveals two dimensions of evaluation I didn’t discuss in my previous post: the difference between potential and achievement.
But this is not about multidimensionality, but about the way that emotion can influence reasoning. To what extent is evaluation affected by emotions? There is a plenty of actual empirical data on how emotions do influence reasoning (see, for example, the idea of “reactive devaluation”), but I’m just going to focus on one particular influence on evaluation.
This morning, I stopped at a cafe, and the music playing was music that was new and that I had loved when I was in high school and college. A lot of that music still seems particularly excellent to me. Rationally, it makes no sense to me to suggest that the best musicians ever were all performing their best music in the first twenty years or so of my musical memory. But it often seems that way. Those songs were emotively impactful to me when the whole world was new. Music that is new to me today is often simply unable to catch my attention because I have so many other things in mind.
To what extent is this true for evaluating basketball players? Jordan was one of the great stars of that same period—high school/college—Jordan trying to take the mantle of greatness from Bird and Magic. I don’t really remember the greatness of Kareem, though I remember his long and productive post-peak career. Do I have a propensity to overrate Jordan in the same way that I have a propensity to overrate the music of my youth? The baseball writer Bill James included a repeated item in his Historical Baseball Abstract in which, for each decade, he quoted old ballplayers saying some variation of “they ain’t as great as when I was young.”
Will those who are in high school and college today—people too young to have watched Jordan’s great games live—will they be predisposed to consider James the greatest ever because he was the player who amazed them when the world was still new? And will there be a debate 20 years from now about whether some new player is greater than James (with Jordan having receded into the past)?
The decision-making process includes emotional elements that shape our reasoning. If we’re called upon to make a quick choice, the emotional factors are likely to be the deciding factors when complex decisions must be made because the complexity of carefully reasoned evaluation tends to defy answers.
After the Cavaliers’s win last night, James has once again led a team to the NBA Finals—this for the 8th straight year. This adds to his impressive resume and his claim to be greatest of all time (GOAT). In my previous post, I argued that questions like “who is greater: James or Jordan?” were unresolvable.
At the same time, winning the conference finals 8 times in a row is—well, if Jordan had chosen to continue playing basketball instead of trying baseball, maybe he could have matched that feat. Perhaps Jordan was the more talented, but maybe those 8 straight trips to the Finals is the more impressive career? This also reveals two dimensions of evaluation I didn’t discuss in my previous post: the difference between potential and achievement.
But this is not about multidimensionality, but about the way that emotion can influence reasoning. To what extent is evaluation affected by emotions? There is a plenty of actual empirical data on how emotions do influence reasoning (see, for example, the idea of “reactive devaluation”), but I’m just going to focus on one particular influence on evaluation.
This morning, I stopped at a cafe, and the music playing was music that was new and that I had loved when I was in high school and college. A lot of that music still seems particularly excellent to me. Rationally, it makes no sense to me to suggest that the best musicians ever were all performing their best music in the first twenty years or so of my musical memory. But it often seems that way. Those songs were emotively impactful to me when the whole world was new. Music that is new to me today is often simply unable to catch my attention because I have so many other things in mind.
To what extent is this true for evaluating basketball players? Jordan was one of the great stars of that same period—high school/college—Jordan trying to take the mantle of greatness from Bird and Magic. I don’t really remember the greatness of Kareem, though I remember his long and productive post-peak career. Do I have a propensity to overrate Jordan in the same way that I have a propensity to overrate the music of my youth? The baseball writer Bill James included a repeated item in his Historical Baseball Abstract in which, for each decade, he quoted old ballplayers saying some variation of “they ain’t as great as when I was young.”
Will those who are in high school and college today—people too young to have watched Jordan’s great games live—will they be predisposed to consider James the greatest ever because he was the player who amazed them when the world was still new? And will there be a debate 20 years from now about whether some new player is greater than James (with Jordan having receded into the past)?
The decision-making process includes emotional elements that shape our reasoning. If we’re called upon to make a quick choice, the emotional factors are likely to be the deciding factors when complex decisions must be made because the complexity of carefully reasoned evaluation tends to defy answers.
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