I have been participating in discussion boards in the Internet since the late 1980s. Over the years, I have tired of the endless, mindless, vicious babble that dominates the vast majority of boards. However, I have found a few that are populated by reasonably intelligent people, and I participate in these discussions. Here are a few of my better contributions to these boards.
Native American Commission
This was in response to an essay advocating a kind of “truth and reconciliation commission” for the boarding schools for Native American children, which were well-meaning but ultimately destructive attempts to help Native Americans integrate into mainstream American society.
There are two broad categories of memorial days: those that memorialize important historical events or people, and those that honor groups, or ideas. For example, yesterday was National Coaches Day, National Noodle Day, National Plus Size Appreciation Day, World Cerebral Palsy Day, National Walk and Bike to School Day, World Financial Planning Day, and Random Acts of Poetry Day. This latter group regularly expands because it costs nothing for legislators to declare such days yet they please an interest group. Indigenous People’s Day falls in this latter category. It flatters indigenous people without actually doing anything.
Proponents of Indigenous People’s Day blunder when attacking Columbus Day. This day celebrates an immensely important event in the history of Western civilization. By insulting Columbus Day, indigenous people insult Western civilization. The mistake here is that the society in which they live identifies itself as the leader of Western civilization. Spitting in the faces of those more powerful than you is not a prudent way to advance your own interests.
Putting Indigenous People’s Day on the same day as Columbus Day is another blunder: it clearly creates a competition between the two, a competition that indigenous people are certain to lose. Much smarter would have been to place Indigenous People’s Day immediately after Columbus, to serve as a reminder of the destruction of indigenous people subsequent to the Western colonization of the Western Hemisphere.
A third blunder is the assertion that Columbus did not discover America. From the point of view of Western civilization, Columbus did indeed discover America. From the point of view of indigenous people, he did not. By asserting that the point of view of indigenous people is the correct point of view, advocates declare the superiority of their own point of view. This is certainly a good way to bolster their own self-confidence, but serves only to antagonize the vastly larger portion of the population that identifies as Western. A more diplomatic approach would be to pass over the subject in silence.
The objection might be raised that the suggestions I offer serve only to cement the subservience of indigenous culture to Western culture. This objection ignores the fact that indigenous culture has been subservient to Western culture for well over a century. Native American culture was crushed by Western culture. That is the historical reality.
The tragedy of indigenous peoples stems from the failure of American politicians to grasp a fundamental truth of history: there is no case in all of human history of two separate cultures co-existing in the same region. The closest we have come to this ideal has been the notion of “quarters” in cities, where different groups could co-exist. However, such arrangements were always under the control of the dominant culture, and the separate quarters were always strongly demarcated, sometimes even walled off. The minority cultures always existed at the sufferance of the majority culture, and always suffered from imposed discrimination.
American politicians tried to square the circle with the reservation system, which served only to isolate Native Americans in huge ghettos. Far better, in the long run, would have been the elimination of the reservations and the scattering of Native Americans among the general population. Yes, this would have destroyed Native American culture, but it would have also integrated Native Americans into American society. Native Americans would have joined the Schultzes, the Toussaints, the Riccis, and other groups in joining American society.
Separatism doesn’t work. Native Americans who pursue separatist strategies do a disservice to their people.
Interestingly, the moderators of the board saw something objectionable in this comment and deleted it. However, they accepted an expurgated version of it. I think that it was the last sentence that they found offensive.
Women in Science
This was an article complaining that Nobel Prizes go mostly to white males.
I do tire of the endless discussions of bias against women in the sciences, but not for the reasons you might expect. My objection is that there are other forces at work, forces that are routinely ignored.
Let's take the simplest example: the bias in the Nobel Prizes for science. These prizes are never awarded early in a scientist's life; some have been awarded for work done fifty years earlier. Our efforts to improve the standing of women in science have only picked up speed in the last few decades; we should not expect women to start racking up Nobel Prizes for a little while more. They've started winning, but we should not expect numerical equality in Nobel Prizes until decades after we have achieved numerical equality in representation.
A second factor at work is the well-established difference in cognitive performance of males and females in social intelligence. Females are stronger at social intelligence than males. This tends to direct them to fields such as teaching that utilize their cognitive advantage. Science requires almost nothing in the way of social intelligence, so it does not attract as many women.
The other side of this coin is that science attracts men who are particularly weak at social intelligence. Having been trained in physics and astronomy, I've known a lot of scientists and I can testify, based on a fairly large sample size, that scientists are social clods. These guys mean well, but, in the words of so many women, "They just don't get it." As a result, they ignorantly stomp all over the feelings of young women like oafs wearing clodhoppers at a barn dance.
Add to this the intrinsic lack of self-confidence of young women. Actually, it's not so much a lack of self-confidence on their part as a surfeit of self-confidence on the part of their male competitors. Millions of years of sexual selection have produced males who, in order to attract females, attempt grand demonstrations of personal excellence. Often this is self-destructive, as is the case with young males driving too fast, engaging in extreme sports, or all manner of other testosterone-driven foolishness. But often this enables young men to charge into life willing to take on any challenge. A reasonable person, unpoisoned by testosterone (e.g., a female) would find the challenges of early adulthood intimidating, and behaves accordingly. This often leads to female imposter syndrome.
My wife suffered from this in her first engineering job. For the first few weeks in the job, she was certain that somebody would come to her desk, tap her on the shoulder, and tell her "It's OK; we know who you really are; you can go home now."
I have spent decades trying to help young women advance in their careers, and over and over I find this obstacle blocking their path. I once helped a young woman who was setting up a complicated arrangement of equipment to carry out an experiment. The PI (Principal Investigator: the boss) had told her how to do it. She worked on his design, but it didn't work well. So she re-arranged the equipment to function better. Shortly thereafter, the PI came by, examined her work, and chastised her for not following instructions. She did not explain why he was wrong and she was right; she obediently re-arranged it so that it conformed to his requirements. I was dismayed and had a long talk with her afterwards.
A fourth factor, harder to nail down, is male drive versus female drive. A male cannot achieve the most fundamental goal of his existence -- reproduction -- without attracting a female. Just as with male birds, this requires the achievement of something spectacular, but bright feathers alone don't do the job with human females. In order to gain reproductive capacity, males must make some impressive achievement demonstrating their talent. This instills in males a harsh drive to accomplish. Females lack this drive; they don't need to impress anybody to reproduce. Their task is to select the ideal candidate for reproduction, usually a male with a good combination of physical genetic quality and ability to provide resources for children. (This can get VERY complicated!)
Thus, young women entering adult life find themselves in competition with males at the peak of their sexual drive, males obsessed with the need to triumph in their chosen field. In such competitions, the female usually comes out second-best.
I once new a bright young lady who showed lots of promise. She obtained a doctorate in a scientific field and set out on her career as a scientist. But the intense competition in her field was more than she could handle. She was unwilling to subordinate her life goals to the single goal of success as a scientist. She failed to find an appropriate position; she ended up in a teaching position at a small college where she could not carry out research. Her career path did not match her brilliance. Today she is ground-down, surviving but not thriving. I don't blame bias for her failures -- I blame the brutally competitive character of most scientific fields.
I have known women who have been successful in their careers: an astronaut, several professors, some lawyers, and a number of successful businesswomen. All of these women made sacrifices in their lives to achieve their goals. None of these women were handicapped by self-doubt. But dammit, such women are few and far between.
The corrective actions required to take full advantage of the pool of female talent will involve much more than the policies proposed here, good as those policies are. We need to recognize some fundamental psychological forces at work and work WITH them, rather than against them. In particular, how can we evaluate young people using longer-term considerations than are now used in the sciences? The talents that distinguish a young male scientist do not necessarily indicate long-term potential; the world is full of middle-aged nothing-burger scientists who shone brightly in their twenties. We need to learn how to discern true long-term talent, which may involve the social intelligence to inspire and lead others.
Abstraction
This was a response to a discussion of the role of AI in creating music.
Abstraction reduces a range of similar ideas to a single, more compact idea. For example, the word “chair” is an abstraction of many objects that we deem to be similar in some fashion. Some of these objects, such as a beanbag chair, strain the abstraction, but we still accept it as a chair – or at least, most of us do.
Abstractions can address different ranges of objects or events. For example, the abstraction expressed in the word “watermelon” covers a small range of objects; by contrast, the abstraction expressed in the word “food” covers a much larger range of objects.
Thus, there are degrees of abstraction. “Watermelon” represents a low degree of abstraction; “food” expresses a higher range of abstraction.
As we age and learn more about the world, we develop higher and higher levels of abstraction; one such collection of abstractions we call “wisdom”, but there are other manifestations of extremely high levels of abstraction.
This AI project abstracts Beethoven’s music at a low level. The project teaches us some principles of how to abstract music. Beethoven knew those principles, and many even grander abstractions, intuitively – that was his genius. By lots of trial and error, we should be able to teach AI to learn higher-level abstractions.
So, can AI ever be creative in a fashion we find worthy of our respect? I am torn over this question. The grandest levels of creativity entail abstractions ranging over huge expanses of human experience. Consider how Beethoven’s Sixth Symphony abstracts notions of our syntony with nature in musical form. Those abstractions are based on vast knowledge of musical form, but also human experience of being in nature as well as human experience of NOT being in nature. I am dubious that computers will ever be able to build abstractions based on the combination of the feeling of the warmth of the sun on your skin, the twittering of birds, the exuberance of life in a spring meadow, and the colors of wildflowers. So, no, I do not believe that computers will ever rival the creativity of our great artists. But we can learn a lot by trying. What’s a heaven for?
Segregation versus Separatism
This piece was a response to an essay arguing that more money should be spent to help blacks escape from the trap of poverty in which they find themselves:
Once again I will argue that the problem is not segregation but separatism, that the animus some white people feel towards black people is motivated by xenophobia, not racism.
We have mountains of evidence that, while racism continues to a significant degree in American society, it is not a primary factor in the sufferings of black people. First, we have seen Americans showing great tolerance towards all other ethnicities and religions. Even Moslems, who are identified in some minds with terrorism, are treated fairly by the great majority of Americans – although a few asses can make life hard for Moslems.
More important, we have a huge list of very successful black people. We should not underestimate the importance of the fact that Americans elected a black man to the Presidency, then re-elected him. This proves that a majority of Americans are not racist. Yes, racism exists, but it is definitely not a majority component of American culture. The continuing success of black actors, entertainers, entrepreneurs, scientists, and engineers proves that racism is not a significant factor in the success of some blacks.
If, however, we can put our finger on the factor that differentiates successful blacks from unsuccessful blacks, we could make great progress in reducing the injustices visited upon blacks. I claim that black separatism is that factor. In effect, some blacks decide that they are Americans first and blacks second. They consider themselves part of the American culture, and behave accordingly. They speak common American English, they dress like most Americans, and they share most common American values. As a result, many of these people enjoy successful American lives.
On the other hand we have black cultural separatists. They embrace a separatist culture that takes pride in its differentiation from American culture. They are blacks first and Americans secondarily. They speak a different dialect of English; they dress in a manner identifying them as blacks. They coif their hair in unique fashion.
It is understandable that a person would rather be an excellent black than a low-quality American; the desire to associate with persons of similar culture is natural. Consider the fact that powerful gangs are a feature of lower-class black and Hispanic populations. When you’re at the bottom of society, your need for protective social groups is overwhelming.
These tendencies, while they are human universals, are the root cause of the injustices that blacks suffer. Many blacks are caught in a self-destructive cultural trap in which they prominently reject the culture that they cannot succeed in. In so doing, they cut themselves off from that culture and insure that they have no chance of succeeding in that culture. Their only path to success is through behaviors that American culture deems to be criminal.
The problem is most glaring – and most revealing – in interactions between police and blacks. The black perception is that police, as the enforcers of American culture, are the enemy imposing an alien culture upon them. This motivates many blacks to approach police in a hostile manner – a grossly stupid tactic. I have watched many heartbreaking videos of black interactions with police, in which unnecessary hostility triggers overreactions from the police that always end up with the black person being shot. It’s intensely frustrating watching these tragedies, hoping that one side or the other will de-escalate the situation, but it’s almost never the black person who de-escalates.
This analysis suggests that an especially constructive strategy is for black leaders to actively discourage cultural separatism. They should deride the use of black dialect, black attire, and black hairstyles. This would be a very tricky balancing act, for it would also demoralize a goodly segment of the black population. In all honesty, I don’t know how to manage that balancing act. I do know, however, that the only long-term strategy for bringing blacks into American society is to induce them to WANT to be part of American society.
Art History Professor Complains About AI
This is my response to an essay by an art history professor complaining that AI people were invading art with lots of ignorant hype and that journalists were publishing too many stories about this.
What?!?!?!?! Do you mean to say that journalism simplifies complex issues and emphasizes their sensational aspects?!??! That material written for the hoi polloi does not communicate the depth and subtlety of the academic literature?? I am shocked -- SHOCKED! -- to discover this horrifying truth. 😛
I caution the author to rein in the jealousy pervading the essay. Yes, the sciences get more money than the arts. That's because the sciences generate a lot more money than the arts. Everybody wants other people's money; the science people get more of it because they do things that generate more material wealth for society. Is that not meet?
Of course, there's another factor at work here, first pointed out by C.P. Snow's "Two Cultures" concept sixty years ago. A century ago, the arts & humanities were not so segregated from science & engineering, but the stupendous explosion of intellectual exploration has generated so much specialization that physics is now as remote from chemistry as it was from poetry 150 years ago.
I will also chide the author for her snotty attitude towards the use of AI in the arts. Sure, they're doing lots of stupid things, and sure, there's lots more hype than results from this work. What do you expect? It's a new field of study, and new fields always generate hype. 70 years ago, the world was full of hype over atomic energy, with promises of nuclear-powered cars and airplanes, electricity "too cheap to meter", and talk of "The Atomic Age". Nowadays, we've gotten a better appreciation of what really can and can't be done with nuclear energy, and you don't see that kind of hype any more.
Back in the 19th century, "electricity" was the hyped technology. Why, electricity in the form of lightning could bring to life a human composed of stitched-together body parts! At the end of the nineteenth century, X-rays were hot, hot, hot. We'd be able to look through women's clothing to see them naked! Nothing would be secret any more!
AI will not revolutionize art history. It does offer some interesting new ways of thinking about art history and it will find its useful place as one more tool in the art historian's toolkit. X-ray imaging was another scientific "invasion" into art history, and it too was hyped, but now it's an accepted part of the field.
Now, however, I will offer my harshest criticism. C.P. Snow was right in warning the world that the segregation of artists and scientists was a dangerous trend, for science grants us power but art confers the wisdom to exercise that power effectively. Yet scientists deride art and artists dismiss science. Most engineering people I know think of Star Wars as art. Most art people I know couldn't tell the difference between a quadratic equation and a kumquat.
My chosen field of work is in interactive storytelling, the extension of computer games into the field of drama. I was trained as a physicist but for the last forty years I have been struggling to understand art. Along the way I have tried to convince people on both sides of C.P. Snow's divide to learn about the other side, and I have utterly failed in my efforts. The engineering people just don't "get" art, and don't care. After all, they can make a living producing the same old games over and over. The arts people flatly refuse to even consider the use of mathematics in their work. But mathematics is a powerful language for understanding aspects of the world otherwise invisible to human cognition.
Ignore the hypesters. Jump into the intersection of AI and art history, and help guide it in useful directions. Bitching and moaning about ignorant people is feckless.
Cultural Diversity
This is my response to an essay about the importance of cultural diversity.
Yes, America is certainly the most open to cultural diversity. But American cultural tolerance is based on the assumption of eventual assimilation. For example, when the Irish first immigrated in large numbers during the famine, they were despised and abused. Over the decades, however, they assimilated into the mainstream American culture. They retained some symbolic elements of their culture – most in St. Patrick’s Day and Catholicism – but nowadays it’s well-nigh impossible to differentiate a person of Irish descent from the mainstream of the American population.
The same thing has happened with many other cultures: Chinese, Japanese, Jewish, Mormons, Russians, Asian Indians, Greeks, Italians, and so on. We have one cultural group, the Hispanics, that are in the process of assimilating just now, and there’s less animosity directed toward them than we see to blacks and Native Americans.
The problem here is that many blacks and Native Americans refuse to assimilate; they prefer to retain a separate cultural identity. In the case of blacks, we see the creation of many cultural identifiers that permit them to prominently declare their refusal to assimilate. This, not racism, is the cause of cultural conflict between mainstream American culture and black culture. The proof that racism is not the driving factor is the fact that the majority of Americans voted for a black candidate for President, and that we have seen many successful blacks. The salient point is that the successful blacks have all assimilated. If we had only audio recordings to identify people, we would not be able to identify Mr. Obama, Ms, Winfrey, Mr. deGrasse Tyson, or any of hundreds of other prominent blacks as black. They are culturally and behaviorally mainstream American.
Native Americans are not as belligerent about their cultural independence from mainstream American culture, but they refuse to assimilate. They feel so strongly about this that two Native American authors here on The Conversation demanded that one of my comments be deleted because I criticized (in entirely civil terms) the upbringing of Native American children outside of the American mainstream culture. I pointed out that this constituted a subordination of the interests of the children to the interests of the Native American culture. This point cut too hard for the authors to tolerate.
Other cultures have had occasion to deal with culturally distinct populations occupying the same territory. Most of the time, these cultural divides ultimately led to violent conflict and the expulsion of one group. The only long-term solution was to wall off minority groups in separate communities: the “Christian quarter” in Muslim cities, the Armenian Quarter in Jerusalem, the Jewish ghetto in Warsaw, and so on. Native Americans have in effect walled themselves off from the rest of America, and this has served all sides well in terms of preventing conflict. But this does not serve the interests of young Native Americans.