In case you haven't heard, a superstar Harvard scientist has been found responsible for research misconduct, possibly including fabrication of data, and leading to a key journal article being retracted. Rather than being some minor fudge that can be easily set straight, the comments from those in the field -- primate cognition -- make it sound like an entire edifice could crumble. How could just one bad apple spoil the bunch?
The answer comes from Nassim Taleb's view on the fragility vs. robustness of complex systems, and the accelerating per unit costs of correcting harms as those harms get bigger. Go to his webpage and read around, or listen to his podcast at EconTalk, or read the afterword to the paperback edition of The Black Swan. The ideas are spread throughout. Here's how it works in this case:
With the advent of the modern research university, work on a given research problem gets concentrated into fewer and fewer hands as academics over-over-over-specialize. Before, they were generalist enough to understand most problems, have something to say or carry out work about them, and interpret and judge other people's thoughts and findings on them. Academics may always be prone to unintentionally seeing their data with biased eyes, to maliciously faking the data, and to having their equipment crap out and give them a faulty reading.
But before, there were, say, 100 academics working on some problem, so that if any one of them made a serious error, the others could correct it at a small cost -- by trying to replicate the results themselves, asking for the data to re-analyze it themselves, proposing rival explanations, pointing out logical flaws (that would still require enough knowledge of the problem to see), and so on. So, if the system is moving in the direction of greater-truth-discovering, and we perturb it away by having one of these 100 academics make an error, the system goes back to where it was and the error doesn't spiral out of control. Also, the errors from various academics don't compound each other -- that would require belonging to some larger framework or vision or coordination that wove them together, making them interact.
However, in the modern setting of hyper-specialization, there are very few qualified to correct the errors of the one academic (or maybe a small handful) who are working on the problem. They mostly have to take the raw data and the interpretations on faith -- deferring to expert consensus is out since, again, so very few are qualified that the law of large numbers cannot work to yield an unbiased consensus. Thus, when a crucial error is made, there are few external checks to dampen it, and its harm grows and grows as it becomes taken for granted among the broader academic fields that cite the erroneous article.
Moreover, these errors compound each other because they all come from the same academic, not a group of unrelated researchers. In his vision, his big ideas all mesh together and reinforce each other; most academics don't toy with a bunch of totally unrelated ideas, but instead seek to build an interlocking tower of ideas.
Let's say that there are a total of 4 errors made relating to some problem and that go uncorrected for awhile -- they're only spotted after they've been incorporated into the broader field. In the generalist world, those errors probably came from 4 unrelated researchers, so they will hit at 4 distant spots in the problem -- like having 4 blows made to a chair, one to each of the 4 legs. It will get shaken around, but it won't get upended. Now go to the hyper-specialized world: those 4 errors will all be part of an integrated vision, so they'll have a stronger total force, given that they work with each other. And they'll be more focused in where they strike since the scope of research for one person is smaller than it is for four people combined. This is like an even stronger force striking at just one of the chair's legs -- now it will topple over.
In other words, the harm done by the 4 errors of a single, specialized academic is greater than 4 times the harm done by a single error of a generalist academic (because of compounding). We would boost the health of the academic system by breaking up research territory so that it looks more like the generalist than the specialized world. It doesn't matter if there are economies of scale, benefits of specialization (like becoming a master at one thing rather than being a jack-of-all-trades), or whatever. Those benefits all get wiped out when some series of errors gets out of control, as it inevitably will -- then the whole system crashes, and the so-called gains of specialization were illusory.
In the generalist world, errors are less likely to go uncorrected, and they do not get compounded, so it is much more robust -- at the "cost" of greater inefficiency. Greater efficiency in the short-run only serves to boost the status of researchers, as they get praised and financially rewarded for their impressive short-term performance. The fake efficiency of specialization counts for nothing once the body of work on a problem is found to be contaminated beyond repair. *
A central source of robustness is redundancy, like having spare parts in case one stops working. An academic world where 100 people are working on a problem is more robust, even though it looks inefficient -- why not just hand it over to a handful of specialists? Well, why have two lungs and why ever back up your files? The cost of redundancy is more than outweighed by the benefit of superior survival value, whereas the benefits of specialization are more than outweighed by the cost of getting wiped out before too long.
This is surely a big part of why so little great research was done during the 20th century, especially during the second half when peer review became institutionalized (but that's another story). For thousands of years before the modern research university, people found new big problems all the time, made progress on them, and this lead to solutions for other problems (because generalists can see connections between disparate problems). They were subject to fads and groupthink, but so are specialists -- the latter more so since they're so insulated -- and in any case, they weren't so fragile to the errors of a couple of researchers.
"Yeah, well this is just one case -- so what?" This is the only one that we know about here and now. We only found out because Hauser was so out there, according to his graduate students, that they couldn't stay silent any longer. Most grad students are of course a bunch of big fat pussies who value career stability over higher goals. So there are all sorts of cases, past and present, that we aren't even aware of. Sometimes people actually trace the chain of citations back to the original data and find that the original results were wrong, or got transformed in a game of broken telephone. Every field has their share of academic urban legends, and that's much more likely in a specialist world where people have no choice but to take data and interpretations on faith, and where non-specialists are likely to mutate the original finding or interpretation.
The only solution is to break up the academic territory and go back to the generalist world that prevailed before the modern research university, before publish-or-perish incentives that only made the temptation to fudge even greater, and before supposedly hard-headed academics began to take others' findings on faith.
* It's just like with banks: there's a mismatch between the time scale of performance and getting bonuses. Managers get bonuses every year, yet it could take a decade or more to see if they'd been taking dangerous risks that ultimately will wipe the company out for good. So their incentive is to take a lot of hidden risks and massage the numbers so that they get their yearly bonus. Once the hidden risks expose themselves beyond the power of massaging the data, the company goes bust -- but the banker still keeps the bonuses from those first 9 years of illusory efficiency. Same with academics, who get praised, promoted, and paid on an annual basis, but whose performance may take a decade or more to truly evaluate.
August 31, 2010
August 30, 2010
Real vs. simulated wildness
Just browsing the NYT archives and came across this snapshot of what young guys were up to for fun in 1987. As far as I know, not a single midnight launch of a video game has attracted nearly 20,000 people in one spot and ended with cars being overturned and burned. For all they rave on about the first-person shooter de jour, or how sick it is to get to play as a gang member in Grand Theft Auto, it's worth remembering that adolescent dudes today have never gotten into a real fight, or even toilet-papered someone's house -- really, when was the last time you saw that anywhere?
August 29, 2010
Music odds and ends
- After watching the new video for "California Girls" (not a Beach Boys cover), you might be sad that Katy Perry isn't dead yet. But look on the bright side: at least she's replaced Fergie as the queen of the I'm-so-hot, it's-all-about-me, look-how-exaggerated-I-can-make-my-face way of life that prevails among the women these days. Katy Perry is annoying but doesn't make you want to punch her in the face, and she looks cute rather than like a horse-faced transvestite.
I don't get the attempt to try to shock with the word "teenage" in her album title, Teenage Dream, given how lacking in sexual charge the lead single is. That reminds me of the laughably tame song by Against Me! called "I Was a Teenage Anarchist" -- yeah right, you've never gone on a joyride, shoplifted anything, openly confronted the principal... damn, you've probably never even cut school! Buncha dorks. The only cool song with "Teenage" in the title is "Teenage Kicks" by the Undertones, and the only erotic-sounding album title with the word is Seventh Dream of Teenage Heaven by Love and Rockets (not a very good album, but the title is).
- What happened to literary references in popular music? I guess this is part of the larger trend away from reading fiction, both on the part of the audience (who now won't appreciate them) and the creators (who don't have them on hand in their mind to begin with). My impression is that these used to be more common. Just a few examples from albums I've been listening to recently, not exhaustive: "Dover Beach" by the Bangles quotes "Prufrock," Iron Maiden wrote a song around "Rime of the Ancient Mariner," and Echo & the Bunnymen mention John Webster ("My White Devil"). As you can see, it wasn't just the arty people who made them, as you might expect; even the poppier and metal groups were doing it.
- Speaking of Echo & the Bunnymen, I picked up Ocean Rain -- another Sgt. Pepper's kind of album, one that's famous for being famous and for trying to turn a popular form into something Big and Serious. It's OK overall and has a few good songs, but it's overwrought. Their previous album Porcupine is so much better -- more stripped-down, vigorous, honest, and free of self-awareness. One of the best post-punk albums for sure. If you're going to get it, buy the re-release, which has an alternate version of "The Cutter" with more pleasing guitar harmonies.
- Before I noted that supermarkets play better music than coffee houses these days, likely a reversal from the pattern of 10 or 20 years ago. Mega-markets even have a better selection of music to buy compared to refined music-sellers like Barnes & Noble. I've been going on a buying binge lately, and B&N has had almost nothing I wanted aside from a low-priced copy of the Footloose soundtrack. There's too much fashionable stuff -- singer-songwriters on the one hand, and indie / emo and its alternative predecessors. Aside from the Beatles and some David Bowie, there's almost no classic rock there, no punk, no post-punk, no college rock, dance pop, synth-pop, heavy metal, or just about anything. That stuff has had its time, and room must be made for music that "goes beyond" it -- right, more like comes up light-years short of it.
Now go to the local mega-market, and even though the size of the selection is the same (only four or five racks) the quality is infinitely better. You can find a good amount of Madonna, Prince, and other superstars who you expect to see anywhere real music is sold -- and not just some greatest hits CD but the actual albums too. A bit too much indie / emo / alternative for my tastes, and too little post-punk or college rock, but still. There's a greater variety of classic rock, dance and disco styles, but the largest difference is that there's a lot more metal. They had plenty of albums that even my used record store, with its rows and rows of CDs, couldn't give me.
The obvious answer is who the average customer is for B&N vs. a Wal-Mart style mega-market, more well-to-do vs. more blue collar. Higher-status people are more concerned with oneupsmanship -- with signaling to their competitors that they're not only staying au courant but are part of the avant-garde (even if they're not leading it). So retailers that cater to them will have to throw out lots of great, classic material because that's not what's happening and not where things are going right now. Retailers who cater to lower-status people don't have to worry about whether something is "hot" but rather whether it's any good for its price.
...I was going to say a bit more about this greater preservation of metal classics vs. rock-for-the-college-educated, but that probably deserves a post of its own.
I don't get the attempt to try to shock with the word "teenage" in her album title, Teenage Dream, given how lacking in sexual charge the lead single is. That reminds me of the laughably tame song by Against Me! called "I Was a Teenage Anarchist" -- yeah right, you've never gone on a joyride, shoplifted anything, openly confronted the principal... damn, you've probably never even cut school! Buncha dorks. The only cool song with "Teenage" in the title is "Teenage Kicks" by the Undertones, and the only erotic-sounding album title with the word is Seventh Dream of Teenage Heaven by Love and Rockets (not a very good album, but the title is).
- What happened to literary references in popular music? I guess this is part of the larger trend away from reading fiction, both on the part of the audience (who now won't appreciate them) and the creators (who don't have them on hand in their mind to begin with). My impression is that these used to be more common. Just a few examples from albums I've been listening to recently, not exhaustive: "Dover Beach" by the Bangles quotes "Prufrock," Iron Maiden wrote a song around "Rime of the Ancient Mariner," and Echo & the Bunnymen mention John Webster ("My White Devil"). As you can see, it wasn't just the arty people who made them, as you might expect; even the poppier and metal groups were doing it.
- Speaking of Echo & the Bunnymen, I picked up Ocean Rain -- another Sgt. Pepper's kind of album, one that's famous for being famous and for trying to turn a popular form into something Big and Serious. It's OK overall and has a few good songs, but it's overwrought. Their previous album Porcupine is so much better -- more stripped-down, vigorous, honest, and free of self-awareness. One of the best post-punk albums for sure. If you're going to get it, buy the re-release, which has an alternate version of "The Cutter" with more pleasing guitar harmonies.
- Before I noted that supermarkets play better music than coffee houses these days, likely a reversal from the pattern of 10 or 20 years ago. Mega-markets even have a better selection of music to buy compared to refined music-sellers like Barnes & Noble. I've been going on a buying binge lately, and B&N has had almost nothing I wanted aside from a low-priced copy of the Footloose soundtrack. There's too much fashionable stuff -- singer-songwriters on the one hand, and indie / emo and its alternative predecessors. Aside from the Beatles and some David Bowie, there's almost no classic rock there, no punk, no post-punk, no college rock, dance pop, synth-pop, heavy metal, or just about anything. That stuff has had its time, and room must be made for music that "goes beyond" it -- right, more like comes up light-years short of it.
Now go to the local mega-market, and even though the size of the selection is the same (only four or five racks) the quality is infinitely better. You can find a good amount of Madonna, Prince, and other superstars who you expect to see anywhere real music is sold -- and not just some greatest hits CD but the actual albums too. A bit too much indie / emo / alternative for my tastes, and too little post-punk or college rock, but still. There's a greater variety of classic rock, dance and disco styles, but the largest difference is that there's a lot more metal. They had plenty of albums that even my used record store, with its rows and rows of CDs, couldn't give me.
The obvious answer is who the average customer is for B&N vs. a Wal-Mart style mega-market, more well-to-do vs. more blue collar. Higher-status people are more concerned with oneupsmanship -- with signaling to their competitors that they're not only staying au courant but are part of the avant-garde (even if they're not leading it). So retailers that cater to them will have to throw out lots of great, classic material because that's not what's happening and not where things are going right now. Retailers who cater to lower-status people don't have to worry about whether something is "hot" but rather whether it's any good for its price.
...I was going to say a bit more about this greater preservation of metal classics vs. rock-for-the-college-educated, but that probably deserves a post of its own.
August 28, 2010
When girls' only guy friends are gay
We have a vague impression that tame times are more sex-segregated and wild times are more mixed-up -- the '50s picture of the girlfriend and her gal pals sitting around a tupperware party while the boyfriend and his buddies are out having a drink, vs. the '70s picture of a bunch of boys and girls gathering to shoot the bull, get a little drunk, and then go out dancing. The segregated world shows less trust between the sexes, the mixed one more.
This pattern is hard to notice about the present. I might write up more examples later, but just consider that most of young girls' serious / long-termish guy friends are mostly gay. That's the only way they'll trust a guy enough to hang out with him in a variety of friend-like contexts. It's either that or just about no guy friends at all (again, ones whose relationships are as involved and even as close as those with her chick friends, not just an acquaintance).
To find out when the change happened, ideally we'd have annual survey data about how many gay friends a girl has. Unfortunately we don't. So let's look to pop culture that aims for some degree of contemporary realism. When did the "gay best friend" become a stock character? Well there's Mean Girls from 2004, where the only guy who isn't a boyfriend to someone is flaming gay. Before that was Will & Grace, which began in 1998, although I've never watched it, so couldn't say if there are substantial non-gay male friend roles. For sure there's Clueless from 1995, where the only guy who plays a strictly friend role is gay. The year before that produced My So-Called Life, where again the only guy in a friend role to girls is gay.
Heathers from 1989 was very insightful and captured a zeitgeist, and even shows the beginnings of the sex-segregated world that was to develop during the falling-crime times of the '90s and 2000s -- yet no gay best friend. Most of the teen movies from the '80s show mixed-sex social circles, such as Fast Times at Ridgemont High and A Nightmare on Elm Street, although not if the point was to emphasize how socially inept they were (like Weird Science or Revenge of the Nerds). The basis of the running gag of Mr. Roper's cluelessness in Three's Company was how unlikely it was in the late '70s and early '80s for a couple of cute 20-somethings to have a gay guy as their closest friend and housemate.
I can't think of too many examples to test from 1990 to 1993, but it's pretty clear that this is a rising-crime vs. falling-crime difference, with greater trust between boys and girls in the former and less in the latter. If homosexuality isn't socially acceptable, girls will hang out just with each other (1950s), whereas if it is acceptable they'll hang out with guys provided that they're gay ('90s and 2000s).
This pattern is hard to notice about the present. I might write up more examples later, but just consider that most of young girls' serious / long-termish guy friends are mostly gay. That's the only way they'll trust a guy enough to hang out with him in a variety of friend-like contexts. It's either that or just about no guy friends at all (again, ones whose relationships are as involved and even as close as those with her chick friends, not just an acquaintance).
To find out when the change happened, ideally we'd have annual survey data about how many gay friends a girl has. Unfortunately we don't. So let's look to pop culture that aims for some degree of contemporary realism. When did the "gay best friend" become a stock character? Well there's Mean Girls from 2004, where the only guy who isn't a boyfriend to someone is flaming gay. Before that was Will & Grace, which began in 1998, although I've never watched it, so couldn't say if there are substantial non-gay male friend roles. For sure there's Clueless from 1995, where the only guy who plays a strictly friend role is gay. The year before that produced My So-Called Life, where again the only guy in a friend role to girls is gay.
Heathers from 1989 was very insightful and captured a zeitgeist, and even shows the beginnings of the sex-segregated world that was to develop during the falling-crime times of the '90s and 2000s -- yet no gay best friend. Most of the teen movies from the '80s show mixed-sex social circles, such as Fast Times at Ridgemont High and A Nightmare on Elm Street, although not if the point was to emphasize how socially inept they were (like Weird Science or Revenge of the Nerds). The basis of the running gag of Mr. Roper's cluelessness in Three's Company was how unlikely it was in the late '70s and early '80s for a couple of cute 20-somethings to have a gay guy as their closest friend and housemate.
I can't think of too many examples to test from 1990 to 1993, but it's pretty clear that this is a rising-crime vs. falling-crime difference, with greater trust between boys and girls in the former and less in the latter. If homosexuality isn't socially acceptable, girls will hang out just with each other (1950s), whereas if it is acceptable they'll hang out with guys provided that they're gay ('90s and 2000s).
Are there groups of courageous academics?
Overall they're not courageous, obviously, but I mean relative to one another. Academics have some basic training in their field plus more specialized knowledge about their pet projects, but they don't seem to act on this knowledge very much -- perhaps because it's not very useful, so let's just stick with academics whose knowledge could be applied to real life.
Sometimes it's easy and painless to do so, like an engineering prof using a better type of building material rather than another for an addition to their house. But what about where it would cost them in reputation or social acceptance, which is what academics care most about (not money)?
For example, how many anthropologists or historians follow a low-carb diet? Other academics may not have a clue what happened to human health after we adopted an agricultural diet, but anthropologists do, and a fair amount of historians at least have the impression that it was for the worse. The most successful anthro / history book of the past several decades is Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs, and Steel, most of which chronicles how destructive agriculture was for human health. So even if this wasn't part of your specialty, you'd still recognize it as something that that Diamond guy talked about.
Conclusion for the real world: cut most carbs out. There can be no whining about taste, as how good something tastes is mostly due to fat, salt, and sugar. Most carb-eaters aren't eating cakes and ice cream all day, so they won't be missing much there. And they can eat all the fat and salt they want. Unadorned carbs taste like paper or grass -- nothing lost. The real reason they don't do so is that it'll make them stand out as a weirdo, even if they can explain why it's a healthier diet.
There is a mass suspicion about animal products in our culture today, so you can have a non-mainstream diet like vegans and not be considered weird (among academics anyway). But going the other way by relying more on animal products and eliminating grains -- now you are officially strange.
As far as I can tell, most anthropologists and historians don't apply this lesson at all in their real lives. Forget about those who say they don't care about their health (a lie almost always), and stick just with those who claim to want a healthy diet. Even they aren't majority low-carb.
Is there any group of grant-grubbers that does risk social disapproval to apply the wisdom or knowledge of their field to real life? Note the assumption -- that they possess such applicable wisdom to begin with. I'm not talking about an autistic economist who ruins his social life by contracting out the task of helping his friends to those who are specialists, which is more "rational" and "efficient." And, being less costly to the economist than doing them himself, are weaker signals of friendship, causing his friends to withdraw, so reducing his adaptedness to the highly social world we live in. This risk of social disapproval does not result from applying wisdom, as he has fundamentally misunderstood the purpose of helping out friends -- a big part of which is to give a costly (hence honest) signal of loyalty.
And I'm not talking about some sociologist who "just knows" that most of the differences in SAT scores are due to tutoring differences, and so spends a fortune for his kids to get top-rate tutors.
These people are fools whose decisions, if made commonly, would unravel humankind. I'm not ruling out anthropologists, economists, or sociologists -- but they surely wouldn't count based on the above examples. I know there are individual iconoclasts, but are there groups where most of them apply wisdom to real life despite the risk of broader disapproval?
Sometimes it's easy and painless to do so, like an engineering prof using a better type of building material rather than another for an addition to their house. But what about where it would cost them in reputation or social acceptance, which is what academics care most about (not money)?
For example, how many anthropologists or historians follow a low-carb diet? Other academics may not have a clue what happened to human health after we adopted an agricultural diet, but anthropologists do, and a fair amount of historians at least have the impression that it was for the worse. The most successful anthro / history book of the past several decades is Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs, and Steel, most of which chronicles how destructive agriculture was for human health. So even if this wasn't part of your specialty, you'd still recognize it as something that that Diamond guy talked about.
Conclusion for the real world: cut most carbs out. There can be no whining about taste, as how good something tastes is mostly due to fat, salt, and sugar. Most carb-eaters aren't eating cakes and ice cream all day, so they won't be missing much there. And they can eat all the fat and salt they want. Unadorned carbs taste like paper or grass -- nothing lost. The real reason they don't do so is that it'll make them stand out as a weirdo, even if they can explain why it's a healthier diet.
There is a mass suspicion about animal products in our culture today, so you can have a non-mainstream diet like vegans and not be considered weird (among academics anyway). But going the other way by relying more on animal products and eliminating grains -- now you are officially strange.
As far as I can tell, most anthropologists and historians don't apply this lesson at all in their real lives. Forget about those who say they don't care about their health (a lie almost always), and stick just with those who claim to want a healthy diet. Even they aren't majority low-carb.
Is there any group of grant-grubbers that does risk social disapproval to apply the wisdom or knowledge of their field to real life? Note the assumption -- that they possess such applicable wisdom to begin with. I'm not talking about an autistic economist who ruins his social life by contracting out the task of helping his friends to those who are specialists, which is more "rational" and "efficient." And, being less costly to the economist than doing them himself, are weaker signals of friendship, causing his friends to withdraw, so reducing his adaptedness to the highly social world we live in. This risk of social disapproval does not result from applying wisdom, as he has fundamentally misunderstood the purpose of helping out friends -- a big part of which is to give a costly (hence honest) signal of loyalty.
And I'm not talking about some sociologist who "just knows" that most of the differences in SAT scores are due to tutoring differences, and so spends a fortune for his kids to get top-rate tutors.
These people are fools whose decisions, if made commonly, would unravel humankind. I'm not ruling out anthropologists, economists, or sociologists -- but they surely wouldn't count based on the above examples. I know there are individual iconoclasts, but are there groups where most of them apply wisdom to real life despite the risk of broader disapproval?
August 27, 2010
Why Amazon hasn't replaced the college bookstore
As college classes begin soon, tons of students will get fleeced at the college bookstore for new and used textbooks. They can usually find the books at Amazon for around a quarter of the price at the bookstore, so what gives? Why hasn't competition driven the college bookstore out of the textbook business?
The answer is that colleges do not force their professors to publicize the reading lists for their courses on the web before the semester starts. You have to go to the brick-and-mortar bookstore to see what books are required for what classes. By the time you do this, classes are only a few days away or have already started.
Professors don't wait to make use of these books, so if you try to shop around at Amazon or other textbook retailers, you'll be out of the loop and probably will never catch up (the average student anyway). It takes several days to find a good deal, plus 4 to 7 business days -- so you're looking at the second week of classes at the earliest, perhaps even later if your search time reflects 4 classes with 8 books each. Rather than risk falling far behind right up front -- and all while feeling helpless, rather than just lazy -- they shell out the big bucks for overpriced textbooks.
The simple solution is to have professors post their reading lists on the web, integrated into the online course catalog. An entry would tell you the course number, name, prof, room number, etc., and then have a link that brings up the reading list. This would have to be in no later than, say, 2 weeks before classes start. Hell, it's not as though they don't already have the reading list made up by then. That would give students plenty of time to find cheap textbooks at Amazon or wherever else, and bypass the college bookstore.
If professors decided not to use a book that they had already committed to on the list, they would have to reimburse the students, either financially or perhaps giving them all A's or throwing a party for them. (Or maybe Amazon would have a refund program if students could show the book had been de-listed.) Professors could add books to the list, but they would not be allowed to make use of them in class until two weeks after classes begin, again to give students time to find cheap copies. And really, if you're adding something so last-minute, how central can it be anyway?
That's how it would work, roughly, if students paid for education on their own. They would not accept plunking down tens of thousands of dollars just for the privilege of getting ripped off every semester at the bookstore and being at the mercy of professors' whims regarding reading lists. Colleges that offered better customer service in this way would eliminate competitors of similar academic quality. As it stands, though, the customers have no way to tell the producers what they do or don't want. They more or less take whatever crappy treatment they get and hope for the best.
As much as I loathe the helicopter parent phenomenon, at least they create some kind of feedback and punishing power to the producers if they're screwing up. Unfortunately parents seem to care more about ensuring that the college is spoiling the kids enough, rather than that the college isn't taking them and their kids to the cleaners. It's like medicine and hospitals -- parents put total trust in the doctors, administrators, and so on, and hope that their kid is getting treated nicely. They don't commit heresy by asking if this or that is really worth paying for.
The answer is that colleges do not force their professors to publicize the reading lists for their courses on the web before the semester starts. You have to go to the brick-and-mortar bookstore to see what books are required for what classes. By the time you do this, classes are only a few days away or have already started.
Professors don't wait to make use of these books, so if you try to shop around at Amazon or other textbook retailers, you'll be out of the loop and probably will never catch up (the average student anyway). It takes several days to find a good deal, plus 4 to 7 business days -- so you're looking at the second week of classes at the earliest, perhaps even later if your search time reflects 4 classes with 8 books each. Rather than risk falling far behind right up front -- and all while feeling helpless, rather than just lazy -- they shell out the big bucks for overpriced textbooks.
The simple solution is to have professors post their reading lists on the web, integrated into the online course catalog. An entry would tell you the course number, name, prof, room number, etc., and then have a link that brings up the reading list. This would have to be in no later than, say, 2 weeks before classes start. Hell, it's not as though they don't already have the reading list made up by then. That would give students plenty of time to find cheap textbooks at Amazon or wherever else, and bypass the college bookstore.
If professors decided not to use a book that they had already committed to on the list, they would have to reimburse the students, either financially or perhaps giving them all A's or throwing a party for them. (Or maybe Amazon would have a refund program if students could show the book had been de-listed.) Professors could add books to the list, but they would not be allowed to make use of them in class until two weeks after classes begin, again to give students time to find cheap copies. And really, if you're adding something so last-minute, how central can it be anyway?
That's how it would work, roughly, if students paid for education on their own. They would not accept plunking down tens of thousands of dollars just for the privilege of getting ripped off every semester at the bookstore and being at the mercy of professors' whims regarding reading lists. Colleges that offered better customer service in this way would eliminate competitors of similar academic quality. As it stands, though, the customers have no way to tell the producers what they do or don't want. They more or less take whatever crappy treatment they get and hope for the best.
As much as I loathe the helicopter parent phenomenon, at least they create some kind of feedback and punishing power to the producers if they're screwing up. Unfortunately parents seem to care more about ensuring that the college is spoiling the kids enough, rather than that the college isn't taking them and their kids to the cleaners. It's like medicine and hospitals -- parents put total trust in the doctors, administrators, and so on, and hope that their kid is getting treated nicely. They don't commit heresy by asking if this or that is really worth paying for.
August 26, 2010
Falling American solidarity since the '90s, immigrant surname edition
Here is an article about the decline in immigrants Anglicizing their surnames, which they say has happened within "the last few decades." So this is likely another instance of the huge social fracturing that began in the late '80s / early '90s, depending on the case.
One idea is that most of the recent immigrants such as Latin American mestizos and Asians could not pass for white and therefore see no point in trying to fool others by changing their surnames, in contrast to earlier waves of European immigrants who could blend in by looks. The article itself proves this idea wrong, so you wonder why they don't mention that. The current decline in Anglicization of surnames affects even European immigrants (one of the people featured is from the former Yugoslavia).
Plus before the decline, white-looking and non-white-looking both tried to adopt Anglo surnames. Ashkenazi Jews are a clear example of the former, and blacks of the latter. Blacks may not have been immigrants, but if there had really been a desire to emphasize their cultural difference, they would've changed their last names like Malcolm X or those who adopted Arabic surnames when they got into the Nation of Islam. Those few who did were lampooned by the majority of blacks for taking their African roots too seriously -- we're Americans first, they were saying.
And blacks could certainly not pass for white or Anglo, but only a clueless journalist or social scientist would think that's what influences the decision to adopt a certain group's surnames. Rather, it's about signaling the good faith effort they're making to leave behind the tribe they came from and join the one they've come to. It has nothing to do with signaling race.
They didn't even change them to something European but less Anglo -- they kept Jones, Jenkins, and Smith. Their first names started to diverge from whites' during the second half of the 1960s, but surnames are more important for identifying what Big Group you come from. Most people inappropriately project the '90s-era identity politics back onto The Sixties, which was about civil rights and anti-war. Black power was a fringe movement and vanished in a flash. Blacks wanted to join mainstream society so much that when three of the top ten TV shows featured all-black casts, they didn't try to blackify their surnames (or first names) at all -- they were the Evanses, the Jeffersons, and Sanford and Son. Ditto when The Cosby Show took over.
As late as 1984, we were still a very nation-oriented country, as the Los Angeles Olympics exemplified:
You didn't see that at all in the Atlanta or Salt Lake City Olympics. Since the early '90s, it has become cool to be "ethnic," that is to de-nationalize the level that you base your identity on. Most of Robert Putnam's "Bowling Alone" narrative really applies to the '90s and 2000s, not the '60s through the '80s. If during the latter period people stopped playing bridge together, having friends over for dinner, and joining the PTA, it's because bridge ended as a fad as people took up other social games and sports (like softball), because people began to eat meals together outside the home, and because parents decided to get a life rather than hover over their kids and hound their teachers.
It was an incredibly social time, not to mention nationalistic. The public accepted or even cheered on a continual series of large wars and interventions, whereas during the '90s and 2000s politicians found out that they couldn't do that anymore, so we've had no large wars, let alone a string of them. If you weren't chanting "U-S-A!" during the Olympics, you got punched in the nuts for being a traitor. Since then it's become gauche and everyone will ostracize you for "jingoism." Right through the '80s, the description "All-American" was a complement rather than a put-down. That glowing image of the All-American showed up in popular music, too, from "California Girls" in 1965 to "Free Fallin'" in 1989.
One idea is that most of the recent immigrants such as Latin American mestizos and Asians could not pass for white and therefore see no point in trying to fool others by changing their surnames, in contrast to earlier waves of European immigrants who could blend in by looks. The article itself proves this idea wrong, so you wonder why they don't mention that. The current decline in Anglicization of surnames affects even European immigrants (one of the people featured is from the former Yugoslavia).
Plus before the decline, white-looking and non-white-looking both tried to adopt Anglo surnames. Ashkenazi Jews are a clear example of the former, and blacks of the latter. Blacks may not have been immigrants, but if there had really been a desire to emphasize their cultural difference, they would've changed their last names like Malcolm X or those who adopted Arabic surnames when they got into the Nation of Islam. Those few who did were lampooned by the majority of blacks for taking their African roots too seriously -- we're Americans first, they were saying.
And blacks could certainly not pass for white or Anglo, but only a clueless journalist or social scientist would think that's what influences the decision to adopt a certain group's surnames. Rather, it's about signaling the good faith effort they're making to leave behind the tribe they came from and join the one they've come to. It has nothing to do with signaling race.
They didn't even change them to something European but less Anglo -- they kept Jones, Jenkins, and Smith. Their first names started to diverge from whites' during the second half of the 1960s, but surnames are more important for identifying what Big Group you come from. Most people inappropriately project the '90s-era identity politics back onto The Sixties, which was about civil rights and anti-war. Black power was a fringe movement and vanished in a flash. Blacks wanted to join mainstream society so much that when three of the top ten TV shows featured all-black casts, they didn't try to blackify their surnames (or first names) at all -- they were the Evanses, the Jeffersons, and Sanford and Son. Ditto when The Cosby Show took over.
As late as 1984, we were still a very nation-oriented country, as the Los Angeles Olympics exemplified:
But the Los Angeles Games, televised by ABC, were a flag-waving, chanting USA ad...
"As a spectator at the Opening Ceremonies in 1984," NBC 2002 Opening Ceremonies producer Don Misher said recently, "I came out of the stadium euphoric. An IOC member later told me it was very nationalistic, second only to Hitler's (1936) Games."
You didn't see that at all in the Atlanta or Salt Lake City Olympics. Since the early '90s, it has become cool to be "ethnic," that is to de-nationalize the level that you base your identity on. Most of Robert Putnam's "Bowling Alone" narrative really applies to the '90s and 2000s, not the '60s through the '80s. If during the latter period people stopped playing bridge together, having friends over for dinner, and joining the PTA, it's because bridge ended as a fad as people took up other social games and sports (like softball), because people began to eat meals together outside the home, and because parents decided to get a life rather than hover over their kids and hound their teachers.
It was an incredibly social time, not to mention nationalistic. The public accepted or even cheered on a continual series of large wars and interventions, whereas during the '90s and 2000s politicians found out that they couldn't do that anymore, so we've had no large wars, let alone a string of them. If you weren't chanting "U-S-A!" during the Olympics, you got punched in the nuts for being a traitor. Since then it's become gauche and everyone will ostracize you for "jingoism." Right through the '80s, the description "All-American" was a complement rather than a put-down. That glowing image of the All-American showed up in popular music, too, from "California Girls" in 1965 to "Free Fallin'" in 1989.
August 23, 2010
No shampoo, and no problems
I've been thinking where else to apply the back-to-nature principle, which goes like this: if we're disturbing the outcome of natural selection, this practice is guilty until proven innocent. In some cases, a good case can be made -- like washing your hands. True we didn't evolve in a world with soap, and we are thus messing around with our natural state. However, we live in a world that's far more germ-ridden than when we all lived on the African savanna, mostly due to crowding, contact with animals, and living -- and doing our business -- in the same place over time. So, severely cutting down on the concentration of harmful junk on our hands gives a huge boost to our health.
That does not apply to shampoo, though. It has no anti-bacterial, anti-fungal, or anti-viral powers, unlike soap. (There are special shampoos if you want to zap the bacteria that contribute to dandruff or if you have lice, but I'm talking normal everyday shampoo.) All it does is remove some of the dirt and dust that sticks to the oil that your scalp makes and that coats your hair follicles (sebum), so there's no sanitation or hygiene angle here. Yet it doesn't have laser-like precision in removing these dust particles -- it strips away a good deal of the sebum too.
Now, natural selection put oil-making sebaceous glands on your scalp for a good reason -- and you don't even have to know what it is, although it's fun to speculate. It survived natural selection, so it must have been doing something good for you. And people can easily tell that their hair gets messed up in some way (too dry, too limp, whatever) after shampooing, so they then try to put some of the moisture back in with conditioner. Whenever you need a corrector for the corrector, you know you're digging yourself deep.
Washing the dirt and dust out of your hair doesn't take anything more than a thorough rinse in a shower with good water pressure. This is what humans have done for as long as they've had access to bodies of water in which to bathe, and the hair of hunter-gatherers looks just fine. They've also infused oily substances into their hair -- olive oil in the Mediterranean, coconut oil in the South Seas, a butterfat mixture among the Himba pastoralists of Namibia, and god knows what else. But whereas rubbing fatty stuff into the hair appears universal, using cleansing agents just to get out a little dust hardly shows up at all.
That's true even in the industrialized West. I searched the NYT archives for articles mentioning how often you should shampoo. There aren't any such articles before the first decade of the 1900s, when the consensus was that once a month was good, but aim for once every 2 to 3 weeks. That was true for the 1910s, too. I couldn't access the articles from most of the following decades, although there is one from the WWII days that mentions women's weekly shampoo. Brief histories I've read suggest that the advertizing of the '70s lead to even more frequent shampooing, and certainly I remember from personal experience that by no later than the end of the '80s, daily shampooing was expected.
As much as I rave about that decade, no one did babes like the '60s. Everything lined up just right for them -- lots of animal products in the diet, little / infrequent shampooing, no layers of hairstyling products, normal amount of sun exposure, and little or no air conditioning = normal level of sweat, helped out by a normal mix of physical activity. God, that big bouncy hair... here is a cropped, safe picture of Cynthia Myers, Playmate of the month for December 1968. You won't see that in the era of Clueless and Mean Girls. In fact, if it weren't for styling products, I doubt you would've seen it in the '80s either.
As for guys, here's a picture comparing current star Zac Efron to Leonard Whiting, who played Romeo in Zeffirelli's 1968 movie. Whiting's hair looks thicker at the individual hair level, more voluminous overall, and more lustrous.
It's been almost two weeks since I last shampooed my hair, although I still rinse it well with just water in the shower, and it's not a big greasy mess like I imagined it would. After a lifetime of daily shampooing, it'll take my sebaceous glands some time to adapt to the *lack* of the oil-sapping stuff and dial down their activity. From what I've read, it'll take between two weeks and two months for a complete return to normalcy, but it's worth it. Reading around, I was struck by how wimpy people are when they try this out -- "omigod i could never go for more than like three days, i'd feel so gross!" They know that it will all work out, but we've become so focused on immediate comfort rather than enduring robustness. It's considered a violation of someone's human rights to tell them to deal with it until it gets better.
There seems to be an eco-friendly movement afoot called "no 'poo" -- those damned Greens will never learn good advertizing -- which aims to reduce shampoo use for some environmental reason or other. It seems like most of them still use a cleansing agent and conditioner to ameliorate the damage done by the cleanser, though. Knowing that they're eco-friendly, we can infer that they ingest little animal fat and protein, on which our hair is so dependent, so they're not the best example of what little or no shampoo looks like -- for that, have another look at those '60s honey bunnies.
That does not apply to shampoo, though. It has no anti-bacterial, anti-fungal, or anti-viral powers, unlike soap. (There are special shampoos if you want to zap the bacteria that contribute to dandruff or if you have lice, but I'm talking normal everyday shampoo.) All it does is remove some of the dirt and dust that sticks to the oil that your scalp makes and that coats your hair follicles (sebum), so there's no sanitation or hygiene angle here. Yet it doesn't have laser-like precision in removing these dust particles -- it strips away a good deal of the sebum too.
Now, natural selection put oil-making sebaceous glands on your scalp for a good reason -- and you don't even have to know what it is, although it's fun to speculate. It survived natural selection, so it must have been doing something good for you. And people can easily tell that their hair gets messed up in some way (too dry, too limp, whatever) after shampooing, so they then try to put some of the moisture back in with conditioner. Whenever you need a corrector for the corrector, you know you're digging yourself deep.
Washing the dirt and dust out of your hair doesn't take anything more than a thorough rinse in a shower with good water pressure. This is what humans have done for as long as they've had access to bodies of water in which to bathe, and the hair of hunter-gatherers looks just fine. They've also infused oily substances into their hair -- olive oil in the Mediterranean, coconut oil in the South Seas, a butterfat mixture among the Himba pastoralists of Namibia, and god knows what else. But whereas rubbing fatty stuff into the hair appears universal, using cleansing agents just to get out a little dust hardly shows up at all.
That's true even in the industrialized West. I searched the NYT archives for articles mentioning how often you should shampoo. There aren't any such articles before the first decade of the 1900s, when the consensus was that once a month was good, but aim for once every 2 to 3 weeks. That was true for the 1910s, too. I couldn't access the articles from most of the following decades, although there is one from the WWII days that mentions women's weekly shampoo. Brief histories I've read suggest that the advertizing of the '70s lead to even more frequent shampooing, and certainly I remember from personal experience that by no later than the end of the '80s, daily shampooing was expected.
As much as I rave about that decade, no one did babes like the '60s. Everything lined up just right for them -- lots of animal products in the diet, little / infrequent shampooing, no layers of hairstyling products, normal amount of sun exposure, and little or no air conditioning = normal level of sweat, helped out by a normal mix of physical activity. God, that big bouncy hair... here is a cropped, safe picture of Cynthia Myers, Playmate of the month for December 1968. You won't see that in the era of Clueless and Mean Girls. In fact, if it weren't for styling products, I doubt you would've seen it in the '80s either.
As for guys, here's a picture comparing current star Zac Efron to Leonard Whiting, who played Romeo in Zeffirelli's 1968 movie. Whiting's hair looks thicker at the individual hair level, more voluminous overall, and more lustrous.
It's been almost two weeks since I last shampooed my hair, although I still rinse it well with just water in the shower, and it's not a big greasy mess like I imagined it would. After a lifetime of daily shampooing, it'll take my sebaceous glands some time to adapt to the *lack* of the oil-sapping stuff and dial down their activity. From what I've read, it'll take between two weeks and two months for a complete return to normalcy, but it's worth it. Reading around, I was struck by how wimpy people are when they try this out -- "omigod i could never go for more than like three days, i'd feel so gross!" They know that it will all work out, but we've become so focused on immediate comfort rather than enduring robustness. It's considered a violation of someone's human rights to tell them to deal with it until it gets better.
There seems to be an eco-friendly movement afoot called "no 'poo" -- those damned Greens will never learn good advertizing -- which aims to reduce shampoo use for some environmental reason or other. It seems like most of them still use a cleansing agent and conditioner to ameliorate the damage done by the cleanser, though. Knowing that they're eco-friendly, we can infer that they ingest little animal fat and protein, on which our hair is so dependent, so they're not the best example of what little or no shampoo looks like -- for that, have another look at those '60s honey bunnies.
Where do the art-lovers live?
GameFAQs just ran a poll about what your favorite subject was in high school. I excluded people who said "phys ed," then lumped the three artier ones together (art, language arts, foreign language) and the three sciencey ones together (math, science, social sciences). Then I found the percent of people who liked the arts classes out of everyone (excluding gym fans).
Across all of America, 32% like the arts classes. The map below shows each state's percent as a deviation from the national average, where browner means more art-minded and bluer means more science-minded:
The main pattern is east vs. west, with the middle and southeast of the country at about the national average and an outpost of science people in the middle. You might've expected it to show the northeast as the most art-loving, or perhaps bi-coastal vs. flyover country. Yet that would rely too much on things beyond a person's basic preferences -- there's the price of going to a museum, whether there are museums nearby in the first place, etc. By just asking what their favorite subject was in high school, we're only looking at differences in tastes. Compared to people who live in New York, people in Montana would rather read about western American folklore or take up an arts & crafts hobby, and wouldn't give a shit what Malcolm Gladwell and Steven Levitt are up to.
Across all of America, 32% like the arts classes. The map below shows each state's percent as a deviation from the national average, where browner means more art-minded and bluer means more science-minded:
The main pattern is east vs. west, with the middle and southeast of the country at about the national average and an outpost of science people in the middle. You might've expected it to show the northeast as the most art-loving, or perhaps bi-coastal vs. flyover country. Yet that would rely too much on things beyond a person's basic preferences -- there's the price of going to a museum, whether there are museums nearby in the first place, etc. By just asking what their favorite subject was in high school, we're only looking at differences in tastes. Compared to people who live in New York, people in Montana would rather read about western American folklore or take up an arts & crafts hobby, and wouldn't give a shit what Malcolm Gladwell and Steven Levitt are up to.
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