Over-Simplifying doesn't give anyone's opinions legitimacy

Sometimes we like to discredit things, and we frame our discrediting with clear indicative phrases like "that's just...", "nothing more than...", "all that is...", etc.

Often, these indicative phrases not only indicate an ensuing discredit statement, but also indicate a massive over-simplification. 

An easy example is basketball: "That's just people putting a leather ball through an iron hoop." 

No. No it isn't. Basketball is significantly more complex than that, it has rules, strategies, actions, leagues, organizations, endorsement deals, scholarships, etc., all of which are left out of the above appraisal. 

That phenomenon, basketball, hasn't remotely been discredited, because it hasn't remotely been described. 

Has anything been discredited? I'm tempted to say the speaker, but that is yet another oversimplification. The statement simply discredits itself. 

What's frustrating about this kind of maneuver is it's ubiquity--anything can be incompletely described in such a way. 

Am I currently writing a blog post, or am I "just" touching the screen of my phone over and over?

I am touching the screen of my phone over and over, but (hopefully) it's evident that more than that is going on.

Is reading a book "just" looking at ink and paper?

Is building a house "just" swinging a hammer at some wood?

Is a family reunion "just" a bunch of people in the same place?

You get the idea. I hope. 

I think the reason we do this is to try to fortify subjective preferences with "objective" reasoning. We like our opinions, and we'd like other people to share them. But, there's really no reason why they should. Opinions are things we like, things we don't like, personal tastes, and so on. They are not facts. Facts are features of the world, which we all share in common. Fail to deal with them, and you are, in a very important sense, ignoring the world. Opinions are features of our own individual mental landscapes, which no one else shares in common. Why should anyone else have to deal with them?

So if we could give factual reasons to support mere opinions, our opinions take on an external authority that we, as well as our peers, must bow to.

But we can't give factual reasons to support opinions. We can explain them using facts : "I was forced to listen to this song as a child while my parents stole my money." But that's hardly the same thing. 

It doesn't make sense to say opinions are "better" or "worse", they are just different. Oversimplification is one way of attempting to make an opinion appear "better", but as we have seen, it fails.

More than that, it shuts the door to other experiential possibilities: if we write categories of human endeavor wholesale (no matter what the reason might be) we, ipso facto, preventing ourselves from experiencing them. That's fine sometimes, when there are good reasons. I'd very much like to preclude myself from being involved in a murder. Ending a life causes suffering. 

However, if I preclude myself from experiencing jazz because it's "just a lot of chaotic noise", I might be preventing myself from having an experience of something I later find out I really enjoy. 

On the other hand, if I'm honest and say something like, "I just can't get into it, it's not for me." I've kept my comments about my own subjective states, and haven't implied that the jazz musician sitting next to me is completely wasting his time. 

Beatles Fans: I Am Not Informed

Look, there is absolutely nothing wrong with liking the Beatles. There's something a little wrong with telling people you like the Beatles. Telling people you don't like them is a bit of a head scratcher, but more of that later. 

They, the Beatles (and then I promise I'll stop over-using their name), were great by any account: record sales, influence, sound, innovation, catchiness...on and on and on. People love them. They have done for fifty years. 

So, when I say it's a little wrong to say you like them what I mean is this: of course you do. Why are you wasting part of my finite existence with this useless bit of non-information? Literally non-information: I am not informed of anything. 

It'd be different if it was something a bit offbeat or sub-pop like Star Wars (although, for similar reasons, YAWN!) that only 90% of the population likes. But even then, what am I informed of, really?

Don't get me wrong, there is nothing wrong with liking these things. 

It's just a real conversation killer when you say something as ubiquitous as "I like air." 

What should the next line in the conversation be? What can it be? 

Now, if you say you don't like the Beatles, you might have something tremendously interesting to say in the way of an explanation: you have issues with their lyrical content, their song structure, something along those lines. That's a fine and informative thing to say.

However, if you don't like them "because they're so overrated", then please, hit yourself in the face with a frying pan. (Because NOT hitting yourself in the face with a frying pan is so overrated). 

No, but seriously, are all of your opinions dictated by other people's opinions? Always doing the opposite of "what everyone does" isn't any more interesting than just going along. Only in this case, it isn't that your own view is uninteresting per se, it's that you don't have your own view. You are just a reflection off of everything else. What use is that?

(Being useful is overrated)

(Sorry, I couldn't resist)

One way I made my workday more fun

Edit: apparently this blog decided it would be cool to resize my images below so that you can't see all of the interesting or relevant parts of the images....but I can see them....I'm leaving them in though. So you can share my frustration.

I use a spreadsheet all day every day at work that, really, no one else sees. Its a daily log that i clear out at the end of each day. It's boring. 

So I decided to give myself a little encouragement and enjoyment throughout the day in a non-predictable pattern, because everything else on my sheet is boring day after day. Here's what I did:

In this bright yellow box on the right (j3:k6), I have a randomly-generated message. That message is pulled from a bank on a separate sheet (in my case I named that other sheet "Text").

My formula has two ranges it pulls from. Column B has salutary, "Good Morning" type messages (you'll see how I used them here in a minute, and column A has all the other messages. 

So, if a2 is blank, which, after the column heading is my first job position, then the cell is blank, otherwise, if the second job position is blank (a3), that is, after the first job but before the second, it pulls a message from column B on the "Text" sheet. Otherwise, that is, if a2 and a3 are neither one blank, it pulls a message from column A.

Now the randomizing bit is there, and it's pretty simple: 

Say your list of cells you want to randomly display is a1:a5, then your function would be:

=index(a1:a5, rand()*rows(a1:a5)+1)

North Sea Oil Figures and Scottish Independence

We're well over a year from the 2014 referendum on Scotland's independence (in fact it was announced today that the date will be 18 September), but already debate is raging, and I am fascinated. As an American, I have no horse in this race, and I can't really say which outcome I'd like to see (not that it would matter much to anyone if I did). If I'm being honest, I'd have to say I like the romanticized notion of an independent Scotland. However, the issues, when you begin to investigate them, are complex, and thus the decision Scotland must now make is not so clear-cut. I intend to write more about it, but I'm starting with just one portion of the debate, because of concerns about the length of my posts. I'm hoping, by the way, to be corrected on anything I've said here that may be wrong, misguided, or just plain stupid. If you have a concern, let me have it!

One key piece of the debate is how the new nation can fare economically. And no small part of determining that question is to determine what future revenues from North Sea oil will be. To that end projections have been made. Now, this becomes a problem very quickly. On the one hand because predicting the economic future is fraught with all kinds of problems, but more importantly for the present purpose: two radically different projections have emerged. One projection, endorsed and used by the No Campaign, is perhaps unfairly pessimistic, which, of course, supports their political cause. And one projection, endorsed and used by the Yes Campaign, is perhaps unfairly optimistic, which, of course supports their political cause.

This issue is obviously of vital importance to Scotland, because how well the new country would be able to support itself is paramount in deciding whether to choose independence and manage this revenue alone, or to remain part of the UK if there isn't going to be enough to run the government. Clearly it is important, but not, I don't think, particularly helpful.

The reason I don't think it is helpful is, for one thing, the difference between the numbers means that it's very likely that one or both of them is flawed. Another reason, which to be honest is more suspicion than anything, is that these figures won't change anyone's mind anyway.

With respect to this first point, that it's very likely that one or both of these numbers is flawed, well, it might be interesting in a gossip column kind of way to follow the money trail behind these two figures and the organizations that produced them and find evidence of profound bias or even corruption. That may well happen anyway. Even if it does happen, it doesn't help anything. It doesn't answer the real questions about what the real state of affairs with North Sea oil will be, or what the Scottish voters should decide on referendum day. The most that it should bring about is to make figures within the debate look untrustworthy. That is not the same thing at all as deciding the issue (though obviously it could have an effect when votes are cast. That is the unfortunate difference between what is and what ought to be).

Regarding that second point, that these figures won't persuade anyone: this is a fear I'm carrying with me as part of my American baggage: people will only pay attention to the facts that it is convenient to pay attention to, and when compelled to pay attention to inconvenient facts, they rework them to fit their existing narrative. The result of this is a breakdown of discourse. We can't have a meaningful discussion about something, if we can't agree on what the something we're discussing is to begin with. We have to at least be talking in the same reality.

If that explanation of why I don't think it will be persuasive is itself too speculative to be persuasive, here's an alternative reason for thinking so, at least for now: we don't yet know in detail what the nature of the new government will be and how much will be "enough" to run it, what sources the revenue could come from, etc. in order to know which point the number must be above in order for a Yes vote to not be irresponsible. That is the key: having defined Yes/No parameters, that is whenever it is appropriate to discuss the future of oil prices.

It avoids the more fundamental question, though, which is this: if all of the concerns were addressed to everyone's satisfaction, then should Scotland become an independent state? In other words, does the outcome of oil revenue determine the entire thing? It's a much more difficult question. It is THE question. But I think framing it in these terms gives undecideds a groundwork for making a decision.

Site recommendation: Nizkor

Nizkor is a site dedicated to educating about the holocaust and combating hatred. They offer a great many resources, free educational materials, and so forth. I'm particularly happy that they also offer a list of informal argumentative fallacies: http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/index.html#index

Why People are so Nasty to One Another About What they Decide to Post Online

Here's how it happens:

Level 1: for a while people just post whatever they like onto the Internet, right? Because it's so vast, and so many people partake in its vastness, trends emerge in the ways people use the Internet to express themselves. These trends expand. People start to notice the trends. People start to get annoyed by the trends. Then:

Level 2: People start mocking the trends, calling out the internet cliches. But again, the Internet is vast. Trends emerge in mocking Internet trends, which people begin to notice and get annoyed by. Then:

Level 3: People start mocking the people who are mocking the initial trends....
&c.

Listen: just chill out, people. Stop depriving yourself and others of joy by heap commentary on top of commentary. Quit repeating things until they appear meaningless. Try to remember there's another person on the other side of that post with real emotions and personal issues. And most importantly: ignore me entirely.

Come to Indiana!