Rightness and Popularity are independent of one another

Lately I've been thinking about the old adage "What is popular is not always right, and what is right is not always popular," which is true I think. 

The problem I have with it is that it doesn't give you any clues about whether or not you are right. Some may think, indeed evidently some do think, that unpopularity is itself a sign of rightness. Which doesn't follow at all, as I will endeavor to show by and by.

Some may also understand the adage to mean "stand up for what you believe in, irrespective of popularity." Again, this is unhelpful. What you believe may be wrong. How do you tell?

An extreme version of this adage I read in an article about the Westboro Baptist Church. "If you are doing all the right things the world will hate you. The world hates us. So, we must be doing something right."

This is a very simple argument as far as its logical components go: we have two premises and a conclusion, and I can tell you straightaway the argument is invalid. But let's prove it. (What follows will seem awfully pedestrian to anyone who's ever taken a 100-level Logic course).

First let's remove the content. It's irrelevant anyway. Because once we reveal that the logical structure is bad, the argument will be bad no matter what content we replace it with. 

We'll replace "You are doing the right things" with "A", and "The world hates you" with "B". Then replace them in each occurrence in the argument . We're left with:

If A then B.

B

Therefore A

Logicians among you will recognize the formal fallacy immediately. To reveal it to the rest of us, all we have to is find suitable replacement sentences for A and B. So let's use the legendary thoroughbred Seabiscuit. Who we all acknowledge is a horse, I hope.

Let A= Seabiscuit is a cat, and B = Seabiscuit is a mammal. 

Now we have "if Seabiscuit is a cat, then Seabiscuit is a mammal." It may seem odd to say, but this is True. If he were a cat, he'd be a mammal.

We also have "Seabiscuit is a mammal" this is true, too. Horses are mammals.

And the conclusion "Seabiscuit is a cat." Which we all know is false.

Now the definition of a valid argument is that if all the premises are true, the conclusion must be true, and yet here we have two true premises and a false conclusion. This is an invalid argument structure. Which means both our dreamed-up argument and the one from the WBC are invalid. And it would still be invalid if all the sentences were true: if Barnaby is a Cat, he is a mammal. Barnaby is a mammal, therefore he is a Cat. All of that is true, but the argument is still invalid, because the conditional arrow flows in one direction (from being a cat to being a mammal), not in the other. He is not a cat due to being a mammal, he's a mammal due to being a cat.

So, rightness is independent of popularity, or indeed hatred. Which is why I think the old adage is true. What is popular is not always right. But what is popular is not always wrong, either. And since popularity and rightness are independent of one another, we must look for other, more accurate criteria.

Bigotry, Definitions, and Point-Scoring

Let's just say racism, there are a host of analogous forms of bigotry, but let's start there. I think it's a safe assumption that we all agree racism is a problem. Even people who do racist things are quick to say, "It's not racist." That seems to me to be a small piece of evidence that suggests maybe we all do. 

I'm sure, if I scramble, I can find a few fringe people out there who are proud to be labelled racist, but I'm going to act under the assumption that's a very small minority, and for the purposes I'm after at the moment, a negligible one.

So we all agree racism is a problem. That must mean that, if it's possible to eliminate, we'd all think the world would be a better place without it. So, what might eliminating racism look like?

That's where it all goes to hell. The answers to that question are myriad, and they're all predicated of diverging concepts of what racism is. We don't, I sure hope, want to claim that racism is subjective or relativized. We'd rather all be talking about the same thing. But it isn't sufficiently clear that we are. 

Let me give a wild, beetle-in-the-box example to exaggerate what I mean. If I idiosyncratically call roses "baseball games", and you are unaware of this idiosyncrasy, we might get into a very serious argument about whether or not I saw a dozen baseball games in a vase.

What we think the meaning of the word is has huge impacts on what we think should be done if we want to eliminate the phenomenon, just as we might have radically different strategies if we both want to eliminate baseball games. 

So my first point is that we'd better be clear what we're talking about.

My second point is, I hope, a bit broader.

Whatever we think racism is, we must at least acknowledge that it involves very deep-seated, engrained attitudes about people, some we might not even be aware of consciously. These kinds of attitudes do not simply fall off overnight. It requires years (decades? generations?) to identify and acknowledge them, confront them, deal with them, eliminate them. A well-crafted pithy jab simply isn't up to the task. 

And here's where I hope to get broader: the idea that there's an Us and a Them, and that by making these little jabs at Them will "take down" those views we find so contrary to our own doesn't just miss the point. It's positively counterproductive. Across the spectrum--Us and Them--there is work to be done sniffing out these attitudes in ourselves and setting to work on them. Point-scoring does nothing to aid this process, it causes us to bury these attitudes even deeper. It polarizes the conversation and pushes diverging points of view to unnecessary extremes. It prevents the process. 

(I would say something similar about political discourse. Then again, one could argue that toeing the party line is another form of bigotry).

I don't have a nice clean solution to conclude with, because that's the nature of the thing. To assume otherwise is dangerous and arrogant. However, Voltaire does come to mind: "Il faut cultiver notre jardin."

"What kind of music do you like?"

It's over complicated to answer this question. It is for me, it is for you. No one treats it that way, and I don't know why not. 

Firstly, the idea of genrefication in music is pretty problematic. I can't make it make sense to say there are two artists in the same genre, barring some very general similarities or pretty general differences. There are general sounds, I suppose, but one artist can shift and re-shape, morph, bend, break, invent, etc all within the same genre, so that what is at one end of the spectrum, while ostensibly the same genre, has very little in common with what's at the other end.

Really all a genre name is meant to do is simplify out all of those little complexities: to find a way of talking about music while also ignoring every one of its interesting features. It is unhelpful shorthand. 

On the other hand, to dig into all of the fine-grained distinctions, multiply our genre lexicon to the extent that it would be able to handle all of those distinctions would also be unhelpful, because no one would know what anyone else was talking about. Setting up those genre lines would be just as nebulous as not setting them up: ask two country music fans what "real country" is, and you'll get three different answers, each of them supposed to mean "this is definitional of the genre", but actually just means "this is something I like".

In short, the genre game is just nonsense.

But Secondly, I don't pay much attention to genre anyway. I don't mean to say I have "eclectic" tastes, that's just as unhelpful and obnoxious as anything else. What matters to me most is lyrics, what they're about, how they're phrased. Whether or not I'm hearing something put in a way I've never heard it put before, etc. Individual people are "better" or "worse" at that (this is subjective, I just mean I like it more or less), and they're spread out all over. It's not eclectic, it's really only one thing I like. That one thing just doesn't map at all onto the concept of genre.

So is this a reasonable answer to the question?

Well, yes and no. It adequately answers what I'm looking for (I think), but that isn't what's being asked for is it?

Because, Thirdly, this question only exists to weasel the shorthand genre answer out of someone, not because that's helpful. It isn't. It's so that we can use this (non-)information to make character assessments of other people. It's to decide if you and I belong to the same category, and if we do, we can be friends, and if not it's going to be rocky. 

Based on practically no information at all!

It's amazing to me that anyone ever has friends.

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.