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More comments I've posted elsewhere:
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supergee, who was discussing materialism and what he dislikes about it:
I'm not convinced that whatrysmiel is talking about--which is at least similar to my own view, that everything is emergent from the universe as it is [1]--means that we are "creating" value rather than finding it. Whether materialism is true or false (or incomplete, imprecise, or meaningless), does not change the value of, say, a good novel or a good song, nor the source of that value: it's in the creator of the work, and in the person who is enjoying it, not in the book as a paper artifact nor yet floating somewhere in the universe separate from writer, reader, and text.
[1] I don't begin to claim that I know all about the universe as it is: rather, it seems to me that, almost by definition, that's all there is. It might--though I see no reason to believe this--include souls or energy fields or something beyond mind as emergent activity of brains, but if they exist, they are part of the universe.
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polyamory, peaceofpie wrote "I have mixed feelings about the ethics of cheating and punishment forcheating, though, since I'm generally opposed to grading. Ideally, youshould only be cheating yourself if you cheat, and I don't think toohighly of teaching styles that have students graded against each other."
In reply, I talked about the different uses of grades and tests, and why cheating is still wrong:
Grades, as far as I can tell, serve (at least) three purposes. One is for self-evaluation: if I take, say, a self-paced online course, and come to a quiz, the point is for me to find out whether I've learned that material. If not, I should review it, possibly using a different textbook or set of lessons.
The second is to enable someone who wasn't actually teaching me whether I know some material well enough for a given purpose: that can be arithmetic, accounting, or how to fly an airplane.
The third is to compare people's work against each other's. That's the only one of the three that your objection applies to.
No sensible person would cheat in the first context given: they'd stumble when they tried to use the material, or in the next set of lessons. A remarkable number of people do try to cheat in the second context--they don't understand that failing a driving test means they need more practice before it's safe for them to be operating that heavy machinery, or don't care that they'd be defrauding an employer by claiming to be qualified nurses or accountants. Lots of people cheat in the third, or think it's okay to do so--and not only are they also cheating themselves out of learning, to the extent that the resulting grades are used for other purposes, they're changing the evaluation from "who has done the work/learned the material" to "who can afford to buy a term paper/has the most friends who know things." Far too many things in our culture are already skewed in favor of the richer and more popular people.
If you don't believe in grades, enroll in a course of study that doesn't use them. Or do the work as well as you can or care to, and ignore your grades. Being a socialist doesn't entitle me to rob banks.
In response to a post bypnh complaining that LJ posters will offer reassuring comments to almost anything, wild_irises said some interesting things about reassurance and the difficulty and potential value of emotionally safe spaces. I wrote:
I said some of this to Patrick, but I'd like to elaborate.
There are different kinds of reassurance. Most notably, there's a real difference between "I agree with you about $political_issue" and "I'm sorry that happened, and no, you aren't crazy." The latter is, I think, an emotional transaction that LJ is better at than Usenet.
There are people to whom my reaction would be "You really are crazy," but I generally have better things to do than read their writing, whether on LJ, Usenet, the rest of the Web, or printed on paper. I'd better clarify that--I don't mean friends or acquaintances who are dealing with specific mental problems, I mean people who want to convince me that the Jews are conspiring with space aliens to take over the world, or the CIA has implanted a radio in their heads.
It also seems relevant that when the emotional transaction on Patrick and Teresa's Weblog goes to the sort of attack that Patrick might seem to be implying LJ would be better for having, Teresa does her best to squelch it by disemvowelling the offending posts. LJ doesn't have that feature--I can't edit a comment, only hide or remove it, and optionally ban the commenter. (OK, I suppose I could copy the comment, disemvowel it, repost it under my own name as "here is X's comment disemvowelled," and remove the original. But I'm not going to, in part because it would be labeled as my writing.)
I tend not to respond to requests for hugs either--but I do include them in comments to certain people whom I regularly hug in person, if it seems appropriate. And I have made a note of one person who explicitly does not want virtual hugs, and offer her tea instead.
rho posted about what's wrong with sports as generally practiced in schools, notably the part where the players who already know the game control the team choices and who plays where, thus ensuring that those who don't never get a chance to learn or enjoy the activity:
My theory on this is that part of the problem is that math or French or history is a class, and they actually teach the subject, or try to. Gym/sport is called a class, but it's not--if it were, the people running it would teach the skills useful for the game to everyone, not tell the ones who are already good at it "okay, you're in charge, now play" and neglect the students who aren't as gifted or who don't have parents who taught them the basics at home.
The only gym classes I learned anything in, from grade school on up, were when we played soccer--because this was the U.S. in the 1970s, and the mostly-valid assumption was that none of us knew even the basics, so they taught it--and the semester of yoga.
My school didn't have the facilities you describe, or particularly involved teachers, which left a situation in which, for the most part, they neither taught those of us who didn't already have the rudiments, nor gave those who already had some skills any additional instruction, beyond the chance to practice for an hour and a half a week (state-mandated minimum).
I've commented that it took me until I was in my late 30s to find the exercise I actually enjoy. I don't know, though, that I would have learned to like weight-lifting had it been offered to me at 15. Certainly not if it had been offered under similar conditions.
To
supergee, who was discussing materialism and what he dislikes about it:I'm not convinced that what
rysmiel is talking about--which is at least similar to my own view, that everything is emergent from the universe as it is [1]--means that we are "creating" value rather than finding it. Whether materialism is true or false (or incomplete, imprecise, or meaningless), does not change the value of, say, a good novel or a good song, nor the source of that value: it's in the creator of the work, and in the person who is enjoying it, not in the book as a paper artifact nor yet floating somewhere in the universe separate from writer, reader, and text.[1] I don't begin to claim that I know all about the universe as it is: rather, it seems to me that, almost by definition, that's all there is. It might--though I see no reason to believe this--include souls or energy fields or something beyond mind as emergent activity of brains, but if they exist, they are part of the universe.
On
polyamory, peaceofpie wrote "I have mixed feelings about the ethics of cheating and punishment forcheating, though, since I'm generally opposed to grading. Ideally, youshould only be cheating yourself if you cheat, and I don't think toohighly of teaching styles that have students graded against each other."In reply, I talked about the different uses of grades and tests, and why cheating is still wrong:
Grades, as far as I can tell, serve (at least) three purposes. One is for self-evaluation: if I take, say, a self-paced online course, and come to a quiz, the point is for me to find out whether I've learned that material. If not, I should review it, possibly using a different textbook or set of lessons.
The second is to enable someone who wasn't actually teaching me whether I know some material well enough for a given purpose: that can be arithmetic, accounting, or how to fly an airplane.
The third is to compare people's work against each other's. That's the only one of the three that your objection applies to.
No sensible person would cheat in the first context given: they'd stumble when they tried to use the material, or in the next set of lessons. A remarkable number of people do try to cheat in the second context--they don't understand that failing a driving test means they need more practice before it's safe for them to be operating that heavy machinery, or don't care that they'd be defrauding an employer by claiming to be qualified nurses or accountants. Lots of people cheat in the third, or think it's okay to do so--and not only are they also cheating themselves out of learning, to the extent that the resulting grades are used for other purposes, they're changing the evaluation from "who has done the work/learned the material" to "who can afford to buy a term paper/has the most friends who know things." Far too many things in our culture are already skewed in favor of the richer and more popular people.
If you don't believe in grades, enroll in a course of study that doesn't use them. Or do the work as well as you can or care to, and ignore your grades. Being a socialist doesn't entitle me to rob banks.
In response to a post by
pnh complaining that LJ posters will offer reassuring comments to almost anything, wild_irises said some interesting things about reassurance and the difficulty and potential value of emotionally safe spaces. I wrote:I said some of this to Patrick, but I'd like to elaborate.
There are different kinds of reassurance. Most notably, there's a real difference between "I agree with you about $political_issue" and "I'm sorry that happened, and no, you aren't crazy." The latter is, I think, an emotional transaction that LJ is better at than Usenet.
There are people to whom my reaction would be "You really are crazy," but I generally have better things to do than read their writing, whether on LJ, Usenet, the rest of the Web, or printed on paper. I'd better clarify that--I don't mean friends or acquaintances who are dealing with specific mental problems, I mean people who want to convince me that the Jews are conspiring with space aliens to take over the world, or the CIA has implanted a radio in their heads.
It also seems relevant that when the emotional transaction on Patrick and Teresa's Weblog goes to the sort of attack that Patrick might seem to be implying LJ would be better for having, Teresa does her best to squelch it by disemvowelling the offending posts. LJ doesn't have that feature--I can't edit a comment, only hide or remove it, and optionally ban the commenter. (OK, I suppose I could copy the comment, disemvowel it, repost it under my own name as "here is X's comment disemvowelled," and remove the original. But I'm not going to, in part because it would be labeled as my writing.)
I tend not to respond to requests for hugs either--but I do include them in comments to certain people whom I regularly hug in person, if it seems appropriate. And I have made a note of one person who explicitly does not want virtual hugs, and offer her tea instead.
rho posted about what's wrong with sports as generally practiced in schools, notably the part where the players who already know the game control the team choices and who plays where, thus ensuring that those who don't never get a chance to learn or enjoy the activity:My theory on this is that part of the problem is that math or French or history is a class, and they actually teach the subject, or try to. Gym/sport is called a class, but it's not--if it were, the people running it would teach the skills useful for the game to everyone, not tell the ones who are already good at it "okay, you're in charge, now play" and neglect the students who aren't as gifted or who don't have parents who taught them the basics at home.
The only gym classes I learned anything in, from grade school on up, were when we played soccer--because this was the U.S. in the 1970s, and the mostly-valid assumption was that none of us knew even the basics, so they taught it--and the semester of yoga.
My school didn't have the facilities you describe, or particularly involved teachers, which left a situation in which, for the most part, they neither taught those of us who didn't already have the rudiments, nor gave those who already had some skills any additional instruction, beyond the chance to practice for an hour and a half a week (state-mandated minimum).
I've commented that it took me until I was in my late 30s to find the exercise I actually enjoy. I don't know, though, that I would have learned to like weight-lifting had it been offered to me at 15. Certainly not if it had been offered under similar conditions.