From the category archives:
Academia
I’ve been learning just a little bit about Mary Midgley, who wasn’t really on my radar before her death earlier this month. I enjoyed this in particular, from here:
““I started with Plato before I ever went to college… One day, I picked a little book off the bookshelf and said, ‘this might be quite fun.’ I decided it was quite fun.” There was a pause. “I could have picked up Spinoza.” She looked slightly alarmed at the possibility.”
I certainly didn’t pick up any philosophy from off the bookshelf before I went to college, but I’ve been trying to remember which philosopher I read first once I got there (and trying to imagine the consequences of lots of possibilities that I’m pretty sure are counter-factual). I think the first philosopher I read as a philosopher was King.
Research that is most relevant to my scholarship tends to get published in journals and I have ways of keeping up with such work. I have a much harder time fitting in reading academic books. They don’t tend to be directly related to my research so there is rarely any urgency in reading them as they are unlikely to inform my work directly (although, of course, could easily inform my work in more indirect ways). Lots of books get published on the social aspects of digital media that may not need to be cited in my own writing, but I am nonetheless curious to read simply because they are of interest to me more generally. I’d like to know how others fit in such book-reading. Are there specific regular time slots you set aside for this? If yes, how often? Has your approach worked?
I started a book club as part of the Digital Society Initiative at my university as a way to get myself to read at least a few books a year. This way I set aside several hours leading up to the book club meeting, but I don’t think it’s realistic to do that every week. Or is that what I should be doing? We read 4-5 books a year so 4-5 such slots on my annual calendar is not a problem. But this is way less than the structured time I’d like to spend on book reading. Please share your experiences even if they concern failed attempts, I’m curious to hear.
Commutes are one possibility, but my train ride to work is just 20 minutes, which is not enough to make that much of a dent. (I’m not complaining about my commute time, just recognizing that it’s not a ton of time for meaningful reading.) Evening hours I reserve for other types of reading or other activities (like making art).
As for the physical environment needed to read comfortably, I am all set there. I bought a very comfy chaise longue (IKEA’s Grönlid) for my office and it’s done wonders for making my way through readings of all sorts such as grant applications I am reviewing. But so yeah, with so many demands on our reading time (articles closely tied to research, student papers, colleagues’ work I’m commenting on, refereeing), how do I fit in more structured time for book reading?
This image (I snagged it from an FB group) is evidently from this book [Amazon]. Science For Work And Play (1954).
I think someone should write Philosophy For Work and Play. “Error is real.” We could keep the picture the same.
According to a long-standing legal precedent known as the Flores settlement, which established guidelines for keeping children in immigration detention, Helen had a right to a bond hearing before a judge; that hearing would have likely hastened her release from government custody and her return to her family. At the time of her apprehension, in fact, Helen checked a box on a line that read, “I do request an immigration judge,” asserting her legal right to have her custody reviewed. But, in early August, an unknown official handed Helen a legal document, a “Request for a Flores Bond Hearing,” which described a set of legal proceedings and rights that would have been difficult for Helen to comprehend. (“In a Flores bond hearing, an immigration judge reviews your case to determine whether you pose a danger to the community,” the document began.) On Helen’s form, which was filled out with assistance from officials, there is a checked box next to a line that says, “I withdraw my previous request for a Flores bond hearing.” Beneath that line, the five-year-old signed her name in wobbly letters.
One taken this morning:
I’ve been reading that the deliberations over Kavanaugh’s appointment in light of Blasey Ford’s allegations against him are firing up voters on the right in the sense that those voters, like Kavanaugh, find the mere investigation to be crazy, a moral outrage, incomprehensible. I’ve never felt so strongly like I’m living in a completely different reality than those who disagree with me politically. This makes me want to say why I think what I think as plainly as I can, because however wrong it might be, I’m almost certain it isn’t crazy or immoral or incomprehensible. Before the testimony, I thought only that further inquiry was in order. Now, in light of Kavanaugh’s testimony, and independent of Blasey Ford’s, I think Kavanaugh has shown himself to be unfit for appointment to the Supreme Court. Here’s why.
I don’t know much about “grievance studies”, but I do know quite a lot about fraud, having written a book on the subject and spent two years researching it (and now three months more researching some additional bits for the US edition, out in 2019). So just a further observation after Henry’s post on the subject – one thing that I think is underappreciated in a variety of contexts is that the susceptibility of a system to intentional deceit is not by any means a good indicator of the underlying health of that system. In fact, I would even go so far as to say that the equilibrium level of fraud is determined entirely separately from the equilibrium level of quality and output, and that therefore the ease with which X can be faked is irrelevant to your assessment of whether there are severe problems with X.
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As many readers may already know, UK Universities will undergo their next round of research evaluation in 2021. This is called REF (Research Excellence Framework); has recently been joined by its teaching equivalent, the TEF; and is seen by many UK academics as part of a general managerialist, bureaucratic trend in UK academia which many deplore, and about which other CT members have already written many interest things.
This post is neither about that general trend, nor about the problems or virtues one might identify within the rules of the current REF compared to past versions. It is, instead, about throwing out there a very simple idea on how to engage in some minimal effort, minimum confrontation resistance to the whole thing. [click to continue…]
Something has gone wrong in the university—especially in certain fields within the social sciences. Scholarship based less upon finding truth and more upon #slatepitching the libs has become firmly established, if not fully dominant, within these fields, and their scholars increasingly bully students, administrators, and other departments into adhering to their worldview. This worldview is not scientific, and it is not rigorous. For many, this problem has been growing increasingly obvious, but strong evidence has been lacking. For this reason, I have spent a good 45 minutes inside the scholarship I see as an intrinsic part of this problem. [click to continue…]
I opened my latest magnum opus (no link necessary I’m sure!) with a requisite attention conservation notice. But sometimes in life it’s good to maintain a sense of proportion. (I’m not the best at that.)
It’s atrocious that Republicans pretty openly don’t give a damn whether BK did or not or is lying or not or whatever. He’s a good guy, bad guy, either way he’s our guy.
But, for the record, when the planet has boiled, BK will be forgotten. And the official position of the Trump administration is not that it’s not true but – eh, screw it.
“The amazing thing they’re saying is human activities are going to lead to this rise of carbon dioxide that is disastrous for the environment and society. And then they’re saying they’re not going to do anything about it,” said Michael MacCracken, who served as a senior scientist at the U.S. Global Change Research Program from 1993 to 2002.
Just kind of giving up on life on the planet as we know it, without even trying anything. If the only chance of survival would mean doing something the donors wouldn’t like, better to go out feeling smug about coal country.
I was up in Newcastle this week (the first time I’ve visited the city). Lots of dramatic photo-opportunities, particularly of buildings dwarfed by bridges in the city-centre. Unfortunately, at the only time I had to take pictures, the weather was rather overcast.
For any public art lover or sculpture lover, the Sculpture Milwaukee exhibit will be a thrill. Along the city’s Wisconsin Avenue, the event showcases over 20 pieces. There are additional sculptures along the way to enjoy that are not part of the exhibition per se. The styles differ considerably and many are good conversation starters. It’s worth visiting in person, but if you can’t, you can see the pieces here, captured during my August visit. The exhibition runs through Oct 21st.
This is an extract from my recent review article in Inside Story, focusing on Ellen Broad’s Made by Humans
For the last thousand years or so, an algorithm (derived from the name of an Arab a Persian mathematician, al-Khwarizmi) has had a pretty clear meaning — namely, it is a well-defined formal procedure for deriving a verifiable solution to a mathematical problem. The standard example, Euclid’s algorithm for finding the greatest common divisor of two numbers, goes back to 300 BCE. There are algorithms for sorting lists, for maximising the value of a function, and so on.
As their long history indicates, algorithms can be applied by humans. But humans can only handle algorithmic processes up to a certain scale. The invention of computers made human limits irrelevant; indeed, the mechanical nature of the task made solving algorithms an ideal task for computers. On the other hand, the hope of many early AI researchers that computers would be able to develop and improve their own algorithms has so far proved almost entirely illusory.
Why, then, are we suddenly hearing so much about “AI algorithms”? The answer is that the meaning of the term “algorithm” has changed.
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