Carnival of the Elitist Bastards #9
Efrique gives us a great pirate puzzle for the ninth edition of the Carnival of the Elitist Bastards. Between that and the interesting posts, there’s plenty to stimulate your mind as well as your sense of elitism. Go take a look!
Apologetics and apologies
I’ve always been into etymology and linguistics. I love knowing where words come from, and how all the little nuances in connotation are related to previous forms of the word or previous meanings. In second grade, during a unit about food groups and nutrition, the teacher asked if there were any questions, and I raised my hand and said: “Why is a tomato called a tomato?” The teacher looked puzzled, and said, “That’s an interesting question, but that’s not what we’re talking about right now. I’m only looking for questions about the food pyramid.” I nodded seriously and thought I understood, but two seconds later my hand was up in the air again: “Why is a cucumber called a cucumber?”
I suppose it makes sense, then, that today I am fixated on the meaning of the word “apologetics,” in the religious context. Lately, apologist Lee Strobel has been answering readers’ questions over at Friendly Atheist (parts one, two, three) and Martin has been answering Lee’s questions for atheists at The Atheist Experience (parts one and two). A lot of the dialogue, while good and useful, seems kind of old-hat to me, and though I considered it I couldn’t get excited about answering Lee’s questions myself or about questioning/refuting his answers to atheists. I am hung up on people calling themselves “apologetics,” though. What does that really mean?
The reason my mind is twisted around this question is because the word is clearly related to apologize, apologetic, and apology. In conventional usage, these mean: to say you’re sorry, how sorry you feel, and the statement of sorriness itself. Are all these Christians really sorry about their faith, sorry about how Christians treat non-Christians, sorry about all the bigotry and violence? Are they expressing regrets about their religion? No, in general they are not (or at least, that’s not their point). Usually they’re doing the exact opposite.
The word apology comes from the Greek apo- meaning “from, off, away from” and logos meaning “word, speech.” Apologos means “account” or “story,” while apologeisthai means “to speak in one’s defense” or simply “to give an account,” and apologia refers to the defense itself. The original sense of apologizing, it seems, was justifying and explaining oneself or one’s actions. The OED says that to be apologetic is to be vindicatory! It wasn’t until 1594 that apologizing was first recorded meaning something like we typically imagine today, and it didn’t enter common usage until the 18th century.
On the one hand, being apologetic means expressing regrets and admitting guilt. Simultaneously, though, it means defending one’s ideas or behavior in order to seek vindication. This difference is more than a dash of nuance. They’re actually opposite things.
It’s nice to know that my confusion was not completely unfounded, but I still feel intellectually uneasy about this. Do Christian apologetics continue to call themselves that because it’s traditional, even though most people aren’t used to hearing the word “apology” in that sense? Do they think it makes them sound kinder and gentler? That was the picture it originally painted for me. I thought that apologetics would be the people involved in interfaith outreach activities. Oh-ho, that is incorrect. I mean, I’m glad they don’t use a more confrontational-sounding vocabulary (I’m looking at you, Campus Crusade for Christ), but I do wonder if it isn’t a bit disingenuous.
(One last question: how did that happen to our language? My only guess is that the meanings do sort of overlap in the case of an apology in the style of William Carlos Williams… in other words, here is what I did wrong, but here is why I did it and why it seemed right at the time.)
Skeptics’ Circle #104
Space City Skeptics has just posted the 104th edition of the Skeptics’ Circle. Those of us now in the swing of spring semester and perhaps coming up on our first set of exams may find it hauntingly familiar! (Sadly, I’m referring only to familiarity of the test theme, rather than the multiple choice format in particular…. Oh, how I miss those bygone days.) There’s plenty of interesting content there, but do make sure you check out the Perky Skeptic’s post about feeding trolls, and save some of that inspiration for next time you feel discouraged by the number of people who are wrong on the internet.
I’ll be hosting the next edition of the Skeptics’ Circle here on February 12, so please send me your submissions by the previous midnight (EST). Email them to z [at] thoughtcounts [dot] net.
Reading the arXiv
I’m a big fan of the arXiv.org database. (If you’ve never heard of it: pronounce it just like “archive.” Think the Greek letter chi, written like an X.) It contains papers from lots of fields in math and science. The arXiv makes research more accessible to researchers and laymen (laypeople?) in several ways. It’s difficult to get access to journal articles without a subscription, or a university library system with a subscription. Also, it takes time for articles to get printed, for purely logistical reasons, but people sometimes post their papers before publication. Lastly (in my list at least), a lot of research wouldn’t otherwise be published, but even things like null results add to the sum of our knowledge and are valuable to record, and the arXiv is a good a place to put them.
That being said, the arXiv is not a peer-reviewed journal, and should not be treated as such. Some articles have gone through review, but not all. Some papers are early drafts, and are still undergoing review. Some articles have questionable methods, or assume blatantly wrong premises. (We frequently encounter this phenomenon when presenting and discussing papers in “journal club.” I assume we are not the only ones noticing this.) You do need to be a registered author to submit a paper to the arXiv, and you’re not supposed to lie about who you are, but no one is there checking your work.
Daphne was just pointing out the ridiculously alarmist Fox News coverage of a new arXiv article about black holes at the LHC. She makes a lot of great (and funny!) points about their inaccurate and misleading interpretation of the article, and I don’t have anything to add there. What really got me about the story is that the Fox reporters based their entire story on a paper only published on the arXiv. I’m not questioning the researchers’ methods or conclusions — hep-ph is not my subfield, and besides, their claims are certainly not what is reported on Fox News’ site — but I am pretty sure that no one at Fox is qualified to question them either, which means that they shouldn’t take everything they find on arXiv at face value. It’d be like reading Wikipedia and then reporting that the European Union has announced a new policy that ALLY WUZ HERE!!1!
I want information to be freely available just as much as the next intellectual. However, we have to be cautious. The internet may be the great leveller, but that means it sometimes obscures the difference between good ideas and bad ones.
Turning to psychics
Today Richard Wiseman pointed out the flurry of recent news stories about psychics getting more business as we face difficult economic times. He covered similar material in his book, Quirkology, basically explaining that “superstitious behaviour gives people an illusion of control over their lives, and proves especially appealing in the face of high uncertainty.” Nevertheless, he asks: “why have our brains evolved to turn away from rationality just when we need it most?”
It seems to me that Wiseman has already answered his own question. People are calmed by the idea that there is some order even in seeming chaos. Perhaps his question was specifically about evolution — that is, how could superstition be a trait that’s selected for?
In that case, I think the answer lies in the calming, rather than in the superstition. Of course a psychic can’t give you any real insight into navigating financial markets. Complex mathematical models govern traders’ decisions about when to buy and when to sell. Logical thinking, not pseudoscience, is clearly what’s needed to develop those. Logical thinking was also necessary for primitive humans to develop a mammoth hunting strategy, to evade predatory animals, to survive cold winters… or to triumph in any number of situations in which they would probably have felt helpless or overpowered. The other thing necessary in all these situations — and, I’d argue, in playing the stock market — is a lack of panic. You can draw up all the logical plans you like, but they won’t do you any good if when you try to carry them out, you’re so afraid for your survival that you forget all about them or take additional actions that sabotage them. Things like carrying lucky trinkets, or performing special rituals, or receiving the affirmations of a spiritual leader (or psychic) offer reassurance that a higher power governs all that seems beyond your control, so you can take a deep breath and get back to your plans.
Of course, in understanding this situation it’s important to remember that to the vast majority of people, the stock market is little more than random chaos. Even the people who work as investment bankers are just one person in a sea of trading firms that, in the aggregate, have some moderate amount of control over the markets. Wiseman assumes that rationality is what we need most. As a general rule, I’d be inclined to agree with him. It’s obviously the ideal. However, I think in this case, what people need is the ability to make rational decisions, and sometimes people cling irrationally to a couple superstitions in order to be calm enough to act rationally the rest of the time.
Thoughts on humanity
Just a quick post today. Check out this video, made by a student for a class project. People walking down the street are asked, “What does it mean to be human?” and these are their responses.
I found it interesting to note the common responses and the uncommon ones, as well as people’s reactions when it was clear they’d never thought of this question before. Happily, most seem pleased rather than upset at the prospect of thinking philosophically about life. It would be an awesome experiment to do this in several cities, around the country or the world, and see how people responded the same or differently.
Math instincts
This article from the New York Times is somewhat old, but it’s still interesting. Research about how humans (and other animals) understand numbers, in a kind of primitive mathematics, can give us insight on how to teach math to young children.
One research team has found that how readily people rally their approximate number sense is linked over time to success in even the most advanced and abstruse mathematics courses. Other scientists have shown that preschool children are remarkably good at approximating the impact of adding to or subtracting from large groups of items but are poor at translating the approximate into the specific. Taken together, the new research suggests that math teachers might do well to emphasize the power of the ballpark figure, to focus less on arithmetic precision and more on general reckoning.
Try this Flash game to evaluate your own number sense.
Choosing a career
W.M. Irwin wrote a really interesting post about career aspirations last Friday. He talks about how as a child he used to want to be an astronomer, and about how most children express “lofty and seemingly unattainable” career goals but most of us grow up and settle for something more “ordinary and mundane.” So what should we do, he asks, follow our childhood dreams or be happy with what life hands us? I’d add my own questions: Should we teach children to get excited about more “ordinary” career prospects? Should we teach children that being a brain surgeon or an astronomer is more attainable than they might think?
As a graduate student in physics, these are questions I wonder about often. I remember when the letters “Ph.D.” signified some kind of otherworldly, almost magical genius, and now here I am realistically on track to have them attached to my name (and not feeling at all special about it, either, like it’s just par for the course). My grad student friends, both in physics and in other fields, have expressed similar feelings. In contrast to W.M., we often grapple with doubts about whether aiming for that “lofty” goal by spending years and years in school is really worth it, and really going to get us the life we imagined — and from reading PHD Comics I get the sense that we’re not the only ones out there thinking this. What was so bad about being an accountant, or a secretary, store clerk, or a network admin? Was it too ordinary and mundane?
You only rarely hear kids naming one of those professions when they explain “what they want to be when they grow up.” But why not? Of course society needs people to be accountants and store clerks, and all of that. It would be terrible if no one ever took those jobs. So why don’t we celebrate them? Why don’t kids aspire to be them?
One of the things I could end up doing, as a physicist with decent writing and communication skills, is science journalism. I’m averse to the idea, though, even though I could easily imagine having more fun at it than I would doing research. Maybe it’s that it’s too ordinary-seeming. It feels like a waste of the degree… even though I’ve often lamented the quality of science writing and general science literacy, and wished that more people with science expertise got into journalism. I know that I’m just being silly, and I would certainly be happy with a science writing job. It’s just that I can’t seem to shake the feeling of stigma, the sense that a career move like that would be a disappointment.
Of course, there are people out there aspiring to be journalists. More power to you! I hope you don’t get me wrong. If my diploma said “Journalism” at the end of 5 (or 6 or 7…) years, there’d be no problem, but most people don’t get doctorates in order to become journalists. Surely, for whatever your career goals are, you can think of some job you feel would be clearly beneath your qualifications… but then on closer reflection, you can also think of someone who wants that job sincerely and is working their butt off to get it. Maybe it’s this sort of inductive step that we should keep in mind when talking to children about their future careers. They shouldn’t only get your “ooh” and “aah” responses when they say things like “a surgeon!” or “an astronaut!” or “the President!”
At the same time as we encourage children towards “ordinary” careers, though, I think it’s important to make it clear that working as an astronomer or a surgeon is not unattainable. Not everyone will be good at every job, sure, but there isn’t something “magical” about these professions that means only a miniscule fraction of people ever born will be able to get a job doing them. It is okay to try for them. Maybe the real bottom line is, when we teach kids that “you can be anything you want to be,” we need to make clear that there really are no strings attached.
President Obama
The long-anticipated inauguration ceremony went very well, I think. I found Obama’s speech to be gracious while still pointed. I don’t want to say much more about it, because every blogger who’s ever discussed American politics is posting something like this today, and I don’t really have anything new to add. I just want to say congratulations to President Obama and Vice President Biden. Here’s hoping that we were right to have hope.
Speaking of which, I want to point you to the Obameter, maintained by PolitiFact.com, if you haven’t seen it already. They’re keeping track of the 500+ promises that Obama made during his campaign, and marking each one with their status (kept, broken, in the works, etc.). I saw it mentioned first on the Reason Hit & Run blog yesterday, and at a few other places since then. I’ve generally seen it discussed with a sort of sore-loser snark (at H&R, not so much in the post itself as in the comments) but I think it’s something we should all be celebrating, even if we’re happy that Obama won the election. It’s a fantastic example of how technology can bring us better government, increase transparency and promote accountability through availability of information.
Politicians have been making campaign promises all over the place for as long as there have been politicians. Everyone gripes about how they don’t follow through. Oh, politicians, those dishonest, lying crooks! (Insert melodramatic fist-shake here.) But seriously, I think a lot of things just get forgotten. We’re talking about many hundreds of statements made. It’s not malice on the part of the politician, but simply things getting hectic and other issues taking the forefront, displacing that half a sentence in a speech to the crowd outside the Piggly-Wiggly in Tuscaloosa. If the public is really invested in that promise being carried out, a website like this one can serve as a reminder to the politician that he or she did make it. On the other hand, the website might reveal to citizens that the “big” promises do get the follow-through, while smaller and less important daydreams and wishes don’t get a politician’s priority. Either way, it’s a valuable reality check for everyone.
I also want to caution against becoming too obsessed with these records. Some of these promises hinge on Congress going along with what Obama wants, and while the president ought to work with the legislature to get his agenda through, he doesn’t have 100% control over the outcome. Additionally, some things have changed over the past year, and the president ought to reconsider his positions when the relevant information has changed. (I mean, really, if we’ve learned anything from the last eight years…!) Finally, we need to get real and understand that saying “I will work for x” is not the same as “I promise, x will definitely happen immediately when I take office.”
As happy as I am to be able to say “President Obama,” I won’t give him a free pass. We should all hold our elected officials accountable, which is why I’m glad the Obameter is up and running on inauguration day. Still, guys, remember he’s only been president for three hours. Give him a little more time to get started on the tax code.
And… we’re back!
I know, I broke my New Year’s resolution already. I was busy for the whole weekend and never had a chance to schedule posts ahead of time to cover it. Ah well, such is life. I’m back now, and you can expect “real” posts to resume tomorrow.
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