Well, there's a bit of "boy who cried wolf" to worry about -- the more "Important!!!!!" messages you see that aren't actually important, the more you tune them out and the less likely you are to pay attention to the ones that really are important.
There was an op-ed in the NYT recently regarding electronic medical records that included an anecdote where the doctor(s) didn't notice a mistake in a prescription because the alert that came up was lost in a sea of routine alerts.
Actual straw-manning in blog discussions is fairly rare, because we're usually talking about the opinions of large classes of people rather than individuals - you can pretty much always find a [member of group] voicing a particular opinion, so it just turns into a tedious debate about what's typical/representative of the group.
Much more common is weak-manning -- you can hardly have a blog discussion without a hefty dose of that.
This is what's been nagging at me a little about the discussion -- it seems like the reaction is less to do with the power imbalance within the university structure and more about the the fact the undergrads are generally pretty young. If our cultural assumptions/practices were such that, say, most people worked for 10 years after high school and were pushing 30 when they started college, I think we wouldn't be as inclined to regulate so broadly -- yes to preventing vertical relationships within a particular class or (perhaps) department, but no to preventing them across the entire organization.
@kazzy Is there really any difference between a physics professor dating a junior majoring in American Lit and the same professor dating a 20-year-old barista? Why should the one be forbidden and not the other?
This is my body, boiled and drained for you. This is my blood, mixed with some basil and oregano and poured over my body for you. Do this in remembrance of me.
The whole idea of whether something is worth mourning over is a personal matter.
Yes, it's a personal matter, but I think the question is the extent to which the rest of us are entitled to judge someone based on the target of their nostalgia. E.g. someone expressing nostalgia for the pre-Civil Rights south might not get the shoulder-shrugging "different strokes" sort of reaction from us that Jeremiah is.
And then someone else yells 74 and the whole place just breaks up. The new guy asks why such a big reaction on that one, and his cell mate says "Because none of us had heard that one before".
A truly creative coach would've had a team dinner the night before and added some Campylobacter to the meal -- the whole team gets food poisoning and has to forfeit the game, darn the luck.
Both coaches failed their players -- everyone knows that even when you and the opponents and everyone in the stands knows you have no desire to win, you have to at least keep up the pretense. There's no way to get points besides putting the ball in the hoop, so why bother with the blatant 10-second violations and own-goals and such -- all you have to do is make sure the whole team just inexplicably goes stone cold.
"Women have a right to their own body" is a rhetorical club, like its opposite number "It's a child, not a choice". In either case, of course you can try to drill into the details and find conditions and nuance and trade-offs, but it's also easy enough to find people shouting these slogans as if they were sufficient and unassailable arguments for the rightness of the given opinion.
Damon is clearly referring to the way it's usually deployed and is pointing out its deficiencies as a self-contained argument and engaging in a bit of mocking of the people who use it that way. I doubt he's suggesting that there's no way to come up with a notion of self-ownership that's contingent rather than absolute. The best response IMO is to acknowledge that it's over-simplistic, like most statements that appear on placards and bumper-stickers.
Puns are little "plays on words" that a certain breed of person loves to spring on you and then look at you in a certain self-satisfied way to indicate that he thinks that you must think that he is by far the cleverest person on Earth now that Benjamin Franklin is dead, when in fact what you are thinking is that if this person ever ends up in a lifeboat, the other passengers will hurl him overboard by the end of the first day even if they have plenty of food and water.
I think we're missing some context -- there's apparently a controversy specifically about changes made to the AP US History test for 2014 -- see e.g. here. The proposed bill is saying that funding should be cancelled until such time as the College Board reverts to the prior version. Whether or not the objections to the changes are reasonable, the idea that he's objecting to AP tests in general seems wildly overblown.
@north I think it's a useful thing to think about, for those in this kind of situation, but I don't think it's technically the "sunk cost fallacy" -- that's specifically the difference between, say, seeing that there's a 60-minute wait for a table and deciding to go someplace else vs. waiting for 40 minutes, finding out that it's going to be another 60 minutes still, and deciding to keep waiting because you've already waited so long already and you don't want to feel like you blew that 40 minutes for nothing.
I just don't get the sense that it's quite the same mental process going on in the situations we're talking about -- there might be false hope, there might be clinging to a moribund relationship, but is there really a thought of "I don't want to consider the last two years wasted?"
On the other hand, as Rufus mentions about grad school, I was several years into my program and regretting that I'd ever started but very much feeling like I couldn't just quit and have nothing concrete to show for all those years and and all that work. OTOH even that wasn't purely the sunk cost, it was also vanity (what would my friends think) and practical concerns (how will it look to potential employers if I quit in the middle).
I'm sort of with Saul on this one actually -- unlike the usual examples of sunk time costs (e.g. having waited in line for an hour and deciding whether to keep waiting), for relationships there are also potential benefits that could've built up during that time. So the "sunk cost fallacy" applies only to the extent that the decision-maker is thinking merely of the time spent in the relationship itself (e.g. "we've been together five years, we can't give up now") and not of the products of that time (e.g. "we know each other really well, we've worked out how to divide up the chores, who gets which side of the bed, etc. -- I'd hate to start over from scratch"). In the latter case, it's really just a cost-benefit-risk analysis, no fallacy at all.
McArdle doesn't use the word "always" -- she's referring to the typical pattern:
Pardon the sexism, but most men aren't operating on the same timetable for having kids, and also, at least in my experience, they don't tend to stay silent and hopeful for so long. And I'm sure there are also lesbians and gay men out there who are frustrated with a partner who doesn't want to settle down, but again, the gender differences in biological timetables -- and willingness to commit -- don't seem to loom so large for them in my circles. So I'm going to address this column mostly to the folks it is most likely to describe -- heterosexual women -- and if there are others who feel this way, too, just change the pronouns in your head and proceed.
I agree re the pictures. Re rot13, I agree that it's a PITA to have to go to another site, but my preferred solution would be to have this site incorporate a rot13 encoder/decoder in some way.
Fair enough, Tod. One suggestion i have is to return to having sub-blogs and a clear distinction between them and the front page -- my memory is that there was something of a shared sense back then that front-page posts needed to be more thought-out and less ideologically parochial, and it made the main site more accessible to a wider range of commenters while also giving various spaces for having a conversation specifically within a particular ideological framework.
Yes, I don't use RSS so Twitter is a convenient way to see when a writer I like has posted something new. I basically don't ever tweet anything myself -- there've been as many spam tweets sent from my hacked account as genuine ones written by me.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.
On “The Unintended Costs of Bi-Partisanship : Updated!!!”
Well, there's a bit of "boy who cried wolf" to worry about -- the more "Important!!!!!" messages you see that aren't actually important, the more you tune them out and the less likely you are to pay attention to the ones that really are important.
There was an op-ed in the NYT recently regarding electronic medical records that included an anecdote where the doctor(s) didn't notice a mistake in a prescription because the alert that came up was lost in a sea of routine alerts.
On “Linky Friday #107”
Actual straw-manning in blog discussions is fairly rare, because we're usually talking about the opinions of large classes of people rather than individuals - you can pretty much always find a [member of group] voicing a particular opinion, so it just turns into a tedious debate about what's typical/representative of the group.
Much more common is weak-manning -- you can hardly have a blog discussion without a hefty dose of that.
On “Where Doctor Seuss Made A Mistake”
That's going to add a whole new wrinkle to the Blue Eyes puzzle.
On “Lawyered up for Love”
This is what's been nagging at me a little about the discussion -- it seems like the reaction is less to do with the power imbalance within the university structure and more about the the fact the undergrads are generally pretty young. If our cultural assumptions/practices were such that, say, most people worked for 10 years after high school and were pushing 30 when they started college, I think we wouldn't be as inclined to regulate so broadly -- yes to preventing vertical relationships within a particular class or (perhaps) department, but no to preventing them across the entire organization.
"
@scarletnumber Can you explain how it's different (in a way that bears on this policy)? I'm not necessarily arguing against it, I just don't see it.
"
@kazzy Is there really any difference between a physics professor dating a junior majoring in American Lit and the same professor dating a 20-year-old barista? Why should the one be forbidden and not the other?
On “On The Evolution Of Weapons”
Dammit, too slow.
"
This is my body, boiled and drained for you. This is my blood, mixed with some basil and oregano and poured over my body for you. Do this in remembrance of me.
On “Help Me Understand”
Yes, it's a personal matter, but I think the question is the extent to which the rest of us are entitled to judge someone based on the target of their nostalgia. E.g. someone expressing nostalgia for the pre-Civil Rights south might not get the shoulder-shrugging "different strokes" sort of reaction from us that Jeremiah is.
On “The Metamovie: A Primer”
And then someone else yells 74 and the whole place just breaks up. The new guy asks why such a big reaction on that one, and his cell mate says "Because none of us had heard that one before".
On “How To Win By Losing…Well, Except For The Suspensions That Follow”
A truly creative coach would've had a team dinner the night before and added some Campylobacter to the meal -- the whole team gets food poisoning and has to forfeit the game, darn the luck.
"
Both coaches failed their players -- everyone knows that even when you and the opponents and everyone in the stands knows you have no desire to win, you have to at least keep up the pretense. There's no way to get points besides putting the ball in the hoop, so why bother with the blatant 10-second violations and own-goals and such -- all you have to do is make sure the whole team just inexplicably goes stone cold.
On “From Power to Explorer”
Ah, so the show is preparing kids to be software developers who have to deal with non-technical people.
On “Linky Friday #103: Fear & Guns Edition”
"Women have a right to their own body" is a rhetorical club, like its opposite number "It's a child, not a choice". In either case, of course you can try to drill into the details and find conditions and nuance and trade-offs, but it's also easy enough to find people shouting these slogans as if they were sufficient and unassailable arguments for the rightness of the given opinion.
Damon is clearly referring to the way it's usually deployed and is pointing out its deficiencies as a self-contained argument and engaging in a bit of mocking of the people who use it that way. I doubt he's suggesting that there's no way to come up with a notion of self-ownership that's contingent rather than absolute. The best response IMO is to acknowledge that it's over-simplistic, like most statements that appear on placards and bumper-stickers.
On “Weekend!”
(Belated) Welcome to CT! You picked a lousy time to visit. May should be nice, trees will be budding by then.
On “Lent!”
Dave Barry, from "Why Humor is Funny":
On “Take a wild guess as to which party might make funding Advanced Placement classes illegal in Oklahoma…”
I think we're missing some context -- there's apparently a controversy specifically about changes made to the AP US History test for 2014 -- see e.g. here. The proposed bill is saying that funding should be cancelled until such time as the College Board reverts to the prior version. Whether or not the objections to the changes are reasonable, the idea that he's objecting to AP tests in general seems wildly overblown.
On “Liberalism and the End of History: Rules, Laws, Political Correctness and Free Speech”
Seems to me that once you've decided to go with an ex-Dodger named Steve, Steve Sax throwing to first would be the natural choice.
On “Lock, Stock, & Marriage”
@north I think it's a useful thing to think about, for those in this kind of situation, but I don't think it's technically the "sunk cost fallacy" -- that's specifically the difference between, say, seeing that there's a 60-minute wait for a table and deciding to go someplace else vs. waiting for 40 minutes, finding out that it's going to be another 60 minutes still, and deciding to keep waiting because you've already waited so long already and you don't want to feel like you blew that 40 minutes for nothing.
I just don't get the sense that it's quite the same mental process going on in the situations we're talking about -- there might be false hope, there might be clinging to a moribund relationship, but is there really a thought of "I don't want to consider the last two years wasted?"
On the other hand, as Rufus mentions about grad school, I was several years into my program and regretting that I'd ever started but very much feeling like I couldn't just quit and have nothing concrete to show for all those years and and all that work. OTOH even that wasn't purely the sunk cost, it was also vanity (what would my friends think) and practical concerns (how will it look to potential employers if I quit in the middle).
"
I'm sort of with Saul on this one actually -- unlike the usual examples of sunk time costs (e.g. having waited in line for an hour and deciding whether to keep waiting), for relationships there are also potential benefits that could've built up during that time. So the "sunk cost fallacy" applies only to the extent that the decision-maker is thinking merely of the time spent in the relationship itself (e.g. "we've been together five years, we can't give up now") and not of the products of that time (e.g. "we know each other really well, we've worked out how to divide up the chores, who gets which side of the bed, etc. -- I'd hate to start over from scratch"). In the latter case, it's really just a cost-benefit-risk analysis, no fallacy at all.
"
McArdle doesn't use the word "always" -- she's referring to the typical pattern:
On “Repairs Under Way”
I think it'd be great to have selective, tailored confirmation dialog after you submit a comment -- e.g.:
"Dude, you've posted 50 comments so far this week already - maybe the blog can do without your wisdom for a day or two?"
[Sorry, I'll shut up now]
[Fish you, the world needs to hear this!]
Or with a bit of AI:
"You seem to have used the word "fish" non-euphemistically - this is likely to cause a little confusion. Post anyway?"
"
I agree re the pictures. Re rot13, I agree that it's a PITA to have to go to another site, but my preferred solution would be to have this site incorporate a rot13 encoder/decoder in some way.
"
Fair enough, Tod. One suggestion i have is to return to having sub-blogs and a clear distinction between them and the front page -- my memory is that there was something of a shared sense back then that front-page posts needed to be more thought-out and less ideologically parochial, and it made the main site more accessible to a wider range of commenters while also giving various spaces for having a conversation specifically within a particular ideological framework.
"
Yes, I don't use RSS so Twitter is a convenient way to see when a writer I like has posted something new. I basically don't ever tweet anything myself -- there've been as many spam tweets sent from my hacked account as genuine ones written by me.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.