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Complexity
Back in 2000, I was approached, at a Muni station, by a supporter of a fairly hardline candidate for Attorney General. "No thanks," I said, "I don't think more jails is the answer." "Well, what do you think the answer is then?" he asked, indignantly, "Less jails?"
This is the sort of thinking that is holding us back as a state (and, on a larger scale, as a nation). If you don't want more jails, you must want less jails. If you don't want cuts in education, you must want tax hikes. If you don't support the death penalty for one person on death row, you must be anti-death penalty. If you didn't support the preemptive invasion of Iraq, you must have supported Saddam Hussein. If you support gay marriage, you must support pederasty.
Malarkey. This is simplistic thinking, suitable to simpletons, and I for one am sick of it. The world is not binary. Human beings are not binary. We are capable of complexity, and it's about damn time we started to embrace it.
Complexity has become a dirty word in politics these days. It's become a way of tuning out the average person, of perpetuating the status quo. When we ask why we have crime in our cities, we're told it's complicated, and we let it go at that. Who wants to dive into the complexities of race relations, the urban family unit, economic depression, urban blight? It's much easier to just assign blame and say it's complicated. Why don't kids do well in school? Obviously it's because the teachers aren't doing their jobs. Or it's because parents aren't concerned about their children's education. Or because the Man is keeping Mama's baby-daddy from getting a real job and making the child-support payments. Can't fix that-- it's complicated.
And the problem never gets solved.
You want to know whose fault it is? I'll tell you, so we can get on with fixing it. It's my fault. Yep, it's all my fault. My bad, me to blame, I'm the one, I did it. Have we got that out of the way yet? Good. Now let's get going on fixing it.
Start by figuring out where we can make a change, the biggest change on the smallest level. Recognize that whatever the problem is (schools, teen pregnancies, kids smoking stupid amounts of dope), you're going to need to spend more money before you can afford to spend less money. Recognize that the price you pay to live in a somewhat safe society is the taxes that go to build the programs that keep the kids from ripping off the stereo in you car. Recognize that if you buy a luxury car, you're at higher risk and ought to pay more.
Remember, though, when you feel like grousing and moaning, that a small, cost-effective prevention plan will trump a more expensive fix-it plan later on.
So when the politicians start circling like vultures, saying, "We must return to basics!" or "More taxes will drive more business out of the state!" or "Welfare just encourages more welfare!" take a deep breath and take the plunge into complexity. Figure out for yourself that nothing is simplistic enough to fit into a soundbyte.
If we all did that, we'd be one step closer to getting through this mess.
This is the sort of thinking that is holding us back as a state (and, on a larger scale, as a nation). If you don't want more jails, you must want less jails. If you don't want cuts in education, you must want tax hikes. If you don't support the death penalty for one person on death row, you must be anti-death penalty. If you didn't support the preemptive invasion of Iraq, you must have supported Saddam Hussein. If you support gay marriage, you must support pederasty.
Malarkey. This is simplistic thinking, suitable to simpletons, and I for one am sick of it. The world is not binary. Human beings are not binary. We are capable of complexity, and it's about damn time we started to embrace it.
Complexity has become a dirty word in politics these days. It's become a way of tuning out the average person, of perpetuating the status quo. When we ask why we have crime in our cities, we're told it's complicated, and we let it go at that. Who wants to dive into the complexities of race relations, the urban family unit, economic depression, urban blight? It's much easier to just assign blame and say it's complicated. Why don't kids do well in school? Obviously it's because the teachers aren't doing their jobs. Or it's because parents aren't concerned about their children's education. Or because the Man is keeping Mama's baby-daddy from getting a real job and making the child-support payments. Can't fix that-- it's complicated.
And the problem never gets solved.
You want to know whose fault it is? I'll tell you, so we can get on with fixing it. It's my fault. Yep, it's all my fault. My bad, me to blame, I'm the one, I did it. Have we got that out of the way yet? Good. Now let's get going on fixing it.
Start by figuring out where we can make a change, the biggest change on the smallest level. Recognize that whatever the problem is (schools, teen pregnancies, kids smoking stupid amounts of dope), you're going to need to spend more money before you can afford to spend less money. Recognize that the price you pay to live in a somewhat safe society is the taxes that go to build the programs that keep the kids from ripping off the stereo in you car. Recognize that if you buy a luxury car, you're at higher risk and ought to pay more.
Remember, though, when you feel like grousing and moaning, that a small, cost-effective prevention plan will trump a more expensive fix-it plan later on.
So when the politicians start circling like vultures, saying, "We must return to basics!" or "More taxes will drive more business out of the state!" or "Welfare just encourages more welfare!" take a deep breath and take the plunge into complexity. Figure out for yourself that nothing is simplistic enough to fit into a soundbyte.
If we all did that, we'd be one step closer to getting through this mess.
Re:
Yes, I see that a lot. It really makes me crazy. Fer crissakes [that was for Erik] please respond to what I actually said, not what you think I might be implying by what I said.
When I was in school there was a controversial anthropology professor who had much of the campus population pissed off at him. The Daily Cal would run articles about him, enumerating his evils, but the actual quotations they ran were always far more measured and reasonable than the reporter's take on what the professor supposedly believed.
It is good that people are able to make leaps and assumptions based on their intuition, but they also need to be able to follow a rigorous discourse or line of reasoning. Most people simply are not accustomed to critical thinking or able to make fine distinctions. Education has failed them. I'd like to see geometry, epistemology, and simple programming taught to everyone.
My high school required every student to take a programming fundamentals class. At the time I was opposed to it. Programming was all well and good for techies like me, but the other students should just learn to use word processors and ignore the man behind the curtain. Now I realize that I wasn't just learning a job skill, I was learning a way of thinking. The methodical through process I learned from programming has served me well in all sorts of pursuits. (Of course, the flipside of this is that many of my fellow programmers are too rigid in their thinking and/or can't recognize that other people don't think was we do.)
Anyway, the three subjects I mentioned-- geometry, epistemology, and elementary programming --teach skills which are important counterparts to the skills gleaned from other classes. Intuitive leaps and random inferences have their place, but sometimes we need to be able to follow the facts in a more methodical way. Good thinkers must be able to operate both ways.
Changing education is hard though, and any teacher will tell you that simply piling on more requirements poses problems of it's own. One alternative is simply to hit people when they make stupid inferences about your beliefs. That way we won't have to raise taxes.
Re:
My favorite professor at Cal was Professor Gregor of the Poli Sci department. He often taught the Empirical Studies course. He said that this course used to be three courses (epistemology, semantics, empiricism and truth -- or something like that). During the 1960s, though, students protested about these (and other requirements), complaining that they didn't need to know what metaphysical truth is in order to do whatever it is that they planned to do in their lives. So, Professor Gregor continued, the university gave in. After all, the university already had the students' and the state's money. What did it care if the quality of education wasn't so rigorous?
The methodical through process I learned from programming has served me well in all sorts of pursuits
I had that experience, too. When I was growing up, I couldn't understand math. I worked very hard just to pass math classes. I had to learn to do it by rote because I just could not get what was going on.
When I was 19, I was sitting in the back of an algebra class and it suddenly all clicked. I understood it. It really felt like a switch in my head. After that, math was fun and while sometimes difficult, it was also downright pleasurable.
And then came the other changes. My writing in English and history improved. The improvement was tremendous. I went from Bs to As inside of a single semester. The improvement came from improved methods of thinking.
I saw another dramatic improvement as a result of taking Professor Gregor's class, too.