Trendlist: Althouse

Tuesday, April 13, 2021

Althouse

Pink and blue.
"The speech of rationalists is heavy on the vernacular, often derived from programming language: 'updating your priors' (keeping an open mind), 'steel-manning' (arguing with the strongest version of whatever point your opponent is making)..."
Magnolia.
"A group of top Democratic Party pollsters are set to release a public statement Tuesday acknowledging 'major errors' in their 2020 polling — errors that left party officials stunned..."
"New research shows that daydreaming can inspire happiness if you purposefully engage with meaningful topics, such as... imagined scenes of triumph in the face of all odds...."
Tree-hugging.
"The BBC’s wall-to-wall coverage of Prince Philip’s death has become the most complained-about moment in British television history...."
"Notable & Quotable: Deplorable Polling."
"Men are exposing their legs in public as a reaction to our public behaviour being so tightly policed in public for the last year. They want to feel the wind’s tactile caress on their skin."
Pictures from the Arboretum.

Posted: 13 Apr 2021 10:35 AM PDT

"The speech of rationalists is heavy on the vernacular, often derived from programming language: 'updating your priors' (keeping an open mind), 'steel-manning' (arguing with the strongest version of whatever point your opponent is making)..."

Posted: 13 Apr 2021 10:45 AM PDT

"... double-cruxing' (trying to get to the root of a disagreement).... In her book, Galef argues for what she calls 'scout mindset,' which she contrasts with 'soldier mindset.' The idea is that evolution has wired our minds to be soldiers (focused on winning) instead of scouts (focused on ensuring our mental maps accurately reflect the territory of reality). To adopt a scout mindset is to resist falling prey to 'motivated reasoning,' in which we distort our thoughts to achieve a desired outcome."

From "The Tech Elite's Favorite Pop Intellectual Julia Galef on bringing the rationalist movement to the mainstream" (NY Magazine).

The book is "The Scout Mindset: Why Some People See Things Clearly and Others Don't Hardcover." My link goes to Amazon, where there's this graphic (click to enlarge and clarify_:

I'd love to see more "scouts," but I'm afraid this clear picture may make some rational people chose to be "soldiers"! I believe I've always been on the scout side, but if I'd understood this division early on, I would have asked the "Is it true?" question about whether it's better in life to be a "scout," and I might have said no, taken a side, and fought. I have no idea if Galef discusses that problem!

FROM THE EMAIL: Tim writes:

Engineers are trained to have a scout mindset. Never mind what we want to be true, what IS true. Seek out the correct answer and then revise your assumptions. Which is why 2/5ths are conservative, 2/5ths are independent, and only 1/5 is leftist. Because there is a right (sometimes best, but always accurate) and wrong answer. And once you figure out the right answer, you stop believing in the false answers. It is why we have not built any more Tacoma Narrows bridges. There was a right answer, and it was found. It is how the Brooklyn Bridge was built starting 150 years ago. I may not be the engineer that Washington Roebling was, but if I get hit with a clue bat often enough, I figure out the correct answer.

Yes, if the scout mentality naturally appeals to you, there are some careers that will fit most comfortably.

AND: Geoff emails:

If everyone were a scout, tens of thousands of people in Silicon Valley would stop getting up every morning to work 10 hour days to implement the visions of "thought leaders" like Steve Jobs and would do their own thing instead. This is why Silicon Valley likes H1Bs from countries where obedience to the hierarchy is a social value. It takes a special kind of self-regard to think of how lost your army would be without your scouting while blinding yourself to the fact that without your army's soldiering you would be dead. This is, of course, just another manifestation of the elite's self-separation from the world they presume to rule.

Magnolia.

Posted: 13 Apr 2021 08:09 AM PDT

Photographed in the arb yesterday, not long after acquiring an iPhone 12 Pro.

"A group of top Democratic Party pollsters are set to release a public statement Tuesday acknowledging 'major errors' in their 2020 polling — errors that left party officials stunned..."

Posted: 13 Apr 2021 10:26 AM PDT

"... by election results that failed to come close to expectations in November.... 'Twenty-twenty was an "Oh, s---" moment for all of us,' said one pollster involved in the effort, who was granted anonymity to discuss the process candidly. 'And I think that we all kinda quickly came to the point that we need to set our egos aside. We need to get this right.'... [S]ky-high turnout for Trump among irregular voters only explains a small slice of the problem, the pollsters concluded. Even if the polls conducted last year were properly adjusted for future turnout, they still would have been biased toward Democrats. The memo floats at least three possible causes: late movement toward Trump and Republican candidates... the Covid pandemic causing people who stayed home to answer the phone at a greater rate... and the decline of social trust and faith in institutions."

Politico reports.

FROM THE EMAIL: lawlizard writes:

They nailed it when they noted "decline of social trust and faith in institutions." I took a phone poll in 2002. I was a conservative living in a liberal city. The pollster actively tried to get me to say what he wanted to hear. I assume pollsters continue to do the same. My husband told a pollster in 2020 he was going to vote for Joe Biden, and then laughed about it for 3 days. The purpose of a poll should be to find out what I do think, and inform the politician what he should do based on its popularity, not to tell me what I ought to think. Polling instead says we want to spend a lot of money on social programs, you are telling us you do not want to pay more in taxes for these programs, but you do like spending on "infrastructure." If we call social programs "infrastructure," can we spend the money the way we want? You want voter id and secure elections, if we tell you that this is "racist," does it change your mind. Polling like many other institutions has been corrupted. It's not about listening, it's about manipulating. They have lost sight of their institutional role and so it can no longer be effective. If you are going to manipulate me, then I'm going to manipulate you first.

Me, I just don't answer the phone if Siri doesn't announce who's calling. You'll have to leave voice mail to get through by phone, and I don't think pollsters ever do that. So I am never polled. I didn't vote, but I stood in waiting, prepared to vote, if motivated — a raging "undecided" in a swing state.

AND: Ray So CA emails:

I see your post on Democratic polling trust as a continuation of the other post on the election fraud, and even the one about nobody showing up at the White Lives Matters Rally. It all comes down to trust. Perhaps a tag "Trust" or "Trust in institutions." I see a theme there.

Look what happened to those that attended the Trump capital rally. And how they have been demonized. And had the entire weight of the FBI and DOJ thrown against them. And how no major Republican Figure has stood with them. Talk about broken Trust. The lack of trust in the News Media is another example.

>the decline of social trust and faith in institutions.

For the polling issue, I see as a bigger issue the fear of being doxed, losing a job, or not getting one. I guess that could be rewritten as lack of faith and trust in the polling industry. Who knows who is really calling you for a poll? And what database they are populating.

40% of Hiring Managers said supporting Trump would negatively impact their hiring decision.

If you make a political contribution in CA over $100, it's a public record. And you can be doxed. That happened after the Gay Marriage Ballot initiative. Brendan Eich got fired for that.

And now a bill is in process in California, that would make those who signed a recall petition, available. My fear of this, and my family, of being doxed was why I did not sign the recall petition against Governor Newsom. My daughter was worried she could lose her job if her company found out she signed the petition.

"New research shows that daydreaming can inspire happiness if you purposefully engage with meaningful topics, such as... imagined scenes of triumph in the face of all odds...."

Posted: 13 Apr 2021 07:55 AM PDT

"When given a framework that guided them to imagine something positive, like a fantasy of having superpowers or the memory of their first kiss, [study participants] were 50 percent more likely to feel positive after the session. Why couldn't they do that on their own? Erin Westgate, a psychology professor at the University of Florida and the study's lead author, said that positive daydreaming is a heavier cognitive lift. So, our brains move toward effortless mind wandering, even when the results are negative.... Dr. Robinson-Mosley likens meaningful daydreaming to the practice of shadowboxing: 'Before you even get in the ring to face an actual opponent, you will spend thousands of hours shadowboxing, a form of visualization that's designed for you to simulate a boxing match in your mind before you ever glove up.' Using daydreaming as mental rehearsal can do more than just hone job performance. Research has shown that imagining scenarios as visual scenes can provide a boost in mood to people suffering from major depression. Dwelling on personally meaningful but imaginary scenes... can increase creativity and spur inspiration."

From "Don't Take Your Head Out of the Clouds!/Far from a waste of time, daydreaming might be one of the best things you can do with your free time" (NYT).

Do you daydream like that? Or do you go over negative things, like errors you've made, the wrong things you've said, and the opportunities you've squandered? There's no way that going through all the negatives fixes anything in the past, but maybe you fantasize that by giving them attention, you can avoid future mistakes. Me, I'm much more likely to think through everything I've ever done wrong than to fantasize about success, and I never daydream about superpowered success. Is it foolish to waste your daydream time thinking through problems and imagining realistic solutions?

***

There is no comments section anymore, but you can email me here. Unless you say otherwise, I will presume you'd enjoy an update to this post with a quote from your email.

Tree-hugging.

Posted: 13 Apr 2021 09:50 AM PDT

We were impressed by this super-large pine tree in the arb.

It seems to be reaching out for a hug, don't you think?

FROM THE EMAIL: Wild Swan writes:

I'm impressed by the shoes. They complement the pine tree colors so perhaps they walked you over there. for their own reasons. The shoe is a lonely hunter/ that hunts on a busy sidewalk.

Thanks. And let me give you the Amazon link for these shoes: here.

"The BBC’s wall-to-wall coverage of Prince Philip’s death has become the most complained-about moment in British television history...."

Posted: 13 Apr 2021 06:35 AM PDT

"At least 110,994 people have contacted the BBC to express their displeasure at the decision to turn most of the corporation's TV channels and radio stations over to rolling tributes to the Queen's husband.... Not all the complaints were about the extent of the BBC's coverage. Almost 400 people wrote in to complain that Prince Andrew had featured despite his association with the late financier Jeffrey Epstein and refusal to answer questions posed by the FBI. A further 233 people complained that BBC presenters were not wearing sufficiently respectful clothes, with viewers complaining that not all newsreaders were wearing black – an echo of the controversy over the burgundy tie worn by Peter Sissons when he announced the death of the Queen Mother in 2002. And in a sign that the BBC is destined to be criticised by all sides, 116 people wrote to the corporation over the weekend to complain that it was making it too easy to complain about its coverage."

The Guardian reports.

(To comment, you need to use email — here.)

"Notable & Quotable: Deplorable Polling."

Posted: 13 Apr 2021 05:22 AM PDT

I'm quoted in the Wall Street Journal this morning.

The quote comes from this post from yesterday (which, by the way, has a lot of comments from the email).

"Men are exposing their legs in public as a reaction to our public behaviour being so tightly policed in public for the last year. They want to feel the wind’s tactile caress on their skin."

Posted: 13 Apr 2021 10:26 AM PDT

Said Prof Andrew Groves, the director of the Westminster Menswear Archive at the University of Westminster, quoted in "Micro shorts for men: how short is too short?/With lockdown easing, will you be following Paul Mescal and Harry Styles and baring more leg than usual this summer?" (The Guardian).

This isn't just another men-in-shorts article. This is the news that men are going back to the kind of short shorts runners wore in the 1970s.

And it's a Gen Z thing. So says Shane C Kurup, a Men's Health's editor: "They are the most socially aware, health-conscious generation we've ever seen. There's a strong emphasis among this generation of being comfortable in your own skin and not blindly conforming to a prescribed body type."

Great! I'm looking forward to a clown show of atrocious fashion. And I intend to enjoy the fun of the Z kids annoying the millennials.

FROM THE EMAIL: Amadeus 48 writes:

Your short note on shorts impelled me to dig up the following quote from George Orwell's "Road to Wigan Pier." Orwell got so many things right he seems like a prophet:

"One sometimes gets the impression that the mere words 'Socialism' and 'Communism' draw towards them with magnetic force every fruit-juice drinker, nudist, sandal-wearer, sex-maniac, Quaker, 'Nature Cure' quack, pacifist, and feminist in England. One day this summer I was riding through Letchworth [a new model town favoured by progressive intellectuals] when the bus stopped and two dreadful-looking old men got onto it. They were both about sixty, both very short, pink and chubby, and both hatless. One of them was obscenely bald, the other had long gray hair bobbed in the Lloyd George style. They were dressed in pistachio-coloured shirts and khaki shorts into which their huge bottoms were crammed so tightly that you could study every dimple. Their appearance created a mild stir of horror on top of the bus. The man next to me, a commercial traveller I should say, glanced at me, at them, and back again at me, and murmured, 'Socialists', as one should say, 'Red Indians'."