"... conducted a vigil of 21 days, daybreak to nearly midnight, to study the life cycle of a single aphid. At the dawn of the 20th century, the American philosopher William James insisted that voluntary human attention was the linchpin of free will. By that time, some laboratory researchers had begun to turn their attention to attention as a subject of explicit scientific inquiry. One of the first to undertake such investigations was James McKeen Cattell, a German-trained American at the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Cattell, the first professor of psychology in the United States, used a fast-snap shutter to flash a few letters for a tiny fraction of a second. The test subjects then repeated back to him as many letters as they could remember. Observing a range of results, Dr. Cattell concluded that they reflected a significant feature of cognitive ability: what he called the 'span' of attention. Subsequent researchers used the attention span metric to identify children’s mental 'deficiency.'"
"Defeating the forces that frack human beings in order to extract the financial value of their attention is going to require... attention activism... a new politics of 'attensity.'"
"... while he himself was declared an expert in all fields, from linguistics to biology. Contempt for expertise is not the only autocratic force at work in the case of S.B.1 [the Tennessee law banning puberty blockers and hormones for transgender children].... I expect the court to uphold the Tennessee law.... [I]t won’t stop with trans care. Governments at different levels will be emboldened to meddle in what should be private, family decisions. In and out of government, people who know what they are talking about will be supplanted by people who perform their loyalty most loudly. Quackery will continue its ascent; expert consensus, not only in medicine but in all the disciplines that enable us to know and navigate the world, will be marginalized...."
Why did Gessen write "genuine expertise" if not to admit that experts can go wrong? Obviously, autocrats have their "experts" too, and respecting them has done great harm. I think first of Josef Mengele, who earned a cum laude doctorate in medicine from the University of Frankfurt for a thesis dealing with genetics and who conducted genetic research at Auschwitz. That doesn't make genetics a "pseudoscience," but it does show that we'd be fools to think there's a binary choice between deference to experts and marginalizing them.
Here's the Wikipedia article about the Soviets' banning of genetics. I can see that those who did the banning regarded themselves as experts:
We read about a 20-month-old girl who wears "a soft pink hat" with a "lightweight GoPro-type camera... attached to the front." This particular child is only wearing the camera once a week for one month, but scientists are asking...
"Basically, when you look at the sun, it has enough of all the different colors in it and it’s so bright that everybody’s eyes are firing like crazy and saying, 'It’s too bright for me to tell you what color it is.' That’s why the sun looks white to us... 'Essentially, it’s a green star that looks white because it’s too bright, and it can also appear yellow, orange or red because of how our atmosphere works.... 'The sun is at its midlife, and it still has quite a lot of years before it changes colors.... It still hasn’t dimmed out one bit.... When astronomers say color, they really mean temperature.... But to anyone in the public, color just means the color you see and how you make sense of the world."
The author, Ted Heindel, a mechanical engineer who studies fluid flows, explains why it made sense for the TSA to subject a jar of Jif to the 3.4-ounce rule about "liquids." It may seem wrong, but how much do you really know about what is a liquid?
"... in part because the arc of the book follows Hamer getting too old to work as a gardener anymore. However, I hesitated to research his age. In Chapter 10, titled 'Gardener,' Hamer mentions the discovery, in 2006, of the world’s oldest living creature, a clam. The clam, named Ming, was five hundred and seven years old. It had been found off the coast of Iceland, and died when the scientists who discovered it tried to ascertain its age."
Although researchers already studied the ways that animals move seeds
across landscapes, the possible role of their personalities had gone
largely unexamined.
"By bringing marginalized perspectives to the table, it can generate new questions and methodologies that help scientists identify and correct for hidden bias. Think of it as a stake strapped to a growing tree: it provides scaffolding to help the tree get back on track when it starts to lean too far to one side.... In 2012, [evolutionary biologist Patricia] Gowaty performed a series of careful replication experiments with fruit flies that challenged the longstanding 'Bateman’s Principle' of sexual selection. Her findings helped show that this principle, which states that males tend to be more promiscuous than females due to the asymmetry between sperm and eggs, was more of a hypothesis — and a flawed one at that."
"... versus the lack of support provided to women athletes to reach their highest potential. 'Science is increasingly showing how sex is dynamic; it has multiple aspects and also shifts; for example, social experiences can actually change levels of sex-related hormones like testosterone in our bodies in a second-to-second and month-to-month way!' Sari van Anders, the research chair in social neuroendocrinology at Queen’s University, in Ontario, told me by email."
I was surprised that the research chair in social neuroendocrinology used an exclamation point! But what is social neuroendocrinology? I don't know! Is it more like sociology?
Here's something from a clearly identified sociologist:
The knotty hair puzzle reached Prof. Mahadevan's lab three years ago, as he was thinking about how birds build nests. His research led to the question of tangles, which also occur at the microscopic level in DNA helixes and in magnetic flux lines crisscrossing the cosmos....
"The unlinking of the homochiral helixes during this process can be quantified in terms of the Calugareanu-Fuller-White (CFW) theorem which states that Lk=Tw+Wr, where Link (Lk) quantifies the oriented crossing number of the filaments averaged over all projection directions" and so on....
As you know, if you've combed tangled hair with any competence at all, it doesn't work to start at the top and comb down. You work up from the bottom. Mahadevan, despite being a genius, couldn't comb his 5-year-old daughter's hair. But it percolated in his head for 20 years, and he ultimately did some sophisticated research (as you can see) that explains why you're going to want to start from the bottom and work your way up. Most of us observe and guess and do trial and error, but there's a place in this world for the genius, even if he can't comb a little girl's hair intuitively. We're told he has also studied "why Cheerios clump in a bowl of milk."
The NYT seems to be stimulating fear in reaction to the CDC announcement. The survey the headline refers to was taken before the CDC took its new position, so these epidemiologists — 723 of them — were, I suspect, passing along the party line. Did they do their own studies? Even if they did, do they study the costs of the restrictions or simply, endlessly default toward caution?
Here's the full comment:
This is a horrible, horrifying decision. There’s no way to prove who’s vaccinated and who isn’t. People are going to lie about their status. We were out shopping today and my husband saw a woman wearing a mask that said “This mask is as useless as my Governor.” Does she seem trustworthy? Does she maybe seem like someone who’d doff her mask at the first chance, whether she’d been vaccinated or not, because she’s an imbecile and has no regard for the lives of others?
What difference does it make? If you know you're vaccinated and you believe vaccines work, you're fine without your mask, and only the unvaccinated are at risk. Why are you obsessing about the mind of a stranger?
It's Helleborus. It looks a lot like another flower I have trouble remembering, Ranunculus. Ridiculous! I end up referring to it as "Homunculus," which I know is wrong, but amuses me to say. In truth, a "homunculus" is...
"At least until all this science starts to fog up our mental windshields and we, the people, start to wear out. Our irritability mounts; our attention wanes; the guide-rope in our mouth starts to chafe. It is then that the bawdy obstreperousness and its odd twin, the glory hallelujah, of democracy come into view — a single unit; maddening, infuriating, nevertheless fused. And Greg Abbott or someone else steps up to lead the beast forward, by instinct if not by Hoyle... The love of democratic citizens for experts shouldn’t be overestimated. The nature of democracy is preference for or deference to popular wisdom, however unwise that wisdom may prove in action. It’s been a long time since this pandemic started. People are tired. People want to see, and relate to, each other. That’s human nature. The human nature-affirmers like Greg Abbott, with a little luck and sense of timing, are likely to come out way ahead of their castigators and vilifiers, Robert Francis (Beto) O’Rourke conspicuously included."
The Spectator is British, but Murchison is American. He even went to the University of Texas. I had to look that up because the use of "glory hallelujah" hit my ear as a foreigner's mistake. To me, the phrase — which you see in the title and the text ("its odd twin, the glory hallelujah, of democracy") — is entirely evocative of "The Battle Hymn of the Republic," and Texas was in the Confederacy.
There's an episode of The Johnny Cash Show from 1969 where the man himself makes a little speech with a pretty big error. "Here's a song that was reportedly sung by both sides in the Civil War," Cash says, guitar in hand, to kick off a performance of "The Battle Hymn of the Republic.... which proves to me that a song can belong to all of us."
Cash was wrong, but in the years after the Civil War, the song came to be sung in church, at football games, and at labor union events. And on all sorts of political occasions:
"One critical way hockey differs from other contact team sports is how players do line changes — substitutions of groups of players — and are expected to sprint for nearly the whole time they are on the ice. Experts say it probably leads to heavier breathing, resulting in more particles being exhaled and inhaled.
Jose-Luis Jimenez, an air engineer at the University of Colorado, speculated that the spaces occupied by rinks keep the virus suspended, perhaps six to nine feet, just above the ice. Similar outbreaks have been documented in other chilly venues — meat processing factories and at a curling match earlier in the pandemic. 'I suspect the air is stratified,' he said. 'Much like in a cold winter night, you have these inversions where the cold air with the virus which is heavier stays closer to the ground. That gives players many more chances to breathe it in.'...... Surrounded by plexiglass not only to prevent errant pucks but also to keep the airflow stable so the ice can remain cold, there’s little ventilation and humidity by design in ice rinks.... In higher humidity, the virus attaches to bigger droplets that drop faster to the ground, decreasing the chance that someone will inhale them. The drier the air, the faster droplets will evaporate into smaller-size particles that stay in the air, increasing the concentration..."
Here's a good clip showing Hirono's earnest, mildly contemptuous attitude toward the Supreme Court nominee and editing in the use of "sexual preference" by a few notables, including Joe Biden and Ruth Bader Ginsburg:
Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who Mazie Hirono called "our champion" on Monday, used the term "sexual preference" in 2017. Hirono jumped on Amy Coney Barrett for saying it Tuesday, calling it "offensive and outdated." pic.twitter.com/8bHIQTSVFkhttps://t.co/JlcRA35g59
I was surprised to hear that "sexual preference" has become — at least in some circles — a politically incorrect term. I could immediately see the reason for objecting to it: It vaguely suggests that sexual orientation is a choice, even though I don't think it's true that we choose our preferences. It might suggest that who we love — and who we feel sexually attracted to — is lightweight, more like which flavor ice cream we like better than another. Yes, you prefer to have sex with a blonde, but if you can't have the blonde, the brunette will do just as well.
Why not get bent out of shape about "sexual orientation" then? Orientation suggests pointing east or west on a landscape. All you have to do is turn around and you'll have a different orientation.
And why the focus on immutability anyway? I think even if sexual attraction is a matter of choice, your choice is worth of respect. Choices are important and a good foundation for rights in a free society. Think of freedom of religion, freedom of conscience, freedom to have political opinions and to speak about them. These things matter in part because they can change and you do have a choice.
Indeed, the right to have an abortion is referred to as the right to choose. It's about individual autonomy. Let me quote the 3-Justice opinion that determined the outcome in Planned Parenthood v. Casey (the case that partially overruled Roe v. Wade in 1992):
These matters, involving the most intimate and personal choices a person may make in a lifetime, choices central to personal dignity and autonomy, are central to the liberty protected by the Fourteenth Amendment. At the heart of liberty is the right to define one's own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life. Beliefs about these matters could not define the attributes of personhood were they formed under compulsion of the State.
But I took Hirono's scolding to heart. Even though what I've just said is what I genuinely think upon reflection, my first reaction was: Oh! I didn't know this was offensive! Have I offended?! I knew I could look in my 17-year blog archive and in my classnotes from conlaw2 to see if I'd used the offending phrase.
To leap into the text to find an answer to my question, I searched the page for "science." Look what I found instead of the science underlying the ideology:
Borrowing from feminist scholarship and critical race theory, whiteness studies challenges the very nature of knowledge, asking whether what we define as scientific research and scholarly rigor, and what we venerate as objectivity, can be ways of excluding alternate perspectives and preserving white dominance. DiAngelo likes to ask, paraphrasing the philosopher Lorraine Code: “From whose subjectivity does the ideal of objectivity come?”...
Robin DiAngelo is the author of the book "White Fragility." She's critiquing science — or "what we define as scientific research" — but is she doing science? There's a paradox here. Is her theory about white supremacy white supremacy or is it just completely unscientific?
And there's this:
[Glenn E. Singleton, a Black trainer whose firm, Courageous Conversation, has been giving workshops for over two decades, said that] “a hallmark of whiteness,” which leads to the denigration of Black children in school... is “scientific, linear thinking. Cause and effect.” He said, “There’s this whole group of people who are named the scientists. That’s where you get into this whole idea that if it’s not codified in scientific thought that it can’t be valid.” He spoke about how the ancient Egyptians had “ideas about how humanity works that never had that scientific-hypothesis construction” and so aren’t recognized. “This is a good way of dismissing people. And this,” he continued, shifting forward thousands of years, “is one of the challenges in the diversity-equity-inclusion space; folks keep asking for data. How do you quantify, in a way that is scientific — numbers and that kind of thing — what people feel when they’re feeling marginalized?” For Singleton, society’s primary intellectual values are bound up with this marginalization....
That's what we're dealing with — the radical dumbing down of America.
Now, pay attention to the article, which focuses not on whether the theory of white fragility has scientific support — which was my question — but about whether the cure for the problem — the "training" that is being foisted upon us — has scientific support.
"At the width of a couple of kozo fibers, the paper becomes as thin as the wings of a mayfly. Only one use remains then: paper conservation. Trying to aggressively mend a document is risky because long-term chemical and physical effects are highly variable and relatively unknown. 'The more and more I am in this field, I feel that I should do less and less,' Ms. Choi said. So, as far as reinforcement material goes, the thinner the better.... The width of this thinnest tengujo is the same as the diameter of a single kozo fiber: 0.02 millimeters.... Slicing a 3-millimeter strip of Hidaka Washi tengujo with an ethanol-activated adhesive brushed onto one side, Ms. Choi gently covered an imperfection in Pinckney’s yellowing page. With a little push, the papers melted into each other. From a normal reading distance it looked as if nothing had been done, but under close examination you could see tiny strands of kozo gripping onto the ink....."
Eliza was 16 years old when she became responsible for managing Wappoo Plantation and its twenty slaves, plus supervising overseers at two other Lucas plantations, one inland producing tar and timber, and a 3,000 acres (12 km2) rice plantation on the Waccamaw River. In addition she supervised care for her extremely young sister, as their two brothers were still in school in London. As was customary, she recorded her decisions and experiments by copying letters in a letter book. This letter book is one of the most impressive collections of personal writings of an 18th-century American woman. It gives insight into her mind and into the society of the time.
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Burnett, Loh, and Schmidt have a book, "Attensity!" (commission earned). The word "attensity" appears in the column like this:
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