A couple months back, I posted an entry criticizing the various initiatives discussed by Bill Gates in a TED Talk regarding education reform. I continue to believe that my criticisms represent valid concerns. However, when a friend of mine asked me what I would suggest in lieu of Gates' initiatives, I had nothing to offer. My friend then retorted that my criticisms were, in light of my failure to present viable alternatives, irresponsible and unproductive.
I agree with my friend and have come to appreciate more what a policy perspective entails. Policy-making is inherently a forward-looking, problem-solving enterprise. It engages with real constraints and by virtue of its future orientation contains seeds of optimism. Critical thinking and analysis are great things that one picks up from a liberal arts education. But a policy perspective demands more than critical thinking. It demands that we take the next step to ask, What now? How do we move productively forward given available resources and constraints?
I intend to better incorporate the set of questions implicit in a policy orientation into my daily thinking.
Showing posts with label critical thinking. Show all posts
Showing posts with label critical thinking. Show all posts
Thursday, July 30, 2009
Thursday, October 30, 2008
The Liberal Arts Lie
There is a growing trend to view higher education as a value-adding commodity. You go to school and you expect to come out employable, with marketable skills. Surely, education is an investment in human capital, but an overly commodified view has its drawbacks. If you view education as a value-adding transaction, then you tend towards vocational training, which adds value in concrete, measurable ways.
Liberal arts institutions fight this trend, a worthy fight in my humble opinion. Rather than cranking out employees, liberal arts colleges try to nurture thoughtful citizens, armed not with skills but with critical thinking. And this is the liberal arts pitch: at our institution, you will learn how to think, you will learn how to learn, and that is the most transferable skill possible. You will receive a broad-based, holistic education that will enable you to pursue any profession you desire. At our institution, we take a broader view of "value."
This is all nice and dandy. I enjoy learning and thinking, and my Swarthmore education cultivated my curiosity and, cliche as it might sound, a lifelong love of learning. Things get a bit messy, though, when you transition from an institution that fights against the value-added view of education to the job market. In the vagaries of the marketplace, it is unreasonably difficult to translate thoughtfulness into social contribution. I see so many of my classmates--who are smart, thoughtful, motivated and filled with good intentions--struggle to find employment where they are happy and feel as though they are contributing real value to society, or at least on their way to doing so.
I am unemployed right now, and I am sleeping on the couch of a high school friend who studied Business for his undergraduate degree. He is an investment banker taking in a handsome salary, and he just finished reading a book, titled Damn, It Feels Good to be a Banker. The author of this obnoxious book ends the preface with this sentence: "Dad, thanks for not letting me study liberal arts."
I am not complaining. There are things in my life that I value much more highly than a bank statement. And I think the liberal arts pitch is ultimately true. I am merely commenting on the difficulty of the transition from a liberal arts education to a nonacademic pursuit. And I think that it is something of a shame.
Liberal arts institutions fight this trend, a worthy fight in my humble opinion. Rather than cranking out employees, liberal arts colleges try to nurture thoughtful citizens, armed not with skills but with critical thinking. And this is the liberal arts pitch: at our institution, you will learn how to think, you will learn how to learn, and that is the most transferable skill possible. You will receive a broad-based, holistic education that will enable you to pursue any profession you desire. At our institution, we take a broader view of "value."
This is all nice and dandy. I enjoy learning and thinking, and my Swarthmore education cultivated my curiosity and, cliche as it might sound, a lifelong love of learning. Things get a bit messy, though, when you transition from an institution that fights against the value-added view of education to the job market. In the vagaries of the marketplace, it is unreasonably difficult to translate thoughtfulness into social contribution. I see so many of my classmates--who are smart, thoughtful, motivated and filled with good intentions--struggle to find employment where they are happy and feel as though they are contributing real value to society, or at least on their way to doing so.
I am unemployed right now, and I am sleeping on the couch of a high school friend who studied Business for his undergraduate degree. He is an investment banker taking in a handsome salary, and he just finished reading a book, titled Damn, It Feels Good to be a Banker. The author of this obnoxious book ends the preface with this sentence: "Dad, thanks for not letting me study liberal arts."
I am not complaining. There are things in my life that I value much more highly than a bank statement. And I think the liberal arts pitch is ultimately true. I am merely commenting on the difficulty of the transition from a liberal arts education to a nonacademic pursuit. And I think that it is something of a shame.
Tuesday, October 21, 2008
Discussion, Not Debate
If I had to distill my $40k-a-year college education into one lesson, it would be this: the difference between a discussion and a debate. And I will be proud if in my life I approach every problem and every question from the perspective of a discussion and not a debate.
---
I just finished reading The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable by Nassim Nicholas Taleb, a book that I highly recommend. Taleb describes himself as an academic libertarian, a term that he defines as "someone who considers that knowledge is subjected to strict rules but not institutional authority, as the interest of organized knowledge is self-perpetuation, not necessarily truth" (307). I am very much taken by this idea of academic libertarianism. It seems very apparent to me that the categories created to describe different academic departments are arbitrarily drawn. And while I am sure that there are benefits to having lines drawn between different disciplines, I am also sure that the lines are often taken too seriously and thereby inhibit cross-pollination between disciplines. Taleb criticizes the insularity of Economics departments in particular.
Let me cite at length Taleb's discussion of the confirmation bias, which is a related idea and which I find to be super interesting:
I find this idea about confirmation bias interesting because it addresses the single most important question about people and knowledge, namely, how people become certain about their knowledge.
If we try to avoid the confirmation bias, then it makes sense to try at every point to disprove our hypotheses rather than seek to prove them. This has everything to do with the company that we keep, the conversations that we choose to hold and what we choose to read. If I hold liberal opinions on politics, I should make an effort to associate with conservatives so that I can challenge my ideas and see if they might be disproved in a way. (Obviously, opinions can't be disproved, but they can be undermined.) I should try to understand the thoughts of those who hold beliefs opposite to my own.
Unfortunately, I can't say that I have been particularly successful in avoiding the confirmation bias in this respect.
---
I grew up in a household that was not particularly politically aware/active, at least not in the realm of US domestic politics. So when I arrived at Swarthmore, I had a vague idea of what it meant to be liberal or conservative, but by no means a deep understanding. But I happened upon a campus that was overwhelmingly liberal and populated by passionate liberals. So from every direction, I was the recipient of liberal ideology, a situation from which it is most difficult to think independently.
Now that I think back on it, the political environment of Swarthmore lent itself to the confirmation bias. Swarthmore students did not seek to disprove their liberal ideas; instead, they surrounded themselves with others who would only confirm their ideas. Presidential debates and State of the Union speeches were the most telling scenes of the confirmation bias. On a Swarthmore TV screen, it was impossible for President Bush to say anything of merit. Over the "boos" and the mockery, I imagine it would have been nearly impossible to hear the words of Sarah Palin or John McCain during the most recent debates.
---
So this is my main point: if we too readily call ourselves "liberal" or "conservative," we take the first step towards engaging in a debate rather than a discussion. In a discussion, you are not trying to convince, you are trying to understand. A discussion in many ways is similar to a debate, but it is importantly seasoned with humility and the earnest desire to understand the other perspective. A debate usually implies an unbending allegiance to one's own beliefs, and the desire to persuade another lends itself to the confirmation bias (you will pull only from evidence that support your argument). A hallmark of intellectual integrity ought to be the willingness to be disproved, and the willingness to change one's opinions.
Ironically, the one lesson that I probably cherish the most from the classrooms of Swarthmore was very seldomly practiced outside the classroom (at least in large public gatherings; behind closed doors, things were a bit better).
---
I just finished reading The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable by Nassim Nicholas Taleb, a book that I highly recommend. Taleb describes himself as an academic libertarian, a term that he defines as "someone who considers that knowledge is subjected to strict rules but not institutional authority, as the interest of organized knowledge is self-perpetuation, not necessarily truth" (307). I am very much taken by this idea of academic libertarianism. It seems very apparent to me that the categories created to describe different academic departments are arbitrarily drawn. And while I am sure that there are benefits to having lines drawn between different disciplines, I am also sure that the lines are often taken too seriously and thereby inhibit cross-pollination between disciplines. Taleb criticizes the insularity of Economics departments in particular.
Let me cite at length Taleb's discussion of the confirmation bias, which is a related idea and which I find to be super interesting:
The first experiment I know of concerning [the confirmation bias] was done by the psychologist P.C. Wason. He presented subjects with the three-number sequence 2, 4, 6, and asked them to try to guess the rule generating it. Their method of guessing was to produce other three-number sequences, to which the experimenter would respond "yes" or "no" depending on whether the new sequences were consistent with the rule. Once confident with answers, the subjects would formulate the rule...The correct rule was "numbers in ascending order," nothing more. Very few subjects discovered it because in order to do so they had to offer a series in descending order (that the experimenter would say "no" to). Wason noticed that the subjects had a rule in mind, but gave him examples aimed at confirming it instead of trying to supply series that were inconsistent with their hypothesis. Subjects tenaciously kept trying to confirm the rules that they had made up. (58)
I find this idea about confirmation bias interesting because it addresses the single most important question about people and knowledge, namely, how people become certain about their knowledge.
If we try to avoid the confirmation bias, then it makes sense to try at every point to disprove our hypotheses rather than seek to prove them. This has everything to do with the company that we keep, the conversations that we choose to hold and what we choose to read. If I hold liberal opinions on politics, I should make an effort to associate with conservatives so that I can challenge my ideas and see if they might be disproved in a way. (Obviously, opinions can't be disproved, but they can be undermined.) I should try to understand the thoughts of those who hold beliefs opposite to my own.
Unfortunately, I can't say that I have been particularly successful in avoiding the confirmation bias in this respect.
---
I grew up in a household that was not particularly politically aware/active, at least not in the realm of US domestic politics. So when I arrived at Swarthmore, I had a vague idea of what it meant to be liberal or conservative, but by no means a deep understanding. But I happened upon a campus that was overwhelmingly liberal and populated by passionate liberals. So from every direction, I was the recipient of liberal ideology, a situation from which it is most difficult to think independently.
Now that I think back on it, the political environment of Swarthmore lent itself to the confirmation bias. Swarthmore students did not seek to disprove their liberal ideas; instead, they surrounded themselves with others who would only confirm their ideas. Presidential debates and State of the Union speeches were the most telling scenes of the confirmation bias. On a Swarthmore TV screen, it was impossible for President Bush to say anything of merit. Over the "boos" and the mockery, I imagine it would have been nearly impossible to hear the words of Sarah Palin or John McCain during the most recent debates.
---
So this is my main point: if we too readily call ourselves "liberal" or "conservative," we take the first step towards engaging in a debate rather than a discussion. In a discussion, you are not trying to convince, you are trying to understand. A discussion in many ways is similar to a debate, but it is importantly seasoned with humility and the earnest desire to understand the other perspective. A debate usually implies an unbending allegiance to one's own beliefs, and the desire to persuade another lends itself to the confirmation bias (you will pull only from evidence that support your argument). A hallmark of intellectual integrity ought to be the willingness to be disproved, and the willingness to change one's opinions.
Ironically, the one lesson that I probably cherish the most from the classrooms of Swarthmore was very seldomly practiced outside the classroom (at least in large public gatherings; behind closed doors, things were a bit better).
Friday, October 17, 2008
The Problem with Humility
I studied English Literature in college, and part of the reason I studied English Literature is because every time that I read a novel, a short story or a poem, I feel humbled. Total mastery of a text is impossible. There are always different things that a reader can bring to a text, always different things to be seen, always different insights to be made.
But reading with humility flattens the array of possible interpretations by in a way granting legitimacy to all readings.
---
A lot of my parents' friends in the United States, being Taiwanese or Taiwanese-American and being staunch supporters of Taiwanese independence, vote Republican. Why? Because Republicans and neoconservatives usually hold a harder line against the Communists on the other side of the Taiwan Strait. They back up their "globalization" or "democratization" project with force, and that bodes favorably for the fledgling democracy in Taiwan.
This makes me ask, On what basis should voters make their decisions? Let us say, for simplicity's sake, that Republican foreign policy is better for the future of Taiwan, but let us say that I like the more liberal domestic policies of the Democrats. Do I base my decision as a voter on the single issue of foreign policy towards Taiwan? Do I vote with my personal interest in mind or with national interest in mind?
If I vote according to personal interest, then I can hope that the aggregation of all self-interested votes will result in the best mixture of policies for the nation, much in the same vein as Adam Smith's idea of the Invisible Hand. Plus, if a voting bloc can be organized around the single issue that I care most about, then that single issue will gain political momentum.
On the other hand, if I vote according to national interest, I run the risk that my personal interest will be sacrificed for what I deem to be the greater good, and that the single issue I care most about will lose political steam. So it isn't immediately clear to me: Do I vote for what is immediately best for me? Or what I think is best for the country?
---
If you practice humility in your life, it becomes much more difficult to hold strong opinions. After all, in how many subjects are you an authority? Along the same lines of logic, practicing humility often paralyzes, handicapping action. Let us say that you want to help in the fight against global warming, and that you think about buying a hybrid as your personal contribution. But then you read an article that the additional carbon emissions from the production of the hybrid far offsets the benefits from switching cars. What do you do? How do you determine the net benefit or cost of your ultimate decision?
I've always struggled with the idea of decision-making under the conditions of uncertainty. Surely, there is a way to reconcile humility and decision-making; otherwise, there really is no way forward.
But reading with humility flattens the array of possible interpretations by in a way granting legitimacy to all readings.
---
A lot of my parents' friends in the United States, being Taiwanese or Taiwanese-American and being staunch supporters of Taiwanese independence, vote Republican. Why? Because Republicans and neoconservatives usually hold a harder line against the Communists on the other side of the Taiwan Strait. They back up their "globalization" or "democratization" project with force, and that bodes favorably for the fledgling democracy in Taiwan.
This makes me ask, On what basis should voters make their decisions? Let us say, for simplicity's sake, that Republican foreign policy is better for the future of Taiwan, but let us say that I like the more liberal domestic policies of the Democrats. Do I base my decision as a voter on the single issue of foreign policy towards Taiwan? Do I vote with my personal interest in mind or with national interest in mind?
If I vote according to personal interest, then I can hope that the aggregation of all self-interested votes will result in the best mixture of policies for the nation, much in the same vein as Adam Smith's idea of the Invisible Hand. Plus, if a voting bloc can be organized around the single issue that I care most about, then that single issue will gain political momentum.
On the other hand, if I vote according to national interest, I run the risk that my personal interest will be sacrificed for what I deem to be the greater good, and that the single issue I care most about will lose political steam. So it isn't immediately clear to me: Do I vote for what is immediately best for me? Or what I think is best for the country?
---
If you practice humility in your life, it becomes much more difficult to hold strong opinions. After all, in how many subjects are you an authority? Along the same lines of logic, practicing humility often paralyzes, handicapping action. Let us say that you want to help in the fight against global warming, and that you think about buying a hybrid as your personal contribution. But then you read an article that the additional carbon emissions from the production of the hybrid far offsets the benefits from switching cars. What do you do? How do you determine the net benefit or cost of your ultimate decision?
I've always struggled with the idea of decision-making under the conditions of uncertainty. Surely, there is a way to reconcile humility and decision-making; otherwise, there really is no way forward.
Friday, October 10, 2008
Ergodicity
I have only recently been introduced to the idea of probabilistic thinking, and I like what I see. Probabilistic thinking refers to a way of seeing the world through the lens of statistics and probability theory. My introduction to this has come from Nassim Nicholas Taleb's Fooled by Randomness and Michael Lewis' Moneyball. I suppose the ideas of probabilistic thinking are not new to me. I studied statistics and econometrics while in college, but Taleb and Lewis have made the implications and importance of probabilistic thinking much more clear to me.
What appeals to me about probabilistic thinking is that it devalues actual outcomes in favor of expected outcomes. Actual outcomes are very often deceptive and probabilistic thinking alerts us to this fact and cautions us against drawing conclusions from individual events. It seems like a simple and very obvious insight, but I wonder how many people actually practice probabilistic thinking because it is so inherently abstract.
We are trained to treat results as being important. It doesn't matter if a team has a 0.6 probability of winning a game. What matters is if the team manages to notch a tally in the win column. We are trained to judge things by results rather than by processes. A lot of people and a lot of companies will tell you that they are "results-oriented." But when was the last time that you heard someone tell you that he/she is "process-oriented?" Part of the problem is that processes are much harder to observe.
In a recent job interview, I was asked the question, "What has been one of the biggest decisions you have made in your life? How did you arrive at your decision?" My instinct (and I think the instinct of most people) is to go through an inventory of decisions I've had to make in my life and think about which has been most important, and then to think about the process through which I arrived at the decision.
But you see how that is sequenced? Precedence is given to the decision...you think about the decision first, and then you think about the process. The instinct is to think about our lives as a series of big and small, but all discrete, decisions.
And this, finally, is where my discussion comes to the idea of ergodicity. As I understand from Taleb, ergodicity is the idea that a very long sample path will show its long-term properties. I am sure that there is a more technically and mathematically rigorous definition, but I like the elegance of the idea. Despite short-term volatility, things eventually settle according to their long-term properties. A very Aristotelian idea, I suppose. Like telos.
But if we take ergodicity seriously, then how important are individual decisions at all? How big of a decision was it for me to move to San Francisco as opposed to Philadelphia or New York City? The generator of this decision as well as of past and future decisions remains the same. Eventually, my life will settle into its long-term properties. So the difficult but important thing is to examine those long-term properties.
What started me on this train of thought was a passage from Philip Zimbardo's book, The Time Paradox:
Thought about in this way, and viewed through probabilistic thinking, personal happiness over a short time horizon is not all that important. The important question to ask, strangely enough, ought to be: How probabilistically happy are you?
Expected outcome over actual outcome. A long, long time horizon over a short time horizon.
What appeals to me about probabilistic thinking is that it devalues actual outcomes in favor of expected outcomes. Actual outcomes are very often deceptive and probabilistic thinking alerts us to this fact and cautions us against drawing conclusions from individual events. It seems like a simple and very obvious insight, but I wonder how many people actually practice probabilistic thinking because it is so inherently abstract.
We are trained to treat results as being important. It doesn't matter if a team has a 0.6 probability of winning a game. What matters is if the team manages to notch a tally in the win column. We are trained to judge things by results rather than by processes. A lot of people and a lot of companies will tell you that they are "results-oriented." But when was the last time that you heard someone tell you that he/she is "process-oriented?" Part of the problem is that processes are much harder to observe.
In a recent job interview, I was asked the question, "What has been one of the biggest decisions you have made in your life? How did you arrive at your decision?" My instinct (and I think the instinct of most people) is to go through an inventory of decisions I've had to make in my life and think about which has been most important, and then to think about the process through which I arrived at the decision.
But you see how that is sequenced? Precedence is given to the decision...you think about the decision first, and then you think about the process. The instinct is to think about our lives as a series of big and small, but all discrete, decisions.
And this, finally, is where my discussion comes to the idea of ergodicity. As I understand from Taleb, ergodicity is the idea that a very long sample path will show its long-term properties. I am sure that there is a more technically and mathematically rigorous definition, but I like the elegance of the idea. Despite short-term volatility, things eventually settle according to their long-term properties. A very Aristotelian idea, I suppose. Like telos.
But if we take ergodicity seriously, then how important are individual decisions at all? How big of a decision was it for me to move to San Francisco as opposed to Philadelphia or New York City? The generator of this decision as well as of past and future decisions remains the same. Eventually, my life will settle into its long-term properties. So the difficult but important thing is to examine those long-term properties.
What started me on this train of thought was a passage from Philip Zimbardo's book, The Time Paradox:
Compared to people from other cultures, Americans today seem more obsessed with personal happiness and have been criticized for having become a feel-good rather than a do-good culture. We are obsessed with looking good, with having a great tan, tight buns, and blemish-free skin. Yet what is important in life is more than skin-deep. It is a spiritual inner happiness that does not diminish over time. (256-257)
Thought about in this way, and viewed through probabilistic thinking, personal happiness over a short time horizon is not all that important. The important question to ask, strangely enough, ought to be: How probabilistically happy are you?
Expected outcome over actual outcome. A long, long time horizon over a short time horizon.
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