Social Constructs

Recently I read two articles which came to rather odd conclusions.

The first one was about research showing that non-religious people were more easily stirred by emotional videos to donate resources, while religious people were less so. This was mutated into, "Religious people are less compassionate than non-religious people."

The second one was about research showing that people thinking in a second language, when presented with a safe option and a potentially (or expectationally) higher-yielding bet, chose the higher yielding bet. When in their first language, they preferred the safe option. This was mutated into, "Thinking in a second language makes you more rational."

There are obvious problems with these formulations. I leave them as an exercise for the thinking reader.

Antiholics Anonymous

I think it is amusing that one great source of hits upon this blog is the question, "What is the opposite of holistic education?" I don't think I quite intended that. The problem is that I did intend to point out the flaws in the concept, and perhaps I have done too well in that regard.

So here I must set the record somewhat straighter: I think that holistic education is a wonderful ideal; but, like the idea of the 'reasonable person' or the 'economically rational person', it is an impossibility which is to be hoped for but never realised. Nobody will ever receive an holistic education; nobody should (if they want to be honest) claim to deliver such a thing.

Furthermore, I will lay down a challenge: define 'holistic' and then prove that you have delivered an holistic education to any particular person using specifically described means and methods. If you can do so, I will recant and become a crusader for your brand of holistic education.

Please note that you should give a complete description of the process, including modules like 'standing in the rain to build character' if you have such advanced ideas in your armamentarium. I will gladly disabuse you of such fantasies if I can.

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Note: This seems to be the first use of 'antiholic' in the sense of 'opposed to the idea or acceptance of holism or things said to be holistic' anywhere on the web. It's a true neologism, and one that works. The word has been used before as a sort of contraction of 'anti-alcoholic', either as a substitute for 'teetotal'/'teetotaller' or for 'anti-alcohol crusader' — but that's not an obvious usage nor one that makes sense etymologically.

Causation

It always amuses me when people reason from cause-and-effect as if it is the only reasonable paradigm. It's not that I mind, since part of my livelihood stems from teaching that cause-and-effect can be the basis of knowledge. But I'd like people to think about it a bit more.

Just imagine, if you will, that X is a character in a novel. Now look at X and ask the usual questions:

• Does X have free will?
• Does cause-and-effect apply to X and X's actions?
• Does reading the novel backwards have any effect on X's reality?

and so on.

You might have the illusion that 'cause-and-effect' works because the author of your novel is extremely meticulous about internal consistency. Perhaps he is infinitely meticulous, but is not averse to breaking the rules for the sake of the plot.

Think about it.

EEKS

It's been some time since I first started putting together my observations on the State of the Old Place. Fifteen years since my first observation, in fact. In the latest iteration, I've observed an interesting phenomenon with a huge amount of supporting data. I call it EEKS.

In brief, the phenomenon originates in two subprocesses, a kind of cherry-picking and a kind of 'no true Scotsman' thinking. The logical outcome of applying these two subprocesses is EEKS, a rather odd and educationally distasteful phenomenon.

What happens is that a bunch of presumably professional educators (PPEs) start the first process by setting a difficulty bar for admission to a certain course of study or the right to be assigned a supervisor for some form of assessment. So, for a cohort of say 400 students, 280 of them are cherry-picked to be in what is perceived (but may not be) an elite course. Of these 280, a second cherry-picking occurs in which (for example) 20 of them are assigned to do Subject XYZ (or any other area of knowledge in which an extended essay may be written). At this point, the 400 (initially cherry-picked from the top 10% of a cohort which is already in the top 50% of the world's population and thus nominally in the top 5% worldwide) have become 20. These 20 are a chosen 7.14% of the top 3.5% in the world, or a selective top 0.25% elite.

At this point, some of them fail to meet expectations. The PPEs, who in some cases have been neglecting the students all along (after all, they are the top 0.25% of population worldwide, aren't they?), then tell the not-so-good ones that they are not truly elite and it is all their fault. Since they have been cherry(cherry(cherry(cherry(picked)))), they can't be failures. So they must have faked their way into the system and should rectify their own shortcomings. A true cherry would not be underperforming. Hence they must be 'no true cherries'.

The typical 'no true Scotsman' fallacy is one in which a person sets up a definition. He is later exposed to a case outside his control which falsifies his definition. But rather than blame his defining process, he shifts his evaluative process and says that the case is true but not a case within the original definition. At no point does he consider the fact that he might be wrong.

This situation, the EEKS phenomenon, is even more egregious. Not only is the 'no true Scotsman' fallacy applied, but it is applied to cases that the defining agency has had many years to work on, and in fact, has a duty to do so. The cases, in short, are the outcome of a PPE agency working towards a definition that is well-publicised. Yet, the PPE agency has not been able to make the case meet the definition. In this situation, the cherries who fall short are re-labelled 'pomegranates' or something, despite them obviously being cherries which have been abused, misused or 'benignly' neglected by the system.

In one particular case, after a long period of benign neglect, in which a cherry had been allowed to turn into something approximating a cherry tomato, the supervisor said, "Well, I don't know what to do with you, so I'm giving you a 'D'." Fortunately, a Certifiably Professional Educator (CPE) was found who was able to rectify the situation somewhat. Actually, a lot of the agency's success can be plausibly attributed to CPEs — some of these are actually PPEs with genuine talent, and some of these are freelancing agents.

EEKS.