“post-modernism”, physics-style

The ubiquitous use of “post-modernist” as an insult meant to describe some sort of uber-relativistic, solipsistic mental-masturbation has always bugged me. Post-modernism was a very important development that deconstructed the illusion of humans (or “scientists” or “men”, depending on the topic) as objective observers of reality. It posited humans as interpreters of reality, who constructed models, symbols, etc.to make a counter-intuitive reality comprehensive to brains that never had any “reason” to evolve the ability to do so. And yet, people sneer at post-modernism and constructivism (the idea that reality is constructed by people) as some sort of wooey, New Agey “everyone can have their own reality and their own facts” sort of BS.

Well, imagine my glee when, while reading an article in Skeptic about Stephen Hawking’s 2010 book The Grand Design, I come upon a discussion of Hawking’s “Other Controversial Theory”: Model-Dependent Realism.
The article in Skeptic explained MDR in the terms very similar to the ones the social sciences have been using for years (but with more neurologyscience*), and the more I read about it, the more it seems to be the very same thing. But this time, it comes from a source not so easily dismissed by nerd-snobbery: the world’s most famous physicist**. A relevant quote from the book:

[Model-dependent realism] is based on the idea that our brains interpret the input from our sensory organs by making a model of the world. When such a model is successful at explaining events, we tend to attribute to it, and to the elements and concepts that constitute it, the quality of reality or absolute truth. There is no picture- or theory-independent concept of reality. Instead we will adopt a view that we will call model-dependent realism: the idea that a physical theory or world picture is a model (generally of a mathematical nature) and a set of rules that connect the elements of the model to observations. This provides a framework with which to interpret modern science. According to model-dependent realism, it is pointless to ask whether a model is real, only whether it agrees with observation. If there are two models that both agree with observation … then one cannot say that one is more real than another. One can use whichever model is more convenient in the situation under consideration. It might be that to describe the universe, we have to employ different theories in different situations. Each theory may have its own version of reality, but according to model-dependent realism, that is acceptable so long as the theories agree in their predictions whenever they overlap, that is, whenever they can both be applied.
According to the idea of model-dependent realism …, our brains interpret the input from our sensory organs by making a model of the outside world. We form mental concepts of our home, trees, other people, the electricity that flows from wall sockets, atoms, molecules, and other universes. These mental concepts are the only reality we can know. There is no model-independent test of reality. It follows that a well-constructed model creates a reality of its own.

source

So: I’m going to have to read that book now, just to make sure I’m not entirely deluding myself about this (wouldn’t want to end up like those morons who think relativity and quantum physics “are what Eastern religions have been saying for millenia”), and if it turns out to be that MDR really is a physicy version of constructivism/post-modernism, next time someone sneers at those concepts because they’re primarily used in the social sciences (and, *gasp* the arts and humanities), I might have to link them to a discussion on MDR and/or suggest the book to them.
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*dum… dee… dum…
**Yes, I’m fully aware I’m making an appeal to authority. However, nerd-snobbery is an argumentum ad hominem, and I find that, in non-formal discussions, those two cancel each other out nicely. So, to get those who commit the ad hom against constructivism to get past their mistake, I present them with an authority their tribalist brains might be willing to take seriously. In terms of intellectually honest debate, this might be cheating a bit, but fuck it: if it gets the morons to pay attention to such important concepts, it might be worth it.

Link dump

there’s a few issues on my mind that don’t need a lot to have said about them (or, you know, render one completely speechless), so I’ll just collect them all here:

1)douchebag: now an insult also applicable to racists: Hey Did You Know Your Vagina’s Personality Is Based On Your Race?

2)something that’s quite old by now, but that I haven’t gotten around to respond: Walton linked to an article about a boy in London fighting the ban on cornrows in his school. The ban was being defended because it bans things associated with gang-culture. Someone else commented that it was “unprofessional”. That reminded me of how political black people’s hair is: how much racism there is in associating traditionally black hairstyles with criminality, and how much shaming there is (usually of women) for their natural hair, to the point where many of them end up damaging it to make it look like white people’s hair. Anyway, here’s a good article from the guardian about it: Cornrows? Non-traditional? What rubbish

3)News Corp trying to shut up critics, in a way that vaguely reminds me of something a certain someone recently did… News Corp’s Times Of London Cartoon Shows Starving Children Bemoaning Phone-Hacking Scandal Coverage

4)Limbaugh claims that current heatwave is a Liberal Conspiracy: Limbaugh: The Killer 116° Heat Index Is ‘Manufactured By The Government’

5)Sustainable development that’s actually sustainable: Permaculture in Cambodia (30 min documentary)

EDIT: one more, for good measure: Fox News: Are There Really Poor Americans?, from The Young Turks

On sexism, being a sexist, and doing sexist things

First, a caveat: absolutely no one is going to use the words consistently the way I’ll be using them here; the concepts are fairly well agreed upon, but how people choose to apply our extremely fuzzy language to them varies from person to person.

With that out of the way, let me say right out that we’re all guilty of sexism, because sexism is a structural thing (sexism = prejudice + power), and since our whole society is still sexist, we contribute to sexism simply by being part of it. We do this primarily in two ways: for one, because the structure itself perpetuates sexism, and few people function outside that structure (meaning, we all pay the price for dry-cleaning assigned to our clothes’ gender(!); we all, to some degree, submit to social definitions of what is “feminine” and what is “masculine”; etc.); two, growing up in a sexist culture means we learn how to act, what to consider normal, how to interact with people, how to assess them, etc. in ways that are in some way or another sexist; hence the studies that show lower levels of respect for women, from both men and women. So in that sense, every person who hasn’t been raised by (egalitarian) wolves and/or is far enough on the Autism spectrum to be immune to social clues is a sexist. That’s however not how people generally use the word “sexist”. When people use that word, they generally mean someone who is prejudiced against women; I would say though that that prejudice should be called “misogyny*”. The reason for that is that, as I said, sexism is structural. If no power accompanies the prejudice, you can’t really have sexism. As such, “misandry” is a real thing, but it isn’t sexism since there’s no real power to enforce anti-men prejudice**.
Now, the problem is that most people who are aware of the effects of being stuck in a sexist culture also don’t usually refer to everyone as sexist. so we get the distinction between “being a sexist” and “doing sexist things”; which, if we for a moment ignore my last paragraph and use “sexism” in the casual sense of meaning prejudice, is also a sensible distinction: being a person who is prejudiced, and inadvertently doing something, usually out of ignorance, that originates in prejudice are two different things. The distinction also might make sense in the context of the previous paragraph in the sense of there being a difference between being sexist, being a sexist, and doing sexist things: the first is the default for people in a sexist society; the second is someone who actively promotes, approves of, and willfully engages in sexism (i.e. what people usually think of when they hear the word); the third one is simply an isolated act that is borne out of the first, but doesn’t (yet) imply that one is the second: it does imply that the behavior is correctable and that a single sexist act does not yet condemn a person to being a sexist.
Anyway, this vagueness of language and the difficulty of accurately and consistently describing the concepts is what causes at least half the drama whenever sexist or misogynist behavior*** is pointed out: people feel like they’ve just been accused of being hateful, prejudiced assholes, when all that actually happened was that they did something that our sexist culture taught them to do; something they now have been given the opportunity to un-learn, and thus divest themselves of one more piece of inadvertent misogynist acculturation. Something similar happens with accusations of being “tools of the Patriarchy”: that’s not an accusation of outright hatred of women; it’s a rather blunt way of pointing out that an action/behavior/state of affairs that one is defending is patriarchal in nature, and as such, the defense serves to bolster patriarchy. Most people who act as “tools of the Patriarchy” do it not out of malice (though those exist too, of course) but out of sheer ignorance of how the thing they’re defending fits into the systemic structure of sexism. But of course, due to the charged nature of the insult as well as due to the Dunning-Kruger effect, people so labeled aren’t going to respond smartly to it. Especially when they’re very young, because as previously mentioned, most people under 25**** are fucking idiots who know a little bit of everything, and think that means they know everything.

I have absolutely no solution to this clusterfuck; if I were emperor of the world, I’d make everyone use these words in exactly the way I used them here, plus invent a new word for inadvertently promoting sexism, but without being prejudiced. Short of that, people will continue to (choose to) misunderstand and get pissy about being called on acting sexist or defending the patriarchy (and no, not calling them out is not an option)

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*it seems people use “misogynist” as a stronger version of “sexist”: someone who’s sexist is merely prejudiced, someone who’s misogynist is someone who actually hates women. On occasion, I also see “misogynist” simply being a subset of “sexist”, in the same way that “polygyny” is a subset of “polygamy”. Personally, I think the word is really more useful as the word for the specific prejudice that fuels sexism, in the same way that homophobia is the prejudice that fuels heterosexism. In fact, I wish there were such a distinction for racism, too, but there the systematic discriminatory outcomes and the prejudice are conflated and labeled with the same word, leading to all sorts of stupid drama. Like I said, language is incredibly, inconveniently messy.

**there is such a thing as sexism against guys: it’s that “Patriarchy Hurts Men, Too” thing: prejudice about how men are supposed to be and behave, and the social power to enforce this. homophobia is a huge example of this. This, however, is sexism against men borne out of prejudice against women (misogyny), not prejudice against men (misandry)

***since I earlier mentioned that sexism is structural, sometimes our sexist acts don’t even include any subconscious prejudice, but are merely ignorance or lack of knowledge of how to get something done without perpetuating the sexism of it; the best example was an article I read recently about a women consciously resisting from complementing a little girl on her looks, and instead asking about her interests. The woman clearly isn’t prejudiced, but does occasionally catch herself promoting sexism with small things like squee-ing at a baby-girl in a cute outfit; because it’s almost automatic, and socially expected. So, one can perform a sexist action, or one can perform a misogynist action (which would be one that did include prejudice, even if maybe only subconscious and/or unexamined prejudice). I wish there were a word for perpetuating sexism without being prejudiced, to avoid confusion *sigh*

****oh, the stupid shit I’ve said and done in defense of d00dz, for the goal of being seen as one of the “cool” girls… *groan* … and worst of all, I actually thought I was right! I wish at least I could say I was being cynical and manipulative and making the patriarchy work for me, but no: I was just stupid.

And now for something completely different

Why do Americans hate cursive writing? (this is not about the reforms. typing is a more important skill than handwriting, and pretty much anything that’s quick and legible should be accepted as a valid form of handwriting. meaning, “cursive” shouldn’t be more than a single semester, to introduce the notion of connecting letters and minimizing strokes, and some practice. After that, no one should give a fuck)

Seriously, what precisely about the notion of a script designed to connect letters makes Americans be so passionately hateful about it, that they talk about fantasies of “ha, I told you so” letters to their teachers, now that there’s talk about discontinuing the teaching of cursive? And make them claim that they’ve never used it since 4th/5th grade (which is an odd claim. I checked all the notes, postcards, letters, etc. I’ve received from various Americans. None of them are in strict block letters)?

Is it that you’re taught some highly stylized, onerous version of cursive*? Is it that you learned it years after learning block letters (the constant references to 4th/5th grade intrigue me)? Is it that your teachers were all assholes? Is it that your school policies were “zero tolerance” of any individualistic deviation from the taught letters? what is it that’s so horrible about it? TELL ME! TELL ME NOW!!!!! I MUST KNOW!!!!!!!!

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*for reference, this is the cursive I had to learn. I immediately rejected the silly “z”, and later some other superfluous strokes, but overall that’s it.

Because this shit totally needs more people’s opinions added

I’m not necessarily interested in prolonging this by now almost completely pointless discussion, but there’s a list of things in and around this elevator-clusterfuck that are eating my brain. So I’m dumping my thoughts on them here, so I can stop thinking about them (which in any case was the original point of this blog, anyway):

1)so because you behaved like a Decent Human Being you’re now old and single? well, that sucks. you still don’t get an exception to the Decent Human Being rules, just because assholes end up with girlfriends and you don’t. I mean, I’m dirt-poor and will likely remain so forever. Being poor is not just emotionally exhausting and depressing, it’s sometimes downright unhealthy. Doesn’t mean I get an exemption from the Decent Human Being rules and should start a religion, sell snakeoil, or otherwise scam old ladies out of their social security, even if some assholes successfully got rich that way.

2)hiding behind the autism spectrum is just fucked up. Aspies, being actually oblivious to most social clues, don’t usually internalize the sort of behavior that a) says that isolating and cornering a woman will make more compliant, and b)loudly and stubbornly insists that they should be allowed to behave like that because they don’t see a problem. Most Aspies catch on right quick that they’ve no fucking clue how other people and society as a whole work; and because they’re immune to the sort of toxic masculinity that bars them from feeing empathy, they actually do want to understand and function well, so they learn (either with help, or if they’re very high-functioning, by themselves through observation) by rote which behaviors seem acceptable and which don’t. If Elevator Man had really been an Aspie, he’d be grateful for the anonymity and ability to learn a few more things about human interaction (such as: enclosed spaces are perceived as dangerous; cold-propositioning is perceived as creepy). Plus… would an Aspie who heard “I’m going to sleep” hear anything other than “I’m going to sleep”?
No, Elevator Man and his defenders may be socially inept, but they’re neurotypical; or at least, neurotypical enough to have absorbed quite a bit of toxic masculinity, enough to hear “I’m going to sleep” as “I may be saying I’m going to sleep, but if a man suggests he’d rather I do something else, I’ll totally agree to that; because that’s how women behave”. And enough to feel that they should be allowed to behave in exactly the way they think “alpha males” are allowed to behave, and are resentful when being told that they shouldn’t (see point 1).

3)This shit isn’t going to go away if the first thought on every guy’s mind remains that women are for hitting on, and it’s unfair to let them in if there are going to be rules that might make hitting on women more difficult.

4)While depression is sometimes triggered by events out in the environs, chronic depression doesn’t get cured by altering the environs. I’m not going to stop being depressed even if I manage to lose th 30 or so pounds that I’ve gained over the last few years. And similarly, a single, chronically depressed man isn’t going to stop being depressed if women start dating him, fucking him, and being in relationships with him. In fact, it might just make it worse. Because people who can handle dealing with deep, chronic depression on a daily basis are far and few between, considering the ridiculous amount of willpower and internal peace/steadiness that requires; add to that the neediness of someone who believes relationships will cure his depression, and you have a psychological load few people will be able/willing to take on. And so, it will, sooner or later, blow up spectacularly, possibly worsening the thought-patterns that make the depression what it is. And sometimes “blow up” means the dude snaps completely, and we read in the paper about another murder-suicide by a guy who couldn’t handle a break-up.

5)The older I get, the more I realize that young people (including myself before about the age of 25) are clueless twits. the Dunning-Kruger (sprinkled with a heaping dose of entirely unwarranted optimism about the world, and (subconscious) desire for a cookie from People That Matter)can be smelled from miles away. And it makes me want to smack them over the head with their own words once they get older (except that some of them might not actually grow out of their youth-induced cluelessness); because of course I (and other people who’ve been through this) are just being condescending and paternalizing when we point out that they don’t have the life-experience or even time enough to absorb enough theoretical knowledge to really have a well-rounded and well-founded opinion on the complex issues in this world

Not quite back yet…

****** PZ NOW CONFIRMED THAT THE COMMENTS IN QUESTION WERE INDEED MADE BY THE REAL RICHARD DAWKINS ******

… but the most recent women-in-atheism thread, especially the vile comments by Richard Dawkins claiming that women don’t have the right to complain about rape culture until after they’ve been physically harmed, and that the everpresent thread of rape women live with is exactly like the “threat” that someone might loudly chew gum in front of him, was sort of the last straw. We desperately need feminist atheism. And since I’ve repeatedly mentioned that I’m not a leader, I’ll instead contribute to the creation and visibility of it differently: I made a picture (well, I made two pictures):

Feminist Atheism (also available in GNU)

not necessarily my best work, so anyone who wants to is welcome to make a better one (just keep in mind, the A needs to remind you of atheism, not anarchism, so sticking with the round A’s is probably the way to go :-p)

UPDATE:
and because apparently I’ve got nothing better to do today, here are some intersectional atheism ones, which I like better, from a design-perspective

UPDATE 2:
ok, last ones, promise ;-)