hooser
1yr ago
I respectfully disagree.
Physical appearance in the post I responded to refers specifically to physical fitness. Half-a-century ago, general physical fitness was broadly necessary (e.g., many people had to walk or do physical labor), and now is much less so (e.g., much smaller proportion of people have to walk or do physical labor, and for the latter OSHA mandates all kinds of supportive equipment).
Sex in the post I responded to refers primarily to marriage and its dissolution, so "how-to-get-and-stay-married" is the relevant skill here.
Finally, playing-the-game-of-credentialism (a.k.a. "education") is without a doubt a more widely practiced skill now than it was fifty years ago. About 90% graduate high-school; of those, half go to college; of those, about half graduate with a degree. Fifty years ago, much higher percentage of people dropped out of high-school, and less than 10% of those who graduated went on to college. (There stats are approximate but broadly correct.)
The credentialism game has changed to accommodate the large influx of people seeking credentials.
hooser
1yr ago
I especially like your Christianity-as-skill idea, because it fits but I haven't thought of it that way before.
Recently, I [an atheist who grew up Eastern Orthodox] came to the conclusion that, if ever shit hit the fan in my life and my personal social network wasn't up for the task, I would head to Church--of whichever denomination is closest to Eastern Orthodox and physically proximal to me. Church first, then check what safety net the government has to offer. Because the Church tends to respond faster to any crucial need and doesn't require paperwork.
(US governments offer a pretty good safety net to anyone who is willing and capable of (a) accurately filling lots of forms, (b) letting go of all of one's earthly possessions, and (c) waiting up to several years if necessary.)
My atheism in particular, and my non-belonging-to-a-church in general, are luxuries indicative of a life lacking in severe shocks. I recognize this. How fortunate for me, then, that so many Christian denominations share the idea of repentance and return-of-the-prodigal.
hooser
1yr ago
All of your examples have this pattern: $[skill] used to be not only desirable but also broadly necessary; as $[skill] became generally unnecessary, a large portion of the population has mostly abandoned it, while those who remained devoted to maintaining $[skill] became much more proficient.
E.g.: back in 1962 every home-maker was expected to bake, and a large proportion of women were home-makers. Now, fewer women are home-makers, social norms about desirability of cakes and cookies have largely changed, and there are lots of options for buying baked goods. Thus, most women have mostly abandoned baking (or never developed the skill), while the few that do have vastly improved that skill.
E.g.: back in 1962, the alternatives to books (for entertainment or information) were either expensive (movies or plays in the theater), or inferior in quality or quantity (newspapers), or were on a schedule (TV and radio). Now, the alternatives to books are superior, cheap, and instantly available. So most people mostly abandoned reading books, while a smaller proportion still reads for pleasure. (Though for this example, I don't know of any metrics by which those that read books have become more proficient, except maybe a brief increase in popularity of speed-reading a decade ago in my circle.)
Let's call these the coming-apart pattern examples, and let's consider whether there are any examples with a flipped coming-together pattern: $[skill] used to be desirable but broadly unnecessary; as $[skill] became generally necessary, a large portion of the population has developed at least some competency in it. As a result, if we compare the $[skill]-ed populations now and back-in-the-day, the back-in-the-day group was much more $[skill]-ed.
E.g.: typing. Back in 1962, most professionals didn't type much themselves because they could hire a typist for a fairly low wage (mostly because that was one of the careers for young women that was generally acceptable for decades by then). That is, a professional could, instead of learning the skill himself, use some reasonable portion of his income to outsource the typing tasks. Now, every white-collar worker and many blue-collar workers are expected to do their own typing, and the typing tasks have only increased. As a result, at least 2/3rd of the population has some typing skill, and if we compare the group whose job included typing in 1962 to similar group now, the average 1962 typist would be much faster and make fewer spelling errors.
(The skill of spelling is another coming-apart pattern example, mostly courtesy of ubiquitous spell-checkers.)
Another coming-together pattern example: figuring out how to make a new electronic device work. Back in 1962, besides the small number of professionals who needed to work with bespoke electronic devices--and hobbyists who chose to do so--most people would only need to figure out how to make their TV and their radio work, and those were fairly straightforward. Now, most people regularly get electronic gadgets that either didn't exist a decade ago or whose user interface changed substantially, and they keep having to figure out how they work. (The joke among us olds is that the instructions are so complicated that only a child can do it.) So a broader proportion of the population has acquired the skill of figuring out how to make new electronic device work, but the professionals and hobbyists of yore were much better on average, because they had to understand quite a bit about the underlying electronics. (My husband salvaged many a cheap Chinese-import doo-dad with a multimeter and a soldering iron.)
To summarize:
-
When a desirable skill becomes more broadly necessary, more people acquire some level of proficiency in it, and the average level of the skill (among those that have some proficiency in the skill) drops.
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When a desirable skill becomes less broadly necessary, fewer people acquire some level of proficiency in it, and the average level of the skill (among those that have some proficiency in the skill) rises.
hooser
1yr ago
I do not care that someone on the internet may actually bring to life the strawman assertion that "[A Song of Ice and Fire] is some kind of nihilistic, grimdark, pornographic deconstruction of all that is right and good in the world". Your essay remains a response to a strawman. For comparison, here's the whole text under the "Criticism" of GRR Martin's wikipedia page:
Martin has been criticized by some of his readers for the long periods between books in the A Song of Ice and Fire series, notably the six-year gap between the fourth volume, A Feast for Crows (2005), and the fifth volume, A Dance with Dragons (2011), and the fact that The Winds of Winter, the next volume in the series, hasn't been published since. In 2010, Martin had responded to fan criticisms by saying he was unwilling to write only his A Song of Ice and Fire series, noting that working on other prose and compiling and editing different book projects have always been part of his working process.
I have went through all five stages of grief and have come to accept the fact that the last two books in the series will likely never be written, with the HBO's crappy last two seasons will remain the one-and-only allowed fan-fiction. I am at peace now.
So I have to be honest with you: I did not read your essay past the first three paragraphs. The framing of your essay is I-will-put-on-full-armor-and-destroy-this-strawman, and it turned me off so badly from what you have to say about one of my favorite fantasy series that I don't want to read the rest--even as I recognize by skimming the headlines that you may have something interesting to say about ASoIaF.
And maybe that's just me, and other people here will find the strawman a delightful hook. However, if you do get similar complaints, please consider reposting a revised version of your essay, where instead of this-nobody-thinks-X-but-I-think-Y framing it's just Y. I will gladly read and engage with that essay then.
hooser
1yr ago
But do children learn anything in school anyway? You can graduate from high school and then get a degree without knowing much of anything.
Surprisingly, some students do indeed learn in school. It happens to some students, on some days, and in some classes, when the perceived norms for students is to pay attention and do the work. When those norms are gone, those students who would have learned something are not paying attention and miss the opportunity, or they are paying attention but have not done the work and are thus unprepared for the moment.
This is not the most efficient way to learn. But it does happen, just not often and not to everyone.
I worked with high-school and college students before, during, and after the pandemic. The holes even in their elementary-school math (like fractions and decimals) are so much larger now than before. But what's really impressive is the holes in their expectations for what the school norms ought to be. No, the fact that you showed up doesn't mean that you will pass the class. No, the fact that you wrote 'idk' as your answer does not earn you partial credit. Yes, we are going to have an in-class exam, and no you can't use your laptop or phone, and no you can't work in groups. How were you supposed to know how to answer this question, you ask? Do you observe this section in your textbook that you were required to read, with a very similar example worked out in detail? Do you remember these two similar problems we have done in class? Do you recall these three similar problems on the homework, which I see by your turned-in work you have done correctly? Was that perhaps not your work?
Rant over; I am just so happy I have retired.
hooser
1yr ago
The breadth of Hunter Biden's pardon is unprecedented, with Ford's pardoning of Nixon the closest comparison. That source goes through other presidential pardons in history for comparison. Since it's MSN, I take it as a sign that Democratic Party partisans are less-than-pleased with Biden pissing in their well.
hooser
1yr ago
How very Confucian:
The Duke of She said to Confucius, “Among my people there is one we call ‘Upright Gong.’ When his father stole a sheep, he reported him to the authorities.” Confucius replied, “Among my people, those who we consider ‘upright’ are different from this: fathers cover up for their sons, and sons cover up for their fathers. ‘Uprightness’ is to be found in this.”
Yes, this reflects badly on Biden as US President, and by extension on the Democratic Party. Giving such an unprecedently-broad pardon to his own son--prior to sentencing--is hypocritical on so, so many levels. And yet, one of my favorite Borges short story is the Three Versions of Judas:
"God became a man completely, a man to the point of infamy, a man to the point of being reprehensible—all the way to the abyss. In order to save us, He could have chosen any of the destinies which together weave the uncertain web of history; He could have been Alexander, or Pythagoras, or Rurik, or Jesus; He chose an infamous destiny: He was Judas."
hooser
1yr ago
This is exactly my experience, but with sports! I don't enjoy watching sports, I don't care who wins or loses, but I know that 90% of the discussion at Thanksgiving will revolve around the Notre Dame football games so I have to choose to either watch (the highlights) or be utterly out of the conversation loop.
This is not a new problem. I fully suspect that it's what drove the earlier generation to watch the nightly news, since otherwise you're out of the water-cooler chit-chat loop. (How far back do I have to go for a water-cooler chit-chat to still be a thing? 90's?)
hooser
1yr ago
For me, Scott's write-up is valuable because he (a) surveys the best of the field, (b) reasonably summarizes the findings in layman terms, and (c) does his best to distinguish his own editorial ideas.
Do prisons work to reduce crime? I am sort of interested--my tax dollars support the system, and I and mine are subject to the laws that have the potential to land us there--but I am not sufficiently interested to actually do my own deep dive into the matter. Thus, it's useful to know (and I will trust Scott on this) that, in the vast and varied field of criminology studying the question, there are three meta-studies that are worth a damn. It's useful to know that they (and most criminologists studying the question) share a reasonable framework of Deterrence / Incapacitation / Aftereffects. Knowing how academic research gets done, I am not at all surprised that even the three meta-studies disagree on specifics. However, it's useful to have a general synthesis of how much they agree, and an analysis of the likely roots of their disagreement. Plus, Scott provides a simple though very useful additional framework where effectiveness of a change in incarceration rate depends on current level of incarceration and current level/type of crime.
And it took me a leisurely hour or so to read Scott's post, whereas my own deep dive would have taken me days and I wasn't going to do it anyway.
hooser
1yr ago
That's either evidence against my hypothesis, or proof that the memeplex metastasized.
hooser
1yr ago
My hypothesis is that the Social-Justice-IdPol is a memeplex that successfully evolved in the past two decades to infect any institution that recruits US college graduates and is sufficiently large to rely on authority (like Human Resources) to settle inter-personal disputes.
Many US colleges claim to promote "critical thinking" and "citizenship" in their students. They operationalize those challenging concepts by requiring general-education courses. Both students and professors realized that the easiest way to appear to meet the "critical thinking" and "citizenship" requirements is to ask, given any topic X: "But how does X affect $[underrepresented minority Y]?"
US employers say that they are looking for employees who have "critical thinking" and "citizenship" skills. Well, there are now a bunch of college grads who got trained on "But how does X affect $[underrepresented minority Y]" version of "critical thinking" + "citizenship". Meanwhile, few institutions have developed any antibodies to such concern-questions, and quite a few candidates for such antibodies get squished hard by appeals to HR.
E.g.: Meeting at Spotify. Boss asks for suggestions for playlists. A senior employee suggests Christmas songs list. A new employee says something like "But how would our centering Christian-holiday songs written in part to support White Supremacy and heteronormativity affect BIPOC Muslims and LGBTQ2S Wiccans?" Everyone grows quiet because they all had to take that harassment training last week and they are not eager to repeat that experience. Result: Glow playlist.
hooser
1yr ago
I agree with one of your main points--people don't engage in the local politics where they have the most impact--but I disagree that political discussions are powerless. Let's take the trans issues in particular:
You can get millions of engagements talking about trans issues that you can’t affect.
In my experience, whenever trans issues come up in person (so not with strangers online), the discussion serves a very important social function: my social circle is coordinating understanding of how to appropriately act/react if someone we know says they're trans. If my social circle cannot come to a single view on the matter, at least we get to identify who feels strongly about the issue and in which direction, and then act accordingly.
And, in my experience, the way such conversation don't start out with "So and so is trans, how should we react?". They start out as "I heard [some news item about a trans-person]...", followed by a qualified personal reaction. Talking about people who we don't know provides an important emotional distance, even if it's a topic someone is passionate about (one way of another), to feel out where other people stand.
Take my Liberal suburbanite friend Judy, who has a twelve-year-old daughter. Judy starts the conversation with "I heard about that High-school teenager in [another state] who assaulted a girl in the girl's bathroom." Then we do a verbal dance around trans rights / sexual assault. Once Judy is satisfied that I know that she's in principle for trans rights, and she heard me make appropriately qualified noises about protecting girls from predators, only then she brings up how there is this trans kid in her daughter's class and her daughter now doesn't go to the bathroom between bells but instead keeps asking for a hall pass during the class after lunch, and the math teacher brought this up and an issue during the parent-teacher conference last Wednesday.
hooser
1yr ago
Glad you brought up Richelieu. In the book, he and Milady are aptly juxtaposed because of these very qualities: smart, adaptable, ruthless, resourceful, and seeking power. The difference is that Richelieu (for the most part) uses that accumulated power to make the state of France strong, while Milady (when not kept on a tight leash) uses it to pursue her own passions, including murder and revenge. That is Milady's one ultimately-fatal flaw: whatever her intelligence and talents, she ultimately serves her baser instinct. It's what makes her such great villain, while Cardinal Richelieu is merely an antagonist who aptly pursues goals contrary to whose of the protagonists.
She's not exactly portrayed as a role model by Dumas.
Exactly: Dumas develops her as a villain, not an anti-hero. And as a villain, she is absolutely the tops. She has her own clearly developed story arc. She has a great back story. She grows as a character. Her resourcefulness gets developed and revealed and stages. By the time of the "boss fight" scene, the reader really believes that it indeed takes four musketeers and a professional executioner to finally kill her. All that, and the only time she lifts a weapon is to pretend to wound herself.
Men hate when women characters like this are empowered.
You know, I have never met a man who likes the Dumas books but was incensed that too much time gets devoted to this Milady character, or how it's bullshit that she's so powerful. Dumas chose to devote many more chapters to Milady. The chapters about her mission to kill the Duke of Buckingham are from her point of view. Dumas published the chapters serially, a lot of his readers were men, and I take it as evidence that he responded as much to popular demand as he did to his own creative urges.
I mean, how much more empowered can a character get? The Duke, forewarned by a lucky fluke, captures Milady, imprisons her, puts an incorruptible guard over her. In a few short days, she not only gets that guard to help her escape, but to carry out her ultimate mission: kill the Duke. I mean, damn! that's Power!
hooser
1yr ago
Alas, I can't comment on those three. I put the first one on my viewing list because on it's on the streaming service I have.
However, I do recommend the 1994 "Queen Margot" (French, "La Reine Margot"), which is a very good adaptation and does a great job developing the logic of that story consistent with the norms of the time. Its two main female protagonists (Margueritte and her mother Catherine de Medicci) use various aspects of femininity to secure their positions. They do not wield swords, and they're no strangers to wounds or death.
hooser
1yr ago
The idea that femininity could be manipulative and dangerous is a bad look for women, so obviously they would rather not depict such characters.
Except that they are still portraying a woman who is manipulative and dangerous. The difference is that their character is dangerous in a direct way (sword-though-your-guts), and manipulative in a direct manly way (overt seduction). Why isn't this character a bad look for women? Is it because she is so unbelievable that the audience disregards her as an obvious fiction (like they would Wonder Woman or She-Hulk)?
If that's the case, maybe that's what makes the original Milady such a compelling character. She is extraordinary, but not beyond the realm of possibility. We can indeed imagine a smart, resourceful, and utterly amoral woman who is a master of feminine wiles.
hooser
1yr ago
Last year, a new film adaptation of The Three Musketeers came out. (French, Part 1, Part 2)
I watched Part 1 first; the fight scenes are amazing. The scene of the arranged duel between D'Artagnan and the three musketeers that turns into a brawl with the Cardinal's men is particularly fantastic. The style has a flavor of Cinéma vérité in that it's a continuous and somewhat shaky take from a point of view of an unseen witness who keeps turning to catch the action while ducking away from danger, but it deviates from Cinéma vérité in that everyone fighting is super-competent. In this seemingly-continuous shot, one catches glimpse of feats of martial arts moves, all geared towards dispatching the enemy, none are for show. It's very cool and impressive, and worth watching for that scene alone.
Every film adaptation makes decisions about how much of the original material to use, and how closely to stick to the plot. When it does, that's a deliberate choice on the part of those who made the film. Sometimes it's a little change: Porthos is bi; Constance is not married and yet runs a hostel while working in the queen's chambers. It's annoying to have such present-day sensibilities undermine the portrayal of a society very different from mine, but I figured that at least these changes didn't utterly contradict an essential part of the story.
And then I watched Part 2.
Milady from the book is one of my favorite villains. She is smart, adaptable, ruthless, resourceful, flawed, vicious, and above all feminine. She wields femininity as a weapon far more effective then mere swords and muskets. Why dirty your hands, when you can manipulate men to do it for you?
In this adaptation, Milady is a sword-wielding girl-boss.
When an otherwise-good adaptation takes an awesome feminine villain and replaces her with someone who might as well be a man, that's a deliberate choice. That choice dismisses the idea that femininity can be dangerous to one's enemies or efficacious for achieving one's goals. It's therefore ironic that the people who made this choice consider it a feminist move.
Fiction is not associative: strong (female character) != (strong female) character.
hooser
1yr ago
VA had a hiring spree last year, in large part because of the expanding benefits from the PACT Act.
Your impression of a hiring freeze remains partly correct, because VA has budget shortfalls and plans to lay off staff:
More recently, though, the VA told Congress it now expects to have about 5,000 more employees in VHA next year compared to this year. That's created a new problem, as the VA is warning it is facing a multibillion-dollar budget shortfall.
I suspect that VA tends to paint a bleak picture to Congress as a standard operating procedure, in hopes of getting more funding. Though my nephew assures me from his VA experience that more funding would not go amiss.
So back to my off-the-cuff idea of importing doctors: my point is that any VA hospital that finds it challenging to attract a decent US doctor ought to be able to do what the private sector does. Right now, the VA follows AMA's standards, which require any non-US-trained doctor to do 3+ years of residency (plus other things) before they can practice medicine in US. Residency slots are, apparently, the bottleneck for US doctor supply in the first place.
My question is: just how crucial is it for someone already practicing as a doctor in a French or German hospital to do 3+ years of residency in US?
hooser
1yr ago
I would love to know why you don't think it wouldn't help with the shortage. I figure that, having a shortage of doctors willing to work in VA, combined with doctors from other countries who are willing to work at VA because it will gain them the higher US pay + a path to US citizenship, would indeed alleviate shortage of doctors at VA. However, I am not a medical doctor, so what am I missing?
hooser
1yr ago
Thanks for sharing the study, it is really very good! Reading it was a Sunday well-spent.
The conclusions that the authors reach have a lot of nuance, and help explain both why so many people have negative impressions of NPs while others have positive impressions: the variability of the productivity[1] within each profession dwarfs the difference between the average NP and the average doctor.
The other useful estimate from the study: randomly pick an NP and a Doctor working for VA emergency department; 6 out of 10 times, the Doctor is more productive, 4 out of 10 times, the NP is.
I understand that VA hospitals have trouble attracting talented doctors, though I assume that they have similar problems attracting talent in other professions, NPs in particular.
If I were in charge of VA, I would make a rule that any doctor who got their license in any OECD country can work unsupervised (provisional on training on HIPPA or whatever other US-specific medical laws). Then get a whole bunch of H1 Visas for any doctor who wants to come work for VA for five years.
[1] "productivity" was operationalized as the total cost of care (negatively coded), including the cost for any avoidable hospitalization due to screwing up, which makes sense in the VA emergency department.
hooser
1yr ago
I'm going to push back on the assumption that nurse practitioners, or even registered nurses, tend provide worse care than doctors for most patients. I want something more than an impression of anecdotes--preferably actual studies--because in my circle complaining about getting misdiagnosed made by doctors is a well-honed pastime.
I dig your take that those born to the PMC class who strive for Doctor status don't downgrade to nursing. In my experience, nursing Bachelors programs are still very competitive, and there are plenty of children of PMC that go into it (heck, I know a few). These are young women (for the most part) who like to work with people, who like clearly meaningful work, who are not put off by the prospect of hard work, and who by-and-large aren't strivers.
Nursing Bachelors programs also draw plenty of (mostly) women from the working class--because it's clearly meaningful and hard work that's well-renumerated--and only the smartest and most conscientious tend to make it into--and then through--the competitive Bachelors.
It therefore seems to me that there is a positive selection for a combination of conscientiousness, intelligence, and willingness to work hard. So without looking more into the data on the subject, I predict that a study comparing rates of misdiagnosis would be similar for Nurse Practitioners and Doctors, and probably not much worse for Registered Nurses.
Especially if the study counts the final diagnosis of the system rather than the initial diagnosis: a good Registered Nurse can look at a first-time patient, say "I think it's anxiety, but since I am not certain, so please wait while I consult with the Doctor on staff", and that may be the right call when the Doctor then identifies it as a blood clot. A good diagnosis by Registered Nurse should be "I know it's this" or "I need to send it up the chain of specialization".
(My thanks to @ToaKraka for posting earlier the info on what various nursing type professions require.)
hooser
1yr ago
TapWaterSommelier translates some Russian gallows-humor jokes from the start of the current war / special operations. The original source of the collection is great but it's in Russian, and jokes are some of the hardest writing to translate.
My favorite:
“Good morning, here is your conscription notice.”
“Who are we fighting with?”
“Fascists, of course!”
“Ok, and against whom?”
The original source is an anthropologist who studies jokes-as-coping-mechanism in Russian-speaking world. TapWaterSommelier gives a good summary of the trends. The joke I quoted is an example of a "common-man" character who obstinately and deliberately remains clueless about anything political.
hooser
1yr ago
Alternatively, end all subsidies for tuition in private educational institutes. Those private institutes who provide a strong-enough return-on-investment to their students will remain, and those who don't will rightfully go under.
The main objective of many of the selective private colleges is to build and maintain a successful alumni association. They are therefore more akin to a private club. There's nothing wrong, I think, with a private selective club choosing among their perspective members based on criteria other than how good they were at school or how well they can score on various aptitude tests. But I don't see why taxpayer money needs to support selective private clubs.
As for the non-selective private colleges dependent on the tuition of current students rather than largesse of their alumni association: they are welcome to switch to Lambda School's model.
hooser
1yr ago
For math specifically: most US states have adopted some version of the standards that were put together by the National Council of Mathematics Teachers and the US National Research Council's "Adding it up: helping children learn mathematics" report. The latter focuses solely on Kindergarden-8th grade, and in my opinion may explain why the NCMT standards are coherent up to 8th grade but lose serious steam in their recommended standards for 9th-12th grade. I have never understood the sense of teaching Algebra 1 for a year, then switching to Geometry for a year, then once the students have forgotten all about algebra switch back to Algebra 2 and spend the first half just recapitulating Algebra 1 for those who utterly forgot it and boring the rest silly.
That fits the coming-together pattern, but with an extra feature: because many more people need to grapple with the situation that requires some of the skill, the market responded by making such situations easier to accomplish.
This is similar to the pattern in education credentialism: because many more people are playing the education credentialism game (e.g., getting a Bachelors degree), the market responded by making it easier to accomplish.
I gotta say though, sometimes it's not just the market. Take set theory. Reading Cantor's original work is challenging for a professional mathematician. But take about a century iterations of people communicating the essentials to ever-broader audience. By the 60's we have "New Math" books for elementary-school kids, which confuse the crap out of most math teachers but which the top 10% grok and love. And a few decades later Venn diagrams become essential components of memes.
And that's the coming-apart pattern.
There is a scene in Star Trek IV where Scotty tries to operate an 80's computer by talking into the mouse. After realizing his mistake, he looks at the keyboard, says "How quaint!", and then proceeds to speed-type. It's a funny scene, but it has always rubbed me the wrong way: why would anyone who never needs to type pick up that skill? Or, for that matter, the skill of operating whatever chemistry-model software that company was using? Not even the assumption that Scotty is the-best-of-the-best geeks can patch this hole.
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