Isn't it so simple

As a teacher, I've come to distrust claims of "It's really simple!" Well yes, that might be true. Many aspects of nature, once you sift through enough experiments and analysis, trial and error, dissent, frustration, and perplexity turn out to be blitzingly more direct than anyone realized. But I think if we were to see these answers naively, like children, we would not at first consider them simple, anyway. We'd need to have the right concepts in place.

There are three major reasons I distrust it's-so-simple-look. First, I see most students struggle with things I find mind-squishingly obvious. At some point I have to put aside whether I think a thing is simple or not. There have been times when I have simplified and simplified and then just told a student the answer, told them exactly which one step to take, a step I know perfectly well they have been able to do easily for years, and they have not been able to do it. It happens more than you think. Once a person feels confused enough, they'll struggle to tell you their own name. You will find that there are times you cannot make anything simple enough, and in those moments you will have to admit that something other than simplicity is critical. Whether it's anxiety about not understanding or a grumbling stomach, it's important.

A decent teacher can reduce problems to individual steps so uncomplicated that anyone can do them. But simplicity isn't enough. I've found myself saying, having lasered in on the next step in a bigger problem, "You add the two numbers. 7 and 3. You add them. What do you get?" And a student no longer in elementary school will not be able to break open this safe, no matter how I phrase it. This deer-in-the-headlights effect is a feature of human psychology. Eventually, I'll have to tell them. "7 plus 3 is 10." Then they'll feel stupid. But I've found it's better to get that over with sooner rather than later. Once a person has reached overwhelming confusion, I'll have to take the wheel for a few seconds. The alternative is sadly a lesson that's so frustrating it's pointless or worse. Before teaching, I had no idea intelligent human minds could be reduced to pebbles so easily by confusion. And I should know, shouldn't I? If you think this is only young students, you are quite mistaken. Whether you remember it or not, you've been there.

Second, when a teacher takes anything as simple, that's often just an assumption too many. The belief can predispose you to demonstrating poorly. You need a hook. You need a good example. You want to tie this to something familiar to your listener; you want to extend their worldview rather than drop in something totally alien. A teacher needs to assume less, rather than more, about what a person knows. As I was just saying, it's much easier to skip ahead when a student gets this area than it is to backpedal into the basics when the student is confused. The best teachers I've watched tend to assume as little as possible about what a person knows. They start with square one and politely ask if the person is familiar with this. If the answer is yes, they test the waters of comprehension with a strategic question or two, then go from there.

How often have you been sitting in a class, or any lecture or presentation, when suddenly it dawned on you that you'd lost the thread? Everyone seems to get what's happening, you even thought you did, but now it hits you that you don't, and you can't even say when that started. It isn't very pleasant, is it? (For me, the answer is "very often." I have ADHD-I.) There's research that says some discomfort from confusion can help learning, but it's also clear that people have different tolerance levels, different points where they'll simply tap out, tune out, fall asleep, or go home.

To make a new idea simple for someone, to see the mist blow away in an instant, it helps to understand what they know and how they think and what kind of stuff they like. "Simple" is mostly relative. (Okay okay okay, we're putting aside the information theoretic way of analyzing this—Kolmogorov complexity—which is not relative. We're talking about practical psychology. And I'm sorry, I'm such a show-off sometimes!) Finding simplicity, even the nexus of an idea you know like a favorite t-shirt, can take a lot of work. But when you find simplicity, it doesn't feel like education. It feels like discovery, because it is.

Third, when I tell someone this thing they are struggling with is simple, they might feel deflated. The best-case scenario is that they immediately see why, actually, this is really easy. They hadn't heard or seen a good explanation; no one had broken it all down for them. But I've seen that fail too many times, whether I was the one teaching or someone else was. I'd rather not promise a student that an idea is simple. It's like telling someone the board game they're about to play is "really fun." Intuitively, you'd think this would encourage them, cheer them up, excite them, etc. Nuh uh. Almost never. They get tense, visibly. "What if I don't find it fun?" they're asking themselves. "What if everyone else gets it and I don't?" And "What if I hate it, how will I make my exit as soon as possible?" I'd rather watch a person discover that they're having a lot of fun with a new game and tell me that. I'd rather watch a student discover that this is actually like making toast or boiling an egg (yet simultaneously amazing) and thank me. There's no need to promise here, in my experience. It just makes people antsy. And it could take away the best part of the surprise.

Genuinus et sophia populi

America chews through its own feet democratically. We're constantly talking about "optics" as if this were the value of government. In order not to appear biased or partial, commentators on television—and others copy them—talk about how voters will respond to what they're seeing. So what? Let's put aside this preoccupation with pandering. True democracy is not rule by majority, nor is it pandering to optics. True democracy is healthy engagement, mobilization to change the way we live for the better as soon as the need arises. True democracy is government by the people for the people, yet as little as possible by short-sighted trends or closed-minded majorities. True democracy draws on the full intelligence of an entire population to find the best decisions.

It's geometric

Oh wow, a fragment I had lost forever! You know when you hear an entrancing song on another continent or half-asleep, or learn of an astonishing historical incident or use a quotation for a while, or see one-third of a biopic on an airplane, and it was so moving, but you can never remember what the blazing excess of wasabi it was?

I've been trying to figure out what in those tarry nations this science fiction movie I saw was. One thing it was is a fluke: I wouldn't have given it a second thought, but my dad saw the name on the tv guide station while walking by and said, "Oh, [forgotten title]! That's wonderful! Wonderful! I read the story years and years ago. It's horribly sad. You should watch it. Really!"

So I did.

But I didn't get a chance to see most of it. We had to go somewhere—the dentist, can't the dentist wait, is the dentist more important than this—and I remember the tug and indignation of having to amputate the rest of the story he himself had suggested, right when the plot was thickening. "You'll see it later," he said. The same exit sign had landed on "2001: A Space Odyssey" like a flying saucer when I was in Kindergarten, though I think that was a swim instructor rather than a dentist. That time we'd been taping the broadcast on VHS, so I do know everything up to the late stage where HAL is losing his memory in floating banks. My brother and I watched and watched our copy pirated from the airwaves, but I've only seen the ending once—in the Uptown cinema in DC, actual year of 2001. Later, a friend told me this is the same cinema where 2001 premiered on April 2, 1968. After watching it there that day, the director went home and cut 19 minutes to improve the pacing. In 2010, 17 of these minutes were found in perfect condition in a salt-mine in Kansas.

Anyway, it isn't the kind of thing my dad would remember years later. Yes I asked, and he didn't. I searched... and searched... and searched... and never could find hide or tale of this hard sci-fi adapted for tv. What's in a name? A calling card? Nothing I saw rang any bells—cowbells, doorbells, bluebells, jingle bells, nothing. You know when you're sure you'll remember something, and you do for a while, so you assume you always will? Yeah, that.

The only line I remembered was: "It's geometric." An astronaut on a ship in deep space looks at a graph projecting some pattern into the future. Well. That, uh, just ain't sufficient to locate an obscure bit of television. The only reason the line stuck was because I didn't know that "geometric" and "exponential" were synonyms, or it hadn't quite clicked, and the word puzzled me. So I turned it over in my mind. It was one of those moments that show the use of a word to you right where you're climbing, surrounded by ferns, lianas, gibbons, and no-see-ums. You forget most of the intros, but you remember some.

Right near the end of an Aaron Sorkin video, he mentions this short story "The Cold Equation" by an author he can't remember, and it sets something off in my head.

A little searching later, and I've found it... a 1996 made-for-television movie that aired on The Sci-Fi Channel.

It's aliiiiiiiive! (Clears throat.) Um, yes, er, so this happened!

Haha, I'm sorry, the lost fragment bothered me so many times! Every time I tried to think of this name stuck confoundingly on the tip of my tongue, I couldn't stop hearing "Equilibrium" (which I haven't seen, but which definitely wasn't it). Then I'd think of "Event Horizon" (which I did see, and it was terrifying in the theater), and then I'd go blank and have to give up.

Is it ironic that someone's lapse on the author's name sparked my memory, ending my own lapse? He didn't even have to tell the gist of the story (though he does in the video). That instant I heard the name, I knew. It was as if a time capsule had fallen open in my ear.

"The Cold Equations" by Tom Godwin, 1954 short story later named one of the best ever written. It's been produced several times, including for "The Twilight Zone." Now I know more—I've got the bookmark back!

A similar experience with the television series "The Velvet Claw" excited me enough that I wrote about it here.

I guess it's time to finish what I started.

Update: I've read the original story which is in the public domain, found out I can stream the Sci-Fi Channel movie with one of my memberships, and am collecting my thoughts...

Second update: I've watched the movie, and it isn't particularly great, but I'm really glad I got back to it. The line was "It's a geometrical equation." Not "It's geometric." And I must have dropped in towards the end and only seen a bit. The short story is truly heartrending. It's like being punched in the solar plexus at a funeral. It filled me with actual grief for about 15 of the 16 pages. The film is more believable in some ways and less believable in others, but I still shed a tear.

b or b

One of the most frustrating things is when, by hard experience, you know yourself—your limits, your frailties, your normalities, your talents—but you have to contend with the status quo inclinations of others who wish to deny the truth of you. I've been told that it's not acceptable to be shy, not acceptable to be a night owl, not acceptable to spontaneously and arduously follow my many interests and tie them together rather than operate on a strict schedule. Yet these are all denials of deep truths about myself, and the deniers are wrong.

Seeing Past the Picket Line to What's There

There are two kinds of people in this world (among many other lines and subtleties): those who decide whether they are for or against a person (as if the person should go away and die if the answer is "against"), and those who focus on deciding whether specific statements are true and specific actions are constructive. As you can tell from my phrasing, I'm the second kind. We are your buffer against polarization. We keep the rest of the world sane. You're welcome!

I'll tell you what I mean. Jordan Peterson is an intelligent writer, speaker, and debater. Many say his words have turned their lives around. His critical thinking seems sharp next to the average educated person's, which undoubtedly is some of why he's a professor in psychology, a practicing clinical psychologist, and recently (considered) a public intellectual. When I say this, you might think that I agree with his political stance on gender identity. Actually, I do not. Protecting LGBTQ+ people is critical for a fair society, and law changes are necessary. I support the law changes in Canada that upset him. However, some of his points are rational, even excellent. As far as I can see, anyway, he is making a serious effort to be honest and truthful (not the same thing). Is he right? Some of the time he is right, some of the time not. To declare that everything he says is wrong simply because he appears to resent the trans community, feminism, and political correctness at large would be to turn your own opinion into a cartoon. The points he makes are often good points. They add to the debate. You don't have to agree with his stance overall to grant that he makes good points. And that's what almost everyone does: they decide whether they are for or against someone, and then they stop thinking.

As a result, a well-made, apparently impartial documentary about Jordan Peterson is getting picketed and canceled at its first screenings. His political objection is mainly against impingements on free speech, and his most aggressive opponents seem to play right into his hand by trying to ban a documentary about him. They don't seem concerned with what's in the documentary, or they would recognize that it includes people with opinions like their own. They simply want to shut down and shut out Jordan Peterson because they disagree with some small fraction of his thinking about the world, in other words, with a fraction of his thinking that relates to a cause they care about or that affects them directly.

Here's a review of the film. Here's a report on the protest. Here's a statement from the director. Death threats are hate speech, undeniably. Saying that, as a professor, you want to be able to critique issues of gender identity on grounds of truth, and you don't want that to be interpreted and punished as hate speech, is, for the record, not hate speech. Now, he says things that are rather paranoid and are understandably taken as offensive. Whether he is responding to resentment directed at him or is simply prejudiced about gender fluidity, I don't know, but it does make him seem prejudiced. Before writing these words, I have to seriously consider how badly it will reflect on me. And I have to be careful, because I really don't want to add to anyone's oppression. (If that's how this is coming across, please forgive me. That isn't what I want.) Two of my close family members are more paranoid than Peterson is in a big way, and I know people with various prejudices, so I'm used to not hating a person for paranoia or prejudice. Yes, I accept you, whoever you are. You exist and you are important.

The picketing of Jordan Peterson's documentary, and the death threats and excessive polarization reducing complexity to caricatures of people and ultimately voodoo dolls and effigies, all this mirrors the treatment of a documentary made about men's rights activists—by a woman herself critical of that movement. Here's Cassie Jaye's TEDx talk. For investigating a movement she disagreed with, she received death threats. It's amazing how little a person needs to know before they decide they hate someone, a film that person made that they've never seen, the arguments in it that they haven't heard or thought about, etc.

This is exactly what I'm deeply opposed to: yes, also the current presidency (I volunteered for Hillary Clinton and the North Carolina Democrats the month leading up to the election), and much of what Republicanism and conservativism stand for today, but definitely this bad way of thinking (not-thinking, actually) that affects all sides, all academic levels, all social classes, all groups. We believe that all we've got to do is pick a side, pick the good person, pick the bad person, then go to war. And I do not believe that is the best way to make progress at all. At its very most insane, that's a mentality that assassinated Abraham Lincoln, Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., John Lennon, and millions of Jews. People think they have to fight for what's right (whatever they believe) by picking the baddies and then attacking the baddies, tragically often on scant evidence (and by that I do not mean to deny women's reports and testimonies in companies and courts, something we need to make a lot more room for and respect better). This polarization on personality and person is juvenile thinking at its most basic (good vs. bad), but it's also how most people think in all walks of life, just not as drastically stupidly as those assassins.

I am against that, and I am for rationality and compassion and progress. I am for you. Thank you for understanding.

I accept you. You exist and you are important. If we disagree, I'm interested most of all in your thought process. Even if we agree, I'm interested most of all in your thought process. And I hope you appreciate that, and I hope you don't mind that I would afford the same consideration to someone else.

st

Broth is usually pronounced incorrectly. It should be pronounced "bruhth."

Also, why are we all so lazy about superscripts? It's bro^th.

The bro^th fresh air was warmer and kinder than the eleven^th fresh air, even better than the fresh^st air.

Out

I've always had a hard time identifying with how easily people get insulted and hold grudges. What good does it do?

If you say something I don't like, I will search it carefully for useful information regardless, and I will never be absolutely totally sure I'm right. There's a little game I play with reality: whimsical uncertainty about absolutely anything. It's usually fun, and it keeps perceptions limber and ready to accommodate facts. I'll imagine you're right, even if you sound insane. You always get a bit of an out there.

Especially if I can construe what you say as a factual statement or an attempt at factuality, I don't see any excuse for holding a grudge.

To me, this is the only sensible way to be. I don't get it.

Actually, I do get it! Life is difficult, and too many people are mean—even decent people. I just disagree, ultimately. My way is better.

Switch

There's something really satisfying about writing code, and it's often around the moments that feel worst. You're staring at some function. The more intensely you work on it, the less you can keep in your mind. Soon, you can't even remember why you started writing the function, let alone what it's doing. You push harder, and it doesn't help. You feel stupid and definitely not cut out for this.

Yet... a little while later, you're surprised and not surprised at once: you've made it clean and organized and crystal clear to yourself. You test it, and it works.

Or you test it, and it doesn't. And maybe you have no idea, maybe you spend an hour trying to untangle why. Maybe you're at this for two or three hours, sometimes more. And again you feel stupid, absolutely not cut out for this. But you do solve the mystery...

by detective work. Over sudden seconds,

the jigsaw pieces fall into shape. And you realize, with a forgotten sense of recognition, that it isn't a surprise: that's what usually happens, after all.

Wars won and lost skirmishes, slowly the upsets reduce. Most wrenches in clockwork are more interesting than discouraging now. You still enjoy the way code feels when it's spiffy and sparkly and firing on self-tuning cylinders. You can almost tell by looking at it that it works. You see it working under the surface of the screen, in some perpendicular time that looks still.

A bit

One of my very favorite quotations is this: "Magna est veritas et praevalet."

Why not love everything about it? First, it's from a now-obscure version of an obscure book of the Bible. It's from Ezra, often attributed "Esdras," as that's the older name. The verse was added by anonymous fingers translating (or copying) the Bible in ancient times, into (or already in) Latin. This probably happened a lot, little changes and additions. The graffiti of generations. It's just... here's one graffito we know about.

And it's really good. But it still needs editing.

It means: "The truth is great and it prevails."

You can see what that is: God is great. God is everywhere. God shows everyone His Way, etc.

But whatever your beliefs, there's something to it. Take God out of it.

It's still... It's still...

true?

So—so—so—let's acknowledge that people everywhere are busy lying, even right now, and many of the lies are busy being believed. And people get things wrong and go to war over nothing, really, and millions die. Humanity could still end in a zombie-skulled scuffle, an unleashing of nuclear war, a biological miasma, or runaway drones, or what have you.

Even though we—in our little sphere—manage to lie and get things wrong so much and so dishearteningly often, the truth, reality, the solid facts: we must admit these do prevail. They create us and destroy us and give us emotions and voice.

Just not always in our minds. Not always in our wills, either. Hell is angelic if human will isn't mostly about subjective desires and preferences, about selfish or groupish goals. Whatever will is, it does seem to exist, so that also is truth. But it seems to depend on something other than facts, even when it's informed.

We've got subjectivity, then. Let's admit that. Undeniably, it's there. And I think most of us rather like subjectivity. We enjoy existing and having this little bubble, this mini-version of the universe, and pushing this way and that.

Because we know that not everything is solved and finished, that the world, at least of humanity, is a work in progress, and we have myths to dispel and truths to uncover, and sometimes a wrong violently oppresses and destroys, and we can help, and so on—seeing all that, later individuals quoting this sentence have added to all the graffiti and written it this way: "Magna est veritas, et praevalebit."

That means: "The truth is great, and it will prevail."

Will prevail, now. There's tons of work to do, some unknown improver realized. Things are changing, discoveries are happening.

Out there are human factors, errors. There they are, but they won't remove truth in the end.

Well, both versions make sense, don't they? At all times, the universe is objective. It's a pile o' facts. It is however it is. The matter is arranged that way. The energy is arranged accordingly, the information accordingly, and all this develops constantly. It's completely objective. It is.

Then we focus on that second telling. It will prevail, won't it? Because we're coming around. We're seeing the light ourselves.

Splitting the difference, others have quoted good old Esdras ("Esdras") this way: "The truth is great and it prevails, or will."

Or. Maybe now, but if not, then one day. Do we see that it is good? The sentence is working on its own self. Folk wisdom has been getting us somewhere, it seems to me. How much of the Bible and other sacred scriptures evolved like this?

In the case of these words Esdras never wrote, the quotation isn't included in most Bibles, because we now know it was added later, and many people who are not "Esdras" are very particular about Bibles, believing in one historical event or line of telling or another.

Nonetheless, stepping back, we see a tiny example of how wisdom can accumulate in great texts, even potentially improving them over time.

There's also the joke version, punning on the Latin tense shift: "The truth is great, and it will prevail a bit."

Praevalebit means "will prevail." Will prevail a bit. Get it?

What this wisdom ultimately says, to me, is something about the character or quality of truth itself. What's true is true because the universe is arranged that way, because mathematics works like that, etc. You see it more by stepping out of the way and observing and testing your beliefs, putting aside some of your desires and preoccupations, than by trying to prove you've already got this detail perfect and therefore you are wonderful and therefore you should have people bringing you grapes on platters and feeding them to you. Getting a detail perfect, the slow etch of observing, insofar as that's possible, is both giving and receiving.

If you understand that one idea, you can help the truth prevail a bit.