Gifted vs. Bright

A retired elementary school teacher sent me this. Schopenhauer could have used this.

Gifted vs. Bright: Understanding the Difference

While bright children possess a strong foundation in academic skills and a keen interest in learning, gifted learners exhibit unique traits that extend beyond typical academic achievement.

BRIGHT CHILD	GIFTED LEARNER
Knows the answer	Asks the questions
Is interested	Is highly curious
Is attentive	Is mentally and physically involved
Has good ideas	Has wild and silly ideas
Works hard	Plays around yet tests well
Answers the questions	Discusses in detail, elaborates
Top group	Beyond the group
Listens with interest	Shows strong feelings and opinions
Learns with ease	Already knows
6-8 repetitions for mastery	1-2 repetitions for mastery
Understands	Constructs abstractions
Enjoys peers	Prefers adults
Grasps meanings	Draws inferences
Completes projects	Initiates projects
Is receptive	Is intense
Copies accurately	Creates new designs
Enjoys school	Enjoys learning
Absorbs information	Manipulates information
Technician	Inventor
Good memorizer	Good guesser
Enjoys straightforward, sequential presentations	Thrives on complexity
Is alert	Is keenly observant
Is pleased with own learning	Is highly self-critical

Another Thought for the Day

From Essays in Idleness:

Gordon Moore’s Law

One of the men who went on to found Intel predicted in 1965 that the number of transistors on a microchip would double every year or two, leading to the continuous, exponential growth in computer power, and a splendid future for the semiconductor industry.

This was not a law of physics, but a fond business projection. Yet, in defiance of physical limitations, the prediction has been sustained into this age of three-dimensional chip stacking, and other neat tricks. Moreover, according to George Gilder’s Law, the total bandwidth of communication systems triples every twelve months; and to Robert Metcalf’s Law, the value of a network increases as the square of the number of its users, every eighteen months. Indeed, by consulting the Internet, it may now be possible to make one’s head explode.

Thought for the Day

Via Bustednuckles

Stupidity

The Stupidity Epidemic: Why Critical Thinking is Dying
Simply Resilient Me

Great stuff, explains a lot of what happens in human society. Some of the words were hard for me to understand, especially the clip from Bull Durham.

Wondering if I had posted anything about stupidity before, I was surprised how many posts I found.

Sweet Emotion

Aerosmith - Sweet Emotion
Aerosmith

Looking at the mess we (meaning the USA) have fallen into, and I'm wondering how did this happen? I think I have an answer. 

• Part 1 is that people are emotional animals and logical thinking is hard work. 
• Part 2 is 'sharing is caring'. It's very easy to be seduced by stories about how this program or that is going to help, the poor, miserable disadvantaged souls in our midst. 
• Part 3 is these feelings tend to grow. You feel a little sympathy for the poor, miserable wretches, and that feeling makes you feel better, so you sign on with that campaign because you like feeling better.

As long as there is money to be had, this will continue. After all, feelings are what make us feel alive.

The problem is that no one wants to hear the cold hard facts. They are boring and devoid of warmth. There's no feeling involved, so no one cares. The trick then is to wrap up your rational, conservative approach to government spending in some kind or warm fuzzy blanket that will make people feel better. And that's what President Trump has done. Well, he's making some people feel better, at least a majority.

The Queen's Gambit

The Queen's Gambit Limited Series Trailer | Rotten Tomatoes TV
Rotten Tomatoes TV
We started watching this mini-series this evening. It's pretty great. 

The Queen's Gambit is a fictional story that follows the life of an orphan chess prodigy, Beth Harmon, during her quest to become the world's greatest chess player while struggling with emotional problems and drug and alcohol dependency. - Wikipedia

There have been a few female chess champions, but not many. I don't know what makes this show so great, might just be because it is well told tale. There is always an undercurrent of tension, you get the feeling that something very bad could happen at any time. Nothing ever does (or least not yet, other than the opening incident, which is bad enough), but the potential is always there, or maybe I'm just paranoid. Or maybe I've watched too many thrillers that have same undercurrent of tension and then bad things do happen.

The film uses an imaginary chess board projected on the ceiling with the chess pieces hanging upside down to represent what is going on in the girl's mind. I have built models in my mind of some of the data structures I needed for computer programs I've written. Most data structures can be easily drawn on paper, they aren't too complicated, but you start shifting things around and it can quickly get very complicated. Individual actions can be easily drawn out on paper, but after a certain point you become familiar enough with what needs to be done that it's quicker and easier to do it in your head than to draw out all of the various actions on paper.

I've played a few games of chess but I never got the bug to pursue it. It's a lot of work for not much reward. If you're good, you can claim to be good, but that and a dollar will get you a cup of coffee at McDonald's. There is good money if you are really good, but that's kind of like being a professional athlete. There are a few people who make a bundle of money, but there are legions of people who were almost good enough. You have to be obsessed to pursue success fighting those kind of odds. I'm not that obsessed. That might be why I went into computer programming.

Update January 2022 replaced missing video. The missing video was from Netflix. Why would they pull a trailer?

Part 2 here.

Orthodox Privilege

Stolen entire from Paul Graham:

There has been a lot of talk about privilege lately. Although the concept is overused, there is something to it, and in particular to the idea that privilege makes you blind — that you can't see things that are visible to someone whose life is very different from yours. 

But one of the most pervasive examples of this kind of blindness is one that I haven't seen mentioned explicitly. I'm going to call it orthodox privilege: The more conventional-minded someone is, the more it seems to them that it's safe for everyone to express their opinions. 

It's safe for them to express their opinions, because the source of their opinions is whatever it's currently acceptable to believe. So it seems to them that it must be safe for everyone. They literally can't imagine a true statement that would get them in trouble.
And yet at every point in history, there were true things that would get you in terrible trouble to say. Is ours the first where this isn't so? What an amazing coincidence that would be. 

Surely it should at least be the default assumption that our time is not unique, and that there are true things you can't say now, just as there have always been. You would think. But even in the face of such overwhelming historical evidence, most people will go with their gut on this one. 

The spectral signature of orthodox privilege is "Why don't you just say it?" If you think there's something true that people can't say, why don't you be brave, and own it? The more extreme will even accuse you of specific heresies they imagine you must have in mind, though if there's more than one heresy current in your time, these accusations will tend to be nondeterministic: you must either be an xist or a yist. 

Frustrating as it is to deal with these people, it's important to realize that they're in earnest. They're not pretending they think it's impossible for an idea to be both unorthodox and true. The world really looks that way to them. 

How do you respond to orthodox privilege? Merely giving it a name may help somewhat, because it will remind you, when you encounter it, why the people you're talking to seem so strangely unreasonable. Because this is a uniquely tenacious form of privilege. People can overcome the blindness induced by most forms of privilege by learning more about whatever they're not. But they can't overcome orthodox privilege just by learning more. They'd have to become more independent-minded. If that happens at all, it doesn't happen on the time scale of one conversation. 

It may be possible to convince some people that orthodox privilege must exist even though they can't sense it, just as one can with, say, dark matter. There may be some who could be convinced, for example, that it's very unlikely that this is the first point in history at which there's nothing true you can't say, even if they can't imagine specific examples. 

But except with these people, I don't think it will work to say "check your privilege" about this type of privilege, because those in its demographic don't realize they're in it. It doesn't seem to conventional-minded people that they're conventional-minded. It just seems to them that they're right. Indeed, they tend to be particularly sure of it.
Perhaps the solution is to appeal to politeness. If someone says they can hear a high-pitched noise that you can't, it's only polite to take them at their word, instead of demanding evidence that's impossible to produce, or simply denying that they hear anything. Imagine how rude that would seem. Similarly, if someone says they can think of things that are true but that cannot be said, it's only polite to take them at their word, even if you can't think of any yourself. 

Once you realize that orthodox privilege exists, a lot of other things become clearer. For example, how can it be that a large number of reasonable, intelligent people worry about something they call "cancel culture," while other reasonable, intelligent people deny that it's a problem? Once you understand the concept of orthodox privilege, it's easy to see the source of this disagreement. If you believe there's nothing true that you can't say, then anyone who gets in trouble for something they say must deserve it.

Via Brain Micklethwait's New Blog. He posted excerpts from Graham's post and then added some comments of his own. It might help to know who Attlee was: Prime Minister of the UK after WW2.

Writing

Cloud City

I'm not much on cooking. I operate the grill at our house when I need to grill some hamburgers or steaks, and I bake the pizzas I bring home from Papa Murphy's, but that's about it. Oh, I will make a bowl of instant oatmeal in the morning using hot water from the hot water dispenser, and on occasion I will heat a bowl of soup in the microwave, but that's not really 'cooking', is it? Other than that, it's fast food, sandwiches and eating whatever I can grab out of the fridge.

This morning I decided I needed to cook some sausage patties. They've been sitting in the fridge for a few days. I could freeze them, but then they would likely never be seen again. And I really like fried pork sausage, so I got out the frying pan, fired up the range and set the sausage to sizzling. Now comes the hard part, waiting for the sausage to cook. It doesn't take long, about 12 minutes, but I am not really good at standing around doing nothing. I could play solitaire while I am waiting for the timer to expire (3 minutes, 4 times), but maybe I could work on a blog post while I am waiting. My trusty laptop is sitting on the kitchen table, so let's see what I can get done.

Turns out, not much. In 24 minutes (two batches of sausage), I wrote a thousand characters which is roughly 150 words. I was surprised by the timer every time it went off as I had only written a single sentence. Near as I can tell, this post to this point has taken me about 15 minutes. Oh, well, speed isn't everything. If you disagree, you are wrong. This is my blog and I'm write, er, right.

Anyway, I came across a short blog post yesterday that said, in essence, that some people think in words and some people think 'natural thoughts', or something like that (I looked for it but I can't find it, it didn't strike me as important at the time). In any case, they don't think in words. My wife and I are good examples of each. My wife remembers what people say, and when I tell her something that I heard from someone else she inevitably asks me what they said. I have no idea. I parsed the words they spoke, extracted the information from their message, stored it in my brain and discarded the words. Yes, maybe I have spent too much time working with computers. Or maybe computer systems have evolved to mimic natural thought.

P.S. 'Cloud' uses the same letters as 'could'. The brain works in mysterious ways.

Public discourse is distorted by constant outrage over anecdotes

Best thing I've read recently. Stolen entire from David McElroy:

Adolf Hitler with Rosa

If you want a nation to follow you, don’t convince them of your principles or policies. Just tell the public carefully chosen stories. Sell images.
Adolph Hitler did this well. His marketing consultants flooded Germany with pictures of a smiling Hitler and happy children. (In the picture above, Hitler is with a young Jewish girl named Rosa.) People saw these images of a benevolent leader with adoring children — and they found it easier to believe he was a good man they should follow.
Joseph Stalin did the same thing in the Soviet Union. Chinese communist dictator Mao Zedong did it, too. How could these men be cold-blooded murderers if they loved children and children loved them?
Unfortunately, the rest of us have learned the same techniques in this age of video storytelling. Our politicians sell themselves this way. Companies sell products this way. In the era of social media, we have adopted the same techniques to convince others that we’re right about whatever we believe.
But it’s something I don’t want to do anymore.
When I first started writing political content online, I did the same thing that almost everybody does today. I wrote about (and shared links to) stories which were outrageous — incidents that reflected the negative consequences of the people whose policies I oppose.
I quickly found out that it works. People who agreed with me were eager to share those stories with their friends. My links were all over Facebook and Twitter. This approach attracted many new readers for me, all of whom already agreed with me about some particular issue.
But over time, I realized that’s all it did. Nobody who disagreed paid any attention. There was no reasoned dialogue. It simply promoted people beating their friends over the head with these links, essentially saying, “See? I’m already smart enough to believe this.”
I’m far less likely today to share outrageous political or social anecdotes, because it’s becoming increasingly obvious to me that “argument by anecdote” is all the popular culture seems to understand — and it’s worse than useless.
The problem is that doing this is intellectually shallow and is frequently misleading.

Neural Net

Grain Elevators in Rockwell City, Iowa

All of Iowa is a giant solar energy plant. The entire state is covered with fields of corn. In every county there is a big, stone county courthouse and a giant grain elevator with half a dozen concrete silos. Next to every grain elevator there is a railroad siding. So, the entire state plants in the spring, lets the corn grow all summer, harvests it in the fall and stores it in the grain elevators. Then the trains start collecting the corn and hauling it off to the feed lots and the ethanol distillers and the bakeries. Actually, they probably never stop. Trains are running constantly collecting grain from one elevator after another. It takes them all year to drain all the elevators and then the whole cycle starts again.

Calhoun County Courthouse
Yes, I know it is obscured by trees. I took this picture because of the sizable radio antennas.

Look at all that infrastructure devoted to the collection, storage and distribution of one crop. All the grain elevators, railroad tracks, and railroad cars. That is some serious capital investment, with very thing margins. The only way it will pay off is if you keep using the same equipment over and over again, year after year.

Railroad lines in Northwest Iowa between Des Moines and Sioux City

Look at all the little towns scattered across Iowa. They are small because they don't need a lot of people to take care of the business of corn production. I suspect half of the people are there to provide a modicum of civilization to these remote outposts. Every town needs teachers and a barber and a sheriff. A grocer and a mechanic would not amiss. I don't know if every town needs a doctor, but every county surely does.

Colorful clouds after rain shower at one of the gatherings.

My father-in-law passed away a couple of weeks ago and I flew to Iowa to attend the service. There were several gatherings to commemorate the event. About a hundred people attended each one. Some were formal and subdued, others were more relaxed and even a bit festive. Quite a few people were from out of town, most of whom had grown up here and hadn't seen each other for years, so there was a lot of catching up to do.

At all of these gatherings there was great deal of chit-chat. Some people would call it talking, but talking to me is communicating information, and to me, chit-chat doesn't qualify. It is more like comforting mouth noises. Or is it?

All these people know each other, and have known each other for most of their lives. There is no real information that needs to be communicated, it's just chit-chat.

Neurons

But then I had a vision. You know how the neurons in your brain have connections to several other neurons? Information that is passed from one neuron to another is not a complete thought, it's just an ill-defined fragment. Only by having zillions of neurons operating in parallel are we able to think, reason and act.

A similar thing is going on at these social gatherings. It's like a hive mind thinking. Little bits of information flow across the room, information that has a different value for each individual, but by passing it repeatedly and in parallel you can be reasonable sure that it will reach those who need to know, even if you don't know who they are.

Excitement

Ghoncheh Ghavami

Tam links to Popehat, who is perturbed by a petition to disinvite Bill Maher to speak at a Berkeley commencement ceremony. The petition comes from Change.org. They are unhappy with Bill claiming that Islam is not a religion of peace. Who is Change.org? Never heard of them, so I go to their website, and what do I find? I find this picture (above) of a lovely woman who was jailed in Iran for watching a volleyball game.
Waaaa? On one hand they are condemning Bill Maher for condemning Islam, and on the other they are condemning Islam for being Islam? Do I have that right?

Logical thought is kind of a trick. It sometimes takes a certain amount of work. Not everyone comes by it naturally. Emotions can get in the way. So can years of conditioning. If someone tells you that something is wrong every day for a dozen years, you might start to believe them, no matter how illogical that thing is. Like a woman watching a volleyball game is a sin comparable to driving a car, and we all know that women should never be allowed near any kind of mechanical device, right? Am I right or what?

Sometimes I think studying Computer Science made me like I am, or maybe it just aggravated my natural tendencies. Computers are machines and figuring out how to make them do what you want can be a very frustrating experience. You know what you want, you tell the computer what you want it do, and you tell it no uncertain terms, and it goes and does something completely wrong. Was the computer being illogical? No, you simply missed something, you made some assumption about what would happen, and assumptions never cut it with computers.

I suspect that large segments of the worlds population is unfamiliar with logic and may even be incapable of logical thought. I thought America was above that, but that would be illogical.