He Said She Said They Said

Surviving in the Dizz/Misinformation Age

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay 

This is a weekly column consisting of letters to my perspicacious progeny. I write letters to my grandkids — the Stickies — eventual selves to advise them and haunt them after they've become grups and/or I'm deleted. Best perused on a screen large enough for even your parents to see and navigate easily.   

Trigger Warning: This column is rated SSC — Sexy Seasoned Citizens — Perusal by kids, callowyutes, or grups may result in a debilitating meltdown.  

About

Glossary 

Featuring Dana: Hallucination, guest star, and charming literary device  

"The country would be better off if we stopped having comment sections. And if we got rid of Twitter." -Colin Powell

Dear (eventual) Grandstickies and Great-Grandstickies (and Gentlereaders),

Like many people that watch/listen to two too many podcasts...

{That's your idea of a killer first sentence?}

Once I typed to two too many, there was just no going back.

...I've heard the word heuristics oft bandied so I went a-googlin' and the very first hit returned was a definition. 

{Oft bandied?}

Heuristics are mental shortcuts that can facilitate problem-solving and probability judgments. These strategies are generalizations, or rules-of-thumb, reduce cognitive load, and can be effective for making immediate judgments, however, they often result in irrational or inaccurate decisions. 

Perfect. And oh, please note, "...they often result in irrational or inaccurate conclusions," more on that anon. And oh yeah, a tip o' the hat to The Decision Lab for supplying the definition. 

For example, a pair of hungry Homo commonsensicusses emerge from a forest/jungle into a clearing at the same time as a huge, hungry, saber-toothed bitecherfaceoff. Having been around the forest/jungle a time or three they don't stop to debate and plan their strategery.

Their brains — based on past experience, available weaponry, the size of the bitecherfaceooff, how long it's been since they last ate, etceterate — rapidly recommends that they either prepare for battle (bitecherfaceoff steaks kick-ass) — or run like hell.  

{What's any of this got to do with he said she said they said?}

Patience, Tonto, patience. 

{Bite me, Kemosabe, bite me.}

I've never understood that phrase, it doesn't make sense.

{I know, right? But still...}

Scott Adams — cartoonist, author, daily podcaster, and former public speaker (more on that anon), the Dilbert dude — has noticed a powerful heuristic shortcut that's powered by the internet.

In Episode 1681, Scott Adams: Facts Don't Matter. It Only Matters How Much We Hated You Before You Spoke, Mr. Adams points out that "...we have completely stopped caring about topics and we only care about people," and provides examples of "...the personality being more important than the fact." 

Once a person reaches a certain level of notoriety and the kids on your team have identified him/her/they as being uncool, you're no longer burdened with discovering exactly what it was they actually said, in what context, and deciding if it was a valid, factual statement. 

Who said it is more important than what they said

This is a very handy shortcut when navigating a passage through the Information Ocean in search of the truth... or at least a friendly harbor where you can catch your breath and stock up on provisions. 

Who's got the time to watch/listen to all those podcasts, watch all those videos, or read all those articles, blogs, and columns? Even if you do have more time (and energy, and motivation) than the average Joe or Joan Bagadonuts, how do you know who or what to believe?

Worse yet, there are powerful people loose in the world whose power is based primarily on their ability to exploit our ubiquitous media, particularly social media, although their accomplishments in the real world, in meat space, are negligible. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortes comes to mind for some reason.

{But you digress.} 

Indeed.

Anyways...  Although he didn't mention it, Scott Adams is a perfect example of this phenomenon. Long before the election of the Donald in 2016, he predicted in a blog he no longer maintains that His Royal Orangenes would be the next president. This was when everyone else, including me, was saying no way; it's just the Donald marketing the Donald.

Mr. Adams, who wasn't a Trump supporter at the time, and whose political opinions are all over the map, merely set out to explain how it is Trump did/does what he does. Adams calls him a master influencer and set out to explain his power from the perspective of a trained hypnotist. It was really quite fascinating. 

{Did/does what he does?}

Cool, right? It also put an end to the Dilbert Dudes' lucrative sideline as a popular public speaker invited to lampoon the corporate weenies he lampoons in his comic strip — at corporate events sponsored by corporate weenies.

Although he went out of his way to explain he wasn't a Trumpie, that he was merely explaining how the Donald does what he does, a handful of rabid anti-Trumpers declared him a supporter of the evil one. Twits who had never read his comic strip, much less his blog, began twittering and the noise triggered an avalanche. 

As far as the corporate weenies were concerned he was now potato salad that had been left out in the sun. An income stream evaporated overnight. Fortunately for Mr. Adams, he had already accumulated FU-level wealth. But what about all those little fish trying to pay their bills that live in large ponds polluted with Wokie ideology?

Poppa loves you,

Have an OK day

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Feel free to comment and set me straight on Cranky's Facebook page. I post my latest columns on Saturdays, other things other days. Cranky don't tweet.

Politics Without Romance

Human nature is the nature of humans. 

This is a weekly column consisting of letters to my perspicacious progeny. I write letters to my grandkids — the Stickies — eventual selves to advise them and haunt them after they've become grups and/or I'm deleted. Best perused on a screen large enough for even your parents to see and navigate easily.   

Trigger Warning: This column is rated SSC — Sexy Seasoned Citizens — Perusal by kids, callowyutes, or grups may result in a debilitating meltdown.  

About

Glossary 

Featuring Dana: Hallucination, guest star, and charming literary device  

"There's a reason that there are oodles of young Aussies, Germans, Japanese, even Chinese backpackers traipsing around the world. They are unencumbered by debilitating student loans. No such luck for the American Theater Arts major with $120,000 in loans." -J. Maarten Troost

Dear (eventual) Grandstickies and Great-Grandstickies (and Gentlereaders),

The public-choice school of economics, a.k.a public-choice theory, is, well...  'As James Buchanan artfully defined it, public choice is “politics without romance.”' -econolib.org 

For the record, I can't find exactly where or when Mr. Buchanan actually said that. I did find dozens of versions of something along the lines of 'As James Buchanan said, public choice is "politics without romance."'

{And this matters because?} 

Well, the dude won a Nobel Prize for his work in the field, you'd think that... 

{You really need to get out more, Sparky.}

Anyways... This normally would be a good place to quote the Wikipedia entry on the subject at hand, assuming, of course, it wasn't clearly crafted by a Wokie (it wasn't), but since it reads like it was written by an impoverished grad student who will never be famous for his/her/their prose stylings...

{Seriously, dude, you're not that old, find the car keys and...}   

Instead, I'm going to post the video below, because I'm cool like that and it does an excellent job of explaining public choice theory.

Now, for those you that are wandering in the wilderness and following the locusts and honey diet, or the Luddite like gentlepersons among my vast hordes of regular readers that rely on some intrepid soul to print out my column (not to mention any names, Ed), permit me to vastly oversimplify. 

Public choice theory holds that the politicians (sleazy and otherwise), and bureaucrats (and bureauons) that constitute the group of H. sapiens that run or work for the government at any level are subject to the same drives, incentives, and motivations as we mere mortals. 

{That's just common sense.}

Not necessarily. There's an awful lot of people that maintain that they're just humble but lovable public servants, grateful for a chance to serve. 

{Sure, but nobody actually believes...} 

So you say, but there are also an awful lot of people who say that we need a government solution for this, that, or that other thing — which can be true.

Big BUT.

As the video points out, instead of just asking what government policy is needed to solve a given problem, we also need to consider what policy is likely to actually emerge from "real-world democratic politics," and take that into consideration. 

To which I would add: before we pass yet another law on top of the thousands of other laws that, so far, have not led us to the promised land.  

Which is to say: since the H. sapiens in the government business are just as prone to temptation, egotism, and screwing up as you and me, what we want is often not what we get — that's politics without romance. 

And it gets worse: people in the government business don't suffer from an inconvenient constraint that most of us do, they pay the bill with other people's money.  

{This would be a good place to supply an example...}

For example, on a recent Joe Rogan podcast, Rogan had a guest, Ben Burgis, a writer for Jacobin magazine. Mr. Burgis is a socialist who, like Mr. Rogan (a democratic socialist), supports things like universal healthcare, a universal basic income, free college, etceterage. 

{Impossible, Rogan is a card-carrying member of the alt-right, just ask Neil Young.} 

They both agree that college should be free, and consider that the cost of a college degree nowadays, as well as kids going into debt up to their... butts is completely unacceptable. I don't agree with the free part — free is rarely actually free, and "free" is often perceived as having little value — but I do agree that kids just beginning their adult lives deep in debt is unacceptable.

But one of the many reasons college is so expensive is the result of several decades of The Fedrl Gummit handing out easily obtained loans to children (which can't be discharged via bankruptcy) and then the higher education business raising their prices faster than the inflation rate to absorb the money. 

This isn't an open secret, it's not even a secret. 

{They're not children! Well, not exactly, they...}

Simultaneously, education incorporated is top-heavy with administrators who are teaching nothing to no one, and many of these positions are mandated by The Fedrl Gummit. What about taking a machete and thinning out the ranks of all those people that don't actually teach anyone?

{You mean their jobs, right? Not actually the...} 

Isn't reforming the bloated education business the place to start?

{Bloated?}

Schools with well-fed endowments are currently fighting a 1.4% tax on their investment incomes if their cash stash is worth more than $500,000, per student! Leaving that tax in place is not just politics without romance, it could also be called common sense.

Poppa loves you,

Have an OK day

P.S. How about college grads having to take a standardized, general knowledge test to graduate and prove they didn't slip through with inflated grades, and publishing the aggregated results? 

What about students who are often taught by absurdly underpaid "instructors" and "teaching assistants" (often as not in debt up to their eyeballs in student loans) that help to prop up the system? 

What about charging the NFL for running a minor league for professional football wherein the coaches are often better paid than the professors? 

What about... 

{We gotta go, folks.}

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Feel free to comment and set me straight on Cranky's Facebook page. I post my latest columns on Saturdays, other things other days. Cranky don't tweet. 

 

  

Critical (Everything) Theory

Traditional theory vs. Critical Theory.

This is a weekly column consisting of letters to my perspicacious progeny. I write letters to my grandkids — the Stickies — eventual selves to advise them and haunt them after they've become grups and/or I'm deleted. Best perused on a screen large enough for even your parents to see and navigate easily.   

Trigger Warning: This column is rated SSC — Sexy Seasoned Citizens — Perusal by kids, callowyutes, or grups may result in a debilitating meltdown.  

About

Glossary 

Featuring Dana: Hallucination, guest star, and charming literary device  

"It is much easier to be critical than to be correct." -Benjamin Disraeli 

Dear (eventual) Grandstickies and Great-Grandstickies (and Gentlereaders),

According to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (SEP), a critical theory "...must be explanatory, practical, and normative, all at the same time." This concise definition is a distillation of the broken-hearted Marxist's philosophy developed by the scholars of the "Frankfurt School," who developed the theory back in the 1930s.

This was prior to them fleeing Germany and heading for the USA so as to understandably avoid being rounded up by Heir Hitler and friends who had devised a rather unpleasant final solution to rid themselves of all sorts of folks they didn't much care for that Ghengis Khan would've envied.

{Explanatory, practical, and normative?}

From the SEP: "...it must explain what is wrong with current social reality, identify the actors to change it, and provide both clear norms for criticism and achievable practical goals for social transformation" (my emboldening).

{Right... Okidoke.}

From me (well, from my research): A mere traditional theory attempts to account for/explain the reason something occurs in the world. 

Critical Theory starts with a conclusion, that the traditional social arrangements most H. sapiens take for granted, particularly those folks who are the children of what used to be called Western Civilization, are an unmitigated mess. 

And furthermore, most of the he/she/theys who take them for granted are too damn dumb to realize that we need to burn 'em down and start over, from scratch. Hey hey, ho-ho, current social reality's gotta go.  

One of my heroes, James Lindsey, explains the big three thusly. A critical theory: 

1. Must have an idealized vision for society.

2. It must explain how the existing society doesn't live up to that vision. 

3. It must inspire social activism on behalf of achieving that perfect world. 

{Bend over. This is going to hurt for a bit, but in the end, you'll thank me? Wait-wait-wait. Heartbroken Marxists? What's critical theory got to do with Marxism?}

Ever hear one of Lenin's "useful idiots" declaring that communism is actually a good idea, that it just hasn't been properly implemented, yet? Well, the critical theorists were upset about what had happened in Russia after the revolution and which was becoming harder and harder to ignore/explain away. 

Also, they were pissed off at the working class for not overthrowing the corrupt bourgeoisie in various and sundry countries and setting up dictatorships of the people. 

Marx had got it wrong, the proles were easily duped by rising standards of living, consumer goods, and "...the technological developments that allow cultural products, such as music, movies, and art, to be distributed on a massive scale," among many other things

{You made that quote up!}

Nuh-uh! it's from Simply Psychology and an article that was the first hit that came up when I googled critical theory. Not exactly light reading, although an excellent analysis, it explains in (mostly) everyday English what critical theory is, but without much in the way of details as to how its acolytes are going about implementing it. 

What's a Wokie to do? After all, "cultural hegemony" ensures that "...the rule of the dominant group is achieved by the spread of ideologies—beliefs, assumptions, and values—through social institutions such as schools, churches, courts, and the media, among others."

Easy-peasy. Train and indoctrinate a dedicated guerilla army whose soldiers think they're saving the world, and then turn them loose. There are now Critical Theories of pedagogy, law, gender, globalization, race, geography, literature, etceterature. 

Critical Race Theory is currently getting a lot of attention, Dick and Jane (dated Boomer reference) feel guilty about their white privilege. 

“Let’s be clear: Critical race theory is not taught in elementary schools or high schools. It’s a method of examination taught in law school and college that helps analyze whether systemic racism exists,” -Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers

Technically speaking, that statement is not a lie, your honor. 

The ball did get rolling in law schools and colleges, but it's now bouncing all over the country. CRT ain't being taught in grade schools, it's being implemented in grade schools, as outlined in this article. 

Remote learning and helicopter parenting aren't all bad. Joe and Joan Bagadonuts, and Zach and Meadow Bagabrie, now know what's going on in this, that, and even that other school, the one they can't afford to send Dick and Jane to. 

Poppa loves you,

Have an OK day

Scroll down to share this column/access oldies. If you enjoy my work, and no advertising, please consider buying me a coffee via PayPal/credit-debit card.    

Feel free to comment and set me straight on Cranky's Facebook page. I post my latest columns on Saturdays, other things other days. Cranky don't tweet.