As readers of my blog know I research a lot, reading a ton of information on many different subjects. Recently I came across a paper that I thought was pretty good at the start. The paper was written in 2008 by a UofM (Dearborn) grad who actually made the honors roll named Jennifer A Huff. The article is actually good, although not as accurate as I would have liked. You can read the article at : http://www.mied.uscourts.gov/historical/newspdf/200805.pdf
This researcher wrote in one of her paragraphs “...the Supreme Court, the Court issued its most famous ruling regarding public education. Brown v. Board of Education (1954) overturned the doctrine of separate-but-equal schooling that had prevailed in the South for decades.”
This is total crap.
Brown v Board of Education overturned several previous rulings. Typically Liberal “Pro-North/Anti-South” researchers cite Plessy v Ferguson which is an 1896 Louisiana case. This ain't reality.
Back in 1849 the case of Roberts v Boston set the legal precedence that Plessy v Ferguson was built on.
Way too many Liberal researchers unfairly attack the south and make it sound as if the north had far less to do with segregation. Those of us who actually remember the sound of tanks driving down 8 Mile during 1967 have a far different perspective.
To her credit Ms Huff does point out that the north pretty much ignored DE-segregation while the south was moving towards an integrated society. In 1970 George Wallace, the guy MLK fought against during the Selma march, won the Democratic primary in Michigan.
The propagandistic myth of an integrated north vs a segregated south is as destructive to society as the myth of the Democratic party supporting civil rights.
We can learn from our mistakes when we realize that we made them and we change what we are doing. When we pretend the mistakes don't exist by making statements like “...had prevailed in the South” we display an unwillingness to accept responsibility for our mistakes.
In reality blacks have been as or more persecuted in the north than they have been in the south. Malcolm X's father was lynched right here in Michigan. Roberts v Boston (you know, Boston Mass, in the north) set the stage for “separate but equal” across the entire country, not just the south.
Back during the Civil War the Democrats in New York tried to succeed from the Union. When that failed the Democrats in New York City tried to succeed from New York State. The famous New York newspaper publisher, Horace Greeley, wrote many editorials against the Democrats and their support of slavery in New York. There were riots during the Civil War which have been renamed “draft riots” where blacks were lynched from lamp posts and black babies were thrown from the upper floors of multi-story buildings. Illiterate blacks were not told that they had been freed and were forced to work in New York city in slave like conditions long after the Civil War. Even today New York deals with immigrant slavery.
Edusnobbery and prejudice create conditions that force academic candidates for advanced degrees to continue publishing obvious falsehoods such as this garbage about segregation in the south. This may be the case where Ms Huff is concerned, or maybe her research is just sloppy and repeating the same tired anti-southern propaganda that has been popular in the North for the last hundred and fifty years.
Detroit was and really is a festering cauldron of racism based on primarily voluntary segregation. Make no mistake segregation is segregation and it creates a racial and cultural divide that is and will always be difficult to overcome while tired and ridiculous propaganda like blaming segregation on the south exists.
Ms Huff's article is worth reading, but, like a lot of the crap written about racism in the United States you have to be careful and double check the facts. Don't get caught in propaganda.
Monday, December 27, 2010
Friday, December 17, 2010
Multiple Intelligence and Life in general
My wife sent me a couple of links on something called “Multiple Intelligences” or MI which is a multi-modal methodology for the classification of intelligence.
Essentially the idea is that using a single classification for intelligence “IQ” does not capture an entire person so the doctor involved subjectively developed various groups of “intelligences” and designed a series of tests to assess an individuals placement within these classifications.
This is actually a pretty good idea, however, like most things in psychology (including IQ) it suffers from subjective assessment and the internal filters of the people involved in the development of the program and the assessment of the intelligences.
Multi-modalities exist in nature. If you take a salt shaker and dump it out on a table you get a pile of salt. If you take a cross section of that salt pile you will get a “curve” that looks a lot like the grading curve your teachers may have used when you were in school. This is called “normal” distribution.
Here is the thing most people do not understand. The entire curve, even at the far edges is “normal”. Most people tend to think of the center section of the curve as “normal” and the edges as “abnormal”. That couldn't be farther from the truth. “abnormal” is something that does not appear on the curve.
Suppose we jerk the salt shaker slightly sideways as we are pouring it out. We now have what looks like two intersecting piles of salt. If we take a cross sectional curve we still have a “normal” distribution, but, we call this distribution “multi-modal” because it has two “humps”.
There are many multi-modal distributions in nature and in manufacturing. One of the biggest mistakes people make in understanding multi-modal distributions is tossing out “flyers”. Flyers are typically some strange result the researcher collected, didn't understand and then pitched. The problem is that those little grains of salt farthest from the center of the pile tell us more about the limits of the distribution than all the grains of salt in the center pile.
I won't get into the math behind that. It is kind of like averaging or being on a curve. Maybe one of the kids in your class at school did so much better that everyone else became angry because it made it harder to get a “C”. Some people “drop” those “flyers” just because they “skew” the curve”. This is how cultures are destroyed, the lowest common denominator. The “stronger” mutation the group tries to destroy to prevent the evolution and development of the group. The kid, or any other flyer, that skews the curve.
The idea of multiple intelligences has an emotional draw to people. It is a way for them to assure themselves that they are not stupid and help them develop a better self image.
The problem is the subjective analysis. Teachers and psychologists (and sometimes engineers) typically grade subjectively based on their experience. This will skew the results of the analysis based on the personal prejudices of the reviewer. The teacher who gave you crap grades because you didn't get along with them. We have all had one of those.
Intelligence tests are typically not very intelligent. They require language comprehension skills that are a learned skill and so people who have strong language comprehension skills do well on tests regardless of their actual intelligence. The same is true of these MI tests.
Multi-modal distributions occur naturally. In this situation it appears that some researchers have subjectively determined multi-modal groups and then created tests which skew respondents into specific categories based on a subjective assessment of what the researcher believes they mean. For example, “I enjoy categorizing things by common traits” and “I easily pick up on patterns” are essentially the same thing and yet these questions are in different intelligence groups. In the logic section I found the phrase, “Structure is a good thing”. Understanding different structures can be difficult. For example understanding the structure of interpersonal relationships in the management of a large organization can appear chaotic to some. Some might not see the structure at all. Rembrandt vs Picasso. To me, this structure phrase means nothing. I would need to understand the structure and it's intended purpose to subjectively determine if the structure is a “good” thing, or likely to produce the intended results. The Tacoma Narrows Bridge is an excellent example of a structure many thought was good, well, before they built it they thought it was good. After it collapsed not so much.
So how do I answer “Structure is a good thing”? I would select a “middle” answer and the results would skew me away from being a logical person.
However!
The world wide web does offer a wonderful opportunity at really understanding the multi-modal development of personality (intelligence is a stupid term, and I have an IQ of 157 so you should believe me).
Different websites will have more visitors than others. By just capturing the visits to different websites and subjectively analyzing the “content” we (people in general) can develop a better understanding of the real, not the subjective, categorization of these multi-modal groupings.
Multiple Intelligences is a good idea, in the current development of subjective analysis it has it will probably die away for some other “pretty butterfly” that captures the imagination of researchers unless real objective analytical development is accomplished.
Here is a paper on MI: http://pzweb.harvard.edu/PIs/HG_MI_after_20_years.pdf
Here is an overview: http://tip.psychology.org/gardner.html
Here is an interesting paper on MI and culture:
http://www.laspau.harvard.edu/idia/UAI_2010/Readings/JamesGrayreading.pdf
Essentially the idea is that using a single classification for intelligence “IQ” does not capture an entire person so the doctor involved subjectively developed various groups of “intelligences” and designed a series of tests to assess an individuals placement within these classifications.
This is actually a pretty good idea, however, like most things in psychology (including IQ) it suffers from subjective assessment and the internal filters of the people involved in the development of the program and the assessment of the intelligences.
Multi-modalities exist in nature. If you take a salt shaker and dump it out on a table you get a pile of salt. If you take a cross section of that salt pile you will get a “curve” that looks a lot like the grading curve your teachers may have used when you were in school. This is called “normal” distribution.
Here is the thing most people do not understand. The entire curve, even at the far edges is “normal”. Most people tend to think of the center section of the curve as “normal” and the edges as “abnormal”. That couldn't be farther from the truth. “abnormal” is something that does not appear on the curve.
Suppose we jerk the salt shaker slightly sideways as we are pouring it out. We now have what looks like two intersecting piles of salt. If we take a cross sectional curve we still have a “normal” distribution, but, we call this distribution “multi-modal” because it has two “humps”.
There are many multi-modal distributions in nature and in manufacturing. One of the biggest mistakes people make in understanding multi-modal distributions is tossing out “flyers”. Flyers are typically some strange result the researcher collected, didn't understand and then pitched. The problem is that those little grains of salt farthest from the center of the pile tell us more about the limits of the distribution than all the grains of salt in the center pile.
I won't get into the math behind that. It is kind of like averaging or being on a curve. Maybe one of the kids in your class at school did so much better that everyone else became angry because it made it harder to get a “C”. Some people “drop” those “flyers” just because they “skew” the curve”. This is how cultures are destroyed, the lowest common denominator. The “stronger” mutation the group tries to destroy to prevent the evolution and development of the group. The kid, or any other flyer, that skews the curve.
The idea of multiple intelligences has an emotional draw to people. It is a way for them to assure themselves that they are not stupid and help them develop a better self image.
The problem is the subjective analysis. Teachers and psychologists (and sometimes engineers) typically grade subjectively based on their experience. This will skew the results of the analysis based on the personal prejudices of the reviewer. The teacher who gave you crap grades because you didn't get along with them. We have all had one of those.
Intelligence tests are typically not very intelligent. They require language comprehension skills that are a learned skill and so people who have strong language comprehension skills do well on tests regardless of their actual intelligence. The same is true of these MI tests.
Multi-modal distributions occur naturally. In this situation it appears that some researchers have subjectively determined multi-modal groups and then created tests which skew respondents into specific categories based on a subjective assessment of what the researcher believes they mean. For example, “I enjoy categorizing things by common traits” and “I easily pick up on patterns” are essentially the same thing and yet these questions are in different intelligence groups. In the logic section I found the phrase, “Structure is a good thing”. Understanding different structures can be difficult. For example understanding the structure of interpersonal relationships in the management of a large organization can appear chaotic to some. Some might not see the structure at all. Rembrandt vs Picasso. To me, this structure phrase means nothing. I would need to understand the structure and it's intended purpose to subjectively determine if the structure is a “good” thing, or likely to produce the intended results. The Tacoma Narrows Bridge is an excellent example of a structure many thought was good, well, before they built it they thought it was good. After it collapsed not so much.
So how do I answer “Structure is a good thing”? I would select a “middle” answer and the results would skew me away from being a logical person.
However!
The world wide web does offer a wonderful opportunity at really understanding the multi-modal development of personality (intelligence is a stupid term, and I have an IQ of 157 so you should believe me).
Different websites will have more visitors than others. By just capturing the visits to different websites and subjectively analyzing the “content” we (people in general) can develop a better understanding of the real, not the subjective, categorization of these multi-modal groupings.
Multiple Intelligences is a good idea, in the current development of subjective analysis it has it will probably die away for some other “pretty butterfly” that captures the imagination of researchers unless real objective analytical development is accomplished.
Here is a paper on MI: http://pzweb.harvard.edu/PIs/HG_MI_after_20_years.pdf
Here is an overview: http://tip.psychology.org/gardner.html
Here is an interesting paper on MI and culture:
http://www.laspau.harvard.edu/idia/UAI_2010/Readings/JamesGrayreading.pdf
Sunday, November 21, 2010
Wasting Resources and the Pseudo Intellectual Elite
The primary tells for knowing that you are talking to a pseudo intellectual are:
Their parroting of ridiculous non-facts like "George W. Bush was a liar" or "Dick Cheny 'outed' a covert CIA agent" or "Clinton balanced the budget" or "Obama was born in Hawaii".
Their edu-snobbery about their "education" and why or how it is better than "yours".
Their incessent need to "one-up" who ever they are talking to because their entire self image is based on the idea that they are smarter than whom ever they are talking to.
Their claim to be open minded and accepting while censoring and shouting down any ideologies that appear contrary to their own.
In the end the biggest tell that identifies pseudo intellectuals is their attraction to and selection of leaders based on charisma rather than either education or intelligence. Don't even think about selecting someone who has a proved track record when there is someone else with charisma they would like to lift into status as "royalty".
In the end governments dominated by pseudo intellectuals who favor oratory and presentation over accomplishment and capability are all self defeating.
The more charismatic a person is, the better they get along with others, the less skilled they have to be to appear successful.
The less charismatic the more skilled a person must be to appear successful.
As actual skills and capabilites deteriorate in favor of charisma, oratory and presentation the more likely an organization is to fail, and this is the real tell.
The failure of the organization will never be the fault of the charismatic orator. It will be the fault of some "barbarian horde", which if the orator was as capable in reality as they were in presentation would have been defeated.
Their parroting of ridiculous non-facts like "George W. Bush was a liar" or "Dick Cheny 'outed' a covert CIA agent" or "Clinton balanced the budget" or "Obama was born in Hawaii".
Their edu-snobbery about their "education" and why or how it is better than "yours".
Their incessent need to "one-up" who ever they are talking to because their entire self image is based on the idea that they are smarter than whom ever they are talking to.
Their claim to be open minded and accepting while censoring and shouting down any ideologies that appear contrary to their own.
In the end the biggest tell that identifies pseudo intellectuals is their attraction to and selection of leaders based on charisma rather than either education or intelligence. Don't even think about selecting someone who has a proved track record when there is someone else with charisma they would like to lift into status as "royalty".
In the end governments dominated by pseudo intellectuals who favor oratory and presentation over accomplishment and capability are all self defeating.
The more charismatic a person is, the better they get along with others, the less skilled they have to be to appear successful.
The less charismatic the more skilled a person must be to appear successful.
As actual skills and capabilites deteriorate in favor of charisma, oratory and presentation the more likely an organization is to fail, and this is the real tell.
The failure of the organization will never be the fault of the charismatic orator. It will be the fault of some "barbarian horde", which if the orator was as capable in reality as they were in presentation would have been defeated.
Monday, November 01, 2010
Wasting Resources
These days I work at a National Laboratory. I is purdy smart!
At least some people think so. In reality I am not much more intelligent, if any, than most of the good skilled tradesmen I have worked with over the years. Many people who gravitated towards skilled trades are very intelligent people who, for one reason or another, did poorly in academics. I did badly in school because I read a lot.
My father used to beat me when I read his and my mother’s college text books so I had to hide reading “adult literature”. As I became older I began to understand that my father didn’t really understand any of his text books, although he really liked to believe he did. When I was 13 I made him really angry when I tried to discuss the differences between Adam Smith’s classic economic theory and John Keynesian’s economic theory. He did not understand. That is not unusual, most people don’t understand. My father had a degree in economics.
So here I am in school listening to teachers with average education and average intelligence say really stupid things. “Republican’s started slavery!” is something I remember. Most people believe this tripe even today because some moronic elementary school teacher told them that.
During a discussion in English class I mentioned that I thought Russia and the United States would become allies again, just as they had been in WW2. The class laughed, the teacher said “that can never happen”. Of course it has happened.
Back in the late 1980’s I was working on the shop floor talking to a group of people about terrorism. I mentioned I knew a Weatherman, one of the people asked me “what channel”. During that discussion I mentioned the probability of an Islamic religious war based on terrorism. The people in the group agreed that China was far more dangerous than the "Arabs". I just shook my head.
My biggest problem is always understanding radical new ideas and having people disbelieve them. It has also been my saving grace. God puts me in a situation where my ability to look at things in a radically different way are a benefit and I do something “amazing”. Not because it is really amazing, but, because other people didn’t think of it "that way" and if they did they dismissed it as to "weird".
Education in the United States, and most other places, is a socialization process and not really an education process. If you can’t or won’t learn the same way as the group you are “banished”. It used to be banished into manufacturing. These days those jobs don’t exist.
So the education system is designed to churn out “average” people, average intelligence, average ability to socialize, average ability to succeed. Even those “above average” people in high school, middle school and elementary school end up in the “average” range. avergae results in stagnation. Always.
When teachers grade on a curve they typically use plus or minus 2 standard deviations or a range which encompasses about 90%. Teachers know some students have problems on tests and as a result they typically oppose standardized testing. Most high school graduates cannot pass a GED and yet the GED is looked down on as being a “poor substitute”. If it were up to me I would make it a law that anyone who can’t pass a GED can’t have a diploma. Why, because teachers use subjective criteria to make graduation easier for students who function well in academia. These same teachers use the same subjective criteria make graduation harder for people who do not, those “trouble makers” that teachers want drugged or expelled or shoved into substandard education to make their lives and the lives of the 90% more "stagnant".
So what happens when we don’t utilize that 5% of people who make the real changes that help the world, the small improvements in design and utilization that accumulate making the world better?
Stagnation.
Me, I have an above average income, an average life style. If you include my education level I am probably in the top two percent of people in the US with my education level.
Like most people who couldn’t deal with academia I went in manufacturing. That won’t happen in the future because the United States is pulling away from manufacturing. Our best potential for future development is not in academia. Academia churns out people within 2 std dev of “average”. Sure, 5% of those are going to be poor performers in any situation. The other 5% are people like me. Very intelligent and function like crap in typical academic environments.
Above average people who cannot function in academia require special opportunities. Some of us find them in construction, manufacturing, computers and we help the world become a better place. Some of us never find them.
What if Thomas Edison had been born in India in the 1700’s. He would have become successful, but, not the innovative, world changing, inventor that he became. Tesla, Einstein, Ford, Jobs, Gates, all these people “dropped out” and achieved great things in manufacturing because they committed to the right ideas at the right time. The rest of us “geniuses” have typically just enjoyed above average success in our chosen careers. Sometimes we influence things in very small ways that accumulate and change the world for the better.
So what happens when our society reduces the utilization of this 5% by reducing manufacturing and other semi-skilled trades that attract this 5%? The small and important developments in skilled and semi-skilled trades end up being made 2nd and 3rd world nations and the people outside of the 90% (or more) in the US end up being born in the wrong time and place.
Right now, the place for someone, with a high IQ who can’t function in academia, to be is China or India where their skills translate into social development. The United States has chosen to waste that 5% of the population that makes a huge accumulative impact. They might never become rich in those 2nd and 3rd world nations, but, like most of us in the 5% they will help make the world a better place and achieve a higher than average standard of living than the 90% average student.
At least some people think so. In reality I am not much more intelligent, if any, than most of the good skilled tradesmen I have worked with over the years. Many people who gravitated towards skilled trades are very intelligent people who, for one reason or another, did poorly in academics. I did badly in school because I read a lot.
My father used to beat me when I read his and my mother’s college text books so I had to hide reading “adult literature”. As I became older I began to understand that my father didn’t really understand any of his text books, although he really liked to believe he did. When I was 13 I made him really angry when I tried to discuss the differences between Adam Smith’s classic economic theory and John Keynesian’s economic theory. He did not understand. That is not unusual, most people don’t understand. My father had a degree in economics.
So here I am in school listening to teachers with average education and average intelligence say really stupid things. “Republican’s started slavery!” is something I remember. Most people believe this tripe even today because some moronic elementary school teacher told them that.
During a discussion in English class I mentioned that I thought Russia and the United States would become allies again, just as they had been in WW2. The class laughed, the teacher said “that can never happen”. Of course it has happened.
Back in the late 1980’s I was working on the shop floor talking to a group of people about terrorism. I mentioned I knew a Weatherman, one of the people asked me “what channel”. During that discussion I mentioned the probability of an Islamic religious war based on terrorism. The people in the group agreed that China was far more dangerous than the "Arabs". I just shook my head.
My biggest problem is always understanding radical new ideas and having people disbelieve them. It has also been my saving grace. God puts me in a situation where my ability to look at things in a radically different way are a benefit and I do something “amazing”. Not because it is really amazing, but, because other people didn’t think of it "that way" and if they did they dismissed it as to "weird".
Education in the United States, and most other places, is a socialization process and not really an education process. If you can’t or won’t learn the same way as the group you are “banished”. It used to be banished into manufacturing. These days those jobs don’t exist.
So the education system is designed to churn out “average” people, average intelligence, average ability to socialize, average ability to succeed. Even those “above average” people in high school, middle school and elementary school end up in the “average” range. avergae results in stagnation. Always.
When teachers grade on a curve they typically use plus or minus 2 standard deviations or a range which encompasses about 90%. Teachers know some students have problems on tests and as a result they typically oppose standardized testing. Most high school graduates cannot pass a GED and yet the GED is looked down on as being a “poor substitute”. If it were up to me I would make it a law that anyone who can’t pass a GED can’t have a diploma. Why, because teachers use subjective criteria to make graduation easier for students who function well in academia. These same teachers use the same subjective criteria make graduation harder for people who do not, those “trouble makers” that teachers want drugged or expelled or shoved into substandard education to make their lives and the lives of the 90% more "stagnant".
So what happens when we don’t utilize that 5% of people who make the real changes that help the world, the small improvements in design and utilization that accumulate making the world better?
Stagnation.
Me, I have an above average income, an average life style. If you include my education level I am probably in the top two percent of people in the US with my education level.
Like most people who couldn’t deal with academia I went in manufacturing. That won’t happen in the future because the United States is pulling away from manufacturing. Our best potential for future development is not in academia. Academia churns out people within 2 std dev of “average”. Sure, 5% of those are going to be poor performers in any situation. The other 5% are people like me. Very intelligent and function like crap in typical academic environments.
Above average people who cannot function in academia require special opportunities. Some of us find them in construction, manufacturing, computers and we help the world become a better place. Some of us never find them.
What if Thomas Edison had been born in India in the 1700’s. He would have become successful, but, not the innovative, world changing, inventor that he became. Tesla, Einstein, Ford, Jobs, Gates, all these people “dropped out” and achieved great things in manufacturing because they committed to the right ideas at the right time. The rest of us “geniuses” have typically just enjoyed above average success in our chosen careers. Sometimes we influence things in very small ways that accumulate and change the world for the better.
So what happens when our society reduces the utilization of this 5% by reducing manufacturing and other semi-skilled trades that attract this 5%? The small and important developments in skilled and semi-skilled trades end up being made 2nd and 3rd world nations and the people outside of the 90% (or more) in the US end up being born in the wrong time and place.
Right now, the place for someone, with a high IQ who can’t function in academia, to be is China or India where their skills translate into social development. The United States has chosen to waste that 5% of the population that makes a huge accumulative impact. They might never become rich in those 2nd and 3rd world nations, but, like most of us in the 5% they will help make the world a better place and achieve a higher than average standard of living than the 90% average student.
Monday, September 27, 2010
Perspective, God's perspective and the perspective of people
If you watch one of the many versions of Law and Order on television you may have seen the characters talk about how unreliable eye witness testimony is. You may have watched scenes where several different witnesses give very different accounts of the same incident and found out later every account had some truth in it, and that none of the accounts was “true”.
This is because people have different perspectives. We all see things differently and as a result we judge situations differently.
The other day at church my wife and a friend put some caramel dip into a bowl and filled a plate with apple slices to dip into the caramel. The caramel was really thick and kind of difficult to work with. I pointed this out and suggested we nuke the caramel to soften it. Our friend mentioned me criticizing the dip. This was an interesting twist, I pointed out a potential issue and offered a possible solution. She felt it was criticizing. Very few ate the caramel, if you dipped an apple slice into it the caramel didn't stick to the apple and it was so stiff the apple slice would break if you tried to “scoop” some caramel up. Rather than try warming the caramel they just let it sit there in a fairly unusable clump.
This is pretty typical of human beings. When faced with what we feel is criticism we often would rather stick with what we have than consider the suggestions useful.
Christians point out issues with societal behavior and in very much the way our friend at church ignored the issue with the caramel people ignore the suggestions of the Christians.
My friend at church would feel it was her duty, and Biblical rightly so, to point out issues with someone's Christian walk and yet she behaved the same way the secular community does. Was she wrong to put out the caramel without heating or “improving” it? No. Was I wrong to point out that it could be more useful if we heated it up? No. Was she wrong in criticizing my suggestion as criticism? No.
People don't like to believe or accept they are “wrong” even though Christ tells us no one is Good except God. Who was “wrong” in our caramel discussion at church? Neither of us.
Truthfully mistakes are important to make because in making mistakes, recognizing mistakes and learning from them is the most important thing we can do.
The issue is that it is almost impossible for multiple people to agree on what a “mistake” is because of the different perspectives.
Here is a kicker. Which one of us does God think was right?
Neither of us. God does not have the same perspective people have.
Lets look at a different situation. I worked with one of the guys from Church during a time I was reading the Bible for the sixth time. This version had been published by the Jehovah's Witnesses. This guy criticized the version of the Bible I read, he criticized some of my actions, he criticized my performance as a CNC programmer, my skills as a tool maker, pretty much everything. In fact a lot of the people at that shop criticized me for a lot of things.
As usual I thought about what people were saying, I accepted the criticism I felt was useful and I ignored the criticism I felt was useless.
One issue pretty much describes the vast majority of criticism. This was back in 1998. I had brought in my laptop and I was working on a math problem on my computer. One of the guys brought up a calculator and said, “I use this, I never had a problem I couldn’t figure out with this'” I looked at the guy and said, “I am sure there were people who felt the same way about their slide rules. I ain't one of them” and I went back to working on my laptop.
Who was right? Who was wrong? My perspective is that people who do not adapt and use new technologies eventually stagnate and die. His perspective was that the fancy new tool was no more useful than his old tool. In reality we were both right, based on our individual perspectives.
From my perspective computers had proved their usefulness and place in society by 1998. For others it took much longer to adapt to the new technology. It had to become cheap enough and easy enough to learn that they believed their investment would be returned. Heck, I was sure in 1984 that computers would be household tools. I just couldn't afford one back then.
Don't think I am always right, at one time I thought CF cards were the shiznik and now I own SD cards. Most people seem to own SD cards, micro SD cards, mini-SD cards.
Everyone makes guesses at where technology is going. The people who invest in the winning technology first end up making the most from their investment.
People who jump in too soon and make the wrong pick end up with the wrong digital media card.
People make choices based on their perspective. In reality there wasn't a wrong choice about when or what to get into computers, or digital media cards. There were learning experiences that helped people become better people, or not.
In religion, once we accept that everything we know, everything we are is wrong we become like children and we look to God for everything and we quit depending on our own understanding.
The realization that we are wrong about everything, that every person is wrong about everything is the most important realization a Christian can make because without the realization that our perspective is wrong and so everything we understand is wrong we never become as dependent on God as a child is dependent.
God's perspective is so different that we cannot possible understand it until we “are older”.
This is why Christ tells us we are not Good. This is why Paul tells us that we are all sinners.
You don't start looking for what is right until you know what is wrong.
This is because people have different perspectives. We all see things differently and as a result we judge situations differently.
The other day at church my wife and a friend put some caramel dip into a bowl and filled a plate with apple slices to dip into the caramel. The caramel was really thick and kind of difficult to work with. I pointed this out and suggested we nuke the caramel to soften it. Our friend mentioned me criticizing the dip. This was an interesting twist, I pointed out a potential issue and offered a possible solution. She felt it was criticizing. Very few ate the caramel, if you dipped an apple slice into it the caramel didn't stick to the apple and it was so stiff the apple slice would break if you tried to “scoop” some caramel up. Rather than try warming the caramel they just let it sit there in a fairly unusable clump.
This is pretty typical of human beings. When faced with what we feel is criticism we often would rather stick with what we have than consider the suggestions useful.
Christians point out issues with societal behavior and in very much the way our friend at church ignored the issue with the caramel people ignore the suggestions of the Christians.
My friend at church would feel it was her duty, and Biblical rightly so, to point out issues with someone's Christian walk and yet she behaved the same way the secular community does. Was she wrong to put out the caramel without heating or “improving” it? No. Was I wrong to point out that it could be more useful if we heated it up? No. Was she wrong in criticizing my suggestion as criticism? No.
People don't like to believe or accept they are “wrong” even though Christ tells us no one is Good except God. Who was “wrong” in our caramel discussion at church? Neither of us.
Truthfully mistakes are important to make because in making mistakes, recognizing mistakes and learning from them is the most important thing we can do.
The issue is that it is almost impossible for multiple people to agree on what a “mistake” is because of the different perspectives.
Here is a kicker. Which one of us does God think was right?
Neither of us. God does not have the same perspective people have.
Lets look at a different situation. I worked with one of the guys from Church during a time I was reading the Bible for the sixth time. This version had been published by the Jehovah's Witnesses. This guy criticized the version of the Bible I read, he criticized some of my actions, he criticized my performance as a CNC programmer, my skills as a tool maker, pretty much everything. In fact a lot of the people at that shop criticized me for a lot of things.
As usual I thought about what people were saying, I accepted the criticism I felt was useful and I ignored the criticism I felt was useless.
One issue pretty much describes the vast majority of criticism. This was back in 1998. I had brought in my laptop and I was working on a math problem on my computer. One of the guys brought up a calculator and said, “I use this, I never had a problem I couldn’t figure out with this'” I looked at the guy and said, “I am sure there were people who felt the same way about their slide rules. I ain't one of them” and I went back to working on my laptop.
Who was right? Who was wrong? My perspective is that people who do not adapt and use new technologies eventually stagnate and die. His perspective was that the fancy new tool was no more useful than his old tool. In reality we were both right, based on our individual perspectives.
From my perspective computers had proved their usefulness and place in society by 1998. For others it took much longer to adapt to the new technology. It had to become cheap enough and easy enough to learn that they believed their investment would be returned. Heck, I was sure in 1984 that computers would be household tools. I just couldn't afford one back then.
Don't think I am always right, at one time I thought CF cards were the shiznik and now I own SD cards. Most people seem to own SD cards, micro SD cards, mini-SD cards.
Everyone makes guesses at where technology is going. The people who invest in the winning technology first end up making the most from their investment.
People who jump in too soon and make the wrong pick end up with the wrong digital media card.
People make choices based on their perspective. In reality there wasn't a wrong choice about when or what to get into computers, or digital media cards. There were learning experiences that helped people become better people, or not.
In religion, once we accept that everything we know, everything we are is wrong we become like children and we look to God for everything and we quit depending on our own understanding.
The realization that we are wrong about everything, that every person is wrong about everything is the most important realization a Christian can make because without the realization that our perspective is wrong and so everything we understand is wrong we never become as dependent on God as a child is dependent.
God's perspective is so different that we cannot possible understand it until we “are older”.
This is why Christ tells us we are not Good. This is why Paul tells us that we are all sinners.
You don't start looking for what is right until you know what is wrong.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
