This is your brain on drugs

     OK, I don't usually do this sort of thing, but, today, I'm gonna mention some paradoxes. Some philosophers love paradoxes. I merely like them.
     Here's one that, like it or not, I think about all the time, owing to how I make my living:

The Surprise Quiz Paradox:

[Y]our teacher tells you (i) she's going to give the class a surprise exam next week, and (ii) you won't be able to work out beforehand on which day it will be. Using this information, you work out that it can't be on Friday (the last day), or else you'd be able to know this as soon as class ended the day before, contrary to the second condition. With Friday excluded from consideration, Thursday is now the last possible day, so we can exclude it by the same reasoning. Similarly for Wednesday, Tuesday, and finally Monday. So you conclude that there cannot be any such exam. This chain of reasoning guarantees that when the teacher finally gives the exam (say, on Wednesday), you're all surprised, just like she said you'd be. (The Surprise Examination Paradox)

     As a teacher, hearing about this paradox is a little like receiving a notification from your insurance company that your policy is cancelled now that you're dead. You're pretty sure you're not dead. But then there's this notice. Cool.
     Here’s a paradox (or a set of paradoxes) that I often refer to in my lectures:

Puzzles (paradoxes) attributed to Eubulides of Miletus:

The Heap: Would you describe a single grain of wheat as a heap? No. Would you describe two grains of wheat as a heap? No. ... You must admit the presence of a heap sooner or later, so where do you draw the line?*
The Bald Man: Would you describe a man with one hair on his head as bald? Yes. Would you describe a man with two hairs on his head as bald? Yes. ... You must refrain from describing a man with ten thousand hairs on his head as bald, so where do you draw the line? (Sorites Paradox)

     Students imagine that every word can be defined with a precise definition.
     Nope. Imagine a series of slight modifications (removal of small amounts) of a chair. When does it cease to be a chair? Any answer will be unacceptable because it is arbitrary.

     VOTING. More than one thing is referred to as the “paradox of voting.” The particular “paradox” I have in mind (roughly) is discussed in the encyclopedia entry below:

The paradox of voting … is that for a rational, self-interested voter the costs of voting will normally exceed the expected benefits. Because the chance of exercising the pivotal vote (i.e. in case of a tied election) is tiny compared to any realistic estimate of the private individual benefits of the different possible outcomes, the expected benefits of voting are less than the costs. The fact that people do vote is a problem for public choice theory, first observed by Anthony Downs. (Paradox of Voting)

     Now, don’t get me wrong. I believe in voting. I vote (most of the time). I think that I have good reasons to vote.
     But, in my view, one reason that I do NOT have for voting is the one we most often hear, namely, that “one’s vote counts!”**

     Unless one will countenance the fallacy of equivocation, one cannot really defend the notion that one’s vote “counts,” for, to say (in the relevant contexts) that one’s vote “counts” is to suggest that it will make, or it quite possibly will make, a difference to the election’s outcome (winning/losing). (I'm not particularly interested in the issue of self-interest; I'm interested in a point about efficacy.)
     Here’s where the so-called paradox*** of voting comes in. Obviously, for typical government elections (I’m not referring to elections involving small numbers of people—department elections and the like), the chances that one’s vote will make a difference to the outcome are extremely small.
     Consider the recent election for the “board of trustees” seat now held by TJ Prendergast, which was unusually close. The final tally was the following:

115,304 Prendergast
111,197 Muldoon

     As it was, Prendergast received 4107 more votes than Muldoon did. Suppose that Smith voted for Prendergast. Had Smith not voted, the outcome would have been only very slightly different: Prendergast’s total would have been 115,303, not 115,304.
     So, in fact, Smith’s vote, if it “counted,” it did not “count” in the sense that it made a difference (of any consequence) to the outcome. To be sure, his vote was “counted.” Nevertheless, it did not “count.” (Remember: equivocation is verboten.)
     It is true, of course, that it could have counted, though, in fact, it did not count. But, clearly, the odds of one’s vote “counting” are infinitesimal. Very likely, all of you who read this (hundreds!) will go through your entire lives voting and, in the end, there will not have been even one election in which any of your votes “counted” or even came close to counting in any meaningful sense.
     Some will respond to this by noting that, in recorded history, there have been elections in which a single person’s vote “counted” in the way I have in mind. (For an illustration, see Examples of Why Your Vote Counts.)
     Of course this occurs. Given the great number of elections that occur, this goes without saying, I think.
     But the occurrence of these events does not respond to the point at hand, namely, that, though it is possible that one’s vote will “count,” it is extremely unlikely that it will count. Given that one could live a great many lifetimes before encountering even one election in which one’s vote “counted,” in what sense is one being told anything true and motivating**** when one is told that one’s vote “counts”?
     In my view, when we seek to persuade people to vote on the grounds that their “vote counts,” we are either confused (i.e., we think we have a valid point when we do not) or we are lying/manipulating (we know that we have no valid point, but we offer it anyway perhaps because [we think] our end is good).
     My guess is that confusion more than lying is afoot.
     On the other hand, there are so many instances in which our “teachings” are manifestly (or nearly manifestly) invalid, we should consider the possibility that, yes, we offer this false point not “knowing” that it is false—but, still, it must be said that we have good reasons to suspect that, often, what we “teach” is logically hinky at best, and so, quite possibly, this is logically hinky too.
     Organic muffins, anyone?

Footnotery:

   *So what's paradoxical about this? Well, you start with a heap of sand. Plainly, after removing grains of sand for a sufficient period of time, you end with a non-heap (one grain). And yet there is no "line" that you cross to get from "heap" to "non-heap." You cross a line, but there is no line to cross.

   **To act to influence large numbers of voters—something sometimes available to leaders—means the difference between a significant number of people voting for X or not. Here, whether or not “Smith’s vote counts,” the leader’s urgings might count a great deal. It will remain true, however, that not one of those votes counted.
   “Yes, but what if everyone thought that way.” It is of course true that what (say) 50,000 voters in state X do during a particular election can make all the difference. And that is why those who care about the outcomes of elections rightly concern themselves with persons and events that influence large numbers of voters. But all of that can be acknowledged without falsely supposing that each voter’s vote “counts.” That the collective vote of 50,000 voters “counts” does not imply that each of those votes “counted.”

   ***What is “paradoxical” here? It is, I suppose, that, though it matters a great deal how everyone votes, in fact it matters not at all how any given voter votes. That Americans in general voted for candidate X matters to the outcome of the election. That any given voter voted for candidate X does not matter to the outcome of the election. To endorse both statements might seem to be the endorsement of a contradiction, but it is not.

   ****Obviously, one is not being told anything of significance if one is being told merely that one's vote could mean something like the difference between Prendergast's receiving 115,304 and 115,303 votes. Why would anyone care about that difference?







Good Eating Habits

iPad profs prosper; cheaters don't; @ Repub Congress, oil companies prosper—The planet? not so much

The iPad for Professors: Evaluating a Productivity Tool After One Year (Chronicle of Higher Education)

Excerpt:

“I am not an Apple fan by any means. I use Windows and Linux machines. My phone is an Android. I scoff at my wife's Powerbook. Yet I love my iPad. It's become indispensable for my teaching, research, and other scholarly activities….”

Many Cheaters Are Overly Optimistic About Their Academic Ability, Study Finds (Chronicle of Higher Education)

     A new series of studies has found that a majority of students cheat, and that those who do often have inflated expectations of how well they can perform without cheating. In a survey of 40,000 students at public and private high schools, 59.4 percent admitted to cheating on a test, and one in three said they had cheated on a test twice or more in the past year. Another study, by Harvard Business School and Duke University, found that students who were given the opportunity to cheat on a test predicted they would perform just as well on a second test when they weren’t given the opportunity to cheat. Students who received a certificate of recognition for their scores on the first test were even more likely to overestimate their success on the next test. The results of the study suggest that some cheaters set themselves up to fall behind academically after becoming overly confident about their abilities, said John Fremer, president of consulting services at Caveon LLC, a private test-security company.



Physicist Bob Park rants anew:

IGNORANCE: HOUSE COMMITTEE VOTES TO OVERTURN NATURAL LAW. The price of gasoline at the pump is at the highest level ever for this time of year. That’s not all bad; raising the price is the only effective way to reduce consumption, thereby improving the environment and delaying the dreaded Hubbert peak. There are, however, two ways to raise the price to the consumer: increase the profit margin of the oil industry, or levy a large consumption tax. The revenue from a heavy consumption tax would help to pay the crushing costs of the Bush economy. You will not be surprised, however, to learn that the Republican Congress overwhelmingly prefers the first method, which [will be] embodied in the Energy Tax Prevention Act of 2011, in preparation. But first they had to amend the Clean Air Act to eliminate the authority of the Environmental Protection Agency over greenhouse gases. According to an editorial in last week's Nature, the Republican disdain for climate science was evident in the "anger and distrust directed at scientists and scientific societies." The widespread melting of snow and ice, and rising global average sea level, is unequivocal evidence of global warming.

Rebel Girl's Poetry Corner: "The label, the labor, the color, the shade. The shirt"

Shirt
by Robert Pinsky

The back, the yoke, the yardage. Lapped seams,
The nearly invisible stitches along the collar
Turned in a sweatshop by Koreans or Malaysians

Gossiping over tea and noodles on their break
Or talking money or politics while one fitted
This armpiece with its overseam to the band

Of cuff I button at my wrist. The presser, the cutter,
The wringer, the mangle. The needle, the union,
The treadle, the bobbin. The code. The infamous blaze

At the Triangle Factory in nineteen-eleven.
One hundred and forty-six died in the flames
On the ninth floor, no hydrants, no fire escapes—

The witness in a building across the street
Who watched how a young man helped a girl to step
Up to the windowsill, then held her out

Away from the masonry wall and let her drop.
And then another. As if he were helping them up
To enter a streetcar, and not eternity.

A third before he dropped her put her arms
Around his neck and kissed him. Then he held
Her into space, and dropped her. Almost at once

He stepped to the sill himself, his jacket flared
And fluttered up from his shirt as he came down,
Air filling up the legs of his gray trousers—

Like Hart Crane’s Bedlamite, “shrill shirt ballooning.”
Wonderful how the pattern matches perfectly
Across the placket and over the twin bar-tacked

Corners of both pockets, like a strict rhyme
Or a major chord. Prints, plaids, checks,
Houndstooth, Tattersall, Madras. The clan tartans

Invented by mill-owners inspired by the hoax of Ossian,
To control their savage Scottish workers, tamed
By a fabricated heraldry: MacGregor,

Bailey, MacMartin. The kilt, devised for workers
To wear among the dusty clattering looms.
Weavers, carders, spinners. The loader,

The docker, the navvy. The planter, the picker, the sorter
Sweating at her machine in a litter of cotton
As slaves in calico headrags sweated in fields:

George Herbert, your descendant is a Black
Lady in South Carolina, her name is Irma
And she inspected my shirt. Its color and fit

And feel and its clean smell have satisfied
Both her and me. We have culled its cost and quality
Down to the buttons of simulated bone,

The buttonholes, the sizing, the facing, the characters
Printed in black on neckband and tail. The shape,
The label, the labor, the color, the shade. The shirt.

*

Note: The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in New York City on March 25, 1911 was the deadliest industrial disaster in the history of the city of New York and the fourth deadliest from an industrial accident in U.S. history. Most of the workers killed were women.

*

Really, Republicans?

Wisconsin GOP Seeks E-Mails of a Madison Professor Who Criticized the Governor (Chronicle of Higher Education)

     The Republican Party of Wisconsin is seeking, under the state's open-records law, to obtain e-mail sent by a Madison professor who has publicly criticized that state's Republican governor, a move the professor is denouncing as an assault on his academic freedom.
     Officials at the University of Wisconsin at Madison received the records request on March 17, two days after the professor, William Cronon, published a blog post examining the role conservative advocacy groups have played in formulating legislation recently proposed by Gov. Scott Walker and Republican lawmakers. The most prominent of the legislation, a bill to strip University of Wisconsin and other public employees of their collective-bargaining rights, was passed after a bitter debate that featured huge rallies at the State Capitol and demands for the recall of lawmakers on both sides of the issue.
. . .
     Gregory F. Scholtz, associate secretary of the American Association of University Professors, said his group planned to urge the university to resist the open-records request because it believes complying with it will have a chilling effect on academic freedom. Characterizing Mr. Cronon as an "extremely major" player in his academic fields, Mr. Scholtz said "they picked on the wrong guy this time."

It's like waving a red flag in front of 'em!

By Orange County's  Emigdio Vasquez

Todd Spitzer

     WHISTLE BLOW HARD. A few months ago, when Assistant DA Todd Spitzer accidentally poked into the nasty FUBAR that is John Williams’ Public Administrator/Guardian office (down at the County), it got him summarily fired from the DA’s office.
     People noticed. It was like turning on a flashing neon sign that said, “corruption and mismanagement, here.”
     Now, of course, Spitzer’s running for Supervisor, and so, naturally, he’s exploiting his recent adventures in accidental whistle-blowery for all that they’re worth.
     For instance, in today’s Red County (Public Administrator John Williams: Pension and Salary Robber), the Toddster roars

     The now-infamous Orange County Public Guardian John Williams was stripped of his powers as both the Public Administrator … and Public Guardian … on Tuesday after he refused to resign based on his incompetence in office and failure to perform his basic duties.
     It is my unwavering successful efforts for two decades as a prosecutor and elected official to get to the bottom of government corruption that has the backroom power brokers concerned.  For years they have comfortably placed their pals in position of power, gained lucrative no-bid contracts and hid behind the lack of transparency in government for their own personal gain.
     This online story from two days ago is now a FRONT PAGE OC REGISTER LOCAL Section story today. Read it. The article connects a lot of dots of the politically powerful in Orange County. But this is why I am running for County Supervisor. To end the nepotism, pension spiking, "I'll hire you if you hire me" mentality and the liability exposure to the taxpayer for putting incompetent politically connected people into important government positions. Enough already!

     Let’s hope Spitzer is serious about all this. I mean, what he’s describing, more or less, sure is real (like I’ve been sayin’). But will Todd really blast Crony-Connectoville once he’s elected (if he’s elected)?
     Maybe.

To be an Orange Countian is to have Mexican and Vietnamese tastes

     THE OC: PORTAL TO VIETNAM. Meanwhile, our pal Gustavo Arellano over at the “Stick a Fork in It” blog posts today about, of all things, a recent addition to the OED!

   Oxford English Dictionary Adds 'Banh Mi' to Dictionary

     Ah, the august [OED], grammatical gatekeeper to all that is proper and just in the world of the English language. The great thing about the tongue of Shakespeare, of course, is how it absorbs foreign words as they inextricably become part of the Empire—and, just this week, OED deemed bánh mì worthy of inclusion.
     "As the culinary appetites of the English-speaking world grow ever more diverse, loan words referring to new cuisines are a perennial source of new OED entries," explains Katherine Connor Martin, senior editor of new words (how awesome a job is THAT?!) for the dictionary….

     I’m none too worldly, but I’m guessing that this OED business is newsworthy (here in OC) because the term “banh mi” has entered the English language via Orange County, which is after all home to, well, the biggest Little Saigon in the world—namely, Westminster and Garden Grove, a portion of OC that is about 25% Vietnamese.
     —And very Republican. You know, like Miami with all those commie-hating Cubans.

     ART SHOULD BE PROTECTED. A few days ago, I posted about the “Cypress Street Barrio” in the city of Orange, my hometown, sort of. In the course of that story, I mentioned OC artist Emigdio Vasquez, who, as it turns out, grew up in that barrio and, I’m told, still lives on Cypress Street.
     Rebel Girl reminded me that IVC is in possession of a fine Emigdio Vasquez mural—it’s in the hallway bisecting the B100 building, one of IVC’s many architectural monstrosities. I was going to take a picture of it today, but that didn’t work out. I’ll try again on Monday.
     Rebel Girl tells me that the mural is on canvas and is utterly unprotected—and there’s lots of traffic in that hallway.
     Tsk, tsk. That ain't right.

Flag of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam

     BRING BACK THE FLAGS O' THE WORLD! And that reminds me—let’s try to get those “flags of the world” flying again in the Student Services Center! You’ll recall that, a couple of years ago, some Vietnamese Americans complained that, included among the flags of the world colorfully displayed in SSC, was the flag of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam (boo, hiss!). Well, owing to the particulars of OC’s Vietnamese community (namely, their bein’ refugees from the Communist invasion that occurred after we declared victory and left Southeast Asia), flyin’ that flag around OC's Little Saigon crowd is like, um, waving a red flag in front of 'em.
     Yeah, it’s like dressing up as Castro down in Miami. It just won’t do, I guess.
     Naturally, when these none-too-subtle Vietnamese-American bulls hinted that there might be hell to pay if that red flag keeps flyin’, our Rocky decided to take down all of the flags. Problem solved.
     I.e., he caved.
     Well, that’s just bullshit. Let’s get those flags back up there. They were purdy. They shouted "global community." And, like it or not, the Socialist Republic of Vietnam is among the nations of the world. Heck, we have friendly relations with ‘em these days!
     That’s good, right?
     Yes, it is.

Heads up: Monday's board meeting

     The agenda for the March meeting of the SOCCCD board of trustees—on Monday, the 28^th—is now available at the district website. There, look for the blue box, which includes a link to a pdf of the "current agenda."
     For what it’s worth (not much), the agenda for the 5:00 p.m. closed session includes the following item:

     I’ve glanced over the agenda for the open session, which is set to start at 6:30 p.m., and it contains nothing of obvious interest (to me). Possibly, the item concerning the proposed 2012-2013 district calendar (item 5.16) is interesting. Check it out:

     The meeting’s discussion items are the following:

"Ching Chong!"—pleasantly countering Stupid Girl's anti-Asian rant

The original rant HERE