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Author Topic: Upon Deeper Consideration  (Read 9887 times)

barton

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Re: Upon Deeper Consideration
« Reply #75 on: December 26, 2020, 02:53:26 PM »


I feed a few dozen spotted turtle doves in my garden, and I often greet them:
"Hey little radiologists."

Funny.   

I'm thinking if you did that in a public park,  you'd get interesting looks from people.

I'd guess crows and ravens would also be good at that.   They're also among the smartest bird species.   

In any discussion of animal minds,  I always recommend the famous philosophic paper by Thomas Nagel,  "What Is It Like to be a Bat. " 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_Is_It_Like_to_Be_a_Bat%3F

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barton

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Re: Upon Deeper Consideration
« Reply #76 on: December 26, 2020, 03:05:54 PM »

Regarding Uno's sidebar on inherited v learned behavioral traits,  I think pretty much any geneticist,  evolutionary biologist,  sociobiologist,  or zoologist would tell you that,  with hominin species and a lot of other primates and mammals generally,  the answer is usually "both. "  Genes code for specific proteins,  and are not generally tied to specific character traits,  but clusters of allied genes do interact with environmental influences and so there are tendencies in individuals such that some are more readily shaped by certain influences than others.   

A group of genes,  for example, may lead to a slightly larger brain region called the amygdala.   And persons with a larger amydala do tend to have a more intense fear response especially to people they don't know.   This has been found to correlate with certain political leanings.   
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bodiddley

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Re: Upon Deeper Consideration
« Reply #77 on: December 26, 2020, 05:39:47 PM »

When trying to understand the thoughts and/or experience of being an animal a major problem is that we  process any such understanding and effort into language which is of course foreign to animals and outside their mindset. 

At times I try to glean what my cats are thinking and how they are experiencing things.  It's quite difficult to get too far beyond sensory input and some basic emotions.  But any actual pattern of thought or sense of how their mind works is extremely elusive/illusive.

It's also fascinating and frustrating to try to imagine what a cat's dreaming might be like.  I like the dog's dreams in The Triplettes of Bellville.
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Hamilton Samuels

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Re: Death penalty
« Reply #78 on: December 28, 2020, 06:08:41 PM »

I still see the similarity between death penalty and homicide, i. e., both involve death by violence.

And how do you feel about abortion?

Ambivalent, and you?

But I would not think of imposing my opinion on a woman by penalizing her if she chose to do something I find hard to accept.

Looks like only Bo and I have nuanced opinions on the DP.


Magister dixit.

NO issues with abortion on demand. I always find it weird and inconsistent that someone would be pro-life and support the DP, as so many do.

Same with the the pro-abortion crowd who scream about not wanting to take a life of someone who has murdered, raped, abetted murder and rape and is committed to doing so.

A woman and her mate have a right to decide if they want to end a pregnancy, without the government's interference, and the government has a definite responsibility to protect the public from further predation by those convicted of heinous murder.



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Hamilton Samuels

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Re: UDC - Can people be taught character traits? Or is biology dominant?
« Reply #79 on: December 28, 2020, 06:11:52 PM »


I am suggesting another new topic, with perhaps more room to explore new avenues of shared thought: Can people be taught character traits like determination to succeed and to persevere? Or is there an overriding biological nature that determines such traits in humans?

My suspicion is that it varies from person to person how strongly wired they are.

Further, I suspect it is easier to drag somebody from inclined toward what we think of positive traits to the negative than the other way around, just as it is easier to diminish their physical, intellectual, and emotional potential through application of substances (alcohol, nicotine, etc.) and/or deprivation of positive intellectual or emotional stimulation.

We know from identical twin studies that their being raised together leads to divergent personalities, while being raised apart and not knowing each other leads to convergent personalities.

We know from family studies that siblings raised by the same parents by no means turn out with the same moral senses!


Have you read any of the work of Angela Duckworth on grit? I find it interesting, and I think that some of us are more wired to persist in the face of difficulty. But she seems to think it is a trait that can be taught.

I am not so sure. I know for sure, though, that many people are ignorant and unsuccessful by choice.
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Hamilton Samuels

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Re: Upon Deeper Consideration
« Reply #80 on: December 28, 2020, 06:18:13 PM »

Here's an interesting one, heading to the SCOTUS:

https://www.yahoo.com/news/cheerleaders-vulgar-message-prompts-first-131037750.html

Social Media has led to tremendous amounts of social bullying, and that is a huge problem in schools, especially in an age where suicides have greatly increased among teens.

Schools want to be able to extend their campuses, virtually, too.
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josh

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Re: Upon Deeper Consideration
« Reply #81 on: December 28, 2020, 07:28:26 PM »

Here's an interesting one, heading to the SCOTUS:

https://www.yahoo.com/news/cheerleaders-vulgar-message-prompts-first-131037750.html

Social Media has led to tremendous amounts of social bullying, and that is a huge problem in schools, especially in an age where suicides have greatly increased among teens.

Schools want to be able to extend their campuses, virtually, too.

Schools' reach has been greatly extended in the past 20 years, as illustrated by the boy who got suspended for his outrageous, but not profanity laden, banner during a parade in Alaska.

"BONG HITS 4 JESUS" is not promoting illegal drug use, no matter how SCOTUS perceived it!

Quote
Morse v. Frederick, (551 U.S. 393 (2007)), is a United States Supreme Court case where the Court held, 5–4, that the First Amendment does not prevent educators from suppressing student speech that is reasonably viewed as promoting illegal drug use at or across the street from a school-supervised event.[1][2] In 2002, Juneau-Douglas High School principal Deborah Morse suspended Joseph Frederick after he displayed a banner reading "BONG HiTS 4 JESUS" [sic] across the street from the school during the 2002 Winter Olympics torch relay.[3] Frederick sued, claiming his constitutional rights to free speech were violated. His suit was dismissed by the federal district court, but on appeal, the Ninth Circuit reversed the ruling, concluding that Frederick's speech rights were violated. The case then went on to the Supreme Court.

Chief Justice Roberts, writing for the majority, concluded that the school officials did not violate the First Amendment. To do so, he made three legal determinations: first, that "school speech" doctrine should apply because Frederick's speech occurred "at a school event"; second, that the speech was "reasonably viewed as promoting illegal drug use"; and third, that a principal may legally restrict that speech—based on the three existing First Amendment school speech precedents, other Constitutional jurisprudence relating to schools and a school's "important, indeed, perhaps compelling interest" in deterring drug use by students.
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josh

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Re: UDC - Can people be taught character traits? Or is biology dominant?
« Reply #82 on: December 28, 2020, 07:35:31 PM »


I am suggesting another new topic, with perhaps more room to explore new avenues of shared thought: Can people be taught character traits like determination to succeed and to persevere? Or is there an overriding biological nature that determines such traits in humans?

My suspicion is that it varies from person to person how strongly wired they are.

Further, I suspect it is easier to drag somebody from inclined toward what we think of positive traits to the negative than the other way around, just as it is easier to diminish their physical, intellectual, and emotional potential through application of substances (alcohol, nicotine, etc.) and/or deprivation of positive intellectual or emotional stimulation.

We know from identical twin studies that their being raised together leads to divergent personalities, while being raised apart and not knowing each other leads to convergent personalities.

We know from family studies that siblings raised by the same parents by no means turn out with the same moral senses!


Have you read any of the work of Angela Duckworth on grit? I find it interesting, and I think that some of us are more wired to persist in the face of difficulty. But she seems to think it is a trait that can be taught.

I am not so sure. I know for sure, though, that many people are ignorant and unsuccessful by choice.

I'm pretty familiar with her work as well as the work on conscientiousness. Wikipedia has two sentences that resonate for me in this area:
Quote
However, meta-analyses have found no evidence that grit is linked to superior performance. Moreover, Duckworth's operationalization of grit has been criticized as a mere renaming of the previously established construct of conscientiousness.

The first of these is more key to me than the second, as the second is "merely" about her possession of the "intelligence" that Harvard's Howard Gardner neglected: marketing! (He, too, renamed some previously established constructs and got famous for it.)

Teaching grit does not seem to work appreciably better than teaching resilience, another vital (IMO) aptitude.

It's too bad. I wish they seemed more teachable than they do. {i]Empathy[/i] seems more teachable than those two traits do!
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carlos123

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Re: Death penalty
« Reply #83 on: December 28, 2020, 10:01:36 PM »

I still see the similarity between death penalty and homicide, i. e., both involve death by violence.

And how do you feel about abortion?

Ambivalent, and you?

But I would not think of imposing my opinion on a woman by penalizing her if she chose to do something I find hard to accept.

Looks like only Bo and I have nuanced opinions on the DP.


Magister dixit.

NO issues with abortion on demand. I always find it weird and inconsistent that someone would be pro-life and support the DP, as so many do.

Same with the the pro-abortion crowd who scream about not wanting to take a life of someone who has murdered, raped, abetted murder and rape and is committed to doing so.

A woman and her mate have a right to decide if they want to end a pregnancy, without the government's interference, and the government has a definite responsibility to protect the public from further predation by those convicted of heinous murder.

Your opinion on the DP doesn't really seem nuanced, but you choose to say it is, so good for you.
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Hamilton Samuels

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Re: Upon Deeper Consideration
« Reply #84 on: December 31, 2020, 07:52:38 AM »


I am suggesting another new topic, with perhaps more room to explore new avenues of shared thought: Can people be taught character traits like determination to succeed and to persevere? Or is there an overriding biological nature that determines such traits in humans?

My suspicion is that it varies from person to person how strongly wired they are.

Further, I suspect it is easier to drag somebody from inclined toward what we think of positive traits to the negative than the other way around, just as it is easier to diminish their physical, intellectual, and emotional potential through application of substances (alcohol, nicotine, etc.) and/or deprivation of positive intellectual or emotional stimulation.

We know from identical twin studies that their being raised together leads to divergent personalities, while being raised apart and not knowing each other leads to convergent personalities.

We know from family studies that siblings raised by the same parents by no means turn out with the same moral senses!


Have you read any of the work of Angela Duckworth on grit? I find it interesting, and I think that some of us are more wired to persist in the face of difficulty. But she seems to think it is a trait that can be taught.

I am not so sure. I know for sure, though, that many people are ignorant and unsuccessful by choice.

I'm pretty familiar with her work as well as the work on conscientiousness. Wikipedia has two sentences that resonate for me in this area:
Quote
However, meta-analyses have found no evidence that grit is linked to superior performance. Moreover, Duckworth's operationalization of grit has been criticized as a mere renaming of the previously established construct of conscientiousness.

The first of these is more key to me than the second, as the second is "merely" about her possession of the "intelligence" that Harvard's Howard Gardner neglected: marketing! (He, too, renamed some previously established constructs and got famous for it.)

Teaching grit does not seem to work appreciably better than teaching resilience, another vital (IMO) aptitude.

It's too bad. I wish they seemed more teachable than they do. {i]Empathy[/i] seems more teachable than those two traits do!

I think that both Duckworth and Gardner shouldn't be blamed for what they've tried to bring to the educator's toolkit. The problem with most education "reformers" is that they glom onto frameworks for thinking about ways to educate as  education itself.

Duckworth and Gardner have shown that we should continue to be looking at children as individual learners, as individuals who bring a certain orientation to the world, with certain innate strengths as learners, and the education we provide should work to develop those strengths by exploiting the learner's interests.

So, for example, when we have students who present as Gardner would call them "bodily kinesthetic" or "Spatial" learners, we should be aiming our teaching with that in mind. We should be praising effort for all students for moving towards a goal---teaching how to create short-term and long-term goals and how to celebrate them, and I think that reflects Duckworth's contribution to examining our students. But, I don't think that either theorist has captured the entire dynamic nature of all learners.

Nor do I think anyone can. I do think, though, that we need to encourage systemic change that affords individual educators to have the flexibility to meet individual students' needs by teaching in a manner similar to what I outlined in the last paragraph.

a) Figure out what a students strengths and weaknesses are---for THEM.
b) enlighten the student first.
c) engage the student through his/her/their interests
d) be sure to imbed self-assessment into the process
e) use that self-assessment and teacher assessment to demonstrate student progress and where adjustments need to be made by both teacher and student.
f) consistently promote effort. There may be reasons for something being difficult to learn, but there are reasons to continue to work towards a goal, if it has true relevance to the learner. The teacher enables that relevance by working within student interests.

So, for example, suppose I wanted to teach the concept of a circle as a set of points that share the same distance from a center point, and the student was that bodily kinesthetic learner of Gardner's Multiple Intelligences. Let's say I also know that this student is highly motivated to play hockey. We might literally examine hockey rinks and the number of circles that are contained within them, and the rules for hockey face-offs require staying on the perimeter of the circle until the puck is dropped, and then we might gather several students, placing one as the center of that circle and using a tether/rope/ribbon of some sort of exactly the same length place other students around our "center" equidistantly to create the circle. From there we might then look at ice rink models to examine the circles of each---or, if we could go to an actual rink---or the basketball court to measure the circles, there.

And assessment would work from there, with questions designed to afford the student a chance to investigate various circles as we find them in the everyday environment, and then to the more abstract circles encountered on paper or through computer graphics.

And perhaps, then we'd extend it further to ask a student to design a rink of their own by modeling it in some fashion of his choosing.

And move on from there. And when that student struggles with any part of this process then I'd ask them to review what they know, what they still want to find out, and how far we've come to date, and that is the student's effort that has produced what he has accomplished towards the ultimate goal of fully grasping a the concept of a circle, it's use in every day life, its purpose in design, how to measure one, how to find its area, its perimeter, and how to see it used to create cylinders like a...puck.

All along, of course, this is a very simple example (and it could use more thought, btw) of trying to use Gardner and Duckworth in concert as frameworks for teaching. But the approach is more in line with John Dewey's theories than Gardner's or Duckworth's contributions alone. To me their work has value in letting me as a teacher thinking both broadly in terms of how I can create the kind of learning experience to which individual students will respond and develop.

But, does that teach determination? Maybe. And can the learner generalize the concepts and apply to other situations that may not be of particular interest to him/her/them? Perhaps, if assessment, carefully thought-out assessment, comes in to play.



My experience tells you that this can work well in terms of student engagement and student learning, but only when faculty is given the freedom to teach this way. Too many teachers today are trapped in systems that do not afford this kind of work. Sadly.

I spent the last decade of my career expanding my thoughts in this area and trying to apply this essential method to my work. But I don't think I actually taught grit as much as I stressed finding a way to persevere when stressed.
I used to tell my kids "if you're not uncomfortable, you're not learning".

I wanted them to understand that learning was worth the effort. And that is why I never stressed grades. What I'd say about grades is, "don't learn this to produce and A on a test, or to get a good report card, or to please your parents, or to please me. This is for you to learn for you.  At the end of the day, grades don't matter. Learning matters. Make it matter to you, and you'll never have to worry about grades."

Okay, I strayed from grit discussion alone.

Empathy? Harder to teach in the virtual world, don't you think?


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Hamilton Samuels

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Re: Death penalty
« Reply #85 on: December 31, 2020, 08:02:08 AM »

I still see the similarity between death penalty and homicide, i. e., both involve death by violence.

And how do you feel about abortion?

Ambivalent, and you?

But I would not think of imposing my opinion on a woman by penalizing her if she chose to do something I find hard to accept.

Looks like only Bo and I have nuanced opinions on the DP.


Magister dixit.

NO issues with abortion on demand. I always find it weird and inconsistent that someone would be pro-life and support the DP, as so many do.

Same with the the pro-abortion crowd who scream about not wanting to take a life of someone who has murdered, raped, abetted murder and rape and is committed to doing so.

A woman and her mate have a right to decide if they want to end a pregnancy, without the government's interference, and the government has a definite responsibility to protect the public from further predation by those convicted of heinous murder.

Your opinion on the DP doesn't really seem nuanced, but you choose to say it is, so good for you.

Snark doesn't become you, carlos.

Bottom line, there are truly evil people, proven to be evil, and showing they'd like to continue to perpetrate that evil. If we have perfectly show that to be the case, such as in the likes of the Ted Bundys of the world, there is no need to keep them above ground.

There shouldn't be an automatic DP, IMO. And prosecutors make mistakes---but not in cases like those I detailed before.

I'd also like to eliminate the concept of prosecutors being elected to their positions. They should be concerned with enforcing the law, and only enforcing the law.  Putting a political layer over that process clouds judgement and creates incentives to seek wins over justice, to promote body counts over counting on equal protection before the law.
 
Abortion is a personal choice and should remain so, but it ends a potential life---a life that was given by the parents, and one they should be able to prenatally end, if they know that they can't afford to, for economic or other reasons, provide for that child.



That is nuanced. And it's been clearly articulated.

We haven't really gotten that kind of clarity from your expressions on these subjects.

But I am willing to wait until perhaps your zealotry fades a bit, either through time or perhaps after you garner more education on the true nature of man.
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Hamilton Samuels

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Re: Upon Deeper Consideration
« Reply #86 on: December 31, 2020, 10:33:22 AM »

It could have been a lot sooner. Sadly, the wimps of the world kept this asshole alive.

https://www.npr.org/2020/12/31/951918219/samuel-little-the-nations-most-prolific-serial-killer-dies-at-80
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kidcarter8

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Re: Upon Deeper Consideration
« Reply #87 on: December 31, 2020, 06:29:12 PM »

Abortion is a personal choice and should remain so, but it ends a potential life---a life that was given by the parents, and one they should be able to prenatally end, if they know that they can't afford to, for economic or other reasons, provide for that child.


As parents who cannot conceive wait to adopt such child....

That may be "nuanced" but I am not sure you can properly defend it
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Hamilton Samuels

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Re: Upon Deeper Consideration
« Reply #88 on: December 31, 2020, 06:42:34 PM »

Abortion is a personal choice and should remain so, but it ends a potential life---a life that was given by the parents, and one they should be able to prenatally end, if they know that they can't afford to, for economic or other reasons, provide for that child.


As parents who cannot conceive wait to adopt such child....

That may be "nuanced" but I am not sure you can properly defend it

 Rape and incest pregnancies should be always allowed to be terminated,  in my opinion. That said, it isn't a simple choice to abort vs offer a child up for adoption.

Consider that ...among American women for whom carrying a child to term would be safe, adoption is a remarkably unpopular course of action. Though exact estimates for all women are hard to come by, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that among never-married women, about 9 percent chose adoption before 1973, when Roe v. Wade legalized abortion. (The figure was higher for white women: 19 percent.) By the mid-1980s, the figure had dropped to 2 percent, and it was just 1 percent by 2002, the last year the CDC data captured. In 2014, only 18,000 children under the age of 2 were placed with adoption agencies. By comparison, there are about 1 million abortions each year.

 

The available research on adoption’s relative unpopularity is still limited. But the sociological studies that exist suggest that some women who are deciding between adoption and abortion find adoption to be more emotionally painful than abortion. And the reason complicates the narrative around abortion on both sides.

For the most part, women are not choosing abortion instead of adoption. In fact, both adoption and abortion rates have fallen over time, while births to unmarried women have risen over the past few decades. This suggests to some researchers that women are choosing between abortion and parenting, and more and more, unmarried women are choosing parenting. “Women just generally aren’t interested in adoption as a reproductive choice,” says Gretchen Sisson, a sociologist at the Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health research group of the University of California at San Francisco. “It’s an extremely rare pregnancy decision.”

The move away from adoption is part of the historical trend toward reduced societal stigma for unwed mothers...

...many pregnant women who don’t wish to become mothers seem to have a dim view of the adoption process, according to a study that Sisson and her colleagues published in 2017 in the journal Women’s Health Issues. The researchers relied on the Turnaway Study, a five-year, longitudinal look at women who sought abortions at 30 U.S. clinics from 2008 to 2010. The authors interviewed 956 women, 161 of whom went on to give birth, and 15 of whom chose adoption. They also had more in-depth conversations with 31 of those women, 16 of whom received abortions, and the rest who did not.

The authors note that the women seem to consider their options sequentially: They first seek abortion, and if they can’t afford or access one, they might then consider adoption. A week after being denied an abortion, 14 percent of the women said they were considering putting the baby up for adoption instead. But ultimately, only 9 percent of the women who were denied an abortion chose adoption. The majority simply went on to parent.

Meanwhile, none of the 16 women who got abortions were at all interested in adoption at any point. Some of their reasons were practical: “Adoption was often ruled out because they felt it was not right for them, because their partner would not be interested, because they had health reasons for not wanting to carry to term, or because they believed there were already enough children in need of homes,” the authors write.


https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2019/05/why-more-women-dont-choose-adoption/589759/

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josh

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Re: Upon Deeper Consideration
« Reply #89 on: December 31, 2020, 07:13:06 PM »

Abortion is a personal choice and should remain so, but it ends a potential life---a life that was given by the parents, and one they should be able to prenatally end, if they know that they can't afford to, for economic or other reasons, provide for that child.


As parents who cannot conceive wait to adopt such child....

That may be "nuanced" but I am not sure you can properly defend it

We have many more children awaiting adoption than we have parents waiting to adopt, Kid.

If it were otherwise, your argument would have a ton of weight.

Quote
Number of children waiting to be adopted in the United States from 2007 to 2019

Number of children
2019   122,216
2018   125,285
2017   123,450
2016   116,391
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