Generating New Forms of Poetry

[desiresjab]

One does not see a new way of generating poetry very often. I suppose imagism could be thought of as a new way of generating poetry by changing peoples' concepts about poetry and images. It was a whole new philosophical school of poetry, therefore a very big new way of creating fresh verse, but not exactly a technique and not exactly a form.

Haiku and Tanka were new forms to westerners, which gave them unexplored frameworks from which to generate. It makes no difference that there is nothing sacred about seventeen or thirty-one syllables in our language.

Hopkins's sprung rhythm was definitely a new technique for generating poetry. That's more like it. A new mechanically operant program within poetics.

The sonnet was a new form from Italy. Look what happened. Poetry unleashed. Free verse. Look what happened. Girls gone wild. Symbolism...

Sometimes it is a school of thought, a way of treatment, sometimes a new mechanical loop that is introduced.

Merrill sweating over a hot ouija board was indeed a novel process for generating poetry. Yeats had done something like it before, but not exactly, and without a ouija board.

There is of course visual poetry, which makes various shapes upon the page.

[miyako73]

Lunacy is the new poetic form, I say.

[YesNo]

Merrill sweating over a hot ouija board was indeed a novel process for generating poetry. Yeats had done something like it before, but not exactly, and without a ouija board.


I found this reference to Merrill and the ouija board: http://www.nytimes.com/books/01/03/04/specials/merrill-mirabell.html

I'll have to see if I can find the "Divine Comedies".

As far as a new form goes, one can come up with some mathematical pattern and call that a new form, but the key is what sounds good in the language.

[MorpheusSandman]

The only thing inhibiting the invention of new forms is a lack of imagination, and probably too many not caring about form in poetry to begin with. I'll never understand people that work in an artistic medium not caring about the tools of the medium, regarding them almost as a burden or something that just gets in the way and ideally they'd want to disappear. I can't tell how many times I've heard people say this about the camera in film; it should disappear, never call attention to itself, just observe but not "narrate." Too bad it's almost always the bad artists that think like this (there are a few exceptions).

Anyway, I will claim to have invented one form. I call it the Sesnet, a combination of Cinquain and Sonnet:

6-lines
L1 = 2 syllables
L2 = 4 syllables
L3 = 6 syllables
L4 = 8 syllables
L5 = 6 syllables
L6 = 2 syllables

Ostensibly, this looks like a Cinquain with an added 6-syllable L5, but if written metrically there are also 14 feet (1+2+3+4+3+1), and like a sonnet you can have an octet+sestet and volta at foot (instead of line) 9, which comes midway through L4. Example:

Lighting
Of filaments
Conduits envelope
Conductive wires—Conversive thoughts’
Skin will feel intentment
Till Dark



I found this reference to Merrill and the ouija board: http://www.nytimes.com/books/01/03/04/specials/merrill-mirabell.html

I'll have to see if I can find the "Divine Comedies".You'd be better off just getting his Collected Poetry and Sandover. Divine Comedies' first half is 4-or-5 relatively long poems and the second half is The Book of Ephraim, which was the first part of Sandover. When his work was collected, Ephraim was joined with Mirabell, Scripts, and Coda to form Sandover and the other long poems were left to stand in Divine Comedies. Don't get me wrong: Divine Comedies is a phenomenal book, probably Merrill's single best collection, but if you're going to read Sandover it's best to do it all together rather than just reading Ephraim from Divine Comedies.

[YesNo]

I found Collected Poetry in the library and read a few selections from Divine Comedies. In the pieces I read, where the iambic pentameter sounded right, I enjoyed the lines.

That was an interesting Sesnet form using 14 feet rather than 14 pentameter lines. However, there should be some aural reason to insert a line break beside syllable count.

[MorpheusSandman]

However, there should be some aural reason to insert a line break beside syllable count.Not sure what you mean here... the syllabic line-break is how Cinquains work and, like I said, the form is a combination of Cinquain and Sonnet.

[miyako73]

Hi, Morph. Is my dyadic sonnet a new form? The Tehran poem as an example. It made the Eratos peeps crazy. hahaha

Miyako

[MorpheusSandman]

You'd have to post it here or give me a link and let me check it out.

[miyako73]

it's in the poetry section of litnet.

[MorpheusSandman]

I read it. Firstly, allow me to say that it's probably the finest piece from you I read. The detailed imagery is quite lovely and I love the slant rhymes which breaks up any potential monotony in the rhymed tercets. Though there's some occasionally awkward phrasing that I'd consider fixing, like the opening "Why cannot I forget," which is unnatural and I don't think is justifiable either for its rhythm or musicality, and "when the crescent moon unclad" is just weird since "unclad" is both archaic and really weird as a verb.

I assume what you mean by "dyadic" sonnet is that there are two alternating speakers? If so, that's not really a new form but a new mode of an old form. Whether it's a new mode or not, I'm not sure. I've written a few sonnets with alternating speakers, though none using the quadruple tercet/couplet form, and I never posted them. I didn't have a specific influence but I'd guess it's likely been done before. The 20th century saw A LOT of experimentation in sonnets and polyvocal poetry has been in vogue since Eliot, so somebody probably thought of using dual voices in a sonnet before either of us.

[desiresjab]

it's in the poetry section of litnet.

Huh? How's that? I'd like to see.

[YesNo]

Not sure what you mean here... the syllabic line-break is how Cinquains work and, like I said, the form is a combination of Cinquain and Sonnet.

Basically, I prefer the sound of poetry over its visual display. So if there is a line break I look for a sound pattern to justify it.

[desiresjab]

A remarkable difference in tone between the two poems. The Tehran poem sustains its meditative mood well, I think Morpheus is right about a crude spot of phrasing or two. When you are working within tight limits, sometimes there is one spot where it just did not fit. For a certain while you justify it to yourself, but it always nags. Sometimes it even takes years for the right words to fall in, just here, just there.

Crudities and anachronisms are two old foes.

[MorpheusSandman]

Basically, I prefer the sound of poetry over its visual display. So if there is a line break I look for a sound pattern to justify it.There is a "sound pattern" in breaking syllabically if you're also writing in meter, because there's a growing and then shrinking number of beats per line: 1 beat, 2 beats, 3 beats, 4 beats, 3 beats, 1 beat. I also use the last words of lines to echo (through sound) or juxtapose previous words. So, eg, you can find "filaments" in "feel intentment," or "Till Dark" echoing back to "Lighting," and the "con" sound in the middle two lines should be obvious. I also have a personal quirk in Cinquains and Sesnets where I alternate each line between iambic and trochaic rhythms, so there's a push/pull rhythm. That should be enough "sound" reasons in addition to the syllabic "rules" in line breaks.

[MorpheusSandman]

Hopkins's sprung rhythm was definitely a new technique for generating poetry.Actually not; it was basically a loose form of alliterative verse, which goes back to the origins of English poetry (in fact, it was dominant until Chaucer).


Merrill sweating over a hot ouija board was indeed a novel process for generating poetry. Yeats had done something like it before, but not exactly, and without a ouija board.I recall a section from Sandover where Yeats is mentioned, and one of the spirits says something to the effect of "poor Yeats, always simplifying." :lol:


Crudities and anachronisms are two old foes.I do think there's room for both, but it's all about context. In a very early poem I wrote experimenting with Miltonic blank verse and using Gaiman's Dream (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dream_%28comics%29) character as a narrative catalyst, I realized that the archaisms were really only suitable to a character like that, who represents something ancient himself. Auden seemed to have a good sense of when to bring in crudity and archaisms; there's a lot of abstract personifications and "thees" sprinkled in his later poetry, and even in a piece like Musee des Beaux Arts (http://english.emory.edu/classes/paintings&poems/auden.html) there's a certain rightness in the inversion of the opening clause and prepositional phrase ("about suffering they were..." instead of "they were... about suffering"). It's hard to put a finger on it too; maybe something about how the whole scenario itself is inversed, how the "everyday" takes focus and precedence over the major mythological event. Pope also had an excellent sense about using inversions to represent a natural or more typical order being upset:

She ruled, in native anarchy, the mind.
Still her old empire to restore she tries,
For, born a goddess, Dulness never dies. (The Dunciad, Book 1)

"In native anarchy" syntactically upsets the "subject/verb/object order (splitting the verb and object, emphasizing her distance from it). The next line is even more clever as the shambled syntax (object/infinite verb/subject/verb) mimics the shambles of her empire.

I think when contemporary readers read Pope there's a tendency to "excuse" these archaisms by saying "well, it wasn't archaic THEN and was an accepted aesthetic practice," but I think this is just weak reasoning. It implies that aesthetics is all about what's trendy at a time and that somehow archaisms were ok THEN but not NOW. I view it with more egalitarianism; I think that such techniques either serve a purpose or they don't. If there are times in Pope when it's done purely to maintain the iambic rhythm and rhyme, then it's bad poetry then no differently than now. Yet there were times then just as there are times now when such techniques serve an aesthetic end, and it's foolish to dismiss all archaisms and even crudities since it CAN be called for.

[desiresjab]

I do think there's room for both, but it's all about context.

I know that, but I do not like to qualify everything I say or there is nothing left for the next guy. In the right spot a grammatical inversion can be priceless. Anything goes as long as it goes right.


Actually not; it was basically a loose form of alliterative verse, which goes back to the origins of English poetry (in fact, it was dominant until Chaucer).

The reason for calling it a new process is the fact that Hopkins was counting syllables along with his irregular accents. At the least, rediscovery functioned identically to invention, Hopkins got his pimp hand in, and indeed generated poetry he would not have generated otherwise.

Another possible scenario for originality: If a translator attempts to "drag" and transplant the native rhythms of one language into another. An example might be Sapphic verse.


I think when contemporary readers read Pope there's a tendency to "excuse" these archaisms by saying "well, it wasn't archaic THEN and was an accepted aesthetic practice," but I think this is just weak reasoning. It implies that aesthetics is all about what's trendy at a time and that somehow archaisms were ok THEN but not NOW. I view it with more egalitarianism; I think that such techniques either serve a purpose or they don't. If there are times in Pope when it's done purely to maintain the iambic rhythm and rhyme, then it's bad poetry then no differently than now. Yet there were times then just as there are times now when such techniques serve an aesthetic end,

Very good point.


and it's foolish to dismiss all archaisms and even crudities since it CAN be called for.

Don't look at me. I said they were old enemies of poets, and they are. Enemies have their uses.

[desiresjab]

Of course, one new way of generating poetry would be via computer--the computer writes it. If a computer can ever write poetry that moves us, I think we can give up the notion of a lot of things. We would not be the deep, mysterious beings we might have supposed.

If I read a poem I did not know was written by a computer, and I liked it, I would be crushed and angry.

[YesNo]

I don't see why a computer could not generate poetry or some other cultural product. Computers assist us now already. If one wanted sentiment, program the computer with phrases that included "love" or "peace" or "baby animals". If one wanted a dissonant and chaotic experience, just program it to add in drivel disconnected from one line to the next so that it does not make any sense.

A computer could be programmed to simulate human behavior but not experience itself performing that behavior. It could create a product (poem, story, movie) that moved us, but it would not be moved itself, although it could be programmed to make it look to us as if it were moved. However, if a computer could actually make a choice in creating a work of art or not, simply for its own consumption, I can imagine it reasoning, see its wheels turning, and see how it could rationally come to the conclusion that the task would not be worth doing.

[desiresjab]

It could create a product (poem, story, movie) that moved us

Theoretically, but so far it hasn't. So far it is no better poet than it seems to be translator.

[desiresjab]

I don't see why a computer could not generate poetry or some other cultural product.

The programming of visual parameters should be much easier than creative language, because it is equation based. Non-representative abstract art should be the easiest to program. The computer makes some beautiful drawings but no real choices except those that are programmed in. The programmer determines how the program will choose. Music that holds the attention is harder, but creative language is harder yet.

[YesNo]

As a practical matter, I don't think a computer will be able to generate poetry that a human will find interesting, but then a lot of humans aren't able to do it either.

Some of the interest that comes from art is an expectation that something should be good or bad and has nothing to do with the art itself or what the person viewing or reading it experiences. For example, if it is known that Shakespeare wrote something, one may not like it, but it would generate more tolerance than if one were told a computer generated it.

[MorpheusSandman]

We would not be the deep, mysterious beings we might have supposed.Mystery is merely a product of ignorance, anyway. We don't know ourselves and we fall in love with and deify our own not knowing.


If I read a poem I did not know was written by a computer, and I liked it, I would be crushed and angry.I would be fascinated! I can't wait for the day that computers will advance to the point it can simulate human thought and even advance far beyond it.

[Paulclem]

It seems to me that with our very new capacity for combining the visual - whether it be art, photography or graphical playfulness - that poetry could quite easily alter through its presentation. I don't mean sticking a few verses on a picture, but a more sophisticated approach such as having emerging graphics or colour. Of course this has been done to some extent before, but the means of innovating with quite sophisticated effects are in the hands of many.

[mortalterror]

Personally, I wish people would stop trying to invent some whole new type of poetry and just get proficient at the types we already have. Stop being so precious and narcissistic. Artists need to stop ****ting on sticks and throwing them in the air and study how to draw again. Musicians need to stop banging trash can lids together and take a piano lesson. If you are that hung up on form, it might be because you don't have any content. Needless to say, if you can write an epode as well as Horace or a sonnet as well as Shakespeare, your reputation is assured. Besides, are our ideas really so revolutionary that the old forms would be unsuitable to their expression?

I was recently perusing the shelves of a Barnes and Noble bookstore and happened upon a copy of Classical Painting Atelier, which contained paintings by classically trained artists. While I only really liked one work by Michele Mitchell I was happily surprised by how nearly good many of the other offerings were. Even the artists who weren't masters or creative at least had some skills to exhibit, and the result was at least not horrible and ugly as is the case with most contemporary art.

Oh and Morpheus, that bit about a computer creating art reminds me of a great Stanislaw Lem short story: "The First Sally (A), or Trurl's Electronic Bard" from his collection the Cyberiad. The computer begins by imitating or parodying human compositions. In the end, the computer gets plugged into some sort of cosmic device and is writing it's beautiful poems in the form of supernovas and other celestial events. While I was looking for it I also ran across a very similar sounding story by Kurt Vonnegut called EPICAC.

By the way, there is also a guy named David Cope who has a computer program that analyzes different composers and then produces new compositions in that style.

[YesNo]

Here's a poem generator I just tried after searching for them: http://www.pangloss.com/seidel/Poem/ I entered "Mary had a little lamb", expecting something sweet to come out, and got this:


You say "pitty-pitty-pat" but disolve into a whisper

Realized she was in a MAJOR jamb

a fly grasping warmth while perched on an integrated circuit

I wonder if the computer liked its own poem?

[Paulclem]

Personally, I wish people would stop trying to invent some whole new type of poetry and just get proficient at the types we already have. Stop being so precious and narcissistic.


Is it mutually exclusive? In order to extend the bounds of poetic forms it would be a good idea to become more proficient at current forms.

[desiresjab]

I would be fascinated! I can't wait for the day that computers will advance to the point it can simulate human thought and even advance far beyond it.

Hawking and some other members of an institute he is an advisory board member of are currently trying to raise awareness of our greatest existential threats. Since global climate change is already receiving a lot of attention, they chose the subject I have quoted from you. It becomes unpredictable once machines are auto-didacatic and able to self replicate. Programmed to do only good, they might wipe us out.

http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2014/05/but-what-does-the-end-of-humanity-mean-for-me/361931/

[MorpheusSandman]

Personally, I wish people would stop trying to invent some whole new type of poetry and just get proficient at the types we already have.I don't begrudge the artists that attempt to find new forms, modes, mediums, etc., since, as Wallace Stevens said in Notes Towards a Supreme Fiction, "It Must Change," and if everyone was only interested in retreading the past we never would've had... well, most every major work of art in every medium that exists. That said, I DO think there needs to be more of a balance, more of artists learning and learning from the old ways and assimilating them with what's contemporary, or experimental, or whatever. I think either ignorance of or kowtowing to the past are polar negatives.


Oh and Morpheus, that bit about a computer creating art reminds me of a great Stanislaw Lem short story: "The First Sally (A), or Trurl's Electronic Bard" from his collection the Cyberiad. The computer begins by imitating or parodying human compositions. In the end, the computer gets plugged into some sort of cosmic device and is writing it's beautiful poems in the form of supernovas and other celestial events. While I was looking for it I also ran across a very similar sounding story by Kurt Vonnegut called EPICAC.
Sounds interesting! :nod:

[MorpheusSandman]

It becomes unpredictable once machines are auto-didacatic and able to self replicate. Programmed to do only good, they might wipe us out. Yeah, it's called Unfriendly AI. Eliezer Yudkowsky, the primary contributor to Lesswrong (the site I frequently post links to around here on various philosophical topics), is an AI Researcher specializing in Friendly AI. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friendly_artificial_intelligence) He's also on the staff at the Machine Intelligence Research Institute that that Atlantic article links to. Here's (http://intelligence.org/files/AIPosNegFactor.pdf) one of his chapters in Global Catastrophic Risks. (http://www.amazon.com/Global-Catastrophic-Risks-Nick-Bostrom-ebook/dp/B003WE9D7M/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1399996781&sr=8-1&keywords=global+catastrophic+risks)

[YesNo]

Yeah, it's called Unfriendly AI. Eliezer Yudkowsky, the primary contributor to Lesswrong (the site I frequently post links to around here on various philosophical topics), is an AI Researcher specializing in Friendly AI. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friendly_artificial_intelligence) He's also on the staff at the Machine Intelligence Research Institute that that Atlantic article links to. Here's (http://intelligence.org/files/AIPosNegFactor.pdf) one of his chapters in Global Catastrophic Risks. (http://www.amazon.com/Global-Catastrophic-Risks-Nick-Bostrom-ebook/dp/B003WE9D7M/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1399996781&sr=8-1&keywords=global+catastrophic+risks)

Yudkowsky writes the following from the first page in the chapter you cite that I agree with:


The field of AI has a reputation for making huge promises and then failing to deliver on them.

What I see in the hope for "Friendly AI" is a sort of messianism or hope for a coming savior or end of time when everything gets fixed. The alternative, and one that I prefer, is to live now.

Why is generating new forms of poetry or new poems something valuable to do? It doesn't matter to me whether it is a computer or a human that generates the form and computers are valuable in helping to create poetic products.

Why do we bother writing a poem even with a pencil? I think the answer is that it is mainly for the human experience of reading the poem or hearing it recited. If that is the case, the primary activity is not the writing of the poem, but the experiencing of it.

Then one can ask, to what extent is the writer of the poem or the creator of the new form significant? Who actually wrote the poem if a computer generated it? The programmer? Who wrote the poem if a human created it? A muse?

[MorpheusSandman]

What I see in the hope for "Friendly AI" is a sort of messianism or hope for a coming savior or end of time when everything gets fixed. The alternative, and one that I prefer, is to live now.Why in the world must you turn everything, no matter how completely unrelated to religion it may be, into some faux-religious doctrine? Many Worlds is a religion and Friendly AI is a Messiah? What's next? Climate Change is Satan and the Singularity is Revelation? Evolution is Genesis?

What you apparently DIDN'T seem to get from the other links (namely the one desiresjab linked to: http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2014/05/but-what-does-the-end-of-humanity-mean-for-me/361931/) is what a serious threat many of our brightest minds--many outside AI research--consider Unfriendly AI to be. Friendly AI is about trying to avoid the possible mistakes, not about creating a "Messiah." Surely even you'd admit that a self-learning, self-correcting, superintelligent AI could be either the worst or best thing that ever happened to/for humanity; the goal of Friendly AI is making it the best thing, not the worst. "Living now" is fine for us mere mortals, but there are geniuses out there in all fields whose work that's being done today will shape how we live tomorrow, not to mention decades from now, and pardon some of us for being concerned that much of that work might have catastrophic consequences for all of us. I'm not saying we should obsess about it, but being informed about it/not ignoring it WHILE "living now" is a good middle-ground to take. You can take it unseriously all you want, but remember that a few decades ago many would've said that a computer that could beat humans at chess would be a pipe-dream/science-fiction as well, and we all know how that turned out. I think Tegmark hits the nail on the head here:
Tegmark told Lex Berko at Motherboard earlier this year, "I would guess there’s about a 60 percent chance that I’m not going to die of old age, but from some kind of human-caused calamity. Which would suggest that I should spend a significant portion of my time actually worrying about this. We should in society, too."

I really wanted to know what all of this means in more concrete terms, so I asked Tegmark about it myself. He was actually walking around the Pima Air and Space Museum in Tucson with his kids as we spoke, periodically breaking to answer their questions about the exhibits.

"Longer term—and this might mean 10 years, it might mean 50 or 100 years, depending on who you ask—when computers can do everything we can do," Tegmark said, "after that they will probably very rapidly get vastly better than us at everything, and we’ll face this question we talked about in the Huffington Post article: whether there’s really a place for us after that, or not." I imagined glances from nearby museum-goers.

"This is very near-term stuff. Anyone who’s thinking about what their kids should study in high school or college should care a lot about this."

"The main reason people don’t act on these things is they’re not educated about them,” Tegmark continued. "I’ve never talked with anyone about these things who turned around and said, 'I don’t care.'" He’s previously said that the biggest threat to humanity is our own stupidity.


Why is generating new forms of poetry or new poems something valuable to do? It doesn't matter to me whether it is a computer or a human that generates the form and computers are valuable in helping to create poetic products.

Why do we bother writing a poem even with a pencil? I think the answer is that it is mainly for the human experience of reading the poem or hearing it recited. If that is the case, the primary activity is not the writing of the poem, but the experiencing of it.

Then one can ask, to what extent is the writer of the poem or the creator of the new form significant? Who actually wrote the poem if a computer generated it? The programmer? Who wrote the poem if a human created it? A muse?I've always thought art was the realm where humans were (or should be) the freest to explore, indulge, and express their anthropomorphic tendencies. So trees don't share in human feelings; so what? Make them as scary as possible to add a symbolic corollary to your paranoid protagonist. Art shouldn't have to be concerned with the truths of things as they are as much as the truth of things as they seem to us. All that said, I definitely think it matters to most people WHO writes poems or does anything similarly creative because it engenders that feeling of being apart of a unique species that does such things; the minute computers are able to do it our last remaining uniqueness (Darwin already took away our unique origins) will be gone and we'll enter the uncanny valley. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncanny_valley)

[mortalterror]

Why in the world must you turn everything, no matter how completely unrelated to religion it may be, into some faux-religious doctrine? Many Worlds is a religion and Friendly AI is a Messiah? What's next? Climate Change is Satan and the Singularity is Revelation? Evolution is Genesis?

To be fair, you did it first. "Mystery is merely a product of ignorance, anyway. We don't know ourselves and we fall in love with and deify our own not knowing. " You seem to have religion on the brain. And in his defense his remarks were on point and synthesized several ideas within this thread. I found his remark interesting, sophisticated, intelligent, and a little poetic. Secondly, I have seen people conflate belief in Global Warming with Religion. The person in question argued that both were stubborn delusions held by ignorant people on little evidence. (I disagreed.) I have also seen Statism compared to a religion. Basically, anything were opinions are strong and disagreement is regular one side will declare the other unreasonable and delusional. Since atheists believe that all belief falls under this heading, the term religion pops up frequently in such discourse.

[MorpheusSandman]

mortalterror, this is not the first time that YesNo has tried to equate religion and modern science. He's said numerous times that "Many Worlds is a God" and its proponents are like "irrational believers" while simultaneously displaying a gross ignorance on the subject (often in threads having nothing to do with either). This "Friendly AI is a sort of messianism or hope for a coming savior or end of time when everything gets fixed" is, therefor, not a one time, off-handed analogy said in passing (like my "we deify our ignorance"); this is a familiar tactic of YesNo's and I find it absurd and insulting. His trick of taking a lengthy, complex, in-depth paper like the one I linked to and then extracting one simplistic quote from the introduction and then going on a tangent is also a common ploy.

The two "analogies" are not even remotely on the same level: I use one word to talk about how people treat their own ignorance (which is true considering "God of the gaps"); YesNo verges on creating a religious allegory out of modern science. I hardly think my single word is evidence of me having "religion on the brain," and even when there's science I think is wrong(headed), like with Copenhagen, I don't think its proponents are blind believers with no rational or scientific grounds for thinking what they do.

If you find all this "interesting, sophisticated, intelligent, and a little poetic" then you're exactly the gullible, ignorant audience he's after; and I don't mean "ignorant" insultingly but factually. I'm quite ignorant about AI myself, but there's something to be said for recognizing one's own ignorance for what it is and not thinking that you understand enough to make such ridiculous analogies. When scientists disagree with each other (like Many Worlds and Copenhagen proponents) they don't go around calling the other side a "religion," and they certainly don't do this with something like Unfriendly AI when you have a handful of the brightest minds (Hawking, Tegmark, Bostrom, Wilczek, Russell, Chalmers, Hanson, Guth, Rees, Yudkowsky... just to name a few) concerned about and working on it. Of course, this doesn't necessarily mean they're RIGHT, but I think they deserve more respect than to be treated no differently than doomsday believers that YesNo is trying to make them out to be.

[mortalterror]

mortalterror, this is not the first time that YesNo has tried to equate religion and modern science. He's said numerous times that "Many Worlds is a God" and its proponents are like "irrational believers" while simultaneously displaying a gross ignorance on the subject (often in threads having nothing to do with either). This "Friendly AI is a sort of messianism or hope for a coming savior or end of time when everything gets fixed" is,
I see what you are saying, but then I also see his side as well. I've heard that the many worlds hypothesis is just science fiction bunk even though it's even captured the minds of certain members of the scientific establishment. And there is definitely a lot of irrational thinking in science and among scientists, the same as there is with any area of knowledge or human institution. As for belief in the friendly AI being a sort of messianism, I can see that too. If you examine Ray Kurzweill's singularity idea which recently caught hold in the public consciousness, it's nothing but Pierre Teilhard de Chardin's theory of the Omega point dressed up in scientific clothes. There are no doubt other examples of current scientific theories which had an early origin within the realms of theology, and then many of the human impulses which spur religion are also active within the scientific community where they find similar expression. As for "a coming savior or end of times when everything gets fixed", I am reminded of the way many people place their faith in technology to save us from the effects of global climate change. They pray for the "good" technologies to defeat the "evil" technologies of pollution without having a particularly clear idea just what either entails.

therefor, not a one time, off-handed analogy said in passing (like my "we deify our ignorance"); this is a familiar tactic of YesNo's and I find it absurd and insulting. His trick of taking a lengthy, complex, in-depth paper like the one I linked to and then extracting one simplistic quote from the introduction and then going on a tangent is also a common ploy.
I wasn't aware that you and YesNo have a history with this sort of thing, although I do remember seeing you both in the one or two religious threads on this board. You say that he took a quote from an article you linked, but not having read the article myself I just saw how his remark paralleled others within the thread. From my perspective, it seemed on topic.

The two "analogies" are not even remotely on the same level: I use one word to talk about how people treat their own ignorance (which is true considering "God of the gaps"); YesNo verges on creating a religious allegory out of modern science. I hardly think my single word is evidence of me having "religion on the brain," and even when there's science I think is wrong(headed), like with Copenhagen, I don't think its proponents are blind believers with no rational or scientific grounds for thinking what they do.
I'm not sure how YesNo was creating a religious allegory out of modern science, but then I may need to reread his comment. But I'm sure that there is a great deal of parallel thinking between scientists and religious people. So much of science's history was done within the halls of the churches, so many of it's greatest thinkers, that many of it's core concepts and terms have their origins in religious thought. Don't we call cells cells because Gregor Mendel, a monk and father of genetics, was reminded of the shape of his abbey domicile? It's also occurred to me that there exists a God of the gaps within science, certain place holder theories that exist in areas we haven't worked out, such as Dark Matter, or the obsolete theory of Aether before it.

If you find all this "interesting, sophisticated, intelligent, and a little poetic" then you're exactly the gullible, ignorant audience he's after; and I don't mean "ignorant" insultingly but factually. I'm quite ignorant about AI myself, but there's something to be said for recognizing one's own ignorance for what it is and not thinking that you understand enough to make such ridiculous analogies. When scientists disagree with each other (like Many Worlds and Copenhagen proponents) they don't go around calling the other side a "religion," and they certainly don't do this with something like Unfriendly AI when you have a handful of the brightest minds (Hawking, Tegmark, Bostrom, Wilczek, Russell, Chalmers, Hanson, Guth, Rees, Yudkowsky... just to name a few) concerned about and working on it. Of course, this doesn't necessarily mean they're RIGHT, but I think they deserve more respect than to be treated no differently than doomsday believers that YesNo is trying to make them out to be.
Are you sure that scientists are always mild mannered and respectful in their disagreements? There are more than a few examples in history of scientists ridiculing and flinging mud at their rivals. There's the controversy between Newton and Leibniz over who discovered Calculus, Peary and Cook over who was first to the North Pole, Adams or Le Verrier on who discovered Neptune, Edison vs Tesla and Westinghouse on electricity, Tesla vs Marconi on the radio, Alexander Graham Bell and Antonio Meucci on the telephone, Cope and Marsh on dinosaur bones

The Bone Wars, also known as the "Great Dinosaur Rush",[1] refers to a period of intense fossil speculation and discovery during the Gilded Age of American history, marked by a heated rivalry between Edward Drinker Cope (of the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia) and Othniel Charles Marsh (of the Peabody Museum of Natural History at Yale). Each of the two paleontologists used underhanded methods to try to out-compete the other in the field, resorting to bribery, theft, and destruction of bones. Each scientist also attacked the other in scientific publications, seeking to ruin his credibility and have his funding cut off. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bone_Wars
And that's mostly where scientists blackened each others eyes over things they mostly agreed upon but couldn't decide who should get the credit. When they actually disagree about fundamental points of science things can get downright nasty. There's the controversy of Derek Freeman and Margaret Mead over Samoan anthropology, Hobbes-Wallis over squaring a circle, etc.

You have scientists championing peculiar and wrong headed pet theories all the time, like Newton did with Alchemy. The authoritative force of a major scientific personality lends credence to otherwise easily discredited ideas. For decades, people searched for the planet Vulcan because the mathematician Urbain Jean Joseph Le Verrier proposed it's existence to account for peculiarities in Mercury's orbit. Flaws in Galen's medical theories remained unaddressed until the Renaissance because he was considered an unquestionable authority.

There was the example of an academic feud where Edward Teller (father of the H bomb) testified that J. Robert Oppenheimer (father of the A bomb) was a communist security risk and should be taken off all scientific government projects. You have the example of Wilson, Watson, and Crick all winning Nobel prizes for the discovery of DNA while minimizing and downplaying the contributions of Rosalind Franklin. Freud's disagreements with his disciple Jung about the collective unconscious. The Einstein Bohr debates about measuring electrons lasted for three decades.

Ignaz Semmelweis was the first doctor to propose washing hands before surgery as a way to limit the spread of disease. For that, he was fired, shunned by the medical community. Prominent medical doctors disputed his findings, and he eventually had a mental break down, was admitted to an asylum where he was beaten to death by the guards. It wasn't until after his death that his ideas were accepted.

Plus, there are more than a few scientists who's ideas I don't think warrant anything but simple derision. I'm thinking of Geologist Robert Schoch who believes that the Sphinx is several thousand years older than we know it to be. I'm thinking of Masaaki Kimura who thinks he found an ancient underwater castle off the coast of Yonaguni, Japan. Jacques Benveniste and homeopathy. Andrew Wakefield's studies linking vaccines to autism. Robert P. Liburdy's studies linking cell phones to cancer, or Peter Duesberg denying the existence of AIDS. I had a doctor recently tell me that there's some sort of healing effect from standing on grass, I laughed in her face and asked if she believed in magic crystals too. So I'll go along with YesNo in agreeing that there is such a thing as a mad scientist, and they can be as wacky as any doomsday believers.

[MorpheusSandman]

So as not to derail another thread, I'll PM you on this one, mortal. :)

[desiresjab]

Threads are for talking--whatever comes up. No one should worry about derailing a thread, when at least something is being said in it.


There's the controversy between Newton and Leibniz over who discovered Calculus, Peary and Cook over who was first to the North Pole, Adams or Le Verrier on who discovered Neptune, Edison vs Tesla and Westinghouse on electricity, Tesla vs Marconi on the radio, Alexander Graham Bell and Antonio Meucci on the telephone, Cope and Marsh on dinosaur bones

And so many more. Newton was almost the father of scientific dispute and priority controversies. Newton stepped on a lot of people. One of them was Flamsteed. If anyone had usurped Newton's work the way he did Flamsteed's, Newton would have died of a heart attack. The dispute with the brilliant and irascible Hooke is quite understandable.

Science is self correcting, religion is not. Religion has hitched a ride with science now. Philosophical freelancing with scientific ideas is all right with me. I like to do it myself. Cosmic inflation, MW, dark matter, these are ideas and possibilities, nothing more. Anyone who says they believe in any one of them is misguided. They are not somethying to believe in but something to investigate to see if they should be believed in.

Unless one is a world class mathematician and physicist these concepts are fathomable only by the imagihnation--one gets a purchase anywhere he can. It always comes back to faith unless you can follow every detail of the science. Most university math professors would not have a chance with the math involved in a lot of these concepts without a great deal of further study. Most people simply are not smart enough, that is the bottom line. It always comes back to the guy you believe in because he is supposed to be smarter than you.

I am a big believer in philosophizing about scientific concepts. That is where science fiction comes from.

[MorpheusSandman]

The key point I wanted to make is that unless one is an expert on these subjects then we have no business criticizing other experts by saying they're the equivalent of paranoid doomsday believers, especially when minds as bright as Hawking, Tegmark, Guth, Yudkowsky, et al. are concerned about them. It annoys me to no end when YesNo insists that "MW is a god and believers treat it like a religion" or "Friendly AI is a messiah for the end times," as it is a cheap attempt to diminish and undermine the thought and people involved. As I said to mortalterror, it doesn't mean geniuses are always right, but people like us are in no position to state differently, much less ridicule them.


Cosmic inflation, MW, dark matter, these are ideas and possibilities, nothing more. Anyone who says they believe in any one of them is misguided. They are not somethying to believe in but something to investigate to see if they should be believed in.

Unless one is a world class mathematician and physicist these concepts are fathomable only by the imagihnation...Errr, well, not quite. Cosmic inflation now has strong evidence for it after the observations of the CMBR and the detection of inflationary gravitational waves made by the BICEP2 program just two months ago; Dark matter is just a term for the discrepancy between how large astronomic bodies should be moving given their total mass and how they are moving (dark matter being the unknown "something" making them move faster than they should be); MW is really the only QM interpretation that makes a lick of sense: http://www.askamathematician.com/2010/10/q-copenhagen-or-many-worlds/ It can't really be "proven," only "falsified," but it's been tested as much as is currently possible; as "the physicist" says, people just don't like the results.

[mortalterror]

The key point I wanted to make is that unless one is an expert on these subjects then we have no business criticizing other experts by saying they're the equivalent of paranoid doomsday believers, especially when minds as bright as Hawking, Tegmark, Guth, Yudkowsky, et al. are concerned about them. It annoys me to no end when YesNo insists that "MW is a god and believers treat it like a religion" or "Friendly AI is a messiah for the end times," as it is a cheap attempt to diminish and undermine the thought and people involved. As I said to mortalterror, it doesn't mean geniuses are always right, but people like us are in no position to state differently, much less ridicule them.

Woah, woah, woah, woah, woah, woah, woah, woah, woah! I just looked up who this Yudkowsky guy is.

Eliezer Shlomo Yudkowsky (born September 11, 1979[citation needed]) is an American blogger, writer, and advocate for Friendly artificial intelligence.

Yudkowsky is a resident of Berkeley, California. Largely self-educated [1]:38, he co-founded the nonprofit Machine Intelligence Research Institute (formerly the Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence) in 2000 and continues to be employed there as a full-time Research Fellow.[2]:599 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eliezer_Yudkowsky
He's a blogger with no college experience. Are you ****ing kidding me? That's your uncriticizable genius?

[desiresjab]

He's a blogger with no college experience. Are you ****ing kidding me? That's your uncriticizable genius?

That matters? Before you read a poem maybe you should check first to see if it is a professor poet. I think minds grasping at straw make this argument when they have not read the man in question. Did you? Of course not. You googled his name. Hawking is not going to collaborate or associate himself with a halfwit.

Nor is MW a religion, nor have I ever seen anyone treat it as such. It is Yes/No's personal fantasy. He may believe that all scientific theories are religions. Maybe he will get some creative use out of it. He has been known to pen some pretty good lines of poetry. I am all for personal fantasies, they will not fare well in the logical arena, however.

[desiresjab]

The key point I wanted to make is that unless one is an expert on these subjects then we have no business criticizing other experts by saying they're the equivalent of paranoid doomsday believers, especially when minds as bright as Hawking, Tegmark, Guth, Yudkowsky, et al. are concerned about them. It annoys me to no end when YesNo insists that "MW is a god and believers treat it like a religion" or "Friendly AI is a messiah for the end times," as it is a cheap attempt to diminish and undermine the thought and people involved. As I said to mortalterror, it doesn't mean geniuses are always right, but people like us are in no position to state differently, much less ridicule them.

Errr, well, not quite. Cosmic inflation now has strong evidence for it after the observations of the CMBR and the detection of inflationary gravitational waves made by the BICEP2 program just two months ago; Dark matter is just a term for the discrepancy between how large astronomic bodies should be moving given their total mass and how they are moving (dark matter being the unknown "something" making them move faster than they should be); MW is really the only QM interpretation that makes a lick of sense: http://www.askamathematician.com/2010/10/q-copenhagen-or-many-worlds/ It can't really be "proven," only "falsified," but it's been tested as much as is currently possible; as "the physicist" says, people just don't like the results.

You may have missed it. There was an article just a few days ago where the researchers admit they may have misinterpreted the data regarding gravity wave signatures. Their methods are undergoing further scrutiny.

I agree there is no use attacking scientists as "shamans" because their theories sound far out. When one does not understand the mathematics there is a tendency to think it is not there and all this stuff is based on "notions." Not true. There is an incredible amount of math that goes along with cosmic inflation, for instance, though the reality of the phenomenon itself is still only a conjecture.

Theories get more compelling names these days than in days of yore. Relativism proved to be a gold mine for many outside of physics or even hard science. You cannot really fault people for being compelled when the name was probably meant to do that for a counter-intuitive theory. It helps in the competitive world of funding to have a catchy name. Part of today's digiscape. Misrepresentation is bad, however. Fanataises are fantasies and theories are theories.

[MorpheusSandman]

He's a blogger with no college experience. His (original) blog was sponsored by Oxford, and he associates/works with people like Robin Hanson and Nick Bostrom who do have college experience and don't seem to mind that Yudkowsky doesn't. FWIW, I have no college experience either. I also have an IQ in the 150s and would readily admit that Yudkowsky is at least 10-30 points more intelligent than I am (and much smarter on everything not related to the arts). Does this mean you stop listening to anything I say about poetry and literature because I haven't studied it formally?


That's your uncriticizable genius?Where did I say he (or anyone) was uncriticizable in general? What I've said was that those ignorant on the relevant subjects have no business criticizing him/them. Are you an expert on AI? Have you studied it AT ALL? Do you think YesNo has? If the answer is "no" to these, then, yes, I feel you have no authority on which to criticize Yudkowsky on the subject of AI. If you want to have a go at it, you should probably actually read all of this (http://intelligence.org/files/AIPosNegFactor.pdf) (and preferably also some of his more technical ones) instead of just writing him off as "just a blogger." To me, this anti-appeal-to-authority is no better than its more famous twin.

[MorpheusSandman]

You may have missed it. There was an article just a few days ago where the researchers admit they may have misinterpreted the data regarding gravity wave signatures. Their methods are undergoing further scrutiny.Interesting! I didn't hear about this.


I agree there is no use attacking scientists as "shamans" because their theories sound far out. When one does not understand the mathematics there is a tendency to think it is not there and all this stuff is based on "notions." Not true. There is an incredible amount of math that goes along with cosmic inflation, for instance, though the reality of the phenomenon itself is still only a conjecture.I like what Lawrence Krauss once said in a debate that one of the most powerful words in science is possible, that the theory of evolution began as the notion that it was possible that organisms changed slightly each generation and that the changes influenced the probability of being passed on. How long did it take to explore this "possibility" before it became an actual theory? That said, I don't like the word "conjecture," which implies such things are based on nothing but a notion or imagination. The good thing about science is, as you said, it's self-correcting, and it doesn't make a mountain out of a possibility until it's been thoroughly tested, explored, poked, prodded, etc.


Theories get more compelling names these days than in days of yore. Relativism proved to be a gold mine for many outside of physics or even hard science. You cannot really fault people for being compelled when the name was probably meant to do that for a counter-intuitive theory. It helps in the competitive world of funding to have a catchy name. Part of today's digiscape. Misrepresentation is bad, however. Fanataises are fantasies and theories are theories.A rose by any other name, and all that, but the problem is that the ignorant frequently infer too much from a name without really learning what it actually means/refers to. Global Warming is a good example of a term that everyone heard and then idiots proceeded to go "but this winter sure don't FEEL any warmer! It must all be bunk!" Many-Worlds is another example where the name doesn't really tell you anything about the interpretation except its most fantastic consequence. It would be like calling evolution "from goo to you by way of the zoo." That may be an amazing consequence, but it says nothing of the underlying mechanisms of how evolution works; similarly, Many Worlds (the title) says nothing about the underlying assumptions that lead to the actual "many worlds."

[mortalterror]

FWIW, I have no college experience either. I also have an IQ in the 150s and would readily admit that Yudkowsky is at least 10-30 points more intelligent than I am (and much smarter on everything not related to the arts). Does this mean you stop listening to anything I say about poetry and literature because I haven't studied it formally?
Of course not. I just wouldn't give your opinion the same weight as other equally intelligent people with more formal training. Just look at the people on this board who have masters degrees and PhDs: Drkshadow03, Kafka's Crow, Lokasenna, Stlukesguild, Petrarch's Love. They tower over the rest. I don't think that an autodidact can compete at the same levels as someone who's had advanced formal training in their specialty. There are some rare exceptions, but they are mostly just that, exceptions. I think the added education both widens their view of what is possible, deepens their idea of what is going on, and instructs them in the kind of mistakes which it is common for people in their field to make, as well as how not to make them. Also, you can learn a lot faster with an excellent teacher than you can on your own, it's like following a road versus beating your own path through the jungle. The experience you can get in four years of college would probably take ten years outside it.


Where did I say he (or anyone) was uncriticizable in general? What I've said was that those ignorant on the relevant subjects have no business criticizing him/them. Are you an expert on AI? Have you studied it AT ALL? Do you think YesNo has? If the answer is "no" to these, then, yes, I feel you have no authority on which to criticize Yudkowsky on the subject of AI. If you want to have a go at it, you should probably actually read all of this (http://intelligence.org/files/AIPosNegFactor.pdf) (and preferably also some of his more technical ones) instead of just writing him off as "just a blogger." To me, this anti-appeal-to-authority is no better than its more famous twin.
I'm not an expert, but I fancy myself a reasonably intelligent person capable of discussing things at the layman's level, with the limited information available. I'm not trying to publish a paper in Nature. I'm just having a discussion with other laymen. And there are certain things about scientific ideas and scientific people which are open to criticism by a layman. I would not criticize Mr. Hawking's mathematics which I know nothing about, but as a fellow reasoning being I can criticize his logic and rational. We can criticize the parts of their ideas which are non-scientific when we judge them so. We can cite authorities in the sciences who disagree with them and explain their reasoning so far as we understand it. There are a number of ways that a layman can validly criticize a specialist, and the assumption that one must be a member of a society in order to critique that society is an idea with fairly obvious flaws about it. That's like saying you have to be a congressman to criticize congress, or a businessman to criticize businessmen.

My critique of that field has as much authority as my specialization and experience of that field. It cannot be definitive, while I am an unacknowledged novice, but it is adequate to the needs of discussion on a message board. Everyone may speak, but only some may speak with authority. But you bring up a good question. What is an expert? When should we take their word over others? Scientific authorities frequently give voice to opinions on non-scientific subjects. In such cases, I take Hawking, Harris, Dawkins, et all's opinions with the same grain of salt that I would any other layman's opinion. They may be bright, but their experience is still narrow, and they shouldn't be speaking authoritatively on anything they don't have advanced degrees in. Hawking should stick to physics, Dawkins to biology, and Harris to neuroscience. When they stray off into history, art, philosophy, religion, or even neighboring sciences they talk the most ridiculous nonsense.

[miyako73]

"Of course not. I just wouldn't give your opinion the same weight as other equally intelligent people with more formal training. Just look at the people on this board who have masters degrees and PhDs: Drkshadow03, Kafka's Crow, Lokasenna, Stlukesguild, Petrarch's Love. They tower over the rest. I don't think that an autodidact can compete at the same levels as someone who's had advanced formal training in their specialty. There are some rare exceptions, but they are mostly just that, exceptions. I think the added education both widens their view of what is possible, deepens their idea of what is going on, and instructs them in the kind of mistakes which it is common for people in their field to make, as well as how not to make them. Also, you can learn a lot faster with an excellent teacher than you can on your own, it's like following a road versus beating your own path through the jungle. The experience you can get in four years of college would probably take ten years outside it."

NO COMMENT!

Now post your works and let us read them.

[desiresjab]

Of course not. I just wouldn't give your opinion the same weight as other equally intelligent people with more formal training. Just look at the people on this board who have masters degrees and PhDs: Drkshadow03, Kafka's Crow, Lokasenna, Stlukesguild, Petrarch's Love. They tower over the rest. They may be bright, but their experience is still narrow, and they shouldn't be speaking authoritatively on anything they don't have advanced degrees in. Hawking should stick to physics, Dawkins to biology, and Harris to neuroscience. When they stray off into history, art, philosophy, religion, or even neighboring sciences they talk the most ridiculous nonsense.

You seem to have found a cache of gall to be advocating where minds like Hawking with his 185 IQ and real world accomplishments should be keeping themselves.

Let's see, Thomas Edison should have stayed the thunder away from inventing, Bertrand Russell should have stayed the thunder away from literature and politics, Leibniz should have stayed the thunder away from Mathematics...and, yes, Stevens should have stayed the thunder away from poetry.

What do you consider a ridiculous statement concerning religion, anyway, if you have an example handy? It seems to me the most ridiculous one of all is simply I believe this nonesense.

I am only impressed by advanced degrees in hard science and mathematics, perhaps linguistics and foreign languages. A degree in urban studies or English is a laugh to me. I have seen what all those degrees did for poetry. The lay opinion in English or urban planning or theology can hold its own. In hard science it is a churl's opinion, unless dealing with an ethical matter.

You say you are reasonably bright enough to criticize certain aspects of Hawking's thought even on matters where you are not an expert. Then you malign his same freedom in a non technical field where everyone's thought is valid. The first thing you need to do is look at what you are saying.

Loki translates from ON. If that is not enough sign of ability, the mentioning of an advanced degree will not be either.

Some of the most gifted scientists always become socially minded in their later years. They understand what the young scientific minds are up to, but no longer have the vigor themselves to transcend the bramble. Their stewpot-sized heads are not going to retire from active reflection and comment just when these other powers are coming to peak.

If Hawking suddenly feels he has something to say about Egyptology or chemistry, I am going to be curious enough to find out what it is, and maybe just naiive enough to hope that he has found something. I will look into it. And so will you. You are not going to laugh with the comment that he is only a physicist and pass over that article for the next.

Cross-disciplinary thinking is highly desirous and required for a lot of important problem solving.

[desiresjab]

We forgot to answer how one generates poetry in the first place. Just how is that done? What does one use to generate poetry? Is it something abstract like passion, or do techniques and forms et al actually generate poetry?

Personally, I see form and technique as generators of poetry both good and bad. The shape of the mould determines the shape of the artifact. The mould determined the shape the molten metal would harden into. Is there someone who believes regular rime does not determine the shape a phrase will harden into?

Now, if I am to believe some, there are no new moulds to pour our molten passions into. Nothing new under the sun, just like the good book said. Who could disagree with that?

The relationship between form and passion is arguable. Wordsworth, a man who used somewhat hard forms, would probably side with passion. But to me, what you pour from the crucible onto the ground has to get very lucky to end up as a display piece.

[mortalterror]

You seem to have found a cache of gall to be advocating where minds like Hawking with his 185 IQ and real world accomplishments should be keeping themselves.
Does that number mean something to you? Do you think that being smart is all there is to being right? For my part, I believe that training and experience usually trumps intellect.

You like boxing right? Think of intellect as strength or speed, just another physical ability. Formal training, such as a college education would be like having coaches to teach you proper technique. It's nice when they go together, but boxing history is full of limited guys who only had one and not the other. When a great physical boxer goes up against a great technical boxer, my money is on the technical boxer. The physical specimen can swing away with great looping haymakers that crush the air, meanwhile the technical boxer is slipping or blocking blows on his gloves, landing short, crisp punches that stun and wear his opponent down. The pug has a puncher's chance, but most of the time experience and technique lead the way. That's why at nearly fifty Bernard Hopkins is tooling guys half his age, that and whatever drugs he's taking. It's not just about having great intellectual power. It's knowing how to use your power effectively.

Adam Carolla uses a car analogy. How much power is making it to the rear wheels? You can have a big powerful engine with 50% of the power getting scrubbed off on the way to the rear, and you can have a little efficient engine getting 95% of it's power to the rear outrunning the bigger engine. Many famous people have made great contributions with relatively low IQs and many people in Mensa contribute nothing.

If I were trying to put things into a frame Morpheus would understand I might make an analogy to card playing. A man with a system and experience, who knows the rules of his game, usually beats a man without a system.

To make another sports analogy, Michael Jordan was a great basketball player and a lousy baseball player. This could have been for two reasons. 1)He didn't devote the same kind of time and study to baseball that he did to basketball or 2)He didn't have the same natural aptitudes for both sports and his athleticism didn't transfer. The kind of mind that will make you a great artist isn't necessarily the same kind of mind which will make you a great musician or a great writer. What makes a successful physicist may not be the same as what makes a successful biologist. There are different types of intellect. A man may be very bright academically speaking, but very immature and emotionally or socially unintelligent. Or he could be very intelligent but not have a good work ethic and the drive to achieve great things. There is just so much that goes into success or reaching correct conclusions about the world besides a person's intellect.


Let's see, Thomas Edison should have stayed the thunder away from inventing, Bertrand Russell should have stayed the thunder away from literature and politics, Leibniz should have stayed the thunder away from Mathematics...and, yes, Stevens should have stayed the thunder away from poetry.
When it comes to that, I think that Bertrand Russell didn't deserve his Nobel prize in literature. I've read some of his literature and found it to fall far short of other laureates of the time such as William Faulkner, Ernest Hemingway, Eugene O'Neill, John Steinbeck, T.S. Eliot, and Albert Camus.

As far as Gottfried Leibniz is concerned, after studying philosophy and law, it looks like he was tutored by Christiaan Huygens a prominent Dutch mathematician, which partially explains why he was so good at it.

And yes, Stevens should have stayed away from poetry.



What do you consider a ridiculous statement concerning religion, anyway, if you have an example handy? It seems to me the most ridiculous one of all is simply I believe this nonesense.
Well, Dawkins and Harris have written a number of books about religion despite never formally studying it, and so I consider everything they have to say on the subject non-authoritative. For instance, Dawkins compared Muslims to nazis, and the Quran to Mein Kampf despite admitting that he'd never read it. Men like St. Thomas Aquinus, St Augustine of Hippo, Moses Maimonides, Soren Kierkegaard, Emanuel Swedenborg, Averroes, or Avicenna, etcetera just have a better grasp of the subject. Dawkins and the New Atheist crew seem to have a very distorted, very superficial grasp of their subject and one often gets the feeling reading them that they don't know what they are talking about and would be on firmer ground writing about biology or neuroscience. Consequently, it's probably a better use of time to read modern theologians like Reinhold Niebuhr or Hans Kung to get a bead on the contemporary state of the subject. I really think that Dawkins or Harris' ideas of religion would be much improved if they were to take a year or two and complete a course in divinity studies, systematics, or comparative religion.


I am only impressed by advanced degrees in hard science and mathematics, perhaps linguistics and foreign languages. A degree in urban studies or English is a laugh to me. I have seen what all those degrees did for poetry. The lay opinion in English or urban planning or theology can hold its own. In hard science it is a churl's opinion, unless dealing with an ethical matter.
I disagree and I feel like your attitude is a common one and a great problem for our society, the root cause of why we are defunding the arts. For my part, I respect science and the humanities equally. I also do not believe that a high school student or a physics professor both have as much to say which is valid about Homer as a person with a degree in Classics. Your opinion about Shakespeare's sonnets is not as good as Stephen Greenblatt's.


You say you are reasonably bright enough to criticize certain aspects of Hawking's thought even on matters where you are not an expert. Then you malign his same freedom in a non technical field where everyone's thought is valid. The first thing you need to do is look at what you are saying.
His layman thoughts are the equal of my layman thoughts. They are worth expressing in a conversation, but should not be taken as gospel, and would likely not withstand the weight of careful academic scrutiny which his discourses on physics would. He can eat at Krispy Kreme and say "That's a damn good donut!" But that doesn't make him Anthony Bourdain.


Loki translates from ON. If that is not enough sign of ability, the mentioning of an advanced degree will not be either.
I can translate from French, (at least I used to be able to) but I am not an expert in French literature. I am likewise impressed by his ability to translate Old Norse, but I am just as impressed by the depth and breadth of his learning on the subject. He shows his learning and education in a number of ways. It's not just about creating products. There are many scholars who don't write poetry or translate old texts. His analysis of the texts is also important. And his education taught him more than facts about medieval literature, it taught him strategies for thinking about those facts, it gave him a vocabulary to speak and write about them, and gave him the practice he needed to attain mastery. He could have learned to translate on his own. Ask him if he thinks his time at the university was time well spent, or if a layman who just read Egil's Saga is just as good as him.


Some of the most gifted scientists always become socially minded in their later years. They understand what the young scientific minds are up to, but no longer have the vigor themselves to transcend the bramble. Their stewpot-sized heads are not going to retire from active reflection and comment just when these other powers are coming to peak.

If Hawking suddenly feels he has something to say about Egyptology or chemistry, I am going to be curious enough to find out what it is, and maybe just naiive enough to hope that he has found something. I will look into it. And so will you. You are not going to laugh with the comment that he is only a physicist and pass over that article for the next.

Cross-disciplinary thinking is highly desirous and required for a lot of important problem solving.
Actually, I wouldn't pay any attention to what Hawking had to say about Egyptology. Same reason I don't care what Kim Kardashian has to say about Egyptology. I'd say, "He's out of his depth" and I'd go read something by someone who knows what they are talking about. I'd rather get my literary theory from Edmund Wilson, not E.O. Wilson, and my psychology from Sigmund Freud not Lucian Freud.

[desiresjab]

It is not a contest, a matter of education trumping intuition. But I will tell you this: degrees in English are relatively easy to get, degrees in hard science are not. When it comes to heart surgeons, if you want the one with an IQ of 105 instead of 185 for your operation, that is up to you. If you have an advanced degree in math, I know you did not fake the tests the way so many people bull$#&* their way through an English test, because you cannot do that on math tests, it doesn't work. The guy with the degree in basket weaving will have to prove independently to me that he is a working light in the arcade. He can do that, it is done all the time.

William Shockley, the co-inventor of the transistor, was much maligned by those with degrees in journalism for views they poorly understood, but which they wanted not to be true so badly they were willing to make an example out of him. He had no business researching intelligence and genetics, but it is no accident that the heirs of the father of the silicon age are the ones with huge vaccination programs aimed at reducing some of the disparities he pointed out. Shockley did not claim sub-Saharan Africans were genetically inferior. He thought the presence of malaria in equatorial regions, which often lays children up during their best learning years, was one likely culprit along with diet. But the mere mention of this statistical reality was too much for the brain police, as Frank Zappa coined, and Shockley was branded a racist, was ostracized and died a pariah, despite having won a nobel prize and fathered-in the micro age.

He was branded as an outright eugenecist. The elite of the global elite in science, business and education in this country have an historical sweet tooth for eugenics, so it was easy to throw Shockley into that hole. He thought the work he did in this area was the most important work of his life, and his progeny like Gates have continued the work, only more discretely than their curmudgeon father.

Take it where you can get it, is my advice on truth. I do not take researchers like Josephson and Sheldrake lightly, just because they are researching what they were not trained for. There is no training for what they are after. You have to train yourself, the way Newton often had to forge his own tools.

Now, what is that you were saying about the relationship between passion and form in poetry? Do you consider them synergistic?

[Drkshadow03]

The Advantages of Formal Education:

1) Formal education boils down to experience and focus in a particular subject. Basically, you're putting in the time and concentrating on one field/area. Basically: focused experience on one thing over a long period of time.

2) Its second advantage is that it allows for a guided education. You can ask questions of an expert(s) (i. e. someone else who has put in the time and studied not only for a long period in school, but has also continued to study it and new developments and stayed updated on his colleagues for 20+ on top of that, assuming your professor is wrinkled and gray).

3) Multiple viewpoints: you will inevitably encounter multiple people that can provide different viewpoints and perspectives on the same topics.

The formal credential or piece of paper you get after this is just evidence that you, in theory, took advantage of above said advantages and that you genuinely spent the time to develop a certain level of expertise. There are, of course, people who get the piece of paper in "softer" subjects like English or other Humanities who BSed their way through the subjects and that piece of paper isn't worth much. This is harder to do with science and math because of the different nature of those fields. You either know how to perform the mathematical process or not. You either understand why you perform a certain process, why it works, what it represents or can represent, or not. You either got the correct answer or you didn't.

Now notice all of this really boils down to: lots of relevant experience.

For this reason, a lay person with no formal education can learn any of these subjects (math, science, or literature) by putting in the relevant time. Authority or credentials is just a formal way of indicating the person has put in the time and that we should give them the benefit of the doubt that they know what they're talking about or have good reasons for holding the positions they do. It doesn't prevent one from disagreeing with their positions or arguments if we have good reasons for doing so. At the end of the day, we need to evaluate a person's argument.

There are plenty of lay people who make insightful comments about literature. Likewise, if I teach myself how to do logarithmic functions, understand its properties, its an inverse of exponential functions, etc. then at the very least I understand that mathematical concept whether I learned it in school or whether I have the formal degree or not.

[MorpheusSandman]

Of course not. I just wouldn't give your opinion the same weight as other equally intelligent people with more formal training. Just look at the people on this board who have masters degrees and PhDs: Drkshadow03, Kafka's Crow, Lokasenna, Stlukesguild, Petrarch's Love. They tower over the rest.Having talked with Loka and Stluke a great deal about poetry and literature before, I doubt VERY seriously either would agree that they "tower over" me on the subject. We all have areas we know more than the others know about. Personally, I think I know less in general than they do, but that's partly because I split my time almost equally between film, music, and literature.


I don't think that an autodidact can compete at the same levels as someone who's had advanced formal training in their specialty. There are some rare exceptions, but they are mostly just that, exceptions. I think the added education both widens their view of what is possible, deepens their idea of what is going on, and instructs them in the kind of mistakes which it is common for people in their field to make, as well as how not to make them. Also, you can learn a lot faster with an excellent teacher than you can on your own, it's like following a road versus beating your own path through the jungle. The experience you can get in four years of college would probably take ten years outside it.A lot of generalizations here on a matter where I think specifics are called for.

I think it greatly depends on the subject in question. I absolutely believe an autodidact in the arts can compete with anyone who's had "advanced formal training" in their specialty, because the "advanced formal training" is little more than reading the books that others have written on the subject and following a similar path. As much as I admire, eg, Helen Vendler, I know good and well I could do what she does as well as she does if I had the impetus for putting that much time and effort into close-reading a particular poem or poet; of course, I could do it in large part BECAUSE I've read her, but that's kind of the point; that's all one needs to do in literature is to read those that have done it.

The hard sciences are a different matter altogether, as desiresjab has stated, but even then there are different types of hard sciences and different kinds of knowledge that's required for one to do it on a basic level, do it at an advanced level, and be able to actually innovate. When it comes to innovation, I don't think systematic study really engenders the creativity that's necessary for it, so it's frequently those outside the box that are the biggest innovators. All of this is, of course, dependent on the subjects being fairly well established to begin with; the problem with AI is that it's a relatively new field and, beyond certain programming basics, the problems facing (Un)Friendly AI are not exactly things you can learn formally in a textbook. In fact, Yudkowsky started blogging on subjects like epistemology and ethics because these are subjects intricately related to Friendly AI, and it perhaps goes without saying that there's not exactly a well-established connection between philosophers and computer programmers. If someone is going to bridge that gap I think an autodidact would probably have a better chance than someone raised on classic programming or philosophy, partly due to the issues that Luke Muelhauser talks about here: http://lesswrong.com/lw/frp/train_philosophers_with_pearl_and_kahneman_not/

Yes, MOST everyone learns better with good teachers, but this is not always the case. Whether it was some undiagnosed Aspergers or autism, I know I, personally, always learned better on my own. Teachers always tended to slow me down and I always felt there was a communication gap. I also have this peculiar problem where I can't process information when spoken nearly as well as I can when read, hence my love for internet message boards and such. I've also always had an ability to very easily absorb whatever I pick up and read. When I was in school I was constantly in trouble for goofing off and daydreaming, but I guess I even knew back then that I wasn't really learning from the teachers, I was learning from reading the textbooks, and my teachers were always puzzled that I somehow aced tests after they knew I hadn't paid attention to them. When I was 14 I started having serious health problems and was taken out of school at 15 and put on a program where teachers came to my house twice a week (one for math, one for everything else). Both almost always spent the entire hour chatting with me and my mom because they never had anything to teach me; I'd usually read the chapter and got the information by the time they came out.

Am I an exception? Probably, but I doubt very seriously as if I'm the only one. The autodidact Yudkowsky scored 1600 on the SATs at 15. If that isn't a testament to the success of autodidacticism in some cases, I don't know what is. I should also add that autodidacticism is not "beating a path through a jungle;" you act as if autodidacts don't/can't read the same books that those with formal training do. I've probably read more poetry and film textbooks than most poetry or film professors. All teachers can do is help you through confusing bits, but I've only ever been confused when I HAD teachers, not when I was on my own.


I'm not an expert, but I fancy myself a reasonably intelligent person capable of discussing things at the layman's level, with the limited information available. I'm not trying to publish a paper in Nature. I'm just having a discussion with other laymen. And there are certain things about scientific ideas and scientific people which are open to criticism by a layman. I absolutely agree with this (in fact, I agree with your whole paragraph). I don't want to make out as if laymen have no grounds for which to criticize experts on anything, and you making the distinction between, eg, Hawking's math VS his philosophy is as good an example as any. Similarly, all of Yudkowsky's blogging has been trying to translate in laymen's terms the subjects that are crucial for Friendly AI, and I think anyone is capable of criticizing his posts on rationality, epistemology, etc. Remember, that this all stemmed from YesNo claiming that Friendly AI was like a "messiah" that such people were needing for the "end days," just like he's claimed that Many Worlds was a "god" and its proponents like irrational believers in anything. To me, analogies like THAT are offensive if, one, you're not an expert on the subject (or even the slightest bit well-read on it) and, two, you don't present any detailed, rational argument for why you feel that way.

Can we at least agree that if you've never picked up even a single book on AI, or even read the article I linked to, that calling Friendly AI a "messiah" and those concerned about it "doomsday believers" is not a FAIR criticism? To me, that's no different than the people that have never picked up a book on evolution proclaiming it a "religion" and Darwin a "messiah" to its believers. It's not that one has to always be an expert to make criticisms, but it would certainly help if they weren't completely and utterly ignorant on the subject.


Hawking should stick to physics, Dawkins to biology, and Harris to neuroscience. When they stray off into history, art, philosophy, religion, or even neighboring sciences they talk the most ridiculous nonsense.This is assuming that history, art, philosophy, religion, etc. have nothing to do with physics, biology, and neuroscience; but I think they all very much do. The "straying" of hard scientists into, eg, religion comes from religion once having had dominion over those areas of science. When Christians promote Creationism over evolution I think an evolutionary biologist like Dawkins has every authoritative right to comment. Similarly, when people report NDEs and proclaim that they've evidence for there being life-after-death, I think a neuroscientist like Harris has every authority to state that the experience can be explained partially or wholly through neuroscience. Philosophy and science are necessary bedfellows as well, since the scientific method is, in itself, a philosophy; and philosophy without science is no better than fanwanking about life.


If I were trying to put things into a frame Morpheus would understand I might make an analogy to card playing. A man with a system and experience, who knows the rules of his game, usually beats a man without a system.Yes, but a man can "have a system" in poker without any formal training or any training at all. The best in the game right now never read any books; they just figured it out for themselves. Undoubtedly experience is important, but experience doesn't have to come formally.


And yes, Stevens should have stayed away from poetry.:p


Well, Dawkins and Harris have written a number of books about religion despite never formally studying it, and so I consider everything they have to say on the subject non-authoritative. For instance, Dawkins compared Muslims to nazis, and the Quran to Mein Kampf despite admitting that he'd never read it. Men like St. Thomas Aquinus, St Augustine of Hippo, Moses Maimonides, Soren Kierkegaard, Emanuel Swedenborg, Averroes, or Avicenna, etcetera just have a better grasp of the subject.Instead of just saying "religion," how about we recognize that religion is an umbrella term that covers a great many things, from philosophy to science to history. To me, it's hard to be an expert on anything that's not related to some aspect of religion. You could just as easily argue that men like Aquinus, Augustine, Kierkegaard, et al. were not experts on some subjects within religion they wrote about. Can one really write about even a basic belief in God without first being an expert on epistemology? And if you're going to study epistemology, how about neuroscience? How about rationality? Biases? All of these things are tied together. It almost seems you've gone from arguing that laymen should be able to criticize experts to arguing that nobody is really an expert on anything (if we extend the argument you're making here).


Your opinion about Shakespeare's sonnets is not as good as Stephen Greenblatt's.What opinion? If on their quality, then absolutely my opinion is every bit his equal because that comes down to nothing more than what qualities we each appreciate in poetry, and such things can't be objectively correct. If it's on their history, then I'm sure Greenblatt knows more than I do; but, then again, I can't imagine me having an opinion on the matter that would contradict his.


He can eat at Krispy Kreme and say "That's a damn good donut!" But that doesn't make him Anthony Bourdain.
I'd be willing to bet a sizable sum that if you blinded Anthony Bourdain or any famous chefs or foodies and had them taste the fanciest cuisines back-to-back with fast food they couldn't reliably tell the difference. Such a thing has already been done with expensive VS inexpensive wine and expensive VS inexpensive audio gear. There are plenty of subjects where people get famous not because they have some highly developed skill or discernment, but because they devote their lives to that subject and take on an air of authority. When it comes to tastes, though, no "opinion" is better than another, they just originate from different perspectives that we either value or we don't. You can argue that, yes, a Shakespeare sonnet has this quality and that quality, you can argue WHY we should appreciate these qualities, but at the end of the day there's absolutely no reason that we MUST appreciate those qualities.

[MorpheusSandman]

Now notice all of this really boils down to: lots of relevant experience... At the end of the day, we need to evaluate a person's argument.Superb post, Drkshadow. I agree with every single word, but especially quoted these two points as I think that's what it boils down to.

[mortalterror]

It is not a contest, a matter of education trumping intuition. But I will tell you this: degrees in English are relatively easy to get, degrees in hard science are not.
You say this having gotten degrees in both, I presume?


When it comes to heart surgeons, if you want the one with an IQ of 105 instead of 185 for your operation, that is up to you.
Beyond about 120 I don't think it makes much difference. Either they know what they are doing or they don't. I'd take someone with a lower IQ and years of experience over a beginner with a high IQ though. Doogie Howser MD can practice medicine on someone else. Get me a guy with grey hair. I'd also rather the guy had an Ivy league education than some community college diploma or a correspondence degree from a diploma mill like DeVry.


If you have an advanced degree in math, I know you did not fake the tests the way so many people bull$#&* their way through an English test, because you cannot do that on math tests, it doesn't work. The guy with the degree in basket weaving will have to prove independently to me that he is a working light in the arcade. He can do that, it is done all the time.
I don't think you can fake your way through much in English, because I've taken the tests when I read the material and attended all the classes and vice versa and the results were not the same. When I bull****ted I got called on my bull**** and I got a bad grade. Same thing happened when I took French. The teachers can tell when you know the material or not.


William Shockley, the co-inventor of the transistor, was much maligned by those with degrees in journalism for views they poorly understood, but which they wanted not to be true so badly they were willing to make an example out of him. He had no business researching intelligence and genetics, but it is no accident that the heirs of the father of the silicon age are the ones with huge vaccination programs aimed at reducing some of the disparities he pointed out. Shockley did not claim sub-Saharan Africans were genetically inferior. He thought the presence of malaria in equatorial regions, which often lays children up during their best learning years, was one likely culprit along with diet. But the mere mention of this statistical reality was too much for the brain police, as Frank Zappa coined, and Shockley was branded a racist, was ostracized and died a pariah, despite having won a nobel prize and fathered-in the micro age.

He was branded as an outright eugenecist. The elite of the global elite in science, business and education in this country have an historical sweet tooth for eugenics, so it was easy to throw Shockley into that hole. He thought the work he did in this area was the most important work of his life, and his progeny like Gates have continued the work, only more discretely than their curmudgeon father.
You'll have to clean that up and re-write it. I don't follow what point you are making there.


Take it where you can get it, is my advice on truth. I do not take researchers like Josephson and Sheldrake lightly, just because they are researching what they were not trained for. There is no training for what they are after. You have to train yourself, the way Newton often had to forge his own tools.
Brian Josephson? Who's that?

Brian David Josephson, FRS (born 4 January 1940), is a Welsh theoretical physicist and professor emeritus of physics at the University of Cambridge.[3] Best known for his pioneering work on superconductivity and quantum tunnelling, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1973 for his prediction of the eponymous Josephson effect, made in 1962 when he was a 22-year-old PhD student at Cambridge. He shared the prize with physicists Leo Esaki and Ivar Giaever, who jointly received half the award for their own work on quantum tunnelling.[4]

Josephson has spent his academic career as a member of the Theory of Condensed Matter group at Cambridge's Cavendish Laboratory. He has been a fellow of Trinity College since 1962, and served as professor of physics from 1974 until 2007.[4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Josephson
So far so good.

In the early 1970s he took up transcendental meditation and turned his attention to issues outside the parameters of mainstream science. He set up the Mind–Matter Unification Project at the Cavendish to explore the idea of intelligence in nature, the relationship between quantum mechanics and consciousness, and the synthesis of science and Eastern mysticism, broadly known as quantum mysticism.[5] Those interests have led him to express support for topics such as parapsychology, water memory and cold fusion, and have made him a focus of criticism from fellow scientists.[4]
Uh oh. Those things don't go together. What's this Quantum mysticism?

Quantum mysticism is a set of metaphysical beliefs and associated practices that seek to relate consciousness, intelligence, or mystical world-views to the ideas of quantum mechanics and its interpretations.[1][2][3][4][5][6] Quantum mysticism is considered pseudoscience.[7][8][9] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_mysticism
And we're done here.

Now, what is that you were saying about the relationship between passion and form in poetry? Do you consider them synergistic?
I don't think that passion should factor into it. If I were deciding to write an epic poem I'd take some thought as to what was the proper meter and structure. Do I take the example of Homer, Virgil, Tasso, and Milton or do I follow Ovid and Chaucer. 12 books like Virgil or 100 Books like Dante. Heroic couplets like Chaucer or iambic pentameter like Milton. I'd weigh the pros and cons of both, maybe read the opinions of experts like Alexander Pope, Samuel Johnson, and John Dryden who debated the merits of such things. Then I'd do what seemed best. If I wanted to write an invective I'd first look to see how Archilocus had done it and decide whether iambs would best suit the project I had in mind or not.

[desiresjab]

You say this having gotten degrees in both, I presume?


Beyond about 120 I don't think it makes much difference.


I don't think you can fake your way through much in English.

Uh oh. Those things don't go together. What's this Quantum mysticism?

And we're done here.

I don't think that passion should factor into it.

Just imagine that Josephson having the gall to posit ideas without the proper authorities behind him. Why, many are even against him.

Now you run squalling to the degrees again. You just said passion does not factor into a poem. You are claiming there is no innate connection between passion and creativity. All you have to do is go read Pope or Dryden and see how they feel about the matter. What you want is precedence, an authority to tell you it is all right to proceed. They cannot make it all right, professor, you will know from inside yourself when you should proceed. When you are on to something right, you will know it without Dryden's nod and wink. Oh, I know, little kids should not follow a cop without a badge.

[Lokasenna]

I'm reluctant to step into a long and involved debate which I'm afraid I don't really have time to read through properly and hence do justice to - a sad consequence of being within weeks of submitting my aforementioned PhD and thus rather over-worked - but given that my name has cropped up, I feel I ought to add my two cents.

I am very much in agreement with Drkshadow's perspective on formal education - I think the three points he raises are entirely valid. I would add, furthermore, that another consequence of a university education in literature is to develop one's intellectual toolset - the means by which one approaches literature - and that this is perhaps the most important part of further education. Studying literature at university level is not about being given the answers, it's about learning how to find the answers both through one's own appreciation of a given text and through independent research; this is something that comes as a shock to quite a few undergraduates fresh from school, who expect to be spoon-fed the 'correct' answers in class, and consequently often voice how appalled they are that they 'only' get an hour's tutorial on any given text. The more perceptive students (which is most of them, thankfully) realise that the tutorial represents an hour where they can discuss the fruits of their considerable pre-prepared thinking and research.

I do not, therefore, agree with desiresjab's assertion that one can bull**** one's way through English. Up to A-Level, it's certainly possible - but then one can bull**** one's way through almost any A-Level, so long as one knows which hoops one has to jump through. I bull****ed my way through several A-Levels, including Maths - I had, and still have, no real understanding of how mathematics works, but I simply memorised all the processes, applied them as I had been shown to do, and got a high mark as a consequence. Having marked hundreds of undergraduate essays, I can assure you that it is immediately apparent to a marker when a student is bull****ing - and the mark they get will reflect this.

With regard to my own formal education, I certainly don't think that it allows me to 'tower' over anyone here who has not had similar experiences. Whilst I am probably of above-average intelligence, I'm certainly not a genius, or anything approaching that. The only field in which I claim absolute expertise is medieval Scandinavian literature, and within that narrow field there are certain niche areas in which I can say with absolute candour that I rank amongst the world's greatest experts. This is not a result of any god-given natural talent or skill, beyond an affinity for literature and a knack for pattern-spotting, but rather of many years of intense study. My knowledge of further medieval literature, from around Europe and beyond, is extensive, but I'm sure I could easily be shown up by someone who had put an equivalent amount of study into, say, the poetry of William Dunbar or Marie de France, despite my more-than-passing interest in their works. Although I am well-read in post-medieval literature, I suspect that are many people on this forum, without (advance) degrees, who are more widely-read than I am. The only real advantage I might have over them is the development of my 'toolset', which I've spent the best part of a decade honing at university - but which it is also entirely possible, if perhaps somewhat harder, to acquire on one's own outside the ivory tower.

[Pierre Menard]

Fantastic post Loka.

[desiresjab]

Loki, I hope that about says it. Sometimes you can see why someones is a phd candidate. That was awfully good.


The only field in which I claim absolute expertise is medieval Scandinavian literature, and within that narrow field there are certain niche areas in which I can say with absolute candour that I rank amongst the world's greatest experts.

I love it. And it does not even come as a surprise. How did you arrive at such an obscure niche?

[Ecurb]

Interesting discussion. I'll add a couple of minor points.

I.Q. and S.A.T. scores are predictors of academic success; S.A.T.s are specifically designed for that purpose, I.Q. tests have been tweaked over the years to better predict academic success. Citing Stephen Hawking's I.Q. or Yudkowsky’s SAT scores is unnecessary. Once someone is grown up, we can look at their achievements rather than their potential.

To return to the sports analogy, the NFL (that's gridiron football for non-Americans) measures prospective players' speed, strength, height and weight to assess their potential as professional football players. The teams will be signing these players to million dollar contracts, so they try to be as scientific as possible in their assessment.

However, it would be silly to emphasize such statistical measurements as “40 yard dash time” to assess the value of a player who has been in the league for several years. Why? There are better ways to assess his value, including, but not limited to, actual performance statistics (yards gained, touchdowns scored, passes caught, etc.). The same is true in academia (or medicine, as mortalterror pointed out -- I wonder if desiresjab would choose Stephen Hawking to perform delicate heart surgery). Just as S.A.T. scores are predictors of academic success for undergraduates, undergraduate degrees and academic grades are predictors of success for scholars continuing in their fields. Nobody looks at grades during a tenure review. Quite reasonably, the members of the tenure committee look at the published (and unpublished) scholarly work of the professor seeking tenure instead. There is no longer any need for imperfect and vague attempts at predicting success: the professor either has or has not produced good work (of course people still argue about what constitutes good work).

Since we humans are social creatures, most of us learn best in Universities. The feedback from our peers helps us assess our own work. The community of scholars that constitutes a University (or a Department in the University) values and praises our contributions. If we become professionals, we get paid for our scholarship (and most of us need money, and must spend quite a bit of time, effort and energy getting it elsewhere if we are not paid scholars). The “independent scholar” of the past was generally independently wealthy.

Finally, a University education “develops one’s intellectual toolset” (Loka’s words). However, scholarship involves building something with the tools one has developed. Producing scholarly work both demonstrates one’s expertise, and hones that expertise. Wide reading creates breadth of knowledge – academic writing precision of thought and argument.

[desiresjab]

I see passion as the prompter. Sometimes passion comes already bound up with a form. It is always seeks for one.

These are only personal beliefs. They are nothing to argue, or that I would argue about. You construct your personal poetics to enable poetry, as I see it, not to conform to reality but to create reality.

The stronger the prompt, the more sustained the effort. What is this passion? I seemed one day to recognize it finally. It was same urge that plumps the berries and makes grass grow. The universe itself came from passion. This passion operates on more advanced fronts than were possible for billions of years in our universe. The poet is perhaps one sense organ of this passion, which enables it to expand into new territories.

The above is part of a philosophy of poetics, not of the universe. But synaptics connections are growing between the two. If the universal passion is blind, then the atheists are right; if the universal passion is conscious, then the believers win. But I am allowed to play the fence or to create any system I choose for the sake of poetry. I care more about that than whether there is a god, to be honest. For me it is about enabling poetry, not seeking but creating reality. It is the kind of reality that grants the forgiveness of time Auden referred to so beautifully. Poems are objects of reality which have been heralded as outlasting stone monuments.

Adjacent realities exist, because poetics is one of them. What we live in and experience is not ultimate reality, but a narrow band of it, twisted and distorted we are not sure which way to our perspective. There is only enough matter in the Empire State building to fill a grain of rice if you eliminated the space between the atoms. My senses are wonderful, but not really the best judges of reality. My senses once were convinced that the earth was flat and that the sun circled the earth. Perfectly reasonable assumptions.

This most trustworthy reality is poetic. It takes from science what it needs. It asks to dance. It takes from all things what it needs, to enable poems which must come. Every lasting poem adds a little more land like a Hawaiian poi poi flow. With the help of science, poetry sees right through the Empire state building into the shadowy possibilities of a superior reality it is up to poetry to create by illumination.

I do not lean either way, rather, I lean both ways. Blind passion is called mechanics, conscious passion is called willfullness. I know the passion, not whether it has separate consciousness, but that it is willful in me. It is there. It is here. Others can argue about education or reality (who may have more of both), I feel the poet's job is to create a personal poetics which enables poetry, nothing more.

[mortalterror]

I think it greatly depends on the subject in question. I absolutely believe an autodidact in the arts can compete with anyone who's had "advanced formal training" in their specialty, because the "advanced formal training" is little more than reading the books that others have written on the subject and following a similar path. As much as I admire, eg, Helen Vendler, I know good and well I could do what she does as well as she does if I had the impetus for putting that much time and effort into close-reading a particular poem or poet; of course, I could do it in large part BECAUSE I've read her, but that's kind of the point; that's all one needs to do in literature is to read those that have done it.
There we disagree. I think that a university education is more than just reading the books. You can read the same books but I doubt you could plum their depths as deeply as a teacher could explain what is going on in them to you. I personally was rather upset when an idea I'd come to through years of independent study was written on a board by a teacher, and in ten seconds the whole class had copied it down. Teachers are like having the cheat codes for learning. You might be playing the same game. You might even be better at it. But I just turned on God mode, invincibility, infinite lives, all the weapons, and I'm ten times as fast.

It's not just about reading the same books. You get more out of them with a teacher, discussing them with students, making copious notes, committing things to memory, and writing essays on everything you've learned. I'm pretty sharp but I wouldn't have thought of half the things my instructors told me when reading Lolita, or Henry IV. And that brings me to directed reading. I read things I would not have read had the choice been up to me. Many people read narrowly. They stick to favorite authors or time periods. At the university I couldn't do that. They made sure I was well rounded and I had to complete a course on each of the major time periods of English literature to get my degree. If it were up to me, I'd have just read novels from the 1920s to 50s, but it wasn't and I wound up reading Donne, Pope, Joyce, Keats, Chaucer, Dickens, etc. I had to read feminist literature, African American literature, Native American literature, and worst of all postmodern literature. They made me read plays, poetry, short stories, and novels. I had to study critics like Jacques Lacan, Derrida, Foucault, Roland Barthe, Henri Bergson, some crazy Freudian chicks and Jungian people, Nietzsche, Freud, Hazlitt.

They made me write research papers. I had to dig deep into the stacks of a major University library, full of the kind of books you can't get from the public library or Amazon.com, with all kinds of rare and eclectic knowledge in them. Then when I made errors, they made me correct them. The didactic learner has no one to correct him, even should he ever set himself such tasks. Ask Darkshadow about JSTOR and academic article databases some time. There are some books and articles you can't get any other way.

If I may, I'd like to return to how teachers direct the learning experience. When I was in college I had knowledge coming at me faster than I could possibly absorb it. I might watch Gone With The Wind, 8 1/2, Pulp Fiction, Network, and the Bicycle Thief all for the first time in the space of a week. I had some sweet teachers who were always like, "You ever hear of Howard Hawks or John Ford? Ever hear of Francois Truffaut and Fritz Lang?" It was like being high all the time on the brilliance of an ever expanding universe, like being a child and every day I was initiated into a new mystery. On my own, I have to do all the hard work myself. I don't know anybody who knows more about film than myself, so I can't ask anybody for advice. I've liked one of the last 30 films I saw: Devil's On the Doorstep. I still haven't found any films from last year which I would recommend to anyone. That's about my batting average for music and literature too. Having someone around with more knowledge and experience than you is such a valuable resource. Cheat codes man.

So basically, the teachers corrected my mistakes quicker than I could have on my own. They challenged me, made me read books I wouldn't have, saved me time by directing me to the best books, gave me free knowledge which I couldn't have gleaned any other way, and forced me to analyze deeper than I would have on my own. When I read books now, I might write a sentence or two about them instead of a five to fifteen page paper. Besides the basic broadening of what I was reading and contextualizing what I had already read, they wouldn't give me a degree until I'd taken a bunch of classes in French, biology, astronomy, world history, classics, psychology, (I tested out of the math) because they wanted me to be well rounded and know something besides Jane Austen. Again, they force you to study things you would have never studied on your own. It's not just about reading a couple of books. It's about reading the right books, the right way, and learning a few other things as well.


The hard sciences are a different matter altogether, as desiresjab has stated, but even then there are different types of hard sciences and different kinds of knowledge that's required for one to do it on a basic level, do it at an advanced level, and be able to actually innovate. When it comes to innovation, I don't think systematic study really engenders the creativity that's necessary for it, so it's frequently those outside the box that are the biggest innovators. All of this is, of course, dependent on the subjects being fairly well established to begin with; the problem with AI is that it's a relatively new field and, beyond certain programming basics, the problems facing (Un)Friendly AI are not exactly things you can learn formally in a textbook. In fact, Yudkowsky started blogging on subjects like epistemology and ethics because these are subjects intricately related to Friendly AI, and it perhaps goes without saying that there's not exactly a well-established connection between philosophers and computer programmers. If someone is going to bridge that gap I think an autodidact would probably have a better chance than someone raised on classic programming or philosophy, partly due to the issues that Luke Muelhauser talks about here: http://lesswrong.com/lw/frp/train_philosophers_with_pearl_and_kahneman_not/
One, I don't believe that my science classes were any harder than my English classes. Bacteriology and Neurochemistry weren't as hard as any of my Classics courses, and they were just as full of dummies. Two, I think you are wrong and only someone who has mastered all of the stages of a discipline and understands it's intricate ins and outs can successfully innovate. Three, Artificial Intelligence has been a field of study for sixty years. It's fairly well established.


Yes, MOST everyone learns better with good teachers, but this is not always the case. Whether it was some undiagnosed Aspergers or autism, I know I, personally, always learned better on my own. Teachers always tended to slow me down and I always felt there was a communication gap. I also have this peculiar problem where I can't process information when spoken nearly as well as I can when read, hence my love for internet message boards and such. I've also always had an ability to very easily absorb whatever I pick up and read. When I was in school I was constantly in trouble for goofing off and daydreaming, but I guess I even knew back then that I wasn't really learning from the teachers, I was learning from reading the textbooks, and my teachers were always puzzled that I somehow aced tests after they knew I hadn't paid attention to them. When I was 14 I started having serious health problems and was taken out of school at 15 and put on a program where teachers came to my house twice a week (one for math, one for everything else). Both almost always spent the entire hour chatting with me and my mom because they never had anything to teach me; I'd usually read the chapter and got the information by the time they came out.

Am I an exception? Probably, but I doubt very seriously as if I'm the only one. The autodidact Yudkowsky scored 1600 on the SATs at 15. If that isn't a testament to the success of autodidacticism in some cases, I don't know what is. I should also add that autodidacticism is not "beating a path through a jungle;" you act as if autodidacts don't/can't read the same books that those with formal training do. I've probably read more poetry and film textbooks than most poetry or film professors. All teachers can do is help you through confusing bits, but I've only ever been confused when I HAD teachers, not when I was on my own.
It sounds like you either were too young to take advantage of what the teachers had to teach, or you had poor teachers.

While I do not doubt that you have read a great deal, I must doubt whether you read everything you would have at a university pursuing a degree. Some of the stuff they gave us in our course packets was really esoteric stuff I'd never heard of anywhere else. It's not like we just went through the Norton Anthology. Also, you say that you read textbooks. Some of these textbooks are a little more advanced than others. I've got some language books on my shelf for first year students, second year students and so forth. Also, like I said before the teachers offer some rare insights which might not have occurred to you when reading on your own. That's one of the reasons why many people join book clubs. They get the advantage of hearing other people's interpretations, and sharing their own gives them the opportunity to really scrutinize passages they might otherwise have skimmed over. Besides, it's not just the reading. There were many learning exercises where we wrote about the books, and we diagrammed them, and we made lists of themes, and gave reports. Then we were graded on each of these, so we had the added incentive not to suck, as well as frequent correction in our problem areas.


I absolutely agree with this (in fact, I agree with your whole paragraph). I don't want to make out as if laymen have no grounds for which to criticize experts on anything, and you making the distinction between, eg, Hawking's math VS his philosophy is as good an example as any. Similarly, all of Yudkowsky's blogging has been trying to translate in laymen's terms the subjects that are crucial for Friendly AI, and I think anyone is capable of criticizing his posts on rationality, epistemology, etc. Remember, that this all stemmed from YesNo claiming that Friendly AI was like a "messiah" that such people were needing for the "end days," just like he's claimed that Many Worlds was a "god" and its proponents like irrational believers in anything. To me, analogies like THAT are offensive if, one, you're not an expert on the subject (or even the slightest bit well-read on it) and, two, you don't present any detailed, rational argument for why you feel that way.

Can we at least agree that if you've never picked up even a single book on AI, or even read the article I linked to, that calling Friendly AI a "messiah" and those concerned about it "doomsday believers" is not a FAIR criticism? To me, that's no different than the people that have never picked up a book on evolution proclaiming it a "religion" and Darwin a "messiah" to its believers. It's not that one has to always be an expert to make criticisms, but it would certainly help if they weren't completely and utterly ignorant on the subject.
I'll go along with that. If you don't have a decent grasp of the subject, then you shouldn't call names. There's probably a better way to voice your criticisms anyway. That's just good manners.

Although, you did just remind me of how few atheists have actually read Darwin's On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, even though they frequently make reference to him and his work. I once saw someone stump Dawkins, when he was criticizing Christians for not reading the bible. They asked him what the title of Darwin's book was and he couldn't remember the full title. I think he might have swore. It was rather funny. But it's rather odd how many pro-science people know almost nothing about science, how many advocates of logic and reason don't practice either, etc. I won't say that science has become a god in our culture, but I think that it has usurped the role religion once held as an ultimate authority, even in areas where it's dictates probably shouldn't apply. You frequently see it annexing all legitimate authority from it's neighboring studies, claiming to be the study of everything, instead of simply the study of nature, so that it even presumes to dictate to the arts and humanities within their own fields, subordinating them to just another branch of scientific study. I wouldn't say that our scientists have become high priests or prophets, but I do think they often make declarations which are tenuous at best, and treated with undo gravity and reverence.

One could say that something is a religion to a group of people, when they mean that it is a strongly held belief, or that a person is a messiah when he is just a respected leader; but hyperbole is to be expected in certain types of conversation. It is common for both sides to overstate their case.


This is assuming that history, art, philosophy, religion, etc. have nothing to do with physics, biology, and neuroscience; but I think they all very much do. The "straying" of hard scientists into, eg, religion comes from religion once having had dominion over those areas of science. When Christians promote Creationism over evolution I think an evolutionary biologist like Dawkins has every authoritative right to comment. Similarly, when people report NDEs and proclaim that they've evidence for there being life-after-death, I think a neuroscientist like Harris has every authority to state that the experience can be explained partially or wholly through neuroscience. Philosophy and science are necessary bedfellows as well, since the scientific method is, in itself, a philosophy; and philosophy without science is no better than fanwanking about life.
I don't mean that there is never any overlap, there is. But the sciences don't take kindly to the critiques of the humanities either you know. Science has been the target of numerous sociologist, historian, epistemological, and feminist critiques.

Sociologist Stanley Aronowitz scrutinizes science for operating with the presumption that the only acceptable criticisms of science are those conducted within the methodological framework that science has set up for itself. That science insists that only those who have been inducted into its community, through means of training and credentials, are qualified to make these criticisms.[5] Aronowitz also alleges that while scientists consider it absurd that Fundamentalist Christianity uses biblical references to bolster their claim that the Bible is true, scientists pull the same tactic by using the tools of science to settle disputes concerning its own validity.[6] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_science#Epistemology
I'm talking of course of the science wars.

The science wars were a series of intellectual exchanges, between scientific realists and postmodernist critics, about the nature of scientific theory and intellectual inquiry. They took place principally in the United States in the 1990s in the academic and mainstream press. The scientific realists accused the postmodernists of having effectively rejected scientific objectivity, the scientific method, and scientific knowledge. Scientific realists (such as Norman Levitt, Paul R. Gross, Jean Bricmont and Alan Sokal) argued that scientific knowledge is real, and that postmodernists thought that it is not real. Though much of the theory associated with 'postmodernism' (see poststructuralism) did not make any interventions into the natural sciences, the scientific realists took aim at its general influence. The scientific realists argued that large swaths of scholarship, amounting to a rejection of objectivity and realism, had been influenced by major 20th Century poststructuralist philosophers (such as Jacques Derrida, Gilles Deleuze, Jean-François Lyotard and others), whose work they declared to be incomprehensible or meaningless. They implicated a broad range of fields in this trend, including cultural studies, cultural anthropology, feminist studies, comparative literature, media studies, and science and technology studies. They accused those postmodernist critics who did actually discuss science of having a limited understanding of it. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science_wars
If scientists don't want professors of postmodern literature dabbling in their field they should lend them the same courtesy. Also, if biologists like Dawkins would limit their biblical critiques to biology mentioned in the bible there would be no problem. The problem is that is only where he begins and then tries to prove many other things false, which he is not an expert in.

You say that you don't like it when Christians promote Creationism over evolution. I agree. Religion should stay out of science. But I think that science should largely stay out of religion as well, and it is not extended the same courtesy. Do you see the imbalance in authority here? Who has the right to do what depending on which side you are on. I'd like a separation of religion and science as much as I'd like a separation of church and state. I think when two non-overlapping magisteria start overlapping they get up to no good. As for Evolution, if Dawkins would limit his comments to falsifying Creationism, that would be wonderful. Most Christians believe in Evolution and think that Creationism is hogwash. He'd be doing them a service, and they would be grateful for the return to orthodox thinking. The problem is that he goes further and attacks the institution, he attacks everything they hold most sacred, things he is not qualified to speak about. The problem is the overreach, and the fact that's he's such a disdainful, disrespectful person.


Yes, but a man can "have a system" in poker without any formal training or any training at all. The best in the game right now never read any books; they just figured it out for themselves. Undoubtedly experience is important, but experience doesn't have to come formally.
I believe in systems. I believe in order beating disorder. I believe in method and rationality. I don't believe that is how most people read or independently educate themselves. If you said you were systematically reading Mortimer J. Adler's Great Books of the Western World starting at volume 1, ending with volume 60, that would be one thing but most people's reading habits are so random and disjointed. They read science fiction on a Tuesday and Romance on a Wednesday. Some people only read books with a dragon or a space ship on the cover. They could read a thousand Dragonlance books and I wouldn't call them well read.

With formal education and the knowledge acquisition broken up into stages, you can spend two months reading just American novels written between 1900-1920, focusing on similarities between them. If everyone read A Farewell to Arms with a companion volume of criticism, cliff notes, and an encyclopedia, then discussed it with their friends maybe we wouldn't need formal education. If they read sequentially, focusing on 16th century English plays one month and then 17th century English plays the next, they wouldn't need a teacher to write up a lesson plan. The problem is that most people aren't methodical like that. They aren't serious. They are just playing for fun.


:p

Instead of just saying "religion," how about we recognize that religion is an umbrella term that covers a great many things, from philosophy to science to history. To me, it's hard to be an expert on anything that's not related to some aspect of religion. You could just as easily argue that men like Aquinus, Augustine, Kierkegaard, et al. were not experts on some subjects within religion they wrote about. Can one really write about even a basic belief in God without first being an expert on epistemology? And if you're going to study epistemology, how about neuroscience? How about rationality? Biases? All of these things are tied together. It almost seems you've gone from arguing that laymen should be able to criticize experts to arguing that nobody is really an expert on anything (if we extend the argument you're making here).
I wouldn't say they were experts in religion. I'd say that men like Aquinus were experts in theology. Theology as a field has many sub branches which I think all of those things you mentioned fall under. A brief perusal of Systematic Theology shows all kinds of divisions like Christology, Angelology, Theology Proper, Bibliology, Anthropology, Soteriology, Ecclesiology, Eschatology. We already have fields of study for critiquing various aspects of Christian thought that go back two thousand years. The criticisms of modern atheists regularly leveled at Christians are not new, and there is a body of literature that seeks to address these criticisms which men like Dawkins and Harris are probably profoundly ignorant of. They don't feel they need to do their homework, because they own a telescope, or all those writers are so old they couldn't possibly have anything to tell modern men like them.

You can parse things and categorize them how you will. You say that everything falls into a category of religion, or everything falls into a category of science, that seems to me as flawed as when Socrates and the ancient Greeks used to claim that everything falls under the rubric of philosophy. Every academic field since the beginning of time has made an argument for why their field is special and deserves to rule over all the other fields. I find such reasoning specious, self-serving, and unconvincing. I've been to the public library. They have this thing called the Dewey Decimal System. Philosophy goes over here. Psychology goes over there. Painting goes over here. Chemistry goes over there. It's not hard.


What opinion? If on their quality, then absolutely my opinion is every bit his equal because that comes down to nothing more than what qualities we each appreciate in poetry, and such things can't be objectively correct.
So if things can't be objectively verified in literature, it is not a science, and scientific rules do not apply to things like value judgements. Certain areas of human thought, certain subjects defy scientific authority. If you agree that the humanities fall under such a classification, then why do you persist in believing that science should make the same kind of rulings about the supernatural? Objectively speaking there is no way to prove or disprove the existence of gods, so scientists should be neutral and silent upon the subject. If however, you feel that there is an objective truth even within the humanities just as much as in the sciences, then you cannot but admit that your opinion is not as good as Greenblatt's.


If it's on their history, then I'm sure Greenblatt knows more than I do; but, then again, I can't imagine me having an opinion on the matter that would contradict his.

I'd be willing to bet a sizable sum that if you blinded Anthony Bourdain or any famous chefs or foodies and had them taste the fanciest cuisines back-to-back with fast food they couldn't reliably tell the difference. Such a thing has already been done with expensive VS inexpensive wine and expensive VS inexpensive audio gear. There are plenty of subjects where people get famous not because they have some highly developed skill or discernment, but because they devote their lives to that subject and take on an air of authority. When it comes to tastes, though, no "opinion" is better than another, they just originate from different perspectives that we either value or we don't. You can argue that, yes, a Shakespeare sonnet has this quality and that quality, you can argue WHY we should appreciate these qualities, but at the end of the day there's absolutely no reason that we MUST appreciate those qualities.
I think that there are definitely a good number of dilettantes when it comes to fine cuisine, but I also believe that some people are as knowledgeable as their reputation suggests. Those dudes talking about notes in wine, doing those taste samplings, and mixing different herbs and spices to bring out other flavors, I think there's something to that. I think some people have educated their palette in ways that I haven't and can tell what winery and vintage something is by the taste. And some people have an awesome grasp of culinary art and can prepare food that somehow tastes better than other people can.

[MorpheusSandman]

It's not just about reading the same books. You get more out of them with a teacher, discussing them with students, making copious notes, committing things to memory, and writing essays on everything you've learned.Again, you're making a generalization out of a subject where there are undeniably exceptions. One is also able to discuss what they read, take copious notes, commit things to memory, and write essays outside a university. I've always done this with books/authors I was extremely interested in; even more so now with what I can get on kindle (as I hate marking my original books). When I first started learning poetry I would literally work through all the assignments in the textbooks on my own.


I'm pretty sharp but I wouldn't have thought of half the things my instructors told me when reading Lolita, or Henry IV. And that brings me to directed reading. I read things I would not have read had the choice been up to me. Many people read narrowly. They stick to favorite authors or time periods. At the university I couldn't do that. They made sure I was well rounded and I had to complete a course on each of the major time periods of English literature to get my degree. If it were up to me, I'd have just read novels from the 1920s to 50s, but it wasn't and I wound up reading Donne, Pope, Joyce, Keats, Chaucer, Dickens, etc. I had to read feminist literature, African American literature, Native American literature, and worst of all postmodern literature. They made me read plays, poetry, short stories, and novels. I had to study critics like Jacques Lacan, Derrida, Foucault, Roland Barthe, Henri Bergson, some crazy Freudian chicks and Jungian people, Nietzsche, Freud, Hazlitt."Half the things your instructor told you" s/he probably learned from reading critics and studies you could've read on your own had you known about them. Nobody certainly ever had to provoke me into broad reading, and I've read most of the names you list on my own.


They made me write research papers. I had to dig deep into the stacks of a major University library, full of the kind of books you can't get from the public library or Amazon.com, with all kinds of rare and eclectic knowledge in them. Then when I made errors, they made me correct them. The didactic learner has no one to correct him, even should he ever set himself such tasks. Ask Darkshadow about JSTOR and academic article databases some time. There are some books and articles you can't get any other way.Yes, this is one advantage of the university I will readily admit; doing google searches on various authors/subjects I've often wished I had easy/free access to JSTOR; but I should mention that individuals CAN get a (limited) free pass or a paid-for (monthly or yearly) pass as well.


If I may, I'd like to return to how teachers direct the learning experience. When I was in college I had knowledge coming at me faster than I could possibly absorb it. I might watch Gone With The Wind, 8 1/2, Pulp Fiction, Network, and the Bicycle Thief all for the first time in the space of a week. I had some sweet teachers who were always like, "You ever hear of Howard Hawks or John Ford? Ever hear of Francois Truffaut and Fritz Lang?" It was like being high all the time on the brilliance of an ever expanding universe, like being a child and every day I was initiated into a new mystery. On my own, I have to do all the hard work myself. I don't know anybody who knows more about film than myself, so I can't ask anybody for advice. I've liked one of the last 30 films I saw: Devil's On the Doorstep. I still haven't found any films from last year which I would recommend to anyone. That's about my batting average for music and literature too. Having someone around with more knowledge and experience than you is such a valuable resource. Cheat codes man.Again, this sounds like my experience on my own. I got into film in my early teens. Instead of teachers I had various movie books with recommendations on films and directors. I was watching Hawks, Ford, Lang, and Truffaut when I was 14. At one time I was watching almost 20 films a week and ravaging the foreign and classic sections of my local Blockbusters, Hollywood Videos, Price Marts, and a few other small rental shops. Once I had access to the internet, I bought even more film books with more recommendations; I also started studying the art of film and filmmaking on my own, diligently listening to every commentary and watching every extra I could. I was in my early 20s when I found Theyshootpictures, which gave me even MORE recommendations for great films and filmmakers; through them I discovered Hou Hsiao-hsien, Theo Angelopoulos, Stan Brakhage, Mikhail Kalatozov, et al. I was one of the first subscribers to Netflix and at times would have as many as 6 films out at a time. I've made use of region-free DVD players and bought films that are only available overseas, like so many of Satyajit Ray's.

I did all of this on my own, and I've probably seen close to 10,000 films by now. I can't imagine how a teacher could've possibly aided me. For so many years, the greatest challenge was having access to most films, and I'm fairly sure no local university is going to have a copy of Hou's A City of Sadness lying about somewhere. The internet (Netflix, Amazon, streaming, rutracker, et al) has helped tremendously with that. Also: I don't know what having seen a ton of films has to do with liking so few modern films you see. You and I are different in that regard; even when I watch films that I consider fairly average/mediocre, I'm always quite aware that I'd rather be watching that film than doing most other things.


Three, Artificial Intelligence has been a field of study for sixty years. It's fairly well established.Friendly AI is not.


It sounds like you either were too young to take advantage of what the teachers had to teach, or you had poor teachers.No, I had very good teachers; I just didn't need them. If you're a teacher and see a child learning the material on their own without your help, what are you supposed to do? I do wish you could at least accept that different people learn in different ways. It's nice that you (and so many others) get such use out of your teachers, but there's almost nothing you've described about the advantages you had from teachers that I haven't been able to manage on my own.


While I do not doubt that you have read a great deal, I must doubt whether you read everything you would have at a university pursuing a degree. Some of the stuff they gave us in our course packets was really esoteric stuff I'd never heard of anywhere else. It's not like we just went through the Norton Anthology. Also, you say that you read textbooks. Some of these textbooks are a little more advanced than others.I have no idea how much of what I've read would've been required reading if I was pursuing a degree, but I'm not a stranger to esoteric texts, especially when it comes to studies on my favorite authors. I'm often surprised by what I find on page 20 of an Amazon search! Bibliographies are always helpful, too. I've certainly gone through far more than a Norton Anthology. As for textbooks, I was mostly thinking of introductions that are clearly designed to be used in courses (like those on poetry by Longman, Norton, Vendler, Meyers, Furniss/Bath, et al., but I also have several more specialized anthologies and studies like this recent one: http://www.amazon.com/The-Lyric-Theory-Reader-Anthology/dp/1421412004/


But it's rather odd how many pro-science people know almost nothing about science, how many advocates of logic and reason don't practice either, etc. I won't say that science has become a god in our culture, but I think that it has usurped the role religion once held as an ultimate authority, even in areas where it's dictates probably shouldn't apply.I will say that if someone is going to put faith in an institution in their ignorance, then it's better to choose something like science that has proved its worth to humanity time and again, as opposed to something like religion that has promised the heavens and delivered nothing tangible (the "intangible" can be gotten just as well through meditation, art, philosophy, etc.).


I'm talking of course of the science wars.

If scientists don't want professors of postmodern literature dabbling in their field they should lend them the same courtesy. Also, if biologists like Dawkins would limit their biblical critiques to biology mentioned in the bible there would be no problem. The problem is that is only where he begins and then tries to prove many other things false, which he is not an expert in.Yes, well, I'm very much with the scientists on this one, even though I enjoy a lot of modern and postmodern criticism. When it comes to obtaining knowledge about the real world, I don't think science can be bettered as a method. I've said it before, but there's nothing more ironic than people criticizing science online; ie, criticizing it via a medium that's one of its greatest achievements. All the postmodernist thought in the world never gave us anything remotely as valuable. What's more, no other method has ever been proposed that filters nearly as well for the various mistakes that can be made when we try to answer questions about how reality functions. I'm not saying that science is perfect, and Yudkowsky raises one very interesting critique of it at the end of his quantum mechanics sequence: http://lesswrong.com/lw/qa/the_dilemma_science_or_bayes/ (note: most of his critique won't make sense without having read the whole sequence, but I post it because it's probably as good a negative criticism of science that I've ever read), but simply that I don't know of a better method, and I'm very suspicious of the motives behind most negative critiques of science as they're usually from people whose authority feels threatened by a superior method. As much as I enjoy literary criticism, there is A LOT of BS out there, and, yes, I include most Lacanian, Freudian, Barthesian, etc. in that. That kind of stuff is interesting and fun, a kind of mental masturbation, but whether it actually explains anything is another matter entirely.


You say that you don't like it when Christians promote Creationism over evolution. I agree. Religion should stay out of science. But I think that science should largely stay out of religion as well, and it is not extended the same courtesy. Do you see the imbalance in authority here? Who has the right to do what depending on which side you are on. I'd like a separation of religion and science as much as I'd like a separation of church and state. I think when two non-overlapping magisteria start overlapping they get up to no good.So what area of religion do you think is inaccessible to science? I honestly can't think of any. The non-overlapping magisteria sounds like a nice defense, but falls apart under the slightest examination; Yudkowsky again: http://lesswrong.com/lw/i8/religions_claim_to_be_nondisprovable/ I've never read a good response to that article, tbh. You keep saying "religion" but, again, religion is just a big umbrella term. Yudkowsky says it good with: "The Old Testament is a stream-of-consciousness culture dump: history, law, moral parables, and yes, models of how the universe works," and I don't see any of those things as being off-limits to science.


The problem is that he goes further and attacks the institution, he attacks everything they hold most sacred, things he is not qualified to speak about. The problem is the overreach, and the fact that's he's such a disdainful, disrespectful person.Some examples would be good.


I believe in systems. I believe in order beating disorder. I believe in method and rationality. I don't believe that is how most people read or independently educate themselves.I'm mostly with you here, but even you add the qualifier: how "Most" people read. Yes, MOST are incapable of systematic reading or study, hence the advantage of teachers and education structures. There are people, though, that are not "most" people in any number of ways, including having an innate ability to systematically learn/study on their own. However, I should add that systems, methods, and order can be wrong and/or sub-optimal, and just because any given system/method/order has been institutionalized doesn't in the slightest mean it's right or superior. Most of what passes for rationality is no better than rationalization, and some very bright minds are capable of BSing masses of other highly intelligent people. Wasn't it Chomsky who said Lacan was a self-conscious charlatan? One doesn't have to look hard or even that far back historically to see dubious systems that got institutionalized.


The criticisms of modern atheists regularly leveled at Christians are not new, and there is a body of literature that seeks to address these criticisms which men like Dawkins and Harris are probably profoundly ignorant of. They don't feel they need to do their homework, because they own a telescope, or all those writers are so old they couldn't possibly have anything to tell modern men like them.This, I think, is a legitimate critique. Even Luke Muelhauser has chastised atheists for being extremely lazy when, eg, debating William Lane Craig: http://commonsenseatheism.com/?p=392 That said, I do still believe that what modern scientists know is far more valuable than what old theologians knew. Old theologians (like old philosophers) were working in times where knowledge of the natural world/universe and the human mind were vastly inferior to what they are today, and it's impossible that their thought was uncolored by such ignorance. Whatever theology modern atheists may be ignorant on, I think that ignorance is far less deleterious than what the old theologians and philosophers were ignorant about (through no fault of their own).


You can parse things and categorize them how you will. You say that everything falls into a category of religion, or everything falls into a category of science, that seems to me as flawed as when Socrates and the ancient Greeks used to claim that everything falls under the rubric of philosophy. Every academic field since the beginning of time has made an argument for why their field is special and deserves to rule over all the other fields. I find such reasoning specious, self-serving, and unconvincing. I've been to the public library. They have this thing called the Dewey Decimal System. Philosophy goes over here. Psychology goes over there. Painting goes over here. Chemistry goes over there. It's not hard.I'm not concerned with categorizing anything, but I don't have to be a specious, self-serving cognitive scientist to note that any thinking that was done from Socrates to Augustine was done before they knew about cognitive biases (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_bias), and that such biases undoubtedly influenced everything they thought. Your insistence on separating everything into discrete categories (philosophy here, psychology there) probably reveals why you dislike postmodernism that so vigorously sought to prove how inextricably interconnected everything was.


So if things can't be objectively verified in literature, it is not a science, and scientific rules do not apply to things like value judgements. Certain areas of human thought, certain subjects defy scientific authority. If you agree that the humanities fall under such a classification, then why do you persist in believing that science should make the same kind of rulings about the supernatural? Objectively speaking there is no way to prove or disprove the existence of gods, so scientists should be neutral and silent upon the subject. If however, you feel that there is an objective truth even within the humanities just as much as in the sciences, then you cannot but admit that your opinion is not as good as Greenblatt's.Really, this section here deserves its own thread because it gets to the crux of a great many issues. I'll try to reduce it as much as possible:

Value judgments are not objective, but value judgments can be based on things that are and, what's more, if we establish a basis for value judgments we can establish a scientific method for studying them. This is more clearly illustrated with ethics than with literature. In ethics, science can't tell us whether any individual's life (say the President's) is more valuable than the lives of 10,000 others. What science could do, however, would be to explore the consequences of losing either. It's a bit like saying that science can't tell us to like chocolate icecream, but it can explore why many do and what will happen if we eat too much of it. So if I say "I like icecream!" science can't tell me otherwise, but the minute I say "I like icecream because..." I'm moving into an area where science can have a say. Similarly, if I say "I like this Shakespeare sonnet because..." then we can explore those reasons. EG, one might praise Shakespeare's sonnets for their rich use of rhetoric, and that they are rich in rhetoric might be true, but that being true doesn't mean anyone has to appreciate that quality. So much of our appreciating art comes down to nothing more than whether we like or dislike the same qualities that we recognize are there; just as many hate as love Milton for his "grand style," to use Leavis's phrase.

Given the above, any time someone says "I believe in God because..." they're moving into an area where science has some authority. Saying that science can't prove gods do or don't exist isn't really the point, since science can no more prove that ANY mythological beings do or don't exist, but it can certainly explore people's reasons for thinking they do. It can explore it psychologically, cognitively, physically, historically, etc. Really, what science has done, quite well IMO, is knock down all of the reasons that for centuries people had for believing in God. We couldn't fathom how the universe got here, how life got here, how humans got here, where lightning came from, where fire came from, why plagues happened, etc. Now we have cosmology and abiogenesis and evolution and physics and biology; what's more, we have the cognitive sciences that can explore why we assumed the existence of supernatural agencies to begin with and continue to invoke them in our lives, that can point out all of the biases that we fall victim to in trying to proclaim causes for any phenomena we don't understand.



Those dudes talking about notes in wine, doing those taste samplings, and mixing different herbs and spices to bring out other flavors, I think there's something to that. People can talk about anything; people talk about using magic quantum purifiers or godlike cables to make audio sound better: http://redspade-audio.blogspot.com/2011/02/bybee-quantum-purifier-snake-oil_16.html and http://www.nordost.com/products/power-cords/odin-supreme-reference/odin-supreme-reference-power-cord.php

Those latter cables also cost over $10,000 and, yes, I know people that have them and swear they can hear a difference. I don't think it takes a genius to understand, one, why such manufacturers would claim they make a difference and, two, why many would believe they do. Also, here's a thorough thread with links to such claims and ABX tests: http://www.head-fi.org/t/486598/testing-audiophile-claims-and-myths

There have been lots of wine tests done as well. Here's one story: http://www.forbes.com/sites/katiebell/2012/07/09/is-there-really-a-taste-difference-between-cheap-and-expensive-wines/ but google "expensive vs cheap wine test" and you can find many, many more.

[Lokasenna]

I love it. And it does not even come as a surprise. How did you arrive at such an obscure niche?

The answer to that is 'at university' - which I suppose highlights another potential advantage of a university education in Literature, insofar as it tends to expose students to a wider body of literature than they are perhaps used to after going through fairly restrictive high-school syllabi. At school, the only medieval literature I had read had been a bit of Chaucer at A-Level, and thus I arrived at university having almost no knowledge of anything pre-Renaissance - the vast majority of my peers were in the same situation.

Luckily for me, my first university had a compulsory 'Introduction to Medieval Literature' module; our first week's assignment was to read several of the Anglo-Saxon elegies in the Exeter Book, and I remember sitting down to read The Wanderer fully expecting it to be either tedious or incomprehensible. By the time I reached the end of the poem, I was fighting back tears because it moved me so much. At that instant I knew that I had found my niche. A couple of weeks later, they had us make a stab at some short Icelandic sagas - I found them captivating, intellectually challenging, and fascinating. When it came to picking my optional modules, the only sensible choice for me seemed to be to throw myself headfirst into anything Old Norse or Old English that was offered. It was about half-way through my second year that several of my tutors, apropos of nothing, started referring to when 'you have undergraduates of your own' - more than anything else, that was what made me seriously consider an academic career. Several years later, here I am - not exactly with a career, but certainly in a good position from which to fight for one!

[YesNo]

If the universal passion is blind, then the atheists are right; if the universal passion is conscious, then the believers win.

That's how I see it as well.

I would add that the consciousness in the universe would have to be something the believers can relate to, such as a poet relating to a muse or goddess or holy spirit of some sort.

In a sense the universe is already conscious since we exist in it. I don't think neuroscience is validating a view of the brain as a computer that can generate consciousness as an emergent property. That would undermine reductionism and so I'm not worried about "unfriendly AI". If we want, we can blow ourselves up on our own. We don't need to invent a machine with enough free will, that we supposedly don't even have if the determinists are right, to make a choice and do it for us.

[Ecurb]

So what area of religion do you think is inaccessible to science? I honestly can't think of any. The non-overlapping magisteria sounds like a nice defense, but falls apart under the slightest examination; Yudkowsky again: http://lesswrong.com/lw/i8/religions...ondisprovable/ I've never read a good response to that article, tbh. You keep saying "religion" but, again, religion is just a big umbrella term. Yudkowsky says it good with: "The Old Testament is a stream-of-consciousness culture dump: history, law, moral parables, and yes, models of how the universe works," and I don't see any of those things as being off-limits to science......

Given the above, any time someone says "I believe in God because..." they're moving into an area where science has some authority. Saying that science can't prove gods do or don't exist isn't really the point, since science can no more prove that ANY mythological beings do or don't exist, but it can certainly explore people's reasons for thinking they do. It can explore it psychologically, cognitively, physically, historically, etc. Really, what science has done, quite well IMO, is knock down all of the reasons that for centuries people had for believing in God. We couldn't fathom how the universe got here, how life got here, how humans got here, where lightning came from, where fire came from, why plagues happened, etc. Now we have cosmology and abiogenesis and evolution and physics and biology; what's more, we have the cognitive sciences that can explore why we assumed the existence of supernatural agencies to begin with and continue to invoke them in our lives, that can point out all of the biases that we fall victim to in trying to proclaim causes for any phenomena we don't understand.

.

Science can, I suppose, “have some authority” in addressing questions about religion. However, scientific attempts to understand religion have not been, in general, successful. I don’t mean to imply that such attempts have been incorrect; instead, I would argue that they haven’t been enlightening, illuminating, sophisticated, or valuable. The reasons that you posit for supernatural explanations of natural phenomena may very well have influenced religion – but how are we to investigate that “scientifically”? How does humans’ desire for “explanation” allow us to discuss the wide divergence of supernatural “explanations” of natural phenomena? What (indeed) does positing such a deep-seated human “need” add to our understanding of either religion or humans? Is there any evidence to support it, or is it mere speculation?

My own academic training includes an M.A. in Cultural Anthropology, slightly shopworn after a couple of decades. I bring it up here to suggest that “scientific” approaches to literature probably haven’t been much more enlightening than those to religion. I don’t know – perhaps some posters who are familiar with scientific approaches to literature can enlighten me. In general, it seems to me that scientific approaches to the humanities have been disappointing.

Here’s one example from Cultural Anthropology: One “school” of cultural anthropology in the U.S. was the “culture and personality” school. This was one of the leading anthropological approaches in the U.S. in the middle of the last century. Leading practitioners included Ruth Benedict and Margaret Mead. Benedict wrote, “Culture is personality writ large.” The (neo-Freudian) idea (very simply) was that adult personality was reflected in the cultural institutions of the society, which included the child-rearing practices, which, in turn, influenced adult personality. In terms of religion, anthropologists posited that in societies in which the father figure was remote and authoritarian (like Freud’s Vienna, for example), God would tend to be male, remote, and authoritarian.

It all made sense – but it turned out to be incorrect. Cross-cultural data bases (Human Relations Area Files) showed that such correlations could not be statistically confirmed..

I know next to nothing about scientific approaches to literature. Are any of them enlightening? Do they add something of value to our understanding of literature? Some scientific approaches to culture have been successful – the examples generally cited include linguistics and economics. Claude Levi-Strauss (for example) tried to apply the methods of structuralism in linguistics to the study of myths and to the study of culture in general. The results were intriguing – but I’m not sure we could call them “scientific”. What about new forms in poetry? Can they be developed “scientifically”?

One more question to morpheus: Do you think watching videos is identical to watching films? I think the difference between watching a video and watching a film in a theater may not be as great as that between viewing a painting in a museum and seeing a reproduction in an art book -- but it still exists. I notice that in the "rate the last film" thread, most people seem to be rating videos. Personally, I FAR prefer films in the theater to videos -- but maybe I'm like the wine critic who is influenced more by the bottle than the wine.

[desiresjab]

The application of projective geometry to painting and drawing was a visual success. The application of metrics to language was a resounding one.