Misleading metaphors
economist.com
economist.com
http://www.frameworksinstitute.org/mission.html
For a practical intro, see "How to build a metaphor to change people's minds"
https://aeon.co/essays/how-to-build-a-metaphor-to-change-peo...
And if you already read it, I for one would welcome further study on these lines if you know it!
There are many others really. It's a pervasive metaphor (sovereign debt = household debt) that leads to fundamental confusions about how governments, individual citizens and private industry, and imports/exports, interact. Many austerity-hawks are sometimes unknowingly, sometimes very knowingly, repeating it ad nauseum.
Too much sovereign debt is bad, but that is in specific contexts. Most governemnts require debt in order to secure credit (as in the USA immediately after securing independence). It's MUCH more complicated and flexible than household debt. The flexible part is often what is lost in the metaphor.
http://blogs.reuters.com/great-debate/2013/01/14/why-public-...
Business debt is used for productivity and not just consumption. However, in both the case of business debt and sovereign debt, the return on the extra capital would have to exceed the interest rate on the debt.
I disagree with your analysis of public universities, however. The cost of university has grown substantially over the last 50 years with no real change in education quality. That implies there is some underlying reason for that cost disease. Besides, if everyone in the US goes to university, and the government pays for university education, there really isn't a change in who pays for tuition -- people either pay for it with a loan or they pay for it with taxes. At least if they pay for it with a loan they aren't forced to pay for someone else's education without receiving any benefit from it.
Theories: Tell us what something is. According to Derman, theories “deal with the world on its own terms, absolutely.”
Models: Tell us what something is partially like. According to Derman, models are “reductions in dimensionality that always simplify and sweep dirt under the rug.”
Metaphors: Models can be compared to Metaphors. Metaphors are relative descriptions that compare it to something similar, but better understood through theories or real life applications.
"A model is a metaphor, not the thing itself. Good metaphors compare something we don’t understand, to something we think we do. Based on this, a model is simple and of limited applicability when compared to the real thing as it focuses on some parts rather than the whole. It is a caricature which overemphasizes some features at the expense of others."
[1] http://bit.ly/dermanmodels [2] https://medium.com/pnr-paper/metaphors-models-theories-fb406...
Since when? Please show me an example of this..
(Edit: I'm certain that we can find examples from the legal systems of other countries and cultures, if we bother to look.)
http://csswashtenaw.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/Rule_of_T...
https://books.google.com/books?id=-IpmCgAAQBAJ&pg=PA105&dq=r...
> English common law before the reign of Charles II permitted a man to give his wife "moderate correction", but no "rule of thumb" (whether called by this name or not) has ever been the law in England.[2][8][d]
In other words, beating of wives was historically an acceptable practice under English Common law, notwithstanding my mistakenly using a debunked anecdote.
Thank you for "moderately correcting" me.
(edit: And to further the original point that historically English Common law allowed for wife-beating, from wikipedia:
> Prior to the mid-1800s, most legal systems viewed wife beating as a valid exercise of a husband's authority over his wife.
You're assuming "moderate correction" means wife beating. In fact, if you look at the source Wikipedia cites for that phrase, it says:
>Such corrections specifically excluded beatings in favor of temporarily confining the wife to the household (like making a child sit in the corner). In fact, no British law, Common or Parliamentary, ever permitted wife beating under any circumstances.
(edit: Perhaps I was confused by this quote:
> "In the early 1800s most legal systems implicitly accepted wife-beating as a husband’s right, part of his entitlement"
> https://www.britannica.com/topic/domestic-violence)
I took that to include English Common law (the article I quoted doesn't make that clear.) Bully to the English for always providing legal protection to their women!
> “Calories in, calories out” is more than a banal restatement of the Law of Conservation of Energy: it is a metaphor casting the metabolism as akin to a current account. Weight gain is then simply a matter of depositing more than you withdraw. But that ignores the role of hormones and appetite; differences in the way different foods are metabolised and the way the body reacts to prolonged deprivation by hoarding fat and slowing down. No wonder diets rarely work
Speaking of misleading stories, diets do work. People just don't stick to them because they're super difficult. We are hard-wired physiologically to crave food, and it can be near impossible socially to stick to a diet. It's not because something is wrong with the phrase "calories in, calories out". Which isn't even a metaphor, by the way, so why is this diatribe here? This specious argument is saying we should ignore the primary factor and instead worry about the margins. Person to person variance in caloric digestion is in the low percentages for almost everyone. Nearly everyone gets the same 230 calories from McDonalds French fries. Sure, someone might absorb a little more and get 245 and someone else might absorb a little less and get 215, but skipping them is an order of magnitude more effective for everyone.
The problem is that common examinations of diet focus on this math rather than what motivates humans to eat. It is like saying 'the problem with traffic is too many cars.' It is an axiom that does nothing to examine the causes. Admonishing everyone to 'drive less' will do very little unless several other systems are changed.
Eating less is entirely a personal willpower issue.
The problem is if we could just increase will power for everyone, we'd cause more problems than we'd solve. Too much "will power" means literally insane people. You'll have people exercising until they die of exhaustion/stroke/etc. You'll generate anorexics. You have psychopaths since willpower overwhelms every other consideration. People pursuing self-destructive dead ends all over the place because they no longer listen to their bodies, their peers, or just plain common sense to STOP.
We cannot just increase will power. The problem is with the other side: the body thinks it's starving, so is triggering extremely loud survival instincts that overwhelm will power. We don't want to make will power so great that it always overcomes survival instincts (like the need for sleep, pain in a tooth or a sliver, etc... all these are things we want people to still respond to so they don't kill themselves), we want to tamp down this false survival instinct of hunger to that of a normal person.
I don't understand your argument. How does the OP just talking about increasing willpower, equate to advocating for people to ignore their survival instincts? Or do you consider any act of increasing willpower something that will eventually lead to someone ignoring their own life?
But ignoring all that, people want practical weight-loss programs that work in the real world, not just on paper. Personally, I don't see the point in arguing about methodology when one can simply 'practice what they preach' and show that it works. People have been losing excess fat in various ways without killing themselves, so it seems like there are multiple solutions to this problem.
If you just increased willpower to overcome this much stronger hunger drive, you'll have increased will power beyond any kind of equilibrium with the other (weaker) survival instincts, thus increasing the probability of some unintended problem.
The solution isn't to just increase willpower, as will power isn't lacking and increasing it more could cause problems. The solution is to address the real issue: the body's exaggerated response (i.e. releasing hormones which cause the sensation of hunger even when the individual is overweight) to fighting caloric restriction.
Getting exercise sucks, it makes you exhausted, it hurts because you're literally harming your body in the short term so that it heals stronger, and it requires will power to go out and do every day and do it. Your body is doing all it can to prevent unnecessary expenditure of energy.
Is the solution to this just to make some crazy ass pill that solves all these issues? Or is it to just deal with it and exercise?
If and when someone does invent a crazy ass pill that replicates all the benefits of exercise without the effort, I'll gladly embrace it. The self-discipline-and-enduring-suffering part of exercise is just a means to an end, not a virtue in itself.
Even if you could magically increase willpower way beyond the usual to counter the body's exaggerated hunger drive (that science says you experience during AND especially /after/ losing weight when you're obese), it'd almost certainly cause other problems.
You've got to address the root cause, which is the body's ill-adjusted response to maintaining a negative caloric balance for weight loss. Obese people who try to lose weight have just as much will power as a normal person.
"It's just a matter of willpower"--as one of my sibling commentors so thickly puts it--is theoretically true, it's just that a lot more willpower is required out of some people than others.
I found out personally that focusing on willpower doesn't work very well, thinking that way makes it easier to fail mentally. You're trying to focus everything you have on not eating food, and judging your strength by whether you succeed. It's like the psych test of trying not to think of a polar bear. (http://www.apa.org/monitor/2011/10/unwanted-thoughts.aspx) Trying not to think about something is harder than thinking about something, and doubly harder than the habits we don't think about. Focusing on willpower is setting up such a monumental task that almost nobody can achieve, and the very few people that do have mentally trained for it.
It does take me the right mental frame of mind to stick to a reduced calorie diet, but I don't consider it willpower, it's more of a way of thinking and arranging my life so that I don't need willpower. It's almost opposite of willpower. I think about what I should do and how I should feel, instead of what I shouldn't, and I form new habits so that I don't have to think about it all the time or use the power of my will to overcome my tendencies.
I'm not sure but I feel like women generally have it harder when it comes to calorie reduction. My wife has to eat under 1500 to lose weight as well, and she's active and doesn't have bum knees or thyroid problems. Either way, that stinks for you mom. Does she regret her previous sport life at all now, or does she have fond memories?
And it's not just a matter of willpower.
If you add up the calories in the food you eat, then subtract the calories you burn through exercise, respiration, beating heart, etc., you cannot compute weight gain or loss.
That's because the body doesn't use 100% of calories in food. Some calories are never absorbed and are excreted as waste. And if you eat a big meal and then you don't exercise immediately to offset it, the excess calories are not automatically converted to fat.
And different bodies have different metabolisms, which is nearly impossible to quantify in any practical way. In fact, cutting back on calorie intake can actually cause some bodies to add fat.
So the whole idea of applying a simplistic equation to a complex and dynamic process like this probably does more harm than good.
Most people are able to lose their weight fast once they get motivated and are in a place where they can form a good habit. Habit forming requires so staying power and ability to live in some amount of discomfort. When people difficulties in life, or become depressed, food is good excellent way improve mood temporarily. Food works as instant antidepressant for mild depression. It's long term effects for mental health are usually negative.
Many people (me included) feel few days of extreme hopelessness and loss of meaning in life if they fast. If person cant accept periods of mental discomfort, but treats them as emergencies that need to be solved and not endured, there is no way he/she can get anything done that requires more than average effort.
If we would treat self-control as major issue in health and life even for normal mentally healthy people, we could tackle the issue directly without negative connotations and shame.
You just invoked the misleading "brain as a computer" metaphor. I know, it wasn't intentional, and you probably didn't mean it in the way most people would understand the term, but do give the article the benefit of the doubt that these concepts are such commonplaces in our spoken language that they can affect our thinking if we're not careful.
What I took away from the article is that decisions with serious consequences such as judicial sentencing, managing our health, and massive government policies are made on overly confident assumptions that descriptive metaphorical explanations are definitive statements of reality. This happens because the convenience of language around the terms confuses people.
1580s, "one who passes judgment," from Middle French critique (14c.), from Latin criticus "a judge, literary critic," from Greek kritikos "able to make judgments," from krinein "to separate, decide" (from PIE root krei- "to sieve," thus "discriminate, distinguish"). Meaning "one who judges merits of books, plays, etc." is from c. 1600. The English word always had overtones of "censurer, faultfinder."*
http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=critic&allowed_in_f...
That is, you literally cannot use the term "critical thinking" without employing metaphor.
1. Dismiss stress, by badly redefining what stress is.
2. People "snapping": Just mention it, but do not explain why is a bad metaphor. Maybe he/she deleted the paragraph, maybe he/she do not care for a coherent article?
3. Dismiss healthy food
4. Do not understand DNA
5. more badly explained things
6. “war on drugs” - finally something, but this is PROPAGANDA not a bad metaphor. It is intentional.
7. "War on terror" - I this case, when "war on terror" is "war on ISIS" is not a bad metaphor, they've uniforms and a territory.