Portable Ideas
raganwald.posterous.com
raganwald.posterous.com
3 And he spake many things unto them in parables, saying, Behold, a sower went forth to sow;
4 And when he sowed, some seeds fell by the way side, and the fowls came and devoured them up:
5 Some fell upon stony places, where they had not much earth: and forthwith they sprung up, because they had no deepness of earth:
6 And when the sun was up, they were scorched; and because they had no root, they withered away.
7 And some fell among athorns; and the thorns sprung up, and choked them:
8 But other fell into good ground, and brought forth fruit, some an hundredfold, some sixtyfold, some thirtyfold.
That would be a good analogy if the post was actually about spreading ideas in as many bubbles as possible and hoping one bubble picks it up.
The post is actually about making 1 idea of high enough quality and insight such that it can be transferred from one bubble (yours) to the next by the "edges".
So you'd have to find a parable that speaks of getting a good seed and planting it in your garden, in the hopes that the flower that grows from it spreads its seeds to your neighbors!
Eschew what's popular and what gets attention. Seek the fundamental instead. This is the difference between learning about Ruby because Rails is the current big thing versus knowing enough to be interested in Ruby because it embodies the objects+messages model and you find that beautiful. (And if you value the objects+messages model because it was a big thing in academia at some point, you are still missing the point!)
Programming has many of the features of "pop-culture" because the rate of change in the field is faster than the rate of actual progress. Learn in-depth the actual progress.
EDIT: Switched the positions of fundamental and portable, since fundamental => portable.
This is an awkward phrase, as the word "fundamentalist" carries anti-intellectual baggage.
...inexperience in expression tends towards bad outcomes. I have no scientific evidence for this...
You now have one data point.
Some, like homoiconicity and macros, have been shot down whenever they tried to “achieve escape velocity"
It was the idea that "Fundamental ideas are portable ideas" I was having problems with. Some are. Some aren't.
I love Lisp - and love the fact that other languages do more of the things that Lisp does. But in some cases it's taken decades for those features to get general acceptance. Fundamental ideas don't seem any more or less likely to become portable.
To pick another example - I can remember being actively mocked by many different people in the eighties for the idea that any of object-oriented languages, garbage collected languages, or languages running on virtual machines would ever be used outside of academia (despite the fact that I was working on a RAD environment that included all three with some very happy industry customers :-)
Fundamental ideas don't seem any more or less portable than any other kind of idea as far as I can see - the context and the language used to express the idea is much more important.
This is probably backwards.
Often one has to sit back and wonder how reasonable, decent people can support horrible policies such as banning gay marriage, torture, and so on. At least part of the reason for this is because those in power who want to enact these policies have mastered the art of making them portable outside their own extremist spheres. They do this by "attaching" these ideas to more innocent, pure, and (generally) positive beliefs that are universally held by many conservatives, if not all Americans: love of country, love of God, the fear of harm to your children, belief in fairness, belief that hard work begets success, belief in the benefits of family and community, and so on.
The magic that makes it possible for decent, loving, hard working people to support things like torture is by making the idea of torture "portable" into their worldview, by hanging it onto one or more of these core beliefs. If you don't support torture, you're not protecting your children. If you support gay marriage, you're laying the groundwork for families to unravel. It's all bullshit, of course, but these are the root things people are being convinced of: not that torture is good, or that gay marriage is evil (though it often morphs into that), but that these things are natural conclusions based upon beliefs you already have. It takes the work of an evil genius to figure out how to connect these two things together and make them portable towards groups of people who have otherwise innocent and positive beliefs, but we see it happening every day.
this is a basic principle of all propaganda, right wing, left wing, anti gay, pro gay, white suprematism, black power, the list goes on.
Let's give these banks just a little trillion dollars or our country would suffer. Let's burn just a few Jews in the furnace or they would sell our country. Let's take all the money from the rich and kill them and make everyone equal(ly poor). Let's bomb these Muslims into the Stone Age because they threat our children. Let's help those Muslims kill Serbs or World Democracy is in danger. Let's allow these morons squeeze our balls and tits or our airplanes would fall from the skies.
It's just marketing, a way to sell the bad idea to people and make them feel happy. It has nothing to do with right and left.
Side note: the pattern "accept <wrong> to prevent <worse>" is of course not bad in itself, but rather when false assumptions are used to connect <wrong> and <worse>...
Identifying it in those you disagree with is easy. How about how it affects you?
What definition of "torture" are we using?
For example, suppose someone comes from a culture that stones gay men. Is it "torture" to force them to witness a gay marriage? How about two men kissing? How about two men making love? If said "torturee" is male, how about having him be kissed by a man?
I note that some folks have serious problems with menstrual blood. How about wiping fake blood on them, telling them that it is MB?
I can't be sure whether your country's mind was changed by our Eighth Air Force, or by our allies in the Red Army. Perhaps the first seeds of "change" were planted even earlier, by the British Navy. And of course we can't forget about Napoleon, now, can we?
What's certain, however, is that with the right application of military force, this same enlightened populace could be compelled to either return to its old views, or adopt new ones even more enlightened.
You should read more old books. It would teach you to be less confident in condemning people who disagree with you - as just about everyone born before the 20th century, in any country, did. Do you hate them all, and consider yourself morally superior? Really?
It's almost as if you didn't read my post at all. You claim that I hate the people who disagree with me, when the entire point of my post is that I can sympathize with those who disagree with me if their basic assumption is that their viewpoints say, on torture, are grounded in the (misguided, force-fed) belief that torture is necessary to protect family and country.
One of the strange things you might discover, if as an American communist ("liberal" being, of course, a euphemism) you try living abroad, is the number of cultural tropes you share with American fundamentalists and don't share with European communists. (This discovery is forced on all Foreign Service brats by the fact that our embassies, while staffed by State Department communists, still have to be guarded by Marine fundamentalists.)
Your sympathy could be quite easily mistaken for contempt. And you don't think NPR is ever manipulative, at all, ever? When you try watching Fox News, you're eating very, very low off the hog. Try reading, say, the Claremont Review of Books.
Or here - test your open-mindedness in one step. Read a book by a Confederate:
http://archive.org/details/serviceafloatwar00semmrich
Nyah nyah nyah, I dare you.
If you have a problem with my argument as it relates to the original post of this thread, why not address it directly so we can all learn something, instead of us taking us so far afield with these personal attacks on these cartoonish strawmen that you are constructing? It's hard for me to take it personally since you are arguing with a figment of your imagination.
You were being patronizing, which is an easily recognizable form of contempt. I'm taking the same attitude toward you, in the perhaps vain hope that it might help you see how rude you're being. I'm also quite happy to classify you culturally as a function of your belief system, which is once again good for the gander.
As it happens, I don't have a problem with either "torture" or gay marriage. However, because I have been exposed to plenty of perfectly intelligent arguments for waterboarding and against gay marriage, I can tell you haven't been. No, I would not recommend Fox News as an introduction to conservative thought - try Burke. Or better yet Maistre. And have some more arugula, preferably with the chevre.
(Also, if you think there's a meaningful difference between American communism and "socialism" or "radicalism" or "progressivism" or "liberalism," I suggest the following exercise - pick an arbitrary NYT obituary of anyone over 80, ie anyone who was an adult in the '40s, and try to classify your subject as "communist," "socialist," "progressive" or "liberal." Unless you say that only a card-carrying CPUSA member can be a "communist," which is an abuse of the English language, you'll find no basis for any such distinction.)
And yes, I've read Burke and other conservative thinkers of the past. If you think these viewpoints have anything to do with mainstream "conservatism" in America, I don't know what to tell you.
Can I stereotype you again? You've read a ten-page excerpt of Burke in your sophomore poli-sci reader. Like claiming to know all about Mexico because you once spent a week in Acapulco. The rest of the country being, of course, "horrible." Why risk Montezuma's revenge? Go read the Regicide Peace, cover to cover, then come back and talk about Burke:
http://archive.org/details/thoughtsonprospe00burkiala
What was offensive about your post was not that you claimed certain views were "horrible," but that you assumed this position on the way to an entirely separate argument. Moreover, your approach to those who held these views was not to argue with them, but to patronize them.
You even appeared touched by great and tender concern for the poor Fox News viewer - a concern which can't possibly be genuine, because we can only be genuinely concerned with those we actually know and interact with. If you knew and interacted with ordinary American conservatives while talking this way about them, you'd receive a swift punch in the nose or at least its digital equivalent.
In short, you've seen the usual story about the "brogrammer" who talks about women as if there were no women in the room. s/women/conservatives. While I am not even slightly deluded as to the health of American "conservatism" (the scare quotes, for once, are entirely appropriate), I consider the importance of good manners all the greater when the victim doesn't have the iron fist of the EEOC in her back pocket.
Also, the tactic of patronizing me in a manner to make me realize I am being patronizing, while clever, doesn't really open me up to being receptive to hearing what you have to say.
You don't often see conservatives in America arguing the subtle role of government and where the line can be drawn on these issues, and where it ought to be drawn. This is the conversation that we should be having on these topics, and we are not. However, they are quick to point out where government intervention goes too far in some areas, such as in tax law. This asymmetry is striking and leads me to believe there is something deeper going on.
My original post was postulating a clear, at least to me, example of two issues that have been strategically complected with other portable ideas to most of America. This process results the arguments we hear rest not upon the ethical/moral/legal nature of the acts themselves, but upon the potential consequences of not doing them. This is a red flag: it points to arguments that are coming from somewhere, but not from the overt facts and historical context of those specific issues, but deeper, more subtle shared values that override those matters. There is a reason, after all, that it is the right wing in this country identifies themselves as "values voters" and has "values voter summits." Its because they share these common ideals and their views on specific issues often framed in a way to fall out of these ideals.
My point is that the right wing media perverts and simplifies issues in order to shoehorn them into fitting into this ideological framework to make them portable to many people. The nice thing about controlling the message is that you can often find arguments to tie either side of an issue to general, broad ideals. The result, of course, is massive surface-level hypocrasy ("Get your government hands off my medicare") but internal, hidden, consistency due to the fact that their views tie back to a few basic ideals.
It is this phenomenon I was getting at with my post, and I was hoping you would attack these points more directly, instead of coming to the defense of classical conservatism (which I am not attacking, and is largely dead) and telling me I am being patronizing by saying people are being manipulated despite the well understood, documented, and measured phenomenon of Fox News in the U.S. misleading viewers and manipulating them by tying complicated issues to very simplistic ideals in a way that suits their agenda and takes reasoned debate off the playing field.
I won't reply to your next response in order to give you the last word. I appreciate you making the time to respond to my posts and I hope on good faith you will restrain yourself from further ad hom attacks and your, as you admit yourself, patronizing tone.
Your whole vision of the way "the right-wing media" "controls the message" could uncharitably be described as a "conspiracy theory," a term I'd like to avoid (not least because real conspiracies do exist in real history). It's perhaps more neutral to say that it has nothing to do with reality.
The reason that American conservatives believe the things they believe is that those things seem obvious to them, and no one has yet succeeded in convincing them otherwise. In the long term (by your "decades" definition) we see a gradual retreat, as you can see from evidence like this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Proposition_14_(1963...
(Yes, in 1963 it seemed obvious to an overwhelming majority of Californians that segregated housing was a good idea. Fortunately, the new enlightened Californians have proved them wrong with the enlightened rainbow society we've created. If only 1963 could see how great California is today! Ha, ha, ha.)
Fox News is an entirely demotic, grass-roots organization. Its goal is to make money, and it makes money by showing its viewers a reality they find credible. You could say it reinforces their existing beliefs, but even this would be ascribing some conspiratorial intent beyond making money. Murdoch sure does make a lot of that.
It's only the American left that has genuine leadership institutions which work to frame the debate. There is no right-wing Harvard. There is no right-wing New York Times. There are various small scattered circles of intellectuals, generally poorly funded. The only professional conservatives are neoconservatives, ie, post-Trotskyists. Nothing at all survives of either McCarthyism or isolationism, the two even remotely effective oppositions to the New Deal heritage - both comical by pre-20th century standards, American or European. In short, American conservatism is a pathetic joke, and any liberal who worries about it is a paranoid.
Why do so many liberals have this vision of Dr. Evil cleverly twisting the minds of innocent Ohioans? In a word, projection. It is simply impossible for the liberal to fathom how pathetic and inept his so-called opponents are. In part this is because he wants to think of himself as the oppressed underdog, rather than the ruling establishment.
Here's a wonderful example of the "framing" mentality I recently found, in the wild, by a respected and intelligent commenter on the extremely erudite Crooked Timber:
But I’d say, just because affirmative action is a lonely and isolated victory doesn’t mean we should abandon it. I also think that fighting for other lonely and isolated victories is… the best we can do. This is basically what I took away from MLK’s letter from a Birmingham prison. We are never really going to get the apathetic white moderates on board with a radical change, but we can hope to somehow create a new more radical status quo and then over time get apathetic white moderates on board with what’s now the status quo. So each policy we manage to get enacted is shaky and not well-supported for, like, 50 years. Then it will have become normal enough that we can repaint the landscape: the policy will probably still be contentious, but if we gradually repaint things right, it will be the people trying to undo the policy that will look like radicals.
http://crookedtimber.org/2012/04/14/needless-to-say-part-ii/...
I find this an extremely representative picture of the complexity and deviousness of the 20th-century American "liberal" mind. You're playing 3-D chess. Your opponents are playing tic-tac-toe, and not very good tic-tac-toe at that. Is it possible that if you can first overcome your fear, you can later learn to overcome your hatred?
I've been on Hacker News a while, and have noticed across many posts that raganwald often writes well meaning, but sexist comments. He seems like a nice guy, and I've actually considered writing him a polite email about it.
But I end up not doing it. For no other reason than it's really hard and time consuming. When you criticize someone, it's understandably met with resistance. And if you make any kind of rhetorical mistakes whatsoever, people will take the opportunity to discount your entire position. It's a minefield. And there's so much sexism in the world, there's not enough hours in the day to write "portable" responses to all of it. Writing an "angry" blog post is often as far as one can get.
And so while I appreciate raganwald's point, that it's incredibly powerful when you can write a gentle, persuasive, portable argument.... I just don't think that's enough of a strategy for us, as a group.
I think when someone calls you out on sexism, you have some responsibility to wade through the anger and rhetorical mistakes and try to understand what their beef is..
Feel free to make suggestions here if you think they will be instructive for others as well as for me. If you prefer to make them privately, I’m reg@braythwayt.com.
Sincere thanks in advance...
Although some people complain about the fact that there are strong biases on HN, I actually think that it is not that bad, and there are plenty of topics on which the community is divided (on top of my mind: internet piracy is acceptable vs bad, windows is a good tool vs it sucks, google is evil vs it is awesome, linux will never be a good desktop environment vs it will, etc..).
I think that there is a distinction between bubbles that are created around certain opinions (windows is bad + piracy is good + linux rocks) and bubbles that are organized around values (I disagree with you but I like debating with you + I like to learn about different subjects + etc..).
Genre's are useful - they act as a nice shortcut in the bookshop if you're looking for a particular kind of book. But I never pop my head outside of the SF section I'm going to be missing out on a lot of good reading and some interesting outlooks on life.
For example - I have some fairly strong beliefs, based on the teams that I've worked with, on how design/UX and development fit together. I've learned from experience that I usually can't just jump to the "you need to play nice - look at all the advantages" pitch. Instead I have a bunch of arguments and points for developers, and a bunch of arguments and points for designers.
The talk I giving at the mostly developer GOTO Copenhagen next week is going to be very different from the one I gave at UX Cambridge last year - because of the audience not the ideas.
Once you nudge folk a little out of their comfort zone - then you can sell the larger changes that either side would have initially rejected.
Keep looking for the portable ideas - they always help. But in the mean time I'd also pay a lot of attention to why different groups reject ideas, and use the knowledge you gain there to hone your presentation to that group.
(BTW for folk who've not already come across it "Resistance as a resource" is a good read http://dhemery.com/articles/resistance_as_a_resource/ )
What does you mother think of this? I'd like to know her take on it, because she is an amazing example of someone who lives in the edge of the bubble. A black woman who became a programmer during the times when there were no women or blacks can put some insight into how to build portable ideas.
Here are some of the things I’ve tried. First, I’ve tried writing parables. Some of these seem very portable, but they also often annoy the people in the bubble who already embrace the idea and want more practical insights or advice. Nevertheless, parables have a way of side-stepping the logical critic in people’s brains and appealing directly to their emotions. Sometimes that’s a big win.
Second, I’ve tried to come up with sound bites. I’m not sure this is an effective example, but off the top of my head: “Discrimination doesn’t scale.” Sound bites are the refined sugar of ideas for good and for bad.
Third, I’ve tried to write without demonizing the people I disagree with. I tried to portray “Ted” as well-meanininged but a little too caffeinated here: http://raganwald.posterous.com/bob-and-carol-and-ted-and-ali.... But I think I blew it here: http://raganwald.posterous.com/a-position-of-the-highest-mor....
The truth is, I have no system or method for generating portable ideas, just some observations that many portable ideas have certain characteristics in common: They have emotional impact (tip 1), they are easy to remember (tip 2), and they avoid being divisive (point 3).
YMMV.
Second, I’ve tried to come up with sound bites...Sound bites are the refined sugar of ideas for good and for bad.
As you note, those are equally applicable to ideas with and without substance.
The truth is, I have no system or method for generating portable ideas, just some observations that many portable ideas have certain characteristics in common: They have emotional impact (tip 1), they are easy to remember (tip 2), and they avoid being divisive (point 3).
I'd posit that looking for ways to popularize substantive ideas will produce portable ones.
Oh, and don't be too abstract on Hacker News; they won't get it.