Call for online logic resource recommendations

Do you have any free online resources for use in freshmen level symbolic logic classes you would like to recommend?

I’m giving a talk at this years AAPT conference in Austin where people can share their recommendations for any kind of logic opencourseware. As a part of that, I’ll be promoting my version of a free online logic textbook, http://forallxremix.org/.

Do you use a free online textbook? Which one? Are there any youtube videos you like to use? Have you posted class preparations on line? Send links and recommendations to me: jloftis at lorainccc dot edu. I’m looking specifically for material that works with freshman level symbolic classes, including Aristotelian logic, sentential logic, and basic quantificational logic. I already have some resources, but need more more more! 

Untitled #1

This is the power
This is the truth of the power
This is the power of the truth of the power

See things as they are.

Paid spokesperson for a bad idea

For critical thinking classes, I want to create a series of "talking head exercises," where students have to play spokesmen for proposals that are stipulated in advance to be really bad ideas. The first scenario I thought of goes like this: There are two courses of action, and one is twice as risky as the other. Option A has a 15% chance of a Very Bad Outcome, and Option B has a 30% chance. The Payoff if the Very Bad Outcome is avoided is the same in each case. You, the student, have been hired as a TV spokesperson for Option B by an organization that for some reason (money, ideology) wants to see it happen. You need to write up a series of talking points and coaching tips to yourself for your next TV appearance.

The answer for this particular scenario would involve two bullet points:

• Emphasize  that both options have risks 
• Avoid direct quantitative comparisons. 

The spokesperson needs to say things like "Look there are no guarantees in life. Even if we took option A, there is a possibility of a Very Bad Outcome, perhaps from set of circumstances X. [Elide the fact that these circumstances are unlikely.] If we want the Payoff, we are going to take risks. All we are saying is that we should give option B a chance."

If we got really fancy, we could do role play in class, although right now I don't do any public speaking type stuff in any of my classes. It would be nice to do this in combination with studying the techniques used by people in history advocating for what we now all agree are very bad ideas, such as Bill Buckley's oh so rational arguments for segregation, or the talking points for people paid to say that cigarettes don't cause cancer.

I need more scenarios, though.

This alone provides immunization against the cavils of Dawkins-style atheists.

If you restrict yourself to beliefs that can be verified scientifically, you can't make it through your day. This alone provides immunization against the cavils of Dawkins-style atheists.

The question becomes then, what else to believe, in addition to what can be known by science. The next step that presents itself, to me at least, is to take our emotional responses to the world as at least potentially veridical. This doesn't just appear amazing, it might actually be amazing. This doesn't just appear disgusting; it is actually disgusting. We can clearly be wrong about such judgments. (When I was 17, I thought gay sex disgusting.) But we cannot be rid of all of them, or else, how do we get through our day?

Philip Pettit on Republicanism

Periodically I hear people try to explain the difference between the Republican and Democratic party in America by linking the Republican party with a tradition of republicanism that starts with the Roman Republic and goes through the founding fathers. Democrats are then linked to some dreadful rabble-rouser like Andrew Jackson. But Pettit's take on the republican tradition seems to say this this is all backwards. First of all republicanism is contrasted with classical liberalism, which the libertarian wing of the republican party claims as their ancestry. Second, Pettit's republican tradition has a strong tradition of government protection against private domination, which is really the thing that links all the elements of the current Democratic coalition together. It is the one thing that labor, women, ethnic, religious and sexual-orientation minorities all require.

In other news, if I listen to philosophy, rather than music on my run, I tend to walk more.

Pleasure and the present moment

Intense athletic training often causes the athlete to focus intensely on the present moment in a way that distorts the overall perception of time. (This is sometimes called the flow state.) Many meditation practices also get you to focus on the present moment, as does smoking dope. In cognitive science terms, you can characterize this focus as a constriction of the window of short term memory. (This at least describes the experience of smoking dope, which can create such a narrow window of short term memory that it cannot hold a longish sentence The beginning of the sentence drops out of your mind by the time you get to the end, and you forget what you are saying.)

All of these states are considered pleasant. But is it intrinsically pleasant to have your window of short term memory constricted? If there were drug that only constricted your window of short term memory, and did not have other euphoria-inducing agents, would the drug still be fun?

"about one-sixth of eating disorders can be blamed on cultural environment"

This interview (found via this salon article) makes some very good points. This is the quote people are talking about:

Therapists pretty much agree that there are three main causes of eating disorders, and most of us who get them have a combination of the three. One is your genetics. Second is your physiology, like the biology of your actual brain—your personality. Some people are incredibly resilient and slough off difficult messages; other people are not. In my book I call them Velcro; things stick to them. I’m Velcro. The third thing is environment. Environment is broken into two parts: the environment of your home, what your mom and dad said to you, the behaviors they modeled. The other part of environment is culture. So about one-sixth of eating disorders can be blamed on cultural environment, like the pictures we’re shown. That’s what I mean when I say skinny models don’t cause eating disorders. I just think that’s completely oversimplified and kind of ridiculous. If we magically were able to suddenly change the images we see in order to be diverse in all ways, gradually that part of the pressure would relieve itself. But it wouldn’t relieve that need of a girl to control her food intake because she can’t control her life.

A lot of this must be oversimplifying. Genetics and physiology are intertwined, so any attempt to separate them as causes must be a little arbitrary. She also exaggerates her own position when she jumps from "about one-sixth of eating disorders can be blamed on cultural environment" to "I say skinny models don’t cause eating disorders."

Still, I think there is something basically right here. It jibes also with the stories reported in conjunction with the trend of exporting the American style of mental illness. (See also here.) People in Hong Kong used to develop a form of anorexia different than the American model. They refused to eat, but not because they thought they were fat. However as more American culture got picked up in the Chinese speaking world, the way people talked about the illness changed. It became something about women wanting to look thin when it wasn't before.

The fact that a style of mental illness can be based in a culture and then exported is fascinating in itself. But what is also interesting is that we can talk about anorexia separately from its current cultural connotations. Even minus the skinny models, people can develop pathological desire not to eat.

Kaptur vs. Kucinich.

Redistricting has pitted two of the House's most progressive democrats against each other in the democratic primary for our district: Dennis Kucinich and Marcy Kaptur. Kaptur is from Toledo. Kucinich is from Cleveland. The legislature has gerrymandered a district that includes every progressive household alon I-90 between the two cities. We have to decide whom to vote for.

Kucinich is well known on the national stage. Kaptur I know less about. But...

She has a lot more seniority (=power) in the House than Kucinich. In fact she ranks 25 in seniority and sits on the Appropriations committee. Kucinich is 125th, and has no good committee posts. The Kaptur campaign is playing this as a "workhorse vs. showhorse" contest.

Kaptur has progressive bone fides. She was named "most valuable house member" in 2008 by The Nation, and is a member of the House Progressive Caucus.

On the other hand, Kucinich has a slightly more progressive voting record than Kaptur, particularly on peace and civil liberties issues. Plus he does things like introduce articles of impeachment against Dick Cheney.

Kucinich is has also made noises about a Cleveland issue that doesn't seem to be on Kaptur's radar: the soon-to-collapse-catastrophically Inner Belt Bridge. The bridge is the same age and design as one that collapsed in Minnesota recently, and generally has lanes closed to decrease the amount of weight on it at any given time.

So, we've got our mail-in ballots, and need to figure this out.

Bleg: Web hosting for my version of a logic textbook.

I want to create a simple webpage to promote a version of a free logic textbook that I have been working on. Basically, I want to have a dedicated website to host the .pdf file for the text, the LaTeX source file, some text promoting the virtues of the book and open access textbooks in general, supporting textbook materials, and maybe some tools for collaboration. And I should have an easy to remember URL.

I was thinking that Wordpress would be the easiest software to use. What should I do for hosting? Pick the cheapest host that partners with Wordpress? Will there be much of a learning curve with Wordpress?

The last time I created a website was almost 10 years ago, and I just wrote something in HTML and transferred it to some host using FTP software. Can you still build websites like that?

Child's play

Child's play
Originally uploaded by rob helpychalk.

Caroline and Joey were playing Buffy using the big lego set up. This is Willow, being held captive by The Master, on the evil side of the lego world.

Who is behind myedu.com, and why do they have so much information about me?

Myedu.com is a website that lets students compare professors. The main thing they have over sites like ratemyprofessor.com is that they have access to the complete grade records of each instructor, so you can select the instructor who gives out the highest number of As. Here is my profile.

I'm happy that this information is published. I would have offered it to anyone who asked. But how did myedu.com get it? Apparently, someone at LCCC has given them access to our enterprise level software, as have people at many many other colleges and universities. Now myedu.com is a for-profit company that makes its money from advertising, and probably also selling information on its registered users. They have been accused of sending spam using the emails they gather.

The founder of myedu.com got a fawning article in the New York Times, which strikes me as supremely misleading, given that they never mention that the point of the website is to find easy graders.

My question is this: if myedu.com is making money using information we gave them, why don't we get a cut? There is no reason they should be the ones to make money off information that we collect.

Return of the Big Monkey Reverse Difference Principle.

It is time to invoke what I have called in other contexts "The Big Monkey Reverse Difference Principle."

The plutocrats are motivated in part by a desire for wealth, and in part by a desire for inequality. They want to be sure to have more wealth than others. The Reverse Difference Principle is a rule for balancing these two goals. It says that equality is to be tolerated only to the extent that it benefits the best off.

Imagine two societies. One has a great deal of inequality, but the richest 1% are relatively poor. Another society has less inequality but the richest 1% are much better than the people in the first society. Now which society to you want to be a plutocrat in?

I believe it is now the job of political philosophy to convince the plutocrats of the US this truth.

Dear Chancellor Katehi

Linda P.B. Katehi
Offices of the Chancellor and Provost
Fifth floor, Mrak Hall
University of California, Davis
One Shields Avenue
Davis, CA 95616

Dear Chancellor Katehi,

I am writing to express my outrage and dismay at the actions of the UC Davis police office who pepper sprayed sitting protesters, now visible to the entire world on Youtube. The Davis Enterprise is reporting that he is Lieutenant John Pike. Numerous cell phone video and still pictures show that Pike's attack was completely unprovoked and the protesters where being assiduously nonviolent.

I have two children who will be college age in a few years. I cannot imagine sending them to an institution that treats its own students in this fashion.

I urge you to relieve John Pike of duty immediately. You also must change your policies toward Occupy protesters. The Enterprise reports that you personally ordered that the encampment be cleared. This incident makes clear the folly of using force to stop students from exercising their freedom of speech when your only justifications are "liability concerns and limited staffing."


Sincerely,

Rob Loftis

Links:

Video of the Attack.

Davis Enterprise Story on the events

UC Davis police professional standards unit. The second and command of the unit seems to be Lieutenant John Pike himself.

Office of the Chancellor: officeofthechancellor@ucdavis.edu

For Armistice Day, Two Poems about Vietnam.

By my co-worker Bruce Weigl

Song of Napalm

for my wife

After the storm, after the rain stopped pounding,
We stood in the doorway watching horses
Walk off lazily across the pasture’s hill.
We stared through the black screen,
Our vision altered by the distance
So I thought I saw a mist
Kicked up around their hooves when they faded
Like cut-out horses
Away from us.
The grass was never more blue in that light, more
Scarlet; beyond the pasture
Trees scraped their voices into the wind, branches
Crisscrossed the sky like barbed wire
But you said they were only branches.

Okay. The storm stopped pounding.
I am trying to say this straight: for once
I was sane enough to pause and breathe
Outside my wild plans and after the hard rain
I turned my back on the old curses. I believed
They swung finally away from me ...

But still the branches are wire
And thunder is the pounding mortar,
Still I close my eyes and see the girl
Running from her village, napalm
Stuck to her dress like jelly,
Her hands reaching for the no one
Who waits in waves of heat before her.

So I can keep on living,
So I can stay here beside you,
I try to imagine she runs down the road and wings
Beat inside her until she rises
Above the stinking jungle and her pain
Eases, and your pain, and mine.

But the lie swings back again.
The lie works only as long as it takes to speak
And the girl runs only as far
As the napalm allows
Until her burning tendons and crackling
Muscles draw her up
into that final position

Burning bodies so perfectly assume. Nothing
Can change that; she is burned behind my eyes
And not your good love and not the rain-swept air
And not the jungle green
Pasture unfolding before us can deny it.

Elegy for Peter

That night we drank warm whiskey
in our parked car
beyond woods now lost to the suburbs,
I fell in love with you.

What waited was the war
like a bloody curtain,
and a righteous moment
when the lovely boy’s

spine was snapped,
then the long falling into hell.
But lately, you’ve been calling me
back through the years of bitter silence

to tell me of another river of blood
and of the highland’s
howl at dusk of human voices
blasted into ecstasy.

That night in sweet Lorain
we drank so long and hard
we raised ourselves
above the broken places,

mill fires burning
red against the sky. Why
is there is no end
to this unraveling.