In the moment

Recently I’ve noticed a pattern in my creative pursuits. If I don’t do an idea as soon as I get it, it’s likely I won’t go through with it. I tend to get excited about an idea when I have it, and that’s the prime time to do it. Many times I do go through with it, and that’s awesome! But other times I’ll just write it down and hope to come back to it later. But as I said, I find that I tend to not follow through on the ideas I don’t implement immediately (or if I do follow through with them, it’s more difficult to be as passionate or excited about them as I was when I conceived the idea). 

I’ve seen this play out mostly with Conjecture. I’ll have ideas about videos I want to make or concepts I’m excited about and write them down. Many of these I’ll try to do quickly, but that definitely doesn’t happen with all of them. In fact, now that I think about it I have often been “waiting” to do a specific video I had wanted to do for a while. This is usually something I’ve put off for a while that I genuinely do want to create. But I instead wind up doing a video on some other topic that inspired me much more recently. I used to feel kind of guilty about this, but now thinking about it through this context I don’t feel as bad: it’s easier to pursue an idea in the moment than one I was excited about a while ago.

So now that I’ve realized this, I’m trying to research/film/make/do things as soon as possible after I get the idea. That’s why I’m writing this now: it’s not exactly a long or impressive blog post, but I wanted to get my thoughts out there. Hopefully I’ll be able to follow through on this idea, haha.

Reading a Book

This weekend I went on a retreat with my a cappella group, NOTA. It was a lot of fun and we spent most of our time talking and hanging out with each other. However about 2 or 3 times I wanted to excuse myself from the group to read a book I liked, one that I wanted to get back to reading. The first time I said this to the group they said something like, “Why did you bring that here? You’re with all of us!” This was asked out of pure curiosity with perhaps a hint of mild judgment. But around the second or third time I wanted to excuse myself to read, the message took a different tone: “Seriously, why are you doing that?? You can do that anytime!” These replies, I felt, were more intended to guilt me away from reading and back into spending time with them.

So I get that I could read a book anytime and that everyone is here together, but reading is something I do to relax myself. I didn’t really say that at the time, but I figured most people viewed it that way. Also it’s not like I read so much that I dropped out of all the activities we did. I participated in pretty much everything we did, and only really read when I felt like there was a lull in what we were doing. I’d say the maximum amount of time I spent reading on this day-and-a-half trip was one hour.


…Do these attitudes towards me reading seem kind of harsh? Yeah? If you think so, you’re not alone. Maybe I can offer an explanation: I wasn’t ever actually reading, and I never said I was going to go read. I said I was going to play video games.


Ah, now it makes sense—I didn’t get this treatment because I wanted to read, it was because I wanted to play video games! But...everything I said otherwise was true. For me, video games offer a kind of relaxing solace others find in reading. I want to spend time with my friends, and I did that for the vast majority of the weekend. But sometimes I just want to do the things that relax me and make me feel happy, which is often playing video games.

We have this stigma about video games that prevents many of us from seeing them as anything beyond some dumb thing that wastes our time. I see them in the same light as reading for fun, they’re experiences that engage your mind in a gripping and exciting way. I’d actually argue in many cases video games can provide more than books, like forcing your brain to think how to act in novel situations, or allowing you to experience deeply interactive scenarios not often present in books.*

I don’t want to made to feel bad about doing something I love, especially when it’s not seriously impacting my life or anyone else’s in a negative way. I just want to help others understand why this stigmatized, child’s activity might actually be more than meets the eye

<3


~~~~Footnote~~~~
*This isn’t to say that video games are more fun or better for you overall than reading is (I read a lot, by the way). Video games and books each have their strengths. Books often make me think about my worldviews and expose me to ideas I’d never before considered. Video games don’t do that very often. But video games do let me share an immediate experience with someone in a visceral way I don’t find from books. They also act as a very specific test: “how good can you be at doing XYZ?” Honestly having written this out I don’t even see why we need to compare the benefits they bring—do whichever brings you more enjoyment!

Models of Creativity Applied to Andy Weir's "The Martian"

I’ve recently been reading books and articles about creative success and I started thinking about two principles of creativity I’ve heard reiterated frequently: (1) creators are often bad at predicting which of their works will be the most successful, and (2) they usually have lots of works that aren’t as widely acclaimed before their first big hit. 

After I started generalizing these rules in my head I naturally began to think of outliers to prove them and myself wrong. I thought of Andy Weir’s “The Martian,” his debut novel which not only became a motion-picture featuring Matt Damon, but also earned him recognition and privileges from important people at NASA. This was his first novel, and he had experienced tremendous success, so here was the outlier to these rules. Or so I thought.

As I thought about the situation more, I realized it wasn’t too derivative from what I had said earlier. The first criteria checks out perfectly: Weir didn’t expect at all for the book to become the massive success it did. The second one seems difficult to counter, because this was his first novel. But it certainly wasn’t his first bit of writing. Weir kept a blog with an active reader base for a while before he began work on the novel. And he actually published his novel on his blog, chapter by chapter. He received feedback from his readers and made several big changes to the book based on his readers’ feedback. Even though the novel was perhaps his first formal and complete work, he had written many other things before it.

It doesn’t fit the model to a T, but a fit exists. I also will go back later and cite these sources…I’m just tired right now.

THERE YOU GO.

My Voice

I’m glad we had until Wednesday to write this blog because while I’ve been able to process some parts of our trip well, other parts are still coming in. Anyway, let’s begin.

One of the biggest moments of the trip happened right off the bat for me, at the Atlanta Civil and Human Rights Museum. There was a clip in an exhibit showing this…well, why don’t you just watch it below:

Every time I’ve recounted this story to someone I’ve cried. It just…I feel like I can’t adequately explain in words how this affected me. I think my writing is good, but I find it hard to convey the tones and emotions I was feeling at the time. And that’s why below I’ve attached an audio file that I recorded during the trip, a file where I spoke my mind about everything I had heard. I created this at 10:30 at night after having done MLK’s march on Washington by myself (after having done it with the group).

Like I said in the opening paragraph, I do still have to process everything I’ve heard. I have this desire to put it into a cohesive narrative, whether or not that is even necessary. But for now this audio file will do. Enjoy~

https://soundcloud.com/mattmignogna/sets/civil-rights-thoughts

Thank You, Donald Trump

Based on the things Donald Trump has said (Mexicans are rapists, let’s ban Muslims, etc.), it’s very hard to argue he’s not racist—or at least that his rhetoric isn’t. In fact when people talk about Trump I tend to hear remarks like “oh my god our country is moving backwards.” However I want to argue that Donald Trump isn't moving us backward and in fact is helping us. That seems like a ridiculous thing to say, so let me explain:

While Donald Trump is the one saying these extreme things, one man alone saying extreme things is not important. But when lots of people start to agree with him and support him, that’s when things become interesting. And yes while there are some followers who don’t believe Trump will enact his ideas and follow him more for his audacity and status as an outsider, I believe there are just as many (if not more) who genuinely believe in his ideas. Just take a look at this clip from CNN after Trump said he wanted to rid the US of Muslims.

I don’t think Trump is actually influencing anyone’s views. I think his supporters have always believed what Trump is saying, but we’re just seeing it now. These people had these views the entire time but now that there’s a high-profile public figure talking about it fearlessly, they feel safer themselves to come out with their views. Seriously, watch the CNN clip again and look at the guy interviewed at 1:10. The reporter presses him to say whether or not he agrees with Trump’s Muslims-removal plan and after looking over both his shoulders cautiously, he says yes. You can feel that he’s uncomfortable saying this because he knows it’s not a popular position. And while I don’t agree with the idea, I totally understand why he’d be scared to say something like this.

And this is why Trump is actually really important and helpful: he is empowering people to say what they believe. This shows everyone else what we’re actually dealing with. We will never be able to change peoples ideas if we don’t really know what they are. I mean, think back to the guy from the CNN clip. How could we possibly hold a meaningful conversation and attempt to understand why he feels the way he does if we never even knew how he really felt.

Here’s the bottom line: I agree with almost nothing that Trump says. But he has proved to us that we have a lot more work to do than we thought. And for that we owe him thanks.

So Good They Can't Ignore You

This is a summary of the main points in Cal Newport's book So Good They Can't Ignore You.

.....

Summary

1. "Follow your passion" is bad career advice. Many people don't have pre-existing passions and their path to finding work they loved was complicated.
2. Great work is rare and valuable so you, in return, need something rare and valuable to offer in return: career capital. This is basically high proficiency in something useful. You have to be So Good They Can't Ignore You (Steve Martin quote and the book's title). 
• To develop yourself to the point of being so good you can't be ignored, you need deliberate practice. This is practice where you intentionally force yourself to practice increasingly difficult tasks because overcoming/learning them will make you better. This part sucks, but it's how you develop skills instead of plateauing like most of us do. 
• It's easy to see this applied to athletes and musicians, but we don't tend to hold this mindset for everyone else. That is a big mistake.
3. Control over what you do and how you do it is super important. Cal calls control the "Dream-Job Elixir." This could mean leaving your job and starting a similar but more independent role or many other things. There are two traps to fall into with control, however. 
• The First Control Trap: it's dangerous to try and gain more control (leave you work, do something radical) if you don't have enough career capital to back it up.
• The Second Control Trap: once you have a lot of career capital, employers won't want to lose you and will fight to keep you on your traditional path.
• Use the Law of Financial Viability (do you have clear evidence that people are willing to pay you for your capital) to discern how much career capital you have and which control area you may be in.
4. To build work you love you cash in career capital for valuable traits like control and mission, a bigger reason or calling for your work.  
• The best ideas for mission are found at the adjacent possible (where you're at the cutting edge of your field and so you can understand things about your field that most others can't). 
• Once you have a mission you have to make it succeed, so generate small steps that produce feedback. Cal calls these little bets. 
• Finally, adopt the mindset of a marketer to make your work known. This is the Law of Remarkability: it must (1) literally compel people to remark about it, and (2) launched in a venue conducive to sharing and remarking.

One last thing I should mention: Cal argues that for most jobs it doesn't matter what you're doing specifically because you can become good at it and ultimately love doing it. However he does list three job attributes that would each prevent workers from developing following Cal's ideas.

1. Few opportunities to distinguish yourself by developing rare and valuable skills
2. Job focuses on something you believe is useless or harmful to the world
3. Job forces you to work with people you dislike

Thoughts

1. If many people don't have pre-existing passions, that means they were developed from...something. So could we potentially alter our existing passions and create new ones with some cognitive framing? I think the answer is yes. Also, we haven't experienced everything we ultimately will, so the scale we use to judge how much we like something could change drastically as we find out new awesome things we didn't know existed. 
• however, I think it's a little quick to throw out the idea of passion altogether. Obviously as people find work they love they become passionate about it, and passion also seems to describe mission. So perhaps it'd be more beneficial to think about passion after you have career capital and control rather than before or never.
2. This part I totally agree with, especially deliberate practice. It's humbling to think about how many skills of mine alone have plateaued: piano, beatboxing, singing, smash, YouTube (maybe?), and I'm sure many other that aren't coming to mind. Deliberate practice is just how you get better and we often don't do it because it's difficult...I want to focus a lot on this in my personal life, and that will be discussed more later on in this post. 
3. Control, autonomy, has come up in literature time and time again as being important to people. While reading this I tended to think of freelance-type work as one of few paths with more control, but more control could simply mean a different role in one's organization. 
• As for the second control trap, I think to the movie Get Smart with Steve Carrel. Because Steve is the company's best analyst, he's turned down for a promotion because they feel like they can't afford to lose him in his job. If Steve had read this book, he would have known that he had a lot of leverage at that point.
4. This section really loses me. I think Cal is stretching his examples to fit this category. One guy for instance is an archaeology grad who loves communicating and eventually gets a show on the discovery channel. I don't know if he needed a mission for that, he was just good at communicating and happened to come across the right people and loved doing what he did. The "little bets" were a side-result of his fervor. I think gaining enough capital to experience the adjacent possible is really important, though I don't think you need to be in the AP to experience a passion or mission. I think experiencing the AP is more reflctive of how much career capital you have rather than connected to mission. Now I do think the law of remarkability is actually quite legitimate, but I feel like it accounts more for people recognizing you for your career capital, not building a mission. 

Plans Moving Forward 

[I'll probably come back and edit this section later, just posting initial thoughts here right now]

The biggest things I took from this book are (1) that it's absolutely worthwhile to get very good at things and (2) we achieve a high level of skill only through deliberate practice. With that in mind, I want to take a more intentional approach towards completing the tasks and developing the skills I want. Specifically, applying for internships and increasing my proficiency in graphic design, coding and YouTube.

I think I should put these tasks to a schedule, doing each on certain days so I can focus exclusively on one per day. Until I apply for a fair amount of internships the internships will carry a disproportionate amount of weight. Here's the schedule:

Minimum 30 min per day on each subject:
M–Internship Application
T–YouTube
W–Internship Application
R–Photoshop Tutorial
F–Coding
Weekend–YouTube

For the Internships, I will mostly just be applying to places I've found and looking up potential opportunities. Not much deliberate practice as I see it, more of just completing a task.

For photoshop and coding I'm still learning the basics, so I'll be continuing tutorials online. That qualifies as deliberate practice because I'm learning new things that will naturally be difficult and different.

For Youtube, I had to spend more time thinking of how I can deliberately practice being "better" at what I'm doing there. For that purpose I'm going to make a list of traits I think described good YT-ers. [I'm almost finished but I have to post this at 8, sooooo I'll be coming back to it later]

1. Engaging speaker, passionate about topic
2. 
   

YouTube section:
I think I need to differentiate first whether I want to just improve my skill or also try intentionally to grow (because while connected, those are two different things). I'll talk about just improving for now.

Here's a short list of the qualities I think make YouTubers great
-they have fun with their own style.




 layout a schedule and plan to help me work on the skills I want to develop. At this moment in time, those are coding, photoshop, getting an internship (not a skill, but whatevs) and YouTube. importantly, (2) that deliberate practice is critical to becoming better at what you do.

1. I'm coming back to this.

What are the things that, right now, I want to be better at. 

photoshop, coding, youtube. 

going ham on YouTube? and i guess internship...resume.


.....
Mid-way through writing this I came across this post by my friend Serena. I had read it before and bookmarked it, and now because of its title I read it again. http://serenafulton.com/2015/05/05/why-following-your-passion-is-bad-career-advice/

Generalizing Psych Activities

In my multi-cultural psychology class we did this activity: thumb-wrestle for 1 minute and each time a partner pins the other, they get .2 extra credit points. As soon as we were told this and paired up, I said to my partner, "this makes me feel awkward, let’s do whatever and say we each won twice.” She agreed.

Our thumb-wrestling was really more pleasant conversation than anything else—mostly about how my thumbs relative to hers were enormous and how the activity therefore wasn't fair. I did wind up winning both of the two wrestles we did. Time was up and the teacher started to say what I (and probably you) had expected all along.

This activity wasn’t about the winner or loser, it was about how we would engage in the activity, specifically whether we had more collectivistic (cooperative, group-oriented) or individualistic (competitive, individual-oriented) tendencies. It was meant to elicit behavior like me proposing we split the victories regardless of the outcome. As the teacher was explaining this, my partner said she’d write down that I’d won 3 wrestles and she’d won 1. 

This activity was...interesting. My teacher said it was to see whether we were more collectivistic or individualistic but I strongly contest the fact that an exercise like this provides much real insight into our generalized behavior. There are soooo many others factors coming into play. 

Yes, I said let’s split the points. No, that doesn’t necessarily make me a collectivistic person. I said what I did because I personally don’t value .6 points of extra credit so much that I’d be competitive to an off-putting extent. In my opinion the social perception of being a “tryhard” strongly trumps the insignificant amount of extra credit available. 

So whether I’m an individualistic person or not (I am), this activity doesn’t reflect my true beliefs because there are other social factors that act on the situation with greater strength than the extra credit incentive did. From a brief glance around the room, it seemed like most if not all students had made some sort of “collectivist compromise” like myself, though we have no way of really knowing whether or not this collectivism applies to any other aspects of our lives. 

So this collectivism activity, while it may shed light on some specific situational attitudes, cannot be generalized because there are too many other factors at play. I’m guessing my teacher knows this, but it still bothered me enough that I wanted to write about it, haha. 

A couple of other things I noticed:

• My partner wrote down 3-1 instead of the actual score, 2-0. She probably felt that even though I said I was totally fine splitting the total that she should be fair. 
• We could have kept the orginal score because I still had two more than her. But 2-0 is significantly different from 3-1 because with the latter she also earns points. 
• Lastly, while I did say we should make it even, I didn’t specifically lose intentionally to make our scores actually even. I was just going to do the thumb-wrestling, disregard the ultimate score, and say we were even. After I won two I could have (very obviously) let myself lose so we both actually won and lost twice. I wonder if other people did this. Does it say anything about me? Probably, but I don’t know exactly what. Let me know your thoughts below :) 

The Fine Print

Recently the internet was in an uproar about the Fine Bros. trademarking the term "REACT" as part of a global initiative they were trying to launch. Basically they would let people use their format if they paid them, and if not they'd take down their videos. The story is more complex than that and it's been a little difficult to follow, so I've compiled a multi-media storyline explaining what went down.

1. Fine Bros. Announcement Video (watch only first half!)*
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H9X8xZzyZyY
2. Reactions
• Film Cow https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=No_Vti186Tk 
• h3h3Productions https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dwcmWhPcTk8
• boogie2988 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YN-vhZoO7wM
• Hank Green https://medium.com/@hankgreen/the-trouble-with-trademarks-dcd8af3bede3#.gf3lx8emx
• Former Fine Bros. Employee
  https://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/43sdch/not_a_video_but_the_finebros_have_cancelled_all/czkn6yc
• Philip DeFranco https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I_3HESGr52A
3. Fine Bros. Update Video (watch only second half!)*
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H9X8xZzyZyY**
4. CGP Grey Sarcasm
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9dPnaAt-Rbs
5. The End
• https://medium.com/@FineBrothersEnt/a-message-from-the-fine-brothers-a18ef9b31777#.p4vpo2fda

In the end it seems like many people still don't trust them and they have a record of going after other creators. Whether or not they changed as people at least we don't have the trademark issue anymore.

~~Footnotes~~
*original video by Fine Bros. was deleted, mirror upload (if this is deleted let me know, I downloaded the mirror)
**before and after uploading the update video, The Fine Bros. were losing something like 300 subscribers per minute...which is insane. They went from something like 14 million subscribers to 13 million in one day. I didn't keep a good track of those specific numbers, but I've compiled the drama for you all to follow :)

The Longest Ever Study on Happiness

This TED Talk discusses the longest ever study on happiness. It followed 724 men from their childhood to their 90s, and it has spanned generations of researchers. These men were originally students from either Harvard or Boston’s worst suburbs. I summarized the main points of the talk below:

1. Social connections are really good for us. Loneliness kills. People connected to families, communities are happier, healthier, live longer. More isolated people are less happy, less healthy, brain functioning declines, they live shorter lives. (1/5 Americans are lonely)
2. It’s not just the number of friends or being in a relationship that makes you happy, but the quality of those relationships. Living in warm relationships is good, protective. Living in bad relationships is worse than a divorce. Biggest predictor of health at 80 had nothing to do with cholesterol or physical ailments: people who were most satisfied in relationships at 50 were healthiest at 80 (when they had more physical pain, their moods were still happy). But for people in unhealthy relationships, the emotional pain magnified the physical pain.
3. Being in securely attached relationship to another person keeps your memory sharper longer.

As we can see, the ultimate takeaway is that good relationships keep us happier and healthier. Nothing about fame or wealth correlates that strongly.* The speaker mentions in the beginning that over 80% of millenials have the goal to get rich, and 50% want to become famous. I don’t know if it’s only millenials who have these unrealistic life aspirations, but watching this TED talk could help a lot of them realize that perhaps that goal isn’t the best one.

*Other researchers have found similar things, that while money may correlate up to a degree, it isn’t as big as we think (https://www.ted.com/talks/daniel_kahneman_the_riddle_of_experience_vs_memory?language=en).

Discussing The Usage of "Retarded"

I made this video a while back talking about why I felt awkward telling someone they shouldn't use the word "retarded." The point of this video was really to talk about my thoughts and insecurities in potentially lording my beliefs over the other, but because this is the internet virtually every comment was actually about whether or not the word "retarded" should be considered bad.

A while back someone e-mailed me with a lot of interesting points about the usage of "retarded" and I responded with what I were thought were my most articulate ideas on the subject. I'm posting them here so others who wish to engage in this conversation can see my full view on the issue that the video wasn't really about. Enjoy!

.....

Initial E-mail

Hi Matt, I am a new viewer (just watched last week's PBS Idea Channel where he linked to an interview of him by Go VERB a NOUN, who I had never heard of and from that channel, I just found you) and just back logged your YouTube channel. Upon doing so I stumbled upon a video ('Telling people about the "R-Word"') that isn't... The video isn't "wrong," per say but it doesn't have any footing and here is why.

(At the very bottom there is a numbered (i) - (iv) TL;WR. Otherwise the email is roughly 1,300 words - just a heads up)

A co-worker of mine and I recently had a debate (possibly still on going, we meet once a week so who knows if new revelations will occur) about the 'R-Word' where in I expressed the fact that the claim, "it shouldn't be used on the grounds of offensiveness" is (i) ridiculous and (ii) incorrect.

As to why I found it to be ridiculous, first off we immediately come across a slippery slope where in even if we agree that it is offensive (which I strongly oppose that notion and will argue momentarily), can we not then use it? And the reason I ask the basic, "Can we use offensive words?" is more on the idea of... avoiding red tape.

Who decides what words are offensive and is there any context where they can be used even if they are offensive? What happens when the offended are absent, and can anyone claim offense to any word and ban said word? If yes, one can see a problem where in all words become banned; and if no [meaning no one can simply claim a word offensive from thin air (if you will)] then what is the process by which a word becomes offensive (or no longer offensive)? Who regulates that and what does the process consist of?

And those are just the issues my brain immediately runs into as to why I find the premise ridiculous, but more importantly I think it is inaccurate. To state that a word is offensive requires that the particular word in question (if not 'all of the words') holds a value. In this case, a presumably 'negative' value as we are calling it 'offensive.' To which I think I can dispute outright or at least bring anyone to the mindset of, "Well, I guess I do not know" (Meaning I think I can get you away from "This word is offensive" and land on "I am not sure as to whether or not it is offensive" at the very minimum).

1. To claim that a particular word/words, as an thing that exists, hold(s) value(s) is an objective truth claim. And as such you will have to prove it. Otherwise a Christopher Hitchens quote comes to mind, 'That which can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.'

2. Supposing you say, "I cannot prove a particular word/all words have value, but I suspect they might still," I would just like to fall back on a Occam's Razor style approach. It is more likely that there isn't this hidden thing we cannot pin down (in the form of value being intrinsic and words) as that is a much simpler state of reality than the existence of this complicated thing.

3. You may fall back to an idea of 'social definitions' (if you will) where in, sure the WORD 'retarded' isn't negative inherently in and of itself, but as a people we have place this value on it after the fact which we must now all recognize. To which again I say no (or perhaps, 'not quite'). Undoubtedly people do attach meaning to words, it is very clear from the nature of your video that the word 'retarded' has a negative value (or at least, can have a negative value) but the onus is on you.

To see why the onus is on the offended I want to look at the idea of placing value on words after the fact (which does assume the value isn't inherent to the word in the first place), I want to look back at the 'social definition' idea.

First we would want to narrow down to whom the social definition applies. A first reasonable restriction I would like to apply is all people who speak the language in which we are speaking when we use the word (this is to prevent me saying "thank you" to someone who hears the sound I make when I 'say' 'thank you' and hears in their language, (enter 'disrespectful' phrase here). And to go one step further, maybe one even needs to have the language in question be their native language. Perhaps another restriction we could add are people from the same (or very close generations). We could go on to exclude people from too different of socioeconomic backgrounds, etc. But regardless of who we include or exclude in our 'society' which now shares these 'social definitions,' we are assuming that they agree... and they don't have to (a little Hume's Law-ish)

I concede that people can agree on values for words and elect not to use them because of it. Meaning, suppose you and I are hanging out and I use a word you are uncomfortable with. You then say, 'Hey man, I am uncomfortable with that, it offends me, could you please not use it.' Supposing we're cool with each other, I say 'Sure man, no problem. I didn't mean it in that way at all, I can pick my words more appropriately (to the situation).'

This is (i) perfectly fine, (ii) happens all the time and (iii) does not oppose my point. In this example all parties came to an agreement which resulted in a desirable state for one, and a neutral state for the other. But the important thing of note is that just because two people speak the same language (and if they are hanging out, are probably from similar socioeconomic backgrounds, from the same generation, and all the other things that we agreed earlier put them in our 'society' where in a 'social definition' could thrive where it a useful thing) they won't inherently come to the same word to value placement.

But to argue social definitions at all is to assume all people in the social bubble we just defined will come to the same conclusion, that word 'N' has meaning 'P' and so on. But this isn't the case by the very fact that people like the cashier in your story exist. Some people are not offended by the same word as other people because they have not placed the same value on the word as the offended people have. What exactly does that mean? That social definitions aren't a useful tool for determining whether or not a word is 'offensive' and so my point '3.' goes in my favor as well.

And this idea to me applies to every word you can ever think of, not just 'retarded.'

To sum up:

(i) There is a slippery slope in even suggesting certain words should be restricted because they are offensive.

(ii) But in order to even assume they are offensive requires evidence that the word in question (or all words) hold value intrinsically.

(iii) If one cannot prove the existence of the intrinsic value of words, they shouldn't still assume it exists as it is less likely to exist than not to exist.

(iv) Conceding to intrinsic value not existing but supposing 'social' definitions take the place of 'IV' and make words offensive and wrong to use is a claim that won't stand enough scrutiny.

---

I hope this made any sense at all and I'd love to hear what you think. This is merely my opinion and I am open to being wrong.

Regardless, my name is [NAME], it was a pleasure to stumble upon your channel, and keep it easy killer.

My Response

Hahaha I get so much flak for this video. Hi [NAME].

So frankly, this was one of my earliest videos and I was still learning how best to articulate my point. In fact there are a bunch of things that I didn't represent well or flat out changed my opinion on later. Given the chance, I definitely wouldn't do it again, haha. But it's worth keeping up there to have these types of interactions.

Anyway, I'll run over the main things I was trying to get across in this video, and hopefully those'll address your points—

1. I don't think the word retarded should be banned. It has actual meaning: "Its growth was retarded." "That person is retarded." What I referred to as the r-word" was the word retarded when used in a way I deem inappropriate.

2. So now let me define that way! So when people use "gay" to mean stupid or bad or whatever, what that does is strengthen the association between "gay" and "bad." Obviously we (or at least I) don't want that because it makes people more likely to associate being gay with something wrong or bad. That being said, I don't think we should ban "gay" because it is a helpful description for many people. But in the same way that I called retarded the r-word out of appropriate context, one might call gay the g-word when it's not used to describe someone's sexual orientation. 

So just as using gay inappropriately reinforces the notion that gay = bad, using "retarded" inappropriately reinforces the notion that retarded = stupid. And maybe by conventional standards like IQ tests you could claim that is true, but I would not call retarded people stupid—they have very different abilities and many people who are retarded in some form are much better at certain things than us "normal" people are. 

In fact, now that I'm writing this out, I don't even like using "retarded" in its appropriate context, because it still ultimately implies that these individuals are slow when in reality they are simply different and are better and worse in different areas than we are.

So ultimately the incorrect usage of "retarded" (and frankly, maybe even the correct one) strengthens our association between those people and the concept of "stupid," which is not good because it makes us more likely to believe these individuals to be stupid or wrong before we understand them.

3. Finally (and I think this is funny): the point of the video wasn't to discuss what the definition or usage of "retarded" despite virtually everyone thinking/complaining about that. The video was just about the internal debates I hold when someone says any word with which I disagree. But that's so long gone by now, haha.

~~~~~

Anyway, I'd love to hear your opinion on this, too. Hopefully you stick around on my channel, even though future videos may be less controversial :)

Also, just curious: how'd you find my channel through Peter's?

Thanks [NAME],

Matt

His Response

Hello again Matt,

First I want to address your last point, which was that the point of the video ('Telling people about the "R-Word"') wasn't to have this type of discussion. And with fear of being Captain Hindsight, I would image a lot of the people who you said gave this type of criticism (including myself) probably knew that. For me, my desire to write in was (i) because this topic was very recently on my mind and more importantly (ii) I view'd it as a very... bad/inaccurate way to think about words.

Humorously enough however, I feel you have thrown a huge wrench in my mindset though. While I am not at all swayed towards the idea of words having a value, I cannot dispute with you that on a large scale (not all of the time, but perhaps most of the time) when words like 'retarded' or 'gay' (as you brought up) are used, they are (i) getting a descriptive point across for the user but also (ii) furthering/keeping-alive the notion that 'retarded/gay' means something is wrong/bad. And I sort of subscribe to a combination of desirism (http://desirism.wikia.com/wiki/Desirism) and for a lack of terminology, the type of ethics found in Sam Harris's, 'Moral Landscape,' and taking your point that using them (the words in question) directly or indirectly furthers a undesirable state/outcome, despite the words being perfectly fine per my original argument, we may want to avoid using them. You definitely gave me something to consider.

As to how I found you through Peter's channel, it was either directly through his interview with Mike (of PBS Idea Channel) or in the suggested scroll on the right hand side of YouTube; I do not remember exactly how unfortunately but it had to have been one of those two.

I'll definitely be around regardless of controversial topics - I am a digital native which won't be leaving YouTube anytime soon. Still a pleasure to 'meet' you and your channel. Keep it easy killer.

My Second Response

Hey! I'm glad this was ultimately a civil discussion. You never know with people on the internet (and I've been the non-civil one before). Yeah I guess to try to put my point more in your words, though words may not have inherent value, or usage and linkage of them creates a value. The word still carries no inherent value, but after our usage we individually/societally create one. 

Also you appear very learned, what with quoting different philosophies and texts I've never even heard of before haha.

Glad to hear I could stretch your mind—you did the same for mine. 

Have a great day, [NAME]!

.....

So there you have it. My view on this, as well as another interesting one. With all YouTube comments addressing this I'll likely link this post. Feel free to discuss it further in the comments of this post. 

theories: translating phrases

Theory: When we write translated phrases in ways that we’d be more likely to say, we’re more likely to remember and use their foreign counterpart. 

e.g. if I translate “non farne un affare di stato” as “no big deal,” I’m more likely to remember and use that italian phrase than if I translated it as “don’t make a mountain out of a mole hill.” This is of course dependent on what phrase is most familiar to the user.

.....

theories is a series of psychological theories I have thought up. I don’t have the means to test many of them, but if you do and want to, send me an e-mail or reply to this post :)

Education E-mail

Here is an email I sent to a professor of mine. I thought I'd post it here, too.

.....

No problem! Also, here's a short reading on the flipped classrooms I mentioned before: https://www.seas.harvard.edu/news/2013/03/flipped-classroom-will-redefine-role-educators

The point isn't necessarily to flip your classroom but simply acknowledge that students learn best in very different ways (I don't mean auditory, visual, etc—studies have shown that those don't really impact students too differently). What I mean by that is one student might genuinely want or need a lecture to understand the information. Other students, however, might not. Many students, myself included, would much rather learn the subject material on their own because (1) they learn it better when they're the ones working it out for themselves and (2) this provides in-class time for them to do in-depth analysis of the information learned and truly learn it (not forgetting it after the test).

So what does this mean for practical implication?

When you look at classrooms, you see professors almost always teaching through just one style, and it's almost always the lecture-based approach. Maybe it's because of physical class restraints, maybe something else. But that doesn't change the fact that it happens. A simple baby step I think the formal education world needs is more options. Maybe some students are able to work in groups with a TA discussing the learned material while the professor lectures to the other half of class. Maybe some students are lecturing to other students while a TA or prof watches over them to make sure they don't miss any big pieces of information.

I'm not saying you have to implement these ideas in your classes or even this class, but rather I'm hoping to stir up some thoughts about how the style used by many could be improved. When a system is so commonly used that people no longer question its effectiveness, that is the most important time to do so.

Anyway, this has been super long but I hop[e] you enjoyed reading it :) These ideas are ones I hope to explore in my education program here. If you ever want to talk more about them, please let me know!

See you tomorrow,
Matt

i still have things to say

Yesterday I watched a video from Jake Roper after he’d learned he had Sarcoma, a type of cancer. He talked about how his biggest fear isn’t dying, but not being able to make and do and be all the things he wants to. I never thought about death in that particular light, but I realized I share Jake’s fear exactly. I’m worried that, as Jake says, “I'll leave this world at some point with not enough of me left in it.” Whether it’s through YouTube or photoshop or Live Hangouts, or blogs, I have this desire to create things. So I created something last night: a video that was uploaded today. 

I said basically all of those things but in a less digestible way (I recorded the video in the spur of the moment and my thoughts weren’t yet coherently collected). But now that they are I can say them with more clarity: I will be putting out more content because I want to get my ideas out there. 

If I wanted to publish more videos similar to those I do now, I think I’d work myself to death. Because that doesn’t sound fun, I’m instead adding a certain type of video in addition to the videos I normally put out. These videos will differ in two noticeable ways.

1. They’ll have a less tightly-edited style, meaning they’ll be similar to vloggers and the video I just posted.
2. Instead of doing complex analyses of publications and/or science, they’ll be more focused on thoughts and conjecture (haha very funny). For example, is a narrator accountable for the information they read?

I’ve posted these ideas for a while on this blog, but I might as well do it on YouTube, too. I think that’s the best way to get all of this out there :)

Wikipedia Calculations

This is a little write-up explaining some statistics and calculations I did for my most recent video, “Can You Read All of Wikipedia?” While the statistics from the video are all approximately correct (as I mentioned), they should have been a little more accurate. I want to explain why.

Let's begin with this Wikipedia article showing Wikipedia's word count. 

Two things should stand out: 

1. The word count here is 2.95 billion, not 2.9275 billion like I claimed, and...
2. After the word count the brackets literally say “not in citation given”

These two are both related. It was September 1st* when I last checked this page and finalized my calculations. Back then, it said that there were 2.9275 billion words and it didn’t have that bracket saying that number wasn’t in the citation. I tried to look through the edits to find this number but I couldn’t. I really remember seeing that number there (because where else would I have gotten it?) but it's seeming more and more like I pulled it out of thin air.ª

ANYWAY the point is that even if that number had been there, I didn’t verify it by checking the source. As someone who attempts to research material with academic curiosity and legitimacy, this is embarrassingly irresponsible. I will say that with virtually every other topic I’ve ever done through YT, I did verify the source, but for this one I chose not to. Maybe I trusted the source because it was Wikipedia writing about itself, or maybe because I thought this would be a short video and it wouldn’t be a big deal. Either way, I should have checked the source and noticed that both 2.9275 and 2.95 billion aren’t supported by the available data. 

The actual source links to the English Wikipedia's statistics page. Here do find a word count here...but it’s most recent count comes from January 2010. 

Since the total word count hasn't been updated after 2010, we really have no way of definitively knowing from this source what the current word count is. Yet I think I have a guess as to where the contributor got 2.95 billion. If you divide Jan 2010’s 1.798 billion by 3.1 million, the Jan. 2010 article count, then you get an average of 580 words-per-article. Now if we assume that that WpA doesn’t change over the years, then multiplying it with the current article amount of 5.1 million would give us a current word count of 2.9 billion. Not exactly 2.95 billion—we’d need an average of 590 WpA for that—but close enough that I feel comfortable saying we’re in the right ballpark.

Speaking of the 590 WpA count, I actually made my first ever Wikipedia edit to point this out. You can see me explaining what I did and also asking what methodology the previous contributor used to arrive at their conclusions. 

So we’ve worked out the number of total words. The other stat I mentioned is that Wikipedia was adding 440,000 words daily to the site. Is this number of words accurate?

Probably not, because I used the exact same methodology as before (checked it Sept. 1st, didn’t check source, used a random wiki page). So if we’re working with the 2010 WpA count, multiplying that by August’s° new article count gives us an average of 492,420 words added daily. Again, not exactly the same, but close enough that I’m okay saying my original data was approximately correct.

Looking back, I’m not sure if it would have been smarter to use 2010 numbers. Obviously they’re more accurate, but Wikipedia’s clearly grown so much since then that while the 2010 data may be more numerically accurate, it might actually be a less accurate representation of Wikipedia. 

. . . . .

I made this post detailing how a couple numbers I used were off by a certain degree. But this degree turned out to be relatively small…why did I write this, publicly announcing my (seemingly) small mistake? 

I value academic transparency and sources. I think if you’re involved in education (i.e. professing to know something others don’t) it’s your responsibility to not mislead others and publicly provide access to the information which informed you. I believe learners have a right to know where knowledge came from so they may examine it for themselves. If I make mistakes I want to explain why it happened and make sure people have access to the correct information.

However I’m okay with making these mistakes because I’m trying a lot of new things. Almost all of my videos up to this point have been simply reciting information I’ve learned. But my last two videos** haven’t been reciting information—they’ve been creating new information from scratch. No source told me how to convert video to words or to measure humans’ ability to read Wikipedia. That was my math, my thought process, my original work. 

So I’m okay with making these types of mistakes because (1) I learn from them, and (2) it means I’m trying more complex things I haven’t done before. I like that :)

~~~Footnote~~~

ªIf you’d like to look for it please be my guest :) https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Size_in_volumes&action=history

*I did think I would publish this video sooner than I did (more than three months after the research), but ultimately I should have done recalculations to check and see if the stats changed much. They didn’t change much, but as I’ve said the point of this post is to highlight my exact methodology as well as point out what I did irresponsibly and/or incorrectly. 

°Technically I’m not sure what month was used as the source for determining the article count, but I’m using August here since I collected my data on September 1st. 

**excluding the P4A one

Interpreting the Law

I found this statement of academic integrity in a study guide for one my classes. I think this statement is intended to prevent one person from e-mailing the study guide to everyone in the class, but regardless the language is way too broad: “Distributing this information in any form…in any way…is a violation of academic integrity and the student code of conduct.” This means that if I physically give the unmodified study guide to a friend in the same class who had the ability to print it for himself, that’d be cheating. And that’s ridiculous.

This makes me think of two philosophies that exist for interpreting the laws: (1) that they should be followed to the letter with no exceptions or wiggle room and (2) that the laws are meant to represent general concepts and there can be extenuating circumstances where they shouldn’t apply. (Obviously I think the study guide falls into the second interpretation.) 

Now, there are good and bad componenents about each of these interpretations. For (1), it is very clear and obvious what constitutes the law, which I think makes applying and understanding it easier. The bad thing is that it might penalize people who share an unmodified study guide even though his friend had the ability to print it for himself. For (2), the good is that it wouldn’t penalize that person, but the bad is that it can be time-consuming to decide things on a case-by-case basis and it could also be difficult to “draw the line” in terms of where the extenuating circumstances lie. Still I lean towards the second one because laws are written without the full understanding of how they might play out in the real world. If my teacher saw me hand a printed study guide to a friend, I doubt she’d even think of it as cheating.

I thought about all of this because my friend actually e-mailed me a study guide she filled out and shared it with me. I didn’t think twice of this until I realized that this was technically cheating. But it doesn’t feel like it…I mean, we could have just as easily met up in-person and read our thoughts and research for each question. If we were called into the office of student academic integrity, I’d make a good case for us.

Facing the Voice: Thoughts on Meeting Bill Nye

On Wednesday night I met Bill Nye the Science Guy!

Now you’d think that meeting a childhood idol and hugely popular science educator would leave me like this

But it actually left me more like this

Meeting celebrities in-person can be a dangerous game. Obviously it’s super cool to talk with the people who fascinate you, but you also run a big risk: knowing what they’re really like. 

Yes, we’d all like to think there’s no way this person whom we’ve grown up watching could be anything other than their awesome, on-screen persona. But notice that term, persona. A persona is a role played by an actor, and I used that word for a specific reason. In real life, celebrities might be nothing like their persona. 

This can’t be news to anyone—we’ve all heard stories about this. Even so, it didn't cross my mind when I got tickets (and backstage passes!) to see Bill Nye at Penn State.

The lecture was great and showed me every reason to love this guy: he’s funny, intelligent, fascinating, and an excellent communicator. But backstage was a slightly different story. 

It started off with a procession line leading everyone to Bill for a picture. This came off as celebrity worship and seemed a little strange, but I figured we’d see the more human side of him after it ended so I didn’t mind. 

Instead of a phone, I went up to him with my camera to ask if he’d say something for Conjecture (“brother, I’ll see you on weekday”). As I was describing it, he cut me off and said “you can’t do this, what if everyone wanted to record a video? Just take a picture” I apologized and took out my phone, but he told me I wasn’t ready and sent me behind someone in line. 

Of course I shouldn’t judge him too much from my one interaction…but he was like this with everyone, coldly telling people to hurry up with their pictures and get out of line as soon as they were done. Attempts at polite small talk were essentially met with “come on, you can’t do this now.” 

I'd already had a sour taste in my mouth from observing all this, but he did say that there’d be time for more talking and stuff after the picture line. So I waited to see the real Bill Nye.

Unfortunately, nothing really changed. After the pictures everyone did gather around him to interact in a more intimate way, but it instead devolved into a semi-formal Q&A. Genuine exchanges were infrequent and it ultimately still felt like celebrity worship. I expected to be the audience during the lecture, not while I was backstage too.

Now look, I get that everyone wanted a picture and that Bill's probably exhausted from talking to so many colleges and that he's kind of a big deal…but let’s compare this to another experience I’ve had.

At VidCon 2015 I met Vsauce’s Michael Stevens.

He was a fantastically nice dude. He was flooded with more people than Bill was and still took the time to hold genuine conversations with each individual that approached him. He only left because he was forced to, not because he wanted to. Needless to say, I was floored. In fact when I pulled this photo from my facebook, I saw a comment I wrote on July 25, 2015.

My facebook's in Italian :)

So yeah—we can make excuses for Bill Nye, but when I’m comparing his behavior to Michael Steven’s (who in many ways is more popular than Bill Nye), it just doesn't hold. 

All of this, meeting an idol and realizing they’re not as cool in person, makes me think of something I heard recently from CGP Grey on his podcast Hello Internet (skip to around 1:20:00). He was saying how seeing the faces of narrating voices like his own can actually ruin the experience for the audience. You wind up liking the narration in a such a unique way that seeing the real thing just doesn’t fit. And after seeing the real thing, the narration can no longer exist in your mind as a solely awesome creation, but rather the product of an ordinary person—it becomes less magical because you know the truth. If you don’t understand what I mean, maybe seeing real pictures of CGP Grey would help illustrate this (see footnote).

Meeting Bill Nye was like seeing that voice. Meeting any celebrity runs that risk. They might be just as you’d expect them, but they also might be something else. 

That night I traded the Bill Nye that existed in my head for this picture:

I want to trade it back.

~~~Footnotes~~~

RE: CGP Pictures...

CGP is okay with their dissemination, he mentioned that in the same Hello Internet Podcast after the section I wrote about. But remember what you just read! Think if you actually want to see what he looks like.

...

https://twitter.com/Alextigtig/status/533483252255031297
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C5MVXdg6nho
https://www.quora.com/What-does-CGP-Grey-look-like

Nice Guys and Relationships

So a while back someone I knew was very drunk and complaining to me. Of course, it was about a girl.

He liked this girl, she didn’t like him back…that was really it. BUT, he was going on and on and on about how he was so nice to her and she STILL didn't like him, that she doesn’t know what’s good for herself and maybe he just shouldn’t be nice at all anymore.

Now he was intoxicated, but I still couldn’t believe the words I was hearing. This is that "nice guys finish last" thing you hear in high school!

So I'm writing this post as a sort of response to that idea, and hopefully it can help anyone else, guy or gal, who is struggling with a similar situation.

~~Let's roll~~


Ok so first off, he’s thinking that basically because he’s so nice to her, she should fall for him. This seems to kind of make sense, until you consider some things:

1. If niceness is all that makes someone attracted to someone else, then what's to stop someone from being nicer to this girl than you were? Based on your logic, this person would leave you instantly! But this doesn't happen, and that's because of the next thing...
2. What attracts us to people is complicated, and not one-dimensional (i.e. it'll never be niceness alone). I mean, you could meet the nicest person in the world and not be attracted to them for many reasons! This is because we're also attracted to elements like ambition, personality, physical attractiveness, and sense of humour. Attraction is a complex combination of so many things that one alone would never sway a person (or, at least, it shouldn't). 
3. Finally, you said “oh maybe I shouldn’t be nice in general anymore.” Okay, I’m assuming you meant you'd stop being nice just to people you're romantically interested in and not the general population, because the latter would be pretty stupid. So now that we have that established, here's the thing about this: yeah, niceness isn't the sole determinant for relationships, but girls like people who are nice!! Why would a girl, or anyone want to be with someone who’s mean?? I realize I’m not a girl here, but you gotta just trust me on this one. If a girl you like is attracted to someone who (in your view) isn't as nice as you are, it just means she sees another meaningful and attractive quality in him or her besides niceness.

So after I explained this to him, he proceeded to analogize his affection for this person: "What if you find the prettiest, most beautiful flower in the field, and you know it's the one for you and that there are no other flowers like her, but you can't have it. What then?"

There are a lot of reasons this analogy isn’t great.

1. The idea that this is the most beautiful flower you’ll ever see becomes true when you decide you’re not going to explore the field anymore! If you just stand there admiring it, of course you’ll never find anything better! There’s a whole field of other beautiful flowers to find!
2. But for argument’s sake, let’s say that this is indeed the most beautiful flower in the field, okay? Well to this I'll tell you that our personal standards of attraction change as we mature physically and emotionally. We will be attracted to different things at different points in our life, so even if that flower is (improbably) the most beautiful in the field, as you mature it probably won’t stay that way! And look, I know it’s really hard to get your mind around this and the last point when you're really into someone. I've been there. But I promise you that it always gets better with time. 

BUT OKAY let’s say it really is the most beautiful flower and you’re never going to change the way you feel (unlikely). There's still one huge problem with this analogy: women aren't flowers! You see, flowers are passive objects—they get admired and picked. But women (and people) are not!!! Except in extreme circumstances, people get their say in deciding who're they're attracted to. That’s just how relationships work.

Instead of looking at a relationship like admiring a flower, I think a better analogy is those hotel doors that connect rooms. If you’re attracted to someone, you can open your door and show it. But nothing will happen unless they open their door too, and just like in an actual hotel, they have the right not to open it.

Now when I was explaining all of this to him…well, most of it wasn’t getting through because he was really drunk. But I was also getting really angry that I even had to explain this stuff to him! But as I thought about it more, I realized something: he had never had any of this explained to him. Maybe it seems basic to you or me, but without hearing this concretely it can be a confusing and difficult concept to grasp. 

And when you view someone's actions through this lens, it becomes really difficult to stay angry with them. You just want to tell them "hey man, this is how the world works, and you’ll be happier and healthier when it sinks in." Unfortunately, I didn’t realize this in the moment and was getting incredibly frustrated with him…but yeah. Hopefully this helps some of you deal with this type of stuff. It would have been helpful to me too when I was younger.