Article of the Day: Jonah Lehrer on How to Be Creative

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203370604577265632205015846.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

In this article, Jonah Lehrer explains that creativity is not some seemingly-magical ability that people either have or don’t, but a skill that can be trained. He explains how the creative process works and offers practical suggestions for how to improve one’s creative thinking skills.

This article got me thinking about meditation. I am by no means an expert on meditation—I do it only occasionally—but from what I understand, it greatly improves one’s ability to concentrate. Much recent research has demonstrated that meditation improves focus and discipline.

Common sense tells me that meditation should help unlock one’s creative capacities. But according to Lehrer, the key to creativity is often a lack of focus, and the act of concentration actually impedes divergent thinking. This makes me wonder, Does meditation increase or decrease one’s creative thinking ability?

Article of the Day: Nuclear power—Why the panic?

Today’s article is about the reactions to the recent meltdown in Fukushima. It discusses how people react too strongly to rare accidents, which is a widely observed phenomenon. People worry more about dying from a shark attack than about drowning, even though sharks only kill about five people per year while about ten people drown per day. Sensational or outlandish events have a tendency to stick in our minds, while more mundane occurrences are forgotten.

When it comes to power plants, human psychology works no differently. Pollution from coal causes more deaths than nuclear radiation and nuclear meltdowns put together. But on the rare occasion when there is a meltdown, it is spectacular. It’s on every news channel and quickly gains international attention. This is a serious problem because it actually causes people to make seriously poor decisions. Policymakers who decide to shut down nuclear power plants are wasting huge amounts of money. Nuclear power is quite safe and one of the cheapest alternatives to fossil fuels. We should probably be building more nuclear power plants, and we certainly should not be shutting them down.

RE: Why Nerds are Unpopular

One of Paul Graham’s greatest essays, and most thought-provoking. The thesis is profound, and the details are fascinating. I don’t have much to say about it, simply because I agree so much with what is said. You should read it, especially if you are in education or are an educator.

Article of the Day: The Age of the Essay

Another wonderful Paul Graham essay. This one is about high school essays.

Remember the essays you had to write in high school? Topic sentence, introductory paragraph, supporting paragraphs, conclusion. The conclusion being, say, that Ahab in Moby Dick was a Christ-like figure.

Graham explains that the reason why high schoolers write essays about literature is because, a few hundred years ago, literature and essays got merged into one subject. And the reason that all essays must take a position and defend it is that essays were originally written in law school.

If we step outside of these restraints, what is the ideal essay like? What kinds of essays should teachers assign? First, there’s nothing wrong with assigning essays where one analyzes a piece of literature. Considering how students are frequently already studying literature, it’s a rather convenient topic. But there are certainly other topics out there. In addition, not all essays need to take a side and defend it. (Read Graham’s essay for more about this.) Essays could be explorations of the literature; the student would learn just as much, if not more.

Students should be given the opportunity to write essays about exploration. I have rarely gotten these sorts of chances in school. But if you read some of the longer essays on my blog, you may notice that I propose something, play around with it, maybe reject it and expand on it more. Then I go on to the next idea. This is because I am not planning these essays out in advance. I just write as I go; and I get my thoughts organized in a nice, convenient format. My school essays are completely different: focused, rigorously organized, and, if you ask me, a lot more boring.

Not that there is a problem with persuasive essays. They’re great. But, as Graham pointed out, being right is more important than being able to argue well (at least in school). So why do we learn how to take a strong with-us-or-against-us position and defend it to the death, but we don’t write essays where we explore the answers in a much more open way?

I propose that traditional English classes spend one month per semester working on writing essays. Perhaps throughout the year there are essays written about the literature being read, but during these blocks, there is a greater focus on writing quality essays. And to better enrich the minds of the students, these essays should be more about searching for the truth than about arguing a point. Perhaps the teacher can come with a list of widely varied topics, or let the students choose their own topics, or both. Students can write essays in response to other essays. (Which happens to be what I’m doing right now.)

I haven’t been writing essays on my blog for all that long. Before my blog, I practically never wrote essays outside of school. Now, I write them all the time; I’m still relatively new at it, though. Yet I keep doing it. Probably the reason I keep doing it is that writing essays gets thoughts into writing and helps me to thing more thoughts. When I write essays, I think of ideas as I go. Just sitting and thinking does not work quite so well.

Another aspect of writing essays that may seems trivial — but definitely is not — is that when I write essays, I stay focused on the essay. Simply sitting and thinking is not enough for some sorts of things, because I will get too distracted. But when I’m writing an essay I can focus on the topic at hand and actually come up with some pretty good ideas.

I want other students to feel this. School is about learning, right? It’s about the development of ideas? What better way to develop one’s ideas than to write essays? But I fear that the current restrictions placed on essays will leave many students dissatisfied, and they will leave school disliking essays, never realizing how useful and fun they can be.

I never truly appreciated essays until I started reading Paul Graham. This man writes about topics that I actually care about. When I read his essays, I learn something. That may be a lot of the problem with essay-reading: students read essays about topics that they don’t care about, or they read essays that don’t teach them anything. This is not how a good essay should go. A good essay should be informative and fun; also, as Graham pointed out in his own essay about essays, when you read an essay you should be surprised. A good essay is one that teaches you something, or makes you think in a new way.

If there’s one piece of advice I would give about writing essays, it would be: don’t do as you’re told. Don’t believe what you’re supposed to. Don’t write the essay readers expect; one learns nothing from what one expects. And don’t write the way they taught you to in school.

I certainly can get behind that advice. The problem with school is that you’re supposed to do what you’re told, pretty much by definition, which makes it hard to write truly good essays. I know that I have never written a truly good essay for any school assignment (by my personal standards); probably the best school essay I’ve ever written is one at the beginning of this year where we had to turn in some sort of writing sample so that the teacher could get to know our writing styles, and I turned in an essay that I had written for my blog. So even that one wasn’t really written for school.

To add on to Graham’s advice: when you write an essay, don’t write it because someone else told you to. Write for yourself. Other people may learn something by reading your essay, but the person who learns the most is you. I find that you can come up with much better ideas by writing essays than simply by thinking, and this is what can really make the art of essay-writing a fruitful one.

Article of the Day: Sam Harris on Sarah Palin and Elitism

This political article is from a couple of years ago, but it is still relevant, and I quite like it. I don’t have a lot to say about it, but I do agree with much of what is said. Elitism is underrated.

A Very Confused National Geographic Article

Whoever wrote this article apparently wants to feel smart, and wants the readership to feel smart, but is doing some serious muddling of ideas.

Article of the Day: It’s Charisma, Stupid

Yet another Paul Graham essay.

In this episode, Graham proposes that the factor in getting Presidents elected is not their policies, but their charisma.

As I looked further back, I kept finding the same pattern. Pundits said Carter beat Ford because the country distrusted the Republicans after Watergate. And yet it also happened that Carter was famous for his big grin and folksy ways, and Ford for being a boring klutz. Four years later, pundits said the country had lurched to the right. But Reagan, a former actor, also happened to be even more charismatic than Carter (whose grin was somewhat less cheery after four stressful years in office). In 1984 the charisma gap between Reagan and Mondale was like that between Clinton and Dole, with similar results. The first George Bush managed to win in 1988, though he would later be vanquished by one of the most charismatic presidents ever, because in 1988 he was up against the notoriously uncharismatic Michael Dukakis.

This is an interesting point. Also, though, it is worth noting that charisma cannot be the only factor. In terms of popular vote, elections are not often won by more than 10%, and the widest margin ever recorded was 26% (source). People sometimes disagree on who is charismatic, but in general people will agree. Therefore the entire election cannot be based on charisma. Graham is not saying that it is; rather, he is saying that it is the deciding factor. I agree. Perhaps 70-90% of the vote is based on policy; only the other 10-30% is based on charisma. But on policy, the country is quite evenly split. Because of this, the relatively small percentage of the vote that is based on charisma is still enough to affect the outcome of the election.

Article(s) of the Day: Sleep

I found this article (it’s a download, but only PDF so you don’t have to be afraid of viruses) about adolescent sleep patterns to be fascinating.

There is also this article about how sleeping is contagious.

Article of the Day: In Praise of the Devil

This is a lovely article about why Lucifer is an admirable character. No, it is not the lunatic ravings of an ego-maniacal madman. In truth, it’s a very interesting article. The author proposes that Lucifer is not an immoral character; on the contrary:

Lucifer is the embodiment of reason, of intelligence, of critical thought. He stands against the dogma of God and all other dogmas. He stands for the exploration of new ideas and new perspectives in the pursuit of truth.

Lucifer was a rational fellow who was willing to question God’s word. This is something to be admired, but it is understandable how God would, well, demonize such activity.

They call Lucifer the Prince of Lies. A lie is defined by the Christian as anything which contradicts the Word of God – as told to us by the Bible and God’s representatives on Earth. If we accept this definition of a lie then we should praise lies. A “lie” is then a questioning of blind dogma.

Praise Lucifer!

Article of the Day: In Defense of Dangerous Ideas

This article by Steven Pinker is, as is said by the title, a defense of dangerous ideas.

An excerpt:

In every age, taboo questions raise our blood pressure and threaten moral panic. But we cannot be afraid to answer them.

Do women, on average, have a different profile of aptitudes and emotions than men? . . .

Did Native Americans engage in genocide and despoil the landscape? . . .

Do African-American men have higher levels of testosterone, on average, than white men? . . .

Have religions killed a greater proportion of people than Nazism? . . .

Perhaps you can feel your blood pressure rise as you read these questions. Perhaps you are appalled that people can so much as think such things. Perhaps you think less of me for bringing them up. These are dangerous ideas — ideas that are denounced not because they are self-evidently false, nor because they advocate harmful action, but because they are thought to corrode the prevailing moral order.

After reading this article, I have formulated a proposition. The proposition is this: complete honesty is the best strategy to maximize moral uprightness.

Let us assume, for the sake of argument, that women are far smarter than men. Some people may be strongly opposed to this idea; but remember that it is only for the sake of argument. As it is, we treat men and women as equals, or at least try to. But if men are treated as just as apt as women, then this would certainly be unfair. We may not like the prospect, but the best thing to do would be to treat women and men as they are, and not as how we want them to be. Therefore, honesty and inquisitive investigation is the way to go.

This same logic can be applied to any of the scenarios listed by Pinker. If we make a false assumption because we are afraid of the truth, then in the end we are only harming ourselves.

Interestingly, this does not seem to be true all of the time. But a lot of the time, perhaps most of the time, it certainly is. What is the difference, then? Would complete honesty always be the most beneficial, but our culture gets in the way of it? For instance, you might not want me to tell you that you’re fat, but if you are then it may help you in the long run. But we have strong social pressure not to talk about such things. There also seem to be some circumstances in which honesty really doesn’t help at all. For example, if there’s someone who you think is ugly, but they can’t to anything about it, how can it benefit either of you to tell them? Such honesty is only hurtful. Unless, of course, there is a societal shift. If we start to care less about how people look, then it will no longer be a problem. We all like to talk about how it’s what’s on the inside that counts, but let’s face it. We care what people look like. Basing how we like someone on how they look is completely unfair, but we still do it. If we didn’t do it, though, then there would be nothing wrong will telling someone that we think they’re ugly.

Let’s ask Thomas Jefferson what he thinks about this issue.

Here we are not afraid to follow truth, wherever it may lead.

I think that makes his position clear enough.

I think the sentence that best sums up the article is this:

Rational adults want to know the truth, because any action based on false premises will not have the effects they desire.

I think that this is a wonderful point, and I’ll leave you at that.