Seth’s blog

This clever and attractive music video creates images out of repetition of dice numbers — pictures of dice showing 1, 2, etc. It illustrates the general point that we like to see identical or nearly-identical things side by side. A vast amount of decoration (wallpaper, rugs, packages, posters, architectural details) takes advantage of this.

It’s a curious propensity because we don’t see this pattern in nature: we don’t see identical things side by side, neatly lined up. So the propensity did not evolve so that people will prefer Place X to Place Y. It’s a propensity that causes us to place similar things side by side — if we have a doll collection, for example, to put our dolls side by side rather than far apart.

When we put things side by side it is far easier to notice small differences. Noticing small differences is the first step toward caring about small differences, deriving pleasure and displeasure from them — becoming a connoisseur, in other words. Connoisseurs pay more for “fine” stuff than the rest of us — wine connoisseurs pay more for wine, for example. In human prehistory, I theorize, connoisseurs supported artists and artisans, who were the first material scientists.

The pleasure we take from identical things side by side evolved because it increased connoisseurship. Supermarkets should do more side-by-side sampling of different products in the same category — different balsamic vinegars, for example.

Directory for this series.

The education improvement program — merit pay for teachers as part of a larger package — promoted by the Milken Family Foundation received a big public boost last week with this NY Times article about a similar program in Minnesota.

A consensus is building across the political spectrum that rewarding teachers with bonuses or raises for improving student achievement, working in lower income schools or teaching subjects that are hard to staff can energize veteran teachers and attract bright rookies to the profession. . . Minnesota’s experience shows . . . that an incentive plan created with union input can draw teacher support.

The plan that is gaining support was devised by Lowell Milken, according to Jana Rausch, who works for the Milken Family Foundation on this initiative. Before he started the foundation, Lowell Milken was a lawyer. As far as education goes, he is self-taught. Yet the program he devised seems to be working better than other programs. Of course many people have proposed merit pay for teachers; but it is the Milken Family Foundation that has managed to make it work. We need engineers to build a better plane. But we do not need education experts, apparently, to build better schools.

foreign-aid experts
medical doctors
book writers
clinical trials
psychotherapists
psychotherapists again
education experts
spiritual experts
clinical trials again
book reviewers
journalists
expert vs math models
ICU doctors
fugu processors

Among the community of psychotherapists, according to Dr. Marion Arom, a psychotherapist friend of mine, “it is common knowledge that in many traditional therapies, if the therapy fails — if the desired change doesn’t occur — it’s due to client resistance or lack of motivation to change or unconscious motivation. The role or skill of the therapist is not examined, ever.”

Dark Age Ahead by Jane Jacobs has a chapter about the failure of highly-respected professions to police themselves.

Directory of Twilight of Expertise posts.

I heard about [the Shangri-La] diet from someone on a discussion group I’m part of and it sounded like total bunk. . . . This person pushes my buttons, so I decided I would test the diet. If it worked, I’d lose some unhealthy weight (three pregnancies combined with the stress of recent years left me 40 pounds overweight for my height), and if it didn’t work, I’d have the satisfaction of proving her wrong. It was a win/win.

I chuckle every time I read this. It continues:

I eliminated my two daily Cokes . . . from my diet and replaced them with the equivalent amount of liquid and calories from sugar water. I’ve been less hungry and losing weight ever since. Damn her!

Speaking of SLD and blogs and good writing. This has nothing to do with SLD.