You learn a new thing about yourself every day, or rather you should if you're paying attention. I was paying attention this morning in the shower and what I learned was this: my mind relaxes in the shower. I think it's where my best thinking happens.
Maybe this isn't as sexy as other things I could have learned in the shower (... e.g. the many toxic ingredients in my shampoo, the specific heat of a bar of soap, or the true extent of my vocal range-- you're welcome, roommates!), but it was still a good discovery.
Part of the reason that this was a good discovery is that this discovery was related to, and supportive of, philosophical musings happening in my brain. I am always thrilled when I discover things related to the way brains work, specifically my own and let's face it, most of the mind experiments (or mindsperiments) I do have an "n" of one. And that one "n" is me.
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| What my brain feels like in the shower! I call it my thinkin' brain. (link to original) |
The other reason that this was a good discovery lies in the content of the musings that led to the aforementioned realization. The content of the musings was related to complexity and the fact that, to my thinking, people consistently misappropriate it.
Folks make befuddled that which is simple and oversimplify that which is nuanced.
These musings are born out of all the recent activity on Facebook, Twitter, and the various other socially medias about the upcoming Supreme Court decision on DOMA and Prop 8 (slated for the end of June-ish) and a clip I saw this morning of Matt Damon talking about Education Policy in the US.
It's all about the crux of the argument. Here's my take on these issues:
1. Gay Marriage
- The Debate: Should gay couples be allowed to wed?
- The Crux: moral argument for (rights-based) and against (religious-based)
- Simple. Rights trump religious inclination, especially when the religious argument is based largely on Leviticus. Adults who want to commit to love, honor, and cherish each other for the rest of their days ought to be supported in doing so, regardless of the identified genders of those adults. Society should support as much loving, honoring, and cherishing as it can, period, because there's far too much hate, dishonor, and neglect rolling around these days. (Whether or not government should encourage the semi-permanent linking of two adult individuals at all is another matter for debate, of course)
2. Education Policy
- The Debate: How do we best insure that all young people of America are provided with the opportunity to receive a comprehensive, high quality, and thorough education?
- The Crux: arguments against "good education" are minimal, arguments for "good education" are ubiquitous, but their proponents offer for different solutions. It's a methods argument.
- Complex. There is much ongoing research on education policy- it's an unresolved "issue". Interests of equality/ justice, economics, race, safety, geographic location, state sovereignty, choice, and tolerance have reasonable cause to enter the debate. In a situation with so many (in some cases, competing) interests, an optimal solution is unlikely to be achieved in a top-down/ federally-mandated, single-metric way.
But what do people often do with these two issues?
We hear arguments against gay marriage that are framed as if the issue were a complicated one: implications of gay marriage for straight marriage, morally-susceptible children, godliness in general, and the moral fiber of our nation specifically. The talk goes on, but it is all based on a single, flawed central assumption: that being gay is morally wrong. Without this assumption, all other "complexities" disappear (even and especially those related to the fear that encouraging "gayness" will produce more "gayness"). And since this assumption is the crux of the "anti" side, the issue boils back down to the moral argument again. And the "pros" win. Rights over religion. QED.
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| (original) |
For the education policy argument we hear the opposite. We hear arguments on all sides that are framed as if the issue were a simple one. "People work better with incentives. So we incentivize teachers with test scores. Problem solved." or "A good education is an equal education- busing students from an area with bad public schools to an area with good public schools will solve the education issue. Problem solved." or "Money makes things better. Pour more money into schools and they will become good. Problem solved.".... and none of these arguments is completely wrong. People often do work better when the incentives are better, there is unequal education based on locality, and lack of funding can contribute to education inefficiencies... but there is no tidy underlying assumption to which these arguments boil down. The assumptions vary and must be independently addressed:
The first assumes: 1. that teachers are the sole dictator of student success; 2. that test scores accurately reflect student success/knowledge/education, and 3. that teachers are motivated to teach well solely by a student-score-derived monetary incentive. These assumptions, however, are rarely articulated (or likely understood) by proponents of score-based incentivization.
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| This is a good teacher, even though I can't see his test scores. (original link) |
The second and third arguments also rely on assumptions, like the above, but I won't bother enumerating them now-- it suffices to say that they are equally unsubstantiated and troublesome. All of this means, that for education policy there is no "single-intervention-problem-solved-q.e.d." answer. It's complicated and so must be our policy responses.
I love simplicity as much as the next gal, but I love accuracy, rightness, and truth even more. It's always tempting to pick one answer, one metric, one possibility, and shutter off the others. Ockham's Razor still cuts sharp, parsimony is nice, and who among us doesn't love a fun, truthy epigram? But misplaced simplicity is lazy to the max. Misplaced simplicity is at the root of much evil, done by good people.
So be good people and be wise with your complexity.
"The truth is incontrovertible. Malice may attack it, ignorance may deride it, but in the end, there it is."
-Winston Churchill (the master of epigrams)
