Fist of fury

Sometimes I just want to punch people in the face.

Let me emphasize that this is a new feeling for me. I've never been a physically violent or even hot-tempered person. I never got into a fight in school—not because I was afraid of getting beat up (although that's very likely what would have happened), but because it isn't in my nature. I DO like to argue, as everyone reading this must already know, so I don't shy away from conflict, but typically in an argument my emotions remain in check. I've always felt that arguments come to blows only when people are either too stupid or too cowardly to articulate their ideas verbally. In other words, people resort to violence only when their words are impotent. Turns out I'm a fan of neither stupidity nor cowardice, and I'm certainly not cheering for verbal impotence, so you'd expect anger management to come to me naturally. And usually it does.

But sometimes I still want to punch people in the face.

Not very often, of course. It's actually a very specific set of circumstances that boil my blood, and I've spent a reasonable amount of time trying to figure out exactly why they set me off when ordinarily it's not in my nature. I found common thread: arguments in which I've gone to considerable effort to explain myself, yet the other person almost deliberately refuses to understand me. In these arguments, my words are involuntarily rendered impotent—not because I can't articulate myself, but because I'm dealing with someone who has already deemed unimportant something he doesn't care to understand.

In some ways my frustration is probably obvious and commonplace—no one likes to have their hard work casually tossed aside—but for me it's more personal and not at all trivial. In all my interpersonal interactions—with my wife, family, friends, colleagues, whatever—my overwhelmingly top priority is to be understood. Not to be praised or to dominate or to be the smartest, not even to be comforted or loved, but to be understood. That's why I love to teach, why I sincerely appreciate it when people dissent on this blog, and particularly why I enjoy arguing. Done properly, disagreement gives me an opportunity both to understand someone else and to be understood. THAT is the miracle of human interaction—that after hours of discussion two friends arguing over dinner can breach the lonely barrier of solipsism and arrive at a mutually edifying mutual understanding. For me it's the only really authentic way of connecting with another person: through his ideas. Everything else is superficial by comparison. So when you stomp on that connection because you're too busy pushing your agenda, defending your pride, or just being angry simply because I disagree with you, you stomp on an innate part of me, and you deny me the only meaningful way I have to connect with you.

And when that happens, don't get angry if I want to punch you in the face. Maybe you deserve it.

The excluded middle

A week ago I posted a link to this article, written by David Frum, to my Facebook profile. There are parts of his analysis that I disagree with, of course, but on balance I found the article to be a thoughtful, constructive, and pragmatic take on heathcare reform from a conservative perspective. Most appealingly, Frum didn't engage in the petty histrionics of the tin-foil crowd: his article delightfully misses the entire {'Marxist','bloodless coup','facist','government takeover','armageddon'} set. I was impressed enough to check out his blog, where I found a collection of interesting, articulate political pieces written from a more-or-less conservative perspective. I also found a relatively intelligent commentariat who, in spite of ideological differences, manage impressively civil disagreement. I thought to myself that, in an age of Limbaugh, Beck, and Palin, Frum is exactly the sort of thing the political right ought to promote: reasonable, self-critical, even academic arguments for conservative ideas without anti-intellectualism and scorched-earth demagoguery.

Alas, it was too good to be true. On Tuesday, two days after the publication of the linked piece above, Frum was fired from his position at the conservative American Enterprise Institute.

I won't lie: I was really angry when I found out about it. Of course I can't say whether or not Frum was fired over his politics (if you like you can read his take as well as that of one of his AEI colleagues), but in any case it's disheartening when a political group rejects its moderate elements. People like to complain about the hulking inagility of the two-party system, but one of its chief benefits is that it discourages extremism. Radical ideas are first taken up by third parties, and if they become sufficiently mainstream they are picked up by one of the major parties. This forces the ideas through an incubation period, moderating them before they have any chance at becoming policy. This system works relatively well because the major parties have incentive to appeal to as large a base as possible. Empty political slogans or not, Reagan's big tent, Clinton's third way, and even Bush's compassionate conservatism sought common ground among an ideologically diverse electorate, thereby forcing moderation on the relevant party.

But this system doesn't work if a party caters to its extreme elements. If it continues to pander to the tea party bloc and push out moderates like Frum, the Republican party will give its stupidest and most reactionary elements control over its agenda, which is bad for everybody involved. Energizing a narrow, vocal portion of the base may garner short-term political capital, but it's a losing strategy in the long-term—one that poisons the political atmosphere in the meantime. White-hot partisan noise deepens divides while alienating moderate voters, and it takes more than angry paranoiacs to win elections.

My own politics are a hodgepodge of left- and right-leaning ambivalences, but my loyalties are beside the point: regardless of the party in power, we need a strong, moderating opposition. But when the opposition chooses downtown Glennbeckistan as its ideological epicenter, it relinquishes its claims to credibility and does real damage to democracy.

Here we come a-qwantzling

I've made it no secret on this blog that I love Dinosaur Comics. I find the strip extremely funny—both intellectually and viscerally—in a way that I can't properly explain to people who don't share my appreciation. If you aren't familiar, you should give it a fair hearing. It could change your life for the awesomer.

Ryan North, the writer of Dinosaur Comics, embedded a puzzle in one of his recent comics. Inspired by the cryptographic messages of early modern scientists like Newton and Hooke, he encoded the strip's punchline as an anagram: "12t10o8e7a6l6n6u5i5s5d5h5y3I3r3fbbwwkcmvg", meaning that there are 12 't's, 10 'o's, etc. He left it to his readers to decode the scripts and offered prizes for the first person to return the correct punchline. That was over a week ago.

So far no one has solved it. It's like Excalibur. Or the Riemann hypothesis.

Realizing that his "qwantzle" is challenging, Ryan has been slowly giving out clues. So far, this is all we know:

1. The solution is a single, reasonably grammatical sentence that fits the context of the strip. It begins with the word "I", contains a colon and a comma (in that order), and ends with a double exclamation mark!!
2. Letters in the solution are capitalized as in the code, and there are no proper nouns; thus, combined with the first clue, all instances of capital I must be the word "I".
3. All words in the solution have been used previously in Dinosaur Comics. (DC is searchable, and readers have put together a dictionary of all possible words. My untrimmed dictionary has 14,000 unique words.)
4. The longest word in the puzzle has 11 letters, and the next-longest word has 8; these words appear sequentially in the solution.
5. [RN recently posted a final clue: the largest word is 'fundamental'. It helps, I suppose, but I think most people had already guessed that, and in any case the search space is still obscenely large!]

Even with the clues, qwantzle is maddeningly hard. Naively, there are 97! letter combinations, and even if you incorporate all of the hints the number of possible word combinations is staggering—far too many for a computer to enumerate. So there's a small community of readers working on heuristic approaches to the problem, trying to combine human intuition with brute-force computational strength. But so far, most solutions (interestingly, readers have submitted many grammatical sentences that meet the criteria, but none of them has been correct) have come simply by guess-and-check.

I won't lie: I've spent more time than I care to admit on qwantzle. I've taught myself a new programming language and spent a few idle hours crash-coursing on computational linguistics. To show for it, I've developed two approaches that I thought were clever. One takes a valid solution, randomly deletes a few words, and forms a new anagram with the deleted words; this gives you a way to automatically explore variations on a solution that you think might be pretty close. The other performs a genetic algorithm on letter ordering alone. The letter orderings are ranked according to how well they correlate with DC dialogue, randomly mutated and crossed over, and made to compete in a pseudo-Darwinian process intended to improve the overall quality of the solutions.

But, despite (what I consider) reasonable creativity, these approaches don't work all that well. They WILL spit out technically valid solutions, but they aren't terribly grammatical. My next step should be to include natural language processing techniques—NLP is a new field with surprising success at computationally characterizing language as it is spoken and written—but I'm having a hard time being optimistic. In general, computers are far inferior to human brains at pattern recognition, and I struggle to believe that a computer could be made to recognize the right answer even if it found it.

I'm certainly on the lookout for new solution ideas, of course. But I think that the problem will remain unsolved until Ryan North finally gives out enough clues—at which time it will be solved by a human brain performing (computer-aided) guess-and-check.

[Note: I originally mistyped the anagram, so if any of you were working on the puzzle using my copy—and I hope you weren't—I'm very sorry and it's fixed now!]

Meta-post

You probably noticed: I didn't do it. It turns out I picked a pretty poor week (maybe the week of your birthday celebration(s) isn't the best one for a challenge of creativity) for daily blogging, and I greatly underestimated how much effort it would take to write a post every day. Perhaps you noticed that I posted the entries just before midnight, or that I edited them significantly the next day, or that I had a hard time simultaneously keeping up with multiple threads of comments while writing the next day's post. I didn't run out of things to say--I have a post or two waiting in the wings--but rather struggled to get the ideas adequately expressed. Finally, on Thursday I just didn't get it done. Originally I intended to pick up and not let it deter me from finishing out strong for the rest of the week, but once you've failed at your goal, it's hard not to give up now. So I did.

Failures aside, it was a useful experiment. Although I ultimately succumbed to the pressure, I managed to write my way through a few complex posts in much shorter time than I usually would. I now also see the value in a few days' wait between posts. It takes a day or two for people to see the post, decide what they don't like about it, and respond; it takes a further day or two for arguments and counter-arguments to converge. A new post's arrival simply stifles the process.

So: where to go from here? Inspired by Marie and Gareth's suggestions, I'll try to occasionally post shorter, lighter, even more superficial posts. Although it's quite difficult for me, probably I can share a thought or an idea or an experience without picking its bones clean with over-analysis.

Finally, inspired by Grant's suggestion, I want to spend some time writing a series of introductory articles to particularly important (or interesting) mathematical ideas. Consider it a sort of "greatest hits" of mathematics, with an emphasis on accessibility to the lay person--sacrificing precision for intuition. Such posts will likely take a good chunk of effort from me, so I probably won't do it unless there's sufficient interest. Thus I ask: is there sufficient interest?

Je pense, donc je suis

Every modern scientist owes an intellectual debt to René Descartes. In addition to his mathematical contributions--Descartes invented the coordinate axes and made early contributions to calculus--his philosophy instigated the rationalist movement, which arguably forms the basis of the scientific method. Though a Catholic, Descartes' philosophy was founded on ultimate skepticism. Sense experience is subjective and therefore unreliable, he argued, so everything is open to doubt until it can be proven logically. He posited that for all he knew an "evil genius" was manipulating his sensory input, constructing a false reality. His only given (either an axiom or a tautology depending on your perspective) was his famous pronouncement "I think, therefore I am". He (ostensibly) constructed his entire philosophy from this single premise, eliminating the possibility of the evil genius and logically establishing the existence of God.

'Ostensibly', of course, is the key word. I have to give Descartes credit, as his efforts at radical doubt were seminal, but by modern standards he was a lightweight skeptic. His proof for the existence of God is essentially an elaborate repressing of Anselm's ontological argument. Put very simply, Descartes' argument goes as follows: I can imagine a perfect, benevolent God; something cannot come from nothing, but since I am imperfect, the idea of a perfect God cannot come from within me; thus the idea must come from something perfect; that something is God. Regardless of your theological loyalties, this argument is not terribly convincing. It's not at all obvious, for example--and Descartes leaves it unproven--that an imperfect being cannot conceive of something perfect. Yet Descartes rejected critics' arguments and maintained throughout his life that his proof was complete.

Descartes was no fool; in fact, I'm convinced that he was highly intelligent as well as fully sincere in his philosophical quest. In spite of his extreme efforts at skepticism, however, he ended up more fully convinced of his convictions even though the evidence was far short of watertight. His goal was to discard everything he couldn't justify logically, but he ended up unilaterally embracing a logically unprovable proposition. I have no quarrel with Descartes' beliefs, but it's disheartening to see a brilliant and sincerely skeptical man peg his philosophy to a facile, credulous argument simply because it confirms his preconceptions.

Descartes' example highlights a worrying reality: smart people rationalize their preconceptions just like the rest of us. In fact, they may be even worse about it. Intelligence and education can encourage us to be honest with ourselves, but just as often they provide us merely with the sophistry we need to talk ourselves into believing whatever we choose. Every think tank with an innocuous name and a viciously partisan agenda testifies to the fact that, with enough intellectual effort, we can study ourselves into whatever ideological corner we prefer. It's a sobering thought, one that should give us particular pause in our religious and political affairs where intransigence so often prevails. I'm not arguing that we can't believe in anything, of course--I'm nobody's nihilist--but we must be careful with the arguments we accept for belief, ensuring that we don't simply follow tortured intellectual paths because they lead to the conclusion we wanted all along. Our instinct is to confirm our biases, and intelligence and education are not enough to counter it; only sustained, self-skeptical honesty can successfully keep it in check.

B sides

When I read an article online, I usually spend about twice as long reading the comments section as I do the original article. Partially this is because the sheer bulk of comments--nonsensical or otherwise--easily outweighs that of the article. But mostly I'm fascinated to read other people's arguments--again, nonsensical or otherwise--particularly when the parent article is an opinion piece or somehow controversial. An article, no matter how nuanced or multifaceted its arguments, is almost always a single monologue from a single writer's perspective, and I'm convinced that I learn more from the interdependent swarm of commenters who respond not only to the original article, but to each other's arguments.

I feel the same way about this blog: I think my most concise, coherent writing has actually been in response to your comments, since I have another person's ideas to (a) offer an alternative perspective and (b) give concrete objections on which to focus my thoughts. They're like B-sides: not as polished and audience-friendly as the featured tune, but often a better look into the artist's soul.

Based on the preceding, I've constructed a method for evaluating the quality of a website: instead of trying to judge the content directly, it's easier and more accurate to judge the quality of the discussion it generates. A site that inspires misspelled, all-caps ranting is likely to serve up marginal content, whereas comments thread with meaningful debate usually appear on sites with quality material. "Meaningful debate" is in the eye of the beholder, of course, but I've decided to rank five corners of the web according to this criteria, from worst to best:

5. Youtube

Youtube comments are perhaps the only compelling argument I've ever heard in favor of voluntary extinction. It's been argued (persuasively, I say) that it's impossible to post a comment on YouTube so stupid that people realize that you're kidding. Spelling and grammar are nonexistent, and any disagreement devolves immediately into name-calling. My only consolation is the assumption that mostly teenagers have the time and temperament to watch videos all day. Oh, I hope.

4. Ordinary news outlets (CNN, NYT, MSNBC)

Comments here aren't terrible. By the mass-appeal nature and easy controversy of news sites, comments tend towards angry posts telling people to "wake up" and "stop drinking kool-aid". But there are usually enough calm, reasonable comments to steady my wavering faith in humanity.

3. Online "magazines" (Slate, The Economist, etc.)

Comments here are often quite good. Magazines tend to cater to a somewhat niche audience--often a particular portion of the political spectrum--and the general readership is well-informed, articulate, and capable of quality debate. The biggest drawback is homogeneity: the vast majority of commenters comes from the appropriate political niche, and so the minority opposition feels the need to comment both loudly and inarticulately. Reading comments on Slate (respectively The Economist) therefore gives the impression that conservatives (respectively Keynesians) are ignorant screamers, which isn't good for leveling one's biases.

2. AV Club

The Onion's sister site is not a joke, but its commenters are very, very funny. They are also mean, crude, and pretentious. Funny trumps nice, however (and anyways, AV Club posters expect to be ridiculed--it's an understood part of the fun), so I give the AV Club a hearty recommendation.

1. Wikipedia

Whenever I encounter a Wikipedia naysayer, I invite them to check out the talk pages behind the articles they read. First, the comments there are the best possible way to discern the quality of an article--of course there are bad articles on Wikipedia, but an article with lots of discussion has probably been pored over, its content verified, and its controversial sections moderated by compromise. Second, talk page debates are fascinating examples of quality argument. While debates occasionally degenerate into personal attacks and edit wars, contributers--for no compensation other than (semi-)professional pride--typically succeed in finding common ground, achieving consensus, and turning out a reasonable article. It's a soul-sustaining specimen of human dignity.

Conclusion and obvious subtext: comments here are encouraged!

How wide the divide?

[Note: yes, I changed the title on this post. I actually thought of this title last night, but I couldn't remember it when it came time to actually post. So the original title went in as a placeholder until inspiration re-struck.]

So, it turns out that I get made fun of sometimes, which probably comes as no surprise to most of you. I'm usually happy to laugh at myself, but often these attacks are unfair and petty--I'll use a word too large for my audience, and ridicule follows (I get it; sometimes people are insecure, and maybe sometimes I'm unintentionally intimidating. I'm sorry about that, and I've even gone to considerable lengths to avoid it, but there's nothing I can do to help your problem; you need learn to believe in yourself, just like the last scene in all movies!). But sometimes the ridicule is justified. Recently I was made fun of by a friend for using a semicolon in a text message. I'm not sure that I feel guilty, exactly, but I have to admit that this act was completely mockable: only a laughably curmudgeonly prescriptivist would go to all that trouble just to avoid a comma splice.

You read correctly: today is the day we talk about prescriptivism!

The prescriptivist/descriptivist debate perennially pits high school-vintage grammar snobs against college-educated linguists. Simply put, prescriptivists argue that a language is a collection of officially-defined words which are ordered into sentences and paragraphs according to standardized rules. In other words, language is defined by its rules, and "correct" usage simply follows those rules. I admit that I harbor prescriptivist leanings. I believe that correct usage increases the precision and concision of language, thus making written communication more effective. I appreciate it when objective pronouns are rendered 'whom', when the subjunctive is used properly, and, yes, when comma splices are mended with a simple semicolon.

[Side note: any grammar or usage mistakes in this post are placed there intentionally. For irony!]

Linguists, who are almost universally descriptivists, point out that prescriptivism is largely a modern phenomenon. Language has evolved continuously ever since its advent, and it's only been in the last few hundred years that, with a high literacy rates and the ubiquity of print, it's even been possible to standardize language. Since rich, complex languages existed before prescriptivist rulesets--the average Roman, for example, didn't run around worrying about the difference between the indicative and imperative moods--the languages must therefore not be defined by such rulesets. You can make a sort of Platonic argument: the true language exists independent of the ruleset, thus the ruleset only approximates the language as actually used.

Despite my prescriptivist bias, I'm forced to accept the logic of the descriptivist argument. On one hand, prescriptivist standardization facilitates communication. On the other hand, descriptivists are obviously right in that language transcends standardization. Pure prescriptivism gives us the boorish grammatical hair-splitter; pure descriptivism gives us teh intertubes.

Given my penchant for reconciling conflicting viewpoints (yes, kids, I'm inviting you to read my thesis; while you're at it, if you could cite it in your academic work, that would really help me out), allow me to postulate some common ground: what prescriptivists and descriptivists really care about is that, rather than just spouting out words, we think about language as we use it. A prescriptivist, I argue, doesn't care so much that I use quotation marks as dictated by the Chicago Manual of Style, but that I pay attention to the issues when making choices with punctuation. A descriptivist doesn't really advocate wildly ungrammatical writing, but simply points out that a consistent definition of 'grammatical' is a chimera. So, I can use "standard" usage to write as precisely as possible, while acknowledging that language is inherently fluid and mutable.

Phew. Problem solved.