Macabre Constant

This is an entry in Bernard Werber's awesome Encyclopédie du Savoir Relatif et Absolu, which groups all eleven of his books, like The Ants, We The Gods, and Third Humanity, as well as some additional material.

It is a compendium of a lot of interesting facts, theories, thoughts (and includes a couple recipes as well), and is simply a fascinating read!

Due to the fact that these bite-size entries in his encyclopedia discuss so many varied topics, I find it also is a great source of inspiration for future stories... That's right folks, if you guys can read French (for the encyclopedia is currently only available in the author's mother tongue, or in Russian, I just found out), you may be able to find out which items I may end up using in one of my next series ;)

Here's an entry I found interesting in terms of how our society tends to organize itself...which, imho should change, but the question is: How?

(translation by yours truly)

The Macabre Constant

The name "macabre constant" comes from the researcher André Antibi. This lab director for educational sciences at the university of Paul-Sabatier in Toulouse posits that, in a classroom, the teacher has to have the following distribution among its students: 1/3 good students, 1/3 average students, and 1/3 bad students.  (My note: This is similar to grading on a curve)

What would one say of a teacher who didn't attribute a grade below B?(1) That s/he's too indulgent. For a teacher to be credible, s/he has to have 1/3 of her/his class be considered "bad students." Under societal pressure, the teacher therefore becomes a selector despite her/himself.

In a 2000 survey done on teachers and professors, 95% admitted that they felt obliged to establish a certain percentage of bad grades. However, this "macabre constant" that creates a selection based on failure, ends up making its victims lose confidence in themselves, and even discourages these students entirely. (My note: Sometimes wrongfully so. Besides, shouldn't a teacher/professor be evaluated instead on how well s/he successfully imparts knowledge instead?)

Mandelbrot set detail

André Antibi proposed, to avoid it, another system, the EBCC, or the Evaluation By Contract of Confidence (2), which consists in verifying whether the student has acquired the requisite knowledge.

One can find this principle, that rules there should be 1/3 winners, 1/3 in the middle, and 1/3 losers, is also applied outside of the scholastic system, to all human groups, as if it were necessary to have a third world, emerging countries, and industrialized countries, to keep humanity balanced.

Likewise, inside each nation, we find again this division in thirds: the poor, the middle class, and the rich.

And just like with Mandelbrot's fractals, this three-tiered scheme is reproduced indefinitely. Even in slums (just like within the middle classes, or with those in power), this distribution can be found again.

Despite all Utopian equality that's been attempted (anarchists, communists, hippies, ...), this principle of the macabre constant keeps coming back, as if it were inexorably linked to our species. 
The measure of any victory can only be undertaken based on the defeat or failure of a group of individuals designated as "losers."

Income Inequality in the USA (March 24, 2014)
From demographicpartitions.org

Notes:
(1) Note that this is technically France, where the grading is out of 20, with passing grades going from 10-12, depending on the school system, so the author, B. Werber, actually said "didn't grade below a 12."
(2) In French, it's EPCC, or Evaluation par contrat de confiance.

On Productivity - Making Grand Gestures

I've been reading a really interesting book lately, called Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World by Cal Newport. Found out about it because I realized I was having major concentration issues (partly due to my lately-discovered gluten allergy, but not only to that).

The book states that a key to advance in any worthwhile project (including at work), is to have the ability to get into the zone and do some deep work for long stretches of time. This entails detoxing from immediate reward activities such as going through my emails, surfing the Internet, checking out Amazon, twitter, or browsing Instagram... Yeah, easier said than done.

Other things just as crucial, but harder to control, including going to *cough*lock yourself up in*cough* a quiet space, one where people aren't likely to distract you. That's basically impossible in an open work space like the one at my current job (yes, I do have a regular job, as evidenced by my long absences on this--and other--forums).

Anyway, Deep Work is a really interesting read for anyone who wants to get things done, and also includes tips and tricks for people with varying types of jobs and activities.

Here's an excerpt I found particularly interesting to me, since it mentions the mighty J. K. Rowling, and her struggle to write the final book of her awesome Harry Potter series (I cannot compare myself to her, but the struggle to finish my Morgana Trilogy is definitely quite an arduous journey for me too):

   In the early winter of 2007, J.K. Rowling was struggling to complete The Deathly Hallows, the final book in her Harry Potter series. The pressure was intense, as this book bore the responsibility of tying together the six that preceded it in a way that would satisfy the series' hundreds of millions of fans. Rowling needed to work deeply to satisfy these demands, but she was finding unbroken concentration increasingly difficult to achieve at her home office in Edinburgh, Scotland. 

"As I was finishing Deathly Hallows there came a time where the window cleaner came, the kids were at home, the dogs were barking," Rowling recalled in an interview. 

It was too much, so J.K. Rowling decided to do something extreme to shift her mind-set where it needed to be: She checked into a suite in the five-star Balmoral Hotel, located in the heart of downtown Edinburgh.

"So I came to this hotel because it's a beautiful hotel, but I didn't intend to stay here," she explained. "[But] the first day's writing went well so I kept coming back...and I ended up finishing the last of the Harry Potter books [here]."

Interesting tidbit I actually wasn't yet aware of (shame on me). However much I wish I could do the same, my own life doesn't permit me to make that grand a gesture towards focusing on the editing/writing of Curse of the Fey (apparently the hotel costs $1,000 a night). But I try to do something similar whenever I can: go to a cafe (hopefully quiet--I'm not usually very lucky in this department, though), rent a cabin for a weekend (that one turned out to be quite fun and productive), go to my aunt's and uncle's place where I'm lucky enough to have full use of their office...

The Balmoral Edinburgh suite where J.K. Rowling stayed to finish Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

What about you, what kind of grand gesture do you find yourself doing to be able to get your important projects done?

Pleasure Vs. Happiness

I don't quite remember how I fell on this book (the joys of happenstance) by Robert H. Lustig, but The Hacking of the American Mind is turning out to be quite an interesting read (although it should change its title, because it certainly doesn't just apply to Americans)!

In it, he states that there are two clear definitions of the terms Pleasure and Happiness:

Pleasure, which comes from the French word plaisir, is a concept of reward:

1. It's immediate
2. It provides some level of excitement/amusement
3. It's dependent on circumstance
   

Happiness, on the other hand, is about being content, about well-being and human flourishing (aka physical and/or spiritual growth:

1. It's about life
2. It's not prone to acute changes in one's life (so no roller-coaster of emotions)
3. It's unrelated to circumstances--anyone can be happy!

These two states can certainly happen concurrently, but they also can affect one another in negative ways that I certainly hadn't always suspected (going all the way down to the molecular level of our brain!). In fact, "chronic excessive reward eventually leads to both addiction and depression," what Robert Lustig calls the twin epidemics, and therefore too much pleasure can actually prevent us from being happy.

For your (and my) ease, I've created a quick table of the 7 differences between reward (pleasure) and contentment (happiness) as expressed in The Hacking of the American Mind:

Note here that it's important to have some level of dopamine (it would actually be really bad not to), but it is addictive, whereas serotonin...isn't. On top of that, in terms of evolution, dopamine is

"stronger" than serotonin, or we'd still be cavemen (if still around at all) since dopamine is a hormone that keeps us motivated. But this also means that, if we're constantly releasing dopamine into our brains, we're effectively destroying our dopamine receptors...and our ability to feel happiness.*

Knowing this, it only makes the following fact all that scarier:

In his research and analysis, Robert Lustig has come to realize that "in the last half century, America and most of the Western world have become more and more unhappy, sicker, and broke as well. Marketing, media, and technology have capitalized on subverting our brain physiology to their advantage in order to veer us away from the pursuit of happiness to the pursuit of pleasure, which for them, of course equals the pursuit of profit."

"In fact, [these corporations'] recipes are continuing to improve: as the science of reward is elaborated and becomes more precise, new techniques in neuromarketing are now becoming mainstream. And as corporations have profited big from increased consumption of virtually everything with a price tag promising happiness, we have lost big-time. America has devolved from the aspirational, achievement-oriented "city on a hill" we once were, into the addicted and depressed society that we've now become.

Because we abdicated happiness for pleasure. 

Because we got cheap."

And you thought the world in Game of Thrones was bad**! 

In any case, after this intense intro, I'm very much looking forward to reading the rest of his book, including how indeed we did get hacked, and how we can claim our brains back (OK, this definitely sounds like a weird zombie movie now). I'll probably share a couple more nuggets as I go along :)

*OK, so this is highly simplified, and we have loads more hormones, but this doesn't make the above facts wrong either.

**I'm still crying that the last season won't come out till 2019, yes, yes, I too fall prey to this society of consumption, especially when it comes to stories...and sweets...and tea... Gah!

Intellectual Snobbery

On the whole I think the snobbery of my childhood, the snobbery of birth, that is, is more palatable than the other snobberies: the snobbery of wealth, and today's intellectual snobbery.
Intellectual snobbery seems today to breed a particular form of envy and venom. Parents are determined that their offspring shall shine. "We've made great sacrifices for you to have a good education," they say. The child is burdened with guilt if he does not fulfill their hopes. Everyone is so sure that it is all a matter of opportunity--not of natural aptitude.
I think late Victorian parents were more realistic and had really more consideration for their children and for what would make a happy and successful life for them. There was much less keeping up with the Joneses. Nowadays I often feel that it is for one's own prestige that one wants one's children to succeed. The Victorians looked dispassionately at their offspring and made up their minds about their capacities. A. was obviously going to be "the pretty one." B. was "the clever one." C. was going to be plain and was definitely not intellectual. Good works would be C.'s best chance. And so on. Sometimes, of course, they were wrong, but on the whole it worked. There is an enormous relief in not being expected to produce something that you haven't got.
The general standpoint in my young days had a certain humility. You accepted what you were. You had assets and you had liabilities. Like a hand at cards, having been dealt it, you sorted your cards and decided how best to play them. There was, I am almost sure, less envy and resentment of those more gifted or better off. If some young friends had expensive or exciting toys one did not expect or demand to have them oneself. I might say to my mother, "Freda has a wonderful doll's house. I wish I had one like that," and my mother would reply placidly, "Yes, it's nice for Freda. Of course her parents are much richer than we are." Nowadays it seems to be "Marylyn has got a bicycle, why can't I have one?" as though it were one's right.

~Agatha Christie, An Autobiography

Sadly enough, it doesn't seem like things have reversed since then...

Creative Geniuses

Art by AnnSoDesign

"Ideas can't be created out of nothing. Ideas are created by you when you take something and combine it with something else." [Dean Keith Simonton] Logical thinkers will exclude the things that can't be combined and creative thinkers don't exclude anything.

Thus starts an interesting interview of Creative Thinkering's author Michael Michalko (which you can read fully here).

Michalko goes on to say that "genius is tantamount to th[e] theory of evolution, because genius requires the production of many ideas"--many through the forced and challenging combination of two dissimilar things--of which only a select few will survive (just like a select few genetic mutations that create new species will survive, while the majority perish). Or, as Da Vinci called it, "connecting the unconnected."

Fantasy Vs. Knowledge

Einstein by VityaR83

Just a quick food for thought for the day.

Einstein once said (or wrote, not sure which):

When I examine myself and my methods of thought, I come to the conclusion that the gift of fantasy has meant more to me than my talent for absorbing positive knowledge.

I think this is a great point to bear in mind when thinking about educational programs. I believe it's

good to understand the bases for certain ideas/theorems/etc, but I don't think that individual thinking should be discouraged. Simple regurgitation of a teacher's or professor's lectures should not be the goal of one's education, especially not when pursuing higher education. That is why I feel privileged to have attended a university in the U.S. and at a school where professors encouraged critical thinking and questions in class.

PS: This is my own opinion, of course, and like anything human, subject to fallacy. 

PS 2: I'm not saying American schools are necessarily the best. I'm also not saying that this point should be the only one to consider when comparing programs on a global basis. However, based on my own experience, I do not believe I would have blossomed to the same extent (or at least not as quickly) had I chosen a university in the "regurgitation" system than in the "free-thinking" one.