Vigotsky on animal learning

In his Mind in Society Lev Vigotsky wrote on animal intelligence that "primates cannot be taught (in the human sense of the word) through imitation, nor can their intellect be developed, because they have no zone of proximal development. A primate can learn a great deal through training using its mechanical and mental skills, but it cannot be made more intelligent, that is, it cannot be taught to solve a variety of more advanced problems independently. For this reason animals are incapable of learning in the human sense of the term; human learning presupposes a specific social nature and a process by which children grow into the intellectual life of those around them."


Vigotsky, Mind in Society (1978), p. 88.


Vigotsky's point raises an interesting question: are primates really unable to develop intelligence, or is the issue rather that since they don't have the kind of social life humans have, they have no motivation to engage in the activities humans try to teach them to engage. A chimpanzee does not apply the basic counting skill it learns from humans more generally. But not because it cannot or could not, but rather because it has no situations in its life where it would need to. As Vigotsky stresses with regards to the development and learning of humans, abilities learned can be very task or domain specific. Why expect them then to generalize better in the case of animals? It would seem to me to be an equally good general and abstract speculative explanation of why animals don't go on using their intellectual skills further, that they lack independent motivation to engage in the tasks that humans usually try to engage them in (e.g. communicating with humans, counting, social cooperation tasks, etc.). This means, that the lack of human-like development is the result of the lack of human-like motivation. This is nothing surprising in species with different life forms from ours.

Of course I know that Vigotsky's point was quite speculative, and mine even more so. I'm more than happy to receive pointers to good data, ideas, and reading suggestions to this.

It is actually not interesting whether or not there are gods

I think whether or not there is a god (or gods) doesn't matter. It just doesn't matter anything, and we should not care.Why so?

Here is the reasoning:
1. If there is a god who created (and/or manages the world) that god (or those gods) allow for a lot of suffering, pain, and meaningless horror (pedophilia, torture, sadists, abuse in family, depression, wars, bombs, and so on). As humans we have clear interests: safety, relative wellbeing for ourselves and our families, freedom from too much stress. That's pretty much it. Gods that create the kind of world we live in are not concerned with out needs, hence, we shouldn't care whether or not they exist. Their concerns are different from ours. They are perfectly alien to our world, having no deep concern with anything that makes our lives worth living. Such gods do not merit any attention. We should keep working on better societies, better charities, better and less corrupt social institutions including politics, and on getting along better.

2. If there is a god who created the world that is of no concern to our creating better societies, better charities, better and less corrupt social institutions including politics, and on getting along better. There is no sign at all that any god has any concern with our endeavours to create better societies. People live excellent lives in atheist societies, mixed religion societies, non-religious societies, and also, people live horrible lives in both religious and non-religious societies. At the same time, people live much better lives in societies with strong and stable political institutions, with social justice, with effective charities and social services, with solidarity and good psychological services. People without these things live consistently worse lives.

3. Our abilities to build better societies don't depend on any gods. They depend on human capacities and abilities to feel, think, and talk. We can cooperate, plan, agree on things, and act together. That's all that is basically required to start any social cooperation. Gods are hence irrelevant. The values we create don't depend on gods, they depend on our abilities and activities, and our efforts. The values that matter to humans are values that stem from our human nature and build, and our ways of living.

4. Gods could seem to be relevant to the sciences. But it seems that whatever role any creating god or interfering god might have played at any time, the world does run consistently along the rules natural science, and our spheres of human interest are shaped by the activities and dynamics of the cultural conceptual spheres that humans shape. Hence gods are irrelevant to them. We need to understand the kind of social world we build, and the kind of natural world around us better, as well as their interconnections. We are parts of nature, so our capacities to invent cultural norms, habits, to sustain practices and invoke values, and so on, are all natural. They don't need to be reduced, or explained away, nor do they need to be explained by invoking the interference of gods. They are simply complex and interesting parts of our world.

The U.S. working class and its role in electing Trump

Joan C. Williams wrote a very informative and cool-headed piece in The Harvard Business Review on what the Democratic Party's strategy got wrong about working class U.S. citizens, and how much this influenced the votes of masses of people.

Williams summarizes several ways in which working class people are misrepresented by Democrats and mainstream media. She emphasizes, that working class people in the U.S. are usually solid middle class, nevertheless are usually presented as poor. Also, often when Democrats focused on policies benefiting the poor, they didn't take into account that these policies would not affect in any beneficial way the middle classes, including working class people. These are surely important and significant points to make, and Williams makes them with admirable clarity.

In this entry I want to discuss two issues she mentions:
- The fact that some working class voters turned away from the Democrats because they detest professionals, teachers, and researchers, and the rhetoric of Democrats was too intellectual.
- That 'manly dignity', male pride, is important to several working class voters.

Williams doesn't say that either of these two things is good. She just highlights them as something that a party that wants to win the elections cannot forget. This is very sound pragmatic advice.

My main issue is the following: while there certainly are many neglected aspects of working class existence these days in the U.S. which should have been addressed by the Democrats, the two attitudes highlighted by Williams and mentioned before are very hard to accept for someone leaning towards enlightenment ideals. Endorsing that people can improve themselves and their society underlies the drive for continuous social improvement. And hence it is very hard to campaign in a way that caters to voters who oppose academics, intellectuals, and white collar workers. Of course this doesn't mean that such voters are bad people. But it does mean that their views of how the world works are very one-sided: while recognizing the importance of skills, experience and expertise in some fields, they play down the importance and legitimacy of these aspects in other fields.

This is what the Republican party, the Christian church, and Trump have both relied on in making many perfectly obvious questions seem controversial:
There is no serious debate regarding whether evolution is the process through which humans came to be what they are.
There is no serious evidence showing that allowing equal pay and equal rights regardless of gender and race has any bad implications for society.
There is no serious debate regarding climate change. It is happening and it will be devastating.
Still, Trump and others have managed to present these issues as if they would still be open questions in the sense, that they haven't been substantially argued for and supported by evidence. They have.
What Trump and others relied on in undermining such perfectly legitimate expert consensus was in part the fact that a number of voters don't have basic science and cultural literacy, they don't understand what researchers, scientists, managers, etc. are doing, and they are suspicious or even antagonistic towards them.

These attitudes surely need to be changed. What to do? Since it seems that simple explanation, fun talks, public intellectuals, politicians who campaign to get the word out are not enough, Williams might actually be right: maybe we should rely on the man-pride of those voters who couldn't get on board with the Democrats because they felt neglected. It might be that if they think they are being cared for, they matter, and they are on the winning team, they would be more open to think in progressive ways.
Still, their resistance is worrying, and it is sad that this is what we would need to rely on. In the long run one can only hope that most people come to understand that in itself neither their social position, nor their gender, or how important they themselves feel that their problems are, can justify ignorance. This in turn will hopefully lead to a more informed and critical acceptance to science and society related issues. Such a stance would enable to endorse the views of proper experts and to neglect fakes. The general idea that the world is too complex now for us to look to one politicians who thinks he himself is the source of authority on every question needs to seep through.

Of course such a change would be much better facilitated by conversations than by talking down. On the other hand it is hard to have the patience to do this all the time, just to save the egos of people who are unwilling to adapt, but whom we do want the best for, and also need them on our team.

If interested in more depth in the connection between work, traditional gender roles, and working class life in affluent Western countries, Williams also has a number of publications, and her recent books (2012 and 2014) discuss these issues. I'm sure many readers would find them interesting, and they can provide plenty of insight.

On Handke's 'The Goalie's Anxiety at the Penalty Kick'

Handke's book, The Golie's Anxiety at the Penalty Kick, (in original German Die Angst des Tormanns beim Elfmeter) was not a relaxing (entspannend) one for me to read. The book is depressing, very realistic, and follows the prolonged mental agony of its protagonist. The main character whom we follow, called Bloch, is a former goalkeeper. He has lost his job and can't find his place in the world. The novel documents how he loses his connecting with community, and how he can't find his place in the world, leading him to perceive his surroundings more and more absurdly.

We learn from the novel that Bloch's career as goalkeeper had its ups and downs, although he played for a big club, and he loses the job that he is doing after his retirement from football. He is divorced, not talking with his child, and has no money. As we could say, he is in a very bad position.

He commits a crime, but that's not what triggers the process of his losing his ground. Rather, it is a result. As Bloch realizes that he lost most of the important things that constituted the main frame of his life, he tries to cling on to smaller joys and habits: going to the cinema, getting drunk, picking up girls, going to his favourite bars. But nothing helps. Without a proper life within which these activities would have their place, within which they would give him pleasure or pain, they would be bad or good, would make him jump or feel guilty, they don't offer anything, just more of the same bleak grayness.

Bloch eventually ends up in a small village near the border. Initially the reader is tempted to think that he wants to flee across the border to escape punishment for his crime. However, Bloch is too passive and confused. When exploring the countryside around the little village in the direction of the border he starts thinking about the geometrical properties of the location, perspective, unexpected encounters, and space. Seemingly all could be related to planning an escape, but Bloch's thoughts drift far from making practical arrangements. The only time he appears to find some peace is after he gets extremely drunk, provokes a fight in a pub, gets beaten up, and then just sits at a table in the tavern with a beer, half awake and half asleep.

Bloch is not obsessed with his crime as Dostoevsky's Raskolnikov in Crime and Punishment. He is much more like the narrator of Camus' The Stranger/The Outsider. Someone who hasn't found any attachment in life, and is unwilling to invest the needed energy, emotion, and commitment to care. Without the needed emotional connections, without valuing things, he drifts, and gets into situations which could have been easily avoided. Bloch is somewhat more active, more of an agent. But an agent without much direction. It is obvious that he is a middle aged, energetic man, who is used to action. A normal, confident grown up. But without aims he just steps into situations, but then fails to see why they would matter, what would be their significance.

Peter Handke

In the novel's closing scene Bloch tells the story of a goalkeeper who thinks so much about where the striker is going to shot the penalty that he is eventually rendered motionless, stands still in the middle, and the striker - expecting the goalkeeper to jump to one side - shoots the ball in his hands. Bloch is similarly unable to move. His thoughts throughout the novel run in all directions, usually into usually abstract, depressed and disattached directions. He persistently fails to find significance in anything. Whether he ends up with the ball in his hands? Unlikely that this would work the same way in the real life. One cannot be always lucky.

In many ways this is a sad tale of a middle aged person, who finds that he doesn't have the imagination, the will, and/or the energy to start life anew. He doesn't know how to build up again a network of caring relations, how to relate to people he has lost and should forge new types of relations with - his ex-wife and child - and what he should do with his life. The drifting highlights that since what he was good at he cannot do anymore - he is too old to go back to professional football - and he doesn't have any other genuine interests or connections, he falls apart, inflicting tragedy and confusion on others, as well as himself. We could understand the novel both to highlight how sad life is for many, and also to underline the importance of cultivating a genuine personality, capable of existing alone, with genuine interests, valuing things and people for their own sake. That is what enable most of us to survive continuous change in our life, and even very difficult times.

Defending climate scientists from ridiculous lawsuits

The climate change deniers are in full swing in many places, but most strongly in the U.S.

If you have a few spare bucks ($5, $10, or more) you can support efficient legal defense for scientists who are attacked for political reasons. The goal of many republicans and industry moguls is to slow down or make the work of climate researchers impossible. What we need is to join up and show them that they can't simply shut up the researchers standing up for our needs and goals as a society.

Let's show these greedy jerks. If the state is unwilling to stand up to them and shoot down their stupid actions, we have to get together and push back.

Masuji Ibuse's 'Black Rain'

I've just finished Masuji Ibuse's 1969 novel Black Rain. It is an excellent novel. It presents the story of a small family from a village near to Hiroshima a few years after the atomic bomb was dropped on the city. The tone is - as in several the works of many Japanese writers - very matter of fact, and giving a good feel of the character of the storyteller, Shigematsu Shizuma. Despite the sometimes dry tone in which what was seen is recounted, Shigematsu's genuine concern for friends and family shines true at the important points. Ibuse's book offers some very dramatic turns which can be felt in full force. It is emotionally moving, and tragic.

It mainly deals with how radiation effect crept up years after the bombing on many of those who thought they would be fine, they would survive. It was interesting to read the book in the same year as Svetlana Alexievich's Chernobyl Prayer. Both books tell stories of loss, of patriotic or nationalistic feeling that motivated people to help and work among the debris of nuclear catastrophes, and the tragedy of not knowing what they were dealing with. At the time the nuclear bomb was dropped on Hiroshima the Japanese - including doctors - had no idea about the effects of radiation, and at the time of the Chernobyl catastrophe the masses of people living in the regions affected, as well as those who were sent there for relief work were kept in the dark about those effects. Both books tell about much suffering, but also about remarkable cases of community spirit and a feeling of belonging to the places, even after they have been affected by catastrophes. Of course the Japanese - with the help of the U.S. - dealt with Hiroshima and Nagasaki following the war was very different from the way in which Moscov - and Belarus and the Ukraine - handled the consequences of Chernobyl.

Ibuse's book mentions criticisms of the Japanese Imperial government, army, and navy only in a very subdued way. It is hard to guess today whether this is a literary tool employed by the writer to express that people were genuinely afraid to criticise the leadership and the army, even at the end of the war, or simply a reluctance to engage in such criticism when he wrote the book. What makes the former interpretation more likely is that in some places in the novel there is a marked contrast of descriptions of malpractice, mistreatment of civilians and soldiers by the military, still people who are obviously aware of the ridiculousness of what was going on are silent. The horrible plans of the army to arm all civilians to defend Japan against the invasion of the U.S. forces is mentioned in several places - in no way favourably -, also showing that there were people who genuinely believed - or at least talked as if they would believe - in such policies.

The book is another great argument for never again wanting a war and strictly keeping away from using nuclear weapons ever, in any situation. This makes it an especially relevant book to debates today, when the Russian military publicized in the last years that it carried out practices for scenarios of nuclear strikes against European targets, and where the false rumour was spread that the U.S. was threatening Russia with a nuclear war (this is supposed to have been averted by the election of Trump).

Russia is obviously at a point where it is under huge international pressure, and it Putin, his government, and his generals are willing to go to great lengths. Novels like Ibuse's and Alexievich's can help people understand in Russia, the U.S. and everywhere else, that threatening with nuclear strikes is a horrible thing to do, and any use of atomic bombs that affects civilians is a terrible crime. Tension and Russian propaganda need to be defused. Merkel and Obama have gone to great lengths to achieve this. However, Putin is willing to risk much, and Trump is fool enough - so it seems at the moment - to go along with his games.

You can read a review of Black Rain from The Japan Times here.

On voting and basic knowledge and understanding

"[J]ust having the right to vote is meaningless if a citizen is disenfranchised by illiteracy or semi-literacy. Illiterate and semi-literate Americans are condemned not only to poverty, but also to the powerlessness of incomprehension. Knowing that the do not understand the issues, and feeling prey to manipulative oversimplifications, they do not trust the system of which they are supposed to be the masters. They do not feel themselves to be active participants in our republic, and they often do not turn out to vote. the civic importance of cultural literacy lies in the fact that true enfranchisement depends upon knowledge, knowledge upon literacy, and literacy upon cultural literary. To be truly literate, citizens must be able to grasp the meaning of any piece of writing addressed to the general."

E. D. Hirsch What Every American Needs to Know: Cultural Literacy, p. 12.

The U.S. is a huge country, with a great population, lots of different school providers and standards, and myriads of beliefs and views. However one thing that became obvious lately - as it does during every election campaign - was that there are plenty of voters who are not really able to engage with complex information. Since they cannot do that they cannot form a realistic idea of what the U.S.'s position is like in the world, nor of what is going on in their own country. This led to many fruitless and silly debates. (This isn't just an issue for Trump supporters, although it is a pronounced one for many Trump supporters.)

What Hirsch proposed and argued for in part of his work, was that education should equip people both with the skills and some particular basics of how to handle and deal with knowledge about their nation. That this would be quite useful is now obvious. There is a danger of course that such proposals can be hijacked by the state to push its own agenda and teach students an ideology or a nationalist vision which fosters loyalty even if the governments is doing evil. However, Hirsch's recommendations are fairly particular and interesting, and an updated core knowledge elements might be a welcome and useful tool against technocracy and cultural illiteracy.

Here you can have a look at Hirsch's bio at the site of the Core Knowledge Foundation he set up.

 And you can go on reading a bit about cultural literacy and some connected debates in The Atlantic and The Guardian.

On the Trump presidency

Some articles (like this one in The Independent and this one in The Washington Post) mention two possibilities:

1. That Trump might not be as hot-headed and aggressive as he acted in his campaign, and that
2. a Trump presidency might be better for international military politics, because Trump said that he would be reluctant to wage wars if they are costly, or to defend allies if they don't pay towards their defense.

Both of these ideas are mistaken and there is no reason for hope and optimism.

With concern to 1.: The question is not whether Trump might be more sensible than the way he made himself look in his campaign. The question is if there is any good reason to think that is more sensible. There isn't. He was consistently haphazard, offensive, chaotic, unprepared, and unprofessional.

With concern to 2.: I've read in many places that Trump wants to talk to Putin and that is a good thing. Saying this makes it obvious that many - even intelligent - people believe that the U.S. administration and military is not maintaining constant close discussions on many topics with Russia. This is of course a false idea. Russia and the U.S. don't collide on many issues because they don't communicate.
Also, people who think that when Trump said he would talk with Russia that was a considered, serious thing haven't listened to his other ideas. He is just sputtering populist phrases. Whatever works at the moment. He knows as much about strategy, military issues, and economic competition with Russia as about other topics: next to nothing. As soon as he is seriously briefed and informed, if he even understands what he is being told, which is not sure, he might change his mind.

The same is the case concerning his ideas that the U.S. shouldn't offer defense arrangements for Japan, South-Korea and the Philippines. There are three enormous confusions here:
i) the U.S. does not offer defense. Japan had to accept that the U.S. military is stationed there at the end of the occupation following WWII. South-Korea had to accept the troops after the Korean war. The Philippines used to be a de facto U.S. colony. Also, Japan and South-Korea pay huge amounts towards the maintenance of the bases that the U.S. troops are using and towards the costs of the U.S. military.
Third, it is far from obvious that these countries really wanted the U.S. to station their troops there. That the U.S. is there ensures that these countries collide in their diplomacy with their other neighbours, Russia and China. If the U.S. troops would not be there these countries would have much more space for diplomatic manouvering and for looking out for their own interests. It is however part of the U.S. position that there can't be any powerful opponents on its borders. Canada and Mexico are no threats, across the Atlantic is a bloc of NATO countries, and Japan and South-Korea, as well as the Philippines form a big buffer zone between the U.S. and China. If the U.S. does not want to change its major defense policies it won't give up on these alliances.

Hence, there are no good reasons to be optimistic about Trump's presidency if he goes through with anything he has said.

Exposing misinterpretations of experimental results: Tomasello on apes and understanding others

Michael Tomassello conducted with his group another experiment concerning how apes react to others' behaviour. And again, based on sloppy definitions he and his team overestimated and misinterpreted what their results meant. It is more and more common that not only poorly trained and/or click-hunting 'science journalists' misinterpret the findings of studies, but also the researchers workig on them.

See the original paper here.

And the successful bullshit-busting here, by Hanoch Ben-Yami (CEU).

Frans DeWaal is someone who repeatedly did the same thing, when he claimed that apes possess the same as our what we mean by empathy in our current societies. While DeWaal's experiments and many of his observations - just like Tomasello's - are truly fascinating, he over-interprets his findings too.

The reason of such over-interpretations and misunderstandings is usually careless thinking: the researchers involved in the experiments don't think hard and carefully about the concepts and questions they pose and try to answer. It is usually very obvious that they lack any training in conceptual work, and don't have a solid humanities background. Of course there would be funding to solve this issue, but then the results would be much more cautious and less sensational. They wouldn't make for such entertaining TED-talk material. Sadly, the truth loses in these circumstances often.