On metaphors for the encounter with objective reality, here's an especially resonant quote from a book that was very important in my conversion (Chesterton's Aquinas hagiography): "The mind conquers a new province like an emperor; but only because the mind has answered the bell like a servant."
Second, earlier today I was going to answer your questions and say that really the only thing I do regularly that can be judged by wholly objective standards is the dishes. I even had a whole riff on how cooking doesn't fit the description because whether the kids like what I make can be dependent more on their needs/moods than the food itself. BUT THEN I had my third and BY FAR worst attempt at making falafel so it turns out sometimes things become a scum of gritty froth and filth in the pan and that's your contact with reality for the day.
Meg from Little Women, with her jelly that wouldn't jell, is our greatest literary image of the seeker after objective truth, fight me.
Reading Edith Stein (some years ago) was a great revelation for me - her ideas fit well with what I had come to believe based on my church and my mother’s teachings. I was surprised to find that Stein elucidated these so long ago.
This was a welcome post. For one, im undergoing cancer radiation and just wrote, today, about comparing this season to normal life and finding myself lacking. Of course, radiation is a reason to draw back, though objectively I am doing less and it seems honest to ponder who is picking up my slack. Many "failures" this season, causing me to balance the dignity of dependence with the hard base line of things not completed.
At the same time, we made the decision at my work to open a daycare for homeless moms in September. This is work that's hard to fudge and humbling compared to, say, grant writing. Our young staff complain about working daycare shifts mightily in comparison to allocated office shifts where one might be working or might be surfing the Internet. I've put myself on the sub list, to make it fairer, and today got called into sub before radiation. My plans for today included mostly computer work, but a 2 year old must be watched... So I went. Perhaps medicine hasn't fallen apart because it's so embodied and academia has because it's hard to measure failure- just give everyone an easy a and leave early! There are no easy A's in a daycare or in cancer treatment- just order or chaos, wellness or illness, and in both settings doing work well can mean life or death.
Im increasingly sceptical of knowledge workers, regardless of gender. I think that arena is the problem more than the presence of ovaries in the employees.
"Doing objective, physical work, whether it’s mending, cooking, or building always prompts me to consider myself in relation to the world."
Physical work still has frustratingly subjective components, like what's close *enough*, have you tried *enough* stain-removal techniques before giving up?
When to abandon a physical project as failed isn't entirely free of subjective judgment.
One of the blissfully freeing aspects of math is that there isn't "proved enough", just proved or not. Pure math's freedom from empiricism offers a freedom from subjectivity that isn't practically available anywhere else (clever as empirical science is at reducing subjectivity).
"The actual science of logic is conversant at present only with things either certain, impossible, or entirely doubtful, none of which (fortunately) we have to reason on" outside of pure math. "Therefore the true logic for this world is the calculus of probabilities, which takes account of the magnitude of the probability which is, or ought to be, in a reasonable man’s mind.” – James Clerk Maxwell
Well, how reasonable can you expect your reasonable man to be?
I wonder, are the subjective parts of physical/concrete work due to fallenness or imperfection in the physical world? To use your example, if a stain won't come out, that's not necessarily due to imperfect *effort* but rather maybe due to imperfect *conditions*. In some cases it would take a miracle (felix culpa style) to restore stained cloth to a pre-stain or no-stain-detectable condition.
Whereas, on the other hand, when we're studying pure math, we are studying the ideal or (in some senses) perfect. (I wonder if I remember enough math to talk intelligently about this?)
Stain treatment is one of those practical skills where having paid attention to high-school-level chemistry gets you plenty of good information. But even good information is typically incomplete information – except in rare cases like pure math (and, as Leah pointed out, programming, in a sense (programming languages are still designed by humans to meet needs apparent to them rather than to you, a fact I've been known to resent, though less than I resent computer *applications'* expectations of users)).
I'd call my own ignorance a bigger factor in stain-removal frustrations than the imperfections of the physical world are. I may know a lot about a stain (whether it's greasy, plant-pigment-y, protein-y, etc), but knowing *everything* about a stain's natural history (not only *exactly* what it's made of, but whether time or dryer heat have set it) isn't reasonable. Preventing the setting of stains I didn't catch the first time has motivated me to line dry more, but avoiding the dryer entirely isn't practical for me, and if a garment gets through the dryer with a stain I don't notice till later, for the stain to then set (if it's the kind of stain that sets in the dryer) is *frustrating*, but is also physical reality working as it *should*. It's also unreasonable to expect close scrutiny of *every* item that goes into the dryer, every time.
We know a lot, but we can expect to be ignorant of some stains before they set, and of whether the persistence of some stains signifies failure to apply correct laundry technique or that removal is physically impossible.
That creation falls through ignorance is a gnostic idea (for which "gnosis" is the cure), but an idea also present, to some extent, in orthodox Christianity – I forget which early theologian called orthodoxy the "true gnosis" in contrast to gnostics' "false gnosis", but there was (at least) one, and, anyhow, 1 Corinthians 13:9-10.
Incomplete information is partial ignorance, and I do think there's something about the way math is played – here are the premises to deduce from, any valid deduction is licit, and validity is a matter of internal logic, not external information you may lack – that offers a glimpse of "unfallen things". It isn't the only glimpse – there are other glimpses, too, and more physical ones, like the Eucharist (the Sanctus from Isaiah 6:1-8 falls where it does in Eucharistic liturgy for a reason) and music, which, for all its algorithmic beauty, is still an embodied art.
"If not more physical work with unambiguous failures, how would you try to strengthen an orientation toward truth-seeking in a community?"
Truth-seeking is only possible if we are comfortable with truth-telling. I'm trying to think through what "failure" would look like in an interpersonal context, like if you said something that hurt someone else, or misinterpreted what someone else said as a slight when it wasn't. In either situation, both parties would need the motivation to seek repair, skills to discuss what was said in a kind way, a non-defensive attitude, imagination to understand how the same words could be interpreted different ways, assuming the other's good intent...
In short, I think a community needs to teach how to be graciously honest.
"If she is worried that “the rule of law will not survive the legal profession becoming majority female,” why have industries already dominated by women (pharmacy, veterinary medicine) not collapsed? I choose those industries specifically because their failures should be noisy, producing a visible body count. If women persistently, and perniciously, prioritize “empathy over rationality, safety over risk, cohesion over competition,” I’d expect to see visible harms in less politically contentious arenas."
I'm not inclined to blame the field of medicine's dysfunctions on its growing number of women, but I think it's easy to argue that it has come to prioritize safety over risk and so produced exactly the body count you're looking for! Scott Alexander wrote:
"Some Australian oncologists did an analysis and found that 60 people per year died from IRB-related delays in Australian cancer trials. 6,000 people died from delays in ISIS-2, and that was just one study. Tens of thousands were probably killed by IRBs blocking human challenge trials for COVID vaccines. Low confidence estimate, but somewhere between 10,000 and 100,000 Americans probably die each year from IRB-related research delays.
So the cost-benefit calculation looks like - save a tiny handful of people per year, while killing 10,000 to 100,000 more, for a price tag of $1.6 billion. If this were a medication, I would not prescribe it."
I agree that the FDA and IRBs have swung too strongly toward "the safest choice is delay/disapproval" but I don't think this swing tracks with the rise of women in the field. It's much more a response to particular horrors (e.g. Mengele, and Thalidomide) leading to understandable overcorrection.
Yep, I agree! But since you can find a body count if you go looking, I think the argument against Andrews becomes tougher. It's not always the case that the harms she's predicting have failed to materialize; in some cases, they have, so I think we've got to argue that even so, femininity makes a poor culprit.
Does this actually correlate with the phenomenon she's describing though? If the problems with IRBs predate women's rise, then I don't see how it supports her argument.
Those projections of harms resulting from the cautions imposed by IRBs and the like neglect the very real and historically important harms that resulted from a lack of such cautions.
On metaphors for the encounter with objective reality, here's an especially resonant quote from a book that was very important in my conversion (Chesterton's Aquinas hagiography): "The mind conquers a new province like an emperor; but only because the mind has answered the bell like a servant."
Second, earlier today I was going to answer your questions and say that really the only thing I do regularly that can be judged by wholly objective standards is the dishes. I even had a whole riff on how cooking doesn't fit the description because whether the kids like what I make can be dependent more on their needs/moods than the food itself. BUT THEN I had my third and BY FAR worst attempt at making falafel so it turns out sometimes things become a scum of gritty froth and filth in the pan and that's your contact with reality for the day.
Meg from Little Women, with her jelly that wouldn't jell, is our greatest literary image of the seeker after objective truth, fight me.
Just purchased the book, can't wait!
My upcoming book has a whole chapter on Stein!
Can't wait!
Reading Edith Stein (some years ago) was a great revelation for me - her ideas fit well with what I had come to believe based on my church and my mother’s teachings. I was surprised to find that Stein elucidated these so long ago.
This was a welcome post. For one, im undergoing cancer radiation and just wrote, today, about comparing this season to normal life and finding myself lacking. Of course, radiation is a reason to draw back, though objectively I am doing less and it seems honest to ponder who is picking up my slack. Many "failures" this season, causing me to balance the dignity of dependence with the hard base line of things not completed.
At the same time, we made the decision at my work to open a daycare for homeless moms in September. This is work that's hard to fudge and humbling compared to, say, grant writing. Our young staff complain about working daycare shifts mightily in comparison to allocated office shifts where one might be working or might be surfing the Internet. I've put myself on the sub list, to make it fairer, and today got called into sub before radiation. My plans for today included mostly computer work, but a 2 year old must be watched... So I went. Perhaps medicine hasn't fallen apart because it's so embodied and academia has because it's hard to measure failure- just give everyone an easy a and leave early! There are no easy A's in a daycare or in cancer treatment- just order or chaos, wellness or illness, and in both settings doing work well can mean life or death.
Im increasingly sceptical of knowledge workers, regardless of gender. I think that arena is the problem more than the presence of ovaries in the employees.
"Doing objective, physical work, whether it’s mending, cooking, or building always prompts me to consider myself in relation to the world."
Physical work still has frustratingly subjective components, like what's close *enough*, have you tried *enough* stain-removal techniques before giving up?
When to abandon a physical project as failed isn't entirely free of subjective judgment.
One of the blissfully freeing aspects of math is that there isn't "proved enough", just proved or not. Pure math's freedom from empiricism offers a freedom from subjectivity that isn't practically available anywhere else (clever as empirical science is at reducing subjectivity).
"The actual science of logic is conversant at present only with things either certain, impossible, or entirely doubtful, none of which (fortunately) we have to reason on" outside of pure math. "Therefore the true logic for this world is the calculus of probabilities, which takes account of the magnitude of the probability which is, or ought to be, in a reasonable man’s mind.” – James Clerk Maxwell
Well, how reasonable can you expect your reasonable man to be?
I wonder, are the subjective parts of physical/concrete work due to fallenness or imperfection in the physical world? To use your example, if a stain won't come out, that's not necessarily due to imperfect *effort* but rather maybe due to imperfect *conditions*. In some cases it would take a miracle (felix culpa style) to restore stained cloth to a pre-stain or no-stain-detectable condition.
Whereas, on the other hand, when we're studying pure math, we are studying the ideal or (in some senses) perfect. (I wonder if I remember enough math to talk intelligently about this?)
Stain treatment is one of those practical skills where having paid attention to high-school-level chemistry gets you plenty of good information. But even good information is typically incomplete information – except in rare cases like pure math (and, as Leah pointed out, programming, in a sense (programming languages are still designed by humans to meet needs apparent to them rather than to you, a fact I've been known to resent, though less than I resent computer *applications'* expectations of users)).
I'd call my own ignorance a bigger factor in stain-removal frustrations than the imperfections of the physical world are. I may know a lot about a stain (whether it's greasy, plant-pigment-y, protein-y, etc), but knowing *everything* about a stain's natural history (not only *exactly* what it's made of, but whether time or dryer heat have set it) isn't reasonable. Preventing the setting of stains I didn't catch the first time has motivated me to line dry more, but avoiding the dryer entirely isn't practical for me, and if a garment gets through the dryer with a stain I don't notice till later, for the stain to then set (if it's the kind of stain that sets in the dryer) is *frustrating*, but is also physical reality working as it *should*. It's also unreasonable to expect close scrutiny of *every* item that goes into the dryer, every time.
We know a lot, but we can expect to be ignorant of some stains before they set, and of whether the persistence of some stains signifies failure to apply correct laundry technique or that removal is physically impossible.
That creation falls through ignorance is a gnostic idea (for which "gnosis" is the cure), but an idea also present, to some extent, in orthodox Christianity – I forget which early theologian called orthodoxy the "true gnosis" in contrast to gnostics' "false gnosis", but there was (at least) one, and, anyhow, 1 Corinthians 13:9-10.
Incomplete information is partial ignorance, and I do think there's something about the way math is played – here are the premises to deduce from, any valid deduction is licit, and validity is a matter of internal logic, not external information you may lack – that offers a glimpse of "unfallen things". It isn't the only glimpse – there are other glimpses, too, and more physical ones, like the Eucharist (the Sanctus from Isaiah 6:1-8 falls where it does in Eucharistic liturgy for a reason) and music, which, for all its algorithmic beauty, is still an embodied art.
Programming has this too (to a point)
Well, in pure math, you still have the subjective question of whether the thing you’ve proved is any good.
"If not more physical work with unambiguous failures, how would you try to strengthen an orientation toward truth-seeking in a community?"
Truth-seeking is only possible if we are comfortable with truth-telling. I'm trying to think through what "failure" would look like in an interpersonal context, like if you said something that hurt someone else, or misinterpreted what someone else said as a slight when it wasn't. In either situation, both parties would need the motivation to seek repair, skills to discuss what was said in a kind way, a non-defensive attitude, imagination to understand how the same words could be interpreted different ways, assuming the other's good intent...
In short, I think a community needs to teach how to be graciously honest.
"If she is worried that “the rule of law will not survive the legal profession becoming majority female,” why have industries already dominated by women (pharmacy, veterinary medicine) not collapsed? I choose those industries specifically because their failures should be noisy, producing a visible body count. If women persistently, and perniciously, prioritize “empathy over rationality, safety over risk, cohesion over competition,” I’d expect to see visible harms in less politically contentious arenas."
I'm not inclined to blame the field of medicine's dysfunctions on its growing number of women, but I think it's easy to argue that it has come to prioritize safety over risk and so produced exactly the body count you're looking for! Scott Alexander wrote:
"Some Australian oncologists did an analysis and found that 60 people per year died from IRB-related delays in Australian cancer trials. 6,000 people died from delays in ISIS-2, and that was just one study. Tens of thousands were probably killed by IRBs blocking human challenge trials for COVID vaccines. Low confidence estimate, but somewhere between 10,000 and 100,000 Americans probably die each year from IRB-related research delays.
So the cost-benefit calculation looks like - save a tiny handful of people per year, while killing 10,000 to 100,000 more, for a price tag of $1.6 billion. If this were a medication, I would not prescribe it."
https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/book-review-from-oversight-to-overkill
I agree that the FDA and IRBs have swung too strongly toward "the safest choice is delay/disapproval" but I don't think this swing tracks with the rise of women in the field. It's much more a response to particular horrors (e.g. Mengele, and Thalidomide) leading to understandable overcorrection.
Yep, I agree! But since you can find a body count if you go looking, I think the argument against Andrews becomes tougher. It's not always the case that the harms she's predicting have failed to materialize; in some cases, they have, so I think we've got to argue that even so, femininity makes a poor culprit.
Does this actually correlate with the phenomenon she's describing though? If the problems with IRBs predate women's rise, then I don't see how it supports her argument.
Hm, fair. I was just thinking in a pretty hand-wavey sense that medicine has certainly gotten more woman-heavy since the days of thalidomide.
Those projections of harms resulting from the cautions imposed by IRBs and the like neglect the very real and historically important harms that resulted from a lack of such cautions.
There are no solutions, just trade offs…!