No Means No, Obviously

That's how language based communication works, words have meanings, and when you say them you evoke that meaning. I read a very interesting article about "playing hard to get," but I disagree with a significant proportion of it. I have to admit I appreciate her extolling people, specifically women but I think it applies to men, not to play hard to get. Although I have yet to meet someone who even remotely seemed to be playing hard to get, that may be because when I am rebuffed romantically I almost always just let the issue lie, and in the couple of cases where I haven't I have more revisited the subject at a later date in hopes that her opinion has changed; in short, when it comes to romance, I try to convince people to change their minds by being awesome, because I am awesome, rather than trying to persuade them to change their minds verbally.

Anyway, while I have yet to meet someone who displays evidence of playing "hard to get," I have to agree that the trope widely exists through our cultural stories. Men are told that to "get the girl" one must put forth some romantic effort. While I disagree with the author that this is inherently undesirable, I do heartily concur with her that it seems to play into rape culture.

However, where I categorically disagree with the author is where she asserts that maybe means no. Of course, I am similarly opposed to the assumption that maybe means yes, for similar reasons, yes, no, and maybe are all separate words with wildly different meanings! Maybe means maybe! And here lies the refuge of people who want to play hard to get, maybe should clearly indicate that one is not acquiescing to the proposed activity, whether it be dancing, dating, or sex, but one is willing to consider it. If one does not wish to consider it further, there is a proper word for that, "no," and it is then the moral obligation of the rebuffed to accept that.

I am not often asked out, and people straight up ask me for sex even less frequently, but people often ask me if I will to go to dance activities. If I want to and am able to go I answer, "yes," because yes I will go. If I have a conflicting obligation or just don't want to go (the latter is rather uncommon) I answer, "no," because no I will not go. If I kind of want to go, but am feeling overwhelmed and kind of don't want to go, then I might answer, "maybe," or, "I don't know... [insert lame excuse here]." At these times I completely welcome people trying to convince me to go, sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't, but it helps me make up my mind. I don't think that I am "playing hard to get," per se, but if someone wants to play hard to get, let them use maybe! It is the correct word to use, "maybe" can mean, "maybe, if you work hard enough," which is what someone playing hard to get seems to implicitly mean.

Maybe shouldn't contribute to rape culture. Maybe leaves the door open to be convinced, but the door can still be closed. Maybe doesn't mean you cannot eventually say no (on a side note, that male friend she mentions complaining about people not being willing to agree with him eventually, creepy!!!). But that should be obvious, because you know what, yes doesn't even mean you cannot eventually say no! Let me expound on that, because it is of some importance, even if someone says yes to sex, if they change their mind, or you start hurting them, or they just get creeped out for some reason and change their mind to no, then that is a no! If you have sex with someone expressing a desire not to have sex with you, even if they explicitly expressed a desire to have sex with you at some earlier point, that is rape! If you decide not to have sex with someone who really did want to have sex with you, but felt they had to say "no" due to cultural considerations you missed having sex with someone who can't honestly express themselves and he/she missed out on having sex with an awesome person who is respectful of her/his desires. Guess which way I think you should err... Hint, which I don't think you should need, no means no!

While I don't think it is harmful to err on the side of no if you get a maybe, whereas it is definitely harmful to err on the side of yes, I don't think it is morally required to pretend that maybe doesn't have it's own, unique, and communicatively valuable, meaning. If you want to play hard to get, I invite you to use 'maybe's, or other such non-committal responses. And, most importantly, for this to work we have to realize that non-committal quite literally means without commitment, one way or the other, so if it becomes a no, then it is a no, end of discussion.

Words of Power

On a walk into school last week I started thinking about cuss words. Since this is a post about cussing, I will include some strong language, if only to refer to the word itself. The departure point for this post is the thought that, although they all refer to the same substance, words like "poop," "crap," and "shit" all have varying levels of social taboo, ordered in increasing order I believe. This highlights that the taboo nature of cuss words, while related to the sensitive subjects they inevitably are about, is not solely tied to the literal meaning of the word. Rather, it, like all word connotations and meanings, is a very cultural phenomenon.

I have sometimes had conversations with people who believed that our hang ups and censorship of such words is ridiculous and ought to be stopped. I have also heard that, for example, the Japanese language does not have such taboo-ed words. Be that as it may, I have always been a champion of leaving some words beyond the pale of polite society.

Usually my support has been of the form that all words have culturally defined meanings, and our culture has defined some words to be rude and disrespectful to say, so saying such words must be rude and disrespectful, to the same degree that a verb must be an action. However, on this particular walk I started thinking about the power given to these taboo-ed words by their very taboo nature.

By habit, I am not inclined to particularly vitriolic language, but I think that causes my cussing to lend greater emphasis to what I say than it would otherwise when I do occasionally cuss. On that note, if any of you are reading this, I would appreciate if that story were not to be posted openly on the Internet, you know who you are. If that makes no sense to you, ask me about it in person sometime if your curiosity must be assuaged, it is probably a funny story, but I am not particularly proud of it, so I don't want it just floating on the Internet.

Anyway, while, by their vary nature, these words cannot lend their emphasis to a statement very often, at risk of losing their power, it is very useful to have them in reserve for those horrible occasions when everyday words lack enough power to convey a sentiment. And do not mistake me, I am using the word power in a very literal sense, it is no coincidence in my mind that magic in so many traditions has some form of verbal component. Ask any mathematician and they will assure you that it is very important for words and symbols to be properly arranged in order for them to correctly channel the idea for which they are intended.

Furthermore, insofar as reality is something shared and inter-subjective, if not objective, then language is our truest manner of interacting with reality. By this I mean that language is our least subjective form of communication. Thus, the words we use to describe our private experiences, our thoughts, reactions, and emotions, directly determine how we enter into the public reality as people. As such, it is important that we have words of power at our disposal, for we are powerful consciousnesses and have powerful experiences.

In fact, I would argue that we do not have enough taboo-ed words! The taboo-ed words we have span too limited a range of emotion, being, for the most part, negative. For example, consider how much trouble we have with the word "love," in its most powerful context, even though we permit the debasement of its meaning through its usage on all manner of trivialities. Now imagine how potent it would be if we had a word which wasn't even considered polite to say, a word whose very usage indicated that it had been ripped irrationally from our tongue by the strength of our passions.

We need words like that, not just for hate and disgust as we currently have, but also for love, joy, and beauty. And we need to be content not to use them. We must resist the urge to clinically emphasize a point by employing them as strong rhetoric, and instead preserve their power in our fear and reverence.

Mathematics, A Eulogy?

Did you know that the area of a circle is Pi times its radius squared? Did you know the area of a triangle is one half of its base times its height? Did you know for a right triangle (a triangle with one angle of 90 degrees or pi/2 radians) the sum of the squares of the two sides adjacent to the right angle is the same as the square of the side opposite the right angle, the hypotenuse (did you know that I, a mathematician, still cannot spell hypotenuse?)? More importantly, do you know why?

Earlier today I posted a Facebook blasting the mainstream method of mathematics education. This was out of various frustrations, including my frequent interactions with people in the late stages of chronic math apathy, and conversations with colleagues on the state of our students. I have colleagues, how weird is that! Much of my despair boils down to our dogmatic adherence to a system which is fairly seriously flawed. I don't claim to have THE solution, I have thoughts that I would like to see tried out, but mostly, I want to see us have the courage and vibrancy to experiment boldly with our curriculum, changing it to try to get out of this malaise.

I believe I was unduly harsh, as math is not the only subject that suffers from some deep problems endemic to our education system. One horribly harmful practice is the passing along of students who have not sufficiently mastered current materials to higher level courses. Because math is such a rich and useful subject, attempting to understand a subject without a thorough grasp of the prerequisite courses is akin to the canonical fool attempting to build a sturdy foundation upon ground made of sand. Although factoring polynomials (mostly quadratics) and negative numbers are two fine examples of things one ought master before proceeding, as they end up in fairly frequent use, by biggest concern is fractions.

I cannot understand what part of our system so scars students that they stay scared of fractions long through their math careers. If one simply wishes to work with fractions, two simple rules suffice, common denominators to add, multiply straight across. This will not convey an understanding of the nature of fractions, but it will provide you with all the "special" tools that you need to manipulate them, they won't be things of beauty, but at least they ought no longer be feared. However, as I indicate at the end of the first paragraph, the essential point of math is NOT an isolated scattering of lifeless, lonely facts, but an intricate, intertwined network of collaborating reasons why things are true.

Were I to be given an island on which to implement my social experiments, my math curriculum would, broadly, look as follows (and mothers could keep their children...). An introduction to the positive integers, addition, and the number one. These topics are deeply connected, as you can think of one, the unit, as the starting place for all mathematics, without it there is only nothing, then addition miraculously conjures the rest of the whole numbers, as one is joined by one for two, and so forth. Here we introduce the miracle of zero, which leaves numbers unaltered Should we ever experience diminishing, as happens when one departs, we become familiar with negative numbers (not subtraction, which is a misleading myth). Now, one might find it useful to repeatedly add a number to itself, such as if students arrive on buses each carrying 32 children, 32 children after the first, 32+32 after the second, 32+32+32 after the third, and thus is multiplication formed from addition.

Now things become a little tricky, but I have faith in our citizenry to persevere. Just as zero played a special role for addition, leaving things unaltered, our unit plays the same role for multiplication. And just as the addition of -n undoes addition by n, because together they add to 0 which leaves things untouched, multiplication by 1/n undoes multiplication by n, because they multiply together to zero. Thus we run into the first fractions as reciprocals to the whole numbers, and we noticed that division too is an illusion. Consider 0*n, which we know to be n added to itself zero times, when no buses have arrived, there are no students, no matter how many are on each bus, so 0*n=0. Now suppose you are discovering this for the first time, what must you suspect about 1/0? Well, one expects multiplying by 1/0 to undo multiplication by 0, because that is the role of 1/n to undo n. So, 1/0 times 0*n should be n, no matter what n is. However, no matter what n is, 0*n always arrives at 0, so 1/0*0 needs take on more than one value to satisfy our system, since it cannot, and indeed must be 0 since anything times 0 is zero, we discover that 1/0 cannot be included in our system without breaking the patterns that we have established. Because there is no division, and n/0 is instead n*(1/0), we must conclude that, should zero occupy a denominator, we have left our reasonable system of numbers, so this is to be avoided. This has gone on long enough, but we may quickly build exponentiation from multiplication the same way we build multiplication from addition, and roots now are un-exponents, the same way negatives are un-addition and fractions are un-multiplication.

Of course, this is a bit of a mess when skated through in 2 paragraphs, rather than over the course of a year or two, but the point is that it is all interrelated. This is where the beauty of mathematics comes from, it is a mosaic, and a puzzle, and a fractal laden, dew adorned spiderweb on a cool morning. Addition and multiplication are different, not separate, and subtraction and division no longer exist, much simplifying the order of operations. Recall that these operations have the counter intuitive property that they do not commute (that is, 3-2 is not 2-3, and 2/3 is not 3/2). Since these operations no longer exist, this strange fact, an artifact of a formulaic approach to math, need no longer be considered. Now 3+(-2) and (-2)+3, as well as 2*(1/3) and (1/3)*2 can be swapped as much as is desired.

The WHY is beautiful, without it math is just an exercise in memorization and rote manipulation, two things that are fairly boring and easily done by computer. With why, math becomes a rich environment for exploring, every new piece of information not a fact, but a new piece of the puzzle which must be slotted into an awaiting rough edge. The easiest method to determine the area of a circle requires calculus, but I can prove the Pythagorean theorem on a napkin in under 5 minutes (if we are in the same place, feel free to ask me to do so, it is a beautiful proof). How amazing is that, these two facts, that we casually teach side by side in an introduction to geometry, have vastly different backgrounds and stories. Personally, I think the area of a triangle is the easiest of the three, and accordingly, I leave it as an exercise for the reader, should you be in the mood to explore. It may help to take right triangles as your point of departure, but remember that not all triangles are right triangles.

As I posted on Facebook, learning math the traditional way is akin to learning to write poetry by taking lines from the poems of the greats and sticking them next to each other in varying orders. Or, to be less absurd, it is learning about history by rote memorization of dates and events, with no thought paid to the overall correlation and causality, the beautiful, interconnected, vastness of human experience. It is learning a foreign language sentence by sentence, hardly paying heed to individual words in the phrases blindly committed to memory, let alone the system of syntax and grammar. Overall, I have to say that what is a very important question to answer, but only because you need to establish the what before you can sail off into the sunset after your elusive why's...

What is Altruism?

I just realized that it was Tuesday, so I should have put up a question. This one might actually deserve a Friday, but I need something about which to write, so here it goes. The question at hand comes from Frank, and asks, paraphrased, if it is possible to be completely altruistic?

I used to think the answer was no, and that everything we did is done for self serving reasons. My reasoning was that even the most self sacrificing saint does what they believe is right, and thus gains personal satisfaction from that. However, when called on to examine the question again, I realized that I might need a more complex understanding of what altruism is.

Previously I had considered it to be doing something for little or no personal benefit, and thus complete altruism was impossible because everything we do benefits us in some manner. Instead, here I shall amend the definition to something along the lines of how altruistic an act is depends on the degree to which the needs of others inform how we form our desires. That is, an act that we derive enjoyment from can still be altruistic if our enjoyment is derived by attempting to meet the needs of others, rather than focusing on our own needs.

In this case, I do believe that highly altruistic actions do exist. Indeed, most good parents will be completely altruistic to their babies. Of course, problems can still arise when the perfect altruist misconceives the needs of others, but I do believe in perfect altruism in principle.

What do other people think, both about my definition, and whether perfect altruism exists? When answering, feel free to use my definition of altruism or another that you specify.

Idiocracy Redux

Savoring my last days of freedom before spring term commenced, I found myself watching Idiocracy for the first time late Saturday night, or rather, early Sunday morning. I found it to be a humorous, if somewhat grim, movie, slightly reminiscent of Brazil.

Fast forward to twenty minutes ago. I was reading through a comment pile loosely tied to the Snoop Dog/Bill O'Reilly fiasco here. Someone made a comment likening Snoop Dog's comments to the script of Idiocracy, which I read, thought about for two second, and then passed over. Later in the comment pile I had the sudden horrifying revelation that it is not uncommon for parts of comment piles to resemble dialogue from Idiocracy. This emphasized one of the themes of the movie, the possibility of highly sophisticated tools to be used without sufficient thought or discipline. Taking a page out of my local library's book, pun very much intended, I believe that I will start a propaganda campaign: "Be Kind, THINK!"

This also highlights the lack of respect which I feel is all too common in online discourse. I feel the same way about traditional analog conversation, but I see it to a high extent in digital conversation. Perhaps a part of the problem is that on the Internet we are always simultaneously behind someone's back and right in front of them.

Anyway, the reason it took me twenty minutes to start this post is I completely forgot how to access my account, oh the intricacies of G-Mail. I too fall victim to Idiocracy.

Be Kind, THINK!

Laying the Foundation

"Every journey begins with a single step."

No doubt most are familiar with this clichéd saying, if you type it into Google you will obtain hundreds of results. This only makes it more surprising that I cannot find to whom it should be attributed! Thus does my "blogging" career begin with disappointment.

I have been, if not agonizing, then worrying about, what I should put into this first entry. In fact, it has taken me almost a week to overcome my timidity and boldly throw myself out of the nest and into the Internet. It is not just the plethora of options that Blogger offers, which seem quite daunting to this shy soul, more than that it is the alternately apathetic and antipathetic nature of the medium in which I swim. However, the mental unease of knowing my unchristened, ignored blog lurked on one of my Firefox tabs did eventually grow heavier than the unease associated with exposing myself like this, and thus do I begin. Seeing as I am beginning, perhaps I should finish with some comments about myself and this journal.

1) I am a self-proclaimed moderate, mainly through alienation from both sides of our two-party system. I make no claims about my views actually being moderate; many of them are quite the opposite. I do not speak for any association of moderates, or radical far middlists, only myself.

2) I prefer mild language, both in my writings and in comments that, hopefully, are posted here. Personally my strongest insults usually hover around "nutcase," although I have been known to ramp it up to "stupid" if I am emotional. Keeping this in mind will help decipher why I am seem to be taking some issues sitting down, my language may be relatively mild, but I still might be aghast or enraged. I have no intent on censoring for strong language (see next point), nor will I faint dead away if someone uses an "adult word". I consider my language to be a form of respect for my reader, and I request that contributors show similar respect please.

3) On the other hand, I may censor for content. There are some things with which I do not wish to be associated. I will not list them; I doubt I could produce anything resembling an exhaustive list. Again, pleased be governed by respect for myself and other "netizens" you may affect. Should I feel it necessary to censor a comment, it will be removed, I may make note of it, and I may not.

Thank you for respecting my personal parcel of cyberspace.