by Aaron Swartz
But it’s still a fun and interesting book. However, I believe its most important point is one that’s not stated explicitly: that through the proper investigation of the numbers we can better understand our world.
The Immorality of Freakonomics
http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/immoralfreaksDate June 17, 2005
Age 18
As the hype around the book Freakonomics reaches absurd proportions (now an “international bestseller,” the authors have been signed for a monthly column in the New York Times Magazine), I think it’s time to discuss some of the downsides that I mostly left out of my main review. The most important of which is that economist Stephen Levitt simply does not appear to care—or even notice—if his work involves doing evil things.
The 1960s, as is well-known, had a major civilizing effect on all areas of American life. Less well-known, however, was the immediate pushback from the powerful centers of society. The process involved a great number of things, notably the network of right-wing think tanks I’ve written about elsewhere, but in the field of education it led to a crackdown on “those institutions which have played the major role in the indoctrination of the young,” as a contemporary report (The Crisis of Democracy) put it.
The indoctrination centers (notably schools) weren’t doing their job properly and so a back-to-basics approach with more rote memorization of meaningless facts and less critical thinking and intellectual development was needed. This was mainly done under the guise of “accountability,” for both students and teachers. Standardized tests, you see, would see how well students had memorized certain pointless facts and students would not be allowed to deviate from their assigned numbers. Teachers too would have their jobs depend on the test scores their students got. Teachers who decided to buck the system and actually have their students learn something worthwhile would get demoted or even fired.
Not surprisingly, as always happens when you make people’s lives depend on an artificial test, teachers began cheating. And it is here that Professor Levitt enters the story. He excitedly signed up with the Chicago Public School system to try to build a system that would catch cheating teachers. Levitt and his co-author write excitedly about this system and the clever patterns it discovers in the data, but mostly ignore the question of whether helping to get these teachers fired is a good idea. Apparently even rogue economists jump when the government asks them to.
Levitt has a few arguments—teachers were setting students up to fail in the higher grade they would be advanced to—but these are tacked on as afterthoughts. Levitt never stops to ask whether contributing to the indoctrination of the young or getting teachers fired might not be an acceptable area of work, despite being an economist, he never weighs any benefits or even considers the costs.
Levitt, by all appearances, was not, like some of his colleagues, a self-conscious participant in this regressive game. He was just a rube who got taken in. But surely preventing others from the same fate would be a more valuable contribution.
In Offense of Classical Music
http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/classicalmusic
June 20, 2006
Age 19
I recently had to sit through a performance of Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier at the Chicago Symphony Orchestra (it was the conductor’s farewell concert). At first it was simply boring, but as I listened more carefully, it grew increasingly painful, until it became excruciatingly so. I literally began tearing my hair out and trying to cut my skin with my nails (there were large red marks when the performance was finally over). The pianist, I was certain, kept flubbing the notes and getting the timing off. But few around me seemed to agree. “Well, he certainly plays it differently from Gould,” was the most they could say.
The audience, like that of private libraries and the Fox News Channel, was decidedly old. I don’t recall seeing anyone who looked younger than thirty. And, aside from thoughts of this whole orchestras-playing-classical-music thing dying out, it made me wonder: what’s so great about classical music?
Ask the old folks there and they’ll tell you that nothing really compares. Listen to the stuff on the radio today and it’s all simply repetitive melodies with stupid lyrics. And the thing is, they’re right: the stuff on the radio does suck for the most part. But that’s not really a fair comparison.
When I listen to good modern music, it takes my heart in its hands and plays with it as it pleases—makes me soar, makes me sad, excited, and mad. But when I listen to classical music, at most it simply occupies my brain for a while. Is this simply a flaw in my perception or has music really improved?
I think it’s possible to argue that music is actually getting better. As humans, we clearly share a number of genetically encoded similarities, perhaps with some variation. For example, we almost all have two eyes, although in different shapes, sizes, and colors. Imagine that we are similarly endowed with some shared sense of musical appreciation (or, put another way, emotional susceptibility). We all fall for the same musical things, again with some variation.
If this is the case (and while I can’t really prove it, it seems at least plausible to me that it is), then there would indeed be objective standards for measuring music: better music would be more appreciated by the “average person” or the majority of people or some such. And if there are objective standards for measuring music, then music can get better.
And, if we again imagine that what’s appreciated in music isn’t simply random, that it involves certain traits (which seems pretty clear, although again hard to prove), then not only can music get better, but it probably will. Musicians will listen to old music, the majority of them will enjoy the good songs of the past, and they’ll try to build upon and improve that good material, following its patterns, creating even better music. And the next generation will do the same, from a further along starting point.
Does this prove that the latest Aimee Mann album (The Forgotten Arm) is the best work of music yet to be created by humans? Of course not. But it does mean it’s at least possible, that I’m not completely crazy for thinking so.
A Unified Theory of Magazines
http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/unifiedmagazines
September 28, 2006
Age 19
For as long as I’ve been building web apps, it’s been apparent that most successful websites are communities—not just interactive pages, but places where groups of like-minded people can congregate and do things together. Our knowledge of how to make and cultivate communities is still at a very early stage, but most agree on their importance.
A magazine, we may imagine, is like a one-way website. It doesn’t really allow the readers to talk back (with the small exception of the letters page), it doesn’t even have any sort of interactivity. But I still think communities are the key for magazines; the difference is that magazines export communities.
In other words, instead of providing a place for a group of like-minded people to come together, magazines provide a sampling of what a group of like-minded people might say in such an instance so that you can pretend you’re part of them. Go down the list and you’ll see.
The magazines of Condé Nast, for example, export “lifestyles.” Most readers probably aren’t the “hip scene” the magazines supposedly cover, but by reading these things they learn what to wear and what to buy and what these people are talking about. Even their highbrow magazines, like the New Yorker, serve the same purpose, only this time it’s books instead of clothes.
The late, great Lingua Franca exported the university. Academephiles, sitting at home, probably taking care of the kids, read it so they could imagine themselves part of the life of the mind. Similarly, the new SEED magazine is trying to export the culture of science, so people who aren’t themselves scientists can get a piece of the lab coat life.
Alumni magazines similarly export college life, so that graying former college students can relive some of their old glory days, reading pieces about library renovations as they recall havi
ng sex in the stacks. And house organs export a particular kind of politics, telling you what a party or organization’s take is on the issues of the day, giving you a sense of the party line.
Run down the list and in pretty much every case you scratch a magazine, you find an exported community. Magazines that want to succeed will have to find one of their own.
On Intellectual Dishonesty
http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/intellectualdishonesty
December 14, 2011
Age 24
Dishonesty has two parts: 1) saying something that is untrue, and 2) saying it with the intent to mislead the other person. You can have each without the other: you can be genuinely mistaken and thereby say something false without intending to mislead, and you can intentionally mislead someone without ever saying anything that’s untrue. (The second is generally considered deceit, but not dishonesty.)
However, you can be intellectually dishonest without doing either of these things. Imagine that you’re conducting an experiment and most of the time it comes out exactly the way you expect but one time it goes wrong (you probably just screwed up the measurements). Telling someone about your work, you say: “Oh, it works just the way I expected—seven times it came out exactly right.”
This isn’t untrue and it isn’t intentionally misleading—you really do believe it works the way you expected. But it is intellectually dishonest: intellectual honesty requires bending over backwards to provide any evidence that you might be wrong, even if you’re convinced that you are right.
This is an impractical standard to apply to everyday life. A prospective employer asks you in a job interview if you can get to work on time. You say “Yes,” not “I think so, but one time in 2003 the power went out and so my alarm didn’t go off and I overslept.” I don’t think anyone considers this dishonesty; indeed, if you were intellectually honest all the time, people would think you were pretty weird.
Science has a higher standard. It’s not just between you and your employer; it’s a claim to posterity. And you might be wrong, but what if you’re not around for posterity to call you up and ask you to show your work? That’s why intellectual honesty requires you show your work in advance, so that others can see if you’re missing something.
The Smalltalk Question
http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/smalltalkq
August 16, 2006
Age 19
One of the minor puzzles of American life is what question to ask people at parties and suchly to get to know them.
“How ya doin’?” is of course mere formality; only the most troubled would answer honestly for anything but the positive.
“What do you do?” is somewhat offensive. First, it really means “What occupation do you hold?” and thus implies you do little outside your occupation. Second, it implies that one’s occupation is the most salient fact about them. Third, it rarely leads to further useful inquiry. For only a handful of occupations, you will be able to say something somewhat relevant, but even this will no doubt be slightly annoying or offensive. (“Oh yeah, I always thought about studying history.”)
“Where are you from?” is even less fruitful.
“What’s your major?” (in the case of college students) turns sour when, as is tragically all too often the case, students feel no real passion for their major.
“What book have you read recently?” will cause the majority of Americans who don’t read to flail, while at best only getting an off-the-cuff garbled summary of a random book.
“What’s something cool you’ve learned recently?” puts the person on the spot and inevitably leads to hemming and hawing and then something not all that cool.
I propose instead that one ask “What have you been thinking about lately?” First, the question is extremely open-ended. The answer could be a book, a movie, a relationship, a class, a job, a hobby, etc. Even better, it will be whichever of these is most interesting at the moment. Second, it sends the message that thinking, and thinking about thinking, is a fundamental human activity, and thus encourages it. Third, it’s easiest to answer, since by its nature it’s asking about what’s already on the person’s mind. Fourth, it’s likely to lead to productive dialog, as you can discuss the topic together and hopefully make progress. Fifth, the answer is quite likely to be novel. Unlike books and occupations, people’s thoughts seem to be endlessly varied. Sixth, it helps capture a person’s essence. A job can be forced by circumstance and parentage, but our thoughts are all our own. I can think of little better way to quickly gauge what a person is really like.
“What have you been working on lately?” can be seen, in this context, to be clearly inferior, although similar.
So, what have you been thinking about lately?
UNSCHOOL
When I first met Aaron and he told me that Grace Llewellyn’s The Teenage Liberation Handbook: How to Quit School and Get a Real Life and Education had been a big influence on him, I laughed in recognition. Chances are you haven’t heard of the book, but trust me, it’s a cult classic in certain circles. Over the years I’ve met countless curious, energetic, and always slightly rebellious young people who were emboldened to forge their own unique educational path after reading it.
Unlike Aaron, who discovered the book on his own, I got a copy from my parents. I was raised an “unschooler,” which means I grew up without classes or coursework or grades. I was raised, in other words, according to the free-form child-centered pedagogy that so inspired Aaron. Part of what I find so captivating about Aaron’s writing on education is his exuberance at discovering a philosophy of learning that aligns with his instincts and experiences. Aaron was nothing if not a compulsively curious and hardworking person, yet, as these pages make viscerally clear, he felt profoundly stifled in school. He laments the ways time is wasted, important topics are trivialized, and teachers are forced by the administration to fixate on testing instead of teaching for its own sake, which means that students become correspondingly blinkered, obsessed with passing or failing instead of getting truly absorbed in the subject at hand.
Online, Aaron found a community that pointed to the possibility of another way of doing things. Far-flung Internet users helped him master the art of computer programming, offering feedback and assistance and encouraging his love of coding—of knowledge—instead of enforcing rote memorization and instilling fear of failure, as a more orthodox student-teacher relationship might. Fear is a big theme of Aaron’s writing on education, as is boredom, and for him the two go together. Like most prominent unschooling advocates, Aaron believes human beings are naturally curious; the problem is that conventional schooling stamps this inherent inquisitiveness out of us. Students are so afraid of getting answers wrong, so terrified of seeing a big F written in red pen, that they retreat into apathy, hedging their bets to finish the required assignments instead of taking the risks true engagement requires. Fear of humiliation, in other words, squelches experimentation. And as Aaron argues, this suits the powers that be just fine, because contemporary schooling is more about instilling discipline than imparting information, let alone wisdom. Fear tends to toe the line, while curiosity interrogates and crosses it.
It’s this bigger story, about how our educational system evolved hand in hand with the rise of industrial capitalism, that Aaron begins to tell here. Though only a fragment of what he envisioned as a larger project, the essays that follow are a welcome and thought-provoking contribution to a long-standing and ongoing debate about learning, freedom, pedagogy, economics, and the public good. What’s more, these pieces provide a valuable window on the learning process, an illustration of Aaron’s fundamental argument about curiosity engaged. We witness Aaron maturing, transforming from a teenage student struggling in school to a young adult and independent scholar studying the academic system from the outside, asking why it evolved the way it did and whether it could be another way. What a gift to see such a keen and conscientious mind at work, striving to understand a world he cared so much about.
—Astra Taylor
School
Spring 2011
Age 24
Given as a lecture at the Safra Center at Harvard University.
From their very first moments on Earth, babies get bored.
Babies get so bored, in fact, that this is the basis of all modern baby research. Show a baby three dots (...) and they’ll stare at it intently for a while, before getting bored and looking away. Vary the position of the dots (...) and they’ll look at it for a bit, then get bored again. But add another dot (....) and they’ll go back to intent staring. The scientists are thrilled: babies can count! But they overlook something even more important: babies get bored.
In another study, babies were given a special pillow so that by adjusting their head they could control the movement of a mobile. Not only did these infants quickly learn how to move the mobile, this discovery was followed by what the researchers called “vigorous smiling and cooing.”* As a later study observed, “Even casual observations of infants reveals their delight in making events occur.”† In other words, infants aren’t just playing around because they’re bored—from birth, they know the pleasure of figuring things out.
John S. Watson, “Smiling, Cooing, and ‘The Game.’”