time's up

Marie was going to show us the rest of this yesterday, but the clock dinged too soon. We've got to make more intelligent use of our time.

changing education

The plague of unquestioning obeisance to Bigness Bill McKibben deplores in Eaarth definitely has its correlate in our public educational establishment, and in its assembly line mentality. Can the grassroots energy of 350.org be brought to bear on that?

For those who missed Paul's Monday report:

"circle of empathy"

The phrase is commonly associated with ethicist Peter Singer, but Jaron Lanier uses it too.

You have to draw a Circle of Empathy around yourself and others in order to be moral. If you include too much in the circle, you become incompetent, while if you include too little you become cruel. This is the "Normal form" of the eternal liberal/conservative dichotomy.

Lanier's Third Law: You can't rely completely on the level of rationality humans are able to achieve to decide what to put inside the circle...

Best guess for Circle of Empathy: Danger of increasing human stupidity is probably greater than potential reality of machine sentience. Therefore choose not to place machines in Circle of Empathy. edge.org

Empathy is essential, but it's essential to extend it in the right directions.

Future Minds

Matthew's terrific TED-worthy report yesterday on Slavoj Zizek* and altruism, featuring the marvelous RSA hyper-animation format, has inspired me to share another (albeit less animated) Royal Society talk:


Richard Watson examines how screen culture is changing the way we think, and calls for analog-digital balance. "The medium still influences the message." Take a walk, switch off after 6:30, reclaim the quality time you've been missing. Only disconnect, now and again.



*

higher education

"We have a system of education modeled on the interests of industrialisation."


In Tennessee it's with a "z" but the idea's the same as Sir Ken's, as we faculty Senators were reminded yesterday when the Chancellor-Emeritus of our governing board spoke to us* of the importance of appeasing state legislators' demands that we meet arbitrary and ill-formed "outcomes-based" targets to justify our very existence. 


We dare not speak to our benefactors, if you want to call them that, of the value of a liberal education. They don't like "L" words. Like learnin'. (Or did I misspell that?- A colleague summarizes the Chancellor's message: "TBR -- WE LURN YOU REAL GOOD")




*Chancellor-emeritus Manning delivered a sobering talk to the Senate yesterday afternoon, emphasizing that getting funding for higher ed in Tennessee will always be like squeezing blood from turnips. (And that UT, where "scholar-athletes" rule, will always have first dibs on whatever's on the table.)  


He said we should acknowledge the strong anti-intellectual sentiment now re-ascendant across the land, especially here in the Bible belt-buckle. (The irony of a colleague's sharp, pointed question about anti-intellectualism on the TBR board itself was evidently lost.) Our best long-term strategy for survival at MTSU? Shrink [we currently teach more students than UT-Knoxville] and try not to piss off the "deeply religious" zealots who control our purse-strings. 


Serve our prime constituency, the C & D students who become community leaders and legislators. Don't waste too much time trying to figure out the political "game" in the state capitol. We may not like the budget allocation formula but we should understand that bizness leaders and politicians (a convergent set) love "outcome-oriented" funding. And the new gov's priority will not be higher ed in any  event.

Oh, and when can we hope to get that new science building we've needed for twenty years? Hard to say, ask him again in 2015. 

There was also, another colleague reminds, an obnoxious reference to an 

"Oriental girl on a mule" outperforming the kids with the big backpacks full of books to show how Tennessee education must compete in a global market (or this is what I tried to draw from it).  I have to say this off-hand comment was particularly galling at a school that just landed a Confucius Institute on its campus.

And, 

And please do not overlook the response to his friend's query on the removal of non-christian professors.  I assume he was from the Christine Todd Whitman School of Constitutional Interpretation. 

Yes, speaking just for me and some other academics from Tennessee: a new higher ed paradigm would be welcome here.