All of Stefie_K's Comments + Replies

This is true, but for classes like these in particular, you need to stay focused on getting useful things out of them. This is important for any college class, of course, but at colleges like this, the classes are likely to be geared to a student population with wildly varying abilities and knowledge. If you allow the class to be what determines how hard you work, you (if you visit a site like this) will probably learn a whole lot less in the time than you otherwise would, because the class will be focused on pushing students who need to learn more.

I say... (read more)

I work for Smarthinking (also as a writing tutor), and it only pays $12/hour if you have a Ph.D. If you have a Master's degree, $11/hour; a Bachelor's, $10/hour.

For what it's worth, they are reliable in supplying work hours, which is nice, and the work isn't bad.

ETA: Although they advertise and accept applications year-round, I have a suspicion that they hire/train new people only during the summer. I have only extremely limited data on this point (myself and one other person who both applied in the fall to be hired in May), but it seems worth mentioning as a possibility to be aware of. Alejandro1, what was your experience?

There are further implications along these lines, too. It's isn't just ability, but willingness: at least some prospective teachers would probably be put off by the prospect of being required to be armed in the classroom.

Not that the job market for teachers isn't glutted, right now, but is "willingness to carry a gun and shoot to kill" really something that we want to select for, in teachers? It would compete with the ability to teach well in determining who actually teaches our children.

I teach writing at a community college (I began in January), and I agree with this.

I wouldn't see that student as a sign of poor discipline. If the student was arguing solely about the grade, then like you, I would see it as a waste of time and emotional energy -- his and mine.

Incidentally, one of the things I like about the class I'm teaching is that, even before I got there, the syllabus was set up to get students thinking about their purposes in writing the various essays they write, and the purposes the authors of the assigned readings had. Many of m... (read more)

To follow up on my post:

The original post talks about noticing flinches and attachments, which is similar to what I discussed above. However, I would expect it to be a lot more difficult to notice the flinch itself than it would be to notice the aftereffects, because the flinch is one moment, and the aftereffects last. (At least, when I catch myself doing it, the flinch is a single moment, and then the rationalization normalizes very quickly unless I act to counter it.)

The momentary nature of the flinch would not only make it harder to notice, but also m... (read more)

The original post mentions some techniques for getting people to avoid rationalizing once they've realized they're doing it, but an earlier step is to get them to realize that they're doing it.

The key to this may be that a person who is rationalizing without realizing it is arguing with him/herself without realizing it, since it's easier to recognize (and to accept) that you're arguing than that you're rationalizing. Accordingly, getting people to realize that they're rationalizing would involve getting them to realize that they're the one that they're ar... (read more)

Another thing worth mentioning: a carpet (depending on what the floor currently looks like). I have no particular thoughts on throw rugs, but if your floor is ugly and/or doesn't match what you're doing with the room, it'll make a huge difference to cover it with an as-close-to-wall-to-wall carpet as you can.

My last apartment had ugly tiles of the kind I associate with basements, and the rooms basically looked like rooms of some kind that had furniture in them. My current apartment is carpeted, and -- with the same furniture and mostly the same artwork -- it looks like a home.

Actually, I want to take some of my criticism back. It seems to me that there are several instrumental goals that would help with the terminal goal of getting people to routinely be specific at useful times in the future. No one exercise has to encompass all of the instrumental goals. The list I see right now is:

1) Make people better at being specific.

2) Get people to appreciate the value of being specific.

3) Get people to recognize situations where they or other people aren't being specific.

4) Get people to react negatively to a lack of specifics.

5) Ma... (read more)

My exercise already calls for people to think of specific things they did recently in their lives. I doubt many exercises can do better than that.

In getting them to be specific in the present, it's hard to ask for better. In getting them to be specific in the future, I'm not sure, and the point is their future behavior, right?

Of course, my own exercise might be considered a cop-out in this regard; it doesn't get them to be specific in the present, even, and its main goal is to get them to simply be frustrated with a lack of specifics in the present and... (read more)

This gets people thinking of specifics, but would it contrast being specific with failing to be specific, and make the students want to be specific in the future? I think that the students need that contrast just to appreciate what the issue is, and they need to see what they're doing as something that could apply to a broad set of situations in order to find occasions to behave this way in the future.

I suppose you could contrast your test with a personality test that doesn't use specifics, and that could supply the contrast. How would you supply the app... (read more)

That was kind of my intention, but I had imagined that they wouldn't be the only ones. (Misery loves company?) I was thinking that you might do dialogues like in Eliezer's example with a lot of people (privately), as one rationality exercise, then use that to put together a large set of scenarios.

Remember, students will probably need scenarios that are different enough from their own lives for them to recognize the lack of specifics. Eliezer's example might not work at all well for someone involved in an online company, and/or a startup, because it migh... (read more)

Hmm. I hadn't envisioned them being present, but I may have misunderstood the ongoing nature of these things. If they aren't present, key details might be changed, and so on, to preserve anonymity. I was also imagining that this exercise would be done privately, rather than on a stage in front of lots of people -- although that would be flexible.

Reusing earlier exercises isn't essential to my idea, so that could be changed, and made-up dialogue used instead.

However... I think that one of the issues with all of these exercises is going to be making sure ... (read more)

Hi! I've been lurking for a bit.

It looks to me like one thing that would help would be to get the people you're teaching to get frustrated enough to spontaneously say "Be specific!" on their own. If you can get them to associate a feeling of frustration with certain situations, the emotional reaction could reinforce the cognitive skills they're developing.

Specific scenarios can be based off of actual conversations like the one Eliezer presented in his post. Here's an example, based on Eliezer's example:

Sample Exercise:

The student must decide... (read more)