The McCaskey Mess

Anyone who follows the Objectivist world probably has heard about John McCaskey’s resignation from the board of the Ayn Rand Institute over his Amazon review of David Harriman’s The Logical Leap: Induction in Physics. I don’t have the time nor interest to rehash the gory details of this incident. Others have done an admirable job detailing and analyzing the tsunami of consequences that has washed across the shores of the Objectivist work. For anyone reading this who is not aware of these events here is a short and admittedly incomplete list. A list of links to other commentaries is provided at the end.

• John McCaskey, who holds a doctorate from Stanford University in the history of science, who teaches at Stanford and who was a board member of ARI, wrote an Amazon review of David Harriman’s The Logical Leap: Induction in Physics. (According to Wikipedia, McCaskey also “organized the Anthem Foundation for Objectivist Scholarship, which provides grants for scholarly work on Objectivism in academia.”) His review starts with this statement: “Readers of the book should be aware that the historical accounts presented here often differ from those given by academic researchers working on the history of science and often by the scientists themselves.” After explaining the reasons for this statement McCaskey concludes with: “The theory of induction proposed here is potentially seminal; a theory that grounds inductive inference in concept-formation is welcome indeed. But the theory is still inchoate. If it is to be widely adopted, it will need to be better reconciled with the historical record as the theory gets fleshed out and refined.”

• McCaskey resigned from ARI after Peikoff wrote a letter in which he said: “When a great book sponsored by the Institute and championed by me – I hope you still know who I am and what my intellectual status is in Objectivism – is denounced by a member of the Board of the Institute, which I founded, someone has to go, and someone will go. It is your prerogative to decide whom.”

• Leonard Peikoff issued a subsequent letter explaining his position. He notes: “Because some people have turned the dispute into a moral issue, I should state the full truth, which is not stated in the letter: I have, for years, long before Harriman’s book, condemned McCaskey morally: I regard him as an obnoxious braggart as a person, and a pretentious ignoramus as an intellectual.” He also states: “An organization devoted to spreading an ideology is not compatible with ‘freedom’ for its leadership to contradict or undermine that ideology.”

• Yaron Brook, speaking on behalf of ARI, posted a statement containing this: “The substantive issue that Dr. Peikoff raised—whether a person who does not support a central ARI project should sit on the Board—was itself a very serious one. In addition, the Board had the practical, moral, and fiduciary responsibility to avoid needlessly damaging our important relationship with Dr. Peikoff. Dr. Peikoff founded ARI, served as its first Board chairman, and has continued to provide ARI with moral, financial, and practical support over the 25 years of ARI’s existence. As Ayn Rand’s heir, he has been very generous in giving Ayn Rand’s materials to the ARI Archives, with much more planned for the future. In these and many other ways, Dr. Peikoff’s ongoing support is important to ARI; we are certainly interested in hearing his thoughts and analyses, and we give them due weight in our deliberations.” This could hint at stronger disagreements between McCaskey and ARI than was revealed publicly.

• Craig Biddle, founder and editor of The Objective Standard, published a statement titled “Justice for John P. McCaskey”.

• In turn ARI canceled a lecture series by Craig Biddle.

• Biddle removed Yaron Brook’s name from the masthead of The Objective Standard.

In light of the above here are some observations.

• I don’t see anywhere in Peikoff’s or Brook’s responses a direct challenge of McCaskey’s points about Harriman’s book.

• I was not familiar with McCaskey before this controversy. After this story broke I visited his web site where a series of his publications, lectures and presentations are posted, most of which deal with the history of science or induction. As most people know Stanford has a strong reputation. It’s not like McCaskey is teaching at some no-name community college. If anyone among the ARI crew could test Harriman’s thesis it would appear that McCaskey has the qualifications.

• When Peikoff states that McCaskey is an “obnoxious braggart as a person, and a pretentious ignoramus as an intellectual.” I don’t see an explanation how these traits, if true, are moral failings. Maybe Peikoff would argue that a person with these traits is lying to himself and others. I’ve met people who rubbed me the wrong way; I didn’t consider them to be immoral. Mistaken maybe. Or delusional. But not necessarily immoral.

• As stated before McCaskey raised issues with the historical background in The Logical Leap, not with its thesis. Maybe he challenged the book’s thesis privately with his ARI colleagues. If McCaskey did harbor serious reservations at least he didn’t publicly broadcast it. Nonetheless, given his credentials and expertise of anyone in ARI I’d say McCaskey is qualified to question the book.

• It’s also obvious to me that ARI is handcuffed because of Peikoff’s hold on Rand’s “materials.”

I’ve written before that ARI has done an admirable job representing Objectivism in various media outlets in a principled manner but without the extreme polemics that can alienate the general public. This affair will somewhat undermine those efforts and will provide additional ammunition to Rand’s detractors who feel Objectivism is a sham philosophy. I’m sure ARI will lose some supporters because of McCaskey’s treatment but I think it’s premature to predict ARI’s demise. They still will have the steady influx of new readers who will find references to ARI in Rand’s novels in addition to ARI’s distribution of 400,000 of Rand’s novels as part of their essay contest. (An advantage that The Atlas Society does not enjoy, not that this is the only reason for their struggles.)

I think this incident opened the eyes of some people who aligned themselves with ARI. They were caught by surprise by the reaction to McCaskey’s review and how he and others who took his side were treated. For others such an episode was not so surprising. It was just a matter of time.

http://www.amazon.com/review/R33YO57MMEDAJ7/ref=cm_cr_pr_perm?ie=UTF8&ASIN=0451230051&nodeID=&tag=&linkCode

http://www.johnmccaskey.com/

http://www.johnmccaskey.com/resignation.html

http://www.peikoff.com/peikoff-vs-an-ari-board-member/

http://www.aynrand.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=26109

http://craigbiddle.com/misc/mccaskey.htm

http://craigbiddle.com/misc/mccaskey-faq.htm

http://www.intellectualactivist.com/php-bin/news/showArticle.php?id=1234

http://aynrandcontrahumannature.blogspot.com/2010/11/collision-course.html

http://aynrandcontrahumannature.blogspot.com/2010/09/mccaskey-objectischism.html

http://objectiblog.blogspot.com/2010/09/mccaskey-schism.html

http://blog.dianahsieh.com/search/label/McCaskey

http://blog.shealevy.com/

http://blog.dianahsieh.com/2010/11/closing-thoughts-on-ari-peikoff-and.html

http://www.facebook.com/bidinotto/posts/128520173872227

Switch: How To Change Things When Change Is Hard - Review

The Heath brothers did it again. Earlier I reviewed their book Made To Stick dealing with how to create memorable messages. It stuck with me, becoming one of my favorites because the Heaths have the ability to condense their massive research into easy-to-remember principles. In Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard they’ve aimed their same approach at change. Specifically, how do we change things in our lives? Almost all of us have tried to change something in our lives. Losing weight. Getting into better shape. Not procrastinating. But many of us even if we change we often slip back into our former habits. Why? Is there a way we can follow to increase the stickiness of change? The Heath brothers say there is.

The Heaths observe: “All change efforts have something in common: For anything to change, someone has to start acting differently. … successful changes share a common pattern.”

Before getting into the details of this common pattern Chip and Dan first tackle the nature of the key element of change: our brains. They rely on the work of Jonathan Haidt, author of The Happiness Hypothesis (reviewed here). Haidt’s research lead him to conclude that the emotional side of our brain is like an Elephant while our rational side is similar to a Rider who tries to rein in the elephant and seems to be the leader. However the Rider’s ability to control the elephant is tenuous because the Rider is so small relative to the Elephant. The roots of our emotional mechanism are deep in our ancestry while the rational part of our brain evolved only recently in terms of our total history.

This approach treads into largely uncharted territory for Objectivists. The elephant side of our nature gets very little billing in the Objectivist literature. We hear precious little about the second half of the definition of man as a rational animal. In fact our rational side is supposed to be able to dictate all of our behavior and totally control the subconscious and the brain’s subsystems.

I’ll admit that there is a potential weakness in Haidt’s research methods as well as others who come to similar conclusions. Objectivists could argue that the people being studied have accepted their moral premises by unthinking osmosis and therefore allow their Elephant to rule the Rider. However even if the Objectivists are right the fact remains that our rational cortex represents a thin, recently added layer on a brain with many other mechanisms rooted deeply in the dark earth of our animal ancestry. At the very least these facts should lead us to conclude that maintaining our objectivity represents a far stronger challenge than Objectivists acknowledge.

The Heaths go on to say the Elephant often wants a quick payoff with minimal effort while the Rider plans for the future. “When change efforts fail, it’s usually the Elephant’s fault, since the kinds of change we want typically involve short-term sacrifices for long-term payoffs.” This ties into their advice later in the book.

The Heaths’ reach three conclusions about trying to switch using sheer will power and self-control.

1. “Self-control is an exhaustible resource.” Meaning, our Elephant can wear out our limited supply of self-control.
2. “What looks like laziness is often exhaustion.” When we give up we might write it off as being just lazy when we’re really wearing ourselves out.
3. “What looks like resistance is often a lack of clarity.” If we don’t have a clearly defined and visualized end point we won’t know our ultimate goal.

These conclusions lead to their framework for change.

1. “Direct the Rider. What looks like resistance is often a lack of clarity. So provide crystal-clear direction.”
2. “Motivate the Elephant. What looks like laziness is often exhaustion. … So it’s critical that you engage people’s emotional side – get their Elephants on the path and cooperative.”
3. “Shape the Path. What looks like a people problem is often a situation problem. … When you shape the Path, you make change more likely, no matter what’s happening with the Rider and Elephant.”

For each of these parts of the framework Switch lays out advice on how to accomplish them. For instance, in directing the rider we can find the bright spots to help our motivation, script the critical moves to clearly define key steps and point to the destination. To motivate the elephant we find the feeling associated with our goals, find ways to shrink the change to make them less daunting and, for managers and leaders, help your people grow. (This ties into having a growth mindset versus a fixed mindset.) To shape the path we can tweak our environment, build habits and rally the herd.

Once we follow the path laid out by the Heaths they tell us how the “keep the switch going.” They point out that we use a positive approach instead of punishment, citing the results of animal trainers who “set a behavioral destination and then use ‘approximations,’ meaning that they reward each tiny step toward the destination. … We need to be looking for bright spots – however tiny! – and rewarding them.”

Ultimately Switch shows that there is a lot more to changing than sheer will power and repeating positive affirmations. Change requires a variety of tools and techniques that help the Rider chart a course and keep the Elephant reasonably in line.

Bottom line: I highly recommend Switch. Following it advice will help make change easier when change is hard.

Beyond The Happiness Hypothesis: The Righteous Mind by Jonathan Haidt

In monitoring the hits this blog gets I’ve noticed that my review of The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom has been getting the most visitors, particularly in the most recent couple of months. While I’m not sure why this is happening I’m glad that it is. I have found Haidt’s book interesting and thought-provoking. He is working on his next book: The Righteous Mind: Why good people are divided by politics and religion. It is scheduled to be published in 2011 by Pantheon Books.

To give you an idea of what it will cover here is a part of the book proposal.

This book will be a friendly slap in the face to liberals and atheists, delivered by a liberal atheist who desperately wants his peers to wise up, drop their self-righteousness, and understand the moralities of conservatives and of religious groups. The central idea of the book is simple but its implications are far-reaching:

Liberals and atheists generally do not understand the breadth of human morality. They think morality is about decreasing harm and increasing justice and autonomy. But for most of the world, morality is primarily about binding people into cohesive communities with strong institutions and collective goals.

The book is based upon my empirical research in moral psychology. I have discovered that there are five innate psychological systems upon which cultures build their moral systems. The first two are Harm/care (involving compassion and nurturance), and Fairness/reciprocity (involving concepts of justice, which generate rights and autonomy). These two psychological systems account for nearly all research in moral psychology, and they provide most of the psychology needed to explain the long history of liberal moral theory in which society is a human creation, a social contract entered into by individuals for their mutual benefit and protection.

But there are three other foundations of morality used by conservative and religious communities, foundations that liberals generally reject as causes of immorality. One is the Ingroup/loyalty foundation, which gives people the strong feeling that being a committed and trustworthy group member is more important than maximizing overall utility. When conservatives say “my country, right or wrong,” liberals say “dissent is patriotic.” Another is the Authority/respect foundation, which motivates conservatives to defend hierarchical social structures in which authorities (such as teachers, parents, and the police) have a duty to establish the order and stability that is necessary for everyone’s benefit. Liberals, in contrast, instinctively “question authority” and often equate it with oppression. The last of the five foundations is Purity/sanctity, which underlies religious conceptions of persons as having a divine soul housed in a body that is disturbingly animal-like. Moral systems built on this foundation urge people to cultivate their higher, spiritual nature and to shun carnal pleasures and petty concerns. Many Christians believe that their bodies are temples, on loan from God. But for secular liberals, people have full deed and title to their own bodies and can adorn them, pierce them, drug them, and stimulate them however they please. Most culture-war issues are really battles over the legitimacy of the Ingroup, Authority, and Purity foundations.

Objectivists probably would disagree with Haidt’s discussion of and homage to conservative moral foundations and would agree more with the liberal advocacy of autonomy. After all autonomy is at the individualist root of Objectivist philosophy. Nonetheless, I believe Objectivists would benefit by seriously considering Haidt’s thoughts on this. Personally, I’m looking forward to the release of his The Righteous Mind.

Signature in the Cell -- Comments

Anyone familiar with Objectivism knows that Rand was an atheist. While Rand didn’t write specifically on intelligent design (ID) I’m sure she would have dismissed this argument because of its support for a supernatural being. Although I know it’s blasphemous (to use a religious term) to give any credence to the intelligent design argument I believe we need to test of our beliefs and principles by facing the best arguments of opposing viewpoints. Thus I recommend seriously reading books like Michael Behe’s Darwin's Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution, William Dembski’s The Design Inference: Eliminating Chance through Small Probabilities (Cambridge Studies in Probability, Induction and Decision Theory), Anthony Flew’s There Is a God: How the World's Most Notorious Atheist Changed His Mind and Stephen Meyer’s Signature in the Cell: DNA and the Evidence for Intelligent Design.

Behe’s book started the current resurgence in the intelligent design argument by introducing the idea of irreducible complexity that is displayed in various components of living organisms. Behe contends that evolutionary processes as envisioned by Darwin cannot explain the development of this complexity. Dembski’s approach is more philosophical, offering a scheme for identifying the causes of events as the result of natural law, chance or design. Flew touches on a number of factors that lead him to abandon his life-long atheism.

While I won’t discuss Dembski’s or Flew’s approaches here I do want to take a second to discuss how Behe uses a mousetrap to illustrate irreducible complexity. Even though it is a relatively simple device the mouse trap won’t work until its pieces are assembled in the right order and in the right configuration, making it irreducibly complex. Behe shows how many of life’s features such as the bacteria flagellum, the blood clotting mechanism or the chemistry of vision are much more complicated than a mouse trap. Behe contends that the development of these complex mechanisms could not have evolved by a step-by-step process because the components will not work until they are fully assembled.

Stephen Meyer’s Signature in the Cell: DNA and the Evidence for Intelligent Design takes a different approach by focusing on the special characteristics of DNA. I have provided some key quotes below but I want to mention that I recently learned of philosopher Thomas Nagel’s pick of Meyer’s book as Book of the Year for Times On Line (The Times Literary Supplement). Nagel is primarily known as for his work in ethics and surely is not noted for being a mystic.

As Nagel says:

Stephen C. Meyer’s Signature in the Cell: DNA and the Evidence for Intelligent Design (HarperCollins) is a detailed account of the problem of how life came into existence from lifeless matter – something that had to happen before the process of biological evolution could begin. The controversy over Intelligent Design has so far focused mainly on whether the evolution of life since its beginnings can be explained entirely by natural selection and other non-purposive causes. Meyer takes up the prior question of how the immensely complex and exquisitely functional chemical structure of DNA, which cannot be explained by natural selection because it makes natural selection possible, could have originated without an intentional cause. He examines the history and present state of research on non-purposive chemical explanations of the origin of life, and argues that the available evidence offers no prospect of a credible naturalistic alternative to the hypothesis of an intentional cause. Meyer is a Christian, but atheists, and theists who believe God never intervenes in the natural world, will be instructed by his careful presentation of this fiendishly difficult problem.

Here are selections from various parts of Meyer’s book which summarize his case.

The theory of intelligent design holds that there are tell-tale features of living systems and the universe that are best explained by an intelligent cause – that is, by the conscious choice of a rational agent – rather than by an undirected process. Either life arose as the result of purely undirected processes, or a guiding intelligence played a role. Advocates of intelligent design argue for the latter option based on the evidence from the natural world. The theory does not challenge the idea of evolution defined as change over time or even common ancestry, but it does dispute the Darwinian idea that the cause of all biological change is wholly blind and undirected. Even so, the theory is not based on biblical doctrine. Intelligent design is an inference from scientific evidence, not deduction from religious authority.

The design inference defined here does not constitute an argument from ignorance. Instead, it constitutes an “inference to the best explanation” based upon our best available knowledge. … an inference to the best explanation does not assert the adequacy of one causal explanation. Instead, it asserts the superior explanatory power of a proposed cause based upon its proven – it’s known – causal adequacy and based upon a lack of demonstrated efficacy among the competing proposed causes. … The inference to design, therefore, depends on present knowledge of the demonstrated causal powers of material entities and processes (inadequate) and intelligence (adequate). It no more constitutes an argument from ignorance than any other well-grounded inference in geology, archaeology or paleontology – where present knowledge of cause-and-effect relationships guides the inferences that scientists make about the causes of events in the past.

Premise One: Despite a thorough search, no material causes have been discovered that demonstrate the power to produce large amounts of specified information.

Premise Two: Intelligent causes have demonstrated the power to produce large amounts of specified information.

Conclusion: Intelligent design constitutes the best, most causally adequate, explanation for the information in the cell.

Intelligent design constitutes the best explanation of a particular feature of life because of what we know about the cause-and-effect structure of the world – specifically, because of what we know about what it takes to produce large amounts of specified information.

I’ve provided these quotes to give a flavor of Meyer’s argument. It's impossible to do justice to his 624 page book here. Based on my reading of Meyer, Behe, Dembski and Flew I have concluded they are not whim worshippers or raging subjectivists. Yes, they are making an argument for a belief in God or at least some kind of unknown intelligence that is responsible for the design of life, a conclusion with which we might ultimately disagree. However, to be fair, these authors craft arguments, marshal facts to support them, anticipate objections, and try to address them. I’m not saying the ID argument is irrefutable. Unfortunately the “refutations” I’ve seen in books or on the ‘net are heavy on sarcasm and ad hominem but are light on true objective analysis.

My point is that Objectivists and others who summarily reject ID arguments do not do them justice but, more importantly, also lose an opportunity to truly check and test their own premises.

Ken Wilber’s All Quadrant All Levels, Spiral Dynamics and Objectivism

As you'd expect by the title and nature of this blog I am influenced by Ayn Rand. However Ken Wilber has also influenced my thinking. If you're not familiar with Wilber the best way I can describe his thinking is systematic Buddhism. I'm sure Rand and her more ardent fans would dismiss Wilber as he is a self-described mystic and therefore is automatically not worth considering. I obviously disagree. Even if you don't accept his fundamental spiritual philosophy I believe we can benefit from the cornerstone of Wilber's thinking: his All Quadrants All Levels (AQAL) model.

The AQAL model does not tell us what to think but instead offers a template for interpreting the world. It's difficult to put the diagram into this blog so I'll try to describe it. Imagine a box broken into quadrants. The upper left quadrant represents our individual internal world, the world inside our consciousness. Corresponding to this upper left quadrant is the upper right: our external behavior, what people see that results from our thinking and feeling. The lower left quadrant represents our collective interior world of cultural aspects: the world of social mores, politics, and etc. The lower right quadrant covers our social world, how we relate to one another (friendships, family, work, etc.) (Note: Wilber and his colleagues probably would take issue with how I've described the quadrants. This is my take on the AQAL model.) The one word description of each quadrant, starting with the upper left, is intentional, behavioral, cultural and social.

Wilber proposes that each quadrant adheres to its own version of truth. For the interior individual truth is being truthful (or objective?): for the exterior individual, truth: for cultural, justness; and for social, functional fitness.

Wilber contends that most philosophies and ideologies latch onto one of these quadrants then claim their truth applies to everything. Hence, Marxism, which explains everything in terms of means of production and class warfare, expands a lower right quadrant conclusion to apply to the other three. Or, behaviorism which looks at consciousness from the outside ultimately says that the internal world of consciousness can be reduced merely to external behavior.

Wilber contends that each "ism" identifies a kernel of truth but makes the fatal mistake of saying their kernel is the whole cob! As Wilber likes to say no one is so brilliant that they're 100% wrong. Wilber calls his overall approach "integral" because the AQAL model integrates the four basic dimensions of human experience. Anyone in Wilber's camp are identified as Integral Thinkers.

Not being a static model AQAL incorporates the idea of evolution as well so that people and cultures can develop through these quadrants in an ascending spiral. In fact, Wilber eventually incorporated another model called Spiral Dynamics which uses colors to designate different stages of development in our consciousness. I figure some Objectivists blanch at this New Age sounding jargon but I believe both the AQAL and Spiral Dynamics (SD) models have some validity and explanatory power. I encourage anyone interested in exploring these ideas to check out these web sites.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spiral_Dynamics

http://www.spiraldynamics.com/

http://www.spiraldynamics.net/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ken_Wilber

http://www.kenwilber.com/home/landing/index.html

If I may digress here is what I mean by explanatory power of SD. But first a little background. The SD model uses colors to describe each stage of evolutionary development. I want to focus on three of the most recent stages: Blue, Orange and Green. Or. as Stephen McIntosh another Integral author calls them, traditional, modern and postmodern. By traditional (or Blue) we refer to those who value law and order, the market as a governing and disciplining device, belief in God-given rights, religion providing moral order, etc. Blue represents the traditional Republican or conservative.

Orange applies to the Enlightenment mentality: individualism, achievement-oriented, free market as an expression of individuality, reason and science, order is inherent within nature, not imposed by God. Obviously, many libertarians and Objectivists fall into Orange.

Green describes the modern liberal with their belief in egalitarianism, anti-hierarchy, freedom of expression and a concern with the have-nots.

As you can see Blue and Green are more collective oriented while Orange favors the individual. I think it also becomes clear why there is a constant tension in the alliance of traditional Blue conservatives and the modern Orange libertarians and Objectivists. What little common ground they share is constantly threatened by their fundamentally different worldviews. They share a common antipathy for the modern liberal.

You might balk at the idea that in the SD model Green liberals are deemed as more evolved in this scheme. I share this reservation to a degree but ultimately agree for reasons I won't cover now. Wilber too doesn't say that the Green stage is the be-all and end-all. In fact he refers to this level as the "mean Green meme" and wrote a novel titled "Boomeritis" (referring to the excesses of the Green stage) because, despite their kumbaya message, the Greens judge people in other levels just as harshly as conservatives and Objectivists, deny any validity of the earlier stages (thereby undercutting the foundation upon which their stage depends -- which postmodernism carried to the extreme) and suppress debate through political correctness. Worse, they prevent further development beyond Green to what Wilber calls the "second tier" of thinking that incorporates the healthiest parts of the previous levels while jettisoning the unhealthy. Just like every other stage, Green believes they are the most advanced stage of consciousness.

In any case there is a LOT more to AQAL and SD than I can cover or do justice to here. I encourage anyone interested in checking out Wilber's books and the related web sites. I feel I have benefited from their ideas and believe you would too.

From the same star: reflections on our common roots

When I visited my mother recently she played an album, Vom selben Stern (From the same star), by a German group called Ich + Ich. While it has some catchy tunes, I especially like the title song for the thought behind it: that we’re all made from the same ashes of a former star, that we all share a common heritage going back much further than whether we evolved from apes. This idea has intrigued me for years. The chemicals that we are made of couldn’t have come from the cloud of gases that formed the Sun because the heavier elements like carbon, iron, oxygen, and etc. form only within stars that are much older. I’m sure I’m not doing this justice but stars go through cycles. Once they burn up most of their hydrogen the star collapses because the pressure exerted by the fusion reactions decreases, allowing the star’s gravity to temporarily win the battle. As the star collapses the pressure in the interior increases until it is high enough to start a self-sustaining fusion reaction of the heavier elements. This process continues until the star runs out of fuel. For smaller stars like ours it eventually turns into a cinder called a dwarf star. For a large star which generates larger gravitational pressure it can actually turn into a nova. The catastrophic increase in pressure tears the star asunder, spewing out the heavy elements that formed in its interior. Billions of years ago a star died, releasing it elements which were then captured by the Sun’s gravity to form the earth and the other planets. (See this entry on stellar evolution.)

This means we’re made of remnants of a star that died billions of years ago. In addition the earth is in a narrow band from the Sun in which the temperature is just right: much closer and the water would boil away, much further away and the water would freeze. (Some call this the Goldilocks Effect.)

I find this fascinating and amazing. Whether earth, life and consciousness are the result of design or of accidental clumping of chemicals the bottom line is the same: the staggering complexity of life and the formation of consciousness is a miracle.

I think if we kept this in mind we might look at life and our fellow humans a bit differently. I’m not saying that we’re a meaningless speck floating in the cosmos. On the contrary, we’re incredibly, marvelously complex creations with the capacity for self-reflection. I’m also not saying that we should accept people regardless of their beliefs and their actions. What I am saying is that we start with the premise that all of us are miracles and share this common incredible history.

When I see Objectivists smugly dismissing religious beliefs or arguments about Intelligent Design they take the easy cases: the fundamentalists who argue from pure faith. I believe Objectivists need to acknowledge that some religious people are driven by a deep dissatisfaction for the explanation of how stardust self-assembled into life. I’m sure some religious folks are motivated by whim worship, as Rand would have put it. However, from my own experience many have concluded there is a God based on what they believe is evidence, not blind faith. At the very least I feel we need to acknowledge -- and even have awe for -- the amazingly complexity of life.

Talent is Overrated Review

This topic doesn't directly relate to Objectivism but I found it interesting nonetheless. Most of believe some people “have it” and some people don’t. What the people “have” is talent. Gobs and gobs of talent that allows them to be world class level competitors. People like Tiger Woods or Alex Rodriquez. CEOs like GE’s Jack Welch. Many of us believe that these people come into this world equipped with talent that allows them to beat the competition and that we who don’t have it will never be able to reach these lofty heights of achievement.

Geoff Colvin disputes this in Talent Is Overrated: What Really Separates World-Class Performers from Everybody Else. He claims that the top performers in sports, business, the arts and other areas share something in common: the use of “deliberate practice.”

• The gifts possessed by the best performers are not at all what we think they are.

• Even the general abilities … are not what we think.

• The factor that seems to explain the most about great performance is something the researchers call deliberate practice.
• Most organizations are terrible at applying the principles of great performance.

What is deliberate practice? The elements are, as Colvin explains.

It is actively designed specifically to improve performance, often with a teacher’s help. Identify elements that need to be improved then work intently on them. It can be repeated a lot; feedback on results is continuously available; it’s highly demanding mentally; … and it isn’t much fun. … We insistently seek out what we’re not good at. Then we identify the painful, difficult activities that will make us better and do those things over and over.

Speaking personally, I heard about the concept of deliberate practice in my research on soccer coaching in which I stumbled upon an article on the subject. I applied the concept to tennis, my sport of choice. By working diligently on my weaknesses (primarily the serve) I have been able to transform my serve from a liability into a weapon.

Colvin also addresses another misconception. We’ve heard many times that we with repetition we’ll get to the point where we don’t have to think what we’re doing. While it is true we can automatize complicated movements to the point where we no longer have to consciously guiding these movements. In fact, we can thwart smooth performance by thinking too much. However Colvin shows that:

Great performers never allow themselves to reach the automatic, arrested development stage in their chose field. … Ultimately the performance is always conscious and controlled, not automatic.

In other words, top performers maintain a constant awareness of whether their actions are producing desired results. When these results don’t occur, they modify what they are doing to improve their results and use this input to refine the design of their deliberate practice.

In addition to being constantly aware of what they are doing, top performers perceive more. How?

• They understand the significance of indicators that average performers don’t even notice.
• They look further ahead.
• They know more from seeing less.
• They make finer discriminations than average performers.

And top performers “had more knowledge about their field.” They “have better organized and consolidated their knowledge, enabling them to approach problems in fundamentally different and more useful ways.”

In addition to explaining how top performers use deliberate practice to distance themselves from their competitors Colvin shows how we can use the same principles in our own lives.

They approach the job with more specific goals and strategies, since their previous experience was essentially a test of specific goals and strategies; and they’re more likely to believe in their own efficacy because their detailed analysis of their own performance is more effective than the vague, unfocused analysis of average performers. Thus their well-founded belief in their own effectiveness helps give them the crucial motivation to press on, powering a self-reinforcing cycle.

Finally, Colvin explores the role of two kinds of drive: intrinsic and extrinsic. According to his research creative people focus on the task (How can I solve this problem?) and not on themselves (What will solving this problem do for me?). This is an example of intrinsic motivation, being driven from within. Extrinsic motivation on the other hand depends on outside factors like rewards or penalties.

Does Colvin argue that extrinsic motivation plays no role? No.

Extrinsic motivators that reinforce intrinsic motivation could work quite effectively. Like what? Recognition that confirms competence turned out to be effective. … ‘constructive, nonthreatening, and work-focused rather than person-focused,’ in Amabile’s words. That is, feedback that helped a person do what he or she felt compelled to do was effective.”

Feedback from coaches and teachers focused on the task and doing it better.

Lastly Colvin reveals that the majority of childhood prodigies don’t grow up to be top performers and that top performers are rarely child prodigies. This gives us hope for improving how we perform. “[B]y understanding how a few become great, anyone can become better.”