Man of the Year 2017

Look at him. He is the Pee-Wee Herman that you thought Pee-Wee Herman looked like after you found out he was a child molester (is that even true? No, I think he just got caught jerking off in public.)

Shkreli ordered jailed after online bounty on Hillary Clinton's hair
Reuters, Sep 2017

For sheer entertainment value alone this guy should get person of the year. He has added more priceless content to the interwebs than any other person (I guess this has been going on for more than a year, but we have to draw the line somewhere).

He raises drug prices so high that he basically kills dozens of people, and has absolutely no remorse. He goes to trial for securities fraud and tweets about how all the people involved are dumbasses, to the chastisement of his lawyer. He goes on trial and they can't even find a jury for him because he is so infamous for being a dirty asshole. His face is that of a sneaky shitbag (just look at him). His name, for christ's sake, is that of the sleeziest scumbag you ever heard of (Shkreli? Just say it out loud). He buys the secret and almost priceless Wu-Tang album for millions of dollars and then threatens to upload it to a torrent site so everyone can have it for free. I think he tried to pick a fight with Raekwon (am I making that up?). He uses twitter better than Donald Trump. (what does that even mean?)

I am definitely missing some things here, but we pause right after this - he puts a bounty on Hillary Clinton's hair, just one strand. You have got to be kidding me. He's serious, he's hilarious, he's preposterous, his moral compass is actually a piece of spin-art made on the boardwalk at the Jersey shore, his conscience is the evil, zero-fucks-epitome of all of us, manifest. He is the perfect child of corrupt capitalism, born fully formed from the head of the Merrill Lynch Bull.

In my series of coward-heroes, he is just the one I've been waiting for. First Jared Loughner, then Julian Assange, now this guy, Martin Shkreli. Man of the year, 2017.

Quantum Pedagogical Theory

WE BEGIN with a glimpse at the future of education:

The Global Arbitrage of Online Work

Quentin Hardy, OCTOBER 10, 2012

Recently two of the biggest online staffing companies, oDesk and Elance, have released surveys concerning the companies that hire workers over the Internet to do things like write software, and the mindset of online workers themselves.

[...]

 Education alone probably won’t help you get hired. Only 6 percent of the survey respondents rated schooling as a “very important” reason to hire someone. It was the lowest-rated reason to hire someone. Work experience was first, followed by how other people rated the contractor, pay, portfolio of work, references, and scores on skills tests that oDesk offers online.

In the future, having a degree may be helpful, but having a reputation will be even better.

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/10/10/the-global-arbitrage-of-online-work/

NOW for the real subject at hand:

It’s Not Me, It’s You [aka "conditional stupidity"]

Annie Murphy Paul, October 6, 2012

Experiments show that when people report feeling comfortable with a conversational partner, they are judged by those partners and by observers as actually being more witty.

It’s just one example of the powerful influence that social factors can have on intelligence. As parents, teachers and students settle into the school year, this work should prompt us to think about intelligence not as a “lump of something that’s in our heads,” as the psychologist Joshua Aronson puts it, but as “a transaction among people.”

-truth, people, social dynamics, reality, the construction of reality, ‘quantum’

-truth becomes irrelevant. you tell them they are smart, and they become smart

-ignore the truth, make shit up, and watch it become reality

"Mr. Aronson, an associate professor at New York University, has been a leader in investigating the effects of social forces on academic achievement. Along with the psychologist Claude Steele, he identified the phenomenon known as “stereotype threat.” Members of groups believed to be academically inferior — African-American and Latino students enrolled in college, or female students in math and science courses — score much lower on tests when reminded beforehand of their race or gender."

-if you believe you are inferior, you will score lower on tests.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/07/opinion/sunday/intelligence-and-the-stereotype-threat.html?_r=0

please follow to the next logical extension:

High-Stakes Testing as the Inverse of Morality

http://networkaddress.blogspot.com/2012/11/high-stakes-testing-as-inverse-of.html