Firstly, it probably goes without saying that I agree with you, and think you expressed it interestingly. (I normally mean that, but sometimes I forget to say it :)) I've oft been annoyed by such attitudes, and it feels good for someone to stand up and say "No, they really are saying that, and I really do think they're wrong." In many contexts it really is pernicious.
I'd like to subscribe to the manifesto, as some people have started to do :) But whilst I like the language it uses, I feel it may need some more condensing before I'm happy propagating it, both to make it more clear, and to make it clear that (a) vilifying people for thinking is bad (b) not thinking at all is bad (c) but it's not an attack on anyone who doesn't enjoy thinking sometimes :) (The list of reasons why someone might think is accurate, and a good flame of people who watch TV all day and never think, but you don't want to make it sound like any non-thinking hobby is bad -- swimming, dancing, music all might classify.)
It's interesting to consider where the anti-thinking attitude comes from from. It might just be society. It might be life-long insecurity: I feel bad because I'm not as intelligent as some people, so I will dismiss intelligence as ever useful. It might (in theory) be a reaction to people who maybe do think too much[1]. At school, it often does seem to be there -- I don't know, might it be rebellion "We are expected to study. Therefore anyone who enjoys that is mad"?
[1] I would joke that you can't think too much. But some people do, in that they might go on analysing a question, out of a general desire for knowledge, when answering it would be more urgent. And I totally enjoy the analysing, but can see why in some circumstances someone might be annoyed, if they wanted to get on, and didn't enjoy doing that for its own sake; or even feel that the analysing was implicitly criticising them for not wanting to do so :(
Or, something I've been exploring with L, is that my natural inclination is to analyse any question, but sometimes (eg. goatse, views about marriage on a first date), while all knowledge is good, deprioritising certain knowledge may be wise for the moment. So there may be such a thing as thinking too much.
I'd like to object to dancing as a non-thinking hobby. As someone with several left feet, dancing requires a lot of thought. It's jolly good fun, though.
Oh yes, that was cut down from a longer passage. The point is, watching bad TV instead of ever thinking is generally agreed by people I know as not a good thing, and may lead to resenting people who do think, but Simon's list excluded several ways hobbies could not involve thought that seem pretty good.
Dancing was one example, others might involve other sorts of exercise, yoga, watching TV, etc, that are broadly approved by people I know, but seem to show to me I don't just enjoy thinking. The way I enjoy thinking definitely seems to be different to the way I enjoy puzzles, and a way someone who didn't enjoy thinking could probably cope with -- it requires effort, and concentration, and remembering (maybe more than some people would want in some circumstances), but I think someone who was down on geeks wouldn't object to it on those grounds, provided the dancer never tried to generalise the dance steps :)
It's not so much "expected to study" as "made to jump through fifteen years of hoops of dubious use" at school, isn't it?
I think willingness to think is a brain chemistry thing; it doesn't feel, to me, wilful when I run out of headspace. I'm much more conscious than I was at the time of how lucky I was that it didn't hit at school; at the time, I took ease of thought for granted.
I think geeks tend to take ease of thought for granted. I clearly remember being roundly patronised by an uber-geek who watched me lose at Othello and explained that I'd been in a strong position but I *needed to think ahead*. My problem wasn't that I didn't know I needed to think ahead. It was that I ran out of focus and headspace. I was in the sleep-deprived-parenthood state that a friend describes as being like those polar bears in Eastern European zoos who pace up and down repetitively and try to eat themselves.
I wonder whether there's a spectrum of ease of thought, and whether geeks occupy a significantly further-flung part of it than they think. I agree strongly that thought is good, but if you're a minority preaching to a majority you won't encourage them not to disparage you by disparaging them.
It's not so much "expected to study" as "made to jump through fifteen years of hoops of dubious use" at school, isn't it?
That too. (But it applies equally much that many people are turned off studying by it, and apply that dislike to others.)
I think willingness to think is a brain chemistry thing;
I know what you mean. The thing with Othello rings completely true. I remember vaguely with chess or bridge, trying to form an overall picture, and just not being able to hold it all in my head at once, and finding myself repeating analyses because I couldn't follow every line of thought to the end at once. And at some point giving in and picking one. And how tired, how practised, and how intelligent you are affect where this point is.
But I think I was trying to say there were perfectly valid reasons for not thinking, and that Simon's rant was against against people who disapproved of thinking (but maybe spilled over in some places and might have sounded like it was against any forms of not thinking, even though it wasn't supposed to be).
And certainly, there may be a problem with lumping together any reasons for not thinking as bad: not in Simon's post, but in geek culture.
I think the disapproving of thinking may well come from having got fed up, many years ago, of being berated for not thinking enough. I've been wondering all day about the parallel with recreational running, which is the same kind of doing things well for fun which other people don't want to be involved in, and I think the difference is that while runners may be in-your-face and enthusiastic and fitter than you they tend not to be proselytising and dismissive (and paid for it). But if your pub was taken over by people ostentatiously doing press-ups you might think about going somewhere else.
Sigh. (Intrusive video game going on in background.) I'm still in favour of thinking, I just can't do it tonight 8-(
Ah, I've got it. It's easy for me to be in favour of thinking, because I have had and still do intermittently have ease of thought. But I now see that it's contingent and not under my power, and I see that if I hadn't had it at school my life would have been very different. It's not clear to me that if I had never had it I would be very sympathetic to this manifesto, and it's not clear to me that the people this manifesto is targeted at are necessarily going to have ease of thought. (That's particularly, but not exclusively, ease of geekoid mathmo-technical thought.)
For an extreme example, I know a contemporary of Kathy's who had a brain haemorrhage at birth in the maths-area, and now has great difficulty with plus and minus one, while Kathy is loving everything numerical. It seems extraordinary to me that something as fundamental as number should be so localised and biological and vulnerable, but it clearly is.
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I'd like to subscribe to the manifesto, as some people have started to do :) But whilst I like the language it uses, I feel it may need some more condensing before I'm happy propagating it, both to make it more clear, and to make it clear that (a) vilifying people for thinking is bad (b) not thinking at all is bad (c) but it's not an attack on anyone who doesn't enjoy thinking sometimes :) (The list of reasons why someone might think is accurate, and a good flame of people who watch TV all day and never think, but you don't want to make it sound like any non-thinking hobby is bad -- swimming, dancing, music all might classify.)
It's interesting to consider where the anti-thinking attitude comes from from. It might just be society. It might be life-long insecurity: I feel bad because I'm not as intelligent as some people, so I will dismiss intelligence as ever useful. It might (in theory) be a reaction to people who maybe do think too much[1]. At school, it often does seem to be there -- I don't know, might it be rebellion "We are expected to study. Therefore anyone who enjoys that is mad"?
[1] I would joke that you can't think too much. But some people do, in that they might go on analysing a question, out of a general desire for knowledge, when answering it would be more urgent. And I totally enjoy the analysing, but can see why in some circumstances someone might be annoyed, if they wanted to get on, and didn't enjoy doing that for its own sake; or even feel that the analysing was implicitly criticising them for not wanting to do so :(
Or, something I've been exploring with L, is that my natural inclination is to analyse any question, but sometimes (eg. goatse, views about marriage on a first date), while all knowledge is good, deprioritising certain knowledge may be wise for the moment. So there may be such a thing as thinking too much.
Dancing was one example, others might involve other sorts of exercise, yoga, watching TV, etc, that are broadly approved by people I know, but seem to show to me I don't just enjoy thinking. The way I enjoy thinking definitely seems to be different to the way I enjoy puzzles, and a way someone who didn't enjoy thinking could probably cope with -- it requires effort, and concentration, and remembering (maybe more than some people would want in some circumstances), but I think someone who was down on geeks wouldn't object to it on those grounds, provided the dancer never tried to generalise the dance steps :)
I think willingness to think is a brain chemistry thing; it doesn't feel, to me, wilful when I run out of headspace. I'm much more conscious than I was at the time of how lucky I was that it didn't hit at school; at the time, I took ease of thought for granted.
I think geeks tend to take ease of thought for granted. I clearly remember being roundly patronised by an uber-geek who watched me lose at Othello and explained that I'd been in a strong position but I *needed to think ahead*. My problem wasn't that I didn't know I needed to think ahead. It was that I ran out of focus and headspace. I was in the sleep-deprived-parenthood state that a friend describes as being like those polar bears in Eastern European zoos who pace up and down repetitively and try to eat themselves.
I wonder whether there's a spectrum of ease of thought, and whether geeks occupy a significantly further-flung part of it than they think. I agree strongly that thought is good, but if you're a minority preaching to a majority you won't encourage them not to disparage you by disparaging them.
That too. (But it applies equally much that many people are turned off studying by it, and apply that dislike to others.)
I think willingness to think is a brain chemistry thing;
I know what you mean. The thing with Othello rings completely true. I remember vaguely with chess or bridge, trying to form an overall picture, and just not being able to hold it all in my head at once, and finding myself repeating analyses because I couldn't follow every line of thought to the end at once. And at some point giving in and picking one. And how tired, how practised, and how intelligent you are affect where this point is.
But I think I was trying to say there were perfectly valid reasons for not thinking, and that Simon's rant was against against people who disapproved of thinking (but maybe spilled over in some places and might have sounded like it was against any forms of not thinking, even though it wasn't supposed to be).
And certainly, there may be a problem with lumping together any reasons for not thinking as bad: not in Simon's post, but in geek culture.
Sigh. (Intrusive video game going on in background.) I'm still in favour of thinking, I just can't do it tonight 8-(
For an extreme example, I know a contemporary of Kathy's who had a brain haemorrhage at birth in the maths-area, and now has great difficulty with plus and minus one, while Kathy is loving everything numerical. It seems extraordinary to me that something as fundamental as number should be so localised and biological and vulnerable, but it clearly is.