<p>Oh, bookworm, I wish I felt the same...I can think of one post I wish I hadn't made..if my DS knew about that post, I think he might want to throw something other than a pillow at me. Enough however of my hijacking this advice thread. Ben, can you bring us back to the subject at hand?</p>
<p>Gladly (and quite soon). I do, however, love digressions. : )</p>
<ol>
<li>Be ready for disagreement.</li>
</ol>
<p>I should say right away that today's advice is rather more philosophical than the rest. (But, to make up for it, the next day's will be extremely concrete.)</p>
<p>Most people, before they come to college, have spent most of their lives in a relatively constant environment. For some people, this is literally and completely true – living in the same town with the same people since birth. For others, it merely means that, despite geographic changes, they have spent most of their time around familiar people, ideas, and norms. A few people have been lucky (or unlucky) to have very broad exposure to many unfamiliar people and ways of living and thinking, but this is highly unusual.</p>
<p>College tends to be the end of this, except for those [url="<a href="http://www.liberty.edu/index.cfm?PID=6907%22%5Dunfortunates%5B/url">http://www.liberty.edu/index.cfm?PID=6907"]unfortunates[/url</a>] who choose a [url="<a href="http://www.biola.edu/about/doctrinal_statement.cfm%22%5Dcollege%5B/url">http://www.biola.edu/about/doctrinal_statement.cfm"]college[/url</a>] mainly to nurture their (or their parents') ideological presuppositions. (That was the most creative way that I have to rephrase the cliché that "college is the time to be exposed to new things and to have your assumptions questioned".) It is therefore essential to understand the several kinds of differences of opinion that there can be, so that you do not mistake one kind of difference for another and react in a nonsensical way. The reason that people can often be unfamiliar with the kinds of differences in the first place is that many have had relatively few fundamental disagreements (see above).</p>
<p>The late-night conversations you are likely to have early in your freshman year will be more important than almost anything else you do in college, but they can also be frustrating or alienating for some when they meet views that seem quite alien and wrong. I remember one girl from the South who seemed to spend most of her time freshman year dazed by the sheer diversity and strangeness of the opinions she encountered.</p>
<p>In short, be prepared to meet unfamiliar views and to understand what kinds of differences of opinion there can be. More on how in the next post.</p>
<ol>
<li>Understand the difference between facts and values.</li>
</ol>
<p>You can differ about facts or about values. One kind of disagreement is often, though not always, much more productive than the other.</p>
<p>Facts are things about the world that you can check. In practice, if A and B are talking, a fact is something about the world that can be verified (in principle) by doing an experiment, and both A and B agree about this. (Under this formulation, what is a fact depends on who is talking. A fact between A and B might not be a fact between B and C if the people involved differ about their assumptions about what kinds of things are susceptible to empirical investigation. This is probably as it should be. Formulating a mind-independent definition of factuality that is nontrivial and useful is quite a bit harder.)</p>
<p>Values are beliefs about what things are to be done, pursued, or regarded as important. (Examples: Thou shalt not covet. We ought always to act as to improve the condition of the worst off first. Physics is the most important science.) They are things for which there is no accepted method of empirical investigation. It is hard to find an experiment satisfactory to a significant number of people that would tell us whether puppies are good, whether mercy is a virtue, or whether it is wrong to eat meat. This is completely uncontroversial among most agnostics and moral relativists, but is actually a much more broadly accepted insight. Religious people, too, tend to agree that their moral beliefs are founded on faith, not empirical study. So values are unempirical statements about what is good to pursue, what is important, or what is worthy of effort.</p>
<p>It is [url="<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Is-ought_problem%22%5Dwell-known%5B/url">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Is-ought_problem"]well-known[/url</a>] that values cannot be derived from any number of facts. It is easy to formalize this insight and show it rigorously in the language of formal logic; try it if you are into that kind of thing. We may agree completely about facts, and diverge hugely about values, and I can say nothing to you to prove from our common basis of facts that my values are the right ones.</p>
<p>More in the next post.</p>
<ol>
<li>It is much more productive and fun to argue about facts.</li>
</ol>
<p>Examples of arguments about facts: Does capitalism lead to more efficient production than communism in a particular society? Do llamas yelp? Do most Americans think algebraic geometry is a disease? If we agree that vegetables are the most important things, does it follow that Saddam Hussein is good? [footnote1]</p>
<p>In factual of disagreements, you can much more easily find common ground and go from there to a resolution. You can discuss what one might do to figure out who is right. You can appeal to background knowledge that sheds light on what the answer is likely to be. You might propose studies and experiments if there is no such background knowledge. Factual disagreements are uncivil relatively rarely. Since there are agreed-upon ways to figure out who is right, plate-throwing is superfluous.</p>
<p>Arguments about values especially fundamental ones are likely to be much less productive. Most of the time, you end up disagreeing about fundamental normative assumptions. While it can be useful to know that other people have different fundamental assumptions than you do, this is where the usefulness of debate typically ends. As we noted above, there is nothing I can say to convince you that your values are wrong, and vice versa. </p>
<p>If you know this, you can actually get a lot out of talking to those with different values from yours. You can learn about their tastes and preferences and how differently many people approach life. Since you know that you can't convince them that they are wrong, you will be unlikely to get into messy and unpleasant fights with no resolution. (In my experience, the time disagreements start getting personal is when people realize they can't make an argument to convince the other side.) By treating values as things to be chosen based on taste and intuition (as opposed to proof) you will be able to have more satisfying conversations about the different moral ideas there are in the world.</p>
<p>Some[/url</a>] people [url="<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_W._Bush%22%5Ddon't">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_W._Bush"]don't</a> know that there</a> aren't moral facts, and will try to prove to you that you are misguided about the moral facts. (I fell into this category for much of my life.) If you meet such people, ask them about how one can check the moral facts. This will often uncover an implicit normative axiom (e.g., "What the Bible says is what is right.") Then, if you differ about the normative axiom, you will have uncovered the source of your disagreement and you will have a good guess about whether it is useful to argue about it.</p>
<hr>
<p>[footnote1] This might seem like a question about values, but is actually a factual dispute. Once you agree about what is important, the question of whether something (like Saddam Hussein) serves those ends is a mere matter of logic and empirical study.</p>
<p>In the spirit of the thread, though not immediately applicable, a piece of general advice:
Start paying attention now to what you post online. When you start interviewing for internships and jobs, employers will very often google you, and any common aliases they find for you. Just by virtue of being a member of a small school, most of the identities here could be attached to the correct person (as shown above with oaklandmom). If your posts aren't parent-censored, they're probably not potential-boss-censored. You've probably heard this before, and you'll hear it again, but it's so important. I've read half a dozen stories in as many months about students who would have gotten a job if not for a post/website/profile/picture online.</p>
<p>Haha you were right Ben. And I have to say, once you know those guidelines, it is much more challenging and fun to discuss values. BRING IT ON! (because the bible says so! lol jk)</p>
<p>This seems less Caltech/college advice as it is Ben's philosophical views on life and how to live it...</p>
<p>Well, dLo, the awesome thing about advice is you don't have to listen to it. Hehe. I'll read anything Ben posts in this thread as well as anything anyone else posts. Post some stuff, dLo!</p>
<p>Ben, what are your views on the categorical imperative?</p>
<p>The next post will be about Caltech quite explicitly. I just figure censoring myself will result in less interestingness all around.</p>
<p>But I do try to label babbling/philosophy explicitly so that those of a more practical bent can ignore it.</p>
<p>:-)</p>
<p>How does Ben, techie that he is, have the time to write all these posts? I think we should be told. Moreover, some biographical info. is clearly necessary so that we can understand the context from which the sage is operating.</p>
<p>It's summer, I'm bored. Ben seems to have time to waste year round...</p>
<p>
[quote]
9. It is much more productive and fun to argue about facts.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>My roommate at MathCamp believed that </p>
<ol>
<li><p>The real numbers were countable. </p></li>
<li><p>Goedel's incompleteness theorems were somehow incorrect.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>Talking to him was neither fun nor productive.</p>
<p>If you want to know more about ben, friend him on facebook.</p>
<p>Hmmm, I do want to know more, but must I really get a facebook? I had one for a while, but then decided it was a bit... well, fake/pretentious? All those "friends," that one really hardly, if ever, spoke to; all the pics celebrating one's supposedly happy/wild/exciting/enviable social life... it just didn't feel quite legit. Anyhow, enough cynicism for now -- just give me the dirt on Golub. (I mean, why would he "friend" me, he doesn't know me...yet.)</p>
<p>neapol1s -- <em>giggle</em>.</p>
<p>Yes. One needs some auxiliary assumptions, like that you agree about how to resolve disagreements. In math, this amounts to being able to check whether claims follow from axioms. Someone who is unable to do this would probably not be so fun to talk to, at least about math.</p>
<p>As for the categorical imperative, I think Kant's argument for it is wildly unsound. So I think there is no such thing. It is certainly a modestly valiant effort to bridge the fact-value gap.</p>
<p>magd -- i would friend you gladly! my facebook is not awfully revealing, though.</p>
<p>Well, the most important thing to know about Ben is that he wishes he had my hair.</p>
<p>What is there that you want to know about Ben? He's dead sexy--almost as hot as I am.</p>
<p>Alleya is exactly right on the be-careful-what-you-post-online stuff. This is particularly important if your name is as obvious as mine. (Hint: only one person in the Caltech class of '04 was named "Joe"...)</p>