Screen time is very limited in our home, so our 7-year-old and 10-year-old have to find other ways to entertain themselves besides watching YouTube.
Over time, I started noticing something interesting. Human attention is limited, yet it is one of our most valuable resources.
When screens are no longer the default, kids naturally start paying attention to different things. They notice a dead spider surrounded by ants. They compare a big leaf with a tiny one. They spend time drawing, making up games, and simply playing.
It reminds me that where we place our attention shapes what we see in the world.
Love this comment! I write a lot about it attention and how it’s more valuable than we know. Here’s a piece on time and attention if interested: https://unorthodoxy.substack.com/p/time-is-life
This is very similar to one of my own quotes, "You cannot recreate the world without first destroying it." Presently, this is what we are seeing transpire in our world; Revelation in the works.
"No results. The exact phrasing "You cannot recreate the world without first destroying it" didn't turn up anywhere in my searches. Similar ideas exist, like Ben Okri's "You can't remake the world without remaking yourself," but not this specific wording." --Grok
There's an entire universe of interpretative sciences where measurement is irrelevant. This statement is simply false. The interpretive sciences are indispensable because human beings do not merely behave; they act within worlds of significance, where words, gestures, obligations, fears, loyalties, rituals, silences, threats, promises, and institutions draw their force from the meanings people assign to them and live through them. To understand social life one must understand the systems of meaning that make conduct intelligible from within it. Measurement is not the relevant concern at that level of analysis, though it may become a welcome contribution once a broader and better-formed set of questions has been established. Think about and learn from Weber, Boas, Malinowski, Evans-Pritchard, Geertz, Douglas, Hymes, Taylor, Carbaugh, Bozeman … on and on and on.
Perhaps the forum I somehow was included in is meant for specialists and amongst them that would be the appropriate language de jure. Certainly the physiologic and pharmacological language in my specialty, anesthesiology, could be dense and abstruse to outsiders. But even in something as seemly circumscribed as anesthesiology, there is room for interpretation of the meaning of inputs, and potentially serious choices in the outputs, the actions, based on the interpretation of the inputs.
Meaning comes from experience and interpretation, and these are heavily impacted by ideology. It’s even been argued that the neural channels we received these through, auditory and optical, filter or emphasize input based on prior experiences. And those experiences can include ideology.
My point on reductionistic science was not that it is not incredibly powerful and has revealed and explained the world around us in incredible ways in the last three centuries or so. Actual practicing scientists, and students of the history of science, I think have noted that much is lost when we reduce a complex system to the point where we can study it and formulate a falsifiable hypothesis.
No doubt, many sociologist have studied every aspect of conflicts in Africa or of the last 78 years of Arab Israeli conflict. We can reduce that conflict to economic, tribal, religious, and many other causes. Those things might tell us what in the ideal world of a laboratory we can do to solve the problem. But the actual organic problem as far beyond that.
“ just it means many things to many people and we need to get our heads around that to act wisely“ is truly an empirical statement, but I would maintain at the same time that it IS a reduction of the entire situation. It is nothing more than a starting point for further inquiry… a necessary and good starting point, but still, just the beginning. Just as an elucidating, a double helix, structure of DNA was the barest surface of what DNA is all about- a necessary statement of “2+2 = 4“, when even the most difficult integral calculus would even then only scratch the surface.
I read that headline and thought of those “wise Chinese proverbs” that were supposed to be full of wisdom for the masses but always sounded naive at best; a fallacy and at times, misogynistic at worst.
the claim that nothing is understood until it’s measured is itself a claim with a record worth measuring. other ways of knowing were not simply overlooked. they were outlawed, burned, renamed as superstition. yet there have and will always be different ways of understanding, knowing and moving within and in relation to the world..
This is a good discussion. I have sitting on my bookshelf. PERSONAL KNOWLEDGE By Michael Polanyi. Polanyi was one of those central European Jewish polymaths who made fundamental theoretical contributions in physical chemistry, economics, and philosophy. Einstein commented on his brilliance and contributions. His son and two of his students won Nobel Prizes, so we can only guess at his ability to influence thought! I blush to confess I have not read it, a huge shortcoming. In it, he argues that “positivism is a false account of knowing, he maintains that creative science and acts of discovery are shot through with strong personal feelings and subjective personal commitments.”
I did once spend two hours alone with one of those Nobel laureates that Polyani mentored, Melvin Calvin of Calvin cycle fame… and added absolutely nothing of value to his day
Also, on my bookshelf that I have read are Rodney Stark’s THE VICTORY OF REGION, and Yuval Levin’s THE TYRANNY OF REASON. Id say both of their thesis are well stated and accurate, although they have very different conclusions. But they are not really occupying the same space exactly.
If we threw in Kant’s CRITIQUE OF PURE REASON, which I also have not read, we would really have a background on all this!.
And of course, we all have our personal abilities and limitations to understand, retain, and integrate all of this into something coherent and insightful in our own intellects.
I hope you two will take a look at some of these, Especially the Polanyi work.
Polanyi’s useful on tacit knowledge, though he never asks whose knowing counts as knowledge. Donna Haraway, Patricia Hill Collins and Miranda Fricker take that further. and alongside them: Cheikh Anta Diop, Sylvia Wynter, Édouard Glissant, Saidiya Hartman. not different opinions about reason. different accounts of who was permitted to hold it.
though I’d note Stark’s thesis is that reason is a Christian European achievement, which is the argument I was writing against rather than background to it. and Kant, who wrote that Africans have by nature no feeling rising above the trifling, is less neutral ground here than he looks.
But I am probably wasting your time at this point. You are an expert in sociology, I am a retired anesthesiologist with 30 years of interest in sociopolitical writing Ben happenings, and it’s probably not a good mix. And while I certainly do not think YOU are a pretentious ass, dense verbiage, which was appropriate in that forum, is flung around by a huge number of pretentious asses on the general Substack forum.
Take a lesson from biology: take a cell, lyse it, fractionate the proteins, run ‘em through a gel column to quantify them, measure the percentages of carbs, lipids, and even the elements: C,H, N, O, P, S, Ca,, Se, and a bit more. Measure the number of chromosomes and base pairs. Quantify the number of ribosomes, mitochondria, the length of the endoplasmic reticulum. Study the cell membrane’s complex bilayer and the receptors and protein transfer molecules. Go as deep as you like.
Then pretend you understand life. You’ve created a bunch of data, and a dense vocabulary to amaze and impress the non-cognoscenti. Then a frog hops by, and if you’re honest, you know you actually haven’t even scratched the surface. The some of the parts is barely even a shadow of the synergistic total.
“To understand social life one must understand the systems of meaning…”
No, that’s how you get tenure and a job in academia. Or failing that, start a clinical practice (where you actually learn how little you know) or use your background in reductive science to do polls for somebody.
But, puhleeeesss… the sententious pronouncement makes you out to be a pretentious ass!
A) I don't understand your comment. Justice, mercy, kindness, humor … these are situated practices of meaning. I don't have tenure and I don't work in academia. I design and peace and security programmes in conflict zones where understanding how people make sense of their own actions is the data needed to design interventions that have local traction and a chance of working.
B) My argument is that measurement is not the tool for the job, but measurement can assist depending on the nature of question being asked and what needs to be known to solve a mystery or a problem, which undermines the claim of the headline, which is my point..
Meanwhile: What kind of person calls someone a "pretentious ass" for opening a discussion about the virtues of proper analysis to the making the claims needed to solve problems?
A person that likes to throw the fat into the fire, to raise questions, to question rudely. Perhaps I have spent too much time dickering with Marxist sociologists who are convinced that “… pure Marxism hasn’t been tried and next time we will get it right”. That grows a certain degree of deep cynicism and lack of respect.
I stand corrected. Your work sounds intense, human oriented, and an actual benefit to mankind. But surely you must agree: the essence of what we study is often lost when we use reductive science to study it. And dense vocabulary often backs an empty thesis or masks intent.
I'm not a Marxist, and I don't see how "justice means different things to different people, and we need to get our heads around that to act wisely" is reductionist. What's being reduced? I also don't think I used any dense language. Sociology was invented by Durkheim in France and his subject was suicide because he wanted to study a phenomenon for which there was obviously no social benefit and yet still seemed to be a social practice. It was quite brilliant. Studying meaning has nothing to do with ideology. Interpretive sciences — done right — are empirical because you can falsify claims.
Goffmana nd Durkheim without a doubt. Haven't read much Mills. But the larger issue is that to measure something, you need to understand what the something is. The idea that we are not engaged in interpretation when defining, measuring, and then analyzing is simply (and empirically) wrong. This is not a case against measurement; it is one for understanding that claims have to be reposed on relevant forms of analysis.
The making sense part! How many studies have you read where people measure something and then they all start debating what it means? Meaning is essential to all scientific endeavors. Measurement sometimes is.
So how do we measure the truly important? How do we measure love or trust or beauty? Some of the most important aspects of our world are unknowable and certainly not measurable. Or were you being ironic?
IMPEACH AND DUMP TRAITORS, FELONS, PEDOPHILE ENABLERS,IMPERIALIST CRIMINALS, CAREER GRIFTERS, FASCISTS, FRAUDSTERS, GANGSTERS, AND CON REPUBLICONS EVERYWHERE. CON RTRUMP IS BLACKMAILED BY PUTIN & NETENYAHU. FIX THE ECONOMY AND CLIMATE CHANGE. SAVE DEMOCRACY FROM THE NAZIS.
This is such an underrated point. The second you try to measure something, all the fuzzy assumptions come crawling out. That’s usually where the real understanding starts.
Meditate on the meaning of "measurement". Example: you listen to a Bach cantata in a cathedral. This experience is transformative. Bach, the performers, and the cathedral, and the ambiente are transformative to the audience. At what point was measurement in this process?
I would say: " you can't transform the world.... unless you have experienced it".
Not everything that matters can be measured, and not everything that can be measured truly matters. People transform the world through intuition, imagination, values, and lived experiences - most of which aren't quantified by some sort of subjective measurement.
To understand the world and to measure it does not mean you can transform it? And what do you mean when you talk about "the world"?? The physical world or also our spirit and the world of our thoughts and emotions?
Kids have taught us so much.
Screen time is very limited in our home, so our 7-year-old and 10-year-old have to find other ways to entertain themselves besides watching YouTube.
Over time, I started noticing something interesting. Human attention is limited, yet it is one of our most valuable resources.
When screens are no longer the default, kids naturally start paying attention to different things. They notice a dead spider surrounded by ants. They compare a big leaf with a tiny one. They spend time drawing, making up games, and simply playing.
It reminds me that where we place our attention shapes what we see in the world.
Love this comment! I write a lot about it attention and how it’s more valuable than we know. Here’s a piece on time and attention if interested: https://unorthodoxy.substack.com/p/time-is-life
Thank you for sharing! I bookmarked it and will give it a read later today!
This is very similar to one of my own quotes, "You cannot recreate the world without first destroying it." Presently, this is what we are seeing transpire in our world; Revelation in the works.
Is your name Picasso, William?
"You cannot recreate the world without first destroying it" --William Rogers
This has been said in French by Picasso
"No results. The exact phrasing "You cannot recreate the world without first destroying it" didn't turn up anywhere in my searches. Similar ideas exist, like Ben Okri's "You can't remake the world without remaking yourself," but not this specific wording." --Grok
Indeed paraphrasing a quote and you have one if your own
Search the quote to the letter.
There's an entire universe of interpretative sciences where measurement is irrelevant. This statement is simply false. The interpretive sciences are indispensable because human beings do not merely behave; they act within worlds of significance, where words, gestures, obligations, fears, loyalties, rituals, silences, threats, promises, and institutions draw their force from the meanings people assign to them and live through them. To understand social life one must understand the systems of meaning that make conduct intelligible from within it. Measurement is not the relevant concern at that level of analysis, though it may become a welcome contribution once a broader and better-formed set of questions has been established. Think about and learn from Weber, Boas, Malinowski, Evans-Pritchard, Geertz, Douglas, Hymes, Taylor, Carbaugh, Bozeman … on and on and on.
Perhaps the forum I somehow was included in is meant for specialists and amongst them that would be the appropriate language de jure. Certainly the physiologic and pharmacological language in my specialty, anesthesiology, could be dense and abstruse to outsiders. But even in something as seemly circumscribed as anesthesiology, there is room for interpretation of the meaning of inputs, and potentially serious choices in the outputs, the actions, based on the interpretation of the inputs.
Meaning comes from experience and interpretation, and these are heavily impacted by ideology. It’s even been argued that the neural channels we received these through, auditory and optical, filter or emphasize input based on prior experiences. And those experiences can include ideology.
My point on reductionistic science was not that it is not incredibly powerful and has revealed and explained the world around us in incredible ways in the last three centuries or so. Actual practicing scientists, and students of the history of science, I think have noted that much is lost when we reduce a complex system to the point where we can study it and formulate a falsifiable hypothesis.
No doubt, many sociologist have studied every aspect of conflicts in Africa or of the last 78 years of Arab Israeli conflict. We can reduce that conflict to economic, tribal, religious, and many other causes. Those things might tell us what in the ideal world of a laboratory we can do to solve the problem. But the actual organic problem as far beyond that.
“ just it means many things to many people and we need to get our heads around that to act wisely“ is truly an empirical statement, but I would maintain at the same time that it IS a reduction of the entire situation. It is nothing more than a starting point for further inquiry… a necessary and good starting point, but still, just the beginning. Just as an elucidating, a double helix, structure of DNA was the barest surface of what DNA is all about- a necessary statement of “2+2 = 4“, when even the most difficult integral calculus would even then only scratch the surface.
Thank you.
I read that headline and thought of those “wise Chinese proverbs” that were supposed to be full of wisdom for the masses but always sounded naive at best; a fallacy and at times, misogynistic at worst.
the claim that nothing is understood until it’s measured is itself a claim with a record worth measuring. other ways of knowing were not simply overlooked. they were outlawed, burned, renamed as superstition. yet there have and will always be different ways of understanding, knowing and moving within and in relation to the world..
This is a good discussion. I have sitting on my bookshelf. PERSONAL KNOWLEDGE By Michael Polanyi. Polanyi was one of those central European Jewish polymaths who made fundamental theoretical contributions in physical chemistry, economics, and philosophy. Einstein commented on his brilliance and contributions. His son and two of his students won Nobel Prizes, so we can only guess at his ability to influence thought! I blush to confess I have not read it, a huge shortcoming. In it, he argues that “positivism is a false account of knowing, he maintains that creative science and acts of discovery are shot through with strong personal feelings and subjective personal commitments.”
I did once spend two hours alone with one of those Nobel laureates that Polyani mentored, Melvin Calvin of Calvin cycle fame… and added absolutely nothing of value to his day
Also, on my bookshelf that I have read are Rodney Stark’s THE VICTORY OF REGION, and Yuval Levin’s THE TYRANNY OF REASON. Id say both of their thesis are well stated and accurate, although they have very different conclusions. But they are not really occupying the same space exactly.
If we threw in Kant’s CRITIQUE OF PURE REASON, which I also have not read, we would really have a background on all this!.
And of course, we all have our personal abilities and limitations to understand, retain, and integrate all of this into something coherent and insightful in our own intellects.
I hope you two will take a look at some of these, Especially the Polanyi work.
Polanyi’s useful on tacit knowledge, though he never asks whose knowing counts as knowledge. Donna Haraway, Patricia Hill Collins and Miranda Fricker take that further. and alongside them: Cheikh Anta Diop, Sylvia Wynter, Édouard Glissant, Saidiya Hartman. not different opinions about reason. different accounts of who was permitted to hold it.
though I’d note Stark’s thesis is that reason is a Christian European achievement, which is the argument I was writing against rather than background to it. and Kant, who wrote that Africans have by nature no feeling rising above the trifling, is less neutral ground here than he looks.
But I am probably wasting your time at this point. You are an expert in sociology, I am a retired anesthesiologist with 30 years of interest in sociopolitical writing Ben happenings, and it’s probably not a good mix. And while I certainly do not think YOU are a pretentious ass, dense verbiage, which was appropriate in that forum, is flung around by a huge number of pretentious asses on the general Substack forum.
Take a lesson from biology: take a cell, lyse it, fractionate the proteins, run ‘em through a gel column to quantify them, measure the percentages of carbs, lipids, and even the elements: C,H, N, O, P, S, Ca,, Se, and a bit more. Measure the number of chromosomes and base pairs. Quantify the number of ribosomes, mitochondria, the length of the endoplasmic reticulum. Study the cell membrane’s complex bilayer and the receptors and protein transfer molecules. Go as deep as you like.
Then pretend you understand life. You’ve created a bunch of data, and a dense vocabulary to amaze and impress the non-cognoscenti. Then a frog hops by, and if you’re honest, you know you actually haven’t even scratched the surface. The some of the parts is barely even a shadow of the synergistic total.
“To understand social life one must understand the systems of meaning…”
No, that’s how you get tenure and a job in academia. Or failing that, start a clinical practice (where you actually learn how little you know) or use your background in reductive science to do polls for somebody.
But, puhleeeesss… the sententious pronouncement makes you out to be a pretentious ass!
A) I don't understand your comment. Justice, mercy, kindness, humor … these are situated practices of meaning. I don't have tenure and I don't work in academia. I design and peace and security programmes in conflict zones where understanding how people make sense of their own actions is the data needed to design interventions that have local traction and a chance of working.
B) My argument is that measurement is not the tool for the job, but measurement can assist depending on the nature of question being asked and what needs to be known to solve a mystery or a problem, which undermines the claim of the headline, which is my point..
Meanwhile: What kind of person calls someone a "pretentious ass" for opening a discussion about the virtues of proper analysis to the making the claims needed to solve problems?
A person that likes to throw the fat into the fire, to raise questions, to question rudely. Perhaps I have spent too much time dickering with Marxist sociologists who are convinced that “… pure Marxism hasn’t been tried and next time we will get it right”. That grows a certain degree of deep cynicism and lack of respect.
I stand corrected. Your work sounds intense, human oriented, and an actual benefit to mankind. But surely you must agree: the essence of what we study is often lost when we use reductive science to study it. And dense vocabulary often backs an empty thesis or masks intent.
I'm not a Marxist, and I don't see how "justice means different things to different people, and we need to get our heads around that to act wisely" is reductionist. What's being reduced? I also don't think I used any dense language. Sociology was invented by Durkheim in France and his subject was suicide because he wanted to study a phenomenon for which there was obviously no social benefit and yet still seemed to be a social practice. It was quite brilliant. Studying meaning has nothing to do with ideology. Interpretive sciences — done right — are empirical because you can falsify claims.
...Erving Goffman, C. Wright Mills, Durkheim, Marx were the "biggies" for me...
Goffmana nd Durkheim without a doubt. Haven't read much Mills. But the larger issue is that to measure something, you need to understand what the something is. The idea that we are not engaged in interpretation when defining, measuring, and then analyzing is simply (and empirically) wrong. This is not a case against measurement; it is one for understanding that claims have to be reposed on relevant forms of analysis.
Yup. Quant. The skeleton, the bones. Qual. The flesh, the lived experiences.
The making sense part! How many studies have you read where people measure something and then they all start debating what it means? Meaning is essential to all scientific endeavors. Measurement sometimes is.
Spot on! Another sociologist? Great intro to the discipline! 👍
This Emily North looks like Charli XCX.
Doesn’t apply to the Luddites in Trump’s Republican Party. They don’t have the answers….they don’t even know the questions to ask.
So how do we measure the truly important? How do we measure love or trust or beauty? Some of the most important aspects of our world are unknowable and certainly not measurable. Or were you being ironic?
IMPEACH AND DUMP TRAITORS, FELONS, PEDOPHILE ENABLERS,IMPERIALIST CRIMINALS, CAREER GRIFTERS, FASCISTS, FRAUDSTERS, GANGSTERS, AND CON REPUBLICONS EVERYWHERE. CON RTRUMP IS BLACKMAILED BY PUTIN & NETENYAHU. FIX THE ECONOMY AND CLIMATE CHANGE. SAVE DEMOCRACY FROM THE NAZIS.
Transforming the world, to my view, is treating others respectfully.
thank you for featuring angel cake 🤍🤍
express yourself in the world through clarity action and not just words sjk
Black swans mindlessly and unpredictabiy transform the world too frequently.
This is such an underrated point. The second you try to measure something, all the fuzzy assumptions come crawling out. That’s usually where the real understanding starts.
The following article is a true "post mortem" of this raping of one of human's greatest literary work !!
<https://www.unz.com/article/eat-pray-sail/>
Meditate on the meaning of "measurement". Example: you listen to a Bach cantata in a cathedral. This experience is transformative. Bach, the performers, and the cathedral, and the ambiente are transformative to the audience. At what point was measurement in this process?
I would say: " you can't transform the world.... unless you have experienced it".
Not everything that matters can be measured, and not everything that can be measured truly matters. People transform the world through intuition, imagination, values, and lived experiences - most of which aren't quantified by some sort of subjective measurement.
Not so ....claim about measurement.
To understand the world and to measure it does not mean you can transform it? And what do you mean when you talk about "the world"?? The physical world or also our spirit and the world of our thoughts and emotions?