Tryangulation

homophily self exam

...another serendipitous step between ancient and new paradigms, and one more flat earth story.

I've been following a blog by Ethan Zuckerman called ...My heart's in Acra, where he writes about international development and using the disruptive quality of the web in global activism. Zuckerman just posted a link yesterday to Amy Gahran's Contentious blog, where she picks up on an interview  Zuckerman did where he brought up the notion of homophily.

Wikipedia defines homophily as "the tendency of individuals to associate and bond with similar others." These similarities could be based on ethnic identity, socioeconomic status, political views or religious beliefs. Whatever the bond, the result is easier communication between like individuals, and more difficult communication between unlike individuals. As Zuckerman says, "homophily makes you stupid."

Gahran's post Breaking out of the echo chamber does an excellent job of  bringing together Zuckerman's and her own ideas, along with some other resources on the topic. What's on my mind, though, is how to check whether I am homophily positive.

I just did a quick check and saw that, of nearly 120 feeds in my aggregator, about one-third are about education, and half of those are about ed tech.  Several, but not many, are about politics, and an equal number are about underdevelopment and changing the world.  I gravitate toward one Turkish newspaper, two English language cable news channels, and generally choose the documentaries and books that reinforce what I already believe and know. In previous jobs and in previous places I experienced more --sometimes continuous-- challenges to my "knowledge."  "Knowing more" now has possibly resulted in learning less.

The photo here shows don Benjamín Ortiz, one of a select group of people who taught me how my "knowledge" had shielded me from the truth. Benjamín is Guatemalan, a native speaker of the Mayan language Takaneko, and a coworker during the three years we did ethnolinguistic research and assessed the viability of mother tongue literacy.

Family and national circumstances being against him, Benjamín attended school for only two years before going to work. As an adult, he was recruited into a rural health promoter program, which inspired him to finish primary school by correspondence. During our first year together he successfully finished 6th grade. Sometimes we went through his textbooks together, and one day we looked at a geography lesson that explained that the earth is round.

This concept was completely outside his experience and reasoning. "If the world is round," he said, "then why are all pictures of the world flat?" Challenged, I tried to draw the continents on an orange, but at that scale Guatemala was just a speck. It was outrageous that this rugged, mountainous country, where 200 miles makes for a 12-hour journey, counted for nothing.

I wrote about this conversation in a letter to a friend in the US, who kindly sent back a beach ball globe. Benjamín and I spent a lot of time studying it, playing with a flashlight to figure out night and day, pondering imponderables such as why were my in-laws in Morocco going to bed when we in Guatemala were just having breakfast.

Benjamín's willingness to let me challenge such a commonly held belief stood in sharp contrast to my own inflexibility. I had dual degrees in Spanish language and Latin American studies, trained for ethnolinguistic fieldwork, and armed with the weapon that laid all knowledge captive at my feet: literacy. I showed up on the scene equipped with an understanding of the geographic, economic, and historical reasons for poverty, and ready to use demographics and dialectology to decide the fate of a language.

I was ashamed that these tools did not prepare me for life with no electricity, no bathroom, and nearly no water. Hamlets wiped out by measles. Legitimate crops destroyed instead of poppies in the US' war on drugs. Aching, crushing poverty that forced families to pull children from school because they couldn't afford pencils. The arrogance of the government doctor who showed up for two days every two weeks and let Benjamín's sister die without treatment. An entire society that functioned without the printed word. The truth was, all my learning did not prepare me for knowing people whose lives were so different from my own.

The only way out then, as now, was to start over, discarding the assumptions that kept me from seeing what I needed to see.  I still need to accept that I might be wrong, or at least that others can be right, suppress the arguments in my head, and learn things over.
 

Flat worlds of all sorts

As a brief stop on the way from ancient information technologies to the problem of paradigm shifts,  I have to share this video my son pointed me to. The video is a clip of a televised debate from Iraq on whether the Koran permits belief in the round earth theory. The content is disturbing, but maybe not for the reasons you think. If you're reading this via email, click here to see the video.

This poor man is mistaken, but not because he is a Muslim.  Muslim scholars --in Baghdad, no less-- began to reason out a methodology for empirical observation a thousand years ago. Islamic astronomers proposed earth's heliocentric orbit starting from the 8th century, and earth's rotation by the 11th century. Muslim scholars of that period built upon the knowledge of the ancient Greeks, who already had theories about a spherical earth; in the 9th century Arab astronomers even calculated the earth's circumference (they missed it by a few thousand miles), and developed spherical trigonometry to calculate the direction of Mecca from any point on the globe.

Non-critical thinking is not the intent of any religion. All of the monotheist faiths see the intellect and the ability to reason as divine gifts. So what has happened to our poor man with the thick glasses and the anesthetized mind? Why does he hold his beliefs so tenaciously? Does he build arguments upon arguments to protect some hidden, vulnerable thought? Is this part of the famous clash of civilizations?

No, this is a clash of epistemologies. The poor man is mistaken because his paradigm leads him to believe that most knowledge necessary for a good life has already been "revealed" and we should not be worried too much about creating new knowledge. Observe how his feeble empiricism is affected by this grid: he believes a distant ship's narrow masts are easier to see in a blur than the bulky hull, and the eye sees the world with half of the iris at a time (when in fact he is describing very well how the world looks through bifocals).

The scientist, on the other hand, demonstrates an attitude that knowledge continues to be created as we observe and reason. I think he could have made some better arguments, but at least he showed --without attacking one's faith-- that although we still don't know it all, we have the divine gifts of intellect and reason to help us along. 

I love maps, (here's one of my faves) and I enjoy the paradox that maps, in order to represent certain features of the terrain, must distort or omit the representation of other features. Paradigms are like that: they only work when they block extraneous chunks from your view of the whole. Just as "the map is not the territory", so a single paradigm does not encompass the whole of our knowledge and experience. Your world is flat only if you ignore the spiky parts; my problem (actually, it's your problem) is that the spiky parts are what I notice most. Even contemporary, Western scientists have impeded the advance of science because certain things just "couldn't be true."

Some time ago I wrote about dolphins swimming through the center of Istanbul, and the total indifference of those around me to this marvel. I still wonder about that, and about us. What do we fail to see because we are unaware of our own biases and have already made up our minds?

The dark side of teens & cell phones

Over the last year edubloggers have discussed more and more the role of mobile phones in educational technology, recognizing the near-native ability that young people have with text messaging and "info sharing" (read: photos and music). What happens though, after the final bell rings and those same young people head for the school parking lot?

Today was a slow day for me, so I got to watch Dr. Phil for the first time in my life. Today's show was about teens who read and compose text messages while driving. Dr. Phil interviewed a 17-year-old girl who has been driving for 4 months, and who averages 5000 text messages a month. He also had on the show a young man who struck a man on a bicycle with his car while text messaging; the man later died from his injuries.

The tenacity of these teens' addiction to texting parallels that of other substance abuses. I've seen similar cases in Turkey (and not limited to teenagers), but what I haven't seen are programs that impress upon people the seriousness of this kind of behavior while driving. At the very least, we can borrow a question from Dr. Phil and calculate how far a car going 80 kph will travel during the 2 seconds it takes to take your eyes off the road and look at a text message.

I'm going out on a limb here, but I think that before mobile phones get mainstreamed into the classroom there ought to be some way to ensure more responsible phone use outside of class. The last thing we want is to require students to become even more dependent on something that can cost a life.

For more on this episode of Dr. Phil, follow this link:  Dr. Phil.com - Shows - Season 6 Premiere

On a related note, one new TV commercial I've noticed since we came to the US this summer shows a car salesman pointing out the features of a new car to a couple of young men. The best selling point turns out to be a dock for an MP3 player in the car's dashboard. So much for encouraging teenagers to think critically and make good choices.

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A new way to pretend the world is flat

Never mind flat, the world is upside down... or is it?

I've always loved maps, and in particular the different ways they approach the problem of emphasizing certain details like shape, area, topography, or human impact. That's a problem because, in order to emphasize one thing in a map, you have to de-emphasize something else: blatant distortion of reality in order to get a point across.

I've wanted one of these south-up maps ever since I first saw a similar one nearly 30 years ago. I finally gave in to temptation and got one from ODT Maps; it just came in the mail yesterday. I can't wait to think up some assumptions to challenge. 

Click here for more info on unconventional maps and to get your own.

Language and identity: diverse ways of knowing

This is part three of a series of discussion questions related to the presentation on language and identity in our Theory of Knowledge class. See the end of this post for related links.

Indigenous languages, indigenous knowledge

Anthropologists apply indigenous knowledge from different cultures to other sciences, and have created new cross-disciplinary fields like ethnobotany, ethnozoology and ethnoastronomy. By studying the ways that indigenous people groups gather and organize their knowledge about the environment, scientists have identified "new" species of useful plants and animals, discovered useful chemical compounds in traditional medicines (including antibiotics and cancer treatments), and studied cognitive processes through linguistic analysis.

Case study 1

The ancient Maya used a base-twenty numbering system for public works, astronomy and calendar making. They invented the zero independently of ancient mathematicians in Mesopotamia, and their long-count calendar still works today without the need for regular adjustments like our Leap Year.

The image at the right (source)  is of Stela C, found at Tres Zapotes, a pre-Maya site in Mexico. The stela is one of the oldest artifacts that uses the Long Count calendar system used by many peoples in Mesoamerica. The numerals inscribed on the left column read: 7.16.6.16.18, which corresponds to the date 3 September 32 BC in the Julian calendar, around the time when Caesar Augustus defeated Mark Antony.   
The zero date for this calendar corresponds to 3114 BC in our calendar. The long count calendar will reset when it reaches the date 13.0.0.0.0.0, which will occur in December 2012.

What if Western Civilization had developed mathematics based on twenty instead of ten? How would technology be different? How would the sciences be different? Or language?

Case study 2

2. Surveyors in Brazil recently found evidence of 67 previously unidentified people groups living in the Amazon rain forest. Because of extensive mining and the harvesting of tropical hardwoods and other forest products, these people groups may become extinct soon.

What would be the best way to retrieve and protect the knowledge of these people groups? 

What if they believe that sharing their "secrets" would bring danger to them? How do you weigh the importance of protecting their culture versus learning from it?

Related links

Language and identity, part one: The sound of a vanishing language

Language and identity, part two: Geography 

For more on the problem of indigenous knowledge and intellectual property rights, see these Wikipedia articles on indigenous peoples,  traditional knowledge,  biopiracy.  See also the UN's Decade of the World's Indigeous Peoples.
 

Language and identity: geography

This is part two of a series of discussion questions related to the presentation on language and identity in our Theory of Knowledge class. See the end of this post for related links.

Map comparison

This map shows the topography of Guatemala and neighboring regions, with international boundaries. The red circle indicates the  area where traditionally Mam of Tacaná has been spoken.

The next map, taken from the Atlás Lingüístico de Guatemala (Michael Richards, et al. 2003), shows the municipios of Guatemala (secondary administrative divisions, like the ilçeler of Turkey). Each municipio is color coded according to the survival risk of the local indigenous languages. Red denotes the highest risk, and blue denotes minimum risk. The areas in white have no significant indigenous population for the purpose of the study. Notice that Tacaná is coded red.  

Discussion

1. Compare the topographical map with the language risk map. (You can click on the images to enlarge them.) Do you see a pattern in the distribution of risk levels? What hypotheses can you make about the relationship between geographic location and the level of risk?

2. Why do you think geographic location would be a factor? Can you think of any intermediate factors, that is, are there any ways that geography creates a certain effect which in turn affects language (like a chain reaction)? Read The sound of a vanishing language again to see if you can find an important clue that I left there.

3. What kind of research could you design to test your ideas about the relationship between geography and language?

Related links

Language and identity, part one: The sound of a vanishing language

Language and identity, part three: Diverse ways of knowing

To see the location of specific languages of Guatemala, you can look at this map from the Ethnologue.

 

The sound of a vanishing language

This is part one of a series based on the presentation on language and identity in our Theory of Knowledge class. See the end of this post for related links.

In January I had the opportunity to give presentations and lead discussions on language and identity for our IB Theory of Knowledge classes. I shared some of the field research I did in the Guatemalan highlands several years ago, among an indigenous Mayan group whose language was in the last stages of displacement by Spanish.  In the course of that ethnolinguistic research I collected tape recordings of the language for analysis and intelligibility testing, and I played one of those tapes for my students last month.

Listening to that tape over and over after so many years has created a strange melancholy and nostalgia for the nearly three years that my wife and I lived in Tacaná. I remember the day in 1989 when I visited Fortino Ortiz and his wife Delfina (seen in the image above), along with Fortino's cousin Mariano, and recorded nearly an hour of conversation with them as we sat next to the kitchen fire and talked about their farm, their children, and the annual trek down to the Mexican coast to work in the coffee plantations. I would later use some clips from that recording as part of a survey to assess whether their language would survive another generation. Our research later showed that no one under the age of 21 could speak Tacaneco , and that was 17 years ago.   

The classroom presentation and discussion focused on some of the causes of the disappearance of Tacaneco and what lessons we can learn about language as a key to identity and as a vehicle for learning culture. Several students asked to listen to the recording again, so I have edited a brief segment of the one tape I have with me, and posted it here. This is my first attempt to use Audacity, and I'm afraid the quality was compromised a bit in the conversion from magnetic to digital, and then from one digital format to another.  As I get more proficient I'll replace this with a better clip.  I'll share some of the discussion questions as well later this week. 

Click on this link to listen:

Download tacaneco_track_3a.mp3

Related links

Language and identity, part two: Geography

Language and identity, part three: Diverse ways of knowing

To see the location of specific languages of Guatemala, you can look at this map from the Ethnologue.

60 ways to get it wrong

Back in April I wrote a post titled We're all less biased than everyone else. In the post I mentioned an article from the New York Times which cites research about how frequently people think themselves to be less biased than others.

I have since found on Wikipedia a very interesting List of Cognitive Biases, a  thorough pathology of how we can incorrectly interpret information.  While browsing this shockingly long list of biases, I recognized many immediately, not necessarily by their name (e.g. "the Von Restorff effect") but certainly by the symptoms ("the tendency for an item that 'stands out like a sore thumb' to be more likely to be remembered than other items").

What's more troubling is that not only did I recognize them, but some of them are old friends of mine. How much is there that I don't know because of their interference? Seeing them in this light will maybe make me more aware of them the next time they try to make an appearance.

If you're brave, maybe you can take a look at the list, choose to abolish one of these biases, and see what new things you learn.

We're all less biased than everyone else

The New York Times oneline has an article titled I'm O.K., You're Biased which reviews different psychological tests of people's assessment of themselves and of others concerning fairness and bias. The results indicate that most people give themselves an above average rating for fairness (even when they cheat), and that most people give others poorer ratings for fairness (even when they don't cheat).

Author Daniel Gilbert writes, "[study subjects] strive for truth more often that we realize, and miss that mark more ofthen than they realize."

Gilbert cites an experiment where subjects had to make assessments of students' intelligence. The subjects examined one by one individual pieces of information about a particular student, all of it negative. However, if the subject liked the student, he persisted longer in looking for positive data about the student than did other subjects.

So why did I put this in my Learning category?

We humans ar driven to find meaning in our surroundings and in our experience, and we are very quick to formulate ad hoc theories about people's behavior before we have adequate information (the transition from etic to emic). The trouble is that we become very attached to our theories, and we unconscously use them as filters that prevent us from looking at information in new ways.   Predudices and biases are hard to overcome,  first because we don't see them in ourselves and, second, we have to reassess all the filtered information that originally brought us to accept those biases.

Which means a lot of hard and potentially embarrassing work.

Click here to read Gilbert's article.