After Apartheid was lifted, I began to work in South Africa, doing archaeology and helping with some development projects. It was then that I heard the story of the new flag, from the white liberal citizens with whom I worked in the Limpopo province.

One thing you need to know about South African culture (and this permeates all subcultures) is that if there are four South Africans having a conversation about something, there will be five opinions about that topic. Or at least, this bit of self-deprecating humor is about the third or fourth thing you’ll hear about South African culture from any host, and South African hosts are both warmly embracing and funny. So when the idea of a flag for the New South Africa came along, the only way to move forward was with an infusion of wisdom, and who among the citizens of South Africa was most wise and able to make this happen with minimal stress? Nelson Mandela, of course.

I was told that Mandela’s idea was this: Have a contest of sorts, or otherwise, get some flags in competition to use as the new symbol. Then, pick one but with the proviso that it would only be the new flag for a year or two, during which time, a diligent effort would be made to come up with the actual new flag.

Another expression describing South African culture may have been, according to my friends, “If you’ve already done something, why do it again.” That is not only sensible, but probably universal. In any event, once the temporary flag emerged, and yes, it was hated and complained about by many, it went into use, people became accustomed to it, and in a very short amount of time, fell in love with it. The idea of replacing it was forgotten, and at some point (1996 to be exact) the new flag was made official in the final draft of New South Africa’s rather amazing constitution. (Give that constitution a look when you have a chance you will be amazed.)

One important point about the design of the flag: there is no official description, and no two people agree on what it means. The flag is unique, I believe, in that it has more colors than any other nation’s flag, and that certainly means something. I think it means: we have a lot more colors available for use these days for flags than they did in the 17th or 18th century.

It is easier for a person who studies behavioral biology to get this. Colnsider Big Men in cultures that have formal Big Men. There are of course big men (small b, small m) in all soceities, in some way, but the role of a man as a Big Man is especially clear in societes that have a word for it, and a social and political position so defined. One of the great and classic ethnographic examples Ongka, a New Guinea big man from a tradition region, the star of a documentary called Ongka’s Big Moka. Ongka is a Big Man, a leader among men, seen as the Big Man for a large community which is in bellicose relationship with neighboring groups. In the documentary, Ongka devises an attack on his neighbors, in which he will attempt to defeat their Big Man. The attack requires the accumulation of a huge store of valuable goods, which includes Australian cash, a Land Rover, many bushels of Yams, and large numbers of rare forest bird feathers and domestic pigs. During the course of accumulating this wealth, Oka talks, and talks, talks. Ongka incessantly shows up ina aprt of the villafge, and talks about how he is the Big Man, and how he with the help of the villagers will defeat the neighboring Big Man¹. Ongka shows up, gives his speech, and leaves with some pigs to add to his larder, and some yams, which will be used to feed the pigs. He may get a feather or two. And, over the months of time during which this happening, the polygenous Ongka adds a wife or two a well.

Eventually Ongka is ready to defeat his neighbor, and a ceremony is arranged. The two men face off. This is not a symmetrical battle, this is Ongka on the offense, and the man he is going after absorbs the attack, survives or loses, but has the option of attcking back at a later time. Ongka gives the biggest and baddest speech of them all, but the speech is not to ask for help, but to accompany what has been laid out. The feathers, pigs, yams, money, and Land Rover have all been arranged to look quite impressive. No marketing rep at Target could do a better job at making the goods look so good. This is the a largest Moka (that is what the ceremony is called) anyone can remember. Ongka’s Bit Moka has defeated his enemy, and Ongka tells him so in the last chapter of this round of his Big Man narrative.

This may look like a man being great at what men are great at, giving speeches that get him goods, mates, fame, and power. That would be the more naive or amateur evolutionary view of the thing. But if we add one level of theoretical sophistication to the model, we might see that this is actualy a man being good at what men are handicapped at. Linguistic skill is more easily come by in women than in men. Traditionally, remedial reading programs are frequented by boys, not girls. Typically, UN simultaneous translators are more often women than men. In many societies, women move at marriage between groups, and in places where language areas are small and heterogeneously mixed up, many young girls are expected to quickly learn, if not already have, high proficiency with a language that was not her birth language.² In mammals, all males are females that have become masculinized to varying degrees in development, and in the brain, this masculinization can not be done by adding structure, function, or features, but only by literally wiping out brain tissue. It is thought that this process goes a bit farther in some boys, ultimately causing modest language related deficits. The details and degree to which this happens is not well understood, but it is generally agreed that it happens. Baby girls have better hearing discrimination of language phonemes than do boys. Average starting age for linguistic (verbal and reading) milestones are earlier for girls than boys. And so on.

So from a behavioral biological point of view, Ongka is handicapped, and is overcoming his handicap by being very very good at a behavior in which men tend to be limited relative to women. There is a great deal of theory and study surrounding the “handicap principle” (look up Zahavi’s Handicap Principle). If he can do that mentally, he must be an exceptional male, at the high end of the bell curve for the men in his society. No wonder he gets the extra yams.

I know I’ve been a little disdainful in this essay of amateur evolutionary thinkers. Let me be clear: I love amateur evolutionary thinkers. The non-specialists who take on evolutionary biology as an interest are in many areas more important, and their activities more impactful, than actual evolutionary biologists when it comes to preserving and sometimes even saving science from religiously or politically driven attacks. That is very much appreciated. The average actual biologist is a lab rat or a field drone, collecting data, running it through the peer review process, usually ignoring and maybe being unaware of the “war on science” carried out by the right win in congress, right wing parents in vulnerable school districts, and all those yahoos on the Internet. If it weren’t for the non-scientists who happen to love science, we would be doomed. But at the same time, people want to know the details, understand the nuances, and enjoy learning more things about the thing you know about already. So that’s what this is.

Here’s Ongka’s Big Moka:

But I wonder if monarchy-hate is fully appropriate, given some of the reactions I see from actual subjects of the Queen/King. Said subjects seem blind to the argument that the monarchy is a burden on the budget, has no practical use, and is linked to a history of colonialism and repression. Or are they?

Here is why these ideas may be misguided if not just wrong.

1. The monarchy has not been the prime mover in colonialism and repression since well early in the 18the century. The monarchy is a part of, and an increasingly no-effective part of, the British government during the last 300 years of British colonial advancement, colonial retraction, and colonial separation. One could easily argue that the parliamentary part of the British government is more responsible for everything that happened than the monarchy. Not to let the monarchy off the hook. I’m just saying that if you have a small gang of thieves and get rid of one of them, you still better keep checking your pocket to see if your wallet is still there.
2. The portion of GDP attributable to the monarchy is difficult to determine. The annual cash flow of the monarchy represents about one one-hundredths’ of a percent of the British GDP. The annual cost to taxpayers is about 3 one thousand’s of a percent of the British GDP. The total value of the monarchy (if you sold it off tomorrow) is between 2 and 3% of GTP. So, the monarchy is a low-maintenance very valuable asset, assuming that it produces some payback.
3. Compare it to sports. In America, we have no monarchy, but we do have sports. Sports takes up more American cultural space and energy that the monarchy takes up British cultural space and energy, I would assert. Or at least, they are in the same ballpark, as it were. Sports value as a percentage of GDP is about 2 tenths of a percent in the US. Small nationwide, but huge compared to the equivalent annual cash flow of 1 one hundredths of a percent for the British Monarchy. American sports are a burden on the American budget (every time a city is asked to build a new stadium or bail out a team, or as a function of increased vandalism and criminality associated with sports culture) but with limited practical use, and linked to a history of segregation, racism, nurturing of violence and criminality, and overall stupid behavior. One could argue that sports has advantages, and one can argue that the monarchy has some value too.

I’m agnostic, and I prefer to follow the lead of British progressives. It is their monarchy, after all.

Americans tend to think we threw off the monarchy centuries ago because we did not like it. That is not what happened. America rebelled against unequal tax and representation by our government (we were part of Great Britain) as it applied to the Americas, and against home-country (UK) rules against killing Indians. Our government in London told us we had to stop grabbing land that wasn’t ours. The British government was on the verge of getting rid of slavery, which Brits in the Americas (our forefathers) did not want to do. Our revolution was not about being a democracy instead of a monarchy. It was about us being an out of control asshole on the world stage, not held back by certain British sensibilities. So fellow Americans, maybe lose the impertinence, OK? Not a good look coming from one of the very small number of countries that maintained slavery longer than everyone else, and then converted slavery into something as close to slavery as possible for the next rest of time.

Finally, I suspect most people who are down on the monarchy are not aware that the role of the British monarchy in the British government is not to rule, but to be dignified. Like this:

*I know I know, she is not the “Queen of England” except that she is, but also, Queen of some other things too. As an American I’m not into getting sidetracked by the whinging about the complex national identity associated with that which is British-ish and related.

Any questions?

Note: “tablespoon” in some countries or cultures is a serving spoon used for serving at the table, but in the US and I believe many other locations, “tablespoon” is a large spoon used for eating at the table. Meanwhile, don’t forget that as a unit of measure, tablespoon is 14.8 ml, aka, 0.50 US fluid ounces, but 0.51 Canadian/UK ounces in Canada. An Australian tablespoon as a measure is 20 ml, or 0.68 US fluid ounces. So be careful.

To get back to my own personal first world problems: as noted, I now have a tableware set where the teaspoon is very small and the tablespoon is very large. I like the differentiation, but I think the in between zone could be served with a middle size spoon. I therefore think we should have three tableware spoons. Perhaps the large tablespoon, the diminutive teaspoon, and an in-between spoon should comprise the panoply of table spoons, with the new in between size set at the standard teaspoon size time 1.5.

What is the standard teaspoon size? Well, one third of a tablespoon is how I learnt it, but apparently it is more complicated. From wiki: “The size of teaspoons ranges from about 2.5 to 7.3 mL (0.088 to 0.257 imp fl oz; 0.085 to 0.247 US fl oz). For cooking purposes and dosing of medicine, a teaspoonful is defined as 5 mL (0.18 imp fl oz; 0.17 US fl oz), and standard measuring spoons are used.”

So, where does the cultural trait of fear of AI in Western society come from? The same place all cultural traits come from. Movies. (And other conduits of received knowledge.)

I’m teaching a class on a related topic, and in so doing put together a series of video clips that I thought I’d share. Have a watch, and feel free to discuss. You’ve seen most of these already.

They are in a sort of order.

(Hat Tip Parker)

Comic relief. How hackers meet and fall in love:

Modern consequences. One tipping point among many:

The most annoying man in the world almost certainly being wrong:

What have I missed?

I am a fan of U2, and I had assumed I was a fan because they make good music. But more recently, I realized that I like U2 also because they saved us from the 1980s.
Don’t get me wrong. There is nothing wrong with Guns N’ Roses, Queen, Metalica, AC/DC, Bon Jovi, Foreigner, Journey, or Motorhead. Probably. Well, to be honest, I can’t name a single song any of them ever made. But my impression is that most of these bands were continuing traditions that date back to the late 1960 (which ran from 1971 to 1977), and not doing a lot of innovation. Doesn’t matter, I’m not an expert. But I’m pretty sure U2 innovated.

Their greatest album is probably Joshua Tree. A couple of years ago I went to the Joshua Tree (revival?) concert performance at the Big Corporate Thingie Stadium* in Minneapolis. It was the best of concerts, it was the worst of concerts. Best because it was one of the great bands of the century (last century; too early to tell for this century) performing their arguably best album with all their own retrospect sewn in. Worst because Big Corporate Thingie Stadium was not built for musical performance despite the oversize duvet covers they hung on some of the walls. That stadium was built, more than any other stadium built to date since Roman times, to have the worst acoustics possible, which is necessary to confabulate the visiting offense during football games.

Eagle Rock produced a documentary on The Joshua Tree (1999), which includes conversations with U2’s members. (Did you know one of them is named The Edge? Well, that’s Mr Edge to you. Me and The, we’re on a first name basis. I wrote him a letter recently. It started out, “Dear The,” But I digress.) Anyway, the conversations are revealing because they pin down the ways U2 stepped aside from what was going on, musically, in the middle of the 1980s, and how they scraped against, and punctured through, the envelope everyone else was operating in. The thing is, U2’s hard turn from the usual direction “immediately catapulted the band into the category of rock superstars.” This catapulting caused the innovation by this group to be fully real, to not just fade away. Innovation, breaking away from traditional producing methods, paying attention to the rhythm section (aka drums), producing the album in a house instead of a studio, embracing encouragement over competition. All these things and more.

Joshua tree was in part a response to an ongoing takeover of of America by extremist Republicans (not recognized by most at the time) and similar deterioration of humanity going on elsewhere, and thumb in the nose to the stolid keepers of the musical way of the time (see list of bands above).

I won’t discuss the how or why here, but the album came along at a time in my life that was well suited to that particular soundtrack. That, however, means almost nothing compared to the meaning for the mothers in Chile.

A century and a half ago, my ancestors came forth on this continent because they chose a risky move over near certain starvation in Ireland. Just under a half century ago my distant cousins came forth to address America with a series of questions and inspirations. When you think about it, there is nothing more American than starvation. It also turns out that there is nothing more American than a foreign band adopting us as their errand child. Also, just so you know, Yucca brevifolia is endemic, nothing more American than the Joshua tree.

Songs on this album:
Where the Streets Have No Name
I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For
With or Without You
Bullet the Blue Sky
Running to Stand Still
Red Hill Mining Town
In God’s Country
Trip Through Your Wires
One Tree Hill
Exit
Mothers of the Disappeared

U2 Band Members past and present:
Bono
Ethe Edge
Adam Claton
Larry Mullen Jr
Dik Evans
Ivan McCormick

*I prefer not to partake in the “naming rights” scam, thank you. I refer here to the stadium the Vikings play in.

That is probably true sometimes. But we have sequenced the entire human genome, so shouldn’t we know about all the genes? Well, yes and no. We may have a list of genes found in a sample of humans, but “The Human Genome” can consist of a single individual (though it does not) and miss variation between individuals, i.e., it may not be a record of all of the possible alleles (variants) of each gene. Also, beyond the scope of this discussion but worth mentioning, a “gene” is not a simple concept. Whether or not a gene is expressed, where, when, and exactly what product it produces is not entirely encoded in the gene itself, but rather, elsewhere in the genome, or not encoded at all, but rather, dependent on external, non-genetic factors. So that complicates things too. So, if there is a trait that you think must be genetic, but years of research have failed to find it, the existence of a human genome and the prior acquisition of a lot of genetic data does not necessarily mean that the genetic information that determines the trait in question is not there. You can continue to believe that the genetic code for the trait will eventually be found

Except when you can’t.

There are two separate ways in which people sort out which traits are assumed to be genetic from those that are assumed to be not genetic. Both are heuristic, one is valid, and one is not. Let’s start with the one that is valid.

Suppose, as before, there is a trait that is seemingly inherited in families in such a way that a genetic trait would be, in the time tested manner that with respect this trait “offspring resemble their parents” as Darwin noted. The next question you can ask is this: Is it biologically sensible that this trait is inherited genetically, or is there a better, obvious, non-genetic mode of inheritance? If the trait is a physical feature such as eye color, then we have a sensible biological explanation for the trait having to do with developmental process we know something about and a set of metabolic pathways that produce various molecules such as pigments. The idea that this trait is genetic is biologically sensible, so even if you can’t find any, or all, of the genetic determinants of this trait, you can figure they are out there somewhere. Suppose, though, that the trait is a behavioral one that we see people in real life learning. For example, what language a person speaks generally follows the same kind of inheritance pattern many clearly genetic traits follow. With respect to spoken language, most of the time, offspring resemble their parents. But, rather than there being a sensible biological explanation for this trait, there is a sensible cultural explanation for this trait, so we don’t even look for the genetic variants for “French” vs. “Mandarin” vs. “English.” We simply assume this is not genetic.

The second method, the incorrect one, is to work with an article of faith. Broadly speaking, and I oversimplify greatly here, there are two primary articles of faith that often inform people’s thinking, shaping their assumptions, about genetics. Both usually have to do with behavioral traits in humans, but this can apply to physical traits as well. One article of faith asserts that humans are born as a blank slate, and all of their behavioral characteristics, such as their personality, intelligence by one measure or another, and so on, are added by experience. The other is the inheritance assumption, that some or much of an individual’s personality, intelligence, etc is determined by genes. There is not necessarily a consistent logic behind either of these assumptions, though various schools of thinking will include, often, a logical framework. However, this method of coming to a conclusion about the genetics or lack thereof behind various traits relies on one important element regarding genetic systems: Ignorance. If you are a blank slatist, then the absence of a clear pathway from genes to behavior means that your hypothesis can’t be falsified. If you are a genetic determinist, then the lack of such a pathway can be attributed to ongoing ignorance about the genes. The former might then be expected to live in fear that a gene will be found for their favorite learned behavior, and the latter might be expected to to live in a state of hubris, firmly knowing and asserting a truth that is not yet known but someday will be.

My impression is that over time there are fewer and fewer pure genetic determinists out there, and few and fewer blank slatists. I think the reasons for that shift have little to do with increasing knowledge, and more to do with changes in how one plays the academic game of argument, but that is discussion for another time. There is a danger in that shift, though. In the absence of any useful research results, if blank slatists start to admit that there could be some sort of genetics behind behavior, and determinists start to admit that experience and learning can also play a role, then we are converging on an increasingly simplified view of what is really a very complicated process. We should be gaining more complex, nuanced, and better informed views of how behavior arises, not simpler ones. Probably.

Over the last few decades, there have been a few important changes in how we should view human behavior over generational time and variation in those behaviors within and across categories (gender, ethnicity, geography, etc.). In short, certain behavioral traits have shown, synchronically (lacking the perspective of change over time) patterns that look genetic. For example, some families seem to be extra smart. Some have suggested that some “races” are smarter than others (at another time we can discuss why there really are no races, but let’s use “race” here as a potentially valid sampling strategy, which it can be even if the underlying races are fictions). We also see assertions of behavioral differences between the primary sexes (male vs female).

These observations are really statements about variance. Two groups are different, but vary within. There is overlap in the trait (i.e., IQ) but the means vary. We can statistically test the validity of the asserted differences in means by examining the variance in each sample and seeing if the mean of one sample fall within the predicted range of the central tendency of the others. In other words, asserting that there is a statistical difference between two groups is a process that involves understanding the variance of the underlying population(s) and samples. So, the questions can all be reframed in this manner:

Is the variation we see in trait X across certain groups best explained by underlying corresponding variation in the genetic system, or by the variation found in some other cause?

People fight vigorously over the underlying cause of IQ differences between groups. Some say it is primarily genetic, some say it is primarily not genetic, but rather, related somehow to what has become known as “lived experience.” Over the last couple of decades, there have been many attempts to explain observed variation in IQ using socioeconomic status, diet, education, issues having to do with test making or testing procedures. All of these factors have been shown to explain differences between groups to a modest to large degree in several studies. In other words, if you want to explain variation in IQ using non-genetic explanations, you can have some real success.

The genetic explanation of variation in IQ has had success in one main area which is irrelevant. This is the fact that genetically determined developmental differences between people that affect function that are generally classified as disorders predict large IQ differences. But this set of effects is not related to the question being asked.

The strongest evidence for a genetic underpinning of IQ is probably the large scale racial model solidified years ago by J. Philippe Rushton. He demonstrated that there is a grouping of brain sizes by race, with Asians having the largest brains, Caucasians the second larges, and Blacks the smallest (these race terms are his). He then showed that these brain sizes correlated with IQ difference. The modern psychometric literature assumes a racial difference in IQs, and asserts that this difference is real, but does to by citing sources that then site sources that ultimately cite Rushton. Rushtons all the way down, as it were.

The problem with this is that Rushton’s analysis was bogus. The brain sizes were taken from such sources at hat sizes for army conscripts classified by race, with the hat sizes used to estimate brain size. The Black (African) brain got smaller because Rushton subtracted a factor from that estimate of brain size, using an archaic thick skulled African fossil to assume that Africans have very very thick skulls. Correspondingly, the Asians were assumed to have thin skulls, and thus, got larger brains. The IQ data is similarly adulterated. In one part of the study, Rushton needed an “African” (native) IQ value, so he used the results of a test administered by racist anthropologists commissioned by the Apartheid government of South Africa to prove the inferiority of Blacks. And so on. The bottom turtle in this edifice is a fake.

The range of variation across “racial” groups (or other groups) in modern IQ data is very small compared to the change in IQ measured or estimated over decades of time through the 20th century within a single large and diverse population (Americans). If IQ is genetically determined and a stable feature of behavior, then there has been more evolution of these genes over less than 100 years of time in the US than we see across any two groups of modern humans. That is impossible. Again, IQ does not behave nicely as a genetic trait.

The discovery of a gene or set of genes that would underly IQ has not happened. In some recent studies, IQ is assumed to be very complex and the result of many different genes, and there is some statistical evidence for this. But, there is a big problem there too. Any trait can be linked to a set of genetic variants if the set of genes is large enough. That is a statistical effect and it is not really a link. More like a party trick, or a con game. (In fact this method is a con you may have heard of. I send 10,000 people an email predicting that a certain stock will go up, another 10,000 people an email predicting it will go down. One or the other happens. I then send 5,000 of the people who got the “correct” prediction another prediction, and 5,000 of them the opposite prediction. Now, 2,500 people have gotten two correct predictions from me. I keep doing that until I’ve got several dozen people convinced I am a stock market genius, and I take their money.)

Generally speaking, many behavioral traits have been explained, in part and sometimes in large part, by factors that are not genetic, while at the same time, the hunt for the presumed underlying genes have come up empty. There was great optimism up through the 1990s that genetic underpinning of human behavior … genetic variation corresponding to behavioral variation … would be found. But even as early as 1993 this was being questioned. Here is a sidebar, reproduced in full, from a Scientific American article by John Horgan summarizing the work up to that time:

Behavioral Genetics: A lack of progress report (1993)

CRIME: Family, twin and adoption studies have suggested a heritability of 0 to more than 50 percent for predisposition to crime. … In the 1960s researchers reported an association between an extra Y chromosome and vio-lent crime in males. Follow-up studies found that association to be spurious. MANIC DEPRESSION: Twin and family studies indicate heritability of 60 to 80 percent for susceptibility to manic depression. In 1987 two groups reported locating different genes linked to manic depression, one in Amish families and the other in Israeli families. Both reports have been retracted. SCHIZOPHRENIA: Twin studies show heritability of 40 to 90 percent. In 1988 a group reported finding a gene linked to schizophrenia in British and Icelandic families. Other studies documented no linkage, and the initial claim has now been retracted. ALCOHOLISM: Twin and adoption studies suggest heritability ranging from 0 to 60 percent. In 1990 a group claimed to link a gene—one that produces a receptor for the neurotransmitter dopamine—with alcoholism. A recent re-view of the evidence concluded it does not support a link. INTELLIGENCE: Twin and adoption studies show a heritability of performance on intelligence tests of 20 to 80 percent. One group recently unveiled preliminary evidence for genetic markers for high intelligence (an IQ of 130 or higher). The study is unpublished. HOMOSEXUALITY: In 1991 a researcher cited anatomic differences be-tween the brains of heterosexual and homosexual males. Two recent twinstudies have found a heritability of roughly 50 percent for predisposition to male or female homosexuality. These reports have been disputed. Another group claims to have preliminary evidence fo genes linked to male homosexualty. The data have not been published.

This is from a study by Jay Joseph on the “Classical Twin Method in the Social and Behavioral Sciences”

The classical twin method assesses differences in behavioral trait resemblance between reared-together monozygotic and same-sex dizygotic twin pairs. Twin method proponents argue that the greater behavioral trait resemblance of the former supports an important role for genetic factors in causing the trait. Many critics, on the other hand, argue that non-genetic factors plausibly explain these results…. In 2012, a team of researchers in political science using behavioral genetic methods performed a study based on twin data in an attempt to test the critics’ position, and concluded in favor of the validity of the twin method and its underlying monozygotic–dizygotic “equal environment assumption.” The author argues that this conclusion is not supported, because the investigators (1) framed their study in a way that guaranteed validation of the twin method, (2) put forward untenable redefinitions of the equal environment assumption, (3) used inadequate methods to assess twin environmental similarity and political ideology, (4) reached several conclusions that argue against the twin method’s validity, (5) overlooked previous evidence showing that monozygotic twin pairs experience strong levels of identify confusion and attachment, (6) mistakenly counted environmental effects on twins’ behavioral resemblance as genetic effects, and (7) conflated the potential yet differing roles of biological and genetic influences on twin resemblance. The author concludes that the study failed to support the equal environment assumption, and that genetic interpretations of twin method data in political science and the behavioral science fields should be rejected outright.

With respect to psychiatric disorders, from the same author:

The psychiatric genetics ?eld is currently undergoing a crisis due to the decades-long failure to uncover the genes believed to cause the major psychiatric disorders. Since 2009, leading researchers have explained these negative results on the basis of the ‘‘missing heritability’’ argument, which holds that more effective research methods must be developed to uncover presumed missing genes. According to the author, problems with the missing heritability argument include genetic determinist beliefs, a reliance on twin research, the use of heritability estimates, and the failure to seriously consider the possibility that presumed genes do not exist. The author concludes that decades of negative results support a ?nding that genes for the major psychiatric disorders do not appear to exist, and that research attention should be directed away from attempts to uncover ‘‘missing heritability’’ and toward environmental factors and a reassessment of previous genetic interpretations of psychiatric family, twin, and adoption studies.

And from researcher Tim Crow:

A substantial body of research literature, identified by nine out of ten papers on genetics in the recent ISI research front on schizophrenia, claims to have established associations between aspects of the disease and sequence variation in specific candidate genes. These candidatures have proven unreplicated in large sibling pair linkage surveys and a targeted association study. Even if the case for an association be regarded as a lucky guess (assuming one gene in 30 000 was guessed right) the large linkage and association studies provide no evidence of sequence variation relating to psychosis at any of these gene loci. Thus this body of work must be regarded as an indicator of the extent to which the ‘eye of faith’ is able to discern meaning in complex data when none is present.

I could go on. There have been further criticisms of the twin studies, for example. The most interesting, potentially, of these studies was on twins reared apart, more or less separated at birth. Commonalities among such individuals would be strong evidence for a genetic underpinning, because these individuals were raised in completely different environments so there would be no chance of a learned or cultural component other than a general background effect of having been raised n the same planet, or in the same country. Right? Well, no. Twins separated at birth were mostly twins that were not all that separated. After all, where do researchers actually find twins truly and distantly separated at birth, especially in the days when people seeking birth parents had hardly become a thing yet? Many of these twins, probably the vast majority, were separated only in the sense that they were raised by different members of the same family, or separately by divorced parents. Many were raised in the same neighborhood or often, the same house. My brother and I are not twins, but we were “raised apart” by the criteria of the twin studies because my family was distributed among the rooms of a two family residence, so technically he and I had bedrooms at different addresses.

In sum, it is easier to find sociological, cultural, or environmental explanations for variation in human abilities, intelligence, or personality traits. The seeming inheritance by family of some of these traits may well be a combination of something genetic and something experiential or cultural, but when looking for the actual underlying causes, genetics has repeatedly come up wanting while environmental explanations do a good job of addressing a fairly large part of the variation we see. Models of race based differences are so poorly done, and are often highly politically motivated, that they should never be trusted. That scientific ship sailed a long time ago.

Maybe the blank slate theory isn’t so bad after all. It does not imply that just anything can happen when making a human being out of a sperm and an egg. After all, it is a blank slate and not a blank whatever. But it is probably not true that some people’s lived experiences are written on slate, while others on white boards, and still others on smart boards, even if there are some people who I’m sure assume that they were.

Selected references:

Horgan, John. 1992. Eugenics Revisited. Scientific American. June.
Joseph, J. (2011). The Crumbling Pillars of Behavioral Genetics. GeneWatch, 24 (6),4–7. Web page
Joseph, J. (2012). The “Missing Heritability” of Psychiatric Disorders: Elusive Genes or Non-Existent Genes? Applied Developmental Science, 16(2), 65–83. doi:10.1080/10888691.2012.667343
Joseph, J. (2013). The Use of the Classical Twin Method in the Social and Behavioral Sciences : The Fallacy Continues, 34(1), 1–40.
Lewontin, R. Human Diversity. 2000, Scientific American Library.
Marks, J. (2008) Race: Past, Present, and Future. In: Revisiting Race in a Genomic Age, edited by B. Koenig, S. Lee, and S. Richardson. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, pp. 21–38. PDF
Marks, J. (2008) Race across the physical-cultural divide in American anthropology. In: A New History of Anthropology, edited by H. Kuklick. New York: Blackwell, pp. 242–258. PDF
Tizard, B. (1974). IQ and Race. Nature, 247, (5349), 316.

Other posts of interest:

• How to get rid of spiders in your house
• Why is your poop green?
• How many cells are there in the human body?
• Is there really a plot hole in Harry Potter Goblet of Fire?
• How long is a human generation?
• Is blog ever really blue?
• How to not get caught plagiarizing
• The origin of the domestic chicken
• What are the three necessary and sufficient conditions of Natural Selection?
• How do I get rid of foot fungus?
• Which is better, Tap Water or Bottled Water?
• Has Global Warming stopped?

Also of interest: In Search of Sungudogo: A novel of adventure and mystery, which is also an alternative history of the Skeptics Movement.

How long is a generation, you ask?

Short Answer: 25 years, but a generation ago it was 20 years.

Long answer: It depends on what you mean by generation.

In US-biased Western culture there is a Biological Generation, the Dynamic Generation, the somewhat different Familial Generation, what is sometimes called a Cultural Generation but that should really be called a Societal Generation, and then there is the Designated Generation and finally, the Historical-Long Generation. You will find some of these terms identified on genealogical web sites, Teh Wiki and elsewhere, and some of them are introduced here. (References provided below.)

More broadly speaking, humans have identifiable meaningful generation-related terminology and cultural concepts in many but not all societies, and when it does occur, it is more common to find the concept in age-graded societies or societies in which marriage arrangements are fairly strictly enforced (or at least strongly hoped for) by the ascending generation.

A Biological Generation

A Dynamic Generation

Those methods of reckoning generations have to do with the relationship between people. Another reason to reckon generations is either to do demographic (or economic) analysis or to test and analyze genealogies. For this you want to know how long a dynamic generation (or a biological one) usually is. For instance, a genealogist wants to know this: From the point of view of some long-dead relative, is the time span between the birth date of a grandparent and the birth date of a great grand child … thus, the span of time of four complete generations … reasonable? If such a span is 200 years, that means that an average of 50 years time passed from birth of a person to that person giving birth to the person in line. Implausible. If the total span is 40 years, that means ten year olds were having babies (on average). Also implausible. Either way, some part of the hypothetical genealogy is messed up and it’s back to the church records, vital statistics, and Mormon database for you. This is a Familial Generation.

In the “old days” (whenever that was) people often used the value 20 to represent Familial Generations. So, a person born on the first day of a century may well have had a great great great grandparent born around the beginning of the previous century. Today, with lager age at first birth for women being the rule, we tend to see 25 years as the recommended estimate for Familial Generations.

A Cultural or Societal Generation

• Lost 1914
• Greatest 1923
• Silent 1935
• Baby Boom (Boomers) 1955
• Generation X 1968
• Generation Y 1975
• Generation Z or I 1992

(See comments below for people fighting about these names and dates. I accept Teh Wiki as the final word on this, so I take this list as perfectly accurate and complete.)

Several things are noticed in this list. The first three relate to major historical events (World Wars, the Great Depression) while the later ones are vague, stupid, and obviously little more than lame attempts by people who wish they were part of a generation to name themselves. This leads to the X and Y generations to be floating in broader time ranges (see Teh Wiki) and very arguable. The Z generation is clearly an afterthought. I assume everyone was so focused on the Millennium that they forget to be in a generation for a decade or so, and then had to catch up.

Some of the more primitively sexy and exotic tribal cultures of the world of the world have a strict age grading system. This is where individuals are in a specific age-defined stratum, and there are several strata. Often there are different age-grades for males and females, and often there are more age-grades for males than females. Individuals of a particular age grade always X and never Y (fill in cultural prescriptions for X and cultural proscriptions for Y). The Pokot of East Africa are one example. These age grades can be termed Designated Generations and include not only groups like the Pokot but also Americans who have very strongly age-graded designations.

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Among the Pokot males of a certain age wear a certain hairdo. Males of a certain generation get married. All the important things you can do or not do are defined by one’s age grade. As young men age they want to move to the next age grade, and often take serious risks to do so. In one Pokot group, the boys of one age grade would typically wear the hairdos of the Ascending Generation. Males in the Ascending Generation would then beat the crap out of them. When the beatings became too common and severe (sometimes deadly) the Ascending Generation of the Ascending Generation (the “Elders”) would declare that it is time for everyone to move up one generation, and a ceremony would be held.

In that particular group the ceremony applied to many different villages, and representatives from each village had to bring to the major chief’s village one head of cattle. The cattle were all slaughtered and the fresh meat laid out on racks to be guarded from lions and hyenas overnight by the chief, alone. If any of the meat was taken by predators, the chief was fired and a new chief appointed, everyone was sent home and were required to return with a fresh head of cattle, and the ceremony was re-started with the new chief. But I digress.

The Historical-Long Generation is my own invention. This is the period of time that is just short enough for a person to have a conversation with another person about shared memories where those memories are separated in time by the maximum amount possible for our species. Let me explain further:

Just today, the last surviving US veteran of World War I died. When I was a kid, I went to (or marched in) parades in which there were lots of veterans. Most vets in the parade were of World War II. Korea was not ever represented. The Viet Nam Vets were busy in Viet Nam being Viet Nam soldiers, so they were not in the parades. But World War I was represented by the grandpas and there were a lot of them.

And, leading all of the veterans in the parade was this one guy who looked quite dead, eyes closed, not apparently breathing, wearing a 19th century Slouch Hat and covered with a blanket and slumped in wheel chair pushed by members of the VFW Ladies’ Auxiliary, and he was the only remaining veteran in town of the Spanish-American War. I know he was not in fact dead because he was in the parade several years in a row. That war was in 1898, and the parades I remember must have been from the mid 1960s. I assume he was a drummer boy, perhaps 10 or 11 at the time of the war. The last surviving vets from Civil War were similar: Boys who served in the military as aides or drummers. The point is, one could argue that a historical-long generation is about a century, because that old guy and I share involvement in an event … marching in those parades … that link two memories, the parade and the war, which were about 100 years apart.

I have an even better memory. The Emancipation Proclamation was signed on Januray 1st, 1863. When that happened, a toddler who’s last name was Alexander and who was born as a slave in the Carolina’s became free. Later, his family moved to Albany, New York. In around 1968 or 1969, my father asked me to accompany our congressman, Representative Samuel A. Stratton (famous for introducing the bill to give us Monday Holidays, I am told) to an old tenement building in “Teh Ghetto” and bring him up to the third floor to meet Mr. Alexander, the now old former infant slave. I did so, and we all chatted for a while. I was about ten, and Mr. Alexander was closer to 110. He had memories of the assassination of Abraham Lincoln that were similar to my memories of the assassination of John F. Kennedy: Vague, mostly about the aftermath and not the event so much, but seemingly real. We shared memories that were a century apart in time, and in this case, interestingly parallel.

So, the Historical-Long generation is a century. If you meet me and shake my hand, you are shaking a hand that has shaken the hand of a man who was an American slave. Meaningless, yet profound.

Fox, Robin.Kinship and Marriage: An Anthropological Perspective (Cambridge Studies in Social and Cultural Anthropology)

Lutz, Catherine. Reading National Geographic

Teh Wiki. Generation.

Teh Wiki List of generations.

Here is my message: Use training in “Framing,” “Race Class Narrative,” or similar ways to improve your communication abilities to become a better producer of messages in the same way an athlete uses strength and aerobic cross training to become a better athlete. Message training is to the hopeful messenger what running 5 miles a day and pumping iron three times a week is to an amateur softball player. You will get better.

Practicing softball itself is of course also a great way to be a better softball player. Messaging training by repeatedly applying techniques you are learning, to a test case, especially in a group with some guidance and some critique, can work wonders on your muscle memory, when the muscle is your brain and the sport is convincing people. Doing it well will become more automatic.

In addition to a discussion of messaging training, I have a few words on writing letters to the editor, and suggest a few items to read.

Why “message?”

Your job in developing messages is to take an internalized desire, having to do with policy or behavior or something, and turning that into words that will change the brain cells in others in a way that causes them to make better decisions, join up with your idea, vote a certain way, or start or stop doing a certain thing. Part of that is knowing what the point is, what you want to happen, and turning that into sensible articulate concepts or statements.

Think about what some of those points might be. I want there to be fewer guns around generally, and less dangerous ones. I want people who have been traditionally kept from voting to vote all the time. I want us to adopt electric cars and trucks, and to replace internal combustion engines. What do you want? If this was a workshop, you’d write some of your ideas down and share them with the person to your right. Or left. Or anywhere on the political spectrum, really.

The second part of that is rephrasing or reforming your message in a way that uses the tools of messaging, so all that hard work you did thinking of a concept actually makes a difference.

The current message improvement culture has three main approaches, which overlap, are not exclusive, and all three of which work and should be used.

Let’s take them in reverse order.

Rhetoric

Rhetoric is the time honored process of persuasive communication. The whole shebang of messaging can be called “rhetoric” but here I refer to intentional rhetorical technique. There are a gazillion rhetorical forms, most identified in great antiquity, because even then, people had been speaking for many thousands of years. When we use rhetorical forms, a certain magical thing happens. The reshaping of the brain cells in the recipient of our message that we are going for happens quicker, more strongly, or lasts longer. Often, the rhetorical form outlives the message. I can’t believe I ate the whole thing but I have no memory of what product I was supposed to buy because I did eat the whole thing. (Kidding: It was Alka Seltzer.)

The great speeches used rhetorical forms, enhancing the impact at the moment, making the messages more memorable. Joe Romm in his book on this topic called it being “clicky and sticky” (see below for links to books).

For example, repetition or enumeration comes naturally and shapes brain cells nicely. One of the most memorable and powerful speeches ever given was Churchill’s “fight on the beaches” ditty. He used meter (putting your words out in packages of similar cadence and size, like a poem might do), alliteration (reusing the same sound) and most notably, repetition.

We shall go on to the end, we shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be.

We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender …

This speech was brought to you by the letter F, S, and G, and powerful concept that “we shall fight.” (And, as you may learn if you investigate framing theory, this speech used a protection frame, and also keyed into the relatable concepts of fighting in the air, streets, and landing grounds, very much in the average British person’s mind as the Nazis were dropping bombs on them.)

Rhetorical form is sometimes scoffed at as “bumper sticker thinking” or cheap jingle-making. Fine. But Donald Trump became the President of the United States and is still in the business of ruining democracy and advancing fascism, and much of the energy that launched that Juggernaut came from rhetorical tropes developed, repeatedly tested, and frequently applied. Do not think “lock her up” came out of his butt. No. It came out of Steve Bannon’s butt along with a bunch of other crap, and survived testing by Cambridge Analytics, and then became the slogan of the Trumpian movement, along with a few other phrases.

Rhetorical form does not, I quickly add, imply one sentence slogans. Churchill readied the British people for war, Roosevelt psyched the American people back to the banks during the Great Depression, and Emmeline Pankhurst got women the vote, using rhetorical forms, and I only slightly exaggerate.

We wear no mark; we belong to every class; we permeate every class of the community from the highest to the lowest; and so you see in the woman’s civil war the dear men of my country are discovering it is absolutely impossible to deal with it: you cannot locate it, and you cannot stop it.

Enumeration (highest to lowest), repetition and alliteration (we wear we belong we etc. etc.) irony (dear men) and so on. Auxesis and crescendo (the sequence of statements about class being ever bigger and bolder). You can’t stop a speech like this.

Ask not what you can do for your sentences, ask what your sentences can do for you. Rhetorical mastery equals compelling writing and speech making, period. Without this, framing and RCN training are nothing.

(Did I mention that exaggeration is a time honored rhetorial device?)

Race Class Narrative as a sea of good

Race Class Narrative is an approach to writing that involves contextualizing your message as a push-back against systemic racist (and classist) repression. It involves identifying the racism (often by identifying and naming dog whisles) and identifying the bad guy (usually the utterer of the dog whistle).

This whopping helping of “j’accuse” is sandwiched between layers of value statements, usually a broad one at the top, and a more speicfic one at the bottom. It is usually served with a side of ask, as in, the message doesn’t just say something, it tells you what to do next.

The best way to grok the RCN is to take one or two of the free and frequent training sessions provided by various organizations. It is worth your time.

Framing

This concept is near and dear to me, because of its role in the study of meaning generation and semiotics, a subfield of Anthropology (from my perspective) that I studied in graduate school. Years later, I saw framing emerge as a proposed method of making more effective messages, and I objected to the way the theory was being used, and misunderstood. This led to a major on line controversy with PZ Myers and me on one side, and Chris Mooney and a guy named Nesbit on the other.

The blogging network PZ and I wrote on worked together with the Bell Museum of the University of Minnesota to have a “steel cage death match” between those two guys and us two guys. It was a widely publicized and well attended public four way debate held in Ford Hall in Minneapolis with a follow-up drunken seminar at the Kit Kat Klub.

During the debate, I batted last, like Nature, and I’m afraid I might have surprised some people. Instead of giving a cogent and unbeatable anti-framing followup, I declared that I had changed my mind, and though Nisbet was totally wrong about everything he ever said, Mooney was mostly right, and using framing to make better messages could be a thing if done right. Which they weren’t quite doing yet.

That was decades ago, and since then framing has undergone a number of cycles of populatarity and refinement. The method comes to us today, in our community, in the form of Connections Lab, with George and Lisa Green and their crew. So now we have framing training, not just framing as an idea.

Pre-messaging, framing was an obscure linguist concept that had to do with how meaning is correctly generated in a recipient. All messages (aka utterances, aka meaning generation, aka acts of semiosis) have a frame. A message has to have a frame to be understood, and the frame, in its simplist and most obvious form, is often an agreement between message sender and message recipient on what the topic of conversation is. This agreement is usually subconscious and contextual. A common language, a common dialect, and a shared lexicon can be part of the frame. Things that seem outside language, but that provide context, can be part of the frame.

So, if I say, “I’m going on a fishing expedition” and I’m a prosecutor standing in front of the grand jury room wearing a nine thousand dollar Italian suit, you know I’m going to go in that room and ask questions of a witness that may or may not lead to an indictment of someobody, depending on what the answers are, and I dont’ know for sure what those answers will be. If I say “I’m going on a fishing expedition” and I’m wearing my fishing vest with the creel case and there are lures stuck to my hat and I’m about to climb into my Lunds 202 Pro V GL outboard docked on Leech Lake, you know my intent is to catch some walleye.

The suit/boat and other features of the context “key the frame” so the term “fishing expedition” is understood. The keying of frames is a way of shifting meaning, or playing around with ambiguities in meaning. You see examples of this all the time in humor. There is an example in the first few paragraphs of this thing you are reading, in reference to the political spectrum. See what I did there? I shifted the frame on you, and made you slip on a rhetorical banana.

We also see the power of framing in the mistakes we make. Framing is often from context, and can include auxiliary information. One day I left work and walked to the multi floor parking lot where I always parked on the third floor. I took the elevator to the third floor and walked directly to my blue Volvo 740. When I put the key in the door, it did not work. I then noticed that someone had switched the car seat in the back to a different brand, and I wondered why that would happen. I then noticed that the trash laying around on the floor and seats of the car was different trash than I usually had in the car, and wondered how that could happen. Eventually, it occurred to me that this was not my car, but only after several layers of framing — the parking lot, the third floor, the model of car, the color of car, all framing the inference that this was my car — the assumption that this is my car unraveled, and against a good deal of frame-induced inertia. Often, we most clearly see a frame when the frame is either broken, or somehow, it breaks us.

In framing a message, the point is to make the recipient receptive to your message in a positive way. So, if I’m wearing all black and I’m drinking a latte chai leaning against the counter in a grungy coffee shop and I say, “I’d like you to vote for Jane because she wants us to have great broadband” and you are a farmer in Freeborn County, Minnesota. You won’t give me the time of day and this “Jane” character can go to heck. If, on the other hand, I’m wearing my plaid farmer suit sitting on a tractor hooked up to a potato harvester, and I say “Vote for Jane, she wants us to have great broadband” you’ll like Jane because you want great broadband, but you’ll hear and accept my message because I’m already on your side. (Or at least, not a member of what to you is an unsavory counter culture.)

Framing is like laying down a road bed before you put down the pavement. It is like providing an excellent, entertaining, informative, likable guide on a safari. Good framing induces comfort. The people who get a better framed message will be comfortable with the message, will more deeply and accurately internalize the meaning. The reshaping of other people’s brain cells is a difficult and dangerous thing that can go wrong. How often do you tell someone something and they totally miss the point? Your intentional control of the framing that is going to happen anyway helps avoid that. How often do you tell someone something and they get it, but irrationally fail to agree with you because of discomfort in the way the message was sent and received? Or, the discomfort is simply in the mismatch between your message and what they see as reality?

An example of that last point because it is both key and not totally obvious: Assume that I want you to vote for a referendum to spend money on education. A framing analyst would instantly note that most Americans believe we live in a world of scarcity, so we can’t pay for things. Indeed, scarcity is a right wing frame that is used to scare people off of “liberal” ideas and to underscore the falsehood of “tax and spend” Democrats. Any referendum starts out as a firm “no” for a majority of voters because this scarcity frame is wildly successful.

A well framed message supporting spending on education may follow or be part of a message that demonstrates that we actually live in a society with plenty. This is not the same as the message that compares a school building with the cost of a smart bomb, which is bad framing because it links education with bombs or pits education against national defense. Nor is it like a frame that paints education as a superior thing to like over some other thing, which is bad framing because it reminds the recipient that we are all in the business of judging each other’s moral standing. Rather, it changes the mind of the recipient to be more comfortable with talking about spending money, without pushing the recipient away. If done right, it might even play on the message recipient’s sense of fairness.

Framing training like Connnections Lab does is not exclusively about framing, but about great messaging, with framing theory as a key guiding, er, framework. And, again, it is training your brain, not handing you a recipe card.

When you write a letter to the editor…

Rule number one is to write the damn letter.

Rule number two is to write your own letter. Don’t send in someone else’s letter, don’t write a letter for someone else. Yes, collaborate, yes, help with editing, yes, pass around bullet points that might be helpful. But do your own letter, put your own name on it.

Rule number three: Write your message in your own voice, and using your own approach. No one should look at your message and see the imprint of an organized entity, or a different writer.

When we look at messaging that was designed and promulgated by entities such as the Kochtupus (via Bradley Foundation, ALEC, Center of the American Experiment, etc) it is blindingly obvious that the letter writer (or speaker at the school board) is parroting a canned message. No matter how well that message was originally constructed, it is ruined by virtue of its assembly line manufacturing. This is a flaw in the current right wing strategy, a chink in their armor. We can do better, if we don’t produce assembly line messages.

Do use the messaging training we have access to. The Race Class Narrative Deli Sandwich is a great way of constructing messages, but if you follow the recipe and that’s all you do, you will have a Big Mac. If, on the other hand, you practice the RCN approach and internalize it, your own voice and your own approach will refine and become better. Then, writing messages in your own voice and using your own approach is made better by your RCN work. Instead of a Big Mac, you will have a luscious three-decker deli sandwich.

Understanding the point of framing will help you structure your messages and your logical arguments, and especially, it will help you recognize counter-productive framing in your own rhetoric. The framing approach is less recipe based than the RCN method, so it is more natural when applied. But remember, the word “framing” does not mean “tricking the audience” or even shaping the message. Framing is how we set up our messages so the context of interpretation is made (usually) more comfortable and acceptable by the target audience. It can also be used to make a message more clear and less ambiguous, so misfires are less frequent. It isn’t so much message shaping as it is message delivery and refinement.

Becoming a messaging expert, or let’s just say, improving your message, is not possible by taking a couple of introductory meetings with RCN trainers or a group like Connections. A colleague of mine started out working with framing and other messaging experts to develop a message for a particular organization. He would tell you that he very quickly improved in his understanding of how to put a message together. Then, he moved to a phase of being able to recognize badly framed messaging. Then he realized what he needed to do to refine the method more. In the middle of this process of development, he presented a draft of his message to a large audience, and there was not a dry eye in the house (in a good way, that was the intent).

Then, he went back and refined. And when I say “he” I mean a small group of about four individuals. This whole thing went on for three years. Sometime over the next year, the message will be deployed. It will be fantastic, and it will be so good because the team included framing experts.

That is not a terribly extreme case.

On the other hand, I’ve observed in workshops individuals trying out framing techniques, or RCN techniques, and going from being an average communicator as all humans naturally are to having a much better approach, and truly appreciating what is learned on the very first day. It can make a huge difference over the short term.

The mistake we don’t want to make is this: Hearing a single lecture on messaging by someone who read a book, or attending a single workshop, then believing it possible to pivot to your own group and guide a set of volunteers to develop excellent messaging. I promise that the best message creator in your group BEFORE that influx of a little training will still be the best message creator in your group afterwards, simply because prior experience and talent in writing is going to beat a three hour tour through RCN, Framing, or any messaging strategy, every time.

One more item: A mistake I see made all the time. Folks show up for training, but it is clear from what they are saying that they are not listening to the training and how it challenges what they are already thinking. They are not changing. They reinforce their bad habits. This is why we give tests in school. If you don’t learn, don’t change, you don’t do well on tests. It is very inadvisable for RCN or framing teachers to be hard on their clients and prove to them that they are not learning, that they have to get their heads out of their butts to really change. They need to be nice, they are glad you showed up, they figure you will eventually get it.

But I can be a jerk about it and lose absolutely nothing in the way of credentials or friends, because that is what my friends expect of me and that is what I am credentialed to do. I am an anthropologist, hear me whine. So I’m telling you: check in with yourself. Did you leave the training session thinking you had some stuff wrong, and thinking you know new stuff? If not, do it again, in a different frame of mind. As it were.

Your reading assignment

Pursuant to the matter of messaging, I hereby recommend a few items. These are not necessarily new, but they are current. Newness is not the key to success. One of the best references in how we communicate with words is well over 2,000 years old.

Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die by Chip Heath.

Mark Twain once observed, “A lie can get halfway around the world before the truth can even get its boots on.” His observation rings true: Urban legends, conspiracy theories, and bogus news stories circulate effortlessly. Meanwhile, people with important ideas—entrepreneurs, teachers, politicians, and journalists—struggle to make them “stick.”

In Made to Stick, Chip and Dan Heath reveal the anatomy of ideas that stick and explain ways to make ideas stickier, such as applying the human scale principle, using the Velcro Theory of Memory, and creating curiosity gaps. Along the way, we discover that sticky messages of all kinds—from the infamous “kidney theft ring” hoax to a coach’s lessons on sportsmanship to a vision for a new product at Sony—draw their power from the same six traits.

How To Go Viral and Reach Millions: Top Persuasion Secrets from Social Media Superstars, Jesus, Shakespeare, Oprah, and Even Donald Trump by Joe Romm*.

How To Go Viral And Reach Millions is the first book to reveal all the latest secrets for consistently generating viral online content—words, images, or videos that are seen and shared by hundreds of thousands and eventually even millions of people, something Romm and his colleagues in three different organizations achieve routinely.

The ALL NEW Don’t Think of an Elephant!: Know Your Values and Frame the Debate by George Lakoff.*

Ten years after writing the definitive, international bestselling book on political debate and messaging, George Lakoff returns with new strategies about how to frame today’s essential issues.

In this updated and expanded edition, Lakoff, urges progressives to go beyond the typical laundry list of facts, policies, and programs and present a clear moral vision to the country?one that is traditionally American and can become a guidepost for developing compassionate, effective policy that upholds citizens’ well-being and freedom. (NB: “All New” here does not mean all new now. It was all new a few years ago.)

*Most of these links are tied to my Amazon Associates account, so if you go there and buy the book I become wealthy. If there are a lot of you.