I’m still not writing every day and that’s not good. Do I remember anything that happened since I last wrote? I made a life-changing discovery a few days ago. Aldi now carries Irish bangers! Guess what I had for dinner that night? You are so smart; you knew it was bangers & mash. I’m having it again tonight. Maybe I’ll live on nothing but bangers & mash and poutine? I walked 5.5 miles on the trip to Aldi; that is not enough to work off the bangers, but I needed the exercise. And Aha! Now I remember my double idiot story or is that idiot² story. On Saturday after blogging, I went out for a walk. It had been raining but it had stopped. Before I left the house I glanced at my phone and saw it was 36º and dressed for that. I had no particular destination in mind, so I decided to do a lap around the reservoir. The problem was that I had checked the temperature but not the feels like. There was a gale blowing and I was freezing. It was particularly bad at the reservoir. I cut my walk short and kept away from the reservoir. Instead, I walked to Popeye’s and had a chicken sandwich for the first time in age. Don’t give me that look. Try the Popeye’s chicken sandwich, it’s amazing. I go for the spicy.
On Sunday I walked to Aldi. When I woke up in the morning, I went through the Google Assistant good morning routine. It told me that was 22º but felt like 12º. I knew it would warm up and it did. When I left it was once again 36º. This time was smart and dressed for 26º. Once again, I didn’t check the feels like temperature. The wind had died down and I was boiling. I had to strip off much of what I was wearing. Not checking the feels like was what made it Idiot².
Today I was less of an idiot. I went to the local supermarket for milk and Yukon gold potatoes, the best for making mash with, and remembered to bring lots of change. I had the exact 48¢ I needed. I’ve been building up change since the pandemic started. I need to start spending it down. It’s many hours later now. I had to make dinner then take part in Martin Swinger’s Birthday Celebration on Zoom. His widower Brian was the co-host who invited me, and the performer was Amy Kucharik. As My Gentle Readers should know, Martin and Amy are two of my favorite people. I had trouble phrasing that at first but decided that even after death Martin is a favorite person. No past tense needed.
I finished recording Gord’s Gold yesterday. Every week I think I put together a great show. This week I had some doubts. I did not play as many recent songs as usual, only two out of sixteen were from this year and the next newest was from 2019. When I recorded and listened to it, I realized that a show can have an edge even with older music. I played old songs by Billie Holiday, Mississippi John Hurt, and Dave Van Ronk. I found a reggae song by Cruton Bey about Malcolm X. I think the show delivered considerable Value Over Replacement DJ. That’s an analogue to the sports metric, Value Over Replacement Play (VORP). Got radio a replacement DJ would be a computerize playlist or the station manager’s friend who could jump in when the DJ got sick and there were no professionals available.
But how do I know that I delivered considerable VORP? That is the question that I think about often. Not just about being a DJ but everything. I’m not insecure. I do think I am better than a replacement DJ. Ron thought I was, he offered me the show. All the presenters that ask my opinions about artists thing so or they wouldn’t ask. That’s as objective as we can get about something as subjective as taste. You might hate the music I play, but enough people like it to give it value.
What brought all this on now is discussions in my baseball groups. The groups are divided into those that judge players by analysis and those that use the “eye test.” Many of the eye-testers, let’s call them Snellens (look up Snellen if you don’t know why) say things like, “People use WAR (a refinement of VORP) because they don’t trust their own judgment.” You know something? That sentiment is correct. We know how easy it is for people to fool themselves. People consistently think they are better at tasks than they really are. How do we know? There are some things we can measure and check what they say against what objectively happened. The famous Dunning-Kruger Effect is the cognitive bias whereby people with low ability at a task overestimate their ability. The first rule of Dunning-Kruger club is that you don’t know you are in Dunning-Kruger club. Anyone aware of these biases tries to find objective measures to anchor their judgment to. That is what distinguishes scientific thought. The Snellens fundamentally reject that world view. Their response when WAR agrees with their assessment is to say, “You don’t need WAR for that.” When it disagrees, they say, “That proves that WAR is nonsense.” There world view is rooted in the absolute certainty that their opinion is correct.
As you might expect the Snellens are disproportionately Trump supporters and climate deniers. This is not a conclusion I came to by pure reasoning. It doesn’t just make sense. I have checked the opinion of every vehement Snellen I have encountered. Many, perhaps most, I have no clue to their politics. But those that leave a political trail on their profiles are overwhelmingly on the far political right. In the years I have been studying this only 3 had progressive politics.
Liberalism is a core value for me, but rational empiricism is at the core of my core. One you say you know something through the eye test, you are putting outside the realm of rational discussion. What if the two eyes disagree? What if a third eye has a third opinion? You can hold those opinions, but they have no place in a discussion of the subject matter. Those are statements about yourself.
I blogged today, are you happy? Now to reward myself with a hot salty pretzel. Philosophy is great but food is food.
Wise Madness 