Audrey Pollnow
@AudreyPollnow
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Fertility. Meritocracy. Post-Liberal Pluralism. "a high-decoupling conservative scold." To correspond with me:
Joined July 2009
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Last Seen Profiles
the mistake is to think this is particular to Oxman. this is just how architecture is.
it combines the problems of interdisciplinary fields w the problems that beset all economically useless prestige professions.
1/n
Practically, it's not really a matter of forgetting a few punctuation marks (as I was led to believe). The cumulative effect of the volume of plagiarism and general disorganization of thought is that it's quite difficult to tell what Oxman wrote, let alone understood, at all.
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architecture views itself as a "master discipline" & so it views all other disciplines as being within its purview. sort of like how philosophy does. except that, unlike philosophy, the precondition to being an architect isn't "good at thinking" but "good at drawing"...
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if architects need to view themselves as masters of a million fields & discourses, which they actually can't master, there needs to be a lot of cut-and-pasting, hand-waving, etc.
so the correct way to view most bits of architectural writing is as a sort of prose poem...
9/n
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to be clear, no beef w architecture studying these things! but it just seems insane to think architecture—rather than, say, law, econ or politics—is uniquely well positioned to understand & address the problem of borders.
anyhow, back to plagiarism, etc.
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I remember a panel on borders, put on by an arch prof. She had invited some economist or law profs to participate.
some architecture students I spoke w thought it was so cool that she was *allowing* these profs to participate in "the conversation." Which was on borders.
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& some notes on prestige in economically useless fields:
one result of the economic uselessness of architecture—of the low pay, combined w a high sense of worth—is that architects are desperate for respect. which leads to brutal social hierarchies.
13/n
If society doesn’t actually value knowledge & beauty but subsidizes them in a weird, fetishistic way (bc we would feel guilty not doing so), these pursuits will become diseased.
Obsessed w social prestige bc that’s all they have.
Cf religion in Europe. & most museums!
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namely, if you're a serious scientist, political theorist, whatever, *why would you spend all your time talking to the architects?* one answer: you couldn't hack it doing the real thing.
the result: architecture thinks it is the center of all sorts of discourses. e.g.
5/n
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of course, to get into architecture school you also need to be good-enough at thinking, good-enough at math, etc.
so architecture is a club of ppl who are much better than average at drawing, & at least okay at a bunch of other stuff.
which brings us to
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to be clear, some people do real, rigorous, interesting theory & scholarship in architecture!
Robin Evans is amazing. Adolph Loos is also great. People whose opinions I trust tell me other people are doing great work. It's not like the whole thing is a joke.
However
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the interdisciplinary problems
on the one hand, lowest common denominator: there isn't a critical mass of architects w serious training in most of the "sub-field" (ie all other fields) for the discourse to be carried on in a serious way.
this exacerbates the other problem
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the standards about plagiarism are radically different in architecture from other fields. in part, bc there are lots of *legit* uses of borrowing in the thing that architects are actually good at—namely, making nice images—& so this carries over to academic work.
but also
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I think this article by
@robinhanson
is going to be a big deal. At least, it should be!
Alice's summary:
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the "norms" at the level of "what's considered acceptable" & "what's compatible w a lot of prestige" are just very low. at least along axes like "is this plagiarism?" and "does this make any sense?"
bc of economic/prestige situation, there's lots of rhetoric, positioning
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but this kind of thing is inevitable as long as arch remains the way it is. zero-sum, focused on the "creation" (ie, redistribution) of prestige, rather than creating beauty.
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& the papers they publish, the importance of being hip, in the know, of bringing the next big thing into the discipline (even if you only understand the next big thing in a hand-wavy way) is immense.
this is, of course, very sad, but we shouldn't judge them too harshly
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"Religion undermines the sense of mastery—the experience of earned and earn-able distinction—which is central to the identity of many American elites."
(a response to
@DouthatNYT
)
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the reason architects are assertive is that you have to be to get anything done.
but this also exacerbates the "plagiarism" situation. (which is really a LARPing at scholarship problem.)
you need to *admit ignorance* to learn new fields.
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the worst part of the Situation of Architecture isn't plagiarism—it's the generation of social hierarchies that are cruel, & that erode people's ability to love & do the thing in q.
(The same problem w conservatories, many acting programs, art school, humanities PhDs.)
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after all, it's basically all they have.
(I mean, you would hope that they had a love of beauty, and deep satisfaction in contemplating & creating it, but the discipline—and the fact that they can't all get great commissions—beats that out of most ppl.)
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& the cruelty can be so cruel.
bc the field is zero-sum—the product being sought is "prestige," ergo a limited resource—ppl push one another down brutally.
I've seen arch profs critique students' body language, accuse them of intending (or failing to intend) insane things
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an arch critic publicly accused a student of racism bc there should have been clouds in the drawing. (didn't explain why no clouds = racism.)
student was not allowed to reply to the charge of racism.
this kind of "punching down" by critics happens all the time.
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I've often joked about writing "ten books on architects" & here I am doing it on twitter. So I'll just continue w some vaguely related, but still interesting-to-me points.
two other common features of architects: assertive, attractive.
why? & what are the effects?
16/n
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2 theories about attractive:
1) cultivation: architects like beauty (that's why they do it) & as a result they care (more than average) about beauty in ppl.
& so young ppl considering architecture are more likely to be noticed, encouraged by arch profs (who are architects)
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the field (at least last time I checked) is obsessed w the concept of privilege, but has no sense that the discipline is incapable of functioning without it.
the most insane, though not the cruelest, instance of this that I recall:
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@AgnesCallard
Are you offended by Agnes' tweet? / Were the Athenians right to kill Socrates?
offended / kill Socrates!
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offended / let him go
519
not offended / kill S!
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not offended / let him go
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Humans hunted megaphauna to extinction everywhere except Africa, whence humans came
(African megaphauna had time to adapt to human threat)
Secularism hunts tradition to extrication everywhere except Europe, whence it came
(European trad had time to adapt to secular threat)
…
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2) values. beautiful ppl are more likely to buy into the idea that beauty is valuable than that beauty is vapid & stupid. & usually you won't dedicate your life to a design profession unless you care at least somewhat about beauty.
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some notes on rhetoric:
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In 1897 the Indiana House of Representatives passed a bill which would have designed pi as 3.2.
It nearly passed in the Senate, “but opinion changed when one senator observed that the General Assembly lacked the power to define mathematical truth.”
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@MelancholyYuga
would not surprise me if a *majority* of papers published in top architecture journals have the quality you describe. this is why, IMO:
the mistake is to think this is particular to Oxman. this is just how architecture is.
it combines the problems of interdisciplinary fields w the problems that beset all economically useless prestige professions.
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@AgnesCallard
@EveryDarkStar1
Aristotle would. (Something to be said in favor of Socrates!)
the most charitable interpretation of the results is that ppl believe themselves to be uniquely well-positioned to discover slavery is wrong, manumit slaves, etc.
less charitable interpretation is selfishness.
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@patio11
We need a name for this phenomenon.
It also explains why buildings are so ugly!
The way our buildings look was not really chosen by anybody, not even by architects. It just emerged. And that's why no one likes the way new buildings look
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If society doesn’t actually value knowledge & beauty but subsidizes them in a weird, fetishistic way (bc we would feel guilty not doing so), these pursuits will become diseased.
Obsessed w social prestige bc that’s all they have.
Cf religion in Europe. & most museums!
12/12
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Some fertility stats: a woman who wants 90%+ odds of having 2 kids should start trying to conceive by age 27. If prepared to use IVF she can wait until the ripe old age of 31. Most women who start trying at 43 will never give birth, even w/ IVF.
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The most beautiful part of the fertility decline: it's driven by a recognition that each child is sacred, has infinite worth.
Parents who see their own shortcomings as a person/parent are reluctant to accept being stretched thin in caring for these precious little ones.
1/n
it can be hard to get out of a low fertility equilibrium.
among other reasons, because parents want to raise *good* kids.
the cultural institutions & practices that make it possible to raise multiple children *well* are a resource, one that can dwindle when not maintained.
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Tom Ritter on why men (& consequently women) are doing badly:
“In retrospect, the most fateful cultural change in gender relations in the last generation was the decision to integrate women into every part of the military, including combat roles.”
Via radiopaper…
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One of the reasons the Church's teaching on contraception makes people uncomfortable is that they don’t feel free to abstain, but they also don’t want to describe this lack of freedom as coercion.
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What is the most important question you don’t know the answer to?
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weirdest thing for me about the whole plagiarism thing is that plagiarism is just not tempting if you're working on something you're interested in.
& why become an academic if you don't care?
it's so much work & other jobs pay better. what's in it for you?
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@default_friend
interviewed me!
note on transcript: turns out I use the word "like" a lot.
e.g., in describing the views of the pro-chastity Left:
“Look, this sexual culture, which is like allegedly a laissez faire sexual culture is, in fact, highly coercive.”
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Current setup doesn’t want academic freeloaders, so it 1) makes ppl publish a lot to get tenure & 2) socializes them into a status hierarchy which cares a lot about publishing.
& evidently many academics are publishing stuff that’s only value is instrumental-to-status.
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if watching someone undress/have sex is a form of sexual contact (as voyeurism laws suggest it is) &
if sexual contact requires ongoing consent, then:
it's wrong to watch films of ppl nude/having sex w/out those ppl's *ongoing consent*!
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If you could reduce trolling by 98%:
-existing conversations would improve
-you'd unlock new conversations that are currently impossible
This effect would compound over time, but by how much? For example,
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When I was a teenager, I thought it might be virtuous to suicide bomb the recently shriven.
Turns out I was wrong, and so is the consequentialism that motivated that nutty idea!
from my review of of Ryan Darr's _The Best Effect_ in
@firstthingsmag
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is there an audience for this? it would have very low production values.
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But it seems like a more fundamental problem—a problem for liberal arts, theater, fine arts, architecture—is that if something doesn’t have economic value, ppl who do it *need* social statues to compensate. And these insane social hierarchies emerge.
6/
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"Jane's poetry combines two things very rarely seen together: formal mastery and vitality."
@GeltnerJonathan
's initial thoughts on
@JcScharl
's _Ponds_
via
@RadiopaperHQ
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The current situation—in which academia is often *not* ordered to the pursuit of knowledge—stems from society’s ambivalence about whether learning is really worth doing for its own sake.
To be clear, it *is* worth doing, but what’s the right way to facilitate it?
1/n
weirdest thing for me about the whole plagiarism thing is that plagiarism is just not tempting if you're working on something you're interested in.
& why become an academic if you don't care?
it's so much work & other jobs pay better. what's in it for you?
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There’s some joke here about how when you share an Amazon account but don’t communicate properly you end up
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Is there *any reason* not to pass a law which bans mandatory auto-renewing memberships & subscriptions?
When auto-renew is mandatory, rather than opt-in, most of the value is that it gets disorganized ppl—or ppl in chaotic circumstances—to keep paying for what they don't want...
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For a book-lengthen treatment of this tweet, see Whose Woo? Which Irrationality?
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it can be hard to get out of a low fertility equilibrium.
among other reasons, because parents want to raise *good* kids.
the cultural institutions & practices that make it possible to raise multiple children *well* are a resource, one that can dwindle when not maintained.
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What *is* sex?
I won't watch this because it will embarrass me to see/hear myself. But you all should!
.
@AgnesCallard
& I will issue S4 of Minds Almost Meeting podcast one at a time. Here's the first one, with
@AudreyPollnow
on "What is Sex?".
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not trying to elevate parenthood as the alternative here:
if you want to raise children well, you need an account of the purpose-of-human life which is *not* merely "raise children well"
bc otherwise humans are just machines for making more humans
(So, go read some Pieper)
in other times/cultures, there was a temptation to go to unnecessary war, bc that's where ppl had a shot at glory
today, the temptation is to engage in unnecessary work, for the same reason
(would love to read a novel War & Peace style novel about this dynamic.)
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my first q for any account of sexual ethics is "how do you root the (extreme) importance of sexual consent in something about what sex is?"
doing this successfully is a prerequisite to being *considered* as a possible, legit approach to sexual ethics.
& most accounts fail.
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There are 2 real phenomena of unexplained, chronic illness, and this article describes one of them. (Which it’s important to watch out for!) But it would be wrong to infer that when someone is mysteriously sick—when they don’t have a diagnosis—they’re just making it up.
Morgan got off the feeding tube, but when her surgery was put off, she requested another one.
“So many people were asking ‘When is your surgery going to be?’ I figured if I didn’t eat, and I got the tube, they'd realize I was still sick.”
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People who read self-help books used to seem so pitiable to me; now I’m one of them.
They’ve helped me to become more effective, but there’s a lot to be said for being the sort of person whose sense of honor forbids you from reading self-help books.
& once you’ve profited…
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What movies are about a shifting center of gravity w/in a friend group? (Other than
@WhitStillman
's Metropolitan?)
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“Life in a recently built apartment is like a simulation that’s constantly glitching. Your towel bar looks like a towel bar, but it can’t hold the weight of a wet towel without falling out of the wall.”
@DavidSchaengold
on why new buildings are so bad.
"Nobody planned for our cities to turn out this way, nobody decided our apartments and houses should be the way they are, and nobody wants to take responsibility for what happened to them."
David Schaengold on the enshittification of our built environment:
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@AnikaFreeindeed
…most abortions involve poisoning the child, or killing her by crushing or cutting her body before she is removed. This kind of violence might be a legitimate form of self-defense against an assailant, but not against someone unintentionally endangering you.
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@stephmurrayyyy
Cure colic with this one weird trick: don’t cry for 3+ hours/day in front of your baby
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"One way to observe the effect of a work of architecture is to observe the behavior of the people who see it or enter it. And I believe the architecture of the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées was necessary for the Rite of Spring riot to occur."
"Nobody planned for our cities to turn out this way, nobody decided our apartments and houses should be the way they are, and nobody wants to take responsibility for what happened to them."
David Schaengold on the enshittification of our built environment:
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@SallyThomasNC
@JcScharl
Or you guys could just move to radiopaper now, which is mostly poets talking to one another…
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Doctors are not omniscient: the fact that we conduct medical research suggests that there are things which doctors still don’t understand fully. And there are lots of people with weird, undiagnosed chronic pain—many of whom don’t exacerbate their pain w a sick person identity.
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Something I wrote awhile ago about the moral degradation that NFP can occasion:
NFP is not bad; sometimes it’s the only way to have ethical sex.
But lots of licit things have associated moral dangers. & they’re best mitigated against by honesty.
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An anti-abortion arg in the Journal of Embarrassing Catholic Studies, possibly of interest to
@LeahLibresco
(at least, it quotes her Other Feminisms essay). Discusses cellists, Peter Singer, the ethics of location, sperm genocide, etc. Somewhat graphic.
Abortion should be Illegal
Trigger warning: I use some very graphic language here.
jecs.substack.com
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Great to see discussions of Dante starting in
@CatherineProj
reading groups and spilling out onto
@RadiopaperHQ
.
:: Rob Rogers :: "I’ve been revisiting the Divine Comedy for the first time in a few years (as part of a Catherine Project reading group), just finished up Inferno. A question struck me that our group didn’t have time to get into: does anyone have any t…"
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Who knows *a lot* about Chesterton’s Lepanto poem?
Specifically, what is going on with King Philip? Dwarves, potions, velvet — is this based on paintings, historical accounts, GKC’s imagination?
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Perhaps it's my haircut + my interest in fertility, but I've somehow managed to confuse twitter about what sort of ads to target me with...
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nice things about rooting sexual ethics in the unitive & procreative nature of sex is that it explains why sexual consent is so important in a way that relies on both of the really salient features of sex: it's an intimate thing to do & its how new ppl come to be.
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A lot of these ppl have been sick for years w/out diagnosis b/c ppl don't take MALS seriously.
So it's frustrating to read the article on
@bariweiss
's substack and to know that now ppl will hear "MALS" & think "oh, that hypochondriac disease?"
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trolls are like economic inhibitors—red tape, protectionist policies, etc—that impede economic growth.
only they're impeding growth in the scope & quality of conversation, of thinking with others.
So how do you defeat trolls, and do so at scale?
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to supporting family life. This view also sad bc what is the purpose of family life?
The solution is something outside work/family, which is worth doing for its own sake: not just producing something to produce more of itself (money or ppl).
SAHM polis, Arendt/Pieper style
the purpose of life can't just be the production of more life. (otherwise, what would the point of that be?)
it must be ordered to activities worth doing for their own sake: contemplation, worship, art, culture, politics (in Arendt's sense).
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Fertility asymmetries between men and women are a significant source of male sexual privilege. We all spend our 20s finding ourselves and then men can pursue childbearing at leisure while women need to hustle. This need-to-hustle gives men far too much power in romantic contexts.
Some fertility stats: a woman who wants 90%+ odds of having 2 kids should start trying to conceive by age 27. If prepared to use IVF she can wait until the ripe old age of 31. Most women who start trying at 43 will never give birth, even w/ IVF.
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In fact, people will often only believe that you were ever sick if you can get better:
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proposed change to Catholic marriage norms:
1) Marriages only take places in regularly scheduled Masses
2) ppl can do 1st 3 months of pre-Cana while single, which shortens engagement minimum to 3 months
3) 9 month engagement maximum
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is there an econ term for a good whose value is mostly about establishing status relative to others &/or being close to some ppl & far from others?
bc I fear a good chunk of the expense of parenting is this
which means paying parents to have kids may not increase fertility, bc
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Behold, my public notebook!
My goals:
-more conversations
-start more writing
-finish more writing
It's just a series of Radiopaper bulletins, which fits my requirements:
-easy to use & edit
-attractive
-others can comment w/out messing up my work
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So maybe you offer them lifetime stipends, contingent on living in a certain place, eating 5 meals a week with colleagues, spending a certain number of hrs on campus. This is a better solution.
There will be social pressure, not to publish but to be interesting.
4/n
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Against Alan Jacobs' defense of A Hidden Life (from
@thepoint
). Mostly an excuse to write about good vs bad hagiography & how the decision to bracket dogma leads to sexist (& other) stereotypes.
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Why is consent extra important in the case of sex?
3 possible answers: 1. it isn't, 2. freestanding spooky reasons, 3. something that's rooted in an account of what sex is.
First 2 answer are unacceptable. (
#2
is unacceptable bc implausible & bc insufficiently effective.) So
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great thread by
@DavidSchaengold
"It's not that the whole field is BS, nor is it that Oxman herself is BS—it's that the specific way Architecture uses STEM-adjacent stuff is BS
this is a good analogy for how non-architectural technical subjects often get used in Architecture. From
@s_r_tarnmoor
,
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Many MALS sufferers have surgery & stop feeling sick.
But while they're suffering, before or after diagnosis, they also need a narrative to live by. & our society doesn't offer any good ones to the chronically sick. You're "not sick" or you're a spoonie until a doctor fixes you.
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Would be to send PhDs down to younger grades before they work at college.
Eg, every elementary school & every middle school has 1 subject expert per subject, who rotates through the classes while home room teacher is present.
Post-phd you do this for 2-4 yr, then HS.
9/
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…are rude (why else would you slump, or zone out?) or that you’re lazy or indifferent to your work.
So if you’re in this weird, invisible world of actually being mysteriously sick, I can see why you’d identify as a spoonie b/c nobody else takes you seriously.
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Educational treatise:
Towards an incomplete, contaminated, ambitious education
notes on the ideal school
jecs.substack.com
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ppl have a right to not be watched having sex w/out their consent
even if someone agrees to be filmed (& viewed) that person should be able to change their mind later, rescinding the right of others to watch the film
we could inshrine this principle in the law
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And how are such people supposed to act? The most salubrious thing is to pretend to be well, as best you can.
Though of course if you do this well, your doctors may not really believe your symptoms are severe & if you don’t tell others you’re in pain they may assume that you…
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It’s striking how often great works come out of scenes: all those early 20th c math guys who *went to high school together”! Art in certain decades and cities in Italy.
The goal is to make your place one of these scenes
. & make it so ppl who want to devote themselves can.
5/n
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Effective altruism isn't just for utilitarians; it's for anyone who cares about saving lives on a large scale.
(Saving lives is obviously something which Christians should care about, though not the only thing.)
Also, if EA people are obnoxious, this isn't proof that EA is bad.
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This creates power dynamics in the heterosexual dating scene which affect everyone who participates, including those who never want children. The net effect is social standards that are higher (in terms of requiring that you be accommodating) for women. i.e. more power for men.
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When physicians don’t have a medical basis for recommending a practice—particularly if the practice is something that medicine could in principle understand, but hasn’t studied sufficiently—they often discourage the practice, disparaging claims that it work as “myth, not fact.”
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here's one possible route:
"The key mechanism... is that messages are not published until the counterparty replies or accepts your comment."
ie, every public conversation is one that all participants *want* to be having. & then this compounds
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You spend more time in HS bc every class has a PhD doing the lectures, though there’s also a specialist who does most of the grading and most of the more skill-based teaching.
Then, after that, you teach at college.
Kids would be better prepared, more appreciative.
10/
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