[00:00:00] Very Bad Wizards is a podcast with a philosopher, my dad and psychologist Dave Pizarro having an informal discussion about issues in science and ethics. Please note that the discussion contains bad words that I'm not allowed to say and knowing my dad some very inappropriate jokes. Life sucks, alright?

[00:00:18] Yeah. Period. Uh huh. Done deal. You got it? Got it. There's your lesson. Okay. Go enjoy it. Hey, no attention to that man behind the curtain. Are you? With no more brains than you have. Anybody can have a brain? You're a very bad man.

[00:01:03] I'm a very good man. Just a very bad wizard. Welcome to Very Bad Wizards. I'm Tamler Sommers from the University of Houston. Dave, I know you don't like to talk about politics, but are you getting the holy shit

[00:01:21] that Trump's gonna win again, vibe like I am these days? You know, like every liberal that I talk to? I don't know. It's like clockwork. I could have told you that this was gonna happen. Like I don't know what's changed in their mind.

[00:01:37] What actually has changed that makes liberals all of a sudden start fearing that Trump's gonna win? I think just because it was with the pandemic and whatever, it was such a shit show

[00:01:48] and Trump, he seemed like he was not confident about anything and it feels like he's hit his stride and then the media is just the liberal media, which is a real thing. Is being just so excruciatingly annoying about how they're covering him right now

[00:02:09] that it feels like everything is just playing into his hands right now. I think that's how that's the feeling I get. But we're riling ourselves up, like we're tweeting, oh shit, I get that feeling.

[00:02:23] It seems as if by talking that way, like then other people tweet it, then other people write news articles and I don't know that anything really has changed. I mean he's definitely in the betters markets. He's shot up like 20% in the last couple weeks. Look at you, quantitative.

[00:02:43] Well, gambling is the one thing that I respect. There's real numbers. Those are real numbers. By the way, you're right, I don't like talking about politics, but I will. I will indulge and I don't think I said I'm too bizarre for Cornell University because I never do.

[00:02:58] But the thought that Biden could win this by turning Trump voters is the most thick-headed thought anybody has ever had. It's like we have to assume that all of the Trump voters who voted last time and more are going to vote.

[00:03:11] The only way to win is by getting more people voting in the key states. But they're doing the exact opposite of that. Instead of doing something that might like excite people on the left, they are trying to win over like the Republican swing voters

[00:03:24] that just this just never going to happen. That's why I thought it should have been Bernie because they all already painting him as Bernie anyway. And Bernie actually excites people. Nobody gives like nobody's excited about Biden, except that he's not Trump. Not even Biden is excited about Biden.

[00:03:40] No. Yeah, yeah. I mean, the Democrats just don't generally seem very good at doing anything that requires mobilizing lots and lots of people. It's really it's it sucks that you have to root for them. It's like rooting for like, I remember there was some Red Sox team

[00:04:00] that was just bloated and shitty and like they and very unlikeable people. They were just alienating their fans. But you still had to root for them because they were the Red Sox. And it's like, you didn't want the Yankees. You did. I did. Yeah. Exactly.

[00:04:15] Yeah, to me, it's more like the Red Sox versus the Yankees and like whatever the penant. You hate both. I am indifferent to most baseball teams. You've got to love the Celtics team, though. The Celtics team is lovable and they are awesome.

[00:04:33] I will admit, I haven't been paying much attention to Disney ball. Other than the Lakers. But but sports and politics now, what else you got for me today? Yeah, we're just going to talk about dental procedures. Radio show. You like talking about sports. Yeah, sometimes I do.

[00:04:51] I have world fatigue. I have world fatigue. It's not even news fatigue. It's it's like maybe that's depression. Maybe it's just a. Tamler, if only I could live in a possible world and not in the actual world. Oh, nice.

[00:05:07] That's like a desperate segue so that we stop talking about what we're talking about. It was like a softball with like flags on it. OK, so today we're we're going to stop talking about politics and like the DNC

[00:05:22] and we're going to talk about in the second segment, teaching. This is something that we have people have requested that we do. And after we hated the paper that we were going to talk about paper shall not be named.

[00:05:37] Yeah, that we that we would do an episode on teaching and given that we've both just started the semester and it's also unusual circumstances for teaching right now. So so that's what we'll talk about in the second segment.

[00:05:51] In the first segment, we are going to talk about an essay that was suggested very recently. You can see how well prepared we were for this episode very recently by on Twitter by I didn't write it down. I don't know if he did.

[00:06:06] So thank you, anonymous person for suggesting this possible girls by Neil Sin Hababu, who I know and who I've met on a few times over the years at conferences, especially in New Orleans. I'm not even sure I've ever seen him outside of New Orleans,

[00:06:23] but I think I have at least once. It doesn't exist outside. He might not. So this is an early paper of his 2008 from that was published in the Pacific Philosophical Quarterly, which is a really good philosophy journal, Top Ten or right right around there.

[00:06:40] I was going to ask you, that's what I didn't know. Yeah, because my my reaction to this paper kind of matters in a few ways. But one of the things that would affect my reaction is how good is this journal? This is what I was not sure about.

[00:06:56] And I I texted you, but we decided to save it for the air, because like I just am still not sure how much of this is tongue in cheek and how much of this is real philosophy. If anything, I think that's like an interesting feature of the article

[00:07:09] is that it doesn't give the game away. Can you this will make you happy, but can can we pick up right there while I run and take a shot of bourbon to? Yes, go ahead. Do it.

[00:07:23] So Dave just I don't know if it's the paper, if it's the politics talk, but he just he just took like a couple of swigs of bourbon out of his angel envy bottle, which is not something you normally does. That's more my thing. So I rarely do it.

[00:07:37] It's been a stressful week. Fasten your seat belts listeners. Yeah, so so yeah, tell me serious serious philosophy. One of the interesting things about the paper is that at times it seems like it's written to make a real contribution to the,

[00:07:54] you know, possible worlds, counterfactual modal realism literature, which we'll talk about in a second. And so like I don't know, I honestly don't know. I can see it making an actual contribution. But let's so let's talk about what it is because then my my doubts

[00:08:11] about the goals of this paper might become a little bit more clear because if you wanted to make a contribution to the literature on modal realism, would this be the paper that you write? Let's say what modal realism is. Yes, that's right.

[00:08:27] And I need to preface this by I am not a metaphysician. I'm going to give my sense of what's going on here. So we say things like it's possible that I only have one dog instead of two or like counterfactuals.

[00:08:42] I will say if I hadn't taken a walk with Charlie this night nine years ago, then we wouldn't have Omar as a dog because Omar followed me and Charlie home that night. And that's true. Like it's definitely true.

[00:08:58] I think that if I hadn't gone for a walk with Charlie that night, that we would, Omar would not be our dog. And so then the question is what makes that true? Or what makes it possible that instead of having two dogs,

[00:09:12] I have a dog and a cat and not Omar who will immediately kill a cat that came into our house. And so the one answer to this question is that there is a possible world in which I didn't take Charlie for a walk that night.

[00:09:29] And we don't have Omar as a dog. That's one way of making sense. We're just, you know, it's possible that I have a dog and a cat instead of two dogs. Is there a possible world where I have a dog and a cat

[00:09:42] at this point in my life rather than two dogs? That's how we make sense of saying it's true that that's possible. And so what Lewis did is he posited that these possible worlds are real, like that they exist in some sense and what sense I think he,

[00:10:02] but in a pretty real sense. And so that's what possible worlds are. Now, what Nielsen Hababu does here is he says, I'm a lonely young philosopher. I think he was a grad student when he wrote this. I'm a lonely philosopher.

[00:10:18] I right now don't have a girlfriend and it doesn't seem like I'm going to get a girlfriend in my actual surroundings at this point. But there is a the perfect girl out there in the possible world universe.

[00:10:33] And so he explores what it would mean to have a relationship with a possible girlfriend. Can I just say I think this is the loneliest paper in philosophy. And and there and when we get to there's a particular sentence that is the loneliest sentence I've ever read.

[00:10:50] I mean, that's a big statement, though. It's it's I don't think a lot of philosophy is very long. There are a lot of philosophers who are lonely. I just have never felt it the way I felt reading his paper. I felt his loneliness.

[00:11:05] Well, there's something I mean, this is, I think, intentional on his part that there is something almost poignant and desolate about just entertaining this idea, just sitting down to write this idea. I want to say two things before I actually get into

[00:11:24] like some of the more lighthearted things I'm going to say. One is that I actually really like this paper, Sadness Aside. And two, I learned more about modal realism by reading this paper than I had like you.

[00:11:37] I it's always tossed around and I had some notion of it, but I'd never dug into it too much. So I actually think this paper worth reading as an introduction to modal realism way better probably than the Lewis article that you were considering. So I like like you.

[00:11:55] I probably I went to Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. I tried to look at but it just gets so technical so quickly because it involves these like logics, these different kinds of logics that can deal with modal sentences.

[00:12:07] But whereas this it flashes it out in a way that's poignant, but also I it's the only thing that could get us to read to do this. There was one thing that I was going to say about modal realism that I in my reading whatever Wikipedia or Stanford,

[00:12:22] I made me understand the idea a little bit more. And that was paraphrasing, I guess, what the way Lewis describes it, that just like set theory is an abstract concept in mathematics that allows for one to play within the logical space of the system that you're using.

[00:12:39] So for him, possible worlds are this way to deal with possible and necessary things in like the given world. Then he takes it further like like Tamela, you're saying to pause it that maybe this is a kind of realism.

[00:12:53] And the thing that I read was when pressed on why you would ever think that all possible worlds are real, he said, like, well, what reason do we have not to? And it would be true.

[00:13:05] There is just by stipulation, there is no way we could know anything about these. It's not like sci-fi where somebody in the multiverse pops into another dimension and says hi. Yeah, right. And he says famously that the way people have objected to it

[00:13:20] is to respond to him with a incredulous stare, in other words, that it's just so against common sense. And so just to build up quickly, and then we'll go to his paper, the sort of intuitive appeal of just thinking about this.

[00:13:36] You know, like I'm sure you and I have thought about like, what if we didn't do this podcast? Like what if you had just said no? Or what if we hadn't met? And so I never thought to ask you at like,

[00:13:47] how would our lives be different right now? One way of thinking about this, I think this is it's very much like the Ted Chang story we did. Exactly. Yeah. That like is to think of this world where that happened. Just to think and to entertain that question,

[00:14:03] if you and I are over drinks, like what would our lives be like? Would we be like world famous researchers or would it be just like bitter academics, like complaining about cancel culture? Like who knows? But just to ask that question is to ask a question about

[00:14:19] what is the possible world where, you know, what are the possible worlds where that didn't happen? Also, I guess importantly, there are necessary truths that can't vary across possible worlds. So these are like, am I am I right in this? Yes. Yeah.

[00:14:33] Like a bachelor can't be a married male in some world. Like that's just it doesn't make sense or like P and not P or whatever. That example is always a little weird because, you know, somebody who's like not married but has lived with his girlfriend for.

[00:14:46] I know the Pope, the Pope is the vote of that. Yeah, but right. But like, but logical, there are things that are just logically necessary. So so there are impossible worlds. And then there are things that might be possible or not. It depends how you think about them.

[00:15:01] Like what if I had been a girl? Right. And if that's possible, then I am in the pool of people that could have fallen in love with Neil. So the general idea is and again, he does this with a totally straight face.

[00:15:17] Like I'm a lonely philosopher and I am not like I would like a girlfriend. And just like you could have a relationship, like some sort of internet relationship with somebody in Australia, even though you're not going to go to Australia,

[00:15:33] he could think of this perfect, perfect girl for him. And he says girl, like this is one of the things and he calls himself a boy. I actually kind of like that, you know?

[00:15:44] And I like, I don't know like what now how that would how that would fly. Yeah, it's if you just think of it as a pun on possible worlds or whatever that pun is the right word, then fine.

[00:15:57] And then he calls himself a boy at least puts him on the same footing and he's not talking about a man and a girl. That would be a little bit. So he starts, he's like, OK, this is great.

[00:16:07] I can have this girlfriend who not only is she loves me and I love her like we're a perfect match. But there's going to be all these other guys who are exactly like me, except that, you know, a butterfly flap this wing in a different way

[00:16:23] or something like that. And he wants a monogamous relationship. So the way he gets around to that, the way he gets around this is he says I need to be the only one. I want to have I want her to love me and only me.

[00:16:38] She needs to have an amazingly intricate desire. She wants the boy from a world that is exactly like mine down to the subatomic particle on Lewis's functionalism. It wouldn't be right to attribute such a complex desire to her

[00:16:54] unless she engages in some kind of activity that makes it clear that her desire has exactly this content. It might take a long time for her to finish the activity, but that can be provided provided for perhaps she's immortal with eternally youthful beauty spending each day singing out

[00:17:09] every fact about my world that differs from hers. Some of the facts are about me, but many other facts, a vast majority of other facts are also included. So she sings about all the different ways that that that his world and hers are different.

[00:17:26] And the functionalism, I guess, is she doesn't really have that desire unless she's demonstrating in some way that she has that desire. So this is the way. So now this possible girl is immortal, eternally youthful, and she spends almost all of her time,

[00:17:42] I guess, when she's not writing letters to Neil, just singing about how the differences between her world and Neil's exact work. And can I just say here something that I know always was difficult for me as a non philosopher and as somebody

[00:18:01] who's like a psychologist and thinks about empirical reality? That possible worlds really is logical because I remember thinking, what do you mean possible? Like it's impossible for a human being to live eternally. So like there are empirical impossibilities that are contingent

[00:18:16] on like the physical world in which we live. It really matters that that this is possible only in the logical way. And so you can have an immortal woman singing facts about the world. Yeah, I mean, that's probably controversial.

[00:18:30] And so like here's an example of is this possible where he says, like, you know, don't be jealous of me. There's a possible girl out there for you. And in fact, if you will only be satisfied by the love of a talking donkey,

[00:18:46] you might be depressed because no actual talking donkeys exist. But you can rest assured that there's a possible donkey who is bringing out the differences between his world and you. Like, is that possible, though? Like that a donkey, like even logically, I don't.

[00:19:02] This is the source of eternal arguments between Nicky and me about what you mean by like conceptual possibility. You know, on the one hand, like there is this way of thinking of logical possibilities where there is nothing within the statement that's contradictory logically to say

[00:19:19] that there is a talking donkey. You can imagine a fantasy writer saying in this world are talking donkeys and boom, it's a conceptual possibility. The inflation of that multiverse is hard to fathom because but but you know, I mean, it's a question.

[00:19:35] This is what I wrote my first paper on like just because you can say it and you don't immediately see like a logical contradiction in saying it. Does that make it logically possible? Because, you know, it could be that there's something about donkeys

[00:19:49] if you're still really a donkey that they can't talk. This. Yeah, exactly. That's it could be that the concept donkey because we have applied that very specific concept to the animals that we know. It could be that that is just not capable of being true.

[00:20:05] And if there were something that looked like a donkey and talked, it would cease to be a donkey, therefore being a logical impossibility. And yeah, that's exactly exactly the problem I have with it. I don't know. I don't know. But but he assumes yes.

[00:20:17] And and and like taking it seriously. Like we don't need to get hung up on this. Yeah, there is one girl out there who actually wants exactly him and he has to find out which one that is and he has a method.

[00:20:31] So yeah, now I don't want to get distracted, but now I'm thinking of possible dogs and and the various possibilities that I could have. It's possible that a dog looks exactly like a cat and meows and purrs and eats cat food

[00:20:47] and like sticks its like paw at my ass. Now you're just getting into desirable world. Even like actual world, but just like I was lonely. Yeah. So what are some of the other things that he considers?

[00:21:06] Oh, so if she's immortal and doing that, how is she supposed to find? How is he supposed to know that this is her because he's mortal? Neil is mortal. And so he says something that to end up with only one girl from the ring,

[00:21:22] I can stipulate that the girl I want is the one from the world that is picked out by the set of sentences that would come first. If all of these sets were put in alphabetical order, I will call this the alphabetical stipulation. I honestly, I don't get that.

[00:21:36] Do you? I got it when I was reading it. So he's basically saying I can have a stop rule. I don't need is that there are a ton of possible worlds out there that have all of the necessary stipulations for that girl to love

[00:21:54] exactly him and that are mutated in other ways. However, you define infinity, there is a girl out there who likes exactly Neil down to the subatomic particles, but that differs in like, you know, we call burritos something else.

[00:22:10] So you have now like a very large set of girls who like exactly Neil. And his criteria was just that a girl like exactly Neil. So now he says, what do I do? He says, well, imagine that those worlds are described exhaustively in one long sentence.

[00:22:26] Let's organize those by alphabetical order. Now the first one on that list that contains a girl that loves me down to my subatomic particle, that will be the one I pick problem solved. So the idea is, but there are these other girls out there, too,

[00:22:41] that if he had just chosen like back of the alphabet, he would have ended up with a different one that was still exactly the same as this one, except that she's reciting them backwards. That's right. OK. See, I tell you, I learned a lot about.

[00:22:56] Yeah, no, this is you might be in the wrong field. That's right. But then there's a question of is this really? Is this really satisfying? Even if you are a lonely philosopher who is with limited contact to actual girls,

[00:23:13] you know, philosophy is a gender imbalance that is very well known. So is this going to be in any way satisfying for you? And he says, while relationships with me with merely possible people are unusual, it's sort of understating. Don't don't like fetish shame him.

[00:23:37] I know, but I would agree that they're unusual. King shame, I meant. King shame, yeah, exactly. They're more continuous with common practice than they might seem. Prevailing attitudes towards actual and possible people differ mainly because of the prevailing opinion that actual people are only real people.

[00:23:53] Reality, not actuality, does the work. If we become convinced that possible people are real, too, we shouldn't regard them differently from how we regard far away actual people. I'm interested in real girls. And if Lewis convinces me that some non-actual ones like me,

[00:24:10] I'm going to get excited about them. This is this is a perfect example of the paragraph that like, I don't know. Like, is this supposed to be a reductive, an absurdum of the Lewis thing? Or is it a cry for help? Is it is it real?

[00:24:25] Is it like, look, I think that this that I'm going to get excited about this possible girl because it's just like someone in Australia. So the way I read it is, yeah, just like someone in Australia. Exactly. It's just like that.

[00:24:39] Do you think that he is writing this with a straight face? Yeah. You know, when you read that paragraph, are we supposed to take that as, look, this is not that different from you and your pen pal or whatever? Because people still have pen pals.

[00:24:59] I hadn't even heard that term in since like 1990. It's like Charlie reading like a Charlie Brown. I, as I read this, I was convinced that it was tongue in cheek. Then I became convinced that it was tongue in cheek,

[00:25:15] but the philosophy was real, like all of the philosophical things he was arguing were real, but the girlfriend part was tongue in cheek. And now I'm kind of convinced that he at the like his journey is that by the end of this paper,

[00:25:29] he actually takes some comfort in having a possible girlfriend. So he's saying about one of the things that Louis stipulates is that these worlds cannot causally interact with each other, hence the puzzle for Neil, I'm just going to say Neil, because how can you have a relationship

[00:25:44] with something you don't causally interact with? So so he writes that. What page is this? This is at the bottom of page 257, is that you can actually interact by getting love letters. But how can you get love letters

[00:25:57] if you can't causally interact with people in the other world? Well, simple. The way you do this is to include an extra stipulation when you choose your possible girlfriend. Stipulate that you want a girl who will write to you

[00:26:07] exactly those words which you write in a particular notebook. And this is the sentence following that I felt like despair for him. Then when you want to hear from her, use the notebook to write the words that you want to hear from her.

[00:26:21] And I just had this picture of like, man, it's one thing to like to tell people that you have a girlfriend in Canada over the summer. But it's another thing to use your metaphysics to satisfy your desire to be with somebody

[00:26:33] by actually writing out the words that you want her to tell you. And I would put, let's say, 10 bucks if you ever see Neil in New Orleans again, ask him if he ever wrote a letter from the possible girl to him. Right.

[00:26:45] That will be the criteria as to like how seriously he took it. And I'll put 20 bucks right now, like Chris Cleans. That he did. On that he did. I'm going to say he didn't, but I'm not like in any way confident that I'm going to win that.

[00:27:00] There's a couple of things and then I want to like, I think I have my favorite sentence that I want to read. But there's one might also wonder whether a transworld relationship without the possibility of causal interaction can count as love. One might wonder that. Yes.

[00:27:15] While most loving relationships involve causal interaction, I love it's I love things like that. Well, most love will involve causal interaction. It's hard to see why this is a necessary condition of love. If I'm intricate enough in setting up my stipulations,

[00:27:31] I can find someone with a whole range of endearing, noble and attractive features that would cause me to fall in love. Lewis's view allows that I can have attitude towards merely possible individuals and that possible individuals can have similar attitudes towards me.

[00:27:45] So here that doesn't make me believe that it is hard to see why this is a necessary condition of love. The fact that he's intricate enough in setting up stipulations and just describe it. So it's like somebody who it's like the like was those 80s robot

[00:28:02] movies where they create like this robot or whatever. And then the question is, do you really love this robot that you've created? But it's even more questionable than that regarding love. What in that you don't even get to like hang out with the robot. Yeah, right.

[00:28:17] Like and you have created this like you've created this person. It is the ultimate. It's I think he's getting catfished by a possible girl. I think so too. That's a great. That's a that's a problem. There's definitely a possible world where he's getting catfished.

[00:28:34] But to the to the question of whether or not it's possible to have a relationship with someone you interact with in a non-causal way. Or is it love? I guess it does it count as love? Is it love? OK, does it count as love?

[00:28:47] I think it might for not not for reasons having to do with modal realism, but reasons having to do with identity. And I think that part of what interested me in that statement was the fact that I think I know, say my girlfriend well,

[00:29:06] and I think that the person whom I know well is that person. So I label her Nikki and Nikki refers to the person of whom I know all these facts. Some of those facts are going to be wrong. Now, you could say that that I don't love Nikki,

[00:29:24] the actual physical thing, because I actually have in my mind an idea of somebody else and I'm not loving the person that I actually think. But I'm willing to say that no, I in fact love the person who I thought was Nikki,

[00:29:37] but has these differences that don't matter to me. But there are, you know, or it could be like something serious, like a big lie about her past. And so if I'm allowed to like people who I don't know,

[00:29:49] to love people whom I don't know at all, like the. But you causally interact with her? That but that's a different of yes, that's that's. But this is a question about whether without the possibility of causal interaction. OK, so this gets me to what you said about Australia.

[00:30:03] Like, suppose you do develop an actual suppose you get catfished by somebody in East Asia and you say that you fall in love with them. Yeah. You never actually interacted with anybody. It would be more like Columbia or something. But yeah.

[00:30:23] Could you say that you fell in love with that person? Yeah. So that's a good example. I was actually thinking of like we just did Brothers Karamazov, Grushenka. Oh, right. You did fall in love with Grushenka. That's right. I kind of fell in love with Grushenka.

[00:30:39] Is it and there's definitely no causal interaction. But the catfish example works too because this person isn't real. Like, you know, if I was being catfished, it would be some guy from Columbia that was fucking with me. So or for whatever. But like so that and then.

[00:30:57] Yeah. So then the question is, can I love what I think is this person? Yeah, maybe there's a way in which you can. Right. I guess what I'm saying with both of my examples is you can love the idea

[00:31:08] of somebody without that person actually existing and maybe without ever causally interacting with that person like you haven't causally interacted with Grushenka, which is a better example for the causal interaction. Yeah. Or but I think it's fine with the catfish example because that person doesn't exist.

[00:31:22] Right. That doesn't mean so they don't exist to interact. They don't exist in the way I can I can see. That's right. Yeah. Here is my deep quiet. This is the last real question I have and it's my one and only objection

[00:31:34] if I'm taking this whole argument seriously. And that is in the last sentence, which I'll read. This is what I was referring to earlier. Last paragraph says, however, I will confess that when I first wrote this paper, the arguments in it irrationally cause me to accept modal realism,

[00:31:50] albeit in what Lewis calls a compartmentalized way. When engaging in philosophical reflection on modality, I always rejected Lewis's modal realism. But there were times when I wasn't thinking about philosophy and I started to feel lonely, then I thought of my possible girlfriend and smiled at the

[00:32:05] thought of someone out there who loved me and desired to be loved by me. In quick succession, I realized that she knew I was thinking of her. After all, she knew every temporal part of me down to a micro physical description.

[00:32:15] She knew everything I was saying and doing. I felt more motivated to act like a worthy man. My posture straightened. I came to believe that she was happy about my writing this paper. So I wrote more of it. That part, when it comes to the philosophy of it,

[00:32:30] how is that not causally interacting with somebody in a possible world? Like that possible world individual caused a real change in your neurons. In his posture. Yeah. Right. And his ideas or whatever, like all the things that directly influenced him.

[00:32:47] And if it couldn't causally influence him, then he couldn't write this. So how does he get out of that? Well, I don't know how serious that is. Right? Like just thinking about possibilities can change our behavior in the actual world. That doesn't make it so.

[00:33:03] I guess you could say they do causally interact with us in that sense. They just can't physically interact with us. They can't. Yeah. I mean, it is weird though, like because I think just thinking about possibilities or counterfactuals affects us in the actual world all the time.

[00:33:22] So like you might think about like, what if I had asked that girl out in high school and that makes you ask the person out that you've been too scared to do it or something like that? Then of course, that possible world interacted with you

[00:33:35] because it was you that's thinking about it. But maybe the idea is it's still just Neil thinking about this girl. It's not that that girl causally interacted with him. This is all coming from his head. And so if there are no possible worlds, the same thing would be,

[00:33:50] you know, it would still be true that he did all those things. I think that what I'm trying maybe to the objection that I'm trying to formulate is that aside from in an abstract way, talking about possible worlds,

[00:34:04] he has singlehandedly picked out one individual from all possible worlds and is thinking of her in a way that I feel but I can't defend because I don't know, but is different from just saying people in possible worlds or possible worlds in general, I don't know.

[00:34:20] I don't know what he would say about that. Maybe maybe you're right. Well, here's what I think he would say because so if you if you continue from what you just wrote, he says from a functionalist perspective, it would have been reasonable to attribute

[00:34:31] a belief to me, the belief that someone merely possible but real who loved me, was aware of what I was doing. And so in allowing for merely possible individuals who are as real as me, this belief presupposed modal realism and marked me as someone who had

[00:34:45] been seduced to Lewis's theory. That's a nice way to end the paper. So this is like the functionalist thing that he talked about earlier, like that's why she had to sing to attribute a desire for Neil's actual,

[00:34:58] you know, the world to be exactly like the world Neil lived in. So here it's like if I am doing these things and if I am motivated to act like a more worthy man and stand up straighter and and write this paper,

[00:35:12] then that must mean I actually believe it. There's a lot in that last couple sentences and and tossing in functionalism at the last moment to sort of save the possible being. No, I don't think he's doing that. It's been there throughout.

[00:35:25] Like that's why she was singing in the first place is because of the functional notion of belief and desire that the functionalism there was playing a role for him to pick out an individual. But now to say that because he's acting

[00:35:38] it's it's functionalism serving a different purpose in this last sentence. It's that of of saying, well, I might as well call her real because I believe that for a moment I believe that she was real.

[00:35:50] Yeah. And I must think Lewis's theory is true, even though I always thought it was ridiculous. Right. So yeah, I guess he could be saying that. So so push comes to shove. He could say, well, by all evidence, I believe.

[00:36:03] Even if I say I don't even if I say I don't, I'm acting like I do. But of course, all that presupposes that he actually does feel less lonely and does stand up straight or because of it. And maybe he does.

[00:36:15] And then I like is that a plausible account of belief or desire? Like, I kind of like those accounts in general. You know, this is like why I accused you of not really believing transporters are murder machines is because you watch Star Trek and you don't

[00:36:27] get really upset when they. Right. Right. And and that probably illustrates why like my yeah, my view of beliefs is just not functional on a functional perspective. On a functionalist perspective, I am not a functional at all. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I even in that moment.

[00:36:47] So so here's what we'll have to what we might be forced to believe if we take this at face value that Neil takes as true functionalism, modal realism, that this girl exists and that this existing girl has led to him being satisfied in a relationship with her.

[00:37:11] All of those, if you take it face value, sounds sound crazy. But he walked us through it and I must admit like this one from from a first segment to a main segment in my life. Like we've been talking about this for over an hour, I think, right?

[00:37:26] Or almost, yeah. Almost an hour. Let me just to extend it one further. Just this is the funniest paragraph in the whole paper to me. He says, this is kind of at the end where he's considering objections.

[00:37:41] There is one more issue to consider with luck at some point. I'll find an actual girlfriend and I hope he has since I don't want to be unfaithful. I'll have to break up with my possible girlfriend if I want to enter into an

[00:37:53] actual relationship, one might criticize me for this. Nobody's going to criticize this, nobody to criticize him for being unfaithful to his possible girlfriend. But OK, one might criticize me for this. My possible girlfriend is spending eons of her life singing about me and my world.

[00:38:11] Isn't it heartless to break up with someone who has invested so much in the relationship? This is not as big a problem as it seems. You know what, I just created a possible world in which there is a person who is referred to by philosophers as one

[00:38:28] and who has these fake criticisms of their paper that are so unreasonable. But this person exists with a variety of like ridiculous beliefs about the world. One might say I am not a. Exactly, like that's only in possible worlds that somebody would make this.

[00:38:44] I love though, this is not as big a problem as it seems. And I don't even remember what the reply was, but I did put that down. Something like she knew this was going to happen.

[00:38:53] Yeah, what he basically says is it would be part of her song that we broke up right because that is part of it. This is this is a candidate for also the one of the loneliest statements, but actual girls are mysterious to me in many

[00:39:07] ways and there's no reason why possible girls would be any different. Yes, it's true. Well, yeah, it didn't go the way we might have thought it was going to go. No, I like this paper. And to be like also

[00:39:22] we didn't cover all of the things that he covers. Like he goes into impossible girls and he goes, it's more detailed. But it's a short paper and I think it's well written. More philosophy papers should be like this. We have been seduced by this paper.

[00:39:34] We were seduced by Neil. Neil, I knew you were creepy enough to seduce me. And guess what? You did it. I know we're not exactly what you're looking for. You were looking for a possible girl and you have actual older guys. But

[00:39:51] well, we'll be back to talk about teaching if we have any time left, which you probably don't. Today's episode is brought to you by one of our favorite sponsors, the Great Courses Plus. David, as you know, things are busy these days, but somehow I still find a way

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[00:43:47] Welcome back to Very Bad Wizards. This is the time in the podcast where we like to take a moment to thank each and every one of our listeners, especially those who have chosen to engage with us in any of the ways that you can.

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[00:47:59] or reread it if you haven't in a while. That's right. I just want to actually chime in and say how proud I am of this series. Like we basically spent our summer reading and discussing and Tamler editing.

[00:48:12] But I think it came out like just it was just a pleasure to do. And I think that that you'll notice how much fun we were having. And I got to say pretty damn insightful. I don't know. Is that bragging? I think it would count that umbrella.

[00:48:30] But hey, we're proud of it. And and Dave also did a pretty dope beat. Yeah, I did that for just for that. Yeah, so, you know, I wanted to give a shout out to Tina Sipple.

[00:48:45] She just is one of the listeners who has been with us since the very, very beginning and continues to be with us day one. We just there's something that makes me deeply happy about knowing that

[00:48:59] somebody has been listening to us for that long, because I just assumed people would trail off, they got sick of us and we'd pick up new listeners. But but shout out to Tina Sipple. Absolutely. OK, so let's get back to the episode. It's OK now.

[00:49:17] What we're going to do is our main topic for today is talk about teaching. It's something that as Tamler said in the beginning, we've been meaning to talk about for a long time. And I'll say part of the reason, at least me, like part of the reason

[00:49:28] I've resisted is because my thoughts on teaching are not like they're not organized in the way that, you know, like a topic, another topic would be. Like, I don't have a list of pedagogical principles I buy and buy. But Tamler and I just especially now,

[00:49:43] perhaps in the time of covid, we wanted to talk about teaching and and partially inspired by Paul Bloom's tweet where he gives 12 points of teaching advice. Tamler, I don't think I'd ever be respected enough for people to read my teaching advice, but fuck it.

[00:50:00] Yeah, I mean, if they're listening, they're still listening now, then they're listening to your advice or at least reflections on teaching. So yeah, the covid thing is interesting because for me, I was really sad about having to move online or mostly online.

[00:50:19] I'm not exactly sure how this semester is going to go. We're officially in a kind of a hybrid model, but I don't know if that's actually going to work out for the courses I'm teaching.

[00:50:29] But the reason I was sad for all, you know, like setting aside everything else that covid is fucked up like P 190,000 people dying or really what it was all about. It's like my like, like I've always liked teaching,

[00:50:42] but like over the last five years, I've come to love it. And I felt like I was hitting my stride over the last few years and had just a bunch of great classes and all of them or at least most of them

[00:50:56] I at least I thought were predicated on us being in person. And so, you know, to now have to move to this model was unfortunate. And, you know, one of the two or three greatest tragedies of, you know, the global pandemic. You're basically covid cock blocker teaching.

[00:51:16] Exactly. And that's one of the worst things about it. So so yeah, I want to talk I want to talk about it. I actually have at least we're in our second week. I have found it's actually better than I thought the online version.

[00:51:31] I know you just haven't really gotten going yet. Yeah, it's our it's our first week and we haven't even had our first class meeting. We should say that from the outset, like we're teaching very different things.

[00:51:41] So the things we say about how to teach, I think, are going to be really a product of that. So I'm teaching a big intro psychology lecture course like 101, which I've been teaching mainly for the last nine years. So actually, my all of the things that

[00:51:56] Tamler is going to say that he loves about teaching seminars. I've had like just less of that and bummed out because this class is so big. Right now it's like over 900 people that they give me a teaching relief for for it. Yeah, you barely ever teach.

[00:52:14] But I know I teach but just, you know, so preparing for those big lectures, it's already impersonal for me in a way that didn't I didn't feel cock blocked as much as you, but all sorts of other shit has changed.

[00:52:28] We were talking about whether we want to give advice and stuff, and I think part of the problem with that is people have such different circumstances like even you and I, both of us have really good teaching loads.

[00:52:40] I don't teach like one class a year like you do. But I coach three seminars. So so that's how I make up for it. But but it's not it's not the same as designing and teaching my own seminar like you usually do.

[00:52:51] In the fall semester, I am part of a team taught great books course. And this is all I do in the fall semester teaching wise. It's a large course, but there's a bunch of professors and we share the lectures.

[00:53:05] And then we each have our own group of students like 18 or 19. And so we see the lectures and then we go talk about the lectures and the reading in. So that's what I do in the fall.

[00:53:16] And then in the spring, I have a large intro class, not as large as yours, but like 125 people or something and then a either a grad seminar or upper level. But those are really good teaching loads.

[00:53:28] And so we are able to put more time and attention into it than somebody who had had a higher one. And it's also just like it's something that you just get better at as you go. Some people think you wouldn't.

[00:53:43] But I don't know why anyone would think that you wouldn't just get better at it as you get more experience, but you do. It's absolutely because one of the things that I was thinking to say,

[00:53:52] there is no to me, it seems like so much of what has improved with my teaching couldn't have happened without experience. Right. And you know, poor kids, my first year when I got up there and taught. But I don't know.

[00:54:07] You know, you and I both love teaching and I think we're constantly striving to improve what we do. And because of that, it feels like time has really made a difference in my teaching. But maybe some people. Well, it's a real thing that some some researchers, academics,

[00:54:24] consider teaching to just be this burden like a committee meeting or something that they have to get through so that they can still be funded to do their research. I think that's misguided on so many levels. One of the big one is that teaching can help your research.

[00:54:38] Oh, I was going to go the more altruistic route that that the students are or what makes it possible for you to fucking have a job. Yeah, no, exactly. Like it's it's a totally morally indefensible stance to have.

[00:54:52] And people say that you have to like we have to get tenure or whatever. And yeah, that's true. But this is why this is who pays your salary. Yeah, that's right. And so you might as well. And I don't think it takes that much more time.

[00:55:07] It takes a little more time, but I don't think it takes that much more time to teach well than to teach badly. And so you might as well teach well. Yeah, or else it's just miserable for you. And then it kind of spirals because it's miserable for them.

[00:55:20] And then they give you bad reviews and then you start resenting your students. Should we talk about some of the ways in which our teaching we think our teaching has improved? Should we go through Paul's? We're not very well prepared for it. We're not.

[00:55:32] But Paul has a list of 12. And I think at least some of these like inspired by Paul, I will at least want to point out some of them. And his number one is enthusiasm.

[00:55:43] When you're in class, you should act like there's no place in the world you'd rather be. Now, that's hard to do. Like it's hard to make yourself do. But I just feel it like I've never I've never felt otherwise. That's such a big difference between doing it online.

[00:55:58] If you are doing delivering a lecture. So like I actually am pleasantly surprised by Zoom seminars that I've been having, even with students that I haven't met ever in person, which is the case for this new semester, but for the lecture and I've had to give one,

[00:56:14] I know you're about to have to give one too. You don't get that adrenaline shot where you just are loving it because here you are in front of all these people who are paying attention to you. And if you're well prepared and you're like,

[00:56:27] it's it just energizes you in a way that yeah, you don't have to fake it at all. Absolutely. And this is what I was telling you off the air how I could have done like better preparing and recorded these lectures like and just been ready to go.

[00:56:48] But I just can't I cannot get myself to do it. And that adrenaline rush, that excitement of being up there and talking to actual people is I realize now because of this bullshit, so integral to the my teaching style.

[00:57:03] I don't think like you say, it's not for everyone. Like I don't think ever some people get up there and they're just tacticians and they have their their the same no matter what. I am not like that. I learned that a little bit in doing that outlier class,

[00:57:16] but that was only four lectures and there was like a crew. Like and so I treated the crew as my audience to stare into like the screen and not have anybody. It's it's weird. It's weird and depressing. It's it's like like having a possible girlfriend,

[00:57:32] but instead it's like possible students. That's right. There is a universe in which they're in which they are sitting in front of me. And I rely on I didn't realize how much I relied on it.

[00:57:41] I knew it was going to be hard, but I didn't know it was going to be this hard. Like I thought I could still make my jokes and do my things. Now if you make a joke, you just feel like a biggest fucking asshole.

[00:57:51] You know, I know. Yeah. They're like no one's I mean, look, very few people were laughing at my other jokes, but at least like my I would just hearing one cackle was enough to get me can I give an example of how terrible this problem is for me?

[00:58:05] Yeah. I was asked by there's some graduate students at a business school who were putting together a series where they asked like professors or researchers or whatever to do a two minute summary of a finding that they from that they had

[00:58:20] or something interesting, exciting, like in a in a chunk. I sat there, Tamler in front of my camera and I'm not exaggerating. Did about 40 takes. Right. Like literally 40 takes because I because if I can edit, then, you know, then like, oh, wait, oh,

[00:58:40] I said that wrong and then like start over. Yeah, that's actually like so I can't I don't know how to edit video. I only know how to edit audio, which I do all the time. No, no, I don't either. I mean, yeah, barely. But my daughter does.

[00:58:52] And so she edited just very but I can't make I can't ask her to do like a lot of it. It's like slave labor. I'm limited in what I can ask her to do. And so I but I would definitely do that.

[00:59:04] You and you don't have that pressure of you have to move on. Right. I remember when I was taking like when I was in high school and did basketball, we had a coach who said if you're going to make a mistake, make it quickly. And that is great.

[00:59:19] It's great. That's great advice for when you're up there teaching, you just correct it and you move on like this is not going to be in the ether for everybody to see and rewind like the moment that you fucked up.

[00:59:29] That's the thing is that it's it's out there. And so, you know, whatever, if it's a joke that doesn't go well or it's a just a point that didn't get across as clearly, it's like, but it's gone. And now it's not.

[00:59:41] And that and now you can and not only is it not gone, but you can make it better, you can change it. But then that just kills the fluidity of what it is that you're doing. It's like having a date night, but that you could edit.

[00:59:56] They like it was planned this week in advance, but we're going to we're going to have a romantic evening. Well, how do you know it's going to be romantic? Have you considered asking? This would be a lot to ask Jen or Eliza to sit there while you lecture.

[01:00:14] No. I've considered asking my daughter to sit there just so I have an audience. Just so you have a little audience. I haven't. I have played with the idea of having and I did this when I was just recording like really quick intro lectures in the spring.

[01:00:30] I had Eliza come in and be a student that I could actually ask questions of and interact with, but to actually just watch me. I think that would be worse. It's hard. It'll be hard. Did you do? Yeah. No, I have I haven't.

[01:00:44] I considered it, but then I realized that my daughter is my audience is way judgier than any student like the students look up. They would look at they're all mainly freshmen. To them, I'm this like expert. My daughter is going to be like, fuck, did you just say?

[01:00:58] So foolish. Yeah, we should talk about also like we will live in a world right where this isn't the case that this is how we lecture. So we should talk about that too. But yes, like I don't know. And the one thing I'm happy about is

[01:01:16] I think you like regular teaching, you only get better at this by doing it. So like that's the only way. So we'll get more comfortable. Probably Paul who has done Coursera's and various things like is already better at

[01:01:29] this, but you have to have experience and so we'll get experience. And right now we don't have any. So it's hard to give a lot of advice about online teaching. All right. All right. It's just our weaknesses. Let's go to Paul's number two. You want to do that?

[01:01:42] Yeah. That's a good segue because confidence is exactly what I won't have if I have my daughter listen to my lecture. This one I had a little problem with. I do too. So let's go. Let's talk about it. So let's read it.

[01:01:54] Act as if you know your shit. Act as if you've done this a hundred times before and it's always gone smashingly. This will reassure the students that they're in good hands and they'll learn better. So what's your problem with it?

[01:02:05] I T.A. for Paul when I was a grad student. And so granted, I haven't seen him lecture in a long time. But one of the things I loved about his style was that he he did not act that way.

[01:02:17] I mean, of course, like there's a level at which you are the expert and you have to you're up there telling them stuff. But there was a disarming charm and humility to the way that he spoke that I think was so effective.

[01:02:30] So when Paul says it, maybe in Paul's hands, his confidence is not arrogance or overconfidence. Maybe he's talking to people who should be more confident. But but I like I would not take this as advice for me. Yeah, I wouldn't either.

[01:02:49] I think there is something that I like the and I feel like I've had from the beginning, you know, I know more than the students. But I'm going into this like they are. There's a lot of stuff I don't know.

[01:03:01] In fact, I choose I choose to put stuff on the syllabus that, you know, like I may not be an expert in and I do it so that I'm modeling a way of approaching it and I'm modeling a way of learning it.

[01:03:14] But I don't necessarily know the answer to what these things and like we were talking about with in our brothers, Karamazov thing about Kolia and Aleosha where the students could change my mind. Like I like to have that it's true.

[01:03:30] Number one and number two, I wanted them to think that, you know, I might think I know something, but they could have an objection that makes me change my view about it. And like that doesn't seem to me to be like un reassuring to the students.

[01:03:44] It seems to bring them in more. Yeah, I think maybe if I'm reading my personality well, like it's not. I don't need to correct in the direction of confidence. What I need to do. It's important for me is to communicate that. And this is one

[01:04:03] that I had on my list is like I need to be able to let them know that I don't know everything and that there's a bigger point about this that I think is is just changing about teaching.

[01:04:14] So it used to be that that you are the source of information, right? So so you had to with authority get up there and tell them like 12 things in some. So the other thing we should say is this is our disciplines might differ radically from other disciplines, right?

[01:04:30] Like I'm not teaching a lab based biology course or something. But it used to be that as a psychology prof, I would give them all of the information that they wouldn't really have access to maybe in their textbook.

[01:04:40] Now everybody has access to a whole shit ton of information. And what I prefer to do is use my lecture time to introduce them and spark their curiosity. And what that means is that any kid in that room could be one step ahead

[01:04:54] of me in terms of facts by Wikipediaing the topic right in my class. And if I don't have the humility that I don't know everything, then like that's very easy to get till I get burned. So why do you think Paul has this on?

[01:05:11] I have a couple possible ideas about that. One is I think we're white men. You are white even if you deny it. But fine for the purposes of this discussion. Yes. So maybe for people and we're fairly self confident people,

[01:05:27] some some people do have to correct in a way that it's fake it till you make it. Like you have to you're actually worried that the students are going to think you don't know what you're talking about and that you shouldn't be up there. And I'm blessed.

[01:05:41] This is like a real blessing. Like that's never been. I don't have that imposter syndrome. I don't have like the if anything like my problem is or was when I was younger now that's it's been corrected for that. I thought I knew more than I did.

[01:05:56] Yeah, you is 100 percent being corrected for. It's like I do. That's it. It's like. Yeah. So it could just be maybe our personalities that like it's not advice that we need. But maybe it's good for some people who are under confident or insecure about

[01:06:12] their standing, which leads to a bigger point. But I'll let you go and then I'll make that. Oh, yeah. I was going to say, I think that's the goal with this. But I do worry because at first I was like, well, yeah, you know, I know some

[01:06:24] great, great researchers who actually are great teachers, but are painfully introverted and it might come across as insecurity. And so maybe exuding more confidence. But I think that's conflating two things. That's that's conflating your like performance with the whether or not you think you know the material.

[01:06:48] And I think in the cases that I'm thinking, those people know their material better than I know my material. Like, I know that they know the material. They know that they know the material. They're just a little sheepish in front of people. And I have also seen this.

[01:07:02] Some people who are insecure and when they're giving talks in front of audiences, whether teaching or some other way. And if they take this advice and they act like they know more than they do

[01:07:14] and you know that they don't, it doesn't make you feel like you're in good hands. It has exactly the opposite effect. And like you said, students can students today are smart and they have wide range of experiences. They will know if you are bullshitting about something.

[01:07:31] And there's just no reason to do it. Yeah, it's important. It's one of the most important things to me is to like make sure I find ways to tell them I don't know or like, yeah.

[01:07:40] The other thing I think that is related to this is we've both acquired a kind of reputation within our respective universities and with just how people perceive us already. And so if you if you have a basic standing of like respect from the students,

[01:07:56] then you don't need to act. You just need to act like how you are. But if you don't have that maybe some sort of I still still like even if you don't like, I still think it's it's this is a hard thing to pull off.

[01:08:10] Yeah, there's a way I'm sure in which Paul means it that that that maybe. But but like I think what I'm talking about is how other people will read it. Yeah. Should we go to the next one? Yeah, this one is I think especially true for lecture courses.

[01:08:26] So he says, mix it up. Don't just do the same thing over and over again. Throw in some variety movies, demos, etc. Variety is the cure for boredom. I think this is something that over the years has not only been something

[01:08:36] that I do more of, but something that just technically was possible. So, you know, I include lots of videos. I have a folder of gigs of videos that I use for examples. You know, in some cases, it's actual psychologists talking about something in other cases.

[01:08:52] It's just like a dog, right? And, you know, one of the main goals that that I have up there is capturing attention that that is my job. So if I can capture their attention, which I think does require a little bit

[01:09:10] of creativity, maybe especially nowadays, I don't know. Here maybe we could talk about this right now. I don't think you ban electronics, right? But I do ban electronics in my larger classes because I know myself and I can be in front of a great lecture.

[01:09:24] But if I have my laptop or phone in front of me, I could just be on it. So but you don't do that, right? No, you know, it's it's so many hundreds of kids that it would turn into a policing

[01:09:37] problem. And in my ideal world, they wouldn't be on their laptops. But I, you know, some of them have particular kinds of disabilities where they need electronics. I don't want to be forced to like on a sort of ad hoc basis to make a decision

[01:09:52] about that. Oh, I just like if they but I mean, I allow for that too. But like they have to come and just ask me. They don't even need to give me a form that says that.

[01:10:00] I mean, students rarely do do that and they don't do it as a way of like getting out of it. If they do it, they really have it. Yeah, but I might get like 30 people coming to me. They want to talk specifically to me.

[01:10:11] And I just don't like I'd rather not deal with like 30 people and like wanting to talk individually about me. I mean about their their disabilities, right? So you just don't want to interact with the students. No, but you know, like yeah, no, I get what you're saying.

[01:10:25] 900 is it's a lot. It's terrible. But what I try to tell them at the beginning and I use this as an example of a research study is that being first of all, like it is bad for them, right? Like their attention will be completely like diverted or whatever.

[01:10:44] And two, having their laptop open actually distracts people around them and makes their retention go down. So I asked them this. If I asked them if they're going to be on a laptop to be in the back.

[01:10:53] That's definitely I think a good strategy is to say at the very least, don't distract others because you do like I've been distracted by other people and what they're looking at and stuff. Yeah, I remember at a really good lecture at like an SPP.

[01:11:07] They were these people playing poker society for philosophy and psychology. Yes, there are these people playing poker during a talk and I was behind them and I just started like even though I liked the talk a lot.

[01:11:16] It's probably about like I think it was like incest talk, one of those. But then all of a sudden I'm getting invested in the hand. I'm like, oh yeah. So I would semi bluff here. You know, yeah.

[01:11:27] And and a lot of students are really confident that it doesn't affect their you know, that it doesn't affect them. But that's just wrong. It's probably more true than I think it is, but it's still false.

[01:11:40] The one thing I would say is that this is with having YouTube clips or videos or various things, this is definitely true for lectures. I don't think that it's as true for more discussion based classes. Because just you're all you're talking about different things.

[01:11:55] You can divide students up into groups if you want, although I don't do that that much. And just having faces looking at you while you're talking like and looking at each other when they're that makes a huge difference in terms of, you know,

[01:12:07] attention capturing and you and usually on also at that level, you usually don't need a simple example from a video, right? You're having a more nuanced discussion. There is a change. There is a dynamic like a variety just based on your different people are talking about different things.

[01:12:24] And so you don't need to do the gimmick of those things, not that they're all gimmicks. Some of them are great. It is amazing in a lecture, just seeing the students just go, oh, I needed this. It's like they were jonesing for like like multimedia of some kind.

[01:12:40] Yeah, I used to feel guilty every time I would put in like a YouTube video. And I realized that it was like because I thought, well, like anybody can go to YouTube, but no, like I am curate like curating the information is part of my

[01:12:52] job and I like I realized it was stupid for me to be feeling like somehow I'm working less or like cheating them out of like me talking. They don't give a fuck like if it's

[01:13:03] yeah, and he says, yes, I've been told that some of this is also sex advice. But do you think Paul and Neil are good friends? Bring in other people. I'm not going anywhere near guest lectures, interviews, etc. Easy to do with Zoom.

[01:13:23] So here's one where I'm a little bit too much of a control freak to do this too much. What about you? Me too. I have had guest lectures, I but I really select people that I know are going to give a good lecture.

[01:13:39] And even then two out of like 35, might go to because I really, really care about the structure. Like I care about it like what I'm telling them. I just don't trust. I used to have a God bless him,

[01:13:57] clinical psychologist who would give a guest lecture and he lectured on Freud in a way that I just didn't believe was true. And so that's when I started putting a kibosh on this. Yeah, it's funny because once you even though it's less work for you,

[01:14:11] it's like a lot of less work. It's but you have envisioned this class and how you're going to present the material and how you're going to and then all of a sudden there's this wild card. I do let if we have a TA for our intro course,

[01:14:26] if my TA wants to give a lecture or one of them wants to give a lecture, I will allow that just because I think it's really good experience for them. But I don't think I've had a guest lecturer like maybe once every couple of years for me.

[01:14:41] We'd like to thank BetterHelp for sponsoring this episode of Very Bad Wizards. Tamler, I think you heard it in my voice when we were last recording that I was pretty, pretty fucking stressed. He asked me to right now. That's right. That's right.

[01:14:58] And actually at the end of when we were recording the main segment, I told you, you know, recording, recording this podcast is like therapy for me. But I realized not everybody has the ability to speak to Tamler Summers on a weekly basis. My soothing calming voice.

[01:15:18] Actually, when I have insomnia, I just just say like just be on the line. Just stay on the line. My pause will be. But yeah, there are times when we need help and and, you know,

[01:15:31] all of us need help sometimes and we might get that help sometimes from friends or family, but sometimes they're not around. And sometimes the friends and family are exactly what you need help with.

[01:15:43] So of course, there are crisis lines that you can call if you're having an emergency, a mental health emergency. But what if you just need or want to speak to a professional about just issues that you're having? You'd have to go about finding a good therapist.

[01:15:57] For instance, in the town I live, there's not that many therapists. You got to get some word of mouth. You have to make sure they have openings, make sure that they take your insurance, make sure that you can get an appointment soon.

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[01:17:18] And maybe they want us to say that if any counselors are actually listening and you want to contact them. So if you want to start living a better, happier life today, go to BetterHelp. As a listener, you'll get 10 percent off your first month by visiting betterhelp.com

[01:17:33] slash VBW. Join over one million people who are taking charge of their mental health. Again, that's BetterHelp, B-E-T-T-E-R-H-E-L-P dot com slash VBW. Thanks to BetterHelp for sponsoring this episode of Very Bad Wizards. There is just one big point that I really, really take to heart about teaching.

[01:17:56] The biggest problem in my own teaching has always been the curse of knowledge, right? So getting my mind to be like the mind of somebody who doesn't know what I'm talking about so that I can organize all of the material in a way that they'll get.

[01:18:12] That to me is like I view my intro site course as a package of knowledge that I'm giving them in a way that I would want to have learned had I not known anything about psychology.

[01:18:24] My worst lectures, hands down 100 percent, are when I have to lecture about my own shit like if I lecture about moral judgment or about emotions, those are the worst lectures because I'm too caught up in it. I'm like, well, I can't possibly,

[01:18:37] you know, I can't possibly summarize all of emotional research in two lectures. You know, everything else. I'm like, yeah, that's fine. Like two lectures on the brain, of course. So I end up being unable to to escape my own mind on those lectures.

[01:18:50] And yeah, that matters a lot to me. I think that's the biggest thing I try to focus on in my lectures. Yeah, that's interesting. I think that's that actually relates directly to one of the things I wanted to say that and how my teaching has changed,

[01:19:02] which is I don't teach the stuff that I know too well as much as I used to anymore. And even my intro to ethics class, I have shaken up so that I'll teach like Ecclesiastes and like a piece by Tolstoy and like the

[01:19:17] in other words, shit that you can also like get a two for by doing a part. Exactly. But I mean, I really did move away from like the can. So this is this leads to a question I had for you.

[01:19:28] So I used to teach a more traditional intro to ethics class where, you know, you would do Aristotle and Mill and even Kant. Like I used to teach Kant and, you know, I knew what I wanted to say about these things.

[01:19:41] I knew about the arguments like the higher order, lower pleasures and stuff like that. And and I just moved away from that partly because I knew the stuff too well. I knew what I thought of it too well.

[01:19:53] And it just I like it just occurred to me and I know that people have different points of view on this, that the students don't need to know that because in my intro class, there are very few philosophy majors like out of 120 people,

[01:20:07] maybe one or it averages maybe one to three will be philosophy majors. So it's really like I get to decide what an intro to ethics class should be. And I don't think that's the best way to approach intro to ethics is to do the same

[01:20:21] old, like higher order, lower order pleasures. There's some stuff from the Canon like the singer family, like I'll always teach because but you know, I make these decisions and so it's really unlike other

[01:20:31] intro classes. Do you do that with intro to psych or do you or do you feel like you owe it to them to give them the more traditional experience and the more traditional things? That's a that's a really good question.

[01:20:43] And I when I first got this class handed to me nine years ago, the person who taught it taught it for 40 years and didn't change anything. I realized what you realize like I there are probably more psych majors coming out of this, but a lot of them

[01:21:01] this will be the only psychology they ever know or they ever listen to. So what do I think you need to know if you were to say, I took Psych 101 and then somebody says, so you've heard of blank. I feel the need to do that.

[01:21:15] So I even teach Freud, even though I don't believe any Freud. Well, not any is a strong term, but but I teach it just because I want them to know something about Freud. But Freud is fun. Like that's fine.

[01:21:27] Like I don't like need to teach something that I think is true. Yeah, yeah, yeah, no. But but but usually I try to it's a it's a really different field. Like I have I am trying to teach only true things. That just is the case.

[01:21:40] Oh, I guess right. Yeah. Psychology, I have to take you might argue that I fail completely because there are no true things. So I have to take that into account. So I always have to preface the Freud thing with like, look, I don't think there's good evidence.

[01:21:55] I don't think this is a good scientific theory, but I want you to know about them and with the other stuff, I just try to stick to the classics. Like I think people need to know about short term long term memory, like those basics, right?

[01:22:05] They should come out knowing about basic emotion research. They should come out knowing about the Milgram experiment, all that stuff. So I put all that in. But I always save lectures, like three or four lectures for whatever the fuck I want.

[01:22:19] Like and that's sacred to me to have. I think it's a continuum. I would feel bad if I taught a class where they didn't learn what utilitarianism was or, you know, virtue ethics. But yeah, I've really strayed from just the standard and really tried to mix it up

[01:22:37] also because it's fresh for you. Dude, absolutely. Like that guy who's taught it every year for 40 years, like that's that's a weird experience that I couldn't. I don't think I could muster up the enthusiasm for that. This is a dated reference time to make the donuts. Right. Exactly.

[01:22:57] Time to make the doughnuts. Duncan doughnuts are always fresh. I made the doughnuts. We make them at least twice every day. Time to make the doughnuts. Not a few kinds like supermarket. The doughnuts. Time to make the doughnuts. But after fifty two varieties of doughnuts.

[01:23:17] Time to make the doughnuts. That's a perfect analogy that I know how many people get it. Maybe I'll put a link in show notes for the time. No, I think you're exactly right in what I realize this serves to two functions.

[01:23:32] If I am bored, it will be a bad lecture. So one of the things that I try to do every year is if I have a lecture down, like in terms of the slides, I usually don't fuck with it too much.

[01:23:43] But every year I try to find something new to put in somewhere because or else I will die of boredom and I feel like I've stopped learning. That's what I like. That was how it was with me and Mill and the higher and lower pleasures.

[01:23:55] I just like I can't I can't pretend that I care about this anymore. And the various debates around it. And so I just cut it and it was like I didn't think it's weird. It's like I didn't think I could cut it before.

[01:24:08] And then I was like, well, yeah, I absolutely can. Nobody is going to stop. It's amazing how much freedom we get. You know, it's so true. That's so true. I could tell them anything and have them like that.

[01:24:18] I could put whatever the fuck I want in the syllabus. Did you know Professor Summers is the single biggest influence on modern ethics? All right. Number five for Paul, this is I 100 percent agree with. Be modest in your goals for each class.

[01:24:33] The most common mistake of beginning teachers cramming too much material in any single session. Like I think this is a really hard one to even if you have it in the back

[01:24:41] of your mind to do it, still you're going to attempt it to do more than you ought to. Pragmatically, this is one of the best pieces of advice anybody could ever give. But as you say, taking the advice is the hard part.

[01:24:52] It's not giving it because you always think, well, yeah, no, I know, but they have to know this. Right? And so you cram and and you don't you don't have a good metric for what is a lot and what's a little like who told you?

[01:25:06] But I have the number one obvious difference in my teaching from my first years to now is you could morph my slides and they go from tons of information to like a picture. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Slides keeping the slide simple, keeping if you're doing power points.

[01:25:24] And then just yeah. And I think this works for discussion classes too. Don't try to cover like three papers in a class or one and always I always if we're having good discussions about it and I try to do this in my lecture

[01:25:37] too because I like to have participation in the lectures. I don't have to get through the whole syllabus. In fact, I never do. So if things are going at a good pace and the students want to continue it, I will just absolutely will just do that

[01:25:50] next time then we'll finish. We'll conclude this next time. Yeah, no, I like take it where the energy takes you. Yeah, for those because those are the experiences they remember anyway. Like it's very rare that you're going to get anybody to remember very much

[01:26:02] from a class that you taught them what I like if I can inspire curiosity, right? Like or change the way that somebody, you know, framed the world. But that to me is that's what you want. Like somebody

[01:26:16] it sounds so cheesy, but to be inspiring to a few kids is the goal. And to be inspiring not just because of the facts that you give them, but just like a way of approaching knowledge or a way of approaching

[01:26:31] a topic that just inspires them to like it just they never thought of things that way. So like you say you teach Milgram. I think we've had this talk about the Stanford Prison Experiment. Yeah, I stopped that.

[01:26:42] It now seems so I know I did to this last time, but because it seems just so fraudulent at this point. But talk about something that inspired or changed the way people looked at decisions and attributions.

[01:26:58] And like it does such a good job of that that you could make an argument with all the caveats that, you know, it's still worth throwing out there. In those in that case, it seemed just designed to illustrate a point

[01:27:11] in the way that you would want to illustrate it. Exactly, like it is like it was just a pedagogical. It was an actual study. There is a possible world, by the way, in which it totally happened and was like rigorously empirically just demonstrated it's kind of far away.

[01:27:26] It's just kind of far. If we're being honest, all of this, like it's just on the far end of the continuum of social psychology bullshit. Right? Come on. Yeah. Yeah. So be yourself. Everyone has strength teaching a way that aligns with what you're good at.

[01:27:41] As an example, if you're funny, engage the students with humor. If not, don't bother serious and intense is also a fine way to run a class. So is cheerful and mellow. There are a lot of ways to do this. Right? Totally agree.

[01:27:50] If you've tried to be funny for 10 years and people keep saying you're not funny. Yeah. And they don't laugh. It's not going to turn around. And actually like there are some great classes that I've watched, seen or

[01:28:02] been a part of where it is like it's so not my style. But the professor is just so intense. And like there's an energy that you get from that. And there's no way they're making a joke.

[01:28:12] It's just that they are like so involved in what it is that they're teaching. There's no like self deprecating humor. This is nothing like that. Some of the stuff that I go to is just like you're just energized by how

[01:28:28] focused they are and how much they believe and care about what it is that they're taught, they're teaching. Absolutely. Yeah. But I find by the way, be yourself to be the kind of advice that I never quite know what to make of.

[01:28:43] But I think the way you could make it because I feel like I've always just naturally done that. But there are people who are like, I need to be funnier in my lectures or I

[01:28:53] need to be I need to make it more of a performance than it is right now. And I just think that that's just not going to that just goes badly if it's not in them.

[01:29:01] It's this is another case where like I luck of the draw, like I feel comfortable in my own skin in a way that maybe some people don't and try hard. But there's nothing worse than seeing people try too hard. Yes, exactly. It's so uncomfortable.

[01:29:14] It's the most uncomfortable thing. Teach. So here's when I have maybe some issues with teaching prep can leach away all your time, don't let it say to yourself diminishing returns, then say opportunity costs repeat as needed. But you know, poor Paul is not here to defend himself.

[01:29:30] Like I had a colleague once who told me when I asked him how like you got grants to pay your teaching. You haven't taught in a while. Like don't you miss teaching? He said, no, I like teaching. It's just that I like not teaching even more.

[01:29:43] Yeah. I mean, like and I and I guess I don't like not teaching more. I've had leaves and stuff and I miss it. You know, just the structure that it gives to your day, but also just the interaction with the students. I love it. It's kind of

[01:29:56] the that's my probably my favorite thing. And I also just think it's like the opportunity costs. Like I think it can really help your research. I've gotten a lot of papers back when I still wrote papers out of teaching the course.

[01:30:09] And I think it's the only way to really understand a topic is to teach it. And a lot of the time, like if I weren't prepping for the class, I would be like on Twitter or something. So that's the opportunity cost.

[01:30:20] Yeah, I think Paul here is probably talking to like young young like psychologists trying to get tenure, right? Where where they're they have to be doing a lot of other shit. That it's perfectly reasonable advice in the hands of some people.

[01:30:35] But what I worry about as with a couple of the other objections is that people will read this in a way that not even Paul intends because I put money on that the first few times Paul taught intro psych, he put in a ton of time

[01:30:50] on those lectures. Yeah, I think it might be for people who are just so obsessive about the prep that it would absolutely be diminishing returns at that point. And also over preparing can hurt the class.

[01:31:02] It leads to errors such as putting too much info on your slides and having too much material to cover and not have being flexible enough to go where the conversation is going. And that is something actually that like when I've done peer teaching reviews,

[01:31:15] I sometimes say that this that the class was a little too rigid and that there were a lot of missed opportunities to engage the students and stuff like that, a well timed great question. I don't know, but I'll find out for next next class is really charming and

[01:31:28] makes everyone feel good. This is so powerful that some profs are roomier to do this, even when they do. Well, I don't know often enough that I don't have to do that. Yeah, luckily early on, I don't know if some people modeled it for me well

[01:31:39] or something, you know, but I picked this up and it is so much better than pretending to know. And it's, you know, like that's exactly the kind of confidence number two that we were talking about that you shouldn't have. Like you should be able to to.

[01:31:53] And, you know, I've had questions that I end up talking about in my lecture course and making slides that have stayed in my lectures for good because I looked it up. Yeah, I still talk about like this student like seven years ago said this and

[01:32:06] like totally changed the way I think about the singer argument or something like that is true. It's not I'm not joking. I'm not I'm not playing around like that's actually what happened. But that's great advice if you don't do that already.

[01:32:17] And if you're me and you don't know that much, then it's easy. There'll be a lot of the time where you have no clue. And you say it's a great question. I was going to skip number nine. Do you have anything to say about this?

[01:32:29] Take of time. No, it's no. It's good. You specific students. That's great. Number 10. This is funny the way it sets up. When I was in second grade, I asked a stupid question and the teacher, Mrs. Pound made me feel like an idiot for doing so.

[01:32:43] It says something about how awful this feels that I still remember this experience so many years later. Don't be like Mrs. Pound. Every question a student asks is at minimum interesting. If it's total gibberish, go for something like parts of your questions.

[01:32:55] Might go a bit too far beyond our topic for today. But one of your points raises something really neat and then talk about something else. Great advice and something I've gotten better at. I have a nitpick, which is that

[01:33:08] one, I don't like it when people say interesting to every single question. No, that's right. And there are some questions that are so misguided that and this is this is advice I wouldn't give to many people or maybe even in public.

[01:33:21] But there are some stupid questions and in a seminar, I view it as my job to tell them why it's an ill form question. But I do like I think I pick some of this up from Paul Stiles. Just say you don't believe that. You don't.

[01:33:36] That's not what you want to ask her. Like something something that will get them to think about their own question a little bit better. And so I actually always tell students in the beginning people people say there are no stupid questions, but they're really there are.

[01:33:50] I do that too. And I say, but the thing is, don't be afraid to ask stupid questions. But like it'll still be stupid. I reserve the right to sort of mock my students in seminars because it like mockery because I find that that diffuses the tension of some

[01:34:05] of the pretty serious things that we talk about and you have to be self deprecating if you're going to mock. I was thinking of this, yeah, more for not like a grad seminar or something like that, although, but even the way you were

[01:34:18] describing it, it sounds like you respect the student. I think the danger is that you don't, that you seem dismissive and that will shut a student up for the rest of the semester if you just kind of acted

[01:34:30] like they're stupid rather than that they might have asked a stupid question. But like you respect them and they're and they're intellect enough because I think students really are insecure and the getting them to like throw themselves out there and you've to treat it gently.

[01:34:48] Yeah, you have to treat it. Yeah, yeah, because that's the thing that you really want. That's what makes classes go well is when the likes more and more students are doing that willing to do that.

[01:34:59] And so I while I agree that you don't want to just treat every question as if it's the same. This is another thing that we talked about when we talked about Alyosha from the brothers Karamazov, where he

[01:35:09] sometimes like was lightly mocking, but in a way that like obviously the first part was that he exuded respect for the kid. But he was also being honest and calling the ideas he was saying foolish and kind of immature, like immature, pure-rower or whatever.

[01:35:25] Number 11 use concrete examples whenever possible, often from your own life. They don't necessarily have to be true. There is no Mrs. Pound. That's very funny. Well, I like that one. It's also like this is advice that I don't need.

[01:35:39] Like I need advice, like maybe don't use as many concrete examples from your own life as you currently do. Me too. One time it got wind to my sister that I had used her as an example of road rage. Oh, I think I did it.

[01:35:56] I think I did it in an interview that she heard and I told them like I always use my sister as an example of like the fundamental attribution error in road rage and she's like, the fuck, David, I don't do nothing.

[01:36:06] I used to use my daughter as an example of just how somebody is just not talented at something and I would go up to the board and like draw and I would say like, this is how she draws like a person.

[01:36:17] And it was so ridiculous, like it was funny because of how bad it was. And that I was making fun of my daughter. And then I remember my daughter was like, so you just use me as like an object of mockery in your class? Yeah.

[01:36:30] Many good teachers self-medicate before class, especially if they suffer from anxiety. This is fine as long as you're careful with dosage. This is interesting because contrary to what listeners might predict, I don't take anything from my classes.

[01:36:48] Like I might like have a drink for it before a lecture or at a conference or something or but I guess if but I don't really have anxiety. So if there's any like I don't lack energy for teaching because there's a lot

[01:37:01] of nervous energy, if I've taken anything, it's when I've been able to get my hands on like something anti-anxiety to like take the edge off because I wouldn't like I just don't drink today aside. And I like sure in the morning, but I never

[01:37:18] took if I'm being honest, the problem is usually just if I have it, I'll take it. I don't really feel like I need it. Yeah. And I say that I don't use didn't never done this. That's when I was a little hooked on Vicodin, I would take

[01:37:32] it before class, but that was just because that was that time of day when I would take it, but but that's a good one for teaching actually. I mean, anxiety is a motherfucker for a lot of people.

[01:37:43] And you know, I would almost say put get 12 up there instead of be confident because a lot of the what appears to be the lack of confidence might just be anxiety. So do you have any other things

[01:37:54] that's all of his I have a few others that I want to throw out there. Yeah, go ahead. One of the things that I've had to learn over the years in my lectures or that I have learned and that's made things much better, I think for me and

[01:38:07] the students is to slow down and that it's OK to pause and let this thought sink in and it's weird when you know, well, I lecture on a stage and it seems a little weird because I'm so distant from even the closest

[01:38:23] students that it's hard to see their faces. But I just have to represent like a student and just give them a time like I try to imagine that this were a conversation in which I just was speaking

[01:38:36] and they were listening and being just more realistic about how you talk because it's so it's so easy to try to get through things fast, that treating it like a conversation and not being afraid of pauses. Yeah, especially if for a lecture, that's hard.

[01:38:51] You're worried that that you they'll think you just like spaz out or something. So, yeah, I agree. That's really hard. I could be better at that. I could also be better at like looking at the students when I'm lecturing.

[01:39:03] I have I have a kind of nervous like put your eyes up. Oh, me too. Like many people have pointed out that I just don't make eye contact when I'm talking to them individually. I can do that in the smaller classes.

[01:39:16] But when I'm lecturing, I find it very hard to look at the students. And I think that's a really good thing to do. Like that's I note that about other lectures that that's and I it's weird how hard it is to do.

[01:39:28] Here's a tip that I feel like I mean, I've always known but I've really focused on. I think that and this is maybe especially true in the fall. The first couple of weeks are so important because the students are fresh

[01:39:40] and they're enthusiastic and if you set the right tone. First day, first day of a seminar, dude, can make or break it. Yes, absolutely. Like if you can set the tone that this is going to be a good lively discussion.

[01:39:54] And if you can figure out a way to get them to do the reading, to actually do it and not do all the bullshit ways that students have to not do it, then like the class is just going to go so well for the rest of the semester.

[01:40:07] Or at least it's it's 200 percent more likely. And I've been really focused on this the last few years of just setting the tone right away while they're fresh before they got a million other things to do and they have to start making sacrifices, make it somebody else's course.

[01:40:24] Have them this be one of the things that they're going to make a priority for. And then the more of those students you have, just the better the whole thing is. Absolutely. And sometimes it's luck of the draw in a small enough seminar where you get

[01:40:38] three lively people. Sometimes the counterfactual like what if these three weren't in the class? Or what if this one kid were in the class? If you can get two discussing from the first day, then others I think tend to join

[01:40:51] in, but it really like you can kill it that first day. You know, I usually have about for these human situation, I have about 18 students and for like upper level philosophy, I'll have like twenty five maybe. That's pretty big for you.

[01:41:06] Like I've been really good about getting like at least half of them contributing, like talking consistently throughout and sometimes more. I remember this last semester, last year with this class that was just apps. It was a lot of luck of the draw. They were awesome.

[01:41:20] We were clicking on such a good level that I had them in group work because we had this two hour Friday thing and had them looking up like just trying to make the case for what Penelope is doing in book 23.

[01:41:31] If she already knows that Odysseus is Odysseus, then how does that? And they were all looking and there were these two students that had to leave like half an hour early because they were going on a history field trip and like they didn't want to leave.

[01:41:42] They wanted to stay to like see like everybody make their cases and like further. And it was just like it's and then teaching is a joy. It is a genuine joy. That's the best feeling in the world.

[01:41:54] Even in my large lecture course, there is an oceanography class that's also like a hundred level that actually has a higher enrollment than mine. They're the two biggest courses on campus. But the oceanography professor is always like he's always trying to brag.

[01:42:08] He's trying to like, you know, make it a dick measuring contest who has more enrolled in one year. He said to me, you know, my enrollment's up higher, but so many more kids go to your lectures than mine. And that felt like such a victory.

[01:42:23] I told him, you should just do more compelling lectures. Yeah. For a student to come up to me after the semester and say, I wanted to come to your class like every day because I didn't want to miss out.

[01:42:35] That's like, yeah, it's the best feeling not because it's egoistic, but because it's like important to me, you know? Yeah. And also, the more you get to know your students and their personalities and the only way you do is if they are feeling like they weren't engaged

[01:42:49] in coming in, then the more context you have for your jokes, for your serious points, that's such a big thing. Yeah. That's something we've talked about all the time. Like what you're allowed to say, given what people know about you, that's a huge thing.

[01:43:02] And given just like the frame of reference, you know, like, yes, you can get away with a lot more now, like more inappropriate stuff because they're on your side, but also just there's just more things you can refer to.

[01:43:14] Do you have any things that you feel like you want to improve on? Um, as a teacher, I have one. I was trying hard to think about this and these are all of the things that I said. You're just too perfect right now.

[01:43:29] No, all of the things that I said are I'm constantly trying to improve on. I think that the pausing and the like having a conversation with the students when I lecture is something that I still work on a lot.

[01:43:41] And I'm a little worried with the online thing because again, I'm not interacting via Zoom. Like what is the right tone to set there? The other thing that this is weird and kind of a boring thing to say,

[01:43:55] making exams that are good is the hardest thing about teaching that nobody ever told me. Yeah, that's something. So actually I can't believe I almost forgot this. It's my I feel like it's the best thing that I've done in all my teaching

[01:44:08] career is these weekly assignments where the students have to ask questions. I do this for every class except my intro, or it's just too unwieldy to that every time that they they have to submit like two substantive real fleshed out questions about the text.

[01:44:26] You told me that you gave me this advice when I was teaching a seminar at Duke and I've used it ever since because it's so much better than having them write like a paragraph summary because they'll just regurgitate the reading. Exactly. Yeah, no, it's so good.

[01:44:40] And it's like so in then with tests, I agree that that's hard. But I've found that like passage identifications are really good where they have to not only just say what what where the passage comes from, but why it's important in the context of the overall work.

[01:44:56] Yeah, I'm I'm at a disadvantage here because I have to do multiple choice and writing multiple choice questions that are actually testing awareness of concepts is so hard. It's so hard, man. And like so many of these kids are raised to learn how to take multiple

[01:45:14] choice tests rather than like they're not focusing on the concepts. They're focusing on like how do I get rid of the right foil? Right, right. They're Princeton reviews. Exactly. Stanley Kaplan stuff bullshit. Yeah, I mean, it's not bullshit. I guess it works.

[01:45:32] The thing that I need to improve on, I think I'm like for in all the classes except intro, they have to write essays and I am really good at getting them prepped to write the essay. But like in terms of giving valuable comments on the completed essays and

[01:45:50] like really where like it's it's a like it's so hard for me to do like to actually do it and then be. Yeah, I feel like I could be much better at doing that. And I you know, it's and it's just a constant struggle.

[01:46:04] It's like the one horrible thing about teaching is and it's you know what I remember reading like in my university, we often are asked to evaluate the cases, the tenure cases in other departments. And I've read just these letters from students saying like how much time

[01:46:24] the professor put into like giving them written like the feedback on their writing and like so much valuable like edits. And I'm like, oh my God, I'm a horrible person. I'm a terrible like to me, the best papers are the ones that are

[01:46:37] due at the end of the semester. And that's terrible, you know, and but it's like it's it's it's very hard to describe if you don't have to do it just how hard it is to like write detailed comments on a student paper of any length. Yep.

[01:46:54] And I've never figured out a way that a psychologically get myself to not want to be jabbing myself with a pencil and the wrist every time, but B, just do it in a way that's really like will help them in the future.

[01:47:06] You know, one of the things that I worry about in those cases too is my like, I don't want my own mood to have influenced how I'm like writing feedback. But if I'm like frustrated with something like I could be like slightly meaner

[01:47:22] on my comment than I should have been or not. You know, I don't want I don't want like their evaluation to be dependent on my own emotions. One thing I've started doing is meeting with students about their papers.

[01:47:33] Like I will I will jot down I will jot down a lot of comments interspersed with the paper, but there's less pressure if I can meet with them and talk with them about it.

[01:47:42] So that is one, I guess, innovation that I've had to deal with this real struggle that that I think is my Achilles heel as a teacher. Well, if that's your greatest weakness, because you know, you're invulnerable in every other domain.

[01:47:59] Well, no, that's my biggest one, I think by a significant margin. The one thing that you can't give that I think we both have is like a love for doing it.

[01:48:11] And I feel like if you have a love for doing it, like a lot of this thing fall, a lot of these things will fall into place like with. But if it's not your thing, I honestly wish people just wouldn't teach.

[01:48:22] Like just don't like these students, man, they're they're paying a lot of money. They're giving a lot of time like for you to like actually give them an education like don't fund the shit in. Like 100 percent agree.

[01:48:35] And it's not it's way more fun to like care about it and and actually try to be good at it, like it's way more fun to be good at something than to just like think, oh, I'm saving an hour for research like and teach the same boring

[01:48:51] shitty class over and over again. All right, that was you ought to wrap it up. Yeah, let's well. Thank you. We may come back and now that once we have experience doing more remote teaching, if we have anything more to say, but

[01:49:09] but yeah, join us next time on Very Bad Wizards.

Episode 196: The Loneliest Paper in Philosophy