I’m the eldest child in my family, so I grew up with an allergy to admitting I don’t know things. For example, I once responded to a nomenclature question from my younger sister by telling her a certain tool is called “channel lock pliers” because our grandfather used it to change channels when the knob fell off his TV.
I’ve outgrown the predilection to flat-out make shit up when someone asks me something I don’t know. But on some level, maybe that impulse is still there because when weighty unknowns cause anxiety, it’s comforting to me to learn what I can about whatever the issue is and then convince myself that I have a reasonable idea of what will happen next.
I suspect a lot of people do that in ways large and small — uncertainty is stressful for most of us, and learning as much as you can about an uncertain situation is helpful up to a point. But it can become a species of magical thinking that can be harmful if you let it blind you to new information that conflicts with your priors. Sometimes it’s better to just to admit you don’t know and try to make your peace with that.
I’ve been ruminating on how tortuous “I don’t know” is to me in relation to personal issues lately. But the stress of “I don’t know” is broader than that, thanks to the curse of these interesting times. Maybe that’s why I found this take by David Kurtz at TPM on the upcoming Speaker of the House vote so refreshing:
Let’s start with an assessment that violates the No. 1 rule of political reporting (posturing as knowing what’s about to happen): No one really knows whether Jim Jordan is going to win the speakership today. I certainly don’t, and rather than pretending otherwise it’s a good time to sit back and observe, report, and stay a bit humble.
Wow — imagine that!
Open thread.
Alison Rose
I’m the youngest child in my family, but I also never liked saying “I don’t know” because I wanted to prove I was as smart as my brothers…even though obviously them being older than me and knowing things I hadn’t experienced yet didn’t have anything to do with intelligence.
The older I got, the easier it got to say “I don’t know”…about most things. If someone asks me what a word means, I hate admitting that I don’t know the definition. Which is why I will always look up any word I come across in a book or article that I’m not sure of.
narya
I’m gonna thank my dad here. I, too, am the eldest kid, and also hate being wrong, but I strongly remember him saying, when I was a kid, that it’s important to say that you don’t know when you don’t know. It really stuck with me, and has been a real life guide for me. Thanks, Dad! What I’ve tried to add to that is going back and saying that I was wrong on those occasions when I was. Still a work in progress here, of course.
grubert
“uncertainty is stressful for most of us”
Gosh, the truth of that is deep.
I think it helps explain why so many people are rather quick to judge.
And so few can deal with a web of probabilities.. a lot of life is like that.
Jeffro
It’s always tempting to fall into pundit-prediction mode (lord knows I do it often enough).
It probably takes a lot for a reporter to just…report…which, as you noted Betty, includes saying “I don’t know” what will happen a given situation.
It’s not like they have a lot of role models in the snooze media in this regard!
moonbat
I read that bit by Kurtz about an hour ago and it allowed me to take a deep breath and let things go a bit. It was a relief after all the tension-ratcheting gloom and doom all over the internet (and this blog!) yesterday.
We will see and, yes, at this point no one knows what will happen today, but we’ll keep an eye on it.
Scout211
Since this is an open thread, Lawfare media has a nice play-by-play of the Garcia hearings in Loose Cannon’s courtroom last Thursday. TL;DR: She abruptly ended the hearing when the prosecution made her mad by adding additional conflicts not in their filings.
. . .
Geminid
I think people sometimes game out a situation (or let others game it) amd arrive at the most probable outcome. That would be fine if they then did not “bet” on an outcome by saying it will happen.
People so often express certainty about things that I have come to see certainty as one of the most easily achieved of all mental states.
Quantum man
Thank you for this. We do not know what is going to happen, and assuming we do helps create anxiety that is unnecessary. If it happens, then we still do not know what will happen, and catastrophic thinking will not help either.
cope
I often cite my learning to say and acknowledge that “I don’t know” something as one of the most important things I learned in college. When I went off to grad school, my advisor was someone who could never say it. He would always come up with some kind of answer. The one time I remember him saying “I don’t know” was him responding to a question with the response “I don’t know…nobody knows”. I blame the internet and “I’ve done my own research” for amplifying the Dunning-Kruger Effect.
John S.
As a product manager working in the world of financial technology, we constantly get asked to take SWAGs (Scientific Wild Ass Guess) on things we really don’t know.
It takes years of confidence and reputation building to be able to say “I don’t know” as an acceptable answer.
Mike in Pasadena
I don’t know whether the vaccines work, but I’m not in an iron lung or a coffin. I got the flu vax last week and the Covid vax yesterday because perfect knowledge isn’t necessary. There is an element of trust. Until proven otherwise, I am going to trust the government and the science that have kept me alive for 70+ years. I guess that may change if Hair Fuhrer is electoral colleged into office again.
Central Planning
I’m the older of two. I’m not sure how I was as a kid, but hopefully I wasn’t an insufferable know-it-all. I’m currently a big fan of “I don’t know.”
I do know my customers like it when I tell them I don’t know something. It’s the truth and they know I will find out the answer for them. And sometimes I’ll say I don’t know just so I can follow-up with them in a day or two.
I did rub the toe of Hume’s statue in Edinburgh last month, so I know that qualifies me to talk all about knowing things /s
Josie
As a teacher, I always tried to model good thinking for my students. To questions I could not answer, I would tell them, “I don’t know. Let’s look that up” or “Let’s try to figure it out.” I never had a student who criticized me for not knowing.
J. Arthur Crank (fka Jerzy Russian)
I was a know-it-all in my youth, but I have done a 180 degree flip. I fell like I don’t know anything anymore, since the rate of innovation and discovery in astronomy and other fields is staggering.
Somewhat related to this post:
Question: What is worse, ignorance or apathy?
Answer: I don’t know and I don’t care, sometimes followed with “you need a new pair of underwear”.
lowtechcyclist
male answer syndrome – Wiktionary, the free dictionary
ETA: ‘Supposed,’ my ass – and I say that as a male in good standing. There should be a 12-step program for us guys to wean ourselves off it.
hells littlest angel
Pet peeve: people saying, “I’m not sure,” when in fact they don’t know, and haven’t an inkling.
Sure Lurkalot
Wise man in Athens claim to fame was knowing that he knew nothing.
WaterGirl
@Scout211: I listened to Roger talk about this on a podcast last week. My take is that Loose Cannon didn’t know what to do when something new came up, so she had to adjourn so she could ask her betters at the Federalist Society, or ask Leonard Leo, or ask whoever it is who is her handler.
Maxim
Most people are strongly attracted to beliefs, and belief systems, that offer certainty, even if (as is most often the case) that certainty is unwarranted.
In my family, “smart” was the most valuable currency, so we all tended to pretend we knew or understood more than we really did. In my later years, I’ve come to deeply appreciate the value of understanding and accepting the limits of my knowledge (which coexists with trying to understand more, and better, when I can).
moonbat
My dad told me that in his dissertation defense one of his committee members kept peppering him with more and more obscure questions until at last he was forced to admit he didn’t know the answer.
And then the professor stopped.
Later he explained to my dad that the hardest things for a freshly minted Ph.D. to do is admit that they don’t know something, but it’s always important to remember that you don’t so that you keep in mind that there is still a lot out there to find out.
WaterGirl
It feels like I’m seeing lots of “I’m the oldest” comments here. I was the baby of the family, and I don’t have any trouble saying I don’t know. Maybe birth order matters here?
opiejeanne
My husband learned to say, “I don’t know, but I’ll find out.” when he was a young adult and had a job. I don’t know how difficult it was for him to learn that. I learned to say that quite a few years later.
WaterGirl
I think some of the “doom” is because for some people, the sate of not knowing is worse than assuming the worst. At least then they feel like they know.
OzarkHillbilly
I never had a problem uttering the words, “I don’t know.” It took way too long but I also got comfortable saying, “I was wrong.” and, “I’m sorry.” I think it’s just because I’m getting old and don’t feel the need to prove anything to anyone anymore.
cope
@WaterGirl: I don’t know (see what I did there?) if it matters but I am the oldest of five.
Brachiator
I was an only child for about ten years, and later the eldest, and I never had a problem with “I don’t know,” maybe because I was always surrounded by elders who I could ask “Why?” and “How come?”
I love uncertainty and that gap between what we know and what we don’t know. I also love finding out something new, even if it upends what I previously thought was true.
There’s also a general principle at work here. For Democrats, and for the country, it doesn’t matter who the Speaker is. The Republicans are committed to stupid, and they have entirely abandoned any pretense of honor, tradition, or interest in the country and the general welfare of the people.
Carlo Graziani
Good philosophical topic.
In the sciences, one of the hardest things to convey to students, and even to early-career researchers, is the power of “I don’t understand/I don’t know.” Many who enter the field grew up on the smart end of the intellectual spectrum, and arrive in a state of mind that makes them extremely hesitant to admit it when they don’t understand what’s going on. This leads to extreme epidemics of impostor syndrome. Unnecessarily so, because (a) everyone starts out not knowing much, (b) one learns much faster by having people slow down and explain things, and (c) STEM subjects are full of folks who are obsessively passionate about what they do, and are eager to explain anything in (occasionally excessive) detail.
There’s basically no downside in allowing others to educate us. The beginning of wisdom is the fact that an admission of ignorance usually triggers learning.
schrodingers_cat
@WaterGirl: I am the oldest in my family and my extended family and I have no problems saying IDK. Perhaps it is my training as a scientist IDK. Because there is always more stuff that we don’t know than we know about any subject
But if I don’t know something I will usually try to figure out the answer. I usually say I will get back to you on that I am not sure of the answer.
Kathleen
@John S.: Back in the 80’s I conducted training for a giant corporation and was very fortunate to have the opportunity to attend a “Quality Training” class provided by a prestigious training/consulting firm in Virginia. Our instructor said the most important quality anyone had in business environment was authenticity and stressed the importance of admitting you didn’t know an answer to a question when you really wanted to engage with students.. “Don’t just say something. Stand there.”
lowtechcyclist
@moonbat:
I’m not sure how one gets a Ph.D. without realizing how vast the areas of one’s ignorance are. You’ve just learned practically everything about one small area in order to push the bounds of knowledge just a wee bit further. And there are a jillion other areas just in your own field that you have only a general idea about.
Betty Cracker
@WaterGirl: I think that’s true of pessimism (certainty of disaster is better than the unknown) and maybe it factors into optimism too. One common saying that really sets me off is, “Everything happens for a reason.” No! It doesn’t! ;-)
Villago Delenda Est
David Kurtz is going to get his “Village Idiot in good standing” card revoked if he keeps admitting he doesn’t know what is goint to happen.
prostratedragon
For a while.now I’ve been dodging the issue of not knowing with something like, ” Well I guess we’ll just have to see.” ‘Cause I’m convinced nobody knows nothing.
Bill Arnold
@narya:
My dad taught his children to estimate the probability that any single thought or belief is true. Habitual meta-cognition is very useful.
gene108
A corollary to not wanting to admit what you don’t know is a certain anxiety in situations you cannot exert control over. The feeling of helplessness is too much for some people.
FastEdD
When I interviewed my current doctor for the first time, I looked at his history and found he worked for a drug company for a few years. I was worried that he would just prescribe pills for everything and he would be against any other kind of healing or therapy. I asked him about it and he said, “I don’t know what I don’t know. I can learn.” Hmm, I thought, maybe this guy is alright. Last year I was freaking out about caregiver issues and losing my life partner from cancer. He prescribed a book that helped him when he divorced his wife. Yeah, this guy is alright.
moonbat
@lowtechcyclist: I could introduce you to quite a few, if you like. lol
opiejeanne
@Betty Cracker: I truly hate that, “everything happens for a reason”. When I hear it I add, “sometimes the reason is that someone did something stupid.”
Kelly
@John S.:
As a retired mainframe IT guy I agree
opiejeanne
@moonbat: I remember how stunned I was as an undergrad to discover just how narrow a field of knowledge some PhDs had. At that time most of my instructors did not have doctorates, almost all had Masters, a couple only had a bachelor’s but had extensive work experience in their field. This was at a Cal State, back in the Dark Ages of the 70s. It quickly changed to almost all of them having a PhD or at least working on one.
schrodingers_cat
@opiejeanne: Isn’t there an old joke that goes like this
narya
@lowtechcyclist:
By convincing oneself that one’s area of expertise is The Most Important, and then by extrapolating from what one knows to everything else. To be a little fair, actually completing the degree does mean a seriously deep dive into something, and finding out all kinds of stuff, only some of which makes it into the dissertation. I found it most problematic with people who did a lot of modeling (game theory . . . ptui!) but didn’t engage with much in the real world.
Alison Rose
@schrodingers_cat:
0. Associates: According to hirers, I don’t know a God damn thing.
schrodingers_cat
@gene108: Yep. And authoritarians know how to exploit that.
I am always suspicious of people who insist that they have simple answers to complex questions.
Suzanne
I find uncertainty very difficult to communicate to people. Often in the course of my job, I have to communicate that we don’t have a decision made on something, and that it has downstream effect. Such as “if A, then B, but if X, then Y”. And half the time, someone will follow up later and say, “You said we were doing X and then Y!” And I’m like ARRRRRRRGHHHH! I just do not know how to deal with the situation effectively. I have tried multiple strategies, and it is just hard. My job (hell, my LIFE) involves weighing a lot of pros-and-cons, and seldom is there a “right” answer.
UncleEbeneezer
@lowtechcyclist: THIS! And it starts very young. I see it with my students all the time. Boys emphatically insist they know stuff that they don’t actually know or even understand. Girls say “Hmmm, I don’t know.” The latter is the far healthier and more accurate approach.
Alison Rose
@UncleEbeneezer: Only thing I’ll note is that girls, especially in the classroom, might say “I don’t know” when they DO actually know the answer, because we’re socialized not to be “full of ourselves” or to show up boys or whatever. If a girl truly doesn’t know the answer, it’s fine for her to say so, but sometimes that “I don’t know” is masking the fact that they do but they think they shouldn’t say so.
moonbat
@opiejeanne: For a long time I’ve thought that the higher the degree the more adept one becomes at shoveling the bullshit. ;)
But as others here have said, students respect you more when you put down the shovel and engage honestly with the questions we are still grappling with because we don’t know.
Suzanne
@Alison Rose: Also, because we have been socialized to be more humble, we do a lot of rhetorical tactics. I have been told that I am intimidating and need to be “nicer”, but I also have to delegate and advise. So a lot of the time, I will state the shit I know as a question. “Do we need to do XYZ thing/choose ABC option so that we can move on?” I hate it. I hate that I am expected to manage people’s feelings of insecurity.
TiredOfItAll
@FastEdD: So what’s the book? Inquiring minds want to know. Thanks.
sdhays
@Betty Cracker: Well, there’s always a reason. It just may (probably) have nothing to do with you.
UncleEbeneezer
@Carlo Graziani: All of what you said is even more true when it comes to our understanding of Racism, Misogyny, Transphobia etc. That first humble step of admitting “Maybe everything society instilled in me isn’t actually correct” and proceeding to listen to those who know more and live this stuff, is absolutely crucial to growth. There really is nothing wrong with men not understanding Misogyny, or White People not understanding Racism, or Cisgender People not understanding the complexities of Gender. The biggest obstacle to people learning and evolving beyond the place of relative ignorance where we all start out is their unwillingness to admit that they don’t really know/understand what they think they do.
Alison Rose
@Suzanne: Or saying things like “I wonder if maybe we should…” or “Do you think it would be good if…” instead of just saying “We should do this” or whatever. Again, it’s good to not be a blowhard and assume you always know what’s best, but it’s fine to be confident and to make it clear you know what you’re doing. But ladies shouldn’t do that!!!
catclub
I think I heard about a different predilection of Italians when asked for directions. Why admit ignorance to a stranger. Just tell them some random route.
mvr
I don’t actually know how hard it is for me to admit I don’t know. I suspect I would claim it was easier than I actually find it to be. (FWIW, I am an oldest kid.)
I work in a field (philosophy) where stuff remains part of the field mostly in virtue of remaining controversial among people who have thought about the topic for a long while. Generally for anything philosophically interesting there are considerations on either side. Once an area converges on received knowledge and methodology it tends to spin off into its own discipline.
Part of writing in such a field is sounding more confident than one actually is. I think there is a kind of background recognition of that – so that we tend to somewhat discount the extent to which most of our peers are sure of what they confidently say. But I also think that recognition fades in and out, even with respect to our own views.
I’m generally comfortable with uncertainty, but I don’t like uncertainty about what to do where important things are at stake – as with politics right now. If I did know what to do it would make things easier.
TriassicSands
Amy Coney Barrett knows! In an interview she said that the SCOTUS should have an ethics code and that “all nine justices are very committed to the highest standards of ethical conduct,” which is transparently false. That assertion smells suspiciously self-serving and strikes me as simply said to mollify Thomas and Alito (at a minimum those two).
Ohio Mom
One thing that has been liberating to me is realizing that it an awful lot of cases, it doesn’t matter what I think.
For one example, whether or not I thought it was a good idea for House Democrats to not support McCarthy, my opinion made no difference. I don’t need to decide if Jim Jordan will be speaker, my opinion changes nothing.
It’s different than saying “I don’t know.” It’s not even getting to that point. It’s recognizing that different possibilities exist and they exist without my input.
Now there are things I can try to help influence, which is participating in elections by donating, writing postcards, etc., and of course, voting.
catclub
CNN headline: Doesn’t seem like he has it in the bag.
Eyeroller
@moonbat: PhD = Piled high and Deep (very old joke)
smith
CNN has live coverage of the Speaker vote, if anyone’s interested. If I’m interpreting the numbers correctly, it looks like only 217 Rs are present, and if so, Jordan can’t lose any votes at all if he wants to win.
ETA: It looks like they might not have finished calling the roll.
Suzanne
@Alison Rose: I talk like that at work all the time, and I hate it so much. I also ask questions that I fully know the answer to, so that other people will hear other people say it, not just me. And I often ask questions in order to “build a case”.
Oddly, the colleagues and clients with whomever I have had the best relationships have usually been men who don’t truck with bullshit and appreciate straight talk.
I still remember this exchange:
(Background: Client had not been maintaining their Fire Life Safety Report, as I had advised weeks before, was now having their permit put on hold until they corrected it. So I got them a consulting firm to do this. We were having the first meeting with this consultant.)
Client: “Suzanne, what’s the process for getting the Fire Life Safety Report to the City and getting the permit?”
Suzanne: :::describes/lists process in order:::
Client: “Consultant, how do we get this report filed and get the permit?”
Consultant (looking stunned): “Exactly what Suzanne just told you.”
MisterDancer
I have trouble with I Don’t Know. I try to be gracious about not knowing, but there was, in my family, some pressure around this issue, and not to my good.
Ruckus
@John S.:
I must be the exception. I was taught to say “I don’t know” when I was quite young. The helpful thing I was taught at the same time was to how to find out. 1. Ask questions. 2. Learn to ask reasonable questions (You can’t do this if you don’t do #1 often enough. 3. LISTEN to the answers/THINK about the answers. 4. Learn to check the answers because some people will always answer to sound like they know whatever. 5. If you are going to be a smartass, at least know when you are being one.
After all these years, I think #5 is the thing one should learn first.
Citizen Alan
@lowtechcyclist: My usual wiggle phrase is “Well, I’m not 100% sure, but this is my understanding …” which allows me to blow smoke out of my ass with a clear conscience.
MattF
An old friend of mine would refer to what she called an ‘onageric estimate’. Crossword people know that an onager is a wild ass.
WaterGirl
@MisterDancer: Back to my birth order theory. First born?
Omnes Omnibus
Ambiguity and/or uncertainty can be very difficult for some people. Also, sometimes there can be twelve good answers to a question and someone needs to pick one and not worry whether it is the best answer. Learning to recognize those situations can be difficult.
ETA: Or all answers could be bad, but you still need to choose.
Ruckus
@Betty Cracker:
“Everything happens for a reason.”
This is code for “I have no idea what, why, when, where or how.”
catclub
@Ruckus: There are also ‘Four statements lead to wisdom’
in Louise Penny’s Gamache books.
Barbara
@UncleEbeneezer: Yes, and perhaps equally important, acknowledging that what they think, or how what they think reflects on them is not the most important thing about any of those subjects. Establishing your credibility as a white person who is not racist, for instance, is far less important than listening to what African-American people say about their own experience.
WaterGirl
@Suzanne: And don’t forget to smile more. //
Villago Delenda Est
@TriassicSands: Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito do not have a single ethical bone in their bodies.
Citizen Alan
Slightly OT, but at this point literally any mention of Aileen Cannon’s existence feels me with unendurable rage. I genuinely feel like Shitgibbon has utterly ruined the federal judiciary for literally generations to come. Certainly for the rest of my life. At the age of 53, I don’t believe I will live to see a SCOTUS that isn’t reactionary and ultraconservative, let alone a liberal one (like the one that was in our grasp in 2016 but, you know, buttery males and all that).
Leto
Two things in my military career that I had to squash: saying “I don’t know” as well as asking “why”. Especially as I moved up the food chain of ranks. It also helps explain, in part, why I retired at the rank I did.
sdhays
@smith: From CNN:
They’re hoping – hoping! – to get 201 votes on the first ballot. Literally, they’re planning on using the exact same playbook as McQarthy in January. What a bunch of morons.
Ruckus
@schrodingers_cat:
I’ve heard this or something like it a long time ago, “The higher I get, I find out the less I know.” I’ve also heard “The older I get, I find out how much I don’t know.”
sdhays
@Citizen Alan: None of the Republicans on the Court do.
catclub
@Villago Delenda Est: In Paper Moon, when Moses Pray tells Addie that he has scruples, she responds, ” and I bet you stole them from somebody else!”
Leto
@WaterGirl: @Suzanne: @Alison Rose: I don’t know if you have Apple+, but there’s a new series that started called “Lessons in Chemistry” that follows a female chemist in the 1950s. Watched the first episode and all of that is in there, in spades. It was adapted from the novel of the same name by Bonnie Garmus. It looks to be a really good series.
Brachiator
@opiejeanne:
I learned this, or was taught this when I had a customer service job early on.
If I just said “I don’t know,” and stopped, customers would hear it as “I don’t care,” and get angrier or must frustrated.
But when I honestly said, “but I will find out,” most customers would feel that you were on their side.
Fortunately I was in a job that gave me some power to follow through on my promise.
This worked in other areas of life as well.
I also developed respect for people who could admit that they don’t know. I do not like lying or time wasting bluster.
This also makes me despise empty bullshit artists like Trump and wonder why so many believe his crap.
PW
Hey Betty:
Your pliers comment reminded me of leaving my pre-school boys (5 and 3) in the house (with a babysitter) with the TV tuned to PBS and the knob removed, when we went to work. Come to find out they found my pliers and used them to change the channels. (Then switched back to PBS before we got home.)
Betty
@Citizen Alan: I see she piled on again chastising the Special Counsel for not finding a SCIF in South Florida. She really is a mess.
Mel
@Josie: I found this to be the case, as well.
Kids have such excellent bullshit detectors, and can almost always tell which teachers are bluffers.
Villago Delenda Est
@Leto: There are some things you can never, ever, answer “I don’t know” to. Like how many soldiers were at formation that morning, with an accounting for every last soldier.
Villago Delenda Est
Squeaker vote in progress.
JWR
@smith:
I think this is the same thing on Youtube. Unfortunately, neither has an onscreen vote total.
Haha. One Repub just voted for McCarthy. ETA and one vote for Scalise.
Ruckus
@Suzanne:
My job (hell, my LIFE) involves weighing a lot of pros-and-cons, and seldom is there a “right” answer.
That IS life.
There may be one answer for one question. There may be dozens of answers for one question. Especially when you are designing something. I designed/built molds for plastic and die cast products for decades. At some point you figure out that your experience often gives you multiple answers to questions, especially complex questions, and one is likely to be a better answer, and on occasion there is only one reasonable answer. You know you’ve arrived when you aren’t the only one that thinks the reasonable answer actually is.
Quinerly
@JWR:
I missed Bacon’s vote. Did he vote for McCarthy?
smith
@PW: My younger sisters went one better: they shared a room, which had a TV in it, and had a habit of watching it late at night, long after bedtime. My mother became so exasperated with this that one night, when she caught them again, she took some scissors and cut the plug off the TV cord. Next night my sisters surreptitiously stripped the wires back a bit, inserted them into the outlet, and continued their TV watching. Needless to say, the TV then went away.
Mel
@Ruckus: The older that I get, the more frequently I seem to encounter the, “as soon as I learn how it works, the way it works changes again” dilemma.
Brachiator
@Citizen Alan:
Courts, like the country, seem to go through phases. Maybe there is a general tendency towards liberalism, I don’t know.
And keep in mind that Biden has made a large number of judicial appointments. Ah, here we go.
Hope.
Eduardo
@Quinerly: He did not. Diaz Balart also didn’t.
Quinerly
5 defections!
Fake Irishman
@Citizen Alan:
Well, take a bit of comfort that two more district court judges are teed up for confirmation today. Small steps, journeys of 500 miles and all that. The Senate has steadily been working away while the House has been in chaos. GOP judicial picks dominate the Supremes and have a few appeals courts locked down, but progress is being made on reversing some of the damage, and Dem appointees grow more numerous at the district level than their Republican counterparts week by week. For a lot of folks seeking justice, that matters quite a bit.
Keep fighting the good fight.
update: and I see Brachiator has said what I wanted to more eloquently and with more complete data at #91.
….What a show off ;)
smith
@Quinerly: You’re more up to date than CNN — what are you watching?
Eduardo
@Quinerly: Really???
Quinerly
@Eduardo:
I read yesterday that Rep Bacon would be a bell weather. Jordan is already down 6 so definitely not on the first ballot.
NotMax
Gotta admit it was refreshing about a week or so ago to see a news anchor on an English language Israeli broadcast ask the former Israeli ambassador to France (or maybe it was the other way round, can’t rightly recall) what he thought was coming next, to be answered with a somber “I don’t know.”
Not that segment, but here’s a link to the i24 channel’s English language coverage.
Eduardo
@smith: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gTD4jqYfVmA
smith
@Eduardo: Thanks!
Quinerly
@smith:
Watching MSNBC.
9 defections.
Villago Delenda Est
@Quinerly: He did.
schrodingers_cat
@Quinerly: How many votes can he lose?
Eduardo
It seems Jordan lost this one — Jordan as Speaker on 1/2025 would be such nightmare
Leto
@Villago Delenda Est: that’s true, but then you’re hit with a surprise technical question that’s out of left field and you have to provide your commander (who should fucking know better) with an answer.
Or akin to your formation one is: Do you know what your Airmen did last night? Ofc not, I was at home sleeping. Oh he got drunk down at a bar in New Orleans, went to piss in a doorstoop, cops saw it and told him to freeze, and then he proceeded to run? Cops caught him, threw his ass in jail, called the first Sgt, and now we’re here? “You’re the NCOIC, you should know where all your people are at all times. This reflects poorly on you.” This TOTALLY didn’t happen to me… again, when I die, I plan on having all my previous Airmen lower me in my casket so I can have them let me down one more time.
CaseyL
@Citizen Alan:
Cannon’s decisions are at least appealable, though the 11th Circuit isn’t much to write home about. (Motto: “At least we’re not the 5th Circuit!”). If she makes it onto SCOTUS, as she clearly hopes under another Trump Presidency, then the debasement will happen in earnest. And this is what the Federalist Society wants, to undermine the fidelity and functionality of US government institutions.
Regarding SCOTUS, the Warren Court, and the 40 or so years of liberal victories there, were the aberration, sorry to say. SCOTUS had been a tool of the RW/rich for most of its history; it has reverted to type.
Betty Cracker
@smith: MSNBC is carrying it live, Chris Jansing hosting. I will always love her for summing up 2020 so eloquently here:
brendancalling
@schrodingers_cat:
He needs 217. He’s lost this round, I think.
This shit is embarrassing.
Eduardo
@Quinerly: Thank you
Quinerly
@schrodingers_cat:
I think 4.
One Repug is out. Funeral.
TriassicSands
@Quinerly:
Unless a sufficient number don’t vote???
But that would take Dems not voting too.
It now looks like there are so.many nos to Jordan he can’t make it in this ballot.
smith
@Betty Cracker:
@Quinerly:
Thanks to both
Matt McIrvin
My scientific training drives me to emphasize “I don’t know” enough that it sometimes bothers my coworkers: it seems it can have this connotation of “I don’t care to find out.” I have to push myself to phrase it in a proactive way: “I will find out.” Though I can’t guarantee that, beyond making the effort.
Citizen Alan
@Ruckus: I once used the phrase “It is what it is” in a conversation with opposing counsel because my client had absolutely no defense for the dumbass thing she did but I couldn’t just say that.
Quinerly
11 defections!
Quinerly
@TriassicSands:
No presents so far.
12 defections!
JWR
@Quinerly: I meant to listen for that name but was busily Googling Youtube. Oh well. :
ETA PS. Have you found a site reporting the vote totals?
Matt McIrvin
@CaseyL: When Cannon’s assignment to this case first came up, I think we established that it’s possible for Cannon to unilaterally acquit Trump in such a way that it cannot be appealed. But to do that, she has to wait until the actual jury trial when the jury is impanelled (so that Trump is technically in jeopardy); she can’t do it until then.
hells littlest angel
@brendancalling: Not even fucking close. Jeffries will end up with a higher vote total.
All yesterday’s worry-warting over nothing.
Alison Rose
LOL Republicans are garbage
Betty Cracker
McCarthy voted for Jordan. What a noodle.
UncleEbeneezer
@Alison Rose: Very true. Though in most of the cases I’m thinking of they were fairly casual questions/responses with little to no pressure. More like “ok does anyone know how the scoring works in a tennis match?” Boys insist they (and ONLY THEY) know, then get it completely wrong. Girls shrug or even joke “well how am I supposed to know that already?” The boys definitely are more concerned with trying to look like the smartest in the room. And they get way more defensive when I tell them they are wrong. Girls roll with it much better or even appreciate being corrected, instead of getting defensive.
Soprano2
Oooh, I hate that too. Pray tell me the reason my sister was killed in a plane crash at the age of 46. Why does my husband of 33 years have vascular dementia? Why does such a cruel disease as dementia even exist? There is no good reason for these things.
As for me, I’m the oldest of 2 and I’ve never had a problem saying I don’t know something. There’s so much we don’t know about everything.
Anoniminous
@lowtechcyclist:
By that I deduce you’ve never dealt with a physicist.
cain
I hope he fails the next few votes – GOP in disarray should be all the headlines.
I hope they can’t do a damn thing without Democratic votes – but I suspect that they will have to fall in line otherwise doomsday is coming for the entire party. It is coming regardless – but it would be fun to see the man go down in flames and a new person comes into play.
Right now the dude is probably bullying people left and right. Probably has Hannity calling up people showing pictures of Hunter’s dick.
Alison Rose
Who are some of the others they’ve voted for?
cain
Is it Jim Jordan’s? :D
cain
“his dishonor remains…”
Matt McIrvin
@Brachiator: Yes, Biden has actually been doing a lot to improve the federal judiciary. Moving much faster than Obama did, if I recall correctly, though that may be because of rule changes that made this possible.
The thing about judicial appointments is that they have a delayed effect and a long, long shadow. This is how Trump left a long-lasting mark on the country and it’s how Biden will do the same, though he probably won’t get anything like the chance to appoint so many Supreme Court Justices.
Citizen Alan
Who the hell is “Zellton” that someone just voted for?
Alison Rose
Oh my heart. Ovation for Mary Peltola <3
Matt McIrvin
@Betty Cracker: My pet peeve is “there are no coincidences”. What do these people think PREVENTS coincidences from happening?
(Probably they just greatly underestimate what frequency of spooky-seeming coincidences is statistically likely.)
Hoppie
Back in the day when we sold slogan buttons and t-shirts, one said: I can answer ANY question. Often the answer is “I don’t know.”
Scout211
Crying now. Rep Peltola being applauded for voting for Jeffries. Standing O for her return.
Quinerly
@Citizen Alan:
He has at least 3 if not 4 votes.
Eolirin
@Betty Cracker: Yes it does, something caused it to happen! :p
cain
@Citizen Alan: Is Harry Potter in the running? Gandalf? WOLVERINE!?
UncleEbeneezer
@Leto: We just started it and are three episodes in. It’s good-not-great, imo. Gets a bit cheesy at times but still worth watching. Similar to Good Girls Revolt (which is about magazine publishing/reporting from the 1960s). Nowhere near the level of Mad Men, but still good.
hitchhiker
When mr hitchhiker fell and broke his neck 20-odd years ago, we all learned how to live with uncertainty … extreme uncertainty.
Neuroscience is really about probability. This might happen, or maybe that, or maybe neither, and also there’s a long window within which the answer might change. Why is a question you figure out pretty quickly that they have no answer to.
I just want him to come home and be himself again wasn’t on the table. Would he be able to pee without a catheter someday? Maybe. Would those flickers of muscle movement in one leg ever turn into walking? Maybe. What were those rigid spasms about, and would they ever go away? We think it works like this, and we don’t know if they’ll go away.
I made myself an expert over the years on how spinal cord injury works, to the point that I published a lay-person’s guide covering all the efforts to repair it, in a book that was funded by the Christopher Reeve Foundation. Trust me when I say that I know the importance of uncertainty management, and how to soothe the impulse to fucking figure out what’s next.
This season in our national life, though, is challenging even my abilities. When things feel very fragile and fraught, I hide from the news. At some point during the day, I take a peek in here, because if things have gone very wrong, I want to hear it from you guys, and hear it with you guys.
NotMax
@Betty Cracker
C-SPAN live stream on YouTube.
Kelly
Lori Chavez-DeRemer, my OR- 5th Republican, voted for McCarthy. She barely won in 2020 in a Biden district. Been trying to look centerish ever since.
Scout211
New voting thread upstairs. It could be a long day.
Manyakitty
@hells littlest angel: Jordan will keep running it over and over until he wins.
Quinerly
I have to say it….AOC looks so cute sitting there next to Raskin. And, no one has ever called me an AOC fan.
Dems just look better than Repugs.😎
Manyakitty
@Betty Cracker: of the sloppiest kind
Manyakitty
@Citizen Alan: Lee Zeldin from New York, who either resigned or withdrew from his race in disgrace.
WaterGirl
I have a new post up for the Speaker Vote/s.
hells littlest angel
@Manyakitty: Or has an aneurysm. I know the outcome I’m hoping for.
Soprano2
@WaterGirl: There used to be a guy in my building who would routinely tell me I should smile when he passed me in the hallway. One day I finally asked him “Why”?, and he said “because it looks nicer and more pleasant”. He quit asking, though.
Manyakitty
@hells littlest angel: acceptable. I’ll switch over to your side.
Leto
@UncleEbeneezer: we’re spacing them out so we have stuff to watch all through the week. I don’t think Mad Men was Mad Men in S1, but I hope they give it a chance to build/grow.
Ruckus
@mvr:
How often are there multiple answers to any question? How many issues in humanity are cut and dried, one answer issues?
Take math. Yes much, maybe most of math is rather cut and dried, 2+2=4, but not all of it. In manufacturing there are tolerances, a plus or minus from the intended. Sometimes that tolerance is large +/- 1/4 inch, sometimes rather small +/- .000025.
Brit in Chicago
It is essential to know when you don’t know something. I think of it as the Socratic virtue. How will you find the truth if you do not recognize that you do not yet have it, and that further inquiry is needed?
Eolirin
@Manyakitty: He resigned to run for governor. And lost. But by less than he should have.
cain
@Quinerly:
I bet she has some really great stories. I would love to hear from both Raskin and AOC on the kind of shit they run into on the Hill. The woman must get nervous when the sun sets.
Manyakitty
@Eolirin: okay thanks. Isn’t he under indictment for some kind of fraud or am I confusing him with another Republican criminal?
eversor
Jordan loses badly.
Manyakitty
@eversor: evergreen. He’s just too stupid to realize it.
schrodingers_cat
@Quinerly: Thanks Q!
Matt McIrvin
@Ruckus: When you do math professionally, it doesn’t take long to get out to the edge where answers don’t exist and may even be provable to not exist. People who liked primary-school math because there was always a right answer you could compute if you knew how get very uncomfortable with this.
Uncle Cosmo
Return with us now to those chilling days of yesteryear when I was still hoping to get my Ph.D. Under that old, old dispensation it was said that 95% of all doctoral candidates slunk out of their thesis defense certain they had failed – when in fact 95% of them passed. It can be truly brutal (though in the end, salutary) to have a panel of professors demonstrate to you how little you actually know.
* * * *
I worked for many years primarily as an applied statistician**, hired mostly by engineering managers who valued stat. At one point one manager hired an honest-to-Gauss Ph.D. in demographic statistics from a corporate office that was being phased out.
After a couple of months sitting in the same cubicle, I said to him, You know, Neil, you have a doctorate and I just have a lousy MA in applied math, and you show up precisely at opening time and leave precisely at quitting dime and only take a half hour for lunch, whereas I’m always late and often working late and take a long lunch hour – but I will be here long after you’re let go. After he finished spluttering, I explained:
And in fact I was still there long after he was let go.
When I was teaching Stat 101 at night in a community college, I would deliver the following bit of blasphemy: All exams would be open book, open notes, open calculators…pretty much the only thing you couldn’t do was send someone in to take them for you. And when someone would mutter, how can you do that, I’d respond:
And I would tell them they could get a 90 on any of my exams even if they flunked arithmetic: For any problem, tell me what we know, what we want to find out, what technique we should use, which are the variables, which are dependent on which other variables, and that’s 90% of the solution. For the rest, we have computers that do know how to do arithmetic.
“Finally, the bad news: Most of the problems will be word problems.” (Loud groan.) “Because customers will describe their problems to you in words, and you’ll have to figure out how to sort those words into a mathematical framework for computing statistics from them. Sorry.” (Not sorry. ;^D)
** And tech writer employed by engineering departments that loathed tech writers who they couldn’t control, mostly because however good they were at writing they sucked at the tech. But that’s not important now (h/t Airplane!)…
Brachiator
@Matt McIrvin:
True enough. But some of Biden’s picks may become Supreme Court nominees.
Biden is helping to build the future. Not too bad for a guy who the stupid press wants to brand as “too old.”
Villago Delenda Est
@Leto: The old AFN Europe question: “It’s 2200 in Central Europe. First Sergeants, do you know where your soldiers are?”
Matt McIrvin
@Uncle Cosmo: In my graduate physics courses, nearly all of the exams were multi-day take-home exams, in which we weren’t supposed to collaborate but could use any of our texts or other sources. That meant, of course, that the questions were hellishly difficult to compensate. Every one of them was like a small theoretical research program.
The one exception was statistical mechanics, which was an in-class exam. I forget whether it was open-book or not. But that one had to be curved with a vengeance because everyone would have flunked otherwise.
Kayla Rudbek
@Alison Rose: a woman’s guess is more accurate than a man’s certainty, as the saying goes
Ruckus
@Leto:
You have me thinking about my service time. Now a little difference, I enlisted, I never re-enlisted, once was more than enough. I could see that for some it would be a not unreasonable career. It seemed to me that applied only to someone who could always put themself last. One didn’t have to be thinking of themselves as number one, hell, number 36 was not acceptable, one had to consider themself as last, in whatever line, count or position. Even if it never had anything to do with the job, position or situation. One always had to be subordinate to everything. And anyone from the captain (navy) or even admiral on down had to be subordinate to someone. Or everyone. I ran an engineering department on 2 different ships as an E5 and we had a captain once who thought his exhaust matter absolutely did not stink. He was wrong – it reeked. It was so pleasant to be discharged from that ship.
Even better than just being discharged…..
wjca
My Dad was prone to answer: “Let’s look it up.” Even when he knew the answer. As a result, we all got the habit of researching our questions, rather than just assuming the first answer/opinion we heard was necessarily correct. It’s been a boon my whole life.
Omnes Omnibus
@Suzanne: The ambiguity averse had difficulty in Evidence class in law school. The most definitive answer you could give is that the piece of evidence probably should (or should not) be admissible because xyz. I was comfortable with that. Many were not.
jlowe
In the days when I was mentoring scientific and engineering professionals in environmental services, occasionally I’d say is the true test of an expert is in how they said “I don’t know”. Not only was that an expression of humility that would be disarming as clients rarely expect their expensive consultants to be humble, it created the opening for discussing a new scope of work to further study the unknown.
geg6
@schrodingers_cat:
Having worked in academia for over thirty years, I’d have to say that old joke has it exactly backwards.
geg6
@Leto:
Read the book and have been excitedly working to finish up watching The White House Plumbers on HBO Max in order to start the show.
geg6
@Betty Cracker:
Ugh. I hate her.
PW
@smith: LOL!!! (Glad they were safe!)
Uncle Cosmo
I remember a grad-school take-home exam in Sadistical Mechanics – more properly, I remember nothing about it except tearing my hair out in utter despair at 2 AM in my office when suddenly the door burst open and the local Boy Genius (all of 20 years old who burned the midnight oil on Pacific Time owing to a co-appointment at Lawrence Livermore) burst into the office from his office next door to rifle the stack of magazines my officemate kept on his shelf. He wondered what I was doing up so late, then asked to see the exam & sniggered over the questions (he’d had the course the year before) but refused to provide me any hints, the sonofabitch…