Fourth Meeting

WE’RE MAKING A VIDEO! This next meeting is all about starting up our video series.  We’ll be brainstorming ideas for our first video and the video series in general. There’s a good chance we’ll also be shooting some footage at the meeting, too!

The new meeting is this Sunday, April 5th, at 7:00 p.m.  Again, it’s being held at the cafe inside the Barnes & Noble bookstore in Deptford.  An interactive map is below. Click here to get directions from your place. As always, there’s a Facebook Event for it. Let me know if you plan on showing up!

No Faking: Praising Ignorance (2)

Recognizing the difference between ignorance and stupidity is a big step toward seeing that there is a positive side to ignorance. Stupidity is rightly seen as a bad thing. Ignorance, though, isn’t the same as stupidity, and so might not be such a bad thing.

Still, in most of our minds there is a natural connection between ignorance and stupidity. This is why many of us are embarrassed to be caught not knowing something.  Few of us want to hear someone laugh and say, “What do you mean you’ve never heard of  _______?!? HOW DUMB ARE YOU?”  So, instead of admitting our ignorance about something, we often pretend that we do know about it, and hope no one discovers our secret.

Faking it is very common.  To avoid looking bad, we pretend we know more than we really do.  Norm MacDonald admits to faking it:

While faking it is both natural and understandable, I believe it’s bad for several reasons.  Mainly, of course, it’s dishonest.  Owning up to our ignorance is simply more genuine.  But faking it is more intellectually damaging than other forms of dishonesty.  In a few upcoming posts, I’ll explain these other reasons to avoid faking it.

Check the Source

-via GraphJam

Making the Video

Our first big project is to make the opening video for the club’s online video series.  In fact, we’re devoting our next meeting  to this project.  Here are some video ideas we came up with at the third meeting:

• a video series of “lessons learned,” where a member tells a funny, embarrassing story about a mistake she’s made, and the lesson she learned from it (this could be done complete with reenactments, like the “Drunk History” series)
• some short interviews with smart people on topics related to intellectual honesty
• clips of powerful people (such as politicians or lawyers) being intellectually dishonest with our reactions to those clips
• short commercials on the benefits of owning our ignorance

Mainly, the first video should be short and funny. Also, it should introduce both the club and the video series.  Suggest more video ideas here!

3rd Meeting Recap

We had a great 3rd meeting last Sunday. Mostly we brainstormed about the club again (although a healthy portion of the meeting was devoted to surviving the inevitable zombie apocalypse). Thanks to “Spanish Project” Ashley, “RPG” Chris, “I ❤ Thom” Danielle, “Pro Bum” Dom, “Zombie” Justin, “Sir Laughs-a-lot” Kyle, “Hand Raising” Ringgo, “Finally Made It” Steph, and “Electricity” Valerie for coming up with some great ideas!  We’re really starting to figure out what this club is all about.  Our new ideas included:

• topics for discussion nights (my favorites: a 60’s night to discuss the impact of the counterculture movement, and a discussion of our ignorance of other cultures)
• ways to promote intellectual honesty (my favorite: creating a video series to put online)
• other smart people to invite as club guests (my favorites: Thom Yorke, and, more realistically, an expert on folklore)

Other new ideas are posted over at the club’s Facebook Discussion Board.

Third Meeting

We got a lot accomplished in our second meeting, though it was mostly an organizational and planning meeting.  Now it’s time to actually start clubbing!  For our third meeting we’ll be doing two things:

1. Having our first Discussion Night!  There’s a place to let us know what you want to discuss on the club’s Facebook Group.
2. Deciding what specific events we want to start planning for in the future.

The new meeting is this Sunday, March 15th, at 7:00 p.m.  Like before, it’s being held at the cafe inside the Barnes & Noble bookstore in Deptford.  An interactive map is below. Click here to get directions from your place. Let me know if you plan on showing up: join the Facebook Event, email me, leave a comment, whatever!

The Other Half of the Battle

-via Indexed

2nd Meeting Recap

In case the Blizzard of 2009 kept you from our 2nd club meeting, here’s a recap.  Mostly, we discussed what the club should do. As a club devoted to having fun and promoting intellectual honesty, we broke down potential club goals into three categories: meetings, activism, and fun. Thanks to Abi, Amber, Ashley, Bora, John, Kyle, Ray, Rebecca, and Wes for showing up and offering the following great suggestions!

Meetings
One popular idea for our semi-regular club meetings was holding discussion nights.  Each night could focus on one specific topic that we want to know more about.  Suggested topics included: physics; anime; movies; music; books; video games; politics; and the economy.  We also talked about a Misconception Night: some of us who are semi-experts on a topic could lead a discussion and set the record straight on common misconceptions about that topic.  Suggest more discussion topics here!

Another good suggestion was to invite smart people to lead discussions or give talks.  Ashley knew a historian at a museum, Bora knew a former general, and Amber knew a U.S. states expert–all cool-sounding smart people we could invite.  I’m going to try to contact several nearby professors who focus on stuff related to intellectual honesty, ignorance, close-mindedness, etc.  Suggest other smart people here!

Activism
We then discussed ways to promote intellectual honesty outside the group.  In general, we want to let others know about the value of reasoning and being intellectually honest, and call out powerful people on their blatant intellectual dishonesty.

Some suggestions included: writing letters to politicians or lawyers; writing letters to the editor of newspapers; writing op-eds; start petitions; creating publications, like a magazine or newsletter, either online or printed; and creating videos or podcasts calling politicians on their intellectual dishonesty.  These ideas were a little more iffy. I’d like to know which suggestions you like AND which you don’t like.  Tell us what you think here!

Fun
We can get away with a lot of fun activities in the name of raising awareness for our club goals.  We had a bunch of suggestions for fun!

Suggested fun “Ignorance Awareness” stuff included: board game night (Trivial Pursuit?); movie night; TED talk night; book release or movie release parties; house party; formal night (The Ignorance Prom!); beach party; potluck dinner; open mic night; Def Jam poetry; drum circle; bowling; skating; trip to an amusement park; trip to the zoo; trip to the Palmyra Cove Nature Park; field trip to a themed cafe (like the Jekyll & Hyde Club in New York City); and Weird NJ outings (where we can be our own MonsterQuest or Mythbusters).  Suggest more fun activities here!

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Our next meeting will be in a few weeks (I’ll let us all know the specific time & location soon).  We’ll try to start planning some of this, and maybe get some organizational/logistic stuff accomplished, too.

TED Talks

Our 2nd meeting went pretty well! Despite the growing snowstorm, a lot of people made it. Thanks to everyone for showing up!

I’ve recapped a lot of the meeting in various posts on the Discussion Board of the club’s Facebook Group. I’ll also be putting up a recap of what we discussed here on this blog soon. For now, though, here’s one of those TED Talks that Rebecca brought up in the meeting. These things are great. You should watch neuroscientist Jill Bolte Taylor describe her “stroke of insight”: