compartmentalization as a way of managing

Twenty years ago, we learnt that the most important foundation of mental health treatment was 'dead':

Psychoanalysis Is Dead ... So How Does That Make You Feel? - Los Angeles Times

Psychoanalysis is a theory of psychopathology and a treatment for mental disorders. Fifty years ago, this paradigm had great influence on the teaching and practice of psychiatry. Today, psychoanalysis has been marginalized and is struggling to survive in a hostile academic and clinical environment.1,2

Is Psychoanalysis Still Relevant to Psychiatry? - PMC

The founder of psychoanalysis was very critical of alternative approaches:

Compartmentalization, a term coined by Sigmund Freud, is a defense mechanism, which is a strategy the psyche uses to avoid feeling anxiety, especially related to internal conflicts. With compartmentalization, the person separates feelings or thoughts that contradict each other into different “compartments” in order to avoid the cognitive dissonance that arises when a thought or feeling we have starts to contradict a different thought or feeling that we are also aware of.

What Does It Mean to Compartmentalize? - Choosing Therapy

It is seen rather negatively:

Compartmentalization is a form of psychological defense mechanism in which thoughts and feelings that seem to conflict are kept separated or isolated from each other in the mind.[1] Those with post traumatic stress disorder may use compartmentalization to separate positive and negative self aspects.[2] It may be a form of mild dissociation; example scenarios that suggest compartmentalization include acting in an isolated moment in a way that logically defies one's own moral code, or dividing one's unpleasant work duties from one's desires to relax.[3] Its purpose is to avoid cognitive dissonance, or the mental discomfort and anxiety caused by a person having conflicting values, cognitions, emotions, beliefs, etc. within themselves.

Compartmentalization (psychology) - Wikipedia

However, this approach can be very helpful:

Compartmentalization in Everyday Life

Compartmentalization can be part of everyday experience, especially in situations when life can benefit from a little separation. Some may draw boundaries between work and play; others may make allowances for mistakes and setbacks.

Can compartmentalizing ever be helpful?

When people are dealing with a number of serious problems at the same time, it can be difficult to maintain focus to accomplish necessary tasks; putting a problem on hold by compartmentalizing can help them take action. Although disengaging with emotions isn’t a long-term solution, it can be a valuable tool from time to time.

How can people compartmentalize work?

Our jobs, particularly high-stress or high-pressure positions, sometimes seem to take over our lives. Compartmentalizing can set boundaries so that you function well at work and enjoy time away from the office.

Compartmentalization | Psychology Today

Psychoanalysis is about Why - looking deeply into our past lives to give explanations.

Compartmentalization is about How - looking at ways of managing things and looking to the future.

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official languages

We can actually communicate in more than one language:

Jay Doubleyou: we are by nature multilingual

But it gets very political:

Jay Doubleyou: imposing one language on china

Jay Doubleyou: language and politics in ukraine

Which countries have more than one official language?

Linguistic Coexistence in Europe: Countries with More than One Official Language – Braanz

List of multilingual countries and regions - Wikipedia

Which Are The Most Multilingual Countries In The World?

But recognising another language as 'official' does not always mean communication on the ground:

Languages of Israel - Wikipedia

Languages of Ukraine - Wikipedia

English is the most common official language, with recognized status in 51 countries.

Official language - Wikipedia

BELGIUM:

French-speaking Minister of Education Caroline Désir suggested making Dutch classes compulsory in Wallonia. This reform will be difficult to implement because of the critical shortage of skilled teachers and the political context.

Belgium's unity remains undermined by the language barrier

Belgium's language divide: Many young Walloons do not speak Dutch

How can Belgium overcome its regional linguistic conflicts? | Social Policy

‘It’s important that people who decide to spend their lives here also learn French and Dutch,’ top Flemish politician says.

Flemish nationalists aren’t happy with plan for more English in Brussels – POLITICO

SWITZERLAND:

The Zurich national museum, the Tages-Anzeiger and swissinfo.ch has invited us to explain Switzerland’s exceptional cohesion in comparison to other multilingual countries, as part of the debate series entitled La Suisse – et maintenant? [Switzerland – and now?]

How To Explain Switzerland’s Linguistic Harmony?

The Language Enigma Of Switzerland - Live and Let's Fly

It’s not unusual to hear Swiss people from different parts of the country chatting away in English. Not everyone is happy about this, but does using English as a lingua franca – a bridge over the Röstigraben, the country’s main linguistic divide – benefit national cohesion or harm it?

English as a common language in Switzerland: a positive or a problem? - SWI swissinfo.ch

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poetry in the esol/efl classroom

To what extent can poetry be used in the English-as-a-Second/Foreign-Language classroom?

There are practical and engaging ways to do this:

Jay Doubleyou: spell check poem

Jay Doubleyou: short texts for fun dication

Here is more fun:

Jay Doubleyou: poetry as diagram

Jay Doubleyou: football and poetry

Jay Doubleyou: tree poetry

Jay Doubleyou: the bfg: malapropisms, spoonerisms and nonsense words

About the British:

Jay Doubleyou: the british - a poem

Jay Doubleyou: grayson perry and philip larkin on the british

Here are a couple of backwards poems:

Jay Doubleyou: refugees: a poem

Jay Doubleyou: backwards poems

But we have to be very sensitive:

Jay Doubleyou: "poetry in the classroom: some kids i taught and what they taught me": three years on

How to make a poem:

Jay Doubleyou: rhyme in english

Jay Doubleyou: limericks

The EL Gazette looked at the subject recently:

On Poetry: Benefits for students and implementation ideas for educators

Creativity in the classroom can come in a variety of ways. Teacher, Matthew Kloosterman, gives his best practice on how to incorporate poetry into teaching.

Connecting poetry, as a genre, to other texts being studied invites intertextuality and deeper reading for students. Poetry is also highly personable and offers an avenue for student agency. When students select their own poems for poetry study, it encourages even more personal connections to texts.

In this article I would like to share several ideas on how poetry can be implemented and why poetry is beneficial for students:

On Poetry: Benefits for students and implementation ideas for educators - E L Gazette

To finish: WOW!

Jay Doubleyou: kate tempest poet

Jay Doubleyou: performing poetry

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backwards poems

Here's a poem which you can read from the beginning ... or the end:

Jay Doubleyou: refugees: a poem

Here's another:

Dear Humanity, It's Time To Give Up (Reverse Poem) - YouTube

And there are lots more:

5 Reverse Poems That Will Blow Your Mind - Heart

Here's how to do it:

How to Write a Reverse Poem. A poem that can be read in both… | by Cameron Bradley | Writers’ Blokke | Medium

9 Reverse Poems Your Middle Schoolers Will Love - Hey Natayle

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what is a crypto city?

Sounds a good idea?

Some are still waiting for the idea to materialise:

Waiting out Bukele's 'Bitcoin City' on a Salvadoran beach

El Salvador: The American still waiting for ‘Bitcoin City’ - France 24

Some were sceptical from the beginning:

A golden city on the coast of the tropical Pacific. A metal walkway suspended above a verdant volcano. And a glossy marina that looks like it belongs in Monte Carlo rather than a near failed-state besieged by some of the world’s most violent criminals.

The detailed gilded model released this week of ‘Bitcoin city’ – the first ever dedicated cryptocurrency trading hub, to be built on El Salvador’s western shore and powered by geothermal energy from a volcano – is nothing if not spectacular.

The grandiose project is the brainchild of the troubled Central American nation’s headline-grabbing populist president, Nayib Bukele, arguably now the world’s foremost cryptocurrency evangelist after foisting Bitcoin as legal tender on his largely bewildered compatriots last year. In September, every El Salvadoran citizen was given $30 worth of Bitcoin in a government issued crypto wallet – although many reported that the money mysteriously disappeared from their accounts.

Meanwhile Bukele, a 40-year-old former businessman and marketing executive with a serious Twitter habit and a penchant for wearing baseball caps backwards, has risked the ire of the International Monetary Fund, who say he is taking gratuitously ‘large risks’ with El Salvador’s precarious economy.

With the world’s highest murder rate, ravaged by mara street gangs, cartels funnelling cocaine from the Andes up to the United States, and an annual per capita GDP of just £3,000, you might think that Bukele had more pressing — and realistic — priorities than turning the region of La Union, an impoverished rural backwater on the Pacific Coast where Bitcoin city will be built, into the epicentre of the highly volatile crypto-revolution.

The madness of El Salvador’s Bitcoin city | The Spectator

Here's a further look:

Blockchain City | Crypto Documentary | Blockchain Technology - YouTube

There is a lot of interest, of course, from the tech and finance sectors - but how much of this is hype?

Definition of Bitcoin City | PCMag

Crypto millionaires building their own cities in Central America | MIT Technology Review

New, futuristic 'blockchain cities' are just castles in the air - Blockworks

AI generated art with the terms “solar punk cityscape, smart city, crypto city, network state”

Here’s my working definition, informed by Vitalik’s blog post on Crypto Cities, Balaji’s book The Network State, and my own experience studying and working in urban planning and city government:

A crypto city is an IRL (in real life) city with a government that uses crypto technology to operate and govern.

The word “crypto” in front of “city” doesn’t give any hints about the physical design or master plan of the city in real life. It is not associated with any particular city style like new urbanism or towers in a park, but refers mainly to the operation and governance of a city. In this definition, crypto is not short for cryptocurrency, but cryptography, which is the underlying technology that gives us both blockchains and cryptocurrency.

What is a Crypto City? - by Nicholas Bonard - Crypto Cities

There's even a game:

CryptoCities

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how to look after democracy

What is 'democracy'?

It's difficult to define 'democracy':

1 a. : government by the people. especially : rule of the majority. b. : a government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised by them directly or indirectly through a system of representation usually involving periodically held free elections.

Democracy Definition & Meaning - Merriam-Webster

The problem is that a lot of governments hold elections - but we wouldn't call them 'democratic':

Democracy Is More Than Just Holding Elections - Open Society Foundations

For example:

Putin’s antiwar rival blocked from contesting Russia presidential election | Elections News | Al Jazeera

But some twenty years ago, Russia, for example, was 'more democratic'

Russian President Vladimir Putin, After 20 Years of Rule

Or maybe not:

Why Russia’s Democracy Never Began | Journal of Democracy

This year, around 4 billion people will be voting in over 60 countries this year - but how many of these elections amount to 'democracy'?

Here's a programme which looks at how democracies are not just about elections - and how people in power can slowly but surely dismantle a democracy:

Democracies do not die in military coups. They are dismantled slowly, by libel laws, through tax audits, and procedure. Democracies are dismantled by bureaucrats and judges, not by soldiers and heavy-handed policing. It has always been thus, from ancient Rome to present-day Tunisia. The program outlines the tricks of the trade that imperceptibly kill democracies – and how examples in Mexico, Turkey, India and Poland illustrate that the autocratic playbook is nearly always the same.

Analysis - How to Dismantle a Democracy - BBC Sounds

There is a lot of advice out there to stop this happening:

Unlock Democracy [UK]

How to Protect Democracy - Protect Democracy [USA]

Freedom in the World 2020: Recommendations for Strengthening Democracy

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are we getting more stupid?

What is the 'Flynn Effect"?

The Flynn effect is the substantial and long-sustained increase in both fluid and crystallized intelligence test scores that were measured in many parts of the world over the 20th century, named after researcher James Flynn (1934–2020). There are numerous proposed explanations of the Flynn effect, such as the rise in efficiency of education, along with skepticism concerning its implications. Similar improvements have been reported for semantic and episodic memory.

Flynn effect - Wikipedia

Of course, IQ tests are very very limited in what they measure:

In 1987, Flynn took the position that the very large increase indicates that IQ tests do not measure intelligence but only a minor sort of "abstract problem-solving ability" with little practical significance. He argued that if IQ gains did reflect intelligence increases, there would have been consequent changes of our society that have not been observed (a presumed non-occurrence of a "cultural renaissance").[28] By 2012 Flynn no longer endorsed this view of intelligence, having elaborated and refined his view of what rising IQ scores meant.[34]

James Flynn: IQ may go up as well as down | Psychology | The Guardian

It seems we are going backwards anyway:

NEW STUDY REVEALS SHARP DECLINE IN AMERICAN IQ SCORES AS THE “REVERSE FLYNN EFFECT” TAKES CENTER STAGE

A new study found a sharp decline in American IQ scores in recent years, offering support for what researchers term the “Reverse Flynn Effect.”Examining a large U.S. sample, researchers from Northwestern University found that IQ ability scores in three of four key categories dropped between 2006 and 2018. Composite ability scores (single scores derived from multiple pieces of information) were also lower in recent samples.

While a decline in IQ scores may sound alarming, researchers caution that the results do not mean Americans are becoming less intelligent. “It doesn’t mean their mental ability is lower or higher; it’s just a difference in scores that are favoring older or newer samples,” said Dr. Elizabeth Dworak, a research assistant professor of medical social sciences at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine and lead author of the new study. “It could just be that they’re getting worse at taking tests or specifically worse at taking these kinds of tests.” Additionally, researchers did find that American scores in the fourth key IQ category, spatial reasoning, had generally increased from 2011 to 2018.

Ultimately, results support a global decline in IQ scores beginning in the 1990s and 2000s. This phenomenon has become known as the “Reverse Flynn Effect.”

New Study Reveals Sharp Decline in American IQ Scores as the “Reverse Flynn Effect” Takes Center Stage - The Debrief

So, are we getting more stupid?

We Are All Getting Dumber, New Science Proves, and No One Is Sure Why | Inc.com

Why are Americans getting dumber? - UnHerd

And if so, why?

We seem to be getting stupider and population ageing may be why | New Scientist

Has relying on tech made us more stupid?

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controlling ai - part three: china controlling ai

We are clearly in a 'propaganda war' - and the likes of the Chinese government are doing very well - thanks in part to the use of technology:

How China uses search engines to spread propaganda | Brookings

TikTok Has Pushed Chinese Propaganda Ads To Millions Across Europe

The Chinese government isn't too keen on a free media:

Jay Doubleyou: china, the bbc and disinformation

Jay Doubleyou: press freedom around the world

A reason given for the authoritarian model in China is its history:

Still, the goal, the aim, the ideal was the ineffable stillness of immobility. When in 1368 the new Chinese emperor inaugurated a native (Ming) dynasty to replace the defeated Mongol invaders, he ascended the throne in Nanjing. He wanted rather to immobilize the realm. People were to stay put and move only with the permission of the state—at home and abroad. People who went outside China without permission were liable to execution on their return...

Jay Doubleyou: the great divergence

For centuries, the Chinese government has proritised stability:

The Life of Confucius: Stability in a Time of Change

Which meant that it lost the technological advantage it had enjoyed for centuries before:

Jay Doubleyou: the great divergence

It is now trying to catch up:

China’s Gotion High-Tech, Fudan University Set Up Battery Research Center

China Focus: China launches ultra-high-speed next-generation Internet backbone-Xinhua

ASPI’s critical tech tracker updates: China’s lead in advanced sensors is overwhelming | The Strategist

But for all its techonological investments, mainland China scientists have never won a Nobel Prize: 

In a 2004 paper, researcher Cong Cao argued that China’s inability to win a science Nobel was due to a combination of poor investment, the lingering effects of the Cultural Revolution, and the Confucian norms of behavior.

Why Hasn't China Won a Nobel in Science Until Now? - JSTOR Daily

There are many reasons for China’s failure to win the prestigious award. An education system enslaved to rote learning and test scores is one. Zheng Yefu, a sociologist at Beijing’s Peking University, insists that no matter what university you study at – Oxford, Cambridge, Harvard or Yale – you have no chance of winning a Nobel Prize for science if you have spent your first 12 years in a Chinese school. An exaggeration perhaps but the premise of his argument is sound: individuality, curiosity, imagination and creativity are simply expunged by the Chinese education system.

China isn’t creative enough to win a science Nobel

Yes, the mainland Chinese education system is about 'rote learning' - and certainly not about independent thought:

Jay Doubleyou: panic in the west over educational achievements in the far east

Jay Doubleyou: rote learning

I can be argued that the focus of the Chinese government's investment in technology is about control.

Here's a dark satire on social control: this is about the near future, but it's already happening in China:

Black Mirror S03E01 Airport scene - YouTube

The problem, then, is that the Chinese government wants the technology to develop, but in a very controlled way:

“It is the first time that [authorities in China] find themselves having to do a trade-off” between two Communist party goals of sustaining AI leadership and controlling information, said Matt Sheehan, a fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

One person close to the CAC’s deliberations said: “If Beijing intends to completely control and censor the information created by AI, they will require all companies to obtain prior approval from the authorities.” But “the regulation must avoid stifling domestic companies in the tech race”, the person added...

China to lay down AI rules with emphasis on content control

China faces a problem familiar to dictatorships throughout history: how to strike a balance between growth-boosting innovation, which thrives in a free society, and the paranoia of an authoritarian state. Its leader, Xi Jinping, wants the country to become a hyper-advanced economy. His government is aggressively promoting the commercialisation of high technologies it likes, from electric vehicles to quantum computing.

At the same time, it is tightening the screws on those it disapproves of. In 2021 it regulated a booming online-tutoring industry into oblivion almost overnight, apparently out of fear that high tuition fees were making children’s education so expensive that Chinese were put off the idea of parenthood. On December 22nd the government took a wrench to the video-gaming industry, introducing rules to, among other things, limit how much players can spend on in-game purchases—and so how much developers can make. The market value of Tencent, one of China’s most innovative firms that also has a big gaming business, tumbled by 12%.

China is shoring up the great firewall for the AI age

It's getting competitive:

China's tightening grip on AI puts other nations at risk - Nikkei Asia

In the race for AI supremacy, China and the US are travelling on entirely different tracks | Manya Koetse | The Guardian

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multilingualism in the classroom

It's good to speak more than one language:

Jay Doubleyou: ça va?! bilingualism is good for the brain

Jay Doubleyou: two languages good, three languages better

So it's good to speak more than one language at school:

Jay Doubleyou: bilingualism and school

Jay Doubleyou: bilingual teaching today

But how can we learn and teach other languages in a ''bilingual" way at school?

Jay Doubleyou: is clil working? is the bilingual class effective? are students learning through english?

There are a couple of interesting articles in the latest E L Gazette looking at recent research:

How might schools incorporate multilingualism effectively? Multilingual Learning Specialist, Valentina Spyropoulou explains the methods and techniques used in her school.

At Optimist International School (OIS), we believe that creating a nurturing and intellectually stimulating environment, where every child feels a sense of belonging, is essential for their holistic development.

However, when a child’s strongest language doesn’t align with the language of instruction, it can present severe challenges and lead to feelings of isolation and exclusion. According to Dr Jim Cummins’ research, developing basic communication skills, like social language, takes six months to two years, while cognitive academic language proficiency may require five years or longer. This can adversely affect a student’s motivation and overall development if we, as their educators, don’t offer them ample opportunities to express themselves.

Even though English serves as our primary language of instruction, we actively embrace and celebrate our students’ and teachers’ linguistic diversity. We integrate translanguaging techniques, allowing students to use their languages flexibly for both communication and academic purposes. Translanguaging, a concept delineated by García, creates a bridge between their prior life experiences and learning, capitalising on their existing knowledge. We are committed to reflection, updating policies, and incorporating translanguaging approaches to make language instruction more inclusive and visible. This ensures students develop a solid foundation in all their languages, enhancing their lifelong language skills.

Here are some of our key strategies:

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Embracing multilingualism - E L Gazette

AND:

L1 in multilingual classrooms

In this article, Hamish Chalmers analyses the evidence for multilingual classrooms.

Attitudes to the use of L1 in the L2 classroom is an area of contradiction. Think back to when you first started to learn a foreign language; if, like me, you grew up in the UK, your foreign languages classes were probably characterised by lots of English use, while you wobbled your way into a comfortable relationship with French or German. You will have been given translations of key words. Your teacher may have used English to explain grammar rules. This will have persisted throughout your formal instruction.

However, if you grew up somewhere else, your experiences of learning English might have been different. You might have been at an international school, where the only language you heard your teachers use was English. Your playgrounds and corridors were probably decorated with signs that read, ‘Please Speak English’. You might have been praised when a teacher heard you speaking English with your friends and told off when you weren’t. If this feels like a double standard, that’s because it is.

Both standards are not without plausible rationales; grammar rules, for example, can be tricky to understand at the best of times, let alone when they are explained in a language you have not yet fully mastered. Using the L1, therefore, can be argued to expedite meta-linguistic understanding.

International school communities are often composed of learners representing a multitude of different L1s, none of which may be shared with their teachers. English, therefore, can act as a lingua franca, levelling the playing field and encouraging teachers to make accommodations for emerging English proficiency a routine part of their practice.

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L1 in multilingual classrooms - E L Gazette

With more reading here:

Multilingualism in the Classroom

Multilingualism in the classroom: benefits in education and policy recommendations | Cambridge University Press & Assessment

Multilingual Learning: How To’s and Strategies for Teacher – Sphero

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controlling ai - part two: how chatgpt is ruining the internet

There are many issues around AI - including how we are allowing chat bots to do all the work for us:

Jay Doubleyou: controlling ai - part one: the dangers of chatgpt

It's leading to very bad quality stuff:

GPT-4 is getting worse and worse every single update - ChatGPT - OpenAI Developer Forum

Why is ChatGPT getting from bad to worst? - ChatGPT - OpenAI Developer Forum

And not only the open-source people are saying this:

Researchers Find That OpenAI ChatGPT Quality Has Worsened

In particular, there are growing concerns for the quality of what's being produced online:

ChatGPT vs Google Search: Why Google is not in trouble…yet! | by David Bartram - Shaw | Medium

Although it's been pointed out that things weren't great before:

Chat GPT is the birth of the real Web 3.0, and it's not going to be fun | Hacker News

But it looks as though it's going to get worse:

The danger of incorrect, but plausible looking content is that it can easily be mistaken for the truth. This is particularly concerning in our time, the age of the internet, where information is easily accessible and can be shared with a large audience in an extremely short amount of time. If incorrect information is shared and believed to be true, it can have serious consequences.

ChatGPT Could Destroy The Internet As We Know It | by Rubén Romero | Predict | Medium

Let's look at recipies - and the ending to an excellent article by James Ball in the New European:

The issue, discovered by the writer Zoah Hedges-Stocks, is that a lot of recipe content on the internet is now written by low-quality bots that churn out any old regurgitated crap. What she had noticed was that alongside posts comparing the process of making fudge to making toffee, there were also posts comparing the process of fudge making to making “scrimgeour”, another apparent Scottish treat of which she had never heard.

What had happened was that AI had confused the use of the word “fudge” in different contexts – “Cornelius Fudge” is the name of the minister of magic in JK Rowling’s Harry Potter series, until he is replaced by the more malign “Rufus Scrimgeour”. There is no candy product called “scrimgeour”, but shoddy AIs collapsed the context gap and generated nonsense – now replicated across numerous sites (and referenced here, too). Other examples abound – X user Will Rayner noted that when looking up the weather recently he had seen errant sentences referring to characters from The Hunger Games and the video game Baldur’s Gate 3, both called “Gale”.

By far the most entertaining to date came from Donald Trump’s former lawyer Michael Cohen, who had to apologise to a US court after citing non-existent cases that had been found for him (and not checked at all) by an AI assistant. It is generally bad form to do that in court.

Current generations of AI are already “trained”, and they were trained on internet content that is pre-AI. But keeping future generations of AI products current – and updating their features – will rely on scraping the internet as it is now.

The problem is that a growing share of the internet is either polluted by the lowest-quality AI content, and then in turn further confused by articles like this one (of which I predict there will be many more in years to come) trying to explain the mess, but strengthening the associations between the misleading words as we do.

That has the potential for a very dangerous cycle, in which ever-degrading inputs mean that AI’s outputs degrade even as the technology gets more clever, leading to a spiral of ever-worse content on the internet (a process dubbed “enshittification” by Cory Doctorow) and eventually the joy and creativity of the internet reduced to an algorithmic grey goo – information reduced to a mulch of wasted words.

Today it’s fudge and Harry Potter. It will be affecting news content in the very near future, if it isn’t already.

No one’s quite sure how significant a risk the grey goo outcome is, and there are no certain plans to prevent it. Media companies need to make sure we’re looking beyond our own backyards – as if we’re not, we might miss the disaster that takes us all out.

This is how the internet ends - The New European

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