I was talking with my dad tonight about modeling and Christopher Sims and @meaningness, and mentioned the later's model of postmodernism's generational failure. He came back at me with a story from when he and my mom were academic psychometrians
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Dad taught in a psych department, and one semester ran a research methods course. One day he was out of town and arranged a panel of his colleagues. One was a postmodernist/feminist woman; a second, an unnamed person who took a middle approach. The third was my mom.
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(quick intermission Penelope is demanding an expedition outside)pic.twitter.com/2saMXAqVDl
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So--my mom. She is a gentle, kind, and incredibly conflict-averse woman. She was a serious scholar and worked very hard--too hard--and accomplished in her field. (She worked in a non-psych department after her PhD.) Now retired, she's taken up kite flying.
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I don't know very much about the methodological divide in psychology as it existed in the 1990s; this probably would have been during the Science Wars. By dad's sketch, the postmodernists were skeptical of psychometrics in particular, and (!!!) dismissed the need for replication.
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The idea of the panel was to present students (unsure whether grad or undergrad) in the class with an overview of perspectives in psychological research from active scholars. My dad left on his trip unconcerned; it seemed like the equivalent of a high school sub putting in a VHS
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No one knows exactly what happened in the classroom that day. This was before cell phones, and--as we shall see--no one left in a condition to talk about it at length. Our only record is my dad's recollection of his call home that evening.
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Dad: How'd it go? Mom: (quietly) Um Dad: W . . . well? Mom: Well . . . um. I made [postmodernist/feminist] cry Dad: You . . . what? Mom: I WASN'T GOING TO LET HER SIT THERE AND TALK ABOUT MY LIFE'S WORK LIKE THAT IN FRONT OF STUDENTS, DADROBOT. CAN YOU BELIEVE HER? (beat) Um
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That's . . . that's all we have. I would have loved more than almost anything to have been in that class. It's a side of my mom I never got to see except secondhand, or through her papers.
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I guess the real point I'm trying to convey is that I'm grateful for my parents, and for the chance to get to know them as an adult. It's such shame that they are just--walking embodiments of well-lived lives, and I'll only get to hear snatches of them.
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Anyway, the journal I got to go with my new fountain pen is arriving tomorrow. I hope my kids like it.
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