{"id":895,"date":"2011-02-15T00:35:55","date_gmt":"2011-02-15T04:35:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wizardwalk.com\/newblather\/?p=895"},"modified":"2011-02-15T01:03:38","modified_gmt":"2011-02-15T05:03:38","slug":"five-ideas-to-change-the-way-you-see-the-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/wizardwalk.com\/newblather\/?p=895","title":{"rendered":"Five ideas to change the way you see the world"},"content":{"rendered":"

1. The idea of emergence
\n2. There are no secrets to success
\n3. School is stupid
\n4. There’s no such thing as a genius
\n5. There’s no such thing as a teenager<\/em><\/p>\n

Here are my top five worldview convictions; ideas that I was not raised believing but came to accept through thought, observation, and communication with others.\u00a0 In a sense, they are like epiphanies; for each idea there was a time I had either no idea about it or believed the opposite.\u00a0 And all of them are subjects of debate; for each one of them there are plenty of people out there who vehemently disagree with my position.<\/p>\n

The books listed are simply the best ones I\u2019ve read on the subject.\u00a0 Although certain books have certainly helped convince me of some of these things, please do not think that I believe anything blindly; there are plenty of authors I disagree with.\u00a0 A book\u2019s contents and ideas are always subject to my own observations, analysis, and judgment.<\/p>\n

1. The idea of emergence<\/strong><\/p>\n

OK, this first one isn\u2019t necessarily that<\/em> anti-intuitive, but it\u2019s something a lot of people still seem to have trouble understanding or accepting.<\/p>\n

There are still ongoing debates about how exactly to define this idea of emergence, but I\u2019ll define it like this: an emergent property is a large scale property that emerges from a bunch of small, usually simple, interactions on a small scale.<\/p>\n

A simple example might be a rush hour traffic jam.\u00a0 A bunch of people get off work and drive home at the same time.\u00a0 A traffic jam emerges from a bunch of individual decisions to drive at that specific time.\u00a0 A traffic jam itself is a collection<\/em> of cars; one car is not traffic jam, and a traffic jam can be made up of different cars at different times.<\/p>\n

A famous example is John Conway\u2019s Game of Life<\/a>.\u00a0 Conway made a grid and came up with a few simple \u201cbreeding\u201d rules.\u00a0 A square on the grid is either living or dead, on or off.\u00a0 Then the player (or, more efficiently, a computer) uses the breeding rules for each square to determine if it would be living or dead in the next iteration (or generation).\u00a0 Might seem boring, but playing around with it for a while, one can easily see patterns emerge, structures that cycle through patterns, structures that cycle but move around, structures that build other structures, etc.\u00a0 All from a few simple rules applied to a bunch of grid squares.\u00a0 The point is that they all interact with each other, and the patterns emerge.<\/p>\n

Another example would be life itself, and nature\u2019s use of DNA.\u00a0 When combined with the machinery of a living cell (life doesn\u2019t just pop up around a DNA strand all by itself), DNA contains instructions on what proteins to create.\u00a0 From a bunch of small physical chemical interactions, a body grows.\u00a0 Hands, brains, eyes, teeth, hair, etc.\u00a0 It\u2019s all encoded in the DNA, and it all emerges with trillions of tiny chemical interactions.\u00a0 It\u2019s important to understand that a physical body is the outcome<\/em> of these interactions; though it\u2019s encoded in the DNA, it\u2019s not actually in<\/em> the DNA.\u00a0 Similarly, a music file encoded in a computer is just a long string of 0\u2019s and 1\u2019s, but it\u2019s not music<\/em> until this sequence is interpreted by a computer, played back through speakers, and ultimately heard by ears.\u00a0 We can\u2019t just look at the string of 0\u2019s and 1\u2019s and know how the music would sound.<\/p>\n

One reason emergence can be hard to grasp or agree with, especially in the context of living systems, is that we humans tend to perceive intent, even when there\u2019s no intent.\u00a0 (There might be a more technical word for this problem, but I don\u2019t know it.)<\/p>\n

When we seek a reason for an event (or for the existence of something), we can seek two sorts of answers: intent to be fulfilled (a purpose), or a causal reason (cause and effect).\u00a0 For example, if we ask \u201cWhy does the heart pump blood?\u201d we can give two sorts of answers: an intent to be fulfilled (\u201cThe heart pumps blood to provide the rest of the body with supplies that travel through the blood\u201d), or a causal reason (\u201cThe heart pumps blood because the brain sends a signal to it and its muscles contract\u201d).\u00a0 We can understand both these answers, but one is wrong: the heart has no consciousness; it doesn\u2019t care what the rest of the body needs; it doesn\u2019t do anything on purpose.\u00a0 So why is it so natural for us to give the heart the human ability of having intent?<\/p>\n

We can simulate similar systems in which emergent properties arise on a computer using genetic algorithms.\u00a0 For example, we can program a robot to roll through a maze based on simple rules.\u00a0 But we can also program the robot to figure out those rules on its own.\u00a0 When it\u2019s done, the rules might seem intelligent<\/em> to us, as if the robot thought<\/em> about his problem and solved it with intent<\/em> to solve.\u00a0 But really it\u2019s just all the outcome of the simple rule-making rules of our program. (Unless, of course, we have succeeded in programming consciousness!)<\/p>\n

If you think about genetic algorithms, it\u2019s not really an amazing feat.\u00a0 You just have the program come up with a bunch of random rule sets, test them, and weed out that ones that don\u2019t produce the results you want.<\/p>\n

The same thing happens in real life.\u00a0 If the rules of making a life form (as dictated by the DNA) cause the life form to die before it breeds, its rules won\u2019t be passed on.\u00a0 Duh.\u00a0 So in the end all we get are rules that \u201cpassed the tests.\u201d<\/p>\n

Although we do not yet know the exact science of it, emergence makes it quite plausible that God is not<\/em> needed to explain the emergence of life on earth, or human life specifically.\u00a0 This is enough to lead some people to atheism.\u00a0 But to me it seems if your belief in God is dependent on ignorance regarding the origins of life, your faith is rather thin to begin with.\u00a0 This really isn\u2019t any sort of proof that God doesn\u2019t exist.<\/p>\n

There are quite a few books on this subject, and many more that relate to it, or utilize it in some way.\u00a0 The two best books I have read on this subject are Emergence: From Chaos To Order<\/a>\"\" by John H. Holland and Complexity: A Guided Tour<\/a>\"\" by Melanie Mitchell.\u00a0 (Complexity: A Guided Tour<\/em> is really about the subject of complexity, obviously, but the concept of emergence is an important part of it.)<\/p>\n

2. There are no secrets to success<\/strong><\/p>\n

If you understand the idea of emergence, this isn\u2019t a big leap of logic: success, at least in terms of fame and money, is an emergent property<\/em>.\u00a0 The fame of a person or a person\u2019s work emerges from thousands, or millions, or billions of human interactions that take place each day.<\/p>\n

This is anti-intuitive because it\u2019s just too complex to understand.\u00a0 When something becomes popular, we want to know why, and we feel that we should have the ability to know.\u00a0 So we analyze the work of art (and the perhaps the traits of the culture that made it popular) and try to pinpoint what factors must\u2019ve made it popular.\u00a0 We try to reverse engineer its success.<\/p>\n

Ultimately, though, the system is just too complex.\u00a0 There is no way to guarantee success.\u00a0 There are no key factors.<\/p>\n

And yet so many people want to analyze and analyze and analyze.\u00a0 Why?<\/p>\n

OK, this might not actually be very anti-intuitive to a lot of people.\u00a0 But it implies something else, something that might be more anti-intuitive.\u00a0 Eventual popularity is not<\/em> inherent in anything, be it a person or a work of art or whatever.<\/p>\n

What I mean by this is that people sometimes look at famous things and take it as an objective measurement of greatness, as if there\u2019s something undetectable but inherent in the work that makes it have such widespread appeal.\u00a0 However, by feeding into this, they are unknowingly becoming a part of the social system that makes the object famous in the first place.\u00a0 For example, it\u2019s easy to look at the popularity of Mozart\u2019s music and claim that it\u2019s popular because genius is simply inherent in it, even though we can\u2019t identify what factors make it so genius.<\/p>\n

This sort of thought has pervaded through cultures for centuries, and it\u2019s wrong; it\u2019s a complete misunderstanding of what exactly popularity is and how it comes about.\u00a0 That is, more specifically, it\u2019s a wrong guess about how it comes about.<\/p>\n

You\u2019ll notice that many of these ideas simply involve giving different, sometimes anti-intuitive (but more correct!), answers to the question \u201cwhy?\u201d<\/p>\n

The best book about this sort of thing is The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable<\/a>\"\" by Nassim Nicholas Taleb.\u00a0 OK, it\u2019s not exactly just about objective greatness and popularity in art; it deals with the bigger problem of induction in general.\u00a0 But the two subjects are very related.<\/p>\n

3. School is stupid<\/strong><\/p>\n

This really seems to get people riled up for some reason, I suppose because the idea of school being necessary is so embedded in our culture; we grew up with it and simply can\u2019t imagine (perhaps even fear) a world without it.\u00a0 It\u2019s odd, because when people are young students, they usually fully agree that school is stupid.\u00a0 But for some reason, as they get older, they change their minds.\u00a0 Usually they’ll defend the necessity of school when they are no longer required to go themselves, as if that\u2019s suddenly a more objective position from which to judge it?<\/p>\n

Notice that I did not claim that education<\/em> was stupid.\u00a0 And I don\u2019t doubt that school is<\/em> about education; it just has an extremely inefficient and overall harmful way of educating.<\/p>\n

There are quite a few reasons formal schooling is dumb, and I won\u2019t go over all<\/em> of them here (there are books on the subject, after all), but I\u2019ll mention the big ones.<\/p>\n

The biggest<\/em> problem with school is the material taught.\u00a0 School systems simply want to teach too much.\u00a0 This comes from a misunderstanding of intelligence.\u00a0 People seem to think (and I\u2019ve blogged about this before if this is sounding familiar) that intelligence is merely about knowing stuff, and the more you know the better.\u00a0 I suppose it\u2019s a bit like the idea behind hoarding\u2014it\u2019s better to just keep everything you can in case you need to use it someday. \u00a0But hoarding makes it difficult to live, difficult to have room for the stuff you want later, etc.\u00a0 True, memory doesn\u2019t work quite like that, but the point should be obvious: knowledge that you don\u2019t use is useless<\/em>.\u00a0 The time and effort spent acquiring it is wasted.<\/p>\n

And people already know this, otherwise students would be taught to memorize phone books.\u00a0 Some knowledge is clearly useless; it\u2019s not like the concept of useless knowledge is simply foreign to educators.\u00a0 They\u2019re just bad at figuring out which knowledge is useful and which isn\u2019t.\u00a0 In fact, usually someone figures it out for them, and they\u2019d rather not think about it or question it.\u00a0 How many times is a teacher asked \u201cWhen will I ever use this?\u201d and the teacher replies something like \u201cYou\u2019ll use it on the test!\u201d or \u201cYou\u2019ll use it on your homework!\u201d?\u00a0 It\u2019s easy to say that a teacher who utters such words should be immediately fired, but the intellectual crime he is committing and that instance probably deserves worse.<\/p>\n

Figuring out what knowledge is useful and what isn\u2019t shouldn\u2019t be a difficult feat, nor should it be up to the government or any collective institution to determine.\u00a0 It\u2019s very simple, you just ask yourself: will I use this knowledge?\u00a0 If you are interested in the knowledge, then yes, of course, it\u2019s automatically useful because it gives you pleasure.\u00a0 If you need the knowledge to get something you want (like a job), then yes, it\u2019s useful; you are going to use it to get something.\u00a0 If it does not fit one of those categories, it is, at the moment, useless.\u00a0 What if it will be useful later?\u00a0 Then learn later!\u00a0 That\u2019s why people write books.\u00a0 Books store knowledge.\u00a0 You don\u2019t have to know it until you need it!\u00a0 Amazing, huh?!<\/p>\n

But you might protest: \u201cHow will I know whether or not I need a piece of knowledge until I know it?\u201d\u00a0 Easy: if you find yourself asking yourself a question, then you need more knowledge.\u00a0 You could be asking yourself a question because you\u2019re just curious (\u201cWhat\u2019s the population of the USA?\u201d), or you could have a specific goal in mind (\u201cHow do I play the piano?\u201d or \u201cCan I make this work I have to do easier somehow?\u201d).<\/p>\n

Then you must search for the answer.\u00a0 It is (or should be) up to you to find it; you can\u2019t (or shouldn\u2019t) just sit back and hope someone will come along and tell you.<\/p>\n

Sometimes the answer can be found through a simple search query in Google.\u00a0 Sometimes you want a deeper understanding that a book can provide.\u00a0 Sometimes you might need several books.\u00a0 Sometimes you might be interested in talking to a professional.\u00a0 Sometimes taking a well-designed school course in the subject is appropriate.<\/p>\n

Sometimes no one really knows the answer, and you must figure out how to find it yourself (that\u2019s why people do experiments) or get used to the disappointment of ignorance.\u00a0 (We\u2019ll never know how many hairs were on Thomas Jefferson\u2019s head.\u00a0 Too bad for us.)<\/p>\n

The point is that you know beforehand<\/em> that there\u2019s some sort of knowledge you want to gain, and then you seek it.<\/p>\n

You probably realize that public schools have the process almost completely backwards.\u00a0 They teach (or try to teach) students things before the student has any use for them.\u00a0 This is completely counterproductive.<\/p>\n

There is only one case in which this is justified, and that is in the teaching of young children.\u00a0 Children are too inexperienced to understand what they want to learn, or why they need to learn certain things.\u00a0 Some things are hard to learn, and they might naturally resist.\u00a0 Most parents would agree that children need to learn to use the toilet, to pack up their toys, to not throw things at the wall, to not hit their siblings, to eat their vegetables, to tie their shoes, to dress themselves, to act politely, to read, etc.\u00a0 Adults naturally need to guide their children in learning these things, even if the children claim they don\u2019t want to learn.<\/p>\n

This is not the case with many subjects taught in school.\u00a0 There is no reason to force-teach calculus, the phases of the moon, the date George Washington died, how to calculate torque, the names of the big rivers in California, etc.<\/p>\n

How do adults figure out what should be force-taught and what doesn\u2019t need to be?\u00a0 Again, the answer is simple: do most adults use the knowledge on an everyday basis?\u00a0 If not, then force-teaching anybody such knowledge is a waste of time.\u00a0 (Note that just because most adults know a piece of knowledge does not make it useful.\u00a0 Most adults could know that the USA has fifty states, but that does not imply that children need to be taught that specifically.\u00a0 It\u2019s not useful<\/em> information; it\u2019s just common sense trivia.\u00a0 As with all common sense trivia, children will naturally pick it up eventually.)<\/p>\n

(Sometimes people say: \u201cI have very eclectic interests.\u00a0 Sometimes I just read random books without searching for any specific answer.\u201d\u00a0 Well, that\u2019s great; go for it.\u00a0 But that\u2019s not the same as subjecting yourself to a strict classroom setting, where tuition is paid, schedules are followed and tests and grades are given. In other words, this doesn’t justify anything; it’s irrelevant to the argument I’m making.)<\/p>\n

So, from what I can tell, that is the biggest problem of our (the USA’s) current public education system.\u00a0 I\u2019ve met a lot of people who agree that public schools have problems, but they completely miss this point.\u00a0 They argue for fewer grades, less work, better teachers, smaller classrooms, etc., but they uphold the belief that so much knowledge should be force-taught in the first place.\u00a0 As long as so much is force-taught, schools will be flawed and wasteful.\u00a0 You can\u2019t solve any other problem without first answering: why are we teaching this in the first place?<\/p>\n

The other problems do include the grading system.\u00a0 While it provides numerical assessment, it is wrongly used as a motivator (\u201cIf you don\u2019t do this, you\u2019ll get a bad grade!\u201d), punisher (\u201cYou got a low grade, so you must do more work!\u201d or \u201cYou got a low grade, so no TV for a week!\u201d), and comparing system (\u201cSean had the highest grade in the class, so he is the best!\u00a0 No one else is as good as him!\u201d).\u00a0 All of these hinder the actual act of learning.\u00a0 There are other ways to assess educational progress.\u00a0 Note that if the knowledge is useless in the first place and the student knows it, there is no<\/em> honest way to motivate the student to learn it.\u00a0 This is an example why solving these smaller problems will not help if the previously mentioned bigger problem is not dealt with first.<\/p>\n

Another problem is that schools are thought of as factories (they are \u201csystems\u201d after all).\u00a0 Students go in ignorant and come out smart.\u00a0 But in structuring it like a factory, students are treated like prisoners: they are split apart by age (what purpose does that serve?), they are required to sit as long as they are told, they need permission to use the bathroom, they all must work at a similar pace, they are all taught the same material at the same time, etc.<\/p>\n

There are problems with teachers: they are underpaid (people who might be good teachers don\u2019t become them), they cannot be fired easily, and they sometimes aren\u2019t very good.<\/p>\n

Creativity is not cultivated as well as it could be; it is sometimes considered a detriment.\u00a0 Music programs are sometimes cut before math programs, for example.\u00a0 Why is math considered inherently more important?<\/p>\n

There are probably books on this, but I actually haven\u2019t read any.\u00a0 As I\u2019ve said before, people, including authors, usually discuss the smaller problems, but don\u2019t see or agree with the bigger one.<\/p>\n

4. There is no such thing as a genius<\/strong><\/p>\n

There is<\/em> such thing as one person having more skill than another.\u00a0 However, the notion of \u201cgenius\u201d comes from a human misunderstanding of where that skill comes from.\u00a0 Sometimes a skill seems to come so easily to another person that we simply can\u2019t attribute it to practice; therefore, we suppose, it must be innate, it must come from DNA, it must be a gift from God.<\/p>\n

Sometimes intellectual fame is also considered an inevitable product of genius.\u00a0 Mozart, Beethoven, Einstein, Newton, Edison, etc. are considered famous because their minds were special and the rest of the world just naturally recognized it.<\/p>\n

But, as discussed in idea #2, their (and their works\u2019) fame (\u201csuccess\u201d) is actually<\/em> the product of our complex social interaction system.\u00a0 That is, it\u2019s an emergent property<\/em>.\u00a0 Mozart was not special.\u00a0 Newton was not special.\u00a0 Edison was not special.\u00a0 Yes, they\u2019re special in the sense that they\u2019re famous, but they never had greater intellectual potential than anyone else.\u00a0 Their status of fame is the result of both their hard work and luck. (By “luck” I don’t mean pure random chance; I simply mean it is an emergent property, a product of a system that is otherwise far too complex for us to understand.)<\/p>\n

You, yes you<\/em>, whoever you are, can<\/em> play the piano and compose symphonies as well as Mozart.\u00a0 But you have to put in the time, and a lot<\/em> of it.\u00a0 But it\u2019s not beyond your mental abilities (though perhaps it\u2019s beyond your time resources).\u00a0 You can<\/em> understand the theory of relativity, you can<\/em> study quantum mechanics, you can<\/em> paint a beautiful sunrise.\u00a0 But you\u2019ve got to put in a lot work and practice.\u00a0 Sometimes it does seem like a skill comes to some people faster than others, but no one is ever just born with it.<\/p>\n

Again, hard work won\u2019t guarantee fame.\u00a0 Since Mozart\u2019s famous touring-as-a-prodigy childhood, there have been plenty of other parents of young pianists seeking the same kind of fame.\u00a0 But fame was not just the product of Mozart\u2019s skill; it was an emergent property. Mozart got lucky, not just in his time, but throughout history (at least to this day; nobody knows what people hundreds of years from now will think).<\/p>\n

Making a breakthrough scientific discovery is a bit trickier.\u00a0 Again, it comes down to luck.\u00a0 We might like to think it comes down to natural genius, but once you come up with your discovery, it\u2019s not as if you\u2019ll be the only one who\u2019ll ever be able to understand it (if that were the case, your discovery would be useless anyway).\u00a0 It might take hard work to arrive at your theory, but there\u2019s nothing you can do innately to guarantee that you make the discovery first.<\/p>\n

There are a few books on this subject, such as The Genius in All of Us: New Insights into Genetics, Talent, and IQ<\/a>\"\" by David Shenk and The Talent Code<\/a>\"\" by Daniel Coyle.<\/p>\n

5. There is no such thing as a teenager<\/strong><\/p>\n

Similar to the notion of a genius, a teenager is a purely cultural idea that emerged from a purely cultural way of raising children.\u00a0 Biologically, after puberty, humans are ready to go out on their own and breed.\u00a0 For some reason, culturally, we don\u2019t accept this.\u00a0 We might even think of it as disgusting and wrong for a thirteen or fourteen year old to get pregnant.\u00a0 But that\u2019s what the body is designed<\/em> to do.\u00a0 (Or perhaps I should say that that’s how the nature of the body emerged.) The reason it seems disgusting and wrong is cultural; we were raised in a culture that thinks of it as wrong and disgusting, so we accept the belief ourselves.<\/p>\n

What is the basis for it?<\/p>\n

Well, you could argue that teenagers are unruly and irresponsible.\u00a0 But is it really biology that makes them that way?\u00a0 I think yes and no; that is, biology indirectly<\/em> makes them that way, and would make adults<\/em> that way too if they were put in similar environments.\u00a0 Biologically and psychologically teenagers are ready to take the reins of adulthood.\u00a0 But they are not given those reins.\u00a0 Parents, teachers, and lawmakers deny teenagers the reins for several more years, sometimes up to a decade longer than they should.\u00a0 They exert control, sometimes giving them only more adult responsibilities without adult privileges.<\/p>\n

The consequences of this should be apparent and predictable, and they\u2019re exactly what we observe: teenagers resist<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Duh.<\/p>\n

But then society makes the mistake of guessing that a teen\u2019s troubles are due directly<\/em> to biology and psychology; they conclude the teenager is in fact not<\/em> ready to be treated like an adult, and the vicious cycle continues.<\/p>\n

Does that mean parents of teenagers are bad?\u00a0 Well, I wouldn\u2019t say they\u2019re evil<\/em>.\u00a0 After all, the belief is<\/em> cultural; it\u2019s natural and understandable that most parents would accept the common societal views of teenagerhood.\u00a0 But they\u2019re still wrong<\/em>, and usually end up doing more harm than good.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately this wrongness is even embedded in national law, so even if a parent wanted to treat their teenagers more like adults, there would be still be lawful limits on just how many privileges the teenagers could be given.<\/p>\n

The best book I\u2019ve read dealing with this subject is The Case Against Adolescence: Rediscovering the Adult in Every Teen<\/a>\"\" by Robert Epstein.\u00a0 However, there are still scientific papers and articles on the differences between the teenage brain and the adult brain that try to explain teenage rebellion, so this is still quite a controversial subject.<\/p>\n

Conclusion<\/strong><\/p>\n

I hope that was interesting to some people out there!\u00a0 I continue to see these ideas all over the place.\u00a0 Emergence is everywhere and helps shape our world in complex (sometimes mysterious) ways. \u00a0The problem of induction leads people to false knowledge and a misunderstanding of the nature of fame and success. \u00a0Schools continue to waste so much time and effort, and the people trying to make it better often miss its main problem. \u00a0The cultural notion of genius encourages people to underestimate their own true abilities. \u00a0And what people think about teenagers leads to vicious endless cycles of strained relationships.<\/p>\n

I was considering adding more ideas, such as compatibilism (the notion that free will and determinism are compatible) and Ayn Rand\u2019s ideas on selfishness (I do recommend The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged<\/a>\"\" to everyone), but they didn\u2019t quite make the cut.\u00a0 Maybe next time.<\/p>\n

I’m tempted to think some people get too satisfied with their convictions; they naturally resist any sort of idea that might change how they see the world. I suppose they’re afraid that if they change their outlook, it implies they’re stupid. But the opposite is true. No one is born with perfect knowledge. In fact, you’re really not born with very much knowledge at all. Most of your current knowledge came from somewhere. Your convictions should<\/em> be changing as you grow older. I’m not saying they have to completely reverse every few years (that would be awful and probably would<\/em> imply your stupidity), I’m simply saying one should be open and honest with himself in his judgments. Changing your mind about something is not a sign of stupidity.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

1. The idea of emergence 2. There are no secrets to success 3. School is stupid 4. There’s no such thing as a genius 5. There’s no such thing as a teenager Here are my top five worldview convictions; ideas that I was not raised believing but came to accept […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[6,18,53],"tags":[76,234,254,239,372,13,373,235,376,374,378,78,375,377,238,246],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7gI4B-er","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/wizardwalk.com\/newblather\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/895"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/wizardwalk.com\/newblather\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/wizardwalk.com\/newblather\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wizardwalk.com\/newblather\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wizardwalk.com\/newblather\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=895"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/wizardwalk.com\/newblather\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/895\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/wizardwalk.com\/newblather\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=895"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wizardwalk.com\/newblather\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=895"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wizardwalk.com\/newblather\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=895"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}