tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30823312024-02-28T07:05:35.686-07:00debitageEnvironmental issues, philosophy, and politics.Stentorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13629599671442149938noreply@blogger.comBlogger2740125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3082331.post-40433231502713129622019-07-02T11:52:00.000-07:002019-07-02T11:52:05.580-07:00On Biology and PronounsA common transphobic argument is to accuse trans and nonbinary people of denying biology. Sex is biologically binary, they say, and so people who -- for example -- use pronouns different from those assigned based on their presumed sex at birth are in effect making a factually false claim.<br />
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The most common response from pro-trans people is to point out that biological sex is not in fact binary. As a matter of biological fact, this is true -- intersex conditions of various sorts are much more common than most of us realize, and are often undiagnosed (how many of us have actually had our chromosomes tested, instead of just assuming them based on our genitals?). But I think this response somewhat misses the point by accepting the premises of the transphobic argument.<br />
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Consider: I propose that we base everyone's pronouns on their blood type. Henceforward, your pronouns will be as follows:<br />Type O: sho/shom/shor<br />
Type A: shay/shaim/shair<br />
Type B: bo/bom/bor<br />
Type AB: bay/baim/bair<br />
(If you haven't had your blood type tested, we will be happy to infer it from your food preferences, personality, etc.)<br />
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Now imagine that, to justify this proposal, I pointed out the biological reality of blood types. Anyone who doesn't want to have their pronouns based on their blood type, I would say, is simply a blood type denialist who needs to be educated on genetics, and who is potentially risking people's lives when they get an improper transfusion.<br />
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In the blood type case, I think it's obvious that the merits of this pronoun system don't depend on the biological facts of blood type. Just because blood types have an indisputable genetic basis doesn't mean that our pronouns need to match those genes. After all, we've been getting along just fine without any outward marking of blood type at all.<br />
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The same, I would argue, applies to arguments about biological sex and pronouns. The validity of someone's pronouns simply doesn't depend on any facts about biological sex, because there's no reason that pronouns need to correspond to biology. We get to decide on what basis we allocate pronouns, and "what makes the person being referred to feel most comfortable" seems like a better basis than "a doctor's assumption about the person's chromosomes."Stentorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13629599671442149938noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3082331.post-188393655702179982019-06-24T15:00:00.001-07:002019-06-24T15:00:38.982-07:00Against "Hamilton Electors"<i>(This draft was written shortly after the 2016 election. I've decided to clean it up and publish it.) </i><br />
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There is a push on right now to encourage members of the electoral college to deny Donald Trump the presidency when they meet next week to officially cast their electoral votes. The effort goes under the name "Hamilton electors," after hip-hop star and Federalist Papers author Alexander Hamilton, who argued that the electoral college should be a responsible deliberative body that can act to prevent the unwashed masses from choosing a dangerous demagogue for president.<br />
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I can see the appeal of Hamilton electors from a purely ends-justify-the-means point of view. Trump is a uniquely dangerous threat to our country, and the prospect of four years of a Trump administration is horrifying. But Republican electors are hardly going to be swayed by this kind of argument, so Hamilton elector proponents have been making principled arguments for why it's important for electors to think independently, and why they're justified in voting against the wishes of the general public in their state. However, I don't think these principled arguments stand up, at least in the context of the electoral college as it's currently constituted.<br />
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Hamilton electors would make sense in Alexander Hamilton's day. Back then, there was no mass media or public campaigning by presidential candidates. Electors were selected for their ability to weigh up the merits of the various candidates and vote in the best interests of their state. But that's not how we choose electors today.<br />
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Consider how the presidential primaries work. Each state is obviously different, but here in Pennsylvania, the Democratic presidential primary was a two-step process. First, my ballot asked me to vote for either Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders. This determined how many votes each candidate would receive from Pennsylvania at the Democratic National Convention.<br />
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Second, my ballot asked me to choose which specific people would be the actual delegates who would travel to Philadelphia to participate in the DNC. For each delegate, I could see their name and which candidate they supported. This step of the vote was about more than just who got to put "DNC 2016" on their resume. If that initial ballot was unable to choose a candidate -- because of a contested convention, or a candidate dropping out, or whatever -- those delegates would need to exercise their own judgment in deciding where to shift their vote. So I could pick delegates who I thought would be responsible about their choices in those later rounds, which I (as an ordinary voter) would not have a chance to directly weigh in on. As it happens, I didn't like a couple of the people who were listed as delegates for my candidate, so I ended up casting a mixed ballot at the delegate selection stage.<br />
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Contrast the primary process with the actual election in November. There was only one step on my ballot: A list of President/Vice President tickets, of which I was to select one, thereby casting my vote for a slate of electors pledged to that pair of candidates. The ballot gave me no information about who those electors are, much less any opportunity to vote for a mixed ticket. Indeed, when the Hamilton electors effort got going, people found it difficult to locate the names and biographical information about the electors!<br />
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In sum, nobody voted for electors on the basis of their individual decision-making skills. We voted for electors as proxies pledged to vote for a particular candidate. And that makes a lot of sense in the current media environment. The candidates campaign directly to the public, and the voters have ample opportunity to make up their minds which candidate they would rather have as president. <br />
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When I walked into my polling place, I knew that I very much did not want Donald Trump to be president, and I very much did want Hillary Clinton instead. When I cast my vote, not only was "which candidate do they support" the only piece of information I had on the competing slates of electors, it was also the only piece of information that was relevant to me. I had made up my mind about the candidates for president. The most important thing I wanted from an elector is an assurance that they could be relied on to vote for Clinton, and not Trump, no matter what. Given the choice between an intelligent, fair-minded person open to persuasion from either side, versus a hack who lives only to support Hillary, I'd have chosen the latter as an elector in a heartbeat. As much as I'd like to see Trump denied the presidency, I find it hard to support Hamilton Electors as a general system.Stentorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13629599671442149938noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3082331.post-41539922304686670522019-06-24T14:55:00.001-07:002019-06-24T14:55:43.708-07:00On the Difference Between Liberalism and LeftismI've seen a lot of talk that attempts to distinguish liberalism from leftism that I think somewhat misses the nature of liberalism. The implied model of politics is usually a one-dimensional continuum from right to left. Liberals are positioned as centrists (having views in between the left and right) and/or reformists (believing leftward change can and should happen incrementally). I would argue, in contrast, the liberalism-illiberalism is a separate axis from left-right. (Of course, substantive ideologies are not a one-dimensional field, but for simplicity's sake ...)<br />
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Left and right are substantive views. They consist of a set of values and preferences about the proper way to live. Centrism is likewise a substantive view, that holds that the ideal way for people to live is somewhere in between what the left and right call for. Liberalism is not a substantive position, but rather a meta-position on how conflicts between substantive positions should be handled. The essence of liberalism is the belief that we should create a substance-neutral set of rules that apply equally to all substantive views and their adherents. Illiberalism, by contrast, holds that society should overtly favor one substantive view. For example, a liberal defends free speech on the same terms for themselves and their opponents, while an illiberal seeks to suppress speech that advocates wrong ideas while defending their own right to speak the truth. <br />
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Liberalism may work by either privatizing or democratizing conflict. A privatized conflict is one in which each person is free to pursue their substantive values in their own life, at the cost of allowing others that same freedom. The classic example is religion -- the European wars between Protestants and Catholics were resolved through the liberal means of allowing each person to practice their own religion, even if their neighbors are sure they are going to hell for it. Democratization occurs when a society as a whole must choose between substantive positions, but that choice is made through a fair and neutral process such as an election.<br />
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The danger of an extreme illiberal view is usually said to be dogmatism. In a wholly illiberal society, all dissent from the correct substantive view is suppressed and ruled out-of-bounds. But I think dogmatism is scary only from a liberal point of view. A liberal values dissent and conflict among substantive views for their own sake. But a truly committed illiberal, who is absolutely convinced that their substantive view is correct, has nothing to fear from dogmatism. Indeed, why should people be allowed to spread demonstrably false views that can do nothing but harm society? <br />
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The danger of extreme illiberalism that should worry an illiberal is tyranny. Tyranny occurs when one person or group is able to set itself up as the interpreter of the substantive view that prevails. Though some illiberals may wish to deny it, there is always a need for some interpreter or arbiter to make the final decision as to which things are consistent with the substantive truth. The truth is never simply self-evident. This interpreter is able to use illiberalism to pursue their own ends by branding any dissent as a dangerous attack on the truth. Illiberalism can thus become twisted against itself. Some measure of liberalism is necessary to allow dissent against particular interpreters of substantive doctrine, and thus accountability of human interpreters to the very values they purport to be pursuing. We need to be able to say "I think the Party is saying things that aren't actually consistent with Marxist-Leninist thought" or "I think the Bishop is misinterpreting the Bible."<br />
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On the other extreme, liberalism is often charged with allowing evil ideologies to arise. A liberal may hope that, say, Nazi views do not prevail in the "marketplace of ideas" or at the ballot box, but there is nothing inherent in the liberal system that would guarantee this. An extreme liberal can't rule any substantive ideology out-of-bounds -- even one that is itself illiberal in content. But just as an extreme illiberal is unconcerned with dogmatism, an extreme liberal is unconcerned with giving the bad guys freedom. From an extreme liberal point of view, if "bad" views prevail within a truly free and fair system, then those bad views are thereby validated as good! Only an illiberal would see a victory by the bad guys as a flaw in a liberal system.<br />
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What would concern a true liberal about an extreme liberal system is emptiness, which results from liberalism's inability to recognize power relations. An analysis of power is a core component of a substantive ideology -- who has power, and who should have power. But liberalism is, by its commitment to neutrality between substantive views, unable to recognize any such power relations. That means a liberal system always presumes a level playing field, which substantive views deny exists. Liberal promises of equality are empty when power inequalities allow some people to take advantage of the liberal system more readily than others. For example, free speech is more easily used by those who have more resources and more social respect, while those who lack those things find their theoretical right to free speech useless.<br />
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Now, to say that perfect liberalism and perfect illiberalism are both flawed doesn't tell us much about exactly where in between those extremes we should land. But hopefully conceptualizing liberalism as a separate axis from that which distinguishes substantive ideologies at least helps frame the question.Stentorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13629599671442149938noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3082331.post-33576616670762575282018-12-17T10:28:00.000-07:002018-12-17T10:28:02.798-07:00A Proposal for the Future Evolution of English Pronouns and Conjugations<i>(note: I am not a linguist, although I play one on the Internet)</i><br /><br />English has lost most of its conjugations by person for verbs, but has retained some of them for "to be." A few centuries ago, "standard" English had a system with distinctions between persons in the singular, plus a different plural form:<br /><br />I am we are<br />thou art you are<br />he/she/it is they are<br /><br />Over time, the practice of using the second person plural as a formal mode of address to single people led to "you" becoming the standard second person singular, displacing "thou" -- and as it did so, it brought along its conjugation. That is, we say "you are" to individuals, not "you art." So current "standard" English looks like:<br /><br />I am we are<br />you are you are<br />he/she/it is they are<br /><br />Of these six forms, four are always used to refer to "persons" in the philosophical sense of conscious beings (not necessarily Homo sapiens) -- the first and second person forms (i.e. you never address a rock, calling it "you," unless you mean to imply that it is somehow a conscious person). (Things are going to get confusing with using both the grammatical and philosophical definitions of the word "person" from here on out, but bear with me.) And of those four always-persons, three now use the conjugation "are."<br /><br />Currently we're seeing a shift toward greater acceptance in "standard" English of the longsanding custom of using "they" to refer to single persons of indeterminate gender. And singular they, like singular you, brings along its conjugation. We say "they are" about individuals, not "they is" (and "they eat" rather than "they eats," etc.). So the emerging paradigm looks like:<br /><br />I am we are<br />you are you are<br />he/she/it is they are<br />they are<br /><br />Singular they looks to become more and more common. More people are coming out as nonbinary (and thus not willing to use the two gendered third person singular pronouns "he" and "she", nor the one non-person pronoun "it"), and singular they seems to be eclipsing neopronouns (such as xe or zie) in this context. We're also seeing more use of singular they in place of "he or she," "he/she," and "he which I'm using to refer to people of all gender because it's easier and since I put this disclaimer in you can't call me sexist." And we're seeing a broadening of the circumstances under which we treat a person's gender as unknown rather than assuming that "he" or "she" applies. So my projection is that singular they will become standard for all persons, leaving he and she as historical relics (like thou). "It is" will be retained for non-persons in the singular.<br /><br />I am we are<br />you are you are<br />they are they are<br />it is<br /><br />Now, "are" has become the conjugation for an even larger percentage of persons (in the philosophical sense). The only exceptions are the retention of "am" for first person singular, and the use of "they are" for all third person plurals, whether persons or not (i.e. you'd say "they are" about a group of people as well as about a group of rocks). Expanding to "I are" is fairly straightforward. To distinguish persons and non-persons in the third person plural, we need to make a side-tour into pronouns.<br /><br />The evolution of "you" left English unable to grammatically distinguish between singular and plural in the second person. The solution in many dialects has been to create a new, pluralized form. Though my eastern PA roots insist that "youse" is more logical, and my Pittsburgher heart yearns for "yinz," the most likely candidate to become standard is "y'all." We can also posit a similar evolution for "they" as singular they becomes more dominant, with the new plural they, "th'all." Building off of this, we can then limit "th'all" to persons, and create a new third-person-plural non-person pronoun out of "it," namely "t'all." And just like you and they brought "are" with them into the singular column, t'all would bring "is" into the plural. The resulting paradigm would then be:<br /><br />I are we are<br />you are y'all are<br />they are th'all are<br />it is t'all is<br /><br />And if "to be" is shifting to distinguish persons from non-persons in conjugation, we could expect the same to happen with the rudimentary conjugation that remains in other verbs.<br /><br />I run we run<br />you run y'all run<br />they run th'all run<br />it runs t'all runs<br /><br />We're already seeing a bit of this in the way that people playfully attribute personhood to non-humans in meme culture. It's common currently to use "he" or "she" as a way of attributing personhood, but it is often followed by a conjugation that lacks the normal third person singular s. We get expressions like "he eat the banana." This could be interpreted as a desire to standardize conjugations according to personhood (in the philosophical sense), not grammatical person and number.Stentorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13629599671442149938noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3082331.post-75141209609770312432018-02-20T20:27:00.001-07:002018-02-20T20:27:09.088-07:00On Allegorical Racism In Speculative Fiction<a href="http://www.cracked.com/blog/the-cringe-worthy-way-sci-fi-fantasy-deal-with-prejudice/">This article</a> makes some good points about the failures of science fiction in using allegory to address bigotry and oppression*. But I think there's a bigger problem with addressing oppression through allegory: it just doesn't work. However much people buy your message about the wrongness of discriminating against a made-up group, they are unlikely to extend that consideration to actual oppressed groups.<br />
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After all, people are very reluctant to take lessons from the real oppression that they actually experience. We have no shortage of sexist black people, racist gays, transphobic disabled people, etc. If allegory between different kinds of oppression worked so well, nobody would need to be reminded to think intersectionally.<br />
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Moreover, taking a lesson in non-bigotry from a made-up situation requires you to recognize that you are acting in a bigoted way in real life. We're all very invested in believing that we're not bigots. Someone can be waving a Confederate flag and ranting about how Hitler was misunderstood, and they will tell you with a straight face that they don't have a racist bone in their body**. What people need is not help in recognizing that bigotry is bad, it's help in recognizing that what they're doing is bigotry.<br />
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I get the impulse to address oppression allegorically. Talking directly about real oppressed groups is hard, especially if you're not a member of the group in question. The people you're targeting with your message aren't going to be happy if you don't sugar coat things with allegory. And the people you're trying to help may not be happy -- they may find your portrayal of them is inaccurate and trades in stereotypes. It's easier to write about Zygons than Muslims because there are no real Zygons to complain that you're misrepresenting them. But if the allegorical oppression doesn't lead people to see real oppression differently, then your allegory is wasted.<br />
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I think Get Out makes a good counterexample here. While the precise mechanism of the oppression (sci-fi brain-swapping technology) was made up, it tied directly into real forms of oppression against the same group. The brain-swapping grew out of, and built directly on, examples of discrimination and racial micro-aggressions that every white person in the audience has done, or at least seen their white friends and family do. (I know I, as a white person, was kind of relieved when the family started just sawing heads open instead of telling Chris how they'd vote for Obama a third time.) The film forces you to empathize with a black person -- a member of a real-life oppressed group -- the entire time. White viewers aren't given an "out" in the form of a white character who ultimately does something good, so that we can think "oh, I would be like that person." It's uncomfortable, but ultimately more successful than a movie about stealing the bodies of aliens or elves would be.<br />
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*At least mainstream science fiction, which is largely written by people who have not themselves been victims of the kind of oppression they're allegorizing.<br />
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**As Andrew Ti once said, I feel bad for all these non-racist skeletons trapped in racists' bodies.<br />
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Stentorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13629599671442149938noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3082331.post-73670135689368896762018-01-08T16:00:00.001-07:002018-01-08T16:02:51.458-07:00On Hierarchy in Polyamory as Explained by Grid-Group Cultural TheoryA standard debate in polyamorous communities has to do with the issue of hierarchy in relationships. Many writers on nonmonogamy assert that relationship hierarchies, in which one partner is considered more important or given some form of priority over others, are wrong or harmful. Explicit defenses of hierarchy are less common, but many people clearly continue to practice hierarchical relationships and would defend their own individual arrangements if confronted with anti-hierarchy arguments.<br />
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It occurs to me that we might get some insight into the hierarchy debate by turning to <a hef="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_theory_of_risk">Grid-Group Cultural Theory (GGCT)</a>, a theory of social organization developed by anthropologist Mary Douglas and her followers. Douglas proposed that social organizations can be categorized based on where they fall on two key variables: grid and group. "Grid" refers to the existence of a system of rules that defines the place and role of each person. "Group" refers to the tendency to elevate the interests and decisions of the collective above those of the individual. If we think of organizations as being either high or low on each of those dimensions, we get a four-fold typology (<a href="https://www.dustinstoltz.com/blog/2014/06/04/diagram-of-theory-douglas-and-wildavskys-gridgroup-typology-of-worldviews">See here for various diagrams, including the one at right</a>). Each of these four types can be expected to have its own characteristic organizational dynamics, supporting worldview, attitude toward the non-human world, and flaws or pitfalls.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://static1.squarespace.com/static/57cf17802e69cf96e1c4f406/t/57cf667014fd83520341f4de/1473210464832/TheBriefNote-The-Cultural-Theory-Of-Risk-Grid-Group-Mary-Douglas-Wildavsky.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://static1.squarespace.com/static/57cf17802e69cf96e1c4f406/t/57cf667014fd83520341f4de/1473210464832/TheBriefNote-The-Cultural-Theory-Of-Risk-Grid-Group-Mary-Douglas-Wildavsky.png" width="320" height="281" data-original-width="800" data-original-height="702" /></a></div><br />
A polycule -- a group of people connected by non-monogamous relationships -- can be analyzed as a social organization in GGCT terms. Looked at in this way, it seems to me that there's a good match between "hierarchy" as discussed by polyamorous people, and Douglas's concept of "grid." Polyamorous hierarchies involve the establishment of a set of rules that create differentiated roles for people within the polycule. <br />
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The hierarchy debate in polyamory thus focuses on one dimension of GGCT. But GGCT is a two-dimensional theory, and the other dimension of "group" hangs over these debates, though often without being recognized. Group describes how much the members of the polycule feel that they are part of an entity that is greater than themselves, operating as a collective rather than as individuals. (Note that group is *not* about how "committed" or "deeply in love" or whatever the people involved are. It's about how oriented they are toward the group as an entity, how much they think and act in terms of "us" rather than "you and me.")<br />
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Consider what it means to have a non-hierarchical -- i.e. low grid -- relationship. There are two basic poles that people seem to be drawn to in order to prevent the emergence of a hierarchy. One pole is a polycule in which all members are equally deeply invested in being a household. In some ways this is much like a standard monogamous relationship, but with more people. Everyone involved is very deeply invested in each other's lives, with lots of shared assets (such as shared living spaces, shared finances, co-parenting, and customized legal arrangements). Everyone involved has some close relationship with each other person (even if not romantic/sexual). Adding a new partner is a rare occurrence and requires lots of work to get the new person up to speed so that they can be equal to the existing members, while leaving the polycule tends to involve painful schisms. The group itself often has a strong identity, perhaps with its own name (something like "the Maple Street House" or "the McSmithingsteins"). We can, with some license, call this the "polyfidelity" model. And it's a textbook high-group, low-grid organization in GGCT terms -- usually labeled an "Egalitarian" organization. You have close integration of members, a focus on the good of the collectivity, and a sharp insider-outsider divide that allows the insiders to be equal (because you can't have everyone be substantively equal unless you know exactly who are included in "everyone"). There may be informal divisions of labor, but there are no formal distinctions of role.<br />
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But polyfidelity is not the only model of a low-grid polycule. Another alternative (and the corner from which some of the strongest anti-herarchy rhetoric comes) is what we can loosely label "relationship anarchy." In its purest form, this mode of social organization consists of a loose, open-ended network of relationships that each persist only so long as both parties care to maintain it. It becomes unrealistic to draw any line around the polycule -- does that person you hooked up with three months ago and are Facebook friends with count, since you never officially said it wouldn't happen again even though you have no specific plans to see them in the immediate future? While individuals may be very emotionally invested in each other, there is a resistance to practical commitments such as legal marriage or cohabitation that would inhibit fluid changes to the nature of a relationship. Each person is fundamentally expected to be responsible for their own life and feelings. Here we have a nice illustration of a low-grid, low-group way of life, as outlined by GGCT. This type of organization is labeled Individualism. (And a nice one for any enterprising Douglasian scholar to examine, as descriptions of Individualism in the literature tend to fixate on free markets.)<br />
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So in summary so far: If you wish to avoid hierarchy (i.e. grid) in your polyamourous relationships, there are two basic models, either high-group polyfidelity or low-group relationship anarchy. But what about high-grid relationships? Well, here we have both high and low group options too. And I think a failure to distinguish them contributes to the intractability of the hierarchy debate.<br />
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Consider first a high-grid, high-group polycule. Because it's high grid, we would see a clear and well-established differentiation of roles, perhaps dividing "primary" partners who live together and share finances, from "secondary" partners seen for less-frequent date nights, and perhaps also "tertiary" friends-with-benefits. And because it's high-group, there is a shared investment in the success of the polycule as a whole. There is a concern for order, clarity, and the management of expectations. "Secondary" and "tertiary" partners respect the authority and greater claims of those above them in the hierarchy. They may not wish a higher position for themselves, or they may get that balance from being "primary" in their own overlapping polycule. (The orderliness of this form of organization alows the differentiation of spheres in which a person can be primary to one partner but secondary to another -- something that would be difficult to arrange in either low grid model.) I think this model is very common in practice, and is what is usually envisioned by defenders of hierarchy. I'll call it "standard polyamory," since it's so common (especially for people who begin to explore nonmonogamy from within an already-established monogamous relationship). Confusingly for our purposes, Douglas and other GGCT scholars call this form of organization -- which is high grid *and high group* -- "Hierarchy."<br />
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I wouldn't expect a relationship anarchist to be particularly enamored of standard polyamory. But I also think that most of the harshest denunciations of hierarchy in polyamory are actually envisioning the fourth type of social organization -- one that is high grid and *low* group. GGCT scholars almost universally consider this form of social organization to be dysfunctional and undesirable. Here we see rules made to confine people to specific positions in the polycule -- but with those people not being invested in the legitimacy of the overall system. The rules come across as arbitrary, reinforcing the isolation of their targets and their own lack of control over their circumstances. The people who are most constrained by these rules are, obviously, the ones who suffer most from such an arrangement. The plight of the "unicorn" -- a woman brought in to serve the needs of an existing m-f couple, subject to various restrictions such as not dating others, only sleeping with the other two together, etc -- is iconic here. But even the rule-makers can suffer from a low-group high-grid situation, as they find themselves in the role of suspicious enforcer rather than honest partner. GGCT scholars label this form of life "Fatalism," which evokes the type of mentality that is cultivated by being in such a situation. A fatalist must renounce the ambition to exert control over their own situation, and instead learn to roll with the vagaries of good and bad that come their way.<br />
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An important point made by most GGCT scholars is that in an extreme form, each of these four modes of life is liable to become dysfunctional. Inidvidualism becomes callous toward those who lose out in competition, Hierarchy (in the GGCT sense) becomes rigid and insensitive to new information, and Egalitarianism is prone to witch-hunts and schisms. A functional social organization must be able to draw on all four ways of life to at least some degree, even if based clearly in one quadrant. (Yes, even Fatalism -- because the experience of being subject to larger uncontrollable forces is inevitable at some point, and because some randomness in outcomes can keep other modes of organization from calcifying.)Stentorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13629599671442149938noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3082331.post-12101371314908853752017-11-06T18:12:00.003-07:002017-11-06T18:12:43.657-07:00On Politicizing TragediesAn ISIS-supporting immigrant runs down pedestrians in New York, killing eight. A white man in Texas opens fire in a church, killing 27. And partisans on both sides gleefully point out their opponents' hypocrisy -- they were quick to draw political conclusions from one of these incidents, while warning us not to politicize tragedies after the other. There is certainly hypocrisy enough to go around on both sides of the aisle, but people of good will seem to agree that it would be possible to have a consistent, content-neutral standard for what constitutes politicizing a tragedy. By that standard, you could recognize when your opponents were or were not drawing legitimate political conclusions from a tragedy even when you didn't agree with them. But I'm not so sure.<br />
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<p>To see why, we need to have a clear idea of what it means to improperly politicize a tragedy. On the one hand, it seems obvious that it's possible to crassly wield a tragedy for political gain, so there are some political connections that should be ruled out. On the other hand, it also seems obvious that we should be able to examine tragedies in order to come up with strategies -- including ones involving policy changes -- to prevent them from happening again. It seems that improper politicizing of a tragedy then means linking it to political conclusions that are themselves inappropriate -- that is, conclusions that don't really follow from the tragedy. The wrongness of politicizing a tragedy consists in demonstrating that you care more about the political agenda you're attempting to advance than you do about the victims of the tragedy.<br />
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<p>Now, here's the rub: you can't determine whether a political conclusion drawn from a tragedy is inappropriate without evaluating the substance of that conclusion. And that evaluation is going to be shaped by your political stance. Liberals see calls for gun control after the Texas shooting as legitimate, and thus not "politicizing," because within a liberal framework, gun control is an entirely sensible solution to what happened. But within a conservative framework, gun control is illegitimate -- both wrong on the face of it, and inappropriate as a solution to the specific incident in Texas. From this point of view, calls for gun control must inevitably seem like inappropriate politicization. There's no way to judge whether saying "the Texas shooting shows the need for gun control" is illegitimate politicization or not, aside from making a judgment as to whether the Texas shooting really does show the need for gun control. Therefore, one's ideological opponents are always going to look like they are illegitimately politicizing tragedies, because they will always be proposing political conclusions that you think are illegitimate. Only the rightness of their proposed solutions could justify linking them to the tragedy, but you already know their proposed solutions are wrong.<br />
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<p>A further implication of this way of thinking is that drawing political conclusions from tragedies will have limited effectiveness. Everyone likes to believe that tragedies are clarifying moments, events whose implications are so clear that they break through the walls of ideology and make your conclusions obvious to anyone but the worst partisan hacks. (This is why we imagine we can have an ideology-neutral standard for politicization.) But ideologies are flexible and adaptable. They can easily interpret a wide variety of events in ways that don't disturb their basic premises and political commitments. This is especially true for types of tragedies that occur repeatedly -- such as Islamist vehicle attacks or mass shootings with high-powered weapons. There is no reason to think that <i>this</i> tragedy is going to be the one that somehow finally convinces your opponents to see the error of their ways.Stentorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13629599671442149938noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3082331.post-25435478864127755702017-08-15T07:27:00.001-07:002017-08-15T07:27:41.462-07:0099% of Nazi-punching discourse is posturingThere has been an outpouring of discussion on the left about the moral justifiability of punching (or otherwise physically assaulting, but punching seems to be the go-to) Nazis ever since Donald Trump won the presidency, and it's seen an unsurprising uptick after the events of Charlottesville. Lots of energy has been poured into the debate on various social media platforms, but the overwhelming majority of it is not serious discussion. It's just posturing to make the participant feel virtuous.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhn9iXGxuSV6d7s-QnRVEDb1K5idGhwHdQHOySo4FYcbYzSQkqA7zGzvn9Hxu8MuKkHGqdDbTfGW6zc-sPKj27W0KDSKqSBIe_yeTYWvb2t_Xn8l2RWHqLFEdTLEPqh5gZ_fPuv1w/s1600/punching-nazis-an-introduction-1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhn9iXGxuSV6d7s-QnRVEDb1K5idGhwHdQHOySo4FYcbYzSQkqA7zGzvn9Hxu8MuKkHGqdDbTfGW6zc-sPKj27W0KDSKqSBIe_yeTYWvb2t_Xn8l2RWHqLFEdTLEPqh5gZ_fPuv1w/s320/punching-nazis-an-introduction-1.jpg" width="233" height="320" data-original-width="468" data-original-height="642" /></a></div>Consider first the anti-punchers. They give us high-minded dissertations on the virtues of non-violence, of not "stooping to their level," of maintaining the moral high ground. But how many of these people would have punched a Nazi if they did think it was justified? I suspect not many. These are not people holding themselves back from Nazi-punching temptation on the basis of moral principle. They're cowards afraid to get involved in a physical fight, who are cloaking it in fancy language to make themselves feel virtuous for not doing something they wouldn't have done anyway. And hey, I'm a coward about physical fights too. But I don't present it as a demonstration of my moral virtue.<br />
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And then there's the pro-punchers. They too talk a good game -- about the necessity of responding to inherently violent ideologies, about the privilege inherent in non-violence, and so forth. They share comic book panels of Nazis getting punched, and that one video of someone clobbering Richard Spencer, and Twitter threads about how to punch effectively. But they too are not out there actually punching Nazis. While pro-punching memes rack up hundreds of thousands of shares and likes, I can count on one hand the number of Nazis who have actually gotten punched by a leftist since the election. Hundreds of Nazis came to Charlottesville last weekend. It was a target-rich environment for anyone wanting to punch a Nazi. But how many of them actually got punched? And OK, maybe taking on a heavily-armed mob is too dangerous. But they marched around un-hooded, so people have managed to determine the identity and personal information of many of them. And yet they still went largely un-punched. Nobody walked into Top Dog to clobber Cole White. The big anti-Nazi victory of the last few days was using social media to shame Top Dog into firing Mr. White. So I can only conclude that pro-punching people aren't actually planning to punch any Nazis. They just want to feel tough and fantasize about literally striking a blow for justice. Most pro-punching discourse is a combination of ally theater and social justice masturbation.<br />
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So I don't have time for the Nazi-punching arguments on either side. Come back when some non-negligible number of Nazis is actually getting punched, and then I'll care whether it's morally justified.Stentorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13629599671442149938noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3082331.post-40597855706800604592017-03-15T09:44:00.001-07:002017-03-15T09:44:11.091-07:00On Not Falling For The Big RevealLast night, the left got played -- hard. Rachel Maddow teased on Twitter that she had Trump's tax returns, and social media went into a frenzy. As it turns out, Maddow had two pages of Trump's 2005 filing, which showed nothing new or particularly scandalous. No funny business. No nefarious ties to Russia. Just a rich dude using the tax code as intended. (I suspect there is nothing terribly scandalous in any of Trump's tax returns. He's continuing to hide them because releasing them would mean his critics "won" and he "lost," which would be a big blow to his ego.)<br />
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The big lesson here is, <a href="http://blog.debitage.net/2017/01/on-anti-trump-motivated-reasoning.html">as I've written before</a>, that the more you -- justifiably! -- hate Trump, the more vulnerable you are going to be to clickbait. I could rehearse all of the usual lectures about fact-checking and paying attention to your sources here. But even that, I think, doesn't go far enough. Clickbait can come from any source. Folks on the left generally regard Maddow as a credible, quality source. But even she is, ultimately, in the business of selling your eyeballs to MSNBC's advertisers.<br />
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The real defense against anti-Trump clickbait is to give up on the myth of the Big Reveal. What made Maddow's promise so sensational was the hope that Trump's taxes would be the Big Reveal, the piece of information that finally confirmed what we all suspected, and made it incontrovertible to our opponents. Trump's perfidy would be laid out in black and white, and we could feel satisfied at being vindicated, while the floor fell out from under his supporters. It's the hope of the <a href="http://tolkiengateway.net/wiki/Eucatastrophe">eucatastrophe</a> -- just when things look darkest, to hear Maddow shout "<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kdz1OxjXA7s">the tax returns are coming!</a>"<br />
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The Big Reveal makes a good dramatic climax to a movie. But real life doesn't work that way. Remember the Billy Bush tape? We all thought that was going to be the Big Reveal that took Trump down. In reality, it dinged him a few points in the polls for a couple weeks, then he bounced back. The Big Reveal only works if we're all living in the same world. But we're not. Liberals and conservatives are working from such different starting premises, such different sets of basic values and basic frameworks about how the world works, that no one piece of information can make everything change. <br />
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That doesn't mean that the situation is hopeless, or that getting more information (including the rest of Trump's tax returns) is useless. But it does mean we can't hope for one big piece of information to suddenly change everything. What will change things is the long, slow process of shifting people's basic value systems and worldviews. Once we set aside the false hope of the Big Reveal, we won't be as easily taken in by clickbaiters dangling it in front of us.Stentorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13629599671442149938noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3082331.post-88961158992551559282017-02-28T19:03:00.002-07:002017-02-28T19:03:39.298-07:00On Steaks and the Difference Between Trump and BushDonald Trump is in the news again for <a href="http://www.avclub.com/article/president-trump-orders-his-steak-well-done-ketchup-251081">ordering an expensive steak well-done</a>, a longstanding culinary preference of his. Some observers have been content to simply mock him, while others have written <a href="http://www.eater.com/2017/2/28/14753248/trump-steak-well-done-ketchup-personality">long pretentious not-sure-if-it's-satire-or-not personality analyses based on his eating habits</a>. It's the kind of thing that would be shameful if applied to anyone we didn't already hate.<br />
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Some people have pointed out that it's not just urban liberal foodies who like their steaks raw -- bloody steak is also the official Real Red-Blooded American Man way of cooking. So how can it be that Trump, champion of the rural working class, can get away with well-done steaks?<br />
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I think the answer can be seen when we contrast Trump's style with George W. Bush's. Bush made a great effort to portray himself as one of the people, a regular Joe, the guy you want to have a beer with. He came from Texas (the most American of the states), spoke with a drawl, and spent his vacations clearing brush on his ranch. And he portrayed John Kerry as just the opposite cultural type -- a windsurfing, swiss-cheese-chessesteak eating coastal elite. And it seemed to work! Gallons of ink were spilled by left-leaning commentators analyzing Bush's affected populism.<br />
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Then along comes Trump. Trump set himself up as the champion of the white rural working class -- but he never made any pretense of being one of them. Where Bush presented himself as a brush-clearing, drawling, reg'lar guy Texan, Trump flaunted his wealth and spoke with a yuge Brooklyn accent while hanging out in his gold-encrusted New York penthouse. There's a certain weird authenticity to the way Trump doesn't seem to care if he looks like one of the people he represents. <br />
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I don't think Trump's taste for well-done steak is an act. I assume that really is how he likes it. (And I can sympathize -- before I became a vegetarian, I preferred my meat well-done too.) But it shouldn't be a surprise that good old bloody-steak-eating heartlanders wouldn't be turned off by Trump's culinary tastes, since he's never claimed that his personal lifestyle is normal.Stentorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13629599671442149938noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3082331.post-2293454311521454322017-02-10T14:06:00.002-07:002017-02-10T14:08:44.446-07:00On Those Trump Voters Who Believe in the Bowling Green MassacreI've seen a bunch of people breathlessly sharing the results of a recent survey, which showed that <a href="http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/trump-voters-bowling-green-masscre-justifies-travel-ban-article-1.2969228">51% of Trump voters say that the nonexistent Bowling Green Massacre justifies the president's travel ban</a>. The implication is that these people are a bunch of idiots who base their political views on fake news, that they sincerely believe that a massacre happened recently in Bowling Green. But I don't think that this particular survey question means quite what everyone thinks it does.<br />
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I'm sure there is some set of individuals out there who hold an active belief that a massacre was conducted by Islamic extremists in Bowling Green. Presumably they heard it from Kellyanne Conway, and dismiss all of the media fact-checkers as promoting fake news due to their bias against Trump. But a more common thought process probably goes like this: "There have been a bunch of Islamic terrorist attacks over the last few years, which justify the president's policies. I don't happen to recall the specific details of the attack in Bowling Green, but I assume since they're asking me about it, it must be one of them. I don't want to sound stupid by saying I never heard of it. Nor do I want to have the poll come out showing weak support for the president just because I quibbled about the details of one specific attack. After all, there have been enough of these attacks to justify the policies overall, regardless of the details I've forgotten about Bowling Green. So I'll say yes."<br />
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Imagine a poll in which people were asked whether the recent police shooting of LaShawn Dyer justified efforts toward criminal justice reform. LaShawn Dyer was not in fact shot by the police -- I made him up just now. But most liberals who are sympathetic to the Black Lives Matter movement don't remember the full list of outrageous police shootings off the top of their head. So when put on the spot to answer a question about the nonexistent Mr. Dyer, they would go through a similar process to the Trump voter in the previous paragraph. They would answer yes about the specific case of LaShawn Dyer because they know there is a more general phenomenon of unjustified police shootings of black people, and they want to endorse the need for criminal justice reform.<br />
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Just because someone reports a false belief on a survey, doesn't mean that they hold that false belief. They may just be coming up with an answer to satisfy the inquiries of the pollster and keep from looking stupid, working on the assumption that the question contains meaningful and relevant information and is not a blatant attempt to trick them. This is a well-known phenomenon among psychologists, known as the issue of <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=5LraY6ZqzFkC&printsec=frontcover&dq=constructed+preferences&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiG2dmgt4bSAhXjiVQKHWF0BkIQ6AEIHzAB#v=onepage&q=constructed%20preferences&f=false">constructed preferences</a>.<br />
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Consider this classic nonpartisan example. Some years ago, poll respondents were asked whether they supported Congress renewing the nonexistent 1975 Public Affairs Act. Here they don't even have the cues of being told there was a massacre or a police shooting to help them put it in context -- "Public Affairs Act" was deliberately chosen as the most banal bill name imaginable. <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/2001/09/10/who-knows/7f4204ab-b7ee-4d3e-959f-e722ee92bc31/?utm_term=.ccb630f6ca39">And yet 43% of people claimed to support or oppose the PAA renewal</a>. I think it's pretty tough to claim that those people hold clear, considered viewpoints on the PAA, that they go about their day actively believing in the existence of this made-up act. So likewise, I suspect most of the people who gave a positive response about the Bowling Green Massacre are not going around actively believing that there was such a massacre. Stentorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13629599671442149938noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3082331.post-18722989205411080202017-01-30T20:57:00.001-07:002017-01-30T20:57:18.483-07:00On the Uselessness of Hypocrisy ArgumentsHypocrisy arguments are pretty popular these days. Trump attacked Clinton for using a private email server, but now <a href="http://www.salon.com/2017/01/27/president-trumps-voters-seem-to-be-fine-with-him-using-a-private-email-poll/">his people are using their own private server</a>. Trump slammed Obama for issuing too many executive orders, but now <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/01/republicans-trump-executive-orders/514547/">he has issued even more executive orders</a>. I get why these arguments are appealing. They may even be logically sound. But they are also completely ineffective at actually changing one's opponents' minds.<br />
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As I said, I get the appeal of hypocrisy arguments. Getting someone to change their mind about substantive issues is tough work. A dedicated pro-lifer is hardly going to be upset if you tell them that Trump is awful because he wants to overturn Roe v Wade. Hypocrisy arguments, on the other hand, seem to leverage the beliefs your opponents have already committed to, in order to hoist them by their own petard. Plus, it's satisfying to believe that your opponents are unprincipled dimwits, whose attacks on your side are just psychological projections of their own flaws.<br />
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Nevertheless, hypocrisy arguments don't work. They don't work, first, because it's always possible to find some reason that the two situations being compared are different. Consider the private email servers. If you are bringing to the table a background assumption that Hillary clinton is a fundamentally untrustworthy person, someone who is scheming and unprincipled who doesn't actually care about America and its safety, then hearing that she used a private email server is going to sound pretty bad. How can we trust her not to be doing nefarious, or at least negligent, things with it? Lock her up! Meanwhile, if you bring to the table a general attitude of trust toward Donald Trump, his use of a private server seems like no big deal. He's a businessman, not a bureaucrat, and his main virtue is that he's not flexible and not bound by the way things have always been done. At worst, you might feel like it's a bit careless (if only because it gives liberals a chance to wail about hypocrisy), but he'll probably get his internet security all settled soon enough.<br />
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Hypocrisy arguments also come across as insincere. Consider the email issue again. Left-leaning people just spent a whole campaign insisting that Clinton's private server was not a big deal. So when a liberal turns around and tries to use conservative outrage over Clinton's emails as the basis for a hypocrisy charge, a conservative hearer will (reasonably) think "hey, you never cared about emails before. You're only bringing up Trump's emails because you think it's some sort of gotcha." Yes, the crux of a hypocrisy argument is the inconsistency. But it's hard to get an argument off the ground when you're demonstrating that inconsistency by getting worked up about something you don't care about substantively.<br />
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Or, think of it this way: when was the last time you were convinced by a hypocrisy argument coming from the other side of the political aisle? For most of us, it's probably been a while. And I can hear you saying: "I would totally accept a valid hypocrisy argument if one were presented to me! It's just that my opponents, in addition to being hypocrites themselves, also seem to only make terrible hypocrisy arguments that are based on spurious claims and unfair comparisons. What a bunch of nincompoops!" <a href="http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/president-trump-travel-ban-differs-obama-2011-policy-article-1.2959631">Fair enough</a>. But that's exactly what they say about your hypocrisy arguments. And that's why hypocrisy arguments are not the silver bullet everyone seems to think they are. <br />
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Hypocrisy arguments rarely sway the other side. They mostly serve as a way for people on the same side to commiserate about what a bunch of nitwits the other side is. If that's your goal in making a hypocrisy argument, then carry on. But don't assume it's going to do more than that.<br />
Stentorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13629599671442149938noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3082331.post-18834002882178145902017-01-24T06:30:00.001-07:002017-01-24T06:30:52.600-07:00On Anti-Trump Motivated ReasoningOK. We've all had a good laugh/cry over <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2017/01/22/the-perfect-meme-for-the-alternative-facts-era-seanspicersays/">Conway and Spicer's recent performances</a>. But here's the thing. You detest Trump, right? Me too -- it seems like a perfectly reasonable reaction to the volcano of awfulness that has been spewing from our new president and those he surrounds himself with. But you have to remember that this makes you -- and me -- very vulnerable to what psychologists call motivated reasoning. Motivated reasoning is when you believe what you want to be true, and what conforms to your preexisting worldview, instead of what the evidence shows. The more you dislike Trump, the more easily you will believe any bad thing about him that comes along. And you will be especially inclined to believe it if it nicely fits one of the specific storylines you have about why Trump is terrible (he's a racist, he's incompetent, he's a Russian puppet, etc).<br />
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Motivated reasoning isn't a conservative thing or a liberal thing, it's a human thing. It's just the way our brains work. And patting yourself on the back about how you're rational and concerned about the truth, unlike all those other people who use motivated reasoning, will only make you *more* vulnerable to motivated reasoning. Recognizing that you're vulnerable to motivated reasoning does not mean that Trump isn't actually terrible. But remember that there are lots of people out there who stand to make a buck off of your motivated reasoning. The get clicks, and line their pockets with ad dollars, if they can feed you things that you want to believe.<br />
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What you -- and I -- need to do is to remind ourselves to be careful and humble about our psychological biases. If something seems outrageous, carefully check that it's true. If something perfectly illustrates exactly what's wrong with Trump, carefully check that it's true. Do this even if you don't intend to spread the information around -- headlines you've skimmed have a way of worming their way into your memory. Then, if it all checks out, go ahead and share it. I promise you, Trump will do enough actual awful things that you won't need the fake garbage.<br />
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Four years is a long time, and you're going to mess up. I guarantee I'll end up sharing something outrageous and fake over the course of the Trump presidency. Hopefully someone else will quickly point out your (and my) mistake. And when that happens, here's what to do: thank the person for the correction. Then breathe a sigh of relief that the item was false. (After all, you don't want Trump to do terrible stuff, right? You're not so hungry for ammuntion to use against him and to justify your worldview that you are hoping he does awful stuff, are you?) Then do what you can to undo the spread of bad information.<br />
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What you shouldn't do is say something like "well, the fact that it was so believable really shows how bad Trump is!" It doesn't show that at all. The fact that it was believable shows how bad *you think* Trump is. And maybe he is that bad. (I mean, he is. He's awful.) I get the desire to save face, and to look at the big picture. But your propensity to fall for motivated reasoning doesn't prove his actual badness. Your gullibility is not evidence of anything. Apologize, correct, and put your focus on the actual bad stuff.Stentorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13629599671442149938noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3082331.post-81242576496579699012014-07-31T12:06:00.001-07:002014-07-31T12:06:33.225-07:00PETA, Detroit, and the problem with "Go Vegan"<p>PETA is in the news again for offering to pay the water bills of 10 households in Detroit who have been threatened with shutoff -- on the condition that they go vegan for a month. It's the latest awful campaign in a string of awful campaigns from a vile organization that makes me embarrassed to be vegan. They're exploiting a real human tragedy as a publicity stunt. If PETA really wants to do something connected to the Detroit water crisis, why not say "we're paying these 10 families' water bills, plus giving them some groceries, because vegans care about everyone, human and animal." Just drop the coercive condition, and you've got a campaign that makes vegans look big-hearted rather than seeing people's tragedy as just a means to further an agenda.</p><br />
<p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjkrtNipGbVNhD7jNfysdksmPNKT_1ZKIGcAMPf8jGV_cP9dJzhw7toSxTUqMYmlCU613nGWIkFcSFW5Zmtri9GgrWi-UqBwiQVaGfTC6wwFlXt0w8ZHxPlfQJsbQIAMcHO5T1Fog/s1600/GoVegan.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjkrtNipGbVNhD7jNfysdksmPNKT_1ZKIGcAMPf8jGV_cP9dJzhw7toSxTUqMYmlCU613nGWIkFcSFW5Zmtri9GgrWi-UqBwiQVaGfTC6wwFlXt0w8ZHxPlfQJsbQIAMcHO5T1Fog/s320/GoVegan.png" /></a></div>But without reducing the opprobrium rightly directed at PETA in particular, I'd like to suggest that this campaign reveals a problem with the approach of the vegan/animal rights movement more generally. At the core of this and so many other campaigns by a wide variety of organizations is the admonition for individuals to "go vegan." The central mechanism of social change sought by vegan activism is the individual choice to give up use of animal products.</p><br />
<p>By making "go vegan" the center of the movement's strategy, modern veganism has turned animal rights into a matter of personal sin and purity. Eating meat is framed as an individual failing, and giving it up as an individual virtue. This fits neatly into a neoliberal world in which everything is a matter of personal choice and effort. Everyone should just pull themselves up by their faux-leather bootstraps. Despite vegans' typical lefty, feminist, pro-LGBT, etc. leanings, much vegan activism does not qualify as progressive (even the non-PETA stuff that isn't directly exploiting other forms of marginalization to advance veganism).</p><br />
<p>(I use the terms "sin" and "purity" deliberately. "Go vegan" activism follows in great detail the cultural template created by evangelical protestantism. Even though vegans are disproportionately likely to be non-Christians, their tactics imitate those of the Chick-tract-wavers. And typical "go vegan" appeals suffer from the same flaws as standard Christian evangelism. Read everything that Slacktivist (a devout liberal Christian) has to say about <a href="https://www.google.com/search?q=slactivist+evangelism&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a&channel=sb">the flaws in modern Evangelical Christian evangelism</a>. Then replace "Christian" with "vegan.")</p><br />
<p>But food is not simply a matter of choice. Food habits are shaped by deeply entrenched social structures, from cultural norms to land use planning to farm subsidies to trade policy to technology regulations. Change these, and individual eating habits will follow. And it's these larger structures of the food system, not the personal sins of individual meat-eaters, that drive the scale of animal (and human) suffering that vegans want to end. And it's changing these social structures that should be at the heart of vegan activism.</p><br />
<p>When mainstream vegan activists recognize the structural issues, they typically do so in a way that assimilates them into the "go vegan" individualistic paradigm. So certain people are granted a sort of indulgence or special dispensation, forgiving them for not going vegan (or granting them extra merit points if they do it) because structural forces make it especially hard for them. But the central focus remains on admonishing those who can make the personal choice to go vegan to do so.</p><br />
<p>The personal eating habits of poor Detroit households are not what is primarily responsible for animal exploitation in the USA. Indeed, their eating habits are as much an effect of the system as the environmental degradation that PETA claims to be worried about. The choice by a few such households to go vegan (made at much greater cost than a similar choice made by the typical middle-class PETA member) is not going to have much sway over the larger system.</p><br />
<p>I'm not saying there's anything wrong with an individual deciding to "go vegan." I'm not intending to start consuming animal products, and all else equal it's a positive step when someone "goes vegan." The problem occurs when "go vegan" is the central, or only, message being pushed by vegan activists.</p>Stentorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13629599671442149938noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3082331.post-78778913247827947222014-04-19T06:21:00.001-07:002014-04-19T06:21:20.712-07:00The benefits of cultural cognitionI'm very sympathetic to the "cultural cognition" explanation for controversy over risk issues such as climate change. Cultural cognition holds that our positions in such controversies -- including our interpretation of "factual" evidence -- is largely driven by our identification with certain cultural groups. By and large we believe in or deny anthropogenic climate change because that belief is socially rewarded in our cultural group, not because we've rationally assessed the evidence.<br />
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Where I tend to diverge from Dan Kahan (the leading modern proponent of the cultural cognition theory) is over whether cultural cognition is a bad thing. Kahan regards cultural cognition as unreservedly bad -- a sort of disease or pollution in our debate about an issue, something to be prevented or neutralized whenever possible so that we can make rational assessments of the evidence. I, on the other hand (and I like to think this is more in line with the views of Mary Douglas, whose work is the basis for the idea of cultural cognition), tend to believe there are ways that cultural cognition can be functional and beneficial. One such way is suggested in <a href="http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/04/16/a-risk-analyst-explains-why-climate-change-risk-misperception-doesnt-necessarily-matter/">this recent post</a> by David Ropeik.<br />
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Ropeik suggests that we shouldn't wait for the public to come around on climate change. Even the most skillful risk communication strategies will never convince the public to make a grand outcry that pushes our leaders to finally take the kind of drastic action necessary to avert the damaging consequences of climate change. Instead, the powerful in politics and business need to be willing to act without a public mandate, exercising foresight to deal with the problem even in the absence of a broad-based push from below. He cites as an example the effort by several major companies, including Apple, to use all renewable power.<br />
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It's common for both critics and boosters to think of major corporations as driven wholly by the search for efficiency. The profit motive and the inexorable clench of the invisible hand will, we're told, strip away all extraneous considerations and lead companies into coldly rational decision-making. But in fact corporations are heavily culturally embedded institutions. Even when they're acting purely rationally, they're doing so in a culturally loaded context.<br />
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Apple is a prime example of a company heavily intwined with culture. Their brand strategy is all about cultivating a particular image of who an Apple consumer is, and making their products a lifestyle. For convenience, let's call the kind of person who buys Apple products a "hipster." Hipsters are not deeply invested in climate change, and aren't likely (as a group) to generate the kind of mass outcry for change referenced by Ropeik. But they do incorporate a belief in anthropogenic climate change into their cultural identity. And so for Apple to make its operations greener is a good way to align their products better with a hipster cultural identity. <br />
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The example of Apple illustrates, then, how the kind of farsighted leadership that might be necessary to solve a problem like climate change can actually be aided by cultural cognition.Stentorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13629599671442149938noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3082331.post-21397174331149129992014-01-28T18:47:00.000-07:002014-01-28T18:47:37.103-07:00Don't sue climate change denialistsClimate scientist Michael Mann <a href="http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2014/1/26/judge-allows-climatescientisttomoveforwardwithdefamationcase.html">has been cleared to proceed</a> with a libel lawsuit against the Competitive Enterprise Institute and the <i>National Review</i> over comments accusing him of academic fraud and comparing him to pedophile ex-football coach Jerry Sandusky. While I think the claims made about Mann are spurious and pernicious, I have doubts that a courtroom is the right place to resolve this issue. <br />
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The Sandusky comments seem to me to be obviously permissible, since the CEI and NR didn't accuse Mann of committing specific acts of pedophilia. They fall into the same category of hyperbolic rhetoric as things like "BusHitler" or "Obama is the antichrist." Of more concern is Mann's claim that it's libelious for CEI and NR to assert that his research was biased. Here, he is essentially asking the court to adjudicate a dispute over the quality of scientific work -- to hold that CEI and NR were knowingly calling his research bad when it was in fact good. It seems to me that the court system is in a poor position to do this, and it sets a dangerous precedent for high-profile scientific issues to be subjected to the legal system. <br />
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The courts are simply not well-equipped to examine scientific questions. Judges do not have scientific expertise. The court system's own methodological procedures are based heavily on tradition and ritual in contravention to what we know (from scientific research) to be good practice in determining the truth -- such as the heavy reliance on unreliable eyewitness testimony. Perhaps more importantly, a key virtue of scientific procedure is its openness. There is always room for debate and reconsideration within science. Scientific claims never come to one final end where they are declared to be finished fact, though well-supported propositions (such as anthropogenic climate change) do, over time, accumulate broad-based assent. The whole point of the court system, on the other hand, is to issue final rulings. A court must issue a yes or a no, a guilty or an innocent, at the end of its proceedings. <br />
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I can understand Mann's desire to take action against people who have ruthlessly attacked him for many years and hindered his ability to conduct his research, but I think that when it comes to allegations about the quality of scientific research, the courts ought to maintain a very high standard for what counts as libel.Stentorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13629599671442149938noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3082331.post-67678667355490601032014-01-23T19:53:00.000-07:002014-01-23T19:53:01.860-07:00Non-Christians are not obligated to fix ChristianityFred Clark has a very odd post up effectively <a href="http://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/2014/01/22/redistributing-falsehoods-isnt-the-same-as-finding-truth/">demanding that non-Christians engage in Biblical exegesis</a>. He posits a friend who believes that Ohio doesn't exist because they believe the Gospel of Matthew denies Ohio's existence. Clark argues that if you take it upon yourself to disabuse your friend of the first falsehood (Ohio's nonexistence), then you are obligated to also disabuse them of the second falsehood (that Matthew denies Ohio's existence). Otherwise, he claims, you have implicitly endorsed the second falsehood, and thus have just shuffled around the falsehoods without decreasing the total number of falsehoods believed. And this is true, he says, even if you are not a Christian and therefore put no stake in what Matthew teaches.<br />
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The first problem with this argument is that failing to disabuse your friend of their incorrect Biblical views is not the same as endorsing them. Clark's ultimate goal is to attack secular intellectuals like Neil DeGrasse Tyson who have (falsely) affirmatively endorsed the idea that the Bible teaches young-earth creationism, while (correctly) maintaining that young-earth creationism is wrong. I agree that Tyson and others shouldn't take this position about the Bible (for reasons explained below). But that doesn't mean that someone who challenges the empirical correctness of a wrong interpretation of the Bible is thereby endorsing said interpretation. Our non-Christian Ohio-believer could simply remain neutral on the question of what the Bible teaches about Ohio's existence.<br />
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Second, Clark's argument assumes that all falsehoods are equal. He focuses on counting up the total number of falsehoods believed. But of course falsehoods differ in quality as well as quantity. Some falsehoods are farther from the truth than others -- compare "Ohio doesn't exist" to "Ohio is located in the South." And some falsehoods are more relevant to our lives (and thereby more damaging to believe) than others -- compare "Ohio doesn't exist" to "the state of Xhix on the planet Xarth orbiting the star Zeta Reticuli doesn't exist." It is perfectly rational to focus one's energy on the bigger, more consequential falsehoods.<br />
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But third and most important, Clark's argument assumes that a non-Christian can engage in debate over the correctness of a Biblical interpretation. Here Clark's non-Christian who insists Matthew teaches nothing on the subject of Ohio's existence is making the same mistake as Tyson is when he claims the Bible teaches young-earth creationism. The Bible (like any other complex text) is not self-interpreting. There is no single meaning that can be proven to be correct through an unimpeachable reading technique. This is a point that Clark himself has repeatedly stressed on his blog. In lambasting Biblical "literalists" (such as the creationists that the post under consideration is aimed at!), he emphasizes that the Bible always requires interpretation and that its meaning cannot be discerned by any simple reading technique. This fact is obscured in the Ohio example because he picked for his Biblical falsehood something so obviously absurd that it's difficult to imagine any realistic hermeneutic that could lead someone to believe that the bible teaches that. But that's certainly not the case for topics like creationism (or gay rights, or feminism, or any other topic where a liberal like Clark would disagree with common assertions about what the Bible says).<br />
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In order to determine which reading of the Bible -- the Ohio-affirming or the Ohio-denying, the creationist or the evolution-compatible, the anti-gay or the pro-gay -- is true and correct, one requires faith. I don't mean faith in the sense that God's spirit must guide your reading (though many Christians do believe in such a thing). I mean that if you don't believe in the existence of the Christian god, then it is meaningless to assert that there is a correct and an incorrect interpretation of the Bible. The correct interpretation of the Bible can mean nothing other than the one that God wants his followers to derive from the text. And so if one does not believe in the Christian God, one cannot believe there is a single correct interpretation of the Bible. In the same way that <a href="http://www.shakesville.com/2009/09/on-real-christians-and-christian.html">non-Christians can't be asked to distinguish "true" from false Christians</a>, we can't be asked to distinguish true from false interpretations of the Bible. While I certainly hope (for instrumental reasons) that more Christians come around to the kind of pro-science, pro-social-justice strain of Christianity that Clark espouses, that's a debate that has to happen internally among Christians.<br />
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Clark's mistake comes from a thread of Christian chauvinism that runs through his otherwise admirable take on his faith. He is rightly appalled by the ends to which people have put Christianity. He believes not just that their ends are wrong, but that they are not true to Christianity, and that the religion can and should be better than that. So far, so good. But in his desire to redeem the faith, to clean his own hands and demonstrate "we're not all like that," he feels entitled to enlist non-Christians in his battle. He wants non-Christians to help him cleanse Christianity of the wrong kind of Christians, so that Christianity can be good and he can avoid being tarred by association with the bad ones. But that is not our battle. Non-Christians have no stake in the fate of Christianity. As long as everyone believes in Ohio (or evolution, or gay rights ...), then it's their own business whether they infer that Christianity must be Ohio-compatible, or whether they reject Christianity as hopelessly Ohio-denying.Stentorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13629599671442149938noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3082331.post-68580605342078650212013-12-12T20:04:00.002-07:002013-12-12T20:04:18.678-07:00The Haraway Projection<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhrcJ20AttlF984bio7DL68BrOFR5mwLoZno4lP3nFNu7ziMQr_ONuyb71D151DMxCzuy5p7FpwUmpHWLOxpfBBpzQPfZRnZDtmttxKpDTR-Jr5WxUXbHqAGil0YOaOtmZzt05zqA/s1600/Cahill-Keyes_Projection.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhrcJ20AttlF984bio7DL68BrOFR5mwLoZno4lP3nFNu7ziMQr_ONuyb71D151DMxCzuy5p7FpwUmpHWLOxpfBBpzQPfZRnZDtmttxKpDTR-Jr5WxUXbHqAGil0YOaOtmZzt05zqA/s200/Cahill-Keyes_Projection.jpg" /></a></div>Wired has <a href="http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2013/12/gene-keyes-quest-for-the-perfect-map/">a short piece about amateur cartographer Gene Keyes</a>. The post describes Keyes' lifelong work on the "Cahill-Keyes Octal Gradient," a map projection billed by Wired as a "master map" that optimizes the presentation of the globe on a flat page. But of course there's no such thing as being "optimal." A map (or anything else) can only be optimal <i>for a particular purpose</i>. I can easily list applications for which the CKOG is far from optimal. The interruptions in the oceans make mapping any oceanic features (like ocean life or trade routes) a non-starter. And the wobbling compass directions from octant to octant make it a poor choice for mapping anything with a clear latitudinal component, such as climate zones. Keyes asserts that his projection is meant to help improve geographic literacy by closely resembling a globe. But the aspect of the world that has always seemed to me most strikingly visible on a globe but is lost on most projections is the connectivity of the continents around the North Pole -- which ironically is discarded in the move from the original butterfly-like Cahill projection to Keyes' M-shaped CKOG! What seems clear is that the projection is optimized for Gene Keyes' personal aesthetics. This is made more obvious through a visit to his website, where <a href="http://www.genekeyes.com/FULLER/BF-1-intro.html">his comparison</a> between Buckminster Fuller's dymaxion map and the Cahill projection (on which the CKOG is based) is largely in terms of "neatness" criteria like symmetry of the map border and facets having sizes that come to nice round numbers when measured in metric units.<br />
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What motivates me to write this post is not so much the strengths or flaws of the CKOG in particular, but the general tendency captured in the title of the Wired post: "the search for the perfect map." When I was younger, I had the same sort of fascination with finding a "master projection" that would give a universally optimal representation of the world. Though I lacked the resources to try to design my own projections, I pored over the atlases I had at home and at the library, trying to imagine how to smooth out every distortion to create the one true map. The desire to explore and master the world through one perfect map, labored over by an isolated genius, seems to be a common fantasy for white dudes like Keyes, Cahill, and my younger self.<br />
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Today, however, my attitude toward projections -- and maps in general -- has shifted by 180 degrees. What fascinates me about mapping is how many different ways we can represent the earth. The projections I find compelling are not ones like CKOG or Robinson or Gall-Peters that try to give a single "best" view of the world, but weird ones like <a href="http://www.progonos.com/furuti/MapProj/Normal/ProjInt/ProjStar/projStar.html">star projections</a> and <a href="http://www.progonos.com/furuti/MapProj/Normal/ProjObl/projObl.html">oblique aspects</a> of more familiar projections. I want maps to challenge me to see the world, and think about how it all connects, in new ways. I want to preserve the sense that the complexity of the world far exceeds any one attempt to map it, and that we can only move between different and mutually conflicting partial perspectives. We could perhaps call this juggling of multiple partial maps the "Haraway Projection," after the feminist philosopher Donna Haraway, who <a href="http://www.staff.amu.edu.pl/~ewa/Haraway,%20Situated%20Knowledges.pdf">famously criticized (.pdf)</a> the quest for a "God's eye view" or "view from nowhere," preferring instead grasp the world through multiple "partial perspectives" rooted in specific social locations. I'll take the disorienting and open-ended instability of the Haraway Projection over the CKOG's illusion of mastery any day.Stentorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13629599671442149938noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3082331.post-29353543957573908022013-11-04T19:45:00.003-07:002013-11-04T19:45:56.054-07:00Sriracha and hipster environmental racismIt has been well established that polluting facilities are disproportionately forced on communities of color. This pattern of environmental racism ought to be a source of grave concern for anyone of a progressive political bent. It's an easy position to take when the pollution comes from toxic waste dumps and coal-fired power plants. But it all falls apart when the culprit is the factory that produces Sriracha, the hot sauce that has become essential to the hipster way of life. <br />
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The issue begins with complaints by residents of Irwindale, California that the Sriracha factory was producing noxious fumes that caused severe eye irritation. <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irwindale,_Ca">Irwindale</a> is 90% Hispanic, suggesting that this case could be seen as a potential case study of environmental racism, highlighting how polluting industry (of which there is a lot in Irwindale) gets placed on the doorsteps of people of color. The city has taken Sriracha maker Huy Fong Foods to court over the issue, unsuccessfully seeking an injunction to shut the plant down while the case proceeds.<br />
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But instead of an environmental racism angle, news coverage has taken a very different tone. The message of nearly every article has been "OMG they're coming for your hot sauce!" We have been warned of a looming <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/30/sriracha-shortage_n_4175604.html">Sriracha shortage</a>, while the situation has been dubbed a "<a href="http://www.theatlanticwire.com/entertainment/2013/10/how-get-most-out-sriracha-apocalypse/71102/">Sriracha apocalypse</a>" -- meaning an apocalypse for foodies deprived of their condiment, not for the plant's neighbors getting a facefull of fumes. The city of Irwindale is consistently presented as just killjoy jerkfaces trying to spoil everyone's spicy fun. A variety of other cities, from <a href="http://abcnews.go.com/Business/philadelphia-invites-sriracha-maker-philly-cheesesteak-sriracha-meant/story?id=20777040">Philadelphia</a> to <a href="http://www.wfaa.com/news/local/Denton-makes-play-for-Srirachi-plant-229954591.html">Denton</a>, have invited Huy Fong to relocate, again focused more on the coolness of the product and the hipster cred of saving Sriracha than on the environmental risks the plant is allegedly producing. When the environmental and health impacts of the plant are acknowledged, it's in a sarcastic and ironic way, as if to say "yeah, yeah, we all care about the environment, but talking about real structural inequalities is so uncool." <br />
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<a href="http://www.theatlanticcities.com/arts-and-lifestyle/2013/10/your-sriracha-supply-serious-jeopardy/7406/"><i>The Atlantic</i> compiles</a> a set of White Whine-worthy tweets on the subject, presented with just enough ironic detachment that they can laugh with the tweeters while maintaining the cover story that they're laughing at them. And while humorously exaggerated panic over a Sriracha supply interruption is adequate to get yourself quoted in this national magazine, nobody thought to ask any of the people suffering burning eyes from the factory what they thought about the situation.<br />
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The contamination from the Sriracha plant may not turn out to be as big a deal as alleged, and Huy Fong has seemed to make some serious efforts to control the plant's emissions. But it's telling that so many people's first reaction was not to take the claims of possible environmental racism seriously, but rather to panic about the possible loss of their hot sauce.Stentorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13629599671442149938noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3082331.post-14982209330808275462013-11-04T19:07:00.001-07:002013-11-04T19:07:31.610-07:00Emotional biases toward nuclear powerIt's never a good rhetorical strategy to talk about how important it is to make decisions on the basis of reason and facts rather than biases and (excessive) emotion. Certainly we should be making our decisions based on reason rather than biases -- but at this level of generality, everyone already agrees. The real question is always what decision is supported by reason and what decision is supported only by bias.<br />
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Consider, for example, a letter recently sent by four prominent climate scientists to a variety of organizations urging them to endorse nuclear power as a solution to climate change. <a href="http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/11/03/to-those-influencing-environmental-policy-but-opposed-to-nuclear-power/?_r=0">They write</a>:<br />
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<blockquote>We ask only that energy system decisions be based on facts, and not on emotions and biases that do not apply to 21st century nuclear technology.</blockquote><br />
The letter cites a number of empirical claims supporting the advantages of nuclear power. But the fact is, it's easy enough to imagine emotional biases in favor of nuclear power as well as those against it. Advocacy of nuclear power has become a powerful symbol of "reasonableness" in the modern environmental debate. Saying "we should build more nuclear plants to stop climate change" is a good way of sending the message "I care about the environment, but I'm not one of those crazy hippies that wants us all to live in back-to-the-land eco-communes!" This symbolic power is in part a function of the practical reality of nuclear power. Of all of the options out there for replacing fossil fuels, nuclear power comes the closest to maintaining the status quo of a mass-scale, high-tech, high-consumption society. This connection is surely a source of bias toward nuclear power on the part of those with an emotional attachment to our current way of life. The fact that nuclear power has for so long been a target of environmental protest, and is linked to the rise of 1960s radicalism, only enhances the emotional significance of the green nuke position.<br />
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My point is not that the authors of the letter are acting out of emotional bias. Rather, it's that there is ample potential for bias on both side of the debate, and so singing the praises of rational and unbiased decision-making in the abstract is unlikely to get us far.Stentorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13629599671442149938noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3082331.post-45315743199988046832013-09-08T07:28:00.000-07:002013-09-08T07:28:08.240-07:00Most people believe in evolution so that their friends will like themHemant Mehta <a href="http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2013/09/08/christian-pastor-explains-how-he-denies-evolution-because-he-doesnt-want-to-base-his-life-on-myths-and-magic/">has some fun with an article</a> by a painfully ignorant pastor who repeats some of the usual creationist nonsense. I won't in any way defend Pastor John Martens' substantive arguments against evolution, which largely boil down to a fallacious argument from incredulity. But I do think he says one thing that has a grain of truth to it. <br />
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Near the end of the piece, Martens says "But many of these very smart people cling to evolution because they want the approval of their peers." Mehta mocks this line, saying "We accept evolution because we just want people to like us. That’s really the secret of the whole scientific method right there." Nevertheless, I think Martens is right about most people who say they believe in evolution -- as well as most people who say they're creationists.<br />
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The level of understanding of the theory of evolution in the general public is extremely low. Even among people who are the most strongly convinced that evolution is the correct explanation for the origins of life, misinformation abounds about biological processes, fossil evidence, and other important aspects of evolution. Because people have limited mental space, and because an understanding of the details of evolutionary theory has little practical usefulness to the average person, most people don't retain a solid base of knowledge about evolution. On the other hand, one's position on the basic question of "evolution or creationism?" is quite important. It's a way of signalling what kind of a person you are and what kind of society you want to live in. I'm pretty sure I would have a big negative impact on a lot of my friendships if I posted to Facebook that I had carefully considered the issue and come to the conclusion that creationism was true. If you sign up for an OKCupid account, one of the first match questions they ask is about evolution vs creationism, because it's such an informative question in sorting out which of these thousands of potential dates you're likely to be compatible with.<br />
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Thus, for most people on either side of the debate, their position on evolution vs creationism is largely a product of aligning themselves with a cultural group. That doesn't mean people are being completely irrational or arbitrary. Certainly aligning yourself with the group that contains the actual experts who have followed a rigorous method for determining facts about the world is not a bad approach if you don't have the time to go through said rigorous method yourself. But it does mean that social factors play at least as big a role in whether the average person accepts evolution as logic and evidence do.Stentorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13629599671442149938noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3082331.post-16422412794291405492013-08-31T08:21:00.001-07:002013-08-31T08:21:46.564-07:00Poor farmers know about vegetablesNathanael Johnson has written <a href="http://grist.org/food/golden-rice-fools-gold-or-golden-opportunity/">a pretty fair article about "golden rice,"</a> the long-promised genetically modified crop that would have increased levels of beta carotene in order to address vitamin A deficiencies in the developing world.<br />
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Rather than addressing the larger issue of the merits of golden rice, I want to pick on a comment that Johnson makes near the end of the article. On the topic of alternatives to golden rice, he says:<br />
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<blockquote>Are there other fixes? Yep, you could give people pills, or convince them to grow (and eat) more vegetables.</blockquote><br />
The idea that poor farmers would need to be "convinced" to grow more vegetables gets things exactly backwards. It's true that poor farmers end up with deficiencies of nutrients like vitamin A because their diets contain too much cheap calories like white rice and not enough vegetables. But that's not because these farmers don't know about the importance of eating vegetables. Their problem isn't that they need convincing. The problem is that economic pressures prevent them from growing a diversity of crops.<br />
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Traditionally, farmers in most parts of the world grew plenty of vegetables -- sometimes in among traditional varieties of rice, corn, and other carbohydrate staples. The economic pressures that shifted farmers away from this system and toward monocropping staples are complex, and vary from region to region. They involve some combination of tax policy, farm subsidies, changing domestic and international market conditions, loss of land rights, population growth, and ecological degradation. Poor farmers would love to grow more vegetables if they could, but it's not economically feasible.<br />
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What poor farmers need is not "convincing" to grow more vegetables, but policy and market changes to make it possible for them to do so. This is the core of the critical view on golden rice. Malnutrition arises from policy systems that are tilted against the poor, and so it seems to make more sense to fix those policy systems rather than finding a technological band-aid for the worst effects.Stentorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13629599671442149938noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3082331.post-25506488334148157292013-08-03T07:53:00.001-07:002013-08-03T07:53:27.641-07:00Capitalism can cause malariaThere's been a lot of attention to <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/27/opinion/the-charitable-industrial-complex.html?_r=0">a recent <i>New York Times</i> piece by Peter Buffett</a>, in which he slams billionaire philanthropy as an ignorant and counter-productive purchase of band-aids for the wounds those billionaires caused while accumulating their riches. Among the responses is <a href="http://qz.com/110616/what-peter-buffett-doesnt-understand-about-the-world/">this one by "effective altruism" proponent William MacAskill</a>. I agree with Buffett about the importance of systemic change, and with MacAskill that Buffett paints with a broad brush and is agonizingly, even embarrassingly, short on specifics about the "new code" that should replace philanthropy.<br />
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I want to focus on one line from MacAskill's article. Addressing the popular and cost-effective charitable cause of malaria eradication, he says "Capitalism doesn’t cause malaria. Mosquitoes do." I think a little political ecology knowledge will show that capitalism does in fact cause malaria -- or at least capitalism significantly shapes the prevalence of malaria.<br />
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The immediate cause of malaria, of course, is actually the <i>Plasmodium</i> protozoan. <i>Plasmodium</i> is transmitted by mosquitoes. Those mosquitoes breed in shallow, stagnant water in warm climates. Capitalism can affect all of these steps.<br />
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The most immediate effect -- and probably closest to the kind of thing that Buffett had in mind -- is that capitalism shapes what livelihood opportunities are available to people in malaria-heavy regions, and thus how well people are able to afford their own malaria treatments. After all, it's not as if the Gates Foundation is the world's only source of chemically treated bed nets or malaria drugs. If capitalism produces economic inequality -- and there's good reason to think that the current system does so for many poor rural people in malaria-heavy regions -- then capitalism is creating the malaria risks that its leaders are paying to eradicate.<br />
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Capitalism also has effects on the presence of mosquito breeding conditions. Capitalism shifts people's livelihood strategies, for the most part away from subsistence farming and toward a limited suite of cash crops, urban employment, and tourism schemes. The precise effects of these changes will vary from place to place. But in some areas the resulting changes in land use can increase the presence of mosquito breeding grounds -- and in turn the risk of malaria. Capitalism also drove the widespread agricultural use of DDT, which in turn caused the evolution of DDT resistance in mosquitoes, undercutting the effectiveness of targeted DDT use in malaria eradication.<br />
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Capitalism is also a driving force behind climate change. Whether or not you think some form of "green capitalism" is possible, to date capitalism has driven massive expansions of fossil fuel use and methane-generating agriculture. Climate change, in turn, is expected to expand the range of malaria. <br />
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My point here is not simply capitalism-bashing. In some cases capitalism can reduce the prevalence of malaria independent of any philanthropy. Capitalism has certainly made mass-production of malaria treatments like bed nets and drugs possible. And in some cases, capitalism-driven development reduces mosquito breeding conditions -- consider the eradication of malaria from the US South through swamp drainage. The point, rather, is that social systems such as the economic structure of capitalism are implicated even in seemingly apolitical issues like malaria. Always be skeptical if someone claims that capitalism has nothing to do with some problem.Stentorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13629599671442149938noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3082331.post-73166135627989422072013-07-13T07:23:00.001-07:002013-07-13T07:23:21.276-07:00Divine forgiveness and atheist moralityA few months ago, some people were on my campus handing out DVDs of a Christian evangelical video called "<a href="http://www.wretchedradio.com/store/product_details.cfm?id=352">The Biggest Question</a>." Watching it made me even more convinced that I'm an atheist. It did, however, help me answer one big question I have: why is it that so many Christians think that atheists can't be moral? The answer -- at least for the conservative evangelicals who made this video -- seems to be that they don't think other people are worth caring about for their own sake.<br />
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Understanding their perspective starts from what is usually seen as the happy fun part of Christianity, the part that is relentlessly pushed as Christianity's "good news": God's forgiveness. In orthodox Christianity, all of our sins can be forgiven by God. But making our sins forgivable by God requires making God the primary victim of our sins. After all, it's the victim of a wrongdoing who can forgive it. If I hear that my friend cheated on his wife, it would be silly to say to him "don't worry, Bill, <i>I</i> forgive you." Certainly I can decide whether or not I will hold his adultery against him (in terms of deciding to stay friends, etc), but that doesn't address the wrong he did to his wife. Only his wife can give him forgiveness for the harm his cheating did to her. She would -- rightly -- laugh in his face if he said "give it a rest, honey, my friend Stentor forgave me for cheating on you." And this fact is not changed by the forgiver being in a position of authority. If one of my students steals another one's textbook, I can't forgive the first student on behalf of the second.<br />
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If God exists, he could forgive sins that are against him. He could forgive blasphemy, and failing to worship him correctly. He could even forgive the hurt he suffers when he sees us sin against each other. But he can't forgive the hurt one person causes to another -- <i>unless</i> that hurt doesn't exist, and only the harm to God is meaningful. If our sins against each other are sins not because they hurt another person, but because they contravene God's law, then God could conceivably forgive us for everything. In this God's-law scenario, God is the only victim and therefore the only one whose forgiveness is needed. <br />
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Todd Friel, the host of "The Biggest Question," is quite explicit about this. He tells us our sins really are primarily affronts to God. Kirk Cameron ends up emphasizing the point in his explanation of why our sins deserve infinite punishment in hell. He imagines lying to various people. If he lies to his young daughter, there's nothing she can do to him. If he lies to his wife, who has more power, she could make him sleep on the couch. His boss could fire him, and the government could put him in jail. By extension, God -- whose power is infinite -- can justly give you an infinite punishment for lying to him. This is a very blatant might-makes-right view, in which the badness of an action is proportional to the power the victim has to punish you. Cameron believes that, were lying to his daughter not also a sin against God, he could lie to her with both practical <i>and moral</i> impunity because she lacks the power to punish him.<br />
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If this is "true" Christianity (obviously it's just one strain, albeit a very popular one), then I have to say I'm an atheist because I care about people. Other people matter, and they are the real victims of the bad things I do to them. Were God to appear and tell me I'm forgiven for my sins against other people, I would reject his offer, because I believe that forgiveness would be <i>fraudulent</i>. If I hurt another person, only that person can forgive me. Friel and Cameron have trouble with the idea of morality without God because they think the only kind of immoral behavior that exists is wrongdoing against God. I think morality without God makes perfect sense because I care about how my actions affect other people. All Friel and Cameron do is show that there's a danger that belief in God could distract you from caring about other people.Stentorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13629599671442149938noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3082331.post-4267692901494551652013-07-10T07:10:00.000-07:002013-07-10T07:10:26.400-07:00Orson Scott Card doesn't get itI'm not planning on seeing the new <i>Ender's Game</i> movie. I thought the book was probably the most overrated work in the SF/F canon, and I rarely see movies, so I'm not inclined to spend an afternoon on it. A lot of people who did like the book are planning to boycott the movie because the author, Orson Scott Card, is an unrepentant homophobe of the grossest kind. In response, Card <a href="http://www.salon.com/2013/07/09/orson_scott_card_gay_marriage_issue_has_become_moot/">issued a short statement</a> showing that he really doesn't get it.<br />
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Card first claims that <i>Ender's Game</i>, having been written in 1984, has nothing to do with political issues that didn't exist then. But LGBT people aren't some new species that landed in the 1990s. Certainly the LGBT rights movement wasn't as prominent in the mainstream media in 1984 as it is today -- but that's because society as a whole was more homophobic and oppressive at the time. LGBT people have always existed, and the modern movement <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stonewall_riots">began a full 15 years before</a> <i>Ender's Game</i> was written. Same-sex couples were still being denied marriage, and even arrested, in 1984. "Back then, I was too bigoted to notice your suffering" is not much of an excuse. <i>Ender's Game</i> doesn't directly address LGBT issues, it just imagines a future in which LGBT people do not appear, because its author had a deficit of moral and sociological imagination.<br />
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Card then argues that the recent US Supreme Court decision overturning the Defense of Marriage Act renders the whole debate moot. This is ridiculous. Certainly the decision was a step in the right direction and will make things easier. But even if we confine our attention to the issue of same-sex marriage in the US, there's still a long road ahead. There are still 37 states where same-sex couples can't marry, and even with the DOMA precedent, it will be a long and difficult struggle for activists in those states to achieve equality. And it's not as if marriage is the only issue where Card holds, and has prominently advocated, repugnant views about LGBT people. The Supreme Court's decision didn't give us strong anti-discrimination laws for employment and housing. It didn't make it easy for trans people to change their legal gender or access appropriate health care. It didn't (and shouldn't be able to) establish frequent, positive, and well-rounded representation of LGBT characters in media, or end rejection of LGBT people by their families and peers. <br />
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The talk of SSM proponents having won the fight might make some sense if Card were announcing that he was throwing in the towel, a la Exodus International or David Blankenhorn. But he's not. He's trying to have it both ways -- to continue fighting against LGBT rights, but to deflect criticism for it by claiming his side has lost.<br />
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Card ends by saying "Now it will be interesting to see whether the victorious proponents of gay marriage will show tolerance toward those who disagreed with them when the issue was still in dispute."<br />
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The thing is, I do tolerate Card and his ilk. I don't want the police to arrest him. I don't want to threaten Utah's statehood unless the Mormon church has a pro-gay revelation. If I met Card I wouldn't punch him in the face -- in fact, I'd probably be polite to him. What I won't do is accept the validity of his views, because they are invalid. Card is deeply wrong about LGBT rights, and insofar as he advocates for those views, my views compel me to oppose them. Someone from the bad side who issues an honest and self-reflective mea culpa can -- cautiously -- be accepted by the good side. But there's no obligation (or reason) to forgive those who are unrepentant about the damage they and their allies have done to a marginalized group.Stentorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13629599671442149938noreply@blogger.com0