part one
part two
Towards the beginning of Gran Torino, a dorky young Hmong boy is ambling along the sidewalk, reading a book. He is hassled from a car by a Hispanic gang, whom he totally ignores. A Hmong gang rides up, and drives off the Hispanic gang (a .38 just won't cut it when the other guys have Uzis). They then demand that Thao get in the car; he owes them, and the leader is his cousin, etc. This time, when they call his name, he pauses, dithers for a moment, before moving on. The gang continues to hassle him, trying to induct him (they show up at his house, etc.)
Christine Korsgaard writes, "If I call out your name, I make you stop in your tracks... Now you cannot proceed as you did before. Oh, you can proceed, all right, but not just as you did before. For now, if you walk on, you will be ignoring me and slighting me." And then later: "For [the act of calling out your name, more or less] to fail in that way, I would have to hear your words as mere noise, not as intelligible speech."*
The exchange in Gran Torino makes Korsgaard's point very effectively, though it does have its complications. In a way, I want to say that Thao does hear the Hispanic gang's taunts as mere noise, and the Hmong gang's words as intelligible speech (at the very least, there's a qualitative difference for him between the two). It's easy enough to give no weight to the Hispanic words, but because he has a certain connection with the Hmong (i.e. his is a Hmong), it is much harder in that case. (Korsgaard would say that mere humanity is sufficient connection, but history sometimes makes me doubt this).
This may be the reason that wear headphones that make it impossible for me to hear what's going on around me. The odd thing is that they're just as effective at enabling me to ignore people when they're off as when they're on. What this seems to indicate is that part of the pressure comes from the knowledge that the other party knows that I've heard and understood them (intent can come through even across a language barrier): there's an element of mutuality that makes the whole thing work.
What all this indicates (this is another thing you can see throughout Gran Torino) is that even in nearly purely adversarial mattters, it can be hard (though not necessarily hard, not universally hard), it can be hard to get away from treating other humans as humans. The Hmong gang takes the actions it does because it feels it has a claim on Thao; in a way, this enables them to show up at his house and try to take him in. (And the other characters acknowledge the claim, as it were: if it were a different gang, one with no claim, they'd call the police). (Perhaps this accounts for why it's so hard to deal at all with, why it's so hard to react to, people who don't default to treating humans as humans).
* Christine Korsgaard, The Sources of Normativity, pp141, 143. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996.
Wednesday, December 31, 2008
doubt, part two; kantian ethics
part one
The second particularly striking aspect of the movie comes in two parts. The first opens the movie; it is a sermon delivered by Father Flynn on the subject of doubt. He preaches that "doubt can be a bond as strong as certainty;" that we can be united by the fact that we are uncertain about our faith, about whether we have judged correctly, about whether there is hope for the world, etc.
The second comes at the end of the movie. In this, Sister Aloysius, who has until now demonstrated an inquisitor's absolute certainty in Father Flynn's guilt and the appropriate way to handle it, confesses to Sister James "I have such doubts." These two moments bookend Sister Aloysius' relentless prosecution of Father Flynn; the two characters are systematically unable to find that common ground: they are strictly adversaries.
This is an example, a fictional illustration, of something that I've been mulling for a while now, a certain issue in neo-Kantian ethics. Here's the short version: most Kantians think that the basis of their moral theory is something variously called freedom, autonomy, reflectivity, etc. The way I would have of cashing this out is with the thought that any of our commitments are subject to revision; we need to realize that we might be wrong - very wrong - concerning the things about which we feel the greatest certainty. (To steal a bit of deep wisdom from Donald Rumsfeld, there are unknown unknowns.) What this enables is a certain kind of relationship between people: a relationship of inquiring together after what the good is.
Now, most Kantians think that this sort of relationship is necessitated by our freedom; they also think it is one in which there isn't so much conflict between people. The way in which we work together prevents essential conflict from coming between us. Put another way, these Kantians think that from this formal fact about ourselves (freedom) certain substantive conclusions follow (morality, as it is traditionally understood). I am starting to wonder about whether this conclusion actually follows from the premises.
One way of putting this is: the argument itself doesn't make so much sense. The original point was that we can question any values; the conclusion is that there are certain values we can be absolutely sure of. If we really can put any commitment to the question, then you and I may very well wind up with very different moral views.
In other words, while I think it is possible for freedom to underwrite a very specific kind of relationship, one that I think is truly valuable, I don't think that freedom necessitates it. After inquiring together, you and I may go our separate ways; we may even be enemies. In a way, this is what happened with Sister Aloysius and Father Flynn: despite both being free, doubting creatures, they held to radically different conclusions, and were in that way adversaries.
(another way of putting this discussion is that there is a difference between the sort of possibility for doubt that constitutes freedom, and the specific doubts we may entertain about a certain possibility - such as whether or not the Krispy Kreme in Chatham is open tonight).
see also
The second particularly striking aspect of the movie comes in two parts. The first opens the movie; it is a sermon delivered by Father Flynn on the subject of doubt. He preaches that "doubt can be a bond as strong as certainty;" that we can be united by the fact that we are uncertain about our faith, about whether we have judged correctly, about whether there is hope for the world, etc.
The second comes at the end of the movie. In this, Sister Aloysius, who has until now demonstrated an inquisitor's absolute certainty in Father Flynn's guilt and the appropriate way to handle it, confesses to Sister James "I have such doubts." These two moments bookend Sister Aloysius' relentless prosecution of Father Flynn; the two characters are systematically unable to find that common ground: they are strictly adversaries.
This is an example, a fictional illustration, of something that I've been mulling for a while now, a certain issue in neo-Kantian ethics. Here's the short version: most Kantians think that the basis of their moral theory is something variously called freedom, autonomy, reflectivity, etc. The way I would have of cashing this out is with the thought that any of our commitments are subject to revision; we need to realize that we might be wrong - very wrong - concerning the things about which we feel the greatest certainty. (To steal a bit of deep wisdom from Donald Rumsfeld, there are unknown unknowns.) What this enables is a certain kind of relationship between people: a relationship of inquiring together after what the good is.
Now, most Kantians think that this sort of relationship is necessitated by our freedom; they also think it is one in which there isn't so much conflict between people. The way in which we work together prevents essential conflict from coming between us. Put another way, these Kantians think that from this formal fact about ourselves (freedom) certain substantive conclusions follow (morality, as it is traditionally understood). I am starting to wonder about whether this conclusion actually follows from the premises.
One way of putting this is: the argument itself doesn't make so much sense. The original point was that we can question any values; the conclusion is that there are certain values we can be absolutely sure of. If we really can put any commitment to the question, then you and I may very well wind up with very different moral views.
In other words, while I think it is possible for freedom to underwrite a very specific kind of relationship, one that I think is truly valuable, I don't think that freedom necessitates it. After inquiring together, you and I may go our separate ways; we may even be enemies. In a way, this is what happened with Sister Aloysius and Father Flynn: despite both being free, doubting creatures, they held to radically different conclusions, and were in that way adversaries.
(another way of putting this discussion is that there is a difference between the sort of possibility for doubt that constitutes freedom, and the specific doubts we may entertain about a certain possibility - such as whether or not the Krispy Kreme in Chatham is open tonight).
see also
doubt, part one
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0918927/
Doubt
directed by John Patrick Shanley
2008
The movie centers around the possibility that Father Flynn has molested an altar boy. He vigorously denies it; Sister Aloysius is certain of it, based on the slightest insubstantial evidence (in the end, just the briefest of moments when Flynn grabs another boy's arm). In the end, she engineers his resignation - though he is moved to another parish, as pastor.
The first moment in the movie that really struck me is when Flynn is angrily lecturing her about the proper way to approach these sorts of problems (the movie makes clear the institutionalized power differential between the nuns and the priests); he tells her that she is a nun, that she has taken vows, and that one of them is obedience. In response, she tears the cross from her robes and shouts that she will do what is right, whether or not that means walking out on the Church (and, it is suggested at the end of the movie, God). What I found interesting about this was the way it changed the way I saw her (almost literally). In every scene, Sister Aloysius is shown wearing a habit, and she seems to almost be that habit. One way of putting this is that there seems to be no gap between her will and the role of a nun: she is a nun.
But in that moment, I was reminded (she reminded us) that she is a person who chose to be a nun, that she took vows, and that she is not her vows. Suddenly she seemed like a person, one who might take off that habit and put something else on. It was a startling moment - to realize that she reserved for herself, in a very deliberate way, the right to judge what is right and worth doing.
(Schlegel responded to Kant by arguing that it is not our capacity to give ourselves laws that is most essentially human, but rather our capacity to break the laws that we have given ourselves).*
* Raymond Geuss, "Morality and Identity," p192. In The Sources of Normativity, ed. Onora O'Neill. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996.
Doubt
directed by John Patrick Shanley
2008
The movie centers around the possibility that Father Flynn has molested an altar boy. He vigorously denies it; Sister Aloysius is certain of it, based on the slightest insubstantial evidence (in the end, just the briefest of moments when Flynn grabs another boy's arm). In the end, she engineers his resignation - though he is moved to another parish, as pastor.
The first moment in the movie that really struck me is when Flynn is angrily lecturing her about the proper way to approach these sorts of problems (the movie makes clear the institutionalized power differential between the nuns and the priests); he tells her that she is a nun, that she has taken vows, and that one of them is obedience. In response, she tears the cross from her robes and shouts that she will do what is right, whether or not that means walking out on the Church (and, it is suggested at the end of the movie, God). What I found interesting about this was the way it changed the way I saw her (almost literally). In every scene, Sister Aloysius is shown wearing a habit, and she seems to almost be that habit. One way of putting this is that there seems to be no gap between her will and the role of a nun: she is a nun.
But in that moment, I was reminded (she reminded us) that she is a person who chose to be a nun, that she took vows, and that she is not her vows. Suddenly she seemed like a person, one who might take off that habit and put something else on. It was a startling moment - to realize that she reserved for herself, in a very deliberate way, the right to judge what is right and worth doing.
(Schlegel responded to Kant by arguing that it is not our capacity to give ourselves laws that is most essentially human, but rather our capacity to break the laws that we have given ourselves).*
* Raymond Geuss, "Morality and Identity," p192. In The Sources of Normativity, ed. Onora O'Neill. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996.
more misuse of statistics
http://www.imdiversity.com/Villages/Woman/dialogue_opinion_letters/amoruso_alpha_girls_0313.asp
"ALPHA GIRLS: Is Today's 'Perfect' Seriously Flawed?"
by Carol Amoruso
retrieved December 31, 2008
IMDiversity.com
The article criticizes a new book (Alpha Girls by Dan Kindlon) which describes a new sort of girl, as it were: (about 20% of the 18-22 female cohort) young women who are confident, assertive - aggressive - driven overachievers (roughly). I have a complaint; let's start with some quotes.
"Surely, the picture is more nuanced than this. Nowhere is mentioned the fact—nor its impact--that 50% of first marriages end in divorce, 48% of all heads of households are unmarried, nor that 43% of today’s weddings (2002 figures, culled from U.S statistics by Divorce Magazine). These and other indications of great upheaval in the family dynamic cannot but redefine in dramatic ways a girl’s relationship to her father."
"Kindlon peers out from behind rose-colored glasses, while around him are stories of the frightening malaise gripping Generation Next’s young women. Overwhelmed by unreasonable expectations and emotional disconnect, they are characterized by Courtney E. Martin as “outwardly high-achieving and inwardly self-hating.” Writing for Alternet before the publication of her book, Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters, Martin reports that “7 million American girls and women have eating disorders, women account for twice as many panic disorders and depression and are plagued by 75% of autoimmune diseases.” Other sources cite that 75% of all anxiety attacks befall young women. Sadly, studies on growing narcissism among young women in particular predict impaired ability to achieve deep, intimate relationships."
There is something odd about this analysis. Amoruso is clearly aware that we're talking about a rather rare subset of young women - who are presumably rather different from the other 80%. And yet she is happy to take statistics that apply to young women generally, and assume that they apply just as much to this subset. Now, given the emphasis on good relationships with fathers discussed by Kindlon, wouldn't it be reasonable to ask: maybe these girls come disproportionately from non-divorced parents. Maybe the difference is that when these girls' parents got divorced, the fathers didn't step out of their lives entirely. In other words, this is an incomplete use of statistics: it leaves us with a lot of unanswered questions. The point was that these girls are unusual; the question ought to be: why?
"ALPHA GIRLS: Is Today's 'Perfect' Seriously Flawed?"
by Carol Amoruso
retrieved December 31, 2008
IMDiversity.com
The article criticizes a new book (Alpha Girls by Dan Kindlon) which describes a new sort of girl, as it were: (about 20% of the 18-22 female cohort) young women who are confident, assertive - aggressive - driven overachievers (roughly). I have a complaint; let's start with some quotes.
"Surely, the picture is more nuanced than this. Nowhere is mentioned the fact—nor its impact--that 50% of first marriages end in divorce, 48% of all heads of households are unmarried, nor that 43% of today’s weddings (2002 figures, culled from U.S statistics by Divorce Magazine). These and other indications of great upheaval in the family dynamic cannot but redefine in dramatic ways a girl’s relationship to her father."
"Kindlon peers out from behind rose-colored glasses, while around him are stories of the frightening malaise gripping Generation Next’s young women. Overwhelmed by unreasonable expectations and emotional disconnect, they are characterized by Courtney E. Martin as “outwardly high-achieving and inwardly self-hating.” Writing for Alternet before the publication of her book, Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters, Martin reports that “7 million American girls and women have eating disorders, women account for twice as many panic disorders and depression and are plagued by 75% of autoimmune diseases.” Other sources cite that 75% of all anxiety attacks befall young women. Sadly, studies on growing narcissism among young women in particular predict impaired ability to achieve deep, intimate relationships."
There is something odd about this analysis. Amoruso is clearly aware that we're talking about a rather rare subset of young women - who are presumably rather different from the other 80%. And yet she is happy to take statistics that apply to young women generally, and assume that they apply just as much to this subset. Now, given the emphasis on good relationships with fathers discussed by Kindlon, wouldn't it be reasonable to ask: maybe these girls come disproportionately from non-divorced parents. Maybe the difference is that when these girls' parents got divorced, the fathers didn't step out of their lives entirely. In other words, this is an incomplete use of statistics: it leaves us with a lot of unanswered questions. The point was that these girls are unusual; the question ought to be: why?
gran torino, part two
part one
One of the communities that Gran Torino focuses on most closely is that of men of a certain sort - the sort that Clint Eastwood at times exemplifies, the strong silent type. Importantly, it's about the induction (the introduction) of a boy to this community; it's about teaching him to be a man. I just want to highlight two related aspects of this.
The first involves the way Thao is taught to be a man. Clint takes Thao to Clint's barber, whom Clint greets with friendly profanity and racism; the barber responds in kind. Clint then tells Thao, ok, now you do it. Thao comes in and greets the barber with some profanity and racism and is met with a shotgun to the face and some not-so-friendly racism. You idiot, Clint tells him. That's no way to greet a man you barely know.
In other words, you don't get a lot of instruction on how to do this thing called being a man. You get fragments, little hints and experiences and words of wisdom here and there whose meaning you'll spend your life trying to figure out, one way or another. And maybe when you're eighty and dying (like Walt) you'll start to have an idea about what they mean, which you'll do your best to pass on to the next generation. (see also)
Consider another scene. Walt has just found out that he's dying, and he calls one of his sons. But he can't figure out what to say; they chat awkwardly for a moment, then Walt says goodbye and hangs up. He never talks to his son again. As it happens, Walt is pretty aware of this problem. When he makes his last confession, this is one of the three things he confesses: that he doesn't know his sons, doesn't know how to talk to them. (The other two things are not paying taxes on the sale of a boat, which is just theft, and kissing a woman who was not his wife at the factory Christmas party. This is despite the fact that Walt has killed a lot of people in Korea, in brutal ways).
This is closely related to the first aspect: the way boys are taught to be men. In a way, that way of teaching someone is a very lonely way, as it involves a lot of working things through on one's own (and I don't necessarily mean sitting down and thinking about them), and not asking for help or guidance. In other words, there's not a lot of dialogue, discussion, conversation. It's a problem.
One of the communities that Gran Torino focuses on most closely is that of men of a certain sort - the sort that Clint Eastwood at times exemplifies, the strong silent type. Importantly, it's about the induction (the introduction) of a boy to this community; it's about teaching him to be a man. I just want to highlight two related aspects of this.
The first involves the way Thao is taught to be a man. Clint takes Thao to Clint's barber, whom Clint greets with friendly profanity and racism; the barber responds in kind. Clint then tells Thao, ok, now you do it. Thao comes in and greets the barber with some profanity and racism and is met with a shotgun to the face and some not-so-friendly racism. You idiot, Clint tells him. That's no way to greet a man you barely know.
In other words, you don't get a lot of instruction on how to do this thing called being a man. You get fragments, little hints and experiences and words of wisdom here and there whose meaning you'll spend your life trying to figure out, one way or another. And maybe when you're eighty and dying (like Walt) you'll start to have an idea about what they mean, which you'll do your best to pass on to the next generation. (see also)
Consider another scene. Walt has just found out that he's dying, and he calls one of his sons. But he can't figure out what to say; they chat awkwardly for a moment, then Walt says goodbye and hangs up. He never talks to his son again. As it happens, Walt is pretty aware of this problem. When he makes his last confession, this is one of the three things he confesses: that he doesn't know his sons, doesn't know how to talk to them. (The other two things are not paying taxes on the sale of a boat, which is just theft, and kissing a woman who was not his wife at the factory Christmas party. This is despite the fact that Walt has killed a lot of people in Korea, in brutal ways).
This is closely related to the first aspect: the way boys are taught to be men. In a way, that way of teaching someone is a very lonely way, as it involves a lot of working things through on one's own (and I don't necessarily mean sitting down and thinking about them), and not asking for help or guidance. In other words, there's not a lot of dialogue, discussion, conversation. It's a problem.
skepticism
A long time ago, Descartes wondered if he could really be sure that he was sitting in front of a warm fire on a cold night, or whether an evil demon had deceived him, and that it merely appeared that way. He concluded, for a moment, that he could know nothing at all about the world around him. Eventually, though, he thought he could: this step has been criticized ever since, because it reeks of circularity.
Ever since, people have been having fits about this skeptical argument. The real problem has been that everybody knows that it has to be wrong, and nobody can figure out why that's the case. But these days, I want to say that the argument is sound. It's just that the conclusion is different than has been thought. What it reveals is a fact about ourselves - not that we can't know anything, or that we can't have reason to believe anything - but that any knowledge or reason is always subject to revision.
I mean to contrast this with most people who have thought that we need to overcome the skepticism by finding something immune to skeptical doubt - that is, something final, something immune to revision. Moore thought that he knew he had a hand in front of face - and I agree, he did know, or at leas had good reason to believe, was justified in believing. But he might not have had a hand in front of his face; he might have been wrong.
It is however important to realize that the "uncertainty" or "lack of knowledge" embodied in being subject to revision is a little different from straightforward uncertainty, pragmatic uncertainty, ordinary uncertainty. Given that it is a generic feature of all our knowledge, I can't be more or less certain of any particular piece of knowledge, in this sense. It doesn't figure into our decisions in the way that ordinary uncertainty does. But it does play a role in our lives; someone who is aware of this sort of uncertainty will live a different life than they would otherwise.
(I want to say that a very similar sort of thing is true of our ethical views, but the argument for this proceeds differently, I suspect.)
There's an upshot to all this, but I'm still working on it. The short answer comes from Father Flynn: doubt can be a bond as powerful as certainty.
Ever since, people have been having fits about this skeptical argument. The real problem has been that everybody knows that it has to be wrong, and nobody can figure out why that's the case. But these days, I want to say that the argument is sound. It's just that the conclusion is different than has been thought. What it reveals is a fact about ourselves - not that we can't know anything, or that we can't have reason to believe anything - but that any knowledge or reason is always subject to revision.
I mean to contrast this with most people who have thought that we need to overcome the skepticism by finding something immune to skeptical doubt - that is, something final, something immune to revision. Moore thought that he knew he had a hand in front of face - and I agree, he did know, or at leas had good reason to believe, was justified in believing. But he might not have had a hand in front of his face; he might have been wrong.
It is however important to realize that the "uncertainty" or "lack of knowledge" embodied in being subject to revision is a little different from straightforward uncertainty, pragmatic uncertainty, ordinary uncertainty. Given that it is a generic feature of all our knowledge, I can't be more or less certain of any particular piece of knowledge, in this sense. It doesn't figure into our decisions in the way that ordinary uncertainty does. But it does play a role in our lives; someone who is aware of this sort of uncertainty will live a different life than they would otherwise.
(I want to say that a very similar sort of thing is true of our ethical views, but the argument for this proceeds differently, I suspect.)
There's an upshot to all this, but I'm still working on it. The short answer comes from Father Flynn: doubt can be a bond as powerful as certainty.
gran torino, part one
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1205489/
Gran Torino
directed by Clint Eastwood
2008
The basic plot of the movie involves the growing friendship between aging veteran Walt (Eastwood) and two teens next door, Sue and Thao; all are menaced by a gang. Walt takes Thao under his wing and teaches him how to be a man - and I don't mean that sarcastically. It's actually a very funny movie; a lot of it involves Walt / Clint complaining about everything.
At the beginning of the movie, this gang essentially saves Thao from being harassed by another gang. They then want him to initiate into their gang by stealing Walt's Gran Torino. Walt stops this - stops Thao from being initiated into this particular gang. What's interesting, though, is that what this really results in is Thao getting initiated into a very different gang, one with different rites - what the movie depicts as the community of men (of a certain sort - not every male is a man).
Actually, one major theme of the movie is these sorts of communities. You can see this in so many places - when the white wannabe gangsta calls a young black man "bro" and gets rebuffed; when the Hmong gang saves Thao from the Hispanic gang (they each start shouting at each other to go back to their own country), and then expects something in return. You see it when Sue tells Walt that Thao needs someone to look after him, because Hmong girls do better in the States than Hmong boys: "Hmong girls go to college, Hmong boys go to jail."
In other words, the movie is an interesting exploration of how we find ourselves in these communities, some of our choosing and some not, what serve as the passwords of entry, the perks of membership, the sort of actions we're inclined to take, and how we relate to others in other communities. And, of course, they all overlap.
Gran Torino
directed by Clint Eastwood
2008
The basic plot of the movie involves the growing friendship between aging veteran Walt (Eastwood) and two teens next door, Sue and Thao; all are menaced by a gang. Walt takes Thao under his wing and teaches him how to be a man - and I don't mean that sarcastically. It's actually a very funny movie; a lot of it involves Walt / Clint complaining about everything.
At the beginning of the movie, this gang essentially saves Thao from being harassed by another gang. They then want him to initiate into their gang by stealing Walt's Gran Torino. Walt stops this - stops Thao from being initiated into this particular gang. What's interesting, though, is that what this really results in is Thao getting initiated into a very different gang, one with different rites - what the movie depicts as the community of men (of a certain sort - not every male is a man).
Actually, one major theme of the movie is these sorts of communities. You can see this in so many places - when the white wannabe gangsta calls a young black man "bro" and gets rebuffed; when the Hmong gang saves Thao from the Hispanic gang (they each start shouting at each other to go back to their own country), and then expects something in return. You see it when Sue tells Walt that Thao needs someone to look after him, because Hmong girls do better in the States than Hmong boys: "Hmong girls go to college, Hmong boys go to jail."
In other words, the movie is an interesting exploration of how we find ourselves in these communities, some of our choosing and some not, what serve as the passwords of entry, the perks of membership, the sort of actions we're inclined to take, and how we relate to others in other communities. And, of course, they all overlap.
what stays with us
Someone I know was a pretty hard-core athlete in high school; she did several sports and was fairly "ripped." One day, her coach looked her over for a moment, and then he said (paraphrase) "What guy would want to go out with a girl who had more muscles than him?" She's mentioned this often enough in certain contexts that it is clear that it really colors a god portion of her self-image.
Once upon a time, someone very close to me - someone who knows me as well as anyone knows me - remarked that I can be very hard to read sometimes; it is difficult to figure out what's going on inside me. That, too, was a fairly offhand remark; we didn't discuss it much. But it's stayed with me a long time; it's really motivated me to try to be more talkative about myself with certain individuals.
There are (at least) two ways of looking at what happened in these two cases. On one of them, her coach's remark didn't cause the development of body-image problems; rather, it just came (in retrospect) to be a phrase that exemplified them. On the other view, a different statement might have tipped her (or me) in a very different direction. It's like dropping seeds in a field: while it certainly matters what the soil is like, the field has many possible futures. Only when the seeds are added (the right seeds) does one of those possibilities become actual.
I mention this because I am interested in the way that single moments, single phrases, can stay with us, can color our whole lives. Maybe we don't understand these fragments when we hear them, but they stay with us, in our minds (consciously or otherwise), we begin to find the meaning in them, to make them something to us - to figure out what whole the fragment belongs to.
Once upon a time, someone very close to me - someone who knows me as well as anyone knows me - remarked that I can be very hard to read sometimes; it is difficult to figure out what's going on inside me. That, too, was a fairly offhand remark; we didn't discuss it much. But it's stayed with me a long time; it's really motivated me to try to be more talkative about myself with certain individuals.
There are (at least) two ways of looking at what happened in these two cases. On one of them, her coach's remark didn't cause the development of body-image problems; rather, it just came (in retrospect) to be a phrase that exemplified them. On the other view, a different statement might have tipped her (or me) in a very different direction. It's like dropping seeds in a field: while it certainly matters what the soil is like, the field has many possible futures. Only when the seeds are added (the right seeds) does one of those possibilities become actual.
I mention this because I am interested in the way that single moments, single phrases, can stay with us, can color our whole lives. Maybe we don't understand these fragments when we hear them, but they stay with us, in our minds (consciously or otherwise), we begin to find the meaning in them, to make them something to us - to figure out what whole the fragment belongs to.
trivial indexicals
We're all familiar with trivial statements like "Either it rains on January 4th, 2o09, or it doesn't." A more tricky and complicated statement is "It's raining out but I don't believe it" - a trivially false indexical statement. I mention this because I have a habit, when I run into people I know, of exclaiming "It's you!"
But every time, I fervently hope that they will rip off a latex mask, Mission: Impossible-style, and announce, "Actually, it isn't!"
(The most famous trivial indexical: "I think, therefore I am")
But every time, I fervently hope that they will rip off a latex mask, Mission: Impossible-style, and announce, "Actually, it isn't!"
(The most famous trivial indexical: "I think, therefore I am")
Monday, December 29, 2008
culture, spin
[this post is handicapped by the fact that I can no longer find the articles I have in mind, which is a problem]
"article"
The article discusses how increasing mobility is leading to more homogeneous neighborhoods. Republicans live with Republicans, because people like to live with like-minded people. As a result, contact between those with different opinions, leading to a diminished marketplace of ideas.
"article"
The article discusses how individuals with rare tastes and passions are using the internet and modern communications to form communities. That is, I might be a little weird, but there are a thousand other weird people out there and we can all get together (on the internet) and talk about our weird interest. This is pretty cool; it decreases the homogenizing pressure to conform.
The point: both of these articles are basically about the same thing. Modern technology / mobility enables people to seek out like-minded others. One article presents this as bad, the other good - and both in terms of diversity of opinion. So consider the following distinction: "subjective diversity" is the diversity of thought that the individual is actually exposed to, "objective diversity" is the diversity of thought that is actually out there / actually accessible. In these terms, the first article laments decreasing subjective diversity, while the second article lauds the increase of objective diversity. Of course, the two feed back on one another: if each of us lives in an echo chamber, little new thought (perhaps) will be produced, leading to increased ossification of ideas and decreased objective diversity.
(Related discussion)
"article"
The article discusses how increasing mobility is leading to more homogeneous neighborhoods. Republicans live with Republicans, because people like to live with like-minded people. As a result, contact between those with different opinions, leading to a diminished marketplace of ideas.
"article"
The article discusses how individuals with rare tastes and passions are using the internet and modern communications to form communities. That is, I might be a little weird, but there are a thousand other weird people out there and we can all get together (on the internet) and talk about our weird interest. This is pretty cool; it decreases the homogenizing pressure to conform.
The point: both of these articles are basically about the same thing. Modern technology / mobility enables people to seek out like-minded others. One article presents this as bad, the other good - and both in terms of diversity of opinion. So consider the following distinction: "subjective diversity" is the diversity of thought that the individual is actually exposed to, "objective diversity" is the diversity of thought that is actually out there / actually accessible. In these terms, the first article laments decreasing subjective diversity, while the second article lauds the increase of objective diversity. Of course, the two feed back on one another: if each of us lives in an echo chamber, little new thought (perhaps) will be produced, leading to increased ossification of ideas and decreased objective diversity.
(Related discussion)
the kingdom of night
I once heard Nazi Germany referred to as “the kingdom of night.” This called to mind the image of a nation where it is dark all the time, even during the brightest noon. Where behind, alongside every sunny day there is the darkest night, all the time, because of what was happening, what was being done. (Once, a German man saw his young son walking along a road, smoking a cigarette and carrying a rifle, and it was then that he knew that he needed to take his family and leave Germany).
As a law student exclaims to his professor (who clearly lived during this time) in The Reader, “And once you knew, why didn't you all kill yourselves?” Why didn't the people see the darkness behind all their sunny days?
And then I thought: it is dark even in daytime here, now. As Mary Wollstonecraft once asked, "Why is our fancy to be appalled by terrific perspectives of a hell beyond the grave? – Hell stalks abroad."
As a law student exclaims to his professor (who clearly lived during this time) in The Reader, “And once you knew, why didn't you all kill yourselves?” Why didn't the people see the darkness behind all their sunny days?
And then I thought: it is dark even in daytime here, now. As Mary Wollstonecraft once asked, "Why is our fancy to be appalled by terrific perspectives of a hell beyond the grave? – Hell stalks abroad."
the reader, part two
(see citation and summary here)
Another issue that this movie caused me to wonder about is: why do we prosecute crimes against humanity? And why do we do it in the way that we do?
That is, in The Reader, several death camp guards are put on trial for their crimes (against humanity). And, weirdly, the trial is conducted very much like a normal trial. They want to prove, using the normal legal burdens of proof, who was where when, who knew what, who had intent to commit this specific act, etc. (In this case, the act was leaving three hundred prisoners to be burned to death in a locked church). Eventually, one of them is convicted of three hundred counts of murder, and sentenced to life in prison (she is paroled for good behavior after twenty years). The others are convicted of three hundred counts of aiding and abetting murder, and sentenced to four years or so.
The strangeness of it all is that it seems as if the law is being forced to apply to a case, a context, a world, in which it really doesn't. What was done here was as much like murder in the normal case as as a banana (well maybe more similar than that). They were all part of a system of systematic murder (indeed much of the nation was part of such a system). It's a good deal different than the normal case, which typically involves individuals acting on their own initiative (except for maybe mob killings), for personal reasons. And moreover, what they did wasn't illegal at the time – indeed it was sanctioned by the government. This was a different sort of crime (that is why we invented the term “crime against humanity,” the idea of a crime so foul that its wrongness is written in all of our hearts – though the point is, unfortunately, that it isn't), and it is odd that we apply the “peacetime” system to it.
So, on to “why.” I once heard that there are four reasons for administering legal punishments. One: deterrence. Two: rehabilitation. Three: redress (the convicted benefited in some way from breaking the rules, and we must remove that benefit). Four: retribution. Of these four, only retribution has any real chance of making sense. But even it doesn't. No one human being can ever be made to suffer to compensate for the death of three hundred. We just aren't put together that way (it's not as if pain is measured like the volume of a liquid, and all we have to do is pour enough into this one vessel to make the scales even). Indeed, it just exposes the ridiculousness of the idea – to think that any punishment could ever be commensured with what was done.
So I'll propose a fifth reason that might explain (or justify) what is going on: to uphold the rule of law. The rule of law is the notion that nobody and nothing is above the law itself, something not identified with the whim or will of any one person, or even group of persons. It applies to us all without exception – or it does not apply at all. For this reason, we must try these individuals, and try them according to the law as we have it.
But one young law student exlaims: who knew? EVERYBODY KNEW. Everybody knew what was going on at Auschwitz. Everybody who did nothing is guilty, some more so than others. If we were to really apply the law, we'd have to hang an entire nation. And we can't do that. So even the rule of law has pragmatic exceptions in exceptional circumstances, it appears - if that is even what is going on here.
(cynical sixth reason: PR).
Another issue that this movie caused me to wonder about is: why do we prosecute crimes against humanity? And why do we do it in the way that we do?
That is, in The Reader, several death camp guards are put on trial for their crimes (against humanity). And, weirdly, the trial is conducted very much like a normal trial. They want to prove, using the normal legal burdens of proof, who was where when, who knew what, who had intent to commit this specific act, etc. (In this case, the act was leaving three hundred prisoners to be burned to death in a locked church). Eventually, one of them is convicted of three hundred counts of murder, and sentenced to life in prison (she is paroled for good behavior after twenty years). The others are convicted of three hundred counts of aiding and abetting murder, and sentenced to four years or so.
The strangeness of it all is that it seems as if the law is being forced to apply to a case, a context, a world, in which it really doesn't. What was done here was as much like murder in the normal case as as a banana (well maybe more similar than that). They were all part of a system of systematic murder (indeed much of the nation was part of such a system). It's a good deal different than the normal case, which typically involves individuals acting on their own initiative (except for maybe mob killings), for personal reasons. And moreover, what they did wasn't illegal at the time – indeed it was sanctioned by the government. This was a different sort of crime (that is why we invented the term “crime against humanity,” the idea of a crime so foul that its wrongness is written in all of our hearts – though the point is, unfortunately, that it isn't), and it is odd that we apply the “peacetime” system to it.
So, on to “why.” I once heard that there are four reasons for administering legal punishments. One: deterrence. Two: rehabilitation. Three: redress (the convicted benefited in some way from breaking the rules, and we must remove that benefit). Four: retribution. Of these four, only retribution has any real chance of making sense. But even it doesn't. No one human being can ever be made to suffer to compensate for the death of three hundred. We just aren't put together that way (it's not as if pain is measured like the volume of a liquid, and all we have to do is pour enough into this one vessel to make the scales even). Indeed, it just exposes the ridiculousness of the idea – to think that any punishment could ever be commensured with what was done.
So I'll propose a fifth reason that might explain (or justify) what is going on: to uphold the rule of law. The rule of law is the notion that nobody and nothing is above the law itself, something not identified with the whim or will of any one person, or even group of persons. It applies to us all without exception – or it does not apply at all. For this reason, we must try these individuals, and try them according to the law as we have it.
But one young law student exlaims: who knew? EVERYBODY KNEW. Everybody knew what was going on at Auschwitz. Everybody who did nothing is guilty, some more so than others. If we were to really apply the law, we'd have to hang an entire nation. And we can't do that. So even the rule of law has pragmatic exceptions in exceptional circumstances, it appears - if that is even what is going on here.
(cynical sixth reason: PR).
the reader, part one
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0976051/
The Reader
directed by Stephen Daldry
2008
The basic plot is this: a fifteen year-old boy has a sex-filled affair with an older woman in Germany during one summer in the 1950's. He reads to her a lot. Years later, while a law student, he observes a trial of several Nazi death camp guards. She is one of them. She is sentenced to life in prison, because rather than point out that the other guards are also responsible, she keeps quiet about her illiteracy (hence all the reading to her). This whole affair haunts him for the rest of his life.
My first question is: what would we think of this movie if we switched the genders? What if it were a fifteen year old girl who fell madly in love with (and had tons of sex with) an older man who was a death camp guard? Now, there isn't really an answer to this question, because we don't have that story and its specifics in hand; we only have the idea of such a story. But there are some points to be made about possible responses.
First of all, the fact that the affair is (in fact) filled with rape might be more on our minds. And if she were as eager for it all as our young lad is, we'd be a little leery of her mental health – maybe she's “under his sway;” maybe she's sex-crazy. Who knows, really.
We'd also look at the guard differently, I expect. There's an image in our minds of the German concentration camp guard. In the popular mind, he's a strong, cruel individual (and he always speaks in harsh German). With her, there's none of that aura of terribleness to her.
Something related to the two above points is that we would expect the power dynamics of the relationship to be very different. In one scene, they argue; she tells him to leave and that she's going to take a bath. She turns the water on; he pushes past her and turns it off. Even though she's much older, he has a certain authority and power over her, in virtue of the fact that he's taller and stronger. Some of this also comes from their personalities: consider the long bike trip they take, where he is clearly leading them (and she is content to be led).
Anyways, the point is that I do not think this is a movie where it would be easy to switch the genders around.
* crazy footnote: Israeli Holocaust Pornography
The movies, gender, the holocaust
The Reader
directed by Stephen Daldry
2008
The basic plot is this: a fifteen year-old boy has a sex-filled affair with an older woman in Germany during one summer in the 1950's. He reads to her a lot. Years later, while a law student, he observes a trial of several Nazi death camp guards. She is one of them. She is sentenced to life in prison, because rather than point out that the other guards are also responsible, she keeps quiet about her illiteracy (hence all the reading to her). This whole affair haunts him for the rest of his life.
My first question is: what would we think of this movie if we switched the genders? What if it were a fifteen year old girl who fell madly in love with (and had tons of sex with) an older man who was a death camp guard? Now, there isn't really an answer to this question, because we don't have that story and its specifics in hand; we only have the idea of such a story. But there are some points to be made about possible responses.
First of all, the fact that the affair is (in fact) filled with rape might be more on our minds. And if she were as eager for it all as our young lad is, we'd be a little leery of her mental health – maybe she's “under his sway;” maybe she's sex-crazy. Who knows, really.
We'd also look at the guard differently, I expect. There's an image in our minds of the German concentration camp guard. In the popular mind, he's a strong, cruel individual (and he always speaks in harsh German). With her, there's none of that aura of terribleness to her.
Something related to the two above points is that we would expect the power dynamics of the relationship to be very different. In one scene, they argue; she tells him to leave and that she's going to take a bath. She turns the water on; he pushes past her and turns it off. Even though she's much older, he has a certain authority and power over her, in virtue of the fact that he's taller and stronger. Some of this also comes from their personalities: consider the long bike trip they take, where he is clearly leading them (and she is content to be led).
Anyways, the point is that I do not think this is a movie where it would be easy to switch the genders around.
* crazy footnote: Israeli Holocaust Pornography
The movies, gender, the holocaust
on shopping for pants
I recently had a discussion with a friend of mine concerning shopping for pants. They remarked that shopping with women for pants is an awful experience, because they have to try on a million pairs, and it all just reinforces how fat they feel. My friend then added – unless they're anorexic.
As it happens, I disagree. I expect the anorexic women have to try on two million pairs, and also feel fat. What this reflects is that there is something out of order with their desires, as it were. That is, a desire impels me to take certain actions in order to satisfy that desire. But I happen to know that taking those actions won't actually satisfy the desire that impels me to take them. If I take the actions that I don't want to take, but which will actually satisfy (or should I say eliminate?) the desire, I believe that I am taking responsibility for myself in the way that Frankfurt advocates.
To apply this to the case of women shopping for pants: the women in question have this desire to lose just a little more weight, because then they'll be thin and feel okay about their bodies.* But, I believe, evidence indicates that (in many cases) losing weight is not the way to feel okay about one's body (to believe that one is beautiful). It more often involves changing one's attitude.
What I think is interesting about the way I've been talking is that I've been presenting desires, impulses, as “cognitively loaded” - they represent the world as being a certain way. They tell me, if you do X, then you'll satisfy me. I think this is closely connected to one of Michael Thompson's basic points: that actions by their nature fit into part-whole relationships, “I did.... in order to...” If desires didn't have this cognitive content, they couldn't produce actions. But this connection is exceedingly foggy in my mind.
* Wittgensteinian footnote: Wittgenstein asks us to imagine an individual going paint shopping. They're looking for a particular shade of red. We show them, say, firetruck red; they respond, no, that's not it, not quite. So we show them "sunset crimson." And no, that's not it either. And fifty, a hundred paint chips later, and none of them are quite right. We want to ask: do they really have a particular shade of red in mind?
As it happens, I disagree. I expect the anorexic women have to try on two million pairs, and also feel fat. What this reflects is that there is something out of order with their desires, as it were. That is, a desire impels me to take certain actions in order to satisfy that desire. But I happen to know that taking those actions won't actually satisfy the desire that impels me to take them. If I take the actions that I don't want to take, but which will actually satisfy (or should I say eliminate?) the desire, I believe that I am taking responsibility for myself in the way that Frankfurt advocates.
To apply this to the case of women shopping for pants: the women in question have this desire to lose just a little more weight, because then they'll be thin and feel okay about their bodies.* But, I believe, evidence indicates that (in many cases) losing weight is not the way to feel okay about one's body (to believe that one is beautiful). It more often involves changing one's attitude.
What I think is interesting about the way I've been talking is that I've been presenting desires, impulses, as “cognitively loaded” - they represent the world as being a certain way. They tell me, if you do X, then you'll satisfy me. I think this is closely connected to one of Michael Thompson's basic points: that actions by their nature fit into part-whole relationships, “I did.... in order to...” If desires didn't have this cognitive content, they couldn't produce actions. But this connection is exceedingly foggy in my mind.
* Wittgensteinian footnote: Wittgenstein asks us to imagine an individual going paint shopping. They're looking for a particular shade of red. We show them, say, firetruck red; they respond, no, that's not it, not quite. So we show them "sunset crimson." And no, that's not it either. And fifty, a hundred paint chips later, and none of them are quite right. We want to ask: do they really have a particular shade of red in mind?
memory, spin, (on flaunting one's sexuality)
I had originally intended to write a post that started with an article about how female doctors who wear clothes which emphasize their secondary sex characteristics get less respect from patients than other doctors. This would have been an example of how women in general take flack for wearing “racy” clothes in professional (and, for that matter, nonprofessional) contexts. I would have gone on to discuss how traditional male garb (that is, formal men's clothes, such as suits and dress shoes) also serves to emphasize secondary sex characteristics: height, breadth of shoulders, etc.
This is the article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/21/health/21essa.html
"When Young Doctors Strut Too Much Of Their Stuff"
by Erin N. Marcus, M.D.
November 21, 2006
The New York Times
The reason I'm not writing that post (sort of) is that when I went back to find the article, I discovered something odd. It leads with a collage of photos of (presumably) female doctors in “racy” clothes. But if you pay attention, the one study it cites remarks that patients prefer that white coat to either “racy” female clothes or formal male clothes. (Various anecdotes do concern specifically feminine clothes). It's interesting, then, the way the story is spun, and the way I remembered it: those pictures fixed in my mind the point of the story; the words (the facts) did not.
This is the article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/21/health/21essa.html
"When Young Doctors Strut Too Much Of Their Stuff"
by Erin N. Marcus, M.D.
November 21, 2006
The New York Times
The reason I'm not writing that post (sort of) is that when I went back to find the article, I discovered something odd. It leads with a collage of photos of (presumably) female doctors in “racy” clothes. But if you pay attention, the one study it cites remarks that patients prefer that white coat to either “racy” female clothes or formal male clothes. (Various anecdotes do concern specifically feminine clothes). It's interesting, then, the way the story is spun, and the way I remembered it: those pictures fixed in my mind the point of the story; the words (the facts) did not.
Thursday, December 25, 2008
nietzche, kant, frisbee, friendship
The Gay Science
by Friedrich Nioetzsche
translated by Josefine Nauckhoff
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
2001
Section 279
"Star Friendship. -- We were friends and have become estranged. But that was right, and we do not want to hide and obscure it from ourselves as if we had to be ashamed of it. We are two ships, each of which has its own goal and course; we may cross and have a feast together, as we did -- and then the good ships lay so quietly in one harbour and in one sun that it may have seemed as if they had already completed their course and had the same goal. But then the almighty force of our projects drove us apart once again, into different seas and sunny zones, and maybe we will never meet again -- or maybe we will, but will not recognize each other: the different seas and suns have changed us! That we had to become estranged is the law above us; through it we should come to have more respect for each other -- and the thought of our former friendship should become more sacred! There is probably a tremendous invisible curve and stellar orbit in which our different ways and goals may be included as small stretches -- let us rise to this thought! But our life is too short and our vision too meagre for us to be more than friends in the sense of that sublime possibility. -- Let us then believe in our star friendship even if we must be earth enemies."
That's it for the Nietzsche. As for the Kant: one way of putting the main point of Kant's ethics is that it is an answer to the question, "How can there be relationships between people beyond those of mere power?" (Or, why must there be such relationships?) In other words, how is it possible to treat another person as more than a mere means to my own ends, and instead as an end in themselves? Roughly, the answer is that we each do the same thing. In canonical Kantian ethics, this same thing is "obey the moral law." (There's also a big strain in Kant's ethics concerning the possibility of autonomy, but I won't go there). Indeed, the thought is that the requirement that we each do the same thing (plus certain claims about universalizability) actually gets us to "do the right thing," and all that we ordinarily understand by that (more or less).
The Nietzsche I quoted presents a serious internal challenge to this view, as far as I can tell. Consider the example of ultimate frisbee. When I play Ultimate, if I'm really playing the game, I aim to do my absolute best to win. All my actions tend towards that aim. Now, in a good game, my opponents are doing the same thing: all their actions tend towards their winning the game. The important bit is that I want them to try their damnedest to beat me. I don't want them to screw up, or to suck, or to throw the game - that would just be a waste of time. In a similar way, Nietzsche presents a kind of friendship in which it certainly apears that the friends are striving, perhaps with all their might, against one another - and yet they're doing the same thing, and they both want all this. (Nietzsche's position is actually much more radical than the one I'm propounding, since he thinks that we don't need to know the "stellar orbit" along which we both pass).
In other words, maybe I can, to an extent, both strive against another and want them to strive back. This would take a lot of the bite out of Kantian ethics - things we normally think of as crimes, as unethical, might very well be allowed.
by Friedrich Nioetzsche
translated by Josefine Nauckhoff
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
2001
Section 279
"Star Friendship. -- We were friends and have become estranged. But that was right, and we do not want to hide and obscure it from ourselves as if we had to be ashamed of it. We are two ships, each of which has its own goal and course; we may cross and have a feast together, as we did -- and then the good ships lay so quietly in one harbour and in one sun that it may have seemed as if they had already completed their course and had the same goal. But then the almighty force of our projects drove us apart once again, into different seas and sunny zones, and maybe we will never meet again -- or maybe we will, but will not recognize each other: the different seas and suns have changed us! That we had to become estranged is the law above us; through it we should come to have more respect for each other -- and the thought of our former friendship should become more sacred! There is probably a tremendous invisible curve and stellar orbit in which our different ways and goals may be included as small stretches -- let us rise to this thought! But our life is too short and our vision too meagre for us to be more than friends in the sense of that sublime possibility. -- Let us then believe in our star friendship even if we must be earth enemies."
That's it for the Nietzsche. As for the Kant: one way of putting the main point of Kant's ethics is that it is an answer to the question, "How can there be relationships between people beyond those of mere power?" (Or, why must there be such relationships?) In other words, how is it possible to treat another person as more than a mere means to my own ends, and instead as an end in themselves? Roughly, the answer is that we each do the same thing. In canonical Kantian ethics, this same thing is "obey the moral law." (There's also a big strain in Kant's ethics concerning the possibility of autonomy, but I won't go there). Indeed, the thought is that the requirement that we each do the same thing (plus certain claims about universalizability) actually gets us to "do the right thing," and all that we ordinarily understand by that (more or less).
The Nietzsche I quoted presents a serious internal challenge to this view, as far as I can tell. Consider the example of ultimate frisbee. When I play Ultimate, if I'm really playing the game, I aim to do my absolute best to win. All my actions tend towards that aim. Now, in a good game, my opponents are doing the same thing: all their actions tend towards their winning the game. The important bit is that I want them to try their damnedest to beat me. I don't want them to screw up, or to suck, or to throw the game - that would just be a waste of time. In a similar way, Nietzsche presents a kind of friendship in which it certainly apears that the friends are striving, perhaps with all their might, against one another - and yet they're doing the same thing, and they both want all this. (Nietzsche's position is actually much more radical than the one I'm propounding, since he thinks that we don't need to know the "stellar orbit" along which we both pass).
In other words, maybe I can, to an extent, both strive against another and want them to strive back. This would take a lot of the bite out of Kantian ethics - things we normally think of as crimes, as unethical, might very well be allowed.
Friday, December 19, 2008
some thoughts on crime
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/226/story/58111.html
"What's it like to be a pirate? In dirt-poor Somalia, pretty good."
by Shashank Bengali
December 18, 2008
McClatchy Newspapers
"The International Maritime Bureau says that at last count 42 ships have been hijacked off Somalia this year, and experts in neighboring Kenya estimate that Somali pirates have pocketed $30 million in ransoms."
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/12/business/12scheme.html
"Top Trader is Accused of Defrauding Clients"
by Diana B. Henriques and Zachery Kouwe
December 11, 2008
The New York Times
"But on Thursday morning, this consummate trader, Bernard L. Madoff, was arrested at his Manhattan home by federal agents who accused him of running a multibillion-dollar fraud scheme — perhaps the largest in Wall Street’s history. Regulators have not yet verified the scale of the fraud. But the criminal complaint filed against Mr. Madoff on Thursday in federal court in Manhattan reports that he estimated the losses at $50 billion."
http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/12/17/hey-ponzi-whats-your-exit-strategy-exactly/
"Hey Ponzi: What's Your Exit Strategy, Exactly?"
by Catherine Rampell
December 17, 2008
The New York Times
The article discusses the economics of Ponzi schemes, and speculates that there is no rational reason for starting one. The first comment points out a basic flaw in the author's reasoning:
"You really don’t get the exit strategy? let me explain..
Madoff is now 70 yrs old, an age that many people aren’t even fortunate enough to reach. He got to live like a multimillionaire for 40 years. He will now spend a year or two in court and then be sent to a minimum security white-collar prison (basically a free nursing home for him funded by taxpayers). Not a bad life…sounds like it was worth it"
Let's think about those numbers for a moment. Let's assume that the Somali pirates, in addition to the $30 million in random, also earned $10 million from stolen goods. In order for them to steal as much as Madoff, they would have had to keep that up for more than a millennium - they would have had to have kept up that level of income SINCE BEFORE AMERICA WAS DISCOVERED BY COLUMBUS.
And let's think about the relative consequences: house arrest and a white collar prison (as discussed by the commentor) and pursuit by some of the world's most powerful navies. I mean really - sometimes I think that, in order to discourage this sort of thing in the future, we should just take people who commit crimes like Madoff out back and shoot them. He's done far more harm than these damn pirates.
"What's it like to be a pirate? In dirt-poor Somalia, pretty good."
by Shashank Bengali
December 18, 2008
McClatchy Newspapers
"The International Maritime Bureau says that at last count 42 ships have been hijacked off Somalia this year, and experts in neighboring Kenya estimate that Somali pirates have pocketed $30 million in ransoms."
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/12/business/12scheme.html
"Top Trader is Accused of Defrauding Clients"
by Diana B. Henriques and Zachery Kouwe
December 11, 2008
The New York Times
"But on Thursday morning, this consummate trader, Bernard L. Madoff, was arrested at his Manhattan home by federal agents who accused him of running a multibillion-dollar fraud scheme — perhaps the largest in Wall Street’s history. Regulators have not yet verified the scale of the fraud. But the criminal complaint filed against Mr. Madoff on Thursday in federal court in Manhattan reports that he estimated the losses at $50 billion."
http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/12/17/hey-ponzi-whats-your-exit-strategy-exactly/
"Hey Ponzi: What's Your Exit Strategy, Exactly?"
by Catherine Rampell
December 17, 2008
The New York Times
The article discusses the economics of Ponzi schemes, and speculates that there is no rational reason for starting one. The first comment points out a basic flaw in the author's reasoning:
"You really don’t get the exit strategy? let me explain..
Madoff is now 70 yrs old, an age that many people aren’t even fortunate enough to reach. He got to live like a multimillionaire for 40 years. He will now spend a year or two in court and then be sent to a minimum security white-collar prison (basically a free nursing home for him funded by taxpayers). Not a bad life…sounds like it was worth it"
Let's think about those numbers for a moment. Let's assume that the Somali pirates, in addition to the $30 million in random, also earned $10 million from stolen goods. In order for them to steal as much as Madoff, they would have had to keep that up for more than a millennium - they would have had to have kept up that level of income SINCE BEFORE AMERICA WAS DISCOVERED BY COLUMBUS.
And let's think about the relative consequences: house arrest and a white collar prison (as discussed by the commentor) and pursuit by some of the world's most powerful navies. I mean really - sometimes I think that, in order to discourage this sort of thing in the future, we should just take people who commit crimes like Madoff out back and shoot them. He's done far more harm than these damn pirates.
horror movies, part three
horror movies, part three
the ways in which we are challenged
Horror movies present threats of different levels of danger. In some horror movies, the threat is to the entire world – to humanity itself. I want to discuss some of these movies, and what this shows about the movie's portrayal of humanity.
28 Days Later
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0289043/
directed by Danny Boyle
2002
In this movie, a man wakes up from a coma to discover that London is empty – or not really. In fact, the INSANELY infectious “rage virus” has turned most of the population into bloodthirsty killers; the rest basically cower in fear. The movie follows this man and a few others he joins up with, and ultimately a group of British soldiers. But everyone in the movie, even the soldiers (perhaps especially the soldiers) are portratyed as very “ordinary human people.” The movie is about ordinary individuals – you and me – trying to survive in the face of horrific troubles. Indeed, it eventually comes out that the struggle is for more than survival – it is the struggle to remain ordinary, decent human beings in the face of the disaster. That is, more than a few humans, despite not being infected, become as bloodthirsty and awful as the raging infected. This movie portrays the distinctively human feature as (roughly) decency.
The Thing
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0084787/
directed by John Carpenter
1982
(see description here)
What is interesting about this movie is the way it depicts scientists, of all people, as the first (and last) line of defense against a tremendous threat to the human species. In other words, when we are faced wih a global threat, it is not military or political might (or indeed any other force) but the power of our science – the best expression, perhaps, of human intelligence – of wha distinguishes us from the other animals that will enable us to survive (or not). Another movie in this vein is The Last Winter, and also The Ring – it is Rachel's reasoning and investigative abilities (that mark of science, perhaps) that enable her to survive what has killed so many others (plus a bit of luck, of course). This movie portrays the distinctively human feature as science and reason.
Resident Evil
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120804/
directed by Paul W.S. Anderson
2002
In this movie, a virus has gotten out in an underground research facility that turns people into zombies. A special forces unit goes in to sort things out, and proceeds to get killed, except for the most badass member of the group, Alice (last name unknown). In this movie, there's little reasoning or thinking or adapting oneself to new circumstances to be done – it all really come down to who can kick the most ass (it is Alice, here and in both sequels). This movie portrays the most basic (and I mean basic, and not distinctive) human feature (the one that all other features contribute to) as fighting ability (I don't mean this in a purely martial-artsy sense). (Alien, Aliens and Alien: Resurrection are all excellent examples of this).
I can't help but mention the pathological case for my discussion: War of the Worlds (which could easily have been presented as a straightforward horror movie) presents the most important feature of humanity as our ability to carry diseases. Some one-liners: Cabin Fever presents the distinctive features of humanity as stupidity and petty vices (petty evils); The Devil's Rejects presents humanity's defining feature as the capacity for (liberating?) evil.
the ways in which we are challenged
Horror movies present threats of different levels of danger. In some horror movies, the threat is to the entire world – to humanity itself. I want to discuss some of these movies, and what this shows about the movie's portrayal of humanity.
28 Days Later
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0289043/
directed by Danny Boyle
2002
In this movie, a man wakes up from a coma to discover that London is empty – or not really. In fact, the INSANELY infectious “rage virus” has turned most of the population into bloodthirsty killers; the rest basically cower in fear. The movie follows this man and a few others he joins up with, and ultimately a group of British soldiers. But everyone in the movie, even the soldiers (perhaps especially the soldiers) are portratyed as very “ordinary human people.” The movie is about ordinary individuals – you and me – trying to survive in the face of horrific troubles. Indeed, it eventually comes out that the struggle is for more than survival – it is the struggle to remain ordinary, decent human beings in the face of the disaster. That is, more than a few humans, despite not being infected, become as bloodthirsty and awful as the raging infected. This movie portrays the distinctively human feature as (roughly) decency.
The Thing
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0084787/
directed by John Carpenter
1982
(see description here)
What is interesting about this movie is the way it depicts scientists, of all people, as the first (and last) line of defense against a tremendous threat to the human species. In other words, when we are faced wih a global threat, it is not military or political might (or indeed any other force) but the power of our science – the best expression, perhaps, of human intelligence – of wha distinguishes us from the other animals that will enable us to survive (or not). Another movie in this vein is The Last Winter, and also The Ring – it is Rachel's reasoning and investigative abilities (that mark of science, perhaps) that enable her to survive what has killed so many others (plus a bit of luck, of course). This movie portrays the distinctively human feature as science and reason.
Resident Evil
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120804/
directed by Paul W.S. Anderson
2002
In this movie, a virus has gotten out in an underground research facility that turns people into zombies. A special forces unit goes in to sort things out, and proceeds to get killed, except for the most badass member of the group, Alice (last name unknown). In this movie, there's little reasoning or thinking or adapting oneself to new circumstances to be done – it all really come down to who can kick the most ass (it is Alice, here and in both sequels). This movie portrays the most basic (and I mean basic, and not distinctive) human feature (the one that all other features contribute to) as fighting ability (I don't mean this in a purely martial-artsy sense). (Alien, Aliens and Alien: Resurrection are all excellent examples of this).
I can't help but mention the pathological case for my discussion: War of the Worlds (which could easily have been presented as a straightforward horror movie) presents the most important feature of humanity as our ability to carry diseases. Some one-liners: Cabin Fever presents the distinctive features of humanity as stupidity and petty vices (petty evils); The Devil's Rejects presents humanity's defining feature as the capacity for (liberating?) evil.
horror movies, part two
living with contingency*
This is a continuation of the previous discussion of horror movies.
The Thing
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0084787/
directed by John Carpenter
1982
In this movie, a group of Antarctic scientists is attacked by a shape-shifting alien life-form that is progressively taking over members of the group. After the climactic battle, our hero MacReady lies in the snow outside the burning base. It's winter in Antarctica, and all means of transportation and shelter have been destroyed; he knows that as soon as the fires burn out, he'll freeze to death. Suddenly, Childs, another survivor, appears; it's unknown whether he's been taken over by the alien. Instead of fighting, they both settle down in the snow, and wait. The movie ends.
Hostel
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0450278/
directed by Eli Roth
2005
A group of young male tourists is kidnapped in Eastern Europe by a group that sells the opportunity to torture and kill young tourists. One of them, Paxton, escapes after struggling with and killing his captor; he evades the group (by disguising himself as a customer), and rescues a fellow prisoner in the process of being tortured. She later kills herself after seeing her horribly mutilated reflection. Later, Paxton notices the man who initiated his kidnapping, follows him into a deserted restroom, and kills him.
Hostel: Part Two
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0498353/
directed by Eli Roth
2007
The movie opens with Paxton hiding out at his girlfriend's relative's isolated house; he's very paranoid. The next day, she wakes up to find his headless corpse. Then, a group of young female tourists is kidnapped in Eastern Europe... you get the idea. One of them, Beth, escapes after struggling with her captor (both grit and intelligence are involved). Beth's companion, on the other hand, just screams and begs and dies a horrible death (she's a “screaming blonde”). Instead of fighting or sneaking her way out, Beth bargains with the kidnappers (it turns out she's fantastically wealthy), and becomes one of the customers; she later gets medieval on the woman who initiated her kidnapping.
I want to say that horror movies come in two flavors: those with affirmative and those with negative endings – that is, movies that give affirmative answers and movies that give negative answers to the question they pose: can we go on in the face of skepticism (see previous post)?
Here's an example: at one point in The Thing, MacReady has cornered the rest of the group with a flamethrower, and is testing which ones are aliens. The first man is human and gets cut loose and armed with another flame thrower. Unfortunately, the second individual is an alien; as soon as it is revealed, it sprouts a giant mouth and lots of teeth and goes on the attack. MacReady's flamethrower is on the fritz, and the second man just stands there terrified until he gets his head bitten off. I want to say that what happened here is that the new man was unable to adapt himself to a world radically different than the one he knew (it turned out that your best friend might sprout a giant mouth and try to eat you and you would be required to burn him alive). He was paralyzed because his old ways of going on were just not applicable, but he also couldn't develop new ones. He failed to be able to live with skepticism.
On the one hand, living with skepticism is an intellectual matter. All three heroes (MacReady, Paxton, and Beth) all use a quick wit to respond to new circumstances (MacReady develops a test for Thinghood; Paxton successfully disguises himself as a customer – even to the point of chatting with another customer; Beth figures out how to escape from a prison she can't fight her way out of). (It is worth noting that this is a constant process: Paxton ultimately succumbs to irrational fear by hiding out with a known associate, rather than just going totally off the grid). (A really clear example of this aspect of living with skepticism is the actions of Nancy in A Nightmare on Elm Street).
On the other hand, there's more to it than just figuring out how to achieve one's ends (or adapting those ends to meet new circumstances, perhaps). It's also a matter of maintaining those ends (“grit”). MacReady is a good example of someone who ultimately fails to do so. After the climactic battle, if he really wanted to definitively destroy the alien, he would have attacked Childs on sight – since he may very well be an alien creature. Instead, he just settles in to freeze to death; it as if he has no fight left in him – he is world-weary at this point.
On the other hand (I love that phrase), all these movies make it clear that, in order to survive, you have to become a truly different person – and by some standards (one might call them peacetime standards) a much worse person. Beth and Paxton are great examples; in order to survive her kidnapping, they both become just like their captors: murderers. (The development of the character Jim in The Hitcher is a really clear example of this kind of response to skepticism).
To put the point another way, Bernard Williams once wrote that we would be a little leery of a businessman who said, “Well, I could always just kidnap your daughter and threaten to kill her in order to force you to sign, but I won't, because that would be wrong,” [citation forthcoming]. In order to survive these situations, our heroes have to become harder people; they have to be willing to entertain possibilities and possible courses of action that are, in normal circumstances, totally horrific and perhaps even wrong. (It is of course the contention of horror movies that you never know when you're in totally abnormal circumstances, which makes it important to be like this all the time. But few horror movies (by definition) really explore what that would be like. The one brief example that comes to mind is Scream 3; the story starts with Sidney, the heroine, living totally isolated, her location unknown to all of her associates. She even works from home. This is because of her experiences from Scream and Scream 2. (Indeed, at the end of Scream 3, Sidney is the one who gets shot – and her body subsequently disappears – a classic horror-villain trope).
* I tend to slide back and forth between talking about contingency and talking about skepticism. This is because I think the point of skepticism is to reveal the contingency of its subject matter. (That is, we become subject to skepticism, through various means, which makes us aware that certain aspects of our lives are contingent in ways we hadn't expected; we must then figure out how to deal with this.)
This is a continuation of the previous discussion of horror movies.
The Thing
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0084787/
directed by John Carpenter
1982
In this movie, a group of Antarctic scientists is attacked by a shape-shifting alien life-form that is progressively taking over members of the group. After the climactic battle, our hero MacReady lies in the snow outside the burning base. It's winter in Antarctica, and all means of transportation and shelter have been destroyed; he knows that as soon as the fires burn out, he'll freeze to death. Suddenly, Childs, another survivor, appears; it's unknown whether he's been taken over by the alien. Instead of fighting, they both settle down in the snow, and wait. The movie ends.
Hostel
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0450278/
directed by Eli Roth
2005
A group of young male tourists is kidnapped in Eastern Europe by a group that sells the opportunity to torture and kill young tourists. One of them, Paxton, escapes after struggling with and killing his captor; he evades the group (by disguising himself as a customer), and rescues a fellow prisoner in the process of being tortured. She later kills herself after seeing her horribly mutilated reflection. Later, Paxton notices the man who initiated his kidnapping, follows him into a deserted restroom, and kills him.
Hostel: Part Two
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0498353/
directed by Eli Roth
2007
The movie opens with Paxton hiding out at his girlfriend's relative's isolated house; he's very paranoid. The next day, she wakes up to find his headless corpse. Then, a group of young female tourists is kidnapped in Eastern Europe... you get the idea. One of them, Beth, escapes after struggling with her captor (both grit and intelligence are involved). Beth's companion, on the other hand, just screams and begs and dies a horrible death (she's a “screaming blonde”). Instead of fighting or sneaking her way out, Beth bargains with the kidnappers (it turns out she's fantastically wealthy), and becomes one of the customers; she later gets medieval on the woman who initiated her kidnapping.
I want to say that horror movies come in two flavors: those with affirmative and those with negative endings – that is, movies that give affirmative answers and movies that give negative answers to the question they pose: can we go on in the face of skepticism (see previous post)?
Here's an example: at one point in The Thing, MacReady has cornered the rest of the group with a flamethrower, and is testing which ones are aliens. The first man is human and gets cut loose and armed with another flame thrower. Unfortunately, the second individual is an alien; as soon as it is revealed, it sprouts a giant mouth and lots of teeth and goes on the attack. MacReady's flamethrower is on the fritz, and the second man just stands there terrified until he gets his head bitten off. I want to say that what happened here is that the new man was unable to adapt himself to a world radically different than the one he knew (it turned out that your best friend might sprout a giant mouth and try to eat you and you would be required to burn him alive). He was paralyzed because his old ways of going on were just not applicable, but he also couldn't develop new ones. He failed to be able to live with skepticism.
On the one hand, living with skepticism is an intellectual matter. All three heroes (MacReady, Paxton, and Beth) all use a quick wit to respond to new circumstances (MacReady develops a test for Thinghood; Paxton successfully disguises himself as a customer – even to the point of chatting with another customer; Beth figures out how to escape from a prison she can't fight her way out of). (It is worth noting that this is a constant process: Paxton ultimately succumbs to irrational fear by hiding out with a known associate, rather than just going totally off the grid). (A really clear example of this aspect of living with skepticism is the actions of Nancy in A Nightmare on Elm Street).
On the other hand, there's more to it than just figuring out how to achieve one's ends (or adapting those ends to meet new circumstances, perhaps). It's also a matter of maintaining those ends (“grit”). MacReady is a good example of someone who ultimately fails to do so. After the climactic battle, if he really wanted to definitively destroy the alien, he would have attacked Childs on sight – since he may very well be an alien creature. Instead, he just settles in to freeze to death; it as if he has no fight left in him – he is world-weary at this point.
On the other hand (I love that phrase), all these movies make it clear that, in order to survive, you have to become a truly different person – and by some standards (one might call them peacetime standards) a much worse person. Beth and Paxton are great examples; in order to survive her kidnapping, they both become just like their captors: murderers. (The development of the character Jim in The Hitcher is a really clear example of this kind of response to skepticism).
To put the point another way, Bernard Williams once wrote that we would be a little leery of a businessman who said, “Well, I could always just kidnap your daughter and threaten to kill her in order to force you to sign, but I won't, because that would be wrong,” [citation forthcoming]. In order to survive these situations, our heroes have to become harder people; they have to be willing to entertain possibilities and possible courses of action that are, in normal circumstances, totally horrific and perhaps even wrong. (It is of course the contention of horror movies that you never know when you're in totally abnormal circumstances, which makes it important to be like this all the time. But few horror movies (by definition) really explore what that would be like. The one brief example that comes to mind is Scream 3; the story starts with Sidney, the heroine, living totally isolated, her location unknown to all of her associates. She even works from home. This is because of her experiences from Scream and Scream 2. (Indeed, at the end of Scream 3, Sidney is the one who gets shot – and her body subsequently disappears – a classic horror-villain trope).
* I tend to slide back and forth between talking about contingency and talking about skepticism. This is because I think the point of skepticism is to reveal the contingency of its subject matter. (That is, we become subject to skepticism, through various means, which makes us aware that certain aspects of our lives are contingent in ways we hadn't expected; we must then figure out how to deal with this.)
Monday, December 15, 2008
the new york times
I grew up reading a local newspaper and watching the local news. I was never particularly interested in what they had to say; my experiences are epitomized by the "milk truck" incident, in which a good twenty minutes of programming was spent reporting on an overturned milk truck - I swear they played the video of workers righting it three times.
And then, for some reason or other - probably due to my being on my high school's forensics team - I started reading The New York Times. It was like a whole new world in terms of depth of analysis, issues covered, and so forth. Going back to my local paper, it all suddenly seemed terribly shallow and trivial.
But it wasn't until some time later that I really understood what journalism is about. This was during the Judith Miller incident:
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/07/politics/07leak.html
"Reporter Jailed after Refusing to Name Source"
by Adam Liptak
July 7, 2005
The New York Times
Basically, a government investigated askeed Miller to reveal the identity of a confidential source; she (and the Times) refused. As a result, she was thrown in jail and the Times was assessed a significant daily fine. (As it turned out, Miller was released and the fine removed after the source identified himself). What struck me here as terribly odd was the idea that a reporter would go to jail over this. It made me realize that maybe journalism is a calling, not just a job - that maybe there's something tremendously important about having a free press in a democratic society - that printing newspapers is more than a business; it is a civic duty.
As it happens, Miller is no angel:
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9905EED8133FF930A15753C1A9639C8B63&n=Top%2FOpinion%2FThe%20Public%20Editor&scp=2&sq=judith%20miller&st=cse
"THE PUBLIC EDITOR; the Miller Mess: Lingering Issues among the Answers"
by Byron Calame
October 23, 2005
The New York Times
While it turns out that this incident isn't the best one for revealing the ideal of journalistic integrity, it was the one that first opened my eyes to that possibility - to understanding what the point of the news is.
And then, for some reason or other - probably due to my being on my high school's forensics team - I started reading The New York Times. It was like a whole new world in terms of depth of analysis, issues covered, and so forth. Going back to my local paper, it all suddenly seemed terribly shallow and trivial.
But it wasn't until some time later that I really understood what journalism is about. This was during the Judith Miller incident:
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/07/politics/07leak.html
"Reporter Jailed after Refusing to Name Source"
by Adam Liptak
July 7, 2005
The New York Times
Basically, a government investigated askeed Miller to reveal the identity of a confidential source; she (and the Times) refused. As a result, she was thrown in jail and the Times was assessed a significant daily fine. (As it turned out, Miller was released and the fine removed after the source identified himself). What struck me here as terribly odd was the idea that a reporter would go to jail over this. It made me realize that maybe journalism is a calling, not just a job - that maybe there's something tremendously important about having a free press in a democratic society - that printing newspapers is more than a business; it is a civic duty.
As it happens, Miller is no angel:
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9905EED8133FF930A15753C1A9639C8B63&n=Top%2FOpinion%2FThe%20Public%20Editor&scp=2&sq=judith%20miller&st=cse
"THE PUBLIC EDITOR; the Miller Mess: Lingering Issues among the Answers"
by Byron Calame
October 23, 2005
The New York Times
While it turns out that this incident isn't the best one for revealing the ideal of journalistic integrity, it was the one that first opened my eyes to that possibility - to understanding what the point of the news is.
ignorance
A friend of mine once discussed his experiences as a student of physics. He majored in physics as an undergraduate, is currently working at a national laboratory, and is on his way to graduate school - so I'd say he knows at least a little bit about things. So one day he remarked to me that he was starting to realize that the point of most physics classes is to keep you from figuring out just how much you don't know, how much you've yet to learn - because if you ever figured that out, you'd just give up then and there, knowing that it would be impossible to ever learn it all.
Once upon a time, I saw a student ask a famous professor of philosophy a question. The student began by discussing his experience reading Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. He said that as he read, he felt all his concepts slipping away from him, that everything he'd thought he'd known and understood was just evaporating - it was tremendously disconcerting. Good, good, the professor said - that's exactly the experience you're supposed to have. No no! the student replied. It was a terrifying experience, and he's not sure that he can handle facing it again. Well, the professor said, philosophy isn't for everyone.
My own experiences of philosopy have been similar. When I first began, I had strong opinions about everything, and would argue them against all comers. But, as time passed, I started to realize that my arguments weren't always that good, that my conviction that I was right preceded the arguments I made. And so, as time passed, I felt knowledge slipping away from me. It's been a long journey, probably incomplete, towards realizing just how much I don't know and don't understand.
I got to talking philosophy with a friend of mine the other day. At the end of the discussion, they remarked that our conversation had brought up a lot of issues that she hadn't thought about since high school - and what was odd is that she realized that she hadn't gotten any further since then towards figuring them out. Realizing just how much there is to be known is an experience that, she said, she lusts after.
Sooo... what is the point of all this? Nothing other than to recount some stories about ignorance - about what it amounts to and the attitude we can take towards it.
* If you wanted, you could discuss the difference between some of these stories, possibly, through the lens of the distinction adumbrated in the following paper (which is excellent, by the way).
"Varieties of Skepticism"
by James Conant
in Wittgenstein and Skepticism
edited by Denis McManus
New York: Routledge
2004
Once upon a time, I saw a student ask a famous professor of philosophy a question. The student began by discussing his experience reading Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. He said that as he read, he felt all his concepts slipping away from him, that everything he'd thought he'd known and understood was just evaporating - it was tremendously disconcerting. Good, good, the professor said - that's exactly the experience you're supposed to have. No no! the student replied. It was a terrifying experience, and he's not sure that he can handle facing it again. Well, the professor said, philosophy isn't for everyone.
My own experiences of philosopy have been similar. When I first began, I had strong opinions about everything, and would argue them against all comers. But, as time passed, I started to realize that my arguments weren't always that good, that my conviction that I was right preceded the arguments I made. And so, as time passed, I felt knowledge slipping away from me. It's been a long journey, probably incomplete, towards realizing just how much I don't know and don't understand.
I got to talking philosophy with a friend of mine the other day. At the end of the discussion, they remarked that our conversation had brought up a lot of issues that she hadn't thought about since high school - and what was odd is that she realized that she hadn't gotten any further since then towards figuring them out. Realizing just how much there is to be known is an experience that, she said, she lusts after.
Sooo... what is the point of all this? Nothing other than to recount some stories about ignorance - about what it amounts to and the attitude we can take towards it.
* If you wanted, you could discuss the difference between some of these stories, possibly, through the lens of the distinction adumbrated in the following paper (which is excellent, by the way).
"Varieties of Skepticism"
by James Conant
in Wittgenstein and Skepticism
edited by Denis McManus
New York: Routledge
2004
horror movies, part one
One constant theme of many horror movies is skepticism - about many things. Let's start with some instances:
The Hitcher
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0091209/
directed by Robert Harmon
1986
The Hitcher is the story of a young man driving a car across the country. He picks up a hitchhiker, who turns out to be a mass murderer. John Ryder (the hitcher) holds a knife to Jim Halsey's (the kid's) throat, and tells him to say "I want to die." Jim eventually throws John out of the car, exclaiming "I don't want to die!" Later, John kills several police officers, and then proceeds to frame Jim for the crimes. Eventually, after much inducement, Jim kills John in a climactic showdown.
All the Boys Love Mandy Lane
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0490076/
directed by Jonathan Levine
2006
In this movie, a group of teenagers (including the titular Mandy Lane, who is so gorgeous and pure that everybody, male and female, lusts after her intensely) travels to a secluded ranch for a Bacchanalian weekend. They proceed to get murdered, one by one, until it is revealed that the high school outcast Emmet (and Mandy's apparently former friend) is killing them. In the movie's final moments, it is revealed that this has all been planned by Emmet and Mandy - and then Mandy kills Emmet.
Like I said, horror movies are about skepticism - about many things. I could go on nearly endlessly with examples, but these two movies provide a lot of material to work with. So:
The first trope is the innocuous killer - the fact that the killer's been one of the apparent victims all along. The idea here is that we really don't know very much about other people. Anyone could turn out to be holding a terrible grudge for which they desire to exact horrific revenge. They could be very motivated liars. (Screamers and The Thing are probably the two movies that take up this trope most centrally).
One series of tropes involves the cops getting killed, or a father getting killed, or the invasion of one's home or bedroom. The basic theme here is that traditional sources of authority fail in dire circumstances. Normally, once the cops arrive, we all know that everything's fine; affairs are out of our hands and in more competent ones. In the world of horror, there is no such authority - though we may have thought that such sources existed, we were wrong. (Another very clear example of this trope is Jeepers Creepers).
Yet another trope I'll call the "screaming blonde" trope, because that is the most well-known example. Sure, this person looks like they're pretty together, but when the shit goes down all they can think to do is run around (often in an amusingly awkward fashion) and scream (and get killed). They panic or get terrified or irrational and in general do things which guarantee their demise. Consider Nash from The Hitcher - although she seems to have it together, she can't keep it together; she cracks, calls her father, and gives away her and Jim's location to John, resulting in her gruesome death.
The last trope is the thought that we don't really know ourselves either, until we're really pushed. Jim, after all, starts The Hitcher cast in the screaming blonde mold - he shakes and quivers and is terrified of John. But in the critical moment, he pulls it together and figures out how to escape (this happens repeatedly). The point here is that it is usually difficult to distinguish the screaming blonde from the final girl* at first glance. Only when the shit goes down do we find out about ourselves whether we have what it takes to survive, or not.
The basic idea of all of these, and of skepticism in horror films, is that we know much less about the world, about other people, and about ourselves than we might think. We are subject to illusions - perhaps even fantasies - about the way things work. What the point of all this is I will leave for another post.
*http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Final_girl
The "final girl" is a concept developed by Carol Clover in her Men, Women, and Chain Saws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film (1992, Princeton: Princeton University Press). The basic idea is that the virtuous, chaste girl survives, while her debauched compatriots get murdered. These days, however, it is usually less easy to determine who the final girl is in advance - the first Hostel movie in particular is a good example of this, in which the chaste character is the first to be killed, and the debauched one survives.
The Hitcher
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0091209/
directed by Robert Harmon
1986
The Hitcher is the story of a young man driving a car across the country. He picks up a hitchhiker, who turns out to be a mass murderer. John Ryder (the hitcher) holds a knife to Jim Halsey's (the kid's) throat, and tells him to say "I want to die." Jim eventually throws John out of the car, exclaiming "I don't want to die!" Later, John kills several police officers, and then proceeds to frame Jim for the crimes. Eventually, after much inducement, Jim kills John in a climactic showdown.
All the Boys Love Mandy Lane
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0490076/
directed by Jonathan Levine
2006
In this movie, a group of teenagers (including the titular Mandy Lane, who is so gorgeous and pure that everybody, male and female, lusts after her intensely) travels to a secluded ranch for a Bacchanalian weekend. They proceed to get murdered, one by one, until it is revealed that the high school outcast Emmet (and Mandy's apparently former friend) is killing them. In the movie's final moments, it is revealed that this has all been planned by Emmet and Mandy - and then Mandy kills Emmet.
Like I said, horror movies are about skepticism - about many things. I could go on nearly endlessly with examples, but these two movies provide a lot of material to work with. So:
The first trope is the innocuous killer - the fact that the killer's been one of the apparent victims all along. The idea here is that we really don't know very much about other people. Anyone could turn out to be holding a terrible grudge for which they desire to exact horrific revenge. They could be very motivated liars. (Screamers and The Thing are probably the two movies that take up this trope most centrally).
One series of tropes involves the cops getting killed, or a father getting killed, or the invasion of one's home or bedroom. The basic theme here is that traditional sources of authority fail in dire circumstances. Normally, once the cops arrive, we all know that everything's fine; affairs are out of our hands and in more competent ones. In the world of horror, there is no such authority - though we may have thought that such sources existed, we were wrong. (Another very clear example of this trope is Jeepers Creepers).
Yet another trope I'll call the "screaming blonde" trope, because that is the most well-known example. Sure, this person looks like they're pretty together, but when the shit goes down all they can think to do is run around (often in an amusingly awkward fashion) and scream (and get killed). They panic or get terrified or irrational and in general do things which guarantee their demise. Consider Nash from The Hitcher - although she seems to have it together, she can't keep it together; she cracks, calls her father, and gives away her and Jim's location to John, resulting in her gruesome death.
The last trope is the thought that we don't really know ourselves either, until we're really pushed. Jim, after all, starts The Hitcher cast in the screaming blonde mold - he shakes and quivers and is terrified of John. But in the critical moment, he pulls it together and figures out how to escape (this happens repeatedly). The point here is that it is usually difficult to distinguish the screaming blonde from the final girl* at first glance. Only when the shit goes down do we find out about ourselves whether we have what it takes to survive, or not.
The basic idea of all of these, and of skepticism in horror films, is that we know much less about the world, about other people, and about ourselves than we might think. We are subject to illusions - perhaps even fantasies - about the way things work. What the point of all this is I will leave for another post.
*http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Final_girl
The "final girl" is a concept developed by Carol Clover in her Men, Women, and Chain Saws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film (1992, Princeton: Princeton University Press). The basic idea is that the virtuous, chaste girl survives, while her debauched compatriots get murdered. These days, however, it is usually less easy to determine who the final girl is in advance - the first Hostel movie in particular is a good example of this, in which the chaste character is the first to be killed, and the debauched one survives.
Friday, December 12, 2008
more game theory and bubbles
http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/print/200812/financial-bubbles
"Pop Psychology"
by Virginia Postrel
December 2008
The Atlantic
More on the subject of a previous post. The article discusses lab research into the behavior of markets where there is absolutely no uncertainty about the risks and returns on certain securities: in other words, where the fundamental worth is exactly known by everyone. And yet bubbles still happen. This is because, the author states, each person doesn't know that everyone knows that everyone is rational. The very possibility of irrational actors, even if there aren't any, can result in bubbles (remember your Hobbes!). The author writes:
"Based on future dividends, you know for sure that the security’s current value is, say, $3.12. But—here’s the wrinkle—you don’t know that I’m as savvy as you are. Maybe I’m confused. Even if I’m not, you don’t know whether I know that you know it’s worth $3.12. Besides, as long as a clueless greater fool who might pay $3.50 is out there, we smart people may decide to pay $3.25 in the hope of making a profit."
And once I am willing to pay 3.25, that starts to drive the price upwards - creating all the more reason to buy the items at prices above their fundamental worth - which drives prices up further.
Another interesting aspect of the article is that it argues that there are two characteristic investment strategies: speculation and momentum. Speculators rush in at the beginning and buy as much as they can. Then they get out during the bubble. Momentum investors (so-called because they follow the market's momentum), on the other hand, start off rational: they know the fundamental value, and aren't willing to pay too much for it. But then the market starts to go up, and they realize that it's reasonable to start buying (unfortunately, prices have already risen, so they buy less than speculators). And, of course, eventually the speculators get out and the momentum buyers run out of cash to drive further price increases - and the market crashes. And momentum buyers all try to sell! And of course they get screwed and the speculators make a killing (an $80 difference).
What is interesting about this is that the momentum strategy looks like a reasonable, rational course to pursue. And the speculation strategy looks weird - buying the items for more than they're clearly worth, then selling them while their prices are still increasing. But the speculators have it right! (At least in this instance).
"Pop Psychology"
by Virginia Postrel
December 2008
The Atlantic
More on the subject of a previous post. The article discusses lab research into the behavior of markets where there is absolutely no uncertainty about the risks and returns on certain securities: in other words, where the fundamental worth is exactly known by everyone. And yet bubbles still happen. This is because, the author states, each person doesn't know that everyone knows that everyone is rational. The very possibility of irrational actors, even if there aren't any, can result in bubbles (remember your Hobbes!). The author writes:
"Based on future dividends, you know for sure that the security’s current value is, say, $3.12. But—here’s the wrinkle—you don’t know that I’m as savvy as you are. Maybe I’m confused. Even if I’m not, you don’t know whether I know that you know it’s worth $3.12. Besides, as long as a clueless greater fool who might pay $3.50 is out there, we smart people may decide to pay $3.25 in the hope of making a profit."
And once I am willing to pay 3.25, that starts to drive the price upwards - creating all the more reason to buy the items at prices above their fundamental worth - which drives prices up further.
Another interesting aspect of the article is that it argues that there are two characteristic investment strategies: speculation and momentum. Speculators rush in at the beginning and buy as much as they can. Then they get out during the bubble. Momentum investors (so-called because they follow the market's momentum), on the other hand, start off rational: they know the fundamental value, and aren't willing to pay too much for it. But then the market starts to go up, and they realize that it's reasonable to start buying (unfortunately, prices have already risen, so they buy less than speculators). And, of course, eventually the speculators get out and the momentum buyers run out of cash to drive further price increases - and the market crashes. And momentum buyers all try to sell! And of course they get screwed and the speculators make a killing (an $80 difference).
What is interesting about this is that the momentum strategy looks like a reasonable, rational course to pursue. And the speculation strategy looks weird - buying the items for more than they're clearly worth, then selling them while their prices are still increasing. But the speculators have it right! (At least in this instance).
Thursday, December 11, 2008
a game-theoretic analysis of the economic crisis
http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200812/blodget-wall-street
"Why Wall Street Always Blows It"
by Henry Blodget
December 2008
The Atlantic
Blodget discusses the causes of the economic crisis. I'm going to pull out three factors which he doesn't really focus on.
"Having already learned the most obvious lesson about bubbles, which is that you don’t want to get out too late, I now discovered something nearly as obvious: you don’t want to get out too early."
"But the future is always uncertain—and amid uncertainty, all sorts of faith-based theories can flourish, even on Wall Street."
"Now Wall Street firms are primarily owned not by partners with personal capital at risk but by demanding institutional shareholders examining short-term results."
The first quote indicates that what we have here is a problem very similar to the Prisoner's Dilemma. People have two options: invest (e.g. take out a loan and buy a sweet house) or save (e.g. stick with your current house and mortgage). The way to maximize profit is to invest right up until the market crash (e.g. the ratio of investors to savers falls below a certain tipping point), and then shift to a saving strategy.
The second quote introduces the essential element of uncertainty. As in the Prisoner's Dilemma, if everyone knew exactly when the tipping point would be reached (the analagous case is knowing the exact number of iterations of the Dilemma you and your partner will face), then the rational thing to do would be to switch to saving immediately, precipitating an immediate market crash. Uncertainty makes it rational to continue to invest.
The last aspect, closely related to uncertainty, is that of timeframe. The longer one's planning timeframe, the greater the likelihood of a market crash - sure, this bubble probably won't burst in the next year, but in the next decade it's almost inevitable. Uncertainty is created by shorter timeframes. (In addition, one could talk about one's inductive timeframe - the distance into the past one looks to understand the present. Look only a few years and all you see are rising prices; look back decades and you see a business cycle).
"Why Wall Street Always Blows It"
by Henry Blodget
December 2008
The Atlantic
Blodget discusses the causes of the economic crisis. I'm going to pull out three factors which he doesn't really focus on.
"Having already learned the most obvious lesson about bubbles, which is that you don’t want to get out too late, I now discovered something nearly as obvious: you don’t want to get out too early."
"But the future is always uncertain—and amid uncertainty, all sorts of faith-based theories can flourish, even on Wall Street."
"Now Wall Street firms are primarily owned not by partners with personal capital at risk but by demanding institutional shareholders examining short-term results."
The first quote indicates that what we have here is a problem very similar to the Prisoner's Dilemma. People have two options: invest (e.g. take out a loan and buy a sweet house) or save (e.g. stick with your current house and mortgage). The way to maximize profit is to invest right up until the market crash (e.g. the ratio of investors to savers falls below a certain tipping point), and then shift to a saving strategy.
The second quote introduces the essential element of uncertainty. As in the Prisoner's Dilemma, if everyone knew exactly when the tipping point would be reached (the analagous case is knowing the exact number of iterations of the Dilemma you and your partner will face), then the rational thing to do would be to switch to saving immediately, precipitating an immediate market crash. Uncertainty makes it rational to continue to invest.
The last aspect, closely related to uncertainty, is that of timeframe. The longer one's planning timeframe, the greater the likelihood of a market crash - sure, this bubble probably won't burst in the next year, but in the next decade it's almost inevitable. Uncertainty is created by shorter timeframes. (In addition, one could talk about one's inductive timeframe - the distance into the past one looks to understand the present. Look only a few years and all you see are rising prices; look back decades and you see a business cycle).
more stuff on virtual economies / societies
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corrupted_Blood
http://kol.coldfront.net/thekolwiki/index.php/Black_Sunday
The first article discusses the accidental release of a deadly plague into World of Warcraft, which rapidly wiped out whole cities, leading many players to avoid populated areas and groups of players. (An accidentally released plague!!!). Eventually, Blizzard fixed the problem by cutting the plague off at the source - the boss that infected players was changed to cast a different spell.
The second article discusses a sudden market failure in the game Kingdom of Loathing. Essentially, an game glitch dumped trillions of units of currency into the game; a simultaneous glitch allowed players to duplicate all their items easily. The basic equivalent in the real world would be everyobdy finding out that they could have as much money and as many things as they wanted. This crashed the market. What is interesting is the strategy used to combat these events: rather than simply resetting things to an earlier, backed-up state, the game creator found ways to suck currency out of the economy - basically by inventing useless shit to buy at gigantic prices (also some useful stuff was sold).
These two examples illustate contrasting approaches to sudden failures. Blizzard essentially used "the hand of God" - they reached in and removed the plague from the game. The makers of KoL, on the other hand, used (for the most part) in-narrative devices. They worked within the rules of the game in order to stabilize the economy.
Consider the possibility that governments could also try for the hand-of-God approach to their economies. The United States could abolish the dollar, if it wanted, and issue ten thousand "new dollars" to every citizen of the United States. Consider the market adjustments and fluctuations that would result in!
Of course, we could hardly stop other nations from trading in USD's. And perhaps individuals could still negotiate to use the old currency. What is interesting is that the same problem could occur in a virtual economy - so long as people had records of their finances, and were willing to set up an economy parallel to the "official" one.
http://kol.coldfront.net/thekolwiki/index.php/Black_Sunday
The first article discusses the accidental release of a deadly plague into World of Warcraft, which rapidly wiped out whole cities, leading many players to avoid populated areas and groups of players. (An accidentally released plague!!!). Eventually, Blizzard fixed the problem by cutting the plague off at the source - the boss that infected players was changed to cast a different spell.
The second article discusses a sudden market failure in the game Kingdom of Loathing. Essentially, an game glitch dumped trillions of units of currency into the game; a simultaneous glitch allowed players to duplicate all their items easily. The basic equivalent in the real world would be everyobdy finding out that they could have as much money and as many things as they wanted. This crashed the market. What is interesting is the strategy used to combat these events: rather than simply resetting things to an earlier, backed-up state, the game creator found ways to suck currency out of the economy - basically by inventing useless shit to buy at gigantic prices (also some useful stuff was sold).
These two examples illustate contrasting approaches to sudden failures. Blizzard essentially used "the hand of God" - they reached in and removed the plague from the game. The makers of KoL, on the other hand, used (for the most part) in-narrative devices. They worked within the rules of the game in order to stabilize the economy.
Consider the possibility that governments could also try for the hand-of-God approach to their economies. The United States could abolish the dollar, if it wanted, and issue ten thousand "new dollars" to every citizen of the United States. Consider the market adjustments and fluctuations that would result in!
Of course, we could hardly stop other nations from trading in USD's. And perhaps individuals could still negotiate to use the old currency. What is interesting is that the same problem could occur in a virtual economy - so long as people had records of their finances, and were willing to set up an economy parallel to the "official" one.
two individuals; acts and ends
Once upon a time, someone remarked to me that "It's ok to not be the best, but it's not ok to not want to be the best." This statement puzzled me. I wanted to understand what the difference would be, in terms of actions undertaken, between such an individual and one who held simply that "It's not ok to not be the best." Now, this investigation is a little detached from understanding the actual individual involved. Requiring that the difference appear in terms of actions undertaken may be doing violence to the claims in terms of what it is ok to be. Nevertheless, this is the spin I intend to give the question.
The answer, I think, appears when we look at cases where the individuals can't be the best - where they have no viable route towards being the best. I want to say that, in such a case, the second individual's principles no longer provide any guidance. If there are no means to our ends, then those ends cannot guide our actions. On the other hand, I think the first individual will, as it were, keep on keeping on. Sure, first place appears to be out of reach, but let's say that competition for second is still open. Which more closely instantiates the goal of trying to be the best: gunning for second, or throwing in the towel?
The point of this discussion is to illustate a broader point about the sorts of ends we can set for ourselves. The second individual has what I want to call a singular end. There is only one state of affairs which is desirable (being the best). And as it happens, the world can thwart one's pursuit of that end: circumstances might occur such that there is no longer any way from here to there, no means to that end. You can't even pursue that end anymore. On the other hand, one might set oneself what I'll call a general end. The point of a general end is that it can be instantiated in a number of states of affairs. The world can't thwart one's pursuit of a general end; sure, circumstances might change, but this just prompts the question: which of the options open to me best insantiates that end / is the best means to the best available instantiation of that end? (I don't at present know if ends are clearly delineated into two categories, singular and general, or if we should rather say that some ends are more general than others (i.e. there is a continuum - are there endpoints?)).
I started the discussion by stipulating that I wanted to look at this issue in terms of actions undertaken. This is because, I think, the business of human life is action. Despite what one might think, there really isn't anything to do but take action; there really isn't any question but "What shall I do next?" And, as I hope the above example makes clear, I think that general ends are better suited to answering that question than singular ones. We can't overcome a certain general skepticism about the world; we can't be sure that we won't be confronted with situations totally unexpected. And if we don't have our values in order, then things may go badly for us. Put another way: how contingent on the world's good behavior do we want the state of our souls to be? Do we want faultlines revealed in moments of crisis, or do we want to figure out how to live well now?
(This topic actually has a lot to do with the stuff regarding Diamond mentioned previously, I think. It has to do with coming to grips with the fact that we are, in certain ways, finite creatures.)
The answer, I think, appears when we look at cases where the individuals can't be the best - where they have no viable route towards being the best. I want to say that, in such a case, the second individual's principles no longer provide any guidance. If there are no means to our ends, then those ends cannot guide our actions. On the other hand, I think the first individual will, as it were, keep on keeping on. Sure, first place appears to be out of reach, but let's say that competition for second is still open. Which more closely instantiates the goal of trying to be the best: gunning for second, or throwing in the towel?
The point of this discussion is to illustate a broader point about the sorts of ends we can set for ourselves. The second individual has what I want to call a singular end. There is only one state of affairs which is desirable (being the best). And as it happens, the world can thwart one's pursuit of that end: circumstances might occur such that there is no longer any way from here to there, no means to that end. You can't even pursue that end anymore. On the other hand, one might set oneself what I'll call a general end. The point of a general end is that it can be instantiated in a number of states of affairs. The world can't thwart one's pursuit of a general end; sure, circumstances might change, but this just prompts the question: which of the options open to me best insantiates that end / is the best means to the best available instantiation of that end? (I don't at present know if ends are clearly delineated into two categories, singular and general, or if we should rather say that some ends are more general than others (i.e. there is a continuum - are there endpoints?)).
I started the discussion by stipulating that I wanted to look at this issue in terms of actions undertaken. This is because, I think, the business of human life is action. Despite what one might think, there really isn't anything to do but take action; there really isn't any question but "What shall I do next?" And, as I hope the above example makes clear, I think that general ends are better suited to answering that question than singular ones. We can't overcome a certain general skepticism about the world; we can't be sure that we won't be confronted with situations totally unexpected. And if we don't have our values in order, then things may go badly for us. Put another way: how contingent on the world's good behavior do we want the state of our souls to be? Do we want faultlines revealed in moments of crisis, or do we want to figure out how to live well now?
(This topic actually has a lot to do with the stuff regarding Diamond mentioned previously, I think. It has to do with coming to grips with the fact that we are, in certain ways, finite creatures.)
nature and nurture
"Ethics, Imagination, and the Method of Wittgenstein's Tractatus"
by Cora Diamond
in The New Wittgenstein
edited by Alice Crary and Rupert Reed
London: Routledge
2000
I've mentioned a couple of times that I'm not terribly interested in the nature vs. nurture debate. This is because I think it actually occludes the issue - people don't talk about what they mean to be talking about. This is because of the belief that what is produced by nature is immutable, and what is produced by nurture is within our control. And if something is immutable, it is off the table, in a way - there's no point in trying to change it, or having a value system that says it should be changed. It would also be unrealistic as a policy matter to try and change things.
Unfortunately this is false. That which is a result of nature, as well as that which is a result of nurture, is mutable. We can change it, if we know how. (Consider that it could be rather hard to figure out how to change something by raising people differently - perhaps almost as hard as figuring out how to change it by other means).
The real issue is different. The real questions we should be asking: what is in our reach, and in what sense? What sort of necessity is in play here - practical, physical, logical? What should we be trying to change?
To get back to Diamond: in her article, she discusses an idea of evil as an attitude towards the world that is something like frustration that it does not simply bend to one's whims. I would put the point rather differently: there are a lot of things that we're not, and never will be, in a position to change - like what I ate for lunch yesterday, or whether energy is conserved in a closed system. Getting frustrated by these things - indeed, getting frustrated by the very idea of factual necessities - is a problem. It means that you haven't really taken to heart the point that the business of human life is action. Part of that means coming to grips with being a finite creature. Part of it means getting a clear view of what can be changed - what it is in one's power to change - and deciding what to do.
by Cora Diamond
in The New Wittgenstein
edited by Alice Crary and Rupert Reed
London: Routledge
2000
I've mentioned a couple of times that I'm not terribly interested in the nature vs. nurture debate. This is because I think it actually occludes the issue - people don't talk about what they mean to be talking about. This is because of the belief that what is produced by nature is immutable, and what is produced by nurture is within our control. And if something is immutable, it is off the table, in a way - there's no point in trying to change it, or having a value system that says it should be changed. It would also be unrealistic as a policy matter to try and change things.
Unfortunately this is false. That which is a result of nature, as well as that which is a result of nurture, is mutable. We can change it, if we know how. (Consider that it could be rather hard to figure out how to change something by raising people differently - perhaps almost as hard as figuring out how to change it by other means).
The real issue is different. The real questions we should be asking: what is in our reach, and in what sense? What sort of necessity is in play here - practical, physical, logical? What should we be trying to change?
To get back to Diamond: in her article, she discusses an idea of evil as an attitude towards the world that is something like frustration that it does not simply bend to one's whims. I would put the point rather differently: there are a lot of things that we're not, and never will be, in a position to change - like what I ate for lunch yesterday, or whether energy is conserved in a closed system. Getting frustrated by these things - indeed, getting frustrated by the very idea of factual necessities - is a problem. It means that you haven't really taken to heart the point that the business of human life is action. Part of that means coming to grips with being a finite creature. Part of it means getting a clear view of what can be changed - what it is in one's power to change - and deciding what to do.
Wednesday, December 10, 2008
more modern alchemy
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/20/science/20mammoth.html
"Regenerating a Mammoth for $10 Million"
by Nicholas Wade
November 19, 2008
The New York Times
"Scientists are talking for the first time about the old idea of resurrecting extinct species as if this staple of science fiction is a realistic possibility, saying that a living mammoth could perhaps be regenerated for as little as $10 million."
More evidence for a claim about the progress of science (it's incredible) originally made here:
http://endlessrecombination.blogspot.com/2008/12/transhumanism.html
"Regenerating a Mammoth for $10 Million"
by Nicholas Wade
November 19, 2008
The New York Times
"Scientists are talking for the first time about the old idea of resurrecting extinct species as if this staple of science fiction is a realistic possibility, saying that a living mammoth could perhaps be regenerated for as little as $10 million."
More evidence for a claim about the progress of science (it's incredible) originally made here:
http://endlessrecombination.blogspot.com/2008/12/transhumanism.html
applied transhumanism
http://judson.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/09/16/a-commitment-pill/
"A Commitment Pill?"
by Olivia Judson
September 16, 2008
The New York Times
"In humans, the vasopressin receptor 1a gene comes in a number of forms. In the Swedish study, men who had two copies of one particular form of the gene — the variant known as RS3 334 — were less likely to be married, and more likely to report difficulties in their relationships, than other men. Their partners were also more likely to report relationship difficulties.
An experiment suggests itself. It would be fascinating to see whether inserting a “regular” vasopressin receptor gene into the brains of men who have two copies of the “difficulties” variant would ameliorate their problems, insofar as they have them. It would be fascinating to test the extent to which different forms of a single gene affect a man’s behavior."
One of many dissatisfied commenters remarks:
"A pill to promote male bonding behavior? A chemical solution to an ancient psycho-social conundrum? Please."
I mean, if anyone's got a better solution, now's the time.
On the other hand, it is worth pointing out that one could put this pill to a lot of questionable uses. It could be deployed as social policy: a way of ensuring that people not only toed a certain line, but wanted to toe the line. And that's more than a little scary. (But hey, the Party managed it without any fancy chemical tools). Equally, it could find surreptitious use in individual relationships.
What I think is wrong with these uses - what makes them the wrong application - is that they are not based on the choices and values of the individual. In other words, it would be reasonable of me, if I really believed in being very monagamous, and if I were male, and if I had reason to suspect that I was at risk of straying, to apply this method to myself (if you know your Parfit, this is meant to recall the Russian Nobleman). One interesting thought - maybe I'm just in love with the idea of monogamy? Maybe my deliberations have gone wrong already? This is why I say that scientific advances alone won't make us better people. This is another way of saying that the same things that can be wrong with using such a tool on another person could be wrong with using it on oneself.
"A Commitment Pill?"
by Olivia Judson
September 16, 2008
The New York Times
"In humans, the vasopressin receptor 1a gene comes in a number of forms. In the Swedish study, men who had two copies of one particular form of the gene — the variant known as RS3 334 — were less likely to be married, and more likely to report difficulties in their relationships, than other men. Their partners were also more likely to report relationship difficulties.
An experiment suggests itself. It would be fascinating to see whether inserting a “regular” vasopressin receptor gene into the brains of men who have two copies of the “difficulties” variant would ameliorate their problems, insofar as they have them. It would be fascinating to test the extent to which different forms of a single gene affect a man’s behavior."
One of many dissatisfied commenters remarks:
"A pill to promote male bonding behavior? A chemical solution to an ancient psycho-social conundrum? Please."
I mean, if anyone's got a better solution, now's the time.
On the other hand, it is worth pointing out that one could put this pill to a lot of questionable uses. It could be deployed as social policy: a way of ensuring that people not only toed a certain line, but wanted to toe the line. And that's more than a little scary. (But hey, the Party managed it without any fancy chemical tools). Equally, it could find surreptitious use in individual relationships.
What I think is wrong with these uses - what makes them the wrong application - is that they are not based on the choices and values of the individual. In other words, it would be reasonable of me, if I really believed in being very monagamous, and if I were male, and if I had reason to suspect that I was at risk of straying, to apply this method to myself (if you know your Parfit, this is meant to recall the Russian Nobleman). One interesting thought - maybe I'm just in love with the idea of monogamy? Maybe my deliberations have gone wrong already? This is why I say that scientific advances alone won't make us better people. This is another way of saying that the same things that can be wrong with using such a tool on another person could be wrong with using it on oneself.
Tuesday, December 9, 2008
science and the supernatural
It is sometimes remarked that science by its nature rules out consideration of supernatural causes. (This principle is often invoked against bullshit, like intelligent design). But frankly, if this is true, it is true in a stranger sense than first appears.
Consider Hume's argument against miracles. Essentially, Hume argues that there can't be such a thing as a miracle, because miracles are by definition things which contradict the laws of nature. But if we ever see something which appears to contradict those laws - indeed if something ever does happen which contradicts those laws - then this would just mean that we were wrong about what the laws of nature were. Whatever the true laws of nature are, they do not admit of exceptions - that's the whole point.
To apply this to the question of supernatural causation: if there were to be something like a "supernatural cause," that would mean that this supernatural entity had entered into the causal order of things. And therefore it would be as subject to scientific investigation as any other element of the causal order. (And indeed, this all would make us wonder: is it really a supernatural cause? It is in this sense that the original statement might be true.)
Consider again Judson's claim (http://endlessrecombination.blogspot.com/2008/12/science.html):
"In schools, science is often taught as a body of knowledge — a set of facts and equations. But all that is just a consequence of scientific activity. Science itself is something else, something both more profound and less tangible. It is an attitude, a stance towards measuring, evaluating and describing the world that is based on skepticism, investigation and evidence."
In other words: the reason that intelligent design is unscientific is not that it is ruled out by definition; rather it is unscientific because there is no evidence for it.
Consider Hume's argument against miracles. Essentially, Hume argues that there can't be such a thing as a miracle, because miracles are by definition things which contradict the laws of nature. But if we ever see something which appears to contradict those laws - indeed if something ever does happen which contradicts those laws - then this would just mean that we were wrong about what the laws of nature were. Whatever the true laws of nature are, they do not admit of exceptions - that's the whole point.
To apply this to the question of supernatural causation: if there were to be something like a "supernatural cause," that would mean that this supernatural entity had entered into the causal order of things. And therefore it would be as subject to scientific investigation as any other element of the causal order. (And indeed, this all would make us wonder: is it really a supernatural cause? It is in this sense that the original statement might be true.)
Consider again Judson's claim (http://endlessrecombination.blogspot.com/2008/12/science.html):
"In schools, science is often taught as a body of knowledge — a set of facts and equations. But all that is just a consequence of scientific activity. Science itself is something else, something both more profound and less tangible. It is an attitude, a stance towards measuring, evaluating and describing the world that is based on skepticism, investigation and evidence."
In other words: the reason that intelligent design is unscientific is not that it is ruled out by definition; rather it is unscientific because there is no evidence for it.
you've got to give them hope
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1013753/
"Milk"
Directed by Gus Van Sant
2008
As I was leaving, I overheard some other theatergoers discussing the issue of gay marriage. Oddly enough, that subject never crossed my mind while watching "Milk" - which is a great movie, by the way. I was thinking of "Mr. Smith Goes To Washington." What interested me about "Milk" is its depictions of good and evil.
Harvey Milk, as the movie opens, is a closeted insurance agent celebrating his 40th birthday. And he says, "I've forty years old and I've done nothing with my life that I'm proud of." And then he comes out of the closet, moves to San Diego, and becomes a leader in the nascent gay community there. He runs for elected office several times and loses repeatedly. But he perseveres, and is elected, and passes gay rights legislation, and prevents other anti-gay legislation (Proposition 6) from being passed. Milk's heroism is in perseverance and hope: he believes in the promise of America, and he does his level best to see it fulfilled - despite the fact that he's a completely ordinary man.
Dan White, on the other hand, seems to be a small man. His sort of evil is not the implacable evil of another Josh Brolin movie, "No Country For Old Men." Rather, it's a tremendously banal, small, awful evil. It's the sort of evil that gets into White and slowly tears him apart (two years after being released from his four-year term, he committed suicide). He's the sort of villain who manages to do truly awful things without appearing any more fearsome than a cockroach.
"Milk"
Directed by Gus Van Sant
2008
As I was leaving, I overheard some other theatergoers discussing the issue of gay marriage. Oddly enough, that subject never crossed my mind while watching "Milk" - which is a great movie, by the way. I was thinking of "Mr. Smith Goes To Washington." What interested me about "Milk" is its depictions of good and evil.
Harvey Milk, as the movie opens, is a closeted insurance agent celebrating his 40th birthday. And he says, "I've forty years old and I've done nothing with my life that I'm proud of." And then he comes out of the closet, moves to San Diego, and becomes a leader in the nascent gay community there. He runs for elected office several times and loses repeatedly. But he perseveres, and is elected, and passes gay rights legislation, and prevents other anti-gay legislation (Proposition 6) from being passed. Milk's heroism is in perseverance and hope: he believes in the promise of America, and he does his level best to see it fulfilled - despite the fact that he's a completely ordinary man.
Dan White, on the other hand, seems to be a small man. His sort of evil is not the implacable evil of another Josh Brolin movie, "No Country For Old Men." Rather, it's a tremendously banal, small, awful evil. It's the sort of evil that gets into White and slowly tears him apart (two years after being released from his four-year term, he committed suicide). He's the sort of villain who manages to do truly awful things without appearing any more fearsome than a cockroach.
Monday, December 8, 2008
transhumanism
http://dresdencodak.com/cartoons/dc_034.htm
"Rule 110"
by Aaron Diaz
February 2, 2007
Dresden Codak
The storyline is about the singularity and transhumanism and also stuff. In this installment, the protagonist remarks "To be more than human is to be human." I lead with this remark because I have, at times, evinced a pro-attitude towards science, and its ability to transform the way we live, that may at times seem unfounded. In defense of that, let me tell a story: once upon a time, alchemists spent quite a bit of time trying to figure out how to turn lead into gold. These days, they are roundly mocked for their efforts - a professor of mine once remarked that building a computer that can really do a good job with English semantics is as realistic as turning lead into gold. The funny thing is, we can turn lead into gold. We did it more than twenty-five years ago.
http://chemistry.about.com/cs/generalchemistry/a/aa050601a.htm
"Turning Lead Into Gold"
by Anne Marie Helmenstine
About.com
Ok, that said: what exactly are we going to do with all this science? To get back to Dresden Codak:
http://dresdencodak.com/cartoons/dc_058.html
"The End"
October 22, 2008
by Aaron Diaz
Dresden Codak
In this final installment, our heroine is disappointed when the fellow from the first comic, about whom she had such high hopes, can't think of any better way to change people than to make them better at sports. To get closer to the things I'm interested in, let's take a look at Frankfurt.
Taking Ourselves Seriously & Getting It Right
by Harry Frankfurt
page 11
2006
Stanford: Stanford University Press
"However, the mere fact that a person has a desire does not give him a reason. What it gives him is a problem. He has the problem of whether to identify with the desire and this validate it as eligible for satisfaction, or whether to dissociate himself from it, treat it as categorically unacceptable, and try to suppress it or rid himself of it entirely. If he identifies with the desire, he acknowledges that satisfying it is to be assigned some position - however inferior - in the order of his preferences and priorities. If he externalizes the desire, he determines to give it no position in that order."
Unfortunately, sometimes our desires are insistent. Sometimes they make their way into the order of our preferences and priorities, despite our wishes; maybe we even become used to this fact and process. Sometimes we're not successful at ridding ourselves of the things we'd like to be rid of. On a level perhaps more insidious than Frankfurt discusses, we may find ourselves consistently overlooking certain possibilities for action; we may find ourselves consistently subject to certain cognitive biases. And so forth.
In other words: one of the things we can do with new tools is change the world. This is an important goal. But no matter how many tools we have, we'll never cease being finite creatures. In other words, new tools aren't a solution to that problem - though they may be solutions to more particular problems (e.g. smallpox). On the other hand, one of the other things we can do with new tools is change ourselves. Our desires and perceptions enter into our deliberations in a way that is different from the way that problems in the world do. It is problems with the former that are most worth being solved by transhumanism. (Put another way, one thing that new tools can do, though again, not merely by themselves, is help us have well-ordered souls).
Now, I don't mean to suggest that science alone will solve all these problems. That is, if we can't even see what the problem is in the first place, all the science in the world won't do a thing for us (except possibly accidentally). But there are situations in which we know what the problem is, more or less; we just don't know how to fix the damn thing.
"Rule 110"
by Aaron Diaz
February 2, 2007
Dresden Codak
The storyline is about the singularity and transhumanism and also stuff. In this installment, the protagonist remarks "To be more than human is to be human." I lead with this remark because I have, at times, evinced a pro-attitude towards science, and its ability to transform the way we live, that may at times seem unfounded. In defense of that, let me tell a story: once upon a time, alchemists spent quite a bit of time trying to figure out how to turn lead into gold. These days, they are roundly mocked for their efforts - a professor of mine once remarked that building a computer that can really do a good job with English semantics is as realistic as turning lead into gold. The funny thing is, we can turn lead into gold. We did it more than twenty-five years ago.
http://chemistry.about.com/cs/generalchemistry/a/aa050601a.htm
"Turning Lead Into Gold"
by Anne Marie Helmenstine
About.com
Ok, that said: what exactly are we going to do with all this science? To get back to Dresden Codak:
http://dresdencodak.com/cartoons/dc_058.html
"The End"
October 22, 2008
by Aaron Diaz
Dresden Codak
In this final installment, our heroine is disappointed when the fellow from the first comic, about whom she had such high hopes, can't think of any better way to change people than to make them better at sports. To get closer to the things I'm interested in, let's take a look at Frankfurt.
Taking Ourselves Seriously & Getting It Right
by Harry Frankfurt
page 11
2006
Stanford: Stanford University Press
"However, the mere fact that a person has a desire does not give him a reason. What it gives him is a problem. He has the problem of whether to identify with the desire and this validate it as eligible for satisfaction, or whether to dissociate himself from it, treat it as categorically unacceptable, and try to suppress it or rid himself of it entirely. If he identifies with the desire, he acknowledges that satisfying it is to be assigned some position - however inferior - in the order of his preferences and priorities. If he externalizes the desire, he determines to give it no position in that order."
Unfortunately, sometimes our desires are insistent. Sometimes they make their way into the order of our preferences and priorities, despite our wishes; maybe we even become used to this fact and process. Sometimes we're not successful at ridding ourselves of the things we'd like to be rid of. On a level perhaps more insidious than Frankfurt discusses, we may find ourselves consistently overlooking certain possibilities for action; we may find ourselves consistently subject to certain cognitive biases. And so forth.
In other words: one of the things we can do with new tools is change the world. This is an important goal. But no matter how many tools we have, we'll never cease being finite creatures. In other words, new tools aren't a solution to that problem - though they may be solutions to more particular problems (e.g. smallpox). On the other hand, one of the other things we can do with new tools is change ourselves. Our desires and perceptions enter into our deliberations in a way that is different from the way that problems in the world do. It is problems with the former that are most worth being solved by transhumanism. (Put another way, one thing that new tools can do, though again, not merely by themselves, is help us have well-ordered souls).
Now, I don't mean to suggest that science alone will solve all these problems. That is, if we can't even see what the problem is in the first place, all the science in the world won't do a thing for us (except possibly accidentally). But there are situations in which we know what the problem is, more or less; we just don't know how to fix the damn thing.
men and women
More on the most recent Flanagan article I discussed:
Flanagan is particularly concerned with the feminine perspective on a certain practice: non-romantic unreciprocated teen female-to-male oral sex. She feels that it ignores the emotional needs of young women. Their ideal relationship to sex would find it
"...in the middle of a committed relationship, with the boy treating the girl as if she were a fragile piece of glass, and their love so powerful that it threatened to blot them both out..."
Instead, they are treated as disposable, interchangeable means to mere physical pleasure, which is not good.
It is interesting that Flanagan notes that the conception of the practice found in the popular culture requires more or less impossible things of the young men involved - such as the capacity to receive five or seven blow jobs in a row. She doesn't take this very far, however; as I previously noted, she's primarily concerned with the female perspective.
My complaint is that this practice, if it is bad - if it indeed involves the objectification of women, the promotion of a false image of femininity, the degrading of sexuality, etc - then it is as bad, from a moral perspective, for the men as it is for the women. I don't mean to say that the boys get nothing out of it - which is evidently not the case - but that what they get out of it is bad for them, despite the fact that they enjoy it: it makes them worse people.
I mention this because, if we want to understand what an ideal world would look like - what gender relations in the kallipolis would look like - then we need to understand the totality of what is wrong with the current world. Otherwise, we'll just end up with a reversal of roles, with women being serviced by anonymous men - which will be as bad for all concerned as the original practice.
(You must notice how I've avoided complaining about Flanagan's conception of love again...)
Flanagan is particularly concerned with the feminine perspective on a certain practice: non-romantic unreciprocated teen female-to-male oral sex. She feels that it ignores the emotional needs of young women. Their ideal relationship to sex would find it
"...in the middle of a committed relationship, with the boy treating the girl as if she were a fragile piece of glass, and their love so powerful that it threatened to blot them both out..."
Instead, they are treated as disposable, interchangeable means to mere physical pleasure, which is not good.
It is interesting that Flanagan notes that the conception of the practice found in the popular culture requires more or less impossible things of the young men involved - such as the capacity to receive five or seven blow jobs in a row. She doesn't take this very far, however; as I previously noted, she's primarily concerned with the female perspective.
My complaint is that this practice, if it is bad - if it indeed involves the objectification of women, the promotion of a false image of femininity, the degrading of sexuality, etc - then it is as bad, from a moral perspective, for the men as it is for the women. I don't mean to say that the boys get nothing out of it - which is evidently not the case - but that what they get out of it is bad for them, despite the fact that they enjoy it: it makes them worse people.
I mention this because, if we want to understand what an ideal world would look like - what gender relations in the kallipolis would look like - then we need to understand the totality of what is wrong with the current world. Otherwise, we'll just end up with a reversal of roles, with women being serviced by anonymous men - which will be as bad for all concerned as the original practice.
(You must notice how I've avoided complaining about Flanagan's conception of love again...)
my sort of sympathy
"Internal and External Reasons"
by Bernard Williams
in Moral Luck
pages 101-113
by Bernard Williams
1981
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
In this paper, Williams discusses the notion of a reason for action (though he might equally well have been talking about a reason to believe). An internal reason is a reason such that there is some rational progress from their current set of reasons / beliefs / desires / values / etc to that reason. An external reason need not have any such link. In brief, Williams argues that the notion of an external reason makes no sense, because it is part of the nature of reasons that they are linked to action.
In some ways, I am a rather unsympathetic person: I do not have a lot of sympathy for people considered in the abstract. I tend to be rather unforgiving of failings, moral and otherwise: if someone did something wrong, regardless of their reasons for it, they did something wrong. On the other hand, to follow Williams - in a way - I don't think there's any point in just telling people that, as it were. Just beating on people serves no point, unless one enjoys the feeling of righteous anger. Rather, the right thing to do is to try and show them the error of their ways. And if we want to show them the error of their ways, that means starting from what they believe now - from who they are now - and figuring out how they could come to see the truth - in other words, offering them internal, rather than external, reasons. There's no point in discussing a truth that they could never get to.
(It is also important to note that we are rarely in a position to understand what another can and cannot come to believe, and also that we are rarely in a position of certainty with regard to what is right).
by Bernard Williams
in Moral Luck
pages 101-113
by Bernard Williams
1981
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
In this paper, Williams discusses the notion of a reason for action (though he might equally well have been talking about a reason to believe). An internal reason is a reason such that there is some rational progress from their current set of reasons / beliefs / desires / values / etc to that reason. An external reason need not have any such link. In brief, Williams argues that the notion of an external reason makes no sense, because it is part of the nature of reasons that they are linked to action.
In some ways, I am a rather unsympathetic person: I do not have a lot of sympathy for people considered in the abstract. I tend to be rather unforgiving of failings, moral and otherwise: if someone did something wrong, regardless of their reasons for it, they did something wrong. On the other hand, to follow Williams - in a way - I don't think there's any point in just telling people that, as it were. Just beating on people serves no point, unless one enjoys the feeling of righteous anger. Rather, the right thing to do is to try and show them the error of their ways. And if we want to show them the error of their ways, that means starting from what they believe now - from who they are now - and figuring out how they could come to see the truth - in other words, offering them internal, rather than external, reasons. There's no point in discussing a truth that they could never get to.
(It is also important to note that we are rarely in a position to understand what another can and cannot come to believe, and also that we are rarely in a position of certainty with regard to what is right).
oral sex, action, feminism
http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200601/oral-sex
"Are You There, God? It's Me, Monica"
by Caitlin Flanagan
January / February 2006
The Atlantic
The article discusses the rise of young girls performing unreciprocated oral sex on young boys. Flanagan is not entirely happy about this. She remarks that it is bad that girls engage in sexual acts without any concern for their own pleasure; she is unhappy that they engage in them outside of the context of a romantic relationship.
Putting on my devil's advocate / philosopher's hat, I want to argue that the nature of acts is not written into the world. (I would make a more or less identical complaint about a lot of religious ethics, actually). The basic point is: are we even right to say that this is a sexual act? Flanagan writes,
"Instead we see a group of young girls who have in effect turned away from their own desire altogether and have made of their sexuality something that fulfills all sorts of goals, but not the one paramount to Katherine and her mother: that it be sexually gratifying to themselves."
Let's assume that this is right - that these young girls experience no sexual desire during these acts. (And let's assume that they're freely chosen, i.e. not rapes). Why say that their sexuality is in play at all? (Certainly the boy's sexuality is - one would expect - but that hardly indicates that, from the female perspective, what we have is a sexual act). Or recall Flanagan's earlier comment, regarding Patty Hearst, that she changed the nature of the act (a rape) by changing her attitude towards it (falling in love with her captor). In other words, Flanagan's objection to the practice is generated by combining her own conception of sex with the conception held by these teens - which probably is not the right way to go about things.
But this obviously isn't the whole story. Flanagan writes,
"I am old-fashioned enough to believe that men and boys are not as likely to be wounded, emotionally and spiritually, by early sexual experience, or by sexual experience entered into without romantic commitment, as are women and girls. I think that girls are vulnerable to great damage through the kind of sex in which they are, as individuals, as valueless and unrecognizable as chattel. Society has let its girls down in every possible way. It has refused to assert—or even to acknowledge—that female sexuality is as intricately connected to kindness and trust as it is to gratification and pleasure. It's in the nature of who we are."
In other words, maybe the nature of these actions isn't written into the world, but into our psychologies. We can't help but react to certain physical acts in certain ways. Whether this is true or not is a real question - an important question. But Flagan goes on to assert that this is "in the nature of who we are." Now, I don't mean to assert that we can change this merely by raising our children differently - merely through "nurture." But I will assert without hesitation that it can be changed; that if we don't know how to do it now, we'll know how to do it soon enough. So is this the way that we should deal with each other? Is this the sort of world we want to live in?
(One question which I have ignored is: if it's not because of their sexual desire, why are these girls engaging in these acts? This is another important question, and I doubt that it has a pleasant answer.)
"Are You There, God? It's Me, Monica"
by Caitlin Flanagan
January / February 2006
The Atlantic
The article discusses the rise of young girls performing unreciprocated oral sex on young boys. Flanagan is not entirely happy about this. She remarks that it is bad that girls engage in sexual acts without any concern for their own pleasure; she is unhappy that they engage in them outside of the context of a romantic relationship.
Putting on my devil's advocate / philosopher's hat, I want to argue that the nature of acts is not written into the world. (I would make a more or less identical complaint about a lot of religious ethics, actually). The basic point is: are we even right to say that this is a sexual act? Flanagan writes,
"Instead we see a group of young girls who have in effect turned away from their own desire altogether and have made of their sexuality something that fulfills all sorts of goals, but not the one paramount to Katherine and her mother: that it be sexually gratifying to themselves."
Let's assume that this is right - that these young girls experience no sexual desire during these acts. (And let's assume that they're freely chosen, i.e. not rapes). Why say that their sexuality is in play at all? (Certainly the boy's sexuality is - one would expect - but that hardly indicates that, from the female perspective, what we have is a sexual act). Or recall Flanagan's earlier comment, regarding Patty Hearst, that she changed the nature of the act (a rape) by changing her attitude towards it (falling in love with her captor). In other words, Flanagan's objection to the practice is generated by combining her own conception of sex with the conception held by these teens - which probably is not the right way to go about things.
But this obviously isn't the whole story. Flanagan writes,
"I am old-fashioned enough to believe that men and boys are not as likely to be wounded, emotionally and spiritually, by early sexual experience, or by sexual experience entered into without romantic commitment, as are women and girls. I think that girls are vulnerable to great damage through the kind of sex in which they are, as individuals, as valueless and unrecognizable as chattel. Society has let its girls down in every possible way. It has refused to assert—or even to acknowledge—that female sexuality is as intricately connected to kindness and trust as it is to gratification and pleasure. It's in the nature of who we are."
In other words, maybe the nature of these actions isn't written into the world, but into our psychologies. We can't help but react to certain physical acts in certain ways. Whether this is true or not is a real question - an important question. But Flagan goes on to assert that this is "in the nature of who we are." Now, I don't mean to assert that we can change this merely by raising our children differently - merely through "nurture." But I will assert without hesitation that it can be changed; that if we don't know how to do it now, we'll know how to do it soon enough. So is this the way that we should deal with each other? Is this the sort of world we want to live in?
(One question which I have ignored is: if it's not because of their sexual desire, why are these girls engaging in these acts? This is another important question, and I doubt that it has a pleasant answer.)
hips and guns
http://blog.newsweek.com/blogs/labnotes/archive/2008/12/03/hourglass-figures-we-take-it-all-back.aspx
"Hourglass Figures: We Take It All Back"
by Sharon Begley
December 3, 2008
Newsweek
The article discusses new research into the trope that a .7 waist:hip ratio is evolutionarily and (consequently) aesthetically ideal shape for women. The gist of it is that men only prefer that shape in societies in which women are economically dependent on men. Moreover, hormones of the androgen family (including testosterone) lead to both higher waist:hip ratios, as well as increased stamina, strength, and competitiveness. This perhaps explains the difference in preferences across societies. Frankly, I think this is a nice piece of analysis - it doesn't get bogged down trying to fight a nature vs. nurture style fight. It combines perspectives from biology, evolution, sociology, and economics.
Of course, take this all with a grain of salt:
http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/12/01/the-gun-show-loophole-revisited
"The 'Gun-Show Loophole,' Revisited"
by Catherine RampellDecember 1, 2008
The New York Times
Here, we have an example of a first analysis of whether gun shows result in crime - which may have appeared very convincing and scientific - but which in fact appears to be flawed, once we take a closer look at the facts. But then again, maybe even the new analysis is not final. For example, the new analysis discusses the fact that it is a long time between when most guns are sold and when the are recovered by law enforcement after being used in a crime. But isn't the more important statistic the time between sale and use? Moreover (as the authors of the new analysis are right to point out), it is entirely possible that a more fine-grained analysis, conducted with better data, might result in some correlation or other between gun shows and gun crime. After all, not all gun crimes are the same.
(To return to the first article - the link between economic dependence, testosterone, and competitive fitness is a rather tenuous and speculative one. DIY: How would we go about testing that?)
So consider this: the first article remarks, offhand, that a lot of young women, upon hearing that the .7 ratio was ideal, ran off to check their own measurements. Why would that be? Why is it so important, on a personal (rather than a policy, perhaps) level what people in general find attractive? (In other words, we have to be careful with what we believe, and also with how we respond to the "facts" or facts).
"Hourglass Figures: We Take It All Back"
by Sharon Begley
December 3, 2008
Newsweek
The article discusses new research into the trope that a .7 waist:hip ratio is evolutionarily and (consequently) aesthetically ideal shape for women. The gist of it is that men only prefer that shape in societies in which women are economically dependent on men. Moreover, hormones of the androgen family (including testosterone) lead to both higher waist:hip ratios, as well as increased stamina, strength, and competitiveness. This perhaps explains the difference in preferences across societies. Frankly, I think this is a nice piece of analysis - it doesn't get bogged down trying to fight a nature vs. nurture style fight. It combines perspectives from biology, evolution, sociology, and economics.
Of course, take this all with a grain of salt:
http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/12/01/the-gun-show-loophole-revisited
"The 'Gun-Show Loophole,' Revisited"
by Catherine RampellDecember 1, 2008
The New York Times
Here, we have an example of a first analysis of whether gun shows result in crime - which may have appeared very convincing and scientific - but which in fact appears to be flawed, once we take a closer look at the facts. But then again, maybe even the new analysis is not final. For example, the new analysis discusses the fact that it is a long time between when most guns are sold and when the are recovered by law enforcement after being used in a crime. But isn't the more important statistic the time between sale and use? Moreover (as the authors of the new analysis are right to point out), it is entirely possible that a more fine-grained analysis, conducted with better data, might result in some correlation or other between gun shows and gun crime. After all, not all gun crimes are the same.
(To return to the first article - the link between economic dependence, testosterone, and competitive fitness is a rather tenuous and speculative one. DIY: How would we go about testing that?)
So consider this: the first article remarks, offhand, that a lot of young women, upon hearing that the .7 ratio was ideal, ran off to check their own measurements. Why would that be? Why is it so important, on a personal (rather than a policy, perhaps) level what people in general find attractive? (In other words, we have to be careful with what we believe, and also with how we respond to the "facts" or facts).
Sunday, December 7, 2008
economics and information
I've remarked a couple of times that economics is really about incentives. But consider this: if economics were just about incentives, then theoretically, we could get out of this economic crisis by just abolishing the system as it is, and telling people to go back to work - and then we'd have jobs and productivity and health care, etc. (Let's assume that people actually would go to work).
There's a problem, though. How would people know what work to do? The market system, in a way, is about distributing information: about letting people know what work needs to be done. It is a system for collecting, determining, and distributing information.
(these remarks are rather abstract and general and light on the details).
There's a problem, though. How would people know what work to do? The market system, in a way, is about distributing information: about letting people know what work needs to be done. It is a system for collecting, determining, and distributing information.
(these remarks are rather abstract and general and light on the details).
anti-intellectualism and wisdom
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/07/opinion/07rich.html
"The Brightest Are Not Always the Best"
by Frank Rich
December 6, 2008
The New York Times
Rich discusses Obama's current picks for government positions, especially economic ones, and compares them to JFK and his advisers, who were similarly known for their intelligence or academic ability, but who got us into Vietnam regardless. Rich remarks that he'd prefer if some of the people being put in power had the wisdom born of experience. (Although he does mention that this sort of meritocracy is preferable to Bush's cronyism and political litmus tests).
Of course: how in the world do we determine who's got "wisdom"?
What is particularly interesting is how Rich mocks McNamara for deploying charts and graphs to argue that the war was going well, while the people on the ground knew it was going badly; he also compares the current crisis to the Tet Offensive. The funny thing is that, as far as I know, the Tet Offensive was a military disaster for North Vietnam. The war was, in fact, going badly for them. The charts-and-graphs man was right. (I don't mean to be defending the decision to go into Vietnam in the first place). And frankly, while I'm reluctant to trust anybody, I'd much prefer someone who believes in numbers than who believes in their instincts, in their gut, in their wisdom. I like evidence: it is the basis of science.
"The Brightest Are Not Always the Best"
by Frank Rich
December 6, 2008
The New York Times
Rich discusses Obama's current picks for government positions, especially economic ones, and compares them to JFK and his advisers, who were similarly known for their intelligence or academic ability, but who got us into Vietnam regardless. Rich remarks that he'd prefer if some of the people being put in power had the wisdom born of experience. (Although he does mention that this sort of meritocracy is preferable to Bush's cronyism and political litmus tests).
Of course: how in the world do we determine who's got "wisdom"?
What is particularly interesting is how Rich mocks McNamara for deploying charts and graphs to argue that the war was going well, while the people on the ground knew it was going badly; he also compares the current crisis to the Tet Offensive. The funny thing is that, as far as I know, the Tet Offensive was a military disaster for North Vietnam. The war was, in fact, going badly for them. The charts-and-graphs man was right. (I don't mean to be defending the decision to go into Vietnam in the first place). And frankly, while I'm reluctant to trust anybody, I'd much prefer someone who believes in numbers than who believes in their instincts, in their gut, in their wisdom. I like evidence: it is the basis of science.
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