Economics is tricky II

Okay, let's talk about externalities. In a nutshell, an externality is something -- good or bad -- that you don't pay for. For good reason, the examples that always seem to get trotted out are instances of pollution. For example, without the EPA around to correct things, a factory that pollutes a river generally doesn't have to pay to clean up the river. Either the state, and hence the taxpayers, do, or no-one does, and the people living downstream `pay' for the pollution by getting cancer and dying.

The contemporary environmentalist's favourite examples of externalities are `cheap' fossil fuels and `cheap' beef. Both are `cheap' because the cost -- as in, dollars the oil baron/cattle baron pays -- to procure these goods (in the economist's sense, not the ethicist's sense) is much lower than the selling price -- what people will pay to consume them. But, in the quantities which we consume and produce, respectively, both fossil fuels and beef release horrendous quantities of greenhouse gases. Fossil fuels release carbon dioxide, as per Part I, and cows release methane as waste (as well as consuming even more fossil fuels, using up lots and lots of water, and so on).

And yet, because these costs are externalized, it is rational (again, in the economist's sense of maximising one's self-interest) for people who can produce fossil fuels and beef to do so. Which is where carbon taxes and cap-and-trade schemes come in. Since carbon taxes are simpler (cap-and-trade schemes amount to a market on carbon tax thresholds, and that means the analysis is an order of magnitude more complicated), I'll focus on those. From an economic point of view, the idea is quite elegant: if emitters of carbon dioxide (and other greenhouse gas compounds, eg, methane) are required to pay at least a significant fraction of the externalized costs, they will generally shift production to processes and products that emit that much less carbon dioxide. It's no longer rational for (former) carbon-emitters to emit carbon.

I'd also like to argue that carbon taxes can be justified on libertarian grounds. This seems entirely straightforward to me: for every metric ton of carbon dioxide you release, you do US$12 of harm to everyone else. (IPCC report, summary for policymakers, 24) Rather than collecting these damages individually and retroactive to the damage suffered, it makes far more sense (in terms of avoiding the legal costs of everybody suing everybody else) for the state to collect them proactively, and hence use them as a deterrent.

Finally some sense! Or not

Clearly fashion designers are insane sexists:

As usual with this designer, there were things to admire: a lean clerical silhouette, the severity of a nearly monochrome palette, the way color and its absence were used to mark out the torso in floating zones. But when designers stop conceding to biological function, they move away from the realm of fashion and into that of social engineering.

The feminist imagination boggles at the monstrosity that made a fashion `journalist' for the Times sound like one Twisty Faster. What could be even more egregious than designing shoes that can only be worn by women with eight toes?

Your answer is below the fold.

Men's pants without a fly. I shit you not. Guy Trebay throws a fit because of a pair of pants that subject men to that most horrible of disgraces: having to use the bathroom like a girl.

It is one thing to nudge men toward exploring their girly sides and quite another to suggest they sit to urinate.

Other `humiliating' features of the line, designed by Miucca Prada, include `tutu belts' and `severe high-collar shirts that buttoned up the back'. Evidently, Trebay either (a) believes that all women -- unlike men -- are contortionists, or (b) is such a horrible fashion `journalist' that he doesn't know how to put on an evening dress.

Which leads me to the questions I often pose my female friends when I hear about this sort of spectacular douchebaggery from the fashion industry: Why the hell do you listen to these people? They are clearly misogynists and hate you. When is it ever rational to treat someone who hates you and wants you to suffer as a good source of advice?

Why I'm going to be a philosopher of science

This semester, I entered the orals stage of my Ph.D. programme. Sometime in the next 7-14 months, I will spend 90 minutes locked in a room with five faculty members, who will happily interrogate my understanding of a list of classical and recent works of philosophy. Should I pass, I move on, more or less immediately, to the final (and interminable) thesis-writing stage. Should I fail, I can try again before the end of my fourth year (next May); if I fail at that point, or don't manage to get a second try scheduled before the end of the year, I get kicked out of school.

Despite the immense pressure, what's nice is that I get to choose what's on the list. At least, to an extent. I pick the general area, and about 2/3 of the list is standard for that general area; I get to decide what goes on the remaining 1/3. So, roughly speaking, everything on the list are things I'm interested in. I don't have to read any metaphysics or Plato or Scotus if I don't want to.

But I've had some problems picking the general area. I enjoy both philosophy of math and philosophy of science immensely, and while I don't think that they should be seen as two distinct areas of philosophy, trying to fit them both into a single orals list has proven impossible. On Thursday I met with one of my professors to get some help with figuring out the list. She gave me an ultimatum: Within two weeks, I have to decide whether I will be a philosopher of science who knows a bit about philosophy of math, or a philosopher of math who knows a bit about philosophy of science. She recommended I think about potential thesis projects and look through the major philosophy of math and philosophy of science journals to decide.

While I had some thesis projects in mind, they were hopelessly vague, and this is part of the problem I was having putting together a list. (One thing that's especially great about this particular professor: she never, ever lets me get away with any sort of hand-waving.) So I went and looked through journals and spent an hour writing down rough versions of thesis projects. Most of the projects I came up with were either impossibly difficult or, upon closer inspection, would be incredibly boring to actually work on in detail. The philosophy of math projects that looked both feasible and interesting came in two distinct flavours:

1. The relationship between mathematics and society, especially the relationship between ethico-political values and `good mathematics'.
   
2. The epistemological significance of certain features of the community of mathematicians, such as the underrepresentation of women and racial and ethnic minorities.
   

Philosophers of science are interested in these two things. But -- critically, and counterintuitively -- philosophers of math generally aren't. Philosophers of math, almost uniformly in this country, work on formal logic, the metaphysics of math (do numbers exist?), and foundations. Furthermore, what I discovered in the journals was that, to the extent that someone works on such things, they're published in philosophy of science and history of mathematics journals, and not published in philosophy of math journals. So, to work on one of these projects, I would have to read a lot of philosophy of science literature, and most of the philosophy of math literature would be completely irrelevant.

So I've made my decision. Strictly speaking, I will be a philosopher of science. Like most philosophers of science, I'll have a certain amount of expertise and affection for one science in particular -- mathematics -- and this will be reflected in what I write and teach. But I won't, strictly speaking, be a philosopher of math. My interests and research projects simply aren't the sort of things philosophers of math work on, at least in the English-speaking part of the world.

A horrifying realisation

For those of you who don't know this, I was born in 1980. The earliest distinct memory I have of a major political event was the August Coup that destroyed the Soviet Union. So I became aware of the world outside my school and my house during the first Bush presidency and the first Gulf War, the democratisation (more or much, much less) of the former Warsaw Pact countries, and the end of apartheid in South Africa. It was a time in which the dynamic and rhetoric of the Cold War was replaced by the dynamic and rhetoric of decolonialisation, democratisation, and universal human rights.

So let's say 11 years old is the typical age at which children start to become aware of events happening on the world stage. (If anything, I think I was precocious in this respect. If 12, 13, or older is more accurate, this doesn't cause a problem for my argument.) My students (and my step-sister) were born in 1989-90. This means they were starting to become aware of events happening on the world after 2001 -- a time in which (and sense which) the dynamic and rhetoric was dominated by paranoid, defensive imperialism and the unitary executive.

I'm not sure why I find this so disturbing. There's certainly no direct causal link between the political climate in which one's identity as a citizen is formed and, say, one's political values. Perhaps my worry is this: If these ideas, in some sense, make up the basic conceptual framework with which they analyse politics, then how well can they understand the dangers of totalitarianism?

Economics is tricky I

Some bad news about ethanol:

Researchers led by Timothy Searchinger at Princeton University said their study showed greenhouse-gas emissions will rise with ethanol demand. U.S. farmers will use more land for fuel, forcing poorer countries to cut down rainforests and use other undeveloped land for farms, the study said.

Searchinger's team determined that corn-based ethanol almost doubles greenhouse-gas output over 30 years when considering land-use changes. Bob Dinneen, president of the Renewable Fuels Association in Washington, said the study used a flawed model and overestimated how much land will be needed.

The intuitive case for ethanol is based on the fact that the carbon you release in burning it was trapped in the corn just a few months ago.

Let's back up. The oxygen combustion of carbon fuels, no matter how efficient (ie, no matter how little particulate pollution is produced) produces carbon dioxide. Yearly averages of carbon dioxide levels are rising because we burn lots of fossil fuels -- essentially, highly compressed prehistoric swamps. This is carbon that was in the atmosphere millions of years ago, but has been out of the atmosphere since the beginning of human civilization. Hence we say that fossil fuels result in a net emission of carbon dioxide.

The intuitive case for ethanol is based on the fact that, rather releasing carbon that was trapped by plants while our shrewlike ancestors were trying to steal eggs from dinosaur nests, burning ethanol releases carbon that was trapped by corn a few months ago. So, over the scale of a couple years, ethanol results in zero net emissions of carbon dioxide.

However, you can't just magically find some unused tract of land and grow lots and lots of corn for use in producing ethanol. At least, the land that's not currently being used is in environments that are too hostile for corn to grow -- the middle of the Sahara, the tundra, etc. You have to take land that's currently in use -- namely, for growing corn or other crops for food -- and change its use -- to growing corn for ethanol.

This results in an increase in food prices -- nothing's changing the demand for food (if anything, it grows as the global population increases), and the supply's just dropped a few percentage points. And, because of globalisation, an increase in food prices in the US increases food prices in places like rural Brazil.

The people of rural Brazil are, generally speaking, already quite poor. So if food prices go up, there's now a (larger) gap between how much food they can afford to buy (it's not like they've gotten any less poor) and how much food they need to survive. It's a lot easier for them to clear-cut another X number of acres of rainforest and grow enough food to fill that gap than it is for them to scrounge together enough additional money to maintain their level of food consumption. But the X number of acres of rainforest would have absorbed a certain amount of carbon from the atmosphere. This counted against the net emission of carbon from burning all the fossil fuels (and, I might add, raising all the methane-producing cattle we do). Effectively, a mandate to switch a certain amount of US land from food production to ethanol production does actually increase net emissions of carbon.

The question is how big of an increase, and how that compares to the decrease in net emissions from burning ethanol instead of petroleum. And the answer, it appears, is enough to double the emission rate in 30 years.

Part II, on externalities, when I feel like writing it. Link from Paul Krugman.

Pope Benedict: Divine command theorist

From Charles Rice's latest nebulous attack on secular liberalism:

Benedict describes as "presumptuous and false," the idea that "[s]ince there is no God to create justice ... man himself is now called to establish justice." "It is no accident," he said, "that this idea has led to the greatest forms of cruelty and violations of justice .... A world which has to create its own justice is a world without hope." No. 42. Justice will be whatever man decrees. Thus Kelsen [some legal positivst] said that Auschwitz and other Nazi exterminations were "valid law." In accord with his "philosophical relativism," he could not reasonably criticize them as unjust.

(Ellipses and brackets in Rice.)

That's right: Plato's Euthyphro caused Auschwitz. The fact that it took a couple millennia just shows that the Catholic Church is the only thing standing between a humanist ethics and genocide.

Frankly, I don't get it. Ratzinger was an academic theologian for 26 years. Presumably at some point during that time he encountered at least a few ethicists and moral philosophers who (a) are not divine command theorists and (b) also not anything-goes moral relativists. Now maybe he doesn't think that their positions are consistent or whatever. That's fine. But he should at least recognise the need for an argument that (a) implies (b). You can't have a reductio ad absurdum without the reductio.

Bonus egregious academic dereliction: Charles Rice, emeritus professor of law, displaying his complete lack of understanding of the difference between logical positivist ethics (which is an anything-goes moral relativism) and legal positivism (which, as I understand things, just distinguishes legality from justice).

The Future Of Video Games

N'Gai Croal has an interesting piece up about the cultural acceptance of video games as an art form. He discusses a blogged wager between two video game designers where one asserts that video games will forever be dismissed as a juvenile media, like comic books. The other designer is a bit more optimistic about the chances of video games. Link 1 and Link 2.

Indy 4 Trailer

Ok, I've said for years now that I wouldn't believe a fourth Indiana Jones movie was happening until I saw it with my own eyes. Well, I'm going to count the newly released trailer as proof enough. I've heard rumors that this movie might be a jumping off point for a revitalized franchise with Shia LeBouf (or however that's spelled) as the new, young Indy. Personally, I'm always interested in some new Jones adventuring, but I wonder whether the new films would have some of the traits that made Harrison Ford's character so appealing. 1) First and foremost Indy is an academic. He may not worry about getting his hands a little dirty/bloody, but he's really a nerd at heart. Would a 20 something Jones just be an action seeking thief or would he be doing it all for the museum like our good Doctor Jones? 2) Indy was always so world weary. Everything that happened seemed to frustrate, annoy, or tire him. Ford really managed to capture the "Oh what now" face and I loved that about the character. Link.

Future Rock Band DLC?

Some intrepid young haX0r took a look-see into a recent Rock Band downloadable content file and found a list of previously unconfirmed songs for the game. The Harmonix response?

"This list of Rock Band DLC that was discovered within the files of a recent DLC pack is unconfirmed and subject to change. Please stay tuned for confirmation of Rock Band DLC closer to their release."

Doesn't sound like a denial to me. There are definitely some songs to get excited about in there, but I'm still waiting for my prog pack. Link.

Vaginas: Kryptonite for bishops

The US Conference of Catholic Bishops has been run off-campus by the spectre of The vagina monologues:

A two-day seminar for bishops hosted by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) and the University will start today at a convent in Mishawaka, instead of Notre Dame, because organizers wanted to avoid connections to the likely presentation of 'The Vagina Monologues' in March.

Now, the play isn't being performed for five or six weeks. Apparently, John D'Arcy believes that the public discussion of vaginas is so soul-corrupting that its vile power can actually work backwards in time and on people who will not in any way participate in that discussion.

Beware the evil time-travelling vaginas!

Two Things

1. In all the hype about McCain basically securing the Republican nomination people are all kinds of worked up about how scary he's going to be in the general. Being prepared for a good fight is never a bad idea, but let's also try not to forget just how much some sectors of the party hate him. His VP candidate is going to have a huge effect on the trajectory of his campaign, and I haven't heard any names mentioned that really make the ticket unstoppable, or even widely appealing.

2. Ezra has been teasing folk about his secret kung pao recipe for months now, but it's finally released. I might or might not sub in some chicken for the tofu (depends on if I'm cooking for the lady friend), but it certainly sounds like a good meal. I'll probably need to head into Chinatown in Philly for ingredients though...

Not just about `choice' or `life'

At the last vegan potluck we had, a month or so ago, my friend Sarah said something about how she didn't like basing abortion rights just on the notion of choice, nor the idea that opposition to abortion is based on the notion of life.

Reproductive Health's Reality Check's factsheet on immigration and reproductive justice gives an excellent summary of reproductive justice, which I think might be a far superior feminist framework for analysing these issues:

Reproductive justice involves more than the right to end a pregnancy. Safeguarding an individual's right to determine her or his own reproductive future is an integral part of an overall agenda to promote social justice. That vision includes the ability of all people, whether American-born or immigrant, to:

1. Become a parent and parent with dignity.
2. Determine whether or when to have children.
3. Have a healthy pregnancy.
4. Have healthy and safe families and relationships.

Note first that this notion incorporates both choice -- in point 2 -- and life -- in 1 and 3 -- subsuming them under the more general notion of justice. Second, in addition, this notion straddles the liberal (that is, individualist)/communitarian divide. There is a recognition of both the irreducible value of the individual's life on her or his own terms and the necessity of living that life as a part of a flourishing community.

For Sure

Yes, it's Super Tuesday (I refuse to call it Tsunami Tuesday both because I find it to be dumb and just a bit offensive), and everyone should be out there voting today. Still, when you find a minute or two to yourself, I have a link for anyone that has trouble understanding rap lyrics but loves graphs. Link.

Thanks Andy.

And Edwards is out, too

NYT: Edwards Drops Out of Race for President

If I could still plausibly claim to be a citizen of the Republic of California, then I would have a serious dilemma on my hands. Clinton's policies are slightly more left-of-center (not to mention concrete) than Obama's, but I'm worried about what twenty-seven years of continuous governments by two families (the Clintons and the Bushes) will do to our democracy. (Think about it: assuming Clinton is elected and re-elected, a large percentage of eligible voters will have never lived under a president who was not named either Clinton or Bush. Already the youngest voters in this year's election were born in 1989 and 1990, after George HW Bush took office, and the oldest twentysomethings can't remember life under Reagan.) On the other hand, Obama's calls for `hope' and `change' are at best meaningless and at worst Democratic pandering to conservatives taken to the highest possible level. (As Glen Greenwald put it, `in almost every significant case, what "bipartisanship" means in Washington is that enough Democrats join with all of the Republicans to endorse and enact into law Republican policies, with which most Democratic voters disagree'.) People are pissed off at Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi for doing precisely what Obama is saying he'll do if elected, and yet Reid's vice is Obama's virtue. This doesn't make any sense.

Really, California Democrats are, IMHO, faced with a choice between two very mediocre candidates. Fortunately, as Indiana does not hold its primary until more than three months (May 6) after Super Tuesday, the nomination will have long since been secured de facto by the time I get to vote.

Allowing people to have children is, apparently, not Pro-Life

A bunch of Catholic MPs in Gordon Brown's government, `linked to the All-Party Parliamentary Pro-Life Group', are throwing a fit, insisting that they be allowed a free vote on a bill.

[Transport Secretary] Kelly recently met Geoff Hoon, Labour's chief whip, to ask for voting restrictions to be removed from much, if not all, of the bill. At the moment MPs will only be allowed a free vote on any amendments that are tabled on abortion. Defence Secretary Des Browne is also understood to have concerns. All three [sic] ministers are prominent Catholics. Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor, leader of Britain's four million Catholics, has condemned the bill as 'profoundly wrong'[.]

What sort of abominations will the bill allow? What grave sacrifice of human life will it make to the dark gods of the selfish feminist gynocracy?

None whatsoever. On the contrary: the bill allows people to become parents, if they so choose. It does not allow any killing of babies, whether actual babies or foetuses. What it does do is `allow children to be born [sic] by IVF without a father's involvement'. `That change would mean they [IVF clinics] were [sic] no longer able to deny treatment to lesbians and single women, with a child's birth mother and her female partner being regarded as legal parents.'

This shows two things. First, Dennis Campbell, health correspondent for the Guardian, needs to brush up on counting, how to use the hypothetical mood, and the difference between pregnancy and birth. Second, `Pro-Life' only means pro-parenthood for the right kind of parents.

Pretty much every conversation I have with a non-academic ends up sounding like this

From Adventures in Ethics and Science.

Dr. Free-Ride is washing the younger of her two offspring before bedtime. Younger Offspring has some unconventional ideas about the relationship between body and mind.

Dr. Free-Ride: Fascinating. Does that mean that your body and mind only feel like 'you' when you can get them to behave a certain way you want them to?

Younger offspring: Uh ...

Dr. Free-Ride: Or when they're acting in a certain unified way rather than acting in different directions?

Younger offspring: Mmm ...

Dr. Free-Ride: What's you theory on this? Can you explain it to me?

Younger offspring: You know, I'm in the water now, and I should get washed soon so there will be time for stories.

Kucinich resigns

AP: Democrat Kucinich quits White House race. Apparently not without good reason:

Kucinich, 61, is facing four challengers in the Democratic congressional primary March 4, and earlier this week he made an urgent appeal on his Web site for funds for his re-election. Rival Joe Cimperman has been critical of Kucinich for focusing too much time outside of his district while campaigning for president.

His decision comes a month after the death of his youngest brother, Perry Kucinich.

Kucinich's run was always symbolic anyways. He might actually do a little bit of good in Congress, so it's fair that he drops out now, saving what money he has to fight off these challengers. And I had no idea about his brother. I can't imagine how Kucinich has done as much as he has over the past month -- demanding a recount of the New Hampshire primary, and suing for access to the debate in Nevada, just for a start -- while grieving the loss of his brother.

Thanks, Dennis, for putting as much time and energy into your presidential campaign as you could.

Since Dodd, my #2, dropped out a while ago, my endorsement goes to Edwards. I'm not comfortable choosing between Clinton and Obama, even over the #2 spot -- basically, neither of their policies platforms is sufficiently progressive for my endorsement.

Noticing class privilege.

Via Adventures in ethics and science, an interesting exercise in class consciousness. As a classroom activity, line the students up, and have them take one step forward for every sentence that is true for them. No discussion until every sentence has been read. As a blog activity, mark the ones that are true for you.

ADULTHOOD [up to and including college]:
If your father went to college
If your father finished college
If your mother went to college (My mom earned an Associate's degree when I was in high school, but never got her Bachelor's. `College' is ambiguous -- does a JC count? I'm going to count it for half -- so starting, but not finishing, college.)
If your mother finished college
If you have any relative who is an attorney, physician, or professor.
If you were the same or higher class than your high school teachers
If you had a computer at home
If you had your own computer at home
If you had more than 50 books at home
If you had more than 500 books at home
If were read children's books by a parent
If you ever had lessons of any kind
If you had more than two kinds of lessons
If the people in the media who dress and talk like me are portrayed positively
If you had a credit card with your name on it
If you have less than $5000 in student loans
If you have no student loans
If you went to a private high school
If you went to summer camp
If you had a private tutor
If you have been to Europe (Studying abroad for a semester in college -- on the cheapest programme you could imagine -- seems to just barely qualify. My brother's never been to Europe, and my mom's only been twice.)
If your family vacations involved staying at hotels (I can recall only two vacations where we stayed in hotels. Every other vacation was either boatcamping or visiting relatives. I don't think two trips count as a sufficiently general trend.)
If all of your clothing has been new and bought at the mall (My mom made a lot of the clothes I wore through about fourth grade, and we occasionally had a few things from Goodwill. I still shop at Goodwill more often than the mall.)
If your parents bought you a car that was not a hand-me-down from them
If there was original art in your house
If you had a phone in your room
If you lived in a single family house
If your parent own their own house or apartment
If you had your own room
If you participated in an SAT/ACT prep course
If you had your own cell phone in High School (They weren't common until my junior year of college. I didn't get a cell phone until I came to Notre Dame a few years ago.)
If you had your own TV in your room in High School
If you opened a mutual fund or IRA in High School or College
If you have ever flown anywhere on a commercial airline
If you ever went on a cruise with your family
If your parents took you to museums and art galleries (Mostly natural history museums.)
If you were unaware of how much heating bills were for your family (We heated our house with a wood-burning stove. I never knew the financial cost, but I certainly knew first hand the cost in terms of time and labour -- we got a couple cords every August, and I had to help stack and split it.)

CHILDHOOD:
If your body does not bear long-term signs of malnutrition.
If you had orthodontia.(Only because my mom didn't give us pacifiers, didn't really bottle feed us, and didn't let us suck our thumbs.)
If you saw a doctor for anything other than emergencies or school-mandated shots. (I had routine checkups every year or so up through about 6 years old.)
If you heated your home with clean-burning fuels or had properly vented heating. (Well, wood is cleaner than coal, but it's nowhere near as clean as natural gas. And we couldn't really afford natural gas. I'm not counting this one, since I counted the last heating one.)
If you grew up in a house without vermin. (Rats and cockroaches? No. Ants? Oh yes. Every summer.)
If you had running water.
If you had a basement or foundation under your house.
If you had an indoor toilet.
If your parents and immediate family were outside the criminal justice system. (I'm assuming traffic tickets and a DUI don't count.)
If you yourself remained outside the criminal justice system.
If your parents had a new car. (My dad had to drive a LOT for work, so he would buy a new car ever 4 or 5 years, then sell it and buy a new one when the old one racked up about 250,000 miles. I don't think my mom has ever owned a new car.)
If you never went barefoot so that you could 'save your shoes for school.'
If your parents never argued in front of you about having enough money for food to last out the month.
If you ate hunted and fished meat because it was a recreational activity rather than as the major way to stock a freezer. (Occasionally we'd eat caught fish while out on the boat. No hunted meat.)
If your laundry was done at home in a washer rather than in a lavandaria.
If your hair was cut by a professional barber or hair stylist instead of your parent. (My mom gave me every hair cut I had until I left for college.)

My family, at least until my parents split up when I was in junior high, was pretty much in the middle of the middle class. At least, if you examined us as a unit. What this list brings out was the class divisions within my family.

Let me explain by getting a bit personal. Between the time her parents divorced -- when she was just a few years old -- and her mother married a very wealthy cattle rancher -- when she was in high school -- my mother grew up poor. And she returned to the life of poverty after being effectively disowned by her mother when she was 18, and didn't really achieve a middle-class lifestyle again until my father was done with school and earning a decent income, in her early 30s. My parents divorced when she was in her late 30s or early 40s (I'm too lazy to figure out exactly how old she was at the time), and, while she's had some successful years since then, her income has been extremely variable from year to year (as often happens with home businesses, especially ones that are closely tied into the state of the housing market).

So my mom has spent the vast majority of her life either poor or just barely in the middle class. My dad, on the other hand, came from an upper middle class family, and has never had to really worry about money at any point in his life. He hasn't always been able to afford every luxury he wanted, but he's never been worried about how to put food on the table or heat the house.

The biggest luxury in my dad's life has been his boat. He's had a sailboat since before I was born, and it has always absorbed a huge chunk of his income. So, while my parents were married and our family was right in the middle of the middle class, we sacrificed a lot of luxuries -- cable teevee, central air, two new cars, fancy vacations -- for the sake of the boat. This placed certain additional burdens on my mom: having to prepare most every meal, even when we were on vacation; having to split firewood to keep the house warm during the day; having to clean the house herself, instead of having a cleaner come in once a week while she sewed and spent time with her children; never getting her own new car; and so on. And, because of growing up in poverty, my mom also had a self-reliant attitude towards things like clothes and haircuts, and so happily took on even more work.

In short, in order for my dad to enjoy a hobby reserved for the upper-middle class, my mom took on the burdens of a lower-middle class mother. And yet, this list isn't sensitive to that class division within my family -- although, to be fair, it didn't really affect my class status.

The telos of the Randian humanum

I promise, this will be my last post on Ayn Rand and Objectivism.

As a eudaimonic theory, Rand's ethics is teleological: an action is good if, and only if, it contributes to or is part of a certain good end. This good end is eudaimonia, the good life. But what is this good life? Considering these questions reveals an equivocation in the Randian argument.

To be more specific, I want to look at a piece titled `Nozick and the Randian argument', by Douglas Den Uyl and Douglas Rasmussen. This piece was published in what is apparently a libertarian journal, The Personalist, in 1978. I like this piece better than anything I've actually read by Rand, as the argument is both more systematically worked-out and actually presented in premiss-conclusion form (although it's frequently unclear how their conclusions are supposed to follow from their premisses). I'm going to focus on just the following part of the argument, which is roughly the first half:

1) Life is an ultimate end, an end in itself, for any living thing.
2) To be a living thing and not be a living thing of a particular kind is impossible.
C1) Thus, life as the kind of thing it is is the ultimate value for each living thing.
4) A human being is that kind of living being which can be designated as a rational animal.
C2) Thus, life as a rational animal is the ultimate value for each person.
5) A rational animal is an animal whose mode of consciousness is characterized by ... conceptual awareness.
C3) Thus, conceptual awareness must characterize one who lives as a rational animal, and one only lives as a rational animal in so far as one engages in conceptual activity.
6) The conceptual mode of cognitive contact with reality is man's [sic] only means of determining how to deal with reality so as to sustain his own existence.
7) Actions taken in accord with judgments of how to deal with reality are man's only means of dealing with reality so as to sustain his own existence.
C4) Thus, living as a rational being means, minimally, acting in accordance with conceptual judgments.

Note that I've skipped some bits that weren't relevant to the subject of this post.

Initially, (1), life is understood simply as a matter of continued existence. It must be, because Rand is talking about living things in general here -- and the primary difference, Rand thinks, between living and non-living things is that the existence of the former is precarious. A living thing's existence can be terminated. Hence, she argues, it must act (voluntarily in some cases, involuntarily in others), in order to preserve its existence.

Moving on, in context, (4) is actually a conclusion derived from (5), (6) and (7). For now, ignore (2) and everything that follows from it -- focus just on the argument involving (1) and premisses (4)-(7):

1) Life is an ultimate end, an end in itself, for any living thing.
6) The conceptual mode of cognitive contact with reality is man's [sic] only means of determining [forming judgements of] how to deal with reality so as to sustain his own existence.
7) Actions taken in accord with judgments of how to deal with reality [so as to sustain one's own existence] are man's only means of dealing with reality so as to sustain his own existence.
5) A rational animal is an animal whose mode of consciousness is characterized by ... conceptual awareness.
[C2'] Thus, living as a rational animal is the only means by which a human can achieve her or his ultimate end.
4) [Thus,] A human being is that kind of living being which can be designated [defined] as a rational animal.

The argument to (4) narrows the scope: we're not just thinking about living things in general, but humans in particular. Unlike other living things, humans use rationality to survive. Note that (6) and (7) regard rationality in a purely instrumental way. In both of these premisses, rationality is a means to the end of sustaining one's existence. Rationality is the primary instrument by which humans achieve their ultimate end, viz., life, understood as simple existence. Call this the instrumental attitude towards rationality. Only bare existence is the end in itself, for the instrumental attitude.

(C2') bears some resemblance to (C2). Both speak of the importance of living as a rational animal for a human being. However, while (C2') reflects the instrumental attitude towards rationality of premisses (6) and (7), (C2) asserts that living as a rational animal constitutes the good human life. Call this the ethical attitude towards rationality. On the ethical attitude, humanity's ultimate ends are defined by the exercise of our capacities for rational thought.

Now, (C2) is supposed to depend on (4) and (C1). If I'm right, and (4) is, not a premiss, but a conclusion that depends on (6) and (7), then somehow the Randian argument has moved from the instrumental attitude to the ethical attitude. Maybe (C1) bridges this gap.

C1) Thus, life as the kind of thing it is is the ultimate value for each living thing.

No, clearly this is the ethical attitude. The move from the instrumental attitude must come earlier. Since (1) is ambiguous, the only place this move can be accomplished is at (2).

2) To be a living thing and not be a living thing of a particular kind is impossible.

This is again ambiguous. Here's another statement of (2), from elsewhere in the text:

It is impossible for a living being to be and not be a living being of some kind -- there is no such thing as unspecified life, ie, life existing in some abstract way. Thus, the nature of a living thing -- the kind of thing it is -- determines whether the life of the entity is achieved. (192-3)

The authors then go on to assert (C1). So the second quoted sentence is just a statement of (C1), with the ethical attitude. The first clause of the first sentence is (2), leaving the second clause, after the dash, to explain (2).

There are two problems with this explanation. First, it is built on a gross failure to understand the type/token distinction -- they have confused the general concept of life with all its instances. Compare this assertion with the following:

It is impossible for a human being to be and not be at some specific place -- there is no such thing as unlocated humanity, ie, humanity existing outside of space and time. Thus, the location of a human being -- its particular cultural context -- determines whether the life of the human being is achieved.

This conclusion is a sort of relativism that Rand strongly rejects. Second, the juxtaposition of the two sentences in the quotation shows that the move from the instrumental attitude to the ethical attitude is nothing more than an equivocation. Living being, in the first sentence, means bare life, mere continued existence, not flourishing. This has nothing at all to do with the normative notion of flourishing life in the second sentence. Consider the `unlocated humanity' passage again: the fact that every instance of humanity is located at some specific place in space does not imply that one's particular cultural context determines what it means for one to have a flourishing life.

My students think I want to kill them with pitchforks

I recently got back my student evaluations from last semester. Evidently, some of them thought my grading was a bit harsh.

 

For the record, there was no significant difference between my distribution of grades and those of the other five or so TAs.

Christian =/= theocrat

I got home from school today to see numerous complaints on liberal and progressive blogs about a flyer the Obama campaign is putting out, featuring the phrase COMMITTED CHRISTIAN and quotations from Obama involving faith. There are also lots of comparisons to an ad the Huckabee campaign used a while back. I don't feel like copying and pasting all the various links, so I'll just point to Glenn Greenwald, who seems to have the clearest statement of the criticism.

the brochure seems designed ... to signify to South Carolina's many Christian voters that Obama is one of them and therefore should have their vote for President, much the way that Huckabee sought to court the evangelical vote that was so critical to the GOP Iowa caucus.

Right. Except for not-the-fuck-at-all.

Huckabee's ad, like the rest of his campaign, is meant to appeal to the theocratic sort of evangelical -- that kind of person that thinks the American legal system needs to be torn down and rebuilt according to his interpretation of the Bible. Aiming to destroy the secular and tolerant principles on which our system is based, the theocratic evangelical's political philosophy is profoundly illiberal. To put it a bit crudely, Huckabee is trying to attract the support of the Christian, capitalist-friendly version of the Taliban.

By contrast, the copy of the Obama ad sounds to me like a man who has grounded his desire to fight for social justice in Christianity. Which really shouldn't be objectionable, as such, especially on Martin Luther King Day.

The big difference between Huckabee's base and Obama's base is that the Christian theocrat wants to subvert liberal democracy, replacing it with an illiberal Christianist regime, while the Christian progressive's embrace of liberal democracy is based on her faith. Yes, they're both `Christians', but one's metaphysical beliefs are not the same as one's political philosophy.

Now, maybe you think that Obama really isn't as progressive as, say, MLK, much less Hillary Clinton, and that therefore the progressive Christian should vote for Clinton instead of Obama. But that argument has nothing at all to do with (a) whether Obama is a committed Christian, (b) whether Obama should be campaigning on that committment, or (c) whether doing so makes him somehow `like Huckabee'. Unless Obama's pamphlet is somehow supposed to suggest to voters that he's going to establish the Christian States of America, he's not at all like Huckabee.

And just because I can't get over the irony: We're having this dispute on Martin Luther King Day? Seriously?

Rand's eudaimonism

I've had the `pleasure' of reading a bunch of Ayn Rand this weekend, along a criticism (by Robert Nozick) and response (by two Objectivists) of the foundations of her ethics. The reading has mostly been quite annoying -- the arguments are usually imprecisely stated and blatantly invalid (conclusions that have nothing to do with their premisses), lots of failures to make important distinctions (and lots of space wasted on what seem to be quite unimportant distinctions), and some seeming inconsistencies (of the assert-P-on-page-n, assert-not-P-on-page-n+1 variety) and circularities.

Skip to the end of all that, though, cut away the business about life being the ultimate value and the vague appeals to `metaphysics', and what you have is basically an eudaimonist account -- an ethics based on the notion of a good life.* Rand's eudaimonia (which, for the purposes of this post, I'll treat as synonymous with both `happiness' and `good life') is characterised by individualist rationality - the exercise, by the individual, of her capacities for `conceptual judgement'. The best human life, then, is one in which the individual acts according to (or possibly just in accordance with) the judgements produced by the exercise of her own reason, without either forcible interference from others or herself forcibly interfering with the actions of others.

But is this coherent? Notice the addition of the qualifications in the last sentence of the previous paragraph. Rand doesn't want to allow `parasites' to go around stealing the products of other people's hard work. Everything they have they should acquire by hard work and fair exchange. So eudaimonia, for X, consists not just in

(A) X acting according to X's reasoned judgements,

but also

(B) Y not forcibly interfering with X performing A, for all Y, and
(C) X not forcibly interfering with Y performing A, for all Y.

For A-C to be coherent, it must be the case that

(1) there can never be a X and Y such that X's reasoned judgement is to forcibly interfere with Y performing A.

(1) doesn't seem at all plausible. Suppose, first, that X's considered judgement is to assassinate Y. Certainly this would interfere with Y acting according to his reasoned judgements. In this case, A is incompatible with C, and (1) fails. Second, suppose that Z now gets involved, and, acting on her considered judgement, stops X. This case is even more problematic for Randian eudaimonia than the first, because now Z's forcible interference in X performing A, by preventing X from forcibly interfering with Y performing A, brings about C. That is, one violation of C is necessary for another instance of C. For a third example, identify Z with Y: X is attempting to assassinate Y, based on his considered judgements, but Y is attempting to stop X from assassinate her, based on her considered judgements. The considered judgements of these two individuals have lead to an impasse; it is impossible for either of them to lead a good life. (Compare these three scenarios to the following premiss in the Objectivists' response to Nozick: `In a social context, the initiation of physical force ... by one man against another serves to destroy the precondition for living the life of a rational animal, since acting upon one's judgment becomes impossible.')

How can Rand avoid these dilemmas? She could say that some people simply can't lead a good life -- X and Y are simply doomed. because of their conflicting interests. But Rand actively denies this. In `The ``conflicts'' of men's interests' (in The virtue of selfishness), Rand argues that such conflicts can never exist (though she completely fails to consider these sorts of possibilities, instead worrying about whether to save a drowning stranger and two people who are both competing for the same job).

The only other option I can see is to introduce qualifiers into (A). So eudaimonia, for X, will consist, in part, in X acting according to X's reasoned judgements, except when G. But, for G to function as an additional constraint on X's reasoned judgements, it must be something independent of those judgements. For other eudaimonists, these are community standards, or something similar -- if my reasoned judgements tell me to do something wildly out of line with the standards of my community, then I shouldn't follow through on them. Rand, of course, can't make this move, as it amounts to subordinating the individual to the community.

The only constraint Rand seems to be willing to countenance on an individual's actions is rational human nature. But this is not independent of X's reasoned judgements -- after all, they're the product of her rational human nature -- and hence cannot provide additional constraints on them, just as modus ponens is no additional constraint on an argument that is assumed to be logically valid. In order to solve the dilemmas, then, Rand needs an argument for (1). But this is where we started. Rand's options seem exhausted, and no progress has been made.

* If this is right, then Rand can be added to the list of twentieth-century female ethical thinkers that challenged the prevailing utilitarian and deontological approaches to ethics and political philosophy using an eudaimonist approach. Other thinkers on this list include GEM Anscombe, Philippa Foot, Rosalind Hursthouse, Carol Gilligan, and Martha Nussbaum. Note that, as I understand things, of these six, only Gilligan and Nussbaum would be considered feminists.

An odd quantifier shift fallacy

I was flipping through the course packet for my Intro class this semester, and the professor included a chapter from some contemporary textbook. The chapter includes this paraphrase of Anselm's second ontological argument:

Premise 1: A being that cannot be thought of as not existing is greater than a being that can be thought of as not existing.

Therefore, if God can be thought of as not existing, then a greater being that cannot be thought of as not existing can be thought of.

Premise 2: God is the being than which nothing greater can be thought of.

Conclusion: God cannot be thought of as not existing.

Which is a little weird. But it's the ontological argument, so I guess weird shouldn't be a surprise.

Let Gxy abbreviate `x is greater than y' and Tx abbreviate `x can be thought of as not existing', and g name God.

(1) (x)(y)([-Tx & Ty] -> Gxy)
Therefore, Tg -> (Ex)(-Tx & Gxg)
(2) (x)(-Gxg)
Conclusion: -Tg

Even if we include both premisses in the inference to the `therefore', it's invalid. The hypothesis that God can be thought of as not existing does not imply that there is something which cannot be thought of as not existing. That is, a model in which only g exists, and g does T, is entirely consistent with (1).

One might try to read Anselm as instead arguing from

(1') (x)(Tx -> (Ey)(-Ty & Gyx))

Then the `therefore' follows by just instantiating the universal quantifier. Notice that (1') follows from the conjunction of (1) and

(1'') (x)(Tx -> (Ey)-Ty)

That is, `if something can be thought of as not existing, then something else cannot be thought of as not existing'. But what does the first clause have to do with the second? Maybe (just maybe) you can argue from the contingent-yet-actual existence of my chair to the existence of a necessary, first cause sort of being -- something had to cause my chair to be, and something had to cause that thing to be, and so on. But that won't work if the something is, say, my pet unicorn. Logically speaking, there's no reason to rule out the model with the empty domain -- in possible world terms, there's no reason given at this stage of the argument to rule out the possibility that nothing (not even God) exists.

Whosajiggawah?

From a DK diary, via Paul Krugman.

The UnFair Tax

I know I link to Ezra a lot, but well, he writes some good stuff. Anyway, he's got an article up about why Mike Huckabee's "Fair Tax" proposal is not very fair. Next week he's promising to have a post exploring some ways that you *could* do a fair consumption tax. I think it's a safe bet I'll be linking to those as well.

The Fountainhead is a piece of crap

I've studiously avoided Ayn Rand, but this semester I'm sitting in on a political philosophy seminar that's starting off with a nod to Rand's egoism. For the first meeting last night, we watched the 1949 film version of The Fountainhead. Rand personally adapted her novel to the screen -- indeed, at her insistence, the tedious and hyperbolic trial speech (running about 6 minutes, according to Wikipedia), was included in its entirety despite the director's desire to tighten things up. My review is below the fold.

First, the basic plot, for those of you lucky enough to have neither read nor seen this horrible novel and too lazy to read through the Wikipedia synopsis. Howard Roark is an uncompromising, individualist architect whose modernist designs are, besides being incredibly ugly, hated by the architectural establishment. Peter Keating is his parasitic conformist kind-of-friend and fellow architect, who is initially successful because of his mediocre talent and willingness to conform to the stylistic dictates of the establishment. Ellsworth Toohey is Roark's great nemesis -- the architectural columnist for The Banner, Toohey's desire is to control others by promoting a philosophy of conformity, mediocrity, and anti-individualism. Since Toohey cannot bend Roark to his will, he naturally wants to destroy Roark. Dominique Francon is Roark's love interest; more on her later. Gail Wynand is a newspaper magnate, editor-in-chief of The Banner. At the beginning of the narrative, Wynand has become wealthy and powerful by pandering to public opinion -- The Banner celebrates mediocrity and conformity, with Toohey as its public face. However, after encountering Roark, Wynand realises that uncompromising individualism is the only true virtue. While he endeavours to follow Roark's model, he is ultimately unsuccessful, and temporarily reverts to pandering to public opinion for the sake of his financial interests in the third act. For about half of the narrative, Wynand is married to Francon, despite her complete lack of affection for him.

In the first act, young Roark is spectacularly unsuccessful because of his unwillingness to compromise his unpopular designs, while Keating has rapidly risen to the top of the profession by embracing a mediocre and ugly design aesthetic. Roark is so unwilling to compromise his principles that he eventually takes a job in a quarry rather than produce ugly buildings. Meanwhile, Francon has withdrawn from a world of hideous mediocrity. Meeting Roark by chance, they are initially drawn to each other, but Francon is frightened of what a cruel, conformist world will do to an individual spirit, and withdraws. At the end of the first act, Roark receives a commission from an admirer of his work, a wealthy industrialist and `self-made man' who is otherwise unimportant to the plot.

The second act sees Roark's star rising. Toohey attempts to oppose Roark's success, inciting a public opposition campaign using his newspaper column -- a campaign which Wynand approves to increase the sales of his papers. This campaign is unsuccessful, and Roark receives commission after commission. Francon and Roark meet again, but again she is more worried about what society will do to an individualist spirit, and she runs off to Wynand. Several years later, with Roark a successful but controversial architect, Wynand commissions Roark to design his country home -- a `temple' to his wife. Wynand has complete forgotten the smear campaign against Roark, but Roark does not hold this against him. Wynand comes to admire Roark, and despite the romantic tension between Roark and Dominique, the three become close friends, a tightly-knit group of individualists. Peter Keating, meanwhile, has gradually lost his prominent position, and in a desperate bid to recover, agrees to attempt the design for a low-cost housing development. Due to his mediocrity, Keating is unsuccessful, and turns to Roark for assistance. Roark agrees, because solving the low-cost housing problem is something that happens to personally interest him (and not, in particular, out of any desire to help the destitute and homeless), but only if Keating does not allow the design to be compromised -- it must be built according to Roark's design, or not at all. Of course, this does not happen, and the establishment architects appropriate Roark's design `for the common good', modifying it. At the end of the second act, Roark destroys the nearly-completed development in an act of civil disobedience.

The third act focusses on Roark's trial. It is never clear exactly what the charges are supposed to be -- presumably, the destruction of the buildings owned by the developers -- but the two sides are Randian individualism versus the `collectivism' of the establishment. Toohey condemns Roark in the court of public opinion, Wynand betrays Roark by letting Toohey do it, but Roark triumphs in the end.

On to my analysis. In terms of a piece of literature and film, this thing is godsawful. The writing is stilted, hyperbolic, and repetitive, with all the subtlety of a brick in the face. Every single line is clearly intended to identify a character as either a noble individualist, a parasitic and contemptible conformist, or, in Wynand's case, torn between the two. To call the characters two-dimensional would be too generous. Every major character is either an annoying sycophant or an arrogant douchebag; none of them are in the least bit likable, but I suppose this is deliberate on Rand's part. Apparently we're supposed to admire the fact that Roark doesn't give a shit about anyone but himself. From a film standpoint, the acting is horrible, the music is overwraught, and the cinematography is listless and uninteresting. The passion between Roark and Francon is as smouldering and compelling as a bucket of water.

In philosophical terms, Rand is sort of the crib notes version of Nietzsche, only on steroids. Wikipedia gives a reasonable summary of Rand's individualism:

Rather than using "selfish" in describing choosing one's interests over and against the welfare of others, she described an act as "selfish" if it remained true to one's ideals against the influence of history and society. "Selflessness" is the concept of losing one's self, not merely acting without regard for one's self or in the interest of others, but as being unable to determine and form one's desires and opinions.

At least, this is what Rand says. She's not consistent in applying this, however. I'll illustrate this by examining each of the five major characters in turn. So, at best, this characterisation is an oversimplification.

Keating is the easiest: he is clearly shown to be unable to determine and form his own opinions and desires. However, he's not a villain; he's just contemptible and pathetic.

Roark is also supposed to be easy to categorise: he doesn't give a shit about other people's opinions at any point in the film, and therefore is a selfish hero.

But contrast Roark with Toohey, the great villain of the narrative. Toohey achieves greatness and power -- at least temporarily -- by manipulating the opinions and desires of others. But he clearly has his own opinions and desires. He's entirely selfish, in both the standard and Rand's sense: he chooses his own interests over and against the welfare of others (even as he appropriates this rhetoric for his own gain) and never compromises his principled, Machiavellian pursuit of power.

Furthermore, Roark's groupies -- Francon and Wynand -- should properly be seen as just as contemptible as Keating. They're identified as praiseworthy not for being individualists but because, unlike Toohey, they think Roark is the shiznit. The times when Wynand is portrayed negatively are especially telling: Wynand twice chooses to demonise Roark for the sake of maintaining his wealth and power as a newspaper mogul. Clearly, in these cases, he's acting according to his own desires and opinions -- like Toohey, he's choosing to pursue his own power according to his own best sense of the way to do that. So, like Toohey, he can't be fairly demonising for not being an individualist, because he acts in a selfish way (in both senses) consistently throughout the film. Rather, he's demonised when he doesn't kiss Roark's ass and sing his praises.

Francon's in a similar position. Up through the middle of the second act, Francon is portrayed as disgusted and fearful of the world. Roark's presence in her life, starting in the second act, finally gives her courage and purpose. She is clearly inspired by Roark's professions of individualism. That is, like Keating, she derives her desires and opinions from others -- Roark rather than Toohey -- and, hence, is no more of a true individualist than Keating. At the end of the second act, she happily risks her life to help Roark destroy the housing development, with no expectation of anything in return from him. Does that sound consistent with Rand's opposition to altruism to you?

Now, from comments Rand made throughout her life, it's clear that she identifies heavily with Roark and the other positively-portrayed selfish assholes of her works of fiction. Consequently, the real villains in Rand's universe aren't `conformists' or `collectivists'. They're other individualists who are Rand's rivals. Similarly, the real heroes aren't `individualists'. They're people with whom Rand identifies, and their groupies.

Rand's philosophy isn't individualist at all. It's a cult of personality, built around the worship of Ayn Rand, sycophantically praising her for her complete and utter assholitry.

Another Quick Note

Just in case anyone out there cares, I'm officially on Facebook these days. I must say that I do prefer it to Myspace, if only because I haven't come across any horrifically ugly modified pages and the site also has tons of games.

My Random Thought Of The Day

Hey, when you're walking around with change in both pockets, does anyone else imagine that you're wearing spurs?

Let's just top that racism off with a nice big scoop of sexism, too

NYT:

Though women and men have roughly the same credit scores, the Consumer Federation of America found that women were 32 percent more likely to receive subprime loans than men. The disparity existed within every income and ethnic group. Blacks and Latinos are also more likely to get subprime loans than comparable white borrowers.

Unlike earlier analyses that revealed clear racism on the part of lenders -- Black and Latin@ applicants were actively encouraged by loan officers to apply for larger mortgages than White applicants of the same income and credit score, and hence got worse terms for their loans -- this article does not suggest explicit racism. Instead, blame is laid on the fact that women are generally poorer than men.

Which is rather dumb, since the analysis controls for income.

“The striking thing is that the disparity between men and women actually goes up as income rises,” said Allen J. Fishbein, director of credit and housing policy for the Consumer Federation of America. Among high earners — defined as people earning twice the median income — black women are as much as five times more likely to receive subprime mortgages than white men.

A better explanation? Not structural sexism, but good old fashioned misogyny.

Mr. Fishbein said that even at high-income levels, mortgage brokers may assume that women are less confident to negotiate or shop around, and so offer them higher rates. A survey in 2006 by Prudential Financial found that two-thirds of women graded themselves at C or lower in their knowledge of financial services or products.

The payments rates are astounding. One woman bought a $130k house four years ago. Her initial payment was $841 a month, which is about 0.65% of the principle. Assuming a 30 year mortgage, at that payment she would pay the bank just under 232% of the principle. But her payment more than doubled after 2 years, to $1769 a month. That's 1.36% of the principle. Over 30 years, she would pay the bank just under 472% of the principle, or about $613.6K.

Nearly two-thirds of a million dollars, for what sounds like a dinky little townhouse in a lower middle class neighbourhood. At an average $15 an hour, 40 hours a week, 51 weeks a year, it would take someone 20 years worth of work just to earn that much money. That's half of your life's wages, just to buy a house.

And lest you argue that `they shouldn't be buying a house if they can't afford it':

Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, which buy loans from mortgage lenders, have estimated that 15 percent to 50 percent of the subprime loans they bought in 2005 went to borrowers whose credit scores indicated they were qualified for prime loans.

Yes, they couldn't afford the usurious subprime loans. But their credit scores say a significant percentage could have afforded prime loans.

A Project!

It's been a good long time since I set any kind of blogging goal for myself, but I think I've found one. Ezra has an interesting review up at the Barnes & Noble web site of Larry Sabato's A More Perfect Constitution. Now, I haven't the book, though it certainly sounds interesting, but the central premise is that the Constitution is horribly out of date and should be replaced by an entirely new version composed at a constitutional convention. While I agree with Ezra that a constitutional convention in our modern world of politics is a potentially scary thought indeed, I am rather intrigued by what I might put into my own Constitution if I was given the reigns.

So here's the plan: I'm going to work my way through the Bill of Rights first because it's the most fun part and therefore the part most likely for me to actually do before my mind wanders. I don't think any of the Amendments are perfect, so I'll be changing all of them at least a bit. After the Bill of Rights I'll pick and choose which Amendments to discuss (I think it hardly needs mentioning that it's unnecessary to include or discuss prohibition and its repeal). If by some monumental stroke of luck I manage to make it this far I'll start my way through the Constitution proper. I have no idea what kind of timeline this is going to be on, but hopefully the posts will be at least weekly.

Oh, and I'm also going to want lots of feedback from you guys, particularly points of disagreement.

Back from vacation

and what a shitty vacation it was. Blogging to resume when I feel less mildly depressed about the state of the world and my place in it.

Preventable Deaths

Ezra's got a great post about the 101,000 people that have died from preventable illnesses between 1998 and 2002. And I heard nearly all the Republican candidates wax poetic about how we have the greatest healthcare system in the world. Link.

Request A Song

Hey Rock Banders, did you know that if you sign up for a profile on the Rock Band Community page you not only get information on your bands, but you can request songs for downloadable content. I really really really wanted to request a Dream Theater song, but ultimately decided it'd be just too damn hard to adapt to the game, particularly on the drums. Damn you Portnoy! Anyway, as a second choice I went with William Shatner's version of "Common People". Link.

Post your picks in the comments!

Here are my runners up:
Alice Cooper - Feed My Frankenstein
Anthrax - Catharsis
The Arcade Fire - Rebellion (Lies)
The Blasters - Dark Night
Boston - Peace of Mind
Bruce Dickenson - Chemical Wedding
The Cars - Just What I Needed (also, My Best Friend's Girl would rock)
Dire Straits - Sultans of Swing
Jethro Tull - Aqualung
Jonathan Coulton - Code Monkey
Journey - too many to choose from, but let's go with Any Way You Want It
The Killers - Mr. Brightside
Led Zepplin - Immigrant Song
Metallica - Master of Puppets (I think we're actually going to get this whole album)
Prince - Kiss
Pink Floyd - Have A Cigar
Porcupine Tree - Trains
Queen - Flash Gordon Theme
Queensrÿche = Jet City Woman
Santa Esmeralda - Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood
Stevie Ray Vaughn - Mary Had A Little Lamb
Tito and Tarantula - Angry Cockroaches
The Trap - Big Girls
Trey Parker - America, Fuck Yeah

A Few Things

The Perry Bible Fellowship is the best web comic I've discovered in a long time. Link.

Gilbert Arenas cheats at Halo 3. Link.

Rez (a precursor to Guitar Hero and Rock Band) is coming to Xbox Live Arcade soon. Link.

One More Quesada

CBR has a five part interview with Joe Quesada, (1, 2, 3, 4) the last of which should be available some time later today. They discuss the recent and very controversial Spiderman story (at least among internet nerds) One More Day and it's followup, Brand New Day. There's all kinds of drama surrounding this thing, from Quesada's long stated hatred of Peter Parker being married to Joe Straczynski's online statement that his final two scripts were altered to the point that he asked for his name to be removed from the book. It's all been a pretty interesting look behind the scenes of a big comics event, but I have to say that though I haven't read the actual book, the more I read about this the more I tend to side with Quesada. I may not agree with him all the time, but he always seems quite reasonable to me.

Ron Paul

I've been annoyed during this presidential run by some of the support that Ron Paul has been getting from some young left leaning people who clearly don't understand that Paul's not just running against the war in Iraq. He's got the full suite of libertarian ideas and most of those would be pretty terrible in practice, but when he's on a stage next to most of the jokers in the Republican primary he seem pretty reasonable. Anyway, Ezra voices this frustration in a much more reasoned way. Link.

Ho Ho Ho!

Where's my cookie?!

Vacation

I'm currently finishing up grading and doing laundry before heading off to California on Monday. My internet access will be spotty until I'm back in the SB, so I'll see you all in about three weeks.

Drivers, Start Your Crashes

What's that? A political post? Well we can't have that at the top of the page! For those that have an Xbox 360 or PS3 and didn't know, the demo for Burnout Paradise is ready for you to download a month before the game comes out. I hear it's very good.

For those hoping to get a Wii for the holidays (yeah yeah, it's for someone else I'm sure), Nintendo and Gamestop are now offering rain checks which Nintendo says will be honored by January. Since right now getting a Wii is as much divine grace as seeing Mary in your Cheerios this might be a good deal for the Wii-less, though it's not quite as satisfying to unwrap. Link.

Is It Fair? Do You Like It?

Ezra's got a post up about the possibility of switching from an income tax to a consumption tax. He makes the point that a consumption tax has positives and can indeed be made progressive if that's what you wanted from it. This is, of course, spawning out of Mike Huckabee's support for such a tax. Link.

Ok, I'm not an economist, but it seems to me that you could make any tax more progressive and fair, but that's now why Gov. Huckabee is supporting the change. Like so many calls for altering the tax system, Steve Forbes' Flat Tax proposal came to my mind, the argument is always that the change should be made because it's simple. We're told that the current tax code is over complicated and taxing in a different manner will eliminate such confusion. This is simply wrong. There's no reason an income tax *must* be complicated, but there is a very good reason why *ours* is: time. Any system of taxes can be very simple if you refuse to add any exceptions or modifications of the original tax assessment. But what invariably happens is that over a few decades the tax system is used for a variety of noble and not-so-noble goals and the system gets cluttered. If you're really interested in simplifying the tax code a committee could review the Code looking for unneeded sections to be eliminated or multiple sections to be combined into more uniform and readable language.

But conservative calls for a change to the tax code are rarely about actual simplification; they're about shifting the tax burden. As Ezra says, a consumption tax could have higher tax rates for higher levels of consumption and as the comments say you could pair that up with exceptions/incentives to help people with specific issues. That'd be fine. What we should be wary of any attempts to reduce the proportion of income paid by the affluent in taxes.

Incidentally, I can't watch at work, but here's Warren Buffett supporting a consumption tax. Link.

First Day

Well, technically today is the second day of my new job, but yesterday was just orientation with no actual connection to my normal day to day activities. I've seen some oral arguments today and got to organize my office a bit, but I probably won't get to do anything of real substance for another month. Until then I'll just try to, you know, learn the law...and stuff. It is nice to come to work again and feel like I'm doing, or will be doing soon, important work. Oh, and I suppose it's nice to know I'm getting paid too. So hooray for finally pushing through the bureaucracy and becoming productive again!

Values on both sides

Say you have a certain statistical tool S. You give a population a certain test, you crunch the resulting data, and out comes a number, one for each person. In certain cases R, the numbers line up in a normal distribution -- a lot of individuals clustered near the mean, smoothly tapering off towards the extremes.

Then you go and apply S to another population, P. Now things are way off -- the population's clustered around a much lower mean, maybe the distribution looks weird, and so on.

Suppose further that P is a significant part of the total population you're interested in measuring using S. Say, around 12%. And suppose, furthermore, that the mean of P is in the lower third standard deviation of the distribution for R.

Then you have to make a choice between two basic hypotheses: Either individuals in P are significantly lower than individuals in R in terms of whatever it is S is supposed to measure. Or P is a crappy way of measuring this whatever it is -- it's gotten the distribution spectacularly wrong.

How to decide between these two? Well, if you already think that individuals in P are significantly lower than individuals in R in terms of whatever it is S is supposed to measure, then you embrace that hypothesis, and don't really consider whether or not S is working right, because it does indeed appear to be working right.

But then, of course, you can't point to S to argue for the claim that individuals in P are significantly lower than individuals in R in terms of whatever it is S is supposed to measure. That would be blatantly circular.

Back in October, James Watson -- misogynist and Nobel laureate co-discoverer of DNA with Crick and Franklin -- said something rather racist:

[Watson] is "inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa" because "all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours - whereas all the testing says not really", and I know that this "hot potato" is going to be difficult to address.

Pretty indefensible, right? How can anyone think that Africans are less intelligent than `us'? (I'm not even going to get into the assumption that the intersection of `us' and Africans is the empty set.)

Well, thank the internets, someone has risen to Watson's defence.

Watson's claim in his recent interview with Charlotte Hunt-Grubbe that intelligence testing shows lower scores in Africa than Europe is likewise, entirely supported by the scientific literature.

Then there are citations to a bunch of studies that all say about the same thing: on standard IQ tests, the mean throughout Africa is between about 65 and 75. That's apparently right around the current definition of `mental retardation'.

The situation is an instance of the one I described above. Test in Western nations, and you get a mean around 100 (by construction). Test in Africa, and you get a mean in the third standard deviation. Africa's population is about 888 million, which is around 12% of the world's 6 billion. These results are incompatible with a worldwide standard distribution of IQ -- if the standard deviation for the African data sets is the same as the standard deviation for the Western data sets, about twice as many people are in the third standard deviation as should be.

So we have to choose between two hypotheses: either Africans are less intelligent than Westerners (that's highly simplified, but again, bracketing the spectacularly racist assumptions here) or IQ tests are not a good way of measuring intelligence.

There is a long attempt in that post to argue for the negation of the second hypothesis -- that is, that IQ tests are, in fact, a good way of measuring intelligence. The argument comes down to two points: First, IQ test scores correlate with other IQ test scores, and second, IQ test scores correlate with economic success. The first is useless -- the fact that all these tests measure the same thing doesn't imply that they don't all measure the same artificial statistical construction. And the second only implies that IQ tests are a good way of measuring intelligence if economic success is a good way of measuring intelligence. And that's only plausible if you think that rich people are more intelligent than poor people. The possibility that economic status has an effect on IQ scores is never considered.

It all comes down to racism, classism, and the intersection of the two. If you already believed that Africans and poor people are less intelligent than `us', then you won't see any problems here. IQ tests must measure intelligence, because they get the results we expected for intelligence. If you think that the idea that Africans and poor people are less intelligent than `us' is offensive on its face, then you're as liable as before to think that this IQ test business is a load of crap.

Which makes this an excellent example of the way ethico-political values show up as background assumptions when reasoning from evidence to theory. We have the same sets of evidence, but different background assumptions concerning race, class, and intelligence. Based on these assumptions, we reason to very different -- indeed, incompatible -- theories. Without these background assumptions -- if our reasoning process was truly `value-free' -- we would have no way of reaching any conclusions beyond statistical correlations between different metrics.

However, where I am willing to embrace the role my values play in my reasoning, the defender of Watson, it seems, does not.

Zalta's logical truths that are not metaphysically necessary

In this post, I want to summarise the argument of Zalta's paper `Logical and analytic truths that are not necessary' for non-logicians who still know a little bit about modal logic.

The basic idea is as follows: Zalta identifies certain sentences which, first, are logical truths, in that they are true under all interpretations; but, second, they are not metaphysically necessary, in that they are not true at all possible worlds under at least one interpretation.

Zalta's argument focusses on definite descriptions. I want to use a simpler language: a standard sentential language L with a single unary operator @. If p is a wff of L, then informally, @p means p is true at the actual world.

More specifically, give L countably many primitive sentential constants p1, p2, p3, ..., and build the wffs of L using the standard logical operators ^, v, -, -> and the unary operator @ on the pi. A world W is a total function {pi : i in N} -> {T,F}, ie, an assignment of truth values. An interpretation A is an ordered pair , where D is a set of worlds and W0 is in D. Informally, W0 is the actual world under A. `p is true at W under A' is defined in the usual recursive way for the standard logical operators. `@p is true at W under A' is true if p is true at W0 under A. For purposes of order of operations, @ is stipulated to be of the lowest order, ie, it is evaluated after all other operators when there is ambiguity. `p is true under A' is true if p is true at W0 under A. `p is necessary under A' is true if, for all W in D, p is true at W.

p is logically true if, for all interpretations A, p is true under A. p is necessarily true if, for all interpretations A, p is necessary under A. Zalta goes to great pains to show that his semantics are entirely standard for languages which involve rigid designators; the only difference here is that the language is much simpler than Zalta's primary example.

For some q, let Q be the sentence

@q -> q

Informally, Q says that, if q is actually true, then q is true.

1. Q is logically true.

Q is logically true iff for all interpretations A, Q is true under A. Choose an interpretation Q. Q is true under A iff Q is true at W0 under A. Q is true at W0 iff either @q is false at W0 or q is true at W0. @q is false at W0 iff q is false at W0. So Q is logically true iff q is false at W0 or q is true at W0. So Q is logically true iff either q is false or q is true at W0. Since W0 is total, either q is false or q is true at W0. Hence Q is logically true.

2. Q is not necessary.

Q is necessary iff for all interpretations A, Q is necessary under A. Q is necessary under A iff, for all W in D, Q is true at W. Q is true at W iff either @q is false at W or q is true at W. @q is false at W iff q is false at W0. Hence Q is necessary iff for all interpretations A and all worlds W in D either q is false at W0 or q is true at W.

Hence Q is not necessary iff there is some interpretation A with some W in D such that q is true at W0 and q is false at W.

Let A be an interpretation such that q is true at W0 and false at all other W in D and let W != W0. Then q is true at W0 and q is false at W. Hence Q is not necessary.

3. There are logical truths which are not necessary.

The `counterintuitive' gap arises because of a difference in scope between necessity and logical truth. Logical truths must be true at all actual worlds under all interpretations. It does not look at any worlds besides the actual world in each interpretation. Hence the actuality operator @ is inert with respect to logical truth: @p is logically true iff p is logically true.

It is with respect to necessity that @ is doing some work. Necessity does not just consider the actual world of each interpretation. It considers the full `multiverse' of each interpretation. Necessity is actually much broader than logical truth, in the sense that it takes more into consideration. Indeed, necessity implies logical truthhood, but as 3 shows, the converse is not true. In my experience, metaphysicians think exactly the opposite -- that logical truthhood implies necessity, but not vice-versa.

This version of Zalta's example show why metaphysicians should want necessity to be the broader notion in a very clear way. Q said that, if q is actually true, then q is true. If this were necessary and q were actually true, then q would itself be necessary. That is, if logical truth implies necessity, then rigid designation makes every true sentence necessary. Modality collapses, and every `multiverse' consists of a single possible world.

If modal metaphysicians wish to retain the equipment of rigid designation or actualism and any robust notion of possibility, then they must deny the inference from logical truth to necessity, at least with respect to statements that might involve rigid designation or reference to the actual world.

Yet, as Zalta points out, this creates a serious problem for metaphysical methodology. That a modal statement is self-contradictory -- is logically false -- does not imply that it is a necessary falsehood -- necessarily not the case. It implies only that it is not necessarily the case.

Zalta's paper is `Logical and analytic truths that are not necessary', J Phil (Feb. 1998: 85.2), pp 57-74. JSTOR link

Lipton's examples of projectivism

Peter Lipton was a Cambridge philosopher of science who recently died. In 2004, he gave the Medawar lecture before the Royal Society (published as `The truth about science' in Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society' (2005: 360), pp. 1259-1269). In his lecture, Lipton distinguishes between three positions on scientific realism. His two examples to illustrate the third, `projectivism', are some of the best I've come across.

When I see the grass to be green, I am not hallucinating; nor can I see whatever colour I want to see. The colour I see depends in part on what is going on quite independently of me. Nevertheless, on the Lockean view, colour is defined in part in terms of human response: for an object to be green is for it to be disposed to produce a certain kind of experience. Thus although we see colours as being ‘out there’ in the objects, there is a sense in which that perception is in part a projection of the inner experience.

When a bridge is constructed, it cannot be built in any way one likes: the world constrains what materials and designs are possible. At the same time, a bridge is dependent on human activity: it is a human construct, if anything is. In that sense, a bridge is a joint produce of the human world and the world quite apart from human activity. Similarly, although that analogy will only go so far, on Kant’s version of projectivism, the properties that science attributes to the world are real, but are joint products of the things in themselves and the organizing, cognitive, descriptive activities of scientists.

This sounds familiar

From a comment on an article in the Chronicle of higher education:

MIT does not really tenure for excellence in research. Like other top-of-the-top universities, MIT tenures for reputation of excellence in research. (Forget about teaching or service; neither factors into the equation.)
This means two things: First, cutting-edge research, risky research, or what the corporate-types like to call “thinking outside of the box” is not viable when faced with a grueling tenure process, based so heavily upon peer review that—in order to garner outstanding reviews—one must cater to the preconceptions of one’s peers at other top institutions. Thus, much like that Other university up the road, MIT is forced poach its very best scholars who first proved their genius elsewhere, because the tenure process does not allow its own junior faculty the time or intellectual flexibility to excel at that level.

What does this have to do with gender (or race)? Well, peer review might claim to be an “objective” analysis of research, but any psychologist or sociologist worth their salt will tell you that evaluation of one’s peers is a social process. And look at the gender and racial breakdowns of these “peers.” White to a man. MIT’s unyielding adherence to reputation can and will only reproduce the social circle (white, male) of those called upon to evaluate the reputation. Meanwhile, there is a myopic and simple-minding insistence, pervasive throughout the institute, that this tenure process is somehow “objective” (tossing out a century of social science on the impossibility of such a thing), which leaves the Institute unable to address the problem.
Only after women and minorities (and white men with numbers of women or minorities in their social circle) have broken into other top and just-below the top institutions, and occupy positions of power in the profession, will they then advocate for those in their social networks in tenure cases at MIT. And only then will MIT’s tenuring process be physically able to recognize these one-time outsiders as worthy of tenure.

Most of the other comments are simply odious. For example, the way the next comment flatly denies that sex and gender play any role any the tenure process and raises the specter of -- oh noes! -- people getting things they don't deserve. The commenter is, evidently, completely ignoring decades of research that the same CV is consistently rated as less impressive when there's a woman's name at the top. S/he certainly misses the entire point of the previous comment.

Yes, these data show that the number and percentage of female faculty receiving tenure at MIT is increasing slowly. However, by themselves, these numbers do not prove that gender discrimination took place. In order to prove this, it would be necessary to provide evidence that female tenure candidates achieved the research record necessary to attain tenure, but were turned down because they were women (i.e., because of their genitalia or feminine attributes) .... It seems logical to believe that the vast majority of highly educated people would not turn down a candidate that has achieved the necessary record of accomplishments for tenure because of their genitalia or femininity. The flip side of this is whether a candidate without the necessary record of accomplishments should be granted tenure because of their genitalia or femininity so the percentages improve more quickly and become more equal? Those who use identity politics to try to leverage power and resources for individuals who may not merit them would say yes.

Now, I actually don't agree entirely with the first comment. S/he says that an objective evaluation is impossible. I think that an objective hiring process is possible. Or, to be more specific, an evaluation in which the consideration of candidates' races and genders and the fact of historical and ongoing discrimination against members of certain races and genders are considered specifically at certain points, would be more objective than the current system. When it comes to junior faculty, for example, measures could be taken to make sure the initial stages are completely anonymous (or as anonymous as possible), and gender, sex, and racial identity could be used to choose between candidates considered to be of the same quality by the initial stages.

Astounding

I know a bit about Photoshop and digital image manipulation, though certainly not that much. But I don't think that's the reason why this blew me away:


Via

Blog Readability Test

I'm not sure whether I trust the algorithm they're using, but it's certainly a fun tool. Link.

In case you're wondering, we here at the Ra were rated at a high school reading level. While I'm sure Noumena's posts would sky rocket the rating if judged on their own, I'm ok with the rating. I think it's a nice balance between smarty pantsocity and writing in a cogent manner. Anyone find some interesting results? Feel free to post them in the comments!

Oh The View...