Home > observations > Lots of great stuff from around the web this week

Lots of great stuff from around the web this week

November 11, 2007
  • LEAD STORY: Today is Veterans Day, appropriately the day that the first World War came to an end on the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month in 1918.  As one of the comics said this morning, the difference between Veterans Day and Memorial Day is that we can still thank the Veterans.  And thank you too, anyone currently serving.

  • Paul at Cafe Philos opens up a can of whup-ass on “Just Say No” (the neocon’s favorite answer to everything) with New study damns abstinence-only sex education
    “Why does America lead the industrialized world in teen pregnancies? Let me suggest the reason might have something to do with the willful stupidity of American policy makers…”

     
    Our short-sighted policies are damaging kids’ lives by lying to them about something really important.  It’s hypocritical and stupid and we should stop wasting millions of dollars on it.

  • Don at Life Cycle Analysis turns a spotlight to those pesky kids in Powershifters shut down Citibank!  I had not heard of the Powershift youth leadership movement on global warming but it is good news as our brave state and federal legislators (to say nothing of our denier-in-chief) are busy ducking the crisis every chance they get.  There’s always a chance the next generation may embarrass us into thinking about the future.
  • On a related topic: one reason it’s so hard to develop innovation on energy production and conservation is that new ideas have to compete with massive corporate welfare to old technologies.  You get more of what you subsidize and from The Pump Handle, here’s a prime example: Illinois’s Subsidy to Coal’s Bob Murray, Wilbur Ross and Exxon.  Cmonforton asks; “The demand for coal is going through the roof.  Do giant U.S. energy companies really need a handout?”  (This is hardly confined to the coal industry, BTW)
  • Also over on The Pump Handle, Liz Borkowski ‘splains Why should you care about your neighbor’s insurance?  Hey, I have health insurance.  The part of the boat where I’m sitting doesn’t have a leak in it…
  • Anyone with an interest in Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (and that would pretty much include every taxpayer) should read this Science Daily article Biomarker For PTSD And Why PTSD Is So Difficult To Treat.  It’s all too common to dismiss any mental illness as a moral failing, if one has forgotten the old proverb about walking a mile in the other person’s moccasins.
  • Another nugget from the TED talks – Sir Ken Robinson asks, Do schools kill creativity?  I thought he was trying a little too hard to be funny but the last third of his talk raises some great points.  Most important: that the complexity and diversity of students’ intelligence is being ‘strip-mined’ for particular properties to the detriment and even destruction of other, unrecognized properties.  In the process he makes an excellent observation about ADHD and how our current approach may be simply wrong.  And the third commenter lights up a good angle:
    “Anecdotally at least, I would have to say yes, schools do kill creativity. They start by killing the creativity of the teachers…”

  • Finally Greg Laden’s blog shares with us a Nature review of Tuesday’s broadcast of ‘Judgment Day’, the PBS documentary about the Intelligent Design trial in Dover, Pa.  I will definitely be watching that one. (Check your local listings)

One Other Thing:  I’m a pretty decent bicycle mechanic but the mechanics of this man’s relationship to his bicycle just have me thoroughly puzzled. Also although I’m pretty fond of my bike, uh, not that fond…

Categories: observations
  1. Ted
    November 11, 2007 at 14:00 | #1

    Our short-sighted policies are damaging kids’ lives by lying to them about something really important.  It’s hypocritical and stupid and we should stop wasting millions of dollars on it.

    There’s so much focus on truth and lying that people make a cottage industry out of exposing lies, yet in the end are not all that successful. George Soros has an article on some of this truth in politics and science.

    … these techniques were developed in connection with the advertising and marketing of commercial products and services, and then adapted to politics. Their distinguishing feature is that they can be bought for money. More recently, cognitive science has helped to make the techniques of deception even more effective, giving rise to political professionals who concentrate only on “getting results.”
     
    These professionals take pride in their accomplishments, and may even enjoy the respect of an American public that admires success no matter how it is achieved. That fact casts doubt on Karl Popper’s concept of open society, which is based on the recognition that, while perfect knowledge is unattainable, we can gain a better understanding of reality by engaging in critical thinking.

    Popper failed to recognize that in democratic politics, gathering public support takes precedence over the pursuit of truth. In other areas, such as science and industry, the impulse to impose one’s views on the world encounters the resistance of external reality. But in politics the electorate’s perception of reality can be easily manipulated. As a result, political discourse, even in democratic societies, does not necessarily lead to a better understanding of reality.

    The reason democratic politics leads to manipulation is that politicians do not aspire to tell the truth. They want to win elections, and the best way to do that is to skew reality to their own benefit.

    This insight should lead us not to abandon the concept of open society, but to revise and reaffirm the case for it. We must abandon Popper’s tacit assumption that political discourse aims at a better understanding of reality and reintroduce it as an explicit requirement. The separation of powers, free speech, and free elections alone cannot ensure open society; a strong commitment to the pursuit of truth is also required.

    We need to introduce new ground rules for political discourse. These cannot be identical to scientific method, but they should be similar in character, enshrining the pursuit of truth as the criteria on which political views are to be judged. Politicians will respect, rather than manipulate, reality only if the public cares about the truth and punishes politicians when it catches them in deliberate deception. And the public should care about the truth because deception misleads people in choosing their representatives, distorts policy choices, undermines accountability, and destroys trust in democracy.
    [...]

  2. November 11, 2007 at 21:28 | #2

    Thanks for the mention, DOF!

    Ted, I suspect partisanship is an enemy of truth.  It seems partisans don’t much care about truth so long as their side wins.

  3. November 11, 2007 at 22:22 | #3

    Thank you for mentioning the disgraceful subsidies that our government continues to pay out, as it tries to discourage us from using the products which it subsidizes.  This is a good example of how money in government hands tends to do more harm than good.

    I think the comments on Popper’s theory were pretty close to the truth.

    In industry, the only thing that matters is getting results.  If you could make my blue jeans cheaper and better last week, but somebody else is doing better this week, I’m not going to refrain from pursuing my best interests, in order to subsidize an inefficient producer.

    In politics, however what matters is creating the illusion that you are doing something that somehow, someday, might produce results.  Hopefully something which cannot be evaluated objectively until you are out of office.  As a result, we have politicians who make their careers applying “quick fix” solutions to economic problems, which in turn make the problems worse and worse.

    If you impose a minimum wage, it sounds good.  The sad truth is that if you are producing enough to justify the wage, you’re probably already making that much.  If you’re not, your employer is probably going to have to let some of his people go, so he can continue to do business.  It sounds, intuitively, like a sane solution.  The reality is very different.

    Or consider something as “harmless” as building codes.  Rich people say to themselves “hey, I wouldn’t want to live in a house that lacked this feature or that”.  They then, with the best of intentions, impose their values on everyone else.  The problem is that poor people tend to have different values than rich people.  This is not due so much to intrinsic differences, but rather simply because the needs they will have to sacrifice in order to conform to your tastes will probably be much more urgent than the needs you have to sacrifice in order to get the same goals.  So will intentioned statists impose building codes, and may people who could have lived more cheaply, and accumulated some capital, and eventually perhaps gone into business for themselves are forced to squander their money on higher rents, paid so that the apartment complex can send workers in to make sure that some fitting is at least 3.14159 inches from some other fitting.  And that is not even considering people who are homeless today, who would have homes in the absence of building codes.  Hell, lots of people wouldn’t mind living in a bloody log cabin for a few years, if it enabled them to meet their other goals more easily.

    And of course there is global warming.  Whether it has anything to do with human activity is anybodys guess, but what we know for sure is that many of the potential solutions are held out of our reach by government.  The government imposes a tariff on sugar which is twice the world market value of the products.  Thus, what we pay for sugar here is three times as much as they pay in the rest of the world.  And we are not engaging in a harebrained race to make ethanol out of corn, which requires as much energy to create as it provides to your vehicle, when we could do much better with sugar, among other things.  All we would have to do is repeal the tariffs.  It’s amazing how often the free market can solve your problems, if you’re willing to let it.  I sure hope to see a free market before I die.

  4. November 12, 2007 at 07:49 | #4

    It’s amazing how often the free market can solve your problems, if you’re willing to let it.  I sure hope to see a free market before I die.

    Be careful what you wish for. Vitamin C is good for you but that doesn’t mean you should try to exclusively live on it.

  5. Ted
    November 12, 2007 at 09:33 | #5

    I sure hope to see a free market before I die.

    You won’t see a free market as long as I live, if I have anything to do with it. :-) I’m a fan of statism, big government and 50+% taxes. Ayn Rand = abysmally bad.

    I can’t understand this notion that lack of building codes is good particularly if you consider the availability of trailers and mobile/modular homes in the US. They obviously don’t have the same quality or safety standards that McMansions have and are geared toward those that can afford them allowing the dream of “home ownership” to extend to lotto buyers. Wouldn’t that equal your desire for a bloody log cabin, or are you looking for an actual lack of safety oversight and governance?

    If there was a lack of governance and oversight, would we expect each person to build their own lean-to from mud and sticks, and scavenging for cardboard or would we tend toward having someone in the market serve the need for cardboard boxes coated with date-rape fire retardant chemicals at reduced rates?

    Ergo, modular homes.

  6. November 12, 2007 at 20:29 | #6

    I can’t understand this notion that lack of building codes is good particularly if you consider the availability of trailers and mobile/modular homes in the US. They obviously don’t have the same quality or safety standards that McMansions have and are geared toward those that can afford them allowing the dream of “home ownership” to extend to lotto buyers. Wouldn’t that equal your desire for a bloody log cabin, or are you looking for an actual lack of safety oversight and governance?

    Mobile homes are still far more expensive than safer dwellings which could be built more cheaply in a free market.  The point is that if I am building my own home, or paying for somebody else to build it, I am going to include those features which actually make it safer or more comfortable out of simple self interest.  There is no need to force me.

    What you have to force me to do is to build a home which meets some arbitrary bureaucratic definition of safety.  These arbitrary definitions also tend to be more expensive than actual safety, because they include those elements which were added only because some union wanted to protect it’s turf or some company wanted to sell a product that nobody needed.

    <blockquote>
    If there was a lack of governance and oversight, would we expect each person to build their own lean-to from mud and sticks, and scavenging for cardboard or would we tend toward having someone in the market serve the need for cardboard boxes coated with date-rape fire retardant chemicals at reduced rates?
    <blockquote>
    I suppose you would be free to make that sort of decision if you so desired, but I would recommend using good judgment.  If you have no faith in people to make good decisions on how to run their own lives, how can you have faith in them to choose masters who make good decisions for them?  How can they recognize judgment if they have none.

    If most people have good judgment, it is redundant to force good judgment upon them, and big government is just a waste of money.

    If most people have bad judgment, it is insane to allow them to force their bad judgment upon you, and big government is disaster.

    Either way, the free market is a better arrangement.

  7. November 12, 2007 at 20:43 | #7

    Either way, the free market is a better arrangement.

    Ahh, the search for a simple heuristic that will relieve us of the burden of drawing lines, making distinctions, and deciding what to do.  Just have faith in God, the state, the free market, Rev. Moon, or the Magic 8-Ball™, and we won’t have to think.

  8. November 12, 2007 at 22:54 | #8

    Actually, that’s almost the opposite of the truth.  We must retain our right to act as we decide, so that we will gain the benefit of thinking, and so that our mistakes, and we are sure to make some, will not be imposed on those who were wiser than we.

    And of course, it is also important to recognize that different people have different values, and thus what may be a mistake for me might not be a mistake for you.  A free market serves all, a socialist dictatorship serves only those whose values agree with those of the masters.

    As an agnostic, my faith in god and Rev. Moon are somewhat limited, as a Libertarian, my faith in the State is non-existent.  I have faith in the market for the same reason that I have faith in open-source software:  When lots of people are trying to solve a problem, and each is free to choose their own solution, independent of what others choose, solutions are bound to be forthcoming, and nobody’s mistakes will be imposed on others.

  9. November 13, 2007 at 07:34 | #9

    The operative word, cxxguy, is “or” which means the options I named were examples and might well be mutually exclusive.  In your case, your faith in the free market is touchingly similar to a religious person’s faith in God.  It is a single principle that you believe can be counted on to always arrive at the best solution. 

    And within a given sphere, this is true; unfortunately that sphere does not include the biosphere where everyone lives.  It is not necessarily even big enough to encompass the self-actualized individual envisioned by those who read Atlas Shrugged in high school and never got over it.  It is an abstract sphere that only encompasses the transactions specifically named, and damn the external effects.

    In other words, you’re as (irr)rational as any True Believer, only your god is the Free Market.

  10. Ted
    November 13, 2007 at 08:38 | #10

    If most people have good judgment, it is redundant to force good judgment upon them, and big government is just a waste of money.

    If most people have bad judgment, it is insane to allow them to force their bad judgment upon you, and big government is disaster.

    Those are pretty big ifs, and only make sense when the individual is assumed to be atomic and self-dependent.

    I like to think of social regulations as institutional knowledge that’s being passed down so that we each don’t need to make the same mistakes, because that doesn’t get us very far forward. Therefore, I deny individual atomicity and self-dependence.

    Or think of it as organic knowledge. As in organism. To deny the nature of human organic knowledge, is to assume the burden of full and complete knowledge on an individual level, which if you’ll excuse me, is just ridiculous because it disregards the structure and accumulated knowledge that precedes, and assumes responsibility for future unknowables. You could have great judgment, but if a flood/drought (outside your scope of influence) destroys your crops, your bloodline terminates because of external variables. Not good.

    In other words, you’re as (irr)rational as any True Believer, only your god is the Free Market.

    Maybe the word is dogmatic. But I think the view stems from a very incomplete philosophy that engages the two “if” conditions above, to the exclusion of all other ifs.

  11. November 14, 2007 at 19:22 | #11

    Actually, I would say that one of the two ifs have to be true.  People either are or are not generally rational.  Pick one.  If they are, then government will do limited damage.  If they are not, then government will do catastrophic damage.

    I would like to think that they are, but horrors of the Clinton and Bush administrations are beginning to convince me otherwise.

  12. November 14, 2007 at 22:07 | #12

    I would say that one of the two ifs have to be true.

    Or, you could look up “false dichotomy” in the class of logical errors. 

    I would like to think that they are, but horrors of the Clinton and Bush administrations are beginning to convince me otherwise.

    The fact that you can lump the two together as if they were in any way equivalent tells me you are a free-market monomaniac.  And, that you have no clue as to the meaning of “horrors”.

  13. November 16, 2007 at 23:16 | #13

    I would put the murder of the Branch Davidians, the wasted lives, time, and money in Somalia, and Bosnia, and several other countries I cannot recall off the top of my head horrors.  They may have been small scale horrors compared to Bush’s Big Shop of Horrors, but they were just as horrible to those who died, and to those whose families died, as are Bush’s horrors, to his respective victims.  Clinton used the United States military in foreign engagements more times than any other single “peace-time” president.  Bush has used the military far fewer times, but the occasions were more disastrous.

    Then there are the taxes, the attacks on the right to keep and bear arms, the escalation of the drug war, signing the law which gave Bush the authority for “regime change” in Iraq.  Bush is a prize fool, but Clinton was no slouch at foolery himself.

    I’m actually just a freedom monomaniac, my love of the free market is just a subset.  A fractional mania, if you will.

  14. November 17, 2007 at 00:06 | #14

    I still prefer the Canadian designation for 11/11: Remembrance Day.  It’s somewhat prescriptive, which is a good thing.

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