Another tedious notion

Guilty by associations.

In politics and much of life, what seems the quickest way to a problem, other than sending photos of your genitals to other people, is to carry along some baggage in the form of people who say or do some "shameful shit". And then to have one's opponents, anyone looking to point and laugh, people who appear willing to endorse a world of pain upon others quickly, spend most of their time running about talking about how terrible it is that you (not they) carry that baggage in the form of things you must think or want done in your name.

This is hardly limited as a phenomenon. Atheists deal with this in the association and sometimes espousal by some of their number with all manner of far-left ideological positions (communism for example), and the historical assumption by the public that secularists must all be godless communists or some such.

Christians have the Westboro Baptist Church. The Tea Party has Sarah Palin. Muslims had Osama bin Laden, and so on down the line.

Libertarians deal with it all the time with some of the ideological travelers it carries and brings along for the ride (Randians, Austrians, gold standard folks, paleoconservatives, secessionists, anarchists, and outright racists at times). "States' rights" in libertarian circles (usually) means something about decentralized power and an attempt, misguided in practice but perhaps sound in theory, that a more localized government be used. The theory is that this would be more adaptive and responsive to the local knowledge and wisdom of local institutions and public and in that way provide a "freer" society under which to live than one ruled by a distant and central authority with only a vague need to respond to local demands and concerns. (In practice, public choice and regulatory capture issues demonstrate that local governance is often ignored by the public and more easily swayed by "special interests", where funds and policy can be diverted to benefit the few at the expense of the many, and a decreasing quantity of cities and towns have a local beat that provides some added scrutiny to these forms of governing behaviors.) "States' rights" in normal conversation means Jim Crow and segregationists, and the legacy of slavery that came before it. That gap of language and communication exists. Libertarians do themselves little credit to pretend it does not. It thus does little good to run around talking about a complex philosophical theory of politics when what the public hears is "we would like to be race supremacists and hang around with other racists!". And then to have a variety of public figures of vaguely libertarian dispositions who have done little to disassociate or disabuse the public of that impression.

When one is of a commonly known, accepted pluralist institution, say the Catholic Church or Christianity in general in the United States, it is quite easy to cast aside the notion that something ridiculous and offensive, if not outright awful and terrifying, that someone is doing, has done in the past, etc, doesn't involve "you", as a person of similar faith and practices. Almost no one puts out a demand for denouncing such people in order to accept as decent and respectable those people of similar dispositions. No one demands anyone stand up and do so. No one looks around to see that it is done. Denunciations come anyway of course, because what is said or done may well have been terribly reprehensible on its own grounds (the priest abuse scandals say). But no one is checking the work to hold it against them later.

Suppose one is of a maligned, oppressed, misunderstood, or relatively unknown minority instead. And now the equation flips. Denunciations come anyway for reprehensible actions by people of similar dispositions (for calling out racist sentiments, acts of terrorism, etc), just as before. But now they go largely ignored by the horde of people who are demanding such denunciations in the process of declaring that whichever disfavored minority group must tacitly support such activities if it doesn't issue such things. A minority group, particularly when composed of somewhat radical persons, has a strong duty imposed upon it to police its own members, its own fringes, and its own fellow travelers to avoid baggage.

If racism and terrorism make up a fairly low probability effect in the average person's interests, it doesn't occur to most of us that we need to denounce the behavior of "other people", even if they look like us, or attend the same civil and religious institutions. I suspect part of the reason school shootings attract so much attention is that there's a growing disposition to park young men in this category of dangerous and hostile, despite it being a fairly rare quality that most young men partake of violence of any kind. If it does not occur to most of us in some minority population that these shared characteristics require us to acknowledge the offending or heinous actions of (supposed) fellow travelers that we may or may not feel any special kinship toward, it should not be surprising that most such people do not speak up against them in some special way, just as it is not surprising that most people in a larger and more entrenched plurality for some society might not. It also should not be surprising that attempts to denounce such groups in this way can have the counterproductive effects of a) not demonstrating to the group a specific problem caused by perceived or actual members of it as they are already feeling disassociated from these aggrieved members and see no need to disassociate further, or b) conforming the group around to defend the activities, up to a point, of these aggrieved members rather than condemning and reforming any actual bad behaviors by supporting the emotional reaction that the group is under attack.

So what to do? Or, rather more pressing, what purpose does this all serve? Primarily the arguments of this kind take the form of "these silly people ALL must be like this crazy mofo", in the seeking of dismissal of their kind for partisan gains (be that party political, religious, or some other division). This is effectively why people argue, not to discern what is true or false about a thing or person or their associates, loose or otherwise, but to win arguments in a social context, and to drive people to or away from goals being sought by others. Sometimes these arguments are of convenience, seeking allies without. Sometimes they are of purity, seeking to restrict and annihilate heresies from within. But always, the goal is to advance one's interests. Not to find and to do what is "right".

To deal with this, minority groups should have twin goals. First. To police their own of the most radical and offensive notions, in particular those of harmful intention toward others, and to declare these notions as out-of-bounds, marginal, or otherwise unjustifiable (in most instances). And second to declare their own positions more fiercely and publicly so that the public can not easily use heuristic positions to simplify their thinking into something more offensive. For something like say, suicide bombing, it is common to declare that Muslims are "fine" with such things. In fact, outside of the Palestinian territory, most Muslims are not. The vast majority even in most countries (including the United States). Where they are accepted as "sometimes justified", it is possible to see such attacks as a form of asymmetric warfare, where there might be particular forms of attacks (upon soldiers or supplies of soldiers, and civilians working on a military base of a perceived foe, for instance), that might indeed be seen as "justifiable" in the context of military conflicts, and others which are clearly reprehensible. There does not appear to be much work done to determine if this is the thinking being used of course when answering questions (that these are somehow "legitimate targets"). It probably is not in many cases and that there is a vibrant minority which expresses support for what would legitimately be a horrifying position morally.

That there is any substantial population expressing favor for such thinking should be viewed as a problematic development that should require some response internally. And if we look around, we find that it can be treated as such. It has been decreasing in popularity already over the last decade. There are various clerics writing and declaring that it is harmful and wrong. Various strategic leaders within some extremist/fundamentalist groups understand that it does little to advance their purported cause, particularly when civilians may be killed. The violence of extremist groups is overwhelmingly listed as one of the biggest problems with such organisations (not their extreme ideological or fundamentalist views, but deprivation of life and the retaliations that brings). The abhorrent views of such groups might be still problematic for their own reasons, but it is the violence that foremost attracts the ire and attention of both the outside world and the internal Muslim communities. This should demonstrate that it may be possible to both clearly identify the worst offenses of some group, and to work to condemn, constrain, and as much as possible eliminate such offenses from the constellation of activities that a group of persons is to engage in.

There's another flipside to all of this. How is it that the majority or large pluralities can be favored so well that their "sins" are forgiven and ignored, or at least declared the acts of lunacy and depravity that they often are, without some grander accounting. Put into practical terms, does this serve us some good in reducing such activities of offense or harm to declare it the acts of insane minorities, themselves sub-groupings that are clearly delineated from the whole by some arbitrary measure? If the affront is committed by some members of a more popular, and thus socially favored group, say police or the military, how does a community respond? Why does it not respond in the same way? Why are we quick to declare that "of course not all cops are bad", as a caveat when some legitimate grievance does emerge, but we may more easily saddle up to the notion that certain religions declare and command violence (but not other religions, certainly not "our's") or certain political ideologies command and worship greed and selfishness (but certainly not "our" political affiliations). What service does this perform for us in attending to any institutional reform needs of these more popular places to be able to hang one's hat as a member? Or to the expulsion or if possible the rehabilitation of its most heinous members?

morality v religion

This should not be terribly surprising. There doesn't appear to be a big difference in reported moral behavior for the religious from non-religious populations.

What appears interesting out of it so far
1) Haidt's moral framework of distinct moral values and the ideological or religious faultlines over which are held in higher regard is rather clearly demonstrated in what people self-report as moral violations or achievements. Religious (conservative) people often identified different things as immoral than the secular (liberal) population. This probably explains a large measure of why non-religious persons are often regarded as "immoral" by religious people, because they do not identify much of their behavior as morally and ethically questionable where the religious person does. This does not mean that non-religious and secular persons have not considered these questions or that they avoid these moral quandaries in order to do things. Instead it usually means they don't find it very important to judge themselves or others on these questions and may regard them as matters of personal taste; Coke v Pepsi style or rap v country rather than intractable social questions.

2) People report hearing about immoral behavior much more often than moral behavior. This is the traditional transmission vector for morality, getting other people to gossip about your misdeeds. I suspect religious people are more vulnerable to negative gossip (from within "their" group). Most secular persons I am familiar with are vulnerable to negative gossip, but mostly because they may try to ignore it until it has already caused a problem for themselves. Paying attention to the opinions of others is tedious, and often a waste of time, but sometimes carries benefits.

3) Religious people experience more guilt or shame over moral questions. This does not appear to lead them to avoid these actions however. It means they feel worse about it. My off-the-cuff impression is that non-religious people experience less guilt mostly because the moral behaviors that religious persons identify are more common (purity or disgust violations) and easy to identify. Non-religious person's ethical codes are more likely to identify most behaviors that are non-harmful (to others) and consensual acts to be acceptable and experience little guilt over these versus other actions where other persons were harmed, which are less likely to occur or be observed in a daily or weekly pattern. If they feel guilty over drinking too much the night before, it's probably because of the hangover and not because they violated some decree, as an example.

Moral politics

are different depending on what team you're on.

Motivated reasoning is a well described psychological behavior. It is not surprising that it would apply to political beliefs, even, or perhaps especially, on wrongly-held false beliefs.

I'm not sure where this is surprising that conservatives would be identified as more strongly motivated. Moral research shows two parts that weren't mentioned in the above.

1) Liberals may think they are more morally motivated, but they are only more morally motivated a particular strain of moral reasoning (such as harm reduction and fairness). Conservatives are more so on a variety of other moral basis (such as disgust or loyalty). This would mean that conservatives have a sector of moral beliefs that they are more motivated on than most people.

2) Liberals are usually identified as highly open to experience, which in turn means highly open to nuance and uncertainty of experiences. Conservatives are described opposite. A need for closure has a greater tendency to avoid trying to understand and cohere conflicting ideas, facts, and opinions into your own worldview.

I do think the "team" tribal affiliation that has consistently attacked university level research (along with media coverage) as having a liberal bias has called into question the validity of non-conservative sources of information. But I think that's probably more describing the mechanics of this disparity than its causes.

Totally unsurprising conclusion: libertarians are weird in that they don't moralise.

The federalism problem

In recent debates, it is clear that there is a growing concern for an object policy like national educational standards. I can sympathize with some of these concerns that underlie such a policy but I find the solution more problematic than most. These are the numerous problems
1) We have a fairly clear supposition of the following
a) that strong investment and support of education is a positive net good for a society, both for individual benefits, economic opportunity/equality, and for net economic growth as a whole.
b) that at present our educational system has infrastructural deficits in attaining this end goal.
2) We do not have a very clear idea how to attain that goal. There are numerous models around the globe of educational success and varying definitions of what defines such successes. The variations between "success" in the Shanghai or Singapore model and that of Finland or other Northern European republics is rather vast, both in results and methods.

This means that it is unclear what national standards would be best designed to accomplish, or how they should accomplish them.

3) In the absence of well-defined and independently useful metrics, it is unclear how we might measure the accomplishment of such things. We rely strongly on standardised tests, which have at best, only a marginal utility to study the impact and efficacy of our educational system and the agents we have appointed to carry it out. By contrast, the Finns do not seem to bother with standardising test results (other than for college admissions periods). And they're apparently kicking our ass on them all the same.

4) I think this argues strongly for the continued use of the "laboratory of democracy" model of decentralised federalism, as it pertains to education. With the use of federal involvement perhaps in some form like that of "race to the top", that is a reward structure to encourage states and cities to innovate and succeed in the platform of education with minimal concern as to how they do so from any top-down institutional perspective. I have my own concerns with "race to the top", namely that it still relies too heavily on testing regimes, but I admire the conceptual approach. Generally speaking in the absence of clear evidence of what works and what does not to achieve a public policy goal, even one of great importance with definite and large externality effects and free rider problems like education provision, we should not be invoking strong central responses. At best we can possibly acknowledge that some measure of taxation to provide that service publicly is appropriate, but the administration may be a more vague open ended system than, say, central and public monopolies on its provision. Other governmental involvements might be to assure that there are not discriminatory practices that conflict unnecessarily with broader educational missions, such as by excluding LGBT children or children adopted/raised by same, or practicing racial discrimination in acceptance of student and parent applications. Gender discrimination seems to have some possibly useful effects (For example, women on average behave differently in a unisex environment in what seems like a constructive way. That is, that they are more competitive than when around men in a mixed gender setting, where they can be rendered more passive by our social norms). Though I'm not sure it should be used permissively at all times (there is value in interacting in mixed sex environments for lots of other reasons) and I do not think it appropriate to systematically exclude a gender from educational opportunity entirely at all.

5) My primary concern with any nationalising standards of education is the same I have for those of state or local standards. Namely, who determines these? At present we often elect school board members to local and state offices, with the side effect of only cursory attention being paid by most voters to their actual qualifications to help determine school policies and educational curricula in any subjects. Presumably we could follow a similar model to decide federal standards, or have the tangential effect of having to lobby an appointed bureaucracy and/or influence it through the election of other public officials (Presidents for example). The existence of standards however does not presuppose what those standards will be or how they will be amended or by whom.

6) To me this seems like a model destined to repeat and inflame the smaller turf battles which occur in thousands of school districts and statehouses around the country at a national level and "we" would have to wage unceasing war with social conservatives over the content and instruction of science or history courses in order to avoid surrendering control over those standards to their perusal and objection. At present, the amount of influence formerly wielded by a dentist over not only Texas but large portions of the country concerning history or science instruction, curriculum and textbook content is a warning that forming large national controls over such things is not likely to result always in the well-meaning intention of providing a better liberal arts education base to the broader public.

7) Many of those aforementioned social conservatives already educate their children at home, or with explicitly religious instruction, and often at public expense. This suggests that their pet issues of religious indoctrination, prayer, creationism, historical revisionism, or whatever the case may be, are likely to be values they wish imposed anyway and will seek means to achieve them. Some of these are Constitutionally protected values (religion for instance), even if they are not imposable values on others by that same Constitution. (Note: this is not to say that all home school instruction is valueless, or that parents should take no effort in the education of values and subjects for their children, but that there are tacit motivations invoked and involved which are of importance to many parents and families).

8) This suggests that an alternative to stronger and tighter national and central control is to abolish or reduce local and state controls. If social conservative types are already going to flee the perceived liberal hegemony over education, then I say let them go. And perhaps they will stop bothering the rest of us if their concerns are allowed to be addressed more privately. I find that a practical objection is that there would be too many nutjobs. But in my estimation there are already too many nutjobs and that abolishing formal religiously-based instruction through schools is unlikely to rid us of them

9) I would also say that religious training is hardly the only source of moral hazard as there are various liberal credos that worry me as being explicitly anti-science too or dishonest assessments of historical fact too. Opposition to nuclear power or genetically engineered food/products is more of a gut reaction than an educated response in many cases and many anti-vaccination advocates are drawn from a liberal elite just as easily as they may be Christian science types. To me this suggests further difficulty with decisions over national standards as there are many, many possible intersections of those standards with educational subjects and the approaches taken to study them.

10) A further practical objection is that in someway the lack of (enforceable) standards would mean that in some cases educational attainment would suffer. On some of these points I am prepared to agree. Though, I'd have to argue we already have many institutions called schools which also fail to help their students attain educational successes on the one hand.

11) Secondly, I would argue that it probably matters very little what a person learns about the scientific method, evolutionary theory v creationist mythology, historical facts and figures from legitimate sources versus revisionists, and so on to their overall life satisfaction and career or job prospects. In fact it matters very little how well one studies Algebra 2 functions, for that matter. To the extent that these things matter right now, they impact political policy through the public's intervention into educational policies and how they are set, especially at a local level. Not always in a positive and healthy manner. It might matter in the abstract value of creating an educational system that fosters a love and desire for learning and study in the subjects that might occur to the person in question. But to the extent that our educational system creates more inquisitive academics and skeptics, I'm not sure this is a desirable or necessary goal in and of itself for everyone we seek to educate. We should encourage those who are able and willing of such things, and have available the methods and systems that might help foster creative and innovative thinkers to operate more freely. But that's not everyone's view of educational success. (To me this means that for most people, education is not about learning).

12) To the extent that there are or will be debates over "values" concerns like prayer in school or some such, I think these are abated if more people who care about such things are permitted to allow their own institutions and children to practice them. That's not to say that they will be silent on the issue of whether "our" institutions should likewise practice their methods, but they will have less teeth to bare and less ability to make such requirements insistently if they are allowed their own arrangements. My own preference should be that people have religious institutions for this purpose and their educational institutions are for other purposes. There are however crossover elements in terms of these vague "values" to be inculcated into the next generation between those institutions that are not easily resolved in a public policy way. Simply abolishing religion from schools and education entirely is not workable. However desirable I might find such a hypothesis valuable personally, a government powerful enough to do so would contain mechanics capable of abolishing more secular values as well or of establishing its own variety of what those values shall be.

Same old songs

There's a ton of interesting elements to this, but a couple big ones.
1) Conservatives are better than liberals at a version of ideological turing tests. This isn't that surprising where it is understood that conservatives use a wider variety of moral dimensions (things like disgust and in-group loyalty for instance) that liberals tend to use much less, if at all. It is however surprising where they then disagree with liberals on some issues. I suspect this has to do with the stronger in-group loyalties of BOTH groups.
2) The relationship between secular versions of religion to religion. Things like patriotism and nationalism are very, very much like religious institutions, and our political institutions also take on their forms. There's just a different item in the "god" slot. This is probably why I find more common agreement with this sort of assault on religious institutions than on simply disapproving of the whole god aspect to them. Which is by itself a pretty painless delusion. This I also might explain why I find nationalism in particular and patriotism at some level to be offensive and damaging in the same ways that religion can be abused against "others", and why I find something like the Reagan worship of conservatives and especially the rewriting of the Reagan myth to suit new political goals to be disturbing.

All of this comes out of the theories of evolutionary psychology, and it's not surprising to me that they would evolve on very similar lines as a result. One aspect that I think Haidt has a problem here is that there seems to be an empathy gap resulting from the "teams" relationship that politics, and religion, and others take on. This gap often takes a LOT more than mere common ground associations to overpower. Or at least, that is, that while that gap might be closed between friends or families, but extending that gap to others who share the same differences that friends or family members do takes more work.

Thought for food

Two atheists talking about life and the world without god.

Some good points and bad

Good first.

1) I'm not sure that every church or mosque out there creates a diverse community of people from all walks of life put together under one roof, but I would agree that it is possible that a shared faith brings a lot of different people together in some functional way. It's not clear that religious organisations have harnessed this diversity in a meaningful way, much less in a helpful to humanity way, as one flaw. It could be argued that colleges and universities are intended to do this. But usually fail. It's still ultimately a good idea in practice to have some random encounters with people who have a different life built in as a framework to one's life. Among other reasons, to understand causes and conditions of suffering that are distinct from our own, or to understand why people might think in a distinct way on a variety of subjects from ourselves.

2) Getting across the sort of quasi-mystical experiences some people have with mathematics, science, exploration, or even art or literature, is something that our educational structure and associated cultural institutions have often failed to do. Wonder is powerful and where people do not wonder and have feelings of awe or inspiration, they're not likely to take much interest as a field or as a private pursuit. Forms of wisdom are also poorly received as a result; forcing people to read certain books or look at certain paintings does little to advance these traditions of expression in their own words and depictions. I would also agree that many liberal arts are poorly studied as a result. As examples, philosophy and literature at the highest levels of study are increasingly involved in these isolated arguments that few, if any, people care much about, rather than more grand aspects of the fields which most, if not all, people can find interesting to contemplate at times. Likewise, "history" is functionally a study of memorizing dates and names, and consequently risks itself readily to a revision of those dates and names that should be of importance, rather than being a study of different people at different circumstances and times and their similarity to ourselves were we to find ourselves in equally challenging times and places. I rather like the idea of changing these to be more applicable, or at least interesting and engaging, fields at this point.

3) The behavior of "new atheists" can be abrasive and annoying. I think we should accept that belittling some of the more ridiculous religious dogmas is useful. Sometimes even cathartic. I'm not sure we, in the form of atheists as a group (we're not much of a community, see #4), have much use in antagonizing people for developing a social custom and building sanctified institutions around it per se however. The useful social function of atheist skeptics like Dawkins, Harris, Hitchens, et al, is to point out places where that institution (of religion) falls short, is misused currently and historically, or has difficulties in dealing with people in a society (or another society) who aren't a part of that institution. It is not to replace it with their own firebrand versions with dogmatic insistence on religion's practices as inherently judged to be false or flawed. Skepticism is the tool. And while it certainly leads to a great deal of well-founded incredulity as it can be applied to the language, interpretation, and practice of religious faith and dogma, it shouldn't be abandoned in the haste to obliterate these practices and the ideas behind them. However ridiculous they appear to be. At least not where those practices have few elements of moral repugnance associated with them. The strident focus on the most absurd versions of religion tends to move the muddier middle ground into a camp closer to the religious absurdists by insinuating their guilt by association. If they are, as we are ourselves often called, to be condemned already as morally improbable persons, why not double down on their belief? Or why not find rational sounding arguments (Pascal's wager, amorphous definitions of deity figures, the importance of a community, etc), to exclude one's self from personal revision on the assessment of likely existence for god(s) by removing the most insane and implausible motives to our character that are most easily associated with a more radical counterpart.

Generally speaking, Botton's point that religious organising serves some useful, even moral, purposes is likely essential to getting people to discard the necessity of deities in order to do it. Or the still common perception that the absence of deities means some horribly dystopian worldview must replace it. I still hear far too often the "argument" that the absence of belief in god or even the mere concept of an afterlife infers a meaninglessness to my existence. When I find that both of those conceptions functionally can diminish or even eliminate the importance and meaning of one's physical experiences in favor of an imagined and non-specific purpose of spiritual experience. I have no trouble finding and assigning meaning to things I do, see, and experience. Thanks for asking.

4) Atheists have no social means of core organising in the manner of religious institutions. I think this is both a strength and weakness. It allows atheists, relieved of the burden of church meetings and forms of pointless ritual, to focus their attention on more secular concerns like other people (family/friends), intellectual pursuits, political issues, or simply following sports teams. What it lacks is the sort of cultural awareness and unity available to religious communities. There's little feeling of commonality with one another. Sometimes that's useful. Still, one of the hallmarks of human beings is the ability to form broader, perhaps even inclusive communities. That religious groups have the distinct character of sometimes being exclusive (and sometimes intolerant) clubs means something in an institutional sense, and provides some organisation in an evolutionary way that is otherwise filled in. Potentially in a less useful or even more harmful way than that of religion (nationalism and xenophobia for instance, arbitrary hatred and exclusion of people who aren't of our tribe by place of birth?)

5) I suspect the insight that religions tend to exist to teach people how to live and how to organise their lives, and that this insight is perceived to be a character flaw in modern times, has some general applications. Generally speaking a lot of things in life are much harder than are expressed, or can be for various times and people. Finding and training for a suitable occupation, making a long and vibrant relationship work with a desirable companion, methods of raising children, are each the subject of numerous radio ads, talk shows, and whole sections of book stores or libraries. In many cases complete with numerous hucksters profiting by the misfortune of some among us. These are basic questions to the human condition. They're not very easily answered in a universal way (if at all). A flaw of religion is to presume sometimes that they can or should be. But it doesn't mean that they shouldn't be addressed, to be asked openly, and their answers to be sorted out in a meaningful and productive way where possible.

The bad.

1) I disagree with Botton's characterisation of libertarianism. I think it is important to avoid "compulsory" action in the form of legal requirements as opposed to moral, cultural, or social requirements. Certainly individuals can react with revulsion to pleas of advice and support for changes in their habits and sensibilities, and this can be frustrating and unpleasant. What makes less sense is the requirement that people offer these pleas and provide these supports to each other in a legally binding way. Libertarianism as "individualism" has this sort of trick to it where one must balance the acknowledgement of the influence and assistance of others to our potential for success against the achievement and duties of the individual within that society and whatever just rewards are to be meted out. I concede there are libertarians (Randians especially) who have failed to run that balance out in any meaningful way, both as individuals and in their philosophical structures. That doesn't amount to an answer to the libertarian critique of legal structure and compulsion. I don't think constructing legally required institutions is an appropriate answer to deconstructing socially or culturally mandated religious institutions that have significant problems with them. Jim Crow was a legally required institution, protected by powerful social forces of racism and intolerance no doubt, but foremost was a set of legal codes. There are significant flaws with the argument that legal compulsion is always an acceptable route, and these are pointed out, frequently and vigorously, by libertarians.

Moral and social compulsion, left relatively unfettered to markets (threats or uses of force to be averted where possible for instance), allows people to find institutions and communities more suitable to their lives and to experience meaning, wonder, wisdom, in a manner more of their own making while still providing some institutional frameworks. An alternative way to look at this, as Botton himself acknowledges in part, is the idea of requiring the tyrannical way that more religious societies are governed (namely by requiring people to be of a particular religious affiliation in order to participate in that society freely). This is not exactly an appealing sentiment. I am not always comfortable living in a society of mostly practicing Christians, but they're also not always forcing me to live like they do, have the same prejudices in my behavior as they do, eat, drink, or work on the schedules that they do, dress as they do, and so on. I complain vigorously when they do do these things, or when they intend this to be the case through legal actions. I don't view law to be used as a weapon, something for the punishment of the wicked and decadent (or at least those who are so viewed or interpreted as such). I view it as a shield, for the protection of the oppressed and innocent, however bizarre or even repugnant they may sometimes be to others. So legal compulsion is thus genuinely troubling where moral and social compulsion, or praise, or even impersonal market forces like price signals, are less clearly so. I'm told this is because I have a very strange brain. But I still have a hard time seeing where "libertarianism" was justifiably attacked there in the philosophical sense. Perhaps "individualism" was, but there's little in "libertarianism" that advances the notion that there will be no voluntary institutions possible in any society for the provision of time-tested means of transmitting wisdom or wonder to impressionable and eager new minds searching for meaningful experiences.

2) While certainly some religious rituals serve psychological benefits, it's unclear to me that we need to replace them in all ways. Marriage ceremonies for instance do not necessarily isolate communities into people who will have successful, lasting, and otherwise prosperous relationships from those who do not. Often times instead they isolate people into people who will have expensive ceremonies from those who do not. Whether or not there is a religious sentiment involved or not seems to make no difference to the social need to have a large and expressive gathering of people at great personal expense. Economists will say things like "incentives matter" and behavourial economists will look for hidden forms of signaling where the incentives don't seem to be adding up. I suspect, with the absence in modern life of a clear aristocracy by class, wasteful signaling of wealth and prosperity has simply taken on other forms (expensive cars and weddings for instance as opulence). Thus the question must be what actual purpose these rituals and ceremonies serve. Cleansing the body before or after prayer or confessions of "sins" are psychological tricks of the mind that serve a useful end purpose (as well as, in more primitive times, basic hygienic needs), by alleviating our burden of guilt through the washing process. Standing and reciting some sanctified words I imagine has somewhat less utility to the actual goal of a successful marriage. (That said, because religious institutions have formed interesting communities, there are useful ways of sussing out potentially useful information on whether or not a pairing might be successful that are less available in a more fully secular community. There's also more institutional support structures, like counseling and marriage courses of a sort). It's also not clear that this should be a requirement for a successful society (that people stay in monogamous long-lasting relationships because of private agreements made into law by custom and tradition). It might be possible to achieve that as a goal through other means, or to ask if it is, indeed, always an appropriate goal. The downside of embracing ritual like this is that one creates an attitude of "we do this because", with no necessity of "why", no necessity of purpose or function behind it that people can recognize and it risks the ritual becoming significant on its own rather than for an essential function it should represent (as I think marriage has done in the US over a period of several decades).

3) Life is hard. I don't think this requires that people be part of a community to recognize. It requires merely that people observe other human beings. In fact, it would almost be best to observe and interact with people who are not a part of one's own community for most of us to see it plainly and to observe its causes and conditions more acutely in order to best act upon them in a useful way. I also am not convinced that forming institutional communities is necessarily a means of alleviating or eliminating suffering as a part of the human condition. It is perhaps more efficient and effective. It's not the only way to show that people can care about each other. Helping people outside of those communities, cooperating in a less selfish way is sometimes a hallmark of religious duties. It's not clear that religious institutions have done so consistently, or that most humans will do so once formed into larger communal units. Getting them outside of the box seems like a more direct way to involve their ability and desire to help others.

Man you people are touchy

Especially the liberals?

Unfriending has a lot of sources, but I find it perpetually strange that any people are surprised by the politics of others. Generally speaking, my engagement with politics has shown that... most people don't have any politics. They just sort of spout off without a coherent thought to why if they do bother to think about politics. This is especially true with younger people who often haven't settled on a political ideology leaning yet. So being "surprised" by a friend's sudden endorsement of the flavor of the month political figure or a random post that indicates some pro-life or pro-choice leanings shouldn't really be so surprising. It's basically random behavior that one should expect if they have enough social network "friends". Consider the finding in that polling data that only 37% of people say they post something political at all and you get the idea that most people don't care, think their political views if any should remain private, or don't have enough information to get into the debates that usually follow and so abstain from participating.

Usually this should be filed under "I think other people I know and like and respect are just like me, or should be as much like me as possible". And as is usually the case, most people are different. That's apparently where the surprise comes in. I find it baffling that people don't conceive of this beforehand. I suspect it is related to another social commentary I've noted of late: that most people wait to speak rather than listen. It makes for some very strange "conversations". But essentially the problem is that people, being human beings, have this ineffable interest in themselves and their own egotistical lives, and thereby expect others to be thoroughly interested as well. I find it very strange when they are interested in my life events and thoughts and therefore don't find it very strange that they should be much different and thus hold very different opinions and levels of knowledgeable support for said opinions than I should. Then again, I also hold some very odd opinions I'm sure.

The most interesting feature is the high frequency of liberals blocking and unfriending.

What I suspect explains the liberal tendency to unfriend (or block) over conservatives is one of two things however. I don't think it is explained by conservatives being apparently more tolerant (I suspect neither group ideology would fare very well at the extremes for tolerance, and neither has much of a claim to tolerance as a result).
1) Conservatives don't friend people who don't already share overt signals of cultural agreement as readily. They don't have much outreach to people of different and distinct religious or racial backgrounds in their immediate friends, so why should their digital friends be much different? If you don't have these disagreements as often, one would expect they wouldn't have much cause to unfriend. Liberals are more likely to have higher openness to experience and thus experiment with cross-ideological associations like these, and to give up on them with some frequency as well. They're also more likely to express things in cogent formats, with somewhat less obstinacy, or provide context when something potentially offensive goes up. That is a reflection on the relative dearth of modern conservative intelligentsia, but also a reflection of the more common folk nature available by sheer numbers. I've certainly encountered some very dogged and utterly stupid liberals in my time online too. But they're less frequent than the popular version I encounter of conservatives who think of me as a "socialist" for demanding more market-friendly schools or health care and calling for large reforms to entitlement spending. I find that line of argument much more offensive in its shear stupidity than the progressives who don't understand the impact of minimum wage or licensing laws on unemployment or prices or otherwise find these to be necessary interventions in the market for other suspect reasons.
2) "Conservatives" are more common than "liberals". (or at least, people who identify as strongly conservative are more common than strongly liberal, which would be the populations most likely to make significant numbers of politically charged postings, consider also that adding liberal, moderate, and conservative ideologies together gets you a figure of 204% of the internet population and 170% of the general. Lots of people are using more than one label, and traditionally speaking this is liberals). This means that liberals might come across the issue more often. Liberals are somewhat more common among the plugged in youth generation using social networks than among the general population, so this too may skew the sample.
 
As further possibilities, "moderate" is likely code for "doesn't care about politics", or at best, is likely able to grasp sometimes radically distinct politics by dint of having radically different (and sometimes conflicting) views themselves and thus doesn't care when other people have them either. 

I find that most people will wish to use social networks the same way they use real friendships, with the idea of reinforcing and validating those ideas and concepts they already hold to, if any, and generally avoiding contact with hostile ideas, or ideas that they don't care about. Hence the similar percentage of people who they "friended" for agreement or whose posts they "liked" or expressed approval in comments for to the percentage of people who were unfriended or blocked, and the high percentage of people on the extreme ends who have friends of shared ideological views (or who think they have friends of shared ideological views).

They also, somewhat rightly in my view, use these networks to shun and deliberately exclude people who say more offensive and discriminatory things.

More than likely, many, many people have blocked me for the volume of political material I post. Possibly a couple have unfriended over it (at least one I should think, more likely I'm just tolerated and ignored). I will admit to having done so only once. A former classmate now living in California expressed a strongly religious backing while opposing a gay marriage law in California (Prop 8, being contested in federal and state courts now), and did so in a modestly prejudicial way causing some offence I'm sure. The religious views were not a surprise, so that didn't bother me. But after some reflection, I decided that I wasn't likely getting much out of other mundane posts being made by this person and wasn't all that interested in their comings and goings anyway and so removed them for the minor transgression of being offensive and the more significant transgression of being boring. I have other friends and some extended family members with modestly distinct religious views of their own, and plenty of mundane postings that I prefer to ignore most of the time. But none of them are likely to use the platform or their private religious views as a basis for a public post saying something prejudicial toward homosexuals. On occasion people post things with a view toward expressing some hostility to Republicans, though often this is for views and policies, or people expressing them, that I find reprehensible myself. I see the transparent "team" aspect of it, and sometimes I find that rather offensive in itself, but since conservatives aren't my team and is a team largely of affiliation by choice rather than affiliation through more deterministic means (biology), I'm a little less concerned. Presumably more conservative people concerned with politics post similar things on the opposite end of the spectrum. In fact, I'm quite certain they do.

That said, for my part, I also filter heavily my networking associations ahead of time and my networks remain smaller as a result (and presumably less interesting to google or facebook as a consequence). Most of the people I've removed have been more out of lack of interest or a lack of use (and in a couple cases, people dropped off the network entirely, removing themselves), rather than a lack of political agreement. I suspect this is the case for most of those 500 million unfriends. Politics certainly occupies a distinct portion of disagreement and disunion among friends and co-workers and families. I don't think it occupies the central core of those frictions.

Minor note. And one less minor

The All-Star Game was vastly more entertaining, particularly at the end of the game, than watching a collection of nostalgic films pat themselves on the back repeatedly. I still haven't seen A Separation, or Melancholia, but otherwise, I think we should just admit to ourselves that movies in general had a bad year. (Other than my aforementioned pleasant experience with Dragon Tattoo).

I do think however that nostalgia is an overriding cultural feeling in America, and that celebrating it might have been worthwhile economically. Except that none of the films that were up for awards were celebrating anything that Americans are nostalgic for. The closest to that nostalgia was probably Captain America, so far as I can tell. And not silent films, movie making, France, WWI, or campy 9-11 movies. It's possible that the "gone with the wind" level idiocy of treatment of the 60s era (1960s instead of 1860s) was something that Americans were nostalgic for (the Help), in the sense that we get to tell ourselves that are a good and noble people and that Southerners were (or are) not. Otherwise, I'm not sure I get the movies up there as servicing the public's desire for nostalgia. Glenn Beck, for all his many faults, did a far better job of this than anything Hollywood nominated because we (Americans, if not human beings) seem to prefer whitewashing out the blemishes of our misremembered past and covering ourselves in glory whilst pretending that our futures are bound to be less innovative and noble than our days gone by. 

As far as the influence of nostalgia on society more generally however, I think this argument:


is persuasive that it is the weird nostalgia for a particular version of "traditional marriage" as that practiced by our parents or grandparents, generationally speaking, is what "we" want. That "we" being the sorts of people who oppose gay marriage. There are several interesting responses to this line of logic then.
1) Marriage has itself undergone a dramatic set of changes over time. We don't accept polygamous arrangements as valid now. We don't tend to allow younger people to get married, nor use it for the explicit purpose of child-bearing. We don't use it principally as a means of transferring property, nor as treating women as property for arranging alliances over other forms of property, or power, to be transferred. These are in fact, relatively recent innovations in marriages, that they are to be used with a normative purpose of having two people who are generally emotionally committed to each other to express that commitment in the form of a marriage ceremony and contract.
2) That we use it now for that purpose, it makes no sense that we don't allow adult individuals to commit to one another simply because we, as outsiders, disapprove of their affections. If their friends and/or families observe their affections approvingly, why do the rest of us care? Does it not strengthen this nostalgic version to allow and encourage more people to marry people of their own choice and to satisfy important pair-bonding elements like sexual preference? Taking this to a logical absurdity, would it make sense to require people to marry other people they found sexually repulsive or even physically hideous because we, as outsider observers, found those people more acceptable mates for them? Preferences for local knowledge should be at the center of a liberal democracy's success wherever possible and it thus seems utterly ridiculous that we are using central control to overturn individual peoples most basic private decisions in this case.
3) That the "bigot" level of disgust or dismay at homosexual's marriage or even sexual preferences are generally diminishing by both the decrease of aged persons and their attitudes toward homosexuality in our societies and the increase in experiences of (generally younger) heterosexual persons who know and are genuinely tolerant of the (private) lives of their homosexual counterparts.
4) That the argument then must ultimately rest upon some factual assertion that it is these post Victorian/Suffrage era 1920-1960s version of marriages are either a) worthy of preservation for reasons beyond mere nostalgic attachment and served some vital social function that is currently abandoned (presumably things like the raising of children or social welfare goods that are otherwise required to be public goods) and b) is being in some way weakened and diminished or damaged by extending basic rights and privileges associated with them to others that were or are previously prevented (as we did by allowing people to marry inter-racially for instance). There are very few, if any, factual assertions that can be raised for either of these arguments that it is homosexuals that have destroyed this version of marriage. There are other grounds that can be argued upon, relating to general social shifts and cultural attitudes toward marriage as a practice as opposed to a ceremony (whereby our society seems to prefer and laud the ceremony to the practice), changes in divorce laws, and so on. But none of these seem to have very much to do with whether or not gays may marry each other.
5) Further, if the argument is to rest upon some sort of child-bearing and child raising stance, there are various problems with this as a basis of marriage. First, the argument against adoption likewise ultimately turns on the grounds of evidence. It by far strikes the empirical world as a bald-faced lie to claim things like children are better off with a father or parent in prison or jail than to have two loving adults care for them (as Rick Santorum implies) simply because those adults are of the same gender. Evidence of childhood outcomes would cut against such an inference and the implication of the argument should be that any two adults willing to raise a child together and in reasonable possession of their full mental and physical faculties should be permitted and encouraged to do so, including two homosexual adults, two non-married heterosexual adults, and so on.

Secondly, that we allow and support publicly various marriages that are privately occupied without any indication or ability for child-bearing (re-marriages by the elderly for instance or the infertile), and make no requirement that a marriage must bear children and must cooperate to raise them to adulthood. That's not part of the contract, nor the ideal basis. It could be inferred that two younger people who care for each other in an emotional and psychological sense would likely find some pleasure in producing and raising a child or two (or more). But we make no promise that they must. Why, if the premise of marriage is thus, do we make no social effort to establish requirements of such things, or why do we not absolve people of their marital duties through contracts and vows when they have raised children to adulthood and are no longer physically able to produce more children of their own?

Reagan is not Voldemort

So saying his name a bunch of times isn't going to make him appear nor smote your enemies in ruin.

More to the point, Reagan's legacy is very different than his actual record as a political figure. So saying his name does invoke some mythological figure to conservatives, but doesn't actually involve any actual policies. I'm beginning to realize that much of the problem with politics in this country is that it doesn't involve policy. At all. Conservatives do not take seriously the idea of governing to begin with, but they don't appear especially prone to voting in a manner that involves rejecting some of their supposed principles in any way that liberals somehow magically do not.

There's a reason I find symbolic acts among the most repulsive form of governance, and thus why appealing to the symbolism of a movement (where Reagan the man has been ignored and transformed in favor of Reagan a myth) is also deeply annoying to me. Because I actually care about what the policies are and how they affect other people. I take seriously the idea that, in a democracy, one's ability to vote implies a responsibility in understanding what their preferences when voting would actually do to others and impose on them as legal penalties or responsibilities, should those preferences become enacted as law. Most people it seems are comfortable with useless signaling that "the government" cares about a particular problem. So we get rent controls or minimum wage laws from one side and dramatic police SWAT raids on non-violent drug offenders and home poker tournaments from the other. And no actual solutions, no interest in an efficient government that uses its resources in a manner that takes account that they are somewhat limited (hence, "conservatives" pandering on yet more foolish investment into NASA moonbases and Mars missions and freely fight over expressed intentions on starting a foolish war with Iran to boot), and no public engagement on issues of government structure and power or how it uses these.

Most people are totally unaware of what the government spends money on (medicare?), and thus what it actually does (and cannot do), and so the process continues unabated. Most people are unaware of who is actually taxing them or charging them fees, and blame the most visible politicians (Congress, President), rather than their local mayor or city council or maybe the governor of a state, or more likely local and state official positions that they are only vaguely aware exist in the first place, if at all. More people call for "there ought to be a law", and ignore how that law could be mechanically used by others in ways that they did not intend, or that their intentions themselves were inconsistent and useless gestures that certainly inform others of their private preferences but fail to make a logical case for legal actions and sanctioning of others (see: gay marriage laws, counter-terrorism policies, bans on burqas and hajibs, secondhand smoke bans and now there are calls for perfume bans). Symbolism, the idea that you care about an issue enough that it should be a law, is saying something is more important than worrying about implementation, or the law's effect on the actual issue, and that we should DO SOMETHING. Very often, "something" is what you will get, rather than demanding "something that will work". 

This flaw even extends to political choices I might be more in agreement with, for example the California law attempting to legalise marijuana that appeared on the ballot was sloppily written and had some strange provisions. People couldn't be fired for failing drug tests with marijuana positives for example. I would agree we need better testing measures to do this accurately when eating poppy seed dressing or bagels can fail a test, to better assess when people are using because of the way THC works to deal with issues of intoxication while driving or working, that we should probably have some method of appealing available or to push people into rehab or treatment programmes for drug abuse as an option beneath dismissal from a company, or understand that some people have medical justifications that might be available (some forms of autism seem to be improved with manageable doses, likewise many opiate based drugs can be useful for pain management), that many companies or employers shouldn't need to bother testing their employees for this or most any other intoxicating substance (for example, we shouldn't bother testing most athletes or academics), or when they do have need, have just as much incentive to test for high levels of alcohol use (truck drivers or factory workers doing potentially hazardous physical labours), but the idea that an employer cannot and could not fire you for drug use is utterly stupid. It's a symbolic inclusion of a policy choice to suggest that drug use is totally normal and safe rather than something that people willingly can do to alter their mental state, ideally in a responsible way (eg, at home or in the mutual company of friends or family without the prospect of assaulting or harming them through such use) but which carries with it some obvious risk effect on "health" through altering one's mental state and in some cases, that of a medical addiction problem, both of which could need to be ameliorated in some way and may even pose unacceptable risks to some people. We can have no grounds for a legal quarrel with the personal choice of some to do such things as private citizens and yet still have legitimate grounds to wish to see them dismissed from our employment should they continue to do them. Focus on the simplest form, getting a narcotic drug legalised, first. That's an actual policy choice with real world impacts that actually matter for everyone (less militarized and invasive police tactics, a modest ability to reduce violence within immigration issue, legal access to a modestly safe mind-altering chemical should they wish it, ability to license to try to constrain access for minors without actual medical reasons, etc).

I want the real world impacts. Not the symbolism from coming your own political movements.

Debunk the debunking bunkers!

"Once people receive misinformation, it’s quite difficult to remove its influence. This was demonstrated in a 1994 experiment where people were exposed to misinformation about a fictitious warehouse fire, then given a correction clarifying the parts of the story that were incorrect. Despite remembering and accepting the correction, people still showed a lingering effect, referring to the misinformation when answering questions about the story."

There are a lot of psychology gems in there. But that one stood out because it is a common media method to hype a new story, which later turns out to be utterly false. Issuing corrections is important for this reason, that information that was wrong must be corrected. Where I think we run into problems is that the correction isn't exactly covered with the same diligence as the superhyped falsehood. Medical information and science reporting in particular are especially prone to such behavior in news cycles. So it would seem better if instead of reporting every new study in ten foot headlines that we wait for more confirmations to trickle in first.

The various debunking tips
1) Avoid backfiring. We tend to remember things in networks by relating things to what we already "know to be". If we already "know" a myth to be true, then associating new information with it, even if it is demonstrating the falseness of the myth is liable to be trouble.

2) Overkill, don't do it. I do this a lot. Power driving people with mountains of disclaiming information to their weak thesis is a common response to seeing someone as wrong. Stick to the best facts and arguments and move on from there as needed. Only among the most "informed" and dedicated followers of a myth will one need to amass copious amounts of information to combat it. Most people believe very vague and poorly thought out straw man positions on most issues, mostly because they don't care about those issues very much. Pile driving them with information demonstrates your passion for it, but doesn't really convince them to do likewise or to alter a preconceived opinion with these new facts challenging it. This is probably why news media tends to cater to those preconceived opinions rather than to chart new courses following new and surprising facts that overturn the old ways.

3) Don't challenge worldviews. This comes up frequently in debates over evolution. Apparently men and apes sharing common ancestries destroys a lot of comfortable assumptions about man's special place in the universe for some religious people and hence Darwin was wrong. Or something. However changing the topic to something like geological time scales or raw genetics, while complicated subjects in and of themselves, is likely enough to push some headway into the Darwin was wrong crowd. Some of it at least.

4) Alternative explanations. This feature of the human brain for completeness of schema is a powerful force behind mythology. Explaining complex phenomenon like weather or evolution of species or the occasion for "bad things to happen to good people" requires generally complicated reflection on these topics for a concise and thorough understanding of the topic. People don't like doing that very much (nor do they have the time to make such inquiries on all manner of subject matter). So they fill in the gaps so they feel like they know what they are talking about. A devastating social effect for anyone to admit is that they do not know what they are talking about in a public setting. Such a response of honest ignorance is rare, and is greeted with derision and scorn. It should be greeted with acceptance and conversation, if such ignorance is honest (Rick Perry's oops moment for instance was not, as he was forgetting talking points that were intended to be bonafides of his conservative intentions to govern). Experts often do not know the answers to everything going on in their circle, much less in fields broad and outside their sphere of expertise. They will ask questions and express fascination or curiosity in new developments, and if they are good enough at it, they will also help to try to poke holes in new theories and discoveries. This is not the common response of the layman on any field for which they are not intimately acquainted. Deference to expertise, to group acceptance, to ideological biases, and so on is much more likely where knowledge bases are poor.

Things of notice

1) Cain dropped out. Finally. I'm still waiting for the moment I can also ignore Newt or Perry or Bachmann again. That day will come however. The thing that bothers me most about the Cain mutiny is that it took a supposed affair to sink him. Apparently payouts for sexual harassment, accusations thereof, and an accusation of sexual assault to boot are non-issues to conservatives. Cain's media and public defences were so ill-handled that this itself should have been judged as a basis for dismissal from the field of "candidates sane persons will support". Either I've over-estimated the number of remaining sane conservatives or there's a much greater insular tendency of conservatives to live in the world pre-determined for them by their faith and their faith in Faux News media worlds. Actually, given Cain's so implausibly stupid policy proscriptions, combined with powerful allergies to declaring a working knowledge of anything at all,, even the most basic facts available, I suspect both are true possibilities. Presumably he is much smarter than he was made to look by all of this, but I doubt the media bubble he has lived in and was working within that insulated him from having to think hard about issues was doing him any favours. 

In related election cycle news, it's starting to sound like Gary Johnson may end up mounting a Libertarian candidacy because Republicans as a party haven't had his back in these debate exclusions. If so, I'll at least have someone to vote for for once. Which is a lot more fun than choosing between candidates whose policies I actively despise. I'd be happier if Huntsman was higher in the polls than Romney. But I'm not a conservative or a Republican either. Huntsman's non-foreign policy (with the crucial exception of Iranian policies), non-entitlement/defence cut related policies don't exactly enamor me to him either (everyone since Reagan, maybe even since Roosevelt, has said they would cut agricultural subsidies, I'll believe it when I see it. And running away from NCLB would be a whole lot nicer if he also backed tax credits for education to create educational markets. Turning it over to local and state boards terrifies me just as much as the intrusions of federal controls that Gingrich, for instance, wants). I'd prefer cutting and abolishing corporate income taxes instead of capital gains and dividends for instance. Income inequality being what it is after all. But he's otherwise the most solid candidate they have over there. I'm assuming his tone is why liberals aren't running terrified at his stances on social conservative issues (where he's more conservative than most) and also is why conservatives hate him (for the: he doesn't piss off liberals!, He must not be a conservative! logic). And hence why I don't have to think too much about him until 2016. This has been the post about Jon Huntsman for the year of 2011 in other words.

2) Georgia should not even be up for discussion as included in NATO. The fact that Rubio has been trying to bring that back up as a topic indicates that the neo-conservative base is still alive and well and strong. A puny disorganised country that picks a fight with a much larger and powerful nation on its borders under the logic that it has received assurances of support from distant and vaguely aligned nations (but who have no treaty obligations to fulfill and no actual national interests at stake) is not a nation-state that belongs in a mutual defence treaty of any kind. Much less a complex (and mostly defunct) arrangement like NATO. I don't care if the much larger powerful nation is Russia. In fact. That's probably an even better reason to ignore Georgia than it is to ally with it. The historical impetus to oppose Russian affairs diplomatically and militarily (for whatever military force projection Russia has anymore outside of regional affairs), is already strong enough without needing alliances with participants in actual shooting wars with Russia in the recent past. Particularly those who STARTED said wars. We should regard anyone who does that, that isn't us or China, as criminally insane.

3) I really liked the recycling toxic waste part. But then I'm already a nuclear power hawk. Personally I'd rather we have a use for the stuff we don't want relating to the already running nuclear power plants than have to figure out how to store the shit for 20000 years. Somehow this doesn't seem like a compelling argument to nuclear power doves. I guess I understand why people fear invisible neutrons bombarding their bodies, but when I look at the death tolls annually from coal and oil and even hydroelectric power, and I look at the cost of solar technology and the present utility of wind (and batteries), I have to say, nuclear looks a lot safer, cleaner than the carbon fuels, and it's at least cheaper than solar. And if we can expand it to include using military grade depleted fuel stocks, so much the better.

4) This is fascinating. Essentially justice and vengeance are viewed as the same by people who find apologies and forgiveness unappealing. Coincidentally, I would expect that these are exactly the sort of people whose main role model was putatively based around the concept of forgiveness. The self-esteem model makes intuitive sense. I'm surprised that people are that surprised that "justice" is viewed in conflict with "contrition" though. Considering the views many people have on crime and criminal penalties (death penalty for drug smugglers!), I would be surprised if people were able to hold these two concepts simultaneously.

Out for blood?

The intersection of culture and philosophy is occasionally interesting.

Like when it points out some difficult social questions.

"I can't prove to you that God exists; but science can't prove that God doesn't exist either." - This argument is logically true. But this is true largely because the religious mindset has deliberately created and defended a metaphysical construct that exists outside of natural and logical examination. Thus the problem with the argument is that it demands that the atheist provide evidence to disprove the notion of a deity in order to satisfy the believer's demands that he or she believe in "something" rather than not. This is an impossibility, proving a negative tends to be that way. The same problem arises when authorities are convinced someone is guilty of a crime/is a terrorist and raises the methods of proving this assertion until the pain or deprivation is too extreme to bear and the truth of guilt or innocence becomes malleable even to the accused. They cannot prove to their interrogator that they didn't do anything, only prove that they did.

What would make more sense to the skeptical atheist is that the believer demonstrate that their non-natural worldview actually intersects somewhere in the natural world and thus provides evidence that can be tested or observed. Since they cannot (by definition), it makes no sense that they should demand the (skeptic) atheist share their worldview. But of course they do.

""You are a Catholic, right?"
"No, I'm not."
"Protestant?"
"Nope."
"Jewish?"
"No."
"Muslim, then?"
"Sorry, I don't believe in ... anything."
To the faithful, not believing simply doesn't make sense. They are much more forgiving of someone of a different faith than of someone with no faith at all. Atheists are at the bottom of the social chain."

Look. Even those (supposedly) pesky Muslims and Mormons are more popular than us. In America, open discrimination against atheists is among the last socially acceptable prejudices (it's the only one that a majority of people will admit to not supporting an atheist for President for instance). The one trick that an atheist has, unlike other more visible prejudices, is that, until someone asks, it's generally pretty hard to tell what makes us different from the rest. It's easy enough to go along with much "common sense" morality (don't murder the innocent, don't lie or steal unnecessarily, don't rape, don't form rampaging mobs to destroy property, etc). So that raises no questions. It's easy enough not to go to the same churches, synagogues, mosques, etc, as your neighbours in a country that broadly accepts religious freedom (and where there are thus plenty of religious options available). That doesn't raise any questions either. And we do have something of a conditional more that says "don't talk about religion", at least openly and proudly, with strangers. This too keeps down the heat. Naturally there are some who disobey this informal arrangement (usually the most eccentric atheists and the much larger body of evangelical Christians), so it comes up sooner or later. And that's where the confusion, and bile, comes out.

"you'd expect that in an age of science people would stop believing in the supernatural; but that's clearly not happening." - Science is too rarely explained and examined in a way that makes sense of what it can (and cannot) do. So we're left with lots of people who claim a belief in deities, and also in ghosts, angels, zombies, vampires, wizards, and so on. As a culture we consume these plots in a series of (mostly) horribly written movies and books every year. Peaking around this time of year in fact. Sadly it's actually very easy to scientifically explain why the human brain believes it saw a ghost, why it believes "mystical" experiences to be evidence of deities or angels/demons, why there are long-standing cultural histories that give us fear of the "undead", and why we would believe in "magic". There's all manner of dedicated research in evolutionary psychology, sociology, recorded human history, neurology, and so on to point to that thoroughly debunks this collective nonsense. The trouble is that most people are completely disinterested in hearing it. They are convinced by their experiences and observations, their senses and intuitions. Not by their reflections, their abstract and critical thoughts. They are the sort who takes every coincidence to be meaningful. Because to them it has to be something more than just random chance; the collision of otherwise meaningless events intersecting in their lives.

For the atheist, the difference is this. We know we are (all) making up meaning for the events of our days and lives, and we embrace this fantastic quest for meaning as an element of our humanity, while rejecting fantasy itself as something to embrace. At least as anything other than idle diversion. I certainly find Batman and LOTR enjoyable stories, for example. But I can put down the story when the movie is over or the book complete. The bulk of humanity is busy embracing this fantasy world in a rush to avoid the much more difficult question of finding meaning for themselves. So in Dexter, this year the killers are of a religious apocalyptic mindset. And this is a very, very typical delusion for people to engage in; that they live in special and meaningful times because the end of human history is upon us, or that it will be without some heroic interventions on their part.

I'd be upset too if the writers take that delusion and confuse it with Dexter's "code", his own delusion, in order to give him some "belief" that looks more tolerable to the average person. Religion and faith format. In my ideal world, I conceive of a place where such issues as what a person's faith is (or is not) matter very little, if at all. I see very little meaningful information to be conveyed by asking what religion someone practices, for a variety of reasons, so I don't see that this is a useful question to ask someone. In practice, we are not there yet. This partly because we don't ask very good questions about where the intersection already occurs between individual faith (or lack thereof) and the "outside" social worlds we live in and interact with, and also where and whether it should occur.

Maybe we can start. Seems like the writers of Dexter are.

Questions of amusement

1. A bat and a ball cost $1.10 in total. The bat costs $1.00 more than the ball.
   How much does the ball cost?
2. If it takes 5 machines 5 minutes to make 5 widgets, how long would it take
   100 machines to make 100 widgets?
3. In a lake, there is a patch of lily pads. Every day, the patch doubles in size.
   If it takes 48 days for the patch to cover the entire lake, how long would it
   take for the patch to cover half of  the lake?

If you don't get these right (I'll park the answers at the bottom somewhere). Don't fret. Most people don't get more than one and a half correct on average. Even MIT and Harvard kids don't get all of them right on average. I find this sad and pathetic, but that's only because I'm a heartless elitist who looks down on your stupidity.

What's of interest is that apparently there's a correlation between the number of incorrect answers and the professed strength of religious faith expressed. It's possible to correct for variations in IQ, religious upbringing etc between the very religious and the rest of us (including the non-religious). A result like this doesn't really surprise me. It continues the general impression I've formed from observing the highly religious. Counter-intuitive, complex interpretations (or answers) are often viewed much more skeptically than the simple and obvious "truth" (common sense?) by such people. More specifically it continues a general impression that most human beings, not merely the very religious among us, are in some sense primed to look for patterns and simple explanations in the events around us. Something ordinary happens at a particular time rather than at some other time, it gains extreme significance and meaning. Clouds have faces and bunny shapes. God makes it rain or windy or sent us a flood. A particular star alignment gives one person certain personality traits somehow distinct from others thus creating astrological charts. And so on.

These explanations will suffice until they are tested and shown to be useless. They exist because we're good at attempting to come up with "good explanations" for one. We're attempting to use reason (which has its own evolutionary purposes for a social animal like a human being). And two because in an evolutionary sense, it is more useful for survival purposes to look for hidden physical causation to some strange event (a tree moving, a shape in the distance, etc), than not. The caveman who didn't see the bear or lion out there got eaten. The one who saw a lion when there wasn't one did not. Essentially. Bad explanations will work perfectly well until they come into contact with better ones (or upon contradicting evidence).

So. Don't feel bad. The guy who gets all three of those right and looks a little funny at you for even thinking the answer to the third one was 24 or the second one was 100 or the first was 10 cents... that guy would probably be lunch 200,000 years ago and you would get to go home and steal his harem of women. Or something like this.

Speaking of which, the answers are 5 cents, 5 minutes, and 47 days.

(Also, that's one humongous lily pad patch and lake. Basically, go round up all the lakes on the planet. Reminds me of the folded paper problem. Ask someone how many times you would have to fold a piece of paper to get it to reach to moon, or conversely how big a piece of paper would be if you could fold it in half 40+times, and I guarantee you'll be amused by far off they will be. Logarithmic rates of increase are fun.)

An amusement

One of the more... interesting uses of social networking.

1) Take your birthday on facebook.

2) Change it to a date early in the next month.

3) Let people congratulate you for your survival of a year

4) Change it again to a date later in the month

5) Let people congratulate you for your survival of a year

6) Change it again to another date still in the same month

7) Let people congratulate you for your survival of a year

Get the impression that a lot of our social conventions are useless signals rather than genuine concern or affections? To be sure if you have fewer friends or more observant people, or people who know you more certainly, this is less effective (I imagine). But there are plenty of people who are routinely engaged in useless demonstrations like saying happy birthday, sometimes even in very involved thought out notes, to whoever seems to have aged. And thus the spectacle and ceremony precedes in importance the event itself so that they, the party responding to the event rather than the source of the event itself, can be thought of in higher esteem.

In which religious fundamentalism is revealed

Seems like a plausible thesis: That religious identity and the fervor which it has undertaken in parts of the world is a reaction to a perceived threat to identity and individual meaning. It is a lot more comfortable to "find" meaning by having someone else tell you what it is I suppose, and much easier to make sense of the behavior of "others" when you belong to a firmly set group holding strict ideas. I think this method is lazier and often leads to a lot of sloppy thinking (plus inherently leads to tribalism), but then again, most people do not do a whole lot of existential questioning of their lives and societies either.

The biggest element to all of this is the resilience, of a sort, of universalist set of values against this allergic reaction to cultural shifts that some have adopted. I'm not totally sure I buy his thesis that it's an effective response. I'd have to probably see how he lays out the case for that. But it is essentially what non-religious fundamentalist people often do, adopt an overarching view of say "tolerance" or a respect for free people's choices within some reasonable constraints and move on rather than busy themselves worrying about what everyone else is doing. The crucial part is that such a set of ideals worries less about what others are doing, but it still has to grapple with the individual's demands for status games somewhere in there. I'm not sure that his explanation is satisfactory for how to thread that needle. Nor does it seem to me that if this is already a commonly held liberal worldview, so to speak, that it would have any sensible impact upon the traditionalist worldviews that are attempting to insulate themselves against this modern global environment. I don't see a whole lot of crossover happening here already.

I'm also not convinced that the problem is worse or amplified in a social media standpoint. I think the problem always existed in humanity and that there are just more people in the ballgame than ever before competing for those same social accolades of status. The ballgame is different than just "valedictorian at your high school" or something like that from the previous generations, sure. I don't see how that intensifies the problem. It would seem like that means there are more winners (and more losers), but that there are more opportunities as well to get back into the "game".

The most convincing thread of his thought is the explanation for things like suicide bombing (along with other acts of isolationist violence engaged in by fundamentalists, like murdering doctors for example). A desire for immortality that is so powerful it leads us to completely devalue life itself? ....And to wonder that I called that whole afterlife concept the most pernicious aspect of religious dogma and theology.

Genius may have its limitations, but stupidity is not thus handicapped

The trouble comes when one side is right and the other side is wrong and doesn’t know it. The Shakespeare authorship page and the Shroud of Turin page are scenes of constant conflict and are packed with unreliable information. Creationists crowd cyberspace every bit as effectively as evolutionists, and extend their minds just as fully. Our trouble is not the over-all absence of smartness but the intractable power of pure stupidity, and no machine, or mind, seems extended enough to cure that.

Parenting continuums and moral cognition

I see parenting tactics and strategies as somewhere between this and this .

And I'm far happier seeing parents adopt the latter than the former. Because most of the effort is wasted or unnecessary protection and otherwise imposes demands rather than allows for a bit of flourishing of the individuals.

Speaking of efforts that might be wasted... , kids apparently start early on that whole good-bad thing. Well before we get to them and start programming our particular favorite set of mandated religious rules.. err, whatever it is we prefer as moral flavor. Evolutionary speaking, this is not surprising that a social animal would have more or less pre-programmed to recognize good and bad social cohesion and to avoid bad behavior which might be harmful to the survival of the species by a) punishing it or b) avoiding it.

What's most interesting to conclude here is this part however. . Human beings appear to come pre-programmed to be bigots. Or at least to have heavy preferences for people who share common ground and to be disposed to actively dislike people who do not share those common interests. There are again, sensible evolutionary reasons why this would make sense. It fosters social cohesion to have groups of relatively like minded people, though it also may be sacrificing social innovations. But basically, "tolerating" other people is akin to "I don't give a shit" about you, and you, and you. Having a strong attachment to a particular interest however means that you will tend to have a strong dislike for its opposite when it appears. And this is pretty much where our sports rivalries come from (which I don't usually care about one way or the other, other than it might produce good quality games), and more importantly, where our political and religious sectarianism comes from.

What wasn't discussed up there, but what occurs to me, is that it's possible that infants are seeing these distinctions as "bad actions" worthy of punishment, because they do not align with their own likely goals. Of course we don't, in most cases, extend active hindrance of people's choice of food or music, but we do in competitive ventures like sports, politics, religion, and nationalism (and yes, most of religion is about signaling your competitive group associations with like-minded people, and not about establishing a better world). If our opposites in these fields are doing something "bad" by not sharing our preferences, then it is reasonable that we should desire to see them punished for it.

Domestic tranquility

Men as performance artists .. in the kitchen. And more or less everywhere else (taking out the garbage, doing homework, making speeches, and having sex). That actually makes a good deal of evolutionary sense, at least the male part of that. I'm not sure where it doesn't become a "sensual act from which to derive pleasure" either however. I mean, I prefer better cooking and tastes and so on, and if I must do it myself, I'd eventually figure out how.

Finally! Somebody learned how to actually do this properly. The article makes heavy use of these "manners" people who somehow presume that it is incumbent on us, the gift receiver, to pretend to like useless or hideous items, or to object to gift cards procured in their stead. The high rate of consumption for gift cards in the modern world (something like a third of all holiday dollars), would suggest that we're moving toward a more efficient transfer for gifts. An idea like this, maybe integrated with wish lists and other ideas, would greatly simplify getting ACTUAL gifts for the gift giver. Which to me, the problem is being a gift giver in the first place and having to ask yourself: what will this person not despise, truly need/enjoy, etc, and then coming up empty. Presuming that we will fail in that mission, merchants have savvily marketed gift cards (over simply gifting cash to one another). This is simply the next logical step to avoiding the "shopping" madness that is the day after Christmas. Known also as the day of return. Ideal gifts are things that the other person will use and enjoy, and that you won't. But unless you are very much more a people person than I am, I will find it pretty hard to presume to know very much about most people. Even family members and long-time friends, and their possessions, their private entertainments, and so on. Not to mention that in general people (sometimes secretly) prefer receiving experiential gifts to "stuff", and this is even harder to come by as a giving tree item.

Rated R . I'm not a big fan of government censorship, so the MPAA's rating system is a vital market alternative to this. It has a generally transparent system: show a lot of flesh and drop a few f-bombs and we'll stamp a hard R on the bottom of the screen. That's fine, so far as it goes, presuming we're all aware this is what we're getting as a value set. But in real terms, what we, as consumers, or really as parents of consumers, are opposed to is particular items (generally sex and language, and I guess depictions of smoking and drug use now too, but not so much worrying about drinking and violence). It would better and more useful, particularly in a technical age, if this information was far more transparently available. As noted, HBO (and other premium movie channels) put this sort of thing out there. You'll usually see when some movie or show is being shown on TV without as much censorship some wording which describes that you're about to see human blood and guts and people screaming "foul" language at each other, or some such.


I'm fine with that. We as consumers will tend to want to filter out what we're consuming as entertainment, and be prepared if we have more sensitive tastes to avoid certain products (as we might look at a list of ingredients on a menu to avoid certain dishes). I'm not fine with a universal set of "avoid this". In the same way that I/we wouldn't be fine if particular palate and taste sets for food were imposed writ large. Quite simply there are lots of things depicted in a movie universe, on a kids show, on the news, whatever, that I'm "opposed" to, or would prefer people not watch. I don't get to impose that demand on the rest of you. I don't quite see why this approach which defines certain words as out of bounds (for no apparent reason), or presumes that violence is more acceptable than sexuality, and so on, gets such preferential treatment either. A more efficient response would divide out these markers and give each their own market of "objectionable" content ratings, so to speak. That way people could consume more freely violence or sex or whatever without being encumbered by other relative value sets which object to certain words, or certain depictions (say, Islamic prohibitions on the prophet Mohammed, and so on). We in effect have this for premium movie channels (and to a lesser extent TV programmes en masse), but it's not caught on for movies so much, where we have much more of an open market as opposed to government censors working at the FCC to protect us all from the word "fuck".

A note

"morality itself cannot be sustained without the support of religious beliefs."

"I’ve always regarded this as a bizarre and chilling sentiment that ought to make us seriously doubt the character of anyone who utters it. Because insofar as it tacitly makes a claim about people’s incentive to behave morally, it amounts to an admission that the speaker simply cannot fathom why someone would treat others with consideration and respect"

A recent debate has once again illuminated that this is a common thread, particularly within the evangelical religious community. Apparently it's impossible to sustain basic human decency once you abandon religious dogma, and the rejection of absolute religious certainty as the only source of truth leads people to... I guess start having sex with livestock and shooting the neighbours infants after tossing them skyward or something. I have no idea how one draws the conclusion that a pro-choice (or rather a pro-abortion) position follows from "believing" in evolution, rather than believing in creationism. Because this does not follow logically without a series of other assumptions. But apparently once that "dark path" is accepted, all sorts of things are suddenly made possible that are otherwise somehow closed (based apparently on the assumption that all religious belief has the same moral flavors wrapping them up)

Given that many of the people I've encountered in the born-again/evangelical type of Christian do seem to have rather sketchy pasts (bouts with abusive use of drugs, alcohol, violence, etc), it does seem more accurate to question the person who would make this statement, this idea that only through religion is morality made possible. Based on my understandings of anthropology, the chicken in this case came first anyway. Morality, in the sense of the organisation of human societies with a set of basic rules of conduct, precedes religion. Religion simply represents a set of codified rules, and often those of a particular region, and of a particular time (and based on that time's understanding of the world).

Stripping aside these contexts, and attempting to make these types rules universal doesn't work very well. With good reason: it's not universally "moral" not to eat pork, or shellfish, or drink alcohol, or engage in pre-marital sexual relations, and so on. These are cultural cues and mores. There are arguments for some of them, some better than others, but they're not applicable to everyone. Not everyone benefits under a society with these sorts of rules (not even the pigs and shellfish, which benefit from their utility to human beings as food by becoming more populous).

As a result, when I start seeing people claim that (their particular brand of) religious piety is the only source of moral conduct, I usually know to avoid meeting this person in a dark alley.