Patriotism is for scoundrels

Aggressive nationalist demagoguery has found a new outlet in America -- in a vapid "debate" over the Olympic Committee's purchase of ceremonial uniforms that were made in China. Of course, there was no debate because the only people with real skin in this issue (USOC and Ralph Lauren) rationally rolled over before the rabble-rousing display of pride and protectionism from Congress. Among high-profile politicians, Mitt Romney had the most reasonable response to all this, dismissing it as a non-issue and a distraction. It seems that the athletes, being close to all this on a day-to-day level, were likely to see it as no big deal... no different than buying any other imported good or training alongside a foreign athlete or under a foreign coach.

Which really shows what this is about. It is pure symbolism with no practical impact. It is about feeding the flames of competitive nationalism. It is about drawing a line at the border, and saying that the people on the other side are "outside" and that the people inside have special moral claims on the wealth created by others inside the borders -- mediated by the state, of course. This is about the nation-state desparately reasserting its relevance in our post-national world.

Nationality is not quite obsolete; tt would be foolish to ignore that there are differences among communities around the world, and a relatively small set of those communities would make appropriate homes for each of us. But it is likewise foolish to pretend that these communities are intrinsically in competition with each other and that the borders are not permeable and in flux. History has shown us that the later is not only foolish, but dangerous.

Yet this is the attitude that Harry Reid, John Boehner and their type are encouraging.

Gun control: the failure of government

With the recent movie-theater massacre in Aurora, Colorado, we are once again hearing discussion about America's gun control laws, along with a bunch of hand-wringing by pragmatists about the failure of government to establish "sensible" gun laws. They point their fingers at the NRA, but overlook the more fundamental problem: how can a fairly small group of single-issue fanatics completely dominate this aspect of our political discourse.

The answer is that all aspects of government are dominated by small groups with a strong interest in establishing a specific (often extreme) policy. Government is incapable of achieving any middle ground, or securing the general welfare. In the gun control battle, "sensible" policies never have a chance. Instead, policy oscillates between being fully pro-gun and fully anti-gun; either guns are prohibited or everyone is packing heat.

Both sides of this argument (at least, those with any motivation) are driven more by symbolism than by rational policy design. They are seeking a victory in the culture war, not seeking to build safe public spaces. This has nothing to do with the influence of libertarianism or any anti-government sentiment-- pro-gun conservatives are fully pro-government.

So before signing up with the anti-gun crowd and wasting our efforts on a massive ideological and electoral battle over guns, those of us who want safe communities should step back and consider this: maybe government isn't the solution.

Barter-based schools

A group called "Trade School" is encouraging people to organize classroom instruction as part of a barter system. They are providing organizational advice and software to enable such schools. Based on this interview at Shareable, it looks like it is driven by an ideology of inclusiveness that is somewhat (but not completely) hostile to markets.

Based on my quick evaluation of the system, it seems like it could be a good set-up for hobbyists, but not for high-productivity education. The potential to teach high value skills is limited both by the complexity of organizing payment by barter, and particularly the difficulty of getting instructors to make substantial time commitments when their only compensation is barter (e.g. I'm not going to pay the rent through barter). Still, I think it will be a nice addition to a community's culture, and this will help introduce/maintain some diversity of educational systems, allowing for the possibility to develop into something larger.

via Slashdot.

Can we choose to stay human?

Does the presentation of martial arts training in movies provide an illustration of fundamental attitudes towards human nature? Michah Watson ponders this question at Public Discourse, where he examines "Neo vs. the Karate kid". This is an interesting, contemplative essay -- the best side of Public Discourse.  Watson uses the instant-learning in The Matrix as an illustration of the "Baconian" ideal of mastery over nature, and contrasts that with the "Aristotelian" model of apprenticeship illustrated in The Karate Kid, where character and relationships are given priority over power.

Watson clearly prefers the "Aristotelian" vision over the "Baconian" one, which isn't surprising for an essay at the communitarian Christian Public Discourse. This essay triggered my sentimentality, but before long I was drawn back to the real world. An item in the news illustrated the futility of Watson's wistfulness: the relentless advance of military neuroscience. Watson admitted that Bacon's desire for mastery over nature was in many ways reasonable, give the high mortality rate of Bacon's time. However, Watson tries to argue that this consideration is no longer relevant in modern society where natural ills have been controlled to the point that the drive for enhancing our powers is somewhat frivolous, and we can afford to take our foot off the pedal (so to speak).

Watson's oversight is that the drive for enhancement does not originate from natural threats, but from competition. Human competition (whether military or economic) can consign a person to misery and death just as surely as natural threats can. Therefore, there is no point at which we can relax -- we will always be driven to further self enhancement.

People like Watson may assert that we can still choose to live as a human, and place limits on how much we are willing to change ourselves in order to increase our powers, but perhaps a more accurate description is that we can still choose to die as a human. Life will be defined by those who survive, and given the human traits of innovation and competition, I don't think that any sort of stability is possible for human nature, short of developing some communist utopia.

Software assitance for teaching statistics

Further progress in propagating expertise without tying up existing expertise (i.e. increasing the supply while decreasing the demand): 

Report: Robots stack up to human professors in teaching Intro Stats | Inside Higher Ed

Without diminishing learning outcomes, automated teaching software can reduce the amount of time professors spend with students and could substantially reduce the cost of instruction, according to new research.
In experiments at six public universities, students assigned randomly to statistics courses that relied heavily on “machine-guided learning” software -- with reduced face time with instructors -- did just as well, in less time, as their counterparts in traditional, instructor-centric versions of the courses. This largely held true regardless of the race, gender, age, enrollment status and family background of the students.
The study comes at a time when “smart” teaching software is being increasingly included in conversations about redrawing the economics of higher education. Recent investments by high-profile universities in “massively open online courses,” or MOOCs, has elevated the notion that technology has reached a tipping point: with the right design, an online education platform, under the direction of a single professor, might be capable of delivering meaningful education to hundreds of thousands of students at once.
The new research from the nonprofit organization Ithaka was seeking to prove the viability of a less expansive application of “machine-guided learning” than the new MOOCs are attempting -- though one that nevertheless could have real implications for the costs of higher education.
The study, called “Interactive Learning Online at Public Universities,” involved students taking introductory statistics courses at six (unnamed) public universities. A total of 605 students were randomly assigned to take the course in a “hybrid” format: they met in person with their instructors for one hour a week; otherwise, they worked through lessons and exercises using an artificially intelligent learning platform developed by learning scientists at Carnegie Mellon University’s Open Learning Initiative.
Researchers compared these students against their peers in the traditional-format courses, for which students met with a live instructor for three hours per week, using several measuring sticks: whether they passed the course, their performance on a standardized test (the Comprehensive Assessment of Statistics), and the final exam for the course, which was the same for both sections of the course at each of the universities.

 via Monkey Cage

A dystopian scenario

Resistance to totalitarian societies is a popular theme of adventure stories (e.g. Wicked, the Matrix, the Hunger Games, Harry Potter, a Scanner Darkly), and I always appreciate it when a writer can concoct a new yet believable totalitarian system. Given the pace of change in our society, there should be no shortage of fodder for imagining new totalitarian systems for literature. While I'm no writer of fiction, I may have come across a particularly gripping scenario for the rise of a totalitarian system, so I want to toss it out there for others to consider.

The strength (or perhaps the weakness) is that it is linked to real world events happening right next door...

The drug war seems to be incubating a police state in Mexico. In some respects, this doesn't make Mexico any different from the US or many other Western countries where new technologies are being combined with old crusades to threaten our freedom. The interesting aspect of Mexico's system is that even as the state is grabbing these powers in the name of combating the drug cartels, those same cartels are infiltrating the state. The end result could very well be a nacro-police state. The culture of such a society would be scary in its own fascinating way. I feel like it could be much more totalitarian than other prospective narco-states such as Afghanistan, or Panama under Noriega. It would be a larger state, with a more urbanized population. To top it off, it would be right on the border with the US... it seems like the US-Mexico border would be a great focus for a story.

Yeah, just a thought...

The difference between wealth and freedom

Caleb Stegall at Front Porch Republic pulls up a good quote from Ivan Illich illustrating how consumer wealth is no substitute for freedom:

People need not only to obtain things, they need above all the freedom to make things among which they can live, to give shape to them according to their own tastes, and to put them to use in caring for and about others. Prisoners in rich countries often have access to more things and services than members of their families, but they have no say in how things are to be made and cannot decide what to do with them. Their punishment consists in being deprived of what I shall call “conviviality.” They are degraded to the status of mere consumers.

First They Came for the Horses | Front Porch Republic

Note: This is not meant to imply that the main loss of freedom for prisoners is in how they relate to objects. This is only secondary to their isolation from their community and the regimentation of their times. And of course, that is only considering the "official" hardships of prison life, not the threat of violence from other prisoners and guards.

Conservatives hate liberty

I'm in a bit of a mood, so when I read Carson Holloway's vapid ramblings at Public Discourse, I had to respond...

Libertarianism, Conservatism, and Egalitarianism

His basic assertion is that conservatism includes intrinsic constraints on the role of the state, whereas liberalism lacks those constraints (and may even positively seek increased intervention), therefore conservatives are the natural allies of libertarians.

His arguments are completely empty, as you will see.

1) He says that since conservatives base their legislative preferences in ideas of stasis (whether "tradition" or "natural law"), they cannot prefer an ever-increasing role for government. In contrast, he says, liberals seek progress so there is no limit on what they want.

I don't even know where to start with pointing out the nonsense of this statement. For one thing, society changes, and as it changes it comes into conflict with tradition. Therefore, it doesn't matter if "tradition" changes, the reach of conservative legislation will expand to include all aspects of life that deviate from the "traditional" ideal. Another problem is that even if conservatives convince themselves that their ideas are static, they are not. Notions of "tradition" change, as do ideas like "natural law" (or whatever ideology tomorrow's conservatives embrace). What's more, many supposedly "traditional" ideas are not. The self-proclaimed traditionalists ignore the diversity that has always existed in American society (and all societies) -- they claim precedence for their own way solely as an excuse to dismiss everyone else's lifestyle and belief. Their "tradition" is not my tradition.

2) He says: "For example, the conservative defense of traditional marriage does nothing to limit individual freedom, since it would merely deny governmental recognition to same-sex unions while leaving homosexuals free to live however they wish."

Not too long ago, the conservatives were trying to punish sodomy and miscegenation. Forget them. If liberals hadn't defeated them, these activities would still be illegal. I can concede that the absence of state recognition for homosexual marriage is far from the worst injustice in the world, but it is still a restriction of liberty for the state to give preference to one group or one lifestyle over another. If a conservative cannot recognize this, he is an idiot.

3) The  next issue he addresses is the contrasting ideas about human failings -- for conservatives it is original sin, for liberals it is faulty social institutions.

Well, here the his argument is backwards. If men are born as sinners, yet rescued by worshiping zombie-Jesus, then there is a clear basis for one group (Christians) to dominate another (e.g. heathens, atheists, heretics). However, if our institutions are faulty, then there is also a clear basis for eradicating the state.

Conservatives must hate liberty.

We are always at war

Ol' B Psycho points us to another idiotic writer at an influential news organization who wants to use the "we're at war" excuse for a state crackdown on basic civil liberties.

Anytime I hear that argument, I have to ask, "If we are at war today, then when were we not at war?" The "if" clause is needed because there is currently no declaration of war by the US Congress, so the speaker is clearly not using the legal definition of "war". Instead, he's using his judgement based on the current level of military activity. The trouble is that the US military is always involved in some sort of activity. The extent of engagement fluctuates, but it is always there.

Off the top of my head, here are our current active wars...
1) The Taliban in Afghanistan
2) The Taliban (and associates) in Pakistan
3) Random terrorists in Yemen
4) Islamists in Somalia

On top of these, we have numerous places where the military is poised to get involved in case the President gets uncomfortable with local political developments (e.g. Libya, Syria, Iraq). We also have the wars of our allies -- Israel vs. her enemies, Taiwan vs China, Georgia vs Russia, South and North Korea, various Middle Eastern countries against their own people, and probably many more. Finally, we have our chronic conflicts with Cuba and Iran, which definitely included covert acts of war, and probably still involve covert actions. And then there's just the general policy of aiding coups in the various banana republics.

So we're involved in a lot of "wars" -- many of which stretch back decades. So when was the last time we weren't at war? More specifically, when was the last time that someone couldn't use "we're at war" for justifying some heavy-handed state action? By that criterion, the Cold War definitely counted as a war. This was immediately followed by first Gulf War, which continued with the siege, invasion, and occupation of Iraq. With just the Cold War and Iraq, we've been constantly at war since WWII. If the siege of Iraq doesn't cut it for you, we also have been targeted by Islamist terrorists since at least 1993 (the first WTC attack).

So if anyone uses this argument to claim that "today is different", all I can say is "STFU tyrant."

Never talk to a cop?

Over at the Agitator blog, the comments are full of advice to think twice before calling the cops. The idea is that by doing so you are inviting trouble, as the cops are prone to over-reacting and may even turn against the person who summoned their help.

This sentiment is reinforced by an article in the WSJ, describing how many people found themselves being prosecuted for uttering small untruths to cops or other law-enforcement officials. Maybe it's best to just not talk to these people until Congress decides to limit the legal liabilities that can arise from doing so. As if...

Here's the WSJ article: For Feds, 'Lying' Is a Handy Charge

Is it illegal to disobey your employer?

I am not a lawyer, but it sounds like there is serious legal disagreement over whether it is a federal crime for an employee to use his work computer in a way that violates the employer's policies. If this goes in the wrong direction, it could be a cornerstone for totalitarianism by employment contract.

I am absolutely fine with violation of policies being grounds for termination of employment and even liability for damages, but making it criminal is just creepy. These fraud laws are ripe for abuse, as illustrated by the prosecution of Ferrell and Kurtz. We cannot count on the restraint of prosecutors ensure that these laws are applied reasonably -- a prosecutor can hound a sick old man and and widower for years without cause, and the scumbag will still get promoted. The corporations already own Congress; they don't need to have prosecutors at their beck and call.

The choice between two illusions (Obama v. Romney: The philosopher candidates)

At Salon.com, Linda Hirshman contrasts the ideologies of Obama and Romney, rejoicing in the fact that this election finally gives the American people a clear ideological choice. Unfortunately, this is a choice between two illusions.

On the Democratic side, there is the illusion that the state can act as a guarantor of an inclusive, caring political economy. Yet among all of our institutions, the state is among the most exclusive, hierarchical, and violent. If you want to see cut-throat competition driven by a winner-take-all outcome, look no further than our elections.

On the Republican side, there is the illusion that the American system allows space for anyone and everyone to thrive. Reality quickly casts doubt on this faith, and the arguments marshaled by conservatives are blatant bullshit.

Blinded by partisan rhetoric, Hirshman fails to identify the important aspects of a truly fair society where widespread prosperity and freedom are possible. By interperting "competition" as winner-take-all competition, she says that we either accept it (and the human wreckage of the losers) or we reject it in favor of an ever expansive welfare state. She ignores the mundane role of low-scale competition in aligning economic incentives across individuals and preventing monopolists from gaining outsized rewards for their efforts. This omission is bizarre, given the central role of this "perfect market" model in economics. It's time to drop our obsession with political illusions and power struggles, and get real about the day-to-day forces that drive our behavior.

p.s. The Salon comment system is a pain to use. I blew 20 minutes trying to leave a comment.

This is interesting...

Glenn Greenwald claims that many prominent persons in national politics have openly conducted business with (and essentially become lobbyists for) a Federally designated terrorist organization -- a crime that is punishable by up to 15 years imprisonment. Many other people have been prosecuted for simply advocating on behalf of such organizations after speaking with representatives on the organization (without taking any money).

In other words, Greenwald claims that these people are above the law. If they are above the law, then there is no law.

As Lee Adama said:

if you are telling me we are throwing out the law, then I am not a captain, you are not a commander, and you are not the president. And I don't owe either of you a damned explanation for anything.

Here's the original report from the CSM. I may just have to subscribe again.

Quote of the day

"Obama is not serving Bush's third term, but Nixon's tenth term."
-Jim Davidson, commenting at Liberal Law

For what it's worth, if you want a clever take on what Nixon's 4th term might have been like, take a gander at the movie "Watchmen"  -- it's not just for comic-book graphic novel geeks.

The conservative case against attacking Iran

Public Discourse is a conservative blog that publishes academic-ish essays on various topics. I've sometimes considered taking it off of my blogroll because they do not acknowledge reader responses in any way (neither comments nor trackbacks) and I've found some of their arguments to be just absurd. However, every once in a while they have a gem, and now is one of those times. Here the author applies "Just War" theory to the proposed attacks against Iran. Using this framework, he manages to clearly state the various reasons why attacking Iran is not justified.

Check it out:
Just War and the Iran Crisis « Public Discourse

Global Warming libertarians

Peter Gleick, a prominent climate researcher and scientific popularizer, was recently disgraced due to his use of a false pretense to acquire internal Heartland Institute documents. This whole story (starting with the publication of the Heartland documents) is reviving the idea that there is something "libertarian" about denying the science of global warming. For instance, if you look at the story that I linked to, you'll see Heartland described as a "libertarian" think thank.

I cringe at that association, but I regretfully cannot argue that Heartland is just a tag-along in the libertarian movement -- their roots go back to the origins of the "think-tank" component of the libertarian movement.

Since I cannot disown them from the libertarian movement, I can only discredit their approach to climate change, and point out how they discredit the libertarian movement by politicizing science.

With that, I suggest the following blog articles, the first being by Kevin Carson at the Center for a Stateless Society, and the rest being my own thoughts as published at the (defunct) Freedom Democrats blog:

• Libertarians for Junk Science (by Kevin Carson)
• Politicization of Climate Sciences
• The risk of Climate Change, and its implications 
• Activism: looking in, looking out (libs and climate science)
• Science denialism
• America's Climate Choices

Unfortunately, these writings do not address all relevant issues, but should make the point that global warming denial is not a libertarian position. We all need to come to grips with the fact that human activity can change the climate, and this will only become more true in the future as our technologies advance. Libertarianism can handle this reality as well as any other ideology can.

Activism: looking in, looking out (libertarians and climate science)

Originally published at Freedom Democrats in 2009

The main goal of ideological advocacy is expand the influence of a particular ideology among the general public. I define an ideological movement as a group of advocates for an overlapping set of ideologies, who recognize their shared interests. These advocates will frequently look to each other for intellectual and material resources, which aid them in their primary task of expanding the influence of their ideologies. While most of their attention will focus on contrasting their own ideology against others that influence the general public, some of their attention will be focused inwards--evaluating disagreements within the movement.

While there are definitely benefits to some degree of introspection within the movement, I've noticed a tendency for people to go overboard and focus on internal squabbles to the detriment of the original goal of advocacy. There are probably many reasons for such navel-gazing, ranging form a concern with one's own social circle to finding more satisfaction to debating with others who share at least a few common assumptions, but I don't want to get too deep into that speculation. What I want to focus on here is an example of productive introspection, and how a lot of people seemed to miss the point.

Over at the Center for a Stateless Society, Kevin Carson wrote an essay called "Libertarians for Junk Science". I thought it was a very well focused and relevant essay. He starts with the premise that there is a scientifically valid risk of man-made climate change, that will cause major harm in at least a few ways. This has long been the mainstream opinion among scientists, and it has finally become the mainstream opinion among the public. Carson takes a faction of libertarians to task for obsessively denying the science here, accusing them of providing a disservice both to science and libertarianism.

Carson's essay is primarily focused inwards, but it can also provide an outsider with greater respect for libertarianism. Carson asserts that climate-change denialism is driven by the fear that the reality of man-made climate change would invalidate libertarianism, then argues that there is no reason for this fear. This point is of immense importance because if the public believes that climate change invalidates libertarianism, then libertarianism is dead. Even if the greenhouse gas effect turns out to be benign, our ability to modify the climate will only increase in the future and we will eventually have to deal with these sorts of issues. Carson provides an explanation for non-libertarians, and asks libertarians to stop framing the issue in a way that discredits liberty.

Unfortunately, his audience (as represented by the comments) seemed to miss the point. One commenter (Schulman) immediately turns to navel-gazing, debating whether Carson is a real libertarian. Another (Kinsella) ignores Carson's critical introspection, apparently interpreting it as an attack on libertarianism and insisting that statists are much more prone to ideology driven pseudoscience than libertarians are. While this is an interesting issue, it is beyond tangential and it wasn't clear that the commenter recognized it.

A final note on the comment thread, is that it was full of standard denialist rhetoric (I've become familiar with it from the evolution/creation debates). The core of this rhetoric was misrepresentation of scientific opinion. Understandably, it is hard for a layman to get a good grasp of the issues, since they don't have the time that a professional has and they are often getting their information second-hand from reporters and activists who don't have a great understanding themselves. One consequence of this misunderstanding is the "magic bullet" refutation -- acting as though one inconsistency is sufficient to demolish a body of theory that has been built by hundreds if not thousands of research projects (and often, that apparent inconsistency has already been addressed). I also got the impression that some commentators have spent more time reading fringe opinions (both for and against climate change legislation) than they have spent reading the opinions of mainstream scientists or policymakers.  They seem unable to distinguish between the ideas of opposing ideological advocates, such as radical environmentalists, and those of the mainstream scientists and technocrats whose ideas form the solid foundation of public debate.

The conservative fallacy: "someone -> anyone -> everyone"

Back in my days of Swords Crossed debates, I read an argument that Americans are in control of their own economic success. This argument was built upon the observation that several people from low-income backgrounds had managed to earn high incomes during their working lives. This belief is a cornerstone of economic conservatism, since it dismisses the need for economic reform and supports the idea that differences in wealth are the result of personal choices.

However, this argument is based on some pretty sloppy logic, which is commonly employed by conservatives without much thought. I just encountered it again coming from Bryan Caplan (via Anagory) and figure I should put my criticism up for critique. Caplan's basic argument is that high income people have achieved their success in part by "being meek", and that many low income (i.e. working class) people are held back by their lack of meekness. He concludes by implying that if only the working class would me more meek, America could be saved from the emergence of the permanent underclass that Charles Murray harps about.

So let me break down the argument:

• Some people have achieved success by being meek.
• Anyone else can also achieve success by likewise being meek.
• Everyone can achieve success by following this strategy.

Let me first enter the caveat that Caplan does not explicitly follow this entire chain of logic; he seems to be equivocal on the second point, and perhaps completely deviates from the third point (I'll discuss this at the end). However, he puts this in the context of Charles Murray's campaign to teach the lower classes how to be upper class, so that implies that this could be a strategy by which everyone could achieve prosperity and status.

So here's my criticism. First, the fact that someone achieved success by following a particular strategy does not mean that everyone can achieve success by the same strategy, even leaving aside the issue of variation in talents. There is randomness in the world, and one strategy will produce both winners and losers. That's not to say that some strategies aren't better than others, just that we can't attribute all differences in outcome to different choices.

Second, even if the strategy could work for anyone, that does not mean that it could work for everyone simultaneously. This is evident from some pretty basic and well established economic models relating to the growth of competitive industries -- that large profits in an industry attract new suppliers to enter the trade, resulting in lower prices and smaller profits. In other words, while one person could get rich by entering this particular market, if everyone tried to do the same thing, no-one would get rich (but they would get normal wages, and the customers would be happy with the low prices).

Another scenario where anyone does not imply everyone is illustrated by elections: even if anyone could be President, there can still only be one President. While politics may be a special case of hyper-competition (as opposed to the regular competition described above), I think that a lot of the success stories trotted out by conservatives (e.g. Oprah Winfrey and Michael Jordon) involve the same dynamics, where individuals made their fortune by attaining a prominent position in society, and providing a service that by the nature of being a society-wide service necessarily was limited to only a few providers. In other words, there can only be a limited number of celebrities whom "everyone is talking about".

Finally, to be fair to Caplan, his argument does not precisely fit this chain of logic. First, he points out that some people can benefit from being overly assertive, but they are the people who are already at the top of the hierarchy or otherwise have a major bargaining chip, and the "meekness" prescription only applies to the rest of us slobs. Second, he seems to frame the benefit of "meekness" as a competitive tool for climbing up the professional ladder, not as a way for low income people to generally increase their productivity and wages. As such, he doesn't really imply that this strategy would "work" for everyone. However, in this case he deviates from the philanthropic motivation behind Murray's campaign, and is basically just telling the lower classes to know their place.

Elections are not worth our attention

"Conventional wisdom" holds that citizens of democratic states have an obligation to cast an informed vote for the leaders of the states (or referenda, if applicable). This idea forms the ideological foundation of a news culture where the actions of politicians are examined in excruciating detail, both while in office and while on the campaign trail. While I'm sick of hearing about the election horse-race and political theater, I am still sympathetic to the principle that voting is important, but I have not heard a convincing justification for this position. Without a good justification, I have no basis on which to approach the details of this decision -- just what am I trying to achieve by voting?

Some commentators take an emotionalist position on this topic. For instance:

Voting is a privilege and a right given to us by virtue of living in a free society — we don’t need a rational choice framework to provide a reason for participating in the process.

Of course, this doesn't answer the question at all. Why should I consider voting to be "a privilege"? Why would it matter if I didn't vote?

Other commentators have attempted to answer this question rationally, but I still find their arguments wanting. Here we focus on probabilities and expected payoffs.

The main problem to be overcome is that there is a very low chance of a voter influencing the election (about 1 in a million for the Presidential election, if the voter is in a battleground state). Sometimes people have more influence, such as pundits or multi-millionaires who can sway a substantial number of votes, or when the electorate is small. But most regular people -- no matter how smart and informed -- are not going to have substantial influence on the election.

The way to overcome this lack of influence is to focus on the scale of the benefit, should we sway the election. If we figure that one candidate is $1.5 billion more valuable than the other (i.e. $50 per American), then the one in a million chance of swaying the election seems pretty good. Based on these numbers, I figure my vote is worth $1,500;  I'd give up an hour of my time to get that lottery ticket.

My concern is that this "deal" quickly falls apart once we realize that buying that ticket is not as simple as walking to the voting booth, waiting in line, and casting my vote. There is actually a risk that I will vote for the wrong candidate, and end up costing America $1.5 billion. Yikes. In fact, a quick analysis indicates that I have about equal chances of getting it right or wrong in the Presidential election. Basically, since I'm not a partisan fanatic, I have to assume that most voters are just as smart and altruistic as I am, yet about half of them would choose the other candidate. Clearly, selecting the right candidate is not a simple decision. Ironically, the situations in which I'm most likely to affect the outcome of the election are the very situations when I would have the least confidence in my decision (i.e. when the vote is evenly split).

Having realized the responsibility that I bear as a voter, I could decide to collect more information about the candidates so that I am able to make an informed decision. Even if I cannot go into the voting booth with absolute certainty in my decision, perhaps it is enough to increase my confidence to 75%, or even 60%. Maybe it's worth voting even if I only have 51% confidence that I am choosing the right candidate (2% of $1,500 is $30).

But how can I make a reasonable choice about candidates. I can watch debates, read their ideological statements, and the policy proposals. How much will this help? Will I select a good President, or just the best con-man? Will the newspaper articles really reveal the character of these candidates, or will they just reflect which candidate has the best PR team and is the best at manipulating reporters? The final fact that I have to face is that all of these candidates are strangers to me, and I can only gain a very superficial understanding of them even if I dedicate all of my free time to investigating them. Is there anything better I could do with my free time?

On almost any criteria I can think of by which to evaluate the candidates (e.g. policies, parties), I run into the same problem -- the situation is incredibly complex and far removed from my direct experience. To top it off, and I can't really trust half of the information that I get since it is clearly being manipulated by the candidates and their supporters. I'd end up spending hundreds of hours studying just to get my confidence up by a couple of percent. There is some consolation in the fact that I'd likely do much of this studying anyway (I'm a news junkie), but I'm sure that I could spend my time more wisely than that -- I could spend time with my family, on my job, or volunteer with a charity.

After all this, I still have some hope that voting is worthwhile -- perhaps as a signal to the President that he does not decide when to leave office. But I'm not sure it matters who I vote for. Maybe if I am presented with a truly despicable candidate (e.g. Santorum), I would vote as if the election depended on it, but otherwise, I can't see the point in taking the decision too seriously. If I were to vote seriously, the best strategy that I can think of is to vote on a single issue.

Luckily, this mess clears up a little if we think about smaller elections: as things get more local, my influence increases and my information also increases, even if the stakes decrease. This reaches an extreme with my decisions in my personal life, where I confidently make plenty of low stakes decisions that cumulatively provide massive welfare benefits for myself and others.

The decision to vote or not (and how seriously to take it) is simple enough, but this attitude that voting is sacred permeates our culture and twists our institutions. This is most evident in the way that newscasters obsess over politicians: how much real news are we missing because the newscasters think that national electoral politics is the most important thing in the world? How many science and technology stories are going unreported? How many local stories are ignored? How much energy are we wasting on national politics?

Libertarian Transhumanism

No comment, just a funny bumper sticker I found...

Heartland slimebags

Like many corporate-funded institutions, the Heartland Institute is trying to spread lies. Now, they are suing anyone who calls them out.

The Bad Astronomy blog has the original story. According to the DeSmogBlog:

It is clear from the documents that Heartland advocates against responsible climate mitigation and then uses that advocacy to raise money from oil companies and "other corporations whose interests are threatened by climate policies."

A comment on Slashdot has a good evaluation of conspiracy theories...

"Turning everything into a massive conspiracy theory is not going to help you do this."
One side promotes the idea that there has been a massive global conspiracy by scientists, across a number of disciplines and organizations, lasting over decades, to lie about a central scientific result in their field. There is no sensible organizational backing or motivation to this.
....
The other side promotes the idea that there is a small political conspiracy to gain by people who have previously been known to engage in political conspiracies of a a similar nature. There is a well known organizational consistency and economic motivation to this.

These legal threats are just one more link in their conspiracy to silence unfavorable opinions.

Threats to free speech

Here are two stories of companies threatening the free speech rights of their employees (and former employees). Both came to my attention via Slashdot.

First, who owns your twitter account? This is an issue of trade-secrets, non-compete contracts, and trademarks. The lawsuit is in Federal courts.

If you set it up as a company representative (e.g. using their name), does it belong to them? This is the issue that is contested in an ongoing court case, where the company "Phonedog" is suing a former employer who had amassed 17,000 twitter followers under the name "Phonedog_Noah". When Noah left Phonedog, he changed the name and continued to use the account. Now Phonedog wants $2.50 for each subscriber to the list. What a crock!

Lawsuit May Determine Who Owns a Twitter Account - NYTimes.com

My first thought is that if the company wanted control over the account, they should have established it themselves. Either they should have set up their own server, or they should have established some sort of corporate account with Twitter (if Twitter allows such things). If Noah contracted with Twitter under his own authority, then it is his account. Noah is a free man, and can do whatever the fuck he wants with his account.

The other thing that bugs me is how they treat the subscribers an their property. Noah's subscribers are people with their own interests, and Phonedog can go fuck themselves if they think that they have the right to disrupt communications to these people. The question here is "what did the subscribers think that they were subscribing to?". If they wanted to hear Noah's opinion, then they are Noah's audience. If they wanted to hear about Phonedog, then they are Phonedog's audience. I'd think that the proper way to deal with this sort of divorce is to shut down the account in question, and give the subscribers the following non-exclusive options: if you want to hear Noah go to A, if you want to hear Phonedog go to B. I don't know how Twitter works, and whether this is plausible (I'm sure they'd loose a chunk of their subscribers), but it seems to be the only way to handle this split while respecting the audience.*

This lawsuit is in Federal courts. It shows why we need to invalidate all contractual arrangements that constrain a person's ability to make a living or their free speech rights (e.g. non-compete and non-disclosure agreements).

The next situation is that the Heartland institute is threatening lawsuits over alleged leaked/forged documents. It seems that they want to sue all their opponents for defamation or something. So far, there is no actual lawsuit, just vague threats. Fuck them. I think I'll jump in the pool just because of these threats.

http://heartland.org/press-releases/2012/02/15/heartland-institute-responds-stolen-and-fake-documents

*An alternative would be to clone/fork the account. On the one hand, if Twitter allowed such behavior, it might expose the audience to a bunch of spam (equivalent to selling an address list). However, if the chain of inheritance is transparent, subscribers would be empowered to punish anyone who is selling the subscription list (perhaps simultaneously unsubscribing from the original feed and all cloned feeds)

Life as a start up

A fairly new book about the "networking economy" is getting some press -- "The Start Up of You", essentially encouraging college-educated professionals to treat their careers like a startup... which includes using a lot of professional networking to find new opportunities. Appropriately, it is written by the founder of LinkedIn. Based on the reviews at Amazon, it seems to be a little bit stuck in the Silicon Valley experience, and is probably targeted at white-collar corporate workers.

One commenter recommended "My Start Up Life" as a more "real" alternative.

Of course, the problem with reading a book by a big-shot Silicon Valley CEO is that not all of us want that type of life, and even for those of us who want that life, we won't be able to achieve it. One of the ideas that really bothers me (based on a superficial exposure to the book) is the notion that we need to work harder and take more risks. That works fine for some people, but most of us have obligations and lives outside of our professional activities.

My other concern is that this will be another sort of "Who Moved My Cheese"-type book -- encouraging workers to take control of their jobs, even though there are a lot of very real obstacles to doing so. Kevin Carson has expounded on these issues before.

Finally, this also brings to mind what I read in Jack Welch's book "Winning" -- that workers are completely dependent upon their employer for good recommendations. Since your boss may be a jerk, it is a good strategy to cultivate several "employment" relationships and build a network that can substitute for that reference letter from your old boss. Relying on one person (or company) may appear to be the route to economic stability, but such small, narrowly focused groups can often fail in the blink of an eye.

More education resources...

Two more potential "unschooling" resources to consider:

MIT's Online Education Prototype Opens For Enrollment 

The above Slashdot title is self-explanatory.

I've also recently found another simulation system: NetLogo. I've played with a couple of the biology simulations, and they seem pretty solid. There's tons of other science simulations, both in the built-in library and in the online database of community contributions. I haven't done any programming, but it looks like it could be a rather simple (and quick feedback) system to practice the basics of computer programming.

The real problem in our healthcare system...

Darien Worden has a good essay at C4SS describing how all this bruhaha over contraceptives coverage is just culture-war grandstanding by demagogic politicians with no interest in actually addressing the real problems of our society.

It could almost serve as a plank to the Left Libertarian platform that I'm assembling.

In defense of networking

I've been defending the social value of professional networking over at the anagorism blog, and wanted to make a comment here. The argument (as I understand it) is about how much of a role direct social interactions should play in the establishment of economic relationships, and how much this match-making process can be formalized.

My belief is that there are situations where formalization (e.g. credentials, match-making services) can be useful, but that such situations should be viewed as the exception rather than the rule. Rather, in my vision of a "good society", most relationships (including economic relationships) would be established by networking (e.g. recommendations from trusted sources). I view this as the contrast between a mass-society on one hand, and a personal society on the other. In one society, humans are commodities to be fit into predefined categories by managers, while in the other society, humans define their own needs and pursue these needs with their friends and trusted colleagues.

There are all types of problems with the formalized society, ranging from its inability to innovate to the problem of establishing universal trust in the managers. Granted, the network society can have its own problems -- two of them being wasteful competition and nepotism. I won't address the former, because I don't think it is really solved by formalization. While the later (nepotism) isn't solved by formalization either, the anagorist position provides a clear challenge for finding ways to minimize it in a network society.

The main way to accomplish this is to identify socially privileged networks (e.g. government, academia), and assure that they have some sort of open access point by which outsiders can gain access. In academia, there is a semi-formalized admission process for university, after which students can approach professors and try to develop relationships. I am usually up for establishing new access points, but am opposed to proposals that would formalize the entire system from top to bottom.

The thing that really bugs me about anti-networking critiques is that they build on the corporatist assumption that jobs are something that a deity-like employer creates, and then bestows upon an imbecile worker. In the world I live in, and the wold I want to live in, the worker plays an equal role in creating the job. I think this is undeniably true in an abstract sense (supply and demand together determine the quantity produced), but I also see it in the individual hiring decisions of managers. Managers do not necessarily decide to hire a person and then go seeking a person to fill that slot -- often they hire employees opportunistically; it is only after a prospective employee approaches them and says "here I am, here's what I can do" that the employer decides to take on the project that the employee can work on. There are a lot of pieces that have to come together to make a project work, and it takes efforts to bring them together. If you can bring your skills to someone who has the complementary pieces already, you can make things happen.

Dear Chinese: Don't send a person to the moon

To my Chinese friends and their countrymen:

I read with dismay a recent report that the Chinese state is thinking about sending humans to the moon. Meanwhile, our own idiot politicians are spewing a lot of hot air about the glory of space colonization. While these minor-demagogues justify these projects in the name of "national greatness", these activities should instead be viewed as sources of shame. We should not allow these thieves in government to spend our money on their silly propaganda campaigns while our neighbors are suffering from want of anything.

Lest you think that I object to China's technological advancement, I can only say that I welcome the discoveries that Chinese scientists are contributing to human knowledge, and I look forward to the immense expansion of scientific research and technological progress that will occur as Chinese prosperity increases. It is for this reason that I hope that China will not squander its resources on space colonization -- these funds should be allocated in a manner that accomplishes scientific and commercial goals; instead, we are at risk of being drawn into a space race that only benefits the egos of politicians.

American patents, Chinese slavery

Yesterday, I made the argument that copyright is slavery, yet I admitted that it is only a tiny bit of slavery. Today, B. Psycho inadvertently reminds me that I should not have made any such concession; Intellectual Property plays a central role in a system that comes quite close to total slavery -- the devil's bargain between American tech companies and the Chinese state.

The gist of this accusation is Chinese workers allow themselves to be worked like slaves only because various restrictions on commerce (such as Apple's patents) prevent them from making a living any other way. These laws undermine the traditional method by which a free man would earn a living -- by working under an established and experienced mentor, and eventually setting up his own enterprise using the skills he learned on the job and the reputation that he developed. However, in the modern world, this form of upward mobility is prohibited by the law (both here and in China), creating permanent classes of employers and employees -- masters and slaves. In the Apple/China situation, patents prevent the workers from being independent, but other legal arrangements can produce a similar effect. The most glaring in my mind are the "non-compete" clauses found in many employment contracts; it's too bad that most progressives are satisfied to reform slavery without eradicating it.

Copyright is Slavery

With the recent protests against SOPA and PIPA, the prosecution of Megaupload's staff, and the subsequent Anonymous attacks on the websites of various copyright enforcers (e.g. DoJ, RIAA, MPAA), it is time to distill this issue to its essence: copyright is slavery.

This statement may seem a bit extreme, since our own experience demonstrates that copyright is compatible with basic political and economic freedoms (more or less). Still, I stand by this blunt statement; copyright may be just a tiny slice of slavery, but it is still slavery.

Copyright is slavery because it empowers one person to prohibit another person from engaging in a fundamental human activity -- the sharing of songs and stories. The owners of copyright will argue that these songs and stories would not exist except for the efforts of the copyright owner (and perhaps the copyright system itself), and therefore the copyright owner does not deprive anyone of anything. This may be true in the narrow sense -- that a particular song or story would be unavailable -- but it ignores how these songs and stories interact with the human brain and are assembled into "a personal cultural catalog", as I'll call it. It is this catalog that is unjustly privatized by copyright, ultimately giving copyright owners a sort of ownership over other persons. Furthermore, the commercial value of copyright is largely derived from how humans relate to each other by sharing stories and songs, so copyright results in the privatization of our social lives by third parties and the centralization of cultural control.

Supporters of copyright dismiss the idea that our personal cultural catalogs are in any way relevant to the legitimacy of their copyrights. They point out that the assembly of our catalogs are our business, and that they did not force us to listen to their songs, nor did they force us to obsess over the characters of their stories. In some sense (they claim), copyright can be viewed as a contract between the producers and consumers of culture, where access to the story or song is only granted if the consumer agrees to respect the copyright of the producer; given this contract, if the consumer decides to weave the story or song into their own life, that is their own decision taken as a free person. Leaving aside the issue of whether slavery contracts are legitimate, this contract theory of copyright does not hold water. The main reason is that no such contract exists. Without an explicit contract (agreed to before any exchange takes place), a person cannot be expected to understand the implications of the restrictions that are being placed on him. Furthermore, there are only some situations in which such a contract could even be feasible -- such as when purchasing a book or entering a movie theater; the idea of a contract is absurd when copyrighted content is broadcast to our radios or televisions. Finally, the most important parts of our cultural catalogs are collected when we are children, and children cannot be expected to enter into contracts that will restrict their actions for their entire lives.

So that's my argument that copyright is a form of slavery. A quick Google search did not reveal any other arguments for this position. Still, if you want a more elaborate legalistic examination of the issue, I refer you to Stephan Kinsella.

Let's wrap up with a song (Copyright Slavery, by Der Plan [German with some English phrases])

Philip Coogan’s *Paper Promises*

Tyler Cowen is promoting Philip Coogan’s *Paper Promises*.

The Amazon blurb reads:

For the past forty years western economies have splurged on debt. Now, as the reality dawns that many debts cannot be repaid, we find ourselves again in crisis. But the oncoming defaults have a time-worn place in our economic history. As with the crises in the 1930s and 1970s, governments will fall, currencies will lose their value, and new systems will emerge. Just as Britain set the terms of the international system in the nineteenth century, and America in the twentieth century, a new system will be set by today's creditors in China and the Middle East. In the process, rich will be pitted against poor, young against old, public sector workers against taxpayers and one country against another.

So, this raises the question of what will happen if America (and the debt-ridden world) does not accept the system proposed by China and the Middle East. I suppose we would be cut off from their credit. I hope that we have the self-respect to do so. Given that the credit offered by China and the Middle East is just wealth that has been looted by those states, we would be morally justified in rejecting it.

Wikipedia anti-SOPA blackout

Wikipedia will be offline tomorrow in protest of two bills before Congess -- SOPA and PROIP. The reason is basically this:

We depend on a legal infrastructure that makes it possible for us to operate. And we depend on a legal infrastructure that also allows other sites to host user-contributed material, both information and expression. For the most part, Wikimedia projects are organizing and summarizing and collecting the world’s knowledge. We’re putting it in context, and showing people how to make to sense of it.

But that knowledge has to be published somewhere for anyone to find and use it. Where it can be censored without due process, it hurts the speaker, the public, and Wikimedia. Where you can only speak if you have sufficient resources to fight legal challenges, or if your views are pre-approved by someone who does, the same narrow set of ideas already popular will continue to be all anyone has meaningful access to.

More at: English Wikipedia anti-SOPA blackout - Wikimedia Foundation

International Trade

This is a plank of my "Left-Libertarian Platform". This post may be updated to better explain the left-libertarian position on this issue, and therefore the comments section is not the best place for esoteric discussion. However, I would appreciate comments that help to clarify the left-libertarian position. Please let me know if I have overlooked an important aspect of this issue, if many left-libertarians disagree with my description of the issue, or if there is a particularly good external resource discussing this issue in depth.

America's political and economic elite have internationalized protectionism and monopoly under the deceptive banner of "Free Trade Agreements". These treaties restrict the actions of citizens on both side of the border, while transferring state powers from representative local institutions to international corporations. The entire notion of these agreements is based on the cowardly logic that our domestic economic dysfunction is caused by the economic decisions of foreign countries. Rather than fret over their "unfair" trade practices, our leaders should be focusing on removing the rot from our own institutions.

Free trade does not require hundred-page treaties; it can and should be implemented by simple, unilateral decisions to remove barriers to cross-border trade. If a foreign country wishes to offer us subsidized exports, then we should take advantage of that opportunity rather than waste time pondering what the market would look like in an idealized world where every nation adopted our preferred economic policies. These treaties are one of many ways that America's ruling class co-opts the political system of developing countries, to the detriment of the citizens of both countries, thereby fueling resentment against the USA. [see Copyrights, Patents, and Trademarks]

While there are legitimate concerns about developing commercial relations with tyrannical regimes that plunder their people's wealth, such concerns are rarely a factor in deciding actual American trade policy. More often, trade restrictions are designed to protect the (often ill-gotten) wealth of American companies abroad, or suppress any challenge to American geopolitical superiority.

Left-libertarians support the following changes to American foreign trade policy:

• End the embargo on Cuba
• Stop demanding that trade partners enact domestic economic reforms (particularly with respect to foreign ownership of capital) as a condition for allowing Americans to trade with them.

Copyright, Patents, and Trademark

This is a plank of my "Left-Libertarian Platform". This post may be updated to better explain the left-libertarian position on this issue, and therefore the comments section is not the best place for esoteric discussion. However, I would appreciate comments that help to clarify the left-libertarian position. Please let me know if I have overlooked an important aspect of this issue, if many left-libertarians disagree with my description of the issue, or if there is a particularly good external resource discussing this issue in depth.

The existing system of intellectual property (IP) in the USA is corrupt. This system is supposed to promote innovation, facilitate honest commerce, and fairly reward productive work; yet, in reality it stifles creativity, enables fraud, and allows a plutocratic elite to transform their political power into monopoly profits. To make maters worse, in response to public disdain for the restrictive privileges granted to the IP industry, Congress is resorting to increasingly intrusive enforcement methods that threaten to disrupt the Internet and limit freedom of speech (e.g. the DMCA).

Left-libertarians support radical reform, if not abolition, of the intellectual property system in America and worldwide. In addition to the harm caused to Americans -- as consumers, producers, and citizens -- the USA's IP cartel is restricting prosperity-promoting international trade. They demand punitive trade restrictions on any country that does not provide them with powers similar to those that they have in the USA. These mandates are enshrined in treaties such as NAFTA and CAFTA, which have had the effect of limiting access to life-saving drugs (along with other technologies) for the residents of these developing nations. The people of America have been used as bargaining chips in these efforts to extend the USA's exploitative system of IP to countries that America's plutocratic elite have plundered for many decades (with the help of local elites). [see International Trade]

To address these problems, we must first recognize that intellectual property is a government policy (as specified in the USA's Constitution), not a natural right (as asserted by advocates such as Sonny Bono). As such, we are justified in limiting these grants of monopoly privilege in whatever manner serves the public interest. We support the following reforms to limit the powers granted by IP:

Copyright:

• Immediate revocation of any copyright that has extended beyond its initial time-span (i.e. nullification of the retroactive provisions of the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension act).
• Elimination of the variable-time components of copyright duration (e.g. "life + 70 years) so that there is never any doubt over whether a copyright is still effective.
• Reduction of the term of copyright so that important aspects of culture become public within a reasonable time. The initial term of American copyright (14-28 years) is sufficient to maintain most of the commercial value of most copyrights, while recognizing the role of the general public in creating value for cultural goods.
• Expansion of "fair use" exemptions to prevent copyright from being used as a tool for silencing critics.

Patent:

• Greater scrutiny of inventions before granting patents, so that competing inventors do not need an army of lawyers to protect them from unjustified patent suits.
• Greater stringency on the criteria used for deciding if an invention is patent-worthy.

Trademark:

• Non-transferability of trademark to parties that cannot reasonably be expected to provide a product or service that is comparable to that provided by the original owner of the trademark (e.g. the Cult Awareness Network).

Enforcement:

• Limiting IP enforcement to civil cases seeking monetary compensation comparable to the lost profits arising from IP infringement.
• Revoking IP (partially or fully) whenever the owner exaggerates the powers granted by IP, or denies the fair use rights of others.

A left libertarian platform

It is often hard to describe what "left libertarianism" is, particularly because the movement includes many idiosyncratic (and strongly expressed) opinions. Furthermore, any explanation is at risk of being bogged down by preconceived notions about "libertarianism" and "anarchism". Finally, it is often difficult to clearly distinguish between ideology and utopianism.

To avoid these communication problems, I'd like to lay out the main agenda of left-libertarianism in the form of a political party platform. I'm not suggesting that left-libs actually attempt to implement this platform through electoral and legislative politics; I'm just trying to present the left-lib perspective in a manner that is compatible with mainstream political discourse. I'd like these articles to be accessible to readers who are not familiar with libertarian debates. I also would like for readers to decide that they support part of the left-lib agenda even if they don't accept the more abstract conclusions about institutional analysis and moral philosophy, or the ultimate goals of some activists.

Inevitably, the opinions expressed here are my own, being informed by my engagement with the Left Libertarian community. Some planks will be summaries of common arguments made by left-libs, others will be my own attempt to understand an issue in light of the principles and concerns that seem to motivate left-libertarianism. I see two main principles in left-libertarianism: eliminate legal (i.e. forcible) obligations as much as possible; eliminate barriers to attaining the basic necessities of life. 

Below are a list of issues that I intend to address. I appreciate any input; whether it be suggestion for additional planks, independent attempts to write a plank, or links to influential writings on these issues.

Planks:
Copyright, Patents, and Trademarks
International Trade 
Immigration
Global prosperity
Labor law
Cultural diversity
Terrorism
Banking
Secrecy
Free speech
Religious freedom
Sexism
Debt
Military intervention
Taxes
Victimless crimes
Death penalty
Social services
Corporations
Elections
Contracts
Privacy
Pollution
Licensing
Police and prosecuters
Education
Domestic slavery
Abortion
Healthcare
Guns
Due process

The election horserace is not news

Once again, we have descended into election season and the news media will be full of campaign coverage. This is a damaging habit for our society; many important issues will be ignored, and these conversations will reinforce the pernicious attitude that electoral politics are of supreme importance. While many intelligent people have written rants against this sadly predictable shift in attention, I'm thinking that we can do more. I'm thinking that this could be the motivation for a movement to pressure the news media to maintain coverage of broad issues, and not dwell of the idiocy of the campaign. What do you think?

I don't have many ideas right now for how to organize this opposition, aside from writing a letter to my typical news station -- NPR. But I'll give a little outline of how much coverage is appropriate for the campaign.

The first consideration is whether campaign news is useful -- will it affect any of my decisions. I can see two possible uses: helping me decide which candidate (if any) to support; and helping me to anticipate policy changes that may occur over the next five years. However, most of this coverage is useless to the vast majority of people who will be voting for a candidate: either they have already decided, they aren't paying attention, or they will wait to see what the situation is as their own election-day approaches. I'm guessing that the only people who find this information useful are the big donors and party activists who are trying to figure out who has the best shot... but these political junkies will get their news from specialized publications, not mainstream outlets. As for predicting future policies, that's pretty useless at this point: elections are pretty unpredictable, as are the actual policies that will be implemented by the elected candidate. After all, G.W. Bush gave every indication that he was opposed to nation-building ("humble foreign policy" and all), and we saw how his Presidency played out.

So even if this reporting is not useful, it is still news. I'd still like to hear the results from the Iowa caucus, and that Bachmann dropped out. That would take all of 30 seconds to report; it does not justify an hour of "special coverage", plus all-day analysis the next day. Also, it is good to be informed about how our political system works, and so it's good to have an occasional feature story about how political campaigns are waged, but the day-to-day updates are just absurd.

So why do the news agencies focus on the election? Is it because they think it's important? These people do tend to be political junkies. Is it because it is easy? They can collect all their facts from election judges and campaigns (and polling data is common enough). However, I don't see how it's any easier for a talk-show to focus on this issue over any other -- there are plenty of other experts to invite on the show (but maybe political advocates are more eager and polished than non-political experts?). Finally, do they think this is what their audience wants? There are plenty of political junkies out there. This comes down to being a culture war of sorts (without the violence and harassment of the Republican's culture war) -- will news programming be determined by the interests of partisan hacks and those who have succumbed to the cult of the Presidency, or by the rest of us who realize that real life and real change is best found in places other than the campaign trail?

Michael Eisen on censoring dangerous knowledge

Michael Eisen has some interesting comments on the validity of (self-) censoring scientific publications. He argues that this increase in the transmisability of the flu (among ferrets) is not particularly important, and therefore this should be seen as being purely a test case for whether the scientific establishment will self-censor, and what do we define as "dangerous knowledge". As many pundits have pointed out, suppressing the details of the experiments is unlikely to make anyone any safer -- either because the details will be leaked easily enough, or  because it would be straightforward for anyone with the relevant skill-set to replicate the experiments, with or without the details.

Philosophical Diquisitions on Enhancement Technology

John Danaher has another excellent Disquisition, revisiting the topic of artificial enhancement of human abilities and whether it should generally be seen as a type of cheating.

What Republicans don't get about racism

The racist "Ron Paul" newsletters are in the news again (just heard about it on NPR). If you know the story, basically Ron Paul and his supports claim that the racist comments were written by a staff member and slipped by Paul's lax editorial oversight; Paul disagrees with all of it, and there's nothing more to say. Unfortunately for Paul, there is more to say, and I doubt that he will say it because -- like most Republicans -- he doesn't understand the totalitarian danger that lurks in racism.

Most Republicans recognize that "racism is wrong", but it is the wrong sort of "wrong". They think of it as an intellectual error. Or a type of meanness. Either way, they think of it as a failure of the individual who is  racist. They ignore any  social aspects of racism more profound than self-segregation. They ignore that racism is fundamentally a political ideology, justifying the oppression of some people by others. They ignore that its continued prevalence is a social failure, not just a personal failure.

Most Republicans have internalized the conclusion that racism is "very wrong", but they way they apply this conclusion illustrates that they still don't get it. They still focus on the individual expressions of racism, while ignoring the social structure behind it. If one black racist acts threatening towards a white guy, they throw a fit and then get all self-righteous when the traditional anti-racist coalitions don't see it as anything more important than regular street crime. Republicans do this because they don't see the political nature of racism, and they can't distinguish between racism that is politically impotent (i.e. black racism) and racism that could lead to tyranny (i.e. white racism).

This is the stuff that Ron Paul doesn't get about racism, and why he too often tolerates the company of racists (e.g. the people who wrote his newsletters and his 2008 anti-Latino advertisements) -- he doesn't get how these individual acts fit into a larger system of oppression.

For more thoughts on related issues, see Gary Chartier's summary of the relationship between "left-wing market anarchism and Ron Paul"

When knowledge is dangerous

Well, it's finally happened: in the course of researching a disease, someone has created a virus that could decimate the human population, and states are moving towards censoring the findings:

For the first time ever, a government advisory board is asking scientific journals not to publish details of certain biomedical experiments, for fear that the information could be used by terrorists to create deadly viruses and touch off epidemics. 

In the experiments, conducted in the United States and the Netherlands, scientists created a highly transmissible form of a deadly flu virus that does not normally spread from person to person. It was an ominous step, because easy transmission can lead the virus to spread all over the world. The work was done in ferrets, which are considered a good model for predicting what flu viruses will do in people.  

The intent of the "authorities" (both scientific and legal) seems to be that the details of these experiments be restricted, so that only "legitimate scientists" have access to the information needed to replicate the experiments. I'm torn on this issue: clearly we don't want to hand a weapon of mass destruction to a homicidal maniac, but this restriction on scientific communication could usher in its own problems.

I don't have a clear thesis to argue for, so I just want to list a number of points that need to be considered while debating this decision:

• The scientific establishment (epitomized by the journals Nature and Science) wants to maintain its independence from political institutions and will resist any formal censorship. That is all well and good, but we still need to be concerned about self-censorship. The openness of science is integral both to its progress (addressed below) and to its authority among the public. This notion of "legitimate scientists" risks encouraging the notion that professional scientists are elitist snobs who want to rule over the ignorant masses, in part by keeping them ignorant. This type of move is very dangerous both for science and for democracy.
• Censorship can at best delay the independent development of this technology (10-20 years, I'd say). It also is likely to retard the progress of mainstream research into infectious diseases, with the extent dependent upon how well implement the system of access is. Regardless of the calculus here, the point is that we cannot stop technologies from spreading to our enemies, and the best strategy for protecting ourselves may paradoxically be to allow technologies to spread freely, while dedicating our resources on maximizing our own capabilities to respond to infectious diseases -- whether natural or engineered.
• The release of a pathogen like this new flu virus will probably be either ineffective or suicidal. Either the virus won't spread well and the outbreak will not expand, or it will expand rapidly and affect the entire globe. Anyone seeking to use it as a tool for "Clash of Civilizations" terrorism would be extremely foolish. While the terrorist may be able to inoculate himself and his close associates, the only societies that could engage in widespread inoculation are Western and Japan. So there would be some terrorists who may be able to use this weapon effectively, but they aren't our typical Islamist boogeymen (think: Unabomber, or White Supremacists)

I'm sure that they'll be a lot of debate on this topic in the future.

The international post-humanist movement

I'm getting sick of these "all American" fascists trying to shut up anyone who offers a cultural vision that threatens to supplant their own religo-national ideal. I'm used to them attacking liberals and progressives (by which, I do not mean Democrats), but their recent anti-Islamic crusades are really starting to bug me. First, the fashion police attack Dunkin Donuts because of a scarf worn by Rachel Ray; now the WWJD-shirts are trying to drive advertisers away from the show "All-American Muslim". Oh, and then there's the whole "Ground Zero Mosque" BS.

I'm not gonna let them ostracize every group that disagrees with their bizarre belief system.

I'm getting sick of these skirmishes. I want to confront them directly, because I know that these stone-throwers can be defeated -- just like al Quaeda and its sympathizers can be. These movements are primitive, and are heading to the dustbin of history. I figure that the best way to neutralize them (and minimize the damage that they do) is to have them focus their hatred on a social movement that they have no hope of defeating. For that role, I propose:

The International Transhumanist Movement

Basically, the point here is to tell these barbarians that everything they hold sacred is a load of crap, and that we fully intend to leave them in the dust. We will tell them that all of their differences -- be them religious or nationalist -- are nothing compared to the difference between the post-humanist goal and everything that has come before. We embrace science and technology. We seek artificial intelligence, and we will happily become cyborgs. We will put all of their superstitions behind us, and realize a wonderful world of technophilic hedonism. We intend to become so powerful that they will be little more than ants to us, and their culture will only continue to exist due to our grace.

The problem is, we have only been drifting in this general direction, not seeking it whole-heartedly. There are a few organizations seeking to address the issues of our post-human future, but they do not engage in the culture war. Perhaps there is good reason -- maybe the idea of post-humanity is repulsive to most people. I just read Ian Bank's "Use of Weapons" (part of the Culture series), and I'm kinda jazzed about the possibility to live a pleasant life while simultaneously undermining these authoritarian movements.

I don't know what is the best strategy, but I expect that the conservatives will start attacking the transhumanist movement within my lifetime, as an ideal target for their politicized nostalgia. For now, I can rest knowing that technophilic hedonism is well established in our culture...

All intellectuals should learn how to program a computer

Mattan Griffen at General Assembly argues that all entrepreneurs need to learn how to write computer programs. He basically argues that if you have an idea about how to make the world a better place, you need to be able to implement it at least at a rudimentary level. He sums it up in this pithy assertion:

Very quickly, society is becoming divided into two groups: those that understand how to code and therefore manipulate the very structure of the world around them, and those that don't – those whose lives are being designed and directed by those that do know how to code

I'll extend this, and assert that all intellectuals need to learn how to write programs. The gist of my argument is that we now have ready access to incredibly powerful tools for manipulating information. If you cannot use these tools, then you cannot manipulate information at the same level as your peers, and therefore you cannot participate in the modern intellectual community.

Personally, I have encountered many situations where a "philosophical" issue would benefit greatly from the sorts of calculations that computers can perform easily. Most notable is the demand for mathematical modelling or simulation: it often is not possible to fully explore the implications of your assumptions without explicit modelling. This applies to political philosophy and social theory just as it applies to biology. I have even seen students of the history of science who could have benefited from computer simulations -- for instance, some classic scientific texts (e.g. Galleleo's) describe experimental results that are inconsistent with modern scientific knowledge; historians may try to examine this issue by recreating the experimental conditions of the historical scientist, but this requires immense work and ends up being a guessing game. Computer simulations can examine the effect of possible confounds much more efficiently.

An added bonus of formal modelling is that it forces the thinker to be explicit about their assumptions, so it is a great aid to communication. Too often, philosophers (both amateur and professional) are just talking past each other.

So, my advice to all the young thinkers is this: if you want to learn how to think, learn how to program.

Update: I suppose that I should provide some tips on how to learn programming. Personally, I took a college level class, and then taught myself in the context of some projects I was working on, and I just picked up bits and pieces from different sources (another self-taught programmer, some books, and some websites). It probably was not the most efficient approach, but it worked well enough.

Right now, I can recommend two sources:

• Eclipse for Total Beginners (to learn Java)
• The Alice programming environment (a toy language for 3-D storytelling)

good luck.

All nations are invented

A big fuss is being made over Gingrich's comment that the Palestinians are an 'invented' people. I don't really understand what Gingrich was trying to get at -- this assertion is often used as a premise to deny the legitimacy of Palestinian demands for self-governance. Maybe this is what Gingrich was getting at, but he does say that he supports the idea of Palestinian statehood (as long as they don't fight for it, I guess)... so it's hard to say. Either way, his "invention" comment seems to be a non-sequiter in the context of where he spoke it, so I can only assume that he's using some sort of dog-whistle to get votes from the supremacist wing of the (Christian) Zionist movement.

Anyway, the discussion of whether any particular nation was "invented" is kinda pointless, since nationality is intrinsically a myth. All nations are invented.

The "University challenge" -- decreasing costs; increasing access

At the Economist magazine, the "Schumpeter" columnist discusses some changes in the structure of higher education, and offers some suggestions for decreasing costs and thereby increasing access to education:

Schumpeter: University challenge | The Economist

I don't have any particular comment on this, but one of the commenters at The Economist website brought up the "University of the People" which seems to be an establishment-backed effort to develop a model for low-cost online education.

Physics simulations: ideal gas

I'm thinking of shifting my focus more towards educational issues, with a focus on how education shapes power relationships in our society. I figure that part of the "libertarian agenda" in education consists of empowering people to control their own education, so that they aren't forced to participate in any hierarchical/oppressive institutions.

As such, building awareness of new educational tools is key. In that spirit, I recommend PhET, which produces simulations to help instill an intuitive understanding of scientific concepts. The most recent simulation is pretty good... a simulation of transitions between states of matter, and also seems to demonstrate some aspects of the ideal gas law (i.e. PV=nRT). The only problem I noticed is that when the user increases the volume, thereby decompressing the substance, the temperature does not drop... or maybe it's been too long since I studied thermodynamics.

Anyway, check it out:

Click to Run

Vegimite > Marmite

It's so hard to get my hands on Vegimite and Marmite here in the USA. If stores do carry these yeast extracts, the portions are small and the price is high. For a long time, I couldn't find Vegimite at all, even though it was it was what originally turned me on to yeast extract as a food (I've always loved YE it as a microbiological growth medium...which I actually did eat once). Fortunately, today I encountered a store clearance at a grocery store and was happy to find the awesome Australian ale dregs, so I was finally able to compare the two side-by-side.

This confirmed my suspicions, Vegimite is better than Marmite, which explains why the Marmite never lived up to the high expectations that had been established by Vegimite. By smell, the Vegimite is more hoppy. I'll be evaluting the taste again in the near future... I'm so happy.

For you serious people, I am NOT turning this into a food blog.

In fact, I'm thinking that I'm going to focus much more on educational (and scientific) issues, as opposed to broader issues about power relations. I've got a bunch of topics that I want to address, but I'm slowed down by my long-windedness. If you've got any topic you want discussed, advice for how to approach this topic, or good blogs for me to check out, please leave a comment.