Wintry Smile

They’re Spending Eleventy-Billion Dollars To Promote The Singularity, But They Can’t Afford A Damn Designer

18 June, 2010 · Leave a Comment

Jason Bobe, who works on the Personal Genome Project, an effort backed by the Harvard Medical School to establish a huge database of genetic information, points to forecasts that a million people will have their genomes decoded by 2014.

“The machines for doing this will be in your kitchen next to the toaster,” Mr. Bobe says.

Really, your kitchen? Who wants that?

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Two Parties, Few Choices

16 June, 2010 · 2 Comments

In the past, I can’t say I found Glenn Greenwald’s commentary on health care reform insightful, but when Jamelle says he shows “fundamental ignorance of how our politics and government operate” that he’s “self-righteous” and “peddling …bullshit”, count me out. The offending paragraph from Greenwald comes from The Atlantic, in an interview with Conor Friedersdorf:

…the two-party system does not work in terms of providing clear choices. No matter who wins, the same permanent factions that control Washington continue to reign. That’s true no matter which issues one considers most important. At some point, it’s going to be necessary to sacrifice some short-term political interests for longer-term considerations about how this suffocating, two-party monster can be subverted.

While Jamelle responds as if this is ludicrous, I think it’s more right than not when it comes to describing our politics. Where in the two party system do you find opposition to farm subsidies, endless war, police misconduct or indefinite detention? If you’re concerned about the drug war, the bloated defense budget, or unconditional support for Israeli actions, you can at least get scraps from the Democrats.

It’s quite clear that there are many issues where there is no meaningful choice between the two parties. On many others, we are left with only marginal differences. True, Greenwald errs by saying that there his point stands regardless of the issues you’re concerned about–he’s just wrong about most of the issues that Jamelle cites (healthcare, labor and environmental law). But that’s no reason to dismiss him out of hand. It’s a reason to qualify his point, and arguably a reason to support the Democrats. But if it’s a reason to support them, it’s a reason to do it through gritted teeth.

I’m not a third party worshipper–I’ve always held to the depressing thought that our political process does well at representing the mainstream of American political opinion, and that more parties would just mean marginally more representation for views that would still never influence legislation. That opinion is open for debate, however, and the claim that we need to look to third parties is ultimately a question of tactics and priorities. It might be wrong. To decide, we’d have to weigh the impact of the real differences between the parties against the many issues where there is no difference.  But let’s not pretend that the desire to restructure politics is out of bounds or absurd. So long as we accept that dogma, we’ll be left with the same conventional wisdom that renders crazy and evil ideas impervious to criticism.

So when someone says there’s no meaningful choice in our two party system, I find it far more notable how many issues they are right about than to criticize them for overgeneralizing.

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A Boycott Won’t Hurt BP Much

14 June, 2010 · 3 Comments

The NYTimes has published a bit of unwelcome information for anyone who is boycotting BP service stations–there’s almost no connection between the oil that BP pumps out of the ground and the gas that is sold at BP franchises. Refineries buy and process oil from multiple companies, then sell gasoline that is not derived from any single company’s oil (updated for clarity). BP eventually adds some additives, but they are a small portion of the cost per gallon, and don’t give BP a ton of profit. Lastly, the service stations are primarily franchises, and BP would prefer to sell the few that it owns.

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What If Political Scientists Wrote The News?

7 June, 2010 · Leave a Comment

Slate answers that question. Of course, internalizing the message is the hard part.

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Oklahoma’s Abortion Law

3 June, 2010 · 1 Comment

Under a new law in Oklahoma, if you are a pregnant woman and your doctor provides false information during the pregnancy, you no longer have the legal right to sue.

What is sick about this law is that while passed by wingnuts who hope to prevent abortions by keeping women in the dark, it will harm many families who would have carried their babies to term regardless. Even a woman who has no intention of having an abortion regardless of fetal abnormalities might benefit from the ability to prepare for the task of raising a child with a disability.

I am relatively pro-choice, so my judgment may be clouded here, but I think that even someone who is anti-abortion should view this law as a step too far. For the implicit principle authorizing this law seems to be that if the government has an interest in deterring abortions, then anything is permitted to achieve that goal. This logic is all too common in American political discourse, but we must recover the capacity to deliberate about means as well as ends. Outside of thought experiments and casuistry, what justification is there for a doctor to lie so that he can manipulate his patient’s behavior?

I can only hope that there are few doctors who would take it upon themselves to deceive their patients in this way.

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Surprise, BP Took Excessive Risks

1 June, 2010 · 3 Comments

This Wall Street Journal article makes a convincing case that BP’s negligence was to blame for the oil spill. When I first heard that people were boycotting BP, I had the neurotic worry that offshore drilling might be so intrinsically dangerous that all companies doing it are equally culpable and BP was just the one to lose its gamble.  That wouldn’t necessarily make punishing BP a bad decision, but knowing that BP took on unnecessary extra risks makes everything more straightforward.

Update: And BP has a history of terrible safety. (via Daring Fireball)

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A Matter Of Terminology

28 May, 2010 · Leave a Comment

I recently found myself disagreeing with a fellow on these here internets about the “new atheists”. As a prelude to writing something more substantive, let me define a few terms, at least as I have been using them–not everyone is required to use them the same way, and you’re welcome to comment if you view the terms differently.

As I see it, the most important feature of the new atheism is its public profile and the attention it’s received in the press, attention that has accrued to a very specific set of individuals, based on works published within the past decade. I would put Dawkins, Dennett, Harris and Hitchens as the primary members of this group, based on my casual impression of whose names I read and whose books I see.

Atheism itself is old, as is public profession of atheism. Nor is it the case, as I have heard it said, that today’s prominent atheist intellectuals are less deferential. It’s true that Bertrand Russell was somewhat more polite than Christopher Hitchens, but I don’t recall any evidence that Russell censored his ideas. In any case, the difference in tone might be grounds for calling Hitchens a jerk, but in the larger scheme of things, it’s not that important.

I also don’t see much evidence of anything intellectually new going on here. However, let me be clear that I don’t mean anything negative by that. If you are critiquing the cosmological argument or the ontological argument, especially for a popular audience, there is little need for novelty. We have known that these arguments are bad arguments for a long time, but so long as their proponents offer them, someone will have to stand up and remind the world how bad they are. That’s not something I’d like to spend my time on, but it’s still work that has to be done. Intelligent design is more or less new, I suppose–you can cite Paley here, but there’s clearly something new going on today. Of course critics of ID are legion–they’re just about everyone who’s thought hard about the issue, new atheist, old atheist, or theist. So I don’t think ID can really be a defining feature of the new atheists.

For those reasons, I see new atheism as a media or sociological phenomenon, and that matters, because it means that there’s no point in applying the term to most individual atheists. Aside from atheism itself, there isn’t anything connecting them. I suppose in a derivative sense, you might say that Joe atheist is a “new atheist” because he was made passionate about the issue by Dawkins, thinks that Dawkins is almost always right, or whatever else. But in the first instance, the term applies to Dawkins and his fellows, not Joe.

That means that generalizations about the new atheists are generalizations about a relatively small group of people who are in the public eye. It’s not incredibly important whether my use of the term is the right one–though I do think it’s the way that the term is being used–whether or not it’s right, it’s the sense that I attach to the term, and it’s the way to understand anything that I say.

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Amnesiacs Form Impressions Of Their Own Personalities

27 May, 2010 · Leave a Comment

Recently, I’ve been listening to John Kilstrom’s UC Berkeley Social Cognition course (available through iTunes U) during my commute. One incidental fact jumped out at me during a recent lecture.

Amnesiacs continue to have impressions of their own personality–if asked, they can describe what they’re like, despite not having the episodic memories necessary to do that. Moreover, it’s not just based on memories from the period prior to acquiring amnesia–even patients whose personalities changed over time or as a result of the damage that gave them amnesia were able to give assessments which matched their current personality. That suggests that one’s representation of one’s own personality is not entirely based on episodic memory.

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Bank Simple

26 May, 2010 · Leave a Comment

BankSimple is an easy, intuitive, and social bank for people who appreciate simple online services. Unlike other banks, we don’t trap you with confusing products nor do we charge any hidden fees. No overdraft fees. We use sophisticated analytics to help you better manage your finances by providing you an individualized service, catered to your needs and goals. (About Bank Simple)

I could be wrong, but based on a minute’s thought, I would be willing to make a low-stakes bet that that their actual approach is to cherry pick the good (low-cost) customers who’d read and be attracted to this pitch.  (From kottke)

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The Sake Period

25 May, 2010 · Leave a Comment

I didn’t immediately enjoy it when I first listened, but I’ve recently really been digging You Look Nice Today a podcast by Merlin Mann, Adam Lisagor and Scott Simpson. It’s comedy, and depends on the very idiosyncratic senses of humor of the three friends, so I won’t necessarily recommend the podcast to everyone.

That said, if your youth was anything like mine, you’ll love The Sake Period, which is about growing up uncool, and all the bizarre ideas you develop about what you would need to do to become cool. So you have the guy who shows up at school in August with a fake British accent that he acquired over the summer, or my friend who intentionally developed a huge interest in the Spice Girls in 9th grade. I was always too chickenshit to try to reinvent myself, but if I had, I’d have been the guy sitting in Central Park with a towel on his head.

You can find the episode at the You Look Nice Today website, or on the iTunes store under podcasts.

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What I’ve Learned From Cosma Shalizi

8 May, 2010 · 2 Comments

Ignore all social scientific results based on statistical inference.  That’s even if you’ve read the underlying research, so that you know you’re not getting snookered by careless popular journalism.

Of course, the three posts I linked to are a bit, ahh…complicated, and I may have oversimplified or overgeneralized them.  Maybe we’ll call my version a layman’s heuristic?

Do I have it right, Cosma?

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Catherine Mohr’s Talk About Energy Costs

7 May, 2010 · Leave a Comment

My friend Michael mentioned a talk by Catherine Mohr in which she discusses how complex it is to judge the environmental costs of your actions (TED talk; video podcast on iTunes).  Her specific concern is energy use, and she analyzes a few examples in frightening detail.  It’s frightening because by the end, you might despair of ever getting these decisions right yourself.

Recommended viewing if you’ve ever asked yourself “exactly how far would I have to drive these batteries before I’d be better off tossing them in the trash?”

I know most of you have never asked yourself that question, but watch the talk anyway.  It’s just 10 minutes.

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April 15th Is For Charity

19 April, 2010 · 2 Comments

Perhaps you already know that it’s better to give money to humanitarian organizations before a disaster strikes. Unfortunately, for organizations like the Red Cross, or Doctors Without Borders/MSF, many people give money right in the wake of a disaster. That means that these organizations have to suddenly ramp up their activity with no warning, without a clear picture of how much money they will have for the projects, and without infrastructure in place.  Since this money is often given with explicit guidance that it be spent in the affected area, it means that these organizations cannot focus on helping people where they can do the most good.

If you do give money specifically to help out in a disaster area, ideally you’d find an organization like Partners in Health (Haiti), which focuses on the affected area and is already active, but such organizations are not always easy to find.  In any case, if you give money to the general funds of a good organization, they’ll be more prepared for future disasters, and able to respond whether or not the disaster receives attention in the Western media.  There are always people in desperate need, but their plight rareky makes headlines.

Even if you know this, it’s easy to let time go by without thinking to make a donation.  Moreover, the longer you wait, the less you’re likely to give.  At least for me, if I give money now, I’ll make a larger donation and compensate by spending less later.  If I leave the money sitting in my bank account, I’ll be less frugal, so that when I make a donation it will be smaller.  To combat my general tendency towards inaction, I need simple guidelines for my own behavior–just as many people have an automatic deposit to their retirement account.

So if, like me, you’re receiving a tax refund this month, it’s the perfect time to make a donation during the brief period when you feel wealthy.  The idea just occurred to me this morning, and I’m hereby resolving to act upon it any year that I receive a refund.  MSF is my charity of choice and where I gave money this morning, but you’re welcome to add others in the comments.

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Obama Orders The Assassination Of A US Citizen

8 April, 2010 · Leave a Comment

I’m on the bus, and extremely busy to boot, but it’s worth attending to this story. Have a look at Glenn Greenwald’s report on the subject.

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Our Friends At The INS

2 April, 2010 · Leave a Comment

From Tyler Cowen:

More than two months after the earthquake that devastated Haiti, at least 30 survivors who were waved onto planes by Marines in the chaotic aftermath are prisoners of the United States immigration system, locked up since their arrival in detention centers in Florida.

The full and outrageous story is here.  Their “crime,” by the way, is not having proper visas.  Some were pulled from the rubble of the earthquake and none have criminal histories.

What I’ve come to realize over the past several months is that while I’m no libertarian, the issues that I feel most strongly about and the issues that I am most confident about are almost all libertarian causes–though often also liberal causes.   More to come on that topic when I have time for a real post.

Update 1: The 30 Haitians mentioned in the article have been released from detention.  It appears that they were released before I posted–one day after the NYTimes reported on their case.

Update 2: At least one friend suggests that this post reveals I’m not very good at introspection–she claims that my most cherished political ideas have been clear for quite a long time.  I suspect people who know me outside of the internet will have more insight than blog readers on this subject.

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UN Rejects Limits On Bluefin Fishing

19 March, 2010 · Leave a Comment

I’ve had a tiny amount of bluefin tuna in my life, and it was absolutely exquisite.  At the time, I was conflicted about it, because they are so overfished, but if anything, the experience made me even more concerned about its preservation.

What’s remarkable is that Japan lead the opposition to the ban, even though by overfishing bluefin, they’re engaged in a sort of minor cultural suicide.  No one will lose out more than the Japanese if bluefin are no longer available.

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Putnam On Schröder And Peirce

10 March, 2010 · 4 Comments

Spurred by a footnote in Peter Sullivan’s Frege’s Logic, I wanted to find out a bit more about Ernst Schröder.  His wikipedia page included a long excerpt from a Putnam paper, exhibiting a very different perspective on the history of logic than the usual.  Putnam’s paper was published in Historia Mathematica, then reprinted in Realism With A Human Face, which is available on Gigapedia. Since I’m poorly informed about the Boolean tradition, I’ll just present a selection of quotations in lieu of commentary:

“[Begriffschrift] is astonishing because it has no predecessors: it appears to have been born from Frege’s brain unfertilized by external influences.” Michael Dummett, Frege: Philosophy of Language.

A partial, and, perhaps, a somewhat dishonorable exception is Schröder.  Clearly offended by Frege’s neglect of existing work in logic, not least his own, the general drift of Schröder’s review is that Frege, working in naïve isolation, has achieved no more than to reinvent in cumbrous and eccentric form the Boolean wheel. But Schröder was too good a logician for his irritation to have altogether hidden from him the inadequacy of that verdict…” Sullivan, Frege’s Logic, fn 24.

“I assumed that everyone realized that with the appearance of a complete “algebra of classes” the dam was broken, and (given the mathematical sophistication of the age) the subsequent development was inevitable. It seemed inconceivable to me that anyone could date the continuous effective development of modern mathematical logic from any point other than the appearance of Boole’s two major logical works, the Mathematical Analysis and the Laws of Thought.” Putnam, Peirce the Logician

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In One Line

28 February, 2010 · Leave a Comment

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A Paper Of Mine

26 February, 2010 · 3 Comments

I never did actually write anything on here about the topic of disagreement, but I wrote an essay on the subject, and this week I submitted it to Karl to finish one of my courses (ED: you ask how I submitted it to finish a course in mid-late February? That’s just how things work around these parts).  Structurally, the paper is a mess, and it falls well short of what I’d aim for in a complete treatment of the topic, but I think the ideas are not all bad.

I’m posting the paper for anyone who wants to read it.  Buyer beware.  Also, since it’s unfinished work, I’ll probably take it down at some point, when I either start revising or put the topic on the back burner.  As you might guess, it’s not to be redistributed or cited, but I’d be happy to hear comments, either here or by email.

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Reputation Markets

22 January, 2010 · Leave a Comment

At leiter reports, they’re discussing letters of recommendation for academic job seekers, and the discussion has moved into a question of whether professors should make explicit comparisons (“this is my nth best student”, or “this student is at least as good as Justin was, which isn’t saying much”).

Naturally, what we need is a database of all the comparisons made by any given professor which can be used to judge their intertemporal consistency as well as their intrinsic plausibility.  Someone smarter than me can tackle the privacy issues.

Sometimes I say things and I can’t decide whether they’re sarcasm or wishful thinking.

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