Greta Christina: Why I'm Drawing [a stick figure of] Mohammad

Greta Christina: Why I'm Drawing Mohammad: "

This is my drawing of Mohammad [...]

[M "Moe" G: leaving the drawing out, not important for my point below]

 I wish I were a better artist, and could draw something other than a stick figure. But I actually kind of like its purity. If a simple, entirely undistinguished, smiling stick figure with the word 'Mohammad' above it can be so offensive as to earn me a possible death sentence... that makes the whole silly idea seem even sillier. And I like the fact that it's a photo of my hand actually making the drawing. Gives it a certain punch, I think.

Today is Everybody Draw Mohammad Day: an event in which people around the world... well, draw Mohammad. We're deliberately violating the Muslim law against creating images of the prophet Mohammad -- a law that some radical Muslim extremists are attempting to enforce with violence and death threats. On everyone. Muslims and non-Muslims alike.

[...]

But if we don't draw Mohammad, the terrorists win.

"

Atheist writer Greta Christina says "[...I]f we don't draw Mohammad, the terrorists win."

But, technically, it is actually "If we don't draw Mohammad's face on a dog's body, the terrorists win."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lars_Vilks_Muhammad_drawings_controversy

Greta Christina is still tacitly adhering to the double-standard that there is one limit for sacrilege of Muslim figures, and another limit for Christian figures.  The difference being that no Christian groups called for the death of the artist who created "Piss Christ". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piss_Christ

Greta's stick figure Mohammad is too cute by half, if the point is to call attention to Muslim death threats to cartoonists.

I am an atheist, but I also was born into an Evangelical Lutheran faith.  I am an atheist, but I still acknowledges the need in the majority of humans for personal and collective transcendental experiences - experiences of a humbling sort - and I feel deeply that this part of the human condition can, should, be called beautiful.

I am an atheist, but I am also a coward.

The main thing that prevents me taking a noteworthy public stand to represent the prophet Mohammad's face on a dog's body is my fear of how my life would be complicated and inconvenienced, if not actually how my life would be jeopardized.

Also, beyond my cowardice, I would feel terrible if an earnest Muslim, just trying to live their life with peace and meaning, told me that my actions deeply personally hurt them.

But my tenderness does not overshadow my cowardice.  Being honest with myself and giving a true evaluation of my mettle.

So I don't know how to put my feelings into a socially acceptable neat description (socially acceptable to the group I most identify with: the Atheists).  All I can do is be honest.

(I am not trying to score "points" against Greta Christina, a writer I read regularly and admire.  But I feel obliged to state the complications that argue against a pat, cute endorsement of calling a stick figure a brave political stand.  The artists who are currently suffering under the real threat of violence are so because their cartoons had more provocative meaning, undeniably.)

Keith Kloor: Compulsion for the formula of "He said/She said"

Image via Wikipedia

http://www.collide-a-scape.com/2010/05/18/why-climate-journalism-is-a-rotting-carcass/

My God, threaten to take away their "he said/she said" journalistic device, and they become completely unhinged. Very embarrassing post from Keith Kloor. Taken with the comments below, the post is completely self-refuting.

Quoting Michael Tobis in the comments:

Is it any wonder the opposition starts down the road of exaggeration as well? There’s really no advantage to telling the truth here, and it is the fault of the fact that there is no institution delivering any news that isn’t political, in other words, nothing seriously resembling scientific or environmental journalism.

It’s as if all I had to do to get an innocent person I dislike condemned for murder is to accuse him of two murders. If the judge and jury were journalistically minded, it would be a pretty simple matter to get them to split the difference.

My own comment:

Keith, you turn criticism of the "he said/she said" journalistic device by your betters into an _example_ of the "he said/she said" device as you shrug off responsibility to differentiate the two sides.  [Following the link is not necessary, it is as bad as you would expect]

http://noconsensus.wordpress.com/2010/05/06/another-rock/

My lack of compulsion to frame the world as "he said/she said" makes it difficult to see equivalence between the extremes of  Joe Romm and Jeff Id.  The above by Jeff Id is classic bed-wetting 9/12 conspiratorial agitprop (if I may use the word out of historical political context).

Getting back to the beginning of my comment: the issue is shrugging off responsibility.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Here is a very important article by Jay Rosen of NYU Journalism school on PRESSthink:

Jay Rosen - He Said, She Said Journalism: Lame Formula in the Land of the Active User

http://journalism.nyu.edu/pubzone/weblogs/pressthink/2009/04/12/hesaid_shesaid.html

[Edit]

Kloor responds so:

[...] The irony is that if you really, really wanted to do something about greenhouse gases, you’d stop bitching about the things you can’t change (like msm journalism and skeptics) and start thinking of new ways to reframe the issue.  (Hint: Climate catastrophe is not working. So how long you want to stay with that one? Another couple of decades?)

If you see preventing climate disruption as a moral issue (and I think that is the proper way to view it), you will gasp at the moral bankruptcy displayed.

Whatever the irony is or isn't... some players are incorrigible; best to recognize those players early; embrace the moral foundation of the issue because only there is moral motivation to be found.

My Nisbet Gripe, Cont'd

Image via Wikipedia

Michael Tobis - Only In It For The Gold

My Nisbet Gripe, Cont'd: "I have no objection to the idea of framing messages effectively. Until this week, I had no idea why some people were complaining so bitterly about Nisbet.

But Nisbet is in the strange headspace of politics, where science is just a piece of furniture on the landscape of politics. What's more, it's a black box which emits certain very simple results. And when he describes the box, he gets it hopelessly wrong, and uses the bizarre and broken frames of the worst elements of the press.

The problem isn't the concept of framing. The problem is that the guy who has done the best job of staking out 'framing' as his personal territory has about the most toxic set of frames out there for our issues. There is no getting rid of writing to your audience, but the word 'framing' itself isn't all that valuable. If it belongs to Nisbet I don't want it.

One thing I've learned recently is that while in many ways I behave like a journalist, I simply have almost no interest in 'news' any more than I am interested in 'sports'. Events in sports fall clearly into the space of 'don't matter'. In fifty years nobody will remember who won the superbowl this season. In politics, they will remember Obama's name, but little of what he said or did.

As long as we play on the battlefield of week-to-week politics and don't actually look into the science box, we lose the war of words. Yes, the right is disposed against us and the left toward us, pretty much for arbitrary cultural reasons. But the opposition is free to twist the facts and we aren't. So they pick off people as they start to pay attention and the mythology of massive corruption in climate science gets further elaborated.

If we don't play the long game, if we don't try to revive critical thinking and evidence-based reasoning, if we don't go beyond assertion and into explanation, we are playing on the opposition's turf.

Nisbet may have done a good job of describing the opposition's turf, but that is all he knows. He, specifically, is an example of a person lacking a scientific education remotely commensurate with his capacities and interests. His approach embodies the substitution of politics for knowledge.

The long game is our home turf, and we have to stop listening to people who miss that point completely. The absurdly short time scales and shallow symbolic allegiances and frantic half-crazed yuppie obsessions du jour of the beltway and the press are the problem, not the solution.

"

My comment to the post:

I am slack-jawed. You summed up Nisbet perfectly. You communicated better than I could have, exactly how Nisbet rubs me the wrong way. I am compelled to go into detail about how good a job you did.

> Yes, the right is disposed against us and the left toward us, pretty much for arbitrary cultural reasons.

Image by vodstrup via Flickr

A good thing to remember. Once the costs of excess atmospheric carbon dioxide reaches the trillions (with human cultures displaced from drought and flooding, loss of food and wood production from climate change, and loss of ocean protein and nutrition from acidification), the left cannot be counted on to spend scarce resources effectively, because of the need to reward loyal voting blocks. (Not claiming the right will be any better.)

> Nisbet may have done a good job of describing the opposition's turf, but that is all he knows. He, specifically, is an example of a person lacking a scientific education remotely commensurate with his capacities and interests. His approach embodies the substitution of politics for knowledge.

So cruel, and so true.

Why do Libertarians need Natural Rights?

Libertarians will talk about "Natural Rights" until they are blue in the face.

My question/comment:

Image via Wikipedia

The Government/Slavery Analogy, Arnold Kling | EconLog | Library of Economics and Liberty: "

Why does *anyone* need to umpire disputes? Life is not fair, and the concept of 'fairness' was invented by those who desired for the power of the umpire.

That is the most confusing thing to me about libertarians. Why the need for a third party to enforce contracts? 4 billion years of life without the need of an umpire, then, less than 10,000 years ago, some umpires talked themselves into a job and never left. And they guard their position jealously.

I am supposed to be grateful to these umpires for the lack of anarchy around my person, ignoring the fact that I have exactly as much anarchy around my person as I can stand to tolerate. I don't remember any useful order around my person that I didn't have to work and plan for, at great cost to my own leisure.

"

Image via Wikipedia

Once bought a book at Tower Records (back when there *was* a Tower Records) titled _The Myth of Natural Rights_. [ The Myth of Natural Rights and Other Essays - L.A. Rollins http://www.amazon.com/Myth-Natural-Rights-Other-Essays/dp/061519298X ].

The essay/book asked valid questions: why would anyone care about Natural Rights, and could any inalienable Rights provided by Nature be of practical interest? L.A. Rollins is Holocaust denier, or some kind of Holocaust provocateur. (Ugh, how I hate people who are glib about hot-button issues. Who the hell has the time to ape skeptical poses to gain hostile attention? I wish they could have been adequately breast-fed as infants, so their psychological lack wouldn't be pressed upon society, as imbecile gurgling of would-be controversies.) I read it, it made a valid argument, but I cannot endorse the anything else the man may have written.

Image via Wikipedia

Live your life like Diogenes the Cynic, or accept the consequences - your choice. There are no Natural Rights to ensure your good results in life. (I love this picture of Diogenes in his tub, surrounded by dogs.) [Edit] My snarky comment got an emotional, but honest, reply:

Rajeev writes: Manuelg, how many countries in South America, Asia, and Africa have you lived in? Better yet, have you lived in any of the inner cities of the US? Have you been bullied in kindergarten? I live in South Asia, and I can assure you that you have inherited, not created, most of the useful order around your person. If you lived in some parts here, you would quickly find you need an umpire, or suffer severe physical violence. Posted November 19, 2009 10:18 PM

My reply back:

> If you lived in some parts here, you would quickly find you need an umpire, or suffer severe physical violence. How shall I distinguish these helpful umpires from the other potential bullies? Hold out hope that whomever isn't assaulting me physically - at just that very moment - is in fact a well disguised blessed umpire with only my best interests at heart? I do not possess infinite stores of credulity. I see stationary bandits exacting protection monies from those under threat from roving bandits. The monies seem to be enough - I will deny them my gratitude.

Image via Wikipedia

[ I maintain this extreme position as an intellectual exercise. Only to remind myself what I must give up when I _choose_ not to live my life like Diogenes the Cynic - in a gutter, living off of wild onions, with wild dogs. I cast no judgment on a man who chooses to be grateful to the agents of justice and equity, even though I, personally, am cynical. Cheers. ]

This is my newly learned argumentative technique of backing off my extreme positions at the end of a communication. I have heard the people in my life call me crazy so many thousand times, it finally sank in. As a human, I cannot support my most extreme positions in the face of other humans who are earnestly opposed. [ Why the question of being bullied in kindergarten? Are libertarians predominately victims of bullying, who still feel the sting of that past bullying? I guess it is a way to form intellectually something constructive from the experience. As a response, I cannot find must to recommend it, though. Does it lead to less anxiety and more positive outcomes? As opposed to assuming the lion share of a human's potential positive outcomes will come from self-mastery from inside that human. ]

Discovering Science Writer John Mashey

Image by Voyageur Solitaire-mladjenovic_n via Flickr

I thought I was well versed in the science writing around climate change, but I had never heard of John Mashey. What I discovered today was science and critical thinking writing of the highest caliber. Go to "Another Silly Climate Petition Exposed", and read (or skim over) the 128(!) page analysis of the anti-science petition at the American Physical Society (APS).

http://www.desmogblog.com/another-silly-climate-petition-exposed

The American Physical Society (APS) was petitioned by 206 people, about 0.45% of the 47,000 members, to discard its climate change position and declare decades of climate research non-existent. The Petition was _overwhelmingly_ rejected, but this anti-science campaign offers a useful case study. The Petition signers? demographics are compared to those of APS in general. Then, the social network behind the petition is analyzed in detail, person by person for the first 121 signers. This might seem a grassroots groundswell of informed expert argument with the existing position, but it is not. Rather, it seems to have originated within a small network of people, not field experts, but with a long history of manufacturing such things, plausibly at the Heartland Institute‘s NYC climate conference March 8-10, 2009. APS physicists can, do, and will contribute strongly to solving the 21st century's conjoined climate+energy problem, but this petition was a silly distraction, and rightly rejected. However, its existence was widely touted to the public.

I went through the whole document, and I never encountered such a thorough dissection of "Art of Controversy" with regards to Science and Anti-Science. (Using Schopenhauer's term for denialism or creating controversy where there really is none in an attempt to frustrate rational analysis and action). These are Mashey's diagrams of the ideal of how science affects policy: ... and the anti-science alternative of "science bypass": Science Bypass - Executive Summary

Mashey: Science bypass is familiar to people involved with PR, lobbying, politics and those few scientific disciplines facing well-organized attacks, but simply alien and confusing to many scientists. This paper offers a case study to help people understand the tactics, as APS is unlikely to be the only target of such campaigns, often mounted, not to convince scientists, but to create and maintain doubt in the public.

Science Bypass - Section 1: Introduction and Definitions

Image via Wikipedia

This whole section has clear eyed classifications of the recurring themes in the Art of Controversy. Or as Mashey says:

Agnotology was coined by Stanford's Robert N. Proctor to describe the deliberate production of ignorance and doubt.

I will refer to this whole section anytime I am dealing with denialists. Science Bypass - Section 3: The Petition - Commentary

Mashey: This petition is silly. One need only study the 2007 IPCC AR4 to know how meaningless or wrong is the paragraph starting “Greenhouse gases..” The unusualness of 20th and 21st century climate change is well established by multiple lines of evidence. It certainly has been warmer, and during most of those times, large parts of the current USA were under water. Any serious gardener knows Liebig?s Law - growth is limited by the most restrictive factor. No amount of extra CO2 will grow corn in the Sahara Desert. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liebig%27s_law_of_the_minimum Extra CO2 can be helpful in greenhouses with sufficient water, sun, and other nutrients, a condition untrue for most farms. Those who grow up on farms usually learn this by the time they are 10, but apparently the signers have not. Water is the most common restriction. Higher temperatures and Hadley Cell expansion will move rain elsewhere and increase evaporation, especially in places like the US SouthWest. CA is seriously-dependent on Sierra snowpack, always has water problems, and grows half the fruit and vegetables in the USA. Oddly, at least a third of the signers live in the US SouthWest. [The petition] simply asserts ideas contrary to the large, well-tested body of peer-reviewed research in top journals, with no backup whatsoever except belief. All of this is simply anti-science, akin to brain surgeons declaring cardiologists ignorant of heart disease.

Science Bypass - Section 5: Demographics of Signers versus APS Membership Demonstration that the demographics of the signers does not (at all) match the demographics of the whole of APS Membership.

The signer list seems unrepresentative of the APS membership. As a group, the signers are certainly older, seem likely more politically conservative, and somewhat more likely to be male than the total membership.

Science Bypass - Section 6: Social Networks Behind the Petition Simply amazing work. By studying the list of names of earlier anti-climate-science petitions, John Mashey can study the social networks of each "wave" of new signers. Must be read to be believed how pains-taking Mashey was. Science Bypass - Section 7: Why?

Mashey: Why might well-educated physicists sign this silly petition? I do not know any personally, so I can only speculate. I have worked over the last year to create frameworks to help analyze issues of science and anti-science.

From Section 7: Scientist becoming Anti-Scientist Cognitive Bias Failure Modes I have never seen such an thoughtful and comprehensive listing of cognitive bias failure modes, before.

Mashey: IF anti-science THEN one or more following reasons likely to be found; not all combinations make sense.

Cognitive Bias Failure Modes - Finance

• FIN1 Huge: long-term, direct economic organizational self-interest
• FIN2 Large: long-term, direct organizational interest, via funding from above
• FIN3 Personal: direct economic interest, effectively paid for anti-science
• FIN4 Plausible Fear: personal economic impacts, less direct, employee
• FIN5 Vague fear: personal economic impacts; general public
• ---- LB suggests "reference dependency" and "non-rational risk assessment"

Cognitive Bias Failure Modes - Ideology

• IDE1 Professional (paid political advocacy; anti-regulation; extreme free-market)
• IDE2 Public (political advocacy; anti-regulation; extreme free-market, beyond usual)

Cognitive Bias Failure Modes - Politics

• POL1 Political wedge tactic: "X says it", more votes
• POL2 Against: "Cannot stand X, so anything they say is wrong"
• ---- Example: "greenie treehugger environmentalists", or "Al Gore"

Cognitive Bias Failure Modes - Psychology

• PSY1 Conflates: confuses non-science with real science, dismisses latter as former
• PSY2 Contrarian nature; even without attention
• PSY3 Contrarian attention: gets much more attention/publicity; may help career
• PSY4 Ego/pride: in skepticism in general and of scientists in particular
• PSY5 Dunning-Kruger Effect: incompetent and does not know it
• PSY6 High-bar, low-bar: real science takes work; contrarian, easy acceptance
• PSY7 Ambiguity-intolerance: all-or-none thinking; "Authoritarian personality" ??
• PSY8 Personal anchor: encounters anti-science early, accepts, sticks
• PSY9 General psychology denial: problem just too big

Cognitive Bias Failure Modes - Technical and Scientific Workers specific

• TEC1 Long Anchor: early position from TEC0, held long, ~Type II error)
• ---- Early doubts OK, but mainstream has long ago moved. TEC7, PSY2?
• TEC2 Field non-science: evidence stays weak, mild ~Type I error (solar?)
• TEC3 Field pseudo-science: wrong: strongly disproved, strong ~Type I error
• ---- Scientist has an idea, but mainstream science gets in its way. (cosmic?)
• TEC4 Intra-field (or nearby) conflict: personal, factional; discipline rivalry
• ---- Some meteorologists and TV weather people seem especially
• ---- prone to distrusting climate scientists, especially modelers.
• ---- Guess: the former have to predict noise, and get criticized when they miss.
• ---- Some may not understand the physics and methods of climate modeling.
• TEC5 "Going emeritus": (retired, or close) person starts opining beyond expertise
• ---- These are truly sad cases. Sometimes response to perceived loss of influence.
• ---- If inside field and has long done good work, then… might be TEC1, PSY3, PSY1
• TEC6 Ego: smarter than field scientists, prove them wrong
• TEC7 Inter-field conflict: many in one field dislike (sometimes newer) field
• ---- Unsurprising that some mining/petroleum engineers disbelive AGW. (FIN4)
• ---- Some a) physicists, b) engineers, c) economists, d) political scientists seem
• ---- unusually likely to distrust climate science. (Speculative) reasons complex.
• ---- DOE, nuclear, weapons folks sometimes dislike environmentalists…
• TEC8 Over-generalization: of methods from own area, models, proofs, etc

Following understandable, but at some point become real anti-science TEC1 or PSY1

• TEC0 Normal scientific argument evidence, value, uncertainty ?=>TEC1
• PSY0 Irked: exaggeration, non-science, bad journalism, moral arguments ?=>PSY1

Science Bypass - Section 8: Conclusion

Mashey: As a group, the signers have written very little findable peer-reviewed climate research. Some have written books, websites and other pieces, some of which show fervent passion to prove mainstream climate science wrong. The demographics are very different from that of APS. Without being able to prove the exact connections, it is fairly easy to find strong past associations and plausible connections to recognize an act of a dedicated social network willing to support anti-science, not as a grassroots movement by physicists. The data offers strong hints that politics and ideology may have more influence on signing than does normal science. Even those who write books and do lectures often cite outright pseudoscience of the poorest quality, which requires serious suspension of disbelief. Finally, this Petition is a direct descendant of the PR approach outlined for the cigarette companies in 1954, and long practiced by SEPP, GMI, Heartland, and CATO, entities clearly, if not so obviously, involved in this Petition.

More from Mashey - Writings on Climate-Change and Critical Thinking

• Mashey's blog comment: Reasons for Anti-Science

http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2008/12/the_australians_war_on_science_28.php#comment-1272743

• Image via Wikipedia

  Mashey's: Bjorn Lomborg, Wizard of misdirection & Reincarnation of Julian Simon

http://thingsbreak.wordpress.com/2009/01/08/lomborg-long-game/

"Watch the belt-buckle, ignore the head-fakes." ... In politics, there is quite often a difference between what someone says and what they really want, and it takes a while to sort it out.

• John Mashey on how to learn about science

http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2008/08/john_mashey_on_how_to_learn_ab.php

Critical Thinking Reading List: For general defense against disinformation of various sorts:

• Joel Best, Damned Lies and Statistics - Untangling numbers from the media, politicians, and activists, 2001
• Nicholas Capaldi, The Art of Deception, 1987
• Darrell Huff, How to Lie with Statistics, 1954. Classic, indispensable, cheap.
• Gerald Everett Jones, How to Lie with Charts, 1995
• Paul Kurtz, ed, Skeptical Odysseys, 2001
• Mark Monmonier, How to Lie with Maps, 1991
• John Allen Paulos, Innumeracy: Mathematical illiteracy and its consequences, 1998
• Edward Tufte, The Visual Display of Quantitative Information, 1983. Most about doing it right, but Chapter 2 is about doing it wrong, and recognizing such. A truly wonderful and beautiful book, as are Tufte's later three, all of which are worth having for anyone who wants inspiration for good presentation of data.

Scientists can believe strange things and stick with them:

• Robert Ehrlich, Nine Crazy Ideas in Science- A few might even be true, 2001. Physicist offers advice in evaluating crazy-sounding ideas; pp 5-10 is nice summary of evaluation criteria.
• Robert Ehrlich, 8 Preposterous Propositions, 2003
• Many people can believe really strange things, some of which the originators believe, and some of which are hoaxes. Some retain belief even after the hoaxers show them how they did it.:
• Kendrick Frazier, Ed, Science Confronts the Paranormal, 1986
• Martin Gardner, Science Good, Bad and Bogus, 1981
• Martin Gardner, Did Adam and Eve Have Navels - debunking pseudoscience, 2000
• Phlip Plait, Bad Astronomy, 2002
• James Randi, Flim-Flam, 1986
• Jim Schnabel, Round in Circles, 1994. People can believe in weird things like alien crop circles, even after "Doug and Dave" explained.

Happy reading, from Mashey's book list, and from Mashey himself!

Arnold Kling: Status Competition

Arnold Kling: Status Competition: "Arnold Kling's blog posting --

Gordon Wood, in Empire of Liberty, writes:

After all, wealth, compared to birth, breeding, ethnicity, family heritage, gentility, even education, is the least humiliating means by which one person can claim superiority over another; and it is the one most easily matched or overcome by exertion.

Image via Wikipedia

The alleged goal of reducing economic inequality is trumpeted by people who want to strengthen inequality of political power. The goal is to entrench Harvard while delegitimizing those who are less educated. When push comes to shove, political income redistribution favors Insiders over Outsiders. Thus, the bailouts and the continued support for 'too big to fail.' In my view, the biggest threat to America's democratic tradition is not concentration of wealth. It is concentration of political power."

My comment:

> The alleged goal of reducing economic inequality is trumpeted by people who want to strengthen inequality of political power.

I consider myself a "Progressive", but I would nominate your statement as "Really Existing Progressivism described in 25 words or less".

Add " serving themselves" to the end, and you got a winner.

Image via Wikipedia

Anyone who claims to be "Progressive" should explicitly state how they will avoid (or at least mitigate) a self-serving political regime. It is hardly "Progressivism" if the only thing guaranteed is self-serving arrangements by the well-connected self-described "progressives".

Phony Contrarianism, Reactionary Agenda

Interesting essay on the Economist website Contrarianism's end? | Democracy in America | Economist.com

Makes the point that what is called contrarianism is usually reactionary, and provides comfort and cover for the entrenched and powerful.

Cover via Amazon

Contrarianism generally lines up with the 'perversity' column in Albert Hirschman's typology 'The Rhetoric of Reaction: Perversity, Futility, Jeopardy'. Here's the thing: as history progresses, things change. And societies try to adapt to those changes. Experts come up with solutions to the problems the societies face. Those solutions often entail discomfiting established interest groups. And the solutions the experts come up with almost always entail some degree of perverse counterreaction, some kinds of problems or inefficiencies or whatever. It can be very interesting to focus on those counterreactions; it can generate fascinating, eye-grabbing journalism. But in the overwhelming majority of cases, the counterreactions aren't as big as the first-order effects of the solutions. The minimum wage may price a few people out of the labour market, but it mostly raises low-income people's wages. Raising marginal income taxes does slightly lower rich people's incentives to generate income, but it mostly raises government revenue. In other words, the little contrarian thing is almost never anywhere near as important as the big first-order thing it rides on. And as journalism has come increasingly to focus on contrarianism, it has become less and less adept at actually describing the world.

There was a time when I encountered contrarian arguments like those made by Mr Levitt and Mr Dubner and thought, hm, that's really cool. In recent years, when I encounter such arguments, my tendency has been to think, yeah, that's probably a lot of hooey. If journalism is about to affect a turn away from contrarianism, it's none too soon.

The web lets previously marginalized voices of considered compromise to be heard. So phony contrarianists can be called out.

Oldest child, initially rebellious to father, a winning combination...

Oldest male child, so from there would come the tendency for conservatism.

Image by drp via Flickr

I had an alcoholic and abusive father, so, along with my own aggression, comes a tendency for rebellion. Now, that I have reconciled with father, and I admire what he was able to accomplish with his life and provide for his family, I have a combination of both conservatism and rebellion, that I feel works well for me. Both conservatism and rebellious revolutionary progressivism can be unbelievably idiotic, in the extremes. The two together, holding the worst parts of both in check, is pretty good way to be, I feel. Obviously, it takes a personality that can handle being in perpetual inner conflict and ambiguity. My skin is already on fire with anxiety, so a little more conflict barely matters. Err, the quicker I type, the more I reveal of my, how can I put this delicately, "potential for hideousness". Would it soften your opinion of me if I tell you that my loved ones are quick to laugh at me, and I am quick to join in on their laughter?...

United States Republicanism in 2009

A good summary from Reddit commenter "jimmyvanl" (who deleted his account the day after he posted this - strange), about the "really-existing" structures and properties of United States Republicans and Democrats:

Image by Roberto Rizzato ►pix jockey◄ via Flickr

American political parties were historically more organized along power coalitions than ideology. Back before the 1960s, the Democratic Party was an uneasy coalition of Southern racists, who still hated the Republicans for Lincoln, and the Northern urban working class and intelligentsia, which supported Roosevelt's New Deal and hated the Republicans for their refusal to fund social spending. These two groups didn't have much in common, but they cooperated to win national elections. When Presidents Kennedy and Johnson supported Civil Rights, though, the Southern Democrats bolted the Party and became Republicans. As Southerners and fundamentalist Christians took over the GOP, Northern and Midwestern professionals, who were the core of the old Republican Party, began to join the Democrats. So today's Democratic Party is basically a coalition between racial minorities, trade unionists and educated professionals. The GOP, conversely, is a coalition between the ultra-rich who don't want to pay taxes, beneficiaries of the military-industrial complex who want America in more wars, and lower-class Southern whites who believe they're somehow victims of an "elitist" conspiracy because they didn't apply themselves in school. Most of today's racists are in that last category.

Creepy to have it broken down all in one place. Now, from an article from SomethingAwful accurately describing how Sarah Palin burst unto the United States political scene (hat-tip to Reddit commenter "cthulhulou"):

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

Brutalized by eight years of Bush prosperity, the American people experienced a fit of sanity and elected the center-right corporatist and his goofball sidekick instead of the warmongering economic neophyte and the winking, know-nothing, hockey mom hate shit he took on the face of America.

Politics is an infection of the soul, and devours the ability to exercise personal free will and rationality. I am trying to push my internal political beast into a tiny cage.

Four ideas, yesterday and today

Morality = emotion + cultural transmission + ability to abstract First, today, was listening to webcast... From EconLog, Arnold Kling:

"Moral Philosophy" "Will Wilkinson and Jesse Prinz. Highly recommended. You could easily spend four years at an Ivy League college and not have a class as interesting as this one."

Webcast on : bloggingheads.tv

• @13:20 Jesse Prinz, "'Emotions are the middle ground between _action_ and _thought_"
• @28:38 Jesse Prinz: "morality is inevitable, but morality is not universal
• @45:00 Morality = emotion + cultural transmission + ability to abstract

OK, "Morality = emotion + cultural transmission + ability to abstract". Then yesterday was thinking about three things: Politics & Societial Prescriptive Morality:

• what if you list the things that really disturb
• if you confess that, people will say you are: elitist, practically an enemy combatant, wrong, unreasonable
• you could lose your: livelyhood, carreer, friends, recognition
• in Third World countries, you could lose your life, if you are on the wrong side of political conflicts
• the end result - consider working outside of public politics

Fame & Publicity:

• what if you contrast who does and who does not deserve positive fame and publicity
• if you confess that, people will say you are: elitist, wrong, unreasonable
• the end result - consider working outside of public notoriety

but then I was thinking, if morality is tied to emotion, it is not easy to control.

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You owe it to the world to be Progressive, Happy, Effective:

1. Happy, Effective and Progressive
2. Unhappy, Uneffective and Progressive
3. Happy, Effective and Reactive

When we consider people who are Progressive, but also Unhappy and Uneffective, we are supposed to see that they just need help to expand their responses, and not to criticize them, because they are just doing the best they can. But don't people who are Reactive deserve the same understanding?