Here's an awesome quote from the June Scientific American:
People with Wernicke’s aphasia speak in gibberish and often write constantly. In light of these traits, Flaherty speculates that some activity in this area could foster the urge to blog.
Explains a lot.
- jack*
Senator Clinton endorsed Barack Obama today, and at least some of the crowd reportedly booed him. There’s nothing wrong with that of course – people can and should have strong feelings about their choice of candidate. Politics used to be something of a contact sport.
But the apparently significant number of voters who are refusing to vote for Obama or promising in some cases to vote for McCain should finally put the “electability” argument to rest. For months Hillary’s supporters have been pounding on her electability as the signal reason that superdelegates should throw the election her way. There was some empirical support for their claims as well, based on national polls about hypothetical matchups. Of course the argument only works if winning the election is the only important consideration.
the only important outcome is getting a Democrat in the White House
Hillary is the Democrat most likely to win
therefore, Democrats must nominate Hillary
This argument was supposed to trump all the others, and yet it didn’t. It turns out that primary voters (and caucus goers) decided that who won the White House was also an important factor beyond their merely being a Democrat. As we’ve seen, they preferred Obama to Hillary by a slight margin. However flawed the process might be, however sexist the media, however bitter the contest, what should we do now? Let’s try the syllogism again.
the only important outcome is getting a Democrat in the White House
Obama is the Democratic nominee
therefore, Democrats must vote for Obama
Now, I’m not making this argument – I think voters should feel free to vote against party affiliation (and I hope a lot of Republicans do) – but Hillary’s supporters explicitly were making it when they crowed about her electability. What we’ve found out, now that some of them are unwilling to stomach the new conclusion of their own argument, is that they never really believed the premise in the first place. The most important outcome was never getting a Democrat into the White House, but getting Hillary into the White House.
Q.E.D.
- jack*
Special pleading can be recognized by three features. 1) Those making the argument want an exemption to a commonly accepted rule or practice. 2) The reasons they cite would normally be irrelevant to allowing an exception. And finally 3) they support their reasoning with unverifiable or unknowable assertions. An example would be “we have to bail out this bank because allowing it to fail would be catastrophic.” Government has policies and practices that allow business to fail gracefully all the time, so a bailout is certainly an exception; the size of a business is not normally a relevant criterion for such an exception; and the true consequences of allowing the normal process of bankruptcy to unfold are unknowable.
It’s clear that the arguments for Hillary’s viability have all three traits. By any objective standard Obama has won the party’s primary at the state level. He has more delegates from the valid state primaries and caucuses, which is the accepted and relevant definition of “winning.” Although the race is not decided, the common practice would be for superdelegates to follow the results from the states unless there is a compelling reason for an exception. Let the special pleading begin!
“She’s ahead in the popular vote.” Since primaries are not decided this way, popular vote is irrelevant. The core of this argument is that she’s actually more popular with voters and would have won if it hadn’t been for caucuses, which is unknowable.
“Florida and Michigan have been disenfranchised.” Again irrelevant because the disenfranchisement happened under party rules. The hypothetical outcome if those states had held valid primaries is unknowable.
“It’s nearly a tie, so the party should put her on top since he can run again in 8 years.” This is a real argument I’ve heard on the Internet, believe it or not. Under what system of American voting rules has “nearly a tie” ever given the loser any claim to the winning position? This also relies on the unknowable conditions 8 years hence when Obama would have to run on Hillary’s record.
“He’s been so misogynistic that Hillary supporters will vote for McCain.” How voters will vote in the general election is explicitly irrelevant to the primary – evidenced by the fact that many states allow voters of both parties to vote in the primary. Misogyny and racism are also irrelevant to a system based on delegates. There’s no question that the campaign has been rife with both – as I have noted, and indeed was part of the reason I voted for Clinton in the California primary – but what is subjective and unverifiable is whether Hillary has been more a victim of misogyny than Barack has been a victim of racism.
“She’s more electable.” This is the ultimate unknowable. While this is not an irrelevant concern in the primary process, the point of the primary is to poll enough of the party’s voters to determine that very issue. You may think the result was wrong for one reason or another, but falling back on unknowables to deny the result is still a case of special pleading.
If you’re a Hillary supporter at this point you probably think I’m being unfair in rejecting all the arguments for her viability as logically flawed. Perhaps I could dismiss any desire for an exception by sneering that it’s “special pleading.” Is this just a catch-all term to ignore important arguments?
There’s a standard that has to be met in order for such an argument to be more than special pleading. The job for Hillary supporters is simple: articulate the universal objective principle that should be applied here to give her the nod. This principle has to be one that is not only most people would agree is fair, but that you yourself would accept when the situation is reversed: when the person you favor has won the national contest but not enough to knock out the candidate that you feel is weaker. Explain why you would give the nomination to the candidate you don’t like in that case and we’ll take your argument seriously.
- jack*
UPDATE: More here.
Mostly I like Paul Krugman – he seems to be one of the few columnists who tries to make sense of economic issues rather than hewing to talking points – and yet this editorial leaves me confused. On the one hand he questions the conventional wisdom that “red state” citizens vote against their economic interests because of trumped up “values” issues. This is an interesting issue, and the statistics he presents do indeed undermine the idea that it’s poor voters voting against their economic interests that fuel GOP victories.
On the other hand he has no reasonable alternative explanation. He obliquely suggests that this is a battle of the elites: evangelicals in red states against … I guess their counterparts in blue states. Hollywood liberals maybe? It’s true that only about 40% of possible voters actually vote, and Krugman thinks that fundamentalists are the important swing constituency even though they represent a relatively small percentage of the population.
Perhaps there’s another explanation. Consider this first map which shows the states that are net winners in the Tax Revenue game in red (pillagers), and the losers in blue (pillaged). This second map shows the states that went Republican in 2004 as red (winners) and Democratic as blue (losers). The two are almost perfectly congruent.
The eight exceptions are Oregon, Hawaii, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Vermont (tax winners electorally blue), and Colorado, Texas, Indiana (tax loser electorally red). It’s not hard to make up ideas about why this 15% of states should buck the trend that for the most part indicates that voters in red states are voting for their economic interests. In the sense that voters in red states get a bigger slice of the tax revenue pie relative to voters in the blue state who get a smaller slice, at least under Republican administrations. If you think about it, voters in blue states get the smaller slice because they are confident that they are right to support the downtrodden in the red states.
In other words, we are being played for suckers.
It’s time to stop that cycle. The so-called “culture-war issues” are just rhetorical tags which help to distinguish those who care more about the welfare of other people from those who care more about themselves and their kin.
Take abortion. Those who support free access to abortion are exactly those people who know that it’s best for the community as a whole for women to exercise autonomy over their reproductive decisions. These are the same people who would put money into public coffers to support poor people, public health, or farm subsidies – exactly the kinds of things that help people in red states. On the other hand those who oppose access to abortion are the same people who would accept public largess and then declare that they are self-made individualists, and that any woman that might be pregnant was an evil slut. Unless of course it was their own daughter in which case they should be allowed to get an abortion, because she’s a good girl. Good for their egos, but false. Look at the map – they are living large on the public dime, and yet their culture says otherwise. They believe in the American dream, and yet they undermine it for others.
What to do about it? I would say do the same thing you do whenever you discover that you have been scammed – that you have been played for a sucker. Get pissed off! Get angry! You have been played, sucka; you are a fool. Are you going to take it? Or do you deal with the problem?
Beyond that I don’t have a solution. I just don’t know, sorry. You could become as bad as the red-staters and only vote for your personal interests, and yet what would that mean? Should we all relegate ourselves to the Lowest Common Denominator? Or is there a higher action we could take that will override anything that the LCD voter will do? I don’t know.
I hope you do. Comments are open.
- jack*
Evil Bender has been infested by the unintentionally hilarious creationist troll Sirius Knot. It’s entertaining reading, but if you visit don’t post because EB has forbidden feeding the troll. You’ll notice that the “first cause” argument comes up a lot, and apparently creationists think still this has some rhetorical weight despite having fallen out of favor with Sophisticated Theologians ™.
“First Cause” is an argument for the existence of god, and in a nutshell it goes like this:
everything has a cause,
the universe exists,
thus god created the universe
You can get a little fancier, but the basic premise is that since everything we see around us has some cause for why it happens to be there, the universe itself needs a cause as well. God, being supernatural, is the only possible cause for the existence of the universe, so god exists.
This argument is extremely weak and offers numerous lines of attack. The most common is to attack the conclusion. First we can note that the argument is circular. Having posited the need for X, the argument simply asserts that X is god, without making any effort to demonstrate that god has any of the necessary attributes to fulfill X, nor paring away any attributes associated with god that are not implied by X. The theist essentially starts by stipulating that his god has the power to create the universe and then makes the first cause argument to give him a job to do.
The second problem is that the argument only works if we also assume that god doesn’t need a cause. Otherwise, since everything needs a cause then god too needs a cause and we get an infinite regress. By why should god have this special self-causing property? If god can be self-causing, there doesn’t seem to be any reason why we can’t assume the universe itself has this property. Then we simply say that the universe exists because it exists, which makes just as much sense as dragging god into it.
But I want to take a different approach and attack the premise: the claim that everything has a cause. It’s true that for most everyday things we can identify some other thing as proximate cause. Clouds cause rain; rain and sun cause clover to grow; clover causes cows to make milk; milk and cold causes ice cream; milkshakes cause you to get fat, etc. But all of these are transformations of one type of thing into another – phase transitions, metabolism, or chemical reactions. All of them are subject to conservation of energy.
But the universe itself is of an entire different order. The universe is everything that exists, and no matter how much it or what’s in it changes it’s still the universe. If the universe was created from something else with equal energy that earlier thing would simply have been the universe in a different form. The only way that the existence of the universe can have a cause is by violation of conservation of energy – the universe must be created from nothing. Since this is totally unlike anything in our normal experience, the premise that “everything has a cause” cannot be assumed.
In fact, there are many things in the world of quantum mechanics that don’t have causes in the conventional sense. Atomic decay isn’t caused by anything – there’s simply a probability that it might happen, and then at some point it does. You could argue that the field equations caused the decay to be probable, but this doesn’t give us another thing to point to as cause. The decay was not caused by anything, it just happened. Likewise if an excited atom spontaneously emits a photon it’s not completely the case that the atom caused the photon. In fact the photon comes from interactions with virtual particles, which are particle-antiparticle pairs that are created all over the universe all the time, for no reason. They have no cause but quantum chaos.
These so-called vacuum fluctuations give us a much better grasp on the types of events that could create the universe. Rather than basing our intuition on our experience of reshaping huge masses of atoms into different forms and looking for a prime sculptor, we should look at real noncausal physics and see if that can be made to do the work. It may be that the entire universe is something like a giant vacuum fluctuation, in which case it would be reasonable to say that the universe was not caused by anything.
- jack*
Here’s a question one of you free-market libertarians can answer for me. The Federal Reserve bails out the disaster-waiting-to-happen that was Bear Stearns to the tune of $30 billion public dollars for the stated reason that it was too big to fail. There are plenty of other possible real reasons (which we may find out about if there’s any scrutiny of their records), but let’s assume that the stated rational is true: if the company had gone bankrupt they would have triggered a domino effect throughout the rest of the market and disaster would have followed.
As a liberal I believe that the federal government has a responsibility to prevent disasters of all kinds that can adversely affect citizens, and the free-marketeers at the fed think so too (let’s assume for the sake of argument). We also agree, as I have heard many conservatives argue, that the government should use our tax money in the most efficient possible manner. Anything else would also be irresponsible.
Given all that, is minimal regulation followed by massive bailout the best possible use of resources? A $30 billion bailout costs $100 to every man, woman and child in the United States. Was that the very best way they could have spent that $100?
To put it another way, American taxpayers are all de facto investors in all of the very large Wall Street businesses. And not investors who get to share in the upside when the business is successful, no, no; we only get to participate on the downside, when the business fails. So our incentive, since we’re all smart investors, is to prevent failures from happening. So should we say: do whatever you want and we’ll give you cash if it goes bad? Is that smart?
In addition to the power to collect taxes and apparently to give vast quantities of that revenue away to corporations without congressional oversight, the government also has the power to pass laws. Here’s an idea: how about using that power to protect our investments? Why shouldn’t we?
For example, we could pass laws that would prevent any company from ever becoming “too big to fail.” If a company was reaching that point we’d simply require that it split into two companies. It might be slightly less efficient – although at the scale it’s hard to measure – but it would diversify risk which is all we care about. Isn’t that what any smart investor would do?
Or, if you don’t like that, perhaps there should be laws against the utterly retarded practices that led to Bear Stearns being in trouble in the first place. It’s not like these were clever innovations that had never been tried before; everything they did was obviously boneheaded to anyone who knew anything about the financial services industry. A tiny bit of “don’t do that, it’s stupid” would have saved everyone a lot of money.
Don’t you think $10 of thinking ahead is worth $100 of hindsight?
- jack*
I heard Thom Hartmann interview Chris Hedges about his book I Don’t Believe in Atheists. It was excruciating. Hedges started with a disclaimer that religious people can be evil and atheists can be good so morality is not an issue, but once he got that out of the way he made it quite clear that he thought the “New Atheists” ™ were, in fact, evil. His thesis is the tired old trope that atheism is itself a kind of religion, and that the New Atheists are its fundamentalists. This is, of course, ridiculous. An atheist is religious exactly the same way a person who doesn’t smoke is addicted to not ingesting nicotine.
He goes on to make more of a fool of himself by arguing that as fundamentalists, the New Atheists are necessarily neo-conservative hawks in favor of invading the Muslim countries. While this is a completely original line of attack, his only evidence for it is in the writings of Christopher Hitchens, Iraq war booster and one of the Four Horsemen of the Atheist Apocalypse. As PZ also notes, not only is there no such thing as a typical atheist (or even a typical New Atheist), but Hitchens would be an outlier in any group you tried to put him in.
The infuriating thing about the interview was how Hartmann seemed to buy into the whole argument. It’s sometimes hard to tell with him, as even when he has right wingers on he lets them get away with some outrageous statements that we know that he disagrees with, but in this case I think the idea appealed to him. Liberal Christians like to think of themselves as bastions of moderation and reasonableness, and they tend to dislike atheists just as much as Christian fundamentalists. Our crime is being impolite, speaking about what we believe to be true in public even if it offends the religious. The “atheists are fundamentalist” line is tailored to salve the feelings we bruise when we express our atheism.
As I have tried to explain before, disagreement is not intolerance. While Christian fundamentalists work to enshrine their religious doctrines in schoolbooks, law and the Constitution, atheists never try to coerce anyone in any way (except maybe Christopher Hitchens, but that’s because he’s a kook not because he’s an atheist). You will not find better allies for fighting intolerance, but we really do think you’re wrong about the whole God thing.
- jack*
As the father of a ten-year-old daughter, I feel I must deny a pervasive cultural stereotype. Over the next five to ten years my child will develop into a sexual being and she will, at some point, lose her virginity and be indoctrinated in a very visceral way into the adult world. Despite what everyone seems to think about fathers of daughters, this does not freak me out. It is as inevitable as her first steps, her first words, or her first report card. And like those other milestones I cannot cause this experience to unfold in a certain way for her or even at a certain time. I can only be there to teach her when possible, to support her when necessary, and to love her always. Everything else is up to her.
I recently read a comment on a blog proclaiming that “a social conservative is a liberal with a daughter in high school.” It’s almost sad to imagine someone whose beliefs are so shallow that they would collapse at the slightest contact with reality. But like the supposed lack of atheists in foxholes, this is a nothing but a myth. There are many atheists in foxholes, just as there are freethinkers who die without converting on their deathbeds, and there are even more old liberals who still have brains.
All of these myths are variations on the same theme: that liberalism is naïve. A symptom of youthful idealism, liberalism is supposed to be extinguished when a man (and, oh yes, I mean a man) reaches adulthood. At that point his ideals are tested by the hard realities of his own life and found wanting. He realizes that he must accept authoritative, absolutist, traditional principles or else all that he holds dear will be subject to rot and decay. Sorry conservatives, but that’s just not the case.
In fact it’s the opposite.
It’s the conservatives who are the wide-eyed children, and the liberals who are the clear-eyed adults. Is it mature to believe that you should get yours and everyone else is on their own? Is it grown up to do whatever your leaders tell you to no matter the consequences? When you run out of oil would an adult go steal it from someone else? And having decided to invade another country, would a plan that involves blowing up lots of stuff with the biggest bombs available and assuming that the enemy will just surrender to our obvious awesomeness sound plausible to anyone over the age of 10? Is it the wisdom of age to think that women were put on Earth to clean house and give men pleasure? And could an ideology that thinks it can keep children in line by the strength of its rule-making have been invented by someone who knew anything at all about kids?
The supposed immaturity of liberalism is another example of conservative’s bizarre and acidic projection. Knowing they have the weaker position, they reflect their fears as a poison into common discourse and hope we’re confused enough to let it erode our moral sensibilities. But we’re on to them now, and we can harden ourselves to their attacks simply by standing up for our own convictions.
I want my daughter to have a rich and satisfying sex life. When she’s mature enough physically and emotionally to be able to handle it I expect her to sow some wild oats (or whatever the equivalent is for girls), and as she gets ready to settle down I hope that she kicks the tires – as it were – of her potential mates. They better pray they can keep her damn well satisfied; that’s my daughter we’re talking about.
- jack*
I’ve been busy. I’ve done a whirlwind business trip through Europe to be followed immediately by hosting a video game-themed birthday party with 11 fourth-grade girls. While still jet-lagged. Then more business stuff, then more family stuff. You know, busy. So I’ve been remiss in posting here and somehow the longer I don’t the harder it is to get started again.
During a layover at the Paris Charles de Gaulle airport I found myself defending progressive taxation. We were discussing Ron Paul and his flat tax, and my companions were exactly the type of people who tend to argue for regressive taxation: engineers and nerds. These men grew up in very middle class neighborhoods with nice parks and well-stocked libraries, went to very white schools with programs for gifted and talented students, took advantage of publically funded work experience programs that grounded them in science and technology, and earned their degrees from state universities. In short, the very people who have benefited most from strong public institutions seem to be most confused about how those services should be funded.
They are a microcosm of the red-state phenomena. As “D” verifies for Alaska – hotbed of Ron Paul supporters – federal tax money flows into this libertarian stronghold at a rate of 2:1 relative to tax revenue, and yet they all still think that they are self-sufficient cowboys. It’s one thing to live like a king; it’s another entirely to ignore who’s paying.
To start to correct this situation, first of all let me clarify a very common misconception. No one in this country is taxed for being wealthy. The income tax is – as its name implies – a tax on income. Bill Gates could choose to never pay another dime in income tax by making his income zero. He could simply consume his vast fortune while donating any interest or capital gains to charity. Conversely, if an artist without a penny to her name were to sell a sculpture for 100,000 dollars, she would pay the same tax as a fully employed engineer with a 100,000 dollar salary. It doesn’t matter that she lives in her car and eats raw ramen noodles and he has a million-dollar house and a speedboat.
(All you CPA types who have starting thinking about amortizing losses: stop it. You’re missing my point.)
Of course net worth and income are mostly correlated, but it’s important to understand that when people say “tax the rich” this is just shorthand. It would be more accurate to say “tax each incremental level of income at a higher rate,” but that doesn’t really roll off the tongue.
The second critical point is that not all income has the same value. The first 25,000 dollars you earn is far more valuable to you than the second 25,000. Without the first you’re living on the street and eating out of trash cans; without the second you’re living in a squalid studio apartment but at least you’re independent. Without the third you can’t get each of your children their own computer, without the fourth you can’t take that trip to Europe, and so forth. Since every increase in income has – in a very real sense – less value to the person earning it, it can ethically support a higher rate of tax.
But the best way to think about progressive taxation is to consider it as a usage fee. The conventional wisdom suggests that low-income people are the biggest consumers of government largess, what with the public schools and the food stamps and the welfare and the government cheese. But that is only a fraction of federal spending. The vast majority of court cases, for example, are corporate lawsuits – one company suing another – far outnumbering criminal cases. The vast majority of damage to our highway system is caused by commercial vehicles. And even if the direct costs of a public program don’t benefit business owners (say, those not in the defense industry), the indirect results do. Without the government supporting its citizen’s welfare (in the general sense) there would be no employees to hire, no consumers to market to, and no infrastructure to support sales.
Income is a measure of how much a person has used, both directly and indirectly, public services. Those with the highest income have derived the greatest benefit from government spending, while those with lower incomes have received less benefit. People who get the most out of living in this country should pay more of the costs of keeping it going. There are certainly personal differences in ambition and ability, but these are relatively meaningless for determining taxation. As we’ve seen, the people who believe they are self-made are actually not, and the debt they owe should be paid back when they make good.
- jack*
I heard about the story as it broke. I was driving to work and Ed Shultz was canoodling with Joe Scarborough and some other right wing Fox douche (another reason why he’s not one of my favorites). They cut into their inane banter with gravity suggestive of real news, “I’m being informed … that Hillary Clinton started crying at a town hall event …” Oh god, I thought, they’re going to latch onto that. Their tongues were audibly tsking as they contemplated this development, or perhaps that was the media machine kicking into gear.
It was very predictable in a way. All the pundits were talking about Clinton’s third-place finish in Iowa as a rejection by the voters, so what’s more natural than for a rejected woman to cry about it? And that was the story they told. From the New York Times:
Her eyes visibly wet, in perhaps the most public display of emotion of her year-old campaign… Mrs. Clinton did not cry, but her quavering voice and the flash of feeling underscored the pressure, fatigue, anger and disappointment… Mrs. Clinton has felt frustrated and at times rejected…
Did she? Let’s roll the tape, shall we, and see what made her voice slightly husky with emotion. The question was indeed about how she deals with the rigors of campaigning. Did her answer reflect fatigue, anger or disappointment?
I have so many opportunities from this country. I just don’t want to see us fall backwards. … This is very personal for me. It’s not just political; it’s not just public. I see what’s happening, and we have to reverse it. … Some people think elections are a game [but] it’s about our country; it’s about our kid’s futures…
It sounds a lot less like personal frustration or rejection to me than it does like passion, concern for the future, and commitment to make a difference. And crying it was not. I know from crying; I blubber at the heartfelt moments in kid’s cartoons. Mitt Romney was a lot more choked up on Meet the Press than Clinton was here. When Rachel Maddow (why oh why can’t Rachel be on instead of Ed?) called Pat Buchanan on this double-standard, he kept insisting on saying that Hillary “broke up” about potentially losing while Mitt merely “got emotional” at a “powerful moment.” Double-standard? Game and set to Rachel.
Despite being contrary to the actual facts, I’m afraid the meme has already taken on a life of its own. Even people indifferent to Clinton will joke about her melting down because she wasn’t getting her way. It could be the jape for Clinton what the lie about inventing the Internet was for Al Gore. The sexist dilemma for all women in positions of power is that if they are strong-willed they are considered too unemotional, while if they show emotion they are considered too weak-willed. We see that for Clinton, as for so many women, there is no Goldilocks zone. For the media she can be too hard or too soft, but she can never be just right.
I heard the most bizarre version of the Catch-22 yesterday morning listening to a few minutes of the (sigh) Big Ed show. A caller started out by raving about how our leaders shouldn’t cry in front of the terrorists. This is a clue that you’re dealing with a hard-core authoritarian who buys into the absurd right-wing theory that foreign policy is a battle of wills, like some kind of international staring contest where the first to blink loses. He then also went on to pronounce that Clinton’s tears had been false, calculated to win sympathy votes. But wait – if she’s calculating enough to win hearts and minds in the battle of wills that is a national election, surely that’s the kind of person you want dealing with terrorists, isn’t it? Apparently not, if it’s a woman.
If Clinton ends up with the nomination we can expect to be awash in misogynistic slurs as the GOP tries to diminish her relative to her inevitably male opponent, and the media will gleefully pile on. The clarifying factor is that no matter what you may think of her or her policies, she is clearly qualified, both in experience and in temperament, to be president. Keep that in mind as otherwise reasonable people tell you that somehow, in an oblique manner related to her sex organs, she’s not.
- jack*
The relentless but remarkably unoriginal attacks on Atheist authors, particularly Richard Dawkins for his best-selling The God Delusion, have finally stumbled onto a meme that is resonating with liberal bloggers. The idea, from Damon Linker in The New Republic, is that so-called “new” atheists are illiberal. Yglesias piles on here and gets trashed in the comments, and DJW and Rob of Lawyers, Guns and Money come to his defense. Melissa of Shakespeare's Sister also seems to buy the “illiberal” line, based mainly on this quote from Dawkins:
Following a lecture in Dublin, he recalls, "I was asked what I thought about the widely publicized cases of sexual abuse by Catholic priests in Ireland. I replied that, horrible as sexual abuse no doubt was, the damage was arguably less than the long-term psychological damage inflicted by bringing the child up Catholic in the first place."
I don’t have the book in front of me (I read it originally from the library; I guess I’m going to have to buy a copy to find counter-quotes) but my recollection is that this exchange was the start of his “consciousness raising” about the subject of children and religious indoctrination. The rest of the chapter he lays out and carefully argues a thoughtful and nuanced position. If Ms. McEwan or Mr. Farley really want to know what Dawkins means by this quote it’s a simple matter to read the book. As for Linker, he knows that Dawkins is not advocating banishment of religion. He’s just taken the quote out of context and then plays dumb:
Why Dawkins refuses to take this idea to its logical conclusion--to say that raising a child in a religious tradition, like other forms of child abuse, should be considered a crime punishable by the state--is a mystery, for it follows directly from the character of his atheism.
This is a dead giveaway that Linker has created a strawman. He ascribes beliefs to Dawkins that are inconsistent with the latter’s actual position, and then has the temerity to accuse Dawkins of hypocrisy. In a rare twofer, Linker then pushes his strawman down a slippery slope. Dawkins’ irrational hatred of religion will lead inevitably to a totalitarian atheist state where children will recite anti-god chants in school and anyone caught teaching religion to children will be treated like a molester. It’s so ridiculous as to be funny except that liberal bloggers are joining the attack as an opportunity to demonstrate their evenhandedness.
The rest of the article is no better, but it’s standard fare which PZ Myers ably dismantles. Linker tries to argue that good atheists are those that politely question while accepting that religion may be true, and bad atheists are those that try to impose their conviction through forced conversions. Needless to say this is a false dichotomy that fails to get at the substance of the current debate. The “new” atheists are distinguished by their willingness to speak up about their beliefs, and to question the role of religion in the public square. We don’t want to outlaw religion; we want to debate it. People like Linker know that on a level intellectual playing field religion cannot triumph, so he seeks to silence critics with claims of illiberalism. It’s a shame to see otherwise smart people falling for it.
- jack*
One of the great unanswered questions in science is the basis of consciousness, but what about thinking generally? What is the nature of thought and intelligence? There is a long tradition that tells us that thinking is something apart from materialism, that it’s a process or activity that can be best described as an intrusion of the spiritual world into the physical realm. Even if low-level perception and cognition is mechanical, the highest levels of human insight surely lie beyond mere brain wiring to something transcendent.
Interestingly, science can address this question, and the answer is: no. In fact we can show that minds have measurable attributes, and thus must be material. The argument is relatively simple, but it proceeds from the assumption that the laws of thermodynamics are true.
Specifically, the second law of thermodynamics states in part that the total entropy of any isolated thermodynamic system tends to increase over time. It has been well established in the physical, chemical and biological sciences that this law is not only true, but represents a bedrock principle. If it can be shown to be false, then virtually anything we have come to understand about the universe can be shown to be false as well. As Sir Arthur Stanley Eddington said in part in 1927:
[…] if your theory is found to be against the second law of thermodynamics I can give you no hope; there is nothing for it but to collapse in deepest humiliation.
A restatement of the second law is that a system at thermal equilibrium can do no work. If we have a vessel with a hot gas on one side and a cold gas on the other we can place a fan between them and as the gasses mix – the hot rushing into the cold – the fan will spin, doing work. However, if we have a vessel which has a gas at a uniform temperature, the fan will not spin.
We know from statistical mechanics, however, that not all the molecules in the gas are moving at the same rate. Some are moving fast and some are moving slow. Suppose we could use this difference to generate work – that would be a way around the second law. Therefore, if we assume that the second law is true – as we do – then the ways to get around it must be invalid.
Brownian motion is a kind of thermal random motion easily observable under the microscope. Surely we could place our fan into a gas and it would spin with similar thermal motion. It would, but in both directions equally thus doing no work. Suppose, however, that we add a ratchet to the fan so that it will only spin in one direction. Then it would do work, would it not?
Actually, no. As the legendary physicist Richard Feynman demonstrated, the problem is that the ratchet will be of the exact same scale as the fan and will be subject the same random forces. Thus it will operate randomly in the same manner as the fan and there will be no net work. This is good, since violations of the second law show that everything we know is wrong, all things being equal we’d rather that it be right.
But what if the ratchet was under intelligent control? Normally a ratchet requires more force to move one direction than the other. This was the condition that Feynman assumed in his calculations which led him to conclude that the second law could not be violated by a simple mechanical system. But let’s imagine that the ratchet is instead a freely moving axis with a lock. The lock as two positions: open and closed. In the closed position the fan is locked, while in the open position the fan moves without friction. The closed and open positions have neutral entropy – that is whatever change in entropy is the result of going from open to closed is undone by going from closed to open.
Now we have a situation, originally envisioned by James Clerk Maxwell in 1867, in which intelligence could be used to violate the second law of thermodynamics. Someone with the knowledge of the location and momentum of molecules in the gas could decide when to open and close the lock attached to the fan. This “demon” – as Maxwell imagined it – could perform work using just the ambient temperature of the gas. The entropy of the lock itself would average out and the result would be work – the rotation of the fan – despite the uniform and random distribution of gas trajectories. Thus thermal energy plus intelligence equals real work.
Let’s assume, for as we did at the start, that the second law of thermodynamics is sacrosanct. What has to give in this thought experiment? In order for the smart fan not to violate the second law, intelligence itself has to increase entropy. At the most fundamental level, the thinking – the observation and computation – that’s required for the smart ratchet has to equal or exceed the entropy that is diminished by the turning of the fan. Since thinking must affect entropy, this means that thought is material.
This is a huge result. There are many who believe that thinking, understanding and belief itself reside totally outside the physical realm. If that were true, however, it’s not an exaggeration to say that everything we know and can validate scientifically would be false. So if we know anything, we know that thinking, knowledge, and belief are things that have a material basis. Knowing something must have a physical analog that forces it to waste as much entropy as it could possibly generate. This derives simply and logically from the second law of thermodynamics, like night follows day.
- jack*
Someone recently made fun of how little I commute. It’s only around an hour a day, which I admit is pretty small for someone in Silicon Valley. On the other hand I used to work at home, so any kind of driving is frankly objectionable. And with time – like the cost of gas – a little bit each day starts to be noticeable over the course of a month or 12.
As result I am intimate with Air America radio programming. Our local affiliate seems to change its schedule every few weeks, so I have been exposed to a wide range of voices. I have ranked my favorite hosts on three criteria – intelligence, passion, personality – which I hope will be of use to casual listeners or to the Air America programming department. Take notes if you’re out there.
Intelligence is very simple: does the host know their stuff? When they talk to callers or interview guests if they have the facts at their fingertips and can address the talking points then they get a thumbs up from me. Passion says whether they care about the progressive cause and are willing to fight for it. Personality is a matter of being likeable, which matters a remarkable amount when I’m considering if I will listen to someone chat with strangers for half an hour.
So here’s my countdown, Olbermann-like, from worst to best:
7) Mike Malloy does not lack of passion. Too bad he’s a nut. He knows the superficial facts of the news stories he covers, but he has no depth, and his passion for the cause allows him to accept uncritically some of the most embarrassing garbage that his callers spew forth. Personally he seems a little crazy, and I don’t really enjoy listening to him.
6) Ed Shultz is supposed to personable – the host you’d like to have a beer with. I guess, if you like sports. The whole “I’m an outdoorsman who’s also a liberal” shtick could be pretty good if he didn’t keep jamming his ego into everything. His passion for progressive causes seems to be limited to that which can benefit Big Ed. My main problem with him though is that he’s just not well prepared. He’s so easily derailed by right-wing callers that he’s almost the proverbial liberal straw man all by himself. They just call in with their absurd arguments and knock him over.
5) Lionel (who’s named after .. what, the train set I had as a kid?) seems quite smart and has definite passion. But he’s also kind of a jerk. I’ve not heard him much, but his snooty attitude makes me un-inclined to seek him out. Also I’m not so sure we even align ideologically.
4) Randi Rhodes used to be one of my favorites. She’s smart and funny, and employs both assets dispatching trolls most effectively. If someone had a right-wing argument that I couldn’t refute I’d say run it by Randi – if she can’t tear it apart then maybe you have something we should seriously consider. Recently she has fallen in my esteem, however, because she’s starting to sound, well, a bit crazy. Perhaps it was the lawsuit, perhaps it’s personal, I don’t know. It’s just not as fun to listen to her anymore, and I don’t think it’s just me.
3) Thom Hartman is about as smart as they come. He talks like some kind of professor or something, which is great if you think that academic arguments are sufficient when dealing with wingnuts. Unfortunately despite his obvious personal charms, they are not. If he could crank up the passion enough to find a little genuine outrage when it’s called for he could be a great host. I’d urge him to take off the tweed jacket and put on some boxing gloves.
2) Sam Seder has gotten a really raw deal. When his actress co-host Janeane Garofalo ditched him to, you know, do acting, he was probably wasn’t quite ready to be anchor of a high-profile radio show. But he’s matured fast. He’s sharp dealing with callers, personable on his own and as passionate as anyone could ask for. I try to find his show when I can; I only wish he had more than three hours a week.
1) Rachel Maddow is my new hero. I cherish her show when I get to hear it, which is rarely since at the moment it doesn’t coincide with my commute too often. She’s so smart that she not only knows today’s talking points, she has three or four humorous or ironic takes on each one. She (and her staff) range from highly personable to side-splitting, and the passion is implicit. They don’t have to talk about liberal causes and issues – they embody them. If you can’t embrace some aspect of being progressive after enjoying the show, you’re a lost cause. ‘Nuf said.
- jack *
Here are a couple of awesome things I found on that twisty maze of tubes known as the Internet. The first is the “Information Challenge” posed by some doofus named Casey Luskin at the Discovery Institute, which for any who don’t know is the main right-wing think tank shilling for “Intelligent Design Creationism,” a.k.a. the GodDidIt Theory.
Or rather the cool thing is the answer. The “challenge” was:
I request to see how:
“METHINKSDAWKINSDOTHPROTESTTOOMUCH”
can evolve into:
“BUTIMSUREDAWKINSBELIEVESHEISRIGHT”
by changing the first sentence one letter at a time, and having it always retain some comprehensible English meaning along each small step of its evolution. This seems like a reasonable request, as it is not highly different from what Darwinists are telling me can happen in nature.
He thought he was so clever. At least he could be bothered to find two sentences both containing 33 letters, making his challenge at least logically possible. Never mind that life itself doesn’t require that the genetic code remain the same length or change only one letter at a time, or even remain entirely comprehensible. Let alone have a specific target to evolve towards.
But never mind all that. It can be done, and in only 44 generations. It’s interesting to see between generations 33 and 42 how “DAWKINS” shifts from starting at position 8 to starting at position 9.
The second cool thing is this video. I can only aspire to this kind of rhetoric coupled with a nice British accent, so I’ll just send along the link. If you have ever wondered whether you should respect religion to get along or express yourself forcefully I think you’ll find this interesting.
I didn’t say these two items were related, but if you want to find some connection knock yourself out. I just liked them.
- jack*
Josh Marshall finds some correlation between the stratospheric rise in oil prices and American saber rattling with Iran. While there is no reason to question that there is some connection, the larger question remains why the aggressive posture in the first place, and why the threat of military force?
It’s clear that the neo-cons still largely in charge of our foreign policy have never seen a problem that they didn’t see as a cause to bomb someone. The theory that any challenge can be met with pure force of will has been explained, if you can follow the logic, by such mental midgets as Victor Davis Hansen. The “Shock and Awe” tactic at the start of the Iraq invasion was predicated on a theory about the “Arab” mentality that emphasized obeisance to superior force and strength of will. If we just overwhelmed them with our power to destroy, they would become compliant and submissive.
That theory has turned out to be flawed.
However, neo-con personal insecurity alone is not really sufficient to explain the current round of threats from Cheney, Bush and the Congress. Nor is the much-touted Iranian nuclear program. As those who know tell us, Iran’s nuclear weapons program – if it exists – is many years away from delivering a weapon. The administration’s neglect of North Korea and indifference to Pakistan has also shown that they are not particularly concerned about nuclear proliferation. As such, the threat posed by a nuclear-armed Iran appears to be no more than a pretext.
Likewise the alleged Iranian presence in Iraq. If anyone is this administration was serious about fixing the situation in Iraq they would have to look no farther than conditions in Iraqi cities and among Iraqi civilians. This must too be chalked up as mere pretext which also conveniently serves to find a scapegoat for Iraq as well.
So none of the stated reasons pans out. One gets the sense – given an administration composed of Texas oil men, and with Iran having a lot of oil trade as opposed to North Korea for example which has none – that the latest round of verbal aggression has something to do with oil. Perhaps so. Here’s something else that happened but was not widely reported around the same time:
The dollar has sharply plummeted against the yen this afternoon on reports Iran has asked Japan to stop paying for its oil in dollars.
In fact the threat posed by Iran is economic, not military. Iran has been working for a long time to use its role as an oil broker to undermine the status of the dollar as reserve currency, in the past by threatening to open an independent Oil Bourse, and most recently by lobbying for changes within OPEC itself in alliance with Venezuela.
The theory behind this is that since the end of WWII oil has, by international treaty, been priced in dollars. This makes the US dollar the world’s reserve currency, and puts the US in the de-facto role of imperial power by imposing a “tax” on client states. This tax has fueled US growth and wealth for two generations. Empires maintain their position of power by spending a lot of those taxes on military force which is used to keep client states in line. When Saddam Hussein tried to charge for oil in euros, the US invaded on false pretenses as a demonstration to the rest of the region of the invincibility of American might. We all know how well that went.
I don’t know enough to judge whether this theory all holds together or not. However, it does explain a great deal: the attack on Iraq, the saber-rattling with Iran, our obscene military budgets compared to spending by the rest of the world, even how 5% of the world’s population can sustain consumption of 25% of the world’s resources. It makes sense, which is all the more reason why it’s so frustrating that the only articles that discuss this idea sound like crazy conspiracy websites. But based on the actions of our current leadership, crazy conspiracy might be the only explanation.
- jack*
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