Unlike most Americans, I haven't taken a side on the gay marriage / gay rights fiasco yet. I'm not ashamed to admit this. It seems to me that the answers to these issues rest on fundamental unanswered questions.

Briefly, my assessment of the progression of the gay rights movement goes something like this. Within the last few years, homosexual activist groups have become more assertive in pushing for reforms that, as they see it, will help remedy long-standing prejudices and inequalities towards gays. As is usually the case in such matters, the calls to reform crystallize around a rather narrow set of hot-button issues, such as gay marriage. Religious leaders and political leaders, for slightly different reasons, respond to the new burst of activism with dogged resistance. Religious leaders do so because religious dogma is inherently a rigid enterprise, and consequently is completely irrelevant to contemporary issues. Contemporary political leaders do so because the group currently in power is not above using any tactics to win and maintain power, including demagoguery designed to appeal to a small but powerful minority of religious suppoters. Meanwhile, the vast majority of Americans don't have nearly as strong opinions on the matter as the zealots, and so they either follow suit with the standard political narrative (gays will ruin the integrity of families and society, marriage is a sacred institution, homosexuality is a sinful choice...etc.) or remain quiet and drop out of the political equation altogether.

The actual injustices that are driving the discontent, however, are much more diffuse and multifold. Unconcealed intolerance in the South, hate crimes and the like, archaic sodomy laws, persistent workplace discrimination, the recent gay adoption laws, laughable media crusades, and a rising religious movement that preaches the uncompromising moral and religious wickedness of homosexuality are all perceived as evidence of general hostility towards gay people. The gay marriage issue is pretty much a red herring in my opinion. Unfortunately for the greater cause, the rashness of the most extreme gay reformers and the opportunism of politicians has put this at the forefront of the public consciousness of the gay rights issue.

The substitution of a kind of proxy debate in place of the real issues ultimately disadvantages the reform movement. Conservatives reflexively object to anything that entails a break with tradition, such as the redefinition of marriage. Consequently, gay rights reformers end up arguing defensively about the definitions of words and technicalities of institutional practices. Meanwhile, no progress is being made on the more important objective of addressing intolerance. The gay reform crowd should be 100 times more concerned with ending discrimination of all forms (the "right" to marry is awfully insignificant discrimination and mostly symbolic comparatively), ensuring that gays not be used as political scapegoats or vehicles for demagoguery, and protecting their political rights and equality under the law from the infringement of religious zealots. All that pleading for marriage will do is push conservatives' buttons.

It's mind-numbing how so many gay reformers refuse the seemingly self-evident path of least resistantce - working with the Democratic party to further their goals. Ideologically, Democrats are much more sympathetic to the cause. But this is because Democrats are completely inept. And even the gay movement knows it! Personally, I despise the current Democratic party for the very reason that it's ineffectual and unwilling to directly challenge (just complaining doesn't count) the republicans on any issues of importance. As an example, the "values debate" is what mobilized evangelical voters to show up in record numbers last election. Instead of declaring the values issue a lost cause, Democrats must assert the separation between church values and government values (insofar as government values even exist...) as a fundamental constitutional tenet, and then counter with a new commensense, civil definition of values. It wouldn't be that hard. All it would take is a prominent Democratic Senator going on television and saying "The Republicans have claimed a monopoly on values. In the process, they've defined values in a narrow and incomplete way. We respect their cultural values, and their right to assert them. But we believe true American values go beyond cultural matters to issues of foreign policy, executive accountability, fiscal responsibility, electoral reform, etc... and must respect the separation between religion and government." In contrast, presently we have chairman Howard Dean publicly announcing that the values debate is not one the Democratic party particularly wishes to engage in, nor one that it can win. And you have Barbara Boxer engaging in her weekly tirades of futile resistance on the senate floor. The current democratic modus operendi is so unconscionable to me it's almost unreal. Then again, I don't understand much about the way politics actually works. My dad's theory is that Democrats are abstaining on all of these issues so as to give them more punch when they address them come campaign time for the next house election cycle. I hope he's right. My own theory on why you see so many gay Republicans is that the relationship between gays and the Republican party is a little like the Stockholm Syndrome for political disenfranchisement. Your abuser is kind of an asshole, but at least he's the only one who has any power to do anything, so simple expedience dictates you side with him.

This debate is going to be dominated by demagogues screaming aburdities about the apocolyptic ramifications of things like gay marriage until reformers start soliciting solid factual information to change the currency of the debate from mysticism and scare tactics to fact and reality. Demagoguery always trumps reasonableness and moderation in an environment of ignorance.

I don't think it is inaccurate to assert that around the country, gays are currently treated with the same level of ignorance and intolerance that blacks were 60 years ago, or jews were intermittently throughout history. Discrimination is defined as the unequal treatment of people based on attributes that are functionally or otherwise not relevant to the situation at hand. The color of your skin...this is generally not relevant, no matter what the context. On the other hand, the differential treatment of people who possess criminal records IS permissible if the fact is relevant to the context. Yet, still, in some contexts, a criminal record is not relevant, such as in getting a job as a floor sweeper. In terms of the gay issue, we are sadly ignorant of the underlying facts that determine how this issue fits into the accepted paradigm for discrimination. Why can we still not agree on how much of being gay is a choice and how much of it is something that can't be helped? And the answer won't come from evangelicals (who have already set up conversion programs all throughout the country, with mixed results at best). It will come from hard factual science. On any given gay issue, people should demand to rationally specify how being gay is relevant to the issue, be it gay marriage, gays on the job, gays in the military, gays as teachers, etc. Does gay marriage solely constitute a breach of tradition, or does it have legitimate potential for adverse social effects? Of course, to an extent, the second question of relevance relates back to the first of choice in that in many cases the question of relevance hinges on the theory of propagation by example, which in turn depends on how homosexuality originates.

I saw Bill Maher's show "Real Time" on HBO the other day. Generally it's a good show, and fairly engaging if not marginally informative on current political matters. His panel discussions are the meat of the show, consisting of three guests from different walks of life who discuss politics and current events with Maher himself as the moderator. The level of dissension among his guests can be considerable, and I'm always impressed with Maher's ability to keep the exchanges civil and hence the show watchable. Bill Maher is a liberal, and his audience is almost always uniformly liberal. So it's difficult for him to bring in the truly hardcore conservative guests. The usual situation is something like 2 liberals and one pseudo-conservative (someone at least willing to argue the opposite position). The episodes that include people of actual political clout and significance (politicians, policy wonks, chairspeople of various organizations, and even some pundits) as opposed to those with mere political opinions (entertainers, actors, most columnists etc.) are by far the more interesting ones. Of course, whenever the show does manage to bring on a bona fide conservative, things becomes really interesting.

This week's panel consisted of David Frum, the colleague of Richard Perle, one of the Dixie Chicks, and Wesley Clark. Stated briefly, I have never seen a poorer showing from anyone in any kind of conference or television forum than that of David Frum last week. His performance did much to solidify the notion that those in the neocon cabal are unrealistic, delusional, completely ideological and not grounded in fact, and even malign. Among his blunders were the assertion that ownership of assault weapons is a necessary right in modern-day america, and still in line with the original reasoning of the founding fathers; that gun permits shouldn't be screened by homeland security because guns would never be used by terrorists seeking to create destruction; that gays in the military hurt troop morale (a highly unpopular, though not totally rejected view), although they can and should still be used as translators and such; the inactivity of the U.S. in stopping the genocide in Sudan is due to domestic political resistance and not any input on the part of the administration; the Democrats' image problem with respect to military credibility is due entirely to intrinsic factors and not at all to the Republican's ongoing campaign to undermine it. The image created by these assertions is that of a sadly delusional, inaccurate, and disturbingly self-serving and partisan worldview. It's hard to believe that someone could be apparently that stupid, intellectually or politically, and be a contributing editor of the Weekly Standard and a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. As a point of reference for all this, just consider that in comparison Richard Perle seems extremely likeable. Here's a concrete example, just to give you some perspectiv. To be fair, the excerpt is only part of the answer:

Q: I want to ask you a question about Russia...In the time that this administration has been developing a closer and better relationship with Russia, we've seen president Putin roll back democratic freedoms, free market policies now seem to be contested, and especially waging a very murderous and destructive war against a portion of his own citizenry, pushing some of them into Islamic extremism. I haven't seen this country addressing that problem with Russia. You were talking about a moral foreign policy...we should be addressing these questions of Russia.

A: ...I only wish that all of those brave european journalists who got so exercised when America transported captured Taliban prisoners by putting earmuffs on their ears would have some of the same vigilance about abuses of human rights, for the massive death and destruction that is going on in Chechnya. I mean, the earmuff problem is no doubt serious...

The thing is, on paper he's much more competent than he appeared to be on Real Time. He actually doesn't look bad. Granted, his book "The Right Man," which if you don't know it is the one that features the picture of George Bush in a flightsuit on the cover, is by virtue of that fact irredeemably lame in my view. (Apparently, good judgement has led someone to change the picture on the most recent printing.)

The thing is, if you can get beyond the neoconservative's arrogance and complete uni-partisan politics (which is not to say that such things should be overlooked), the truth is that the neoconservatives are paying attention to important things that democrats are just not talking about. Americans seem to like to live wistfully in their isolationist bubble, but I think all the evidence unmistakably points to the fact that there is a serious, widespread, and disturbingly accepted movement brewing in the middle east that is a direct threat to the United States. In several middle eastern countries, it is commonplace for Muslim clerics to append their call to prayer with speeches daily extolling the virtues of Jihad against the west. Given the fact that citizens of Arab nations are kept notoriously uneducated, this kind of uncomplicated message can be made enormously persuasive. The regimes who are supposedly our allies backhandedly fund these activities or are complicit in allowing them to take place.

The literalist interpretation of Islam seems to hold far more sway than in other religions. It's a fact that every religion has its fundamentalists. Every dogma is going to have its idiotic literalists. In the typical religion this is a fringe phenomenon. In Islam, particularly arab islam, the ideology of pre-historic islamofascist triumphalism is actually a threat in the sense of having the potential to become mainstream. Why this is, I'm not quite sure. Maybe it's deep Arab humiliation over failing to acheive its utopian Islamic empire in the 7th century. Maybe it's the widespread poverty and illiteracy of the modern arab people. Maybe the oil economy leads to the wrong people getting wealthy and powerful. Whatever the cause, it would be foolish to ignore this problem. Yet only one of our two august political parties has a strategy, a practical plan, to begin to address the problem in the middle east on any level.

On the other end of the political fence, the head of the democratic party, Howard Dean (a self-flagellatory appointment in my opinion, but anyway) said recently that as democratic president he would seek to involve the U.N. as a primary means to fight terrorism. I don't see how he actually believes that, other than because he thinks it will be popular somehow. Let's look at the facts. The U.N. is an institution founded 50 years ago for the purpose of enforcing international law and national boundaries among nation-states. I'm not going to use the word "antiquated" or "obsolete," because these are just buzzwords that don't convey any information. Nonetheless, I think it's clear that given that the contemporary U.N. manifestly does not have the political clout and power to even enforce within its own domain, i.e. the perpetration of aggressive acts by one nation against another or against itself, there is no reason to expect that it will be able to enforce and protect in a domain for which it is not at all structured. This is not to say that the U.N. should no longer exist, as some suggest (i.e. our intrepid U.N. ambassador appointee). It is to say that it simply does not have the logistical and intelligence capabilities to deal with shady, decentralized, amorphous and anational terrorist networks. Neither does the U.N. have the will to do so, I think all reasonable people can agree. After all, considering its global constituency, most of its member nations either do not face the same threat that has in the most clear terms been extended to the west, or they are directly involved in funding and supporting terrorism and/or the dissemination of anti-western ideologies themselves!

Does this make me bi-partisan? No! On the contrary, it makes me anti-bipartisan. Let me explain... I'm not a political science major, so I might not be able to cite the teachings of distinguished thinkers. But isn't it obvious to everyone that more parties equals less bickering? Staunch bipartisans gush of the merits of the two party system: "It brings everybody together under the same roof!" implying that it encourages moderation. In fact, the opposite is true. When the two parties disagree about something, it appears they need to emphasize their differences, so that one of them doesn't appear to be the party that is "giving in." The result of course is politically self-protective polarization at the expense of prudent policymaking. Whereas, with multiple parties, diagreement is inevitable, thus parties don't have to worry about defining themselves in opposition to some alternative strain. They are able to focus on effective polices without the constant specter of political death vis a vis smear campaigning.

In terms of game theory terminology, isn't it true that the dominant strategy in cynical politics is to define yourself as oppositely the other party as possible? Consider that there are three ways to win votes and support in politics. You can steal your opponent's supporters. You can rally a dormant portion of your own base. And you can convince independent, variable, or non-participating voters to come out and vote for you. Consider how the strategy of defining oneself oppositely the other party affects your goods. 1) Your opponent's supporters are rabidly partisan. Even if there are some moderate or equivocal ones, they have no reason to "switch horses" for a party who is professing to do essentially the same thing as what their party is already doing. 2) Your own base is rabidly partisan. The more it sees its party "challenging" the party in power, the more it will come out and support it. 3) Undecided voters are undecided for a reason, i.e. they don't find the available options compelling enough to come out in support of one side or another. It is foolish to think that if you come out with a similar message, replicating policies that are already being offered, you are going to change any of these people's minds.

If this is all true that the dominant strategy is to adopt the political alternative, then the more parties there are, the more moderate this dominant strategy will be. Why do we resist applying the same analysis to politics that we have already applied with such success and accuracy to economics?

Of course you cannot expect harmony of views in politics. If anything, a healthy democracy requires ample discord. Yet, harmony and moderation are worthy goals to strive for. It is a paradox, but the greater the number of parties, the greater the opportunity there is for discord, the more moderate the outcomes are.

Aside from the obvious incompetence it breeds, another one of the problems of the widespread, extreme polarization in American politics is that one whole half of the country inevitably thinks the other half is completely delusional and vice versa. This is simply a reflection of how different their worldviews are. Now, it's perfectly fine for a group of people to think that one half of the country is wrong, or even 99% of the country for that matter. But when people start thinking the other side is delusional...that's a recipe for disobedience and lack of cooperation.

In terms of protection of intellectual property, the current two party system is great! No one will ever dare steal any idea or stance from another party. But in terms of effective governance, it is seriously, seriously problematic.

Good to see that Israel is finally taking a stand against it's own religious extremists.


I don't know any other way to describe this than awesome.


As to be expected, the controversy over the problem of innate sex differences rages on. I don't want to get involved in the nitty-gritty details of the data, or arguing over what people ought to be concluding from it, nor am I qualified to. As all reasonable people are (should be) saying, let the scientists do their work. After all the data are collected, we can draw our conclusions as we wish. In his blog, respected academic Tim Burke provisionally agrees that conclusions for either side are premature

Let’s ignore the large body of research that casts doubt on or hugely complicates the working hypothesis that men are somehow adaptively better at science and mathematics. Let’s assume that Summers’ hypothesis is valid.

However, he then goes on suggest something incredibly naive.

Even in the best case scenario for this kind of conjecture, we’re only talking about tendencies, not gender-based absolutes. Meaning that even if Summers’ hypothesis actually is the best explanation for the imbalance in the sciences, this imbalance should pose no difficulty for Harvard should Harvard judge it desirable to have more women on its science faculty.
...Even if genetic or innate differences mean that no more than 15% of the top scientists and mathematicians are women, Harvard could pay whatever was necessary to recruit from that 15% and achieve a faculty which had a 50-50 balance of men and women.
...Even if you wanted to be generous to the argument that affirmative action goals result in declining standards, it only applies to the average institution, to institutions which are presumed to lack the clout or financial power to compete for scarce goods and which therefore are presumed to have to lower their standards in order to achieve diversity.

This is so embarassingly wrong. In fact, it seems to me the reverse is true. The top 15% of scientists is not a meaningful grouping. Yes, of course there is a statistical percentile of the top 15%, but this is not a monolithic group. The variance within the extreme percentiles is much higher. As anyone who has ever looked at a bell curve should notice, this is true for ANY reasonably natural distribution. However, in particular it is empirically true with respect to the measurement of intellectual abilities between sexes; look up the data yourself if you don't believe me. The top scientist in any given field can very easily be worth ten of the next best scientists put together; one Einstein is worth 50,000 R and D departments.

The flaw I see in the argument comes from the comparison of top research scientists to scarce goods. In economics, we assume that goods of any given type are identical, and can vary only in their quantity. The approximation may be ok when used to represent pools of unskilled labor. But this is simply not the case with matters of human talent: the closer approximation would be that each scientist is his or her own scarce good. No school has the liberty of being able to make choices on the basis of arbitrary or politically correct or playfully whimsical criteria without sacrificing quality in the process. But in fact, the top institutions have the most to lose by this process, since in their human resource pool, variance is greatest.

What's most offensive about this whole argument is the presumption that institutions of research ought to achieve "diversity." What is called for here is a 50-50 balance, and I assume this contention is not uncommon. Now, of course institutions ought to cultivate discrimination-free environments, and work to eliminate all structural inequalities for women working in academia. Yet, unless there is some a priori reason why we should have absolute numerical parity between genders in academia - and I can't think of one - this suggestion is just as offensive as suggesting a restrictive quota system for one particular gender. Both are completely arbitrary.
Of course, socially progressive readers will remark that setting up concrete, numerical criteria is a practical though crude way to change the social conditions responsible for the problem. Well, there are equal numbers of each sex, so why don't we just choose 50/50 as the goal? This is all very sensible, except this isn't at all the way reasonable people have settled these matters in the past. When social engineering is used to remedy historical discrimination, it very rarely takes the form of enforced numerical parity, or isomorphism or whatever. Imagine if various European countries that had been the sites of civil and professional anti-semitic discrimination for hundreds of years decided to remedy the situation by appointing Jews to government and professional posts according to the exact proportion of Jews living in those countries... As common knowledge has it, there would be far fewer Jews working in these positions than there are today, given a fairly discrimination-free environment. In another case, consider how our most socially conscious institutions of higher learning have responded to the injustices dealt to african americans throughout American history. In its most socially activist form, this means the awarding of extra admissions points for students from historically underepresented (read: discriminated against) ethnic groups. No one is suggesting we provision spots in colleges, jobs, government and baseball leagues according to the numerical representation of african americans in the population. What if someone complained there weren't enough white people in basketball (a valid observation), and proposed an enforced numerical quota to remedy the problem. I can tell you definitively that the quality of professional basketball would go way down. In all these cases, the inherent wisdom of competitive selection is thwarted.
Research science or private sector business is a competitive endeavor. We are not building a polity here. Equal representation in the usual democratic sense, so important for running governments, is effective and necessary because it ensures the will of all the people is represented in the decisions of the governing body. Research and jobs are not government, they do not make decisions for other people, they are selfish, utility maximizing endeavors. There is no moral or civil argument that equal representation as a goal is necessary. Many people may be confusing private and public ventures here, but the ways they are run are very different.
It seems to me a lot of feminists are trying to preempt the debate under the auspices of political offensiveness. The truth cannot be offensive! Ok, so maybe I can think of some cases where it can be. But we have to know the objective truth first, independently, before addressing the normative issue of what should be done. To my understanding, there is research out there addressing these very issues of the relative contributions of all kinds of factors to the current gender gap in natural sciences and engineering. However, the research is incredibly contradictory. No one knows what to make out of it. Worse yet, some of it appears to be clearly political propoganda masquerading as scientific research. The unspoken irony in the whole debate is that this is the natural sciences afterall....people are supposed to agree on things! Clearly the debate would benefit from more research.
Most of the Summers' critics take his remarks completely out of context. As his various detractors have it, he was explaining his own tenure decisions; he was speaking about women and men in general; he was stating his personal belief. Ok, Larry Summers is not the most tactful guy. This is a given. The first two suggestions don't make any sense, though. The conference where the infamous remarks were made was attended by representatives of a few elite science and engineering institutions to address the issue of the gender gap in their faculties. The relevant community here is a freak group of statistical deviants, not men and women in general. The comment itself, on innate gender differences, is a purely scientific question, and has nothing to do with what people ought to or will be doing about this issue. The professor who walked out of the talk explained she did so because Summers was stating his personal belief. He clearly wasn't, and the intention was to goad people to keep an open mind to all angles. Yet, even if that does represent his personal belief, who cares? Maybe that concerns the Harvard administration and tenure committees. Moreover, the issue addressed is scientific. No one's belief really matters. If Summers' was the head of a research group pledging scientific objectivity I would be concerned, but he's not: he's trying to get people to DO research.
From now on, I'm not going to say "I do (or don't) support Summers and what he said." For one, I don't care about what his personal beliefs are or what ramifications they have for his job. I also don't want to argue about a comment that wsn't delivered very tactfully, that was probably ill-advised, and then was distorted by some of its critics. What matters to me is how we adjust our institutions, whatever the finding is. Originally published 4/15/05

You Know What They Should Have...

How many times have you been typing a paper or sending an email or whatever and had to stop because the right word, the one you know expresses your idea perfectly, is stuck on the tip of your tongue? I'm not a psychologist but isn't it true that people think of words in terms of concepts. How often do you forget a word but know what you want as a cross of two or more other words? Wouldn't it be useful if someone created a thesaurus that gave answers based on cross-referencing multiple word inputs? Like if I'm looking for the word that's a cross between "confusing" and "secret" I'll quickly find "cryptic." The way it is now, you'd have to wade through up 10 definitions for each word, with huge lists of synonyms corresponding to each definition; in total you could easily have to look through hundreds of words before you found the one you were looking for. These days, given the widespread use of computers and the wonders of the internets, it should not be hard at all to write a program with this function.

Abstinence Now! - for $15

My friend Noah has brought to our attention an organization relevant to every young adult, be he male or female, gay or straight, muslim or buddhist, black or white. It's called the Abstinence Clearinghouse, and its purpose is to "serve as an association for the abstinence community." Absurdity abounds here. I'll list some of it.

• The premise that the cause of abstinence is faciliated by a social network.
• The "Abstinence Online Store," i.e. the assumption that abstinence propoganda is something that people will pay money for rather than something you will have to force down their throats
• The very idea of "faith-based information" used in product blurbs

Peruse the site for the products. Here are some good ones
The Casualties of Kinsey booklet: "the truth about the founder of spiritual decay in America." Special introductory price timed for the release of the movie whose release it deeply regrets!
God's Gift to Women: "...Eric Ludy challenges you to forsake modern male mediocrity for Christ-built, warrior-poet manhood-manhood that will capture the heart of a woman and change the course of history." In other words, Eric Ludy challenges you to come up with four words that are more mutually contradictory than "Christ-built warrior-poet manhood."
'Keep It' Underwear: "Keep It Underwear aims to approach the serious subject of abstinence in a light-hearted way by letting teens show their statement of choice - even if it's just to themselves." Features cool and tactful "STOP!" signs right on the front.
The Princess And The Kiss: "Contains faith-based content. The Princess and the Kiss is a wonderful fairytale with beautiful illustrations that convey the message of purity with beautiful symbolism. Kit comes with the book, coloring book, crayon and tiara. " I guess everything people teach kids is basically indoctrination right, so why do we have to be so careful anymore? On the plus side, it claims to have faith-based "content" not "information."

I met with a psychologist and professor I knew in high school the other day, and one of the topics that came up in conversation was the issue of trying to gender-neutralize standardized psychological tests. This is particularly an issue with politically-charged tests like the IQ test. I hadn't been aware this was done, but apparently standard IQ tests are constructed so that in no question does one gender show substantial better performance (although I'm not sure if it's anything of statistical significance or what). I forgot exactly what this procedure is called, something like "item-pairing." The thinking is that if you start with a large pool of questions which are purported to test for general intelligence, and some of these questions are answered correctly much more frequently by people of one gender, then those questions must be biased in some way so you reject them.

There are a lot of issues here. One preliminary question you might ask is who does this procedure help? I don't know the data, but my suspicion is that men probably score better on some types of questions, and women score better on other types of questions. Overall, men score slightly better on SAT tests, for instance, so one might infer that more of the questions showing a gender disparity favor men. This is obviously not necesarily true though, since men may just be showing stronger performance in general, but women may be the ones showing superior performance on certain types of questions. Therefore this protocol doesn't necesarilly serve a moderating function; it seems it could potentially exagerate already existing performance gaps.

The real question comes down to not what is the statistical basis for carrying out such a protocol, but what is the conceptual basis for doing so. Since you could always form arbitrary groups of people who perform differently on any given question, and argue that therefore the tests must be biased against them in some way. If you carried this scenario out to its logical conclusion, you would end in a situation where all individual variability in performance is banished - and this is obviously absurd. Of course, the argument will be made that genders are not an arbitrarily drawn group. But a group is only significant to the extent that it is correlated with other, confounding factors. The fact that members of a group perform worse on a certain question is not definite evidence that bias exists; it may just as well indicate that the question tests for something that members of that group are less able in.

The permissibility of this analysis depends on your fundamental philosophical view of what the test is testing. If you thought that there was a single quantity that all test questions were designed to measure, then it would be logical to only accept a test that has no significant variation across questions in the gender answering patterns, because presumably all questions are testing for the same quantity whose relationship with the genders should be static. Note that this doesn't necessarilly mean that the set point of correct responses should be 50-50; what if one gender really does have slightly more of the quantity that the tests measure? A "fair" test would take into account that that gender will invariantly score a given amount better on any question that validly measures that quantity. But in reality it's hard to know what this set point is without the input of a test, so you're back to square one. On the other hand, if you thought the test was measuring multiple discrete skills, you'd expect these would vary between genders. Hopefully, when it comes to IQ tests, political correctness isn't intervening and saying, "well let's just assume that men and women are absolutely the same cognitively, and therefore we'll reject any questions (or groups of questions) that show one gender performing better than the other as either ineffective or flawed" or holding some presumptuous, anti-scientific "intelligence is gender-neutral" dictum. This would be a good way to create a gender-equalized test in terms of scores, if that was your goal for some reason, but wouldn't necessarilly create gender impartial questions. Interestingly, the people who would would probably want to make each question as gender-neutral as possible would probably also tend to be the same people who adhere to the multiple intelligence theory of intelligence - which is logically inconsistent.

My general conclusion is that it seems really stupid to gender-neutralize a test based on rejecting individual questions that show a gender disparity. Probably a smarter way to do it would be to do a kind of latent variable analysis: that is consider GROUPS of questions that show a pattern of one gender answering more correctly, infer some kind of latent common cause, and try to identify (through non-statistical analysis) if it's due to something that the questions are TESTING or something about the way the questions are worded, expressed, or presented. You can't just summarilly reject any group of questions because they are answered more correctly by one gender before determining what the probable cause is, since it very well may indicate a difference in whatever the test is supposed to measure, rather than an unfair bias in the question.

Here's an intereting little optimization problem that occured to me while working on a side job I have of labeling the contents of audio tapes. Basically, the job involves archiving cassette tapes that have multiple concerts or sets recorded on them. I have to record the time into the tape at which the next recorded set starts. The only way to accomplish this is to manually rewind / ff, and hit play. Most of the time there's at most one additional recording per 45 minute side. To simplify the problem, I assumed that this is the case.

If you are getting paid on a task basis, maximal efficiency is of utmost importance, especially if you are busy. In reality, I'm getting paid on an hourly basis, so I want to do the opposite, but I just as easily could get paid that way. The problem is then, how do you get the most tapes done in the least amount of time? In other words if the location of the beginning of the second set on the tape is completely unknown and random for all intents and purposes, what is the best method of hitting fast forward, play and rewind to use that will ensure you find the location of the beginning of the second set quickest?

It simplifies the problem somewhat to assume that the second set continues to play until the end of the tape, so that you're guaranteed to reach some point in the second set if you fast forward all the way to the end of the tape. Also, there may be different answers depending upon whether efficiency is gauged in terms of # of stops on the tape (or times you hit play) versus amount of time spent on the search. It also depends on how realistically you are going to model the actual time it takes to press buttons, reverse direction etc. I'm not absolutely sure there's an optimal strategy if the set placement on the tape is completely random. But I have some preliminary thoughts on at least creating a model that might lead to an answer:

• It's good to fast forward not too far into the tape and hit a point where there is music recorded. This means the beginning of the set is between where you are (which is not too far), and where you started. It's equally good to fast forward far into the tape and hit a point where there isn't music recorded. This means the beginning of the tape is between where you are, and the end of the tape (which is not too far away). But, you're just as likely to find music recorded far into the tape than to not find music recorded not too far into the tape, so neither choice is more likely to pay off.
• However, all other things being equal, if you choose to fast forward not too far into the tape, you have wasted less time. So the general algorithm is something like always choose to fast forward to the point not too far into the tape.
• I can't prove that it's best, but it simplifies the problem a lot if you just assume that the initial move is to fast forward exactly half-way through the tape. If you do this, when you push play, then you are faced with two equally likely options:

1) You hear music
2) You do not hear music
As I said, I can't prove that this is the best fast forwarding / rewinding regime, but it seems equivalent to any other. Since if you initially fast-forward less than half-way into the tape, say 30% of the way, then if you happen to hear music, then you have effectively diminished the length on the tape you have to explore to 30% of the original length of the tape; however, assuming that the placement of the set on the tape is random, you have only a 30% chance of attaining this outcome, so the advantage seems to be nullified. After you fast-forward to where you are going to stop, you push play and listen for a period of time. To simplify the problem, I assumed you always listen for the same amount of time.
As suggested before, if you are to choose as your first move fast forwarding to exactly the half-way mark, then it logically follows that you would choose the same protocol as your second move. This follows from the fact that after your first move, you are logically faced with the same problem you are faced with on the first move: you are given a length of tape over which the beginning of a set of music is equally likely to appear. The only difference is that the movement can now take place in two directions: either backward or forward depending on whether you hear music or not. However this doesn't affect the amount of time you spend, so you don't need to take it into account. The pattern equally applies to the next step, and the next step, and so on. Therefore you can express the total time, which you want to optimize, in terms of time spent fast-forwarding/rewinding and spent listening to the tape. If "f" is the speed of fast-forwarding/rewinding, "w" is the length of the whole tape, and "d" is the standard displacement due to listening to the tape - which is also equal to the time spent listening to the tape, since the play function operates in real time...
T = (1/2(w/f) + d) + (1/4(w/f) + d) + (1/8(w/f) + d) + ...
The first parentheses indicates the time you spend searching and listening on the first attempt, the second parentheses expresses this for the second time, etc. I assume that the displacement on the tape, d, is negligible compared to the displacement traversed in fast-forwarding/rewinding. Of course, this is a worse and worse approximation with each round of fast-forwarding.
The total time T is just the sum from n=1 to n=N of [1/2^n(w/f)] + Nd, where N is the number of times you apply the protocol. However the sum doesn't continue infinitely. There comes a point where the displacement you fast-forward into the tape is less than the displacement into the tape that you pass by from listening to it, and at this point it will be useless to continue the cycle further, since you will have accounted for all the space on the tape. This occurs when d > 1/2^n(w/f) . If you solve for n you get n > log2(w/fd). Therefore, this is your upper limit to the sum, N. Stating the sum again
T = sum from n=1 to log2(w/fd) of [1/2^n(w/f)] + log2(w/fd)d
You can actually figure out that sum based on a simple formula. To spare you the tedium, unless I've made a mistake, the sum comes out to
T = w/f - d + log2(w/fd)d
At this point you can find the listening time, d, at which the total time, T, is lowest by solving a simple max/min problem. Once you take the derivative of T with respect to d and set it equal to 0, you can solve for d... You get
d = (w/f)/2^(1/ln2 + 1), which is somehow a pleasing answer. Unfortunately, this is a maximum, not a minimum. So this tells the optimal amount of time you would want to be listening if you wanted it to take as long as possible to find the spot in the tape. Basically it says if you reduce the total time it takes you to fast-forward through the entire side by a factor of 1/2^(ln2 + 1) you get the optimal time you should spend listening. The speed of the fast-forward mechanism will vary by tape recorder, but mine has a speed of 16 1/2 minutes tape displacement per minute. Therefore, working with my tape recorder, with a 45 minute-sided tape, I will optimally want to spend 3o seconds listening to the tape per round before I choose fast-forward or rewind. This is the protocol you would want to use if you were getting paid by the hour, as I am, and if you for some reason had to appear as if you were trying to complete the task as quickly as possible. However, it should be noted that in the real situation, this is only a local maximum, as one easy way to spend much more time is to just set d so that it exceeds w/f.
There is a minimum of the function for T, and it occurs when the time spent listening to the tape approaches 0. It's interesting that the value of the equation T = w/f - d + log2(w/fd)d in the limit where d --> 0 is T= w/f, which is the original time it takes to fast-forward through the entire tape. This constitues the maximum time you would spend searching for the spot in the tape if you were using the minimizing protocol. On my tape recorder, it takes 2 minutes and 45 seconds to fast-forward through an entire tape. This is probably the one actually useful result to come out of all this, since it seems intuitively obvious that you would want to minimize the time spent listening to the tape as much as possible if your goal was to find a spot on the tape the fastest. This is the protocol you would want to use if you are getting paid by the amount of work you get done.
Looking back, you can judge whether the "d is much less than w/2^n" approximation is a good one. Using the maximize protocol, you can go about 5 rounds before the distance you displace on the next fast-forward/rewind is comparable to the distance you displace listening to the tape. You can calculate that probability that 5 rounds will be sufficient to locate the spot on the tape. Since you always spend 30 seconds, the chance of finding it on the first blind attempt is 30/(45*60), on the second attempt, 30/1350...and the total sum of all these is somewhere around 30%. This is obviously not a very good approximation. A new model is clearly needed. Of course when d=0 the approximation is still good, so the minimize protocol is definitely good.
Pretty much the only valuable thing to come out of all this inquiry is the realization that your optimum minimize strategy is to listen for as little as possible. In fact I'm not sure if any of these results are even meanginful with all the approximations I made. Perhaps someone will come to another answer, or one that's based on fewer approximations?

I am basically ignorant when it comes to analyzing politics. However, this gives me the right to toot my own horn when it looks like I do get something right. A while back I spewed my thoughts on the Iraq War, its motivations, and its implications. Briefly, the conclusion I came to was that the provided rationale for going to war (support of terrorism, WMD's, nuclear program, humanitarian concerns) was contrived and probably totally specious, and that the war would accomplish none of the stated primary goals of operation except remove Saddam Hussein from power. In fact, this is pretty much how it has worked out: there was no weapons programs, consequently there was no potential for the former regime to aid terrorists, and there has been little immediate progress against "the forces of terrorism" - in fact, it seems you would have to be deceiving yourself to say the current environment in Iraq hasn't attracted new jihadists to the area. I also said that I thought the main motivating reason behind the war was democratization. Democratization has two aspects:

1) Democratization of Iraq prope. This is desirable because a democratic Iraq is inevitably much friendlier to its neighbors and to U.S. interests than a dictatorship, especially one that is run by a sworn enemy. Accomplishing this objective at minimum is important because at the very least, it means that the U.S. has one less enemy and a sphere of influence in the middle east.

2) Democratization as an example for the greater Middle East. This is desirable for many reasons. One, the huge antagonistic force we are fighting at this point in time is Islamic totalitarianism, exemplified by bin Laden and his associates. Reasonable people may disagree about the extent two which these forces currently pose a threat to the United States, but it is undeniable that the ideology is extremely dangerous and antagonistic. Democracy necessarilly excludes Islamic totaliaranism and its success in the middle ease will be a huge blow to it. Second, an implicit belief of the Bush people seems to be that turning Arab countries into democracies will significantly lower the tension that characteristically plagues the area. Third, as before, other democracies are more likely to turn out regimes friendly to the U.S. and U.S. interests. This means more U.S. influence in a region that is vital to our economy.

Back in October I predicted that the democratization objectives of the war would turn out decidedly more positively than any other causes. With what's going on in Lebanon, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the Palestinian Authority, and to some extent Syria, it appears that my prediction was right. Of course the by all counts successful election in Iraq goes to this credit as well.

On the other hand, I said before that I am totally against the way all of this was carried out. One can say without cynicism that Administration cronies exploited the fear environment created by 9/11 to sell a distorted case for a war, and that is not acceptable. Presenting false intelligence and rationales to the American public, probably with the knowledgeable intent to deceive, is a terrible precedent to be setting - especially when the issue in question is something on the magnitude of a war. Further, word has it that the war itself was not particularly carefully or well-executed. I can't comment on this aspect; I'll let the reality speak for itself, and leave commenting on it to those with greater knowledge of miltary policy, or greater pretense to know about such things.

The dillemma I face is was any of this possible without the mendaciousness, deception, and strong-arm tactics with which this administration carried out this war? Is it really possible to say, "I like what is going on now, but I would have gone about it better"? The central question there is whether the country ever would have bought into a war based exclusively on subtle and long-term structural goals like democracy reform in the middle east. It's possible that the country would have bought into that rationale alone, but it would have required a much longer period of selling the war, which the administration just didn't have time for. Or it's possible that all the best political analysis said that the democracy pitch was a big loser. Ultimately, this war forces us to ask fundamental questions about the nature of the foreign policy process in our country. In theory, war is supposed to only be declared by Congress representative of the wishes of its constituents, whereas the President is only supposed to be able to suggest war to a critical Congress, and then choose when to carry it through once it has been passed. In reality there are all kinds of vaguely worded loopholes that allow for the use of force in "extenuating circumstances" and "matters of urgent national interest" and the like, and the War Powers Resolution which allows for the unmediated use of force for 60 days. In fact, a formal declaration of war has been resorted to on only 5 occassions in U.S. history. De facto, we have a situation where the president who is elected has unlimited control of military force, within reasonable constraints. We should be asking what role the public should play in foreign policy decisions, and how much accountability Congress should have to the public on these matters, which is currently very little. We should also be asking whether in matters of national interest in which the public is not informed is it OK for authorities to present a distorted case for a benign foreign policy action. Basically we have to clarify the precise role that the public, and presumably Congress which is supposed to represent them, is going to play in the formation of foreign policy decisions in the future.

Interesting Searches

People are continuing to reach my blog through searches even though I haven't been updating. The first one involves, as unlikely as this may be, someone at Bank Of America musing about quote "Could the disparity eventually lead to the class conflict that Karl Marx and Max Weber predicted? " Apparently this person is quite conflicted. Way to go continuing to perpetuate disparities in wealth through your facilitation of the capitalist system and then agonizing over its philosophical consequences.

The second noteworthy search came someone wondering about "Immanuel Kant's views on gay marriage." I wasn't aware that the gay marriage debate extended back to the 18th century. Kind of reminds me of the title of one of Oren Cass's blog posts, "Shakespeare opposed the war in Iraq," but that one was supposed to be a joke.

For The b(n)erds

You know how when you get only one hit on google search (including any hidden results), the corresponding search phrase is refered to as a "googlewhack?"I hereby introduce the logical successor to the googlewhack, the "blogwhack."

Everyone who has a blog takes a pride in seeing their site come up on a search engine. When your site comes up high in the search results, especially when it is number one, it is especially rewarding. Since for the majority, the only conceivable way of attaining this status is for the search to turn out a single result, the "blogwhack" is a vital commodity for any blogger's self-esteem.

The blogwhack is any search phrase that lands the user at your site, and ONLY your site. I will leave it to the more nerdily-inclined to come up with a scoring system. I leave as a suggestion that it take into account, along the lines of the googlewhack, the 1) commoness of the individual words as measured by the number of search hits they produce individually, 2) the number of words (the fewer the better). In addition, I think it should somehow take into account context (not sure how).

New Format

From now on, the format of my posting will be that short, succint, or topical posts will be posted with bold post headings, to indicate that they should be read as blog posts. Longer more involved posts, or posts on topics that are not typical to blogs will be posted without a heading, to indicate that they are to be read more as essays.

Stick to Foreign Policy

Nicholas Kristof has written an editorial demonstrating, with scientific precision, why New York Times writers should just not write about science. Actually, I would tell the paper to just stop trying to write on science altogether, and that there is no good reason for them to, but their science page can sometimes have impressive photos of other galaxies and things...

Let's start here:

Genes that promote spirituality may do so in part by stimulating chemical messengers in the brain like dopamine, which can make people optimistic and sociable - and perhaps more likely to have children.

The sentence that follows it, however should really be read in the original print so that the full impact of its absurdity can be appreciated:

(Dopamine is very complex, but it appears linked to both spirituality and promiscuity, possibly explaining some church scandals.)

Let's forget the fact that priests, and nuns, swear an eternal marriage to God, and have no sexual outlets. Like maybe that explains it a little more easily.

Anyway, the suggestion of the article, it seems, is that spirituality may be genetically determined.

One bit of evidence supporting a genetic basis for spirituality is that twins
separated at birth tend to have similar levels of spirituality, despite
their
different upbringings. And identical twins, who have the same DNA, are
about
twice as likely to share similar levels of spirituality as fraternal
twins.

Let me just give a quick version of my take on theories which assert the genetic determination of high-order social and psychological phenomena, and while it may be too ambitious for a simple blog entry, take it or leave it as it is.

Genes code for simple things. In particular, every gene codes for a specific protein which, when the gene is activated, is constructed in accordance

with the rules in the genetic code. This is true for every gene, no matter

what it codes for, no matter how complicated. Proteins have differing

target effects, and whatever their general effect on behavior is ascertained to

be, we ascribe that as the "function" of the gene. The key thing that must be

realized is that the things for which the manufactured protein has the most

direct effect, are the things for which we can say with most confidence that the

gene is "coding" for something. This is a simple matter of what we mean by

coding.

In popular parlance, it is said that such and such is a "gene

for autism" or a "gene for obesity." This is convenient usage, but it must not

be forgotten that what is really happening is that genes are coding for

proteins, which then have whatever effects they are going to have in the body.

It would be more correct to say that this gene codes for a protein which plays

as a factor in this bodily state. This may seem overly picky and unecessary,

when refering to things for which the route from the protein to the final bodily

effect observed is direct, such as simple physical traits. In many of these

cases, there can be isolated a single protein, and hence a single gene,

responsible for the observed phenomenon. For instance, blue eyes are the result

of a single pigment, whose production is moderated by a single gene (this result

is ficitious, but is provided for illustration). However, it is absolutely

essential to remember when dealing with complex and multifactorial traits the

true meaning of the process being refered to when one talks about this or that

gene.

Consider the factors that go into the creation of a complex

psychological and sociological phenomenon like spirituality. An astute response

to this challenge may be that the question is too broad, and that it only can be

answered in any partially satisfactory manner if some level of description is

specified. So consider the factors that go into the creation of this phenomenon

at the psychological or sociological level, the level most immediate to the

phenomenon of spirituality itself. For one, a person becomes spiritual if there

is a certain need in the person's life which can be fulfilled by spiritual

activity. A person may be seeking answers to large questions, may be seeking

comfort in some way, or may have the unfulfilled need for larger human

connections, all of which can be satisfied by spiritual life. Another factor is

the liking of the person for the spiritual experience in its worldly

incarnation. The person who is turned off by gatherings of large groups of

people which last for relatively long periods of time will tend not to gravitate

to going to church, and this may in turn influence their feelings towards

spirituality. Psychologically, you have many discrete, individually unrelated

factors which contribute to the making of spirituality. A person's ability for

abstract thought can predispose him to be able to understand the kind of

thinking that goes on in spiritual contexts, and conversely, a person who is not

able to grasp abstract thought can feel alienated from spiritual discourse, or

like it all appears meaningless so why bother. A person's sociability can

determine how willing he is to engage with large communities, which is a

prominent aspect of religious experience. Then on top of those you have social

factors, such as how able one is to get any of the aforementioned factors

fulfilled by activities other than religion. The need for meaning can be

fulfilled by finding an interesting field of study and engaging in that. The

need for social connection can be fulfilled by the presence of a close group of

good friends. If person finds fulfillment for a need via other outlets, that is

one less factor available to contribute to the development of spirituality.

In relating these first-order social and psychological factors, which

obviously are quite numerous by themselves, to the concept of the gene, the

chain of factors has to be continued into more and more basic levels of analysis

and causation. Hence, any given complex psychological factor such as, say,

sociability, can be reduced to its own set of more basic psychological factors,

such as disposition, extroversion, mood, conformism, etc. At some point,

presumably there is a threshold at which immaterial things such as psychological

and social considerations can begin to be reduced and attributed to material

things. Mood is reduced to the presence of certain neurotransmitters, activity

in certain parts of the brain, the presence of proper nutrient and energy

levels, the existence of certain hormones in the blood. The entire point of this

is to establish the role of causation of the genes. The chain continues for as

many levels as are necessary until the level of the encoded protein and its

function is reached, at which point it can be said meaningfully that a

particular gene takes is a factor.

The point is that for each additional

level in the chain of factors that can be attributed to a particular trait, the

causation becomes more indirect and more multifactorial, spread thinner over

more factors. For each additional level, the contribution of any given more

basic factor is less and less. This is not to say that all genes are not

determinative of behaviors. In theory, some may be. It is to say that, even though

they may be determinative in the development of certain behaviors or traits,

their determinative influence becomes increasingly indirect and manifold.

There is a certain philosophical issue that becomes relevant here. The

postulation of free will, depending on at which level of causation it is

posited, becomes a large and perhaps fatally complicating factor. Say that the

causal chain of factors, from protein up to prayer, is interupted by the fact

that so and so specifically wants to become a religious person. Maybe

it became a goal because that person read about a scientific study in which

religious people are purported to live longer and be healthier. There is no way

of accounting for this action, by the very definition of free will! It occured

independently of any kind of material cause. In fact, free will seems to mean

that it occured independently of any conceivable law. Therefore if you believe

in free will, it's hard to see that you should believe in genetic determinism

for any other than the most basic traits.

It should be obvious what therelation of this all to religion is. Religion is one of the most complex, higher-order things that exist. It's one of the most difficult things to relate directly to genetics. So, there comes a point when it's meaningless to say something is genetically caused.

However, this doesn't prevent it from making for a fascinating and important and

inspirational-sounding editorial... "It turns out that our DNA may predispose humans

toward religious faith" is a fascinating, but ultimately empty statement. Like

saying that DNA may predispose us to ride bicycles, or DNA predisposes us to

have friends. Of course DNA predisposes us to these things! In a sense, DNA predisposes us to do everything we do. But the farther away that thing is in causation from the actual activity of DNA, which is, basically encoding proteins, the less meaningful the statement becomes.

Blogged Her Hard

There's a new entry into the growing niche-blog scene. My classmate Dave Gottlieb has started a blog that consists entirely of "momma jokes." But be careful: everything is copyrighted under intellectual property laws.

The Other Side Of The Academic-Freedom Coin

In defending the right of Larry Summers to suggest that maybe there are innate differences in the cognitive strengths of men and women, I suppose that I am also beholden to defending the right of this guy, who is a tenured professor at the University of Colorado, to compare 9/11 victims to "Nazis."

In an essay, Churchill wrote that workers in the World Trade Center were the equivalent of "little Eichmanns," a reference to Adolf Eichmann, who ensured the smooth running of the Nazi system. Churchill also spoke of the "gallant sacrifices" of the "combat teams" that struck America.

It's cases like these that make the free speech issue really tough. On the one hand, people invoking the free speech clause usually do so under the assumption that their message is valid, and the truth is somehow being repressed. On the other hand, not everyone agrees on what constitues "valid" or "true," and so the right to free speech cannot be defined on these grounds. It seems that in order to function, the right to free speech must be absolute. Hence, when Noam Chomsky chooses to defend the French Holocaust Revisionist, he has every right to. (Actually, this case is a little more complicated, because Chomsky is actually defending someone else's right to free speech.) The repulsiveness or downright innaccuracy of the thing whose right to be publicized he is defending does not affect his right to defend it.

However, the way I see it, there is a countervailing factor here. And that is the force of public (or professional, or community opinion). Everyone has a right to say what they want, but complimentary to that, everyone else has a right, and even an obligation, to assign creedence as they see fit. The law does not dictate that people have to listen. This system strikes me as good because it allows for unfit statements or conclusions to be weeded out democratically, according to the opinion of the public, or the relevant community.

The problem here is that there is a distinct difference in the ability of communities of people to reach a consensus on the credibility or validity of a claim in the scientific communities versus the humanitarian communities. This is because scientific hypotheses are specifically constructed to be falsifiable, so that if they do not live up to a pre-agreed burden of proof, they are not considered as valid theories. Claims in the other half of academia, the humanities, are not subject to the same standards of rigor. Although something may not seem agreeable, perhaps to many people, there is no way to definitively say it is false. Anything conceivably can pass as "intellectually admissable." Hence there is potential for people to say many outlandish, offensive, or harmful things with no inborn mechanism by which the statement is automatically weeded out.

The real problem here is not that this professor is saying this, but that there are people listening. Ward Churchill is a tenured professor, and the chair of an entire department at a major university. Either he changed his modus opperendi dramatically since being hired, or some tenure committee made a really bad decision. Why are thousands of people attending his talks? The professor has the right to free speech, but this also means he has the right to take an extremely stupid comment back when he realizes how off-base it is. The fact that he's not, and he's standing by it, is extremely troubling. Even Larry Summers apologized for his remark. Our professor has pledged "I'm not backing up an inch."

Perhaps it is somewhat indicative of the current state of affairs in academia today that a scientist who suggests innate differences in the sexes might explain some factual data gets walked out on in disgust, and a tenured professor who compares the victims of a terror attack to genocidal exterminators is rewarded with audiences numbering into the thousands, and defended by the ACLU for his right to free speech.

Oren Cass must be beside himself on this one...

Attention - Public Service Announcement

I don't know what to say in response to that last entry, except for the fact that absolutely no one reads my blog so the message is bound to be wasted, and that the cause might be better served by reporting it to the Better Business Bureau.

Sad to see that Jung won't be blogging for a while. This makes blogging less fun for me, and I'm inclined to take a break until the summer as well. Note, though, that I'm exercising the proper courtesy here in clearly indicating that there won't be much updating going on in the next few months, so as to minimize inconvenience. It seems to me that standards of etiquette are hugely underappreciated in the blog world, and in the computer world in general. How hard is it to leave a short post so people will know you won't be posting for a while and not to check your blog? A partial explanation for this phenomenon is the anonymity factor. That is, the presence of standards of etiquette is inversely related to the degree anonymity. If you wanted to further the ethical analysis, you could draw the conclusion that this shows that etiquette - which is supposed to be an impersonal imperative - is actually very much dependent on personal factors.

But Adam, readers of this blog will undoubtably retort, you're an incredibly rude person online. This is true. I am guilty of impersonating other people, typing in annoying fonts, sending cryptic messages and generally annoying people at times. I am well aware that there are numerous people who treat me with much affection in real life who refuse to talk to me online for this very reason. Hopefully this is something that will go away with maturity, or with getting beyond seeing AIM as an inherently ironic medium. (Interesting side question: would I respond a similar way to the introduction of the telephone if I was alive for that era?)

I guess it would be appropriate to leave with a series of links to blogs that I read on a regular basis, in case anyone should land at my blog, looking for something to do.
http://www.swarthmore.edu/SocSci/tburke1/
http://oxblog.blogspot.com/
http://www.andrewsullivan.com/ (sometimes)
http://yglesias.typepad.com/
http://athameblade.blogspot.com/
http://dfmoore.mu.nu/
http://www.orencass.com
http://www.amherst.edu/~dmgottlieb/

PC-Patrol, PC-Patrol

Everyone on the college circuit has been hearing about Lawrence Summers' recent controversial remark on innate differences in the sexes. The exact incident and statement are hard to reconstruct, but we can make a reasonable estimate as to what transpired. Summers was giving a speech at a meeting of economists adjourned for the purpose of researching issues relevant to women and minorities in science and engineering and, according to event organizers, "was asked to be provocative." He was invited to speak as a scientist and economist, not as a Harvard official. Therefore, his words are correctly interpreted as being stated within the interest of science by a scientist. In this light, you can do a fairly good job of reconstructing what was said and in what context. According to cnn.com, Summers suggested that "innate differences between the sexes could help explain why fewer women succeed in science and math careers...[and] also questioned how great a role discrimination plays in keeping female scientists and engineers from advancing at elite universities." Additionally (all from CNN) he also cited the "possible factor that he cited was mothers' reluctance or inability to work 80-hour weeks."

The thing is, no one knows what the cause is. It's a hypothesis, stated by a scientist, at a conference of scientists, to discuss science. Although I'm personally inclined to disagree, lots of people speculate that it may be true, and no one has done enough research on it yet, so is it wrong to suggest that this area of scientific research be explored? Physical differences exist between men and women in the body, is it so unreasonable to suggest that they exist in the brain as well?

The reaction from inflamed PC patrollers is predictably absurd. "It is so upsetting that all these brilliant young women (at Harvard) are being led by a man who views them this way," says Nancy Hopkins of MIT.

Summers' own explanation is perfectly explanatory. From CNN:

I apologize for any adverse impact ... on our common efforts to make steady progress in this critical area.

I suppose the offended people would prefer that researchers not make progress in this area. But what makes this different from people trying to stop stem cell research for religious or political reasons? In this case I'm going to have to come down and say Summers did the honorable thing of putting his being a scientist before his being a University president in a politically-hypersensitive culture. I personally am extremely happy to see that someone like Summers as the head of a prominent university, because hopefully his example of putting fact before political correctness will make college culture a less annoying and unendurable thing for future generations of college students.

Update: Noted Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker (via Andrew Sullivan) says "First, let’s be clear what the hypothesis is—every one of Summers’ critics has misunderstood it. The hypothesis is, first, that the statistical distributions of men’s and women’s quantitative and spatial abilities are not identical—that the average for men may be a bit higher than the average for women, and that the variance for men might be a bit higher than the variance for women...Second, the hypothesis is that differences in abilities might be one out of several factors that explain differences in the statistical representation of men and women in various professions...Look, the truth cannot be offensive. Perhaps the hypothesis is wrong, but how would we ever find out whether it is wrong if it is “offensive” even to consider it? People who storm out of a meeting at the mention of a hypothesis, or declare it taboo or offensive without providing arguments or evidence, don’t get the concept of a university or free inquiry." With the additional great line, "Good grief, shouldn’t everything be within the pale of legitimate academic discourse, as long as it is presented with some degree of rigor? That’s the difference between a university and a madrassa."

Second Update: Here's a really interesting link to a "Ph.D" blogger who humbly has chosen to remain anonymous. "Well, I've got news for you, Larry. My son, whose father took him to see the first X-Prize launch, calls SpaceShipOne the 'Mama Plane' and the 'Baby Plane.' So I think maybe a little more research needs to be done on this topic before your darling daughter--who I'm sure was raised in a completely non-sexist environment (not)--can really serve as definitive proof that girls can't do math and science. Dumbass."

Reader Feedback

I got an interesting comment on my quick post on the gay marriage debate and I've been meaning to respond to it. It comes from a self-proclaimed evangelical who agrees with my speculation that the religious majority opposing gay marriage and other issues of interest to the gay community are doing so out of animus to the concept of homosexuality:

First, I think you are accurate when you suggest that a lot of people react to any advancement of the "gay rights" agenda out of sheer animus. I am an evangelical Christian, unashamed to say so, but it grieves me when I see this kind of thinking. I supported, for instance, President Clinton's "don't ask, don't tell"--unlike most of my evangelical friends, because to me it hit the right balance: why should homosexuals not be allowed to serve in the military if a structure is put into place whereby military readiness will not be compromised thereby? If you are homosexual, but no one knows it, it's hard to see how the military is compromised, such as studies have suggested it might be in the event this were known.

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I think that evangelicals have lost credibility by opposing anything/everything that might in some way benefit homosexuals; I for one do not think that that is right or wise.

I can actually think of reasons why having even undisclosed homosexuals in the armed forces could compromise operational effectiveness. If part of the idea of keeping women out of the armed forces is to eliminate the distractions that come with the presence of romantic relationships among the soldiers (and I think this is a good reason) then the same can be said for homosexuals in the military. But I guess the "don't ask don't tell" policy presumes that the sexuality of the soldiers will be subsumed enough in service-type situations that the issue of any kind of relationships among soldiers, heterosexual or homosexual, will be non-existent.

The reader brings up the common issue of legislating morality, as it is called. He writes,

Further, I don't think it ought to be illegal for people to engage in homosexual sex. The fact that I consider it immoral doesn't mean it ought to be against the law. There are many things that are NOT immoral that are illegal (driving on the left side of the road) and others that are clearly wrong (lying to your boss) which shouldn't land you in court. Most evangelicals are against removing laws that prohibit homosexual sex, but I am not.

This brings to mind that there are possibly two ways that something can be "immoral." Something can be immoral on a personal level. Thus I may see someone as immoral because he eats dairy products with bacon, doesn't shower, and doesn't believe in a god. Usually, immorality in this way seems to derive from failure to live up to some kind of pre-conceived standard of personal behavior or criteria for the Good life. It lies in the individual failing to live up to a code of good behavior usually designed to ensure individual well-being. Then something can be immoral on a social level. Murder, theft and basically any kind of crime fall under this category. In this case the thing is immoral, or perhaps you could loosely translate as "bad," because of the way it is harmful to other people. Looked at this way, social immorality can be seen as a coercive social construct designed to ensure optimal social conditions.

What kind of morality should we legislate, if any? My gut feeling is that only morality that is based in social well-being is the kind of morality we should legislate. Without a doubt, many thinkers have mulled this very question over for ages. Perhaps Jung can give us a primer on the various philosophical attempts to answer this question.

Even using the assumption that morality of social consequence is the only thing we should ever legislate, the issue of gay marriage is not settled. My guess is that a good number of people who support legislation like the Marriage Ammendment do so not out of policy considerations or legal prudence, but rather as a moral reaction to homosexuality. Others, however, have genuine concerns about the social byproducts of something like gay marriage. A libertarian point of view would say that whatever people choose to do in the privacy of their own bedroom is free game, because as long as there is active consent involved it doesn't hurt anyone or anything else. A more institutional thinker can find ways in which gay marriage can affect the integrity of our society overall, whether it's via homosexuals seducing other people into their sinful lifestyle, contributing to the demise of family structure and familial values, or lowering the assessment of the human race in the eyes of God...any number of things. Conservative blogger and outspoken advocate for gay issues Andrew Sullivan has framed his entire argument for gay marriage around the issue of systemic social effects, and how instituionalizing gay marriage would actually be beneficial. He argues that instituting gay marriage will encourage the gay couples out there to be more monogamous and form stabler family structures, and that the lack of ability to marry is currently a big obstacle in the way of stability, family values, and moral values for the gay community. I tend to think that he's right, and that marriage would help to ameliorate some of the socially troublesome aspects of the gay community.

Other people foresee that the opposite would occur, and that legalizing gay marriage would diminish the strength of the institution of marriage. In one way or another, all these arguments seem to boil down to something about demeaning the fundamental sacredness of the covenant of marriage. If gays are allowed to marry, the argument goes, people will find the bond of marriage less sacred, and will be less willing to enter into marriage themselves, thus undermining the whole purpose of the institution. Of course for some people, homosexuality is fundamentally unsanctified. It's an unholy and depraved social phenomenon and its existence is an intrinsic social problem, end of story. If you suppose this, then it's inevitable that you would oppose legalization of gay anything, and I think the comment I received confirms that this is a very real rationale for a substantial portion of the country.

People can debate whether or not there is a personal moral failing in homosexuality, but of course this shouldn't dictate legislation. These matters are for good reason left to the religious institutions and the individual to decide. The Declaration of Independence says that every man should be free to pursue happiness, as long as he is not hurting anyone else. In philosophical terms, this means to me that government powers in the United States are intended to be limited to those issues with direct social ramifications. That is, I can't use the law against someone because they are a "bad person" but only because they have done something bad, in the sense of done something socially harmful. In practice, will this result in an any less moral world? Are we losing the opportunity to uphold morality? I don't think so. I mean, if someone is really a bad person, any social circle they encounter will shun them, the teachings of their religion and religious figures will attempt to correct them...there are plenty of ways for misguided people to "get the message" other than through government mandate.

Adam's House Of Whiskey And Jass Music

It's been a long time since I updated - I know. Fear not readers - this blog is still alive and kicking. So vacation is over. We're back in the school grind once again, which is interesting if you own a blog because of all the random hits coming in from frenzied students on some random last-minute research spree. Apparently, I've now become an "information source" (so all appropriations of information contained within this site must be formally cited) on turn-of-the century psychologists, along with some "Continental" (not sure if that's the correct terminology...) philosophers thanks to Jung (i.e. Arendt, Hegel, Locke). I've also learned that misspelling commonly misspelled words is an extremely good way to find a market niche as a struggling blogger, since search engines don't correct spelling automatically in their searches, only suggest alternattive spellings (I'll probably get ten additional hits for that misspelling alone.)

I've gotten into listening to jazz again (jass - it's authentic Creole, and it will score you some bonus hits -- pub ), and might begin to play it again somewhat seriously, which means playing with the express goal of getting better, not just to have fun. I took out a whole bunch of jazz CD's from the public library to blatantly illegally burn them onto my computer. Which reminds me of the following public service announcement: libraries are quite amazing and everyone should use them instead of bookstores. But back to the message. I picked up some Dizzy Gillespie big band, Dave Brubeck, and Wynton Marsalis. Anyone who knows anything about my personal opinions knows that picking up a Wynton ( how about 'Winton' - there's no standard spelling for "Wynton" anyway right?) Marsalis CD strongly violates my musical ethic, because Wynton is an annoying person, at least when he's speaking.

Among some of the more annoying things he has done was his work as the main musician interviewee and designated "creative consultant" for the PBS Ken Burns Jazz series, which ended up biasing the whole thing towards a) black people b) people who have never experimented with electronic instruments c) himself. Let's be fair. Black people should obviously get the large majority of the coverage in a documentary on the origin of jazz, since their cultural contribution is undoubtedly more than fifty percent of the art form. However, many whites made great contributions to jazz, including George Gershwin, Bill Evans, and Chick Corea (who's actually Hispanic...), although these greats were hardly mentioned. The project was essentially a statement on black oppression and slavery, which is a good and important message to emphasize in a development on the origins of jazz, but not as much as they did. On many occasions, jazz was referred to as "great black music," or something to that effect. I know this is a Ken Burn's documentary; therefore it is dumbed down a little bit. In fact I really wouldn't care if it were not for the fact that this kind of thinking is entirely consistent with Marsalis's very outspoken view of jazz as an ethnically supremacist music, if one can use the term.

Marsalis has cast himself as the protector and guardian of pure jazz, which is floundering amid all the experimentation with unholy forms of music and white people (Ok, I'm exaggerating the last part a little.. On numerous occasions in the documentary, he literally says only black people can play jazz. He routinely regards himself and possibly also his brothers as the greatest hope jazz has to "stay alive" in this terrible age of crisis. He discards entire branches of development in jazz as illegitimate.  Hence his personal and professional vendetta against Herbie Hancock, the far superior musician and artist, and his getting less than a minute coverage in the documentary. The great thing though is that, despite his tendency to deviate from orthodox jazz at times, at the end of the day Herbie Hancock is the one who has written scores of enduring jazz standards. Wynton is a good musician, great performer, questionable commentator, but he has contributed little to the art form creatively. In fact, even his albums are virtual recyclings of other musicians' arrangements of various songs.

The truth is he really has become, more than many other superior musicians, the face and voice of contemporary jazz, and he has filled the role quite effectively. At first glance it seems odd that someone with only modest contributions to jazz at best has arrived as it's most prominent public figure. But there are a few reasons I can think of for why this is:

• The first explanation comes from an observation that I've made repeatedly over time while playing with jazz musicians: for some reason, as a breed, jazz musicians are seriously inarticulate. I have no idea why this is. Wynton is highly verbal, articulate, and erudite, so he fills the void for spokesmen left in jazz quite nicely.

• The second is that good musicians would rather spend their time working on their art than talking about it. I'm sure he still gets some playing in there, but it's true that Marsalis has a kind of second job of professional spokesman for jazz. Other musicians either have different priorities or don't see that as the role for a musician.

• The third explanation is that jazz has deteriorated in some sense to the point where so little is going on creatively that a guy who talks a lot about how great jazz used to be becomes the modern day prophet. This is possible.

One other major thing that Wynton has going in his favor is his family name, of course. His father and several siblings are all respectable musicians and jazz figures in their own right. His brother the saxophonist Branford, is at least as good a musician in my opinion, and almost as well-known.

Anyway, I say all this because I just listened to a few of Wynton's latest CD's, and can recognize for the first time that he is really good. He's not very original, and doesn't write many good songs from what I can see, but his technical and musical skils are considerable. His music is probably the best example of what good contemporary jazz that hasn't changed style or done anything innovative in the last forty years should sound like. There's something about straightforward jazz with no frills that's easy on the ears and appealing. He definitely has something to teach about how to play so it's listenable.

...As a fairly bizarre aside, has anyone ever noticed how artists are always in the most unnatural poses on the cover of albums? It's like, they're either wearing absurdly reflective glasses and staring out into the distance in some direction, or looking at the camera with their arms in the most contorted, unnatural position, or something. If I ever made an album, I would just be staring right into the camera and smiling. Like Pee Wee Herman, but one level more cool. But it's not nearly as strange as most of the other album covers out there, if you really look at it...