Rational Philosophy

Last week I wrote about the long term risk posed by the Bush administration’s tame response to President Musharraf’s abrupt dismantling of Pakistan’s democratic apparatus. I framed the administration’s reluctance to come down hard on Musharraf in terms of political expediency. But as I read the NY Times recent interview with Musharraf, it occurred to me that Musharraf and Bush perhaps have a lot in common, and that maybe subconsciously (or consciously) Bush doesn’t want to take strong steps against Musharraf because he identifies with him. Not that we should take everything Bush says literally, but he has been quoted as referring to Musharraf as “my buddy and my friend.”

“The emergency is to ensure elections go in an undisturbed manner,” Musharraf says, which reminds me of Bush’s defense of domestic surveillance as necessary to maintain security.

“I know what [the Pakistan people] feel about the emergency when all these suicide bombings were taking place,” Musharraf commented on the increase in suicide bombings, “Their view is, Why have I done it so late.” Which recalls Bush’s insistence that the American people elected him and support his policy of invading Iraq.

The Times also reports that Musharraf defended his dismantling of the Supreme Court because the court had questioned the validity of his re-election. Similarly Bush has attempted, and in some cases
succeeded, in redefining standards for torture, or ignoring international conventions or protocols, because he doesn’t like the restrictions they place on him.

When we identify with someone, psychologically speaking, we connect characteristics they posses with similar characteristics that we attribute favorably to ourselves. Identification has served us well as a species. Identification induces empathy which helps us reach outside ourselves to help others. But identification also presents a particular danger that we need to guard against: With an excess of ego, we can wrongly perceive a characteristic that we possess as good, and, by extension identify and sympathize with that characteristic in others.

Bush seems to believe that his arrogance is justified. He knows better than the courts, he thinks, about what he should do and what is acceptable. He convinces himself that he is right to work outside or to twist the rule of law. If Bush were to condemn Musharraf for similar actions he would create dissonance in his view of himself.

Bush likes to perceive himself as popular and in tune with the people. Musharraf, the same. Outwardly, the trait they believe they possess is a feeling for the people; they like to view themselves as regular guys, men of the people. The true identification seems to be murkier. Perhaps they each recognize a similar weakness in the other, a desire to be liked and understood. It seems that they each feel defensive and inferior, feelings that bring with them a certain bravado (which brings us back to their arrogance).

Referring to the jailed the head of Pakistan’s Human Rights Commission, Asma Jahangir, Musharraf calls her “quite an unbalanced character.”

Interestingly, this comment reminds me of Rudy Giuliani and his now famous rant against the “crazy” owners of ferrets (going back to when he was Mayor of NY City).

Rudy Giuliani has said that he would not urge the Bush administration to cut off financial aid to the Musharraf government. “I would not second-guess any president on that because I think they’re in the middle of a very difficult situation right now,” Giuliani said to The Associated Press.

Perhaps Giuliani’s identifies with Musharraf, too. Something we should keep in mind as we move toward next year’s elections.

New studies provide evidence that young children entering school with behavioral problems don’t necessarily suffer poor academic performance in older grades, and that children exhibiting symptoms of attention deficit disorder may in fact just have slower development of certain areas of the brain, something that eventually will right itself.

On a different, but, I think, related subject the incredible scientific work that’s been done to decode the human genome brings with it the possibility that information about genetic differences will fuel racial stereotypes.

When my own daughter began having some problems keeping up in school a few years ago, I was concerned and surprised that several people quickly suggested she might have ADHD. At that time it already seemed to me that ADHD had become a reflex diagnosis, a ready explanation for too many real or perceived problems, and my own experience only served to help confirm that.

Of course, as a logical rebuttal to this line of reasoning one could say that many children have been helped by the diagnosis and treatment of behavioural problems and ADHD. But my question is how many have been harmed and whether there wouldn’t have been a better way to integrate the information then available into our understanding of child development.

As the article on genetic differences between races points out, we should be worried that the output of genetic research will be used selectively by those who have ulterior motives, and that by its nature it will give an incomplete picture of any genetic differences between races.

Both situations point to the human characteristic of leaping to conclusions. It’s a useful, sometimes extremely useful, mental tool to be able to abstract and apply a pattern from a set of data. In everyday life, the risks of abstraction tend to be low and the upside tends to be high. But when we’re talking about complex and farreaching abstractions which can affect the lives of thousands and millions of people, we need to be very cautious about the conclusions we draw.

When we draw conclusions from partial analysis we will inevitably draw incorrect or incomplete conclusions. I say that we will draw incorrect or incomplete conclusions rather than that we may draw incorrect or incomplete conclusions because a conclusion drawn on partial analysis will be, by its nature, incorrect or incomplete. (To show this by analogy, let’s say that we’re quickly shown a piece of paper on which are printed a large number of small circles. We’re asked to guess how many circles we’ve seen. Even if we guess the correct number of circles, our answer is still a guess. Likewise, if we diagnoze a child with ADHD and the child turns out to have ADHD, but our diagnosis was based on an incomlpete set of criteria, the diagnosis is still flawed even though the outcome is what it would have been had we had a complete set of criteria.)

The critical question though is one of how we should approach such situations in life. We’ll always be faced with life circumstances that provide us with the need to reach a conclusion without all the data. As a society we will inevitably face questions or policy or approach knowing that new studies will bring to light new information. We can’t avoid decisions just because we don’t have perfect analyses.

Which brings me to my point: It seems critical that we should not fool ourselves into thinking that we have sufficient information to a draw a conclusion when we don’t in fact have sufficient information, whether or not we have to make a decision.

When earlier studies indicated that behavioural problems indicated reason to worry about later school performance or that ADHD symptoms indicated a need for ADHD drugs there should have been significant discussion of the likelihood that these studies were incomplete and may lead to overdiagnosis. Even a lay person could have raised skepticism about the rates of diagnosis. How did so many kids get through school just fine before ADHD was even heard of?

As a society we need to develop a process of reasonable skepticism.

Right now, with the research into genetic characteristics, we need to build skepticism into our findings. We need to recognize that the conclusions we draw will be incorrect and incomplete. If we don’t do that we know only too well that many will be quite happy to take the incomplete data and put them to work in the service of ill-conceived agendas.

Yesterday, I visited my wife’s uncle’s house to celebrate his son’s birthday. On the television, the Washington Redskins played the Philadelphia Eagles. I’m not much of a sports fan. I get caught up in World Cup soccer once every four years if the time zone works, or the occasional playoff or world series game, but, as men go, I’m pretty much on the non-sports-watcher end of the spectrum. It took me about three minutes to become interested in the game between the Redskins and the Eagles. I know neither team, neither record this season, none of the players, there was no social charge to the viewing event (the TV was on, but no one was really watching,) but there I am taking an interest, beginning to follow the commentary and how it relates to the drama of the game. Why? I was curious observing myself and amused each time I poked my head back into the den to catch up on the play.

Later in the day I was browsing philosophical blogs, checking out the competition and getting absorbed in some of the ideas. I came across a blog entry about watching sport. The blogger proposes that watching sport is perhaps not a rational activity and has no easy explanation. He tests and refutes various theories such as the watcher’s involvement in the beauty of game. With my own sport-watching experience so fresh in my mind, the post got me thinking.

Another data point: I grew up in England where “snooker” (a game somewhat similar to pool) gets a lot of TV viewers. Although I doubt he’d ever played the game, my grandfather would sit for hours in our living room watching “the snooker,” much to my annoyance, since he was monopolozing the one TV in the house. Snooker is hardly a sport (many players smoke and drink during the game — one of the players, a Canadian, I think,
had a doctor’s dispensation that permitted him to consume more than the officially allotted amount of alcohol during games to keep his hands from trembling). So, the question of why we watch sport can be generalized to one of why we watch (or listen to, or read about) games. (If you’re dubious about this generalization, consider those who watch chess or poker or bridge matches.)

Monty Python dramatized the humor in our obsession with watching games as apparently tedious as cricket (a cricket match can last five days with extended periods during which ostensibly nothing happens), with a sketch that took the form of commentary on Thomas Hardy writing a novel. (For those who’ve read Thomas Hardy’s novels, this is doubly amusing.) I urge you to follow this link and read a transcript of the sketch.

My theory is this: The dramatic element in games and sport compels us to follow them. The thrust and parry of competition, however tame in reality, becomes magnified by our psychological makeup.

Evolution tends to select those forms better able to survive. A great factor in our survival has been our capacity for abstract thought, for reasoning, strategizing, analyzing, outwitting or outmanuevering our competition. We’ve used this capacity to keep ourselves safer from dangerous predators, from enemies and rivals, from the harsh elements of nature. Without wanting to exaggerate the point, the process of living for conscious beings is like a game aimed at survival, a competition against forces that would have us not survive.

Games test our ability to prevail against challenges and odds. Sports do the same with the added demand of physical ability. Observing sports and games calls upon a deep part of our instinct; we analyze the angles, engage vicariously in the challenges the players face. This involvement can be so direct and emotional that we merge our desires and ambitions with those of the competitors. If our team loses, psychologically speaking, we lose.

I didn’t catch the end of the Redskins - Eagles game. When I stopped watching, the Eagles had just gone one point ahead in the fourth quarter, although the Redskins looked to have the edge in terms of ball play. But today I see that the Redskins lost badly, or the Eagles won handsomely, depending on which way you look at it.

My advice to sports-watchers who don’t like spending so much time in front of the TV is this — just try to avoid it; you’ll be happier for it. If that’s not possible, sit back and enjoy it; you’re engaging in an activity that, over many generations and in a more productive form, has enabled the human race to reach the point at which a man can sit back and watch football on a Sunday afternoon…

(Beware: This news is already a day old. Sniff before ingesting.)

It took me several Google searches to find the Hilary Clinton “fact hub” entry that rebuts the charge that Hilary Clinton’s entourage didn’t tip its waitress after a meal at an Iowa Maid-Rite. (No-one seems to want to know what Clinton was doing eating at a Maid-Rite in the first place; didn’t she just have a million dollar birthday party?) Hillary’s campaign team has established the “Fact Hub” as a method of rapidly disseminating such critical details as the amount the meal actually cost and the amount of tip that was actually left. After the first couple of failed searches, I would not have continued to look for Hillary’s Fact Hub website unless I’d needed the website’s address to put in this entry, so I remain unconvinced about whether it serves its ostensible purpose. But that’s not why I write.

I write because in an interview with the Times, the Maid-Rite waitress, in lamenting the media’s focus on the matter when other seemingly far more important things are going on in the world, commented “You people really are nuts.”

Maybe not nuts, but certainly priorities are awry. Where have we come to when political process hones in on such inane details?

Ironically, perhaps the first democratic processes appeared in Mesopotamia, a region now known as Iraq.  Admittedly, Iraq has strayed far from the democratic path since then, but exporting American democracy kind of feels like hawking a used car when you know the undercarriage is rusted out. (Something that happened to me recently, but that’s another story.)

Can democracy really withstand the weight of the fluff that’s piled atop it?

One presumes that the system of checks and balances between congress, senate and the judiciary gives the country some protection against a severly broken democratic process. We should worry about such things as the current administration’s flouting of international processes and conventions, and we should worry about its redefinition of what’s legal. These kinds of things deserve a vigorous response, perhaps more vigorous than the response has been. But I’m thinking more about the fundamental process of democracy.

If I have it right, democracy aims to permit society to decide how it should be governed, what the economic policies should be, the law of the land, the policies for education and investment in infrastructure and healthcare, etc., etc. If it’s to work, democracy requires two things:

1. A fair system by which to select qualified leaders.

2. A fair system by which to influence those leaders toward choices that reflect the educated will of the people.

In America today, I would argue that neither of these requirements can be met with any degree of confidence. Here’s why.

We scrutinze the qualifications of those who govern through a lense of such intense focus that we see the pimples on the chin but not the axe in the hand. (Does it really matter whether Hillary left a tip at Maid-Rite? Do we really care? Would she really do such a thing through meanness or pettiness when she knows that the eyes of the world are watching?) We allow political candidates to be run off the podium for changing their mind or expressing doubt or being flawed. Aren’t all humans flawed? Do we really want to be governed only by those who are squeaky clean and offend no-one or are so good at hiding their flaws that we don’t see them for who they are?

And politicians seem to be influenced by many things, but not by the desire to reflect the educated will of the people. Rather than educating us, they want to sway us or dupe us, sometimes because they have ulterior motives, sometimes because they think we need to be swayed or duped. Rather than reflecting the will of the people (which is a long term thing), they seek to reflect the mood of the people (which fluctuates like anything else).

I realize that these arguments are one-sided. But when there is momentum in the wrong direction only by steering against that momentum can we hope to correct our course.

On a more heartening note, another story today tells the tale of a Kansas high school football team undefeated in 51 games. Roger Barta, the Smith Center Redmen’s coach isn’t proud of last month’s record-breaking game against Plainville, in which the Redmen took a 72-0 lead in the first quarter. As the NY Times reports Barta swapped in his freshmen lineup after the third touchdown, but his team kept scoring. He even went so far as to tell his players to run out of bounds or fall if they broke free. “Sure, we like our football around here,” Barta said. “But we truly believe it takes a whole town to raise a child, and that’s worth a whole lot more.”

Now isn’t that the kind of person you’d want running the country? …But wait, I think I see a pimple on his chin. Can I get a fact check on that?

�

(Or, the beauty of non-conformism.)

In one of the many magnificent set pieces of Joseph Heller’s Catch-22, Yossarian, a Second World War B52 bombadier, proposes to another character (Doc Daneeka, I think) that he should be allowed to return home. “Where would we be if everyone thought that way?” he is asked, “Then I’d be crazy not to,” Yossarian replies. A valid point.

In the world of science, examples of unorthodox thought that ultimately sweeps away a whole body of ill-formed ideas abound, as do examples of the hard road that the non-conformist must often trek — Galileo Galilei, for instance, found himself under indefinite house arrest for supporting Copernicus’s heliocentric view of the solar system. These days, a proposal that the sun revolves around the earth would be so ridiculous that it wouldn’t even draw ridicule, never mind the attention of the Inquisition.

In a lovely, scathing testament to his burning disdain for orthodoxy, Arthur Schopenhauer subtitled his essay On The Basis of Morality “not awarded a prize by the Royal Danish Society of Scientific Studies.” (His was the only entry to the competition.)

And just yesterday, MIT sued Frank Gehry’s architecture firm claiming design and construction failures in its Stata Center which has developed cracks, leaks and other problems. “These things are complicated,” Gehry said, “and they involved a lot of people, and you never quite know where they went wrong. A building goes together with seven billion pieces of connective tissue. The chances of it getting done ever without something colliding or some misstep are small.”

Many at MIT are happy with Gehry’s construction, as the NY Times reports: “It is a joy to work in this building,” said Rodney Brooks, a professor of robotics, “and I know that many of its occupants feel the same as I do about it. We asked Frank to give us a building that fostered communication, and he delivered.”

But it seems that Gehry is no stranger to disgruntled clients. Sometimes the very isolation of the lone voice speaks to the depth of its insight.

There’s an important philosophical aspect of non-conformism that I think we do well as a society and as individuals to remember. Human understanding works through three important processes:

1. Direct, immediate understanding. (A baby knows instinctively to reach for its mother’s nipple when hungry.)

2. Received understanding.  (What we know or think we know from being told or from reading or otherwise learning about how things work.)

3. Deduced, rational understanding. (What we piece together rationally from what we observe.)

The rational non-conformist then works from the third kind of understanding to debunk flawed examples of the second kind. Galileo used scientific observation to unseat the non-scientific theories of the geocentric worldview. When someone speaks out against an established understanding, then, we should ask ourselves whether that established understanding is something that we have simply accepted as fact, or whether we have arrived at it ourselves through a process of rational examination. If our answer is that we have no reason to believe it other than that everyone else seems to believe it, we should consider giving the non-conformist view our diligent attention.

This is, I think, what the Buddha had in mind when he said the following:

“Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it. Do not believe in anything simply because it is spoken and rumored by many. Do not believe in anything because it is found written in your religious books. Do not believe in anything merely on the authority of your teachers and elders. Do not believe in traditions because they have been handed down for many generations. But after observation and analysis, when you find anything that agrees with reason and is conducive to the good and benefit of one and all, then accept it and live up to it.” — Siddhartha Gautama (The Buddha), 563-483 B.C.

It’s perhaps not immediately obvious how this applies to Gehry; but I think it does. Implicit in Gehry’s architecture is the debunking of our expected ideas of what a building should look like. Apart from some very creative and aesthetically adventurous designs, his work says, “you don’t need to start with four walls at right angles.”

The wonderful thing about non-conformists of course is that they break the mold not just for themselves but for all future generations. We’ll never go back to believing that the sun revolves around the earth (well, most of us won’t). And, post-Gehry, innovative architects will never be afraid to make buildings look like we don’t expect them to look.

In an odd but apparently cleverly orchestrated sequence of events, Pakistan’s President Pervez Musharraf has tightened his grip on his rule by dispensing with the Supreme Court and scrapping the constitution. This only a few weeks after the return to Pakistan of the self-exiled former leader Banazir Bhutto (whose jubilant welcome-home parade was marred by a deadly bomb attack). And only months after Musharraf promised to relinquish his military post if elected president.

Apart from the obvious questions about how these distressing events will affect the future of Pakistan and the region, they pose another question that calls upon the current US administration to decide whether it will denounce Musharraf’s dismantling of democracy, or whether it will decide that it needs a friend in Pakistan more than it needs to stand by the principles of global freedom.

Surprising some, Pat Robertson, the television evangelist and Christian Coalition founder, has endorsed Republican White House hopeful Rudy Giuliani for president. Roberston feels that Giuliani’s qualities as a leader outweigh his shortcomings as someone who supports abortion and gay rights.

And house Republicans have joined Democrats to overturn the President’s veto of the water resources development act, just one a several funding bills that seem set to pit Republicans against their leader.

To quote American Theologian Tryon Edwards “Compromise is but the sacrifice of one right or good in the hope of retaining another - too often ending in the loss of both.” But is this the case? What is the philosophy of compromise?

If Bush continues to court Musharraf’s favor by going easy on him in the face of his anti-democratic measures he will discredit the very ideal he says he seeks to promote — global democracy. Now, there are some who think (I’m one of them) that Bush may even believe that he supports global democracy, when what he really wants is to feel safer and to make his friends and allies wealthier. In which case, compromise would seem to be the most attractive strategy; a slap on the wrist for Musharraf so that America can continue to rely on his support.

Reading Pat Robertson’s comments, his goal in compromise seems to be that he hopes to have a strong leader in the White House, one sympathetic to a broad swath of Christian concerns, even if not all of them.

And house Republicans seek to approve funding they feel their constituents support, even if it weakens the overall coherence of their party and its goals. The long term result of which may be that they hurt Republican chances in the next election and thereby risk not getting what their constituents want in the long term.

From a purely conceptual perspective, Tryon Edwards definition of compromise seems quite good: “the sacrifice of one right or good in the hope of retaining another.” But what Edwards’ sobering analysis doesn’t account for is whether, if one were not to compromise, one would forgo a greater right or good. What’s the alternative? in other words.

Therefore, in considering any specific instance of a compromise, we need to evaluate three things:

1. What do we give up by the compromise?
2. What do we gain by the compromise?
3. What options do we have if we don’t compromise?

Bush’s task at hand will be made more difficult if he denounces Musharraf’s actions and isolates Pakistan. But it won’t be made impossible. From a practical perspective, even without Pakistan’s support Bush can continue to fight the war on terror, albeit less adeptly (if that’s the right word). As a matter of principle, not denouncing Musharraf’s actions would undermine Bush’s declared objectives and make a further global mockery of his rhetoric of freedom.

It’s hard to know what Robertson expects to gain from his endorsment of Giuliani, and it’s hard to imagine that he will lose a great deal by endorsing him, but he did have alternatives (McCain, for instance) who would have provided a safer bet. Perhaps then his endorsement of Giuliani reflects a more principled choice than it might first appear. Perhaps he really does believe that Giuliani will make a strong leader and that this is more important than having a president who doesn’t support abortion and gay rights.

And for the house Republicans, voting with the president would have meant voting, symbolically at least, in favor of fiscal responsibility. This would have been a greater good, perhaps, than achieving some short-lived favor with their constituents. But perhaps the chance to distance themselves from Bush was just too appealing to pass up.

�

Or “will the real statistic please stand up.”

Last week I found myself both defending Giuliani against critics that he’d lied to make his case against socialized medicine and criticizing him for using selective statistics. Now I feel compelled to criticize N. Gregory Mankiw for criticizing the use of healthcare statistics, not because his criticisms are wrong, but because he couches his arguments in cool economic terms rather than political terms and doesn’t follow them through to a logical conclusion.

In his ‘economic view‘ N. Gregory Mankiw goes beyond economics in the subtext of his comments about healthcare statistics to tease up matters of broader political sway.  The gist of Mankiw’s argument is that Canadian health stats are better than American health stats not because the Canadian health system is better, but because Americans are more violent, fatter, and more promiscuous as teens. (Ra! Ra! America!) He also says that many of the 47 million uninsured aren’t citizens and that a nationalized healthcare system wouldn’t change this. And finally that healthcare costs should be rising on a per capita basis — this is progress.

Mankiw reasons that a new healthcare system won’t make Americans less violent, thinner, nor less promiscuous (nor, one presumes, less likely to immigrate illegally). Ipso facto — no need to nationalize the healthcare system.

(Note to self: contact Mankiw to see whether he would be willing to fill out my tax return.)

What Mankiw doesn’t conclude is that America, being relatively more violent, fat, and promiscuous than its northern neighbor may have a few things to learn from Canada about how to become safer and healthier. And who knows, in the process we may even decide that we like the idea of socialized medicine.

This is a bit of a tangent, but whenever I think about socialized medicine I think about the private road that leads to my mother’s house. The road (really more of a short dirt track) serves several houses. The houses jointly share responsibility for the upkeep and maintenance of the road. Inevitably, the road is a pitted, potholed liability, unpassably muddy on foot when it rains (which, where my mother lives, is often).

All of the good things about a good system of socialized medicine can be encapsulated by thinking about what a wonderful thing it would be if the local council were to take over responsibility for the maintenance and upkeep of that little stretch of road. And all of the pitfalls of privatized medicine can be encapsulated in an exaggerated way by thinking about what would happen if every road needed to be maintained by the people living or working along its route…

N. Gregory Mankiw’s intelligence and sophistry brought to mind another piece today, one that also traffics in sobering statistics. I imagine that Mr. Mankiw (a professor of economics at Harvard, former adviser to President Bush and adviser to Mitt Romney) received a bang-up education, or at least a comprehensive education. (Although in Mr. Mankiw’s case it seems that a good education can’t teach one everything.) But the country today faces, and has for some time, an educational crisis. America’s system of public education, something that only the most die-hard of conservatives seem to itch to want to dispense with, needs care and attention. Education can’t solve every social and economic problem, but one can be certain that without a good educational system our chances of solving the social and economic problems of the future will be much hindered.

Some days I sit down to write and have no idea what I might write about. Today I sat down with a couple of ideas (to work on the moral problems posed by the plotline of the movie Gone, Baby Gone, and another good idea that now escapes me), but found myself instead reading an opinion piece by Stanley Fish - Suffering, Evil and The Existence of God.

Fish’s piece is inspired by a look at two new books, only one of which addresses Suffering and Evil as they pertain to the Existence of God — Bart D. Ehrman’s “God’s Problem: How the Bible Fails to Answer Our Most Important Question – Why We Suffer.” The other Antony Flew’s “There Is a God: How the World’s Most Notorious Atheist Changed His Mind,” instead forwards the theory that “the only satisfactory explanation for the origin of such ‘end-directed, self-replicating’ life as we see on earth is an infinitely intelligent Mind.”

Let’s tackle these two challenges in reverse order:

Flew makes the point that since science deals with chemicals and material stuff any answer it gives about meaning and purpose is insufficient. Or, as he would have put it when still an atheist the answer that “the laws of physics are ‘lawless laws’ that arise from the void – end of discussion” simply leaves open the question of from whence those laws arose. But here Flew has erred on two critical points.

1. The laws of physics are both self-consistent and consistent with logic and reason. The laws of physics arise out of the nature of this existence, not out of a void. (And therefore the concepts of our existence preceded and reveal themselves through the specific appearance of this space and this time.)

2. The principles of existence can and do provide a fully rational explanation for “the origin of such ‘end-directed, self-replicating’ life as we see on earth.”

The principles of existence in space and time give us the principle of persistence — something that tends to continue to exist will tend to persist. (This is not a tautology, but a very simple reflection of a universal logical principle.) An example: Although there are many kinds of fundamental particles, only protons and electrons exist freely in any abundance. This is because protons and electrons, unlike their heavier sibling particles, have effectively infinite lifespans. This is why the material of the universe consists of atoms (electrons, protons, and neutrons — which are stable in bound form).

Living creatures embody an end-directed form because this is the form that survives. Any number of chemical reactions and interreactions can and do take place in a primordal soup, but the ones that aren’t persistent go nowhere.

Life seems so mysteriously purpose-driven because we’re looking at it backwards. What we don’t immediately perceive are all of the unproductive nubs and dead-ends (think dinosaurs). When we look for meaning, it helps to reflect that the meaning of life derives from process of its unfolding.

(All of this is explained much more fully in my book - “LIFE! Why We Exist… And What We Must Do to Survive.”)

But what then is the purpose of suffering and evil?

It’s easier to dispense with evil. The concept of evil reflects a perception that someone or something wishes to hurt, harm or destroy for the simple purpose of hurting, harming or destroying. This practical definition of evil proves quite useful. Evil stands in opposition to a natural goal of life (that it should persist). Evil then arises from an unproductive genetic branch or from circumstances that warp a person’s psychological makeup. It serves no ultimate positive purpose, but provides great fodder for psychological dramas and political speeches.

Oddly, suffering does serve a purpose and seems to be an inevitable part of life. At the most immediate level, our bodies use suffering as an effective means of prompting us to act. Hunger pangs cause us to want to eat and thereby sustain our body with food. Pain from our nerve endings causes us to avoid doing things or continuing to do things that will harm us (and ultimately perhaps cause us not to survive). Even emotional anguish serves to provide us with a context for acting in ways that will help us survive or help our social group survive.

Well, after reading Paul Krugman’s encouragingly negative piece on Giuliani’s statements about cancer survival rates, I trotted off to research my own damning indictment of Giuliani’s propaganda against Democratic calls for healthcare reform. I should have known better. What I found wasn’t so encouraging.

Of all people, I should have known better. I’m English; my father died of cancer, in England. I know first hand that the American health care system, in some ways — like shorter waiting periods and accessibility of newer treatments — tends to be better than the English healthcare system. (I also know first hand that in other ways — like community outreach — the English system seems better than the American system.) Giuliani’s propaganda should be condemned, perhaps, but not because he lied; as far as I can tell he didn’t lie he simply chose to use the most conveniently damning statistics.

It’s unfortunate that people abuse statistics as they do. The world would be a much better place if one needed a license to wield statistics. We need a license to drive a bus or to inspect an elevator, why not a license to fire off numbers?

Benjamin Disraeli wasn’t the first to coin the phrase about there being three kinds of lies, but he popularized it across the Atlantic, as Mark Twain did here.

Statistics should be carefully handled, thoroughly understood. Very few statistics tell their stories in straightforward, unequivocal terms. How were they gathered? what’s been included, what’s been excluded? what was the sample size? were other influencing factors eliminated, if so, how? And even if we understand the statistics, how can we use them in such a way that we disclose everything we know about the statistics so as not to mislead people?

Here’s an example: If someone were to release statistics about the time I get on the subway to head into the city on weekday mornings, they could cite my average alighting time as 8:06am. But the standard deviation around this mean departure time is over 49 minutes!  Pretty eractic, what a flake.

Now, only those who had access to and took the time to study the underlying data would see that on three days each week I leave at 7:30am (so that I can go to the pool for an early dip). And on the other two days I get on the train at 9am after dropping my son at pre-school.  I keep a pretty regular schedule around those times, with a standard deviation on any particular day of the week of no more than a few minutes.

We like statistics because they feel definite and concrete. They feel as if they will support the weight of some action that we can take to alter them in some way. If my departure time appears erractic, I must strive to be more regular in my schedule! But unless the statistics really do tell the story we think they tell, then they will only support incorrect conclusions and unhelpful actions.

Giuliani clearly liked the statistics that seemed to show that the English healthcare system was vastly inferior to the American healthcare system. He didn’t go looking broadly for statistics that would bear out this conclusion in all facets of the healthcare system. He didn’t drill down to show how the Democratic health reform bill would specifically lead to problems of reduced quality care in the American system. He simply plucked appropriately scary numbers off the statistic vine and tossed them out to support his aversion to increased government healthcare spending. Giuliani selected statistics that on their face lead us to want to reject the Democratic healthcare plan, whereas they don’t necessarily support this rejection at all. We would need to understand a great deal more about the proposed plan and about the potential impact on the quality of healthcare before arriving at such a conclusion.

It could be that the healthcare plan will improve the overall quality of care in America. I would imagine that this is what its proponents intend. But instead of finding out the facts we’re stuck talking about whether Giuliani lied or not. So often, politics gets stuck in meta-discussion, and we all lose out.

�

In the wake of the departure of E. Stanley O’Neal from Merrill Lynch and the possible departure of Richard D. Parsons (of Time Warner), the NY Times has compiled a piece about the opportunities for black executives at the heads of large corporations.  Interviewed for the piece, the chief executive of StarCom, Renatta McCann, said “we have yet to reach a tipping point where the pipeline organically regenerates. We have to achieve momentum and velocity, and it has to achieve scale to make it sustainable.”

Another Times story presents a collection of new data about sexual stereotypes in the workplace. One of the researchers, Professor Glick, found that a female job applicant in a revealing blouse and tight skirt is less likely to be considered appropriate for an executive job than a woman who is conservatively dressed. The story quotes Professor Glick as commenting: “Sexy men don’t have that disconnect. While they might lose respect for wearing tight pants and unbuttoned shirts to the office, the attributes considered most sexy in men — power, status, salary — are in keeping with an executive image at work.”

And in a speech to the Heritage Foundation (a conservative think tank) today, George W. Bush declared: “We are at war. And we cannot win this war by wishing it away or pretending it does not exist.”

As I chomped down these three stories, I found something sticking in my gullet. In each one, what people have to say and the way that they say it seems to create a mask, or to continue to hold up a mask, that obscures the real questions at hand, or, perhaps, obscures whether there are really questions at hand.

Renatta McCann managed to string together an impressive array of buzzcepts in making her point about the relative dearth of black executives in corporate America. If we try to read through her words to find the meaning behind the ideas of “tipping point,” “organic regeneration,” “achieving momentum and velocity,” and “sustainable scale,” I think she’s saying that only by having more up and coming black executives will we end up with more black executives in the boardroom. This seems logical, but hardly profound. Surely the issue is much broader and much more complex than the actions or inactions of corporations. Corporations comprise people and exist within and in service of society. And executives come and go all the time. It’s the nature of the beast. That we’re talking about the race of the two departing executives seems to be a problem in itself.

The article about sexual stereotypes left me with a nagging feeling that all of this research was kind of screwy. If you ask people about stereotypes with stereotypes in mind, and devise a study to present those stereotypes, doesn’t that to some extent throw doubt on the results of the study? Glick’s presumption that a woman revealing cleavage is sexier than a woman conservatively dressed introduces bias into his analysis. He then compounds this bias with his assertion that the attributes considered most sexy in men are power, status and salary. But surely sexual stereotypes vary according to the context and according to the details? Inappropriateness, for instance, can be for some a very unsexy characteristic. What’s to say that the people in the study weren’t reacting to the inappropriateness of the sexy attire rather than the sexy attire itself?

The words of the piece express a logic and a rational set of conclusions that draws me in and I feel that I have to agree with them, but stepping back I reflect on my personal experience in the workforce and find that the logic weakens and begins to disintegrate. I’m left only with suspicion about the arguments presented rather than a newfound insight into the particular problems faced by women in the workforce.

And our old favorite George W. Bush, who uses words with such audacious disregard for their meaning that one almost feels awed by it, accomplishes several feats of extreme sophistry today for no other reason, one feels, than that he’s begun to have some fun now that he’s a lame duck. He scorns the democrats for not taking seriously a war that he once declared we’d won; he further lambasts them for holding up the nomination of Mukasey at a time when the country needs such high profile positions filled, when, as was reported recently, he himself has left unfilled many such top positions for weeks and months; and he criticizes them for attaching “wasteful Washington spending” to another multibillion dollar war spending bill. Hmmm.

Bush uses an athletic analogy as he closes his speech his most dazzling verbal salvo of all; “I’m looking forward to working with you for the next 14 months,” he says, “but you better put on your running shoes, because my spirits are high and my energy level is good and I’m sprinting to the finish line.” I’m sure he didn’t mean it this way, or at least not consciously, but I’m relieved that he’s in such a hurry to get out of office.