Rational Philosophy

On the philosophy of pragmatism: Or, when concept meet conception.

A zealous, Alabama district attorney has been going after pregnant mothers who abuse drugs. As his statutory weapon Greg L. Gambril uses a law that punishes “chemical endangerment of a child,” which was introduced, primarily, to protect children from exposure to meth labs. “When drugs are introduced in the womb, the child-to-be is endangered,” Mr. Gambril said. “It is what I call a continuing crime.” Gambril betrays no compunction about removing mothers from their babies.

On economic policy, Fed chief Bernanke, once a professor of economics, started out in his new job with a belief in the ability of the markets to respond rationally, and a hands-off approach to new financial instruments and odd turns of events. The real world seems to have influenced Bernanke’s thinking. In recent weeks he’s begun to act in ways that contradict his earlier statements — shoring up the ailing Bear Stearns, cutting rates multiple times, and making risky loans to keep the markets from further floundering.

And, to profanity: both Fox and the FCC seem happy that the Supreme Court will be reviewing the FCC’s attempt to tighten its policies on profanity. The FCC wants to be able to go after the networks for “fleeting expletives.” And the networks want to protect themselves against such actions. This momentous legal event is sparked by expletives uttered by Bono at the 2003 Golden Globes, and by Cher and Nicole Richie during the 2002 Billboard Music Awards. I can’t repeat what they said… Well actually, I guess I can. Bono said “fucking brilliant,” Cher said “Fuck ‘em,” and Nicole Richie said “Have you ever tried to get cow shit out of a Prada purse? It’s not so fucking simple.”

Richie is the clear winner.

A common aspect to these three stories seems to be the concept of pragmatism. In each one, pragmatism represents the fulcrum around which decisions or choices need to be made.

Pragmatism can be a deceptive concept. It gets bandied about as a compliment. “It was a pragmatic decision,” people say. Or, “he is clearly the more pragmatic.” But pragmatism is in the eye of the beholder. Alabama DA Gambril doubtless believes that he is exhibiting pragmatism by upholding the spirit of the law and very literally introducing separation between children and chemical exposure. Others argue that Gambril’s efforts do more harm than good because they don’t help the mother and separate mother and child during a critical period in the child’s development.

Likewise, the same people who today praise Bernanke for his pragmatism — the jumpy executives fearing collapse — would criticize him if he were to exert greater central control and influence during sunnier times. They see Bernanke as pragmatic because they like what he’s doing.

And I expect that the 550,000 people who’ve complained to the FCC about “fleeting expletives” would praise the pragmatism of the FCC’s new policies, whereas those who got a good giggle out of Nicole Ritchie’s colorful, cow shit complaint probably think that the policies against expletives are already somewhat unpragmatic.

So, can we make a pragmatic decision that isn’t, by definition, subjective?

Unfortunately, as with most things worth doing, it’s not easy. Firstly, it is important to understand the abstract premise against which pragmatic decisions will be judged.

In the case of the Alabama drug convictions, DA Gambril might frame this premise as “protecting children from the adverse effects of illegal drugs.” The mothers and their supporters might frame it as “ensuring what’s best for the child’s welfare.”

Immediately, we see that Gambril’s abstraction represents a somewhat narrower frame of thinking. Protecting children from the adverse affects of illegal drugs is just one factor in a more complex set of factors that may ultimately help not just the children in the cases being considered but also other children (by acting as a deterrent, for instance). We can then immediately say that, at least as far as I’ve framed it, Gambril’s perspective only considers one piece of the overall impact of his actions. He cannot therefore be said to be acting completely pragmatically.

Once we’ve understood the abstract premise, the second step in deciding whether something is pragmatic must be to try to determine whether the action being taken warrants us bending the rules.

Bernanke can’t be in a very happy position. I expect that he’s considered the long term impact of his current actions. And I expect that he’s ideologically uncomfortable with some of the steps he’s taken. I would imagine that Bernanke believes that without the actions he’s taking there is a good chance that the country’s financial systems would have collapsed. I can’t think of a better reason for acting against one’s purist beliefs. The only counterveiling reason would have been if Bernanke could convince himself that ultimately the markets would have been better for off for a little collapsing.

And here we come to a curious quirk of pragmatism: When it is justified, pragmatism should lead us to question the very foundation of the principles we’re bending. Bernanke should be realizing through this muddle that his original beliefs were deficient, that the markets can’t be trusted to be rational and sensible.

Lastly, applying these principles to the FCC versus the networks. The FCC regards its proposed policy change as a pragmatic response to the request for action against fleeting expletives from 550,000 members of the public. But the FCC reveals itself to be thinking unclearly when it says that “the ‘F-word’ in any context ‘inherently has a sexual connotation.’”  I’m perplexed as to how to read a sexual connotation into the use of the word fuck or its derivatives when it’s being applied as an adjective or adverb.

But one also can’t necessarily defend the networks by poking holes in the FCC’s argument. The meta-question here seems to be whether, pragmatically speaking, the use of fleeting expletives is more offensive than not, whether the networks are responsible for fleeting expletives or not, and whether there is a reason to allow the FCC to change its expletive policy.

For more rational, science-based explanations of life’s meaning and purpose, please refer to my book: LIFE! Why We Exist… And What We Must Do To Survive.

The tricky balance between anxiety and indifference.

This morning I was walking uptown when police blocked off 54th Street in preparation for the passage of the president’s motorcade (he was on his way to acknowledge to the Economic Club of New York that the economy is going through a rough patch.) At first I was miffed to be held up at the barrier (not the one pictured to the left, which is from another day and another part of town). Inwardly I fretted about the delay, and bridled at the imposition (even though I understood, rationally, that the barricades made for an appropriate precaution). Around me, the mood of my fellow detainees ranged from bemused tolerance to indignant outrage. More than one pedestrian tried to argue their perspective with the cops who stood guard at the barriers. After I’d accepted that for a while I’d be stuck at the steel barricade, I was able to get over my short term anxiety and watch with curiosity as the police did their work and as the motorcade passed through.

Up to now, Bush has responded to the current round of economic crises with a detached kind of downhome objectivity. We’re familiar with his slow-draw approach to crises. It’s part of what’s made him so incredibly unpopular with so many. (Examples being his glacial response on September 11th, and his lack of action during and after hurricance Katrina.) His stance has been that the economy is generally sound and that this is a bumpy section of road — an analogy he used today.

On global warming, the Bush administration has taken many years to come around to accepting the science at face value, and is now entering a period of accepting the science of warming, while rejecting the facts of an effective solution. Bush would have us switch to switchgrass fuels before we think about restricting emissions. BBC News reports today that:

“One recent study investigated the impact of fertiliser on biofuel production. Using sugar cane, according to the research, does offer greenhouse gas savings of between 10% and 50%.

“But using rapeseed and corn for biofuel manufacture can actually produce between 50% and 70% more greenhouse gases than using fossil fuels.”

When Bush takes the long view one senses that it’s because he shrinks from the prospect of near term realities. But if we’re prone to short term anxiety, the long view can help us gain a more rational perspective on life by putting our short term fears into perspective.

It can be particularly hard to take the long term view. We are wired to care deeply about how we feel right now and what we anticipate will happen to us in the immediate future. Eliot Spitzer took the short term view when he acted on his desire for sexual gratification, and one can imagine that the long term view was, if not the furthest thing from his mind, then at least stuffed into a far corner, as he did.

When it comes to government, some European countries seem to be particularly good at planning for the long term. The Netherlands has for some time been planning grand but pragmatic schemes to ensure the safety of its land from the threat of flooding from rising water levels. Mentioned in the same BBC article, Sweden already has 1,000 biofuel filling stations. Ireland has effectively eradicated the use of plastic grocery bags.

For everyday life, we can use the long term perspective to help us take a more pragmatic view about things like the development of our children (worrying about how long, relatively speaking, it takes our child to walk or talk), investment woes (if we make a long term investment, the stock price only matters when buy and when we sell), relationship problems (what was that we fought about last week?), and many other things.

(Of course, if we never fret about the short term, we may be very calm but everyone around us will loath us and think us arrogant and indifferent. Not that we’ll care…)

In the long, long term (scientists have calculated about 7.59 billion years) the earth will get swallowed up by the dying sun. This puts practically everything into perspective. Even then, there’ll be hope for the human race if we’ve put the Dutch and the Swedes in charge of planning our exit strategy… Whereas, if it’s down to George Bush’s intellectual descendents, we’d better buy some margarita mix and settle back for the final descent.

 

For more rational, science-based explanations of life’s meaning and purpose, please refer to my book: LIFE! Why We Exist… And What We Must Do To Survive.

How do imagination and logical thinking interelate, and what purpose does thinking serve?

Michio Kaku has spent some time thinking about which inventions of the imagination may be plausible in the forseeable future. He’s written a book on it called “The Physics of The Impossible.” But Kaku’s descriptions of the possible scientific implementations of invisibility mechanisms, force fields and lightsabers seem far less functional and intuitive than their fictional counterparts. This got me thinking about the power of the imagination. Which got me thinking about why we think.

After two years of study the National Mathematics Advisory Panel has issued a report on what to do about the poor state of math skills in late middle school. American students stumble in 25th in math competency out of 30 developed nations. The panel recommends streamlining math education, relying more on specialist math teachers rather than generalists, and ensuring that children memorize core math facts, a tactic that “frees up working memory for more complex aspects of problem solving.” After working with my daughter on her middle school math for the past few years, I’d agree with the panel on these points. There’s a lot to learn in middle school math, and math as a discipline relies a great deal on adding and combining concepts.

As I consider the power of the imagination alongside the power of rational or logical processing I realize that the kind of thinking we do to survive combines these two elements. Thinking entails imagining scenarios or possibilities and calculating or predicting outcomes.

The more powerful our imagination, the more options we will have. The more adept of processing of facts and likelihoods the more likely we will be to make good choices.

This brings us closer to answering the question of why we think. Working backwards, since thinking gives us the power to manufacture and select options, thinking evolved as a good way of gaining advantage through anticipation.

All of which seems rather obvious now that I’ve set it out. But I don’t think I’d ever before considered that imagination had such a powerful and important role in rational thinking.

In an individual, a healthy dose of both capabilities seems advantageous. But if we think about society as a whole, we can all benefit from the imagination of others, as well as from the logical processing power of others. In society we have a collection of minds, some more disposed to imagination, some more disposed to logical processing. If we respect the value of both, society as a whole will benefit.

For more rational, science-based explanations of life’s meaning and purpose, please refer to my book: LIFE! Why We Exist… And What We Must Do To Survive.

On asking the wrong question — science, religion, and politics.

The John Templeton Foundation has given the $1.6 million Templeton Award, encouraging scientific discovery on the “big questions” in science and philosophy, to Michael Heller (pictured left) a Polish Roman Catholic priest, cosmologist, and philosopher. Heller describes his view on the interplay between science and religion as follows: “Science gives us knowledge, and religion gives us meaning. Both are prerequisites of the decent existence.”

Rarely do we find someone working to integrate an open and inquisitive understanding of the scientific workings of the universe with a religious perspective on the meaning of existence. We tend either to find people leaning more in one direction or the other. And I’m struck by Heller’s impulse that both science and religion are prerequisites of a decent existence.

President Bush has today called for swift action on a trade pact with Columbia. Bush claims that Venezuela under Hugo Chavez has “squandered its own oil wealth in an effort to promote its hostile anti-American vision.” Bush, it seems, seeks to solidify an ally in Latin America (Columbia) at a time when Venezuela holds sway in a trend toward anti-American, left leaning sentiment in the region. But what is the truth about the use of oil wealth in Venezuela, and what does America stand to gain or lose if we follow Bush’s call for swift action unfettered by “politics”?

I take it that by saying both science and religion are required for a decent existence Heller means a fulfilling or complete sense of existence. And Heller must be referring to our experience of existence, since the judgment of decency implies awareness (existence without experience could be neither decent nor lacking decency).

Schopenhauer perceived that we have only an indirect experience of existence. We infer existence through our senses of sight, touch, smell, hearing, and through our direct awareness of our body and the impressions upon it. So, everything we know of existence is inferred through our senses. It would be quite feasible to imagine a decent life lived without any indirect knowledge of science or religion. For thousands of years human beings lived without formal, structured and conscious scientific or religious knowledge. Many people today live decent lives with only scant awareness of science or religion.

While Heller strikes me as an earnest and brilliant man courageously pursuing fascinating thoughts and ideas, I take issue with his statement about what makes a decent existence as a fundamental question. But I suspect that Heller was referring to the debate between advocates of science and religion, insisting that neither has a stronghold on the decency of existence.

In this though I think that Heller betrays a lack of objectivity. Since Heller, being both a religious and a scientific man, begins with the premise that a decent understanding of existence requires both science and religion, he will inevitably end where he began.

A more testing question would be to ask whether science in and of itself is sufficient for a decent understanding of existence, one that supports a satisfying and complete depth of feeling about life’s meaning. Or, to ask the opposite question, whether religion in and of itself is sufficient for a decent understanding of existence supporting a complete sense of the mechanics of the universe.

Back to Bush: The truth about Venezuela’s oil money seems to be that Hugo Chavez has somewhat recklessly grabbed a hold of and diverted oil profits toward social programs for two ends — to buy favor in his political war against America (and Bush), and to help lift his people out of poverty. While one can argue that his methods for raising the standard of living of poor Venezuelans are crude and short-sighted, it is difficult to argue that he has no real intent to help them. And, I would argue that if one looks at the degree of investment in each goal, his primary goal seems to be to help the Venezuelan people.

So, Bush is using emotional and misleading rhetoric to sway the US people and congress in support of a free trade pact with Columbia. His goal, as he states, is to ensure America’s national security and economic interest. But does it serve America’s national security interests to try to out-rhetoric Chavez? Bush is playing into Chavez’s hands by helping shape policy choices through defining them ideologically.

For more rational, science-based explanations of life’s meaning and purpose, please refer to my book: LIFE! Why We Exist… And What We Must Do To Survive.

What response to public wrongdoing?

In his chronical of Eliot Spitzer’s predecessors in doing wrong, N. R. Kleinfield makes a compeling case for a connection between power and irrational risk-taking. The piece focuses on sex scandals, but could just as easily have included bribery and corruption. Kleinfield draws on the opinions of experts in psychology to underscore the logic behind the link — people who seek power typically have an appetite for high stakes and pushing the envelope.

We gasp in surprise when we learn of each new scandal, but perhaps we should not really be surprised. Abuse of power, sexual extravagance, and a sense of being above the law have been with us all through history. The difference is that these days there’s generally more accountability, and more publicity.

In his initial announcement, Spitzer apologized to his family and said that his connection to the prostitution ring was a private matter (although he did apologize to the public, too). This echoes previous scandaleers who have either explicitly or implicitly sought to separate their private actions from their public role.

Unless we’re to compound the abuse of power, any illegal actions should be appropriately prosecuted. But what about immoral or inappropriate acts, things that are not illegal or wouldn’t typically be subject to prosecution.

As members of society we can ask ourselves two questions:

1. How much do we care to let the private actions of public figures reflect upon their public roles?

2. How do we action upon that answer?

In America in recent years it has begun to seem that the intense scrutiny of the private lives of candidates for public office has gone beyond the point of appropriateness and good sense. After all, if we accept that those who seek public office must be prepared to tolerate risk, and to gain or lose a great deal, shouldn’t we tolerate the idea that this personality type won’t be happy with slippers and a pipe in the evening (at least not a tobacco pipe)? I’m not saying we should excuse or overlook illegal activity, nor turn a blind eye to serious character flaws, but the important thing is that the person can do the job he or she is elected to do.

If the politician can maintain a rational and exemplary record of public service, why should we care, or even need to be aware, that he or she has a personal pecadillo or two?

Which brings me to the definition of flaws. On moral matters we define a sin as something that, from our perspective, we would judge immoral. As I outline in my book (LIFE! Why We Exist… And What We Must Do to Survive), it’s possible to point to a rational origin for our sense of morality, thereby lending it an objectivity, but as morality reveals itself in the world, it tends not to be rational.

Let’s cut the politicians a break and allow them their private lives, flaws or no flaws, moral or immoral. Let’s not dig if we’re only digging for private dirt. When society expects its leaders be not just effective and law-abiding, but also irreproachable in mind and body, society loses.

For more rational, science-based explanations of life’s meaning and purpose, please refer to my book: LIFE! Why We Exist… And What We Must Do To Survive.

On truth and lies: and their effect on society and how we live.

My wife and I are selling our house. One man made a good offer, insinuated his keenness to move quickly, and then promptly became impossible to pin down. After a roller-coaster of promised inspections and contract signings, reneged upon for reasons of his workload or ill health, we have been forced to conclude that he’s either completely full of it, or extremely busy and unfortunate. We don’t know which. Nor does it seem likely that we will ever know. While I’m curious for curiosity’s sake to know the real story, my overriding concern has a practical base — is he a legitimate buyer?

I’d been wanting to write about fake memoirs (the latest being Peggy Seltzer’s Love and Consequence, her (fictitious) account of her young life in the LA drug wars) and Daniel Mendelsohn helped me find a way in. Mendelsohn has been gathering life histories of family members who survived the holocaust for a book he’s working on. Mendelsohn has a very personal take on those who lie about their experiences in order to tell an amazing story. He thinks it is repellent. He goes further and questions whether it is a good thing to go through the process of trying to imagine the pain of others, to put ourselves in their shoes. Our presumption to be able to imagine what others go through “debases the anguish” that they suffer, he claims.

Mendelsohn spares no one in his assault on induced empathy. A holocaust museum that recreates the experience of riding in a cattle car “encourage[s] not true sympathy or understanding, but a slick “identification” that devalues the real suffering of the real people who had to endure that particular horror.” (Mendelsohn goes on to implicate the Internet, “which has already made problematic the line between truth and falsehood, expert and amateur opinion, authentic and inauthentic.”)

Apart from his skepticism about manufactured, the real crime, according to Mendelsohn, is that when people lie about their experiences, they make us less trustful of such accounts generally. “How tragic if, because of the false ones, those amazing tales are never read — or believed.”

All of which made me wonder — is he right?

I concluded that Mendelsohn takes an essentially irrational position. That his response is mostly emotion wrapped in rationale.

Rationally, Mendelsohn’s empathy hypothesis would lead us to suspect any form of empathy. But if we read, watch or listen to a true story of oppression or suffering, the story has impact and affects us only if we can feel some sort of empathy. If we were to be able to tell ourselves that we had no place imagining ourselves in a similar set of circumstances, the story would be emotionally meaningless to us.

Mendelsohn’s actions also don’t concur with his rhetoric. He is compiling a list of true stories because he believes they should be heard. Does he want them heard but not to affect people?

Sure, some empathy ploys are cheap, ineffective, devaluing and insulting. But to damn empathy generally is short-sighted.

Mendelsohn’s other target is trickier to unravel. I share his desire for less fabrication, for greater honesty and candor. But wanting won’t make it happen. And I don’t immediately come to the same conclusion that modern society has become a catchall for lies and misstatements, with the Internet as its most effective web.

I wrote recently that we each have an obligation of skepticism. That we can’t simply accept everything we read or see at face value. Mendelsohn seems to hanker for a world where everything is believed because it is all truth. But truth is an elusive quality. Even in the true stories that Mendelsohn gathers for his book there will be elements that become highlighted, brought to greater intensity by the use of a particular word or phrase or literary technique, as well as aspects that get excluded or diminished in the telling. That’s the whole point of the telling — to get it told, to bring out the essence.

For as long as there has been language there have been lies and liars. As human beings we process the stories we hear, some we know to be truth, some we know to be lies, and some we either must take at face value or not. Ultimately, we each reach our own level of skepticism. Without a certain level of honesty and truthfulness, society begins to crumble, because society relies on contracts of reliability in human relationships. Society rightly places a great value on honesty. I therefore feel less pessimistic than Mendelsohn seems to feel about the future of truth.

For more rational, science-based explanations of life’s meaning and purpose, please refer to my book: LIFE! Why We Exist… And What We Must Do To Survive.

Stress reduction: If we stress about time, what is the answer?

Stefan Klein’s OpEd piece on our perception of time, and our sense of time’s scarcity, leaves me wondering what advice he would give to the time poor. Stefan points to some compelling data that implies that we feel time pass more quickly when we’re using more of our muscles or when our senses are stimulated. We’ve all felt both time’s elongation (sitting through a boring lecture or when waiting for a bus, perhaps) and time’s contraction (reading one of these dazzling blog posts, or enjoying an evening on the town with our friends).

I read somewhere recently that someone (I forget who) aimed to eke the most out of his life span by avoiding excitement, therefore making every second feel like an eternity. This points to the self-defeat of such an endeavor — who wants an eternity of boredom?

Herr Klein’s target, though, at which he takes aim in somewhat rhetorical mode after leaving his research data behind, is the time stress we put ourselves under these days. One can’t dispute that Klein speaks the truth when he says that “Our society is obsessed as never before with making every single minute count. ” But what, may one ask, are we to do about it?

Yesterday evening, my wife and I got into a tiff when she asked me to take a look at an article she’d written before she submitted it to her editor. I replied that I’d do it if she could put our son to bed (usually my joyful task.) This got her riled up; why did I feel the need to barter over the favor? Because I felt time poor. Those few minutes would be stolen from me, leaving me less time to do the things I’d already alotted for the evening.

Klein seems to suggest that we create the sense of time pressure. He laments the accepted equation between time and money, and argues that trying to do things quickly actually ends up costing us, because when we work quickly we make mistakes.

Then there’s the Bureau of Labor Statistics time survey for the year 2006. The survey tells us that on average Americans spend over 5 hours per day pursuing some kind of leisure activity, and that more than half of this time is spent watching television.

(As a relevant tangent, my friend, a university lecturer, told me that his students comlpained recently when he asked them to watch an educational program during the evening because the program went head to head with Deal or No Deal…)

This puts the concept of time stress into some kind of context.

The way we live these days succeeds in filling those days with many things to get done. For someone who likes to watch his or her “shows” on TV, time stress means getting everything else done before the shows come on. For someone who doesn’t watch much TV, there will be other things.

Klein doesn’t offer any suggestions. But, rationally, there are only two suggestions:

1. Do less.

2. Worry less.

One can make the case that these two solutions may work most effectively when combined. In order to try to accomplish less, and give ourselves more time to do things at a less frenetic pace, we first need to worry less about the things that we’re letting go of. And then we need to continue to worry less about the things we’re not getting done that we used to get done.

My mother retired a few years ago. It was a wonderful opportunity for her to do more painting, something she loves. At first, this worked. But then other tasks began to squeeze out the painting, until now she does it much less. She’s always busy. But what if she were to turn her priorities around, worrying less about the garden or the house cleaning, and instead making paintin a priority. She’d get fewer chores done on any given day, but she’d feel less time stressed because she’d be getting to do the things she wants to do.

If we examine our lives we can start to pick off a few things here and there that we’re less critically concerned about accomplishing, let something go, let a door close. Do something less often. As long as we then give ourselves time to do other things at a more appropriate pace, we’ll come away feeling less stressed.

Klein didn’t make the connection, but the industrial and technological ages have been instrumental in increasing our sense of time stress. The more we feel we can accomplish, the more we try to accomplish. We get places quicker, we have more options, we can connect with more people and communicate with them more readily. And the more we can carry things around with us to do, the more we will do.

There’s something very human about this. But there’s also something worrying. Consciously, rationally, choosing to reduce our time stress seems like an eminently sensible thing to consider.

For more rational, science-based explanations of life’s meaning and purpose, please refer to my book: LIFE! Why We Exist… And What We Must Do To Survive.

 

 

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On the philosophy of constraint: Solar power. Swearing bans. Street parking.

Attention has turned to solar power plants as an economically and environmentally promising source of electrical energy. Instead of using solar panels, a better-known device for capturing solar power, these plants use mirrors to focus the sun’s energy, generating heat, and steam, which then turns a turbine. As the article points out, these plants are no longer considered experimental. And as the economics of burning fossil fuels continues to make coal plants more costly, so solar power will become even more attractive.

The “no cussing” initiative of a fourteen year-old boy in South Pasedena has led to a town-wide ban on swearing. “My mom and dad always taught me good morals, good values, and not cussing was one of them,” he says.

And the New York City mayor’s office has discovered that it doesn’t have tight control over the 142,000 parking permits issued by the city. Not only has the city issued far more permits than the mayor’s office initially estimated when it first promised to reduce the number, but it doesn’t even know who has them all.

These three diverse stories led me to think about the concept of constraint and how we think about constraint as both a positive and a negative force.

Until global warming entered the collective consciousness as a real and pressing concern, the possibility for generating power from the sun or the wind seemed quaintly academic and remotely whimsical. But was this the case? As the Times article points out, the viability of the kind of solar power plant now gaining popularity was proven back in the 1980s. In fact, economics not innovation constrained the emergence of solar power plants. In order to make collectively good decisions about things such as carbon taxes it’s important to understand such constraints.

Thinking solar power plants not viable, we would be more cautious to levy large carbon taxes. But the knowledge that solar power is viable and not much more expensive to generate than coal power, may inspire us to want to slap carbon taxes on coal power, forcing energy companies to accelerate the switch to solar power.

(As a dramatic case in point, an article only several months ago cast great doubt on the near term prospects of viable solar power from photovoltaic cells without even mentioning the upswing in using solar power to drive steam turbines.)

South Pasedena seeks to constrain people’s behavior by persuading them not to swear. The aim of this constraint is twofold — to improve the quality of life for those who find cussing offensive, and to reduce violent behavior that might accompany or be sparked by colorful language.

But a behavioral constraint can cut two ways. Is a constraint on cussing one step toward a constraint on vulgarity, either spoken or written? Does this take us a step toward a constraint on the kinds of books that it’s appropriate to stock on the shelves of the South Pasedana public library?

I’m not arguing for cussing, but arguing in favor of encouragement rather than stipulation. These distinctions are important. Constraint has a way of hardening into dogma.

Whereas, the proliferation of parking permits (enough to fill many city blocks with “official” vehicles) seems to call loudly and rightly for greater constraint. Here again, though, the concept of constraint can be looked at from two perspectives. If I were a city employee I would probably enjoy having a parking permit. And, if I felt I needed the permit in order to do a better job for the city, I might not like the idea that someone may deny me a permit. But, as a member of the public, I would like to believe that vehicles get issued with a permit for legitimate reasons. After all, I’m subject to parking regulations, tariffs and fines, why should a regular city employee not be?

Viewed from the public’s perspective, uncontrolled proliferation of permits puts a constraint on available parking spaces. Lax control on the perks of city employees leads to a culture of reduced respect for public service and reduced respect for the public.

For more rational, science-based explanations of life’s meaning and purpose, please refer to my book: LIFE! Why We Exist… And What We Must Do To Survive.

 

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Education Issues: On the dangers of paying for improved test performance. The psychology of value.

“An education obtained with money is worse than no education at all”
– Socrates

Researchers at Duke have determined that a high-price tag placebo works better than a low-price tag placebo, even though the two pills have the same active ingredient (i.e., no active ingredient). The perceived price of the pill increases the psychological expectation of positive results. “If it costs more, it must be better,” our brain tells us.

Schools across the country have begun to experiment with programs that reward schools, teachers and children for good test scores. The Times paints a somewhat anecdotal picture of the enthusiasm children have for this approach, but it is not hard to imagine that the picture is largely accurate.

When first read this story, I had a strong and immediate negative reaction to the idea of paying children to do well on tests. As I read about the apparent promise of the programs, I tried to put my negative reaction to one side. But it lingered.

Psychologically, I think, I am reacting to the idea that children are being paid to learn. There is, it seems, a placebo effect at work. With good intentions the program architects and educators want to achieve better scores by paying more for them. But do better test scores reflect a perceived improvement or an actual improvement? Test scores, after all, measure the ability to score well on tests. Scoring well on tests is symptomatic of a good education, but not the same as a good education.

Just as a placebo makes the perception of pain go away. So, too, improved test scores make the perception of subpar education go away.

I don’t want to overstretch the analogy. The other profound misgiving I have also relates to the psychology of value.

Once you pay a child to study, in the child’s mind studying and learning become fused with reward or compensation. (And the research on the perceived value of placebos demonstrates just how powerfully our minds connect value and reward.) What happens when that child finds himself in a situation in which he won’t receive any immediate reward for studying or learning or growing? Will he be in a worse position than a child who hasn’t been paid to do well? Quite likely.

And, as adults, while what we do to improve our understanding comes with reward in the workplace, that’s not true in life generally. Will these children grow up to be less likely to apply themselves when there’s nothing to be gained from it?

Education is a long term investment. It’s very easy for legislators, professors, administrators and educators to get caught up in the need to improve school performance, to get children’s test grades up. But ultimately this is not the goal of education. Education aims to foster the acquisition of knowledge. If we turn our schools into factories that churn out paid learners, we are creating a generation of adults who will be confused about the real value of knowledge and learning. And that is a worrying thought.

For more rational, science-based explanations of life’s meaning and purpose, please refer to my book: LIFE! Why We Exist… And What We Must Do To Survive.

On the evolution of multiple intelligence facets.

Kay E. Holekamp’s impressive work studying the social intelligence of spotted hyenas tells us that animals living in relatively large social groups, reliant on complex, coherent hierarchies and cooperative social relationships to improve their survival, tend to have a larger frontal cortex — the region of the brain where much of the most sophisticated thought takes place. Holenkamp studied spotted hyenas, the most social of four hyena species, but then compared the spotteds to their less social cousins. Analyzing skull samples of these four species, she found that the spotted hyenas had the largest frontal cortex, and, further, that the size of the frontal cortex of each species varied in direct relation to its degree of social sophistication.

Despite the years she’s dedicated to studying this connection, Holenkamp shrewdly warns against simply equating social sophistication with intelligence — “There’s a tremendous support for the social brain hypothesis,” Holenkamp says, “but I think that in order to understand the origin of intelligence we have to think more broadly than that.”

Hear, hear.

Scientists studying the mechanical complexities of winged flight have discovered that some bats create a vortex by the particular way that they flap their wings. The vortex creates lift and keeps them aloft. This is similar to the mechanism used by other small, winged animals (and, most likely, insects) that can hover.

The study of animals tells us a great deal about the evolutionary paths that those animals have followed: Bats and other flying animals have given up a set of limbs to be able to fly. Hyenas have kept their four legs, allowing them to run down prey and flee predators. Human beings and other primates have exchanged forelegs for arms and opposable thumbs that allow them to grasp and easily manipulate objects. These evolutionary artifacts came about not randomly but because they proved advantageous for some reason.

In awarding a significant air defense contract to Northrop Grumman and its European partner EADS, the Pentagon has riled Boeing and its supporters in Congress. The chief argument against the decision seems to be that it denies an American company a lucrative contract.

If the Pentagon followed the procedures for such contract awards, as they claim, what right does Boeing or anyone have to complain?

The excruciating study of bat flight and the arcanery of arguments over defense contracts make me wonder: Can we learn anything about the possible origins of human intelligence from its applications?

After all, evolution cares nothing about the origin of intelligence, per se. It cares only whether intelligence confers some advantage.

Of the species that exhibit intelligence, human beings seem to exhibit a remarkably broad and deep range of intelligences. For instance, the social intelligence required to negotiate the pros and cons of awarding defense contracts at home or abroad must navigate all kinds of abstract and inferred social contracts — contracts of loyalty, risk, employment, pride.

But what of the range and depth of intelligences that goes into designing and building the aircraft themselves — from aerodynamics, to aeronautics, metallurgy, propulsion technologies, and on, and on… Can these deeply creative and exacting mental disciplines be explained by the advanced development of social skills? It seems unlikely. The ability to focus on creative problem solving, the kind of focus rewarded by innovation and mastery of abstract insights, falls in a field that seems to have no bearing on social intelligence. Some of the most intelligent and creative people in history were socially awkward. Creative intelligence seems to be if not inversely proportional to social intelligence then at least seldom overlapping. This makes rational sense. Someone focused on social subtleties will be less likely to forgo social thinking for introverted mechanical or creative thinking.

Just as the connection between particularly social animals and a large frontal cortex tells us that when negotiating social hierarchies the smarter beast has an advantage, so, too, the development of deep mechanical intelligence tells us that for human beings the ability to manipulate mechanical concepts must have conferred an advantage.

If we were to elaborate, catalog, and categorize the kinds of intelligences exhibited by humans or other species, it would doubtless help us understand the origins of those intelligences. This would provide a good adjunct to the work of Holenkamp and others who are coming at this from the other direction.

For more rational, science-based explanations of life’s meaning and purpose, please refer to my book: LIFE! Why We Exist… And What We Must Do To Survive.