23.7.04

Update

Maybe I should continue not posting, as my hits seem to go up every time I take a day off. I probably won't be posting much over the next few days, as my home internet is borked* and I have a wedding to go to and other travel to do.

*I meant to type "borked," but I got a "typo" of "broke" on the first try.
Stentor Danielson, 13:46,

20.7.04

Lying Liars And The Bloggers Who Censor Them

David Bernstein says that:

I, along with I think anyone else sensible (including James Madison in his day), would be happy to censor false and deceptive speech if we (1) had a reliable mechanism for separating it from "good" speech, and (2) could ensure that censoring deceptive and false speech wouldn't lead to a slippery slope culminating in the censorship of "good" speech disliked by the government.

Will Baude offers as a counterexample someone engaging in a lawful activity who is being threatened with unlawful violence because of inadequate police protection -- a Jew in an anti-Semitic town, for example. Baude makes the reasonable case that such a person ought to be allowed to lie in order to save his or her own skin. But it seems that if we're assuming an unrealistically perfect honesty law, it would be very strange not to also assume reliable enforcement of assault laws. If our society is advanced enough to be able to carry out Bernstein's honesty law, it could protect Jews and other unpopular people from their neighbors.

One might rescue the example by restating it so that the harassment is within the law -- being shunned, not getting votes when you run for public office, and so forth. I think a good case could be made that it should be permissible for our hypothetical Jew to lie to his anti-Semitic neighbors to avoid such treatment. Then again, if our government is in the business of legislating morality in the realm of honesty, then it seems like they would also pass much more restrictive laws against bigotry and harassment (and enforce them well) so that there would be little scope for lawful harm to an unpopular person.

UPDATE: I should point out that I'm not necessarily defending Bernstein's claim. I'm not certain that my uneasiness with strong censorship is merely a case of moral instincts calibrated for our own imperfect world and which are therefore misleading in strange hypothetical situations. As someone with utilitarian sympathies, I'm forced to accept a number of strange hypothetical situations in which lying is not just permissible but morally required.
Stentor Danielson, 15:40,

19.7.04

People Who Believe The X-Files

Development of Beliefs in Paranormal And Supernatural Phenomena Two important findings emerged from a recent study I conducted on learning scientific information from prime-time television programming (Whittle 2003). The study used an Internet-based survey questionnaire posted to Internet chat groups for three popular television programs, The X-Files, ER, and Friends. Scientific (and pseudoscientific) dialogue from ER and The X-Files collected in a nine-month-long content analysis created two scales, ER science content and The X-Files pseudoscience content. Respondents were asked to agree or disagree with statements from each program (such as, "Rene Laennec used a rolled-up newspaper as the first stethoscope" [ER], and "The Wanshang Dhole, an Asian dog thought to be extinct, has pre-evolutionary features including a fifth toe pad, a dew claw, and a prehensile thumb" [The X-Files]. My first finding, that ER viewers learned specific ER science content, is an indicator that entertainment television viewers can learn facts and concepts from their favorite television programs. The second finding was spooky. There was no significant difference in the level of pseudoscientific or paranormal belief between viewers of ER and The X-Files. This finding does not seem surprising in light of Gallup and Harris polls demonstrating high levels of paranormal belief in the United States, but the beliefs assessed in the study were fictional paranormal and pseudoscientific beliefs created by the writers of The X-Files. Paranormal researchers ask questions such as, "Do you believe in astral projection, or the leaving of the body by one's spirit?" My research asked, [Do you believe] "[d]uring astral projection, or the leaving of the body for short periods of time, a person could commit a murder?" A homicidal astral projector was the plot of an X-Files episode, but ER viewers were just as likely to acknowledge belief in that paraparanormal (a concept beyond the traditional paranormal) belief as were viewers of The X-Files!

I think the author is being a little too skeptical. In light of the example he gives*, it doesn't surprise me that ER viewers would profess beliefs in the kind of paraparanormal things that appear on The X-Files. "Homicidal astral projector" seems like a perfectly plausible extension of "astral projector," given that what's being astrally projected -- a person -- is something we're familiar with seeing as potentially homicidal. It's not something so bizarre that it requires The X-Files to make you think of it. The ER viewers probably never thought much about homicidal astral projectors, but when they saw the survey question, they thought "yeah, I suppose that makes sense." Indeed, it would seem like these kind of plausible extensions are exactly what the writers for The X-Files are trying to create, as they enhance the spooky "what if" vibe that makes the show successful. So all he's discovered is that The X-Files is well-written.

*I'm not sure if I've ever watched a full episode of The X-Files, so I'm not an expert on the types of things they show.
Stentor Danielson, 19:28,

18.7.04

The Pointlessness Of The Draft

I'm not sure I've ever done an Instapundit-style post with a link and an instruction to go read it. But today Michael Kinsley so perfectly summed up what I had tried to say about the draft that I have to make an exception.
Stentor Danielson, 19:37,

Model Madness

Bay Pollution Progress Overstated At news conferences, on its Web site and in its regular publications, the government agency leading the cleanup of the Chesapeake Bay has documented more than a decade of steady progress. The Chesapeake Bay Program has reported that the flow of major pollutants from rivers into North America's largest estuary has declined nearly 40 percent since 1985, bolstering the claims of politicians in Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania and the District that they were "saving the bay" and helping the states fend off criticism and lawsuits from environmentalists. Those reports, however, significantly overstated the environmental achievements. The estimates of pollution reduction were based on a computer model -- not water samples -- that program officials now say was distorted by overly generous assumptions.

The modelers claim that this is just how science works, and models always need improvement. That's true. It's been sobering for me to listen to some of my professors here, who are on the cutting edge of land change modeling, explain how poorly their models do. But given that, and given the fact that you can (and have) directly test the factor in question, who in their right mind would rely on a model? You use models for things you can't directly measure (such as the future).
Stentor Danielson, 19:27,