26.8.04

Google

Google is totally unfair. I'm part of the perhaps 2% of all political blogs that aren't obsessing over Swiftboatgate. Yet I make one post referring to it, and suddenly I'm the 23rd result for "Swift Boat Blog. Watch this post send me to #3 or something.
Stentor Danielson, 15:45, ,

24.8.04

Away

I'll be gone until Friday night, doing some research in New Jersey.
Stentor Danielson, 14:37, ,

Fire Safety Or Else

Law Requires Homeowners Defend Against Wildfires Deschutes County is poised to become the first county in the state to implement a new law requiring property owners to secure their homes against wildfires, if they live in fire-prone areas. State and county officials are expected to approve a map Monday categorizing the wildfire risk for homes within the so-called wildland-urban interface, or developed areas adjacent to forests, in Deschutes County. ... Department staff have received very few complaints from homeowners, Andrade told The Bulletin newspaper. "We're getting a tremendous response from the public," he said. "People aren't calling asking 'why?' They're calling asking 'what do we need to do?'"

I'm sticking this here for future reference. A few years down the road, this could be the basis for an interesting comparative study of how well legal measures like this work in changing the fire danger.
Stentor Danielson, 14:34, ,

Adultery And Responsibility

One thing that has baffled me for a while is how my conception of adultery diverges from that held by people whose views on relationships and sex I otherwise agree with. Today Amanda states a view that I've heard numerous times (especially on the Brunching board):

... the cheater is the one with a S.O. to cheat on. Again, women are not obligated to force men to be faithful by taking a universal oath not to sleep with married men. It's common sense not to do it. However, the husbands in question stood up before their families, communities, and a god they presumably believed in and vowed fidelity.

To me, on the other hand, it seems obvious that it's wrong to sleep with someone who's committed to someone else*. Perhaps the difference is in part simply an instance of the larger question of when one's contribution to a harm is indirect enough that you're no longer responsible for it. My utilitarian leanings are strong enough to feel that responsibility maps pretty closely to causality (i.e., you're responsible for anything that you could have made happen differently -- except in situations where there's positive motivational effects from apportioning blame differently). For example, we might differ on whether it's OK to offer a vegetarian a dish with meat in it -- after all, I never promised that that person would abstain from meat.

But I think there disagreement on the adultery question is also rooted in differing concepts of marriage. The "not responsible" case is based on a very contractarian model of marriage. Marriage, including the fidelity clause, is a private agreement between the husband and wife. Thus nobody who wasn't part of that contract has any obligation to respect it or avoid facilitating the breach of it.

There are, however, certain private transactions that we do expect to be honored as a society. Take buying and selling property. If my parents sell their house, I can't go ahead and waltz into the new owners' living room on the rationale that I never agreed to the transfer of property. Private property transactions are expected to be honored by the rest of society.

What makes the institution of marriage really work is its social embeddedness. It's not merely a contract. It's a social role that the rest of society is expected to recognize, and in recognizing it implicitly support it. Some people don't feel that such an institution is necessary, and thus they advocate abolishing marriage in favor of individually-tailored contracts. While I'm sensitive to the need for flexibility and diversity in the types of relationships people form, I also see the utility of a limmited number of widely understood templates that allow (and expect) the people around you to adjust to, so that privately conceived relationships aren't continually bumping and scraping against a wider society that's indifferent to their existence.

*I shouldn't have to say this, but keep in mind that I'm not at all diminishing the responsibility held by the married cheater.
Stentor Danielson, 00:56, ,

23.8.04

Postmodern Tribes

Life Without Numbers 1+1=2. Mathematics doesn't get any more basic than this, but even 1+1 would stump the brightest minds among the Piraha tribe of the Amazon. A study appearing today in the journal Science reports that the hunter-gatherers seem to be the only group of humans known to have no concept of numbering and counting. Not only that, but adult Piraha apparently can't learn to count or understand the concept of numbers or numerals, even when they asked anthropologists to teach them and have been given basic math lessons for months at a time. ...Prof. [Daniel] Everett argues that what the Piraha case demonstrates is a fundamental cultural principle working itself out in language and behaviour. The principle is that the Piraha see themselves as intrinsically different from, and better than, the people around them; everything they do is to prevent them from being like anyone else or being absorbed into the wider world. One of the ways they do this is by not abstracting anything: numbers, colours, or future events.

Reading the list of things that the Piraha lack -- numbers, colors, mythology, art, stable personal identity -- gives me flashbacks to the eighteenth century. Anthropology got its start as an apologetic for European supremacy by documenting primitive tribes' lack of things, such as religion and grammar, that seemed indispensible to normal human life. Of course, the problem turned out to be with the anthropologists and the ethnocentrically narrow concepts of culture that they were measuring other societies by. Whether a similar situation holds with the Piraha is hard to say. Those that have studied the Piraha explicitly deny the eighteenth-century conclusion about the intrinsic inferiority of foreigners, even when their data sounds like the same litany of cultural absences. And anthropology is rightfully embarassed by that period of its past, and so is far more careful with making such declarations -- suggesting that the evidence for Piraha innumeracy is fairly strong.

The most interesting bit about this, though, is Everett's hypothesis quoted above (which, sadly, did not appear in any of the other articles on the Piraha that I encountered). On the one hand, the Piraha as he describes them are the ultimate postmodernists, rejecting the making of categories and positing of universals. They even delve into hermeneutics, denying that outsiders can understand their language -- a claim that seems aimed at rejecting outsiders' attempts to "speak for" them, in a way even more radical than the usual statements of members of oppressed groups attacking dominant-group social scientists.

On the other hand, they represent a sort of weird inverse of the ethnocentric 18th century anthropologists. Everett is suggesting that they manufacture their "lack" in order to prove that they are the superior group.
Stentor Danielson, 00:45, ,

22.8.04

Astroturf

I guess I'm supposed to be outraged about the prevalence of astroturf letter writing coming from the Bush and Kerry campaigns -- that is, form letters provided by the campaign that supporters sign off on and submit to the letters page of their local newspaper. Certainly my editorial instinct would be to reject an astroturf letter if one was submitted to the Scarlet. But in a way I'm not sure what's so bad about them. The philosophy behind the letters page is to select letters that are clear, representative, and interesting. Providing an outlet for the personal creativity of readers is not (for commercial papers, at least -- I would say it is a function of college papers). Being written and polished by professional PR people, astroturf letters are as clear as anything a regular citizen is likely to write. Not everyone has the gift of elegant prose, so why should less articulate people be silenced by prohibiting them from getting help with expressing their views? This brings us to the question of representativeness. There's no reason to think that people who send astroturf letters don't fervently believe the campaign talking points that they're attaching their name to. Nothing will be changed about the ideas they're trying to communicate if we make them sit down and rephrase the letter in their own words. As far as being interesting, that's something of a toss-up -- there are loads of really stupid non-atroturf letters out there.

One argument that comes to mind against astroturf, though, is the exact reason campaigns go for it: it's easy. Writing a good letter to the editor is hard and time-consuming. It's far easier to get a bunch of letters published if people have a ready-made submission. This gives members of organized groups a decided advantage over other citizens.
Stentor Danielson, 11:58, ,