debitage: part of the core tool and scraper tradition

debitage

22.10.05

Odds and Ends

1. Let's agree that everyone thinks that the other side is a bunch of rigid ideologues who cling to their beliefs on pure faith and are impervious to even the most basic elements of logic or evidence. This will save us all a lot of typing.

2. "X-ism is a good idea, but the X-ist movement has been hijacked by a bunch of crazy extremists" is an awfully convenient thing to believe. On the one hand, it gets you off the hook of having to disagree with a cause that is morally compelling (e.g. feminism) or has a lot of social clout (e.g. religion). But on the other hand, it also gets you off the hook of having to do anything. Only wild ideologues would insist on making additional progress.

3. Harriet Miers will be confirmed. There's plenty of bellyaching going on now, but when push comes to shove, very few Senators will be willing to defy the president.

4. It's popular to argue that one's political opponents are not just ideologically mistaken, but dishonest and immoral too. Last night the Senate was given as clear a non-ideological test of its integrity as you're likely to see -- and it turns out both parties are mostly made up of scumbags.

5. Rabi makes a good point.

Stentor Danielson, 00:08, ,

19.10.05

Mandatory Man-Taming Marriage

I have to give Todd Zywicki a certain kind of credit for not being ashamed to offer a clearly sexist anti-marriage argument. He states that one of the main purposes of marriage is to "tame" the raging beast that is the single man. He says that while it's possible that the evidence may eventually show that a man can be tamed by marriage to another man, polygamy could not work out so well. Given the assumption that polygamy in law would overwhelmingly mean polygyny in practice, he raises the threat of hordes of untamed men left single by the new law:

I think that there are clear benefits of societal stability and productivity of marrying men into monogamous relationships. Polygamy for some men, of course, means that other men will not be married and procreate at all. I suspect that the overall impact in terms of the damage that can be done to a society by a posse of unmarried men, and the oppressive and unproductive social investments that have to be made to control them, suggests that the net costs of permitting polygamy clearly outweigh the net benefits.

I'll leave aside the critique of the notion -- which would be bizarre if it weren't so widely believed -- that single men are antisocial creatures who need a ring to make them productive members of society. I also won't go into detail about the implication that the law must force some, if not most, women to settle for a second-best mate, forgoing their desire to join the harem of some super-stud because of their duty to society to tame some erstwhile psychopath.

What's interesting is what happens when we take Zywicki's argument to its logical conclusion. The monogamy norm remains strong in our society, and any serious proposal for polygamy in a society which has pretensions to gender equality would have to require the consent of the co-wives (who would be reluctant to give it if, as the "polygyny in practice" argument assumes, women are much more inclined toward monogamy). Therefore, polygamy seems unlikely to be the leading cause of male singleness. Simple reluctance to marry anyone, or any of the ones on offer, would be more important. But if single men are such a social problem, why should we limit ourselves to the relatively modest measure of banning polygamy? From Zywicki's view, any man who remains single is putting society at risk, and any woman who remains single is shirking her man-taming duty. The extreme expedient of sending the Marriage Police around to round up loners and shove rings on their fingers is both unnecessary and probably counterproductive. But there's a simple way to ensure that most people will get married -- make access to certain public services contingent on marriage for people above a certain age (say, 25), and allow private businesses and other organizations to implement similar policies. This would create a powerful incentive to get married, while giving you maximum freedom to choose the most compatible partner.

Stentor Danielson, 23:01, ,

18.10.05

Evolution is Disquieting

PZ Myers points out a quote from Barbara Forrest about how evolution upsets religious notions of human specialness:

We have established scientifically some disquieting facts: (1) human beings have evolved from nonhuman life forms, meaning that (2) at one time we did not exist, and that (3) according to paleontological and astronomical evidence, at some time in the future we shall cease to exist.

I don't completely agree with points 2 and 3. It's not too disquieting that there was a time without humans -- most religions postulate such a time. The really disquieting finding about human origins from evolutionary biology is that the emergence of humans (or of any sentient life form) was not inevitable. The book of Genesis records five days (believed by some to last the equivalent of thousands, if not millions, of years) during which humans had not yet appeared. But you can trust that they were in God's plan all along, and that no matter what, on the sixth day Adam would show up. On the other hand, evolutionary biology* tells us that if the environment had not been such as to select for intelligence, and had the right raw materials not been present in pre-human species, Homo sapiens -- or any other sentient creature -- may never have come about. Personally, I find that fascinating, but I see how others, particularly those committed to a strong version of externally-imposed teleological meaning, might find it disquieting.

I would rephrase point 3 in a softer tone -- there are many species that have survived for millions upon millions of years, and it's possible to be optimistic about our chances. But even as it stands, it's only disquieting if you take a certain interpretation of it**. Contemplating the end of Homo sapiens is disquieting if you think of our extinction as an evolutionary dead-end. But what if Homo sapiens disappears because we evolve into something else? Only a very crude and literal species-centrism would declare a priori that our descendants were not "us." If Homo habilis were still around, a good case could be made by either species for including the other as part of its human community. The same may very well be said of Homo futuris.

*Real evolutionary biology, not the mystical-teleological variant that one presenter at the Open Meeting used as his theoretical approach.

**Not all religions believe in eternal life -- the Norse thought that everyone, both the might warriors in Valhalla and the sickly sols in Hel, would be destroyed for good during Ragnarok.

Stentor Danielson, 17:09, ,

17.10.05

Paul Robbins on the Contradictions of Conservation

I just got back from an excellent talk by Paul Robbins, who is probably the brightest star in contemporary political ecology. His basic theme was that trying to protect nature by separating it from humans is doomed to failure. He focused on a nature reserve in India, where santions against encroachment by people living nearby have recently been stepped up. He argued that, while throwing the reserve open to be turned into farms would be detrimental to the ecosystem, so would completely closing it off from people. The best situation would be one more like what prevailed up until a few years ago, in which the reserve existed, but people frequently broke the official rules.

There were two major ways that human-nature interaction turned out to be good for nature. First, human use of the forest created a beneficial frequent low-level disturbance. This idea has been widely recognized, for example by ecologists in the resilience field, so I won't go into more detail. Second, he described how animals crossing the park boundary was beneficial for nature. He compared the population numbers of several species of animals, and found that the ones that were doing well, or even increasing in number, were the ones that frequently encroached on the surrounding villages. For example, panthers often eat sheep, while nilgai (a cowlike animal) are a constant threat to cornfields. In effect, those species that have done well are those that have adapted to human presence and learned to extract a sort of subsidy from the "unnatural" human lands outside the reserve. He hypothesized that wolves (which also eat sheep) have not done as well as the panthers because they hunt in packs, and are therefore easier for humans to deter.

Robbins made an off-hand suggestion which I think actually makes some sense. He said that perhaps the farmers and herders whose crops and animals are subsidizing wildlife (and who may be tipped into starvation if they get hit hard by the panthers or nilgai) should be compensated for the damage done by wild animals. This fits with the growing idea that owners of less "developed" land should be paid for the ecosystem services that they provide. Their human use of the land is providing a benefit to nature.

Stentor Danielson, 20:10, ,

The Importance of Polarization

The Afterlife Of Environmentalism

... in assessing the obstacles to a progressive majority, the environmental movement would seem to be an odd place to begin. Unlike organized labor, for instance, the membership rolls of the big national environmental organizations have grown -- at least fourfold over the past 25 years. The result is bigger budgets and staff, plus more in-house expertise. New statewide and local organizations have also emerged during this period. Environmentalism has a further advantage: Unlike the reproductive-rights movement, for instance, it does not polarize public opinion. Despite some fluctuation, polls consistently show high levels of support for environmental protection -- levels that would be the envy of many progressive movements. So what�s the problem?

For one thing, as Shellenberger and Nordhaus make clear, the same polls that identify high levels of public support for environmental protection also reveal that support to be shallow. Americans care about �the environment,� but when faced with competing demands on their time, money, and attention, they don�t appear to care all that much.

It's interesting that Meyer lists the broad, unpolarized support for environmentalism as a strength of the movement. In light of his general claim -- with which I agree -- that progressive politics suffer from the lack of a cohesive worldview, I would say it's a weakness.

The most politically potent beliefs are those that are the symbolic centers of one's identity. The case of abortion is a good example -- being Christian and conservative is synonymous with being pro-life (in the minds of both pro-lifers and pro-choicers). Likewise, feminism and liberalism are considered equivalent to a pro-choice stance. But issues only become the center of one's identity when there is a sharp contrast with an alternative identity.

Environmentalism is, for most people, an anti-identity*. People don't define themselves as being environmentalists, but rather as not being environmental extremists. They adopt a stance of common-sense centrism in contrast to the identity-forming ideologies of "radical environmentalists" and (to a lesser extent) ruthless polluters. Both of those contrast groups are so wildly caricatured as to have few actual representatives outside of ELF and 19th-century robber barons, thus allowing everyone to feel like they occupy a neutral middle ground.

Broad consensus is a nice goal, but if it happens too soon, it can sap the will to change institutional and cultural structures. A phase of polarization is necessary to motivate change.

*In perhaps somewhat the same way as, for example, "white" is treated as a non-race.

Stentor Danielson, 12:12, ,