debitage: part of the core tool and scraper tradition

debitage

23.6.06

Shooting the Messenger

Richard Morin is complaining about the Daily Show:

This is not funny: Jon Stewart and his hit Comedy Central cable show may be poisoning democracy.

Two political scientists found that young people who watch Stewart's faux news program, "The Daily Show," develop cynical views about politics and politicians that could lead them to just say no to voting.

So the problem is not that our politicians are a bunch of incompetent buffoons, our electoral system is broken, and the news media is asleep on the job. The problem is that the Daily Show points these facts out to people. Oh, for the good old days when everyone bought into the myth of the public servant and smoothly-running democracy!

Stentor Danielson, 09:34, |

21.6.06

Is The Fantasy You Really You?

Laurenhat has posted a very interesting thought experiment. She writes about a hypothetical sci-fi scenario in which anyone can download an exact replica of another person (typically for sexual purposes), and asks whether you'd be squicked and/or find it morally objectionable for people to download you. The more basic question here is: is it (at least potentially) a violation of a person to fantasize about them doing something that they would be unwilling to do in real life? (My post and Laurenhat's both focus on sex, but I think the ideas involved can easily be applied, mutatis mutandis, to other activities.)

Laurenhat and I (I post as "acsumama" on Livejournal) both give the thumbs-up to people downloading us. If I don't have to actually experience the things they're fantasizing about, I'm not harmed. The fantasizer's utility is increased and mine is left unchanged.

Typosqueene makes the case for the other side:

I am not a sex object, and no one has the right to use me that way. Even if it�s just a thought of me as a masturbatory aid � it�s still making �me� or some essence of �me� into a masturbatory tool, which I absolutely do not give consent to. I don�t mind being aesthetically assessed; it�s unavoidable, really. So if I have a nice bottom and you think �oooh, that�s a nice bottom�, fine. If I have to squeeze past you in a corridor and you�re feeling *cough* oversensitive and get over-excited, well, ew, but fine.

But you don�t get to wank with my hand, nor do you get to do it using all the effort I�ve put in to *be* this bubbly, intelligent, attractive, fun, desirable person. Abstract as it is, it�s still some part of *me* that you�re using for a sexual purpose, and I do not have any interest in engaging in sexual activity, even at a distance, with 99.999999999% of the human race. Thus � wrong.

What I think this boils down to is conflicting intuitions about identity. To typosqueene, the fantasy version of her is her (or at least a part of her), and so things done to fantasy-typosqueene without the consent of real-typosqueene are violations of real-typosqueene. But to me, fantasy-acsumama is a separate entity that just happens to be based on real-acsumama. And being a fantasy entity, it lacks subjectivity, and hence no action done to it can be directly morally problematic. In my view, fantasies bear something of the same relationship to the originals as parodies, remixes, and fanfic bear to the original works of art (the use of stock characters -- like the generic cheerleaders that typosqueene says she's OK with fantasizing about -- might be something like public domain art). I don't know enough about philosophy of mind to argue for one of these conceptions over the other.

On a sociological level, it appears that men tend to share my perspective and women lean toward tyopsqueene's (though of course there are exceptions -- Laurenhat and several other women share my view, and I would be surprised if Hugo Schwyzer didn't favor tyopsqueene's). This seems to make sense given the genders' differing experiences of sex. Men experience relatively few unwanted sexual advances in real life. Other people rarely act as if they are entitled to get some form of sexual satisfaction from us, and we don't feel pressured into offering. We generally feel more in control of our sexual landscapes (at least with regard to avoiding bad things, if not to obtaining good things). Thus it's easy for us to imagine a strong separation between reality and fantasy -- we don't feel threatened by the thought that the fantasy may spill over into real life. We confidently accept a narrower realm of "what actually affects me" in order to establish broader bounadries on people's liberty to fantasize. And we more easily sympathize with the position and interests of the fantasizer, weighing those comparatively heavily against the position and interests of the fantasize-ee.

Women, on the other hand, would be more likely to take a precautionary approach. A life full of unwanted advances (and the fear or reality of worse) makes them less sanguine about the boundary between reality and fantasy. The thought of someone fantasizing about them hits closer to home, in a bad way. A more "extended" conception of the borders of the self seems appealing, at the very least as a way of putting a buffer zone around the critical "real" person. There's also a more relational aspect to this perspective. Fantasy versions of people aren't just objects floating around to be appropriated and used privately and without accountability. They're inextricably linked to real people. This is apparent in typosqueene's point that not knowing that someone's fantasizing about her to adds to the violation -- they're being dishonest to her by not telling her what they're doing with something that belongs to her.

Stentor Danielson, 20:04, |

Why Are Slums Poorer Than Farms?

Via Marcelino Fuentes, the UN has a study out showing that third world slum dwellers are actually worse off than those still living in rural areas. Fuentes frames it as a question of either the rural-to-slum migrants being mistaken about the opportunities available in the city, or the UN choosing the wrong indicators of wellbeing (hence slum dwellers really are better off). Either option frames the wellbeing of the two populations as relatively independent. But I wonder whether there isn't some degree of connection between the wellbeing of people in the two locations.

I can see two ways that migration to the city might actually improve the lot of the migrants, while improving the lot of those left behind even more (meaning that slum dwellers really are worse off than their rural cousins, but that they still made a rational choice to move to, and stay in, the city). On the one hand, migration to the city may relieve rural overpopulation. Rather than everyone starving together, a reduced rural population is able to make ends meet because their neighbors went away to the city.

Adding to the simple population shift effect is the issue of remittances. It's common in the third world for some people -- typically young men -- to move to the city to look for work, leaving the rest of the family behind. So rather than just urban vs rural households, you have households that are geographically extended in order to pursue a mixed economic strategy. These migrants deliberately live cheaply in order to funnel money back to their rural homes.

Of course, neither of these explanations denies the fact that improvements to slum conditions (such as infrastructure improvements and property rights reforms) would be a good thing -- indeed, they may even have trickle-down effects on the conditions in rural areas.

Stentor Danielson, 07:21, |

Not-So-Veiled Xenophobia

In theory, a purely procedural concern over the illegality of illegal immigration is a valid one. And perhaps one could be such a committed legal positivist* as to focus solely on the fact that the laws actually on the books are being broken, without also being disturbed by how little those laws correspond to any notion of justice. Nevertheless, one most often encounters procedural claims acting as a respectable veneer on xenophobia. The slip between the two motivations is a clever one, as the idea of "illegal immigrants" evokes ideas that certain people are inferior "criminal types," prone to all sorts of mischief and unsuited to a good society, while the rest of us -- who did things the hard way by being born in a rich country -- are different.

Take, for example, Hazelton mayor Lou Barletta's statement justifying his city's proposed crackdown on illegal immigrants. While Barletta superficially puts the emphasis on "illegal," it becomes clear from reading his statement that his real concern is about "immigrants." He doesn't want Those People, who are Different and hence Bad, coming to His city.

Barletta opens with some standard glurge about how Americans are just so nice and so wonderful and so open and so tolerant, but gosh darn it those ungrateful immigrants have just pushed us too far by abusing our remarkable generosity. Generosity that appears to consist of things like allowing them to pay for a place to live.

Take a look at Barletta's list of the problems that illegal immigrants cause:

Illegal immigration leads to higher crime rates, contributes to overcrowded classrooms and failing schools, subjects our hospitals to fiscal hardship and legal residents to substandard quality of care, and destroys our neighborhoods and diminishes our overall quality of life.

... Illegal Immigration is a drain on city resources. Every domestic incident, every traffic accident, every noise complaint, each time we send our police department, fire department or code enforcement officer to respond, it costs taxpayer dollars.

These are not problems caused by some Hazeltonians' lack of green cards. These are problems caused by increased population, or at best increased low-income population. Replace every illegal immigrant in Hazelton with someone whose ancestors came over on the Mayflower or the Bering Land Bridge, and those problems would still exist. At best, lack of immigration status provides a convenient way to target a group for being thrown out in order to reduce class sizes.

The fact that Barletta's real motivation is xenophobia becomes clear when he goes on to propose making English the city's official language. Many illegal immigrants do speak English. Many legal immigrants do not. But non-Anglophones are Different, and Barletta doesn't want people in Hazelton who don't fit in, who don't bear all the burden of crossing the cultural divide themselves.

* I hope I'm using this term right -- I'm referring to the view that the law is what the law is, and there's no point in asking what the law should be.

Stentor Danielson, 00:45, |

20.6.06

Profiling For Your Own Good?

Promoting seat belt use among black motorists

Seat belts reduce injuries and deaths in motor vehicle crashes, but previous studies have found that blacks buckle up significantly less often than whites.

... Nathaniel C. Briggs, M.D. and his Meharry - State Farm Alliance research team found that racial differences in seatbelt use vary according to the type of seatbelt law enforced by individual states. In states with secondary seatbelt laws, where motorists can be cited for a seatbelt law violation only if stopped for another offense, blacks are significantly less likely to wear seatbelts than whites. In states with primary laws, where motorists can be stopped solely for not wearing a seat belt, the disparity disappears.

... While it is unclear what accounts for the increased seatbelt use among black motorists in primary law states, Briggs et al. suggest that the findings may reflect concerns of blacks about the possibility of racial profiling, or differential enforcement, whereby law enforcement officers could selectively stop and cite minority motorists for seatbelt law violations.

The authors note that "The issue of differential enforcement has received little attention in the peer-reviewed literature, and should be addressed using methodologically robust epidemiologic studies. In the interim, however, the passage of primary seat belt laws, in conjunction with provisions or companion legislation to monitor and prevent racial profiling, appears to be justified given the possibility that we can achieve racial parity in motor vehicle crash mortality rates."

In other words, "let's use the fear of racial profiling to get black people to protect themselves." Um, great. What makes this even more ridiculous is that the authors recommend a combination of primary seat belt laws and anti-profiling measures as a way to get more black people to wear seatbelts. But that recommendation only makes sense if their proffered explanation for the reduced disparity under primary laws is wrong. Otherwise, the anti-profiling measures would undo whatever increased pressure for wearing seatbelts primary laws cause.

Maybe in the next phase of their study the researchers might actually interview some black drivers (and some white ones for comparison) and ask them about what their thought process is in deciding whether to wear a seatbelt. (Of course, this is all assuming that increasing seat belt use is a worthy goal.)

Stentor Danielson, 04:34, |