debitage: part of the core tool and scraper tradition

debitage

30.6.06

"I'd Agree With You If You Weren't Such A Jerk"

One of my least favorite political arguments is the one that says "I don't agree with X, because other people who agree with X are jerks. Maybe if they were less shrill I'd come over to their side." (Often this argument is disguised as a claim that people who believe X are unlikely to convince some other non-Xists if they persist in being shrill. While this version may be technically valid, it's a bit hard to take seriously coming from a resolute non-Xist.)

The "I won't agree with jerks" argument is, if taken at face value, an argument based on privilege. It essentially says that the substance of a political view is unimportant. Political ideologies are just arbitrary markers of group belonging, like baggy vs tight pants or "soda" vs "pop" or the brand of truck you drive. From that viewpoint, what matters is whether you want to associate with a particular group of people. And so their jerkishness becomes an important criterion, in the same way that you wouldn't invite jerks to go out for a beer with you.

"Xists are jerks" may be a reasonable empirical/causal explanation for why Xism isn't more popular (given the factual prevalence of the fallacious "I won't agree with jerks" argument), and so an Xist might reasonably argue that they and their fellow travelers ought to tone down their jerkishness*. But it's not a justification for a non-Xist to remain a non-Xist. The only justification for being a non-Xist is to argue that X is wrong on the merits.

*The empirical claim is, of course, debatable, and there are other considerations that weigh in favor of (certain forms of) jerkishness.

Stentor Danielson, 20:21, |

Good And Bad Arguments About AC

There's a pair of articles on air conditioning by Stan Cox that ought to be good but end up suffering from an attempt to push them into a partisan frame.

The questionability of the article starts with its focus on AC. Now, there's nothing wrong with writing about AC -- but it's telling that Cox defensively dismisses the idea of making any of the same claims about heating:

The average household in the southeastern United States consumes almost twice as much electricity as the average household in New England, but air-conditioning doesn't account for that entire disparity. Southerners use a lot more power for all appliances, whatever the season. Of course, northern households consume more fossil fuel for heat, but in the dead of winter, heating cannot be dispensed with.

Heating is thus a necessity, where AC is a mere luxury. Never mind that heat arguably causes the same number of deaths as cold. Sure, you need some heating system to survive in the north, but you don't need a modern central heating system cranked up to 80 degrees. Since Cox allows low-tech solutions to the heat (like sitting out on the porch and going swimming), we have to allow low-tech solutions to the cold, like the fireplaces that suited the Wampanoags and the Pilgrims just fine. And if Cox's message to southerners is "don't move to Texas if you can't stand the heat without AC," he could as easily say "don't move to Vermont if a fireplace doesn't cut it for you."

The real reason for the focus on AC perhaps becomes clear in the subhead to the second installment: "Air-conditioning ... just might have given us President George W. Bush." AC is especially bad because it's a Republican climate control technology. But Cox doesn't even stand behind his claim about the AC-GOP link, repeatedly claiming that AC (by making the South hospitable to a larger population) is responsible for the rise of the Republicans, then backing off and disclaiming that thesis*.

The articles also make a strange detour into a sort of technological determinist Marxism. Essentially, Cox argues that the development of air conditioning was a prerequisite for rampant capitalism. Without air conditioning, we'd all take siestas or go down to the free neighborhood swimmin' hole -- but with air conditioning, we're able to spend all summer shopping and seeing movies and other things that involve engaging in consumption. I find this hard to believe. Capitalists are a creative bunch, so I have no doubt that, if AC technology had not come about, they would have found other ways to keep us spending our cash all summer -- privatizing the swimmin' hole, for example. (And in any event, the same argument could be made about heating -- good heating systems allow us to continue our fast-paced consumerist lifestyle in the dead of a New England winter, instead of holing up by the fireside telling stories and eating salted beef like the Vikings.)

A good article about AC, or about climate control in general, would look more like the just first half of Cox's first article. The key points are that AC uses a lot of energy (as well as having other environmentally negative effects), and that it's over-used -- there are alternative, more environment-friendly, ways to keep cool, and when you do use AC, it should be to bring the temperature down just into the tolerable range, not to make your building chilly.

*I'm a bit skeptical of how much geographical population shifts can explain changes in the parties' fortunes. But to the extent that it is a factor, the explanation has to include the fact of our winner-take-all system (which is amplified in the Presidential context by the Electoral College). A bunch of liberal snowbirds heading to Arizona will boost AZ's population, and hence the number of seats/votes it gets. But so long as there aren't enough immigrants to make conservatives a minority, all of that extra clout will still go to conservative representatives.

Stentor Danielson, 19:45, |

29.6.06

Collectivism, Aggregism, and Egoism

Matt Yglesias has been accused of "fascism" for claiming that people ought to consider the broader impacts of their actions on others, rather than only their narrow self-interest. The accusation raises a common false dilemma, of collectivism versus individualism. In reality there are three positions, of which Yglesias was taking the middle one -- collectivism, aggregism, and egoism*.

Egoism we're all familiar with -- it's the claim that you should do what's best for you, and the heck with everybody else. Collectivism -- for which "fascism" is a disparaging term -- is the claim that you should do what's best for the collective. Collectivism must be distinguished from aggregism (philosophers probably have a better sounding name), which claims that you should do what's best for all individuals added together. The distinction between collectivism and aggregism is what Jeremy Bentham and Margaret Thatcher were each getting at in their denials that there is such a thing as "society."** A collectivist or fascist seeks the good of the collective as a system (even if that requires hurting the individuals making it up), whereas the aggregist seeks the good of the members of the system (even if that requires destroying the system and organizing the relationships of the members in a quite different way). Yglesias's argument is the aggregist claim that egoistic actions by individual women will lead to greater harms to other individual women, not the collectivist concern that the collectivity "women" will be harmed (I happen to be an aggregist, as I see no justifiable way of attributing a "good" or "interests" to any entity -- including collectivities -- that lacks subjectivity.)

Of course, hybrids of these positions are common. On the one hand, there are "compatabilist" hybrids, which argue that since (due to the way the world works) the goals are not fundamentally in conflict, pursuing the favored one will lead to satisfaction of the others. Nearly all egoist theories are compatabilist to at least some degree -- even Ayn Rand assures us that rampant pursuit of selfishness will ultimately work out pretty well for the population as a whole. Meanwhile, some variants of Deep Ecology claim that pursuit of the collective good will be ultimately the most fulfilling course of action for the individual.

On the other hand are pluralist hybrids, which admit that conflicts between interests are inevitable but must be balanced. Liberal political theories (e.g. Mill or Rawls, and afaik Yglesias) tend to balance egoism and aggregism by carving out a protected private sphere for the former. Most contemporary holistic environmental ethics are hybrids of collectivism and aggregism.

As I see it, "fascism" refers to an excessive, or even exclusive, emphasis on collectivism (or perhaps more narrowly to excessive collectivism implemented through the use of force). But not all theories that incorporate some collectivism are fascist, and aggregism is a different beast.

*There is theoretically a fourth possibility -- asceticism, the claim that you should do what's best for others without any regard to yourself.

**Unfortunately these denials took a legitimate claim about what entities have moral standing, and phrased it as a false ontological claim about what entities exist. There is a social system, but its value lies only in its instrumental effects on the interests of the people organized by it.

Stentor Danielson, 23:53, |

One More Thought On Religious Progressives

I think one problem with the way the religious progressives question is discussed is that it's usually framed (and Obama did this in a classic fashion) as an argument against the secular left. Any talk about religious progressives has to start by bashing secular progressives, accusing them -- sometimes fairly, sometimes not -- of being unwilling to accept religious progressives. The problem is that this kind of opening gambit, while seemingly useful as a way to show you share religious swing voters' concerns, frames the whole discussion as an attack on secular progressives. But this is a battle that religious people, not secular ones, are responsible for fighting.

All progressives can talk about specific policies, and how to those policies are linked to the shared core of progressive values. The question in the religion debate, however, is how to dig deeper and link those progressive values to fundamental worldviews. Secular people can't be asked to make arguments linking progressive values to a religious worldview, and in fact they must be free not only to assert the secular basis of their commitment to progressive values, but also to advocate for the superiority of a secular worldview over a religious one. All they can be asked to do is accept the political comradeship of others who accept the same progressive values on whatever basis -- and a corresponding demand is made of religious people.

The real culprit who should be blamed here is religious progressives, who have failed to articulate (or perhaps even to have) the link between their religious worldview and their progressive values.

Stentor Danielson, 04:59, |

Obama's Emptiness

I still don't understand either Barack Obama or keynote speeches. The former recently gave one of the latter on the subject of religion and progressive politics, and the blogosphere is all atwitter. Some are furious that he would dare say something nice about religion, since doing so amounts to selling out to Jerry Falwell. Others are swooning over the silver-tongued savior of the left.

I read the speech and couldn't see what the fuss was about. It's a long bit of rambling boilerplate, nice-sounding but noncommittal. It's made all the worse by the fact that he was speaking to a conference on faith-based progressive politics, so his audience would already be quite well aware of, and in agreement with, the idea that progressives shouldn't let the right have a monopoly on religion.

That claim is true, but it's hardly sufficient -- after all, nearly every prominent Democratic politician is a believer and makes a labored show of the depth of their faith on the campaign trail. To accomplish anything, progressives need not just to defensively deny the right's framing, since that only reinforces it and invites the type of close scrutiny justifiably given to newly-proposed and against-the-conventional-wisdom claims. What's needed is a positive narrative (one that doesn't need to be framed as a reaction to the right) showing how Christianity can give rise to the set of values shared by both Christian and non-Christian progressives* (once we decide what those values are). But Obama's "liberals can too be religious" angle doesn't give us that narrative. The only bit of real substance in the whole speech (albeit substance that reflects well on Obama's character) came at the very end, when he described how an email exchange with an undecided conservative voter led him to tone down the ad hominem in his website's statement on abortion. But less ad hominem is only the first step.

* This project is essentially liberal, as it roots a shared political program in a substantive worldview already head by a group of people, without demanding that people who don't already hold that worldview have to change their minds -- they can find justifications for the same political program in their own worldviews. It also reminds me of the pragmatist interpretation of Arne Naess's "apron diagram" theory, in which varying philosophies -- he talked about Christianity, Buddhism, and his own secular version of Spinoza -- will, if interpreted rationally, lead to the same Deep Ecology platform.

Stentor Danielson, 04:31, |

27.6.06

In Which I Say Something Nice About Bush

To shift into a far more wonkish mode for a moment, I actually think President Bush's proposal for a line-item veto is excellent:

"When the president sees an earmark or spending provision that is wasteful or unnecessary, he can send it back to the Congress," Bush said. "And Congress is then required to hold a prompt up-or-down vote on whether to retain the targeted spending. In other words, the Congress is still in the process."

He said this procedure would "shine the light of day on spending items that get passed in the dark of the night," sending "a healthy signal to the people that we're going to be wise about how we spend their money."

Matthew Yglesias is right that pork is hardly the biggest of our problems (or even of our budgetary problems), and that Bush is unlikely to actually use the line item veto for much. But pork is still a problem, and the law would remain on the books for more responsible future Presidents (not Frist, but perhaps McCain) to use. In any event, given that Congress is controlled by Republicans, I'd rather see them spend their time on doing a tiny amount of good than their other agenda items (FMA, ill-advised tax cuts, etc) that do a large amount of harm.

Stentor Danielson, 19:28, |

Fatalists Are Made, Not Born

The "justice" system is fundamentally broken. Or maybe it's working exactly as intended -- after all, it did take a black man and screw up his chances of getting ahead, with no remorse or accountability. Elias Fishburne was lucky enough to have been in good enough shape before his ordeal to have gotten back on his feet afterwards.

Another striking thing is how jaded all of the people who are part of the system are. Their view has been narrowed to encompass just their cramped bureaucratic role. They are so focused on their own coping -- through laziness, cynicism, and dehumanizing of others they interact with -- that they don't see the horrible effects both of the official procedure and of the way they go about implementing it. There's no passion for making the system work, or even for caring about its effects on others. Feeling so put-upon (in their narrow selfish way) by the system, they end up with a sort of passive trust in it -- evidenced, for example, by the assumption that any inmate passed to them by a previous link in the chain is definitely a criminal.

Stentor Danielson, 18:52, |

26.6.06

Making Up Things To Debunk

Killing some time in a bookstore yesterday, I leafed through a book called "Debunking History, which claims to "explode" various historical myths. The first myth I turned to was Andrew Jackson's treatment of the Native Americans. My first reaction was to cringe, expecting some sort of Randian praise of the heroic white man civilizing the poor Indians. But in fact it was just the opposite -- the section said basically "Jackson was really nasty to the Cherokees." Now, I quite agree with this as a matter of historical fact. But how does this count as "debunking a myth" in the 21st century? I've never heard anyone say anything other than that Jackson's treatment of the Native Americans was awful. People may not care very much, and they may dismiss it with "yeah, people were racists back then," but I've never heard any living person claim that the Trail of Tears was a peaceful resettlement.

Stentor Danielson, 22:10, |

25.6.06

A Couple Points About Population

1. Here's a great example of how the obsession with the power of economic incentives can lead people into dodgy moral territory. Alberto Palloni has a terrible idea for how to reduce population growth:

Economics could even help reduce population, he says, with "a mechanism that controls the spillover of childbearing. If you have six children and think the rest of us are going to pay for their education, sure you will have six children. But if we make it difficult for people to educate their children [by, for example, having parents pay directly for schooling], surely they will cut their fertility." Similarly, policies that provide for old-age insurance make it less likely that parents will have children to provide "social security."

Set aside for the moment the empirical facts that parents are not rational utility maximizers, and that the places in the world with the highest population growth are the least likely to have well-funded universal education. Palloni is proposing to punish children for the sins of their parents, in order to send a message to other parents. "Sorry Billy, but you don't get to learn about science, because we're trying to scare some other prospective parents into using the Pill." Note, however, that the suggestion about social security is just fine, as it achieves its incentive without penalizing innocent people.

2. If reducing immigration from the third world to the first world is so great for the environment (because a poor Mexican does less harm to the environment than a rich Mexican-American), then it stands to reason that migration from the first world to the third world would be even better. Here's the link for getting a visa to immigrate to Mexico.

Stentor Danielson, 07:31, |

Juvenile Thinking

Speaking of coining clever new terms with which to cast aspersions on your enemies, I'd like to find a snappier way to say something like "argumentum ad developmental psychology." Argumentum ad developmental psychology is the claim that something is wrong because it resembles the behavior or thinking of younger people. (And there's also the converse fallacy, which holds that younger people have a clear and innocent moral sense that adults lack.)

Stentor Danielson, 06:58, |