Is Recognition of Human Empathy the Solution to our Environmental Problems?
according to Jeremy Rifkin, we’re on the verge of a massive revolution
Posted Feb 19, 11:36 am in biology, consumerism, culture, economics, environment, human nature, improvements, marketing, politics, sustainability
There’s a fascinating interview with writer Jeremy Rifkin over at the New Scientist website. In it, he lays out why he thinks there is going to a be a massive shift in human consciousness as a result of new forms of information accessibility combining with the human ability for expressing empathy. This revolution, in his estimation, will solve the energy and environmental problems our world is facing. Borrowing from evolutionary biology, philosophy, marketing, and many other fields, Rifkin sees hope in the current turmoil where others don’t.
Incidentally, Rifkin’s vision of changing human behavior runs completely contrary to that of Steven Levitt (of Superfreakanomics fame), who as I stated in a previous entry is stuck in neutral with his “solve problems created by technology with more technology” rut.
Incentivization and the Superfreakanomics Controversy
Why Levitt and Dubner’s take on climate change is too limited a view
Posted Dec 26, 12:40 pm in book reviews, environment, human nature, politics
In 2005, a pop economics book called Freakanomics climbed the nation’s bestseller list. Written by University of Chicago economics professor Steven Levitt and New York Times journalist Stephen Dubner, the book claimed to unlock mysteries surrounding many social phenomena. For example, chapters explained through the lens of statistics and economic theory, why drug dealers live with their parents and the reasons for the popularity of certain baby names to particular races of people. The explanations given in the book were interesting and thought-provoking, and earned a great deal of critical acclaim and popular press.1 Whatever the legitimacy of the claims made in the book, there was always a sense that Levitt was a sharp guy; he came from a respected academic institution, and was well-known in his field.
Earlier this year (2009), the highly-anticipated followup to their bestselling book, entitled Superfreakanomics, was released. But even before the book had hit shelves, a massive amount of public controversy had built up— much of it very negative. Many critics who had formerly been gushing about the authors suddenly had lost all respect, viewing the book as a compendium of contrarianism, arguments made to deliberately jostle one’s sense of intuition about things— in a bad way. For example, Levitt and Dubner argued that drunk-driving is safer than walking home drunk. Not only did this incense organizations that had made so many strides against this sort of behavior, but many found there to be surprisingly weak chains of logic in their methodological approaches.
But where the book really enraged the scientific community at large was in their highly controversial chapter on global warming. Climate change is already a hot-button topic; one that has generated a large level of heated public debate. Levitt and Dubner decided to throw gas on the flame by claiming that the only serious way to address the problem is to engage in geoengineering. We should, they argue, release large amounts of certain chemicals into the atmosphere; these chemicals will absorb the problems created by excess CO2 and begin a global cooling process. There’s a lot you could say about their “solution” in terms of the science (which they claim supports them, but which many strongly dispute); for starters, it’s dangerous to so offhandedly suggest a solution on this scale that could have serious downstream problems. Efforts in using human measures to balance biological processes have often had unforeseeable and difficult to correct consequences (one example being the recurring problems we have had with invasive species). But I’m not in the loop enough with that world to argue those points. What irks me is that they specifically downplayed the idea that change in human behavior was warranted or possible at all. In an interview, Levitt was quoted as saying:
If you look at the history of modern mankind, I think you will be hard pressed to find any particular problem that was serious that was solved by a behavioral change, as opposed to by a technological solution…
As a social scientist and economist, I find this assertion not only misguided, but ill-conceived as well. First, it is built on a false premise: that there are two types of change, behavioral and technological. This is untrue; often, behavioral change goes hand in hand with technological change. How is it fair to say that our society’s transition to motor vehicles, or our adoption of cellular telephones are solely the purview of technological change? Sure there are clear technological changes involved, but simple shifts in technological wizardry do not, by themselves, account for widespread shifts in adoption rates (for example, natural gas vehicles have been invented, but few people actually own a natural gas powered car). For any technological advance to take root, it has to be accompanied by behavioral changes.
The second reason, which dovetails perfectly with the aforementioned reason, is that because people do make behavioral changes that aren’t part of technological changes. It’s not clear what serious historical events Levitt is talking about when he says that he doesn’t have confidence in people changing behavior, but there’s tremendous, almost incontrovertible evidence that behavioral change can happen in the absence of technological change. Here’s one simple example: high gas prices in 2007 drastically reduced the amount of driving done by the average American. This might seem like a trivial rebuttal, but the reality is that external conditions force people to change behavior all the time. Here, the fact that prices went up disincentivized people from driving around needlessly. Technology played no part in this. Admittedly, it can be argued that this is not a “serious” situation on the scale that Levitt is referring to in that quote, but aside from climate change, what serious situations of global proportions that involved 6 billion— or even 50 million— atomized individual actors has plagued this planet in the past? I can’t think of one. Regardless, it’s not hard to see that many situations, particularly ones involving imminent crises, effect rapid changes in human behavior. For Levitt— an economist— to make an argument asserting the pre-eminence of technology as a force is a little surprising to me.2
I don’t mean to discount the role of technology at all. But just as often, it comes down to our governments and society to create the conditions necessary for behavioral change. Sometimes this happens on its own, sometimes it happens through deliberate processes. Regardless, my argument against Levitt’s assertion is one that I thought should have been obvious to someone of Levitt’s stature; as an economist, his entire field is about incentivization. Surely he, of all people, would know that you can change behavior— not simply by asking for change, which is the straw man he seems to be knocking down— but by changing incentives structures and changing the conditions that push individuals towards the choices they make (perhaps he should have taken some lessons from his fellow University of Chicago faculty member Richard Thaler, whose book Nudge discusses this idea at length).
Though I can’t make any arguments about geoengineering because I simply don’t know enough about it, I will say that saying that Levitt and Dubner’s attitude towards behavioral change is somewhat defeatist and cynical; I agree, it can be difficult to change behavior, but it’s important to realize how it can and can’t be done. Simply asking for it doesn’t typically work, as people have resistance to change; but creating conditions that encourage behavioral change is exactly how the world and our society was able to transform so dramatically over the past few millennia, and how we can expect it to be shaped in the future.
1 I can’t say that I cared much for the book myself (again making myself the oddball amongst my peer set), mostly because the title was misleading and the book had no applied value whatsoever. It was fairly interesting if viewed as a trivia book, however— putting aside any questions regarding its accuracy.
2 Surprising at least initially, until I realized that mainstream economic theory didn’t even introduce concepts about the behavioral irrationality of the consumer until just a few years back. This shocking and bewildering oversight will eventually lay waste to the entire field if it is not immediately adopted into the economic mainstream. The field is already getting a lot of heat because of the recent economic meltdown, which was due in large part to irrational consumer processes that were not even considered by the big names in economics!
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The Symbolic Value of a Beer
how much meaning is embedded in a single beverage?
Posted Jul 31, 11:03 am in branding, culture, marketing, politics, postmodernism
The so-called “Beer Summit” occurred today. The premise of this meeting between Barack Obama, Henry Louis Gates, and James Crowley— a Cambridge police officer— was the culmination of a lot of recent speculation about latent racist attitudes, profiling, and the state of race relations in America. The event hinged on an incident in which Gates was trying to get back into his house after apparently being locked out, and being challenged by a white police officer for appearing to be breaking-and-entering. Allegations about police making assumptions about black men committing crimes were made and it soon turned into the subject of a national debate.
But Obama, ever the diplomat, invited the parties over to the White House garden for some beers (one each) and a bit of mano-a-mano discussion. A lot could be said about the political nature of this event, but what I’m interested in is what apparently the media made a big fuss about: the beer that each individual was going to choose to drink at this event.
It’s fascinating that a single beer could be so embedded with symbolic meaning. This is the nature of the post-modern world, in which many brands are reservoirs of symbolism and fit so prominently into the public’s schemas about social groups. As I mentioned in a previous post, David Foster Wallace once commented that he’d read books in which a character’s personality could be succinctly conveyed simply by naming the brand of T-shirt the character wore. That’s how much meaning we associate with certain brands. Thus, it was a matter of apparent great symbolic import what beer these gentlemen were having on this momentous occasion.
Gates, a Harvard professor, chose a Samuel Adams Light, while Crowley chose a Blue Moon (with an orange slice). Obama, ever the epicurean (what with his much-ridiculed taste for arugula), chose Bud Light. This invites the question of why, if you were the ostensible leader of the free world, you would ever choose a Bud Light. Maybe I’m more of a beer snob than I realize, but of all the world’s beers I could choose, Bud Light would be somewhat at the bottom of my list. Perhaps I am being a bit presumptuous here, but it seems highly unlikely that a man of Obama’s stature and taste would voluntarily choose a Bud Light if given unrestricted choice.
But of course, we have to think about the symbolic value of his choice. Bud Light is the best-selling beer in America, and has been since 2001; apparently it accounts for a massive 22% of case sales in the United States! It carries with it so many symbolic, populist overtones. It’s what any blue collar American would drink. Not like that elitist, hoity-toity microbrew stuff, and especially not one of those foreign beers that wasn’t brewed on our shores.
According to a Republican strategist quoted in an article from Bloomberg, Obama is “trying to send a message that he’s an average American… [He could] complicate that by making an exotic choice, or an import, or too expensive.” Indeed, imagine what the news sources would say if he drank, say, a Heineken, a Sapporo, or a Sierra Nevada Pale Ale. He was already skewered by Fox News’ Sean Hannity for asking for Grey Poupon at a diner several months ago.
There is a rather unexpected complication to Obama’s choice, however. Budweiser was sold to the Belgian company InBev back in July 2008, making Bud Light not quite an American beer. Sure it’s brewed here and it’s a traditionally American brand, but it’s no longer owned by an American company, so perhaps it can’t be viewed as wholly American as say, Coors.* Nevertheless, I think most Americans probably still view Budweiser as a culturally American beer and don’t really know much or care much about the location of the headquarters of the huge international beverage conglomerate that owns it.
Bud Light, viewed strictly on symbolic terms and with the intent of being an uncontroversial choice for a nation who, during the 2004 presidential election was inexplicably obsessed with choosing the candidate who one would most like to have a beer with, was a good selection. It’s a best-seller, has no particular subculture attached to it, and is sold pretty much everywhere. It’s hard to beat that. As Al Ries, an Atlanta-based marketer told Bloomberg, “Leading brands tend to be a very safe choice for a politician because, in a sense, they’re saying to the public, ‘You picked it, not me. I’m just reflecting your choice.’”
Interestingly, little commentary has been made on Crowley’s choice. The police officer was easily the most blue-collar fellow at the table, and chose what is probably the most “elitist” beer (if such a concept can be meaningfully applied) in terms of popular conception. Most people likely have not even heard of Blue Moon as it is the type of beer that is typically served in “uppity” and yuppy-type hangouts, not roadside dive bars. In reality, however, Blue Moon is rather surreptitiously brewed by Coors, though they do not advertise this and do not have the Coors name listed anywhere on any Blue Moon products. The company (rightly) assumes that the Coors name will reduce the brand equity of this macrobrew masquerading as a microbrew.
Gates’ choice was a sensible one; he lives in Cambridge, just outside of Boston, and he chose a beer that is brewed in Boston, perhaps a symbolic nod to his affection for the area despite his recent conflicts.
All in all, somewhat interesting choices made by all three gentlemen. I would, however, have loved to hear what kind of public commentary would have been made had Obama chosen the ultimate in a confounding beer with multiplex meanings: Pabst Blue Ribbon. Is he kowtowing to rednecks? Bikers? Hipsters? Cheapskates? In a perfect world, he would have chosen it, and it would have been a wonderful and puzzling mystery to unravel.
* You could tell that around the time of the sale of Anheuser-Busch to InBev that the company got kind of nervous about how its customers might perceive this traitorous act of selling out a quintessentially American brand to Europeans; they responded by creating and heavily advertising something called Budweiser American Ale, repeating the world “American” many times in the ads to reinforce the idea that this was a American drink.
Further reading:
1. The Bloomberg Article
2. “How Brands Become Icons: The Principles of Cultural Branding” by Douglas Holt
Business, Social Justice, and the Problems of Fairness
Posted Mar 28, 11:03 am in biology, business, business models, economics, human nature, politics, sustainability
If you observe traffic in India long enough, you’ll arrive at the conclusion that there are no road rules in India. But this is not true. There is one rule that dictates driving behavior: Might is right. To Westerners, this is a discomforting thought, because it bypasses the systems of social justice that we are used to in the West. Shouldn’t you, as a small car, have the same rights on the road as a mammoth SUV? Shouldn’t you, as a pedestrian, be able to cross a crosswalk without fear of being flattened by a speeding vehicle?
Most Westerners probably think so. Fairness and equality is ingrained in our outlook on the world. We look for courts and governments to level playing fields for us. If someone smashes our car in an accident, we use the law to restore ourselves to the situation we were in before the accident. We call that justice.
The ideals of social justice, fairness, and equality are lofty; it’s hard not to get upset when you hear stories of unfairness (persons being wrongly convicted of crimes, people losing all their money in elaborate frauds, etc.), and it’s even harder not to demand justice when something like this happens to you. Yet, I have recently begun to understand the sorts of costs that this has had on our society, both in an economic sense, but also in a psychological sense. I fear that despite the high-minded ideals of social justice, it does not always serve us well as a society to rectify every injustice leveled against us.
I wonder about how the concept of justice fits into an evolutionary context. Does it fit in it at all? Evolution would suggest that some individuals (organizations) are better suited for prevailing conditions than others. The weak and frail will be consumed by the environment, and the strong will soldier on, and grow. Evolution is the law of nature for all beings, and it is a law that is the supposed lifeblood of capitalism. Despite this, our system (at least in the U.S.) continually ensures that those who cannot compete— fairly or not— can be sustained artificially by a system that will nurse them regardless of their strength or potential to compete effectively in the future. This is not true for all firms, but it’s true for many. Think of GM and Ford, think of AIG, think of the ridiculous amount of subsidies given to industrial farms.
You might be wondering where I am going with this. What does bailing out companies have to do with social justice? Remember why the government is currently bailing companies out; it has very little to do with the companies themselves. It has everything to do with the idea that some people unfairly lost their life savings in them, and hundreds of thousands of people will unfairly lose their jobs, and the resulting economic meltdown will unfairly ripple throughout society and affect people who had nothing to do with it. So what is the solution? A lot of people feel that ‘investing’ billions of dollars into these organizations will re-establish justice to not the auto company, but people who might have been impacted by their problems. All those hapless investors won’t lose their hard-earned money. All those dedicated auto-workers who labored at GM for 35 years won’t lose their jobs. And all those bystanders won’t be leveled in the narrowly-averted nuclear winter.
I can’t help but anthropomorphize this situation a bit by comparing it to the way a parent welcomes back the proverbial prodigal son with open arms despite the kid’s waywardness. At least to some degree, we expect this from good parents. Madonna’s song “Papa Don’t Preach” has the narrator begging her religious father for support instead of judgment despite what in his eyes is her grievous sin of becoming pregnant as an unwed teenager. But we’re talking about supporting wayward organizations here, which will have broad social impacts. Welcoming back companies that recklessly screwed over investors and their own employees should not necessarily be supported in return, though it’s tempting to do it because of the other parties that might be affected by a failure to do so. So let’s start with why it may not be a good idea to bail out these companies, and then move on to why it’s even bad for the related parties.
There’s a good chance that Madonna learned her lesson and won’t get pregnant again, but the guys at GM are more akin to heroin addicts than teenagers who made some bad decisions. They’ve been supported by government money so long, are so far from market-orientation, and so incapable of the sorts of organizational change that are necessary for detoxification that it seems impossible to give them any sort of support without tacitly feeding their addictions. Sure, you can give GM money to go rehab, but there’s absolutely no indication that they’re interested in rehab. They want to stave off the looming disaster on the horizon for one more day. If perhaps they showed the least bit of interest in market orientation and willingness to be innovative, it might be different. But that’s not the case at all. They simply expect to be saved because they always have been, and the government plays into their hands largely out of habit.
Despite this, no amount of money given to the company is going to restore the lives of the victims of corporate irresponsibility, and no amount of money alone will prevent the threats of insolvency from being constant and recurring events. Of course, we are often victims of the sunk-cost fallacy, which suggests that because we’ve already wasted so much money on these companies and they’ve already created so much chaos, that we should escalate our commitments to them to hoist them from the tarpit from which they’ve carelessly driven into (again)— which is precisely the wrong tack in this situation. The best thing to do is to walk away and never look back, despite their anguished screams.
I know that many people would be affected negatively by this course of action. I realize that many retirements will be ruined, many workers will hit the skids, and their kids may never be able to attend college. I understand and empathize with this hardship. But what worries me is that trying to correct these unfairnesses actually set us up to create exponentially more of them, and make us more susceptible to future crises of the same or greater magnitude— and it has nothing to do with the actual transfer of money, and everything to do with economic incentives.
Put bluntly, these organizations are drains on the system, and further feeding them and the people who they have hurt is an even bigger drain on the system. That said, I understand that we live in a society, and we can’t always think about things in these terms. I don’t advocate, for example, that we stop all social services, which many perceive as drains. But it’s damaging to the business environment and ultimately consumers to support businesses just because we always have. It not only encourages organizations to be reckless about their management habits, but it encourages those who work for them and invest in them to behave carelessly and greedily. Aggregated over a nation and over decades, it’s primes us perfectly for future disasters of equal or greater magnitude.
Put the right incentives in place, and you can avoid this sort of thing. If you knew that no one was going to bail you out, your company would probably act in a much more controlled manner. If you were investing your life or your live savings in that company, you might spend a bit more time scrutinizing the management practices of that company. Which is what these organizations and people are supposed to be doing in the first place.
Consider this: a herd of antelope will never try to nurse or save an injured antelope, regardless of whether it was maimed by a predator or by another antelope. To do so would jeopardize the future of the rest of the herd. Standing around and attending to the injured puts them all at risk. And indeed, some antelope will need to serve as fuel for the predators. These predators probably aren’t viewed positively by the antelope (if they have such a capacity), but in a way, they are actually protecting the antelope society as a whole because they enable a systematic checks-and-balances that promotes a balanced ecologic sphere that keeps the antelope’s environment stable. Without this, the antelope would overpopulate and eat themselves to famine. Then all of a sudden, the seeming prosperity would reveal itself to just be an elaborate illusion, and they’d see that actually there wouldn’t be enough food or resources to go around. Does this sound at all familiar?
A Thought Before the 2008 Presidential Election
Posted Nov 3, 08:41 am in human nature, politics, postmodernism
What is the link between the following ideas?
- The world is 5,000 years old
- George W. Bush and his minions planned and orchestrated 9/11
- People on welfare spend all their money on alcohol and drugs
- Barack Obama is a socialist and a Muslim (despite having a Christian pastor)
- Marijuana is a dangerous drug and usually leads to harder, even more dangerous drugs
Give up? All these things have no basis in fact. Yet, they are all beliefs that people rabidly cling to no matter what evidence comes up to contradict them.
Like the people who believe these things, some moral and political crusaders spend so much of their lives trying to reinforce and justify their pre-existing opinions that they can’t evaluate new information without experiencing profound cognitive dissonance; they then cling to their pre-existing opinions even tighter to ensure the security of their own identities. These people are called extremists, fundamentalists, jihadists, terrorists, racists, bigots, ideologues, and morons.
To these people, the world is not a complex place; it is a place of black and white, good and evil, right and wrong, “it is” or “it isn’t.” The real world is not this; it is a place of often unsettling gray and ambiguity. And to grapple with it in a meaningful way requires serious independent thought, self-reflection, and a willingness to admit that your thoughts might be inaccurate and plain wrong at times. Reality can conflict even with one’s most basic, gut-level knowledge of “truth.” This is deeply troubling to most people. But we all need to take steps to confront the fact that truth has a way of changing depending on what we know. Perhaps if we take the time to learn more, we can change. Alas, most people do not have the capacity to search for truth or the desire to change; they want to hold on to their old, limited conceptions of the world. And to force them on others.
I heard a reporter talking to a college-age boy about his choice for president. “McCain,” the boy remarked. “He doesn’t want to take from the rich to give to the poor.” This comment was made with the underlying assumption that doing this was wrong. He then went on to admit that he came from an affluent background and that played into his decision. It was a moment that caught me a little off guard, because the unstated subtext of his comment (that perhaps he himself was not even aware of) was that if he were someone else— perhaps a poor person— he might have made a different choice.
But then, if our conception of righteousness is so fluid, and subject to change based on our own current situation and how our opinions might personally benefit us, how then can our thoughts and opinions on issues have any value other than the demonstration of opportunistic self-interest? Should our opinions not reflect attitudes that we would hold regardless of their personal impact on us, or what our situation is?
Perhaps it would be useful to consider the words of Mahatma Gandhi, whose life continues to be an inspiration to me:
“In my life, my commitment is to truth, not consistency.”
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Social Networking and Self-Regulation
the potentially crippling problems inherent in the self-policing realms of Digg and Reddit
Posted Sep 28, 07:15 am in economics, experiences, human nature, improvements, marketing, politics, postmodernism, social networking, unanswered questions
Social networking websites are the big thing right now, not just for armchair sociologists and online businesses, but also for academics. They serve as sort of a vacuum where you can observe interactive behavior from afar in a venue that didn’t even exist just a few years ago.
Two of the sites that get a lot of the attention are Reddit and Digg. These sites are not like Facebook or MySpace, in that they are not pages in which you create profiles for the purpose of having your peers come check you out and find out what music you like. They are essentially link portals that allow users to submit content (links) and allow users to comment on those submissions. They also give users the ability to “upmod” or “downmod” submissions to indicate, respectively, approval or disapproval of said submissions, comments, and links. It’s supposed to be an egalitarian means of aggregating a collective response of the userbase to a submission, and to show others how worthwhile a contribution might be, and to establish a feedback mechanism to the poster.
Keeping count of ups and downs encourages good comments and submissions, and can be seen as a preventative tool to keep out trolls, spammers, and people who say don’t make worthwhile contributions to the public discourse. And like the Roman gladiator battles of old, the idea is that a preponderance of upmods will spare the life of a well-written or interesting contribution, while downmods will effectively slay it, striking it from the viewing grounds.
In theory, it’s a very good thing. Over humanity’s existence, and particularly over the past 15 years, there has been a glut of information flooding into the public sphere at a rate that seems to only accelerate. It become increasingly necessary to more effectively filter what reaches our eyes in order to make our limited time more meaningful. In other words, there’s a lot of junk out there, and you don’t want to waste your time reading it; you want to get to the good stuff immediately (this attitude probably is problematic in its own way, but that’s a different story entirely). These social networking sites help you put mass consciousness to use in achieving that agenda.
For a while this was being considered as the way that private citizens were finally going to wrangle the big bad world wide web and all its anarchic tendencies; finally the masses would be able to collectively wrestle power away from the disproportionately powerful spammers and media corporations, and regain control of the discursive sphere that the internet was always meant to be.
Alas, the debilitating cracks have already formed in the foundations of this well-meaning institution.
Digg was working fine up to a certain point, where articles were being upmodded based on merit and interest, but this utopic system was eventually usurped by an organized network of users operating on a platform of quid pro quo, in which users would agree to upmod another’s comments and submissions in exchange for similar treatment to their own comments and submissions. These rogue networks expanded, using Digg’s proprietary “friend” system, in which a user can befriend other users and monitor each others’ activities with ease. Pretty soon, the entire front page of the site, which was once supposed to house an aggregated list of topics that the entire userbase considered important, was commandeered by people subverting the system through mutual backscratching, thereby annihilating the democratic ideals of the site.
To this day, despite 150,000,000 page views a month and thousands of content submissions per day, the same 20 people’s submissions make it to the front page every day. This, of course, basically makes Digg the equivalent of a mainstream media outlet that uses editorial discretion to filter content, except in this case, it is not exercising supposed meritocratic discretion (“what are the important issues of the day?”) so much as they basically just have a staff of 20 contributors who are going to automatically have their voices heard, while everyone else is basically forced into a consumption role.
So much for that.
It was then that we looked to Reddit to become the site that would cradle our highest democratic ideals. Many Digg users jumped ship to come to Reddit after being disgusted with the downward slide in content quality at Digg. But soon enough, Reddit too was destroyed— but not by the same system as Digg. It was leveled by a much more subtle and insidious form of cancer.
Reddit had always prided itself on being a more thoughtful and educated mass of users than Digg, always mocking Digg for its tendency towards childish humor and ad-hominem verbal sparring. Reddit, on the other hand, was a site that was sophisticated, and more prone to having mature dialogues about subjects that were served more by complex dialectics than verbal drive-bys. But ultimately, this user self-perception and self-selection, combined with the “modding” rights of all users created an ideological vacuum that threatened the very foundation of the site through its own exclusionary behavior.
To understand how this happened, it is relevant for us to first understand what happened in a more concrete sense.
At the moment I am typing this, the front page of Reddit is littered with anti-John McCain/Sarah Palin articles that seem to recite various sensational or seemingly biased positions against them. This is not in itself a problem, but as a supposedly non-partisan site, it has repeatedly been shown that anti-Obama submissions get downmodded into oblivion. Reddit is now essentially a clearinghouse for liberal rhetoric, where every single anti-Republican and anti-progressive screed on the world wide web can be found, being upmodded by users who are probably only reading descriptions of articles rather than full articles, and who are voting based on ideology rather than quality.
Spend a few minutes on the site, and you’ll see liberal comments regularly upmodded (or at least not downmodded), and you’ll see conservative comments downmodded like there’s no tomorrow— with no apparent value put on the complexity or discursive quality of the comment.
Remember, upmodding and downmodding are supposed to be reflections of user opinion on submissions. The issue here is that there are many reasons why users might not like an article, and without consistency in voting patterns, it descends into a meaningless mush of upmod/downmod numbers.
Therein lies the problem with this form of social networking. Upmods and downmods do not carry with them a single unique and transparent value. A downmod does not necessarily mean “I thought this comment was bad on the merits of its thesis”; it could mean “I disagree with you ideologically.” It could even mean “I don’t like this user,” or “I don’t like this user’s username.” All this tends to render whatever submissions are highly upmodded or highly downmodded to be of somewhat ambiguous import— which of course means that anything you are seeing (or not seeing) because of others’ value judgments is based on somewhat arbitrary rationale… which should, in turn, make you wonder why this is such a great medium for brokering dialogue. After all, what if you want to read well-written opinions of people whose ideas differ from the site’s mainstream?
An idealized situation would have separate measures for the any number of factors that might elicit someone’s approval or disapproval: well argued/poorly argued; convincing/not convincing; ideologically agree/disagree; spam/not spam; worthwhile contribution/not worthwhile contribution; stupid username/not stupid username, etc. With such a system, one could theoretically exhibit approval for a contribution on multiple levels but simultaneously disagree on other levels (and let others know it). In this manner, we could read an article that was well argued, but not convincing, that was largely ideologically disagreed with. But we can’t do that now. And that’s too bad, because it forces regular users into intellectual stagnancy. As sociologist Mark Granovetter suggests, it’s actually the people who aren’t in our immediate intellectual circle who are the ones who can teach us things. We already “know” what our ideological peers think.
Of course, this opens up a whole new can of worms because it relies on the ability of users to police themselves in what category of approval or disapproval they choose to give to submissions. Vindictive liberal users might angrily describe an eloquent and well-argued conservative post as “not worthwhile” simply because of their own parochial point of view. This is problematic, and unlikely to be resolved in any meaningful way.
Another reason why this is potentially troubling is because of intersubjective value judgments. What’s worthwhile for you does not match the threshold of what is worthwhile for me. Aggregated over a massive userbase, we’ll end up seeing a sort of middling effect that promotes submissions that basically hug the bottom rung of the ladder of quality. That is, we’ll end up elevating the sorts of things that the most people happen to agree are good. If you listen mainstream radio, read mainstream magazines, and watch mainstream television, you can see why this may not be such a great thing.
Will this ever see resolution? Will humanity’s mainstream be forever condemned to mediocrity in everything it engages in? Will our music, television, movies, literature, politicians, and now content portals all be mediocre? God, I hope not.
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On Self-Rationalization and Justification for Moral Lapses
We usually get what we want… somehow.
Posted Sep 7, 10:22 am in business models, consumerism, economics, experiences, human nature, law, marketing, politics
Some time back, I was sharing an office with someone, and had a shelf next to my desk that I had placed a few books on. One day, I came in to find that the shelf had been moved next to the other guy’s desk, and my books had been tossed upon my desk, along with a note explaining why my officemate needed that shelf more than I did, and how I would be able to get another shelf from some other person in the office if I really needed a shelf (this, of course, invites the question of why he didn’t get the shelf himself from some other person to begin with).
The rationalization in his head followed this trajectory:
1) I want a shelf for my things.
2) There’s a shelf over there.
3) And it only has a few books on it.
4) Given that it only has a few books on it, clearly the owner doesn’t really need that shelf.
5) Given that he doesn’t really need it and I do, I really deserve that shelf more than he does.
6) It’s wrong for him to have that shelf when I need it so much more.
7) I’m just going to take the shelf since I will receive greater utility value than him.
You can see how such self-rationalizing logic has a way of subverting standard social norms such as “ownership” and “right to use.” I was somewhat bothered by this turn of events, but once I started thinking about it, I realized that such behavior happens all the time, and enters into some of our most proverbial ethical dilemmas.
The question of Is it wrong to steal a loaf of bread to feed your family?, for example, is another similar ethical quandary that enters into our popular consciousness.
However, one of the most prevalent examples of this in recent times is the issue of music downloading through P2P networks. The tech-savvy youth of the world, on the whole, have absolutely no problem with downloading copyrighted music from the internet (full disclosure: I have also done it before). This is despite the fact that most of the same people probably recognize stealing items from local stores as morally wrong.
But, comes the argument, this isn’t really theft. In a theft, someone is deprived of an item because someone else takes it. Here, something is being duplicated so I have a copy and the original owner still has his copy.
True. Yet, one could make the same argument about stealing cable, and I have not heard anyone argue that this is morally sound. After all, there are cable companies who have large amount of fixed assets tied up in cable lines, maintenance, and other expenses that come part and parcel of delivering cable. If everyone stole cable, clearly the cable television system would collapse. Is the same not true for the music industry?
Well yeah, but the music industry hasn’t adapted to changes in the market and the way that consumers want to shop.
Maybe, but in every other sphere of the consumer economy, if consumers don’t like the way that a company does business, they simply don’t do business with them. Why is it that you feel justified in stealing property in this case? If you really want a new Ford car, but you really hate Ford dealers, how is it that you are justified in stealing a Ford from their property so as to bypass interacting with the dealers?
Look, I’ll admit that this does hurt the record companies, but you know what? They deserve it. Those suit-and-tie business guys are all about the money; they couldn’t care less about the music, and in fact they’ve have done everything in their power to destroy music! I support the artists, and the record companies just screw them over anyway. Artists only get, like, 10 cents on every CD sale anyway. They make their real money off of touring.
But what gives you the right to decide that the artist shouldn’t have that 10 cents per CD? Sell a million albums, and that’s a lot of money. Isn’t that their decision to make?
Artists who say that are just being greedy! They’re already rich and famous and now they want even more money! Can you believe these guys?
But that’s their job. Surely you’d want to be paid for things you took time to develop and sell, right?
No way! I’m above that. If I were an artist, I’d be happy that people were listening to my music and coming to my shows. It’s all about the art, dude.
Just because it’s ‘all about the art’ for you, doesn’t mean that it’s ‘all about the art’ for everyone. Would you still feel the way you do once you were depending on that income for your livelihood, and your continuing ability to fund that livelihood?
Of course! I’m not looking to make money off records. I’d make my money of touring, and connecting with my fans, and selling merchandise and stuff.
What if you didn’t want to tour?
But that’s how you make money.
That’s one way you make money. The other part is selling records. What if you only want to sell records and that’s all? And don’t you, as the artist, have a right to choose the channels through which you distribute?
Ok, let’s stop this right here. You can see where this is going. Ultimately, the P2P downloader in this conversation is finding ways to justify his decision to download music. He gives all kinds of rationalizations for it, from blaming the companies, to blaming the artists, to giving ideological reasons, to technical explanations of why it’s not bad.
Clearly, this argument was built backwards. The downloader started with the idea of I want to have free, unrestricted access to any music I want whenever I want. From there, he found ways to justify any behavior that led to him getting that. This involved dismissing valid counterarguments through insular and self-justifying means that, while they might apply to his own worldview, are not necessarily shared by those who he is taking from. Nevertheless, he is able to project this ideological view of “how things should be” onto the world, and then convince himself that what he’s doing is actually the valorous thing to do, bravely fighting against an archaic system that enslaves and rips off consumers— when all he really wanted was the music to begin with.
Thus, a base drive to get free music has now taken on an ideological bent and has morphed into some kind of jihadist war on record companies. The guy could just have just admitted he wanted the free music. Why bother blowing all that smoke? Well, he doesn’t realize consciously that he is blowing smoke.
Apologists have this same problem. They’ve decided that George Bush, or Hillary Clinton, or Alex Chiu, or James Dobson, or whoever is right. Now that they’ve come to this conclusion, they can no longer stop to evaluate events critically. Suddenly, they find themselves excusing all kinds of behavior that they would skewer someone else for; and not only will they overlook this behavior, they will defend it— passionately! After all, they wouldn’t want to admit that they were wrong about this person this whole time.
Strange thing, this cognitive dissonance.
Further reading:
Mistakes Were Made by Carol Tavris and Elliot Aronson. Harcourt, 2007.
Comment [2]
Minimum Group Theory and the Christian Quandary
If it’s not one thing, it’s another
Posted Jul 15, 07:12 am in human nature, politics, religion
In a previous post I remarked about the minimum group paradigm, which suggests that people instinctively divide themselves into us and thems in social situations.
Many people in the US are devout Christians (at least in name) and vote accordingly. Many of the same people think that Christian scripture should form the basis of law and public policy, despite the fact that the Constitution allows for and encourages freedom of religion and the separation of church and state. The founding fathers themselves were not all of the same religion, but it does not change the fact that a significant portion of Americans are distrustful and hostile towards non-Christian faiths. Sometimes, you’ll hear religiously-minded people say that all our problems would just go away if everyone was Christian, if we have prayer in school, and if we reinforce the teachings of Christianity in government and society. In other words, if we advocate a religious state.
Of course, the same people who argue this don’t realize the power of the minimum group paradigm, and how it will sabotage their dreams even in the unlikely chance that they get what they want.
Sure, right now it’s about Jesus vs. Allah, but once the Christians banish Allah from their sacred shores and secure themselves in a righteous Christian nation, people— having now no “other” to scapegoat— are going turn on their own. They will, for example, get upset about how evil Anglicans— who worship Jesus— are infiltrating our school boards, or how those bad, bad Mormons— who also worship Jesus— belong to a brainwashing cult, not like us Southern Baptists— who, surprise— worship Jesus. Or Methodists, or Lutherans, or Jehovah’s Witnesses, or whatever sub-subset you can think of. And once the Southern Baptists or Lutherans kick out all the other guys, they’ll find some sub-sub-subset of Southern Baptists or Lutherans to fight against. This will never end until there’s just one guy in the whole country. And then he’ll want to bring in other ‘like-minded’ individuals, and the process will begin all over again.
If you ever needed any proof of this in practice, just think back to the Pilgrims. Most of us probably have happy thoughts when we think of the Pilgrims, what with the way they forged their own way after being harassed out of their own country, and the way they befriended the American Indians, and started Thanksgiving. Oh, and those adorable hats and bonnets!
The part that people forget is that despite the fact that the Pilgrims were forced out of England due to religious intolerance, they turned around and did the exact same thing to the American Indians, in a spectacular show of cognitive dissonance. The Pilgrims were the “them” in England, but in America, they were the “us,” and they had a “them” in the American Indians that they needed to take care of. And boy, did they.
If you need any more proof, just look out into the arid deserts of the Middle East, where Muslim Shi’a and Sunnis struggle over supremacy and who are the true believers. Sure, they’re all Muslims, but unbeknownst to most Christians in this country (most of whom aren’t even aware of this division), these two groups can’t stand each other. And where did this rivalry start? Let’s ask Wikipedia:
Sunnis, the largest group of Muslims, believe that the first four caliphs were the rightful successors to Muhammad; since God did not specify any particular leaders to succeed him, those leaders had to be elected.
The Shi’a , who constitute the second-largest branch of Islam, believe in the political and religious leadership of infallible Imams from the progeny of Ali ibn Abi Talib. They believe that he, as the cousin and son-in-law of Muhammad, was his rightful successor, and they call him the first Imam (leader), rejecting the legitimacy of the previous Muslim caliphs.
And if that isn’t obscure enough, it only goes downhill from there, spiraling into a mess of arcane and esoteric arguments that few understand or want to understand. But of course, why should a lack of understanding of the apparent conflict stop anyone from engaging in it, and mentally and physically blowing the opposing side to bits?
There’s no reason believe that this constant us and them subtext of humanity will ever change, and it is unthinkably naive to base policy on the idea that it ever will.
A Joke Related to the Aforementioned Topic
I was walking across a bridge one day, and I saw a man standing on the edge, about to jump. I ran over and said: “Stop. Don’t do it.”“Why shouldn’t I?” he asked.
“Well, there’s so much to live for!”
“Like what?”
“Are you religious?”
He said, “Yes.”
I said, “Me too. Are you Christian or Buddhist?”
“Christian.”
“Me too. Are you Catholic or Protestant?”
“Protestant.”
“Me too. Are you Episcopalian or Baptist?”
“Baptist.”
“Wow. Me too. Are you Baptist Church of God or Baptist Church of the Lord?”
“Baptist Church of God.”
“Me too. Are you original Baptist Church of God, or are you Reformed Baptist Church of God?”
“Reformed Baptist Church of God.”
“Me too. Are you Reformed Baptist Church of God, Reformation of 1879, or Reformed Baptist Church of God, Reformation of 1915?”
He said: “Reformed Baptist Church of God, Reformation of 1915.”
I said: “Die, heretic scum,” and pushed him off.
On the Politics of Smoking Bans
Why the hostility towards public smoking when cars abound?
Posted Jun 27, 07:40 pm in environment, law, politics
Many cities are jumping on board legislated smoking bans, and it would appear that this trend is gaining a base, and communities all over the country are pushing to adopt such regulations. Aside from the political issues involved, there is something deeply ironic about places like L.A. and New York having instituted smoking bans. These are cities, after all, that have ranked #1 and #8 respectively on the American Lung Association’s list of the cities in the US with the worst air pollution.1
Anti-smoking activists will argue that it is the right of people to be in environments where they are not forced into prolonged exposure to airborne toxins. I agree with this. But the fact that people in L.A. and New York are making such arguments seems somewhat irrational given their choice of residence. If the worst exposure that people are getting to airborne pollution in L.A. is from cigarette smoke in bars, I’d say they’re doing pretty well. But the truth is, L.A. is a cesspool of air pollution— so much so that residents are often given warnings about not going outside because of the level of particulate matter in the atmosphere. How, then, can someone make this argument with any conviction? Everyone in LA is constantly being bombarded with carcinogenic smoke; frankly, cigarette smoke is the least of their worries.
I can think of about a hundred different industries that cause more mayhem than the cigarette industry. But it’s the automobile industry that I would probably put at the very top of a list that environmentalists and health care professionals should target. Breathing cigarette smoke for an hour in a bar seems like a walk in the park compared to living in an environment where cars are spewing out smoke all day long— you know, like they do in every major city in the world.
Anyone concerned about cigarette smoke should be triply concerned about smoke from vehicular transport. We look down on cigarette smokers for their inconsiderate behavior, what with the way they blow their foul smoke all over and ruin our precious air, but we rarely hold motorists to the same standard. Alas, our society has invested much more energy and political leverage into the war on drugs (yes, tobacco does count as a drug) than into the war on pollution, and we have this to thank for the fact that the intensity of our anger has been misplaced on cigarettes and not other, more common and more substantial forms of air pollution.
Few people are up in arms about getting cars off the roads despite the fact that they are like massive cigarettes billowing out megatons of nasty, toxic smoke, and blanketing not just those in the direct vicinity of them— like cigarettes do— but entire towns and regions (just ask the good people of Fresno, California, who are in the unenviable position of being the downwind recipients of the Bay Area’s smog). Why is there no cry for cars to be ostracized from our cities, or at least their presence minimized somehow, like London did by charging exorbitant rates for cars to enter certain parts of the city?
Perhaps it is because as Americans, we have accepted, embraced, and even encouraged motor vehicles as a way of life. Our cities have been designed to not only accommodate cars, but to necessitate them. There is little evidence to suggest that the planners of most American cities and towns have ever considered the idea that building their communities to revolve around automobiles might not be such a great idea. And now, decades later, when planners are starting to question the wisdom of that decision, we are pretty much stuck with those results and are paying the price at the pump, in our physical health, and in our environment.
Yet, despite this, we tend to view vehicles as immutable parts of American life, and have never given pause to consider whether either full or partial bans of vehicles, or “congestion charges” are possible in our cities. It’s not nearly as radical as it sounds— there is a huge environmental price we have to pay for having those cars there. They are loud, they discourage public transit, and they pump out a hell of a lot of smoke— much more than a few cigarettes ever could. Getting them out would confer benefits on many more people and in a much more pronounced way than smoking bans. So again, why do so many city residents want to implement smoking bans but nary a peep is heard about instituting some form of vehicular regulation?
Despite what I consider its misguidedness, in a way, cigarette bans are a step in the right direction if we are looking strictly at environmental concerns and not those regarding personal liberties. We all need air to breathe, and currently, very few private citizens give our air quality much thought outside of those people who are directly affected by it; focusing air quality efforts into food service establishments might just be the most realistic way to plant the seed, and get the public thinking about air quality issues.
But then there are the pesky political issues that arise. A very heated debate rages on about how such bans relate to Constitutional rights, personal liberties, and the rights of businesses to operate the way they want. Many pro-smoking advocates argue: Why should the government be allowed to tell someone how to run their business? Shouldn’t business owners have the decision as to whether they should allow smoking or not, since smoking is not illegal? If customers do not like dealing with smoke in establishments that allow it, won’t they just avoid that establishment? And shouldn’t consumers decide what businesses they frequent?
I find these counterarguments rational and compelling; at least in the context of the complex modern world. Don’t get me wrong, I love having clean air, despise the smell of cigarette smoke, and I would rather not have to deal with smoke anywhere on the planet— especially considering that it’s my air (and the world’s collective air) that is being degraded by someone else without my or our input or just benefit. But we suffer from such tragedies of the commons all the time, and on the totem pole of environmental offenses, cigarettes are charting somewhere towards the bottom; we let companies like Monsanto get away with so much more socially damaging acts than a little air pollution that it seems ludicrous that we should hold cigarette smokers’ feet to the fire instead of going after the big dogs of environmentally and socially damaging behavior.
Yet we go on, content living in our large polluted cities, accepting vehicular air pollution as a way of life, and cursing cigarette smokers for destroying our precious air. All the while, we watch idly as massive diesel trucks and cars of every variety permeate our cities and contaminate every whiff of our air.
Sources:
1) American Lung Association, State of the Air, 2008.
http://www.stateoftheair.org/2008/most-polluted/
2) Wikipedia, “Times Beach, Missouri”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Times_Beach,_Missouri
The Food Supply Chain
a pictorial representation to ponder
Posted Jun 26, 08:14 am in biology, business, business models, consumerism, economics, environment, marketing, operations management, pictures, politics, semiotics, sustainability
(click for a more detailed view)