Starting a CONVERSATION

When it’s your kid accused of bullying, and you know he’s completely innocent, you will brook no nonsense about it being an excellent opportunity to discuss bullying in general and raise awareness.  You know that any such conversation will only serve to confirm the impression that your son is guilty of something, even if not the act in question.  Those individuals attempting to acquire the microphone and establish conversational space (where they are important) can insist that they only wish to use the issue as a starting point, regardless of the facts of this particular case or the guilt or innocence of your son - they lie.  They might be nice people who don’t mean to lie but just like “conversations” about important matters, and don’t think things through very well, but they don’t mean it.  

Because if it was their kid, they’d see immediately.

I don’t mean to get you stuck on the bullying example.  It could be your good boss falsely accused, or your daughter who is a coach or mentor accused of sexual pressure on one of her girls, or a spouse under the gun for innocent comments twisted.  People only allow those conversations against a background of presumed guilt.  This has really brought forth an awareness of whether women have a voice in the churches…this just highlights the American fascination with guns and is an opportunity for a teaching moment…this raises important questions about the militarisation of our police…or government intrusion…or…No.  No it doesn’t.  It might be an opportunity for the opposite, for a discussion of kids being falsely accused of bullying, or bosses of harassment, or whatever.  If we reverse the PC nature it becomes clear.  If a black man is falsely accused of some crime and white people are clamoring for his head, it is offensive to use that as an opportunity to go on the talk shows and talk about the legitimate fears the white community feels.  He’s innocent!  Deal with that first!  Then we can come back and talk about the merits of your idea later.

These issues may indeed be legitimate, but not every event that touches on them is a fair starting point.  When the facts of simple justice actually tend in the opposite direction where you want to go, it's pretty offensive for you to try and pop in.  (I have the image of the new queen bee sawing off the head of the old queen in my mind here.)

So how is it that these nice people keep telling these lies? 

Some of them aren’t nice, just charming and well-spoken.

Some of them get so wrapped up in the cause that what happens to individuals counts for less and less.

Some of them just haven’t thought it through by putting themselves in the shoes of the accused.

Some of them cannot endure Justice, but can only see it through a special prism of social justice, economic justice, sexual justice, historical justice, whatever.  These modifiers are of course all moves away from actual justice.

Some make their living or acquire status by having these important conversations, so they will have a very low threshold for saying “Hey, we should have a round-table discussion about this!”

Christians may be more prone to this than others, and Christian clergy especially prone.

Income Inequality

Perhaps I should be focusing on executive compensation, a more limited version of the topic.  But I don’t know enough about either to know how much overlap there is between the two concepts. Part of that fault is likely my own, as I have not inquired closely.  Yet I wonder if the lack of clarity lies at least partly with the explainers rather than the listeners. 

I also cannot tell if people are worried about inequality primarily because it is an inefficiency – an overall drain on the economy, because increased concentration of wealth dangerously enhances the power of the few over the many, or because it just seems morally wrong – undemocratic, unchristian, something. All three seem plausible. Picketty’s book assumes it is bad, so I am told.  The whole concept of hearkening to GINI scores suggests that we’re supposed to just know that it’s unhealthy.

You know my suspicions already.  Whenever there is lack of clarity in the discussion, I ask whether there is lack of clarity in the thinking, and suspect that there is some large unacknowledged emotional reason that is a real driver of the discussion.  Do we actually know that inequality harms the economy?  How much?  In what way? Who measures this?  Is the idea that it decreases competition and innovation at all but the highest level, that it is a 1% frictional drag on all levels that is a large problem in aggregate?  Tell me how.  Is the moral shortcoming something that can be expressed as a generalised Christian or democratic truth that applies to many situations, or is this one of those things that just feels unchristian or unfair after a certain point?  What is that point?

I can find possible explanations off the top of my head that might apply.  Corrupt 3^rd-world economies often have extreme concentrations of wealth in the hands of a few.  Maybe there’s cause and effect.  A lot of people secretly believe that there’s a (mostly) fixed amount of money in a place and if Jack gains a dollar, Jake loses one.  It’s not true, but I can understand the feeling. Other folks believe that because the Bible warns against greed and Jesus had some specific criticisms of the rich that we should pass laws to keep wealth in check.  Because some people clearly get rich by illegal or immoral methods, there is a spillover that suggests that all of the rich are under suspicion.  Or, executives who are hugely compensated might be encouraged to extract the most they can, or care little about the long term and reinvestment. Too great a separation may reduce esprit de corps enough that production ebbs. These reasons and more, I think I understand.

It’s just that I don’t recall the evidences for any of these being laid out very systematically that these bad things always happen, or even mostly happen because of inequality.  I imagine there is at least some evidence for some of them.  Readers who wish to direct me to links, or even longer treatments, are welcomed.

Foreigners

Linguistic curiosity: An old Proto-Germanic word walkiskh*  was used for all foreigners, which, in their world, were 99% Celts. It was an insulting term, which meant also slave, servile, not-very-art-smay, if you catch my drift. Just about what every tribe in the history of mankind thinks of other tribes.

Because it was applied so universally, it was the name various Teutons and Saxons gave to a lot of people, including the Welsh, the Walloons (Beligium), the Vlachs (Romania), the Cornish (Cornwall), and even walnuts, which were not a normal English hazelnut, but some damn suspicious foreign nut.

Derivatively, the surnames Wallace, Walsh, Welch as well

*approximate. always.  these languages were always highly variable affairs.

WWII London

Interesting behavior in those Air Raid Shelters. The British Museum underground station no longer exists, having been closed shortly after the war when Holbern replaced it about two blocks away.

He's For Us

I saw a Massachusetts pickup with a "Scott Brown/He's For Us" bumper sticker, so presumably that was a previous slogan of his, not a current offering in his NH race.  I have disliked that attitude when used by Democrats, and I find I don't like it any better when used by Republicans.

There is a superficial deniability that says "You know, us.  He's for the little guy, the common man, the regular people, not the special interests/corporate bigwigs/career politicians/elites."  Even if that is the conscious meaning, and sincerely felt, I don't believe it is the most powerful one.  It is a tribal appeal, us against them, which is unhealthy. Plus, even if many people don't know that this is what is swaying them, there are those who know full well, and embrace it anyway.

We stand or fall together.

Small Sample Size

I had a little theory which, upon further review, isn’t likely to hold up under scrutiny.

There are relatives who I now have little contact with*. I’m thinking of a nephew I have never seen as an adult (he must be 40 now), and a cousin about 50 who I have seen only once since he was a toddler. Yet I have kept up with both of them from a distance because of reports I get from others, who remain in closer contact with both of us.  You know the sort.  I wish them well, and they are some part of the tribal background of my life.

Communication is different now, and group emails that chain back through several replies, or Facebook shares, or retweets suddenly put you in possession of comments that the original sender never expected would come to you.  When those comments are rude statements about political or religious groups you belong to, it’s suddenly uncomfortable. It is rather like the time I was chatting with a Mormon friend, who was joined by another Mormon who presumably thought I was in the fold as well and made some disparaging remarks about gentiles. Ah, so that’s why you think of us when we’re not around.

I certainly make generalisations myself, but I hope it is only in response to actual data and real-life examples, not the stereotypes handed to me.  Perhaps not.  One would have to ask those who disagree with me about that. 

Because the two relatives were both male who so emphatically declared the standard insulting cliches, and in both cases made them to other males, I wondered if there was a gender difference here.  Without effort, into my mind popped a short list of male relatives who carry on their interactions in just this way, and in contrast, the female relatives who first came to mind do not do this at all. (Those females hold similar political and religious views, so far as I can tell.)

Their woofing has a schoolyard feel to it, of bumping into people intentionally to see if they will make something of it, or of marking out territory and daring people to cross lines, which also suggests males more than females.

So I set about pondering the various people I encounter, at work, at church, online, at community events. Equally, I thought through categories of relatives close and distant, alive or deceased, looking for patterns.  I pretty quickly thought of two female relatives who mark out political territory on Facebook almost daily, most of it tribal, chirping out what good people their group has and what ignorant bastards are in the other group. These are presented with some wit and skill, usually in the form of a poster to share, but the undercurrent is obvious.  (Duh.  Note: Of course it’s obvious, even when it retains some deniability along the lines of “But I was just…”  The criticism of the others, as people, was the whole point.  There is no other content.)

Likewise, I saw that most of  my male relatives do not set down political markers at every turn - only a few were in this wolfpack mode 24-7. So my theory of male political aggressors and more harmonising females in my family has only weak support.  But not no support.  The trend is there. Additionally, it is supported by my observations at work, where males are clearly more aggressive in their political and religious comments than females.  Church, email, community, also true that the males are - not overwhelmingly but consistently - more likely to set down territorial markers a bit defiantly.  These latter categories are important, because those are more conservative individuals making those declarations. The liberals in those groups are less likely to make irritating comments, conservatives more likely.

I wonder if this woofing largely takes place when people think they generally outnumber the opposition and are attempting to herd the others into compliance, or invite them out.

I think I'm the only referee in most places, and not a fully objective one.  Which is to say, of course I'm objective, but A) I have to show false modesty to retain credibility and B) not every agrees with me.

*Notice that the sentence is grammatically “wrong” in two ways, but is the clearest and most natural expression of the idea in English.  That is evidence that the rules are wrong.

The Wounded Healer

Retriever is having another go at writing, and this is one riffing on Nouwen's The Wounded Healer that you can first read through quickly, then come back and follow the links the next day, with enjoyment both times.

I was tempted to not encourage her - and she left the door open for that - because it seems to end in frustration for her whenever she resumes blogging. (It's a long story, which you will have to learn from her, not me.) But the piece is good, so I'm sending it on.  I don't know whether to root for her or not.

Apologies for not following up on some threads I have left hanging here, but I haven't forgotten and will get to them.  I should have time next week.

Inspiration

I am covering at the desk of a person who likes inspirational quotes.  I started counting.

Twelve quotes or prayers (defined loosely) taped up about the workstation, plus two reminders of how to say things nicely, a yearlong calendar of inspirational quotes ("Just For Today"), prayer flags, Native American symbols, and a picture of the Dalai Lama.

We are here to awaken from the illusion of separateness* - Thich Nhat Hanh
The workplace should primarily be an incubator of the human spirit. Hmm. Trying to get my head around that.

She is one of my favorite people in the building.  But she thinks very differently from me.

*What do you do next after you've done that, then?  What are we here for once we've done that?

Update: A Ten Commandments bracelet, a "health!" butterfly, and a god-knows-what colored pencil drawing with an eye, an ankh, a row of cherries or tomatoes, stars, and letters that might be Egyptian, captioned "Song of the Dawn."  It makes me wonder if the other things have meaning.  A small trivet with a willow? A feather? Oh look, a metal fish and a Buddha - I had missed those.

The Magpie On The Gallows

The Bruegel painting was referenced online because of the odd-perspective, almost MC Escher-ish, of the gallows.

It turns out that it's interesting in many ways.

Climate Clarification

Update 1:  James talks about modeling this morning over at I Don't Know But...

Update 2:  I am told that Max Planck's theory of science change has been investigated and proven false.


It keeps coming up enough that I find a need to set down a statement of what my default prejudices are on climate controversies.  Apparently it is very easy to be misunderstood.  I’m mostly writing this for my own benefit.  I will include some visuals just to break up the appearance.

There has been slight warming since 1800.  As the Little Ice Age ended in 1870 or so, that is hardly surprising.  Exactly how much depends on where one starts measuring, with advocates trying to manipulate both the time and temp axes to show either dramatic or non-dramatic effect.  (You know how I hate that.) 

 But there is some, even with all the questions about measurement differences, urbanisation heat islands, and the like.

In particular, there was a brief, steep increase from 1985-1997. The temps have held steady since then, so it’s “no further warming, but still at a high level.”  The 1930’s may have been warmer, particularly in the arctic.  There was a very slight cooling trend from 1940-75 (there were others in the past two centuries as well), but even with that, the 200-year trend is up.

So the folks who claim there has been no warming whatsoever have a significant burden to show that there is something in that period’s measurements which causes a consistent overestimate.  So far, they have offered possibilities but not convincing proof of that.

What is causing this is extremely complicated, and many disciplines weigh in on solar radiation, volcanism and tectonics, water vapor, feedback mechanisms and the like.  Most of the pixels are devoted to the effect of human activity, as you well know.  My reading of the Scientific Consensus Ô is that almost everyone agrees that there is some human influence on the climate, from agriculture, deforestation, and use of fossil fuels. There are a few holdouts – and these are people with real credentials and peer-review - who say there is none, or almost none.

There is not, however, such a huge consensus that the anthropogenic part is large. It may be north of 50% who would make that larger claim, but nothing near the 97% often quoted.   (That study measured those who said “some.”) As far as I can tell, no one has measured the percentage of scientists who say that humankind is driving “most,” or “virtually all,” or “a significant amount” of the warming. Perhaps it is indeed up north of 90%, as is commonly claimed.  Or less than 50%.  We don’t know.  It pays to remember that on such questions, a great many researchers are of a professionally cautious bent who would be noncommittal even if they strongly suspected an effect.  Others might err in the opposite direction, dramatising or overstating their claims in an effort to spark action they think necessary.

There is no study of the cautious vs incautious personality styles of climate scientists compared to other disciplines. Even though I just made that up, I’m pretty sure it’s true.

I don’t think that the field is riddled with dishonest scientists.  I don’t think there is a consistent conspiracy to suppress data that is suspected to be true but is politically inconvenient.  Yet all disciplines are partially politicised.

Let me expand on that last just a bit.  The DSM-V is a politicised document in more than one way, as were the previous DSM’s.  However, it contains a lot of useful information in framing psychiatric diagnoses, it helps everyone in the field know what everyone else means by certain terms, it eliminates a good deal of vagueness of thought. It is not invalidated by the fact that much of its final wording came down to bullying, horse-trading, and resigned acquiescence.  You can go online and read people who are convinced that the whole thing is nonsense: it goes too far or doesn’t go far enough.

Supreme Court decisions often have political considerations underlying them.  Journalists, and people who get their ideas from journalists, would have you believe that there is little but politics in those decisions.  That’s because that is what they understand, so they believe that must be the only real framing. I don’t see it that way.  I figure in a 6-3 or 5-4 decision both sides must have some valid, arguable points or we wouldn’t have gotten there.  I think SCOTUS justices can be wrong, even badly wrong, and they certainly have their very general political approaches which show in their reasoning.  They are products of their times and training, as we all are. Just because their decisions have some politics in them does not mean they are entirely invalid, however.

Plate tectonics did not finally win out until the 1960’s.  The importance of vitamins still had important opponents until the 1930’s.  People still believe in Freud, and Kinsey, or that stress causes ulcers. The food pyramid was only scrapped last Tuesday. Economists don’t agree about anything, it seems.  There have been scandals in psychology and sociology of researchers fudging data. Anthropology and Education in general make me crazy because they are so riddled with presuppositions.  Noam Chomsky exercised a general suppression effect on certain lines of cognition research over decades – even according to the people who agree with him.  Steven Pinker, Nicholas Wade,  Luigi Luca Cavelli-Sforza  are all aware that there are things you just can’t say without inviting wrath.  People hang on to ideas they like, and change comes in science – well, I’ll let Max Planck say it: A scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.

Thus, when I make the rather dull observation that there is much that is political in climate science, the counter-accusation that I must therefore believe in conspiracy theories and “denying” the evidence on a par with creationists or holocaust-deniers is just annoying.  Also, it makes my little ears prick up.  People confident in their knowledge are comfortable with qualifiers, uncertainties, plus-minus, allowing some validity to an opponent’s points and the like.  Those who reflexively go nuclear make me suspicious that they are oversensitive because they are indeed more political than average.  That is what I do in fact believe about climate science at the moment.  I don’t believe it is invalid or worthless.  I do believe that it is more politicised than most sciences – when you’ve got the UN-derived groups involved as some of your biggest players you’ve rather invited that – and I believe that its claims exceed its data.  On this last, the actual researchers may be little at fault.  It may be that they are merely not protesting in favor of cautious interpretation as much as they should be for good science.  And I admit, that’s probably hard to do when everyone is telling you how important your research is.  It would go to my head pretty quickly.  Note: In at least one major instance, the claims have demonstrably exceeded the data. The most recent IPCC report had to reluctantly admit that even the lowest of its previous predicted warming scenarios turned out to be too high.

There’s some evidence that they are worse and do neglect or cover up evidence more than other disciplines.  How much that evidence is overvalued by opponents for political reasons of their own I don’t know.  Whether their failings are actually worse than researchers in other fields, or simply more publicised, I don’t know.  Whether even real shoddiness is ultimately not very crucial to evaluation, I don’t know.

Next, we have the whole question of how much does it matter?

There is a genuine consensus that if there were a whole lot of warmin’ goin’ on, the net effect would be bad for humans. There are big Howevers behind that.

There isn’t evidence that there is a lot of warming.  There are projections, with varying degrees of uncertainty, that there could be a lot in the future.  Those projections are based on computer modeling, which in turn is based on the assumptions the modelers build in. This is simply a very weak link in the chain, and there’s no getting around it.  This is an area where very small changes in assumptions can result in large changes in predicition.  People don’t have to be deeply biased to get things wrong here.  There doesn’t have to be a nefarious conspiracy.

This is a place where some skeptics get things badly wrong.  They conclude that large differences between projected results and actual results means that there is something significantly rotten in the state of Denmark.  The whole batch of climate scientists, from all those disciplines that hardly ever speak to each other, must nonetheless be keeping the Real True Information out but mutual agreement, winks, and nods.  As we have noted above that such soft conspiracies, refusing to question the conventional wisdom, have occurred in other fields, it is of course possible that we are in the midst of some consistent, stubborn, anosognosia among the climate-research power brokers which bends the research of the entire field.  Possible, but not necessary.  A very little shared expectation, natural favoritism, and confirmation bias can do the trick.  I think most climate researchers are honest individuals who genuinely want to find correct answers.  I believe that in the face of enormous contrary evidence, they would change their views (though perhaps gradually).  But absent that, the normal human trend is to stick with one’s original POV, highlighting supportive evidence, downplaying disconfirming evidence.  I’m taking on general faith in people’s desire to be competent in their work that the researchers are more likely to modify their beliefs than the skeptics.

Perhaps I am naïve there, because maintaining ones livelihood, aside from any considerations of saving face, can be a powerful deterent to rocking the boat, but I still hold to it.

All that to say that the reliance on projections is unconvincing. They might be steadily improving and trustworthy now.  But the previous projections have turned out to be badly wrong, and in precisely the same way that one would expect if the initial assumptions were wrong.  Modeling builds in fudge factors all the time.  Ithas to.  

This is not Newtonian mechanics, and we should not be treating the evidence as if it is unequivocal. There are multiple variables, there is uncertainty, there is ambiguity. Climate science is more like economics.  We know some things, but others are uncertain.  Sometimes things happen and we aren’t sure why.

The second However: In all the talk of scientific consensus, there is one consensus that doesn’t get mentioned often.  Results will not be uniform across the globe, nor will they be all negative. As above, a lot of warming would cause net harm, even catastrophe.  But a little warming?  YMMV.  Respectable minds have concluded that a little might actually be a net good.  Therefore, to treat warming as a possible catastrophe, one has to show that there’s going to be a lot, and more quickly than mankind can manage. My understanding of IPCC Fourth Assessment summary (2007) is that only the highest projected trendline was potentially catastrophic.  We didn’t even reach the lowest, and the early releases of the Fifth Assessment backpedal on that.

Some of the observed data is indeed worrisome, such as the part that agriculture has played in warming.  That doesn’t get as much attention, but it could be forcing change. (Why it doesn’t get attention is an interesting discussion.)  But some of the report is puffery, such as the observation that the last fifty years have been the warmest in the last 700.  Well yeah – most of the last 700 was the Little Ice Age. Most of the worrisome warming was that 12-year leap, which though we have not fallen back from, also hasn’t increased, despite the continued increase in greenhouse gases.

Warmer will mean higher agricultural yields.  The largest stores of available freshwater in North America are in the cooler regions.  People die of cold more than heat. The food disruption of where the fish are and how many there are, may be the largest issue, and not insoluble.

Which is not to say that we’re safe, and we should disregard the warnings and be dismissive.  Through it all, there likely is something to this.  It just has not been evidenced strongly enough to convince doubters that drastic action is needed.  There is a little warming, quite recent, and that has paused but not gone away.  What is the evidence for catastrophe?  I don’t mean “What would a catastrophe look like if there were one?”  That’s a very different qauestion. That some of the skeptics are intransigient and will not be convinced by any data is irrelevant.  That is true of every field.  Treating all skepticism as invalid is evidence that the most popular explainers simply don’t know what they’re talking about. That isn’t done, in any discipline.

There are no scientific organisations which commit to a statement that human influence is neglible – there are individual scientists, * but not groups – but there are some which are neutral.  Organisations of geologists are most prominent among them – I have no idea why.  More cautious?  Longer perspective? Still, through all the hoopla there are respectable bodies which are at least not counseling urgency.  It doesn’t mean they’re right yet it’s worth noting.

The precautionary principle always sounds simple and obvious to those who already believe. Gee, why wouldn’t we invest heavily in alternative energy sources and tax petroleum like crazy to reduce consumption?  Okay, then, why don’t we go to war with a new small country every year, just because one of them might develop nukes?  Think how bad it would be if Haiti got nukes.  Why not say the Sinner’s Prayer word-for-word in one breath, tearfully, just in case it’s the only sure way into heaven?  Why not ban bicycles because of injuries?  It doesn’t hold.  First, you have to establish that there is some real likelihood. If tipping point arguments are supposed to be so persuasive, then why are they dismissed in discussions of taxation and regulation?

The third However may be the largest of all.  Even if true, what do we plan to do about it?  As PJ O’Rourke noted “There are 1.3 billion people in China, and they all want a Buick.”

* Warning:  Biased source.  But the info seems accurate.