Monthly Archives: February 2009

The Dwarf Bends the Titan to His Will

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T.H. Huxley. Hell yes :

The propounders of what are called the ” ethics of evolution,” when the ‘ evolution of ethics’ would usually better express the object of their speculations, adduce a number of more or less interesting facts and more or less sound arguments, in favour of the origin of the moral sentiments, in the same way as other natural phenomena, by a process of evolution. I have little doubt, for my own part, that they are on the right track; but as the immoral sentiments have no less been evolved, th’ere is, so far, as much natural sanction for the one as the other. The thief and the murderer follow nature just as much as the philanthropist. Cosmic evolution may teach us how the good and the evil tendencies of man may have come about; but, in itself, it is incompetent to furnish any better reason why what we call good is preferable to what we call evil than we had before. Some day, I doubt not, we shall arrive at an understanding of the evolution of the aesthetic faculty; but all the understanding in the world will neither increase nor diminish the force of the intuition that this is beautiful and that is ugly.

[...]

Men in society are undoubtedly subject to the cosmic process. As among other animals, multiplication goes on without cessation, and involves severe competition for the means of support. The struggle for existence tends to eliminate those less fitted to adapt themselves to the circumstances of their existence. The strongest, the most self-assertive, tend to tread down the weaker. But the influence of the cosmic process on the evolution of society is the greater the more rudimentary its civilization. Social progress means a checking of the cosmic process at every step and the substitution for it of another, which may be called the ethical process; the end of which is not the survival of those who may happen to be the fittest, in respect of the whole of the conditions which obtain, but of those who are ethically the best.

As I have already urged, the practice of that which is ethically best—what we call goodness or virtue—involves a course of conduct which, in all respects, is opposed to that which leads to success in the cosmic struggle for existence. In place of ruthless self-assertion it demands self-restraint; in place of thrusting aside, or treading down, all competitors, it requires that the individual shall not merely respect, but shall help his fellows; its influence is directed, not so much to the survival of the fittest, as to the fitting of as many as possible to survive. It repudiates the gladiatorial theory of existence. It demands that each man who enters into the enjoyment of the advantages of a polity shall be mindful of his debt to those who have laboriously constructed it; and shall take heed that no act of his weakens the fabric in which he has been permitted to live. Laws and moral precepts are directed to the end of curbing the cosmic process and reminding the individual of his duty to the community, to the protection and influence of which he owes, if not existence itself, at least the life of something better than a brutal savage.

[...]

Let us understand, once for all, that the ethical progress of society depends, not on imitating the cosmic process, still less in running away from it, but in combating it. It may seem an audacious proposal thus to pit the microcosm against the macrocosm and to set man to subdue nature to his higher ends; but I venture to think that the great intellectual difference between the ancient times with which we have been occupied and our day, lies in the solid foundation we have acquired for the hope that such an enterprise may meet with a certain measure of success.

The history of civilization details the steps by which men have succeeded in building up an artificial world within the cosmos. Fragile reed as he may be, man, as Pascal says, is a thinking reed: there lies within him a fund of energy, operating intelligently and so far akin to that which pervades the universe, that it is competent to influence and modify the cosmic process. In virtue of his intelligence, the dwarf bends the Titan to his will. In every family, in every polity that has been established, the cosmic process in man has been restrained and otherwise modified by law and custom; in surrounding nature, it has been similarly influenced by the art of the shepherd, the agriculturist, the artisan. As civilization has advanced, so has the extent of this interference increased; until the organized and highly developed sciences and arts of the present day have endowed man with a command over the course of non-human nature greater than that once attributed to the magicians. 

By the way, this view was shared by Huxley’s fellow X Club member, that villainous utilitarian liberal Herbert Spencer. Darwinian liberals, understanding the benefits and artificiality of civilization, are its best defenders. Those who would have us live “according to nature” invariably have a stupid view of nature.    

Magic Buttons: The Breakdown

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Here’s the Magic Button results by ideological self-identification. If you picked “other,” you’re lumped in with a bunch of people you probably hate. Cat-owners, Hansonians, Fascists, Extropians, Liberaltarians, Socialtarians, Conservative-libertarians, Anarchists, Classical Liberals etc. are all in this trashbin of nonconformism. Some of these labels got several write-ins, but I didn’t think any had enough to make it worthwhile to display the results separately. Sorry Cato-owner! A number of topics of discussion suggest themselves, but y’all can work it out. All the caveats from the prior post about the non-scientific nature of this apply.

Thanks again to Fiery Scribe, whose more detailed charts I simplified. If something is now screwed up, it’s certainly my fault.

Magic Buttons: Summary Findings

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Here’s what I can give you so far. I’ll give you the breakdowns of answers by ideological identification in the next post. Let me emphatically state that the presence of pie charts in no way suggests the presence of science. The poll sample is representative of nothing other than the set of people who either read this blog and are willing to take unscientific polls or who follow me, or certain other people who follow me, on Twitter and like to take unscientific polls. That said, I think the result are suggestive, and fun to talk about. I’m personally most interested in the ideological breakdown of poll participants, which gives me a rough sense of my readership. I will show you later what “Other” included, since it’s sort of funny. 

 

Huge props go to The Fiery Scribe for volunteering his or her mad spreadsheet skilz.

Liberaltarian Reactions

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There are a ton of smart responses to my exchange with Jonah on liberaltarianism. (Brink, maybe we need to write that book.) Here’s Andrew Sullivan. Here’s Matt Welch. Here’s Reihan Salam. Here’s Ross Douthat. And here’s Virginia Postrel, not responding to my post, but drawing on her experiences at a couple recent Brink-devised libertarian/liberal events to draw out what she thinks is the real impediment to a reunion of contemporary classical liberals and our much more numerous liberal cousins. 

When you get political theorists together, they assume the big divide is over the relative weights given to equality and liberty–the old Rawls vs. Nosick split. But given the right flavor of liberals and libertarians, that’s bridgeable. The real division, I believe, is over regulation. Contemporary liberals will say, as someone did at dinner in DC, that they are against stupid regulations like the controls on trucking abolished in the late 1970s. And I’m glad for that.

But finding liberals who oppose any new regulation is almost impossible–no matter what the perverse consequences. My particular bugaboo is housing.

But the CPSIA is another good example. John Holbo at Crooked Timber is wondering why the law’s defenders–his fellow liberals, in other words–aren’t addressing the criticisms head-on: “Maybe thrift store shopping for children should become a thing of the past, because it’s too hazardous to life and limb. But, to repeat, I haven’t actually seen anyone 1) argue that the law shouldn’t, as written, have these really very sweeping effects; 2) argue that, even if it does, on balance it’s still a good law.” The comments do not encourage optimism about a liberal-libertarian/dynamist coalition.

Unfortunately, once you are ideologically committed to the idea of regulation, you can’t say that a given regulation is bad–or, worse, that maybe doing nothing new would have been the best course.

Virginia’s right. Regulation has been a particular sticking point. But, the thing is, I don’t think there’s anything particularly intractable about this — as long as the problem is a genuine disagreement about the net benefit of a particular regulation. That can be hashed out. The problem is intractable when it reflects a deep enculturated distrust between classical liberals and contemporary liberals. The latter suspect that even moderate libertarian types reject the legitimacy of regulation altogether, and so are just being coy when pointing out the costs of regulation. Libertarians aren’t really interested in regulatory efficiency. They just hate regulation, period. They’re clever at the rhetoric of reaction, and all this talk of moral hazard or perverse unintended consequences is a front for what they really want: nothing. But, the thing is, Virginia and Ed Glaeser are simply right about housing regulation. The fact that most liberals won’t listen, due to distrust, is a problem not only for liberal/libertarian amity, but for the poor people hurt by bad regulation. From the classical liberal side, we become distrustful when liberals say they are perfectly willing actually to perform the cost-benefit analysis, but then somehow find that there is always a net benefit. That’s fishy! And so we come to suspect that this seemingly reasonable willingness to honestly and rigorously evaluate the effectiveness of regulation is a front for what they really want: everything.

But it remains that there are classical and contemporary liberals who really do share deep common values and common liberal aims. I don’t think you argue your way out of an impasse of contingent historical suspicion. I think you socialize your way out of it.

Defending the Study of Race and IQ

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Cornell University psychologists Stephen Ceci and Wendy Williams defend the study of group difference in IQ against Steven Rose in today’s Nature. Ceci and Williams’ view is pretty much my own. They argue that, as often as not, claims about group differences in innate cognitive ability can be proven to be untrue. Actually debating the issue, and discussing the best new research, does more to defuse harmful misconceptions than a censorious egalitarian refusal to even publicly contemplate natural inequalities. Moreover, an ethos of punishing political correctness is inconsistent with the norms of open inquiry upon which communities of scientific discovery depend to produce new knowledge. 

Of the James Watson imbroglio, Ceci and Williams write:

Watson’s first assertion could be read as scientifically supported: black Africans’ IQ scores are lower than those of white Europeans. But Watson’s use of ‘intelligence’ was interpreted as meaning ‘intrinsic cognitive ability’, ignoring how unfamiliarity with testing format, low quality of schooling, or poor health might depress IQ scores. There have been analyses showing average national IQs for sub-Saharan Africa to be approximately 30 points lower than average IQs for predominantly white European nations, and drawing a racial conclusion from those results1, 2. A refutation of these analyses would provide an opportunity to advance understanding. Sadly, although these analyses can be refuted, as we and others have done3, most of those who scorned Watson never knew they existed.

They go on to discuss interesting new work that is blowing away old stereotypes about the mathematical abilities of women:

Regarding gender, no one now claims women are unable to excel at complex maths: 48% of US mathematics majors are female, and women earn higher maths grades than men throughout schooling5. The maths gender gap among the top 0.01% of students, which 30 years ago favoured males 13-to-1, now favours males only 2.8-to-1 (ref. 5). Some nation’s women (including those in Singapore and Japan) outscore US males on maths tests by an amount far larger than the gender gap within the United States5.

So, vigorous debate has resulted in great progress in our understanding, and more breakthroughs will come — if we allow free speech in science. 

The fact that that the gap between males and females at the top .01% has narrowed so dramatically so quickly is extremely strong evidence for the claim that prior gaps were a reflection of widespread sexist assumptions about female capacities. The clear implication of this kind of rapid convergence is that it is mistaken to take today’s snapshot of the distributions of various cognitive skills as indicative of innate or natural difference in capacities. Given a little more time, and little more erosion in sexist social expectations, we might find that females are as good or better than males at things like math — long thought to be a special male strengths. And the same argument applies just as well to preferences. One can’t take current patterns of occupational self-selection as dispositive evidence of “natural” differences in men’s and women’s preferences given the rapid past and current shifts in the gender composition of many occupations.

Here’s Cato Unbound‘s debate on the science and politics of IQ, featuring James Flynn, Stephen Ceci, Linda Gottfredson, and Eric Turkheimer.

Chait Empiricism Watch

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I like how Jonathan Chait wrote a whole book accusing right-wingers of braindead supply-sider free-lunchism and now induldges in left-winger braindead demand-side free-lunchism with all the zeal of bizarro Jack Kemp on meth. 

I mean, check it out!

The point of stimulus spending … is simply to spend money–on something useful if possible, wasteful if necessary. Keynes proposed burying money in mineshafts, so that workers would be hired to dig it out. (Imagine what the GOP could do with material like that.) World War II was an effective stimulus that, economically speaking, consisted of 100 percent waste. If war hadn’t broken out, we could have enjoyed the same economic benefit by building all those tanks and planes and dumping them into the ocean. 

Oh my. Since Chait’s a pure empiricist with no agenda but truth, I’m sure he’ll be receptive to the facts revealed in Robert Higgs’ Depression War and Cold War. Here’s Price Fishback’s summary.

[UPDATE: Also see Tyler Cowen.]

The Hood Conjecture Results

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Here you go. According to this completely unscientific poll, riddled with selection bias, and featuring a difficult-to-interpret and probably tendentious statement of the question, self-described libertarians prefer a bigger welfare state and no drug prohibition to a smaller one where the drug war rages on. I think the Magic Button question on drug prohibition and Canadian-style health care is probably a fairer interpretation of the spirit of Hood’s assertion, so you’ll have to wait to see how that came out. We’ve got 101% since I used a format that allowed participants to tick both boxes, and some did. But here’s our results:

What Libertarians Prefer

466 responses

A society with a welfare state of size x and drug prohibition.
189 - 41%

A society with a welfare state of size x+1 and no drug prohibition.
277 - 60%

People may select more than one checkbox, so percentages may add up to more than 100%.