Category Archives: Political Commentary

Political Commentary, Science And Society

Math Is Hard

29 Comments

…as Barbie used to say. Well, actually, it’s not that it’s hard, but that women just aren’t as into it as men are.

The tone of the article is amusing, because the author clearly knows that she is reporting politically incorrect (though obvious to most thinking, observant people) results, and seems uncomfortable with it. So kudos to her for doing it anyway. And of course the feminist establishment is extremely threatened by the notion that there is any cause of disparity between men and women that cannot be attributed to evil patriarchal social conditioning and rampant sexist discrimination. To the point at which they of course have to completely misstate the argument in order to knock down the illogical straw man:

Rosalind Chait Barnett, at the Women’s Studies Research Center at Brandeis, says that boys and girls are not, at root, different enough for such clear sorting to be seen as a matter of “choice.”

“The data is quite clear,” she says. “On anything you point to, there is so much variation within each gender that you have to get rid of this idea that ‘men are like this, women are like that.’ “

Well, the data may be clear, but the logic is severely flawed (I’ll refrain from noting that it may be because it’s coming from a woman…).

Even if there is tremendous variation among individuals within genders (which there clearly is) it doesn’t follow that there won’t be average differences in traits between genders. For instance, when it comes to math, what Larry Summers noted (and lost his job over after some of the mature, rational, scientific women present got the vapors and had to hie to their fainting couches) was that in fact men have a much greater standard deviation than women. They have both more geniuses, and more morons, when it comes to higher mathematics, whereas women have more of a tendency to stay near the mean. And there are brilliant (individual) woman mathematicians and hard scientists. But that doesn’t mean that we can therefore conclude that there are no statistical differences in these traits between men and women. And the fact that there are allows us to draw no conclusions about any particular man or woman (if I call Ms. Barnett illogical, it is because she conveys illogic, and has nothing to do with her genital configuration.) It remains perfectly reasonable, on a statistical basis, to make some broad statements about the genders (“men are like this and women are like that”) without having to infer that every man is like this and every woman is like that.

This is the general problem with discussions of gender and race differences, and why books like The Bell Curve are such anathema, and draw down such fury from the left. If one views people as individuals, then it doesn’t really matter whether or not blacks, on average, have a lower (or for that matter, higher) IQ than whites do. You still have to test each individual’s IQ and treat them as an individual.

But leftists, hating individualism, and being addicted to group and collective rights, can’t conceive that such research wouldn’t or shouldn’t be translated into some attempt at social policy making. Similarly, if women’s choices in career really are choices, and not a result of false consciousness, then they won’t be able to get as much support for implementing their social engineering nostrums.

Political Commentary

Hypocrite

1 Comment

One of the reasons that Obama has done so well is that Hillary has never really brought out the big guns against him, something that the McCain campaigns and the 527s will have no compunction about doing in the fall. His campaign (at least up to the point of the Reverend Wright controversy) was a hothouse plant, and it’s likely to wilt when put out in the wild after the convention.

And why didn’t Hillary hit him where it really hurts (as opposed to idiotic things like kindergarten essays)? Because those big guns are likely to backfire on her. Here’s an example:

In her campaign for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination, Clinton has said little about her experiences in the tumultuous late 1960s and early 1970s, including her involvement with student protests and her brief internship at the law firm, Treuhaft, Walker and Burnstein. She has said she worked on a child custody case, although former partners recall her likely involvement in conscientious objector cases and a legal challenge to a university loyalty oath.

But her decision to target Obama’s radical connections has spurred criticism from some former protest movement leaders who say she has opened her own associations to scrutiny.

“The very things she’s accusing Barack of could be said of her with much greater evidence,” said Tom Hayden, a leading anti-Vietnam War activist, author and self-described friend of the Clintons.

Next thing you know, she’ll be accusing him of shady real-estate deals.

Economics, Political Commentary, Technology and Society

Doomsday Has Been Postponed, Part Whatever

32 Comments

More thoughts on “peak oil,” and what I’ll call the “peak oil constant,” which seems to be twenty or thirty years (i.e., it’s always predicted to be that far in the future).

[Update mid afternoon]

Manzi has a follow up, in response to a Georgetown professor. Bottom line:

What if we had reacted to the predictions throughout the 1970s and 80s that we would reach peak oil in about 2000? Do you think that some of these proposed changes would have slowed economic growth and prevented the world from being in the current position of paying an ever-dwindling share of total output for oil? What other difficult-to-anticipate changes might some these interventions have had? Could the idea of purposely restructuring the transportation, housing, and agricultural sectors of the U.S. economy based on a prediction for an event that we have proven to be very bad at predicting – and for which the world’s leading experts refuse to provide anything other than very broad guidance – induce a sense of humility? It does in me.

Political Commentary, Space

Authorizing NASA

1 Comment

There’s a lot of good discussion (and some not-so-good discussion) of the NASA Authorization bill over at Space Politics, here, here and here. I haven’t read the whole thing, and frankly, it’s hard for me to get motivated to invest much time or thought in it, because it’s just an authorization bill. Most of the time, they never even get passed, and even when they do, they’re pretty meaningless, because the only one that really counts is the appropriations bill, where the money gets handed out. Authorization, when it exists at all, simply serves as a sense of the Congress (and more generally, just as a sense of the relevant Congressional committee). But to that degree, it does provide a useful insight into where appropriations might lead, and potential future policy, particularly in the next administration.

Philosophy, Political Commentary

Are Anti-Jaywalking Laws Fascist?

20 Comments

Let me start by saying I don’t know the answer to the question in the post title, but it is one of the hallmarks of a nanny state. Interestingly, though, while it’s an east-coast, west-coast thing, it’s the reverse of the usual stereotype, in which the westerners are anarchist cowboys, and the easterners civilized obeyers of the rules. Let me explain.

Growing up in southeast Michigan, I remember understanding the term “jaywalking,” but only because someone explained it to me after I heard the term, not because I personally had any experience with it. Or rather, not because I had any personal experience with it in terms of it being illegal, and the law being enforced. I walked across a street when it seemed safe to do so, regardless of distance from lights, or their chromatic condition. And no one ever said boo about it, let alone the law enforcement authorities. I always considered the “Walk” and “Don’t Walk” signs advisories, rather than commands (and I should add that I like the new ones that have a countdown clock telling you how many seconds until it’s going to change, so you can judge whether you have time to start across). This was true in both Flint, the city in which I was raised, and Ann Arbor, where I spent three and a half years at school.

Being brought up in such an environment, I was surprised when I moved to southern California, and was informed by the locals that the gendarmes took illegal pedestrian street crossing seriously (i.e., they actually gave out tickets for it if, for instance, you crossed the street within some specified distance of a traffic signal, but didn’t use the crosswalk). I heard many tales from the locals of such ticketry, and accordingly, I restrained my chicken-like urges to cross the road where and when I pleased (traffic permitting, of course). But like red arrows for left turns, when there was no oncoming traffic, I bridled at it, thinking it idiotic, and being treated like a child.

It got to the point that one of the reasons that I looked forward to business trips back east (generally, in my case, DC) was that I would have the freedom to cross the street if it was safe, anywhere and anywhen I wanted, without first having to check for the gestapo.

Anyway, Tigerhawk had a (to him) disturbing visit to the left coast (Seattle) and was shocked at the level of conformity and groupthink in this supposedly hip and counter-cultural town:

I walked down the hill and up again all before about 7 am. The streets were essentially empty of cars, so being an Easterner I skipped merrily along with little regard for the status of the pedestrian Walk/Don’t Walk signs.

Then I noticed that the few other peds were just standing there waiting for the “Walk” signal to come on even when there was not a car in sight. Not surprisingly, they all looked at me like I was a middle-aged feminist at an Obama rally, so I also stopped violating the crosswalk lights.

When I landed I reported all of this to a friend of mine who claims to hate Seattle — how can anybody actually hate Seattle? — and she said “Of course, Seattle is basically just a suburb of Canada.”

Like that explained it. Although it sort of does.

Anyway, other than in Washington, DC — which back in the day raised money by assigning cops in unmarked clothes to write jay-walking tickets — I’ve always thought of crosswalk signals as purely advisory. Not the command “Don’t Walk,” but more like “probably not a good idea to walk, because the cars have a green light.” That is certainly the rule in any city in which I have lived or worked, including both New York and Chicago. In Seattle, though, pedestrians comply with crosswalk signals almost to the extent that motorists obey traffic lights. You know, they wait for the light to change even when there is neither a car nor a cop in sight. It is bizarre, and really quite un-American.

Well, the “suburb-of-Canada” thing doesn’t explain the attitude in southern California. But it is un-American. A good friend of mine (who has been in LA for the past thirty years or so) lived in Germany for quite a few years back in the seventies, and acquired a wife and step-daughter there. He described the Germans (including his wife and step-daughter) as being hyperobediant to the law, including jaywalking laws, and they would never think of going without permission from the traffic signal, or outside of a cross-walk. At the time I attributed it to being German, but one of Tigerhawk’s commenters notes that the Swiss are similar (though he didn’t say whether it was the French, Italian or German Swiss).

Is such strict cultural regimentation in itself fascist? No. In fact, I think that in general, respect for the law is obviously a good thing. But sometimes, as Dickens put into the mouth of his character, “the law is a ass.” Like the rules of bureaucracy, the laws are meant to protect people with poor judgment (and others who might be affected by dumb decisions) by constraining their behavior. Some foolish people might misjudge traffic, and unthinkingly cross the street against the light, or in the absence of a light, and get hit? Make it illegal. Problem solved. No judgment required. Just follow the rules.

In fact, in LA, I suspect that it has the unintended consequence of actually causing more accidents, exactly because it removes pressure for people to think before acting. Children are taught in school to always use a crosswalk, because in a crosswalk, you see, the pedestrian has the right of way, and cars aren’t allowed to enter it while they’re in it. And in fact, when you step into an unsignaled crosswalk in LA County, traffic will generally (note the word) stop for you. It’s the law, and the culture.

Which can breed a dangerous complacency. That the crosswalk doesn’t contain a force shield to actually prevent cars from crossing it while a pedestrian is in it, and that the law doesn’t involve suspension of the very real physical law of momentum or decrease the stopping distance of trucks, isn’t taught, apparently. I haven’t seen the statistics, but I’ll bet that a lot more people (particularly California natives) are injured and killed in crosswalks, where they have a false sense of safety, than in the “unsafe” areas where they actually have to look both ways and think before crossing the highway. Particularly because they not only have to look out for traffic, but police with nothing better to do than hand out jaywalking tickets.

Too much unthinking respect for the law isn’t fascistic per se, but it provides a fertile breeding ground for someone with charisma who comes along with grand ideas for new laws which, of course, because they are laws, must be obeyed. Thus when it became the law for Germans to turn in the Jews, what choice did they have? It wasn’t after all, their decision. It was the law.

But of course, while LA and Seattle are the west (about as far as you can go west in the lower forty eight and remain above water), they’re not the wild west. They’re in fact (with San Francisco) the bluest of the blue states, chock full of so-called “progressives.” So it’s not surprising at all, per Jonah’s thesis, that they are much more culturally attuned to obeying laws, even senseless ones, and all in favor of more. For the children.

OK, now for the challenging part. How to fit the traffic anarchists of New York City (cue Dustin Hoffman, “I’m walking here!”) into the thesis?