Schwarzenegger said that pot is not a drug but better than that is his totally pragmatic attitude to the subject (“Why should I care if a politician takes sleeping pills every night so long as he can do his job?”).

Of course after the fact his media people rushed out to say he was just joking and that of course pot is a drug but it’s still great to see the mainstreaming of the attitude that pot isn’t a big deal.

Note that despite what sticklers like to assert the claim that, “Pot is not a drug” is not actually false or meaningless. There are clearly two different definitions of drug. One is the technical medical usage on which things like alcohol, aspirin, etc… qualify as drugs but people who have used aspirin or had a beer don’t answer affirmatively when asked “have you ever used drugs?” The meaning of drug in these contexts is something more like, dangerous addictive psychoactive substance¹. Applying the standard rules of conversational charity it is clear that Arnold was (reasonably) saying either that pot isn’t dangerous/problematic like other drugs or that it isn’t really socially forbidden.

In philosophy it is common to take strong intuitions about a subject as reason to believe what we intuit as true. For instance in moral philosophy we generally take our intuition that abducting bums and torturing them to death is wrong to weight against any moral theory that concludes the opposite. Now how these intuitions could give us the proper sort of epistemic access to moral facts is a classic problem in meta-ethics and analogous problems are equally famous in areas like philosophy of math, counterfactuals and many more but I want to try to approach this problem a bit differently¹. Suppose you are dosed with a drug and this altered state of consciousness provokes an extremely strong moral intuition. Does this intuition still give one reason to believe it’s conclusion is true? Is it just as good as a sober intuition? If not why not?

For concreteness sake let’s assume that every time you take MDMA² you have an outflowing of love and sympathy which makes the death penalty or any retributive (as opposed to deterrent or preventative) punishment seem to be a horrible moral abomination³. Or even just that you know that if you were to take the drug you would feel this intuition. Now intuitively one wants to say in these cases that such a drug induced intuition doesn’t count or at least counts much less but why? Well one reason we might wish to exclude such intuitions is the worry that there would be too many of them. Indeed if you believe experiences (or whatever intuitions are) supervene on local physical state (e.g. brain state) then your likely to think that some kind of brain intervention could create any moral intuition desired⁴. But this isn’t a (sound) argument that these intuitions aren’t equally valid it’s merely a wish that they aren’t. It would be nice to have access to moral facts but we can’t discredit the possibility that none of our intuitions, drugged or otherwise, give us any evidence just because we don’t like it.

A more promising approach is to observe that we don’t credit the sensory experiences of inebriated people to the same degree we credit those of sober folks and argue that philosophical intuitions work similarly. While this sounds good the problem is that it’s just not true that we always trust sober perceptions more than chemically altered ones. For instance if a perceptual task requires great focus we very well might prefer the observation of someone taking a small dose of amphetamines than that of a sober person⁵. Certainly imagine drugs or other brain alterations that would improve our perceptual accuracy in some ways even while they might impair it in others. Thus it’s not that we have a blanket rule about trusting sober observations more, rather, we merely induct on prior observations about perceptual accuracy in different states. Without an independent check on moral facts we don’t have any reason to take our normal sober brain states as more reliable in this regard than others⁶.

More broadly one might observe that even without knowing anything about drugs or the effects of brain injuries one would probably believe that most modifications to the brain would degrade, rather than improve our perceptual abilities. However, we only believe this because we have reason to believe that evolution has tuned our brain for perceptual accuracy. Given a situation where we have reason to believe evolution would have tuned our perceptions to get an incorrect, rather than correct, result⁷ we should believe that random alterations to our brains would be likely to improve the result. After all if your brain is a reliable mispredictor (when X occurs we perceive ~X) then any alteration in that behavior would have to be an improvement. Thus whether or not we should assign a higher probability to our normal sober intuitions being correct or those induced by brain changes depends on whether or not we have reason to believe evolution favored accurate or inaccurate intuitions.

When our intuitions are not subject to an external check I really don’t think we have any reason to give more weight to our actual intuitions than those we would have if our brains were altered. In the particular case of moral intuitions I would argue that if anything we have reason to believe that our intuitions are, if anything, less reliable than those selected at random. We have plenty of meta-moral intuitions like ‘all people deserve equal moral consideration’ yet there seems to be no shortage of examples where evolution has favored more concrete intuitions in conflict with these principles, e.g., people tend to have different moral reactions when it’s a family member’s life on the line than a strangers. Thus any analysis that gives more weight to our actual intuitions than other possible ones must acknowledge the existence of evolutionary pressures to have inaccurate moral intuitions while their are both in principle (moral facts would seem to lack causal powers) and pragmatic (continued failure to show otherwise) reasons to think there isn’t any evolutionary pressure for our moral intuitions to match up with true moral facts.

I think this actually establishes an extremely strong negative result. In the absence of a plausible naturalized epistemology of morality (or philosophy of math, or knowledge of possible worlds) it’s irrational to use our intuitions as evidence. Without any justification of why our actual intuitions are more likely to be valid than any of those intuitions we could have had it’s an outright error to treat them as stronger evidence for their claims than the fact that we could have had some other intuition. However, even if you aren’t willing to take it this far it raises some very interesting questions. One that seems particularly challenging for the meta-ethicists is the following:

Suppose theoretical analysis (or survey of galactic civilizations) reveals that our moral intuition about the importance of life is actually an improbable fluke and evolution tends to equip any sentient being with the intuition that it’s the future of someone’s genetic line (or their happiness) that is morally salient not whether they live or die. Does that give us reason to believe that death isn’t morally salient? If not how can it be rational to believe something about moral facts on the basis of an accident without any connection to these facts?

So in several prior posts I talked about the controversy surrounding Ann Coulter’s comments and in the past I’ve discussed the Danish cartoon controversy and even talked a bit about the whole Larry Summers thing. Now in several of these posts I complained that the same conversational standards weren’t being applied to the supposed offenders as we apply to the population as a whole. I’m more convinced of this than ever and I think the recent political debate about the Armenian genocide is a perfect example.

Now there obviously was a genocide and it is clearly horrible that Turkey continues to deny it but it’s clear as day that even the minimal recognition the motion officially recognizing it in the US house offends many Turks and passing it would offend many more. It’s also undeniable that many Turks will misunderstand the resolution as an attack on Turks and a foreign attempt to undermine their country. This obviously raises the question as to why the backers of this motion aren’t creating similar outrage. Note that the congressmen pressing for this measure have large concentrations of Armenian-Americans in their districts so their is more reason to believe they are motivated by self-interest than there is in most cases that provoke outrage.

I’m not actually arguing that just because someone would be offended by something it’s impermissible to say. Just the opposite. I’m offering a reducto of the thesis that it is (substantially) blameworthy to make true claims knowing they will offend someone, even if you have selfish motives for the claim. The duty to avoid confusion an offense only extends so far. As in this case when we have no reason to believe the speaker isn’t motivated by prejudice or a desire to needlessly denigrate some group and they have made a good faith attempt to belay offense and confusion we don’t consider them to be behaving unacceptably even if some group insists on taking offense anyway. While we might question the congressmen’s judgement in this case and vote against them in the next election we still don’t take them to be behaving unacceptably even though we have good reason to believe that this resolution will cause substantial harm, perhaps even deaths, with little benefit¹. The critical point here is that even statements likely to cause massive harms by offending people likely made for personal gain, while obviously bad, don’t warrant the sort of outrage and social approbation we see in response to Coulter, Summers and the like.

So if it isn’t actual harm caused, the self-interested motivation, or the fact that the claims could be reasonably predicted to be misconstrued in an offensive way what explains the outraged reactions we see in some cases? I think the clear answer here is that people are parsing these statements as matters of identity an allegiance rather than actual factual claims. People aren’t so much interested in the actual content of the issue or even so much whether you have noble intents but whether you’re with us or with them. When someone proposes a measure like this their actions clearly place them with the ‘good guys’ and against those bad genocidal racists. When the NAACP, ADL or NOW overreaches, even when their mistakes cause more overall harm to race relations than most racists remarks they don’t generate any outrage because even their wrong choices illustrate that their on the ‘right side.’ On the other hand when someone like Coulter or Summers makes their claims what provokes the outrage isn’t the content but the fact that they have eschewed the accepted ways of saying ‘I’m with you.’

This picture is perfectly capture in the following quote from overcoming bias

Politics is an extension of war by other means. Arguments are soldiers. Once you know which side you’re on, you must support all arguments of that side, and attack all arguments that appear to favor the enemy side; otherwise it’s like stabbing your soldiers in the back – providing aid and comfort to the enemy.

Sadly as a quick heuristic this group identification approach is actually fairly accurate. The vast majority of the time someone expresses skepticism about affirmative action they are expressing solidarity with the people who view blacks as lazy neerdowell. Most of the time someone suggests that inherent differences might play a role in the gender gap they do mean to affiliate themselves with people who think women are inherently inferior. However, just like correlations between race or gender and performance themselves this doesn’t justify the prejudice of assuming everyone who expresses such views has such an intent. Obviously we need to take offense at the thinly disguised statements of affiliation with prejudice but when that isn’t the case we should give people the same freedom to be mistaken or even unintentionally cause harm without being crucified that we give organizations that are clearly on the ‘good’ side.

One person suggested that I look to the IPCC report on global climate change. Now the IPCC 2001 report does have a a report on Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability but this report reaches no real conclusions, instead couching it’s conclusions in statements like the following.

Even though increased CO2 concentration can stimulate crop growth and yield, that benefit may not always overcome the adverse effects of excessive heat and drought.

This is exactly the way that the IPCC should report on the economic issue. Their credibility depends on only endorsing the strongest most clear cut scientific consensus and it is far more important for them to maintain this credibility than to give clear economic guidance. While the models they propose are useful they don’t truly provide much guidance for someone who is trying to quantify the costs to a future richer society of dealing with climate change at that time compared to the costs of various solutions implemented now.

Moreover, I’m not sure this is something that is best addressed by an organization like the IPCC since I suspect that actual policy choices may be primarily determined by the risk of low probability but extreme events like large scale wars breaking out or the extreme end of the climate predictions turning out to be accurate. Certainly what we need first is much more publicly visible work by economists to boil down the conclusions of various climate models to approximate costs and benefits using reasonable assumptions. At this point what is needed isn’t precise answers but merely order of magnitude calculations to get a sense of what magnitude response is required.

As the last dregs of mainstream conservative denial of global warming disappear it is natural to turn our attention to the likely costs of global warming and the solutions we should pursue. Recently (thanks to The Volokh Conspiracy) I came across this article challenging the wisdom of doing anything to combat global warming and then today the same blog linked to this op-ed urging us to consider geoengineering solutions to global warming (like injecting sulfur into the atmosphere) when more prosaic solutions don’t act quickly enough to save species and environments.

Now the first article I linked is a perfect example of the harms of painting global warming as a warm and fuzzy liberal ecological cause. Clearly the writer of this article takes umbrage at this attitude and thus has an ax to grind against the idea of taking steps to avert global warming. But this doesn’t mean his points aren’t valid. Just because global warming is happening doesn’t mean it’s worthwhile to do something about it. We need some estimate of the harms and the costs.

The standard answer would have us believe that the costs are so great it would be utterly foolish to think it wasn’t worth fixing. Perhaps, but if the costs are this extreme doesn’t that mean we need to be taking geoengineering solutions seriously rather than waiting for the slow progress of international diplomacy? Sure, any form of geoengineering posses the risk of unforeseen consequences but so too does allowing the polar ice cap to melt. Frankly, I have no idea what the relative risks and harms under discussion are here and little confidence that what I hear from the media is unaffected by the pro-natural, anti-technology bias that often infects environmentalism. Most media I have seen on the subject treats the existence of global warming itself as the controversy and takes claims about what we should do if it exists for granted.

So here is the question: Does anyone know any good unbiased economic studies that have been done about the costs of global warming? What would be ideal is the same sort of economic consensus that we see among climate scientists about global warming itself. Naive attempts to estimate cost by simply calculating crop land lost or property that would be flooded don’t count. I’ve seen several such studies masquerading as cost benefit estimates about global warming but few bother to be as diligent in listing potential benefits as they are in listing harms and I haven’t seen any that appropriately consider the mitigation measures (levies, dikes, international aid) that would likely to be taken in response to global warming.

My gut instinct is to think that it’s unlikely that global warming is so costly as to require immediate drastic conservation efforts but not so drastic as to make research into geoengineering solutions very important. As a practical matter I understand why lobbying groups may not want to praise geoengineering solutions until we have working international controls on CO2 emissions but as an individual I’d like to know what actually makes sense. Ultimately though I really have no clue and don’t even know where I would look to get a clue.

So I finally got my application in for the NSF postdoc and got some needed sleep. So instead of working on my math like I should be now I went and downloaded the new Radiohead CD, “Rainbows.” Now I don’t actually like Radiohead that much so I didn’t pay anything at all¹ and that’s a perfect example of the inefficiency of the current copyright system. I’m likely to get some positive utility out of this (satisfying a hoarding instinct if nothing else) and this utility is a pure loss on a normal copyright system. However, it’s pretty annoying to hear all the people on the media and in forums act as if the fact that people are paying Radiohead for their CD shows that this is a plausible alternative model.

Even paying $0 for real honest reasons (worth less to me than transaction cost of using a credit card) even I was inclined to feel a little bit guilty and no doubt this is what causes people who actually like Radiohead to chip in a reasonable amount. But one feels guilt primarily because you feel that Radiohead is somehow stepping out on a limb by trusting users to set their own price. If this was ever to become a common practice that pressure would disappear. More critically is that the very people like me this system benefits will cause it to break.

People have strong intuitions of fairness and if you ever tried to distribute music more generally with this sort of system people would start feeling like suckers when they pay twice what their friend did for the music. Ultimately there will be an inevitable slow creep to the bottom as people check with their friends and see that their only paying $6 so that’s not cheating if I do that or come up with other reasons why it’s okay not to pay a bit less. I mean hasn’t everyone someone justifying their use of P2P by saying they would buy music if only the studies didn’t produce such crap? The same process of self-justification would start to happen with self-priced products as well. Besides, who is going to decide to buy 5 CDs worth of music they only sorta like for their car trip because they only have $15 to spend and they value the CDs they really like more than that?

No, I’m afraid solving the inefficiencies of the copyright system will require a fundamental change to the system of IP for creative content. Some means of truly collective purchase is required and the best system that I can think of at this point is to put works in the public domain after 3 years or so with a taxpayer funded system that compensates content producers based on numbers of tracked downloads from some central online repository. Maybe some clever person can figure out something better but as IP fills a bigger and bigger role in our lives the unacceptable inefficiencies of the current market become less and less bearable so sooner or latter something will change.

Is it just me or does the idea of a blog action day where all bloggers write about the same topic seem like a really dumb idea. I mean aside from boring the readers what is this supposed to accomplish? Presumably forced blog posts about the topic of the day are going to be even worse than the usual crap people make.

So I’ve had two people already suggest to me that I’m missing the point on the whole Coulter blow up. They argue that while it’s perfectly okay for a Christian to believe or even say that since his religion is true it would be better if others recognized it’s truth and converted that’s not what made Ann Coulter’s remarks outrageous/anti-semitic. Instead, the argument seems to go, it is the way Coulter presented them and/or her choice to bring up the issue that, when interpreted in light of her previous beliefs, is what makes her blameworthy. The major problem with this argument is that an examination of the transcript reveals that Coulter didn’t bring the controversial issue up and she was trying hard to communicate that she wasn’t attacking anyone but merely expressing a bland belief that logical coherence requires nearly all Christians to believe.

Now if we are going to consider Coulter’s past for context in this situation we have to consider all of it and I think things like the fact that she appears to be dating a Jew is reasonably good evidence that she isn’t actually anti-Semitic. Moreover, the criticism in this case only makes any sense if in fact it was this interview where she clearly made anti-Semitic comments/revealed herself to be an anti-Semite. You can’t justify this criticism by saying you knew she was an anti-Semite all along so it’s okay to criticize her for expressing a perfectly bland position. The only way the prior context can justify the accusations if it appears that Coulter didn’t merely happen to make some claims that were interpreted as anti-Semitic but knew that given her history they would be so interpreted and instead of trying to avoid the implication deliberately courted the ambiguity.

It simply doesn’t get you anywhere with this criticism to point out that Coulter has a history of saying offensive, rude or inflammatory things about religion[^know] (or other subjects). In fact, far from providing evidence of anti-Antisemitism this is evidence against it. After all merely being rude, shallow and offensive doesn’t make you an anti-Semite. What is required is some evidence of animosity towards or prejudice against Jews as Jews and the more inflammatory she has been in the past the less reason to suppose these comments express any anti-Jewish sentiment. Moreover, a history of making controversial and outrageous statements about religion and not being misinterpreted by mainstream organizations as saying something antisemitic makes it more reasonable for her to suppose that she wouldn’t be misunderstood here while expressing a pretty banal belief.

Even if we suppose (contrary to the evidence) that she was deliberately presenting the belief in an inflammatory way this doesn’t get us anywhere. People phrase their statements confrontationally all the time for tons of reasons. I certainly can’t deny that I will sometimes state my views in the most extreme version partially in the hope of prompting an interesting disagreement. Treating religious belief the same way you treat other topics doesn’t make one antisemitic unless you actually take up an antisemitic view. But the upshot here is that nothing about Coulter’s past can obviate the need to show a particular antisemitic view or expression of animosity towards Jews. Interestingly, while Ann Coulter’s past behavior may not show the statements she made were antisemitic it does provide a motivation for others to misinterpret these statements in such a way.

Luckily we don’t need any of these more complex arguments because the transcript in this situation is remarkably clear. A careful read reveals that not only did Ann Coulter not bring up the subject at every turn she tried to avoid even the slightest hint that she might be attacking Jews. Coulter simply answered the question from the host about what she believed and, being smart enough to realize that if Christianity is true than it would be better for Jews to realize this as well, couldn’t honestly answer in any other way. As the conversation continued Coulter was repeatedly the subject of personal insults and horrific moral comparisons because of her religious belief but, even though many people would be tempted in such a situation to turn the tables and attack the host’s religious belief (he’s Jewish) she went to great pains to emphasize she meant nothing beyond the simple point that everyone should believe in whatever religion is true. Now maybe if she had the time to sit down and think through her answers she would have been able to be even more clear but I honestly can’t think of any other interpretation of her statements.

Usually in these cases I’m content to write off the whole thing as a misunderstanding and say no one is really blameworthy. However, (short of the response/interview being deliberately staged by Coulter to sell books) the accusations of antisemitism are so throughly and completely unsupported by any reasonable theory I think the people making them are nearly as blameworthy as if they were anti-Semites themselves. Sure, they honestly believe this is the case but racists often honestly believe whites are the superior race and we hold them accountable for allowing their prejudice to so throughly color their judgment and false accusations of racism/prejudice aren’t much less damaging than false racial beliefs.

Below the break I include more of the transcript than I did last time so the reader can see for themselves just how absurd the claims is that Coulter is deliberately bringing up this issue/phrasing her statements to attack Jews.

(more…)

Ann Coulter generates a lot of controversy, mostly because she says some really stupid shit but I’m absolutely totally shocked and horrified at the latest kerfuffle she has spawned. But this time, for a change, she was being perfectly reasonable (well except for believing in god) and it is her critics that are totally fucking nuts. So in case you haven’t heard during Coulter’s appearance on The Big Idea with Donny Deustch the interview slipped into talk about religion and the relation between Christianity and Judaism. I recommend you go take a look at the transcript yourself but I’ll excerpt the notable segments here.

DEUTSCH: Christian — so we should be Christian? It would be better if we were all Christian? COULTER: Yes. …. DEUTSCH: That isn’t what I said, but you said I should not — we should just throw Judaism away and we should all be Christians, then, or – COULTER: Yeah. …. DEUTSCH: You can’t possibly believe that. COULTER: Yes. ….. DEUTSCH: “Let’s wipe Israel off the earth.” I mean, what, no Jews? COULTER: No, we think — we just want Jews to be perfected, as they say. DEUTSCH: Wow, you didn’t really say that, did you?

Amazingly these remarks have generated a huge outraged response. The Anti-Defamation League stated that they, “strongly condemns Ann Coulter for her anti-Semitic comment.” The American Jewish Committee is “outraged” by her remarks and the National Jewish Democratic Council is circulating a petition demanding networks stop inviting Coulter to be a guest on their shows. Even some catholic organizations are getting in on the action with the director of Catholics United being reported as saying, “I’m just dumbfounded that a Christian would even say this in America.” Of course the reactions in the blogosphere make these criticisms seem like high praise. The more sober criticisms merely saying her comments were anti-Semitic while more extreme reactions compared her remarks to Blood Libel. When Don Imus made his clearly faultable¹ remarks people seemed able to maitain a degree of distance but in this case people are taking this thing really personally. The number of people wishing death upon her in blog comments and this digg discussion seems way above normal.

This is totally fucking nuts! Of course it is better for people to believe true things. It would be better if Global warming skeptics realized their error and supported the science and similarly if Jews are mistaken about Christ it would be better for them to realize their error. Now I think believing in Christ or any sort of God is deeply mistaken so naturally I hope that religious Jews realize their error and convert to atheism. The idea this sort of belief makes one an anti-Semite is so absurd I can hardly believe anyone accepts it much less most Jewish organizations and many mainstream Americans. The day when Christians, Jews, and the rest of them become more perfect less severely flawed and finally give up on religion can’t come soon enough.

What should horrify people here is not Coulter’s statements but Deustch’s amazed offense at them (quoted below). I mean the irrationality and total lack of comprehension in the following segment just blew my mind yet he is being held up. Sam Harris is right, religious moderation is fucked up.

DEUTSCH: You said — your exact words were, “Jews need to be perfected.” Those are the words out of your mouth. COULTER: No, I’m saying that’s what a Christian is. DEUTSCH: But that’s what you said — don’t you see how hateful, how anti-Semitic – COULTER: No! DEUTSCH: How do you not see? You’re an educated woman. How do you not see that? COULTER: That isn’t hateful at all. DEUTSCH: But that’s even a scarier thought. OK – COULTER: No, no, no, no, no. I don’t want you being offended by this. This is what Christians consider themselves, because our testament is the continuation of your testament. You know that. So we think Jews go to heaven. I mean, [Rev. Jerry] Falwell himself said that, but you have to follow laws. Ours is “Christ died for our sins.” We consider ourselves perfected Christians. For me to say that for you to become a Christian is to become a perfected Christian is not offensive at all.

Below the break I document in detail the fact that Coulter said nothing that isn’t contained in mainstream Christian dogma (and most other religions) and discuss what this means about the nature of religious faith.

(more…)

Some idiot from CNET being interview on the radio just claimed that google’s search algorithm is broken because it returns tens or hundreds of thousand results for many queries. According to them someone will eventually come along and offer an algorithm so elegant that it only gives eight results and “I will love every one of them.” I haven’t heard much today so this qualifies for the dumb remark of the day.

Go into a library and ask a librarian for a book on the Spanish civil war and she’ll probably recommend one or two. Go back and tell her those weren’t what you were looking for and she’ll recommend a few more. Unless the librarian’s patience wears out you can keep doing this for a long time and the better the librarian the longer she will be able to keep suggesting more books. It’s not a feature of the librarian that we have to walk all the way back over to the reference desk to ask for more recommendations. It would be strictly better if we could hit the next page button and get the next set of results.

Of course a real librarian would incorporate feedback from our reactions to the previous recommendations (yah this is closer but not quite what I was looking for) and this is an obvious direction for search engines to explore but it’s not clear it would be good for the majority of searches (the overhead of feedback might overwhelm the cost of scanning output or changing your search in most cases). However, it’s just idiotic to think that merely offering the user the change to look at more pages means google’s algorithm is broken.