Incidentally, I hope my raving about conservatives and enviornmentalism isn't offensive. I tried to be nice when making generalizations, but sometimes I'm a little blunt. Also, I was going to clarify my statement that I was inclined to follow the apparent consensus opinion among climatologists, etc. but (1) Firefox ate that post and (2) looking back, I was pretty careful the first time. I realized though that saying things like "well, I'm going to trust the climatologists on this" carries with it a lot of dangerous assumptions, or at least appears to - believe me, I'm no modernist believer in the religion of science (as I tried to indicate in my original post). The reason why I wanted to clarify that was first because I thought it was the weakest point in the post but what finally pushed me over the edge was reading a comment by the late Stephen Jay Gould in the preface to his revised (1996) edition of The Mismeasure of Man defending his right to critique what had traditionally been considered the domain of psychology. His insistence there on the traditional claim that such critiques should be judged on their content and not the qualifications of their authors is absolutely correct, of course. In the world of quick judgments though, I have to admit I sometimes look first to who is making a statement - not all statements are equally trustworthy or informed, and often one can find out a lot about whether the content of a particular critique is worth evaluating in advance simply by checking who the author is. To return to our specific problem, as I said, when Newt Gingrich (who ironically has apparently recently reversed his position on global warming - I'm pretty sure I already knew that but had forgotten it) says something about environmental science, I take it with some skepticism since he is avowedly and openly political. One could also consider things written by people like Bjørn Lomborg or economists (of which I believe there is a lot of literature, though I haven't checked recently). Now, I know that there have also been plenty of critiques of the idea from within climatology and absolutely should those (or even arguments from the aforementioned economists) be evaluated on their merits if there is reason to assume they have any (which is to say, I believe that people who are seriously interested in the theory of anthropogenic global warming will publish in peer-reviewed journals or at least a forum where it will be seen first by scientists even if not peer-reviewed, rather than in the popular press; I mean, shoot, even Alan Sokal had the decency to publish about his hoax in a journal). Now, so far I have not seen too many good arguments though from climatologists against the idea (and I know several points are subjects of debate, though with the mainstream position appearing to stand strong in most of those cases), though there are a few that seemed worth investigating. Certainly one should not be religious about the whole topic - modern science is premised on the idea that people will try to shoot down any given theory. In that sense, as I said before, I agree with some people's concerns that people are indeed turning global warming into an ideology. But just because some people are doing that, let's remember that does not mean the science is automatically wrong.
And this is where we get to a much more complicated issue that I rather side-stepped in the original post. How does one legislate based on science? I mean, we may know that the mainstream opinion among a certain group of scientists is some thing, but we do not know how long such an opinion will hold. It would be foolish to assume any current understanding of science will remain permanently. There are, of course, some theories that are better established than others and action should be taken accordingly in those cases (it would be silly at the moment, for example, for Congress to fund faster-than-light spaceships...) but even those theories are standins for more developed models to come. And some things are much more variable than that. Some well-accepted ideas of science in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries were ridiculous, harmful, or downright directly immoral. But again, we need to be aware that science is not monolithic, and not all theory is equally good, and just because theory may in some cases be adequate, we should not accept every proposed practice built on top of that. Eugenics is a classic example of how not to legislate based on science. A lot of the theory was dubious, but practice was even worse - and we shouldn't take serious the idea that things like forced sterilization were the realm of science (though certainly some scientists tried to put it within the realm of science). I think that the relationship between science (whether natural or social) and policy (especially given the limitations of both) is something that deserves continual and deep consideration. You can take that as a caveat on both sides (though perhaps not euqally) of the global warming debate, for one. But we can't stop there - this an issue that affects us all the time.
Speaking of both eugenics and The Mismeasure of Man... Last week I was whining about statistics and their abuses to one my colleagues, which resulted in that book being brought up. I've been doing a lot of reading on statistics for work lately (more on in another post soon, perhaps) and the idea of doing some non-technical reading about further abuses of them at the same time seemed like a fairly good idea. But, being preoccupied with other things, I did not immediately set out to do so; nor did I have any long-range plans to do so, for that matter. However, on the way to work today, I saw someone carrying a couple bags from the campus book store and the odd thought that they might be having a sale crossed my mind, so I decided to investigate. Indeed they were having a sale; in fact, all books except textbooks were 50% off - way too good to pass up. Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on how one looks at it, I suppose) there were no books I was even remotely interested in. Well, except for one, the title of which you can guess. Serendipity.
Gould's book is about what he saw as the fatally flawed hypothesis of intelligence as reduceable to a single measurable and rankable number that carries with it some sort of measure of worth or value. Or so I take it so far; I have only gotten as far as the (lengthy) preface to the revised edition so far. This is a topic I've been following with some casual interest since I first heard about Herrnstein and Murray's book The Bell Curve in college and with some additional interest since I read another essay by Murray on the same topic a couple years ago (which led to further reading which led to at least one post on race and crime, for example). In fact, I've been meaning to write something about this from a more philosophical perspective for some time; verily, even this week I considered doing so. I might have to now that I'm reading on the same topic. Basically what I want to lay out is that regardless of the quality of the science underlying such things (which plenty of peopke, Gould included, have taken difference with) we need to be careful how we deal with such things - this goes back to the question of "science" and policy. There's good moral reason to not treat groups or individuals differently based on "intelligence" regardless of what the theory says (and in this case the theory turned out to be pretty bad, though it continues to have a life of its own with people like Charles Murray). Which is sort of like saying "all men are created equal" is an excellent basis on which to build a country regardless of whether scientific opinion agrees with that idea at any given moment or not. But as I said, I think that ought to be a post of its own.
I'll have more to say about statistics soon; I've been reading too much about them recently, but I've picked up a lot of useful stuff about them, and a few more entertaining bits (such as an amusing rant by one of the authors whose book I have here to the effect that chaos as a science is more or less nonsense since noise in data prevents the formation of chaos in the real world).
Why does Firefox not ask for confirmation when a text area contains lots of entered text and one hits a button (by accident...) that causes it to navigate away from the page? Why, oh why? Incidentally, this particular missing feature of Mozilla and Firefox has been being complained about for at least 6.5 years as a little searching will show. While we're at it, why are users stupid enough to enter text directly like this instead of using text editors and copy-and-paste? (Frankly though, despite my stupidity, this is mostly on Firefox.)
Why, oh why, is Firefox so slow, especially when downloading files (nearly freezing just over updating the little download window)?
And while we're at it, why do government agencies supply Excel files of their report data for all 50 states and D.C. and Puerto Rico and then organize the Excel file so that none of that data can be used directly without extensive manual rearrangement?
While computers may be fairly advanced, we're doing a really bad job with very basic design issues (of all sorts - not just software interfaces, as my complaint about the Excel file shows). Grr.
It's interesting to see how conservatives deal with environmental issues. Take, for example, everyone's favorite dinner topic ,anthropogenic global warming.
As I recall, up until about ten years ago, no conservative would even admit there was any global warming, regardless of supposed cause. Eventually, that position became largely untenable, and most conservatives took to (1) merely denying anthropogenic global warming while (2) simultaneously pointing out that global warming wouldn't be all bad. Incidentally, denying anthropogenic global warming seems to have slipped more into denying conclusive evidence of anthropogenic global warming (attempting to take the intellectual high road). In addition, the claim has been added that it would be too expensive to prevent global warming and cheaper to fix later. (There's also the absolute last ditch argument that it's not the government's job to prevent environmental catastrophes, but... Well, need I say more?)
These arguments all have several things in common. The first is that these arguments didn't sound all that bad when they were first made (the actual quality of the arguments is a different story). The second is that they have steadily moved to agree more with the environmentalist position of the mid-1990s - momentum is almost exclusively in one direction on this issue. Based on those two properties, you might see that these arguments look suspiciously like rationalizations; that would be the third thing they all have in common.
Now, I'm not saying they are rationalizations, I'm saying they sound like rationalizations. Actually, I could go further and say I think that they are rationalizations. The problem is we can't say for certain they are - rational arguments based strictly on evidence but with a strongly skeptical perspective might look similar. Note I'm also not saying they are good arguments, just that I can't prove they're irrational.
Furthermore, I think if we looked at many other environmental issues we'd see a similar pattern. For all the complaints about economy-killing pollution regulation, for example, we seem to have survived somehow. Car emission and fuel standards, I think we can safely say, were not stringent enough - the conservatives blew that one big time. About the only issue environmentalists really look conclusively incorrect on was nuclear power, and even there there remain problems, just most of them will only really be an issue long after we're all dead. (There's also the DDT thing, but the word "conclusively" is not evoked by that debate, nor am I familiar enough with the details to even attempt to sound reasonable about it.)
What I'm trying to say with all of this is... It's true environmentalism makes bold claims. And it's true that those claims can't always be proven (which is not to say they are not rational). And it's even true those claims occasionally affect the way some people want to live their lives. But, environmentalism has a pretty good track record, and converesly the opposite is also true: anti-envrionmentalism has a bad track record (I bet a lot of people who have been opposed to gas milage standards could go back in time and change their position). But what really strikes me is that anti-environmentalism seems to be merely reactionary, not rational but rationalization. I can't prove it, but the history of its battles suggests it strongly.
Incidentally, it seems that conservative opposition to environmentalism is based largely on opposition to governmental regulation. This outweighs the desire to preserve that one would tend to expect out of people who do after all call themselves "conservatives" (and in other places and times that indeed would have been the case, I'm sure). People who take a cautious approach to resources which can't be readily replaced tend to view the environment as a public good and hence one that can be protected by the government. On the other hand people who take a cautious approach to laws which supposedly can't be readily repealed tend to view the environment as an issue of private property and hence something that should not be regulated by the government. The problem is we have to put up with the earth a lot longer than the laws. Governments that have lasted more than a few hundred years are rare (and at 220, we're getting up there), and laws that have lasted that long are even rarer. On the other hand, we're more than capable of inflicting envrionemental damage that last much longer than that, besides the immediate effects of pollution and such.
As a final gripe, I get really sick of people denouncing environmentalism because of Mother Earth-types and neo-pagans. I try not to evaluate all conservatives on the basis of Pat Robertson, and I'd like the same courtesy.
Alright that's mostly what I wanted to say. But, since I brought up global warming, and since it seems to be the topic du jour, let me add a few thoughts on that.
First, I agree, as everyone does, that anthropogenic global warming is not "proven" though we need to keep in mind that most things in science aren't "proven" per se. Of course, anthropogenic global warming isn't even up to the standard of a looser definition of proof like relativity or something like that; it's definitely something that requires going farther out on a limb than that. But, and I want to stress this, that doesn't make it irrational. It doesn't even make legislating on the basis of the theory irrational. Actually, probably the opposite is true.
Also, I don't want to claim that I "believe in" anthropogenic global warming. I don't "believe in" things in science. I just don't have reasons to doubt them. I'm not signing on to some doctrinal statement here. In fact, I would not be surprised if anthropogenic global warming turns out to be wrong. I've always given it worse odds than a lot of people. On the other hand, I sure ain't betting against it, both because I do believe (there's that word finally) in the general quality of physical scientists in the world and because of the potentially cataclysmic effects if they're right. I don't think, by the way, one should blindly believe scientists (and especially in some fields - not all disciplines are held to equal standards, but also given the ability of scientists to buy into weird theories) and I even realize that some scientists doubt anthropogenic global warming. But in so far as this is unfortunately an issue where it seems to be impossible to remain neutral - if only because policy decisions must be made - I'm going to go with the people who I know to be most credible. And I generally am inclined to trust climatologists more than New Gingrich, especially on something they specialize in. True, they could turn out to be wrong (which even they admit, I'm sure), but short of becoming a climatologist myself, I'm going to have to rely on their judgment to an extent.
Also, I think everyone needs to look deep into their intellectual soul and ask themselves why they think we ought to assume anthropogenic global warming is happening or not. I happen to think that a large portion of conservatives would have to admit, if they were really being honest, that they don't buy into the the idea largely because they don't like it's implications and not because they have any real basis for doubting it. At the same time, I'm sure that because of their initial bias some conservatives may have discovered interesting and good reasons to doubt global warming that they might not have seen if they hadn't been so skeptical. I'm not sure what to say to those people, other than they'll have to be patient with those of us who are still waiting for more climatologists to come around to their way of thinking.
Ironically, had conservatives just left the whole global warming thing alone in the '90s, there would have been no partisan backlash and they would probably have found it easier to promote skepticism now. If global warming really does become the religion they're accusing it of becoming (and in some ways they probably are correct with that complaint), a large part of the impetus for that will probably be traceable to their opposition. But isn't that always how politics works? (I suppose we could blame the 60s for modern conservatism, for example...)
And absolutely finally, a quick shot at all those arguments I brought up way back in the opening: Nearly everybody believes global warming is happening, so I don't need to address that (other than to say, sure, it's always a good thing to have a better understanding of the data, and it's not completely nailed down just how much warming is happening or even that it's 100% certain it is, though it seems to be pretty close to that). Obviously the arguments about the source of global warming are the crux of the whole thing, so I won't dealt with those. But global warming is not as far as I can tell a good thing. Oh sure, it's probably alright if you live in Montana, but if you live on a coast line it's pretty bad. Some bad predictions about agricultural impacts have also been made. The mere existence of this argument suggests both a large amount of ignorance about global warming and a certain provincialism. Next, I've already said a little about why denying conclusive evidence is not useful. That also has to do with the next argument, which is that global warming is too expensive. I've never actually heard a good argument for why fixing the problem is supposed to be so expensive (actually I've never heard any argument - it always just seems to be stated as a fact) but worse this argument seems to completely ignore the history of regulation to the small degree I am familiar with it (that is, regulation usually ends up costing way less than predicted and sometimes ends up actually causing higher profitability). But even if one were to buy into it, first, the potential economic effects are also large, but more importantly, the thing is you're staking a certain percentage of your economic growth against the fate of billions of people - it hardly seems a fair approach.
[Update, May 31: I was not entirely correct when I said I had not heard an argument for why global warming was supposed to be too expensive to fix. Bjorn Lomberg's Copenhagen Consensus had something to say about that.]
Apparent discrepancies (I say "apparent" since there is no "apparent discrpenacy" that is not a subject of dispute) in the gospel accounts are an interesting problem - and I don't just mean in an apologetic sense, but also a literary sense. I mean, on the one hand they have become a source of contention about the accuracy of the gospel accounts, but on the other hand they can be used to extract more information from the rather terse literary form of the gospels.
Take, for example, the dying words of Jesus. Matthew and Mark merely record that Jesus "cried out in a loud voice" when dying (though they make a point to note that Jesus said "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" earlier). Luke reports that "Jesus, crying with a loud voice, said, 'Father, into your hands I commit my spirit!' Having said this, he breathed his last." And John says that "When Jesus therefore had received the vinegar, he said, 'It is finished.' He bowed his head, and gave up his spirit."
This is what I thought of when I was reading an article by Adam Gopnik in the New Yorker, "Angels and Ages" pointed to by Language Hat. Gopnik deals with two interesting examples of this sort of problem. The main part of the article is concerned with whether Edwin Stanton at Lincoln's death said that he belonged to the "ages" or to the "angels." But there is also the interesting case of what John Wilkes Booth said when he shot Lincoln. Gopnik, explicitly referencing the problem with the gospels, writes,
It is not hard to see, in this exegetical exactitude, something that recalls the attention that scholars give to fine-point disputes about the words and tales of Jesus and his apostles. This attention to verbal minutiae extends to the secondary figures in the Lincoln gospel, not least his assassin, John Wilkes Booth. Booth either did or did not say, just as, right before, or shortly after he murdered the President, “Sic semper tyrannis,” the motto on the state flag of Virginia. Possibly, he cried “The South is avenged!” or “Revenge for the South,” and he cried this in the box, or on the stage, or paired with another cry. Of the forty or so reliable witnesses to the assassination whose accounts are collected in Timothy S. Good’s “We Saw Lincoln Shot,” some sixteen heard the Latin or the English, only four heard both, and many say that they didn’t hear the assassin say anything at all. Two witnesses heard Booth say, “I have done it!” Well, which was it? It is possible that he said only Sic semper tyrannis, onstage or off, and that the words were easily misheard by a stunned audience: “The South is avenged.” On the other hand, he may have cried out both, and then added the gloating remark as he fled. But then why didn’t more people hear him?
Booth himself, for whom the assassination was, Swanson says, a kind of diabolical work of performance art, insisted on the “right” reading. “I shouted Sic semper before I fired,” he wrote a few days later, in his own note, which he intended to be sent to the newspapers.
Mind you, Gopnik is talking about eyewitness accounts - no one is disputing that these people saw the event, but only whether their accounts are accurate.
At the end of the article, Gopnik makes the point that even had we been at Lincoln's death bed there's no guarantee we would have known exactly what Stanton said - certainly the eyewitnesses at the Ford's Theatre didn't know exactly what Booth said. And things are no different today - there are often arguments about recorded comments and speeches.
I think there has to be a lesson here - or more than one. On the one hand, one might be inclined to say that naysayers who take minor discrepances in the gospels to be indicative of fundamental contradictions that show the gospels are either majorly inaccurate or, worse, complete fiction should lighten up a little. Probably true. But there is a problem for those practicing a conservative hermeneutic too, because usually of how much weight is often placed upon exact phrasing in the gospels. I understand all the theology that has been built up around that practice - not all of it sound, I'd be inclined to say - but still, I think it ought to give people pause. Now, no credible scholar would ever buy into "proof-texting" as they call it (though they might disagree about what constitutes proof-texting), but people still do it all the time, even people who say we shouldn't do it (I plead guilty, your Honor).
