The recent news coming out of the perennial war of ratings among cable news channels was shocking, I tell you, just shocking: CNN, which three decades ago invented the whole business of cable news, is now dead last in terms of prime time viewership!
The numbers speak clearly: in October, CNN averaged 211,000 daily viewers aged 25 to 54 (the people who matter, because they have money and the inclination to buy what the advertisers sell), against 221,000 of HLN (formerly known as Head Lines News, ironically, a CNN spinoff!), 250,000 of MSNBC, and a whopping 689,000 for Fox.
Things don’t look any better for good old CNN if we look at the performance of individual anchors: Anderson Cooper’s show was dead last at 211,000, while Keith Olbermann was at 295,000, and Bill O’Reilly beat everyone at 881,000 (this is total viewership, regardless of age bracket — notice that O’Reilly is particularly popular with the old white male cantankerous crowd...). The only consolation for Cooper, but not for CNN, is that Lou Dobbs could interest only 162,000 viewers with his cheap populism and anti-immigration rants.
Now, we could be spending our time decrying the fact that Americans seem to have a strong preference for opinionated editorializing (be it Obermann or O’Reilly) over real solid news. Except of course that CNN hasn’t offered real solid news in a long time. Or we could bemoan the fact that a vitriolic ideologue like O’Really totals almost three times more viewers than the equally ideological but far less vitriolic and infinitely more sane Obermann.
But that would be missing the real story. Let me give you some other numbers for comparison, so that we can put things in proper context. The total adult population of the United States is 231 million, which means that even O’Reilly is not actually followed by more than 0.4 percent of the population. The daily readership of the much dreaded (by O’Reilly) New York Times is about 1 million, the audienceship of the beleaguered (by Republican-led budget cuts) National Public Radio is a whopping 6.5 million daily. For crying out loud, even Jon Stewart’s Daily Show beats O’Reilly hands down, with an average viewership of over 2 million, and a peak performance of 3.6 million!
So the real question is: why do we give a damn, as a nation, about what O’Reilly, Obermann, Dobbs, and company say? Why do these people have the power to affect national debates about health care, wars, and the environment, while clearly more reasoned voices actually get much more attention, and when the overwhelming majority of Americans are paying no attention at all?
The latter, of course, is the answer. Yes, O’Reilly’s power derives in part from the dollars that advertisers “invest” on his programs, and in part from the fact that we live in a society where those who shout — even when they are a small minority — get to dictate the terms of the “discussion” to the rest of us (witness the inane spectacle of last summer’s “town hall meetings”).
But it is us who let them do it, largely through apathy. Progressives in this country could count on an overwhelming majority of votes if the majority of eligible voters bothered to vote. A few weeks ago, instead, even in New York City — where there are more political activists than in almost the entire rest of the country combined — a tiny fraction of voters turned out for a runoff primary that for all effective purposes decided the election of a crucial political post like that of City Comptroller.
Republicans know this and act accordingly. Years ago the Christian Coalition devised their “12.5% strategy” to control the country. They reckoned that less than 50% of Americans go to vote, and that the fraction is about half that at primaries, which means that a candidate only needs half again of that (i.e., slightly above 12.5% of the total) to win the primary, which often means winning the general election. It worked, until recently, when the Obama machine turned out unprecedented numbers of minorities and poor to vote during the last presidential election.
Americans are so full of themselves that one of their favorite mantras is that they are “the best democracy in the world,” while actual comparative sociological studies show that the US only ranks below the middle of the pack in terms of quantitative measures of democracy (including, of course, voter participation). As the near certain reelection of Michael Bloomberg as mayor of New York City next week attests — despite the fact that the guy shamefully overturned a term limits law that would have barred him from running a third time — this is simply, the best democracy that money can buy. And what do we do about it? Instead of getting mad and throwing out the clowns, the ideologues and the rich people who think of politics as their personal pastime, we change the channel and watch reruns of Two and Half Men. We truly deserve, then, the little we get from our political class.
About Rationally Speaking
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
Saturday, October 24, 2009
Massimo's picks
* Believe it or not, some Republicans can even vote against the prosecution of rape crimes. Watch the Jon Stewart commentary.
* Can you be good without God? A million New Yorkers are.
* The Big Apple has a new Coalition for Reason.
* Jon Stewart interviews Jennifer Burns, author of a new book about Ayn Rand.
* Plagiarism software identified a new play by Shakespeare (he wasn't cheating...).
* The year's biggest hoax is not the child in the flying balloon, it is how our money is being embezzled by White House supported Wall Street interests.
* On "suggestive evidence," a different philosophical look at what evidence is.
* The brain on e-books.
Wednesday, October 21, 2009
On the scope of skeptical inquiry
There has been much discussion lately on this blog and elsewhere about the relationships among skepticism, atheism, and politics. I have roundly criticized Richard Dawkins for extending scientific skepticism into areas that are more properly the domain of philosophical analysis, as well as Penn and Teller and Michael Shermer for doing the same with politics to support their libertarian views. Of course, even a cursory reader of this blog will easily find my own pieces about religion and politics, which may make it seem like I’m a sinner throwing stones at my fellow skeptics.
In reality, this debate has been going on for decades, and it has at times involved some of the great figures of skepticism. Just think of Paul Kurtz’s struggle to balance his own organizations, the Council for Secular Humanism (which publishes Free Inquiry) and what is now known as the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry (which puts out Skeptical Inquirer), organizations that most certainly not always see eye to eye when it comes to mixing skepticism, religion and politics. Michael Shermer, on the other hand, has been criticized on his own multi-author blog for not making a distinction between scientifically defensible notions and political positions. And of course, Penn and Teller’s absurd denial of global warming, and recent Dawkins award winner Bill Maher’s insane criticism of “western medicine” complete this increasingly messy picture.
Before continuing, therefore, let me be clear about what it is I am trying to do. I am most definitely not seeking to tell people what to write about and what to stay away from. Not only would that be futile, but it is contrary to the spirit of open inquiry that I hold as one of my highest ideals. Besides, as I mentioned earlier, I can easily be seen as a repeat offender on this very blog, and coherence is another ideal I hold pretty high (despite one of my favorite quotes by Walt Whitman: “Do I contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself, I am large, I contain multitudes”).
What I am attempting is a serious discussion of the differences and commonalities among the three areas pertinent to the topics in question: (scientific, or evidence-based) skepticism, atheism, and political philosophy. This blog is about all three because those are my interests and because I am presumptuous enough to think that I have something relevant to say in those domains. But I am in fact continuously switching among three not automatically interchangeable hats: (former) scientist, (current) philosopher, and politically-minded intellectual. All of that said, let the game begin!
First, let me define what I mean by skeptical inquiry, atheism and political philosophy. Skeptical inquiry, in the classic sense, pertains to the critical examination of evidential claims of the para- or super-normal. This means not just ghosts, telepathy, clairvoyance, UFOs and the like, but also — for instance — the creationist idea that the world is 6,000 years old. All these claims are, at least in principle, amenable to scientific inquiry because they refer to things that we can observe, measure and perhaps even repeat experimentally. Notice, of course, that (some) religious claims do therefore fall squarely within the domain of scientific skepticism. Also in this area we find pseudohistorical claims, such as Holocaust denial, and pseudoscientific ones like fear of vaccines and denial of global warming. Which means of course that some politically charged issues — like the latter two — can also pertain properly to skeptical inquiry.
Second, let us turn to atheism. Once again: it is a philosophical, not a scientific position. Now, I have argued of course that any intelligent philosopher ought to allow her ideas to be informed by science, but philosophical inquiry is broader than science because it includes non-evidence based approaches, such as logic or more broadly reason-based arguments. This is both the strength and the weakness of philosophy when compared to science: it is both broader and yet of course less prone to incremental discovery and precise answers. When someone, therefore, wants to make a scientific argument in favor of atheism — like Dawkins and Jerry Coyne seem to do — he is stepping outside of the epistemological boundaries of science, thereby doing a disservice both to science and to intellectual inquiry. Consider again the example of a creationist who maintains in the face of evidence that the universe really is 6,000 years old, and that it only looks older because god arranged things in a way to test our faith. There is absolutely no empirical evidence that could contradict that sort of statement, but a philosopher can easily point out why it is unreasonable, and that furthermore it creates very serious theological quandaries.
Lastly, let’s consider political philosophy. Again — just like with atheism above — it would be silly for a political philosopher to reject pertinent empirical claims: we do have some evidence from the social sciences and from history about what happens when certain economic or political systems are seen at work in human societies. But political philosophy is fundamentally a matter of values: one starts with certain “rights” for instance that one thinks ought to be safeguarded, and then builds the best political/economic system that is likely to do the job. Talk of rights is, again, philosophical in nature, not empirical. One can (and should) defend what one means by “rights” and why one considers certain rights to be more fundamental than others. But all such discussions largely transcend empirical evidence (which, again, should not be ignored).
In reality, this debate has been going on for decades, and it has at times involved some of the great figures of skepticism. Just think of Paul Kurtz’s struggle to balance his own organizations, the Council for Secular Humanism (which publishes Free Inquiry) and what is now known as the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry (which puts out Skeptical Inquirer), organizations that most certainly not always see eye to eye when it comes to mixing skepticism, religion and politics. Michael Shermer, on the other hand, has been criticized on his own multi-author blog for not making a distinction between scientifically defensible notions and political positions. And of course, Penn and Teller’s absurd denial of global warming, and recent Dawkins award winner Bill Maher’s insane criticism of “western medicine” complete this increasingly messy picture.
Before continuing, therefore, let me be clear about what it is I am trying to do. I am most definitely not seeking to tell people what to write about and what to stay away from. Not only would that be futile, but it is contrary to the spirit of open inquiry that I hold as one of my highest ideals. Besides, as I mentioned earlier, I can easily be seen as a repeat offender on this very blog, and coherence is another ideal I hold pretty high (despite one of my favorite quotes by Walt Whitman: “Do I contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself, I am large, I contain multitudes”).
What I am attempting is a serious discussion of the differences and commonalities among the three areas pertinent to the topics in question: (scientific, or evidence-based) skepticism, atheism, and political philosophy. This blog is about all three because those are my interests and because I am presumptuous enough to think that I have something relevant to say in those domains. But I am in fact continuously switching among three not automatically interchangeable hats: (former) scientist, (current) philosopher, and politically-minded intellectual. All of that said, let the game begin!
First, let me define what I mean by skeptical inquiry, atheism and political philosophy. Skeptical inquiry, in the classic sense, pertains to the critical examination of evidential claims of the para- or super-normal. This means not just ghosts, telepathy, clairvoyance, UFOs and the like, but also — for instance — the creationist idea that the world is 6,000 years old. All these claims are, at least in principle, amenable to scientific inquiry because they refer to things that we can observe, measure and perhaps even repeat experimentally. Notice, of course, that (some) religious claims do therefore fall squarely within the domain of scientific skepticism. Also in this area we find pseudohistorical claims, such as Holocaust denial, and pseudoscientific ones like fear of vaccines and denial of global warming. Which means of course that some politically charged issues — like the latter two — can also pertain properly to skeptical inquiry.
Second, let us turn to atheism. Once again: it is a philosophical, not a scientific position. Now, I have argued of course that any intelligent philosopher ought to allow her ideas to be informed by science, but philosophical inquiry is broader than science because it includes non-evidence based approaches, such as logic or more broadly reason-based arguments. This is both the strength and the weakness of philosophy when compared to science: it is both broader and yet of course less prone to incremental discovery and precise answers. When someone, therefore, wants to make a scientific argument in favor of atheism — like Dawkins and Jerry Coyne seem to do — he is stepping outside of the epistemological boundaries of science, thereby doing a disservice both to science and to intellectual inquiry. Consider again the example of a creationist who maintains in the face of evidence that the universe really is 6,000 years old, and that it only looks older because god arranged things in a way to test our faith. There is absolutely no empirical evidence that could contradict that sort of statement, but a philosopher can easily point out why it is unreasonable, and that furthermore it creates very serious theological quandaries.
Lastly, let’s consider political philosophy. Again — just like with atheism above — it would be silly for a political philosopher to reject pertinent empirical claims: we do have some evidence from the social sciences and from history about what happens when certain economic or political systems are seen at work in human societies. But political philosophy is fundamentally a matter of values: one starts with certain “rights” for instance that one thinks ought to be safeguarded, and then builds the best political/economic system that is likely to do the job. Talk of rights is, again, philosophical in nature, not empirical. One can (and should) defend what one means by “rights” and why one considers certain rights to be more fundamental than others. But all such discussions largely transcend empirical evidence (which, again, should not be ignored).
(note: the above diagram is an improved version, not the one originally accompanying this article)
If the distinctions above are so clear, why, then, do we keep running into the mess with which I started this essay? Because the three areas in question do have a common underpinning, as illustrated by the diagram accompanying this article: atheism, skeptical inquiry, and political philosophy are all exercises in critical thinking and rational analysis. The differences among them is in the relative role that philosophical and scientific/empirical considerations play in each case.
That is why, for instance, I can coherently say that Penn and Teller are wrong about their libertarianism and about their position on global warming: in the first case, I am talking about philosophy, in the second about science. There is, of course, much more leeway in the first than in the second case. That’s also why there is no contradiction in me praising Bill Maher for his political views and yet thinking of him as a hopelessly inept commentator when it comes to his opinions on medicine. To consider one more example, this is also how I can agree with Dawkins’ and Coyne’s philosophical positions (and disagree with “accommodationists” like Ken Miller) and yet distance myself from them on the ground that I think they are stretching the tools of science beyond what is reasonable.
All of this may seem confusing and perhaps even an irrelevant exercise in hair-splitting, but it is in fact what makes discussions within the skeptic community — and society at large — so interesting and delicate. By all means, let’s continue to argue about atheism, politics and UFOs. But let us be mindful of the fact that the types of arguments and evidence that are pertinent to one area do not necessarily carry over to another one. Which means that people should refrain from using the venerable mantle of skepticism to engage in silly notions like denying global warming or the efficacy of vaccines. That’s an insult to critical analysis, which is the one thing we all truly cherish.
If the distinctions above are so clear, why, then, do we keep running into the mess with which I started this essay? Because the three areas in question do have a common underpinning, as illustrated by the diagram accompanying this article: atheism, skeptical inquiry, and political philosophy are all exercises in critical thinking and rational analysis. The differences among them is in the relative role that philosophical and scientific/empirical considerations play in each case.
That is why, for instance, I can coherently say that Penn and Teller are wrong about their libertarianism and about their position on global warming: in the first case, I am talking about philosophy, in the second about science. There is, of course, much more leeway in the first than in the second case. That’s also why there is no contradiction in me praising Bill Maher for his political views and yet thinking of him as a hopelessly inept commentator when it comes to his opinions on medicine. To consider one more example, this is also how I can agree with Dawkins’ and Coyne’s philosophical positions (and disagree with “accommodationists” like Ken Miller) and yet distance myself from them on the ground that I think they are stretching the tools of science beyond what is reasonable.
All of this may seem confusing and perhaps even an irrelevant exercise in hair-splitting, but it is in fact what makes discussions within the skeptic community — and society at large — so interesting and delicate. By all means, let’s continue to argue about atheism, politics and UFOs. But let us be mindful of the fact that the types of arguments and evidence that are pertinent to one area do not necessarily carry over to another one. Which means that people should refrain from using the venerable mantle of skepticism to engage in silly notions like denying global warming or the efficacy of vaccines. That’s an insult to critical analysis, which is the one thing we all truly cherish.
Saturday, October 17, 2009
Massimo's picks
* A brief video discussion among a journalist, a philosopher and a scientist about what truth is.
* Thoughtful post about why religious discourse seems to be conducted in a different way from discourse about any other sort of nonsense.
* Paul Krugman on the predictably dire consequences of an uneducated America.
* Find out what happens to your brain just before you die, and why it may explain so-called near-death out-of-body experiences.
* An insightful analysis of the GOP's opposition to hate crime protections. Turns out they are in favor only of protecting that which is an "immutable characteristic," you know, like sex, race... and religion! (But not gender preferences.)
* This just in! My new book, Nonsense on Stilts: How to Tell Science from Bunk, is now available for pre-ordering at Amazon.
* Interesting interview with Richard Dawkins, who sounds remarkably even tempered, and yet manages to diss philosophers anyway.
* Yet another bizarre story about the Large Hadron Collider: now two physicists think that god (or someone from the future) is trying to stop the experiment, because he doesn't like us making a Higgs boson. Hmm, sounds familiar, though the old version included snakes and apples...
Wednesday, October 14, 2009
Penn & Teller: more Bullshit!
All right, I promise to leave Penn & Teller alone for a while after this post, though I’m beginning to think that their show has run out of gas, and that they need a couple years of rest. Catching up with season 6, I just finished watching the episode on “world peace.” It has now become a very predictable pattern: P&T are effective and at the peak of their game when they take on the paranormal and other forms of pseudoscience. But, when they veer into politics, they are full of bullshit.
This is no coincidence: creationism, astrology, ghosts, alternative medicine, ufos, clairvoyance, magnetic therapy and so on are unquestionably reality-challenged beliefs. That’s the proper domain of the skeptic, that intelligent, science-informed, philosophy-savvy member of the human race exemplified by the likes of David Hume and Carl Sagan. And that’s where P&T make us laugh and think at the same time — no minor feat — and it's something for which I will always appreciate them.
But public policies and economics, though surely marked by their own examples of nonsense, are not in the same category at all. When P&T talk about global warming, recycling programs, or, as in the case at hand, world peace, they are out of their league. And they are neither thoughtful nor funny.
Before I started watching the world peace episode I made some empirically testable predictions: a) they will make fun of some dim-witted, though probably well intentioned, peace-nick; b) they will attack the United Nations as the worst idea since the Inquisition; and c) they will ask the enlightened opinion of an anonymous member of some libertarian think tank, most likely the CATO Institute (of which Penn is a proud Fellow, whatever that means). Check, check, and check; that’s exactly what happened. Maybe I should reconsider my skepticism of psychic powers!
Sure enough, P&T went on to interview some silly peace-loving but not exactly bright people of the “Code Pink” organization, who apparently thought that praying with lit candles in Nancy Pelosi’s office really advances the cause of world peace. No, it doesn’t, though the group at least came across as compassionate, unlike that asshole P&T featured as spokeswoman for Move Forward America, a group which maintains that a permanent state of war is necessary for our prosperity. (To their credit, P&T did make merciless fun of her.)
Next, of course, came the United Nations. It is admittedly a flawed organization, beginning with the inane idea of having a Security Council, formed by the five nations who won WWII, granted absolute veto power on any and all resolutions. But the UN does a world of good, both by providing the primary forum for peaceful international dialogue, and by its far reaching field humanitarian work. P&T couldn’t find anything better than to attack the latter by focusing exclusively on the occasional scandals that arise in any sufficiently large organization. I mean, if we are talking about bribery and rape, shall we not start at home, with our own government and military respectively? Would that be an argument to abolish the US Government and to get rid of the Army?
And finally we have P&T’s own solution to the problem of world peace, courtesy of the infinite (lack of) wisdom of the CATO Institute and of a questionable personal anecdote. Did you guess? But of course: the only road to world peace is a planetary free market! It would work because nations would be increasingly inter-dependent economically, which would set up a powerful disincentive toward war. Indeed, P&T tell us that their own professional and personal relationship has worked well over so many years for similar reasons: you see, when they disagree and yell at each other, they don’t resort to violence, because otherwise there wouldn’t be a Penn & Teller show, and Penn’s kids couldn’t have “fancy birthday parties.”
Really? I don’t know P&T personally, but I hope (and strongly suspect) that they are better than that. They are probably friends, and the reason they don’t assault each other violently when they disagree has a lot more to do with the fact that they care for each other and that they are decent human beings. The fact that they also work well together and make a nice living from it is just pleasant icing on the cake.
So, is free market capitalism the key to world peace? Interestingly, as you will find out by reading 1919, the remarkable book by Margaret MacMillan on the making of the peace treaty that ended WWI, people thought exactly the same thing at the beginning of the 20th century. They were proven wrong by not just one, but two world wars.
Of course interconnectedness helps, though it better be cultural as well as economic. But one cannot pretend to be a thoughtful analyst of the problem of world peace and ignore the issue that capitalism itself has motivated some recent conflicts, at least in part, in a quest to control ever larger shares of valuable resources (think both Iraq I and II). And of course capitalist nations don’t have a much better track record of non-aggression than non-capitalist ones (think US history, since its inception, not just recently).
No, if there is an answer to the problem — or at least a way to ameliorate things — it is precisely through something like the United Nations. The current incarnation of the organization is really its version 2.0. Version 1.0 was the League of Nations that was set up after WWI, and which failed in great part because the Americans insisted in inviting only democracies to the high table. Version 2.0, which began after WWII, is better, because everyone has a seat, yet still some seats are better than others. Much better, in fact. So what we need (hopefully without having to go through WWWIII to get there!) is a United Nations 3.0, without a Security Council and where each nation gets an equal vote. You know, it’s called democracy, and we’ve made a business of spreading it to the world for the simple reason that it is a great idea. Greater even than capitalism, you can bet your tv show on it.
This is no coincidence: creationism, astrology, ghosts, alternative medicine, ufos, clairvoyance, magnetic therapy and so on are unquestionably reality-challenged beliefs. That’s the proper domain of the skeptic, that intelligent, science-informed, philosophy-savvy member of the human race exemplified by the likes of David Hume and Carl Sagan. And that’s where P&T make us laugh and think at the same time — no minor feat — and it's something for which I will always appreciate them.
But public policies and economics, though surely marked by their own examples of nonsense, are not in the same category at all. When P&T talk about global warming, recycling programs, or, as in the case at hand, world peace, they are out of their league. And they are neither thoughtful nor funny.
Before I started watching the world peace episode I made some empirically testable predictions: a) they will make fun of some dim-witted, though probably well intentioned, peace-nick; b) they will attack the United Nations as the worst idea since the Inquisition; and c) they will ask the enlightened opinion of an anonymous member of some libertarian think tank, most likely the CATO Institute (of which Penn is a proud Fellow, whatever that means). Check, check, and check; that’s exactly what happened. Maybe I should reconsider my skepticism of psychic powers!
Sure enough, P&T went on to interview some silly peace-loving but not exactly bright people of the “Code Pink” organization, who apparently thought that praying with lit candles in Nancy Pelosi’s office really advances the cause of world peace. No, it doesn’t, though the group at least came across as compassionate, unlike that asshole P&T featured as spokeswoman for Move Forward America, a group which maintains that a permanent state of war is necessary for our prosperity. (To their credit, P&T did make merciless fun of her.)
Next, of course, came the United Nations. It is admittedly a flawed organization, beginning with the inane idea of having a Security Council, formed by the five nations who won WWII, granted absolute veto power on any and all resolutions. But the UN does a world of good, both by providing the primary forum for peaceful international dialogue, and by its far reaching field humanitarian work. P&T couldn’t find anything better than to attack the latter by focusing exclusively on the occasional scandals that arise in any sufficiently large organization. I mean, if we are talking about bribery and rape, shall we not start at home, with our own government and military respectively? Would that be an argument to abolish the US Government and to get rid of the Army?
And finally we have P&T’s own solution to the problem of world peace, courtesy of the infinite (lack of) wisdom of the CATO Institute and of a questionable personal anecdote. Did you guess? But of course: the only road to world peace is a planetary free market! It would work because nations would be increasingly inter-dependent economically, which would set up a powerful disincentive toward war. Indeed, P&T tell us that their own professional and personal relationship has worked well over so many years for similar reasons: you see, when they disagree and yell at each other, they don’t resort to violence, because otherwise there wouldn’t be a Penn & Teller show, and Penn’s kids couldn’t have “fancy birthday parties.”
Really? I don’t know P&T personally, but I hope (and strongly suspect) that they are better than that. They are probably friends, and the reason they don’t assault each other violently when they disagree has a lot more to do with the fact that they care for each other and that they are decent human beings. The fact that they also work well together and make a nice living from it is just pleasant icing on the cake.
So, is free market capitalism the key to world peace? Interestingly, as you will find out by reading 1919, the remarkable book by Margaret MacMillan on the making of the peace treaty that ended WWI, people thought exactly the same thing at the beginning of the 20th century. They were proven wrong by not just one, but two world wars.
Of course interconnectedness helps, though it better be cultural as well as economic. But one cannot pretend to be a thoughtful analyst of the problem of world peace and ignore the issue that capitalism itself has motivated some recent conflicts, at least in part, in a quest to control ever larger shares of valuable resources (think both Iraq I and II). And of course capitalist nations don’t have a much better track record of non-aggression than non-capitalist ones (think US history, since its inception, not just recently).
No, if there is an answer to the problem — or at least a way to ameliorate things — it is precisely through something like the United Nations. The current incarnation of the organization is really its version 2.0. Version 1.0 was the League of Nations that was set up after WWI, and which failed in great part because the Americans insisted in inviting only democracies to the high table. Version 2.0, which began after WWII, is better, because everyone has a seat, yet still some seats are better than others. Much better, in fact. So what we need (hopefully without having to go through WWWIII to get there!) is a United Nations 3.0, without a Security Council and where each nation gets an equal vote. You know, it’s called democracy, and we’ve made a business of spreading it to the world for the simple reason that it is a great idea. Greater even than capitalism, you can bet your tv show on it.
Saturday, October 10, 2009
Massimo's picks
* European readers will now be able to get Rationally Speaking wirelessly: Amazon is releasing the international version of the Kindle!
* Find out what would happen if "alternative" medicine were allowed in the emergency room, in this hilarious sketch!
* Another comic clip, this one about homeopathy and nutritionists.
* Psychologists suggest that people are just in denial about climate change.
* One more debunking of the Shroud of Turin. Duh.
* The Vatican says evolution is ok, again.
* The Bible is too liberal! Let's edit it, says a group of conservatives...
* A little bit of nonsense is good for your mind.
* Conservatives are praying for key liberals, so that they will renounce their evil ways. Fat Chance.
* Clinical psychologists are apparently not that interested in science-based psychology.
* The brain processes facts and beliefs the same way, which explains a lot about why people believe so much nonsense.
* World will not end in 2012, experts say.
Wednesday, October 07, 2009
Michael Moore’s Capitalism, a Love Story
I’m not shy about admitting that I like and even admire Michael Moore. For those of you who made it past that first sentence (this blog has some highly opinionated aficionados who don’t necessarily buy all I write), let me qualify. I do not think for a moment that Roger and Me, Bowling for Columbine, Fahrenheit 9/11, Sicko or, for that matter, the current release, Capitalism: a Love Story are documentaries. They are clearly not. I think of them as op-ed pieces, films that blend factual information, anecdotes and silly (but funny!) stunts to make a point, to force people to think by shaking them out of their complacency. And boy does this country need a bit of shaking and a lot more thinking.
Yes, Moore is largely preaching to the choir. Isn’t everyone? The choir needs preaching, just ask your Sunday morning pastor, or anyone at Fox News. And the difference is that Moore is much smarter and more truthful than either your pastor or Sean Hannity (let alone that buffoon of Glenn Beck).
Capitalism is indeed a love story, because through all the criticism it is obvious that the director aches for a better America, and he does not envision that America as a communist country. Moore graphically shows what everyone knows and yet most people do their best to ignore: that greed ruins people’s lives. Many people’s lives. For every venture capitalist or speculator who gets rich on Wall Street there are millions of people who get poorer by the day, who lose their homes or suddenly see their pensions evaporate. In one of its most poignant moments the movie shows a scared family huddling in their foreclosed house surrounded by a large number of police thugs getting ready to break in and evict them, while at the same time an asshole from the editorial pages of the Wall Street Journal tells the camera with a straight face that he has a problem with democracy, because it gets in the way of corporate profit.
Of course Moore knows that he is just engaging in antics when he drives around Wall Street to make a citizen arrest on the financiers who got this country and much of the rest of the world close to bankruptcy. The same financiers who then turned around and benefited from a huge government bailout engineered thanks to the fact that the federal regulatory agents are run by former financial officers from Goldman Sachs. Capitalists are all against government intervention, it seems, until it is necessary to save their ass, at which point they find their inner socialist and hold on to it for dear life.
Michael Moore is no communist or socialist (the two are different things, contrary to most American’s perpetual misunderstanding). He is what in Europe is called a social-democrat, someone who wants a form of (seriously) managed and regulated capitalism because he knows that in moderation, capitalism really is a great engine of economic growth and prosperity for everyone. But when left unchecked, capitalism turns into a vicious machine that increases the gap between 99% of the population representing the middle and lower classes, and the obscenely rich remaining 1%.
And there lies the real puzzle. Moore explicitly asks the same question I’ve been pondering now for many years: how is it that the Republicans, the party that defends the interests of the rich, continuously manage to get close to half of the votes in each election, while their policies manifestly hurt the overwhelming majority of the population? Moore’s answer is only part of the truth, but it is truthful nonetheless: capitalist demagogues the world over (not just in the US) have managed to convince everyone else that the common person has just enough of a chance to become rich that it is in everyone’s interest to let the currently rich do what they want. After all, if you raise taxes on them, some day you may join the ranks of the high society and have to pay those same taxes. Call it the lottery fallacy, if you will (any undergraduate student of economics will tell you that playing the lottery is most definitely not a good strategy for your retirement).
As I said, this is only part of the answer. Conservative parties the world over successfully vie for power on the basis of a complex cocktail that includes the endorsement (if not always the practice) of traditional values, religion, and of course the military (including a continuous game of scaring the shit out of people using real or imaginary dangers to maintain perpetual wars that serve the dual purpose of keeping the conservatives in power while obscenely filling their pockets with profits).
And yet, it is incredible that so many people do buy into inane ideas like “trickle down economics,” “too big to fail,” “taxes are theft,” “we have the best health care system in the world,” “God bless America” and so on and so forth. Trickle down, Reagan-style, economics has in fact caused a huge leap in the disparity between the rich and everyone else, essentially undermining the foundations of the American middle class. The idea of a bank or corporation that is too big to fail (and therefore needs to be bailed out with taxpayers’ money) is a capitalistic oxymoron if there ever was one. If taxes are theft then by the same “logic” working is slavery (neither is true, obviously). We manifestly and demonstrably do not have the best healthcare in the world. And as far as God is concerned, of course he doesn’t exist, but if he did, why on earth would he prefer one nation over another (and at any rate, didn’t he already say he likes Jews the best?).
So what’s the solution to this mess? Moore does show some glimmer of hope in Capitalism: labor unions (despite their own share of problems) can indeed make a difference for the obvious reason that workers need to be united in order to counter the crushingly powerful interests of the elite. So let’s reorganize and strengthen our unions. Moore visits businesses in the United States that are run as cooperatives, where the members own an equal share of the company, where decisions are made democratically, and the CEO makes as much as any other employee! Guess what? They are highly profitable, so let’s use them as a model to re-engineer our economy from the bottom up. And there are some valiant members of Congress who did stand up to Wall Street when the bailouts were being rammed down their colleagues’ throats. So let’s re-elect them and throw the rest of these bought by corporate interests buffoons out of office at the next democratic opportunity.
The battle for justice and equality is a perennially uphill battle. That’s why the choir needs preachers like Michael Moore to get our juices running again, to get newly pissed off at what some politicians and big corporations are doing to our way of life. Now get out, organize, and vote.
Yes, Moore is largely preaching to the choir. Isn’t everyone? The choir needs preaching, just ask your Sunday morning pastor, or anyone at Fox News. And the difference is that Moore is much smarter and more truthful than either your pastor or Sean Hannity (let alone that buffoon of Glenn Beck).
Capitalism is indeed a love story, because through all the criticism it is obvious that the director aches for a better America, and he does not envision that America as a communist country. Moore graphically shows what everyone knows and yet most people do their best to ignore: that greed ruins people’s lives. Many people’s lives. For every venture capitalist or speculator who gets rich on Wall Street there are millions of people who get poorer by the day, who lose their homes or suddenly see their pensions evaporate. In one of its most poignant moments the movie shows a scared family huddling in their foreclosed house surrounded by a large number of police thugs getting ready to break in and evict them, while at the same time an asshole from the editorial pages of the Wall Street Journal tells the camera with a straight face that he has a problem with democracy, because it gets in the way of corporate profit.
Of course Moore knows that he is just engaging in antics when he drives around Wall Street to make a citizen arrest on the financiers who got this country and much of the rest of the world close to bankruptcy. The same financiers who then turned around and benefited from a huge government bailout engineered thanks to the fact that the federal regulatory agents are run by former financial officers from Goldman Sachs. Capitalists are all against government intervention, it seems, until it is necessary to save their ass, at which point they find their inner socialist and hold on to it for dear life.
Michael Moore is no communist or socialist (the two are different things, contrary to most American’s perpetual misunderstanding). He is what in Europe is called a social-democrat, someone who wants a form of (seriously) managed and regulated capitalism because he knows that in moderation, capitalism really is a great engine of economic growth and prosperity for everyone. But when left unchecked, capitalism turns into a vicious machine that increases the gap between 99% of the population representing the middle and lower classes, and the obscenely rich remaining 1%.
And there lies the real puzzle. Moore explicitly asks the same question I’ve been pondering now for many years: how is it that the Republicans, the party that defends the interests of the rich, continuously manage to get close to half of the votes in each election, while their policies manifestly hurt the overwhelming majority of the population? Moore’s answer is only part of the truth, but it is truthful nonetheless: capitalist demagogues the world over (not just in the US) have managed to convince everyone else that the common person has just enough of a chance to become rich that it is in everyone’s interest to let the currently rich do what they want. After all, if you raise taxes on them, some day you may join the ranks of the high society and have to pay those same taxes. Call it the lottery fallacy, if you will (any undergraduate student of economics will tell you that playing the lottery is most definitely not a good strategy for your retirement).
As I said, this is only part of the answer. Conservative parties the world over successfully vie for power on the basis of a complex cocktail that includes the endorsement (if not always the practice) of traditional values, religion, and of course the military (including a continuous game of scaring the shit out of people using real or imaginary dangers to maintain perpetual wars that serve the dual purpose of keeping the conservatives in power while obscenely filling their pockets with profits).
And yet, it is incredible that so many people do buy into inane ideas like “trickle down economics,” “too big to fail,” “taxes are theft,” “we have the best health care system in the world,” “God bless America” and so on and so forth. Trickle down, Reagan-style, economics has in fact caused a huge leap in the disparity between the rich and everyone else, essentially undermining the foundations of the American middle class. The idea of a bank or corporation that is too big to fail (and therefore needs to be bailed out with taxpayers’ money) is a capitalistic oxymoron if there ever was one. If taxes are theft then by the same “logic” working is slavery (neither is true, obviously). We manifestly and demonstrably do not have the best healthcare in the world. And as far as God is concerned, of course he doesn’t exist, but if he did, why on earth would he prefer one nation over another (and at any rate, didn’t he already say he likes Jews the best?).
So what’s the solution to this mess? Moore does show some glimmer of hope in Capitalism: labor unions (despite their own share of problems) can indeed make a difference for the obvious reason that workers need to be united in order to counter the crushingly powerful interests of the elite. So let’s reorganize and strengthen our unions. Moore visits businesses in the United States that are run as cooperatives, where the members own an equal share of the company, where decisions are made democratically, and the CEO makes as much as any other employee! Guess what? They are highly profitable, so let’s use them as a model to re-engineer our economy from the bottom up. And there are some valiant members of Congress who did stand up to Wall Street when the bailouts were being rammed down their colleagues’ throats. So let’s re-elect them and throw the rest of these bought by corporate interests buffoons out of office at the next democratic opportunity.
The battle for justice and equality is a perennially uphill battle. That’s why the choir needs preachers like Michael Moore to get our juices running again, to get newly pissed off at what some politicians and big corporations are doing to our way of life. Now get out, organize, and vote.
Saturday, October 03, 2009
Massimo's picks
* The most ancient fossil intermediate between humans and other primates has been unveiled. It's spectacular, it's important. Now watch the creationists dismiss it without argument...
* Qualia Soup, a YouTube collection of really cool videos on critical thinking. A great resource for teachers.
* Stephen Colbert, in his inimitable style, takes on Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck. Oh boy.
* A delightful remix of Carl Sagan's videos, set to music (he sings!).
* What's the most significant document of the Enlightenment? Try the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom.
* Thomas Friedman on the disturbing parallels between today's political climate in the United States and Israel just before the assassination of Prime Minister Rabin.
* Did you celebrate blasphemy day this year?
* Incredible: a well done comic book (I mean, graphic novel) on the logicians' quest for a rational mathematics. It features Bertrand Russell as one of the heroes...
* A delightful compendium of failed prophecies about the end of the world.
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