The Filter^

Defending c21st fatalism

In my article about the stadium move, I think a few people were offended by my use of the "fatalist" group. I said:

As ever, the voice most likely to be ignored is that of the fatalist. In this case it's the general fan, who wants his matchday routine to suffer as little disruption as possible.

A problem with Cultural Theory is that the labels are loaded. Mary Douglas felt that "hierarchy" was needlessly negative. Some think that "sectarian" should be used instead of "egalitarian"; and indeed "isolate" instead of "fatalist". I personally feel that "opportunist" is more appropriate than "individualist". It rumbles on.

The most important point is that the labels are intended to assist conceptualisation, and there's no "right" culture. the whole point is that behaviour depends on the social environment.

The classic example of "fatalism" was Banfield's study, but a modern example can be found currently in Romania:

A Romanian company is accused of dumping 47 tonnes of animal carcasses on the outskirts of Bucharest

The carcasses are rotting amid heat of 38C, just metres from a main road. Piles of black plastic bags are stacked around the dump, with bits of chicken and even horse carcasses poking through.

A strong wind is blowing the stench in all directions, but more worrying is the danger to human health.

Only a few hundred metres away, in the village of Gradistea, people show little awareness of the hazard and anyway, they say, there is not much they can do.

If we can strip away the emotion, these are useful, applicable classifications.

Market Imperfection

I'd like to highlight a conversation at theobscurer on the smoking ban and imperfect markets, click here to take a look. Quinn makes a good point: in this instance the smoking ban 'breaks' a Prisoner's Dilemma,

I would say that landlords would have been reluctant to go smoke-free unilaterally even if they had wanted to knowing that while other pubs did allow smoking they would lose the custom of their current clientele who are smokers and their friends; it would be a gamble to hope that enough new non-smoking customers would be attracted in to replace the shortfall, and I doubt in practice that would happen. With an outright ban, however, where all pubs must multilaterally go smoke-free, there is not the same concern.

If a group of 6 people go down the pub, and there's a choice of smoking vs. non-smoking venues, how many of the group would have to be non-smokers before the group would go to the non-smoking pub? I'd say it'd have to be unanimous - I've often sat in the smoking section of a restaurant even if only one of the group is a smoker.

So perhaps people resent this, and vote for a change in the law to enforce a policy they're too weak to insist upon amongst their friends ('Ok, we'll go to a place that allows smoking, and end up stinking, just because one of the group is a smoker. Hmph. But if I just allow the state to intervene, I get my way without feeling like a bastard'). Isn't that cowardice? I suspect some smokers favoured the policy as well, as a commitment mechanism ('I want to quit, but lack the will power. To help me quit, I'm going to inflict my preferences on other people'). Isn't that repulsive?

Persuasion, Conviction, and Convincing

When experts argue, who should you trust? Arnold Kling:

• when an economist known for one ideological leaning makes an argument that favors a different persuasion, that in itself should lend credibility to the case
• force economists to explain their arguments clearly in layman's terms, and then to evaluate the arguments on their merits. That means you have to know enough about economics to be able to distinguish a compelling economic argument from demagoguery.

Bryan Caplan adds:

• Compare credentials. If the advocate of X teaches at Harvard, and the opponent of X teaches at a community college, this raises the probability that X is true. (And yes, this means that all else equal, you should side with Dani Rodrik against me.  Fortunately, all else is not equal).
  
• Adjust for social sanction. If X is a popular, crowd-pleasing conclusion, you should expect this to make smart defenders of X more abundant - regardless of the truth of X. You should therefore hold the defenders of such views to higher standards.
  
• Check the bets.  If only one side is willing to bet hard cash, that side is probably right.
  
• You don't have to take a side. If you really have no idea who to believe, remain agnostic. In fact, it would be much better for the world if the less-informed practiced Swiss neutrality, leaving the well-informed to guide policy.

I'd emphasise that last point, since I feel that the biggest  public policy problem isn't a lack of knowledge, it's an abundance of incorrect knowledge. We'd all be a lot better if we raise the bar of how much we understand an issue before expressing an opinion [cue Jim!]. I'd also add

• Demand full disclosure, but realise that "independence" does not mean "publicly funded".

By the way, I'm writing this as a consumer of rhetoric, rather than a producer

Portrait of Jacques Nayral

Albert Gleizes (1911)

Tate

Applying "Cultural Theory" to the stadium debate

I have an article called 'The “Cultural Theory” Approach to the Everton Stadium Debate' up at ToffeeWeb.  It's an application of CT to the issue of Everton's potential relocation to Kirkby, in light of Michael Thompson's similar study on Arsenal. The aim isn't to fully explain/justify CT as a useful system, but given that it's a respected and well tried technique, to apply it to this context. I end up making two main points: the 'loop' offers a richer architectural opportunity than Kirkby; and a successful relocation will depend on whether four distinct "voices" are heard. I'm skeptical that this will occur. It's generated some interesting comments, so take a look.

Top 5, Lists, and Facebook

Is anyone else dead reluctant to fill in the favourite music; TV shows; movies; and books section of their Facebook profile? I've never been sure how to do this, but the closest I've come is to just list an arbitrary number.

Apparently Tyler Cowen likes the "five best" section of the WSJ:

[a] celebrity is asked to name five favorite books, CDs, or movies.

Five is enough to frame the namer's tastes.  And your chance of learning about a new peak experience is relatively high.  Even if you get no useful information, you've had a chance to judge a celebrity.

So what can be simpler than just listing 5 favourites? Afterall as James has already said:

Lists are great! They save us from thinking. We all like lists.

But I'm still reluctant to jump on board. The main reason is because it is fundamentally self-indulgent and encourages self-promotion. If you have filled in these sections of your facebook profile, you're a spin doctor guilty of "sexing up" yourself. If these were genuine preferences without thought for how society will view you in light of them, there'd be no point making it public. No, lists are bad. Reading lists for specific courses are useful. Long lists for specific awards are useful. But just listing "favourites", is not.

According to Nick Schandler:

I hate this section.  If you'd like, I could put in a bunch of books that I don't understand or appreciate but will make me sound smart.  Remember, if you plan to do this yourself, you need to put in at least one book from each of the following categories: philosophy, science, and literature.  Those are the big ones.  Then throw a few more random ones in for good measure, and add one exoteric book so you don't look like a snob. 

How does one interpret the "music" section? It must be albums, surely. But in this day and age, albums are becoming less relevant. TV shows is interesting: are we going for general approval or "willing to end a relationship in order to get home so as not to miss the start"? For movies and books I'm tempted to just list (personally defined) genres, but does this defeat the entire purpose of writing a list?

Finally, Facebook creater Mark Zuckerberg was profiled in this week's Economist:

Whereas many of the other social networks on the web primarily help people to make new contacts online—whether for hanky panky, marriage or business—Mr Zuckerberg is exclusively interested in “mapping out” the “real and pre-existing connections” among people, he says.

So those of you who've shamelessly self-promoted - what's your strategy? And the bottom line, I feel, is that how you interpret the question, says more than your answer.

Self-experimentation

Demonstrating that methodology can be cool, be sure to pay attention to the work of Seth Roberts, who shows that self-experimentation isn't just for comic book "mad" scientists. "Self-experimentation as a source of new ideas: Ten examples about sleep, mood, health, and weight" is a nice overview, and can be downloaded here (.pdf). He was recently featured in The Scientist:

The last thing Seth Roberts does each night is turn on his bedside timer, and the first thing he does each morning is switch it off. He has tracked his own sleep for more than 30 years and all those data are stored and crunchable along with the many factors he suspects influence his slumber.

Street Cleaning

Sifting through old papers I came across a clipping from The Times, presenting the case for Street Cleaning (related to street clutter):

In its £4.5 million redesign of the street, Kensington adopted the principle of “shared space”. Pioneered in the Netherlands, it rejects the concept that pedestrians and traffic must be strictly segregated. The idea is that cars, cyclists and those on foot will coexist more safely when the boundaries between them are blurred.

The principle extends far beyond just reducing the ugly clutter of railings, signposts and markings; it fundamentally alters the way we view shared space (nb not public vs private) through individual responsibility to exercise their own risk perception. Not only can we make the roads more aesthetically pleasing, but in doing so we can make them safer.

Anthropogenic GLOBAL WARMING is behind the flooding

The recent weather in the South-West of England/Wales is frightening stuff. We have family in the thick of it, now counting the costs - initial relief at no serious losses is now tempered by the lengthening list of destroyed possessions. And for all of you concerned by such destructive weather patterns, there is evidence to suggest that anthropogenic global warming is to blame. The Independent reports that:

What this does is establish for the first time that there is a distinct 'human fingerprint' in the changes in precipitation patterns ­ the increases in rainfall observed in the northern hemisphere mid-latitudes, which includes Britain.

"That means, it is not just the climate's natural variability which has caused the increases, but there is a detectable human cause ­ climate change,caused by our greenhouse gas emissions. The 'human fingerprint' has been detected before in temperature rises, but never before in rainfall. So this is very significant.

The evidence will be published by Nature on Wednesday.

I'd like to claim that - if true - this new evidence reduces the economic argument for collective action against global warming.

In a recent talk on "Collective Goods Problems" that I gave in Cambridge, I tried to make the case that excludability and jointness of use (the two characteristics typically used to define a "public good") are cultural classifications. Because of this there's nothing inherent about goods, therefore economics cannot provide objective criteria to categorise on these grounds. This is a subjectivist argument, articulated well by Aaron Wildavsky:

This claim of externalities makes a good introduction to the assertion that there is a privileged class of goods so essentially public that government is justified in producing them if they are not available at all, or if they already exist, in providing more of them than people are willing to pay for. For the realization that externalities are what we think they are, even what we want them to be, brings us to the irremediable subjectivity of the concept of goods.

A good is not an item in a store with a price tag on it. If that were so, any one of us could put any item in any store at any price. No, a good is something someone values in exchange; someone is willing to give up something else for it. Truly, goods are goods only for those in whose eyes they are good enough.

Wildavsky 1998, p.23

The bottom line here is that a public goods argument rests on agreement about what we all define as externalities, and indeed what we define as "goods". If there's no unanimity about either of these points, economic science has no objective criteria by which to mediate.

Consequently, lets consider the following 3 statements:

a. Global warming is likely to lead to more rainfall
b. Global warming is influenced by man
c. Parts of the world suffer from drought

The evidence from Nature mentioned above suggests that a is true. b seems to be a fairly consensual position. And surely c is irrefutable.

What these points taken together suggest, is that mankind has discovered a way of influencing the global climate, without necessarily having a unanimous position on how to use it. *If* we can affect the weather, it *might* be possible to improve the lives of some people.

What this evidence from Nature suggests, is that the case for collective action - of government action - to improve upon the failures of a market system, is strengthened. But the economic rationale for doing so has weakened. There's convincing justification for government to combat global warming, but politicians cannot and therefore should not use economic rationale for doing so. It's a way to bamboozle a public held in the sway of science. But the emperor has no clothes.

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* NB. I'll remind everyone that despite your inevitable and understandable instincts, I am not a "global warming skeptic".

Alpizar and De Menezes: two years on

BBC News reports that:

The second anniversary of the shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes is to be marked by a ceremony on Sunday.

The Brazilian was shot dead at Stockwell Tube station on 22 July 2005 by police who had mistakenly identified him as a suicide bomber

My immediate thought is whether or not the second anniversary of the death of Rigoberto Alpizar will be marked in a similar way.

Here's what I said last year:

it really does seem to me that the UK media continue to hold the UK authorities to account over the de Menezes shooting, whilst the US media have forgotten all about Alpizar. Just as i'd feared