Second Amendment

Reading yesterday's post, I guess it would be fair to ask how I feel about the second amendment to the US constitution. The answer is that I am deeply ambivalent in the etymological sense of the word -- I am pulled in different directions by powerful opposing ideas that I think both have validity. I do see the roles that guns play in preserving self-sufficiency and in resisting despotism -- and I think these are both good and necessary things. At the same time, it is clear that owning guns is associated with increased risk of suicide and of domestic violence homicide. It also seems clear that in urban areas where guns are readily available in a context of drug and/or gun violence, their presence fuels the escalation of even minor disputes into deadly events.

So, I don't want to eliminate the second amendment, nor am I happy with the status quo that leads to tens of thousands of easily preventable gun deaths annually.

In that context, it seems to me that the rhetoric -- the culture around guns in the US -- can be part of the problem. First off, it is just not the case that the left is lining up to take away everyone's guns. There's no reason to run out and buy more guns every time the topic of gun violence is raised. Arguably -- with more than one gun in the US for every man, women, or child -- we are somewhere close to saturation, so more guns for everyone does not seem like a pressing need. Even more, I worry more about the rhetoric of framing gun purchases in terms of left-versus-right political debate. It add fuels to a fire that I believe is corrosive to our democratic institutions.

Further, too rapid deployment of the self-defense argument concerns me. If you study most martial arts, you're taught about discipline and conflict resolution. Of course, gun safety training teaches a form of discipline. But my experience on gun ranges has often been one where conflict (again, particularly between the left and the right) has been celebrated. Certainly it is not always celebrated, but enough that I've felt afraid to say the wrong thing because open discussion is just not tolerated on some ranges. I think that the martial arts have it right -- with acquisition of means of force comes a responsibility to proactively manage situations that could lead to use of that force. "Stand your ground" is not always the right thing, and often there are inflection points we should notice and exploit long before face-to-face conflicts arise.

One more area concerns me: when we focus on guns too much; when we make them too available (especially in densely populated areas), I think there is a risk of creating a dynamic like "when you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail." In areas where gang and drug-related violence is pronounced, I think the ready availability of guns in the US and the linkage to macho ideas like "I'm not gonna let them push me around" leads to a place where guns become a primary means of conflict resolution.

I don't have an answer. Focus on mass shootings may well be a red herring -- as tragic as they are, they are a small percentage of annual gun fatalities by most measures I am aware of. As a corollary, focus on removing "military-style" guns (whatever that exactly means) is not likely to make a dramatic difference in annual gun fatalities, though it may reduce the glorification/drama factor. Securing guns from children, on the other hand, will almost certainly make a difference -- and while many gun owners do, there are also many who don't.

Like many things in the US, this is a place where actual dialog could help. It is fairly clear there are many needless gun deaths in the US every year. When manufacturers, lobbyists, political parties, and dogmatic partisans demonize one another, and stymie research and discussion around what changes might be reasonable or effective, that conflict costs lives.

Sowing Conflict

The second amendment establishes militias so states can resist tyranny -- especially that of an overzealous federal government. The Governor of the state of Oregon wants federal forces to leave. The state legislature has not asked for federal troops. The Oregon courts have placed limits on use of force for Portland police, and federal forces appear to disregard these limits.

If every branch of state government wants federal forces to de-escalate, and the US congress has not authorized deployment of federal forces to Oregon, it seems federal activities are dangerously close to being an invasion. If such was the case, wouldn't the Governor be obliged to use the state militia to resist federal encroachment? Fortunately, Governor Brown has been much more measured in her response...but have we really come to this? Do we have no peaceful means available to respond to protests against police misconduct? 

Vandalism and arson are crimes, and I believe they should have no part in these protests. But if any one thing seems likely to increase tension and violent confrontation, it is the presence of federal troops in body armor carrying crowd-control munitions.

We rightly laud the bravery of unarmed civil rights marchers in the 60s who suffered direct physical violence to show the rightness of their cause. If federal presence in Portland has the goal of protecting federal buildings, perhaps the most effective -- and least escalating -- means of doing so would be for unarmed federal agents to form a ring around the buildings. And maybe talk to the protestors. That would be brave. And probably very effective.

But if the presence of military-style federal forces is just more political theater designed to enrage and divide us...that is entirely different. If our leaders only know how to sow conflict, then we might just need to stop looking to them for guidance, and instead look to each other to recognize our shared humanity.

Thoughts on a Comet

Last night, the whole family was together looking at NEOWISE. I can finally say I have seen a comet!

We mused about how utterly freaked out early stargazers must have been to see something like that appear in the sky. And then to have it disappear.

We were able to map a few constellations, thanks to our cell-phone apps -- a modern miracle of human creation. Did people really believe Ursa Major was somehow actually a bear?

We live in amazing times, but perhaps nothing is more amazing than the fact we are here to live in them, with our rich cultures, both shared and distinct, our histories full of human greatness and human folly...

That minds should be in this universe to appreciate its beauty is perhaps the most amazing thing about the universe. And there is nothing like those two things -- a little bit of nature and a little bit of the love of family -- to remind me how fortunate I am.

Non-Violence Starts at Home

Over the last few weeks, I've seen a number of posts suggesting if parents of my generation had used more corporal punishment to raise our kids, protests for equity in the US would be less violent and destructive.

Let me get this straight. At this moment, many people -- both young and old -- are protesting to make the behavior of our policing systems less violent. Most of those people are doing it peacefully, but some are not. And you wish we had more forcefully told our kids how to peacefully change people's behavior...by inflicting violence on our kids. What?

You say police should be more violent in stopping protests. You say parents should be more violent in raising kids. But our young people should learn from that to be more peaceful? How could that possibly make sense?

Psychologists and child development specialists have studied this in detail. If you wish to raise children with the tools to resolve conflict without violence, one of the most powerful ways to do so is to eschew violence in favor of reliable interventions that focus on empathy and understanding. Consistently and predictably making children aware of how their actions hurt others...works. Commensurate intervention that emphasizes taking personal responsibility...works. Demonstrating that "if you are caught you will suffer my wrath" only perpetuates violence and diminishes our ability to self-critically evaluate our own behaviors.

Non-violence is hard. Responding with love is harder than responding with anger. But it is what we are called to do. Martin Luther King said it. Gandhi said it. Jesus said it. Buddha taught it. If we wish to create a less violent society, it will not start by encouraging violence in the home.

Environmental Devastation Is Preventable

Saw this bald eagle yesterday - from about 35 ft away.

In 1963 there were only an estimated 417 breeding pairs of Bald Eagles in the lower 48 states. Without concerted, science-based environmental protection, our national bird would very likely be extinct. More than any other person, we owe that victory to Rachel Carson, the author of "Silent Spring." They accused her of being radical, disloyal, unscientific, and hysterical. But federal regulation of DDT, inspired by "Silent Spring," has been instrumental in saving the species.

When I was growing up, air in many cities in the US was becoming unbreathable (or maybe had become unbreathable). Federal regulation in the form of the Clean Air Act made our cities once again safe for living and commerce, while at the same time reducing our dependence of foreign oil supplies.

Until implementation of the clean water act, fouling our countries waterways with untreated sewage was accepted practice. In Boston, you could not swim in the harbor or the Charles River. My father-in-law commented that growing up they learned the breast stroke first, so they could push the floating turds out of their way. These waterways and many others are now swimmable and fishable due to the success of environmental regulation. This has been the source of massive increases in quality of life and has been a key part of preserving our coastal fisheries.

Leaded gasoline was responsible for about two-thirds of the toxic lead that African-American children in Cleveland ingested or inhaled during the latter two-thirds of the 20th century, and was not exceptional in this regard. Federal action eliminated the use of tetraethyl lead in gasoline in the US, and over the last 40 years interventions to reduce lead exposure may have raised the mean IQ in adults by as much 4.5 points. Imagine what a boon that increased intelligence is to our economy and our civic life.

Global reductions in ozone-depleting emissions are expected to prevent over 2 million skin cancer deaths for people in the United States born in the years 1890–2100, as well as much more dramatic reductions in cataracts and non-fatal skin cancer. As a result of international agreement and cooperation, climate projections indicate that the ozone layer will return to 1980 levels between 2050 and 2070.

The value of a market-based economy is that it allows us to make rational decisions about what we value. But that does not mean common resources we all share should be unprotected. Science, good government, and vibrant economies all play a role in ensuring equity today and preserving vital resources for tomorrow. The environmental movement can rightly claim credit for not only the five continental- and global-scale victories above that saved countless human lives, but for many more smaller victories as well.

The history of environmentalism is replete with examples of stunning success that save lives, benefit the economy, and show the risks of governments that abdicate their responsibility for the common good. Some free-market theorists would seem to have us believe that if a purchaser can be found and a seller can make a buck, the system must be good. Of course, they might acknowledge some moral limits, but history has repeatedly shown that we cannot depend on unregulated capitalism for even the simple measure of not killing its own workers. By all means, consider the costs and the benefits of environmental policy. But I still defend the need for effective regulation, and honor the efforts of innumerable public servants that have made our quality of life possible.

In Memory of John Lewis

In memory of John Lewis, few of his words:

"We are one people with one family. We all live in the same house... and through books, through information, we must find a way to say to people that we must lay down the burden of hate. For hate is too heavy a burden to bear."

"If you ask me whether the election of Barack Obama is the fulfillment of Dr. King's dream, I say, 'No, it's just a down payment.'"

"When you see something that is not right, not fair, not just, you have to speak up. You have to say something; you have to do something."

"You must be bold, brave, and courageous and find a way... to get in the way."

"The vote is precious. It's almost sacred, so go out and vote like you never voted before."

Black Lives

Here in the US, it seems we only pay attention to the Black Lives Matter movement when a black man dies. Yet, I'll note, the movement is Black Lives Matter.

Probably the most authoritative presentation of BLM's stated goals is at https://blacklivesmatter.com/what-we-believe. Other than an introductory passage that says that their formation was spurred by rage at the death of Trayvon Martin, death and murder are never mentioned. Instead, their principles begin:

Every day, we recommit to healing ourselves and each other, and to co-creating alongside comrades, allies, and family a culture where each person feels seen, heard, and supported.

We acknowledge, respect, and celebrate differences and commonalities.

We work vigorously for freedom and justice for Black people and, by extension, all people.

We intentionally build and nurture a beloved community that is bonded together through a beautiful struggle that is restorative, not depleting.

We are unapologetically Black in our positioning. In affirming that Black Lives Matter, we need not qualify our position. To love and desire freedom and justice for ourselves is a prerequisite for wanting the same for others.

(I have only listed the first five. While I believe the remainder are consistent with the point I'm making, I also recognize they raise additional topics of conversation; so for clarity I have left it to individual readers to follow up on their own.)

You may not agree with all the principles of of the movement or organization. But nonetheless, I ask you to read their principles with a wide-open mind for a moment -- if only just as an exercise in sympathy. The message of Black Lives Matter is stunningly affirmative. It is remarkable in its focus on lives, and recognizing dignity in living.

We should all seek to end the use of brutality and force in policing. We should all seek to extend economic opportunity and power to communities where opportunity and power are limited or absent. Through their values and actions, BLM aspires to build communities that enable those goals. What could be more American than celebrating individuality, freedom and justice?

A Space for Disagreement

I'm a big advocate of building common ground and solving problems together. But sometimes, even in my own mind, I hear myself saying "We can't just sit around and sing kum-by-ah all the time." It's important for me to be clear - I do not think we can or should agree on all things at all times. Nor do I think we should hesitate to fight injustice (or praise meritorious behavior.)

We should do those things. We should care. We should want to make the world better.

One of the paramount reasons for civility is to create a space where those conversations can happen. Such a space requires building a certain feeling of safety and trust. We lose the required sense of safety when opinion editors feel hounded out of their jobs for having an opinion. But we also lose that sense of safety peaceful protests are disrupted with pepper spray and police in riot gear. Whenever we reduce a human being to a simplistic political or cultural label, we lose part of that space that we need for vibrant dialog.

We have a choice -- we can call each other names, or we can have disagreements where ideas are probed and we get closer to meaningful truths. But we generally cannot do both, and as far as seeking wisdom, name-calling accomplishes precisely nothing.

Psychological Standing

I recently came across the concept of "psychological standing" -- like legal standing, except if you do not have legal standing, the court tells you that you cannot intervene in a case, but with psychological standing you tell yourself that you cannot intervene in or speak out about a situation.

It's an interesting concept, because it is one of those slippery ideas that has some value but can go too far. For instance, I've never given birth and most likely never will, so it seems reasonable to maintain a great deal of humility when speaking about things in that realm. But it would be heartless to let that extend to the point where I was unconcerned by that fact that maternal mortality is rising in the US at the same time it is falling in most other developed countries.

Similarly, when people of color in the US describe the ways in which they've felt impacted by racism, I lack that experience, so when those friends and associates describe things they'd like to see change, I'm not going to turn around and tell them "No, I have a better way to solve the problems you've identified to me." Even that is tricky, because it can be true that people are tired of having to explain an issue at the same time that they want to be given a better chance to express their frustrations.

I am pretty sure we've gone to far when we say "you're an old white male, your opinion doesn't matter." Not because I need some larger platform -- I'm perfectly happy to try speaking for rational thought, democratic mores, and compassionate actions. The chips will fall where they fall. The reason I think it matters is when our efforts to raise up a particular set of voices exclude all others who may be sympathetic, we make it less likely those potential allies will feel they have the psychological standing to speak out against the wrongs we wish to correct.

I don't think there's a formula for exactly the right way to create psychological standing. It varies from one situation to the next. I've noted before that I limit myself to one post a day because I would prefer to spend the time reading thoughtful words from my friends. Whenever I address a specific issue, I do try to include words quoted directly from communities affected -- I could probably do a better job of that at times, but I try. Mostly, for me, it comes back to being motivated by compassion -- it is compassion that causes me to argue we need to do a better job with race issues, health care, policing, etc. It is also compassion that reminds me that on any of these issues I care about, mine is only one small voice, and generally not the most important voice in the room.

Red, White, or Blue?

We don't say "red, white, or blue -- choose one." When we honor the US flag, we say red white and blue.

If we have parented young children, we don't either love them or admonish them to behave better -- we do both.

We don't drive cars with only brakes or gas pedals.

Why then, do we let people suggest that no government or totalitarianism are the only possible end states of political organization?

Why do we let people suggest that pure laissez faire capitalism or minutely planned central control are the only possible economic states we can live in?

When we label people as the 1 percent or as marxists, as tyrants or anarchists, as heartless or blindly naive, we are taking the lazy way out of understanding. It can be true both that people should get to keep what they earn (after paying for services) and that seeing generational and locally entrenched poverty tells us the free market system has failed in some way.

It's common to see mathematical functions that have low values at either end of their range, and a peak somewhere in the middle of their range. We should expect that many real-world situations have the best outcomes when we choose a course that is between two extremes as well.

Breaking Bread Together

It's worth taking a bit of a deeper look at the background to de Tocqueville's "Democracy in America." In his native France, the revolution had become empire under Napoleon, and been defeated at Waterloo. It is fair to say the revolution was struggling. Cromwell's revolution in England a little more than a century earlier had also failed quickly. Why had the American revolution not created the chaos that led to resurgence of authoritarian control as other revolutions had?

Part of de Tocqueville's answer is that non-governmental institutions provided public services to without resorting to governmental solutions. They are part of the whole fabric of and aspiration for minimal government in the US. And, though clearly different people have different ideas of what government priorities should be, I don't know anyone in the US who wants to pay more taxes or wants to be told what to do by the government. We do almost universally share at least some of that world view.

So the question becomes, how do we unite to solve problems without depending on governmental interference?

First, this is like "How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time." 

Second, we need to identify problems we can work together to solve -- for instance, reduction in in use of force incidents between police and citizens is widely desired, and could be a unifying problem. Or we could dehumanize police and say it is all their fault. Or we could dehumanize citizens and say it is all their fault. Finger-pointing does not give us leverage for change.

Third, we need to be more careful about alienating our potential allies before we start. If I tell you that "you and your kind are destroying the country" -- you're not all that likely to sit down and break bread with me, are you?

Swarming Problems

In "Democracy in America," Alexis de Tocqueville writes that he believes that mores in the US, or "habits of mind," play a prominent role in the protection of freedom. These "habits of mind" include township democracy and civic associations. These associations and political structures, it is argued, bring people together outside of party politics to solve problems.

In "Upstream: The Quest to Solve Problems before They Happen," Dan Heath recounts the effort in Newburyport to combat death from domestic violence. He identifies as a specific point of leverage when groups with different responsibilities, powers, and perspectives sat down together to identify women at risk and and how they could be supported. Then someone made the call or did the drive-by to check-in. Prior to their work, there was an average of 1 domestic violence-related death each year. In each the 14 years after there were none.

In the DevOps approach to software development, we talk about swarming the problem -- attacking the problem with all the resources we have. At the same time, instead of blaming people, we view people who make a mistake or identify a problem as messengers that are part of the solution. This is a practice that evolved from "pulling the andon rope" in lean manufacturing. In lean manufacturing, again, the focus is on working as a team to solve a problem and assigning blame is discouraged or forbidden.

What all these have in common is moving from pointing the finger at others to identifying problems. And then enlisting the broadest possible group of people and organizations to help solve the problem in a coordinated and efficient way.

We should do more of that.

Coastal Litter

It does always annoy me to see litter on the trail when hiking. It speaks to a lack of care and concern that actually sort of mystifies me -- it just makes no sense to go to all that effort to enjoy a relatively pristine environment, and then leave it visibly less pristine. But as far as I know, that litter causes relatively little damage to the flora and fauna of the ecosystem. So my sense of annoyance and befuddlement are generally about equal.

It wasn't until I lived in a coastal community that I began to be truly angered by litter. It is estimated that marine littler reduces the value of global marine ecosystem services by $500 to $2500 billion annually, or 1 to 5% of total value [see "Global ecological, social and economic impacts of marine plastic"]. Knowing this, seeing our shoreline littered with single-use water bottles, disposable shopping bags, surgical gloves, face masks, containers from take-out meals, and so on -- well, it just infuriates me. We know where all this litter comes from, and we cannot lay all the blame at the feet of governments and big business.

I do think some public shaming is in order on this one. Maybe not $1000 littering penalties which seem unlikely to be assessed, and seem grossly unfair... I think the general idea that behavior is most readily modified by proportionate and reliable penalties applies here. But realistically, catching non-compliant people is hard to do reliably. A little bit of moral shaming does not seem unwarranted as well. 

Still, if it is hard to catch people in the act, I wonder if there are other incentives that could apply. I did see an initial reduction in cans and bottles as litter when bottle bills were passed here in Massachusetts. However, the value of the deposit has not changed with inflation and there are many classes of container that logically should be included, yet are not. So that dial seems to be creeping back. We should revisit and strengthen the bottle bill, IMHO.

But that only part of our litter problem. Could we offer incentives that are hard to manipulate for cleaning up seaside rubbish? Could we somehow gamify trash pickup to create incentives to remove this trash from our coastal ecosystems? As they say, losing trillion dollars or marine services here, and a trillion dollars there, and all the sudden you're talking about real money.

Why I wear a Mask

A lily pad grows so that each day it doubles its size (area). On the 30th day of its life, it completely covers the pond. How long does it take for the pond to be half covered?

Most of us have seen a variant of this problem and know the answer is 29 days. But most of us can also remember knowing someone who got it wrong or getting it wrong ourselves. 

Exponential growth (and our generally poor intuitive understanding of it) is why, when an area sees a rapid upsurge in Covid-19 cases, we need to resort to heavy-handed measures like partial shutdown of normal services. Parts of the US are currently seeing new cases double every 10 days. Without preventative measures they will quadruple in 20 days.

Market capitalism does a good job of ensuring that we do not keep excess medical capacity available "just in case." So much of that demand, absent regulating elective procedures, would need to be met by increasing capacity. Can you imagine doubling our medical capacity in 10 days? If in Boston we have about 10 major hospitals, it would mean building 10 more in 10 days. And then staffing them with trained professionals. But then it would mean adding 30 more in the 10 days after that. And to meet the demands of 30 days of exponential growth, Boston would need to build and staff 120 new hospitals in the 3rd period of 10 days.

Even allowing that I've made a number of simplifying assumptions, this is clearly ridiculous. We know intuitively that our capacity to build critical infrastructure is more or less linear and can never keep up with exponential growth. 

But it is worse than that. To start with, we cannot train medical staff in 10 days, even if every new facility is a tent hospital. Further, while it might take only 10 days to double the number of new cases, it typically takes 20 or more for a hospitalized patient to be discharged from what I understand. So we cannot even clear our facilities as fast as we fill them.

In our modern, connected and social world, once the virus takes hold in a community this 10-day doubling period seems about typical. Or roughly speaking, we are sure it is not doubling every day and we are sure it doubles much more quickly than every 100 days, again excluding community-wide preventive measures. And because of our connected and social modern world, most communities will eventually see this impact. To respond before the virus takes hold, we would need readily available testing that gives us results in one or two days. And we'd need very good contact tracing. We just do not have either of those capabilities at this point.

Given all that, to prevent spread, we really have two choices if we want to prevent tens or even hundreds of thousands of preventable deaths in the US: masks with social distancing, or quarantine. The first choice allows our economy to reopen, the second does not. I would prefer to see our economy restart; I will wear my mask.

Fairness

When I was in college, I sometimes experimented with trying to bait my dad into oppositional debates about politics. At the time, he was a Reagan/Bush supporter and I was more or less anything but.

One of the big concerns of the time was worry over our trade deficit with Japan in particular and loss of US industrial capacity overall. Also, at that same time, his company was sending him pretty regularly to Mexico to move production lines for Stanley Tools from the US to our southern neighbor. It seemed to me, this was the perfect chance to engage in some gotcha politics.

When I pressed him about how he could support the Reagan/Bush rhetoric on how other countries were eroding our industrial capacity at the same time he was working to move part of our industrial capacity out of the country his reply was something like this: "By now I've spent a lot of time in Mexico. I've seen a lot of poverty -- really heartbreaking poverty. What makes you think that their right to prosperity is any less than yours?"

Well, he was right, of course. The needed changes are not always clear or easy, and we may not always agree on the best course. But it comes down to this: when a person faces economic struggles and/or struggles for justice that are more or less entirely determined by the accident of where they are born or who their parents are, that is unfair. When that unfairness extends across wide demographic groups or persists across generations, I believe we cannot simply ignore it as a problem that will resolve itself.

Confirmation Bias

According to legend, Galileo is said to have dropped two spheres of different masses from the Leaning Tower of Pisa to demonstrate that their time of descent was the same. In fact, for Galileo, this was (at least initially) a thought experiment. The argument is simple -- imagine you have two balls of different mass. According to Aristotle (and most people's intuition), the heavier ball will fall faster. That will cause the string to pull taut as the lighter object slows the fall of the heavier object. But the system as a whole is heavier than the heavy object alone, and therefore should fall faster. It's a contradiction, and they must fall at the same speed.

Many of us repeated this experiment either by directly dropping weights or by rolling balls down ramps. If thought alone tells us the truth, why do the experiment? Because we tend to dismiss logical arguments on the basis of our preconceptions and ignore arguments and evidence that challenge them. We see things that confirm our prior beliefs and completely miss things that disconfirm them.

This is known as confirmation bias, and none of us are immune. Unchecked, this is even a aspect of a variety of neurotic or psychotic states. If one believes strongly that one is a target of other people's ill will or aggression, one is likely to be able to fit many otherwise unaccounted-for incidents into this view. This confirmation bias helps explain why people of opposing political views will look at the same events and draw very dissimilar conclusions.

What we share as a common frame of reference is what allows us to communicate with one another, and thus to form critical bonds such as families, communities, and nations. That common frame of reference is the observable physical world. So we have an almost immeasurable interest in preserving that common understanding of objects and events in the real world. Confirmation bias attacks that very fabric.

To lessen the force of cognitive bias, we can build some compensatory habits. When we see something that we automatically agree with or disagree with, we can note that some sort of confirmation is happening. We can ask "What if I thought the opposite of those ideas?" We can ask ourselves what actual evidence we have for our beliefs. When we find ourselves disagreeing, we can ask "What evidence might others have for their beliefs?"

If you disagree with the idea of wearing a mask to prevent spread of covid-19, can you open your mind enough to understand why people urge its use? The answers are readily available, and while you may not be inclined to agree, snarky posts ignoring scientific studies or the real pain of people who have lost loved ones is neither compassionate or open-minded.

At the same time, if you believe we must stay in lockdown until the risk of transmission is effectively zero, then you may be missing or refusing to acknowledge the real suffering that economic hardship causes, the many sources of secondary death, and the fragility of our food chain for many millions of people across the globe.

The truth probably includes both the idea that we need to get the economy rolling as quickly as we can, and that the fastest way to rebuild the economy includes a lot of civically-motivated people wearing masks in public. But we will take much longer to rebuild the economy, and many people will needlessly die, if we cannot move past our confirmation bias and see the reality we share.

Reproducibility

We are told that science proceeds by verification. Reproducibility is a requirement that cannot be shirked.

However, my yard is not large enough for another LHC. And I might be a little short of cash at the moment.

Still, perhaps the best present I have ever gotten as an adult was a small telescope, just powerful enough to see the moons of Jupiter and the rings of Saturn. And what a sight that was. In the moment I first saw that with my own eye, gained a sense of how Galileo and his contemporaries could have been so changed that they would risk freedom and life itself to tell others what they saw.

In the city where I live, you can go to the beach and get an unobstructed view out of Boston Harbor and into the Atlantic. It should not be hard for me to see the curvature of the earth from here. And still, I have not done it.

Someday soon, I will have a party and invite my rationalist friends to join me at Wollaston Beach for an act of first-hand scientific verification. Maybe my bucket list is a little different than most.

A Missing Idiom

I recently learned of the French idiom "l'esprit d'escalie" -- the wit of the staircase, that glib retort thought of too late as in when leaving the party. It makes me wonder about other states of mind that may be universal or near universal but do not have simple English idioms.

I don't know that it's universal, but I suspect it is -- every now and then some little thing reminds me or I wake from a dream awash in regret for some careless thing I said (or failed to say) years ago. Or maybe some action I took or failed to take. It seems so absurd that we can be subject to storms of self-doubt and self-flagellation for things that took place sometimes many decades before.

I guess some of these events for me have  the common feature that I never apologized for them -- most because didn't even realize my fault until later and I'd lost touch with whoever was affected. A few because I have not had the courage to properly admit my failings and offer a sincere apology.

Whatever the case, I sometimes wish I had a word for that. It would allow me to tell you that if you have those same feelings, you're not alone. On the other hand, maybe we're better off without a simple phrase that allows us to put those feelings in a box, because that lack of resolution may be what gives me to courage to finally offer those apologies that are owed.

Ad Hominum

It is funny how we can look at something over and over again, and not see it for what it is.

I've been trying to figure out how I can best express my frustration with the labeling and "othering" that seems to be central to our social and political relations today. What I had completely missed is this othering is a particularly insidious form of ad hominum attack.

An ad hominum attack is an argument that attacks the person rather than the position. I don't want to call anyone out -- this pattern seems to be pervasive -- so let's say I feel kittens are destroying the fabric of our society. I might say that "Kittens are going to ruin our democracy. The kitten stance is that logic does not matter. The only way a kitten sees to achieve its ends is to manipulate you with cuteness. And worse, kittens will inevitably morph into household cat infestations, houses where the cat owns the couch because they claimed it first, and justice demands that your food must be shared equally with the cats without regard to their contributing nothing to the household income."

At first it seems we are laying out specific arguments against the kitten/cat position. In fact, as we cycle from label to accusation repeatedly, we set up a boogeyman that we tarnish with our first accusation, then we cycle back with our new boogeyman and use that to make our second accusation seem just slightly more sinister than our first. Now our boogeyman is a bit worse by association and we can cycle back and repeat.

We started with accusations and a label and we have iteratively generated an ad hominum argument that allows us to move forward with a fresh sense of outrage that frees us from the need to substantiate or explore our accusations. This is not an honest way to form an argument.

Sometimes when we make a point, we need to be clear about the party to whom the complaint attaches. (Although, trust in our readers suggests we do not always need to be explicit in that regard.) But if your case is made by repeated reference to the other, what you have telegraphed to me is that your logic is too unsupported to stand without a cheap ad hominum attack, and that you have not done the work that entitles you to call your opinion informed or requires of me that I treat your argument seriously.

Independence Day, 2020

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all [people] are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among [People], deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.

Just a couple of thoughts...

"Created equal" is about value. It is not about ability, wealth, or resources.

Years later, some of these some people came together again to build a government that is based on our right to alter it. This (then new) government incorporates our right to change it in annual elections and in numerous other forms. Let's not squander those rights by failing to participate, or fall short of the promise of the founders by discouraging others from participating.

One way people participate in democracy is through assembly and protest. It is noted in The Declaration that experience has shown people often continue to suffer, rather than working to change the forms of government that are failing them. Therefore, if people are willing to subject themselves to tear gassing and potential violence against themselves, it seems likely to me that they truly have some heart-felt grievance that at least needs some sort of voice. If the people expressing that grievance are to be treated as having a value equal to my own, it is on me to listen with an open heart.

Happy Independence Day!