Commenter Archive

I meant you and your hatred of "Algore" (who I met once, when I was in Youth Legislature).

"At times one remains faithful to a cause only because its opponents do not cease to be insipid," eh Bob?

2.4

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_library#Funding_problems

It appears the funding is mostly public, which is a problem when local and state governments are as cash-strapped as they are now.

What are you expecting to attract to your boat?

The proper maxim has to take into account circumstances.

You're not going to have a very good categorical imperative that way!

That's a really interesting way of viewing Kant.

It’s interesting that most of the things you mention: cultural commonalities, economic interdependence, and military/diplomatic alliances (usually against a common foe) are all things that have been in place to a greater or lesser extent in Europe since, well, the fall of Rome. Those things are Europe, and except for the last 65 years, they’ve produced a continent that has been at war pretty much constantly, and which in the last century has done its level best to destroy itself twice. Hell, in a sense it was the cultural commonalities, economic interdependence, and military/diplomatic alliances that caused World War I.

So there must be some other explanation, and I suspect that Jason’s right, the democracy bit plays the biggest role, though I don’t think we should underestimate the cultural memory of the two World Wars that you mention, which certainly make the prospect of wars at home or near home seem significantly less appetizing to Europeans, nor should we neglect the fact that having a super power exerting influence over and playing international liaison to Europe for several decades makes infighting less likely. Conflict of Europe was always about the balance of power, both at home and in distant colonies. I suspect, though it’s really just a guess, that Europe would have seen a war or two since 1945 if the U.S. hadn’t been around to make sure that the balance of power looked like this: U.S. then everybody else.

That said, since the U.S. has a different level and type of influence in many places outside of Europe, and since some of those places are relatively new to democracy, have long-standing cultural and ethnic conflicts that aren’t going to go away just because people can vote, and in at least many cases haven’t seen a world-destroying war at home in living memory, I don’t know that the theory will hold up outside of Europe and perhaps Eastern Asia.

Minogue’s worries about “the advancing of homosexuality as an equally valid sexual option to heterosexuality” makes at least one assumption that is contradicted by the empirical evidence: that homosexuality is entirely or at least primarily a personal choice (it also assumes that gay people don’t reproduce, which is an empirically false assumption). That is, it assumes that it is an “option” which people can consider (even if they do so unconsciously), and towards which they can be influenced by those who are “advancing” it as an equally valid one.

This may not have needed to be pointed out, but I wanted to put it out there anyway. Since much of the conservative fear of homosexuality rests on their belief that the continued and even increased visible presence of gay people in society will influence others (particularly their children) to become gay, it can’t hurt to continually point out that, while it wouldn’t be the end of the world if their kids did end up being gay, it’s unlikely that any amount of gay pride parades, watching Bravo and HGTV, and receiving invitations for their cousin’s gay wedding is going to influence their sexual orientation, even if those things (OK, the first and the last at least) do advance homosexuality as equally valid.

Nice, Tom. You have a myriad of ways of not addressing what people who disagree with you say. It's impressive in a sad sort of way.

No, he wasn't the first.

Exactly Tom: you're right, and it's obvious, so anyone who questions you or your position is just biased. I get it. I love how you argue your position with, "intelligent people are familiar with the claim" (emphasis mine), as though by merely claiming it, questioning it (which is what people here are doing, regardless of whether it means putting ankles in their mouths) becomes superfluous, even absurd.

This is why I don't seriously engage you, but just add a quip here and there. You can't engage people who are convinced that they're correct and everyone else is just an idelogue with an axe to grind. Or at least I can't engage such people.

Changed from what, Tom? Talking about how great Reagan was? It seems to me that Boonton, at least, speaks to the "millions freed."

You're one of those people who's convinced that he's right and unbiased, and the fact that his view isn't more common is the result of bias, which is what anyone who doesn't share his view is suffering from.

I have to assume that you know that there were plenty on the left, especially among feminists, who were outraged at Polanski then and now. There were apologists on the left, of course. Then again, according to House Republicans, what he did wasn't rape, at least not for the purposes of abortion access, because drugging someone is not using force. So maybe the Polanski apologists and the House Republicans can get together to work on Polanski's legal defense.

Jason, you find this disturbing (and unprecedented), but I’m still not clear why. It is described as a penalty in the bill, though it had been described as a tax until the wording changed at just about the last minute. Would you find it as disturbing if it were still described as a tax (note: the wording changed, for political reasons, but the structure of the bill remained exactly the same, so the tax and penalty are the same thing called by different names)? Do you find tax breaks for homeowners equally disturbing? What about tax advantages related to marriage? Is it just the word “penalty” in the bill that you find disturbing or unprecedented? Because, while there are plenty of cases where the government compels action, it usually does so with tax breaks, not “penalties” (by the way, this, I would argue, is where you, not the bill’s proponents, are confused).

Um, yes. It will increase the overall customer base of insurance companies by millions, literally. This is why insurance companies actually pushed for it. It may have other benefits/purposes, but this is undeniable.

It’s important to remember that the mandate originally accompanied the public option. This made it seem like a less awful policy. Without the public option, it’s really just a way of giving insurance companies more business.

By the way, while it requires not making a distinction between federal and state laws, the fact that so many supporters of the ACA/Obamacare/the health care reform law analogize it with laws mandating that drivers purchase car insurance certainly suggests that they aren't failing to make a distinction between action and inaction.

Jason, what Pierre said.

Also, I have no problem not using the "official" label, because bills that might be controversial are always given propagandistic names. I just call it the health care reform bill (or law), usually.

Pierre, as someone who's been reading Jason since... damn, since like 2004, and who followed him here, I hope he doesn't doubt that I take him seriously, though we have had some dustups in the past over health care reform. In this case, though I just find that label absurd. I'm not a defender of the bill as I find it about as abhorent as people on the right do, just from the opposite direction.

but aren’t our policy and legal systems sort of designed to mitigate the problems of emotional bias?

No, not in the least! I mean, not even a little bit. The legal system is a bit unique, because it requires that arguments be rational within a particular framework. That is, arguments for or against something don’t necessarily have to be rational in general, just within the particular legal context in which they’re being put forward. The legal system is more like a game, and you have to follow the rules; as long as you’re doing so, you’re being “rational” as far as the legal system cares. As for legislation, a casual perusal of the history of laws in this country will show quite clearly that “rational” is hardly a requirement for laws, or the arguments in favor or against them. If you can convince constituents (to the extent that they’re paying attention), or if someone gives you enough money, what the hell do rational arguments matter?

I have trouble taking anyone who calls it "Obamacare" seriously, not only because it's a silly name, but also because it wasn't really the health care bill Obama wanted.

That said, I don’t really see supporters of the ACA failing to make the first distinction, though they do “fail” to make the second one (whether it’s constitutionally relevant is not for me to say, though the arguments here aren’t particularly convincing).

Also, of course there are better ways to do it. See., e.g., virtually every other Western democracy.

I was hinting at this in the comments in response to Tom, but part of the problem here is that it’s becoming increasingly clear from empirical work on moral judgment (I’d be happy to give someone cites if they’re interested) that humans aren’t very good at consequentialism, at least not when they’re personally/emotionally involved in a situation/issue. Sure, when we’re emotionally separated from a situation/issue, we can do a sort of utilitarian calculus, at least in fairly obvious cases (e.g., the trolley problem), but let’s face it, there aren’t many situations or issues that call for moral judgments in everyday life from which we’re emotionally removed. Abortion certainly isn’t such an issue, which means that no amount of number talk is going to sway the vast majority of people in either direction. Our judgments about abortion, or other emotionally-charged moral issues, are largely intuitive and automatic, and the arguments we make, or the arguments we’re likely to accept, are largely used for post hoc rationalizations of our intuitive judgments.

This is not to say that people can’t be swayed one way or another on this issue or other moral issues; it just means that the sorts of arguments required to do the swaying won’t tend to be utilitarian, or if they are, it won’t be the utilitarian calculus, but the emotional response to it, that’s doing the work. Utiltarian arguments also tend to be at a disadvantage, from this perspective, because they involve taboo tradeoffs. These tend to, in a sense, shut down our cool reasoning system, and activate the hot one, and it’s with the hot reasoning system that utilitarian arguments fair so poorly.

Even if we accept that people are rational moral arbiters (we’re not), utilitarian arguments aren’t going to fair well against deontological moral positions, which is exactly what “pro-life” positions are. This is why, even though from a practical standpoint anti-sex ed, anti-contraception, and pro-abstinence positions are likely to increase the number of abortions, it seems perfectly consistent to many pro-lifers to think abortion is morally wrong and its practice should be minimized if not eliminated, and at the same time to advocate abstinence-only education and limits on if not the complete denial of access to contraception. Since abortion and pre-marital/non-procreative sex are morally wrong, both have to be abolished, even if in practice abolishing one results in more of the other.

Tom, I'm just pointing out assumptions and biases. If you don't find that interesting, that's your own issue, and I won't bother with it.

Also, I suspect that the "empiricism" that you're thinking of and the "empiricism" that I adhere to are two different things, or at least different poles of the same broad cateogory of positions. It's good, however, that you know how "compact" it is, though.

Also, being able to paint a sunset and being able to appreciate one are two different things.

Bob, good questions. The very ones I was raising, in fact, or at least pointing out that they were implied by what Tom said, and that he himself apparently finds uninteresting.

Tom, way to shift the goal posts. I don't know why a chimp needs to paint a sunset in order to have morality or ethics (I don't recall saying they philosophize).

And I don't know what's anthropomorphic about saying that morality, or ethics ("morality" tends to have theistic overtones) involve some level of understanding, reflected in behavior, of what one should and shouldn't do in a particular situation.

This isn't about bringing humans down to the level of nonhuman animals (we are, after all, animals ourselves). It's about understanding our own behavior. You're the one with your motives and biases on your sleeve here, not me. I simply wanted to point out that what "morality" is comes prior to determining whether humans are alone in having it, so that when you say that we are the only ones who have it, you've already built a bunch into the term that is up for dispute.

Tom, you're just begging the question, again. Or rather, you've defined morality already, with all the attendant implications of that definition (which are many). But there's plenty of empirical evidence that our own moral concepts and judgments are little more than "instinct and learned social behavior" (in fact, a growing body of evidence that instinct, or at least intuition, make up the bulk of our moral cognition, and some, perhaps most of it may be innate).

Also, I wonder what you mean by concepts when you say that animals don't have them. They certainly do in the sense that contemporary psychologists and analytic philosophers think of concepts. It seems unlikely that any nonhuman animals (except maybe dolphins and mice) think much about metaphysics, but I'm not sure we want to make that the sole measure of their ability to think and act ethically.