Genetic Clustering in the U.K.

A recent gene study of native Britons shows, among other things, that Celtic Britons do not have a common ancestry.

Britons in the "Celtic fringe" of the West Country, Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland can be divided into half a dozen or more distinct genetic clusters. They don't show a common genetic profile compared to other Britons from England. The current genetic clustering of native Britons thus predates the arrival of the Celts. The clustering also shows that Angles and Saxons intermarried with the native Britons they encountered, rather than replacing them when they arrived in the island in and around the 5th century CE.

This is a fairly common pattern throughout history; compare the Aryan migration into southern Asia, and the Spanish conquest of Central and South America. In both cases, there was a transfer of language and culture (by the Indo-Aryans and Spanish, respectively), without a wholesale replacement of the native population.

This type of study could potentially answer many historical questions about population movements; I hope similar studies are performed all around the world.

The Original Buddhist Primer

The parable of the blind men and the elephant, from Udana 6.4

For those interested in Buddhism, the Khuddaka Nikaya of the Pali Canon is often overlooked, but contains some really important texts, including the Khuddakapatha or "Short Passages." According to Thanissaro Bhikkhu (one of the translators of the text), the Khuddakapatha was probably originally used as an introduction to Buddhism for novice monks and nuns.

It is surprising how different the Khuddakapatha is from contemporary introductions to Buddhism. Among other things, the Khuddakapatha emphasizes the importance of making merit, includes a list of the 32 parts of the body, and includes instructions for metta ("loving-kindness" or "goodwill") meditation, but not for mindfulness of breathing (which nowadays is commonly the first meditation technique taught to novice meditators).

In addition to the Khuddakapatha, other important but often-overlooked texts from the Khuddaka Nikaya include the Udana, Itivuttaka, and Sutta Nipatha. In terms of their importance for understanding early Buddhism, these should probably be among the first texts one reads, but I am just now getting around to them.

The Khuddaka Nikaya does contain one text which is very popular and widely-read the Dhammapada. Indeed, the Dhammapada is probably the most frequently translated Pali text. Given the popularity of the Dhammapada, and to a lesser extent of the Jataka or birth tales of the Buddha, it is somewhat strange that the other texts of the Khuddaka Nikaya are but seldom translated, read, or discussed. Credit must go to Thanissaro and to the Thai Forest Tradition generally for helping to put the spotlight on these relatively neglected parts of the Pali Canon.

Workers of the World, Invest!

Or, Socialist (in the sense of 'worker-owned') Capitalism: An Immodest Proposal.

This is from David D. Friedman's Machinery of Freedom, a libertarian classic from 1973 (still in print, and now in its third, revised edition) currently being reviewed by the incomparable Scott Alexander of the blog Slate Star Codex.

Alexander highlights the following passage from Friedman's book for our consideration, which, though I have read the book, I had quite forgotten about:

How much would it cost workers to purchase their firms? The total value of the shares of all stocks listed on the New York Stock Exchange in 1965 was $537 billion. The total wages and salaries of all private employees that year was $288.5 billion. State and federal income taxes totalled $75.2 billion. If the workers had chosen to live at the consumption standard of hippies, saving half their after-tax incomes, they could have gotten a majority share in every firm in two and a half years and bought the capitalists out, lock, stock, and barrel, in five. That is a substantial cost, but surely it is cheaper than organizing a revolution. Also less of a gamble. And, unlike a revolution, it does not have to be done all at once. The employees of one firm can buy it this decade, then use their profits to help fellow workers buy theirs later. 

When you buy stock, you pay not only for the capital assets of the firm—buildings, machines, inventory, and the like —but also for its experience, reputation, and organization. If workers really can run firms better, these are unnecessary; all they need are the physical assets. Those assets—the net working capital of all corporations in the United States in 1965—totalled $171.7 billion. The workers could buy that much and go into business for themselves with 14 months’ worth of savings.

As Alexander points out, under current conditions it would probably take longer for this to work, but the general idea still seems sound.

Of course, from Friedman's point of view, this is mostly a thought experiment to show that the workers actually benefit from the expertise of the owners of capital and the employees they hire to manage their capital and their workers. But, even if Friedman is correct about this, if his underlying argument is sound (perhaps a big 'if'!), then it seems that workers could still just purchase stocks in firms or otherwise become owners of capital themselves through saving and investing, thus de facto obliterating the distinction between workers and capitalists.

Of course, as many people have already pointed out, this has already partially happened, since a greater percentage of the population have investments in private corporations through their benefits packages etc., but Friedman's proposal suggests that this process could be greatly expanded and accelerated.

Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (2010)

I recently watched "Uncle Boonmee" for the first time. I have wanted to watch this film since its release, but never quite got around to watching it until now.

It has an art film sensibility, but is totally respectful towards its characters and audience. The film provides insight (or seems to) about Thai folk beliefs on reincarnation and the afterlife, and on the role of Buddhism in Thai popular culture.

The film's theme is (largely) the great matter of life and death, not just the afterlife per se.

Easy Rawlins TV Series?

I just learned that, a couple of years agom there was a project in the words for a TV series based on Walter Mosley's famous black private detective character Easy Rawlins, but that NBC ultimately decided to take a pass. This is unfortunate, and hopefully another similar project will see the light of day--preferably one produced by HBO, Netflix, or Amazon, rather than by NBC or another network, however.

To my mind, "Devil in a Blue Dress" (1995) was a fantastic film, and is a proof of concept of an Easy Rawlins TV series.

More on Patrick Stuart's Ships-Only Analysis of the Star Trek Feature Films

In an earlier links post, I noted that Patrick Stuart has given a systematic analysis of the first ten Star Trek feature films based solely on shots containing spaceships. (He covers the fifth through the tenth films in part two, here.)

On a certain social network which shall not be named, my dear childhood friend Mike Spasoff rankled at the following claim made by Stuart towards the beginning of his two-part analysis:

It was interesting to see the seismic effect that CGI had on the storytelling of the series. 

Short version - it fucked it up.

I agree with Mike that it is foolish to criticize all CGI as inferior to all practical effects (for such I take to be the substance of his cavil). However, there are three qualifications which Stuart makes to his claim about CGI, which considerably limit the scope of his claim, but which also make his claim more interesting thereby: (1) He says this is the "short version." :) (2) He is talking about the effect of CGI on "storytelling" specifically. (3) He is talking about the effect of CGI on storytelling "in this series" specifically.

On the other hand, after reading through the rest of Stuart's two-part review, it does seem that his main critique of the CGI versions of the space ships is that they simply don't look as real or convincing as the practical models (for example, he refers to the CGI renderings as having a "plastic" look to them). And he's right. But in his in-depth analysis, Stuart doesn't really explicitly clarify the effect that the shoddy CGI had on the storytelling. Still, I think he is on to something.

In general, I especially appreciated Stuart's discussion of (1) the difference between the scale of the space shots in "Star Trek: The Motion Picture" and the later films, and (2) the use of "azteking" (a kind of techno-patina) in the shots of the Enterprise in the later films. Regarding (1), his point is that the later films go for a less accurate and "lazier" medium scale, rather than for shots in which things are far away and small or close up and huge, which (he argues) is more representative of what things would actually be like given interstellar travel (ahem).

Alice Dreger's Straight Talk (Ahem) on Sex and Gender

Tom Bartlett, in the Chronicle of Higher Ed, reviews Alice Dreger's recent book on the desultory effects of political correctness in the sciences. And Barron Lerner does likewise at Forbes. 

For background, here is an article in the Pacific Standard from 2014 by Alice Dreger in which she says interesting things about sex and gender (not just the usual yada, yada, yada). (Short version: sex and gender are partially socially constructed, but not entirely, and social justice warriors ignore this at their peril. I should note that Dreger does not use the politically loaded / emotionally charged term 'social justice warrior', but this is my 'short version' of her article, so I feel some creative license on my part is permissible. Gosh darn it; this explanatory note has now effectively rendered the adjective 'short version' false, or at least highly misleading, which gives me reason to rewrite the initial sentence so it no longer includes the politically loaded catchphrase 'SJW' in my description of Dreger's thesis. But I lack the motivation to do so. Sigh. Political debates are draining, dispiriting, and lead to a deep-seated psychospiritual ennui, beneath the superficial adrenaline rush of engaging in an in-group/out-group conflict. But what is to be done? You can take the primate out of the savanna, but you can't take the savanna out of the primate. Because the primate is not socially constructed like that. At least not entirely.)

The Hard Problem

UT philosopher Galen Strawson reviews Tom Stoppard's new play, "The Hard Problem"--via a catty tour through the 400 year history of philosophical debates about the mind-body problem.

It’s what Hilary needs to do, in Tom Stoppard’s new play The Hard Problem. She challenges her amorous tutor Spike to explain consciousness and insists that “when you come right down to it, the body is made of things” – she means physical things – “and things don’t have thoughts.” There is, however, no good reason to think that this last thing is true, and overwhelming reason to think it’s false.

D'oh!

By the way, if you're looking for an actual review of Tom Stoppard's play--I'm joking. This is not that. But this is still worth reading, you deluded fool, you.

Meet Aleksandr Dugin, the Intellectual Godfather of Russia's New Right

Crooked Timber offers a profile of Aleksandr Dugin, Russia's influential New Right / Eurasianist ideologue.

His geopolitical playbook makes for some scary bedtime reading.

And it appears that President Putin is a fan, in that he has proven to be a careful student of Dugin's playbook, judging by his actions in Ukraine and elsewhere; here is the wikipedia summary of Dugin's geopolitical strategy for Russia:

Military operations play relatively little role. The textbook believes in a sophisticated program of subversion, destabilization, and disinformation spearheaded by the Russian special services. The operations should be assisted by a tough, hard-headed utilization of Russia's gas, oil, and natural resources to bully and pressure other countries.

Here is a recent Wilson Center Occasional Paper on Mr. Dugin. And here is a Vice.com profile from 2014.

One thing I cannot figure out is why he uses Michael Moorcock's Sign of Chaos as a symbol of his movement:

Blogs vs. Social; or, Old Internet vs. New

I often cross-post Facebook updates to this blog, which has gotten me thinking about the relative merits of social network websites and apps on the one hand, and blogs and the Old Internet on the other.

Even though they are considered unfashionable, blogs provide a much better medium for providing multiple links as references, for presenting sustained argument and analysis, and for facilitating complex discussions between multiple commentators and across blogs.

Discussion boards are also great for long-form dialogue and multi-way discussions.

Social networks should be viewed as an enhancement or addition to blogs and discussion boards, rather than as a total replacement for them. Social network websites and apps seem harder to search and harder to thoroughly scan or scroll, and content is often blocked from the wider Internet through privacy settings. When I do Google searches related to software debugging or gaming, for example, I often turn up discussion board posts and blog posts, but rarely social posts.

In addition, posting content on social websites or apps effectively releases control of the content to the companies which own the websites and apps. Now, there is no reason why a DIY or open source social network couldn't arise and replace the privately owned, for-profit ones, but this has not yet happened, so de facto going social means going corporate, at least for now. This has given rise to the Indie Web movement, with its advocacy of syndicating content to social networks from independently owned and operated blogs and websites. 

In any event, obsession with the new for the sake of the new, together with ever-shortening attention spans, have evidently caused people to look down on blogs and boards, despite their excellent functionality and comparative advantage with respect to some kinds of communication. It's as if every time we get a new tool, people feel compelled to throw out the old ones, instead of just adding the new one (social) to the box beside the others (blogs and boards).

This reminds me of how people have become strangely insensitive to issues of quality and archivability of data (whether audio, visual, or video) with the advent of streaming. I'm not saying that iTunes, Netflix, Amazon or other forms of streaming are bad because of their poorer quality; it's just that people treat streaming as a one-size fits all solution for their data needs, without realizing that there are trade-offs. CDs, DVDs, and BluRay have superior quality and archivability to streaming, and also give the owner greater control over the data, at least in certain respects. For example, with a Netflix subscription, there's no guarantee you'll be able to access the same content tomorrow that you can access today (it's for this reason that I often used to ruefully refer to this service as "Netflux").

At least, with the Indie Web movement, people are aware of some of the problems with social, and starting to do something about it. My dream is to see strong open source social networks, and to see them integrated with blogs, boards, and the other still useful tools of the Internet of Yore.

Dialogue between Yuval Noah Harari and Daniel Kahneman

This is a fascinating, thought-provoking dialogue about the future of humanity, but it's heavy on speculation, and light on evidence. 

For example, here is Yuval Noah Harari speculating about a future in which advances in technology have rendered most humans worthless as workers:

Yes, the social side is the more important and more difficult one. I don't have a solution, and the biggest question maybe in economics and politics of the coming decades will be what to do with all these useless people. I don't think we have an economic model for that. My best guess, which is just a guess, is that food will not be a problem. With that kind of technology, you will be able to produce food to feed everybody. The problem is more boredom, and what to do with people, and how will they find some sense of meaning in life when they are basically meaningless, worthless.

Harari makes a lot of assumptions. The fundamental assumption is that many or most people will not find ways to make their labor a useful complement to the labor of machines and computers.

This assumption is present in most discussions about Our Robotic Future, or Our Future after the Singularity. And for all I know it may be true. But surely it isn't the only possible scenario. By analogy, the Industrial Revolution didn't render manual laborers obsolete--it just required them to gain the skills necessary for working with machines in factories.

Now, there's certainly no guarantee that many or most workers will be able to gain the skills necessary to make their labor valuable in Our Robotic Future. And Tyler Cowen and other economists have presented evidence that income inequality is currently on the rise precisely because only some workers have managed to gain the skills and training necessary to make their labor a useful complement to the labor of computers. But I don't see a discussion of this or other evidence by Harari and Kahneman, which makes most of their comments pretty speculative.

How the Federal Government Has Restricted the Rights to Freedom of Speech and Assembly

According to this article in the Los Angeles Times, since the days of the Selma march, the federal government has effectively banned large-scale protests on federal land, and federal court rulings have permitted states and cities to forbid the use of public property for the purpose of exercising the rights of freedom of assembly and freedom of speech.

I'm not sure what the implications of this are, but they don't seem good.

Granted, there could be very good reasons for the government to want to limit the exercise of the rights to free speech and assembly, but there's a real risk that the rights will be removed of any substance on account of these rules and rulings.

How wrong the Federalists who opposed the original Bill of Rights have proved to be. If memory serves, they argued that the Bill of Rights was unnecessary, because the Constitution does not permit the government to treat people in the ways explicitly forbidden by the Bill of Rights. Not only was the Constitution alone insufficient to protect the rights of the people, the government has effectively restricted and limited many of the explicitly enumerated rights, and often times has fought tooth and nail to restrict and limit such rights, until being constrained by the rulings of federal courts.

I am not actually a civil rights fanatic, as some libertarians and civil libertarians are, but nevertheless there is much wisdom in the attempt to systematically limit the exercise of government authority; and the Bill of Rights has turned out to be a useful means to this end, although by no means a perfect or optimal one.

What's disturbing is just how easy it appears to be for the government to gradually hollow out or remove the substance from our de jure rights, rendering them quite feeble de facto.

What's in a Word?

Rand Paul is proposing allowing same-sex couples to marry in all but name, through having contracts that are legally equivalent to marriage, but which are not called 'marriage'. 

It's extremely interesting to me that the debate over same-sex marriage has essentially devolved into who has the right to use the word 'marriage' to refer to their committed romantic relationships. It's as if the word 'marriage' has some magic power, some alchemy, that must not be let into the wrong hands.

I suppose it highlights the fact that politics is largely concerned with signalling commitment to values, including sacred values, rather than actually achieving measurable results or benefiting society in meaningful ways.

Another reason why I find myself so often to be simply Against Politics.

Men Are More Likely Than Women To Use Consequentialist Moral Reasoning

A study of the moral attitudes of bankers unexpectedly discovers that men are almost six times as likely as women to be consequentialists (15.2% vs. 2.6%). Tip of the hat to Scott Alexander for finding the study, and for highlighting this particular result.

Curiously, the study seems to treat consequentialist moral reasoning as evidence of psychopathy, as pointed out by a sharp-eyed commentator on Scott Alexander's blog post, who directs us to the following quotation from the study:

As consequentialist moral reasoning is, to some extent, correlated with emotional coldness, aggressiveness, and even deceit (see section 1), we have some reason to expect that decision makers in the banking industry are unlikely to see a genuine need for changing the incentive structure of their business, because, from their moral perspective, their conduct might be morally well justified.

It would seem that, in their eagerness to castigate the style of moral reasoning used by bankers, the authors of the study have decided to portray consequentialism as the Devil's Own Moral Calculus. It would also seem that the study's accidental discovery of a gender-based asymmetry in styles of moral reasoning is more interesting than its discovery regarding the moral attitudes of bankers.

Guerrilla Gardening and the Culture of TED Talks

Ron Finley gives an astounding TED talk on guerrilla gardening as community activism, education, art, and therapy.

One thing I will add here: TED audiences often come across as hopelessly . . . privileged.

Two caveats. First, I say this as someone who is no fan of the contemporary privilege-bashing rhetoric, through which large segments of the population are effectively removed from rational discourse through a kind of ill-conceived ad hominem. This is not to deny the reality of privilege, it's just that invoking privilege as a rhetorical tactic to shut down debate has a tendency to poison the well, strain social tensions, and hinder the unbiased and cooperative search for the truth.

Second caveat: I don't wish to engage in the widespread knee-jerk anti-TED ranting that is so common nowadays, and that was perhaps an inevitable outcome of the unprecedented success and popularity of the TED talk videos. A lot of the TED talks are grade-A presentations which manage the rare feat of being equally informative, amusing, and inspiring.

Okay, now for the critique. So often when I'm watching TED talks about very serious problems, including the one linked to above, the audience erupts into laughter at seemingly inappropriate moments. It's as if the audience's main goal is to be entertained or amused, and not to be informed or shocked out of their complacency. These people are hearing tales of poverty, disease, hardship, misery, and struggle, and their whole focus is on looking for any moment or a comment which can serve as an occasion for roaring with laughter.

Even as Ron Finley, the speaker in the above TED talk, was issuing his firm and serious call to action, the audience continued to merely laugh in response. What the Actual Fudge?! I get the impression that these wealthy TEDsters are so insulated from genuine hardship that they can't authentically empathize with the reality of others' suffering and struggles. Even their altruistic efforts come across as a type of half-hearted noblesse oblige, or (what's worse) as a type of pseudo-altruistic status-seeking, a type of social activist bling or a charitable feather in their cap. Perhaps I'm going too far here, but the question remains: HOW COULD THEY BE LAUGHING? HOW ON GOD'S GREEN EARTH COULD THEY BE LAUGHING?

Facts and Opinions

According to Justin T. McBrayer, the Common Core teaches students that there are no moral facts, and other errors about the relation between facts and opinions.

Now the numerous, persistent student mistakes about facts and opinions I have been seeing the past several years make more sense! (Assuming that McBrayer's claims are correct.)

After posting about this on social media, I received some comments which seemed to indicate widespread (and intense!) disagreement about the existence of moral facts. Most moral philosophers believe that there are moral facts, for a variety of reasons. Among other things. it is difficult to even make sense of moral disagreements in the first place without positing the existence of moral facts as the objects of disagreement. Also, many non-philosophers who dispute the existence of moral facts in one rhetorical context speak and act as if there are moral facts in other contexts, which might imply that their thinking is incoherent on this issue.

However, here are two problems with the Common Core curriculum that are independent of the issue of whether there are moral facts: (1) Even if there are no moral facts, this is a substantive philosophical thesis, and needs to be established through arguments; it cannot be established simply through positing a definition of the word 'fact'. (2) Even if there are no moral facts, the common core definitions of 'fact' and 'opinion' are flawed, because they imply that an opinion cannot be true, and because they do not distinguish between facts and people's beliefs about facts.

Rape on College Campuses

I'm not well informed on this topic, but it seems to me that a victim of a rape or other crime at a university should immediately report the crime to the police (not just to the university), and should seek redress through a civil lawsuit rather than through the university's judicial process. Is this correct?

This article tells the story of a student gang raped by student athletes. The student who was raped apparently at first tried to work within the university's own judicial process, and only later filed a civil suit against the university. After filing the lawsuit, the university seized records from the student's counseling sessions with a therapist employed by the university. The student who was raped had gone to the therapist after the crime in order to seek psychological counseling. The university seized the records of the counseling sessions with the intention of gaining information which could be used against the student in her lawsuit.

Here is some grim advice to students and faculty from the author of the article:

Students: Don’t go to your college counseling center to seek therapy. Go to an off-site counseling center. If, God forbid, you’ve been sexually assaulted, try to find a rape-crisis center. It will have wonderful people to talk to, free of charge. (I know from personal experience.) You simply do not have adequate privacy protections if you go to a college-provided counselor. Sorry. (Or, in the University of Oregon’s case, sorry not sorry.) 

Instructors: Don’t advise your students to seek counseling in the on-campus counseling center. There is no way that, in good conscience, I can ever give that advice again. If you have a student in crisis, help that student find support off campus.

Scientists Should Probably Read More Philosophy of Science

Exhibit A in the case that physicists who talk about philosophy of science should actually read philosophy of science.

This is actually an interesting piece, but the author Marcelo Gleiser seems to imply that Karl Popper's particular theory of the scientific method is the only alternative to peddling groundless presumptions (such as postulating the article's titular multiversal fairies). And it's not.

Popper made an important contribution to the philosophy of science, but a lot of progress on defining and defending scientific methodology has been since Popper first proposed his falsifiability criterion in The Logic of Scientific Discovery in 1959. For example, see Imre Lakatos and (more recently) Susan Haack.

This is a perfect example of an area of inquiry where philosophy actually has something useful and important to say and it is still routinely ignored by most of the interested parties. (Though perhaps I should be happy that so many scientists have at least heard about Popper and falsifiability!)

Earth: A New Wild

I recently watched an excellent PBS documentary called Earth: A New Wild. The series focuses on human-environment interactions, and explores ways in which humans can help create healthier ecosystems even while living among and even harvesting resources from those same ecosystems. For example, "Episode Two: Plains" discusses methods for managing free range herd animals (such as cattle) that lead to healthier and more biodiverse ecosystems.

Episode Two also contains a discussion of reindeer herding by the Saami people in Norway. Among other things, the episode illustrates the traditional Saami method for castrating reindeer, which has to be seen to be believed. (Below is old footage from another source which illustrates the method.)

In any event, I highly recommend the series "Earth: A New Wild"; despite the inevitable schmaltz associated with the TV nature documentary genre, it contains surprising insights from contemporary ecology, and presents considerable evidence in support of its general thesis that human management and harvesting of natural resources is fully compatible with and often even necessary for the health of plant and animal species.