The more the American mainstream media deny that President Obama is a Moslem, the more Americans choose to believe that he is.
Apparently this belief is more prevalent among college-educated Republicans than the rest of the population. How Republicans Learn That Obama Is Muslim (New Republic, 27 August 2010) This raises some intriguing questions about the relationship between education and knowledge.
Jeff Poor suggests that the media are to blame. "By consistently using questions about Obama's faith and his citizenship as fodder to demean conservatives, specifically the Tea Party movement and thereby creating a general mistrust by saying vile things, have the mainstream media perpetuated the very allegations they are abhorred by (sic)?" (Newsbusters, 19 August 2010) At least on this point, Charlie Brooker seems to agree. "Seriously, broadcasters, journalists: just give up now. Because either you're making things worse, or no one's paying attention anyway." 'Ground Zero mosque'? The reality is less provocative (Guardian 23 August 2010). Brooker complains that the terms of the debate are grossly misleading, and grudgingly admires right-wingers for their ability to create snappy-but-misleading nicknames – like fun-size chocolate bars and the Ground Zero mosque. Buzzwords for blowhards (Guardian 30 August 2010).
Jeff Poor quotes CNN political analyst James Carville, who describes himself as "flummoxed" by this result, and claims that "the quality of information to people today is exponentially higher than it was in 19th century England". Now I wouldn't necessarily expect a political journalist to know what the word "exponential" meant, but I wonder whether the quality is higher at all.
Once upon a time, some people were bothered whether Disraeli was Christian or Jew, and some people were uncomfortable about electing Kennedy as a Catholic president. But they are now mainly remembered for what they achieved while in office, not their religious affiliation. Meanwhile, Mrs Thatcher's legacy is not feminism but Thatcherism. Obama will not be remembered for his birthplace, or the religion of his forefathers, nor even for being the first black president; he will be remembered for the successes and failures of his presidency. And perhaps one day, people will wonder why anyone cared whether he was a Moslem or not, and moderate Moslems will be as accepted in mainstream American politics as Catholics are now. (Let it not be forgotten that large sums of money were once raised from American Catholics to support Irish terrorism.)
John T. McGreevy and R. Scott Appleby Catholics, Muslims, and the Mosque Controversy (New York Review, 27 August 2010)
Adam Serwer, Build More Mosques (American Prospect, August 26, 2010)
Saturday, August 28, 2010
CIA Funding Conspiracy?
Fidel Castro claims Osama bin Laden is a US spy [Guardian 27 August 2010]. Castro credits Wikileaks for this information.
Now if the CIA wanted to discredit Wikileaks, this wouldn't be a bad way of doing it. Of course, I'm not saying that Castro is on the CIA payroll, but it makes as much sense as bin Laden being on the CIA payroll. Conspiracy theorists probably think they both are.
Now if the CIA wanted to discredit Wikileaks, this wouldn't be a bad way of doing it. Of course, I'm not saying that Castro is on the CIA payroll, but it makes as much sense as bin Laden being on the CIA payroll. Conspiracy theorists probably think they both are.
Update
@wikileaks (via @glynmoody) posts a link to an item headed "The CIA Should Kill Julian Assange" (founder of Wikileaks) on a website called Right Wing News ("Kneecapping Barack Obama at every opportunity"). I don't even want to speculate about the people behind this item, or their purpose for publishing it.Friday, August 27, 2010
Does Basel want bigger banks?
@Peston via @diane1859 "Basel tilts playing field further towards big banks. It wasn't supposed to be this way."
Here's the dilemma. The official purpose of banking regulation is to protect the whole system from risk. But the actual effect of controlling each bank separately (whether in terms of capital ratios or any other measure) is to encourage the concentration of risk, which makes the whole system more risky.
Counter-productive regulation is an extremely common phenomenon. Stafford Beer's POSIWID principle tells us that the de facto purpose of a complex system is often at odds with the official purpose.
True systems thinking on the part of legislators and regulators might lead us to more effective and appropriate ways of regulating the whole system than simply imposing controls on the individual players within the system. But what's the chance of that happening?
Jane Merriman, Big banks winners from new contingent capital move (Reuters, 27 August 2010)
Here's the dilemma. The official purpose of banking regulation is to protect the whole system from risk. But the actual effect of controlling each bank separately (whether in terms of capital ratios or any other measure) is to encourage the concentration of risk, which makes the whole system more risky.
Counter-productive regulation is an extremely common phenomenon. Stafford Beer's POSIWID principle tells us that the de facto purpose of a complex system is often at odds with the official purpose.
True systems thinking on the part of legislators and regulators might lead us to more effective and appropriate ways of regulating the whole system than simply imposing controls on the individual players within the system. But what's the chance of that happening?
Jane Merriman, Big banks winners from new contingent capital move (Reuters, 27 August 2010)
Related posts Does Britain need smaller banks? (April 2009), Bearing Limit and Financial Regulation (September 2010)
Saturday, August 21, 2010
Defence Against the Dark Arts
Following @TimHarford 's illuminating advice on the dark art of ‘drip pricing’ (Financial Times, 21 Aug 2010) and my post on badly designed websites, @gagan_s comments "Sometimes bad websites, phone-trees and policies have a dark purpose".
The word "dark" can mean "hidden", "obscure", "mysterious", "secret", "unconscious"; or it can mean "devious", "evil", "malicious", "treacherous". Harford's use of the term "Dark Art" in relation to drip pricing clearly denotes a practice that is not just unclear and confusing but also morally questionable.
In terms of the dark purposes of behavioural economics, a website designed to exploit drip pricing needs to be just complicated enough that when the customer reaches the webpage that demands an additional payment for paying by credit card, the customers have already wasted so much time that it isn't worth starting again with a competing website, so most of them grumble but pay.
IT professionals who understand commercial software and/or website design also grumble about the incompetence of the developers of the website. That just goes to show how naive most IT professionals are, if they imagine that all companies genuinely want (and are willing to pay for) websites that are simple and easy to use. Or they may feel morally outraged that companies are not willing to invest the time and money to do things properly.
As regular readers of this blog will know, our starting point is Stafford Beer's maxim The Purpose Of a System Is What It Does (POSIWID). According to this principle, there is no such thing as an unnecessarily complicated website: the complication emerges from some conscious or unconscious dark purpose. In the case of drip pricing, the purpose is to chisel a few more dollars from weary and/or confused customers. This purpose may exist even if the managers of the company aren't aware of it; they may intend (one day) to simplify their pricing scheme, but they feel no pressing need to do so; meanwhile, the company continues to profit from complexity.
The word "dark" can mean "hidden", "obscure", "mysterious", "secret", "unconscious"; or it can mean "devious", "evil", "malicious", "treacherous". Harford's use of the term "Dark Art" in relation to drip pricing clearly denotes a practice that is not just unclear and confusing but also morally questionable.
In terms of the dark purposes of behavioural economics, a website designed to exploit drip pricing needs to be just complicated enough that when the customer reaches the webpage that demands an additional payment for paying by credit card, the customers have already wasted so much time that it isn't worth starting again with a competing website, so most of them grumble but pay.
IT professionals who understand commercial software and/or website design also grumble about the incompetence of the developers of the website. That just goes to show how naive most IT professionals are, if they imagine that all companies genuinely want (and are willing to pay for) websites that are simple and easy to use. Or they may feel morally outraged that companies are not willing to invest the time and money to do things properly.
As regular readers of this blog will know, our starting point is Stafford Beer's maxim The Purpose Of a System Is What It Does (POSIWID). According to this principle, there is no such thing as an unnecessarily complicated website: the complication emerges from some conscious or unconscious dark purpose. In the case of drip pricing, the purpose is to chisel a few more dollars from weary and/or confused customers. This purpose may exist even if the managers of the company aren't aware of it; they may intend (one day) to simplify their pricing scheme, but they feel no pressing need to do so; meanwhile, the company continues to profit from complexity.
Badly designed websites
@TimHarford offers illuminating advice on the dark art of ‘drip pricing’ (Financial Times, 21 Aug 2010), which the UK’s Office of Fair Trading (OFT) now regards as a most pernicious pricing scheme.
As Tim explains "Under the scheme, customers agree to pay a price only to discover that there is a charge for delivery; another charge for paying by credit card, and another for insurance. Drip pricing taps into the endowment effect, because customers feel that they have already made the decision to purchase; it creates loss aversion because customers commit time and effort to the search before being hit with extra charges; and it is a form of complex pricing which makes it hard to compare offers."
Ever wondered why those websites were so hard to navigate? Did you think it was because the computer programmers were incompetent? Think again - who benefits from simplicity or complexity? See my earlier post on Complexity-Based Pricing.
As Tim explains "Under the scheme, customers agree to pay a price only to discover that there is a charge for delivery; another charge for paying by credit card, and another for insurance. Drip pricing taps into the endowment effect, because customers feel that they have already made the decision to purchase; it creates loss aversion because customers commit time and effort to the search before being hit with extra charges; and it is a form of complex pricing which makes it hard to compare offers."
Ever wondered why those websites were so hard to navigate? Did you think it was because the computer programmers were incompetent? Think again - who benefits from simplicity or complexity? See my earlier post on Complexity-Based Pricing.
@gagan_s comments "Sometimes bad websites, phone-trees and policies have a dark purpose".
The word "dark" can mean "hidden", "obscure", "mysterious", "secret", "unconscious"; or it can mean "devious", "evil", "malicious", "treacherous". Harford's use of the term "Dark Art" in relation to drip pricing clearly denotes a practice that is not just unclear and confusing but also morally questionable.
In terms of the dark purposes of behavioural economics, a website designed to exploit drip pricing should be just complicated enough that when the customer reaches the webpage that demands an additional payment for paying by credit card, the customers have already wasted so much time that it isn't worth starting again with a competing website, so most of them grumble but pay. (Obviously if it is too complicated, then the customers never complete the transaction, which is why the Internet contains a wide variety of these nefarious websites, designed for customers with different patience thresholds.)
IT professionals who understand commercial software and/or website design also grumble about the incompetence of the developers of the website. That just goes to show how naive most IT professionals are, if they imagine that all companies genuinely want websites that are simple and easy to use.
As regular readers of this blog will know, our starting point is Stafford Beer's maxim The Purpose Of a System Is What It Does (POSIWID). According to this principle, there is no such thing as an unnecessarily complicated website: the complication emerges from some conscious or unconscious dark purpose. In the case of drip pricing, the purpose is to chisel a few more dollars from weary and/or confused customers.
But maybe that's too simple. Many people interpret POSIWID to imply that there is exactly one purpose in any system, as if the presence of a dark purpose somehow negates all other purposes. (Beware taking the word "the" too literally. See my post POSIWID should be plural.) But clearly the purpose of chiselling customers has to be balanced against the purpose of selling them stuff in the first place, or the company would go out of business. (Some bad companies do go out of business, but we don't generally suppose that to be their purpose either.)
It is conceivable that the developers of these websites are given explicit instructions to produce exactly the outcomes that their websites achieve, and that they test them carefully to adjust the complication level to optimize the economic returns. But this isn't generally how dark purposes are wreaked. When you speak to people in these organizations, they often seem genuinely frustrated about many aspects of these systems. The dark purpose is rarely if ever an openly acknowledged agenda, but what Blake called an invisible worm.
See also: Defence against the Dark Arts (August 2010)
Monday, August 16, 2010
Evolution as natural drift
Here's an argument against seeing purpose in evolution.
This argument shifts explanation of biological features or behaviour pattern away from teleology (patterns are caused by the evolutionary advantage that the pattern confers) towards material cause and formal cause (patterns exist because they were available and consistent with the prevailing structural coupling).
Evolutionary psychologists like to argue sweeping propositions like "men tend to behave like this towards women because it gets them a greater number of descendents" or "women tend to behave like this towards men because it ensures greater survival and prosperity for their children", as if all normal men displayed this behaviour pattern, and all normal women displayed that one. They also like to argue that certain physical types are more "attractive" to the opposite sex. The fact is that men and women display an extraordinary diverse range of behaviour patterns, as well as physical shapes and sizes, nearly all of which are consistent with the continued existence of the individuals and (if they exist) their progeny.
Meanwhile, the fact that sexual pairing is not restricted to those who fit the evolutionary psychologists' stereotypes could be interpreted as evidence for a deeper evolutionary purpose than the kind of purpose recognized by evolutionary biologists.
"Evolution is a natural drift ... nor is [any] guiding force needed to explain [it]. ... Evolution is somewhat like a sculptor with wanderlust: he goes through the wood collecting a thread here, a hunk of tin there, a piece of wood here, and he combines them in a way that their structure and circumstance allow, with no other reason than that he is able to combine them. And so, as he wanders about, intricate forms are being produced; they are composed of harmoniously interconnected parts that are a product not of design but of a natural drift." [Humberto Maturana & Francisco Varela, The Tree of Knowledge (1987) p 117.]
This argument shifts explanation of biological features or behaviour pattern away from teleology (patterns are caused by the evolutionary advantage that the pattern confers) towards material cause and formal cause (patterns exist because they were available and consistent with the prevailing structural coupling).
Evolutionary psychologists like to argue sweeping propositions like "men tend to behave like this towards women because it gets them a greater number of descendents" or "women tend to behave like this towards men because it ensures greater survival and prosperity for their children", as if all normal men displayed this behaviour pattern, and all normal women displayed that one. They also like to argue that certain physical types are more "attractive" to the opposite sex. The fact is that men and women display an extraordinary diverse range of behaviour patterns, as well as physical shapes and sizes, nearly all of which are consistent with the continued existence of the individuals and (if they exist) their progeny.
Meanwhile, the fact that sexual pairing is not restricted to those who fit the evolutionary psychologists' stereotypes could be interpreted as evidence for a deeper evolutionary purpose than the kind of purpose recognized by evolutionary biologists.
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