Humanities and Uncertainties

Thanks. We'll try.

John Horgan at Scientific American has some thoughts about the intellectual contribution of the humanities and social sciences. His basic thesis:

In your science, mathematics and engineering classes, you’re given facts, answers, knowledge, truth. Your professors say, “This is how things are.” They give you certainty. The humanities, at least the way I teach them, give you uncertainty, doubt and skepticism.

This is one of the major objectives of the courses I teach, in statistics and economics. In economics, I want students to realize that when they (or anyone else) suggests there is a simple, easy to understand solution to a major problem the world is facing, it is going to be wrong. We don't have the information to reach easy answers, and in general the easy answers aren't there to be found in the first place. I like to quote Thomas Sowell: "There are no solutions, only tradeoffs."

In statistics, I want students to think in terms of probability rather than certainty, and realize that we can be confident in our beliefs while still being willing to learn. I like to quote Oliver Cromwell: "I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible that you may be mistaken."

I also agree with Horgan that science education is increasingly dogmatic, and this is a major problem. Science educators have gotten so frustrated with 'evolution is just a theory' that they fight back with the same fundamentalism, insisting that science gives us things we totally, definitely know for sure:

[...] science if properly taught should incorporate skepticism. But science is becomingly increasingly dogmatic and arrogant in our era, which is why we need the humanities to foster a healthy anti-dogmatism.

So if the humanities are teaching students to be more questioning, and to be comfortable in a world of uncertainty, then more power to them. It's nice to have allies.

Gender-Flipping the Argument

Why isn't this man in the army?

Here's an amusing list of the ten reasons men shouldn't be ordained, apparently based on an older list related to women's suffrage. My personal favorite is number six:

6. Men are too emotional to be priests or pastors. Their conduct at football and basketball games demonstrates this.

 I may turn the topic of gender-flipping into a regular feature here. It's quite insightful.

David Brooks argues with conservatives

A conservative for
immigration reform

David Brooks has a new op-ed in the New York Times:

This could be a tragedy for the country and political suicide for Republicans, especially because the conservative arguments against the comprehensive approach are not compelling.

After all, the Senate bill fulfills the four biggest conservative objectives. [...]These are all gigantic benefits. They are like Himalayan peaks compared with the foothill-size complaints conservatives are lodging. 

The conservative objectives he mentions are encouraging economic growth, shrinking the national debt, reducing illegal immigration, and avoiding demographic collapse. Read the whole piece. Brooks' piece reminded me of Corny Collins' line from the movie Hairspray:

Velma, isn't this where it's all heading anyway? Now you can fight it, or you can rock out to it!

"They don't need the good news because they don't get the bad news." Nope.

Your kids are not Gollum in this story.

The quote in the title comes from this comment by Steve McCoy. Steve McCoy has been in the spotlight lately for a recent tweet. McCoy wrote "Tell your children they are broken. Deeply broken."

Now, I get what McCoy is trying to emphasize here. We all have a sinful nature from birth. Because it is so fundamental, he wants everyone to know this. He wants them to know it as early as possible because, in his view, anyone who doesn't properly embrace this bad news cannot properly appreciate the good news of the Gospel.  I get it. Most of my experience with Christian communities (beginning in high school) has been with people who agree with his theological point. I happen to agree with his theological point, myself.

But I am dead set against his prescription. (more below the jump break)

Linkdump: Immigration

The Wall Street Journal recommends some fiction for your library, which I have not read, but sounds interesting. (Cannot be excerpted, check out the article for very brief reviews)

The Economist says more legal immigration is low-hanging fruit.

At a time when America is concerned about excess housing supply and anxious to boost its innovative capacity it is madness that so many willing immigrants, including high-skilled workers, including those educated in America, find it difficult to impossible to gain permission to work in the country on a stable, long-term basis.

Annie Lowry agrees.

The pro-super-immigrant data abounds. According to the Hamilton Project, immigrants are 30 percent more likely to start a business than U.S.-born citizens. Immigrants with college degrees are three times as likely to file patents as the domestically born. And all that entrepreneurial gusto really adds up. Economist Jennifer Hunt of McGill estimates that the contributions of immigrants with college degrees increased the U.S.'s GDP per capita by between 1.4 and 2.4 percent in the 1990s.

Despite these success stories, the United States still discourages foreign-born entrepreneurs. The H1-B visa program allows employers to bring in highly skilled workers but grants only 85,000 new temporary visas per year. Many recipients need to leave the country when their contracts end, giving them no incentive to put down roots and start businesses. The student visa program also allows in tens of thousands of the most talented, driven students from overseas, only to push most of them out again once their education is finished.

Bryan Caplan directs us to Tino Sanandaji on the negative political effects of allowing more immigration.

Though ignored by proponents of the ethnic-diversity-and-redistribution, minorities also get to vote, and they vote overwhelmingly for the left. This effect is dominant when we are discussing free migration, because with open borders in a world where 700 million people have told Gallup they would like to migrate right now, sooner or later the immigrants will become the majority of voters and make the political preferences of the natives irrelevant.

And now, some cartoons from the Internet:*

 *Yes, this is overkill on the pithy graphics. Yes, political cartoons oversimplify issues. I still think they're worth including.

Cultural and Economic Development

I have no words.

What happens when a culturally and economically 'backwards' territory is suddenly made a part of a great economic powerhouse? If you're a follower of Aid Watch (and, really, you all should be), you know that the answer is 'mostly bad things.' Part of the problem, of course, is the fact that who gets to decide what constitutes 'backwards' is a pretty important question, and one with almost no good answers. But supposing we can identify a truly inferior culture-economy, that still doesn't mean the economically powerful can make things better by swooping in like a hero in red and blue.

This post by Vivek Nemana illustrates the point nicely. The antebellum American South was both entrenched in a social system that was morally deficient and locked into an industrial system that was economically counterproductive. (I realize not all my readers will agree. I stand by the strength of this statement.)

The South was heavily invested in racial subjugation – slavery directly accounted for over a quarter of the GDP. The region spent an enormous amount of resources to justify slavery, hiring silver-tongued apologists like John C. Calhoun to spin slavery as humane. In this light, slavery was an economic institution that was designed for racially hegemonic society.

Presumably, then, the North was doing the South a favor by overthrowing its destitute system and replacing it with a system based on sound property rights and the promise of true freedom for everyone, not just the landed gentry... right?

While the Civil War radically restructured Southern laws to promote racial equality and property rights, the hegemonic bonds were resistant to change. [...] As the legacy of slavery wound its way into postbellum Southern society and politics, it hindered the way freedom and property rights should have boosted the economy, denying the South the full bounty of American development.

In other words, "the very insertion of these new freedoms and property rights into a society designed for slavery [...] led to the divergent development of North and South." Improving economic and political conditions aren't enough to produce lasting prosperity, and fixing one part of a system can actually make the people under the system worse off.

(As an aside, this post really got me thinking about the economic destructiveness of even a little bit of racism, especially this sentence: "Gary Becker once wrote that people lose out on the potential gains from trade if one group is able to indulge in 'tastes for discrimination' against another." It ties in closely with a post at another blog from Jonathan Wight on the nature of property rights: "Property rights do not bestow limitless abilities on owners, and property rights come with responsibilities.")

All this brings me to an article at the Financial Times. Essentially, the article discusses how we should compare cites like Vancouver to cities like NYC, and what sort of values we express by preferring one over the other. I just don't know how to react to it. The author wants to argue for the organic, unplanned outcomes of a place like NYC over the zoned and top-down oriented nature of Vancouver. But I'm left not sure what to do with some of the elements of the argument.

In fact, it can often be exactly the juxtaposition of wealth and relative poverty that makes a city vibrant, the collision between the two worlds. Where parts of big cities have declined, through the collapse of industries or the fears about immigration that led to what urbanists have termed the “donut effect” (in which white populations flee to the suburbs, leaving minorities in the centres), there is space to be filled by artists and architects, by poorer immigrants arriving with a drive to make money and by the proliferation of food outlets, studios and galleries. These, in turn, attract the wealthy back to the centre, at first to consume, and then to gentrify.

Is he saying diversity is a good thing? That wealthy elites should not isolate themselves? I think that's a great point. But is he also saying that the wealthy should keep a few poor folk around because they run tasty food trucks? Because they offer a culture worth fixing (my wife hates the word 'gentrify,' btw)? That's something else entirely.

In a strange way the everyday conflict with the (unliveable) city can also become part of the attraction.

Again, whether I can get on board with this depends crucially on whether we're talking about opening ourselves to learn from those different from us, or whether the goal is to bring our (clearly superior) ways to influence the 'backwards' folks of the inner city.

Mumbai is probably the greenest big city there is – slums like the million-strong Dharavi use minimal land, energy and water.

Once again, does this mean that we should be willing to have some poor people around because it is good for the environment, or that economic growth for the poorest around us is worth being less green, or that striking the balance between economic and environmental stewardship is hard?

At the end of the day, how we relate to the people and city around us depends an awful lot on if we are developing full and complex relationships with them, with plenty of give-and-take and holistic engagement, or if instead we are setting out to gentrify the backwards natives. And for those of us who educate others vocationally, I think it's a call to special reflection and introspection.

Death of a Sinner

[...] a middle-eastern religious fundamentalist extremist [...]

Thoughts on the news about Osama bin Laden from Pastor Ed Eubanks of Hickory Withe Presbyterian Church:

I understand the need and importance of the operation against Osama bin Laden, and recognize and even appreciate the significance of his removal from terrorist activity. [...] Surely everyone knew that this-- death by firearm, or bomb, or missile, in the face of military aggression-- was the reasonable and eventual end of this man, whose entire life seemed to be singularly-focused on wreaking fear, grief, and death upon as many of those with whom he disagreed as possible.

But Ed also sees something seriously wrong with how we've responded, including the following:

The United States is not the Promised Land. The Old Testament promises for the nation of God's people do not apply to America. The American military forces are not the army of the Lord. And Christians, our citizenship in the U.S., however important, is secondary to our citizenship in the true Kingdom of God (and no they are not the same!). Consequently, Christians ought not feel free to cry out that the killing of Osama bin Laden is a victory for Christ!

Rejoicing at a degree of justice being fulfilled is one thing. Rejoicing at the death of a man who deserved God's wrath and curse no more than we did is something else entirely. the same David, the man after God's own heart who actually did  live in the Promised Land, the man who prayed for deliverance from his enemies and justice on God's enemies, wept for the deaths of Saul and Absalom.

The real kick in the gut, for me, was his last bullet, which included the following:

How many of the Christians who are celebrating the death of Osama bin Laden ever prayed for his conversion and repentance? If we know ourselves and what we have been redeemed from, we long for the redemption of others. If all we feel for others is contempt and condemnation, perhaps we don't know and recognize the depth and degree of our own redemption.

There have been some strongly held opinions on all sides expressed online about the death of Osama bin Laden. I've seen what nearly looked like battle lines drawn on the Facebook, of all places, over how good Christians should be rejoicing at the death of this wretched man. But as my friend Neal F. put it,

Bin Laden's death (should this prove true) is a somber reminder that we all deserve hell for our sins. "But for the grace of God, there go I." Neither you nor I did anything more than OBL to deserve God's love. Let us not rejoice in a fellow human being experiencing the punishment of hell, but rather let us appreciate the reconciling work of Christ to take away the sin of the world.

I say rejoice at a small taste of God's justice, yes. But rejoice for the death of an image bearer of God? Rejoice at part of the fate I have earned for myself falling on someone who has not received the same grace as I? Rejoice at the power of the gun to change the shape of this broken, poisoned world? Rejoice that the sword has not departed from our house?

No. Osama bin Laden was an evil man, and the world is probably safer without him. But will I revel in another death? No. No I will not. God does not rejoice in the death of the wicked, and neither should we.

Linkdump: The Schooling Bubble?

There go my prospects!

Arnold Kling thinks schooling is mostly about signaling respect for hierarchy.

There is no cheap alternative to educational credentials if you want to signal respect for hierarchy. Looking for an alternative signal is fundamentally self-defeating. Any attempt to evade the educational credential system inherently signals a lack of respect for hierarchy!

Steven Levitt thinks schooling pays off.

Of all the topics that economists have studied, I would say one we are most certain about are the returns to education. [...] someone who graduated from college will earn about 30 percent more on average than someone who only graduated from high school. And if anything, the returns to education have gotten larger over time. They’re as big as they have ever been.

Peter Thiel thinks people are borrowing too much to pay for schooling, in any case.

Like the housing bubble, the education bubble is about security and insurance against the future. Both whisper a seductive promise into the ears of worried Americans: Do this and you will be safe. The excesses of both were always excused by a core national belief that no matter what happens in the world, these were the best investments you could make. Housing prices would always go up, and you will always make more money if you are college educated.

Like any good bubble, this belief– while rooted in truth– gets pushed to unhealthy levels. Thiel talks about consumption masquerading as investment during the housing bubble, as people would take out speculative interest-only loans to get a bigger house with a pool and tell themselves they were being frugal and saving for retirement. Similarly, the idea that attending Harvard is all about learning? Yeah. No one pays a quarter of a million dollars just to read Chaucer. The implicit promise is that you work hard to get there, and then you are set for life.  It can lead to an unhealthy sense of entitlement. “It’s what you’ve been told all your life, and it’s how schools rationalize a quarter of a million dollars in debt,” Thiel says.

Schumpeter at the Economist thinks the schooling bubble is worth writing about twice.

Paul Krugman has pointed out that, contrary to popular wisdom, expounded relentlessly by the OECD among other august bodies, technological progress may reduce the demand for high-end jobs, not just low-end jobs. Computer software is now employed to perform tasks that used to require armies of lawyers, engineers or highly educated workers.

[...] My third article is also from Slate. This suggests that applications for law school have dropped by more than 11% since last year, in part because students are beginning to realise that it makes no sense to pile up hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt in order to join the legion of unemployed lawyers. 

And the gist of the second:

THIS year American student-loan debt surpassed credit-card debt for the first time.

Scott James at Forbes thinks there are ways to make schooling worth while.

This new set of schools is increasing the value of their delivered content via a Professor + Practitioner teaching model. This P+P teaching team combines a full academic PhD (required for accreditation) with an expert practitioner (who does that type of work as a day job). Think back to the Operations class you took; how much more valuable would it have been to hear both the viewpoints of an academic plus a manager with 30 years of experience in the trenches at General Electric?

[...] Not everyone is meant to – or aspires to – attend a four-year degree program. In fact, some of the brighter high school students are wise enough to see the amount of debt they would be saddled with after a four-year program, and take a pass on it. As more motivated and smart students opt out of the four-year college program altogether, the idea of a re-skilling college seems more viable.

Money, Money, Money

Here's a bit from macroeconomics: In 2008, per person income in the United States was nearly four times that in our neighbor Mexico, more than ten times that in India, and one-hundred twenty-five times that in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. In the United States we have an adult literacy rate of ninety-nine percent, compared to twenty-six percent in Mali.

And here's one from micro: Two products that start out selling for the same price could come to differ for any combination of four reasons: If more people value and want to buy good A or fewer people want to produce and sell good A, its price will go up; but if fewer people want to buy good A or more people want to produce and sell good A, its price will go down. If people care about doing work they enjoy, then the fact that one job gets paid more than another could either mean people want to buy the product of the higher-paid job more (maybe some people value the product more), or it could mean they enjoy doing the higher-paid job less (maybe it takes a lot more to get people to deal with the drudgery / risk involved).

When I think of personal finance and income, these are the things that come to my mind. The vast majority of the wealth I have is mine simply because of where I was born. Any extra wealth I have that comes from my job has more to do with choosing a field most others would find mind-numbingly dull than it does with how much use I am to the corporations of the world, and neither of these has anything useful to say about any sort of inherent personal value. All the things that put me in the position I am in were given by God, anyway, and the more I have to covet the more God requires I give up for others.

In my mind, to hear that someone else makes more money than me sounds a lot like hearing they have a larger shoe size than me. If it matters at all, the ones with more money have a moral obligation to use it in the interests of those around them with less, in the same sense that someone with a bigger bit of floating debris after a shipwreck ought to share it with other survivors.

All this is background to the fact that I tend to be rather nonchalant, and even flippant, about matters of money. It never occurs to me that talking about how much money I make isn't polite, or that mentioning where my expected payscale ranks compared to those around me is the uncouth work of a braggart. How can one brag about the size of one's shoes, or the buoyancy of one's debris? I ask myself. But the fact that it doesn't bother me doesn't make it OK for me to treat others as if they're silly to let it bother them. I am not the arbiter of truth or seriousness, and the world isn't wrong just because it doesn't see things the way I do. On the contrary, ignoring other people's thoughts and feelings, especially when I don't think or feel the same way, is no way to live in community; it is, however, a perfect way to fail at loving my neighbor.

So if I have bragged about money to any of you before, I am sorry. I was wrong, although I hope you'll believe me when I say there was neither malice nor pride behind it. I was "merely" thoughtlessness, which of course isn't really less wrong. I'm trying to be better. I hope you'll bear with me.

"I repent
...of the way I believe that I'm living right
By trading sins for others that are easier to hide
Oh I am wrong and of these things
I repent"
-- Derek Webb (and, all too rarely, me)

Life-Saving Immorality?

Your taxpayer dollars at work.

Brad DeLong thinks that taxing people in order to prevent an asteroid from destroying the human race is entirely appropriate and moral. He quotes Bob Murphy, on the other hand, as disagreeing:

[T]here is a general moral prohibition against violating another person's rights.... Volokh's... point should be obvious: Just because an asteroid threatens to destroy all human life, that alone is not sufficient to justify violating people's rights. [...] The reason DeLong finds Volokh's views "insane" is that Volokh has elevated his precious political principles to such a height that they trump the survival of the human race. What an ideologue!

DeLong summarily rejects this sort of thinking, summarizing his view as follows:

[...] the sabbath was made for humanity; humanity was not made for the sabbath.

Commentor Daniel Kuehn has a lot to say in response to this position, and particularly to the logic of the position:

If you start where they do - axiomatically defining what a "right" is and defining "immorality" as being the violation of that right - then both the Volokh and Murphy version of the argument follows naturally.

The problem is not the logic itself - that logic is simple enough. The problem is their decision to apply that logic to this circumstance. Deductive logic is a tool - we have long since passed the point where we can claim that it deserves any deeper epistemological priority. [...]  Logic is not a tool for them, as most careful thinkers know it should be. For them it is a path, not to truth contingent on assumptions [I would prefer to refer to this as consistent reasoning or logical validity - N], but to some deeper absolute truth. [...] So to expand on your concluding thought, deductive logic is a tool for humanity, and not the other way around.

Tad Brennan points out that, far from being a primarily political debate, the conflict here is between purely deontological ethics and purely consequentialist ethics, and that the latter lends itself to some problems, as well:

If you eschew lexically-ordered side-constraints, then you have a very pure form of consequentialism. And that's not a bad thing! Some of my best friends espouse pure consequentialism! 

But pure consequentialism can generate some pretty repellent hypotheticals of its own (catalogued by Bernard Williams and others: false conviction of the innocent; harvesting organs from the unwilling; torture of children; etc. etc.).

When people recoil from the consequences of pure consequentialism and consider adopting categorical prohibitions on, e.g., the torture of children, this does not seem to me ipso facto insane.

Finding the right balance of ethical views for the Christian is never as simple and easy as it seems, which is why Christian maturity is a big deal. But this is a circumstance when, again, I don't think Christianity came come down on the side of moral libertarianism.

PS - For those looking for a quick summary of deontology vs. consequentialism in terms we can all understand, may I suggest Mark White, aka The Comics Professor, on the morality of Captain America, Iron Man, and Spiderman!

Hell or Bell?

I am referring, of course, to the forthcoming book Love Wins by pastor Rob Bell of Mars Hill Bible Church. As something of a follow up to a previous post which generated a lively discussion, I thought I'd link to a couple of articles on the Christian doctrine of hell and the people who believe it.

The first article, written by Eric Reitan, is on the controversy surrounding Rob Bell:

Justin Taylor, vice president of editorial at Crossway, quickly posted a fierce condemnation—based solely on advance material. “It is unspeakably sad,” writes Taylor, “when those called to be ministers of the Word distort the gospel and deceive the people of God with false doctrine.”

The main point of the article isn't so much whether Bell is right or wrong, as we don't even know his actual argument yet. Rather, it is about how we react to those who disagree with us about admittedly Very Important Things.

One of the more conservative people in the audience (we’ll call him Jim) said rather forcefully that Jesus only saves those who explicitly ask Him to be their Lord and Savior. When I said I disagreed with that view, Jim replied, “Then you disagree with God.”[...]

This disposition of humility does not become fanaticism, however, until it is paired with arrogance: the refusal to recognize that their beliefs about God’s word could be wrong. The fanatic treats a challenge to their own beliefs as if it were a challenge to the word of God.

Of course, the article does deal with some of the substance of the rejection of universalism, making a point I tried to in my previous post:

Can you really preach biblical inerrancy and dismiss universalism? What, then, do you do with John 12:32 where Jesus says, “But I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to myself”? What do you do with Romans 5:18 (“Consequently, just as the result of one trespass was condemnation for all men, so also the result of one act of righteousness was justification that brings life for all men”)? What about Romans 11:32 (“For God has bound all men over to disobedience so that he may have mercy on them all”)? Or I Corinthians 15:22 (“For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive”)? Or I Corinthians 15: 28? Or Colossians 1:19-20? Or Lamentations 3:31-32?  

Presumably, Piper and Taylor have to say that when the Bible says “all,” it doesn’t really mean “all.” The plain meaning of these passages has to be rejected, some strained interpretation offered, in order to reconcile them with the hell-centric passages they favor (and yes, there is a litany of such passages as well).

Which is to say, taking the Bible as Truth is a much more complex process than we care to admit. Either we accept that some passages apparently contradict each other, and our finite minds don't know how to fully reconcile them, or we have to pick and choose which words to take at closer to face value than others. There are better and worse ways to do the latter, but if we are to build a systematic theology out of Scripture, it has to be done.

The second article is by Tim Keller of Redeemer Pres (PCA) in New York City. Keller offers his defense of the centrality of the doctrine of hell to Christianity:

The doctrine of hell is crucial-without it we can't understand our complete dependence on God, the character and danger of even the smallest sins, and the true scope of the costly love of Jesus.[...]

We must come to grips with the fact that Jesus said more about hell than Daniel, Isaiah, Paul, John, Peter put together. Before we dismiss this, we have to realize we are saying to Jesus, the pre-eminent teacher of love and grace in history, "I am less barbaric than you, Jesus--I am more compassionate and wiser than you." Surely that should give us pause! Indeed, upon reflection, it is because of the doctrine of judgment and hell that Jesus' proclamations of grace and love are so astounding.

Now, as I pointed out with reference to universalism of Carlton Pearson, the real argument isn't whether Hell in the sense of a place of divine punishment for sins exists. The meaningful argument is whether or not the duration of a persons existence there is perpetual. To this, Keller says

Hell is therefore a prison in which the doors are first locked from the inside by us and therefore are locked from the outside by God (Luke 16:26.) Every indication is that those doors continue to stay forever barred from the inside.

I suppose Keller doesn't see the word "all" in the passages cited in the other article as indications the doors do not stay barred forever. Carlton Pearson disagrees.

I find myself agreeing with both articles. I believe hell is real, and while I think there is significant merit to thinking of the unregenerate life on earth as a foretaste of hell (just as life with the Holy Spirit is a foretaste of heaven), I believe the main thrust of Scripture is that hell is real, terrible, and permanent. However, I'm not convince failure to assert the last adjective of that sentence disqualifies you from God's Kingdom (Did the thief on the cross understand the permanence of hell?). I think it is a virtue to be willing to listen to those who name the name of Christ, assert the trustworthiness of His Word, and disagree on this point.

The folly of what Eric Reitan calls fanaticism (and most of the world refers to these days as fundamentalism) comes from treating everything we think is true as a fundamental. Scripture is amazingly brief in the specific things it tells us to believe that we might be saved. Yes, I believe there are direct implications of those core beliefs. Most of you know I have no shortage of opinions on spiritual matters. But the point is, what I think is a direct implication is not the same thing as "God said so." "Confess that Jesus is Lord, and believe that God raised him from the dead" is not negotiable. But the more areas where I am willing and able to be wrong without losing faith in that, the more teachable I will be. Doesn't mean I have to be blown about; as I said, I'm not convinced by Pearson or what little I've read of Bell. But it means I listen. To do otherwise is, in my view, a failure to put the true fundamentals in their rightful place. It's to believe in what my campus minister used to call "Jesus Plus" something.

There are many idols out there for us to follow. One of them says that divine punishment doesn't exist, or doesn't ultimately matter. It ignores the long history of God's people, and the teachings of wise leaders of the Church. Another says my view of divine punishment is the only one that could ever be true, and everyone else is trying to trick you out of God's arms. It adheres to the words of wise humans as tightly as it adheres to the words of the Creator of the Universe.

I hope we can all do our best to avoid "Jesus Plus."

Keep those comments coming, everyone, I'm totally listening!

Free Trade

Does free trade always benefit everyone, or are there winners and losers? Is protectionism really such a bad thing? Here are a few links on free trade.

In response to a NYT column by Harvard Economics Professor Greg Mankiw, some thoughts by KPC's Angus, and a follow up by Mungowitz. Tyler Cowen linked to the original post, and thus some of the discussion takes place in the comments here.

Mark Thoma worries about trade creating inequality, even if it does make society wealthier on average.

Craig Newmark discusses teaching students about free trade.

On these, in particular, pretty much every link contains additional links well worth looking into. Does that make these meta-links?

And a few for Economists

Paul Krugman prefers intuition over mathematics. Since I'm somewhat familiar with his work, I'm sure mathematics doesn't generally hurt, of course.

Turns out Krugman uses intuition to double check whether the math is silly. At OU we call this the "laugh test": if the conclusion makes you laugh, it doesn't matter how many proofs are in the paper.

Instrumental variables can, over time, be proven worthless. To me this suggests (1) instruments that seem appropriate only for a very specific context are probably the best, and (2) demonstrating causality from observations remains really hard, and will likely remain so.

Finally, one from an economist, but of more general interest: David Henderson's philosophy of teaching is love (which makes his sound a lot better than mine, huh?).

Heaven and Hell, Not So Much?

Turns out it's paved with crappy asphalt like every other road.

Slacktivist is not convinced that Hell works the way we think it does (if it exists at all?).

These three passages aren't the only basis for the belief in Hell as eternal fiery torment, but they provide the strongest evidence to support the idea. And as you can see, this evidence is not really that strong. These passages certainly don't provide any sort of basis for the idea that Hell ought to be a central or essential core belief that shapes our faith, or our concept of God, or our concept of one another or of the meaning of our lives. That's not what these stories are about.

On the other hand, heaven doesn't sound all that heavenly:

Take away every sinful attitude, every capacity for contempt, disdain and disregard and everything that might mute or muzzle conscience. Then take away every physiological or psychological impediment to memory and empathy. Do you see what I mean by terrifying? [...]

And this is Heaven we're talking about -- not Hell, not purgatory. This is our common notion of reward, not of judgement, and yet it seems as though it might be judgement enough -- an almost unbearable judgement, survivable only if accompanied by an overwhelming and overflowing mercy.

Speculation, only speculation. A guess and a wild guess at that.

 If you're looking for more anti-fundamentalist thinking (and not just Christian, for that matter), you might consider watching The Man from Earth.

Libertarian Catechesis?

Ron Paul? Is that you?

Bryan Caplan offers, in the question-answer format of a catechism, one of the most succinct summaries of true libertarian thinking (I'm not talking about the Tea Party here). He summarizes the thinking simply:

These common-sense ethics regarding strangers, ethics that almost everyone admits, are unequivocally libertarian.  Yes, you have an obligation to leave strangers alone, but charity is optional.

The whole post is very much worth reading, as are the first ten or so comments (and probably more).

Now, I am highly sympathetic to libertarian thinking in most dimensions.  If you forced me to categorize my political views, I'd label myself 'pragmatic libertarian,' a term I stole from economist Scott Sumner.  But my political views take a back seat to my Christianity, and it's important to acknowledge that Christianity is *not* a libertarian religion. Think about the One who said these words:

“You have heard that it was said, ‘Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth.’ But I tell you, do not resist an evil person. If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also. And if anyone wants to sue you and take your shirt, hand over your coat as well. If anyone forces you to go one mile, go with them two miles. Give to the one who asks you, and do not turn away from the one who wants to borrow from you.

 “You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? And if you greet only your own people, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that?

And consider that in the story of the good Samaritan, Jesus emphasizes that we are obligated to love even those who hate us (and who we equally hate) if we are to live.  Would this Jesus have agreed with the following?

What are you morally forbidden to do to a stranger?  You may not murder him.  You may not attack him.  You may not enslave him.  Neither may you rob him.

What are you morally required to do for a stranger?  Not much.  Even if he seems hungry and asks you for food, you're probably within your rights to refuse.

Now, part of the problem is that Caplan equates your obligations with another's rights. It is entirely possible for you to be morally obligated to give generously, and yet if you fail in your obligation the beggar has no right to extract from you what your obligations says he is due.  I'll also readily admit that there is an important distinction between being obligated to give generously and being obligated to give to a particular person. Similarly, just because you are morally obligated to give generously doesn't mean it's the duty of the state to extract such giving from you.  There is a lot of room for compatibility between libertarianism and Christianity.
But if we truly take Christ seriously, we *have* to part ways from the libertarians when they say "charity is optional." Charity--uncomfortable, sacrificial charity--is essential to what Christ referenced when he said "Do this and you will live."


Libertarianism doesn't show us our need of the gospel. Real Christianity does.

The Dark Knight Rises

On Wednesday Warner Bros. announced the villains and casting for Christopher Nolan's sequel to 'The Dark Knight.' Since a lot of the tone and even plot of the movie depend on these roles, I feel compelled to comment. [Warning: if you haven't seen 'Batman Begins' and 'The Dark Knight,' what are you doing reading blogs?!? Go watch them. For the rest of you, spoilers below.]

First, the obvious:

CATWOMAN

We all knew Catwoman was going to be one of the major villains.  The previous film ended with Batman heartbroken, without a love interest, on the run from the law.  It also featured low-budget Bat-imitators.  The stage was perfectly set for this character. In Frank Miller's Batman: Year One, Selina Kyle is a street prostitute who decides that if someone can dress up like a bat and fight crime, she can put on a costume and make a living off of the mob royalty of Gotham.  I'd love to see Selina use her new found wealth to position herself as a high class call girl, thus bringing her in contact with Bruce Wayne. Maybe she'll see through the billionaire-playboy act, or maybe she'll just take him for an easy mark.  In any case, it's hard to argue that being without a love interest and on the outs with the law won't leave Batman tempted to join a woman with the grit, intelligence, and skill to match him.  It's a moral dilemma Bale's Batman needs to face before we're done, in my view.

And who did they cast for this iconic role?

ANNE HATHAWAY

I'll admit, this is not the casting I expected. Selina Kyle is basically a classic noir femme fatale in a costume, and Anne Hathaway has never struck me as a femme fatale.  She has the physique for the role, and I'm pretty sure she has some background in films requiring some stuntwork.  But I'm not convinced she can sell a Tim Sale version of the character.

So I'm not convince here, yet. But you know who else I was skeptical of? Heath Ledger.

That's Best Supporting Actor Heath Ledger to the rest of us.

So we'll wait and see on Selina Kyle. I am willing to be convinced.

Now, Catwoman is a great villain, but certainly couldn't carry a blockbuster movie on her own. So who is going to be the big-bad villain?

BANE

That... was unexpected.  The stage seemed perfectly set for someone much like the Batman--but without his unwillingness to kill criminals--to enter the scene.  Someone like the Reaper, for example, who was rumored to be one of the villains considered for Batman Begins. Personally, I really wanted Nolan to steal a bit from Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns. I have in mind the first half of the last chapter, in which the city is plunged into chaos, and a large gang of teens called the Sons of Batman are getting ready to meet out their own version of justice when Batman shows up and decides to claim them as his own army. He brings order to the city, even though he is being hunted by the police.  When the new commissioner (Gordon has retired by this point) is asked "Shouldn't we bring him in?" She replies "No... he's too big..." He truly does become a legend larger than just one man, which would nicely bookend some of the key ideas from Batman Begins.

With a villain like Bane, though, I really don't know what direction they'll go with it.  He's a great villain, despite his appearance.  When he was introduced, he masterminded wave after wave of Batman's toughest enemies facing him, wearing the Bat down until Bane could face him at his weakest. As the picture above shows, Bane actually won, leaving Batman bound to a wheelchair for a time.  He also was one of only a few enemies Batman has had who figured out that he and Bruce Wayne were the same man.  The character is a pretty long way from the last version to make it on screen.  I really don't know what direction Nolan is going with this one.

It turns out Christopher Nolan picked someone he's worked with before to fill out Bane's wrestling mask:

TOM HARDY

 OK, I have no idea how he's going to pull off Bane, but casting Tom Hardy as the villain opposite Christian Bale's Batman is going to be awesome.  The pic is from Hardy's role in Inception, which he handled quite well.  He has a physical presence that should work well in a Batman movie, and I thought his performance was one of the better ones in the movie.  If we can get a scene between Hardy and Bale as electric as the interrogation scene between Bale and Ledger from The Dark Knight, the movie will be worth the price of admission right there.

So I don't really know what to make of the casting and villain choices at this point, at least beyond the non-committal, Spock-like response "fascinating."  I'll definitely be seeing this one in theaters... but you probably knew that already.

What Zombies Are For

 People think that zombie stories are about humans doing what it takes to survive. They’re not. Zombie stories are, it turns out, about humans doing what they mistakenly think they need to do to survive. As it turns out, they’re wrong.

This is the gist of a post at OverThinkingIt.com, one of my favorite group blogs, on what really drives zombie fiction.

Every zombie war is a war of attrition. It’s always a numbers game. And it’s more repetitive than complex. In other words, zombie killing is philosophically similar to reading and deleting 400 work e-mails on a Monday morning or filling out paperwork that only generates more paperwork, or following Twitter gossip out of obligation, or performing tedious tasks in which the only true risk is being consumed by the avalanche.

That's Chuck Klosterman at the New York Times offering his take on the attractiveness of the zombie apocalypse.

I think both these articles make good points, but I would add a dimension they don't quite address.  I think one aspect that really captures people's interest is the deep seated paranoia of it all. Zombies are just ordinary folk who turned on you, and anyone can, at any time, cease being your best friend and come after your flesh. On top of that, we have to consider that in any good zombie story, the zombies are not the real enemy. Zombies are hardly ever evil, after all; they're more a force of nature, a disease or a storm to be endured. No, to have true evil in a zombie apocalypse you have to have other people:

Beware of your fellow survivors. Sometimes, they may be the biggest threat to your survival. Other humans who want your supplies or who have lost their minds in the disaster could try to kill you. Never let everyone know about all of your supplies, and never let your guard down completely.

What do you do when you can't rely on your community?*  I think this is a fear a lot of people feel deeply, but don't quite know how to express. And like all unexpressed fears, it expands and fills us up unless we have an outlet for it, like zombie stories.  For me, I see the zombie apocalypse as the Great Disaster: our civilization cannot possibly survive it; at best the human race might survive to build a new one.  If we do survive, we have a chance to repeat the same mistakes or learn from them and try to create a utopia.  Most likely, we will try to create heaven in our own image and end up with a hellish dystopia for a troubles, but that's another strain of fiction for another time.

So how do we deal with a disaster from which there is no bouncing back? If we really think those around us could betray us at any time, can we ever come together to build something with the resources we have left? How bad do things have to get before our greed and fear and need to come out on top keeps everyone on the bottom?

Oddly enough, those are some of the main questions of my research as a development economist.  Maybe we should take zombies a bit more seriously after all!

*Add to this OTI's observation that our defensive paranoia is always wrong--we need community to survive, we need to let someone else save us--and you're dangerously close to every Apocalypse bearing a gospel message. One with shotguns.

Some Insights from Practice Job Interviews

1.   Keep the summary of your job paper brief
1a. Don't summarize your job paper too briefly

2.   The fact that you can do Bayesian statistics is a selling point
2a. Don't sell the Bayesian stuff too hard; be as un-technical as possible

3.   Relax and be yourself, you're trying to find a good match
3a. Relax and be whatever it is they want, you're trying to find a job

4.   Ask questions about the interviewer to show interest
4a. Already know everything about the interviewer to show interest
 
5.   Similarly, asking about the town shows interest
5a. Similarly, asking about the town shows lack of interest

6.   If you're unclear, the interviewer might misunderstand you
6a. If you're clear, the interviewer might misunderstand you

7.   Be energetic and animated
7a. But not too energetic and animated

8.   Be careful about revealing personal information
8a. Reveal some personal information

9.   Have a long list of courses you can teach and research ideas you might explore

10. More specifics are always better (as long as they aren't technical)


If I promise not to unionize, do you think they'll hire me at the Wendy's?

Skepticism about Scepticism

Would that be Meta-Scepticism? Sckepticism? Bueller?

In any case, this post is a response to a piece by the Venerable Gentleman in which he describes his attitude toward modern science, and nutritional science in particular.  Aside from a link to a story in the Atlantic, the post essentially consists of a rationale and a rejection. The rejection indicates that the Venerable Gentleman (VG hereafter) is unconvinced of the unhealthfulness of drinking, smoking, highly processed food products, or saturated fats of any sort; it also includes a passing stab at Pasteur's germ theory.

The rationale is a bit more forceful:

The physical sciences are indeed brilliant and beautiful in harness, yoked to goals above themselves. But when these are abandoned in the name of Progress, we arrive at the same result as that of the coachman who to speed his horses onward cut their traces: the situation is certainly a vast improvement from their perspective, but the passengers had rather hoped to arrive at Brighton before tea-time.

The argument is that the sciences must be reigned by the Queen of Sciences, Theology.  Unless it is thus bound, it's conclusions are of little value or interest to VG.

But frankly, I'm not convinced.  I don't for a moment believe VG consumes Velveeta because the science that tells him it's unsafe has galloped in unbridled fashion from its theological roots. Why not? Because the only reason we've come to believe Velveeta is food at all is that science told us so.

It was modern physical science, which VG argues has little value in its modernist form, which invented highly processed foods and trans-fats. It was modern physical science which convinced our parents and grandparents' generations that these new inventions were healthy and good, contributions to human advancement thanks to the scientific age. And it is modern physical science which continues to argue that the sources of culinary and olfactory satisfaction for hundreds of generations prior to this scientific era are now dirty, dangerous, and outdated; we should turn to the modern Prometheus's of dietary engineering to provide us new, more potent, more sterile, and more safe forms of food and drink.

No, if I may offer a not-too-seriously-suggested narrative of my own, VG distrusts claims against processed food because his mother gave it to him when he was a wee lad, and his mother wouldn't give him something unsafe. He distrusts claims against the vittles which he loves because he loves them, not because he believes them more moral in character. But these claims are largely made by those outside the mainstream of physical science, those who see science as serving Mammon (meaning corporate profits) as master, a critique far more in line with what VG offers than with his opponents.

Perhaps he has reason to distrust mainstream science, too. After all, his cigar-chomping lush of a grandfather (whose character and very existence I have totally fabricated here) lived to the age of 95 before dying in a sword fight with a pirate, so the causal effect cannot be all that strong, can it? (unless we consider drinking and smoking as contributing factors to encounters with pirates, which come to think of it...)  In any case, though, while VG is free to follow or ignore such advice as he pleases, I must insist that he not try to hide his preference behind the curtain of Theology. I'm on to you, wizard.

Taking Offense

After what was essentially a six-week hiatus, I thought I'd hit the ground running with something substantial:

If you met this fellow on the street, would you be offended? If he told you he didn't know what the symbol in his arm meant, he just thought it looked cool, would that make it OK?

Unless he's an actor in a movie or some sort of reenactment, I think we would all generally agree that wearing a swastika armband necessarily associates you with something decent folk don't want to be associated with.  In this sense, what you wear communicates something, whether the wearer intends to communicate it or not.

What about this?

Nobody really thinks that wearing a bomber jacket tells others that you have a pilot's license, or that you have destroyed enemy bunkers using military incendiary devices.  It's entirely plausible for someone to be a complete pacifist but still wear a jacket like this just because you think it looks cool.

So there seems to be a spectrum of association and message when it comes to things like clothing. Somewhere in the vast space between swastikas and bomber jackets, there is a line that, if crossed, moves you from wearing something "because you like it" to wearing something to "send a message." And it's really not a matter of intent: the swastika sends a particular message, period.

I bring this up because I have been thinking about the issue of offending others with something you see as harmless.  This article, in particular, got me wondering.  As an example, I know a lot of people who find this...

...to be a simple expression of support for their home state, states rights, or simply a rejection of an overly intrusive central government. On the other hand, basically every African-American I know looks at that shirt and sees this:

These white hooded figures are Boogey Man, a fear passed from parent to child over generations until it becomes ingrained in the society as the thing we must fear, not unlike the Nazis to Jewish communities. (As an aside, I have a friend of Jewish ethnic heritage who was once called a Nazi by a political science teacher. Bad form, political science teacher; very bad form indeed.)  When you fly your confederate flag, you are linking yourself to the KKK in the minds of most onlooking African-Americans as surely as if you were burning a cross in your front yard. It doesn't matter whether you intend it that way, just as it wouldn't matter if you wore a swastika armband to a bar mitzvah. You are doing something with a distinct meaning to another people group, and that meaning doesn't go away just because you don't see it.

Should the offense done to this people group be reason enough for you to eschew the confederate t-shirt? My instinct is to say yes; there are ways to express your group identity with other Southerners without hurting African-Americans, so the loving thing, the Christlike thing, to do is probably to avoid giving unnecessary offense.

But of course there must be a limit to the application of this logic, since every attire and activity risks offending someone.  Is the offense to animal rights activists sufficient reason to avoid something like this?

Aesthetic arguments are a separate matter.

I'm not sure, but again my intuition is to say the offense is not enough.  We aren't required to avoid all offense at all cost, and I'm not sure it is even possible to do so.  So if someone wants to wear a Victorian explorer outfit to a convention, are you aligning yourself with European imperialism?  If someone informs you that, as descendants of a subjugated people, they find your outfit offensive, do you owe an apology?

Is this man just having fun, or basking in retro-futuristic irony?

How should the second greatest commandment guide our willingness to invoke terrifying images or hurtful history upon those around us?  Where is the line beyond which our aesthetic choices begin to speak without our consent?  Or is this an instance where the mechanic is simply asking the wrong sort of question, where the mystic's way of thinking yields greater light?

I wish I had the answer to these questions.  I tend to think academics in the humanities over-play the idea of "the other," but on balance how we relate to "the other" is something most people should probably be more intentional about.