A Story

I was riding the bus to school one morning, when a fellow next to me spoke up. Now I, personally, am a fan of urban solitude, a believer that my presence in a public place does not demarcate my desire for interaction with strangers. But fortunately, not everyone is like me, and he was one of those. He was dressed rather nicely, dress shoes and pants, a nicely ironed shirt, complete with a tie. In his style of dress, he was disregarding the summer heat in the way that is the very mark of respectability. Like I said, not everyone is like me.

He inquired as to whether I smoked Camels. I indicated to him that not only did I not have any Camels, I didn't have any cigarettes, and that he'd have to ask someone else. But this reply was not found satisfactory. He hadn't asked, after all, if I had Camels, he'd asked if I smoked them. A tad perplexed, I told him that no, I didn't smoke, not that it was any of his business. That final clause, fortunately, got lost somewhere between my brain and my tongue.

Issuing a response at first seemed to be a mistake on my part, for it appeared that I'd turned what could have been a perfectly pleasant bus ride, during which I could have read, or stared out the window, or worried about my exams, or whatever, into something quite bizarre indeed. For I had encountered a man, it would seem, who not only smoked Camels, but was a Camels salesman. Stranger still, he didn't do it for money (as, I thought, most did), but rather out of compassion. For he was convinced that smoking Camels, if done properly, was the key to immortality. Now I had not personally performed the scientific studies, but this hypothesis would not be one I'd have thought to advance. On this point, I was sorely in need of an education, which he considered it his duty to provide.

I proved to be, I'm afraid, rather dense, particularly in comparison with my interlocutor. I thought, at first, that his reasoning was perhaps circular. Such notions soon proved to be false. Circles are, ironically, rather straightforward. But his reasoning had such fluidity, now flowing one way, now another, now jumping somewhere new altogether, now flying down a path already traveled but in the opposite direction, that, as someone whose mind often struggles to proceed in even a linear fashion, I never stood a chance.

Recognizing this, the man resorted to simple repeated, again and again, that if I smoked Camels, I would live forever. Of course, he had an expansive vocabulary at the tip of his tongue, and indeed proved as agile in his use of the English language as one can be while saying the same thing over and over. He said it with a smile. He said it with a frown. He said it as a threat. He said it as if it was the only reward I could possibly want. Between his verbal acrobatics, his inscrutable reasoning, and his fancy shirt, I finally saw the light.

And oh, the light! The hope! A pack a day, every day, and I would never fade away! I was transformed. A new man! I looked upon the world with fresh eyes. How dismal had been my life, before being shown the path. And if I had any compassion in me, I would lead others down that very same path. So I began. I became the most enthusiastic Camels salesman this planet has ever seen. Door to door I went, extolling to men, women, and especially to children, the health benefits of huffing Camels. What purpose, What meaning I had found!

I came to a very busy road I hadn't yet crossed. It was the kind of road just small enough that the powers-that-be could provide a little crosswalk and pretend to expect pedestrians to safely cross, but just big enough that you couldn't quite be sure if it was ever necessary to scrape the inevitable roadkill off the tar, or if it simply disintegrated in seconds under the tires of dozens of vehicles whose drivers were always in such a hurry to be anywhere but there. It was the kind of road, in other words, that one does not cross without questioning one's motives, whether one is hen or human.

Fortunately, the motive of immortality can induce dangerous behavior indeed, so across I went. At the first house I came to, a woman answered the door, with her small daughter. Now I'd perfected my sales pitch by this time, and I had found it best to state my claim immediately. Smoking Camels, I informed her, would permit her to live forever. She frowned. But as she neither stopped me nor closed her door, I continued, retracing my savior's reasoning as best as my limited abilities would allow. It wasn't long before she quietly interrupted.

Quietly, that is, with regard to volume. Not with regard to the content, for the content was not quiet at all. I was informed in several distinct but ultimately similar sentences, that all I had stated was useful only for the growing of crops, and useful for that only if composted correctly, for that was the only possible utility found in such farm-animal excrement. It should be marked as a rare credit to my deductive capabilities that I figured she wasn't actually giving me farming advice.

But it didn't end there. I was told about all sorts of scientific studies purportedly showing that Camels were unhealthy. I was instructed in the unpleasantness of heart disease, stroke, and a whole variety of cancers that Camels cause. Contrary to saving lives, she believed that Camels ended them. I could tell she was a lost cause, so I wrapped up our encounter. As I moved away, she lit two cigarettes, took one for herself and handed the other to her daughter.

It was then that I was informed, I had entered Marlboro Country.

The Locavore's Dilemma, by Pierre Desrochers and Hirozo Shimizu

'The Locavore's Dilemma' is a response to the local foods movement as embodied by Michael Pollan, author of 'The Omnivore's Dilemma', the title Desrochers and Shimizu choose to imitate. Desrochers and Shimizu ask why, if local agriculture is preferable, the agricultural system has developed into the globalized, corporate behemoth it is today. Their conclusion, as one might guess from the title, is that such development is due to economic forces that are still present, and thus present disincentives to move towards a more local agricultural system. But they go further, and attempt to dismantle each argument for a local agricultural system. While not all the arguments are persuasive, on the whole the book presents serious problems that the local foods movement does not address.

Desrochers and Shimizu structure their argument around debunking five "myths", or arguments for a local agricultural system, but I will comment on only the two better arguments for local foods, those based on local economic and environmental considerations. In response to the idea that a primarily local agricultural system would boost the local economy, Desrochers and Shimizu are at their strongest, and though many of their arguments are fairly standard defenses of globalization, it is worthwhile to examine them in the context of food production. Economic specialization allows for better expertise, and farming is no exception. Economy of scale is also important. Together, these pressures make massive technically advanced and specialized farms more economically viable. Small farms growing a variety of crops are at a significant disadvantage. Neither side of the issue doubts this. The question is whether such "family" farms should be protected, and the answer, purely in terms of what will help the local economy, is no.

Small farms inhabit a romantic place in the modern psyche, of a time before our effect on the environment was manifesting itself in obvious and deleterious ways, a time before Wal-Mart and McDonalds conquered the globe, a seemingly more reflective time. This nostalgia is selective, however. The blessings of technology are, of course, mixed, but it is difficult to argue with the fact that we now lead longer, healthier lives thanks to scientific progress.

While I could argue that technological innovation in agriculture should be embraced rather than shunned for the same reasons that most scientific innovation should be pursued, technological progress and agriculture are linked in a more fundamental way. The Neolithic Revolution was the transformation of societies of hunter-gatherers to sedentary societies that cultivated crops. This change limited the percentage of the population that needed to be dedicated to farming in order to feed everyone. This, in turn, allowed more people to spend their time doing things other than worrying where they would find their next meal. These forces are still in effect.

Protection of small farms, then, stands to slow not just of agricultural innovation, but scientific progress. Is it worth this cost? To answer this, we must examine the reason small farms are supposed to deserve protection. Most arguments usually end up invoking an example of a farmer whose family has farmed that piece of land for decades, and is now being pushed out of business by bigger and/or foreign competitors. We end up conflating our empathy for the farmer, and concern for his economic well-being, with the notion that he has a fundamental right to make a living by farming. This error comes from an era when occupation-specific skills were not typically eclipsed by technological advances in a single lifetime. We should be concerned with this farmer's financial viability, not as farmer, but as a member of society. We should provide the educational resources for him to transition to an occupation that is in demand, and social services to support him during education or while searching for a job. This is the type of shift agricultural innovation allows, and will boost the local economy in the form of cheaper food and a more educated, urban labor force.

We turn now to environmental concerns. Here the answers become less clear, and Desrochers and Shimizu do not help matters by exhibiting brash overconfidence in scientific innovation. However there are still some key ideas behinds the environmental argument for local foods that need to be discarded. Small farms using old "natural" pesticides and tending polycultures are not more "in harmony with nature", whatever that means, than large corporate farms. Agriculture fundamentally transforms the landscape, and the only way to avoid this would be returning to a society based on hunting and gathering. Species as widespread as we are transform the planet. It is quite arrogant of us to believe that we are the first species that has done so (we are not), or that we will be the last. We cannot, therefore, conclude a priori that change is bad.

There are, however, perfectly legitimate reasons to be concerned about climate change. Firstly, we evolved to live in a certain climate, and if we cause that climate to change too quickly, we may not be able to keep up. Secondly, our emotional attachment to the current biodiversity is a legitimate reason to be concerned about threats to that biodiversity. But this emotional attachment should be centered around empathy, and science can direct us our concern by telling us what beings are more likely to experience suffering similar to the way we do. Such an emphasis would lead us to be less concerned than typical environmentalists with plants, and more concerned with animals, particularly complex animals (and, of course, the plants upon which their lives depend). A much deeper discussion of science and morality is important, but will not be covered here.

The question then becomes how best to limit the effects of climate change. And here is where local agriculture once again falls flat. More efficient farming as practiced by large farms that embrace agricultural science requires less land and less energy to produce equal amounts of food. The energy required to transport food from farm to table provides one of the most common arguments for local foods. But long-distance transport of large quantities of food consumes comparatively little energy. Approximately half of the energy put into bringing food the consumer's table is the energy it takes the consumer to travel to and from the grocery store. And even including this, energy put into transportation is dwarfed by the energy required for food production. Over eighty percent of the energy required to put food on the table is consumed in the stages of food production. In terms of energy consumption, local agriculture is not a solution.

I will momentarily digress to note a problematic argument put forward by Desrochers and Shimizu with respect to energy consumption. They assert that we need not be concerned with consumption of fossil fuels, because economic incentives will produce the necessary technological innovation to replace fossil fuels if they become scarce. This is a common and bizarre line of argument. Economic analysis indicates that as fossil fuels become scarce, their price will rise, and incentive will indeed grow for development of an alternative source of energy. Economics tells us nothing about when or whether scientific innovation will make such alternatives possible. Desrochers and Shimizu go so far as to claim that thanks to human innovation, finite resources do not exist, a claim that simply cannot stand. However, this only makes it more important that farms are as energy efficient as possible.

Now that the authors' egregious error has been addressed, we can return to ideas of theirs that stand on firmer ground. There is no question, they admit, that large monocultures are more prone to disease, and that pesticides are more often required. But large-scale farms have the resources to research scientific solutions to crop disease to a greater extent than small farms, and by applying these resources, they mitigate much damage. In this case, we need not rely on blind optimism in scientific progress, as the history of industrial agriculture demonstrates. There is, however, a less easily addressed problem with pesticides. There can be no doubt that we must guard against the poisoning of our air, streams, and soil, and it is highly doubtful that economic incentives are sufficient to prevent these environmental tragedies. But small farms are not inherently better in this respect either. Farmers who claim to use more "natural" pest-control methods typically are just using older, less effective pesticides. This means they must either use more quantity or produce less food, or both. Our focus, then, should be to farm as little land as possible, as efficiently as possible, with pest-control methods that target the problematic pests as specifically as possible. Small farms do not do achieve any of these goals, and despite their problems, large monocultures seem to be our best option.

Desrochers and Shimizu address and refute, with varying success, three other proposed benefits of local agriculture: that it nurtures social capital, increases food security, and brings us food that is tastier, more nutritious, and safer. But even if the local foods advocates were correct about these issues (and they probably are not, particularly on food security and quality), they come at great economic and environmental cost. This book, on the whole, successfully identifies problems with the local foods movement, problems that need to be addressed for us to develop a better idea of how the food production system should look.

Book Review: The End of Faith, by Sam Harris

In the book that brought him fame, Sam Harris brings knowledge of philosophy and neuroscience as well as a willingness to ignore taboos to bear on religion, morality, and spirituality. His most oft-quoted and admittedly extreme excerpts, while not entirely misleading the reader as to Harris's ideas, are more interesting and understandable when taken in the context of his arguments, even if those arguments are not always quite convincing in the end.

Harris spends some time critiquing religious literalists, but this is much too easy to be interesting. His criticisms of religious moderates, however, are precisely what puts the "new" in the new atheist movement. Harris's primary assertion with respect to moderates is that they are moderate exactly insofar as they ignore religious ignorance in favor of secular knowledge. Furthermore, to Harris, the demands of religious moderates for religious tolerance provide cover for fundamentalists. He gives religious moderates no credit for finding the signal of spiritual benefit in the noise that is modern religion, where perhaps a (very) little credit is due. But as Harris points out, there are much easier places to find spiritual wisdom (his favorite place is Buddhist teachings), and what religious moderates really seem to do is read the meaning they want into whatever book of antiquity they happen to choose (or more often, whatever book their parents happened to choose). The degree to which religious moderates protect fundamentalists is unclear. But when a father can refuse to install smoke detectors because using electricity is against his beliefs, and console himself that if his children burn to death, then it is all part of God's plan, the freedom of religious practice afforded individuals in this country becomes a concern.

What Harris is most infamous for is his criticism of Islam, and of the way liberals treat Islam. And there is indeed much to criticize. But there is some truth to Harris's arguments. He finds a litany of quotes from the Koran endorsing all sorts of terrible things, and asserts that Islam as a religion is simply more violent and less compatible with liberal ideals then other religions. This is a strange argument coming immediately after his observation that moderate Christians are moderate because they choose to ignore the more onerous passages of the Bible. Harris points to parallels between the modern Muslim world and medieval Christianity (the era of the Spanish Inquisition, in particular), but fails to recognize that if we grant him this comparison, we find that Christianity is every bit as violent as Islam.

Harris's criticisms of liberal ideology are more convincing. Liberals defending Islam as a peaceful religion often seem every bit as ignorant on the matter as conservatives who attack the religion. One might argue that, in ignorance, we should give Islam the benefit of the doubt (and we should certainly give individual Muslims the benefit of the doubt), but this is not the argument that is usually made. Both sides of this debate simply select passages from religious texts that agree with what they want to believe, and scream them at each other. While Harris's conclusions are dubious, his attempt to actually think about what might be true regardless of political correctness is admirable.

The most extreme conclusions at which Harris arrives are that torture should be much more widely used, and that there are situations in which the West should consider utilizing a nuclear first strike. Harris's reasoning on torture is not nearly as terrible as his conclusion might indicate. Surely the collateral damage we accept as necessary is worse than torture, he argues, as it is the death of innocent people, whereas torture would be neither lethal nor (ideally) used against innocents. His argument, then, is not that torture is not a horrible tool, but rather that we already accept the necessity of equally (or more) horrible tools in our prosecution of various military campaigns. We actually have the high ground we claim. And in this, he is correct. The question he dismisses too quickly is whether torture is effective. Harris claims that even a low rate of effectiveness is acceptable, but does not bother to wonder how effective torture actually is. But this is not his only error in this logic. Harris recognizes that morality is based on human emotion, yet analyzes this question entirely rationally. Such an analysis is important, but it is possible that for purely emotional reasons, we find torture to be a tool too immoral to use. Harris even hints that his own (irrational, according to him) emotional impulse would be to find torture more onerous than, for example, collateral damage. But he strives to ignore this impulse, a mistake we cannot afford with stakes so high.

Harris's reasoning regarding a potential nuclear first strike is primarily hypothetical, and thus is little cause for alarm. He does not seem to believe that a country with a Muslim government and nuclear weapons will act rationally, a fear that seems exaggerated. Even among individuals with apocalyptic world views, the instinct to survive is strong, so Harris's notion that a Muslim government would welcome nuclear Armageddon seems unlikely. That is not to say we should not be particularly concerned when people in power look forward to the end of the world. But staring down the barrel of mutually assured destruction ought to have a rationalizing effect on all but the most deluded individuals.

In the later chapters, Harris turns to presenting alternatives to both the moral and spiritual facets of faith. The notion that science cannot inform us about ethics is often repeated by scientists, and is very much wrong, as Harris points out. Harris identifies the goal of morality to be promoting the happiness and diminishing the suffering of sentient beings, a definition that makes so much sense one cannot help but wonder why the matter is yet up for debate. The amount that science and reason can help with this process, it must be admitted, is limited. This is because happiness and suffering are wrapped up with consciousness, a phenomenon we do not understand scientifically, but introspectively. We can not scientifically determine when someone is feeling pain, we can only determine when their bodies are in states in which people typically report feeling pain. This element of self-reporting does not raise major issues when investigating human pain, but suppose we want to extend our knowledge to other animals. We can only compare them to ourselves, so we can only hope to say whether they might be feeling human-like pain or happiness. We can never say exactly what they are feeling. We cannot even claim to know for certain that a rock is not sentient. While these are important theoretical problems, they are not important practical issues. We must be satisfied with what we can, in theory, do, and indeed it is quite a bit more than we have done.

Harris is perhaps the most controversial member of the Four Horsemen of New Atheism, remarkable in a group that includes Christopher Hitchens. While there are a few spots where his arguments go off the rails, this book is, on the whole, an honest and explicit examination of the sort we critically need. It will not show the faithful the error of their ways, but that is not its intent. Its intent is to assure us skeptics that no, faith is not a virtue.

Book Review: Letter to a Christian Nation, by Sam Harris

Sam Harris is not one to shy away from a fight. In "Letter to a Christian Nation", Harris addresses the substanial proportion of the American population who believe that their version of Christianity is the sole path to eternal bliss, and those who seek meaning elsewhere will spend eternity in Hell. His goal is simple: to illustrate why religious dogma is ridiculous, and in this none-too-challenging task, he succeeds. By arguing in the form of a letter, Harris recognizes that such an argument need not even be book-length. Harris does not address most of his more controversial views on moderate or liberal theology, but some of his arguments are still worth examining furthur.

Harris does mention his distaste for religious tolerance, which liberal society takes too far. But he also argues that Islamic dogma is particularly dangerous. This argument falls flat. Claims that all religions are equally prone to extremism or moderation are result of wishful thinking induced by attempts to be overly tolerant, so it is not immediately obvious that Harris is not onto something. However, we see in the history of Christianity that the interpretation of the Bible has evolved through the centuries, and interpretation of the Koran has done the same. In fact, one could argue that Christianity and Islam owe their longevity and popularity to the flexibility of interpretation afforded by their confusing and self-contradictory tomes. It seems that currently there is more violent Islamic extremism than similar Christian extremism, but the cause of this is likely not that the Koran must be interpreted in more extreme ways, but rather that political and socioeconomic forces are causing such interpretations. This possibility Harris explicitly rejects, and here he errs, unfortunately providing much ammunition for the critics of what he gets right.

A question that Harris does not ask is how we might reduce religious dogma's role in society. Or perhaps he has asked this question, and his answer is this letter. But this type of polemic will not change the minds of people who have been indoctrinated into religious traditions. Religious dogmatists take pride in spiting reason. In the same way that atheists cannot be convinced of God's existence by faith alone, dogmatists cannot be convinced of anything by reason alone. Attacking the dogma to which they subscribe is easy but ineffectual. What must be changed is their attitude towards reason, and this can only be changed internally, though we can encourage it by providing better education and by exposing them to diverse ideas and experiences. While Harris sparks a national conversation we need to have, his explanation of why people cling to religious dogma lacks complexity, and his approach to freeing them of it lacks empathy. In a country in which two thirds of the population are creationists, something must be done. But the solution, unfortunately, is not as simple as rehashing the same line of reasoning yet again, true though it may be.

Book Review: The Emperor's New Mind, by Roger Penrose

The Emperor's New Mind is ostensibly a response to proponents of strong AI and a vehicle for eminent mathematical physicist Roger Penrose to lay out his perspective on the physics underlying consciousness. While that part of the tome is interesting, what is most valuable is the first three quarters of the book, in which Penrose explains key issues in theoretical computer science, the philosophy of mathematics, logic, and a great deal of physics. Curious minds looking for clear introductions to subjects such as the Church-Turing thesis and computability, Mathematical Platonism, Godel's incompleteness theorems, classical or modern physics, and basic neurobiology would be hard pressed to find better reading than the relevant chapters contained in this book.

Penrose does return, in the last chapter or so, to the question of whether machines can think, or dually, whether our minds operate algorithmically. He answers this question negatively, using fairly plausible arguments incorporating computability theory and Godel's incompleteness theorem. He then proceeds to lay out very speculative ideas concerning the nature of consciousness and how we might eventually come to understand the phenomenon physically. Penrose believes that the a more complete explanation of consciousness will only come with a theory he calls "Correct Quantum Gravity". True to his scientific training, Penrose very clearly states when he is speculating, but the conclusion of the book is nevertheless weakened by such whimsical trains of thought. One almost gets the impression that Penrose is simply smart enough to draw whatever conclusions he desires. But that keen intellect is exactly what saves the last chapter, as even the less organized thoughts make for thought-provoking fare, and illustrate how relatively the relatively disparate fields covered in earlier chapters can be brought to bear in novel ways. While the reader will likely remain skeptical of his conclusions, the journey through Penrose's ideas is the true genius of this book.

The Drone War

Death from above, prosecuted by a technologically advanced and foreign civilization, is a standard science fiction trope. The hero typically must execute some ingenious plot to exploit a flaw in the foreign tech to save the human race (or our equivalent in the fictional universe in which the story is set). Self-sacrifice is a common theme, and indeed in more than a few storylines, the human capacity for compassion and self-sacrifice is the secret weapon which ultimately saves the day.

It is astounding, then, that we see fit to hand such a similar recruitment story to terrorist organizations in the Middle East. American drones have been waging a now well-covered, but still mostly supported, war that has been vastly expanded under Obama. We fail to understand how individuals in the countries we bomb perceive us. If they know us only through the bombs we drop, or possibly the polemics made by our political leaders and broadcast throughout the world, they will not hesitate to take extreme measures to protect themselves from what they cannot possibly recognize as another part of humanity.

Obama has been particularly active in pursuing this war. The bar for how important a target must be to warrant a drone strike has been lowered, and collateral damage has been high. And this, so far, is to say nothing of the claim made by the administration that it has the right to kill American citizens. This question is important not because the president should be more morally hesitant to kill American citizens than other individuals, but because the Constitution is supposed to protect citizens from this sort of thing, and ceding this power to the president, or for that matter any part of the government, sets a scary precedent. I don't believe either Obama or Romney will begin assassinating Americans without grave reason or within our borders, but once the conversation shifts to asking who rather than whether we should kill, the precedent has already been set.

We send machines to drop bombs in communities who have either limited contact with the west, or none at all. In doing so, we mask our humanity and push people toward the extremists. We cannot possibly expect individuals in communities we bomb to extend compassion to the builders of the killer drones any more than we can expect them to extend compassion to the drones themselves.

Book Review: Founding Brothers, by Joseph J. Ellis

In "Founding Brothers", Joseph J. Ellis sheds light upon the creative moments of the United States, and indeed was awarded for his effort a Pulitzer. Ellis is a noted scholar on the Revolution and ensuing decades, haven written biographies of Jefferson and Washington, as well as other works on the subject. In this work, Ellis structures his story around six key events in the first few decades following the writing of the Constitution, and in explaining how the various founders react and interact at these crucial moments, Ellis reveals their preferences, strengths, weaknesses, and contributions in those formative years.

Several questions the founders faced will sound familiar to the modern reader. Perhaps the foremost question upon which many heated words were exchanged was the question of what powers ought to reside with the federal government, and what powers ought to be left to the states. While the United States seems to have answered that question (in favor of the federal government), debates over the European Union have a similar character. In fact, one option proposed to address the eurozone debt crisis is the consolidation of debt using eurobonds, which is exactly what happened in late-eighteenth-century United States. Hamilton pushed through a consolidation of state debt accrued over the Revolutionary War, turning a liability into a stronger federal government with better credit than any of the states. Many modern domestic issues also echo questions the founders faced. Altogether, "Founding Brothers" is a fascinating and instructive examination of issues which are still surprisingly relevant.

Reviving!

I'm going to try reviving this blog.  I intend to post primarily essays and book reports, rather than random stuff from the internet, so while I might not update too often, hopefully when I do, it will be interesting.