Misunderstood arguments

Posted on November 17, 2013 by Michael

If I had to narrow the Internet down to two things (not including cats and porn), it would be that 1) no one in the history of time has apparently ever had a valid analogy (at least in the eyes of an opponent) and 2) people misunderstand arguments all the time. I want to focus on the second thing.

Often someone will put forth an argument that focuses on factor x, but the objection will inevitably be on factor y. There’s something about being able to see through one’s bias to the frickin’ point that people can’t seem to do. For instance, I recall a philosophy course I once took where the professor used abortion access as an example for one thing or another. The point, as anyone ought to be able to tell, was access. In this instance, abortion wasn’t the focus. Yet, another student predictably tried to make the issue about the rightness or wrongness of abortion. It took no fewer than 3 times for the professor to get the student back on track. And he wasn’t a dumb kid, either.

This is what we often see on the Internet. Even when an issue is explained with utter clarity, a person’s bias just will not allow for a fair understanding. It’s practically willful ignorance; it’s actually amazingly frustrating. Here are just 3 issues I’ve noticed in my debating/discussion days online:

1. Circumcision protects against HIV transmission between heterosexual couples. The usual objection to this is on ethical grounds. This is an invalid objection. The science is the science. You don’t have to like it, but you don’t get to deny it because it’s inconvenient for your ethical stance.

2. Spanking is an unethical practice. The usual objection to this is that people don’t want to raise brats. This is an invalid objection. Aside from the fact that spanked and unspanked children turn out about the same (thus making the objection a troll objection in the first place), the argument is an ethical one. (This is the reverse of the circumcision argument.) Spanking could result in ideal citizens that make the world a better place, but that doesn’t make it right. Disagree that spanking is unethical if you want, but do so by arguing ethics, not efficacy.

3. Talking to the police will not benefit you. The usual objection is that most police aren’t bad people. This is an invalid objection. The reason talking to the police is a bad idea is because anything you say can and will be used against you in court, even if you’re innocent. It doesn’t matter if we’re talking about the best of police or the worst of police. This is about how the justice system works, not any individuals within the system. Indeed, don’t talk to any city, county, state, or federal investigators. That includes street cops, detectives, district attorneys, Congress, or any other person working in an official capacity for the justice system. Your freedom cannot be benefited from talking to the police more than it will from keeping quiet.

Filed under: Misc | Tagged: | 5 Comments »

Tricky marketing

Posted on November 13, 2013 by Michael

A show on the National Geographic Channel called Brain Games has a good track record of exploring and explaining how our brains work, especially in every day circumstances. It’s probable that a good deal of why they work how they do has an evolutionary basis, but it’s also likely that some of their operation is simply incidental, an accident of our emergence from the jungles to the savannah to civilization.

One of my favorite episodes is called “Power of Persuasion”. It’s all about how marketers and advertisers get you to think what they want you to think. The show conducted an experiment (for which there was already ample, controlled evidence) where they sold popcorn to unsuspecting movie-goers. The first set of movie-goers was given a choice between a $3 small bucket and a $7 large bucket. Even when prodded to go for the more expensive choice, most people chose the $3 bucket. When interviewed later, people said they felt like $7 was way too much, and besides, the smaller bucket was more than enough anyway. The second set of movie-goers, however, was given a different set of choices. In addition to the $3 and $7 buckets, they had the option of a $6.50 medium bucket. Many of the patrons chose the medium bucket. When they did, the person behind the counter asked if they wanted to upgrade to the $7 bucket. After all, it was only another 50 cents. A significant percentage of people took the bait, purchasing the large bucket. In their interviews, they said it seemed like they were getting a better deal. Even while making the purchase, some could be heard saying, “Well, it’s only another 50 cents.” People believed they were getting a better deal.

What underlies this exercise is that an extra data point was introduced. In the first scenario the information was limited. Regardless of the price per ounce (which wasn’t given), the $7 bucket was well over twice the price of the small, but it certainly didn’t appear to be twice as big. The perception of the large bucket’s value was low. However, people in the second scenario had a third data point. The small bucket may have still been the best deal, but the $6.50 bucket normalized the prices on the higher end. The $7 bucket’s price was still over twice the price of the small bucket, but it was relatively close in price to the medium bucket; two of the choices had similar prices, so the highest price no longer seemed so extreme. Then when given the choice to spend a relatively small amount more (50 cents), the most expensive bucket seemed like a downright deal.

Now think to all the times you’ve done this. When you look into buying an item, are you only looking at the quality? Or are you looking at the value you’re getting? How often have we all opted to buy the medium-priced item because we don’t want something cheap, but the highest priced items are too much? And how often have we allowed ourselves to spend just a little more because the next product level was so close to what we were willing to spend on a slightly inferior item? I don’t know about you, but I think about this every time an employee at my local cafe asks if I want to upgrade from a medium to a large for just another 30 cents. It seems like a good deal, and maybe it is, but do I actually want more chai tea or do I just want more value?

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Outrage culture

Posted on November 12, 2013 by Michael

I get the sense that as this century progresses, more and more we suffer from outrage culture. Did someone say something offensive? Outrageous! Was something not politically correct enough? Outrageous! Did a politician in the other party not wear a sufficiently large America flag pin? Outrageous!

Most often, though, this outrage seems to be premised in one particular group’s opportunity to be the only one at the table that gets to express how uniquely oppressed it is. For example, Jimmy Kimmel aired a bit last month where he asked children what we should do about our debt to China. One kid, no more than 6, suggested killing everyone in China. Kimmel then asked how many of the (4) kids thought that was a good idea. It wasn’t AT&T commercial cute, but it sufficed for a late night talk show bit. However, now many Chinese-Americans are outraged.

It’s not an issue that people would be mildly offended at the bit. The issue is in the calls for Kimmel to be fired and the sustained picketing outside his show and online. It’s an overreaction, a mountain from a mole hill. This is outrage culture. A group sees the opportunity to portray itself as particularly oppressed, as particularly harmed. The reason why they’re being oppressed isn’t really what’s important. What’s important is that they’re oppressed and hurt and offended and you aren’t. It doesn’t matter which race, ethnicity, or other type of group it is. It only matters that the opportunity is there to demonstrate outrage that only this group is allowed to have.

This type of culture, this outrage culture, only serves to set up artificial segregation between minority groups (of any kind, whether racial or otherwise) and everyone else. Yes, get upset over major issues. Express outrage at racial slurs. Get up in arms over discrimination. But don’t make mountains out of mole hills because you want your group to own the right to be outraged to the exclusion of everyone else. That explicitly sets up walls and barriers, and these are the very things we should want to do away with.

Filed under: Politics and Social | Tagged: , | 1 Comment »

Honeygate

Posted on November 10, 2013 by Michael

The Internet is filled with a lot of annoying people. Sometimes they’re simply irritating because their educational level is so clearly so low. Other times they’re just trolls. It’s that latter category that mostly latched onto the “honeygate” ‘scandal’ involving Richard Dawkins, but I suspect a fair number are just unable to think beyond a very superficial level.

Briefly: Richard Dawkins made a Twitter post complaining about having a jar of honey confiscated as he made his way through a UK airport. The Internet lit up with mocking posts on Twitter and in the blogosphere about how Dawkins lost his dear jar of honey. Here’s his post:

Bin Laden has won, in airports of the world every day. I had a little jar of honey, now thrown away by rule-bound dundridges. STUPID waste.

Again, most of these people were simply trolls. They damn well know this isn’t about a jar of honey or any other particular liquid. The complaint is about overly strict airport security that does little to nothing to secure anything other than the paychecks and inflated egos of TSA and other needless agents.

But this is the Internet. This is where people go to be assholes.

This post isn’t so much about the annoyance of Richard Dawkins by a bunch of mooks. It’s about the fact that people routinely ruin worthwhile and potentially very fruitful discussions because they just want to watch the world burn. Or, less dramatically, they’re dickface trolls. These people are like less skilled versions of people who spread computer viruses. Viruses that are designed simply to hurt the computers of people, not to gain money, scam people, make political points, etc, but simply to cause harm are the worst ones out there. It’s like a vandal throwing a rock through your kitchen window. There’s no reason behind it. There’s no logic or thought behind it. The entire ‘point’ is to be an asshole. These are bad people.

Now, I don’t have the blog traffic for anything to come of this post, but I suspect a recounting of this post by these sort of people would paint me as a defender of honey or Dawkins or something this post isn’t about. Because why not? Intentionally misunderstanding something isn’t dishonest assholery. No, no, it’s just funny. Sure.

Filed under: Rant | Tagged: , , | 1 Comment »

My flirtation with “Men’s Rights”

Posted on November 9, 2013 by Michael

Right away, “men’s rights” sounds like a ridiculous notion. We think of it in comparison to women’s rights and the women’s rights movement, something absolutely necessary in the history of the United States, and still necessary today. We’ve needed women’s rights, from the early part of the century and before when women couldn’t vote, through the middle of the century when women were paid little and sexual harassment was accepted. There’s been a certain disadvantage to being a woman in society; the flip side is that there’s been a certain advantage to being a man. Only the most extreme of individuals will say these facts are firm 100% of the time – of course women have advantages in some areas, and of course men have disadvantages in some areas – but it is clear that life as a man is, on average, easier than life as a woman.

I agree with what I’ve said. That isn’t all simply a recounting of a narrative or a statement of a worldview I’m preparing to attack. I affirm that it is an advantage, on average, to be a man. Indeed, even with my gender and sex identity wiped from my memory, if I could be reincarnated and given the choice to be a man or a woman, I don’t imagine a scenario where I would choose to be a woman. That isn’t to say there is anything wrong with being a woman, though. It’s simply to affirm the advantage that comes with being a man. (Just the same, if I had a choice between being, say, 5 feet or 6 feet, I would always choose 6 feet. That doesn’t mean 5 foot tall people are bad.)

So, again, I affirm men, on average, have an advantage in life over women.

Sadly, the reason I have had to affirm my belief about the male advantage in society is that I’m also going to say something which will automatically cause a certain part of society to ignore absolutely everything I have to say on anything ever again: I sympathize with men’s rights activists (MRA’s).

Of course, I have to qualify this like crazy because the men’s rights movement (MRM) is so often vilified. For example, the Southern Poverty Law Center went idiot hunting last year. What they found was a handful of barely popular fringe websites that were antagonistic towards women, spewing a lot of misogyny and sexism. Coupled with these sites were two of the more popular outlets for men’s rights: A Voice for Men and r/mensrights, a subreddit on the popular site reddit.com. I would lump probably 80% of what A Voice for Men posts with the idiots. The r/mensrights subreddit, however, is a different story.

Since becoming a reddit addict earlier this year, I’ve taken to subscribing to a lot of different subreddits. (Think of reddit has a message board and subreddits as forums. It’s not quite like that, but the idea is basically the same.) I like to make it a point to occasionally subscribe to subreddits that don’t reflect my views. I figure I’ll either learn something or find something funny. The latter reason is why I initially subscribed to r/Christianity and r/mensrights. I soon unsubscribed to r/Christianity because it was so boring, but I stuck around r/mensrights. Men have a big advantage in life, so it was sure to be hilarious, right?

Not really.

As it turns out, there are a lot of important issues raised in r/mensrights that had never crossed my radar. For instance, it never crossed my mind to consider how much of a discount women get on their prison sentences versus men for the same crime. (It’s something like 60% overall, and only a few crimes net women harsher sentences than men.) As anyone who reads FTSOS knows, I’m no fan of the U.S. criminal justice system. I think it’s utter garbage, an institution set up to keep people locked up for petty crimes while private prisons (which should make everyone say “What in the fuck?”) make loads of money. So my reaction to women’s decreased sentences isn’t that they should be raised to those given to men, but I think it’s obvious men and women should be treated equally under the law.

And there are other issues. Go find any article about a male teacher accused of one form or another of sexual assault on a female student. The headline will never say he “had sex with” her. No, it will rightly say he assaulted/raped her. But read an article where the teacher is female and the student is male, and well, she had sex with him. He’s a guy. He must have wanted it, right?

Now, recall when I said I couldn’t imagine choosing to be a woman anymore than I would choose to be 5 feet tall. I’m assuming a clean slate, an equal chance to have my life turn out great as I have for it to turn out awful. But change the details and ask me if I’d rather be a man or a woman standing in divorce/family/criminal court? The answer is obvious: a woman all the way. Even beyond the criminal ‘justice’ system, it is never an advantage to be a man. Women are almost always given custody of children by default. Divorce settlements decidedly favor women (even when the woman is capable of making her own living based upon the skills she has obtained during marriage).

But now I have to get back to the qualifying, less I be accused of embracing everything to do with men’s rights. I greatly dislike when people in r/mensrights use intentionally sexist terms like “bitch”, “harpie”, “shriek”, and so forth. I’m all about using language freely and openly, but it’s obvious the intention by some of the people in that subreddit is to demean women. Fuck that bullshit. And fuck the commenters who genuinely do seem to hold a grudge against all women. I don’t support that.

So, let me be clear: I have a sympathy towards the men’s rights movement insofar as it points out issues where men are treated unfairly and do have a disadvantage. I think it’s wrong that our various courts are obviously (and insanely) biased against men. I think it’s wrong that the sexual assault of young boys is treated as something those boys wanted, provided to perpetrator was a woman. (Notice the lack of headlines declaring “Priest accused of having sex with altar boy.”) I’m very much a utilitarian, but I also very much see the value in egalitarianism. This isn’t always expressed by MRA’s, but it is the underlying theme I’ve seen. That is where my sympathy lies. (The utter lack of egalitarianism in 3rd wave feminism disgusts me.)

But let me be extra clear: My sympathy towards men’s rights does not mean one can possibly conclude my favor or disfavor regarding any given issue. I may think it’s wrong that a man walking with his son in the English countryside was assumed to be a pedophile (the same would not happen to a mother), but that doesn’t mean I have a significant issue with the massive funding disparity between breast cancer research and prostate cancer research – a look into the data shows that it makes sense for the most part. (I do, however, have an issue with the lack of funding lung cancer research receives as compared with breast cancer research.)

So here’s the big conclusion. The MRM raises some valid points that I think deserve far more attention than they currently get. Moreover, I am on board with the egalitarian approach of the movement (an approach, incidentally, which characterizes much of 1st and 2nd wave feminism). I also agree with the idea held by many MRA’s that sexism is not defined by a power asymmetry, but by discrimination on the basis of sex. Aside from being the dictionary definition of sexism, I reject the idea that a given group being in power translates to the individual members of that group automatically having greater power. That is, Congress being composed of mostly white men does not mean that every white man has more power than everyone else. Thus, sexism can and does occur independently of a group’s collective power. But does that mean I embrace everything espoused by anyone claiming the label of “MRA”? Of course not. I’m not a frequent poster on reddit, but most of what I’ve posted in r/mensrights has been dissent. The movement doesn’t have a cohesive philosophy, so it has some serious holes. (Feminism also doesn’t have a cohesive philosophy – forget about claiming it is a philosophy – but as a political movement (and that’s exactly what it is), it is far more coherent than the MRM.) But just as feminist writers opened my eyes to sexism I once did not see, the MRM has made me aware of unfair treatment of one of the sexes.

Filed under: Politics and Social | Tagged: , , , | 38 Comments »

Fresh vs frozen food

Posted on November 9, 2013 by Michael

As someone with food snob friends, I find this incredibly satisfying.

Filed under: Science | Tagged: , | 1 Comment »

Ken Cuccinelli defeated

Posted on November 5, 2013 by Michael

According to some reports I’m seeing come across my side of the Internets, Ken Cuccinelli has been defeated in the race for Virginia governor. I don’t really care about Virginian politics, so I’m not all that concerned about looking up the name of the Democrat who won. All that matters is that the sexually immature, bigoted, anti-science Cuccinelli lost. I hope this is the end of his political career.

Filed under: News, Politics and Social | Tagged: | 1 Comment »

The gender wage gap myth

Posted on November 5, 2013 by Michael

I was once antagonistic to the idea that the gender wage gap we’re always hearing about was really a myth. I mean, I wasn’t totally against the notion; when the evidence was presented to me, I accepted it as far as I saw it go, which was from women making 72-77% of men to women making more like 92% of male earnings. But I now believe that number to be more like 95%. That’s still a problem, but not one that I think merits government intervention like it once did. It’s a problem that is borne of certain cultural conditions that are beyond what any law can change (and, indeed, some of it isn’t even a problem where it’s simply a matter of choice on the part of the individual). Moreover, boys are increasingly being left behind in grade school; their behavior is seen as quintessentially wrong and in need of correction (hence why it is boys, not girls, who are given more Ritalin prescriptions). Even moreover, enrollment in higher education is somewhere around 60% female at this point. Simply put, women are poised better now than ever to not only overcome the (real) wage gap, but to reverse the trend. (I don’t expect anyone to raise a stink when that happens, though – at the very least, the anti-egalitarian feminists won’t.)

So, inspired by a comment left here, I want to dispel the gender wage gap myth with this abridged article:

Why the Gender Pay Gap is a Complete Myth

Men are far more likely to choose careers that are more dangerous, so they naturally pay more.

Men are far more likely to work in higher-paying fields and occupations (by choice).

Men are far more likely to take work in uncomfortable, isolated, and undesirable locations that pay more. Men work longer hours than women do.

Men are more likely to take jobs that require work on weekends and evenings and therefore pay more.

Even within the same career category, men are more likely to pursue high-stress and higher-paid areas of specialization.

Despite all of the above, unmarried women who’ve never had a child actually earn more than unmarried men, according to Nemko and data compiled from the Census Bureau.

Women business owners make less than half of what male business owners make, which, since they have no boss, means it’s independent of discrimination.

Each one of the claims is backed up either with a direct citation or in reference to other cited work. Now, one may argue, for instance, that women choosing to spend more time caring for children than men do is a remnant of a patriarchal society. Then, if one is a feminist caricature, one may say the word “privilege” a half dozen times. Finally, one may conclude that traditional male and female roles are in and of themselves sexist and ought to be changed. However, one would be talking about an entirely different issue than the gender wage gap. Because, as we can all see based upon the clear and convincing evidence, the gender wage gap is almost entirely a myth.

Filed under: Politics and Social | Tagged: | 3 Comments »

Thought of the day

Posted on November 3, 2013 by Michael

Here are the top 3 best acting performances I’ve ever seen:

3. Aaron Paul as Jesse Pinkman on Breaking Bad.
2. Bryan Cranston as Walter White on Breaking Bad.
1. Heath Ledger as The Joker in The Dark Knight.

Filed under: Misc | Tagged: , | 2 Comments »

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