Things are looking up down under

I lived in Australia for a good two years. In that short period of time, I got to really love the country and its people. There were two things, however, that deeply troubled me about Australian politics at the time (I am talking about 2000-2002). The first was the treatment of refugees not invited by the UNHCR who tried to reach Australia across the sea. The conservative government of John Howard tried to discourage them, among others, by incarcerating them in large camps in the interior of Australia and by shipping them off to Nauru, a pacific island and independent nations where the local government, for a hefty fee, was willing to incarcerate the refugees there.
The new government of Kevin Rudd has decided to stop shipping refugees to Nauru -- good news.
Equally good news was the decision on the second thing that really pissed me off about Australian politics at the time: the unwillingness of the Howard government to apologize for the stolen generations and the reluctance to recognize land rights. Again Kevin Rudd delivered (well, a bit): he apologized in parliament for the stolen generations. I noticed on the footage that many aboriginals attended and that the so-called tent-embassy in front of the parliament in Canberra has been removed (though that was unrelated).

Things are looking up down under.

Neuroeconomics

Tom Ford over at politics@aqute sent us all a link to a recent Wall Street Journal science column. Really interesting stuff: experimental economists in collaboration with neurophysiologists shoved subjects in an MRI scanner and asked them to make decisions about the distribution of food among children in an orphanage in Uganda. This type of research -- neuroeconmics -- is growing in popularity, as the columnist (Lee Holtz) notes. Even the Journal of Economic Literature (a very well-regarded journal) has published a survey of the field.

It is really interesting stuff and I am sure that many surprising and important insights can be gained from this sort of research. I am really impressed with the creativity and care that goes into the design of these experiments. However, these folks really could do with more and better theory. Consider a statement like the following: "...During this test, the scientists wanted to see how synapses valued fairness against the desire to avoid harming others..." Surely, we need to know just exactly what "valuing" means in this context (I was unaware that small brain structures can "value" just like whole-scale human beings) and what fairness is and how it really differs from avoiding harm to others and what it could mean to "desire" that. Also, I am at a loss to see how this particular experiment could shed any light on that questions (assuming there is a coherent question in the first place).

It is a pity that both economists and neuroscientists are reluctant to engage with philosophy at this point. Many smart (as opposed to shallow and popular) philosophers have given lots of careful thought to questions like these and others. Moral philosophers have gone to great lengths to determine the meaning of terms like 'valuing' and 'fairness'. Philosophers of mind have debated examples like these way before MRI scanning with the precision and speed that these experiments necessitate was feasible. There is a vast amount of knowledge there that is just waiting to be used. Perhaps philosophers are also to blame for this lack of exchange of ideas between these disciplines. Be that as it may: we need to get together and talk!

A plague...

I was looking at some figures about the world's population recently. It is growing. What I did not realize before, is the following. A person of my father's generation (born in 1930) has seen the population in the world grow from about 2 billion to 6 billion in 1999 and, if he is still around, will see the 7th billion human being in 2011. So in one life time, the world population has increased by app. 350%!!!

Imagine now that the population of bugs (say cockroaches) in your house grows with that rate of increase within the life time of a single cockroach. Say a roach on average lives one year... You'd have a plague on your hands.

And that is what we are in essence: a plague; a terrible, terrible plague!

A Theory of Affluence

The industrial revolution created an enormous surge in affluence. Whereas mankind was engaged in a struggle for existence in the real sense of the word until then, where any slight disappointment in harvests or other conditions could mean the death of thousands, now it seemed that (at least for a considerable part of) men could leave this behind. There is a lot of debate among historians and social scientists as to what made the industrial revolution possible and why it occurred where it did.

Added to this debate is the theory of Gregory Clark, whose recent book A Farewell to Alms (for the NYT review of this book, click here) created a bit of a stir. Clark's argument is that the industrial revolution was possible because people became more, well, I think 'bourgeois' is the best term for it. Clark shows through careful analysis of the available evidence that there was an enormous downward mobility just before and during the industrial revolution, where the higher classes, because of their higher reproductive success, basically pushed out the traditional lower classes from the economic process. These bourgeois classes brought with them a repertoire of less violent and brutish responses than the traditional lower classes which made them suitable for working in standardized manufacturing conditions. This in turn made it possible that (Western) man escaped the Malthusian trap in which population growth exceeds productivity growth. (I am sure I do no justice to Clark's argument, but something like this is the point.) In other words, evolution made man suitable for starting the industrial (r)evolution -- rather than the other way around.

Babel

Last night I saw (alas, on DVD) -- at last -- Inarutti's Babel, with, among others, Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett.

One of the best anti-American-foreign-policy movies I have ever seen. And the great thing is that it achieves this in a very indirect manner
by focussing on small individuals and their stories in Morocco, Japan and Mexico. Of course, in the end Mr. Inarutti's political views are not
important, for what he shows is that if we (especially those in power) stop listening to each other and instead let current ideologies and
policies taint our vision, people get hurt. An incredibly moving and in many ways true movie.

I recommend it (but you probably all have seen it already). (I really should go to a cinema and see it full screen -- the photography is
something else as well.)

You can't make this up....

Read a funny tidbit the other day, distributed by Tom Ford. I have no idea whether this is true or even plausible but the idea of the followers of Mohammed drinking his piss is hilarious (and disgusting).

Robert Putnam on social isolation

Robert Putnam, the prophet of social capital, and his co-researchers have found a very interesting connection between diversity and social isolation, suggesting that the ideal of multiculturalism -- a diversity in cultures and peoples within the same community -- actually fosters the decay of community and promotes isolation and anomie. Food for thought...