The stigma of lung cancer and the nature of human reason

BBC NEWS | Health | Lung cancer carries severe stigma

The stigma attached to lung cancer can have far reaching consequences for patients, research suggests.

Oxford University researchers found many patients felt people blamed them for their illness because it is so strongly associated with smoking.

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Any campaign claiming a particular outcome is sometimes the consequence of a undesired behavior will cause most humans to reason that the converse is true -- that the outcome very strongly implies the undesired behavior. Humans do not understand correlation.

Lung cancer and smoking. HIV infection and unprotected anal intercourse. Adolescent misbehavior and neglectful parenting.

Having made this inference, humans will further infer that the person, having "caused" the bad outcome, is themself bad. Not only are they unworthy of comfort, they are deserving of shame.

This is how human cognition works. As noted in a prior post, our cognition is not so different from that of our fellow mammals (dogs). It evolved, it "suffices", it is profoundly imperfect. Logic and reason can adapt or modify our intuitive thinking, but that takes training and education. Reason and logic are often uncomfortable precisely because they contradict common human cognitive structures. Hence the strong preference for evangelical conservatives for teaching obedience, discipline, doctrine and memorization rather than reason and logic.

Dogs again -- not so far behind?

BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Collie dog's word power impresses

A very smart collie dog named Rico has stunned German researchers by learning words with the apparent flare of a young child, Science magazine reports.

Rico understands more than 200 words and can work out the meaning of new ones, by a process of elimination.

What is more, Rico can often remember new words after a whole month - even though he has only heard them once before, the scientists claim.

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This article quotes some who deprecate Rico's capabilities. They are unconvincing. Canine genius or not, he teaches us some fascinating things about the evolution of language and cognition.

A bit of breeding for puberty, longevity and language capabilities and we might produce a quite different dog. I wonder if the dog would thank us or not.

DeLong on Seymour Hersh's U Chicago speech

Torture and Rumors of Torture: Archive Entry From Brad DeLong's Webjournal

...If what it reports is true, then once again it looks like the Bush administration is worse than I had imagined--even though I thought I had taken account of the fact that the Bush administration is always worse than one imagines. Either Seymour Hersh is insane, or we have an administration that needs to be removed from office not later than the close of business today. The scariest part: "[Hersh] said he had seen all the Abu Ghraib pictures. He said, 'You haven't begun to see evil...' then trailed off. He said, 'horrible things done to children of women prisoners, as the cameras run.' He looked frightened.

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I think Hersh is quoting from another blogger, but forgot to link to the author. It's worth going to DeLong's site to read this.

Reagan - Chaunce the gardener

The New Republic Online: Unorthodox - Jonathan Chait

...The missile treaty was no fluke. Alongside Reagan's (justly) celebrated steely revulsion toward communism sat a wooly-headed, almost peacenik, sensibility. Washington Post reporter Lou Cannon's 1991 biography of Reagan--celebrated for its fairness by left and right alike--revealed Reagan's attachment to anti-cold war movies like The Day After and War Games, which inveighed against the horrors of nuclear war in the most syrupy way. He had a particular affinity for the 1951 science fiction film The Day the Earth Stood Still, in which an alien arrived and forced the United States and Soviet Union to make peace. Reagan invoked this trope so frequently that Colin Powell, his national security adviser, would tell his staff, 'Here come the little green men again.' Reagan even brought up the movie in his 1988 summit with Gorbachev--who, understandably, didn't know quite what to make of it--in the course of proposing a deal by which both sides would destroy their entire nuclear arsenals. All in all, his view toward the cold war was far different than the 'moral clarity' that is currently ascribed to him.

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Peter Seller's 1979 movie "Being There" was a masterpiece about a very simple gardener who, by virtue of cryptic responses and a good suit, is elevated to the presidency. At the end of the movie Chaunce the Gardener strolls across a pond. Not around, across.

The movie was based on a book that preceded Reagan, but Reagan inspired the movie.

The movie may be the best possible guide to Reagan's contributions to history. I suspect, however, we really owe as much to Howard Baker and Mikhail Gorbachev as to Ronald "Chaunce" Reagan.

How Reagan & Gorbachev ended the Cold War

Ron and Mikhail's Excellent Adventure - How Reagan won the Cold War. By Fred Kaplan

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In which Reagan is given some credit, in an odd sort of way, for peace with Russia and the end of the USSR.

Antidote to the republican deification of Reagan

BBC NEWS | Americas | Critics question Reagan legacy

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Nice round-up by the BBC.

Terraforming - Polynesian style

The New York Times > Science > Tasty, and a Great Source of DNA

There is much evidence that the Lapita people took R. exulans along for food. Unlike European rats, Dr. Matisoo-Smith said, exulans do not swim and dislike wet conditions. So it is unlikely that they accidentally reached the islands through infested ships.

As a food source, the rats do not require much effort. The Lapita would have just had to release them on the islands they settled, and rats being rats, there would soon be plenty for eating.

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Quite a few science fiction writers have based their "space faring cultures" on the Polynesian peoples. Using a bioform to prepare a habitat (thereby wiping out many local species) for colonization is a classic terraforming move.

Remembering Reagan - as he was

Salon.com | The Reagan legacy

As the eulogies come down the pike, don't let conservatives, once again, win the ideological struggle to determine mainstream discourse. Remember Reagan; respect him. But don't let them make you revere him. He was a divider, not a uniter.

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A good article. Reagan was nastier than I'd remembered.

Apple - AirPort Express - Yes.

Apple - AirPort Express

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Yes. As soon as the first set of disastrous bugs are fixed. I wish there were a firewire port too, but I think iPod firewire is passe. I'm betting the next generation will be all USB 2.0. I wonder if the USB connector on this device will allow one to eventually broadcast off an iPod ...

No kidding, GWB may really qualify as a war criminal

INTEL DUMP - Archives 2004-06-08 - 2004-06-14

Jess Bravin reports in Monday's Wall Street Journal (subscription required) about a classified legal memorandum prepared by the Pentagon's Office of General Counsel that appears designed to find every legal workaround possible to justify coercive interrogation and torture at Guantanamo Bay. This report comes in the wake of disclosures about other memoranda — one written in early 2002 by UC Berkeley law professor John Yoo while with the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel, and a second written by White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales — justifying the White House's overall Guantanamo Bay plan. This latest memo, signed in April 2003, goes much further than those though — it specifically authorizes the use of torture tactics, up to and including those which may result in the death of a detainee...

...The president, despite domestic and international laws constraining the use of torture, has the authority as commander in chief to approve almost any physical or psychological actions during interrogation, up to and including torture, the report argued. Civilian or military personnel accused of torture or other war crimes have several potential defenses, including the "necessity" of using such methods to extract information to head off an attack, or "superior orders," sometimes known as the Nuremberg defense: namely that the accused was acting pursuant to an order and, as the Nuremberg tribunal put it, no "moral choice was in fact possible."

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If you want to be a Nazi, this DOJ document suggests how to get away with it. I rather doubt Bush is going to sign any international war crimes treaty -- he'd be convicting himself.

The term "war criminal" is used so carelessly that it's lost most of its meaning. The bombing of Cambodia may have been a war crime, and Kissinger might thus qualify as a war criminal, but I can't think of many other clearcut post-1980 examples (though I'm no historian). Except for this one. Even I'm a bit stunned.

Ashcroft should go now. Bush should not be reelected. If he is, no American with half a brain can claim they "didn't know".

On redistribution

The Atlantic | January/February 2004 | Are We Still a Middle-Class Nation? | Lind

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The disparity between rapid productivity growth in mechanized sectors and slow productivity growth in human-service jobs produces Baumol's disease—named after the economist William J. Baumol. According to Baumol, in a technological economy falling prices for manufactured goods and automated services eventually increase the relative cost of labor-intensive services such as nursing and teaching. Baumol has predicted that the share of gross domestic product spent on health care will rise from 11.6 percent in 1990 to 35 percent in 2040, while the share spent on education will rise from 6.7 percent to 29 percent.

The shifting of relative costs need not in itself be a problem. If Americans in 2050 or 2100 pay far more (as a percentage of their spending) for health care and education than they did in 1900, they may still be better off—if they pay correspondingly less for other goods and services. The problem is that as the relative cost of services like education and health care rises, more and more Americans will find themselves in service-sector jobs that, unlike the professions, have historically been low-wage...

... In the absence of some system of private or public redistribution, then, there is no guarantee that rising national productivity will spontaneously and inevitably produce rising incomes and wealth for most Americans, rather than just windfalls for the fortunate few.

Since the 1970s inequality of both income and wealth in the United States has increased dramatically. As Paul Krugman has observed in The New York Times, a Congressional Budget Office report shows that from 1979 to 1997 the after-tax income of the top one percent of families climbed 157 percent, while middle-income Americans gained only 10 percent, and many of the poor actually lost ground. The share of after-tax income that goes to the top one percent of Americans has doubled in the past three decades; at 14 percent, it roughly equals the share of after-tax income that goes to the bottom 40 percent. The concentration of wealth at the upper levels of the population has been even more extreme....

... It is doubtful that in any society with universal suffrage the majority is going to sit on the sidelines and watch, generation after generation, while a handful of investors and corporate managers reap almost all the benefits of technological and economic progress.

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Argentina.

This is a good complement to Reich's Book, except Reich backs away from redistribution. A bit of intellectual cowardice, as his text makes the case even more strongly than this article.

The Law of Preservation of Quality: The Atlantic and The Economist

The Atlantic Online | Back Issues

Ok, there's no such law. But is it entirely coincidental that as The Economist has gone into decline, The Atlantic has emerged from abyss?

UN Security Council Resolution on Iraq: Yes France, you were right

The New York Times > International > Middle East > United Nations: U.S. and Iraq Submit Plan to Security Council Session

Mr. Powell said the American military would still have the right to imprison Iraqis, though he said internment would be resorted to only 'where this is necessary for imperative reasons of security.' He pledged that members of the multinational force would always act 'consistently with their obligations under the law of armed conflict, including the Geneva Conventions.'

From what I can tell, the resolution is basically America's way of saying "Yeah, France, you were right. We screwed up. Now we will do it the way we should have done it from the beginning."

Bush will never admit to the screw-up or the reversal, but this is a good thing.

Bill Joy: A man after my own heart

The New York Times > Magazine > Encounter: Proceed With Caution

The other Bill Joy, however, would very much like to prevent the inevitable from happening. Four years ago in an article he wrote for Wired magazine, Joy declared that the headlong race in biotechnology and nanotechnology might prove catastrophic. In the time since, he has continued to explore and advance this concern. Joy says he thinks the probability of a ''civilization-changing event'' is most likely in the double digits, perhaps as high as 50 percent.

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I'm not as smart as Joy (ok, very few people are), so it's nice to have someone like him with my cheerful perspective on life.

So what happened to journalism in the 90s?

Why Oh Why Can't We Have a Better Press Corps? : Archive Entry From Brad DeLong's Webjournal

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Time to ask why the media has fallen so far. Theories?

Here are mine:

1. The government developed a set of techniques and discipline for managing the media. The need for sources was always the achilles heal of the media -- it just took a while for government to discover how to use this lever.

2. Economics. Print media is stressed by net advertising and the decline in classifieds revenue. Broadcast is stressed by cable. Financial weakness means more advertising levers to pull, and less ability to defend.

3. Corruption. Journalists saw too many stupid people getting rich ripping the system off. No-one seemed to care. Finally they gave up and decided to get their piece.

Are there historical analogies?