On the Soapbox

A friend directed my attention towards a column in Newsweek by a rabbi asking "Why do nonbelievers seem to be threatened by the idea of God?"

I think that the author, Rabbi Gellman, answers his question with this passage:

Perhaps their atheism was the result of [...] an angry degrading sermon, or [...] an unfeeling castigation of lifestyle choices or perhaps something even worse. I would ask for forgiveness from the angry atheists who write to me if I thought it would help.

I think that what he has failed to grasp is the pervasiveness with which the wrongs described above applies to our society. His perspective seems to suggest that this is something that applies to only a handful of atheists, but I do not think he understands just how broad a brush those words represent, especially when we consider the legislative effects of religion. But he anticipates this argument and follows with this:

Religion must remain an audacious, daring and, yes, uncomfortable assault on our desires to do what we want when we want to do it. All religions must teach a way to discipline our animal urges, to overcome racism and materialism, selfishness and arrogance and the sinful oppression of the most vulnerable and the most innocent among us.

Herein lies the root of our problems. Most religious people that I have met hold the conceit that religion (either in general or their own particular brand, depending on how liberal they are) holds a monopoly on morality and is what keeps us from acting like barbarians. It is interesting, though, that the author also writes "I don't think they need to be religious to be good, kind and charitable people," which stands in stark contradiction to his passage above. Whatever the case, the fact that we are a social animal and that we are more or less forced to interact with people dictates morality. This is why, despite vast disparities in cultural and religious history, societies all around the world have generally had similar distastes for things like stealing and homicide. The rule of "do unto others as you would have them do to you" is universal and natural and not exclusive to religion. A rejection of religion does not mean that we will dovetail straight into racism or succumb to our animal urges,* and it is because of this universality that atheists do not dispute rules against theft or battery--not because we believe in the value of religion, but because we are human. The problems with the belief that religion holds the "right" keys to morality manifest themselves when we move away from these simple areas and delve into controversy: how we eat, how we conduct ourselves privately, how we mate, how we discover the world, etc. Yet, the author avoids all controversial topics when expounding on the merits of religion. How very convenient.

The anger of atheists is really the anger of libertarianism. "Victimless crimes" is a label that libertarians are fond of using. Why should people care about what two consenting adults do with one another? Some states still carry anti-sodomy laws. Why should people care about how two or more consenting adults wish to legally contractually incorporate and label themselves (i.e., non-hetero marriage and poly-marriage). Why should people care what others proclaim to be the truth (e.g., Galileo). Why should people care what people eat or how people dress? Why are businesses forbidden to do certain things on Sundays? The list goes on, and if you look closely at the libertarian hit-list of laws that deal with victimless situations, you will see that the vast majority of them are rooted in religion in some way. The problem with these sorts of laws and societal rules is that they serve solely as a way to exert control over people. They do not protect people from homicide or theft; they oppress. Religious people take great offense at the notion that their beliefs are oppressive, but there is really no better way to put it, and as we all know, oppression is a very rich source of anger. Yet, when religious rhetoric decries the dangers and evils of "godlessness", they divert the discourse by evoking the imagery of victims and ignore the fact that we differ only on victimless issues.

Although there are a few atheists who would love to see the elimination of religion, most atheists do not hold such outlandish views. If those who are religious will concede that they do not hold a monopoly on morality and if those who are religious stop trying to impose the rules of their religion on others (want to impose all sorts of rules on yourself? by all means, go right on ahead!--just stop when we get to the rules of society), then the vast majority of angry atheists would suddenly become much more amiable. Indeed, my anger as an atheist is limited only to those who support the imposing of their values on others.

During the Cold War, ordinary Soviet citizens were genuinely convinced that Americans were bent on their destruction and vice-versa. Likewise, many religious people seem to believe that atheists with their well of anger wish to destroy their way of life. The religious right likes to paint our self-defense as a sort of attack, but there is a huge difference between forbidding Timmy from praying in school (the religious right's version of ACLU goals) and forbidding Timmy from joining half the class in openly praying in such a way that pressures others into doing so (true ACLU goals; this protects private prayer and also extracurricular prayer groups). We simply wish to preserve our way of life, and our desire to break into a church and dictate what people can believe in is about as strong as our desire for Ralph Reed and Pat Robertson to tell us what we can do with our own lives. On that note, perhaps the religious right would do well to re-think the value of imposing certain societal rules in the context of "do unto others as you would have them do to you."

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* It should be noted, however, that there are a number of animal species that exhibit elaborate social structures, norms, and regulations.

A government official recently claimed that the cost of the war in Iraq is comparable to the amount that Americans spend on Christmas ornaments, or in the ballpark of $450 billion.

Top-of-the-head math: that's roughly $1.5 thousand for every man, woman, and child. While I'm sure that there are some wealthy families who would spend that much, I seriously doubt that most families spend that much, especially considering that this figure is per person and not per family.

Of course, since my family and I have never bothered to celebrate any holiday--much less decorate for any holiday--I really should not sit in judgment over whether $1.5K for decorations is reasonable. For those who do, is it?

It is easy to defend free speech for journalists, political groups, and everyday people. It becomes harder to defend free speech for pornographic and violent content. And the defense of speech that almost everyone finds utterly distasteful is sometimes a Herculean task.

When people talk about defending the right to deny the Holocaust, rosy principles of free speech look dim and many people are understandably left to wonder exactly what social good and value is to come from the defense of such speech. Slippery slope arguments carry little weight as people scoff at the naïve black-and-white binary nature of such arguments. Alan Dershowitz's pet example of how he would support the right of neo-Nazis to peacefully* march through Jewish neighborhoods would strike all but the most staunch civil libertarians as aloof and overly idealistic. While I am staunchly libertarian and idealistic when it comes to such matters, most people, understandably, are not and require arguments of pragmatism. In the end, we have overblown racial hysteria when an art project that resembled a cross was burned** and a number of European governments whose lofty stances on liberties are marred by bans on Holocaust denial.

The New York Times published a review that criticized the handling of a new documentary on the Armenian Genocide on PBS. For those who are not familiar with it, the Ottoman Empire is accused of killing about 1 million Armenian civilians within its borders during WWI. The Turkish government, however, has been and is currently still in denial; the trial in Turkey of an author accused of "insulting" the state for talking about the Genocide made the news just a few months ago. PBS broadcast the documentary this evening, and because of Turkey's continuing denial, it was going to broadcast a panel debate tomorrow pitting two deniers against two affirmers. However, due to pressure from the Armenian lobby and from Congress, a number of PBS stations will not broadcast this debate because of the offensiveness of the Turkish state-sponsored denial of this event. The Times made an excellent case for the broadcast of the debate: it would show just how deluded the deniers are. Without the airing of this debate, the deniers would be armed with rhetorical ammunition as they point to this and cry Armenian conspiracy, and those who are trying to break through the Turkish government's censorship and tight grip on the debate of the issue would be labeled as hypocrites.

As another example, the cartoon controversy may not have degenerated as much if laws against Holocaust denial did not exist in Europe. Instead, Muslims were very quick to harp on the hypocrisy of the West's free speech defense: how is it free speech if anti-Semitic speech is banned but not anti-Islamic? The vast majority of arguments that I have read from the Muslim side have pointed out this glaring discrepancy. How can you expect them to cherish and to respect Western values when the West does not do so itself?

History has shown us that the restriction of speech, even outrageous speech, usually backfires. It makes martyrs out of wicked and hypocrites out of the righteous. However, this is not to say that nothing should be done about such fringe speech. The best way to combat speech that one does not agree with is not through a clamp-down but instead through an engagement in debate and through the use of speech to counter that of the offender. As the Times points out, the panelists pits a "condescending and defensive" denial against an affirmation that is "smooth and [kept] cool", and as The Economist's editorial board pointed out last month, "[F]ar better to let those who deny well-documented facts expose themselves to ridicule than pose as martyrs."

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* Of course, there are definite limits set for speech. The classic "shouting fire" scenario where false speech such as shouting fire in a crowded theatre results in immediate action that leads to death or injury (by way of a panicked stampede) is one such example. In criminal law, credible verbal threats can be prosecuted as assault, and in 2002, the Supreme Court upheld that cross burning is illegal if the intent is intimidation. This is why Dershowitz is careful to stipulate that the march be peaceful.

** A few years ago, some drunken students on a deserted campus during winter break burned an art project that resembled a cross. Ignoring that there was no audience, much less an intended audience, that there was no evidence of racist or otherwise sinister intent, and that there was no evidence to suggest that the cross-like shape of the object was anything more than an unfortunate coincidence, the Claremont Colleges erupted in a fury of outrage that was grossly disproportionate to the act and the students received punishments that were inappropriate for the simple crime of drunken art project destruction.

The May 2006 issue of the Scientific American has an interesting piece on the history of the slide rule. At least, it was interesting for me because up to this point, I hadn't the faintest idea how a slide rule worked or how one might actually use a slide rule.

Invented a long time ago in the 1600's, the slide rule is surprisingly simple in concept: it basically uses the cool properties of logarithms to reduce "hard" problems like division and roots into simple addition and subtraction arithmetic. The article even had a cut-out do-it-yourself slide rule to practice with, though I was not quite ready to mutilate my copy. :P

Although there is no doubt that computers (and digital calculators in particular, although I do so much calculation on my general computer these days that I haven't touched my calculator in years) are much faster, efficient, precise, and capable, the article does bring up a good point: there was something valuable in this lost art. How many people today are familiar with logs, much less the properties of logs? And with the ease of number crunching today, gone is the incentive to spend time thinking about a problem in order to find clever shortcuts and simplifications. I suppose something analogous in computing is that software has grown increasingly inefficient as processing power increases because more and more programmers no longer bother to really think about the logic and then see and take the most efficient solutions (something that I am sometimes guilty of as well, especially with my older projects). Or in economics, this is analogous to the recent study that showed that modern economists are now so far removed from the basic principles of economists that the vast majority of them cannot even correctly answer a simple introductory-level opportunity cost problem.

Of course, this is not to say that I am going to go buy a slide rule tomorrow and dump my many computers; I am by no means a Luddite, and in the greater scheme of things, the death of the slide rule has been a hugely positive thing. But it is interesting in a fascinating sort of way to look at and think about the unintended effects of such progress.

The April 8 issue of The Economist had a short piece on golf and politics. For example, Bill Clinton has been accused of cheating by taking mulligans--some shots just "didn't count". As for Bush Jr., he "doesn't envision the terrible consequences" that can come from risky shots, such as those involving lakes. And the best line: "[W]orking people play basketball, middle-income people play baseball and wealthy people play golf. [...] The wealthier you get, the smaller your balls become."

In the April 15 issue, it printed this line in reference to the French labor law controversy: "The French government this week did what French governments do best: it caved in"

I think it's nice to have the news delivered with a touch of humor...

It's interesting to read that the House immigration bill calls for a 698-mile long fence that comes with a price tag of $2 billion. Do the math, and that's well over $500 per foot.

For contrast, the plans that Panama recently put forth for the widening of the Panama Canal (no small task, considering that the original canal took decades to construct) comes in at only $5 billion.

Of course, in the greater scheme of things, $2 billion is but a drop in the bucket considering the size of the federal budget and the GDP of the country, but when you get enough of these little things, they add up...

"We need revolutions [...] Changes do not come gradually in France; they happen in jolts" Those were the comments (at least, as best as I could remember) that a French interviewee had to offer today to NPR's The World in regards to the protests over the French labor law. One of the most memorable passages that I remember from McKay, Hill, and Buckler's A History of Western Society* was a quote in reference to 1848 by a Briton that was to the effect that the British reform while the French throw up the barricades. With the violent riots of last fall, the recent 1968-esque massive street protests and strikes in response to the labor law, and the general tendency towards mass protests and strikes in France, it seems that this observation is, sadly (and amusingly), applicable to the 21st century.

It seems odd to me that French university students would be so interested in a law that generally does not affect them; for the most part, the labor situation is such that these people would be past the age limit by the time they enter the workforce. Perhaps they were put off by de Villepin's strong-arming the bill through parliament. Or perhaps they see this as a step down the slippery slope of the dismantlement of the French labor system. Whatever the case, whether or not the French are willing to admit it, their labor system is in need of reform: this is a country where the vast majority of young people aspire to hold government jobs for a career. In today's fast-moving economy, an inflexible and protectionist labor market is a dangerous anchor for a country to be attached to.

However, this is not to say that the left's social and moral concerns about the human condition need to be necessarily tossed aside in the name of free markets. Socialists are often quick to point out the problem of externalities in economics. While most people generally think of externalities as someone polluting the air, the externalities that the left is eager to point out are the more subtle ones that affect every economic transaction. For example, by manufacturing automated checkout machines, a company decreases the economic value of a cashier's labor. Those who are familiar with trade theory will recognize this as another way of describing the winners-and-losers effect of trade. The French problem revolves around how one should deal with these externalities. One solution would be to restrict and regulate activity by instating labor protection laws, adopting protectionist trade policies, or enforcing strict rules on factory emissions. This sort of mandate-and-regulate solution is what France has adopted. The other solution would be to harness the power of the market by "fixing" the externality problem through pricing of the externality. The use of high gasoline taxes in lieu of fuel efficiency standards, the adoption of the sort of carbon trading intended for use with Kyoto are clear-cut examples of the externality pricing approach in environmental policy, but what about labor and trade? Transfers. Since trade (which can actually describe all normal economic activity) is a positive-sum game, it means that it is possible to take enough from the "winners" to compensate the "losers" to achieve Pareto optimality without depleting all the gains. Of course, while this sounds nice on paper, is very difficult to implement because the winners and losers are hard to identify and their gains and losses are hard to quantify. The income tax and welfare system is a reasonable approximation of this sort of externality pricing at play. It's not perfect, but it is certainly better than the alternative of dealing with the problem by destroying market forces by creating an inflexible labor market. On that note, perhaps the French should look north towards Scandanavia, where a combination of free and flexible labor markets with lavish social welfare guarantees shows that it is possible to pursue leftist social goals while maintaining a market economy. Unfortunately, if even the well-educated university students in France are unable to see beyond the labor dogma, then perhaps France is indeed in need of a "jolt"... in the other direction.

Afterthought: The opposition to transfers in the United States is based not on the principles of free markets, but instead on deeply-ingrained libertarian ideals. Is it possible to be a libertarian and still believe in transfers? I certainly hope so, as that is what pragmatic economics would seem to dictate. After all, there does need to be a distinction between libertarianism and anarchy (one that the Libertarian Party seems to forget about).

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* Given how bad my memory generally is, it surprises me that I was able to correctly recall off the top of my head both the title and authors of a textbook from eight years ago. Well, it was a good book...

Well, it's made its way to Slashdot now: MIT stole Caltech's cannon (which is locked to the ground) early last week on the 20th anniversary of Harvey Mudd College's theft the same cannon. And where was HMC in all this? Throwing e-mails around mailing lists asking if anyone knew what happened to it:

Did anyone steal the Caltech cannon Monday night/Tuesday morning? They called and said it was stolen and were hoping it was here.

Chris Sundberg
Associate Dean of Students

Yea, HMC is pathetic; its hacking geekiness has long been in erosion.

A friend took the Myers-Briggs personality test and was scored as an INTJ. I read the description for INTJ, and I thought to myself, "gee, that sounds almost exactly like me". I had taken one of these tests a long time ago, back in junior year of high school. As I recall, I was an INTP back then. Well, it has been quite a number of years and I have discovered more about myself since then, so I decided to take the test again (it only took seven minutes). Well, as it turns out, I'm still an INTP; darn, I really liked the INTJ description. What is interesting, however, is that the descriptions for both INTP and INTJ fit me quite well. For one, they talk about different things: the INTP description page talked about a tendency towards analysis and the INTJ page talked about perfectionism. These two description pages were not describing a common set of variables, and thus without the constraints of a sort of mutual exclusiveness, it can accomplish what I call the "fortune-cookie effect". Call me a skeptic, but most of these sorts of personality test results seem to cast a fairly wide net so that people will be more likely to say "oh right, that is me" even if the test results did not really mean that much.

Or it could be that this particular set of descriptions was poorly written. There are a gazillion pages out there with different descriptions of what an INTP is and what an INTJ is, and I didn't really feel like Googling and comparing...

Life is full of little coincidences. Not long after reading an article about the rise of "phishing" and its increasing sophistication, I received a phishing e-mail.

Normally, this would not be something worth writing about. Indeed, I have gotten a number of phishing e-mails before in e-mail accounts that were subject to spam. But this time, it was very different. As the owner of a number of domain names, I have the luxury of using a unique and different address with every site that I deal with (e.g., something that looks like amazon@example.com or paypal@example.com), and I have a special obscure domain name that I use just for this purpose. This way, e-mails that claim to be from, for example, PayPal that are not sent to the e-mail address that I use for solely for PayPal are easy to reject (it also allows me to figure out which sites sell or leak out e-mail addresses to spammers, which was the original purpose of such a scheme). Anyway, this phishing e-mail passed this first test: it came from an online store where I had bought an item a couple of years ago, and it used the correct name and e-mail address.

The second test is an examination of the e-mail headers to see if the IP address that my mail server received the e-mail from makes sense. This e-mail passed this test as well: the IP addresses of the transmitting server belonged to the service provider that was hosting the servers for the company that supposedly sent the e-mail.

The third test is the believability of the content. The e-mail was plain-text, which helped its legitimacy (because it's easy to hide things in HTML, most phishers use HTML e-mails), and the story that it told was plausible. The e-mail claimed that the company's servers have been hacked and that this e-mail was being sent to inform me of that. The language was formal and correct. The alarm bells finally rang when it then requested users to log on and verify some of the information in their database. Not only is this a typical phishing lure, it also makes no sense if one stops to think about it: what exactly would this verification accomplish in respect to this security breach?

Anyway, things seemed fishy enough that I reported the e-mail to anti-phishing sites and CC'ed a copy of my report to the company's customer service. I suspect that their site has indeed been breached (thus, ironically, rendering the story true), and that was how the perpetrators were able to get the right e-mail address and also send the e-mail from the right server. A few hours later, I received a reply from the company, confirming that my suspicions were correct, that the e-mail was illegitimate, and that they are now looking to address the problem.

This particular experience was similar to a recent incident in Florida where bank sites were hacked and used in a phishing scheme. By hacking the company that they are trying to masquerade as, it allows the criminals to clear many of the hurdles and present a hook and lure that is much more convincing and tempting.

I suppose that I am fortunate to be sufficiently tech-savvy that I can easily avoid such Internet hazards, but there are so many people who I could picture falling for this particular trap: a few of my friends, my relatives, Joe Sixpack, etc. With its high efficacy, it's no wonder that phishing is growing so fast.