Then We Came to the End

I'm reading that book right now, and not only is it a great read, but it's also very appropriate for this week, when both my tenure at work and the Democratic primary come to their respective ends.

I'm psyched to ride the Obama tide. I was an ambivalent but unwavering Hillary supporter throughout the primary, and I still think she would make an excellent president. I really can't get too worried about verbal gaffes or the sins of her supporters; I like her health care plan, I like her doggedness, and I like her solidity. But I think she now needs to concede—I always said she would never concede on the night of a primary win, so I'm not surprised she didn't concede tonight—so we can start the fight for Obama. And, actually, I think she needs to concede so the Republicans can start their fight against Obama. If they have aces up their sleeves that they're just waiting to rip out, it's far better they do it June than in September. And the sooner we can see him juxtaposed with McCain, the better. He will come across so well: He's quicker (I don't mean smarter, per se, but that too), he's more poised, and he's more passionate. He just needs really good foreign policy people whispering in his ear so he makes zero gaffes. I think Barack Obama will make a wonderful, thoughtful, and inspiring president, and I'm thrilled to have him as our nominee.

I wasn't too upset about work winding down. I've been excited for the summer and all the possibility and freedom it holds, and I've been looking forward to living outside the 9 to 5 (or 10 to 7, as the case may be). But just last Friday I started to feel the impending nostalgia. I work in a great area with great people researching and writing about great ideas. There have been better times and worse times at work, but in the end, I've been working in a job most people can only dream about. Not only do I get to write, but I get to write about science. Not only do I get to research, but I get to talk to great scientists about their work. Not only do I report, but I get to think deeply about scientific ideas. Not only do I get to think about articles, but I get to think creatively, across as many media as can fit on a screen (and that's many). And I get to do it all with an uncommonly intelligent and young group of people. That's pretty special. Oh, and I get to proofread. Which I enjoy more than is probably healthy.

There was a time, after I had been writing news stories for a while, when I was wondering whether I was really getting a lot out of my job. A couple of years later, I know I've learned an incredible amount. My writing is better than ever (and if you were looking for "but also"s to follow all of those "not only"s...I hate you). I have become more comfortable on the phone and with my ability to talk with people of all ages and levels of prestige. I have learned what it means to work in an office and what it means to work on a team...and how many things 'working on a team' can mean. I have slowly started to figure out what makes a good boss and what makes a good subordinate, although those are always a little slippery. While I never quite got the hang of thinking as a journalist—that's one of the reasons I'm not staying—I did get the hang of thinking about issues from the perspective of our publication, which is a worthwhile perspective to have. And I learned a lot about science. That's important stuff.

I certainly can't sum up 32 months in a single blog post, but I'll just say, I've been grateful for them. Even in the most miserable times, I was learning, and even in the best times, I was finding out what was wanting in me and in my work.

Oy, I've fallen into lots of soulful repetitions in this post. I think it's because I'm listening to Obama's victory speech as I write. Back to the Baracketry...

Pre-Bed Thought 2

The New York Times has this great article on experimental philosophy this week. It's good to hear this is going on: I always thought that ethics, especially, could benefit from some good experiment. If you think ethics is more descriptive than proscriptive, as they say, it makes sense to test your ideas when you can. And it might even make sense just to throw people into a bunch of situations and see what comes out.

But here's my take on the actual study cited. And I quote.

Suppose the chairman of a company has to decide whether to adopt a new program. It would increase profits and help the environment too. “I don’t care at all about helping the environment,” the chairman says. “I just want to make as much profit as I can. Let’s start the new program.” Would you say that the chairman intended to help the environment?

O.K., same circumstance. Except this time the program would harm the environment. The chairman, who still couldn’t care less about the environment, authorizes the program in order to get those profits. As expected, the bottom line goes up, the environment goes down. Would you say the chairman harmed the environment intentionally?

I don’t know where you ended up, but in one survey, only 23 percent of people said that the chairman in the first situation had intentionally helped the environment. When they had to think about the second situation, though, fully 82 percent thought that the chairman had intentionally harmed the environment.

Then there's another similar study:

Edouard Machery, a philosopher of science at the University of Pittsburgh by way of the Sorbonne, told subjects about a man named Joe who visits the local smoothie shop and asks for the largest drink available. Joe is informed that the megasmoothies come in a special commemorative cup. He doesn’t care one way or the other about the cup. He just wants the megasmoothie. Did he get the commemorative cup intentionally? Most people said no. What if, instead, he’s informed that the megasmoothie has gone up in price and that he’ll have to pay an extra dollar for it? Joe doesn’t care about the extra dollar; he just wants the megasmoothie. Did he pay the extra dollar intentionally? Most people said yes. Machery concluded that foreseen side effects of our actions are taken to be intended when we conceive them as costs incurred for a benefit. In the case of the blameworthy company chairman, then, more pollution was taken to be a harm incurred to gain more profit.

I think, and perhaps I think this too frequently, that this is a language issue more than a substance issue. I think we actually use the word "intend" differently in positive and negative situations. When we talk about intending good things to happen, we are asking whether we purposefully brought something about. This is our usual definition of "intend." But I think when we ask "Did he intentionally harm the environment?" or "Did he intentionally pay the extra dollar?" we're asking whether or not he was hoodwinked and/or ignorant, whether he did something with or without knowing the all the negatives.

I think this distinction might also come in not just in the situations but also in the difference between the phrasing "Did he intend to...?" and "Did he intentionally...?" I think "intentionally" points to knowledge of the consequences of your actions more than it points to purpose. Whereas "intend" points to purpose. You shoot an intruder in the chest. Did you intend to kill him? Maybe not. Did you intentionally kill him? For some reason, it feels slightly more ambiguous, slightly more likely.

So yeah, first reaction: In the positive situations, as presented here, we need them to be purposeful actions to define them as "intended," and in the negatives the person need only have full awareness of the consequences and be in control of their actions to qualify as "intentional."

Pre-Bed Thought

I read something today that raised the question, "Why did we evolve consciousness?" It is, of course, a fun question: Couldn't we do exactly the same stuff if we weren't there witnessing it? I haven't given the question appropriate consideration, but here are my first thoughts:

We could have evolved consciousness because it's the most efficient way to make us unpredictable. Unpredictability has clear benefits for survival...it's harder for animals to hunt you or for other people to trick you if they don't know you'll react the same way to nearly identical stimuli. And although I'm more or less a determinist, certainly the factors that sway decisions can be extremely subtle and nigh impossible to control for. It's really hard to create a random number generator, so perhaps consciousness is the closest we can get with reasonable efficiency. Also (and similarly), consciousness may us to adapt to new situations. We can extrapolate not only rules but probabilities from our past experiences and apply them to the present. Maybe consciousness is a good tool in extrapolation and probability gaging.

Then again, maybe not. I'm just throwing the possibility out there...

Status Que?

When Greg leaves comments on my last post cryptically hinting that I should perhaps update my blog, I figure it's time. The bad part about going two months without updating is that I have two months worth of updating. So you're getting a cumulative update rather than an event-by-event update.

So, the months. I finally finished my cryptic crossword and sent it in to he who wears short Shortz last week. It's not without its flaws, but I think there are some fun and creative clues in there. I'm battling serious odds—he may not even take unassigned cryptics—but until I hear back, I can live safely in that quantum superposition of "accepted" and "not accepted." And if the function collapses to "not accepted," you, my dear reader, can look forward to trying the puzzle...on this very blog! Unless I decide to submit it elsewhere. Gee, I hope I get some personal comments from the man himself. That would be an honor, indeed.

Our apartment has settled, and it is good. Chayes has beautified her room—it's great to be spending some quality time with her—Betsey has moved into Megan's old room and is fitting in beautifully, and Greg's the same sunny delight as ever. Greg and I saw a super-exclusive run-through of Cry Baby last weekend (yay, thanks, Mark!) This particular performance was not "up for review," so I will only review it with the most inscrutable puzzle I can think of: _T W_S _W_S_M_. G_ S__ _T WH_N _T'S _N T_WN.

Work's been crazy as ever. There's been lots of talk about the, er, inappropriate comments made by a certain, unnamed James Watson. If you haven't already read the massive press coverage, you can get the latest at the links I put in the first half of the sentence. The whole to-do prompted me not only to fashion a harness for my jaw to wear whenever reading Watson's comments on black people, women, fat people, gay people or, oh yeah, Rosalind Franklin, but also to do some reading on race and IQ.

It's apparently well-established [most of the following assertions come from that linked report] that the average IQ of black people in America is 15 points lower than the average IQ of white people in America. There are two major questions that come out of this: What are the reasons for this difference? and What the heck does IQ mean anyway? Neither one of these has yet been answered especially thoroughly. While IQ is highly heritable, this doesn't mean that the IQ variations between races is largely genetic. There are plenty of other factors, many unknown, that go into intelligence, and it seems likely that these largely account for differences that we see. Yes, racists, it's conceivable they don't. Someone, sometime will do solid research and we'll have a better idea. The other question, about what IQ actually measures, is just as hazy. It's definitely a solid predictor of academic achievement. In this sense, the test isn't biased toward white people...it's an equal predictor for black people and white people. As the APA report points out, the test is biased against black people in the plain sense that they, on average, do worse. You might say, well, that's not really bias if it still predicts the same stuff, but hey, IQ tests are designed so both sexes necessarily have the same average. It's explicitly not biased toward men or women; I don't know if it's an equal predictor for both sexes, though. This paragraph's getting long, so let me sum up my point: IQ tests are a good but imperfect predictor of academic achievement. There's no great reason to think they measure some ineffable quality of "intelligence." That concept isn't well-defined, anyway. There would probably be some correlation between IQ score and anything measuring some kind of intelligence—probably a fairly strong correlation—but who knows how strong or how consistent between tests? I don't. What I'm saying is we don't know all that much about this topic. And I think people without an agenda should research it, mostly because I'm a curious person and it's an interesting topic. So there.

Oh, and the UU apps are coming along swimmingly. Hopefully those will be out the door in the next couple of weeks. I'm actually feeling very good about this decision. I'm reading One U, a book about UU school, and it's scaring me, but it's also getting me very psyched for the kind of thinking I'd be doing.

All right, friends. I have an episode of Dirty Sexy Money to watch. Emily points out the show's egregiously absent commas. Normally, I would be unforgiving, but somehow Donald Sutherland and Peter Krause have won me over.

Suddenly This Summer

You can almost convince yourself summer hasn't really started yet until the fourth of July. Then you know you're in the throes of the season and it's about to slip by, just as it does every year. I'd have thought this would stop after, you know, I stopped getting summer vacation. But it's still my favorite season. I'd much rather it be 85 than 45, and it's good to have all of the school-bound friends feeling a little more relaxed.

The summer has started off with Harry Pottering, which is unforseeably terrific. I've read the books already, and I know I enjoyed them, but being on a mission to read—spending a Sunday sitting in the Hungarian Pastry Shop and then Riverside Park, reading a fantasy book, and feeling accomplished afterward—is so ideal.

I got my MacBook, which is treating me awfully well. I've only played with GarageBand enough to record myself singing Wimoweh. It's, well, horrible—at once overly pretty and harsh—but I'm thrilled. I'm harmonizing! With myself! And I can send the file to people! Woo!

And I'm happy with my UUST score. If I want to go to UU school, I'm in pretty good shape...just have to get recommendations from old professors and write the world's most brilliant 250 word statement. Maybe my alma mater will take me back...who knows? They're pretty picky, though.

Oh, I met an attractive guy this weekend. I know that doesn't sound like much (no, I didn't, like, get his number...or even have a one-on-one conversation with him) but so rarely am I at all attracted to someone I just met—nay, so rarely am I attracted to anyone at all—that it was sort of a proof of concept. The dude was gorgeous and authentically charismatic. And I kinda dug him. It's more a testament to my functionality than my maturity (it would be nice to go for someone attainable), but when that's in doubt, it's something.

So, on a completely different topic, I was thinking about consciousness a bit today. I do maintain a confidence in science and philosophy...I think we'll eventually have an idea of what consciousness is, but right now I think we don't quite know what questions to ask, and that's hindering progress in finding out what exactly consciousness is and how it arises from the brain. We've apparently nicely eliminated the possibility that consciousness is located at one place in the brain. You can take out any individual part of the brain and maintain consciousness...I mean, maybe parts will make you pass out, but they won't kill your identity. So I guess that only leaves the possibility that it's emergent from some collection of processes? Some network? Which kind of makes sense. But I think before we figure out how it emerges, we have to get a better subjective idea of what 'it' is.

Therefore, I've been trying to pinpoint my own consciousness. What do I feel I directly experience? It's easier to find stuff I don't directly experience. Inspiration is one of them. When I'm doing a cryptic and think of an answer, it often just 'comes to me.' You all know this. The answer to some problem just comes into your head. So that's something that does not happen in the conscious. So the answer appears in your head...how does it appear? Is it an image? A sound? It's kind of neither, usually, and so it's hard to say what it IS. Even when you have mental images or hear things, the sounds don't need to happen linearly; the image doesn't need to be detailed. In what way are we actually active? What specific actions can you take ownership of? I guess we experience things. Sound does actually register. But certainly the processing of that sound isn't part of the conscious mind, nor is the interpreting of it. I can't think of any specific process that I really feel I—as my conscious mind—do. Although I know I'm here.

OK, I'm too tired for further pontificating. 'Night, all.

The Next Exciting Ethical Dilemma!

Get psyched, kids: Eugenics is back, and it's looking much friendlier. All of those "eu" words that were are so positive in etymology seem creepy these days, don't they? Euphoria is a little psychotic and delirious, utopia quickly leads to communism and dystopia, and Eugene's a total dweeb. But eugenics has the worst connotation of them all. Mention the word and all anyone can think of is forced sterilization by the Nazis. Which was bad. Really bad. But the new eugenics is so morally ambiguous, and it may inspire some great ethical discussion.

Here's the deal: Slowly, we're learning more about the genetic and prenatal factors that can influence traits in a fetus. And we're learning how to test for them. So the obvious question arises: How much choice should parents have? What should they select for? Right now we can test for Down's Syndrome, and over 90% of the fetuses diagnosed are aborted. There's some controversy over this, but not a whole lot. It seems like a fairly large majority of Americans wouldn't blame a mother for terminating a pregnancy if she knew her kid was going to have a reasonably serious illness or disability. Still, this kind of thing doesn't do much good for living people who have that illness or disability and their families. As fewer people have these issues, demand for treatment decreases, and it's harder for people to find support from others they can relate to. The more people abort fetuses with Down's Syndrome, the more pressure there is to abort a kid with Down's Syndrome...the fewer people there are with the disease the greater the consequences of having it are. Also, people tend to be less sympathetic to illnesses they see as preventable. And, yeah, I guess screening and selective abortion is a method of prevention. And it's eugenics. Intervening to reduce suffering, boost intelligence, whatever.

And then we get beyond disease to other traits. It is cool to select for IQ? Hair color? Sexual orientation? The last one's a doozy. If a parent wants to select for a straight kid, it's like that a gay kid would face some problems growing up with that parent. Still, it just seems really creepy to say it's OK to select for your kid's sexual orientation. But whom is this parent harming? The gay community at large? By making the world population of gay people smaller and therefore making it harder to be gay or by not forcing herself to accept gay people and contribute to a better universal attitude toward sexual diversity? And as I saw a somewhat sketchy scientist discuss (thanks to CM for the paper), if people can abort for not wildly compelling reasons (could handle another kid, but don't really want one), why can't they abort for this reason?

I'm totally conflicted on these issues, which is kind of great. I love a good dilemma...and that kind of testing for sexual orientation is a little ways away anyway, so I don't have to worry that I'm screwing anyone over by being conflicted. My instinct is to say that it's a parent's right to select the child on whatever stupid criteria they want, so I don't think parents should be legally barred from this testing. On the moral question, I think it's morally wrong to prefer many traits strongly enough that you would choose to abort a fetus—go through an unpleasant procedure and risk having issues that aren't currently present with a future pregnancy—rather than have a child with that trait. I think someone who prefers hair color that strongly is just a little pathetic, and frankly, I think someone who prefers sexual orientation that strongly is, well, kind of a bad person. But I think given those attitudes, the decision to selectively abort is not itself immoral. I don't think it's the responsibility of any individual parent to help a minority by bearing a child who's part of that minority. I'm open to changing my mind, though. That's why I think it's a cool topic.