A Sad Exchange on Racism

I am unhappy with an exchange I had with someone regarding this video.


I tried to tell him that if you call every situation that could be explained by racism, racism, then you'll find racism everywhere. He challenged me on that point, but only by saying that any moral person can see that this is racism.

I then tried to explain that there is no moral difference between us, that anti-racism is common ground, it is in our difference in assessing whether racism is the best explanation for what happened to the woman in the video. I asked him to name something the cashier did that pointed specifically to a racist cause. He didn't answer.

I offered a specific scenario to try to clarify:


A white friend tell you a story about how he goes to Safeway and the cashier treats the cashier in front of him well. But when he gets to the front of the line the cashier checks his credentials with the "bad check list". How do you respond?

A) That's an unbelievable story because racism is the only possible explanation for what went on!
B) I don't know, some people are weird. Maybe you looked like someone who wrote a bad check recently?



The answer is obviously B. So why isn't that a reasonable explanation for the woman in the video?

I think a part of it may be a feedback loop between experience and priors. If you already think that racism is abundant, then racism may be the best explanation for the video. But if your priors are based on many events like the one in the video, then that's not really a great justification for believing in an abundant amount of racism in the first place.



These priors also lead into conspiracy about secret codes of racism, of which perhaps he thought he was cracking with me. Anybody who looks at a particular situation and says, "maybe that's not racism", is secretly just a racist trying to protect his white privilege or whatever. You don't even have to listen anymore. You're right, they're wrong. You're good, they're evil.



Even mentioning that that background existed would have satisfied me. Different assumptions about how racist people are generally will lead to different conclusions about a particular example that could be racism.



But instead he accused me of chest thumping, denying the problem, and re-affirmed that our difference was moral. His response was not very thoughtful, despite him being a philosopher. He dealt with me in a personal way when I just tried to explain my thinking. That makes me think that it wasn't just a difference in opinion, but a soft spot for him, where it's hard to deal with it in an objective way.


I almost feel like he was testing me. Like he really just wanted to see how I would deal with someone who wasn't dealing with the thoughts I was stating, but with the emotional impact of how my thoughts felt to him. I know it isn't true. I think maybe I should expect less from people.

Teething Pain? Nope

I wrote this on Cognitive Strain before I revamped it.

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While reading research on teething pain, I came across a lot on the historic inanity with which the topic was treated. Ready for this?

Gum lancing:

"The procedure was conducted in the absence of any anaesthesia, generally requiring two incisions crossing at 90° overlying the 'difficult' tooth...Few doctors challenged (or would even contemplate challenging) the rationale for gum-lancing, such was their unquestioning belief in its potentially life-saving effect. Only in the late 19th century did a few sceptics publicly doubt both the rationale and supposed effect of gum-lancing"

Teething as the main cause of infant mortality:

Around one half of all infant deaths in 18th century France were attributed to teething, and teething accounted for 12% of the total deaths in children younger than 4 years old in the Registrar General's Report of 1842.

The hare brain solution to teething was pretty... hair brained:

In 117ad, the physician Soranus of Ephesus was the first to suggest using hare's brain to ease teething. This remained a favoured remedy until the seventeenth century. 

The seventeenth century! Oh, and if you run short of hare brain in your pantry worry not, lamb's brain will work just as well.

Not sure why your 6 month old is vomiting? Probably just teething:

Eighteenth and nineteenth century therapies were varied and depended on local superstition and the beliefs of the attending physician. Doses of mercury salts, opiates, purgatives and emetics were recommended, even if the child was experiencing diarrhoea or vomiting beforehand. With modern understanding of diseases it is likely that dehydration was largely responsible for many of the signs, symptoms and deaths associated with teething.

With teething myths permeating throughout time and culture, why should we expect anything different today? They don't generally take as radical form as these past examples, but I heard from more than one mommy that teething was the second most painful experience in life, next after childbirth. When reading research I come away believing that there's not much reason to believe that teething is painful whatsoever!

Teething pain, sometimes referred to as “dentitio difficilis”, is the commonest symptom associated with the eruption of the primary dentition. Despite a reported prevalence of around 85%, evidence for this condition is weak. Adults assume an infant is experiencing pain because they appear distressed, or because they believe the incisal edges of teeth “cut through” the alveolar bone and gingiva during eruption.

Weak evidence:

there is only weak evidence for pain and no evidence to support the wide array of systemic signs and symptoms often attributed to teething by parents, child carers and health care professionals...

 If some pain is experienced during teething, this will be impossible to assess reliably because infants cannot communicate their pain specifically or describe their pain experience explicitly. Instead, adults interpret various cues (vocalization, facial expression, body movements and changes in breathing rates) and attribute these to pain in the infant. Such cues are not specific and are caused by other forms of stress or distress.

A wastebasket diagnosis for when you can't find anything else.

Although many of the conditions historically thought to result from teething are now accurately diagnosed as specific clinical entities, the enigma of teething continues to endure as a somewhat wastebasket diagnosis, when no cause can be found for a particular sign or symptom.

and, 

'Teething' is an ill-defined non evidence-based entity proffered by both health care professionals and lay people as an inappropriate diagnosis for a wide variety of signs and symptoms...

RS Illingsworth statement, "Teething produces nothing but teeth." is a straightforward summation of the actual process of teething...

Studies could not identify systemic manifestations such as decreased appetite for liquids, congestion, sleep disturbances, daytime restlessness, loose stools, vomiting, cough, body rash, fever greater than 38.90C, an increase in finger-sucking, and gum rubbing to be associated with teething in children. 

 A Finland study found few symptoms of teething,

 Tasanen studied teething infants in North Finland, with daily recording of temperature, appearance of gums, presence of infections and disturbances of behaviour.² He showed that tooth eruption bore no relation at all to infection, diarrhoea, fever, rash, convulsions, sleep disturbance, cough or ear rubbing.

 If teething is so painful, why doesn't it cause pain other times?

 the eruption of permanent teeth is free from the symptoms frequently ascribed to the eruption of the deciduous teeth.

and

Teeth, whether primary or permanent, do not “cut” through bone, connective tissue and oral epithelium during eruption as an eruption pathway is formed by via bone remodelling. The lack of any significant “teething pain” associated with eruption of permanent teeth is remarkable. Although it can be argued that in older children there is greater pain tolerance and lower pain sensitivity compared to infants.

 A common thread was that the contemporary myths of teething are common among parents as well as health care professionals. Of course when statistical literacy among doctors are lower than chance, what do you expect?

Also read, The Teething Virus.

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I have one two-year-old child, and another on the way. I'm quickly beginning to realize that as I have more kids, more and more people are going to pop my bubble and ascribe teething pain to my children. I've given up winning arguments against adherents to popular superstitions, but when they come to me I can't help be get frustrated.

Also see Separating Fact from Fiction

False Liberal Accusations

Nuanced thinking, as usual, by David Friedman:

Center left writers and media routinely accuse candidates on the right of being ignorant, stupid, racist, and/or crazy. Most of the time it isn't true.

Donald Trump is, in my view, less qualified to be president than any major party candidate in my lifetime. But after being told more or less the same thing about every candidate seen as right of center for the last fifty years, why should voters, especially voters right of center, believe it?

Bush is stupid. Trump is racist. Ted Cruz is crazy. I've heard it all. Bush probably had above average IQ. I can't find a single genuinely racist thing Trump has said (when interpreted the way he means it). And almost everyone has a crazy philosophy because crazy philosophies don't cost anything.

I think I'm more frustrated with this kind of behavior from the left because they bare the name "intellectuals". They're not intellectuals. Their beliefs are juvenile, and for all their talk about empathy they sure do an awful job intellectually empathizing with their opponents. For all their talk about tolerance, they sure are intolerant of the things they disagree with. If I had to give the label "hypocrites" to one of the two political sides, maybe the left deserves it.

Star Trek Thinking versus Feeling

The Star Trek series always had a running theme of what it means to be human. Data an android, or Spock a Vulcan, struggled to understand humanness.

I think I know their mistake. They always connected humanness with feeling, in one way or another. With Data, two different ideas for the same word, "feeling" got conflated. There is feeling emotion, and there is sense experience feeling. Those are two completely different things.

To digress, to be human is not to feel. Animals feel. Feeling is not unique to humanity. What is unique to humanity is actually what Spock and Data did so well; think.

The use of reasons is unique to humans. Animals don't do it, though perception and instinct can sometimes mimic logical behaviors. Computers don't do it. They don't attach meanings to things and use those meanings to come to beliefs. They stream the input/ output algorithms we tell it to, which can mimic logical behavior. But they do not actually think.

The false dichotomy between feeling and thinking intrudes on the philosophy of the Star Trek brand. We don't have a choice between thinking and feeling. What we think effects how we feel. And how we feel effects how we think. So there is a genuine tension between which of these two things ought to be pulling the wagon (thinking). But to give one supremacy doesn't mean to somehow discard the other.

That would be clear if we spend more time thinking about it rather than being tied up in Star Trek's emotional drama.

Four Reasons Financial Intermediaries Fail

Very good. I wish people I knew in the real world would talk about the financial system with the understanding this video provides.



I often watch these videos from MRUniversity while investigating it for a libertarian slant. I don't typically find one, but I can imagine someone confusing economist's pro-marketism with market fundamentalism. Some think that if a video teaches the value of markets, as economics generally does, then that must be some kind of right wing ideology. The end result is nobody is allowed to talk about the value of markets alone mixing it with something about market failure.



I do this too. I don't feel like I can just give the economics for why,



"Minimum wage probably has disemployment effects."


I have to say,



"Minimum wage probably has disemployment effects. BUT that doesn't mean minimum wage is bad. It might still be good, you can still believe in minimum wage. It just means there's a tradeoff.

In normal discussion I could leave all that unsaid. Of course showing that there's a cost to something doesn't necessarily make that thing bad or undesirable. But I have to hedge against the market fundamentalist interpretation.



I wonder if Tyler and Alex do the same.

"When someone bigger than you says something, you don't Contradict them"

A child opened the blinds. Her grandfather told her that it was still dark, and to open them more to let more sun in. The 4-year-old said that she thought it was already pretty light in here. Her father interrupted, "when someone bigger than you says something, you don't contradict them."

I was very bothered by that. When someone bigger than you is wrong, of course you contradict them!

It brings up the idea of authority, and where it comes from. The father taught his daughter that authority comes from bigness. But men are bigger than women, does that give men authority over women? Does Arnold Schwarzenegger have authority over the president, Jesus, and Gandhi because he's bigger than them?

We shouldn't take the father so literally. More likely he meant, "someone older than you". But does authority come from age? Should I tell my wife, "don't contradict me, I'm older than you?"

But maybe older means at least a generation older. We can test that. Must a young adult not contradict an older man? An old man says Jewish people are the scourge of the earth, should we not contradict him?

Maybe he means we shouldn't contradict those further up the family tree. Authority comes from familial generation. Well then I feel sorry for those born with wrong parents. Many spend their time trying to argue others out of the traditions of their parents, and these same people have kids and then say authority comes from parenthood.

But maybe authority comes from familiar generation only in regard to children. A child must not contradict an older generation relative, but once the child is old enough contradiction is fine. Again, what makes the older generation relative right, or his opinion so supreme that they ought not be contradicted? Many parents teach their children wrong things, and we wish this child would contradict the parent. Suppose the parent tells the child that a Pikachu is a ground type pokemon, is it improper for the child to say, "no, Pikachu is an electric type"?

So why is the child allowed to say that? Because authority in fact, comes from insight. The child has insight about Pokemon, just as his father may have insight about the workings of a car. What insight the grandparent has over the child about whether it was light enough in the room to be called a lit room, I don't know. That's why I remain bothered by it.

Reason, of course, rules individual insight. When someone with insight says something that doesn't make sense, you don't believe it. But sometimes we don't have information or sufficient exposure to a topic to find the correct answer. So we ask those with information and exposure to the relevant topic for their insight, and thus we give them authority. If you want to know about firemen, you ask a fireman. The only insight a parent has by being a parent is insight into having sex.

Parenthood and age ought to be connected with insight, but it isn't always. Some people have spent their lives without gaining insight, often because they themselves were pressured not to contradict their un-insightful parents. Many false beliefs are rooted in superstition that, generation after generation, they were taught not to contradict.

Was the Ford Pinto a Market Failure?

Here's wikipedia on the Ford Pinto, the car that inspired the book Unsafe at Any Speed by Ralph Nadar. Since then it has become a popular example of why a lack of how an unregulated market leads to horrible consequences.

The recall was included in Time magazine's 2009 top ten product recalls, Popular Mechanics magazine's 2010 five most notorious recalls of all time, and NBC News' 2013 twelve famous recalls.[124][125][126] Time said "The Ford Pinto was a famously bad automobile, but worse still might be Ford's handling of the safety concerns."[125] According to the Los Angeles Times in 2010, the award "signaled to the auto industry that it would be harshly sanctioned for ignoring known defects."[107]

Schwartz studied the fatality rates of the Pinto and several other small cars of the time period. He noted that fires, and rear-end fires in particular, are very small portion of overall auto fatalities. At the time only 1% of automobile crashes would result in fire and only 4% of fatal accidents involved fire, and only 15% of fatal fire crashes are the result of rear-end collisions.[6] When considering the overall safety of the Pinto Schwartz notes that subcompact cars as a class have generally higher fatality risk. Pintos represented 1.9% of all cars on the road in the 1975-76 period. During that time the car represented 1.9% of all “fatal accidents accompanied by some fire.” Implying the car was average for all cars and slightly above average for its class.[127] When all types of fatalities are considered the Pinto was approximately even with the AMC Gremlin, Chevrolet Vega, and Datsun 510. It was significantly better than the Datsun 1200/210, Toyota Corolla and VW Beetle.[6] The safety record of the car in terms of fire was average or slightly below average for compacts and all cars respectively. This was considered respectable for a subcompact car. Only when considering the narrow subset of rear-impact, fire fatalities is the car somewhat worse than the average for subcompact cars. While acknowledging this is an important legal point, Schwartz rejects the portrayal of the car as a firetrap.[128]

No car is perfectly safe and it seems the Ford Pinto was not even especially unsafe. Normal economic analysis of risk says that safety is a spectrum, and informed consumers will pay more for extra safety, giving producers plenty of incentive to not kill their consumers.

The Ford Pinto isn't an example of how the normal economic analysis of safety doesn't work. It looks more like an example of people looking for any story that confirms their theory without researching it properly.