Parenting Website Critiques Bryan Caplan’s Selfish Reasons to have more Kids

Here is a parenting website (Dr. Laura… how many Dr. Laura’s are there out there?), it attempts to refute Bryan Caplan’s parenting advice in Selfish Reasons to have more Kids. She’s a bit condescending, which makes me feel better when I point out that she doesn’t seem to understand the nature/nurture problem that twin (and adoption) studies try to solve.

Now, a research team at the University of Washington in Seattle has found that four year olds who watched 3.5 hours of TV per day were 25% more likely to exhibit cruelty and meanness to others (as reported by their mothers) between ages 6 and 11 than those who watched none. That's a far-reaching, big effect.

Were half the kids randomly assigned to watch 3.5 more hours a day? Or could we just as well say that parents who let their kids watch more television (and pass on genes that influence children to want to watch more television), also pass on genes that positively correlate with violent behavior?

while previous studies have linked television to aggressive behavior in older children and adolescents, this is the first time the association has been firmly established for four-year-olds…

Zimmerman's team also found that children whose parents regularly exposed them to ideas by reading aloud, eating meals together, or taking them to museums, for example, were a third less likely to become bullies.

Nobody doubts links and associations, the question is whether they are linked causally or by a confounding variable – genetics. The research being cited doesn’t solve that problem. It doesn’t even try to, and the researchers who are giving parenting advice based on it should know better.

Lets state clearly what I think she and other people miss -- whether nature or nurture is effecting children is not observable phenomenon in normal children. Any time there is a positive correlation between parenting and long term differences, we don’t know whether the parenting caused it or if genetics caused both. Good thing there are two special kinds of families, twin and adoption families.

Twin studies looks at two kinds of twins (fraternal and identical), measures if how much difference in life outcomes there are between them. Since identical twins share 100% of their genes, and fraternal twins only share 50%, we can see how much genetics matter by measuring how much more alike identical twins end up being than fraternal twins. The answer: identical twins are a lot more alike.

Adoption studies are easier to understand for some people. They notice that children end up a lot more like their genetic parents than the parents who raised them.

I did get one good thing from her post, a link to this paper criticizing twin research. It’s locked, so I’ve only read the abstract. But it calls into question the equal environment assumption. I would like to know how. I don’t suspect fraternal and identical twin sets are raised in radically different ways.

 

Here is Bryan Caplan on Econtalk discussion Selfish Reasons to have more Kids.

IGM Experts on Net Neutrality

Here we have the latest poll from a IGM’s diverse panel of economic experts. They try to be current, so with talk about net neutrality so popular right now, it is interesting to see what economists think.

A few comments from the panel:

“High bandwidth traffic imposes externalities on other users.”

“If all qualities sell at the same price, markets cannot allocate quality efficiently. Works for soap, wine, and haircuts; why not Internet?”

“Answer obvious on efficiency grounds. On distribution, use other means to redistribute to poor--not covert internet cross subsidization.”

“Seems like those who cause congestion should pay more. I know some worry that ISPs will play favorites, but that should be preventable.”

The case against Net Neutrality is the normal economic logic that pricing higher valued goods at a higher price allocates resources more efficiently. Make people pay for what they use. Otherwise, other people end up paying for what they don’t use. This is how almost every other market works.

I think the popular non-economic view is that net neutrality is keeping internet service providers raising their prices. No, it is keeping them from selling different products at different prices. We can just as well reframe the question this way and get a very different reaction from the public (and maybe some economists!),

Considering both distributional effects and changes in efficiency, it is a good idea to let companies that don’t send video or other content to consumers pay less to Internet service providers than those who want to send that traffic using faster or higher quality service.

As usual, the non-economists have no idea what they’re talking about. But there was some dissent and uncertainty considering the proposition among economists. What economic reasons could they have? The most popular cause for uncertainty,

The broadband industry does not seem to be very competitive, so allowing it to charge more to content providers may not improve the market.

This is a total side issue. The central issue is the perennial last-mile problem--the market power of the cable and phone companies.

Letting price vary with quality is good if there is enough competition. I don't know if that's true here. If not the answer is less clear.

This would be a great idea if the market for service provision was competitive, but is less obvious with our current market.

In the absence of robust competition in broadband, regulation is needed to help new applications, services and content.

There were a few other considerations, but this one by far was the most common.

The panel answered another question on net neutrality a few months back.

Social Science doesn’t talk about Asian Differences like other Race Differences

Why do Asian Americans outperform their piers? Discrimination I tell you!

This article points out that Asian Americans are awesome academics. Why? One answer you could give is discrimination. But that would be a silly answer since nobody finds it plausible that white employers, teachers, and mortgage lenders would be discriminating against other whites in favor of Asians. That answer can properly be dismissed.

You can’t be dismissive of the possibility that white achievement in contrast to blacks and Latinos is because of discrimination. That could be a part of why there are differences in outcomes, or it could be the whole thing.

Here’s where sociologists and social science generally stop being objective researchers, and start being liberals. You could never ever write the same article about why white’s outperform blacks and Latinos. The article cites conscientiousness as the main driver for Asian academic success. The idea that the same reason could be the driver for other race differences is simply dismissed without discussion. If we’re going to say that Asians outperform Whites because they work harder, don’t we have to at least consider the possibility that that’s why whites outperform blacks and Latinos, instead of assuming that in a non-racist world race outcomes would all be the same?

By the way, conscientiousness is heritable… Oh no, that might mean (dun dun dun!) natural differences.

Conservatives and libertarians would be doing the same thing if either of them owned social science. And they would all do good work up until their work brushed up against the sacred laws of their ideologies. The least left-wing social science is economics, and liberals still outnumber their counter-parts 3-1 in economics.

The article and researchers revert back to liberal suppositions by the end.

the team says Asian-American students reported lower self-esteem, more conflict with their parents, and less time spent with friends compared with their white peers.

We have a negative Asian American outcome. The obvious explanation is people who work harder at achieving academic success have to make tradeoffs with having a social life (friends), or need to attain a higher standard in order to feel fulfilled (self-esteem). But,

The team suspects the high academic expectations or their "outsider" status in American society could be to blame.

Of course.

 

The article came from Skeptical Libertarian.

Social Scientists Ignore Asians (when convenient)

Lucifer isn’t the Devil and the Devil was never an Angel

In popular Christianity, Lucifer has become the name of the devil. So it’s a little surprising that the name is only mentioned in the bible once.

"How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! how art thou cut down to the ground, which didst weaken the nations! For thou hast said in thine heart, I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God: I will sit also upon the mount of the congregation, in the sides of the north: I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will be like the most High".
Isaiah 14:12-14:

This is the also the passage where popular Christianity gets it origin of the devil. The devil was once a high-ranking angel who was originally perfect in all his ways. At some point in the past, he was overcome with pride and instigated a large rebellion against God. The Lord reacted by kicking the devil out of Heaven.

From this text alone, I gather a meaning that is nothing like the story Christians tell the devil’s origin, or any reason to interpret Lucifer as a name for the devil.

Here is a site that covers the passage more thoroughly, and offers alternative explanations. The one I find most convincing is that Lucifer was a King of Babylon:

Remember that this is a "proverb (parable) against the king of Babylon" (v. 4). "Lucifer" means "the morning star", which is the brightest of the stars. In the parable, this star proudly decides to "ascend (higher) into heaven...exalt my throne above the (other) stars of God" (v. 13). Because of this, the star is cast down to the earth. The star represents the king of Babylon. Daniel chapter 4 explains how Nebuchadnezzar the king of Babylon proudly surveyed the great kingdom he had built up, thinking that he had conquered other nations in his own strength, rather than recognizing that God had given him success. "Thy greatness (pride) is grown, and reacheth unto heaven" (v. 22). Because of this "he was driven from men, and did eat grass as oxen, and his body was wet with the dew of heaven, till his hairs were grown like eagles' feathers, and his nails like birds' claws" (v. 33) This sudden humbling of one of the world's most powerful men to a deranged lunatic was such a dramatic event as to call for the parable about the falling of the morning star from heaven to earth. Stars are symbolic of powerful people, e.g. Gen. 37:9; Is. 13:10 (concerning the leaders of Babylon); Ez. 32:7 (concerning the leader of Egypt); Dan. 8:10 cp. v 24. Ascending to heaven and falling from heaven are Biblical idioms often used for increasing in pride and being humbled respectively

Verse 3 and 4 of the chapter reads,

On the day the Lord gives you relief from your suffering and turmoil and from the harsh labor forced on you, you will take up this taunt against the king of Babylon:

And then begins the text within which Lucifer is referred.

Sam Harris on how Science can Answer Moral Questions

Here is a Ted Talk on how science can answer moral questions. I wanted to post it alongside a few thoughts.

Can science solve moral questions?

A paper was published in psychology about the WEIRDest people in the world. Their point was that researches oftentimes draw their sample sizes from Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, Democratic, populations and generalize the results to any population. But WEIRD populations are oftentimes outliers. They think what they're discovering is what it means to be human, but they're actually finding is what it means to be in a WEIRD society.

This relates to this kind of benthamite utilitarianism that Sam Harris talks about. WEIRD populations oftentimes don't see more to morality than care (and fairness). Intellectuals are oftentimes the WEIRDest people of WEIRD cultures, leading so a much less thick sense of morality. I can only imagine someone from India listening to this TED Talk thinking, "this guy doesn't capture morality AT ALL."

Throughout the world and throughout history morality has been about rocks. And not because they got morality from a voice in a whirlwind, but because it feels right to them. Paul said the law is written on their hearts, and this sits well with Christians because they look at their hearts and they say, "yeah, that feels right".

Morality is oftentimes about sanctity. People with a strong sense of sanctity think homosexuality is wrong. You can see it in the type of language they use. It's unnatural, perverted, disgusting, and degraded. The less common answer is that a voice in a whirlwind said so. People with weaker senses of sanctity think that it must have come from a whirlwind because they just don't get it. But they can get it. It's still there. Look at environmentalism which goes far beyond concern for animals and pollution which might hurt other people. They like to rationalize it down to care when you press them, but the language they use is all about concern for rocks; destroying the planet, staining the earth, mankind's blotch on the environment, its about sanctity.

In fact, if you try to build any kind of thought experiment that tests for moral senses other than care, they almost always rationalize for why what they're really doing is caring for other life. So naturally you can change the thought experiment to eliminate any potential for the right answer to help another. What happens? They get frustrated reject thought experiments all together.

Take loyalty. Adultery is betrayal. What reasons to people give for disagreeing with adultery? "It hurts the person being cheated on." Okay they both take pills that wipe their memories of the event so neither can confess, and they're in a completely secluded area. What reason? "because they might get pregnant" Okay, neither person is capable of having children. What reason? "this is stupid, thought experiments never happen in real life" Ugh.

Interestingly, nobody ever feels the need to give reasons why care is good. Care is the only socially approved moral foundation that one doesn't need to rationalize for. Other moral foundations are rationalized down to care, and care just stands there invincible. Is there any more reason to believe in care than in sanctity or loyalty?

This guys just says of course care is morality, and that's it. It's just not true that for most people morality doesn't capture concern for non-living rocks. And his care for human life is no more or less arbitrary than concern for things like sanctity, loyalty, fairness, liberty, authority.

ChristsWords on the Kingdom of Heaven

I’ve mentioned the problems with the popular Christian view on heaven and the Kingdom of God before. A blog I regularly browse mentions the same topic. The blog is Christswords.com, and I’ve found it very impressive and insightful every time I’ve been there. Here is his post on the Kingdom of Heaven, the emphasis is mine:

Did Christ refer to the the afterlife as “the kingdom of heaven?” Was he describing the community of Christians? Or was he describing our increasing understanding of the natural, social, and personal nature and the healing of the divisions within them?

There are several statements that Christ made that seem to indicate that the “kingdom of heaven” is not merely the afterlife or the Christian community, but the entire social order of the world as established by God. For example, Christ said: Mat 11:12 “And from the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of heaven suffers violence, and the violent take it by force.”

He asks,

How does this statement make any sense of the kingdom of heaven is the afterlife or the community of believers?

Also, if Christ was referring to the afterlife, how can the afterlife change in the way that Christ describes the kingdom of heaven? How can it start small and grow like a mustard see? How does it get mixed through everything like the dough?

Mortician Adams on Normal

This showed up on my Facebook feed. Morticia Addams, of course, is the mother on the Addams Family (snap snap).

We should be careful not to confuse the elegance of a phrase with the truth of one. This quote is an especially clear example of elegance without truth, that’s why it floats around Facebook.

The second sentence assumes that there is a normal for the spider, and a normal for the fly. They’re different, but the next question should be, am I a spider or a fly? If you’re a spider, then don’t think that the fly’s normal is your normal. If you’re a fly, don’t think that the spider’s normal is your normal. This doesn’t mean that there is no normal, it means that what is normal is dependent on who you are.

Human beings are not rocks. A rock’s normal is not a human being’s normal. And a human being’s normal is not a rock’s normal. None-the-less, human beings have a normal. What is normal will be broader or narrower depending on the group we’re talking about. What is normal about an African is oftentimes not normal for the American, and what is normal for a hippie is oftentimes not normal for a businessman --“oftentimes”, but not universally. There are still normals that transcend those groups. It is normal for both a hippie and a businessman to like ice cream. If either of them didn’t like ice cream one would say, “that’s weird” (not normal).

I think what I’ve said here should go without saying if the world were a more thoughtful place. What I’ve said is true, clear, and I don’t think can be argued with. The only thing left for Morticia Addams to say is that I’ve misinterpreted her. But everything I’ve said clearly contradicts her first sentence. Normal exists in relation to the categories we’re talking about, but it exists, and it exists in each and every category.