Privilege: Harvard and the Education of the Ruling Class

Today’s book review concerns “Privilege: Harvard and the Education of the Ruling Class” by Ross Gregory Douthat.

Despite entitling his book ‘Privilege’, a word meaning “special laws or rights granted by a dispensing authority”, Douthat does a remarkably poor job of showing that Harvard students are privileged in any particular sense. It’s an entertaining memoir of one student’s life at Harvard and the absurdity of its social and academic climate. In a few places it’s even a thought-provoking inquiry into what the nature of a successful ‘liberal education’ should be and whether Harvard even attempts to accomplish that in any rational way.

But as a coherent picture of what’s wrong, “Privilege” fails. Far more of the book is taken up by assertions that Harvard is this and that, while there is little evidence-based argumentation – just vivid anecdotes and emotionally-charged claims. I was particularly struck by Douthat’s lack of insight into the nature of conservatism – while disparaging “parlor liberals” of the ’60’s who grew up and became “The Man”, he fails to acknowledge that their nostalgia for the past and denial that their roles have changed is a inherently conservative trait.

Worth reading, but for entertainment only.

Problems with Schizophrenia Comic

See this comic.

What’s the problem? The claim that the schizophrenic aren’t more dangerous. Actually, people with delusions are significantly more likely than those without to engage in physical assault – and the problem is that it’s very difficult to predict when they’ll do so.

Obviously, given ’sane’ individuals can be very violent too, and if a given schizophrenic has no history of violent reactions there’s really no reason to think they’ll suddenly start. But all else being equal, they’re a greater danger to others than they’d otherwise be.

I’m not even going to touch the discussion of what the causes of schizophrenia are – that topic requires more work than is suitable for this post.

This Is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things: Boiling the Frog

Via boingboing.net and Cory Doctorow:

Philadelphia Free Library System is shutting down

Well, sort of. They’re threatening to do so, possibly as a form of brinksmanship or hostage-taking. But as one commenter points out, their choices are to hold their functions hostage and try to get the proper funding or risk having their funding slowly reduced until their services shut down.

In some ways, the public is like the aphoristic frog in a slowly-boiling pot: they’ll notice sharp changes but not gradual ones. Shocking people by threatening to cut off everything at once is more likely to induce outrage and grass-roots activity than letting the libraries wither.

Libraries are one of the few government services I favor; it’s a terrible shame that the worthiest programs tend to have the hardest time getting funding. This is why we can’t have nice things, though – does our society deserve proper libraries if we force their caretakers to beg for enough money to keep services functioning?

Morons on Neuroscience

See this comment over at Scalzi’s site.

This is why I love having a degree in Cognitive Psychology with an emphasis in neurology, because it lets me be fully justified when I point out the stupidity of statements like

There are judgements adults can make that children and even adolescents simply do not have the brain structures to make.

That’s utterly hilarious. The final stages of brain development, initiated at puberty, involve the destruction of connections and the massive pruning of redundancy. Adults have less potential and fewer brain structures than children and early adolescents, which is why they cannot pick up languages easily through casual experience, cannot learn to identify phonemes not present in their native languages, and have a very difficult time adopting or abolishing their existing accents and pronunciations.

There’s a tradeoff involved: greater speed and efficiency for impaired flexibility and potential. If you haven’t developed the capacity to do things once the pruning takes place, generally you never will. The late neural pruning exhibited by human beings is a major factor in our increased intelligence and flexibility compared to the majority of animals – the period in which they can learn and adapt is extremely limited, far more so than our own.

In adolescence, the brain changes from the child form to the adult form essentially from the back forwards: the old brain first, the new brain last. (Call that an example of ontogeny recapitulating phylogeny if you want.) Teenagers develop the ability to do crazy skateboard tricks YEARS before they develop the sense NOT to do them. The part of the brain that successfully predicts the consequences of actions develops only very late in adolescence, in fact one might say that the completion of that development IS the completion of adolescence.

Those ‘final stages of development’ involve the loss of the ability to develop functional systems, not their development. A person who hasn’t developed functional frontal structures by the time the pruning occurs will never do so. It in no way follows that the functional structures have not developed before the pruning – in fact, the existence of adults with effective frontal lobes is the definitive demonstration that such development occurs.

In terms of the legal definitions of child and adult, the distinction is arbitrary, having nothing to do with individual competence. There are lots and lots of adults that lack the competence it’s assumed they have because of their age, and lots and lots of legal minors who are far more competent than the adult average.

Hell, most adults never progress beyond concrete reasoning, even in advanced countries. It’s even worse in more primitive societies.

Cheryl Morgan on Gender

See her post on her website, Cheryl’s Mewsings, here.

It’s excellent except for this part:

However, there is a fair amount of evidence that some forms of gendered behavior have a biological component, and that treatment with hormones and similar chemicals, or even neuro-surgery, can cause animals to change their gendered behavior. Presumably the same is possible for humans.

The best available evidence is that it’s not. At least, not in any non-trivial sense – sufficiently advanced neurosurgery could change any behavior, and sufficiently primitive neurosurgery can eliminate any behavior. But that’s not what’s being discussed.

Identity and sexual orientation resist every mode of therapy and attempt to change known. It is possible to destroy cognitive function to the point where unusual concepts of identity and disapproved sexual orientations no longer manifest, certainly. But changing from one to the other? Can’t be done.

The article is definitely worth reading, and clarifies issues many people are confused about to a high degree. With such contentious issues of definition, I’m sure not everyone will agree completely with her usages, but they’re a good starting point for discussion.

[Edit: Clarification] The best available evidence is that orientation and gender identity cannot be changed in humans. I wasn’t trying to suggest that the evidence is against biological components to both those things – quite the opposite.

The Purpose of Power is Power

You cannot avoid the interplay of politics within an orthodox religion. This power struggle permeates the training, educating, and disciplining of the orthodox community. Because of this pressure, the leaders of such a community inevitably must face that ultimate internal question: to succumb to complete opportunism as the price for maintaining their rule, or risk sacrificing themselves for the sake of the orthodox ethic.

- from “Muad’Dib, The Religious Issues” by the Princess Irulan

- Frank Herbert, “Dune”

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the nature of power. What it’s good for, what its limits are.

It’s increasingly clear to me that power, used in ways that are not compatible with the maintenance and continued existence of that power, tends to expend itself. Power that persists usually concerns itself with itself and its perpetuation. But there are inherent trade-offs that cannot be avoided.

Wealth is a tool of freedom, but the pursuit of wealth is the path to slavery.

- Frank Herbert

What is power to be used for? What goal is the end to which power is the means? Those who have purposes for their power will sometimes find that purpose in conflict with the perpetuation and increase of the power itself, and so must choose. Those whose purposes include the use of power in a certain way will face even more conflicts and more choices. But those who seek power only for the purpose of possessing and exercising power will not be conflicted, and will be forced to no difficult choices.

Maintaining a democratic system and keeping it functionally in touch with reality is an example of having standards for the use of power. Demagogues and popular tyrants – the most obvious threats to any democracy – are examples of seeking power for power’s sake.

I don’t think this is a conflict we can win.

Principled Stands

Carl Zimmer has said that he will not participate in any further Blogginghead.tv discussions. So has Sean Carroll.

Good for them.

I should get around to adding them to my list of science-y blogs. I prefer to stay away from Discover, though, given my opinions on how they’ve changed over the past decade or so.

Watching the Watchers

TGGP asks whether it would be better to have the FDA regulate surgeries instead of drugs.

Even if it were surgeries as well as drugs, I’d say the answer is ‘no’. Why?

Many people do not realize that the FDA doesn’t actually perform any testing of drugs. It merely examines the reported results of tests submitted to it. Who performs the studies of the drugs? Why, the pharmaceutical companies who developed and are hoping to market them, of course.

Does that strike you as a conflict of interest? It should.

The biggest problem with this arrangement is that there’s really nothing preventing the drug makers from only reporting positive results. Yes, there are rules against that, but without keeping tabs on what the companies are doing or granting the authority to discipline violators, they’re paper tigers.

If you go out and look for them, you’ll find that there have been many cases of a drug that appeared to be useful in the experiments submitted to the FDA that turned out to be nigh-useless in actual clinical use. Given a drug that doesn’t appear to be doing better than placebo, you can always just perform lots of tests and then keep the ones in which the drug happens to do better than the control. What about the scientific ethics of the researchers paid to perform the tests? If they get a reputation for being ‘troublesome’, they’re likely to be let go – and find it difficult to obtain employment elsewhere in the pharmaceutical industry. Drug makers can sit on the negative results and never let them see the light of day.

The problem isn’t so much that what the FDA does is bad, but that it’s inadequate and horrifyingly ineffectual – and that, by existing, it helps create the impression that drugs are being properly vetted. People presume that drugs that make it through the process are valuable, that in-all their benefits are substantial and outweigh their costs. That trust is misplaced.

Balko on Ted Kennedy

See his article here, which demonstrates a far greater patience and restraint that I could manage.

Basically, he sums up most of the things I wish I could say but am not skilled enough to do so properly.

Secular Right: Futility

Heather MacDonald suggests that all her posturing about the foolishness of religion is a way of attracting young people to conservatism, of “rebranding” it. She seems to think that the young are running away from institutions like the GOP in droves because of their theistic stances.

So her anti-religious rhetoric has nothing to do with Reality or Reason (the two things that SR is supposedly about), but is entirely a means toward her end – which seems to be the propagation of what is commonly called “social conservatism”, or so I presume.

Meanwhile, religious morons dominate the discussions. I mean, just look at this guy. That’s the sort of comment that’s all over the place on SR – not because the morons are exerting themselves, but because no one is saying anything of value. Are the morons shouted down? Are the glaring errors in their arguments acknowledged, much less condemned, by anyone? No.

I’m ‘conservative’ because I think change should be approached with caution – which is not to imply that it’s not inevitable, or not desirable. I think the best of the past should be carefully preserved, and care taken to see that the things we introduce to history are worthwhile; I don’t want to back blindly into the future.

In other words, I want to preserve the legacy of Jefferson in “It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg” mode, regarding what should be tolerated. Not “maybe we shouldn’t execute homosexuals, just castrate them instead” mode. (Well, that’s more tolerant than the general view at the time, but I think you get my point.) Or “let’s declare blacks to be two-thirds of a person for purposes of voting assignments”. Or “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are natural rights, but I need to be able to own slaves.” Those are aspects that I don’t see the value in preserving.

The people who want to preserve that sort of stuff aren’t necessarily conservatives. But they are morons. Pure and simple.

I don’t think it’s the GOP’s theism that’s driving people away. It’s their authoritarian, culturally reactive, narrow-mindedness. Those aren’t traits that make up the best parts of our historical legacy. They’re not things I want to preserve and encourage. I want political groups that are based in reason and reality, not ideological stances that proclaim to possess a continuity with a better past while not actually representing what the past was really like. I want stances to be taken because they’re true and correct, instead of being advertising gimmicks.

I’m increasingly of the belief that SR isn’t interested in providing those things.

As long as the religious morons believe they can be influential without having to give up their attempts to promote their delusions, they’ll keep promoting them. The only way to get the religiously conservative to work for the cause of secular conservatism is for secularism to become sufficiently powerful in its own right that the religious feel they have something to gain by allying with it – and something to lose by not doing so. Power attracts power; strength attracts strength. At least in the nonsensical, limbic-brained world of politics.

MacDonald isn’t just going about things in the wrong way, she has the wrong goals. And no one else is doing much contributing to SR, so she’s establishing the site’s message by default.