The Supreme Consensus

The first U.S. penny touted science

I've posted about how to increase the influence of science in government previously but it was a complete overhaul of our entire democracy, so wanted to explore less drastic alternatives. Modeled on the supreme court, scientists would be appointed to assess the validity of laws, which would be required to cite research. If such research weren't available metrics and studies to gauge the impact of laws would need to be outlined, along with the necessary funding to implement them. An important detail is that this is not necessarily an all or nothing judgement in many cases, as proper risk management requires partial measures be taken in the face of insufficient evidence in order to serve as a hedge. This could be quite far-reaching. For example, a farm bill could be ruled unscientific because it does nothing to address climate change impacts. Inaction is not a way to circumvent reality.

Of course having a small number of experts opens itself up to the same personal failings the Supreme Court suffers from. A better method would be to utilize all those qualified in the relevant fields, possibly weighted by expertise, to provide a broader base. An approach the Supreme Court itself could benefit from and one that was at the core of my previous posting.

A Ticking Time Bomb is Not Justification

I recently saw new interview clips of Dick Cheney and he once again tried to justify torture with the “ticking time bomb” scenario: when you know a suspect has information that can prevent an imminent, serious threat. The theory is that this possibility is so compelling that we should allow torture to be legally permissible. My view of this line of reasoning is that if the circumstances are so dire, so terrible, that the person charged with extracting the information shouldn't care that torture is outlawed and that they will face legal consequences. If they still have concerns about such matters, then the event they're trying to prevent isn't sufficient justification. We need the illegality to act as a barrier to such behavior, especially since torture's effectiveness is not without doubt and we would increase the likelihood of our captured troops facing similar mistreatment. The argument is to prevent the unthinkable by allowing the unthinkable, and the unthinkable should never be sanctioned by law.

Well Regulated Militia

Flawed though the test may be, the takeaway is valid.

I have previously blogged about crowd shootings and even touched on the topic of this post, but feel it warrants expansion. While I am choosing for the purposes of brevity to ignore increased regulation of access and storage of firearms and also improving our mental health system, I wish to make it clear that this is not because I discount them. When tackling complex issues, one should consider all the available tools. What I am choosing to focus upon is the frequently mentioned notion that having more armed individuals will somehow reduce deaths from gun violence overall. This concept is usually accepted uncritically by gun advocates and rejected as unrealistic (based on statistics showing a small number of justifiable shootings relative to accidental ones) by proponents of greater gun control; what I wish to consider is what it would take for this to actually be a credible notion.

What seems to be frequently absent from such conversations is proper emphasis on the need for training; just carrying a weapon will not make you a competent combatant. The ability to keep calm and accurately engage an armed opponent, let alone several, is extremely demanding, necessitating a high degree of training. That is true even in a home defense scenario, and if one considers the context of public defense, the difficulty is magnified many times. Your opponent may well have superior firepower (and other equipment) to what you can reasonably have with you all the time and the safety of bystanders is vital. Indeed, there will be some situations where no responsible armed option by a lone individual is possible for fear of injuring others. Gun owners who seriously intend to act in such a capacity need to have training on a par with police and it needs to be ongoing since such skills are perishable. This would be a significant commitment, which would seem at odds with the number of individuals required so that their presence would significantly add response capacity; if they can’t respond appreciably quicker than the police, it makes little difference. So we'd need a large number of highly trained, certified, armed citizens for it to make much of an impact. This sounds very much like the "well regulated militia" the second amendment references (save for the for the fact that they would usually be acting alone) and would represent a great departure from the status quo of often casual gun ownership. One could argue that dedicated security guards might fulfill this role, but that gets away from the idea of armed citizenry and thus is beyond the scope of this post.

It would be easy to interpret my observations as an outright dismissal of the entire prospect, but that is not the case: while all options should be considered, there is no value in unrealistic schemes. The ratio of good actors to bad would have to be very high for it to be a significant net positive, which makes improvements in the other areas I mentioned in my introduction vital for any such possibility, as it takes virtually no training to attack unarmed civilians and accidents do happen. Human lives are not like a Wikipedia article: you cannot simply undo the damage of a malicious few with a well intentioned many (especially if they’re not qualified), and even Wikipedia must impose barriers to access from time to time.

There is No Sharp Transition to Personhood

The belief that fertilized eggs qualify as people reflects an intuition that there really is no clear dividing line for the concept of personhood. It is much like the paradox of the heap: if one grain at a time is removed from a pile of sand, at what point does it stop being a pile? There are many ways to approach this question, but I favor the fuzzy logic answer: that even one grain of sand has some degree of "pileness" to it, two grains have twice as much, three grains three times as much, etc. The salient point for this post is that there is no sudden transition, something many people have difficulty contemplating. So, is an egg a person? "Somewhat", while unsatisfying as an answer, is nonetheless accurate. A fertilized egg? More so. A baby? Yet more. People attempt to use the ability to survive outside a mother's body as a sharp transition, but even that is artificial: an infant is still utterly dependent on a large input of care and resources, let alone one born right at the edge of viability. More still is required for them to attain anything approaching their full potential.

The problem with extending the notion of legal personhood to ever earlier stages of human development is that it is an argument from potential. Every egg, every sperm has the potential to become a person, but a policy aimed at bringing as many to term as possible would quickly lay waste to the planet. In a world of limited resources, potential life has a finite worth, which by definition means it cannot automatically trump all other concerns. This seemingly heartless conclusion is part of our own biology: many miscarriages are induced by defects that would not be immediately fatal to the fetus but would yield young so weak as to not be worth the associated opportunity cost or risk to the mother. Exactly what the value of a potential person may be is not only beyond the scope of this post, but is arguably impossible to answer definitively owing to the subjective and deeply personal nature of the many competing factors. My goal is instead to dispel the absolute thinking that seems to frequently accompany such issues. Life may be precious, but, on this planet at least, it is far from priceless.

Firearm Misconception

This picture illustrates well the classic human difficulty properly framing dramatic, but rare, events. For example, public perception is that airplane crashes kill more than car accidents, when the reverse is true by a vast margin. Similarly, crowd shootings are very uncommon relative to criminally motivated ones, and both are dwarfed individual unwarranted shootings or accidental ones. Please don't misunderstand me: I am not in favor of outlawing firearms; I own several myself and consider an outright ban to be essentially unenforceable in any event. I am, however, very much a proponent of reasonable requirements both on who is allowed to legally obtain them and also the training and equipment they must have in order to be able to do so safely. This is especially true if your intent is defense, for reacting appropriately in a stressful situation, especially in a crowded area, is far harder than sporting firearm use. Well intentioned incompetents are not a boon when firearms are involved.

Science Defamation

Defamation laws cover intentional, malicious falsehoods spread against an individual or institution. I would like to see this concept widened to include scientific consensuses (where there is a well established one, of course). I frequently run across intentional misrepresentations of the degree of debate in the scientific community on many issues, such as global warming, evolution, vaccination, alternative medicine, and abstinence only. The malicious requirement would protect those bringing up valid new hypotheses and instead target attempts to warp the very meaning of scientific evidence. That sort of behavior should be unacceptable from a public figure. A celebrity or lawmaker spouting disproven theories about vaccines should hold the same place in free speech law as shouting fire in a crowded theatre; it's leading to entirely preventable deaths.

What's wrong with polygamy, exactly?

Rick Santorum's comparison between gay marriage and polygamy has me wondering exactly what the rationale is for it being banned. As long as everyone is of age, free of coercion, and none of the marriages are secret, where's the problem? If one actually takes separation of church and state seriously, then marriage boils down to legal agreements (I personally think that religious marriage should carry no legal weight whatsoever). Framed in that way, it clearly is another case of trying to legislate morality. While it pains me to agree with Mr. Santorum on anything, it does follow that if one accepts gay marriage one must also accept polygamy. Of course, he's hoping I'll have some visceral reaction of intolerance at the association. I reserve that sort of response for politicians of his ilk.

Civil Union for Everybody

Originally posted on my private blog June 21st, 2008.

The various efforts to ban gay marriage have me thinking about the issue and I believe the solution is quite simple: strip all legal ramifications away from religious marriage and make everyone have to get a civil union. The marriage ritual is essentially part of the party you choose to celebrate the legal connection you've just entered into and since it's such a loaded word, let's just strip it out of the equation. It furthers the separation of church and state as a byproduct, which is always a good idea anyway. Clearly my atheism has factored into this opinion considerably.

Personal Image Ownership

No, this is not Liz Taylor.

With the recent demise of Patrick Swayze I was reminded of all the tabloid photographs of him during his fight with cancer and how angry they made me owing to their exploitative nature. Not that I really cared particularly about Mr. Swayze one way or the other, but it seemed an obvious line had been crossed. I think that people should have exclusive rights to their own image, providing they can be identified from it, or it is ascribed to them either directly or through context (to prevent identity being added to a photograph by other means). This would mean that you would be effectively anonymous photographically, unless you'd signed a release. For specific events, people could sign blanket releases and those shot in large crowds can simply have their features blurred slightly to prevent identification. The technology to do this is now extremely simple and should pose no significant restriction. Additionally, it may be desirable to limit the potential practice of having an unidentifiable photograph to which an identity is implied even though it is not in fact of the subject in question. An example of this would be an embarrassing photo of a random person in which a face isn't visible, but put in the context of an article about someone specific. The implication would be that the picture is of them, even though it is not. If the photo were easily identifiable as not being the individual in question, that would of course be acceptable.

Capital Punishment for White Collar Crime

Originally posted on my private blog January 18th, 2008.

I am opposed to the death penalty as it's currently implemented now for several reasons:

1) It is more expensive than imprisoning a criminal for life

2) It fails to have a deterrent effect

3) The wrong people have been executed with alarming frequency

Some capital punishment proponents wish to address #1 by limiting the legal appeals process and #2 by applying the death penalty more frequently. This would inflate #3 dramatically, which is the most troubling of my three objections.

However, mostly as an entertaining speculation, what if we instead applied capital punishment to very serious white collar crime and corruption? The damage caused by such activities can be many multiples more destructive than a single violent one, so I feel such a consideration is justified. How does this idea stack up against my objections?

1) Such crimes occur rarely enough and are already so expensive to prosecute that the additional economic burden of the death penalty is comparatively small.

2) We know that such crime is highly premeditated and committed over long periods, so its chance for preventive effect (even if a conviction for execution is very rarely actually attained) seems higher and such cases attract large amounts of media attention. Also, the long term nature of financial crime gives plenty of opportunity for perpetrators to end the schemes sooner and turn themselves in order to avoid the possibility of a death sentence.

3) Economic crimes can often be proven beyond doubt owing to the large number of witnesses and the huge paper trails they generate. Additionally, serious white collar crime defendants can generally afford excellent legal representation - in stark contrast to today's death penalty defendants.

I don't think I would be in favor of capital punishment under any circumstances but it does make for a sobering examination of how we fail to take economic crime as seriously as we should.