Rants – Page 22 – a sibilant intake of breath

Security in prisons

For the good of society at large, it does make sense to isolate some particularly dangerous people from the general population. At the same time, society has an obligation to manage imprisonment in a sensible way, including by avoiding the vindictive temptation to make prisons themselves Hobbesian jungles in which those who are incarcerated have no personal security, and only bad examples to follow. Rather than locking up more and more people in worse and worse conditions, we should lock up fewer and treat them better. The probable result of that is less cost and harm to society, along with a chance at genuine rehabilitation for those who do commit crimes.

Sending non-violent offenders to prison doesn’t really make any sense. This is particularly true when it comes to non-violent drug criminals: a class that includes ordinary users, but also producers and smugglers. Treating drugs as a criminal problem only makes them more problematic for society by making them a lucrative racket for organized crime groups, and by ensuring that those who operate in this business can only settle disputes through violence. As with alcohol and gambling, society should recognize that prohibition causes more harm than good and undertake a transition from a drug policy founded on criminal law to one founded on evidence-based medicine and harm reduction.

Similarly, having prisons in which inmates fear for their personal safety doesn’t make sense. Living with that kind of stress simply has to be harmful to the human mind, and likely to exacerbate whatever issues led to their imprisonment in the first place. When someone is branded with a criminal record and ‘ex-convict’ status, it already becomes hard enough for them to sustain themselves and any dependents financially in the future. Adding traumatic years of fear and violence to that can only worsen things.

Plausibly, reducing the prison population by excluding non-violent offenders could allow for more resources to be devoted to each prisoner who remains. These could allow for greater personal security, through measures like reducing over-crowding, and for genuine rehabilitation programs focused on things like addressing existing addiction problems and developing skills that are in demand in job markets.

The idea that criminals are bad people who deserve to be punished for their wickedness probably belongs in the Middle Ages. As we learn more about human psychology, we learn that people are profoundly influenced by the environments they inhabit and that people respond in predictable ways to circumstances like stress and deprivation. Rather than seeing criminals as wicked individuals who should be expelled from society to the greatest possible degree, I think it makes sense to have a bit more pragmatism and compassion and to establish systems that minimize the harmfulness of crime while giving criminals better options.

Questioning religious beliefs

In The Moral Landscape, Sam Harris repeatedly questions the societal taboo against critically evaluating religious beliefs. For instance, people are hesitant to raise evidence or arguments that contradict religious claims, as well as point out instances in which different claims made by the same religion contradict one another.

This is at least a bit different from evaluating religiously motivated actions, as was discussed here earlier. As in that case, however, I think Harris argues convincingly that it is wrong to put religious beliefs into a special category deserving special respect. Of course, this is a provocative claim, given that many religious beliefs simply cannot stand up in the face of evidence and critical examination, and people find it awkward when important parts of their religious belief structure are shown to be in a state of obvious contradiction with the kind of every-day mechanisms they use to evaluate new information. People tolerate the fact that claims are made in holy publications and from the pulpit which cannot be made with any credibility in a newspaper or political speech.

The idea that religious beliefs deserve special protection often comes from religion itself. Religions are often extremely hostile toward ‘heresy’, which is understandable from a kind of institutional evolutionary perspective. In many circumstances, faiths that maintain theological and ideological coherence are likely to attract more adherents and last longer than those that tolerate a broad variety of views. Faiths of the latter kind are probably more likely to fragment and fracture, and they are also probably less likely to attract extreme devotion, dedication, and efforts to convert the masses. It is no coincidence that the first commandment (though the notion that there are a clear set of ten is disputed) is that you should make sure not to honour the wrong god. It also doesn’t seem to be a coincidence that the more dogmatic forms of Christianity (to choose one example) are winning more converts around the world than the more progressive forms.

Of course, humanity has a whole has an enormous interest in understanding the world well. It is demonstrably the case that our understanding of things like physics and biology allow us to live richer, healthier, and more fulfilling lives. Particularly in cases where scientific claims based on evidence and reason contradict religious claims based on someone’s supposedly divine authority, I think it is bad for humanity when large numbers of people place the religious claim above the scientific one. There are plenty of contemporary examples. Access to contraception and sex education demonstrably improves the kinds of lives people live, and yet one major force preventing those things from being universally available is religious beliefs that oppose them (arguably, with a hidden patriarchal motivation).

Ultimately, people possess a right to understand their own bodies and control their own sexuality and reproduction that is more important than the religious preferences of others who would seek to restrict and control those rights within the general population, especially among women.

If we lived in a world that took the kind of evidence that Harris finds convincing more seriously – things like the psychological consideration of what effect various circumstances have on human flourishing – I think we would ultimately find it preferable to a world where we continue to rely upon the kind of ‘evidence’ that supports substandard education and medical care for women, or the prohibition of promising types of medical research, or the teaching of utterly refuted theories about the history of life on Earth. People often argue that we should give respect to religious beliefs in the name of ‘tolerance’. While that argument might be somewhat convincing when it comes to benign beliefs, like the existence or non-existence of the Easter Bunny, it seems indefensible in the case of beliefs that have large and harmful effects on the lives of a great many people. Those beliefs – whether religiously motivated or not – deserve to be challenged honestly, openly, and vigorously.

Born this way

I don’t really understand why people make such a big fuss over the question of whether homosexuality is something that people are ‘born with’ or whether it is something they choose. I acknowledge that it is a factual question that is interesting to answer, but I don’t see why it is morally significant.

There’s nothing wrong with being gay if it is an inherent part of your biology, and there is nothing wrong with being gay if it is a conscious choice or unconscious response to your experiences and societal context. What makes any kind of sexual activity ethical is the meaningful consent of the participants, not the characteristics those participants have. Similarly, when it comes to the roles couples play within society (including as upbringers of children), I don’t see why sexual orientation has any relevance that justifies different treatment, either socially or under the law.

Opposition to homosexuality seems to be pure prejudice, plain and simple – often religiously motivated. Perhaps that explains something about why people are obsessed with the nature/choice distinction. If you are personally deeply opposed to homosexuality, see others doing it, and believe that it is a choice, you might feel personally bothered or insulted by the choice you think they are making.

Of course, even if you happen to be the parent, priest, or legislator of the person in question, the way they choose to live their romantic and sexual life is really not something you have any legitimate claim to controlling. Other people like things that you don’t. Get over it.

Oversight over institutions of armed power

On Yes, Prime Minister, a character describing a situation in which a document was leaked discusses the difference between what you do when you really want to find the source of a leak and what you do when it is all just for show. When it is for show, he says, you conduct a leak inquiry. If it is for a serious investigation, you call in ‘Special Branch’.

Reading through the Wikipedia entry on ‘Special Branch’ gave me a bit of pause. It seems like the term is used to refer to two different types of sub-organizations, within broader security structures like national police forces and armies.

Outward intelligence gathering

One sort of Special Branch is the macho Jack Bauer sort that wears flak jackets and drops in on terrorists from helicopters. They are also the ones with the machines for listening to private phone calls and reading private emails, back doors into supposedly confidential databases, and other such legally dubious trickery.

Having some kind of organization of this sort is important – especially for keeping genuinely dangerous things like biological and nuclear weapons away from terrorists. At the same time, giving such an organization an increasingly broad mandate just increases the risk that the organization itself will become abusive, or that the intelligence it collects will be used for inappropriate purposes.

There has to be some kind of meaningful, outside, civilian scrutiny of such organizations. If they are allowed to sit up at the top of the chain deciding who can trust who, we cannot allow them to be a secretive band of unknown people. It may render them less effective as an intelligence organization, to be subject to civilian oversight, but it is ultimately important for the security of society that this be so.

Quite possibly, governments shouldn’t have any organizations that they are not prepared to appear before a fairly elected legislature (in secret, perhaps) and answer detailed questions about.

Internal oversight

The other sort of Special Branch answers the question: Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? They are a response to the reality that organizations like armies and police forces attract bullies – people who are themselves attracted to power. At times, such people will abuse that power. That danger is increased enormously when the people are put within structures that will protect them, regardless of what they do. If the police force protects officers who use excessive force, their violent tendencies are likely to get worse.

Having a Special Branch to check for this kind of corruption in the rest of the service makes a lot of sense, and is an important check on police power. After all, a bad police officer is a scary thing. They are armed with weapons and power, and the judge will almost always take their word for how a situation went (unless there are photos or a video).

Changing balance

On Yes, Prime Minister, I think they were talking about the internal sort of Special Branch, looking for wrongdoing within powerful organizations. These days, I fear the outward-looking type of Special Branch has grown more powerful by comparison, partly by capitalizing on the fear people have of terrorism (despite the tiny chance of being a victim).

When people are fearful of non-governmental forces, they can easily err and make the government overly mighty. People also need to maintain in their minds the corresponding fear of abuse by government itself. The government is so powerful that it can do considerable harm by accident, and its control over information is such that we may never really know what accidents or abuse have taken place.

Terrorists can kill some innocent civilians – maybe a lot if they get hold of something dangerous. But the police can create a police state. They can seize the government with one of their own by force, if the other institutions of the state become weak enough. We need independent people watching over them more than we need them to be looking into the local radical cell.

Ontario and offshore wind

Yesterday was an insane day – guest lecture, work, then a commercial photo project – so I have fallen behind on blog updates. Apologies.

That said, how crazy is it that the government of Ontario has called for a moratorium on offshore wind farms? This is a province with a government that is relatively serious about climate change. It is also a province that has not yet phased out coal, despite the many serious risks associated with it, and which is pondering new nuclear plants, despite all the special risks they involve. Writing in The Globe and Mail, Jatin Nathwani implausibly suggested that offshore wind farms raise ‘red flags’. A savvier letter to the editor declared that: “If offshore wind farms are enough to raise red flags about the environment, then fossil fuels should be raising flags that are redder than red.”

Wind farms would seem like the least of their worries, and actually a contribution to solving their troubles. Of course, NIMBY forces are strong, and politicians are thinking about elections.

P.S. Also in the news, yet more reason to worry about methane and permafrost: Melting permafrost to emit carbon equal to half all industrial emissions: study.

Mythbusters and animal products

I enjoy the show Mythbusters quite a bit. I like the contrasting personalities of the hosts, and I like the way they stress how the ultimate test of any theory is experiment. The constraints of a television show can somewhat restrain them, when it comes to being rigorous and showing their work, but it is obvious that there is more thinking (and math) that goes on in the background.

One aspect of the show I don’t fully approve of is their frequent use of animal products. They often use dead pigs as stand-ins for human beings, usually when testing myths about whether something would be deadly or not. They also use lard as a lubricant, and other animal products.

I don’t think it is always wrong for human beings to kill animals for their own purposes, but I do think there are many reasons to oppose factory farming and many reasons to use non-animal alternatives when possible. In that spirit, it seems to me that the Mythbusters could find analogues for human beings that didn’t have to be raised in the kind of conditions these pigs probably were. Also, it seems plausible that testing urban legends isn’t a sufficiently important purpose to justify the use of animal products, when there are reasonable alternatives available.

In the grand scheme of things, Mythbusters is a minute consumer of animal products. Fantastically larger quantities get consumed by human beings and other animals every day. That being said, the Mythbusters are role models within a certain community, and it might have a positive effect if they established a policy on the use of animal products that takes into account some of the ethical considerations involved.

Arkeology

One thing I find a bit perplexing is that there are actual archeological expeditions that set out to find Noah’s Ark. The fact that these expeditions are assembled and deployed suggests that there is a very unusual class of people out there: those who (a) have the knowledge and experience required to assemble an archeological expedition and (b) actually believe that there was a physical boat that carried all the world’s terrestrial species to save them from a global flood.

I find it difficult to understand how someone with the knowledge and practicality required for (a) could simultaneously be willing to believe (b). Perhaps there are no such people, but rather there are archeologist who are willing to investigate the fancies of others, in exchange for funding or other benefits.

Local environmentalism

Perhaps it is unwise for me to criticize environmental groups at the moment, given that we are all trying to push a difficult issue forward at a time of considerable political hostility. Reagan’s 11th Commandment is a major reason why the Republicans are so strong in the United States. At the same time, it is disheartening to see people expending their useful energy on the wrong thing, when there is something they would care about a lot more available. Also, given that the environmental movement makes choices based on things that are still at the edge of scientific knowledge, there is a benefit in having public discussions, and making the strongest possible cases to one another. We should not assume ourselves to be infallible, but rather to be in a dialogue with an ever-emerging collection of complex information on how the climate operates.

All that said, I must confess that I am perplexed by how many environmental groups seem to focus their time. It might be a terrible thing that some ugly new development will replace a nice bit of woodland, but I think people need to consider the scale on which humanity is smashing nature. That little plot of forest is threatened along with a whole lot of other forests if catastrophic or runaway climate change occurs.

It reminds me of a person wandering in the middle of a battlefield, looking for their glasses. They realize one problem – that their glasses have been dropped – and they are working diligently at solving it by scrutinizing the ground. At the same time, bullets are flying all around them. They see the small problem, miss the big one, and focus their efforts in the wrong way as a consequence.

Climate change really is the over-riding environmental priority right now. If we warm up the planet five or six ˚C, it will ruin all conservation efforts that have been undertaken in the meanwhile. We need to solve climate change first – taking advantages of co-benefits where possible.

In any case, I think I can see the appeal of being a part of a group dedicated to saving the local bog. It has locavore chic. Also, the area might have a special importance to you personally. Finally, it has the benefit that even if your quest fails, the outcome isn’t so bad. Being part of something friendly and local is a lot more pleasant than confronting a terrifying spectre of global destruction. And yet, that seems to be what we are facing.

The CRTC and UBB

Regarding all the furor about usage based billing, I don’t think that basic concept is really so objectionable. Someone who uses 100 times more bandwidth than someone else should probably pay more for it.

What I object to is the rate at which the big telecommunication companies are being allowed to charge for bandwidth: $1.90 a gigabyte (GB), above a low limit. Movies, especially, are rather large. One ordinary definition movie from iTunes is about 1.5 GB – 2.0 GB. High definition movies are even more. The cost of actual providing the bandwidth is much lower, and letting the big firms charge such a high amount risks choking off promising new uses for the internet, such as increased videoconferencing. My relatively modest internet use in December (67 GB, well below my previous 200 GB cap) would have resulted in an added charge of nearly $80 to my monthly bill.

It would be fine to have an internet pricing regime that included some variability, it’s just important that it be set up in a way that allows upstart firms to challenge monopoly providers, lowering costs for consumers and improving service. Letting the big companies squeeze their competitors to death with hefty overuse fees doesn’t serve the best interests of Canadians.

[Update: 11:24pm] Michael Geist has a good piece about all of this: Fixing Canada’s Uncompetitive Internet.

Fewer photos to Facebook

Because of how they get their money, it seems to me that Facebook has a business model that is fundamentally opposed to the interests of its users. Since they don’t pay monthly fees, they aren’t Facebook’s customers. Instead, they are Facebook’s product, which is then sold to advertisers in the form of eyeballs and (more worrisomely) databases of personal information.

Because of that, Facebook is never going to be proactively involved in protecting privacy. Instead, it will always be pushing the boundary and doing as much as users are willing to accept. Bit by bit – visibly and invisibly – it seems that privacy protections will be eaten away and more and more data will be available to Facebook’s real clients, the advertisers.

In response to this, I have been gradually stripping down my profile. That’s not all that possible, however. For one thing, Facebook never forgets information you entered, even if you delete it. For another, it can guess all sorts of things about you based on your friends. It can guess what sort of products you are likely to buy, or even if you are gay.

Some people may not be bothered by this, but I am. As such, I am going to shift away from posting photography on Facebook. Instead, I will mostly rely on Flickr Pro, which is a paid and user-focused service.

[Update: 6:39pm] Fear not, photo appreciators! There will still be photos uploaded, and they are likely to be in smaller batches of higher quality work. These are from today: Rideau Canal Skating 2011.