Global warming is real (DUH).

Here is the majority of an e-mail I sent to my father many months ago in the midst of the election, on why his statement that there is still disagreement within the scientific community on global warming was fundamentally mistaken:

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The confusion about whether scientists agree or not comes about thus; of course, in any large, free community there will always be at least a few dissenters on the consensus, no matter what. This is the consequence of the incalculable effects of personality and unknown intent; always someone will say, “I don’t quite agree,” usually for the thrill of being the contrarian. In political issues today, a lot of the scientists that go against the grain of what the *vast* majority of the scientific community considers solid fact — such as global warming and evolution — are often either 1) scientists paid for or in the service of other interests, or 2) crusaders with another goal, such as Christian scientists who find one or two “gaps” in evolutionary theory and thus conclude it must all be a lie.

Now, no one in the scientific community finds bad science convincing. These scientists become ostracized in the world of empirical data and fact and the damage goes no further there. However, in the political world the dissenting scientists are picked up on, and put on radio talk shows and the “issue book” of the month and those who want to believe in a vast liberal conspiracy within the scientific community go “Look!, see!, they don’t all agree cause this guy says the human eye is irreducibly complex!, or that the earth is actually getting *colder*, not warmer!” But what the radio listeners and book readers don’t know is that nobody in the scientific community takes that scientist’s opinions seriously – and not because it goes against their agenda, after all there are plenty of conservative, especially fiscally conservative if not socially, scientists — but because they are not sufficiently (or at all) supported by empirical data.

Yes, liberals do the same things with results they find more pleasing to their agenda and plaster them up all over; but on the whole, which side the scientific community as a *whole* comes down on is the most important barometer of what is really happening (or has happened, in the case of evolution) because the scientific community has absolutely no reason to guide a complex public relations hoax with bad science. Again, this would be akin to historians writing collective fiction or a pilot not bothering to keep care of his plane.

The beauty about science is that facts don’t lie, they don’t have agendas, and they don’t pontificate. When it comes to these issues those that say “this is all up in the air” or “the facts are not fully in” are really just saying, “well, most of the facts go against us but, we don’t like those conclusions so, we’re gunna go find random dude number 1 and even more random dude number 2 who disagrees and say that therefore, ‘the jury is still out’”. But there will always be people who decide to interpret the data differently, even when they are a quite a minority, as they are — because it always feels good to go against the grain and depict yourself as a persecuted crusader for truth, even if your truth it based more on politics and/or religious belief than facts. Therefore, looking at the majority scientific opinion is really the place to go for your best bet. And if the scientists end up being wrong, the great thing is that they will change their theories when they realize the data has been misconstrued; because as a whole, the scientific community is interested in doing good science, and nothing else.

Like Michael Shermer has said (who by the way is another fiscally consverative, socially liberal skeptic, like a lot of scientists), the question should not be “do you believe in evolution?” but “do you accept evolution?” because it is in fact so established as empirical reality that that is like asking, “do you believe in gravity?”

Academics (not) in society.

I attended a lecture from guest speaker David Merli today entitled “How do we know what to do?” From the title, and from the advertizing for the event, I thought I was going to attend a discussion of how to engage in debate with those who have different value systems than yourself, but are nonetheless worthy and intelligent opponents.

This ended up being a misunderstanding, and fortunately I was not the only one who made the mistake. While Merli’s talk had some interesting points which I found intriguing to think about, he did not really address the issue I imagine most of us were in the room for – how this conundrum applies to contemporary politics, and what to do about the social conflicts it produces, such as the debate over abortion, gay marriage, secularization, etc.

This was revealed when he answered a question concerning the beliefs of a Taliban member. The structural background assumptions that lead a radical Islamist to believe in specific things like say, the subordination of women, is something we can dismantle on rational grounds, said Meril. Well absolutely. But his talk had been dealing with situations where the fundamentally different assumptions people bring to an argument cannot be put in competition with each other on shared rational grounds or, that is how I understood him. The rest of the talk was therefore focused on what to do next, which to be honest I am not entirely clear about. But it seemed these situations, with two opposing value systems which cannot be proved, revolved mostly around elaborate philosophical quandaries and systems which pretty much only professional philosophers have any idea about. So quite frankly, very little to none of the talk was applicable to the real world as we encounter these issues in our day to day life.

That is no fault of Merli’s; again, I think the advertizing created some false expectations. He did what he intended to do well. But it made me think about the power of academia to remove those who administer to it from present day concerns and actual problems that are presented to us. Even something that seems as immediately relevant as, what to do with value systems opposed to ours, ended up focusing on ideas and circumstances that the average or even thoughtful person is rarely presented with in the public sphere. How difficult would it be, I wonder, to get someone to come to give one of these lectures and actually talk about gay marriage, actually talk about the problem of the religious right and the anti-science attitude of much of this country?

Part of the avoidance is built into the culture of academia itself; there is always this subtle suggestion that “contemporizing” historical processes or, in this case, philosophical concepts, is a project for the short-attention span of the masses, whose interests stop once the discussion moves beyond material appropriate for cable news. For example, Merli said that in any lecture concerning the question of clashing value systems, one is always expected to talk about abortion and Hitler, and by mentioning this, he joked, he had disposed of this obligation with one sentence. And to a large degree this is a totally valid bias, and something I complain about quite frequently myself.

But it goes too far when it keeps us from discussing how our thoughts and discoveries are relevant to our contemporary situation – because after all, if we want anybody to be throwing their two cents into these debates, shouldn’t it be the trained, intelligent and thoughtful people who might really know what they are talking about? The fact of the matter is that most people are quite interested in abortion and Hitler, and for good reason. To shrug these issues off as tainted with the shallow discourse of the masses is to give up the chance of making it even better, and therefore I don’t quite understand the hesitancy of so many academics to dive deeply into contemporary issues.

Of course, I should have been alerted to the fact that this was not going to be something applicable to the current situation when it was clear that the talk would be concerned with debating those of equal intelligence and thoughtfulness. While there are, obviously, intelligent and thoughtful Christians, those are not really responsible for the mess our public discourse is in.* The people we are dealing with are fundamentally irrational, unreasonable, and thus even if they are intelligent in terms of their mental capacity, are not really putting their brain power to any intelligent use.

I am comforted by Meril’s assertion that the crazy religious beliefs of Jihadists – and, I assumed, other religious beliefs including those of Christianity – do not even require us to take both value systems as equal in weight, since religious belief is so easily dismantled by reason. However now we still have this question, the question I came in with and then realized wasn’t going to be touched upon, let alone answered: what the fuck do we do about these people? Seriously? We need to start thinking about it and doing more about it more often, even if the wall of irrationality seems impossibly unresponsive. It would irresponsible, as enlightened individuals, not to at least try.

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* Sure, the “moderate Christians” who just like to have something to believe in bug me too, just for the fact that they choose to subordinate reason to something else when the reasons not to do so are so compelling, but those aren’t the folks who get out there with Yes on Prop 8 signs, but rather the ones that stay out of the debate entirely, perhaps aware that their faith is too fragile to take a beating, and they prefer to keep it as one likes to hold on to an old sentimental sweater.

Hope and despair in the midst of The Fear.

I’ve been reading Habermas this week, a German historian and political theorist who originated the elaborated concept of the “public sphere.” The public sphere has origins in the seventeenth century and really took off in the eighteenth. Fundamentally bourgeois, the public sphere was a space (figuratively speaking) of rational debate where the private citizens of a state met to publicly debate relevant issues and, hopefully, subject existing authority to the dictates of reason.

Sounds nice, yes? Sounds wonderful to me. And for a little while, it seemed, the reality came pretty close to the ideal. But all of this fell apart pretty quickly; the public sphere soon became as much an instrument of control as emancipation, especially through the use of culture to advertise rather than criticize existing (especially class) structures; consequently you end up with a mass public culture, constantly shifting and technically open to anyone, but merely geared towards supporting a consumerist society which has nearly lost the ability to think really critically about received wisdom and structures.

Thinking about all this brings me back into the twenty-first century. How everytime I turn on the TV, I get crap. About how standing in line for groceries, I read crap across every magazine cover I see. About how even I, notoriously confident among women, look at myself in dressing room mirrors and feel fat. And when I think about all of this at once, I feel almost despairing. The state of our society has gotten so truly sick, so far removed from that which is truly nourishing and joyful, that I wonder if I am in the end days of reason and happiness. It frightens me, and makes me feel ever so alienated by this place, this space that I must move within.

However today I came across two things which gave me some cause for hope. The first is a song by Lily Allen which I first heard in Moscow on TV, liked it right away, and heard again last night in the pet store, reminding me to download it today. I think the lyrics will speak for themselves bellow:

I want to be rich and I want lots of money
I don’t care about clever, I don’t care about funny
I want loads of clothes and fuck loads of diamonds
I heard people die while they are trying to find them.

And I’ll take my clothes off and it will be shameless
Cause everyone knows that’s how you get famous.
I’ll look at The Sun and I’ll look in The Mirror
I’m on the right track yeah I’m onto a winner.

Chorus
I don’t know what’s right and what’s real anymore
And I don’t know how I’m meant to feel anymore.
When do you think it will all become clear
Cause I’m being taken over by the fear.

Life’s about film stars and less about mothers
It’s all about fast cars and cussing each other
But it doesn’t matter cause I’m packing plastic
And that’s what makes my life so fucking fantastic.

And I am a weapon of massive consumption
And it’s not my fault it’s how I’m programmed to function
I’ll look at The Sun and I’ll look in The Mirror
I’m on the right track yeah we’re onto a winner.

Forget about guns and forget ammunition
Cause I’m killing them all on my own little mission
Now I’m not a saint but I’m not a sinner
Now everything’s cool as long as I’m getting thinner.

Chorus
I don’t know what’s right and what’s real anymore
And I don’t know how I’m meant to feel anymore
When do you think it will all become clear
Cause I’m being taken over by the fear.

This assures me that, at the least, we have not reached the point where critical voices are absent and it is not clear to a lot of people that there is a very serious problem here. Of course, recognizing the problem is different from acting to fix it, and recognizing that it is much, much more pervasive than we realize, and is in fact working its evil magic in places we deem to be free from excessive consumerism, shallowness, or oppression. But we’ll save that discussion of our society’s split personality for the post I’ve been planning forever on Oprah. The point here is that it could be worse. We could be in a situation where a song like this might not hit a chord; however, I’m pretty sure that a lot of people appreciate the blunt social criticism going on here.

The second thing that I came by was the much talked about performance of Susan Boyle on Britain’s Got Talent. This is one of those times where it would be shallow of me to even attempt to avoid being cliche — this video moved me, more than I can say. I recognized my own young, childhood dreaming in this entire moment, but I saw it through a woman who, unlike me, has probably felt knocked down several times for having the dreams she does and appreciating the woman she is. And while you see the sickness, and indeed The Fear in the initial reactions of the audience, again at least, at least we can still recognize beauty when it strikes us starkly, sharply, and with complete assurance in its being.

What is wrong with American media and political culture: an example brought to you by Good Morning America.

A few weeks ago, while indirectly watching Good Morning America* over a bowl of cereal, they ran a preview segment for a 20/20 John Stossel segment on universal preschool, which has apparently been proposed by the Obama administration. Now, I cannot say that I watched the full 20/20 program; but apparently from reviews from those who did, what I saw from the “preview” pretty much covered the content of the whole program. Stossel lined up a bunch of angry, tax paying mothers and had them sound off on the waste of money universal preschool would be. After all, they argued, there are already subsidy programs for those who cannot afford preschool. All this will be is a big waste of money.

There was, not surprisenly, no interviews — at least in this preview, but for how long it was it could have at least included balance if it existed in the longer format — of Obama officials who are responsible for advocating the idea of universal preschool, or interviews of federal employees who administer such benefits as already exist and might be able to explain why the current system is inadequate. Rather we just had livid mothers, complaining about how silly and stupid Obama and such politicians must be; it’s plain common sense to anyone that such a system is a pointless waste of hard earned tax payer’s money.

Now this alone justifies the title of this post. But what made this really golden was the segment that followed immediately after it, a fluff piece with Diane Sawyer in Finland. ** Mostly Sawyer just talked about how much those Fins love saunas and, how cute their traditional dances are; but there was also a lengthy segment on their health care system. Apparently, I learned, all major towns in Finland have a health clinic which, for $50 a year, they can have full access to. And apparently, the Fins have gotten a lot healthier in the past decade or so, due to many public initiatives and awareness campaigns. Impressive, the report seemed to say. And yet, no mention of how this is made possible. Sounds nice, why don’t we do that here? Oh gee, do you think it might have something to do with the fact that, according to this source at least, as of 1999 private sources accounted for only 24% of Finland’s health care system? Hmmmm. Maybe? That might? Have something? To do with it?

Or honestly, maybe not. To be honest, I’m not sure how Finland’s statistics square up with comparable countries, or ours, on how exactly they cover their health care costs.*** And perhaps they will end up revamping it to make it more private.**** But the larger point is that, when covering one of those suspect European countries that are branded negatively in the minds of most Americans as “socialist,” no one even thinks to ask where these charming qualities come from. What, do they just figure the simple and endearing Fins are more thrifty with their primitive medical supplies than Americans? That ought to be the first question on any serious reporter’s list — how do they pay for this, and why can’t we do this here? — but instead, the glaring question is not even asked.

Coming after a typical John Stossel piece, where the government is portrayed by ranting taxpayers as inherently incapable of understanding any simple issue in the simple manner that simple common sense obviously dictates, this very simple (read, thoughtless) piece on Finland came across as even more starkly disturbing. Often the idelogical threat of socialism in Europe is dealt with by demonization; but perhaps ignoring the fact that such altnerative options even exist, or subtely insinuating that they only work in supposedly simple and bucollic countries, is a more effective way to prevent the American pubic from even questioning their by-your-own-boostraps ideology.

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• I am never sure if I am supposed to italicize TV shows, but then decide to in any case because really, doesn’t it just look weird if I don’t? And I dislike quotes as a substitute.
• * And if you’re looking for the health care coverage on the website link, tell me if you find it; cause I couldn’t. Apparently it wasn’t quite newsworthy enough to make the cut, and they replaced it with Sawyer’s chilly dip instead.
• ** And quite honestly, I am too lazy and too busy to embark on that kind of research at the moment, especially considering that 1) no one reads this and 2) it’s not the main point of my argument in any case.
• *** I say this because, judging from my brief Google search, Finland might be revamping its health care system some time soon.