Warmed Up Buffoonery

Chapter XXVII: Wherein the Faithful Don Quixote de la Craken Once More Mounted His Magnificent Steed and Sallied Forth to Battle the Wild Phantoms of Other Men's Imaginations

 

http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Minority.Blogs&ContentRecord_id=2158072e-802a-23ad-45f0-274616db87e6

 

This is not a very coherent piece of work. It's rather hackish, actually. One finds not only deliberately misleading quotes, bad grammar, no sign of proofing--but also, poor organization, no clear thesis, no paraphrasable conclusion. Thus, from the outset, given these formal deficits, it does not appear that the authors expect a serious reception. They certainly do not deserve one.

 

Unfortunately, due to the irreducible complexity of this issue, both those who essentially agree with the IPCC reports and those who propose alternative interpretations of the scientific data have descended into oversimplified rhetoric when discussing climate change in the popular press. Oversimplification is also, to various degrees, falsification. An issue of this complexity is not susceptible to soundbites, nor to live debates, nor to superficial newspaper articles and editorials. All of these conduits transform the underlying information into mere rhetorical displays and political peacocking--yet, what pitiful percentage of the population could even attempt to understand the gross and scope of the climate system (including its feedback mechanisms), the scientific process, the national and international political machinations, the economic calculations, the technological realities and potentialities, the environmental risks, the response of pathogens, the social and psychological adaptations to the realities of all these things and to the images of all these things that actually settles in the mind of the common man?

 

But, now I must set off on my next adventure, before Sancho's island kingdom is deluged by the swollen oceans. Therefore, I commend you to the capable Senor Romm, who provides a more thorough and particularized response at this blog:  http://climateprogress.org/2008/12/11/inhofe-morano-recycles-long-debunked-denier-talking-points-will-the-media-be-fooled-again/#more-4413

The author has the scientific and experiential qualifications necessary for analysis.

By Indirections

find directions out--   Herein lies a feminist rant, which achieved the opposite of its goal, at least in my case:   http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/09/opinion/09hirshman.html?_r=1   She wished to persuade us of the worthiness of women workers, of the contribution they might make to Obama's job program, and of the necessary justice of a tilt in its balance. However, she only succeeded in reminding me how little the female side of the ledger really adds to the economic numbers. For example, men invent virtually everything--and do almost all the difficult and dangerous work. The vast majority of women, whatever their formal titles may be, function as (mostly overpaid) babysitters, nurses, and secretaries. Now, which sex do you think clawed its way out of the Stone Age--and which one continues to propel the economy, and not only the economy, forward? All science, mathematics, technology was created and produced by men; also, all philosophies and religions and cultures, these great civilizing influences in history, were imposed upon the world by men. Women do not evidence the necessary levels of curiosity, ambition, passion, commitment, or talent to generate the major contributions in these areas. Is it possible then that they deserve equal compensation? But, wouldn't equal compensation, under such conditions, mean unequal treatment? "One law for the lion and the ox is not justice."   In the end, feminists have succeeded in reinventing misogyny--first, they deprive the female of half her charms, then they aggressively expose her to unfavorable comparisons with the opposite sex in an environment natural to him but not to her, and, finally, having diminished her strengths and emphasized her weaknesses, these deluded ideologues then want to claim for her a privilege she never possessed even in the past, before her power was foolishly squandered--equality? What? Do they think themselves illusionists to try to foist upon us ideas that betray both sense and reason?   And to think that the Republican party should have such weak and weak-witted enemies as these--and then suffer inglorious defeat to them--   Only the decadence of the age can explain such folly.

Affirmative Action Numbers

Here's some hard evidence on the huge qualifications gap between white and black law school applicants--which gap leads ineluctably to the bar passage gap discussed in the last post:

"In the 1996-1997 admissions cycle, some 2,646 white applicants placed in the top 7.7 percent of LSAT-takers and had college GPAs of 3.5 or better. These credentials are very good, obviously, but not phenomenal; the average student who was admitted to Boalt Hall this year had an LSAT in the 97.7 percentile and a GPA of 3.74. And yet a mere 16 African Americans in the United States and 45 Hispanics had records that strong! In this elite group of applicants, whites outnumbered blacks 165 to one. If we relax the standard substantially and look at students in the top sixth (83.5 percentile or better) on the LSATs and a GPA of only 3.25, 7,715 whites and just 103 blacks qualify. In this broader elite, there were 75 whites for every African American." (See Diversity and Meritocracy in Legal education: A Critical Evaluation of Linda F. Wightmans's "The Threat to Diversity in Legal Education."; Response to Linda F. Wightman, New York University Law Review, vol.72, p. 1, 1997 Constitutional Commentary March 22, 1998).

The differences are even more astounding when you consider that many self-identified blacks and hispanics are actually mixed race (like Obama). Adjusted for the difference in the sizes of the white and black populations in America that 165 to 1 still comes to 30 to 1. If there were as many blacks in America as whites, there would still be 30 times as many highly qualified whites as blacks. This is obviously not a convenient fact socially. Inequality creates tensions and affirmative action is imposed by the elites to keep the people pacified. They will use this strategy for so long as it produces pacification. Of course, if it ever ceases to work, instead of treating the symptoms of pathology (racial inequalities in achievement levels), they might then adopt measures to treat the pathology itself (lower black IQ).

I've drawn up a rough statistical comparison of LSAT scores by ethnicity extrapolated from numbers from this report: Law School Admission Council, LSAT Technical Report 98-04, March 1998. The most recent scores are virtually identical to those in this report. The left hand column is LSAT scores, the numbers in the next 4 columns represent the percentage of each ethnicity who equalled or exceeded the matching score. 

median	152	151	146	142
SD	9	10	9	8
LSAT Scores	White	Asian	Hispanic	Black
142	86	84	70	50
143	84	82	65	45
144	82	79	60	40
145	79	76	55	35
146	76	73	50	30
147	73	69	45	26
148	69	65	40	22
149	65	60	35	19
150	60	55	31	16
151	55	50	28	13
152	50	46	25	10
153	45	42	22	8
154	40	38	19	6
155	35	34	16	5
156	31	31	13	4
157	28	28	10	3
158	25	25	8	2
159	22	22	7	1.7
160	19	19	6	1.4
161	16	16	5	1.1
162	13	13	4	0.9
163	10	11	3	0.7
164	8	9	2	0.5
165	7	8	1.7	0.3
166	6	7	1.4	0.2
167	5	6	1.1	0.1
168	4	5	0.9
169	3	4	0.7
170	2	3	0.5
171	1.7	2	0.3
172	1.4	1.7	0.2
173	1.1	1.4	0.1
174	0.9	1.1
175	0.7	0.9
176	0.5	0.7
177	0.3	0.5
178	0.2	0.4
179	0.1	0.3
180		0.2

Only half of LSAT test takers actually go to law school and these attendees tend to be in the top half of each ethnicity's scoring distribution. This means that a 163 will place a white in the top 10 percent of test takers, but only about the top 18-20 percent of law students. Given that 152 is the median white score, it's fair to assume that few whites with sub-152 scores attend law school. So 152 is effectively the minimum expected from white applicants as far as admissions officers are concerned. If this minimum were imposed on blacks, just 10% would make the cut at any law school. About 15% of law students attend top 20 schools, which are those with nationwide reputations and prestige. This corresponds to a minimum LSAT of 165 for whites and asians. Only 0.6% of black law students score that high. On merit, they would represent less than 0.1% of the student populations at top 20 schools--in reality they are closer to 7%. A 70 to 1 ratio of charity cases to merit cases is impressive. This is a religion forbidding doubts. The black minimum score, then, is 156 at these schools--a full standard deviation below the white minimum. Of course, this makes sense insofar as the median black score on the LSAT is a standard deviation lower than the white median. Coincidentally, the black-white IQ gap has stood at a standard deviation for generations. The education system in this way achieves a superficial unity at the expense of fundamental inequality, de facto and de jure.

On merit, blacks would run to 0.25% of students at the top 50 law schools (which combined graduate a third of law students). And the study quoted at the top of the post estimated that, depending on the predictive model used, between 2% and 3.4% of all law students would be black if admissions were color-blind. Her methodology is quite generous to blacks. To estimate race-blind admissions rates she looked only at LSAT scores and undergraduate GPA. The thing is, white students at any given college have higher IQs than their black peers (due to undergrad affirmative action). I guarantee that people with higher IQs are more likely to take difficult classes than lower IQ people. Result: white and black GPAs are not comparable. An "A" in precalculus hardly carries the same signification as an "A" in multivariable calculus. She certainly overestimates the black representation that would be expected from a more thorough merit-based admissions process. But, even if you accept an average of her numbers, 2.7% is much lower than the 13% of the American population blacks represent. It's a 5 to 1 shortfall. This exactly matches my statistical estimates in the table above: if blacks had to meet the white minimum of 152 to get into any law school, only 10% would make it, compared to 50% of whites. This is slightly misleading, though, since only 10% of test takers are black and my table is based on test takers, not population numbers. By my numbers, 10% of the 10% of test takers who are black would make it--which means they would compose 2% of law students, a 6.5 to 1 shortfall.

The analysis I've done here showing the effect of affirmative action on law school admissions applies in similar fashion to undergrad admissions and admissions to any competitive graduate or professional programs. They are all based, to a significant degree, on pure (eg, SAT, LSAT) and applied (GPA, courseload) cognitive ability. The IQ differences between groups predicts to a high degree of accuracy, as shown above, the academic qualifications that characterize each ethnic group. I do not think most Americans have any notion of the magnitude of the assistance given to affirmative action cases. Even supporters of this racial strategy might be privately grieved by it. My purpose here was to pull out a variety of numbers to give some perspective on the issue.

The Wages of Corruption

Our government mandated racism provokes blowback in all sorts of ways that the PC crowd could never (allow themselves to) imagine. For example:
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/13/weekinreview/13liptak.html
A key figure from this is that 4% of white law school graduates never pass the bar. For black law grads, the number of those who never pass the bar is 22%. That is a shocking contrast and, for the many, many blacks who cannot pass, it is a tragic waste of time and money.

Here's the problem: black law applicants with the best credentials match places like Ohio State or American (ranked 30-50), but, because of affirmative action, instead go to Harvard or Yale (the top ranked programs). Those blacks who fall just short of this top group have qualifications like those at schools in the 50-80 range, but get accepted to schools in the 4-10 range. This continues down the line until you have the least competitive law schools accepting the best black students that higher ranked schools have not snapped up. These students fall short of the white students at their schools just as blacks at Harvard fall short of white Harvard students. Unfortunately, the whites at low ranked schools can barely pass the bar themselves--their less qualified black peers have even more trouble, and frequently cannot pass even with multiple attempts. So the problem starts at the top, though it is not obvious there since the black Harvardeers (being Emory level students) pass the bar at high rates.

The solution is to either end affirmative action, leaving the top 20 programs with virtually no black students and even the top 50 with about 1% blacks, or to somehow prevent the bottom third of law programs from admitting blacks whose qualifications demonstrate they are highly unlikely to pass the bar--which would leave the bottom third bereft of black students. This would theoretically be simple since there is a close correlation between LSAT scores and bar passage rates. Today these ill-fated blacks are not even informed of their odds. At a minimum, they ought to be provided information they can understand on this issue prior to committing to 3 years of law school. The socialists will no doubt reject all my proposed remedies. I'm a threat to their holier-than-thou hypocrisies, and the religion of PC has no mercy on apostates or heretics.

Safeguards against Tyranny

The recent Boumedienne opinion from the Supreme Court corrects another folly of the Bush regime: holding captive men who were suspected of being terrorists or combatants with no proof that they were such. This means that some dangerous individuals are likely to be released due to insufficient evidence against them, which is a price we can and must pay. Sometimes there is evidence that they had planned to become combatants (letters or email messages saying so, for example). Practically, it is difficult to find sufficient evidence in many cases; and a further difficulty arises in the form of evidence that may be decisive, but threatens national security if provided to the court.

However, the Bush administration's solution of arbitrarily imprisoning anyone who in their unsupervised and unaccountable opinion might pose a risk to America is not a defensible proposition--as the Supreme Court finally indicated. Without this judicial check upon executive authority we give the President the option to exercise tyrannical power. In fact, this is the very definition of tyranny: unchecked executive authority. Contra Bush, we must exchange this exacerbated risk of tyranny for the certain contingency of facing some of the released prisoners on the battlefield. Of course, a further benefit to doing justice is that a competent public relations machine will ensure that we are also seen to be doing it.

I would define my position as intelligence reinforced by skepticism, spiced with some misanthropy. I do not trust our government; nor do I trust the people running it. I never have and I never will. Consequently, I favor the imposition of transparency and accountability upon government actions and agents whenever this is practical.

Some might reject the Court's decision as too charitable to our enemies. But, in terms of altruistic sacrifice for our principles--is it simply altruism? By flaunting its brutality and injustices, the Bush administration encourages anti-American sentiment around the world, and even at home. This costs lives, and not only money and power. Apparently, the critics adopt a more cynical perspective on this issue and assume that our actions and our image in the world have no impact upon this anti-American sentiment. I am not so pessimistic as to believe that we have no control over international perceptions of America. And such perceptions, among our allies and our enemies, absolutely matter. They matter economically, militarily, politically, culturally--and their importance increases apace as the world becomes ever more interconnected and interdependent.

Romney on Detroit

His prescription runs counter to mine, and he fails to answer my main objection to bankruptcy: it will frighten off too many customers for the automakers to survive. Otherwise, he makes an intelligent argument. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/19/opinion/19romney.html?_r=1&hp

The Question of Climatic Certainty

I've long said that the climate system is only partially understood--and, due to the complexity of it, the number of unknown variables and unknown interactions among them--it will never be fully understood. Mathematical theory makes it sufficiently clear that some problems are insoluble. This is one of them. But, finding the precise answer and estimating an approximation to it are different challenges. The former will never be possible, since it is prevented by mathematical laws (which tend not change)--however, an approximation appears to be possible even now. On climate change, thousands of scientists have invested several decades of effort to generate these approximations. In response, we ought to undertake such actions as are justified by their assessed accuracy and by the risk level they foretell.

Detroit's Sinking Fleet

The best option to handle the Big Three would probably be for the federal government to negotiate serious concessions in return for some type of bailout. Those concessions would include major environmental advances (higher fuel economy, recyclability of vehicles, intensified research, possibly obligations to pursue other transportation priorities like electric streetcars), new management (preferably a combination of private equity managers, venture capitalists, and engineers), a non-voting equity stake for the government, renegotiation of the union contract to bring their wages down to market-competitive levels (along the lines of Reagan's negotiation with the air traffic controllers' union). Bankruptcy would cause major defections to other automakers to avoid the risk of owning a car made by a defunct company (which would kill resale value and increase repair costs). Bankruptcy would be a circle sufficiently vicious to kill off at least one or two of them. This would accelerate and perpetuate the recession to little positive purpose.

Biden the Clown

We've had a lot of politicians with communication issues recently. Biden talks faster than he can think, Bush gets lost in the forbidding jungles of English syntax, Slick Willy lies compulsively, Obama pauses to emit at least 3 ahs or ums before he can finish a given sentence, Palin has such poor apprehension of rhetorical evasions as to provide the public with several clear views of her ignorance, and McCain was once so naive as to actually try to tell the truth while running for public office.

Ergo, either the talent tends to avoid politics or in politics the scum rises to the top.

Health Costs

The fundamental problem in the health system is a gross misalignment of incentives. Neither the patient nor the doctor directly bears the burden of the medical expenses they incur. Consequently, their incentive to minimize the expense, or at least to recognize the notion of a cost-benefit trade-off, is heavily diluted. The failure to recognize a cost-benefit paradigm by juries at malpractice trials also distorts incentives and causes doctors and patients to demand too many medical services. Socialization will not correct this incentive issue; instead of a better alignment of incentives, it will only create a different misalignment.

Given the pace and nature of technological advance in this field (which is the prime cause of the vast increase in health costs) over the last few decades, assuming technology fails to provide any significant countervailing trends that reduce costs (eg, automation), America is on a path to becoming a well-armed nursing home.

But, we should bear in mind that we are by far the greatest source of innovation in this tremendously important field. And a vital part of this competitive advantage is clearly attributable to the element of private sector profit-seeking. This innovation benefits America enormously and its influence in the world is actually one of the greatest practical forms of American philanthropy. The two primary costs of socialization (and financial realities make this virtually inevitable sometime in the next 20 years) that we should seek to minimize are the diminution of personal liberty and the slow death of the culture of innovation.