Israel and Problems

In a recent speech to AIPAC, the highly influential Israel lobbying group in America, Obama said, "Jerusalem will remain the capital of Israel, and it must remain undivided." Shortly thereafter he said to Fareed Zakaria:  "I think the Clinton formulation provides a starting point for discussions between the parties." The Clinton plan was for a divided Jerusalem. He said he wasn't sufficiently careful with his syntax on the prior occasion.

Making a divided Jerusalem the starting point of negotiations is clearly disadvantageous to the Israelis, and they are much mispleased with this aboutface. Clinton's starting point was more pro-Israel in 2000. Of course, the Israelis would prefer to propose a solution in which they derive all the benefits--but the Palestinians will never (and should never) concede all points. The outcome of negotiation is failure or compromise--neither side dictates except by imposition of simple force. Obama probably could not do worse than any preceding President; each left office with this issue unresolved.

The Israelis get away with playing an evil game, such as we would be most reluctant to countenance in any other ally, by using the excuse that their adversary is still more brutal.

The assumption that Israel is the white knight facing off against the Muslim devils is foolish and grossly oversimplified. Israel established its independence by means of terrorism, butchery, brutality, deviousness, and many other less than lovely qualities. Today the West Bank is pockmarked with innumerable Jewish settlements scattered all over a territory to which they have no legal claim. This is simply an ostentatious and unnecessary provocation of the Palestinians and their supporters. It is the "might makes right" philosophy in action. There is little underlying moral difference between the two religions: both are essentially tribalistic in outlook and espouse "eye for an eye" moral codes. The difference arises instead from cultural history and present circumstances. In particular, the Jews have had benefit of exposure to Western ideas for centuries, have understood and largely absorbed the Western tradition (and were in fact contributors to this intellectual background), whereas the Muslims have only a despotic political tradition and no civil society per se, just the overweening religious structures. Finally, as the weaker party in the power relation, the Muslims have been driven to more desperate measures (overt terrorism) to persuade the Israelis that they still have some power and some basis for leverage at the negotiating table.

The American-Israeli relationship is not a fair deal for the U.S. It never was, nor is it today. Their efforts to make peace with their neighbors have been insufficient--and we have borne a substantial portion of the costs created by their foreign policies. Salting Palestinian wounds by planting settlements all over the West Bank is not excused by the madness of Hamas.

They ought to keep in mind that without us Israel would be a radioactive desert within 20 years.

Opening Bid

http://www.energyxxi.org/xxi/open_letter.html This is an open letter sponsored by the Chamber of Commerce, which was slightly pro-business in its leanings the last time I checked. This is a crushing indictment of most of the Bush administration energy policies, signed by some of his former cabinet and other executive officials. I take this to be a blueprint for what an intelligent republican administration (perhaps McCain's) would pursue as its energy policy--though, with a democratic Congress, compromise would be inescapable. I consider it an interesting update on what the "business/security first" types are willing to concede to the environmentalist elements and what they demand in return. Mostly they seem clever enough to at least go for "dual-use" policies: those environmentally friendly policies that are also good for business or security. That's something, and quite a bit more than the genius in the Oval Office is prepared to sign on for.

Political Psychology

I remember one morning in a seminar class in my last semester of law school having a discussion with my classmates concerning the effect the internet would have on the dissemination of the news. People now have access to vast troves of information and I observed my classmates arguing through variations on what appeared to me to be a touchingly naive underlying consensus that this would result in a more informed populace, one capable of exercising critical judgement as to which resources were most trustworthy and which perspectives could claim the strongest arguments. I argued that in reality most people have neither the time nor the intelligence nor the inclination to play at their game of analytical objectivity--people would simply do what they have always done, only more so given the multiplied options and facility provided by the new medium: they will seek out those news outlets that confirm their prejudices most energetically and emphatically. Since I had thought about this question before, I was able to deliver a brief and fairly coherent and, most important, punctual perspective. That ended the discussion.  

How can one-sided articles like this one:
http://spectator.org/archives/2008/07/16/obamas-left-wing-extremism
be particularly interesting to intelligent people (which is always a minority of the population), even in the rare cases when they string together some good points? All of these editorials (and I do not even except those written by the few authors whom I regularly read), all of them--insult one's intelligence. Instead of confronting all the relevant facts on a given issue, as honor and honesty require, editorialists either misrepresent or ignore the inconvenient facts. For example, the Harvardeer below critiques the Obama health care plan using the usual arguments--but then fails to mention that there are a few problems with the status quo that the republicans are doing nothing to rectify: we spend vastly more than any other nation on our grossly inefficient health care system and we derive little obvious benefit from the huge amount of extra spending we do over and above that of other rich nations. He also fails to note that the government currently pays for 60% of health spending in this country, including tax breaks. Now, I am aware of these inconvenient facts and still oppose nationalization of the health system at this time. Why? Because I believe that we derive tremendous non-obvious benefits from our partly private system. Nationalizing the system would diminish innovation at all levels (which is a double blow because the entire world depends upon our innovation in this field), it would create new socialist-minded voting constituencies (perhaps nurses unions to add to the abominable the teacher's unions), it would further encourage the dependency psychology already too prevalent among certain social groups, it would strike a terrible blow to the ideal of individual liberty, it would make medical care the political plaything of unaccountable bureaucrats and cynical politicians, and, contrary to Democratic propaganda, it might very well intensify the gap between rich and poor--the rich will always have access to private care, which might someday be much better than the public system.

And that's only my criticism of an editorial I fundamentally agree with!

How Many Times Has Bush Shot America?

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/15/science/15tier.html?em&ex=1216267200&en=68581e548380028b&ei=5087%0A

Is it really possible that the Republican Congress in 2006, during a Republican administration, could set these wheels in motion? From the Democrats one might expect this sort of myopic infantile pandering, but from the Republicans? Aside from the Iraq invasion and the climate change issue, what most disappoints me about the Bush administration and his Congress (2000-2006) is that they adopted so many of the worst habits of the Democrats--this is merely one of many examples. I suppose the most notorious instance remains Bush's vast new Medicare entitlement program (the costs of which his people criminally and, I believe, intentionally underestimated when trying to push it through Congress). But this, working toward a new quota system in our university science departments, this is as much as to stab a vital organ necessary to the life of American competitiveness in economic and military spheres.

Diverse Intelligences

http://www.gnxp.com/blog/2006/02/world-of-difference-richard-lynn-maps.php#2.01

The link is to a lengthy review of a book called Race Differences in Intelligence: An Evolutionary Analysis. I have not read the book, but the reviewer (Malloy) seems a better scholar than the author (Lynn). The main advantage I might derive from looking through the book would be a clearer estimate of the quality of the studies on which the book is based. Distinguishing valid from invalid studies is necessary for scientific progress in any field.

The most obvious and one of the most important points of superiority Malloy evinces over the author is in his discussion of IQ difference between American whites and blacks. It has run at about 15-17 points consistently among various IQ tests and over the course of decades since first tested during World War I. This is roughly a standard deviation. Its real world effects are seen most clearly in differential academic performance, which are more pronounced even than the IQ difference itself (the anti-intellectualism of black American culture and the greater prevalence of poverty among blacks exacerbating the deficit). Thus, this issue is of consequence to America. But, it has, as well, major ramifications for black Africa. Finding the cause ought therefore to be a priority, since it may be remediable. Lynn apparently claims the black American IQ deficit is entirely due to genetics. As Malloy points out (facts well-known to me), there are several environmental factors that may be more detrimental to blacks than whites. He mentions low rates of breast-feeding among blacks compared to whites--studies have shown that more breast-feeding reliably increases intelligence by a few points. I would also note that blacks experience higher lead exposure, which limits IQ potential. Though there is some interesting evidence for Lynn's pure genetics claim (especially the very limited range of black IQ found in various developed nations--average IQs range from 83 to 87 among American, Canadian, Dutch, and British blacks), nevertheless the counterevidence I just mentioned, when added to our imperfect understanding of the environmental determinants of IQ, ought to extinguish his certainty. As I said in a previous post, the science currently points to a combination of nature and nurture as the explanation.

Even Lynn concedes that black Africans, with IQs averaging 67, suffer severe effects from a harsh environment--he calculates the environment costs them 13 points. For those of us who estimate the genetic potential of blacks as higher than 80, as I do and Malloy appears to, the cost is even more brutal. I would estimate it at 18 points. But, whether it amounts to 13 or 18 points, it's a terrible toll. The link between the development of a modern civilization and the average IQ of the population seems a matter of mere common sense. Play out the African bell curve and you find that only 2% of Africans have IQs over 97. In the modern world there are an awful lot of vital things people with sub-97 IQs cannot do--engineering, management of businesses and governments and militaries, programming, entrepreneurship, much of banking and finance, much of medicine, etc. Lynn wrote a useful book on this issue called IQ and the Wealth of Nations. I am disgusted by the ignorance and hypocrisy of those who dismiss the international importance of IQ. Almost every problem poor nations face could be solved by development--but this requires intelligence--sine qua non. The "Wealth of Nations" book has, however, had some influence, as Malloy reminds us: "the 'Copenhagen Consensus', ranked improving micronutrient levels as the second most important action to help the developing world. The impact of nutrition on intelligence was a prominent part of their argument, with 54 references to the word 'cognitive' and 10 references to 'IQ' (Jones 2005)."

As to the evolutionary theory Lynn presents for racial IQ differences, his idea is that people who evolved in the last two ice ages at a higher latitude evolved higher intelligence as a necessary adaptation to a harsher environment. The evolutionary logic is clear, but more evidence is needed. I was surprised by a powerful correlation that Malloy notes: "skin pigmentation (mostly a record of evolutionary latitude according to recent evidence) has a very strong correlation with intelligence, .92." This is shocking. On the other hand, one might wonder whether the poverty and malnutrition prevalent among the darker races in their tropical climes constitutes a cause or a result of low IQ. I suspect both, that is, a low IQ causes a poor environment which contributes to low IQ--a vicious circle, in effect.

I enjoy making educated guesses. They involve the mind in such challenges as absorbing new information, ordering and organizing it, identifying biases in the information and in one's mind, deducing the completeness of the information. I think Lynn's theory is correct, that there is a cline of intelligence influenced by the latitude at which evolution occurred--but, I also think there are other genetic factors in racial differences and highly significant environmental differences. The main point of this whole investigation is to find out what are the environmental factors in IQ--finding the genetic factors is useful only to that end, since we are not yet in a position to modify genes. The maximum of racial IQ differences (eg, NE Asian vs black African) seems to be 20-25 points under equalized developmental conditions. It may be lower than that. I posit that a twenty point difference between societies constitutes a difference in kind, not of degree. For example, comparing a healthy black African society with an average IQ of 80 and a European society with an average IQ of 100 (presuming racial homogeneity in each), one discovers that in the IQ range of 130+ which is a precondition for technical innovation the Africans would be outnumbered by a ratio of at least 70 to 1. They would be outgunned in many other fields as well: commercial competition, scientific research, espionage--but, almost every aspect of modern society is dependent upon the intelligence of its members. See: http://www.udel.edu/educ/gottfredson/reprints/1997whygmatters.pdf

Also, there may be numerically small groups who make exceptions to this limit. For example, Ashkenazi Jews have IQs estimated anywhere from 103 to 115 under developed conditions. African Bushmen and Australian Aborigines are about 54 and 62 under undeveloped conditions. Under equal conditions these relatively small groups might still be 30-40 points apart. Much more research remains to be done, probably led by the Chinese given Western "moral" reservations (I would call them immoral reservations). The research ought to focus on remediation among the poor, as the Copenhagen conventions implicity recommended, since this is the most feasible near term goal. But, with a Chinese lead it looks to go a different way, toward the fashioning of genetically engineered or pharmaceutically powered super intelligence--which, though it might not be cost-effective from a global perspective, is much after my own taste.

The Morass

http://vdare.com/sailer/080622_paradox.htm

This is a fairly conservative take on American education, with a comparison to the European system that helps to clarify our strengths and weaknesses. I like the phrase "educational romanticism." Also, the author skewers leftist hypocrisy in amusing fashion. Our educational system is grotesquely wasteful--the republicans should really consider large chunks of it as just another piece of the welfare state (free babysitting and feel-good degrees at taxpayer expense).

Shadows and Skeletons

http://spectator.org/archives/2008/06/20/reject-and-denounce

Assuming the man is not stupid, I wonder why he consented to listen to all the bullshit spouted by Wright and Farrakhan. Could it be that this form of silent apparent assent was a necessary precondition to his rise in politics and eventual election in a particular district of Chicago, a city notorious for its corrupt politics? Is this the type of sordor and stupidity that a certain part of the black underclass demands of it leaders?

 

I wonder what modern President attained office without a passage through realms of corruption. I think, in the end, grotesque as these associations are, there are stronger arguments against Obama.

Full of Passionate Intensity

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120450617910806563.html
The margins of the Islamic world have been radicalized by their obvious lack of power. Also, their religious leaders fear that the creep of secularization evident in most of the world will progress into Islamic lands and minds. I view this, on the whole, as a defensive response--though, of course, some of Europe's naturalized Islamic radicals overtly seek to expand the "caliphate" throughout Europe as well. Unfortunately, given the demographic explosion underway in most Islamic nations, plus their retrograde political institutions and economic policies, the number of potential recruits for such jihadism is likely to continue to increase. This article is mainly an anecdotal diagnosis (and thus leaves open the question of how broad its applicability may be), and it fails to offer any solutions. The solution is to address the demographic, political, and economic problems that seed the deathly garden. Or simply contain Islamic problems within Islamic lands--and stay out.

Climatic Divergences

I've written a fairly lengthy reflection on the climate change issue. This was occasioned by the recent discovery of a worthy adversary--they are extremely rare in this arena.

 

The author of this article, Jim Manzi, did a front page report for the National Review on global warming a few months back. This article is a summarization of what he explained then. He essentially agrees with the scientific conclusions of the IPCC that there is a high likelihood that global warming is in progress and is largely attributable to human-sourced greenhouse gas emissions. However, unlike most articles that begin with this premise, he follows it with an intelligent argument against aggressive mitigation measures to reduce these emissions. Here's what's rare: the argument is made intelligently. Here we have a man who has a reasonable understanding of the issue, but a moral value system with which I and many other environmentalists differ. The use of this presentation is that it allows us to measure the gap created purely by moral differences--without the obscurities and confusions introduced by ignorance, stupidity, dishonesty, and other vices which so very frequently infect the discourse produced by both of the main parties to this dispute.

 

http://theamericanscene.com/2007/11/30/why-i-oppose-a-carbon-tax

 

Mr. Manzi's modest appreciation of the value to be found in biological diversity may be estimated from his passing reference to the possibility that some damages from climate change may be "non-monetary." Diversity is deemed non-monetary by the economists for the simple reason that we do not know how to place an accurate, objective valuation upon this type of "asset." This is partly because we do not have a market price that businesses are willing to pay for the privilege of ecosystem destruction: businesses do not pay a price for this privilege, nor is there any market in such transactions. This prevents us from doing a conventional calculation of diversity's present value; our lack of future knowledge prevents effectual predictions of its future value. As a result of all this ignorance of value, the value of this "asset" is assumed to be zero or something very close to it in typical econometric models. So, here we have a values disagreement. I am willing to pay a higher price for conservation than he is, and, since climate change is likely to be a primary cause of ecosystem destruction, I am also willing to pay a higher price to limit it.

 

I think he is correct that the main thrust of mitigation should presently be government-led programs in the rich nations to develop new technologies that will render emissions reductions cheaper--ideally to the point that they are cheap enough to persuade developing nations voluntarily to forego greenhouse gas emitting technologies. Under every reasonable scenario, developing nations will emit more greenhouse gases than developed nations over the next few decades. Their climate policies matter immensely. This research policy is the most significant public policy option available in terms of long-term consequences and in terms of global impact.

 

Nevertheless, I'm inclined still to support the imposition of a carbon tax in the developed world. The transaction and enforcement costs he speaks of certainly would be prohibitive at this time in the developing world; yet, in the advanced nations such costs would be much lower. Also, if designed efficiently (starting at about 10 cents per gallon of gas and half a cent per kilowatt hour, then moving higher very gradually and predictably to perhaps 50 cents and 2.5 cents over 10 years), the economy could adjust slowly enough that its current capital investments would not be squandered. This would create the technology-forcing effect of which he speaks and cut a practical path for the rising nations to follow. As to his assumption that a carbon tax would be permanent, I say this is not in itself bad. Furthermore, I think there is an opportunity for a major political deal to be cut on this tax issue whereby for every dollar of revenue that is collected as a carbon tax, another specified type of tax is cut by an equivalent amount. In this way, politicians can say that taxes are not being raised, merely redistributed. How about this: instead of taxing production (eg, with the income tax and corporate income tax), tax consumption through a carbon tax? Would the economy not benefit if these particular taxes were simply switched, with no overall increase or decrease in tax revenues? Such a tax would probably have the collateral effect of reducing our dependence on oil from our enemies and non-friends.

 

One of Mr. Manzi's most important and insightful points is that those who claim certain knowledge that climate change will be catastrophic are intellectually equivalent to those who claim they know beyond doubt that the whole theory is a hoax: both arguments are braindead--climate science is uncertain by definition (I mean literally by definition, as in mathematically provable). Therefore no one can make predictions about the climate with certainty. Period. Once this is recognized, it becomes clear that there is a risk of catastrophe just as there is a risk that climate change will not occur due to balancing factors in the climate system. The question then arises (and Mr. Manzi correctly identifies this as the essential question to face on this issue), what price ought we to pay to limit this risk. Again, up to a point he conceptualizes this intelligently as a matter of hedging risks, like taking out an insurance policy on the world. But, he does not go far enough in distinguishing where the analogy breaks down between those who fear we are wasting money on a fantasy problem and those who worry that we are ignoring a huge risk of disaster. The distinction is this: the former stand only to lose a fairly limited amount of money (even the infamously aggressive mitigation measures proposed in the Stern report only entail spending about 2% of GDP each year at worst), while the latter may lose an unknown amount--not just of money, but of lives as well.  When potential losses are unlimited, as Mr. Manzi implicitly states, would it not be wise to err on the side of reducing such an inordinate risk, even though this margin of safety must come at the expense of a greater risk of spending more than necessary? In other words, simply put, the two risks are not commensurate--even if both are equally likely, the risk of catastrophe is the one we ought to be more concerned with and toward which we ought to direct a preponderance of our resources. This imbalance of risks diminishes the utility of gauging the scale and optimal response to this problem through traditional cost-benefit analysis--or, at the least, it warps the conclusion of such analysis in the direction of taking stronger precautionary measures. Despite the low probability of enormous loss, the size of the loss is potentially so much larger than that expected under high probability scenarios that it comes to dominate the numbers turned out by a pure cost-benefit analysis. The other reason why this catastrophe possibility will tend to dominate analysis of the climate change issue is that it inspires a degree of justifiable fear that neither middle-of-the-road nor optimistic scenarios can match for psychological impact. Of course, deciding what to pay for this catastrophe insurance is a difficult question, or, I should say, a subjective question. Once more, at the end of the analytical path we arrive at a fundamentally moral dilemma: the value of our material comfort vs. the value of the lives and well-being of the unborn, the value of the lives and comfort of the rich vs. the value of the lives and comfort of the poor, the importance of the climate change priority vs. the importance of other competing priorities (like money for national defense or biomedical research or education...).

 

So far, at both national and global levels, we have done little more than research the nature of climate change (which is an extremely important activity, though not sufficient). We have yet to construct a single test plant for carbon sequestration. We're still shopping around for a suitable insurance policy as the risks mount. Globally, we are spending less on this issue than any sane analyst has recommended, including Mr. Manzi. This headless, undirected condition is directly attributable to the absence of American leadership. The EU has tried to lead, but lacks the executive energy and decisiveness necessary to make an impression. Practically, America has little to lose by becoming the vanguard nation on this matter--it will help us to maintain our technological preeminence and to reestablish our moral leadership. Also, the timing should be favorable. The Chief Engineer at General Electric (which manufactures a lot more windmills than solar panels) recently said that he expects solar to be competitive without subsidies in the sunnier parts of the country (and in a number of foreign countries) by 2015! The CEO of REC, the largest solar manufacturer in the world, expects this to happen even earlier, by 2012. We could don the mantle of leadership in the confident expectation of reaping PR benefits worldwide without suffering the burden of overly heavy carbon taxes or massive government research programs. The government could then function as a kind of coordinator to help the economy transition efficiently into the post-carbon era enabled, at bottom, by scientific discovery and actioned by private sector innovation.    

Something against Propaganda

http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/books/2007/12/17/071217crbo_books_gladwell?currentPage=all

This Gladwell article is almost too stupid to acknowledge, much less argue with. The challenge he places before himself is this: whether it is possible so to interpret the scientific evidence as to demonstrate that there is no genetic basis for interracial IQ differences. And, wonder of wonders, he discovers that it is possible! There are a couple of minor caveats involved, of course. First, we must relegate logic to the dustheap of political incorrectness. Then, we must be extremely selective in deciding what evidence to adduce. By this procedure it is shown that Good-Thinking=Truth.

His thesis seems to be that the Flynn effect (the observation that IQ scores in advanced nations have been rising about 2 points per decade for a century) undermines the idea that intelligence is genetically determined. This is what we call a straw man argument, since no consequential scientist in the last two generations has claimed IQ is purely heritable. The current consensus is that adult IQ is 70-80% heritable--the rest is hammered out by various "nurture" factors. So Gladwell can be congratulated for beating this non-existent foe.

But, then he segues into his real interest, racial differences. My deduction from much evidence reviewed over the years is that the 17 point white-black American IQ gap is partly genetic, partly environmental--my educated guess is 10 points genetic, 7 points environmental--though we would have a clearer idea of this if the whole field of intelligence research weren't considered morally dubious at best. Gladwell mentions two forms of evidence that these differences are environmentally determined. The studies on which he bases the first are not noted and I do not know what they are. I seriously doubt, though, that they were valid for Gladwell’s purposes here. The second form of evidence is the 1961 Eyferth study—read about it on Wikipedia. The bottom line is that these “black” GIs were not altogether black and, moreover, were smarter than average black Americans, whereas the control group of white GIs were not smarter than average white Americans. Also, the children were tested at age 10 on average, at which stage, per Gladwell, there is typically an 8 point white-black IQ gap. By adulthood, the gap, per Gladwell, is 16.6 points. Given that these children are at most half black, one would expect only a 4 point gap at that age. I would guess they are genetically only 30% black (American blacks are 20% white on average and north africans are not black), which would produce a 2.4 point gap. When you have such a long list of qualifications (and I could continue ad nauseam as this is an abysmal study) this is the result: it's not a valid study to prove interracial IQ equality, IQ inequality, or anything else.
 

I think my indictment on grounds of lack of logic and lack of evidence should produce an easy conviction of this Gladwell on the charge of rank mendacity. And, yet, he's a celebrated author among our "educated" classes. Why? He's part black and all politically correct.

I have never seen or heard of a study that demonstrates that equal environments for blacks and whites produce equal IQs. This would, of course, be the holy grail of the elite establishment as it would justify to the end of time government intervention to impose equality of results among all the peoples of the world.