All posts by mchughrussell

animal psychology and the frozen ark

Uncategorized

What does it mean for an animal to be a social one? In a review of a handful of books about cognitive neuropsychology, Ziff and Rosenfeld explain one aspect of how mental processses are inherently connect to the social environment:

Animals and infants conduct this miniature version of natural selection by means of what Changeux terms “cognitive games.” One well-known example concerns cries of alarm in African vervet monkeys. Adult monkeys use a simple but effective vocabulary of sounds that warn against danger: a loud bark for leopards, a two-syllable cough for eagles, and a hissing sound for snakes. Surprisingly, researchers found, baby monkeys hiss at snakes without explicit instruction. Changeux writes, “Snakes seem to arouse a sort of innate universal fear, which probably developed fairly early in the course of the evolution of the higher vertebrates.” When adult monkeys confirm the baby’s judgment with their own hisses, the infant’s genetically produced prerepresentation is rewarded and reinforced.

But baby monkeys require more explicit instruction in protecting themselves against predators, such as eagles, to which they have been less genetically conditioned. At first,

newborn monkeys react to any form that flies in the air, which is to say to the class of birds as a whole. Then, gradually, a selective stabilization of the response to the shape of dangerous species takes place…. If the first cry of alarm is sounded by one of the young, the nearest adult looks up. If it sees a harmless bird, it does not react. But if the young monkey has spotted a martial eagle, the adult reacts by emitting a cry of alarm that confirms the presence of danger…. The adult’s cry of alarm validates a pertinent relationship between shape and sound that is established in the brain of the young monkey.

This process of learning alarm cries through trial and error, reward and suppression, demonstrates the kind of cognitive games that are played out constantly through the brain’s interaction with the environment.

What this means in context is that, while some of the important information about the species environment is encoded in genetic material, some of it is encoded in social information; but more specifically, in the brains of individual animals. If you take the animal away from its social milieu, in important ways, it ceases to be the same animal. Not only is it less able to survive in its normal habitat, but there is likely other social information which would simply disappear in the absence of older generations. This is likely old hat to many biologists who work to understand evolution, but it is a remarkable insight. Evolution happens across animal brains, just as it does in human brain.

What are the ramifications of this insight? In England, a group of scientists is working on storing the genetic information of the world’s endangered species. The hope is that one day, if technology allows, the material can be used to restore the species to the wild should they disappear.

The problem with their plan is that it completely fails to take into account the lessons offered by Changeux about the nature of animal evolutionary success. For many species, that success is highly contingent on a social environment of other animals, not just a compatible physical environment. Without an older generation to impart the wisdom of the ages, indivduals form any species thawed out in the future won’t have the mental environment that currently ensures their survival. No matter how impressive our biotechnology gets, it isn’t going to provide sufficient tools for the rebirth of species destroyed by our current reshaping of the world.

Yes He Can

politics, US

Adapted almost completely from my piece in the Faculty of Law student paper, the Ultra Vires. I know, it’s a bit late considering the last two weeks of primaries, but I stand by my analysis. Plus some of the links are worth reading.

It’s down to Hillary and Obama and a plurality of students at the U of T’s law school, like most Canadians, has thrown its support behind Obama for President. We’re in good company: the popular video riffing on the recent Obama ‘Yes We Can’ speech features Scarlett Johanssen, the woman who plays McDreamy’s ex-wife from Grey’s Anatomy, some familiar looking white guy pretending to play guitar, and of course the video’s producer, will.i.am. The Grateful Dead have thrown their lot behind Obama, though we’ll have to take their word that Jerry sends his best to the campaign from his great tail-gate party in the sky. The support of Joan Baez means an end to self-imposed exile from party politics.

I’m backing Obama too, though, on the basis of his strong anti-corpocracy message, I was a supporter of Edwards until his exit from the race two weeks ago. But I’m doing more than supporting Obama’s candidacy. I’m going to make the call – he’ll get the nomination. I’m currently batting 1000 in such predictions: I could have been two bits richer if someone had put money up against my call for Dion in the recent Liberal leadership race. As I suggested, the combination of anti-Rae and anti-Ignatieff sentiment combined to put Dion, no matter his failings, in the hot seat. The result was more complicated: without Gerrard Kennedy’s endorsement in the closing minutes of the Convention, I might have lost that bet.In that way, Obama has something in common with Dion: the strength of a key Kennedy endorsement or more exactly, the support of a handful of them. Though the clan is divided – with the noted environmental activist Robert K. Jr. backing Hillary – the endorsement of Ted Kennedy, JFK’s daughter Caroline and Maria Shreiver will certainly give a boost to the Illinois senator, not least because of skewed media coverage of the matter. Despite the split in the Kennedy support, there is no doubt that the shine of Camelot has been lent to Obama, not Hillary.

The candidates aren’t that far apart on policy. Since the beginning, the choice between the two has seemed like a choice between hope and experience. Ezra Klein puts a finer point on it, colouring the choice as one between Clinton as manager and Obama as visionary. There are good reasons to support a manager for President. America has painted itself into a corner in Iraq, flushed its economy down the toilet while running its debt up to unfathomable numbers, and tarnished its international reputation through divisive unilateralism, de facto endorsement of torture and spying on its own citizens. Supporters of Hillary point to her experience as proof that she will be a steady hand at the tiller while America tries to sail out of these shallows. She is, for Democrats, the ‘safe’ candidate. Obama, on the other hand, is so full of enthusiasm that (no exaggeration) he brings tears to the eyes of many Canadians with hope about what the United States can be.

Writing two weeks ago, one day before the Democratic race was shown to have not one but two horses, Michael Chabon suggested that arguments against Obama were pragmatic, not substantial. Sure, his friends said, Obama might be charming, intelligent, and sincere, but he is too good to be true. Someone so nice can’t cut it in the snakepit of politics, they said, and Democrats need someone who can win. His speeches may have inspired famous Californians to march to the beat of a new drummer but in American politics, Hollywood support is often a burden, not a blessing. Up until last Tuesday, arguments against Obama were founded not on his character or on his potential as President but on his ultimate chances as Democratic nominee.

Here’s the catch. Americans are ready for a Democratic president. Polls say that they’re ready for change, independents are voting in record numbers in democratic primaries, polls have the democrats in the lead, and election markets have a democrat taking the prize by a 50% margin. More importantly, Hillary may be slightly ahead of Obama in polls among Democrats but American voters, buoyed by McCain support over Hillary among independents, are much more likely to elect Obama as President with McCain as the Republican nominee.

Until now, Democrats have supported Clinton because they thought that Americans prefer safety over promise, security over potential, sound mind over the possibility of something greater. Polls show the opposite, that Americans as a whole, not just Hollywood, much prefer the visionary to the manager. In short, with McCain as challenger, Democrats can choose the ‘safe’ candidate who is more likely to lose, or take a risk on someone their fellow Americans like and who, in their hearts, they already like more, too. Even the persistently self-defeating Democrats can’t screw this one up.

arts and entertainment

Uncategorized

It is far from writing, and there is no way that it makes up even a hundred words.

But, in justification of my addiction to 3quarksdaily, here is a sample of the random, but often striking edification that they bring into my life:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VhcjeZ3o5us]

There is great promise in the ability to copy and paste such magic. Hannah Arendt suggested that culture was once about edification – the urge to make oneself better by experiencing the creations of others. Long before I was around to mull it over, she worried (in Between Past And Future) that this urge underlying culture was undemocratic, because most people have little to gain from improving themselves – they don’t want culture, they want entertainment. The space between the populism of mass entertainment and the aristocracy of hoi-polloi ‘art’ is hard to bridge, and leaves a gaping chasm where a truly democratic practice of art should be. Contra Arendt, I am filled with hope that there is space for a truly popular culture, and this piece – not only accessible in the haunting beauty it admits in such a short time, but accessible in being online, free in every sense of the word – provides some promise of bridging that chasm. I do hope that Google doesn’t ruin this wonderful tool.

The Cat in the Hat and tests in the bag

culture, education, politics, US

Who are these people?

It is eminently logical that the reading comprehension tests scores of children and adults alike increase according to the time they spend reading for pleasure. More, it is not surprising that children with more than 100 books in their home score markedly better on standardized tests, including math tests,, than children whose parents own fewer than 10 books. And, especially for those who us have attended college, there is nothing breathtaking with this final conclusion, which along with the first two bits of trivia comes from a study by the United States National Endowment on the Arts discussed here in the New York Times:

students who lived in homes with more than 100 books but whose parents only completed high school scored higher on math tests than those students whose parents held college degrees … but who lived in homes with fewer than 10 books.

Thus my opening: who are these people? The correlation is remarkable only in the plainest, “notable”, sense of the word. What is breathtaking is not the conclusion, but the fact that there is a significant cohort of college-graduate parents who own less than 10 books.

I can think of only two even vaguely believable explanations for the existence of these people. Completing college is no guarantee of economic success. Perhaps, facing the slouching, lurching beast which is poverty in the United States, and specifically caught between its twin jaws of a pitiless labour market and an increasingly toothless welfare system, some college-graduates may be included in a sizable cohort priced out of books, as if they were only a disposable luxury.

More likely, in response to a rising tide of unnecessary credentialism, these parents participated in four years of post-secondary schooling so mind-numbing that, instead of feeding a flickering flame of passion for learning, the experience so finally smothered whatever academic spark they left high-school carrying that they respond to books in their home not with an inflamed literary temperament, but a more literally pyromaniacal urge.

Critics of the study suggest that the authors under-measure internet reading – though if my writing is any example of what is available, then we can be sure that writing on the internet is no substitute. Books are, the critics argue, a thing of the past. However, the conclusion about such correlations show that books still matter, and for children they matter at home.

There is a bright side, in the form of a clear lesson for all of us: if one wants to avoid a child so precocious that she corrects grammar and regales with trivia, the choices are to sell off one’s Hawking, Hemmingway, Chomsky and Chaucer, or to put them, along with the Cat in the Hat, under lock and key. At least until standardized test day. (via Arts & Letters daily)

proportional rep and a good first step

city, elections, politics, Uncategorized, war

If democracy works at all, and MMP fails, we can just kick the bums out, and go back to our charming, ineffective, tradition.

The core argument underlying my support for the proportional representation proposal being put to the vote on October 10th – which will, with luck, ‘drag Ontario politics out of the 17th century and into the 21st – is laid out in the Ultra Vires here. Questionable title aside, included here are the sources and further discussion promise in the authornote.

To an accusation of ‘intellectual dishonesty’ received for this criticism of Urqhuart, which now includes a link to the original article, where, I maintain, he relies more on name-calling and misrepresentation than argument:

Besides those like Ian Urquhart who seem to get starry-eyed over the charms of any tradition, no matter how ineffective the institution…

I depend on statements such as these:

The system can lead to permanent minority governments and a proliferation of fringe parties;

which, in the middle a news article (describing the new proposal as “radical”) seems to fall short of reasonable standards of journalism, or argument, for that matter, especially when, as I stated in the piece, the proliferation of minority parliaments under proportional systems is debatable. Perhaps more blame might be laid on the Star’s editorial board than on Mr. Urquhart, who has remained silent on the issue for at least four months, especially since I view Mr. Urquhart’s opinions as generally insightful and well-informed.

To the core of the argument: some might disagree on the nature of democracy itself, but that’s worthy of a much longer article. However, even given support for the idea that debate, deliberation and consideration are as much, if not more important to ‘democracy’ than plurality voting systems unfortunately doesn’t dispose of the advisability of switching systems. Here, repeated, are the two strongest arguments against the October 10th proposal:

First, because the system will use party lists, MPPs may be less accountable to the ‘local constituency associations’ which this coalition somehow believes holds sway now. And because of the (debatably) higher likelihood of minority governments under the new system, they rail against the power that might be held by small parties, while discounting the unrepresentative sway held in the current system by large parties.

The real weakness of the proposal – the difficulty of almost any proportional representation system – is in choosing who gets the seats not allotted by local election. Clearly, opposition to party lists is about more than just accountability. While supporting ‘principled leadership’ over ‘administrative efficiency’, Lorne argues that party lists will only exacerbate the as-yet unquenched tendencies of parties toward corruption, nepotism, and personality-cultism, fed by a power-seeking motive which will only become more lucrative under the new proposal. Instead of inspired voices willing to spark public debate, lists will quickly fill with Machiavellian autocrats and a coterie of clashing sycophants. Underlying a belief in this process is a clearly identifiable incentive: with guaranteed access to at least partial power, politics inside every party will start to become personality-based, with those close to the core winning the spoils: almost-guaranteed seats.

This guy is likewise assured that party lists will toss Ontario head-first into an endless night of the long knives.

Yet with moderate regulation and moderate party discipline, the party list system could inspire the grassroots to seek out principled, eloquent representatives of the issues important to their party, instead of aligning around local level incumbents who are almost impossible to replace. If parties realize the potential of the list system, then conventions could become more like leadership conventions with many winners, instead of half-rigged races where the top dog also gets to choose, according to their personal motives, which contendors come in second, and third and fourth…

Perhaps Lorne’s experience with the Liberal party leads him to see dark days if the proposal wins, where I see real possibility of a passionate, informed public discourse. The NDP, despite attempts from the centre to manipulate results, has been surprsingly democratic of late.

Ultimately, the difference is, I’m willing to take the risk for the sake of democracy, and for the possibility of ending the ‘politics of fear.’

 

More on Arrow’s Democracy Paradox here, and on deliberative democrats here. An exciting proposal for more democratic politics, tangent to the electoral system proper was proposed in Fiskin and Acherman’s Deliberation Day.

the mayors loss and the city’s gain

city, politics

For a decision to bring the re-opening of community centres to a vote in the next two weeks, Toronto’s Mayor Miller has been accused of bowing to pressure and flip-flopping on the issue.

It doesn’t really matter how the Star swings this thing. The past three weeks has been an act of brazen, awesome political theatre on the part of Miller. For those opposed to his ends, perhaps ‘shocking’ instead of awesome.

Miller did exactly what he needed to do to win the necessary support for the new taxes in the upcoming October vote: put a camera-ready service, that the middle class was willing to fight for, on the chopping block for – wait for it – a total of two Mondays.

Now, Miller may come off looking like a ‘flip-flopper’ or an opportunist, a political hack. Royson James, if he hadn’t already reached the limit of his ire, would probably have reached it after this series of decisions. But the Mayor has also tied serious, meaningful, painful service cuts to the taxes he wanted – just in time for the October vote on those taxes. Who would want to be the councillor voting for the re-closure of the community centres, after being on the local news for two weeks speaking out against those cuts? With three years left in his term, the taxes will still be around when the Mayor is done his, but the two Mondays without community centres will be gone from collective memory.

So, Miller ‘loses’, but he gets what he wants, which is what the city needs. And he’s still Mayor. Cynical? Sure. But nowhere near as cynical as all the councillors who voted against the proposal without offering alternatives, who changed their mind on the vote, losing the city $60 million this year, and who have focused on trashing the Mayor to their own political gain instead of mounting either i) support for the new taxes or ii) support for a meaningful alternative. Sometimes, when you’re dealing with whining children, you’ve got to play headmaster. Which he has done with style.

So, good on you, Mayor Miller. Bring on the new taxes.

Leadership and Forgiveness

politics, war

Michael Ignatieff has written a long-awaited mea culpa for his support of the US invasion of Iraq in the New York Time Magazine here.

Mea culpa is an admission of fault, and there is much to be faulted for. The invasion of Iraq stands for two great tragedies. The first is gaunt in its scale, stark in its inhumanity: the 600 000 lives which may have been saved had the war not occurred. The number stands as a humble reminder that piled high enough, snuffed out lives, ruined families, and destroyed homes becomes, in their repetition, only a statistic. Yet there can be no denying that these lives are a sizeable remainder in the arithmetic which ‘good political judgment’ required.

The second tragedy was borne out before the first bomb even fell on Baghdad. It is the tragedy of hopelessness against the very logic of force and arrogance. Contra the realists, from Morgenthau to Kissinger, the logic of brutality and greed are not the sole shape that relations between states can take. The invasion of Iraq confirmed a view of a world where disputes are settled with violence, where power decides against argument. In short, it represented the victory of unilateralism over something more democratic. Increases in terrorism and fundamentalism since the invasion are only a corollary to that logic.

Ignatieff has no compunction about the logic of force. In a stunning display in the NYT of his turn from soft liberalism to stark neoconservatism, American Empire (Get Used to It)[1], he had this to say on the invasion of Iraq:

“The choice is one between two evils, between containing and leaving a tyrant in place and the targeted use of force, which will kill people but free a nation from the tyrant’s grip.”

Such a statement discounts not only the lives lost, but the alternatives hidden between unchallenged tyranny and unilateral force.

Getting Iraq Wrong revisits the hubris supported so vehemently in the 2003 piece, but lacks the thrilled tone Ignatieff had for American resolve in January of 2003. The tone is softened with good reason. In the four and a half years since Ignatieff came out swinging, he has entered political life in Canada, only to see his leadership hopes haunted by the ghosts of his position on Iraq invasion. Some believe that the so-called admission of wrong-doing in the NYT may yet provide him with the clean slate needed to present himself in case an embattled Stéphane Dion cannot find firm footing in time for the next election, and is forced to resign.

Is he really cleaning slate? Here is what Ignatieff says he has learned from the transition to political life.

“An intellectual’s responsiblity for his ideas is to follow their consequences wherever they may lead. A politician’s responsibility is to master those consequences and prevent them from doing harm.”

Which is an attempt to cleave the intellectual from the political and vice versa; a bit of parlour magic he would certainly like to perform on his own public life. Yet drawing such a divide seems disingenuous, and more, dangerous. During the Vietnam War, Kissinger counseled a policy of unremitting violence according to a logic of force he believed to be true; yet he also promoted a result in Vietnam, and Cambodia, that followed that logic. Ignatieff also promoted such a result.

Ignatieff was no ivory tower academic, no pince-nez prognosticator, before he entered political life. He was then, as he is now, a public figure. His opinion in January of 2003 was not only ‘theory’, tossed haphazardly into the intellectual fray to be debated further, but counsel to the people of a country already on the cusp of invasion, to march to the drum of war already beating from the White House.

Again, that march to war was not inevitable. Ignatieff knew he was providing counsel, which is why he then relied on the threat of ‘weapons of mass destruction’ to bolster his claims, and now claims that it was only his own ‘self-justifying’ emotions, inspired by ire over what Hussein had done to Kurds, that truly spurred him to his decision. He knew his position, his words would contribute to the final decision to invade.

As a mea culpa, then, the piece falls short: errors may be intellectual but wrongs have consequences. Admitting one has been wrong is not the same as admitting one has done wrong. And dividing so starkly the public role of the intellectual from the public role of a politician means that Ignatieff dismisses the damage that he did while claiming that others – with charmed lives – helped him learn a lesson, without admitting that the lesson was learned at a cost he too must bear: 600 000 lives, and a world slightly more beholden to the power of the most expensive army.

Ignatieff suggests that having been given more power, he can now be trusted to make wiser decisions. The implication is that, given the leadership of the country, he can’t possibly get it wrong. What he has not done is what would take true resolve: seek forgiveness.

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