Destroying the Truth to Save It

Some time ago I came across a comic book called, if I remember correctly, "The Big Lie." It was basically a Truther screed about how the attacks on the World Trade Center towers on September 11th, 2001 couldn't have happened as the official story says it did. The basic conceit of the story is that a CERN researcher whose husband died in the attacks figures out how to use the Large Hadron Collider to send herself back in time. She then runs to the World Trade Center, finds her husband in his office, and tries to warn him and his co-workers of the fate about to befall them. After about two pages of this, I found myself wondering why (other than the plot demanded that she go into detail about what happened so the other characters could "debunk" it) she didn't just pull the fire alarm or call in a bomb threat on either Twin Towers or the planes involved in the attack. After all, she was trying to save thousands of lives, and could even have stopped a war or two.

Which raises an interesting question. What is worth lying about? Since it's campaign season, politicians are crisscrossing the country (or at least the battleground states) making speeches and calling out their opponents. And there are a number of outlets that are fact-checking their words. And so, if you're up for a little digging, you can find any number of instances of where candidates do everything from tell the truth, but not the whole truth to outright lie like a rug. And, unsurprisingly, an entire cottage industry seems to have built up around being outraged that politicians would tell us anything but the unvarnished truth. Leaving aside my pet peeve of the general public's complicity in a lack of veracity in the political class, I have a question - if a politician honestly thought that they could save the nation, or the world, by being elected into office, would that be worth lying for?

While I'm not going to say that any of us would lie in the name of doing good, I will cop to that myself. If I thought that convincing someone of something that I knew to be false when I said it would save their life, I'd likely say "truth be hanged" and go for it. And in situations where someone else did the same thing, I'd likely be inclined to still think well of that person. (I'm too much of a Utilitarian to be more concerned with keeping my own hands clean than I am with the greater good.) The conventional wisdom is that when politicians lie, it points to a deeper (much deeper) character flaw. We see them as being dishonest and insincere in everything they do, and their reasons for wanting to be in office become suspect. But is that really an accurate way to look at things? Since the Republican National Convention has just wrapped up, let's look at Romney and Ryan. They've both said things in speeches that fact checkers have called out as clear falsehoods. But if the two of them really feel that the nation is in dire straits, and the best hope of fixing it is from the White House, why wouldn't we expect them to do whatever it took to get there? After all, Jimmy Carter, when he was President, told it like it was. See where it got him.

Of course, this isn't to say that every time a politician tells a lie to get into office, they they have noble motives. But it does, perhaps, say that even upstanding politicians are likely to be less than honest when it's on the line. Many people already subscribe to this idea on a partisan level - they're willing to give their own guy a pass when he's caught saying something untrue. Sometimes, they're even forthright enough to come out and say that they'd rather have their guy be in office, as opposed to squeaky clean. Maybe, if we're going to give the benefit of the doubt, we shouldn't limit it to only those people whose party affiliation matches our own. If we're going to recognize that there are more important things, at times, than telling the truth for its own sake, then we should be willing to entertain the idea that getting into a position where one can do some good might be one of those times. This, obviously, is a pale second place to what we should be doing, namely learning to collectively handle the truth, even when it's uncomfortable, and thus lessening the need for politicians to resort to distorting the truth as a campaign tactic. But perhaps being less ready to vilify people with whom we disagree will work as a first step.

Lest You Be Judged

The title of the posting was as inaccurate as it was provocative: Do Vegetarians And Vegans Think They Are Better Than Everyone Else? Is there ever a point in asking a question about such a large and diverse group of people, other than to invite generalizations?

And the end of the article was no better:

It's clear to me that Friedrich and Patrick-Goudreau believe not that they are better people than meat-eaters, but instead that their dietary practices are better for animals, and for our world as a whole, than the habits of meat-eaters. Why do many people so readily confuse these two things?

If Ms. King had set out to invite to groups of people to make generalizations about one another, she couldn't have chosen a better way to do to.

Of course, seemingly in deliberate spite of the many vegetarians and vegans who set out to defend their tolerance of others, many commentators claimed that they didn't see themselves as morally superior, but rather, more intelligent, more compassionate, more ethical, more consistent, et cetera.

But to a certain degree, Ms. King answered her own question within the text of her posting: "In answering my question in the negative, Friedrich and Patrick-Goudreau both point to their own meat-eating past. But they do strongly exhort others, through 'should'-type speech, to choose certain diets over others: diets that don't involve doing violent harm to animals. I understand this. Both work towards a more compassionate world for animals; their goals are just not compatible with an all-embracing 'live and let live' approach, as if one set of food choices were just as okay as another."

People commonly judge others by the choices that they make. To a degree, we exempt children from this - we are often told that there are no bad children, merely children who do bad things or make bad choices. But, once we become adults, that forbearance expires and choices become character. For many people, bad is as bad does, and without a specific exemption, when a choice is considered not okay, the person who makes that choice is viewed as morally lacking at best, and a deliberate agent of evil at worst.

Had Ms. King asked "Do Law-Abiding Citizens Think They Are Better Than Those Who Commit Crimes," despite the fact that this question, too, calls for broad generalizations, many people would have had little compunction about answering "Yes," and proclaiming themselves (likely incorrectly) just the sort of upright citizen who is entitled to understand their own moral superiority to those around them. Even when criminality is thought or even shown to be the result of mental disease or defect, many people are quick to apply the label of "bad person" to a perpetrator.

The simple fact is that as long as people make judgments about people in accordance with their judgments about the choices those persons make, pronouncing a judgment on someone's actions is going to be seen as a judgement of the actor, whether it is intended or not. And a negative judgment of another is often seen as betraying a sense of superiority on the part of the person making the judgement. The chicken-and-egg finger-pointing between vegetarians/vegans and their omnivorous brethren will not change that fact.

Kathryn Schulz's pronouncement that: "Even though we know better, it's remarkably easy to feel as if our own aesthetic judgments reflect reality and that, therefore, anyone of sufficient intelligence and sensitivity should share our view," is just as much in play here as it is in any other arena. People who feel their actions are guided by their knowledge of what is objectively best, rather than what is best for them, or simply what they find to be most appealing, are prone to look down on others, and people who feel judged rarely take the time to discern the judgmental from the tolerant. Hurt people hurt people, as the saying goes, and therefore the chain of anger and bitterness is likely to be eternal, regardless of who you are referring to, or what their habits, culinary or otherwise, are.

Broken Windows

There is a theory of law enforcement called "Broken Windows." The general analogy is that if you allow for things like broken windows, and other small cosmetic blemishes in a neighborhood, people will begin to feel that residents don't care, and soon more serious items will start appearing. This causes a viscous downward spiral which eventually results in a blighted neighborhood. In law enforcement, this is applied to a rigorous police response to petty crimes, so that criminals don't become comfortable with small acts, and start moving up to larger ones.

I wonder if the same thing applies to web-pages. Occasionally, I come across a page with a comments section where it is clear that there is little if any policing of comments for spam and other forms of random advertising. The immediate impression that I get is that no-one is looking after the page, and it's not worth commenting there myself, since it's unlikely to be read.

I would be interested to know if this is a widespread phenomenon, or something that only the more fastidious among us notice.

Side by Side by Side by Side...

I was reading a political blog, and the author of the post made a reference to Dragonlance, a series of Dungeons and Dragons-related fantasy novels that later became an official D&D campaign setting. This reminded me of a time, back when I was in college, when we had attempted to apply one facet of the game to the real world.

The concept of alignment in Dungeons and Dragons can be a tricky one for new players to grasp, and this was especially true in earlier versions of the game. While many people think of it simply as their character's moral outlook, it can be significantly more complicated than that, having overtones of basic personality, social outlook and even a degree of partisanship - the original alignments could all be thought of as secret societies, complete with a special language that all members learned. It operates of two axes, each with three values - Good versus Evil and Law versus Chaos, with each axis having a center value of Neutral. This made for nine discreet combinations. While the idea that you could divide every intelligent creature in a fantasy world into nine moral outlooks struck many people as unrealistic, it is still a somewhat useful system. When applied to real-world organizations and people, Socrates' axiom that people don't set out to do things they understand to be evil means that everyone tends to cluster in the Good and Neutral alignments, if you take them as they view themselves. Taken as others view them, however, and you have the whole board to play with.

In the context of the 2012 presidential race, President Obama, believing as he does in a muscular, activist government, can be placed at the intersection of Law and Good. In effect, the President believes that the way that you do the most good for the most people and the least harm to the least is through strong centralized governance. So we can list him as Lawful Good. On the other side of this, Governor Romney is playing the less government = more freedom = better outcomes for all involved. So we can likely get away with placing Governor Romney in the Chaotic Good camp for now. Of course, some people would list Governor Romney (and a lot of other politicians, for that matter) as Chaotic simply because of how often he seems to change his positions on things. (Which reveals one of the issues with the system, namely that different people would often have wildly differing definitions of what the alignment labels mean.) Broadly speaking, both the Democratic and Republican parties could be described as Neutral Good - at least in their own eyes. Both tend to feel that in certain areas, a robust government enforcing consistent rules is best - even if they disagree on what areas and what rules. On the flip side of the coin they each have identified places where they would really cut back on the rules and regulations. Naturally, these tend to be the ones the other side considers important. It's important to keep in mind that the political parties are Neutral to the degree that they have big tents, and thus must accommodate multiple competing viewpoints. Individual groups within (and outside of) the parties can diverge from this quite a bit. For example, both the TEA Party and the Occupy Movement could be broadly construed as Chaotic Good - even if they would likely describe the other as Chaotic Evil. While one is focused on dismantling the power of Big Government, and the other on doing away with the influence of Big Business, they're both looking for a change in the status quo that results in a more distributed power structure that gives more freedom to individual citizens.

Groups that fall into the categories of Lawful Neutral and Chaotic Neutral as somewhat rare, I think, as most groups like to think of themselves as advancing the cause of Good. But you could make the case that people who assign a moral imperative to notions of freedom, or anarchists for whom tearing down the existing order is more important than building a new one could be considered Chaotic Neutral.

In the real world, people and organizations only fall into the three Evil alignments in the eyes of their critics. Many Progressives, for example, tend to see Libertarians as Chaotic Evil. By the same token, advocates of small government tend to see their opposite numbers as Lawful Evil, promoting a set of laws designed to enrich some at the direct expense of others. But this isn't to say that people always view their political opponents as evil. It's entirely possible to recognize others good intentions, even while pointing out the errors of their ways.

Given the diversity of political thought, nine buckets into which to try to divide the opinions of millions of people are only marginally more useful than the three buckets of Liberal/Conservative/Moderate we normally use, especially when three or four of them are unlikely to be used. But it makes for an interesting thought experiement and tool for understanding how the groups both see and relate to one another.

The Trouble with Infographics

Infographics have become a common means of presenting information to people in an easy-to-understand visual format. But this ubiquity doesn't mean that an infographic always means what a viewer might presume it to mean at first glance. Consider the following map of the United States.

Recently, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration released this, and a number of other maps, showing what the summer climate has been doing recently. Unsurprisingly, the media quickly picked up on the dramatic story. During an interview with Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack, Kai Ryssdal, senior editor of public radio's Marketplace program, made the following observation, "This has been, as you know, the hottest summer on record in a lot places in this country." On NPR's news blog, "The Two-Way," their piece on the heat starts out with "The all-red map tells the story."

But does it?

If you look at the same data on the regional map, you see plenty of the nation sweated through a warmer than normal July. But the heat wasn't record-setting in any single given region. The “118” that shows up on the national map is nowhere to be found on the regional one.

The statewide map is different again. We can see even more of the variation in the average temperature for July. And we see that across Virginia, it was hot – the “118” re-appears, although not so hot as to push the entire southeast region of the NOAA map into the red. In fact the mountain west seems to have a higher average temperature. We can also see that the “Near Normal” and “Above Normal” temperatures dominate states in New England, the Gulf Coast, the Southwest and the West Coast. People in these areas may have been surprised to learn that the summer had thus far been unusually warm.

And when you boil the data all the way down to the divisional level, the red spreads out to scattered parts of the country, but we learn that parts of Washington (like the Puget Sound area), Oregon, California, Texas and Louisiana had below normal average temperatures during July. (Don’t worry; we got ours over the first few weeks of this month.)

The contiguous states are divided into a total of 344 divisions. In all, 17 of these divisions, spread out over 12 of the 48 states, experienced record high average temperatures last month. While that means that a lot of people were looking for ways to stay cool, especially when you consider that Chicagoland is in one of the record-setting districts, many parts of the country, while warmer than normal, avoided pushing into new territory.

The culprit is, of course, averaging. Both spatially and temporally.

As an example, I've created a simple chart that measures a fictitious "Salamander Index" over a span of 15 years. The area being measured is divided into five separate regions - and the orange line on the chart represents the average value of all of the regions for that point in time. By year 15, the average is at record levels, yet, as you can see, only the East Region is in record territory; all of the other regions had scored higher on the index than that in the past – in some cases significantly so. In fact, although it isn't immediately evident from the chart, the South Region (the violet line), which spends much of its time above the overall average, is at slightly below its average level, as across all 15 years, the South Region scores an average of about 31.8.

So it's important to remember that while infographics, especially simple ones, make data easily digestible, they don't always provide as accurate a picture as it might seem at first glance.