Liberal hypocrites.

Two criticisms conservatives frequently levy against liberals and progressives are that we 1) make them feel stupid, and 2) we are hypocrites. I'm not going to comment on the first point, save only to recall Isaac Asimov's musing on the subject:

"Anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.'"

Conservative stupidity, however, isn't the purpose of my writing. Rather, the focus of my remarks will be on the second point: that we are hypocrites. I concur in this judgement. We are, in fact, total hypocrites. Let's just imagine, for a moment, what it must be like to listen to us drone endlessly on about malevolent corporations hijacking the government, oil wars and failure to launch any meaningful effort to mitigate climate change? We call them stupid for not listening to us, and they rightly call us out for the beneficiaries of these same injustices we decry. How many "liberals" in Washington, DC one way or another get their salary from the Defense Department budget? We're hypocrites because we know the wars are about oil, and we still go to work everyday doing our little part in the "War on Terrorism". We criticize corporations like Verizon and Google trying to destroy Net Neutrality, but we own Google and Verizon. That is to say, we own their shares. Which oil companies are you invested in via your mutual funds? And won't you throw a hissy fit when their CEO comes out and must inform you that their companies failed to turn a profit this quarter.

The median income in the US as of 2008 is roughly 31K. How many of you make more than that (or at least expect to make more than that when you graduate. If you're reading this blog, you are/will most likely (be) making two or three times at your fancy professional jobs--actuaries at insurance companies, stock managers at CitiGroup, researchers and sales-reps at GlaxoSmithKline, ratings analysts at Viacom, or engineers at Northrup Grumman. It's no wonder that we're not out protesting in the streets when we're the beneficiaries of an unjust system.

Here's a tip that might help you identify whether you are part of the problem you decry: Would you be fired if you were found out to have attended a protest at a G8 summit? If your boss saw you standing on the side of the street raising a sign that said, "no more blood for oil" would you be getting a talkin' to? No, we're not out in the streets, we're 35 floors up in an air-conditioned offices, and have no mind to rock the foundations of our fortune. What is perhaps more hypocritical still, is the expectation that as we look down on them through one-way glass panes, they should be able to tell the difference between us and the billionaires who we say are responsible for their houses getting foreclosed on, their job getting sent-away overseas, and their lack of adequate healthcare. This is a tall request for someone we have the nerve to call stupid.

Loyola Marymount study finds that Second Life relationships can be more satisfying that real world ones

From Virtual World News

Second Life Relationships More Satisfying Than Real Ones

Participants in the 3D virtual world Second Life are more satisfied with the romantic relationships they form in the virtual world than the ones in their real life, according to two studies conducted by Loyola Marymount Universityresearchers. Even more remarkably, Second Life users who participated in the study reported that their level of sexual satisfaction with virtual world relationships was roughly equal to what they experienced in their real world relationships. Read more...

Full article: http://www.virtualworldsnews.com/2010/08/second-life-relationships-more-satisfying-than-real-ones.html
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More evidence that people can have real and satisfying emotional experiences within virtual worlds. I don't mean to imply that I think virtual lives are in anyway superior to "real" lives. Rather, that virtual worlds constitute a new living space for the mind, unaccompanied by the body. With our feet still firmly planted in the real world amidst real lives, our consciousness may extend into a second, perpendicular plane of existence simultaneously. Such an existence may seem an awkward stretch for many of us older birds, but for our children who will have been introduced to virtual worlds when their brains are still spongy, may find themselves perfectly at home with their consciousnesses striped across numerous realms.

-Nick

Competing ecosystems.

Apple is typically the company that comes to mind when one talks about a software 'ecosystem'; i.e., an effort to put all software and hardware together in a single, coherent package affording users all the capabilities they could ever need. Within a software ecosystem, individual applications pass data to each other seamlessly from the user's point of view. Perhaps even more importantly all applications share a common user-interface experience making it possible for users to competently use a variety of diverse software with a single common skill set; if you can use one, you can pretty much use them all.

It occurred to me today as I perused my daily RSS feeds via Google Reader on my Google Android phone, I'm utterly immersed in Google's software ecosystem. Why does this feel somehow ironic? Perhaps it is because Google is supposed to be the anti-Apple. Where Apple tries to micromanage the user's experience within the confines a "walled garden" ecosystem, Google (supposedly) works by connecting you with the world. But does it really? More and more I find that all the programs I use are Google. This is a Google-owned blogging site, and I chose it primarily for its simple integration with my Gmail account. While, I find the provided creation tools sufficient for my purposes, I might have composed my thoughts using the now revamped and impressive GoogleDocs suite. Apple doesn't even have one of those!

I realize that I'm glossing over the undoubtedly real and consequential distinctions between these two companies. Google actually does earn the large part of its revenue from connecting people with new things, whereas Apple makes its money by selling people computers. Yet my point of all this is simply that the term 'ecosystem' ought to be attached to Google as well. Ordinarily, this would hardly seem worth writing about, but given that heretofore Apple has pretty much owned the term, and further that Google is in some contexts characterized as the anti-Apple, it may help us to construct a better model of what is actually going on between these two giants. Both are ecosystems, and they're competing for your inhabitation. Underlying both of their business models is that they can each provide you with everything you could ever need or want. Consequently, you will never have to stray far from Google's ads or Apple's hardware.

Now if you will excuse me, I have several Google Voice messages waiting.

Response to those who say democracy is needed for economic growth

I don’t see that democracy is a necessary part of this equation: It is really about the combination of ‘security’ and ‘property rights’. Democracy is a useful means to an end, though not the only possible means. It’s merely convenient that democracy may impose some restraints on the government that enhance the security of property rights from the government---though this can happen without democracy, which I think is the story of East Asia during the second half of the 20th century. In small groups, humans WILL cooperate. It may be said that this is to a large part out of their control—it’s our biological nature to cooperate. Even under extreme circumstances, we will cooperate with kin. Security enables cooperation on larger scales, both in geographic terms and in terms of extended, non-kin social networks. Property rights, however, may be necessary to motivate cooperation at these scales. In kin relationships, or small groups, basic human sociality has mechanisms for incentivizing cooperation and disincentivizing freeriding. On a large scale, however, these mechanisms break down and profit takes over as the motivator of cooperation.

Thought of the day

Consumer choice is freedom, and we are the freest people in the world.

If we couldn't get fresh grapes in January, we'd be no better than the Soviets.

Recently I have wondered about the purpose of ‘political science’. Presuming that it is in reality a ‘science’, as it proclaims to be, it should then share the purpose of science generally. While there is obviously no authoritative body to declare the official purpose of science, many scientists and philosophers have written on that subject, who have in some construction or another, nearly uniformly concluded that science about the acquisition of knowledge that improves the human condition or state of being, in either a material or spiritual sense. Albert Einstein wrote, “All religions, arts and sciences are branches of the same tree.... All these aspirations are directed toward ennobling man's life, lifting it from the sphere of mere physical existence and leading the individual towards freedom.” I further hold that no civilization within which there is injustice has maximally achieved these objectives. Therefore, as political scientists it seems to me that our job is to discover the principles of and create social structures that make society a better place for the poor and the oppressed, rather than defending a system that favors the rich.

Thoughts for the day.

1. Study human societies like you would an ant colony.

2. As social contractual society breaks down and the absense of the rule of law sets in, the evolved pyschological mechanisms which establish some order from chaos become increasingly relevant and observable. Consider field studies in locations under condition of state failure, or near.