Reprinted from here

[American voters sympathetic to Palestine (whether progressive or Muslim) have always faced a Hobson’s choice in the voting booth]….Jews are a crucial constituency for the Democrats, the mainstream American progressive party [and evangelical Christians, who tend to be staunchly pro-Israel, a, if not the, core constituency of the Republican party.]. I suspect that many of Ralph Nader’s supporters [in 2000 (and possibly this time around) were] progressives whose sympathy for the Palestinians [was] strong enough for them to break with the Democratic Party. On Israel/Palestine, if nothing else, Nader is correct (No, I can’t believe I wrote that either): the difference between most Democrats and Republicans is negligible.

Reprinted from here

Muslim, and even some European, commentators see the fingerprints of a Jewish conspiracy in American support of Israel. The notion of a shadowy cabal subverting democracy dovetails nicely into a gripping black-and-white, good-and-evil narrative of moral absolutes that corroborates European anti-Americanism and Muslim anti-Jewish sentiment. However, American support of Israel is a textbook example of electoral politics working exactly as intended.

Many would ask why the Jewish vote is so important—Jews comprise less than 2 percent of the country’s population. But their significance comes from three key factors:

First of all, Jews tend to vote in larger numbers than other ethnic groups. Secondly, their concentration in urban areas in high-population states means their votes help determine the allocation of large numbers of Electoral College votes. And finally, they don’t limit their political activism to Election Day; Jews have been among the most generous supporters of political campaigns, especially those of Democratic candidates.The point bears repeating, “[Jewish] concentration in urban areas in high-population states means their votes help determine the allocation of large numbers of Electoral College votes.” In only one state with a population greater than 10,000,000 is the Jewish percentage of the population less than 1%. In that state, Texas, and many of the rest of the so-called red states, fundamentalist Christians, who tend to be pro-Israel, are well represented. Because of American Jews’ largely liberal sympathies, Republicans compete with Democrats for Jewish voters, especially in the liberally-inclined, high-population blue states, through vocal, strident and unwavering support for Israel.“What am I supposed to do in November?” she asked. “Bush has been so good for Israel, and that’s so important to me.”

“So, what’s the problem?” I asked, even though I knew exactly what her problem was. I hear it every day.

“I’m a lifelong Democrat,” she said. “How can I vote for Bush?” She is gratified by Bush’s support for Israel in the post-9/11 era, and she believes he’s right to pursue the war on terror. But she disagrees with just about every plank of his domestic agenda, and she can’t conceive of casting a vote that might mean further weakening the separation of church and state or an end to Roe v. Wade.Muslim immigration to the US has been concentrated in the last three decades. Less than one-third of of the 6.2 million-strong American Jewish population are immigrants or the children of immigrants whereas probably only about 36% of the estimated 3 million to 9 million American Muslims are US-born. Being born in the US entitles one to US citizenship and therefore eligibility to vote. Immigrants to the US obtain citizenship through the naturalization process, which takes time. However, some immigrants don’t even bother to apply. In contrast to Muslims, the bulk of Jewish immigration to the US took place before the First World War. A longstanding electorally significant Jewish presence in the US, coupled with traditionally high levels of both political activism and voter turnout, accounts for the American Jewish population’s ability to “punch above its weight.”

Larger numbers of Jewish voters than Muslim voters in high-population states coupled with fundamentalist Christian support for Israel creates a very powerful incentive for American elected officials to side with the Israelis rather than the Palestinians.

There’s no conspiracy, just democracy. The same could be said of European governments, whose sympathy for the Palestinians is explained by the larger number of Muslim voters there.

A shadowy cabal of Jews conspiring in some dimly lit, smoke-filled room? No.

The animating spirit of the Inquisition and the Holocaust rearing its ugly head yet again? Not really.

Pandering to voters? Hells, yeah.

Reprinted from here

[B]efore September 11th, elected officials were reaching out to Muslim-Americans and even continued to do so afterwards, though they were no longer willing to stick their necks out quite so far.Michelle Goldberg, “Banished from the American dream,” Salon, April 26, 2004.
[T]he Kesbeh family tried everything imaginable to remain in the United States. They enlisted the media, briefly becoming a cause célèbre in Houston, where protesters held vigils on their lawns and local churches offered to shelter them from the immigration authorities. Democratic Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee introduced a bill in the House that would have granted them legal residency. Republican Rep. Daryl Issa, an Arab-American from California, spoke out on their behalf, and Massachusetts Sen. Ted Kennedy reportedly intervened with immigration to delay their deportation.

In post-9/11 America, though, it proved impossible for a family of illegal Arab immigrants to garner enough political support to stay. So on March 28, 2003, they were put on a plane bound first for Amsterdam, Netherlands, and then for Amman.
….
Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee saw the family on TV, and a week later, she made a public statement praising them as the embodiment of America’s values. Soon, there were stories in the Houston Chronicle about the “Palestinian Cleavers” and reports on Amy Goodman’s radio show “Democracy Now.” Lee introduced a resolution in Congress that would have granted the family legal residency.
….
Under pressure from New Jersey’s Arab community, Democratic U.S. Sen. Robert Torricelli agreed to introduce a companion bill to Jackson Lee’s in the Senate, and Sen. Edward Kennedy intervened with immigration to have Sharif and Alaa released while the legislation was pending. The family’s deportation was stayed for six more months.

Asmaa was in the hospital waiting to go into surgery for a hernia when Noor told her that their bill had found a sponsor in the Senate, and that they might be able to stay. She fell to the floor, thanking God and crying with happiness and relief.

But Torricelli, in the midst of an ethics scandal, withdrew from the Senate race at the end of September. After that, the Kesbehs were unable to find another champion in the chamber.

The publicity their case had generated began to backfire, with the right seizing on their story as an example of Democratic squishiness on illegal immigration. Michelle Malkin, the caustic conservative author of the book “Invasion: How America Still Welcomes Terrorists, Criminals, a
nd Other Foreign Menaces to Our Shores,” wrote a syndicated column called “Lawmakers Who Love Lawbreakers,” which excoriated those politicians who’d risen to the Kesbehs’ defense. Senators that initially had seemed sympathetic backed away.Even though scandal prevented Senator Torricelli from following through, the point remains that the Arab community was successful in pressuring him. September 11th not only was the impetus for the deportation of the Kesbehs and others like them, but also made it difficult for elected officials to stand up for Arab and Muslim Americans.

Sometimes you have individuals who support homosexual values, abortion, and marijuana legalization, but at the same time take an anti-Israel stance. BOOM! The lesser of two evils!

It seems that no matter how many times Americans intervene on behalf of Muslims in situations like Kosovo and Bosnia going back at least to Suez, the United States will never earn enough merit in the eyes of Muslims to make up for its support of Israel. Fair or not, in the eyes of Muslims, Israel/Palestine supersedes all other considerations.

But even on that front, do American elected officials invariably side against Muslims and Arabs? One of my very first posts argued that US foreign policy towards Israel/Palestine is better explained by electoral politics than elaborate conspiracy theories. Most Republicans’ positions on Israel/Palestine will be determined by the staunchly pro-Israel attitudes of their evangelical Christian constituents and those of most Democrats by the staunchly pro-Israel attitudes of their Jewish constituents. But it follows that some elected officials, specifically those dependent on Muslim or Arab votes, will express sympathy with the Palestinians.

The voting records1 on 107th Congress House Resolution 392 and 108th Congress House Resolution 294 bear this out, though a comparison between the two shows just how difficult it is for elected officials to show sympathy for the Palestinians when American voters feel threatened by Islamic terrorists.

House Resolution 392, 2 May 2002, Expressing Solidarity with Israel in its Fight Against Terrorism

	Noes	Answered “Present”	Not Voting
Alabama	1	–	3
California	5	5	2
Florida	–	1	4
Georgia	1	2	–
Hawaii	1	1	–
Illinois	1	–	1
Indiana	–	1	1
Louisiana	–	–	2
Massachusetts	–	1	–
Michigan	4	2	1
Minnesota	–	3	–
Mississippi	–	–	1
Nebraska	–	–	1
New Jersey	–	1	1
New York	–	–	1
North Carolina	–	2	1
Ohio	–	4	2
Oklahoma	–	–	2
Imbler	1	–	1
Pennsylvania	–	–	2
Tennessee	–	–	1
Texas	1	–	1
Utah	–	–	1
Vermont	–	1	–
Virginia	1	–	1
Washington	1	1	–
West Virginia	1	1	–
Wisconsin	3	2	–

House Resolution 294, 25 June 2003, Condemning the terrorism inflicted on Israel since the Aqaba Summit and expressing solidarity with the Israeli people in their fight against terrorism.

	Noes	Answered “Present”	Not Voting
Alabama	–	–	1
Arizona	–	–	62
California	1	2	3
Florida	–	–	1
Georgia	–	–	1
Kentucky	–	–	1
Maryland	–	–	1
Michigan	1	1	1
Missouri	–	1	2
New Jersey	–	–	1
New York	–	–	1
North Carolina	–	1	–
Ohio	–	1	–
Texas	1	–	–
Virginia	–	–	1
Washingt on	–	1	1
West Virginia	1	–	–
Wisconsin	1	–	1
Wyoming	–	–	1

Source: Office of the Clerk, US House of Representatives

These voting records show Representatives from California and Michigan willing to publicly express sympathy with the Palestinians, though either that willingness or their numbers were much reduced by June 2003, when Resolution 294 was voted on. Open sympathy with the Palestinians could lead to perceptions of being “soft on terror,” which would likely have been problematic in the first post-September 11th Congressional elections. The House of Representatives that voted on Resolution 392 took office before September 11th, as did George W. Bush, whom Stephen Waldman has credited with coining the rhetorical innovation “churches, temples and mosques” as a candidate.

I do not believe it is a coincidence that California and Michigan are home to two of the largest Muslim communities in the United States. Though their frightened neighbors may have demanded Representatives with a harder line on terrorism on Election Day 2002, some of those elected in 2000 were clearly unafraid of displaying pro-Palestinian sympathies even after September 11th.

Though the numbers are small (and after 2002 almost insignificant), what this shows is that, on the issue of Israel/Palestine, American elected officials have demonstrated a willingness to court Muslim voters that was largely destroyed after September 11th. If Arabs and Muslims, especially Arab-Americans and Muslim-Americans, want to counter the pro-Israel leanings of American foreign policy, they must win over the hearts and minds not only of American government officials, but American voters; they cannot afford not to. Just as Abu Ghraib has damaged the American struggle to win Arab/Muslim hearts and minds, September 11th damaged the Arab/Muslim struggle to win over American hearts and minds. The tragedy is that it occurred just when they were making some real progress (unlike Abu Ghraib).

1I totally busted my ass researching voting records and coding these tables, so if you want to borrow them, I’d better see some credit.
2On June 25, 2003, the Aspen Wildfire, which ultimately scorched 85,000 acres just north of Tucson, was still burning, probably explaining the failure of 6 of Arizona’s 8 Representatives to vote.

Posted by jeet at 09:35 PM

Is your name sexy?

Men with a “front vowel” sound made at the front of the mouth, such as “a” in Matt, were most attractive to women.

Those with a “back vowel” sound, such as “aw” in Paul or George, were less sexy, New Scientist magazine said. In women, the situation is reversed.

Of course, given how names in our culture (excluding certain subgroups) have long historical lineages, how much sexual selection for names has there been? Has our collective namebase evolved through competition?

(I was joking, but now that I think about it, you could actually test this by browsing through old geneology charts and checking off the names that you think are sexiest.)

Posted by Thrasymachus at 01:49 PM

The New York Times has an interesting article, Did Antidepressants Depress Japan? I especially like the experience of Mitake on the last page. After months of treatment, he attended a fasting retreat for a week and it “broke the cycle.”

The great problem with the pharmaceutical treatment of mental illness is that the complexity of the tools is not nearly up to the complexity of the system it is trying to treat. Try to fix your automobile with a stone hand-axe and see how far you get.

A lot of mental illness is undeniably biochemical in origin. Many of the kids here at work have histories of head wounds or the use of inhalants. They are on the low end of the IQ scale (though theoretically above a minimum of 70). At the same time, though, the relational side of mental illness is probably more important. Almost without exception the kids have had someone actively working to make them crazy.

Drugs can appear to have a positive effect, but we usually do not know enough about the brain to be able to say exactly what they are doing. Are they curing an imbalance or are they changing behavior by damaging some part of the brain? The later is probably true a good deal of the time. And while that may mask a problem, it can wind up causing results like this.

A treatment regime on the proper level of complexity would, in my opinion, first address things like diet and exercise. Good food, hard work, and lots of sun. (All usually inadequate in the institutional setting.) More important is establishing good relationships. Effective treatment would also consist of good friends and loving family – the human brain is the best tool for fixing the human brain. That is certainly impossible to provide by the medical community, but whatever approximation is possible needs to be attempted.

One important point, I think, is for doctors to let patients know that a lifestyle change may be the best and safest treatment. Instead, the patient often comes away with the impression that all their problems can be solved with a pill. One of our psychiatrists compares his arsenal of drugs to an electrician’s toolbox. All it takes is the right combination of tools and tinkering to solve the problem, he claims. That is rarely true.

Posted by Thrasymachus at 02:46 AM

About a week ago Steve Sailer noted that a new poll by the Kerry camp shows that Bush’s support from “Jews” is around 22%. This might be a low-balling, but nevertheless, it shows that the “Jewish Republican” is a minority orientation, something that has been typical ever since the political realignment of the New Deal when the Democrats and Republicans crystallized their modern incarnations as catch-all parties of the Left and Right. Godless has blogged about the right-ward shift of American Jews before. Since Jews start out so far Left, it is pretty easy to push them a bit to the Right (though the “Right” credentials of some of the Jewish neoconservatives do I think seem a bit shaky upon closer scrutiny).

But the problem about many of these generalizations is that we are still wedded to a concept of a unitary “Jew.” Everyone’s definition of Who Is a Jew differs. The American Jewish Identity Survey offers data to reformulate, and add a finer granularity, to these typologies. There are, roughly speaking, three important groups of Jews that I think need to be separated:

Jews by religion and ethnicity.
Jews by ethnicity of no religion.
Jews by ethnicity of another religion.

There are of course other combinations, Jews by religion but not ethnicity, but the above three are numerically preponderant. My argument is, roughly speaking, that pro-Israel stances evinced by Republicans (in comparison to Democrats) have the most salience for religiously Orthodox Jews who are already more likely to be Republican. Highly secularized nominal Jews who are mostly Democratic simply can’t be shifted very much on purely “Jewish” issues, because Jewishness is a subset rather than the centerpiece of their identity.

One of the most importance statistics one can find in the survey above is this:

“Do you agree or disagree that God exists?”

Jews by religion: (2,930,000 of total population)
Disagree strongly – 5%
Disagree somewhat – 9%
Agree somewhat – 23%
Agree strongly – 54%
(not determined) – 9%

Jews of no religion: (1,200,000 of total population)
Disagree strongly – 17%
Disagree somewhat – 6%
Agree somewhat – 29%
Agree strongly – 35%
(not determined) – 13%

Jews of other religion: (1,470,000 of total population)
Disagree strongly – 3%
Disagree somewhat – 1%
Agree somewhat – 14%
Agree strongly – 80%
(not determined) – 2%

As you can see, “Jews of other religion” (no doubt mostly Christian), pretty much track the American public, with ~5% level of unbelief (many Jews are also part of “New Religious Movements” and Eastern religions like Buddhism, which might explain those who don’t believe in God). The “Core Jewish Population,” that is, Jews who are either of Jewish religion or Jewish ethnically, and presumptively have no other religious loyalties, display a far higher level of atheism than the general public. Many of these people are the ones who react negatively to G.W. Bush’s religious background. Additionally, many moderately religious Jews also tend to react negatively toward Christian evangelical talk, but I think a key point is that non-Jewish secular people in the United States tend to be highly skeptical of the religious orientation of the Republican party (I saw a statistic in The Almanac of American Politics that 40% of people with “no religion” voted Republican, but most people who offer “no religion” as their identification are not atheists or agnostics). Secularism, the child of the gentile Enlightenment has been taken up by Jews with gusto, and it is a major element in the identities of many ethnic Jews.

I suspect that Jews who might be won over to the Republican cause are those who:

A) “Drop out” of Jewishness, that is, converts to evangelical Christianity, who after a period might not want to identify as Jews.
B) Religiously observant Orthodox Jews who still vote Democratic for local political reasons or because of a historical tie to the party.

Because of A), the tendency for Jewish converts to disappear into the population after a generation or two of intermarriage (I recently had a Mormon missionary with a Jewish last name knock on my door, he was really embarrassed when I asked him about it, as he said, “it’s a family name, I don’t know much about Judaism, my grandfather was Jewish”) means these “Jewish Republicans” will fade away as generic Republicans. As far as B), this group just isn’t numerically that large, I don’t see numbers that suggest the various shades of Orthodox Jews form any more than 10% of America’s Jewry.

Certainly Leftist anti-Israel rhetoric that starts to veer toward anti-Semitism might push Jews toward a philo-Semitic Republican party, but I think there are special conditions that need to apply here.

A) Their Jewish identity has to be strong enough to overrule their Leftist adherences. So, extremely Left and religiously observant Jews are good opportunities for Republicans, but how many hardcore religious and liberal Jews are there?
B) They have to live in an area with a high concentration of Left-wing radicals and low concentration of “Bubbas,” so that the former “threat” is more salient than the latter “igorance.”

To clarify, many Jews in small towns seem to me part of the liberal rump within the community. I speak as someone who spent my adolescence in a very conservative small town where the Jewish families would never consider aligning themselves with their Republican neighbors, who regularly preached to them and tried to “witness” to them. Israel was mildy important to my few Jewish friends, but the cultural sense of alienation from their Mormon & conservative Protestant friends was a daily reality. To give an example, a conservative Protestant preacher was spreading word among some local Baptists that Mormons and Jews grew horns at night. Something straight out of the most stereotypical depictions of conservative Protestants, but it was a reality during my high school years. I also know that the same Baptist church where these opinions were spreading was extremely pro-Israel. But my Jewish friends really didn’t give a rat’s ass about Israel when set against the fact that some of my Baptist friends were arguing pro or con about Jews in insulting fashion (there were also debates about whether blacks are descended from Ham or Cain during the lunch period).

Jewish loyalty to the Democratic party is not something essential, or part of a “group selection strategy.” Rather, it is something motivated to important personal interests and priorities. Jews are atypical Americans. Their IQs are about 15 points higher. Non-Christian Jews (that is, Jews who attend temple and those who don’t) are five times as likely to be atheists. They are often (in my experience) likely to hold strange stereotypes about conservative Christians because of lack of familiarity with them, or, if they do live by them, to have had unfortunate cultural misunderstandings that solidify their anti-Christian inclinations. Various elements of the broad coalition of groups that exist under the umbrella of the American Jewry vote Democratic for different reasons, so a assertion of the Republican party’s philo-Semitism via their pro-Israel policy prescriptions might not yield as much party-switching as one might anticipate.

Addendum: It seems to be that many of the neoconservatives are a small subset who live under the delusion that they are very numerous, that is, highly secular personally, but still expressing a strong awareness of ethnicity which they transfer to the Israeli state. I would assert that the more atheist and secular the Jew is, the more likely ethnic awareness is to drop.

Posted by razib at 02:53 PM

Caught this on Slashdot.

The Political Brain

As The Times reported not long ago, a team of U.C.L.A. researchers analyzed the neural activity of Republicans and Democrats as they viewed a series of images from campaign ads. And the early data suggested that the most salient predictor of a ”Democrat brain” was amygdala activity responding to certain images of violence: either the Bush ads that featured shots of a smoldering ground zero or the famous ”Daisy” ad from Lyndon B. Johnson’s 1964 campaign that ends with a mushroom cloud. Such brain activity indicates a kind of gut response, operating below the level of conscious control.

I have to admit that my politics are based on gut responses to issues, followed up by reasoning to justify myself. Luckily, I’m a Conservative, and that’s how we’re supposed to be. Gut response Liberals are probably more conflicted.

The biggest single predictor of party affiliation is who your parents voted for, of course. But did your parents give you their ideology or their genes?

Posted by Thrasymachus at 12:27 PM

As the US Men’s basketball team is abroad breaking down stereotypes, the NCLB is helping propel them, at least in Missouri.

In the local paper today, they reported the pass rate of the state standardized achivement test for each school, which got me wondering about pass rate over a number of variables, including race. So, I went data hunting…….

…..I found the pass rate per race for MO.* No surprise on the outcomes, and I made a graph to ease trend analysis:

Chart for Math (opens in another window)

Chart for Communication (opens in another window)

Here are what is considered proficient: (math) (CA)

What worries me is that all groups are far less than 100, which is the NCLB ultimate goal (which is an asinine goal, anyway, IMHO). Also, some slopes are negative(!!!!), which isn’t good as the pass rate threshold is increasing each year (plateauing at 100 in ~10 years).

The results if your school screws up consistently: the school, in addition to loosing Title 1 money**, must offer the parents the option of transferring their children to better performing schools (at the school district’s expense, of course), subject to the other schools’ space availability.

Putting on my Nostradamus hat, I predict that by as the 100 threshold nears, the only schools who are reaching the mark are those who have de facto segregated themselves by competency via the transfers, and we can all guess how the segregation will look racially.

*One nice thing about NCLB (maybe one of the only things) is that it mandates certain data (i.e., pass rates by race, SES, etc.) be accessible to the public.

**Money to help educate poor kids

Posted by A. Beaujean at 12:03 AM

One of the most agitating portions for me of Susan Blackmore’s The Meme Machine was Richard Dawkins’ introduction where he tells of a student of his who had picked up some peculiar mannerisms from her parents, who themselves had affected these tendencies in imitation of the Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein. Something within me could not help but be digusted by this idolatry of Wittgenstein, I can abide by the abject devotion and dedication that the majority of my fellow man direct toward their gods, but a man who walked in the flesh and seemed to always be on the verge of insanity?

It did not help that I generally do not feel congenial toward Wittgenstein’s philosphical “ideas.” Not only did he turn against Bertrand Russell, a man who I admire despite his naivete and hyporcisy, for the sheer firepower of his mind, Wittgenstein stood in opposition to the late Sir Karl Popper, the father of falsification (or rather, he was Popper’s “enemy #1”). Wittgenstein’s Poker is a philosophical history that I just recently read which details the conflict between the two Austrians, in the process taking a gentle and entertaining tour of early 20th century intellectual history. I come not to recommend the book, if you’ve read much history of philosophy it is nothing more than a casual airport read, rather, I want to dwell upon the magic of Wittgenstein.

Many philosophers hold to the conceit that they are rational beings. And when I read about the abominable cult of Wittgenstein, I peruse passages that describe his “incandescent intellectual fire,” his “compulsive charisma,” his “godlike disregard for convention.” You would think the man was the second coming! His life was wracked by the torment of thought, his existence pervaded by extreme suffering on behalf of the intellectual shortcomings of his fellow man. I have only mildly skimmed Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations, a byproduct of a period where I absorbed data on the life of Bertrand Russell (Wittgenstein being a prominent player). I don’t disagree with all that Wittgenstein asserts, but I left the text with a feeling of “there is no there there.” Plato seduced by flattering the conceit of intellectuals that their ideas, their minds, were all that truly was (a metaphorical solipsism if not a literal one). Aristotle by his sheer diluvian output. Aquinas via the fiat of the Church. What power does Wittgenstein hold over the hearts of men?

For all Wittgenstein’s peculiar manners, there are some key facts about him that need to be highlighted.

He was the scion of one of Austria’s wealthiest families, and so was possessed of a natural confidence.He was an exemplar at whatever task he set himself. He was an outstanding mechanical engineer, philosopher, architect, medical research assistant, school-teacher, and so forth.His lack of self-conscious pretention (his love of crime fiction for example) appealed to those who saw it as a signal that here was one who did not need to display substance, but simply was.Earlier I have blogged about the book The Imitation Factor, and Wittgenstein is a clear case of this. Second order imitation, as in the case of Dawkins’ student is very probable, as all the researchers who study his life seem to imply that all his “followers” aped his style, though they generally failed to appreciate the substance. Wittgenstein was what Susan Blackmore would term a “Meme Fountain.”

But what does that all mean? Does it matter that a small cult of followers of the late great philosopher is fanatic enough that he was rated the 5th most influential philosopher of all time in a poll taken in 1998 (this was of academics in the field)? I hold that unlike the work of Sir Karl Popper, Wittgenstein’s system is mumbo-jumbo, only a level below that of Sarte or Heidegger. One could say this about a lot of philosophy. Over the generations memetic fidelity will shift his shapeless ideas beyond shapeless recognition. Only the ghost of “Forms of Life” will survive, or whatever nonsensical definition they use. “Schools” of philosophy exist because most of philosophy does not live up to the conceit of rationality, it is driven, perish the thought, by emotion rooted in evolution!

To some people the primacy of idealism appeals to their ego and self-conception as the apex of creation (strangely, my narcissism has always grafted itself onto a skeptical empiricism!). Hard-headed empiricists look to their common sense. More artistic minds wade through the morass that is modern non-analytic philosophy, especially fields like literary criticism. And then there are the men and women who develop “cult” followings, devotees of the mind who flee rationality and yet aver that they are still partisans.

Persistant philosophical ideas are the ones what defy falsification, and so blur the line between faith and reason, religious and paradigm.

Wittgenstein was probably right that there aren’t really philosophical “problems,” just language puzzles. But, as the decades have past, the importance of non-rational and unconscious thought have come to the fore, and vast swaths of the mind have opened up for scientific investigation. Wittgenstein and his followers might assert as a Truth that each language is its “own form of life,” but many linguists would assert that these “forms of life” are constrained by the active hand of evolution, by biology, by the naturalistic limitations of the universe. The “cult” of any philospher exists in that gray zone outside of science, where fashion and fad play a greater role than prediciton of coherency. If all philosophical sense is nonsense, it stands to reason that the most creative and colorfull cult leaders would leave the largest footprints.

Addendum: In contrast, think about the situation of the contemporaneous scientist Linus Pauling. James Watson asserted that one reason Pauling, for alll his brilliance, didn’t stumble upon the structure of DNA, was because he was surrounded by over-awed “Yes men.” Where philosphers can afford acolytes, scientists need skeptics as helpmates. Reality does not accept ego as a form of payment.

Posted by razib at 09:23 PM

I have been thumbing Michelle Malkin’s new book on the subjects of the Japanese interment and racial profiling of terrorists. It’s an easy read, though not very well written, so I would suggest it to anyone interested in the subject.

But as this is a book on racism, the inevitable comment arises from a virulent anti-racist, such as this one on Amazon:

Okay, let’s just say for arguments sake that we follow mrs malkin’s advice and profile ONLY male middle-easterners. Terrorists arent stupid. They’ll quickly catch wind of this and start to change their attack strategy. What if they decide to start using females? If they havent already. Or more light-skinned people? Or maybe even children? Who knows what terrorists can be capable of.

Folks, terrorism is an idea not EXCLUSIVE to male muslims from the middle-east. Sure in the short term profiling male muslims might work, but what about LONG term? That is the key. We must defeat the idea of terrorism in general.

Now, the reader is correct in pointing out that Al Qaeda might recruit persons of other races or sexes, but in the long run I do not believe that Islamic terrorists will move out of the Middle Eastern male market much.

Terrorists are intensely concerned about security and secrecy, for obvious reasons, so much so that most terrorist’s family members or friends do not even know their son has joined. They are also groups which actively recruit and do not advertise much outside the Arab world. All this leads to that the existing terrorists get to decide who joins. In this situation the recruiter is going to go with whom he trusts and what he knows. And so he, being an Arab male, is most likely to trust other Arabs and men.

So at the end of the day, while we may see female terrorists or white terrorists, they are likely to be a minority among ME male terrorists.

Update

A friend who reads this blog e-mailed me saying “What you’re basically saying is that terrorists will remain ME males since ME males tend to be sexist and racist?”

Yup.

Godless comments:

I should also comment that nothing prevents us from switching our strategy once Al Qaeda’s ostensible B-team (the 70 year old blonde Kansas grandmothers who also happen to be suicidal jihadists) starts committing attacks. Profiling is one component of a Bayesian strategy, and of course it can evolve with time if significant numbers of non-Arabs (or non-Muslims) take up the Al-Qaeda banner. The smartest thing to do is to put it on a Bayesian foundation, with estimates for probability of terrorist given Muslim, probability of Muslim given terrorist, and so forth. I have a post coming up along these lines.

Posted by scottm at 08:27 AM

[Assorted pet news crossposted from GeneticFuture.org]

DINGOES EVOLVED FROM PET DOGS

Once again, studies of mitochondrial DNA have revealed something interesting about the ancestral origins of species:

Aug. 3, 2004 — Dingoes, Australia’s wild dogs, are descended from Asian domesticated dogs, not wolves, according to international research.
[Discovery Channel News, reporting on this PNAS abstract]

I love stuff like this. It reminds us that we humans (and our domesticated pets, for that matter) are not the pinnacle of evolution. More bad-ass stuff is yet to come. Take a look at this dingo, for example. Do you think Lassie would have a chance in an all-out claws and fangs battle with this puppy?

Kind of makes you wonder what house cats are going to evolve into…

KITTEN CLONING, ONLY $50,000.
Two kittens have been born using a new cloning method that may be safer and more efficient than traditional methods, a U.S. company said Thursday.

Genetic Savings & Clone promises to clone anyone’s pet — for $50,000 or so — and started with chief executive officer Lou Hawthorne’s own pet cat.
[As reported in this article in Wired News.]

You know, just in case you’re concerned about running out of housecats once they evolve into something ferocious like the Australian dingo.

Posted by canton at 10:51 AM

AEI has released an interesting paper examining world-wide population trends. I’m still absorbing it so I will just point out a few things that jumped out at me, and leave comments on it for a future time or for GC or Razib.

Unnatural Gender Imbalances;
And the collision is not only happening in East Asia. Gender determination technology is now nearly universally available; sub-replacement fertility is fast becoming the planetary norm; and a strong son-preference has been expressed in a number of cultures worldwide. One of these is Punjab, India. In a major survey undertaken there a decade ago, when fertility levels were still well above replacement, ten times as many women expressed a preference for a boy as for a girl. And according to India’s latest census, in that state’s youngest age groups, there were 126 young boys for every 100 young girls. That figure cannot be taken as an exact indication of gender imbalance at birth: differential mortality and/or migration, for instance, may have affected this reported outcome. Yet the true sex ratio at birth in Punjab may not be far different from the extraordinary disparities reported for the very young. Contrary to expectation, with increased affluence, education, and contact with the outside world in China, the gender imbalance has increased, and it is starting to do the same in the Caucasus, parts of Latin America and Eastern Europe, and even subpopulations within the United States.

Now I knew that China and India had gender imbalances, but the U.S.?

American “Demographic Exceptionalism”
(basically we are the only developed country to not have a shrinking population)
So how can we explain this fertility discrepancy? Possibly it is a matter of attitudes and outlook. There are big revealed differences between Americans and Europeans regarding a number of important life values. Survey results highlighted in The Economist (November 2003) point to some of these. Americans tend to identify the role of government as “providing freedom,” while Europeans are inclined to think of government in terms of “guaranteeing one’s needs.” Attitudes about individualism, patriotism, and religiosity seem to separate Americans from much of the rest of the developed world. Is it entirely coincidental that these divergences seem to track with the big cleavages between fertility levels in the United States and so much of the rest of the developed world?

Godless comments:

Without mass immigration, the US would have negative population growth (the Anglo fertility rate is 1.84, below replacement level). See also here:

Future fertility and immigration may play major roles in the Nation’s growth.

The two major components driving the population growth are fertility (births) and net immigration. In the middle series, the number of births is projected to decrease slightly as the century ends and then increase progressively throughout the projection period. After 2011, the number of births each year would exceed the highest annual number of births ever achieved in the United States.

Almost one-third of the current population growth is caused by net immigration. By 2000, the Nation’s population is pro-jected to be 8 million larger than it would have been if there were no net immigration after July 1, 1992. By 2050, this difference would increase to 82 million. In fact, about 86 percent of the population growth during the year 2050 may be due to the effects of post-1992 net immigration.

In the absence of mass immigration, the US population would have similar demographic characteristics to other majority European countries. I can provide more citations on this for the skeptical, but it’s an accepted fact among both immigration reformers and proponents of the current system. AEI takes a much more positive view on the phenomenon than I do; their fallacious assumption is that the individuals being added to the population are not net tax recipients:

“It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that education is the best predictor of income and thus of benefit and cost,” said UC Davis economist Philip L. Martin, an expert on rural immigrants.

He cites studies that say an arriving immigrant with at least a high school education will pay an average $89,000 more in taxes and other revenues than he or she costs in services. Those with less than a high-school education, however, put such a demand on public services that their large negative value persists through their children’s and grandchildren’s generations.

Like Tyler Cowen, I believe a revenue-positive strategy rather than our current revenue-negative immigration strategy is the way to go. Welfare is not the only category of expenditure; everything from public education to roads to police officers costs money, and immigrants with less than a high school education are unlikely to pay more than they necessitate in payments. Often, immigration’s effect as a whole on the tax payer is misleadingly estimated by grouping Ph.D. physicists and engineers with migrant workers. If you break them out separately as Davis and others have done, the disparity is stark – and there is no need for us to take millions of people with less than a high school education when we could be taking the smartest of the world.

Posted by scottm at 12:54 PM