Tag: debate

Fool Me Once

I’m going to start with a confession of something I’ve come to regret immensely. And please, stick with me as I go through this, because I’m using this to illustrate a point. Some time in early 2016, January or February if memory serves, I created a poster supporting Donald Trump for president. The assignment had been to create a poster for a candidate, any candidate. The assignment was very explicit that we didn’t have to agree with what we were writing, and I didn’t, we just had to make a poster. 

At this time in high school, I was used to completing meaningless busywork designed to justify inflated class hours. It was frustrating, soul-dredging work, and since I had been told that I wouldn’t be graduating with my class, there was no end to my troubles in sight. I relished the chance to work on an assignment that didn’t take itself so seriously and would allow me to have some fun by playing around. 

The poster was part joke, part intellectual exercise. Most everyone in my class picked either Clinton or Sanders; a few picked more moderate republicans or third party candidates, not so much because our class was politically diverse, but either out of a sense that there ought to be some representation in the posters, or because they believed it would make them stand out to the teacher. I went a step further, picking the candidate that everyone, myself included, viewed as a joke. I had already earned myself a reputation as devil’s advocate, and so this was a natural extension of my place in the class, as well as a pleasant change of pace from being called a communist.

It helped that there was basically no research to do. Donald Trump was running on brand and bluster. There were no policies to research, no reasoned arguments to put in my own words. I just put his name in a big font, copy and pasted a few of his chants, added gratuitous red white and blue decorations, and it was as good as anything his campaign had come up with. If I had been a bit braver, a bit more on the ball, or had a bit more time, I could have done proper satire. I was dealing with a relatively short turnaround time on that assignment, but I tried to leave room for others to read between the lines. But the result was half baked, without the teeth of serious criticism or parody, only funny if you were already laughing, which to be fair, most of us were. 

The posters were hung up in the classroom for the rest of the year, and I suspect I dodged a bullet with the school year ending before my work really came back to haunt me. I’m not so self-indulgent as to believe that my work actually swayed the election, though I do believe it may have been a factor in the mock election held among our students, where my poster was the only one supporting the winner. I also think that my poster succinctly represented my place in the general zeitgeist which led to Trump’s election. I learned several lessons from that affair. Chief among them, I learned that there is a critical difference between drawing attention to something and calling it out, since the former can be exploited by a clever opportunist. 

Relatedly, I learned that just because something is a joke does not make it harmless. Things said in jest, or as devil’s advocate, still carry weight. This is especially true when not everyone may be on the same page. I never would’ve expected anyone to take anything other than maybe a chuckle from my poster, and I still think that everyone in my class would have seen it that way coming from me. But did everyone else who was in that classroom at that time see it that way? Did the students in other classes, who saw that poster and went on to vote in our mock election take my poster to heart? 

Of course, that incident is behind me now. I’ve eaten my words with an extra helping of humble pie on the side. I won’t say that I can’t make that mistake again, because it’s a very on-brand mistake for me to make. But it’s worth at least trying to lear from this misstep. So here goes: my attempt to learn from my own history. 

Williamson is using dangerous rhetoric to distinguish herself in the Democratic race, and we should not indulge her, no matter how well she manages to break the mould and skewer her opponents. Her half baked talking points rely on pseudoscience and misinformation, and policy designed on such would be disastrous for large swaths of people. They should not be legitimized or allowed to escape criticism. 

Why do I say these things? What’s so bad about saying that we have a sickness care system rather than a healthcare system, or even that Trump is a “dark psychic force” that needs to be beaten with love? 

Let’s start with the first statement. On the surface of it, it’s a not-unreasonable, logically defensible position. The structural organization of American society in general, and the commodification of healthcare in particular, have indeed created a socio-professional environment in the healthcare field which tends to prioritize the suppression of acute symptoms over long-term whole-person treatments, with the direct effect of underserving certain chronic conditions, especially among already underserved demographics, and the practical effect that Americans do not seek medical attention until they experience a crisis event, leading to worse outcomes overall. This is a valid structural criticism of the means by which our healthcare system is organized, and something I am even inclined to agree with. So why am I against her saying it?

Because it’s a dog whistle. It refers directly to arguments made by talking heads who believe, among other things, that modern illnesses are a conspiracy by Big Pharma to keep patients sick and overmedicate, that the government is suppressing evidence of miracle cures like crystals, homeopathy, voodoo, and the like, that vaccines are secretly poisonous, and the bane of my own existence, that the pain and suffering of millions of Americans with chronic illness is, if not imagined outright, is easily cured by yoga, supplements, or snake oil. I particularly hate this last one, because it leads directly to blaming the victim for not recognizing and using the latest panacea, rather than critically evaluate the efficacy of supposed treatments.

Does Williamson actually believe these things? Is Williamson trying to rile up uneducated, disaffected voters by implying in a deniable way that there’s a shadowy conspiracy of cartoon villains ripping them off that needs to be purged, rather than a complex system at work, which requires delicate calibration to reform? Hard to say, but the people she’s quoting certainly believe those things, and several of the people I’ve seen listening to her seem to get that impression. Williamson’s online presence is full of similar dog whistles, in addition to outright fake news and pseudoscience. Much of it is easy to dismiss, circumstantial at best. But this is starting to sound familiar to me. 

What about the second quote, about psychic forces? Surely it’s a joke, or a figure of speech. No one expects a presidential candidate to earnestly believe in mind powers. And who is that meant to dog whistle to anyways? Surely there aren’t that many people who believe in psychic powers?

Well, remember that a lot of pseudoscience, even popular brands like homeopathy, holds directed intention, which is to say, psychic force, as having a real, tangible effect. And what about people who believe that good and evil are real, tangible things, perhaps expressed as angels and demons in a religious testament? Sure, it may not be the exact target demographic Williamson was aiming for. But recent history has proven that a candidate doesn’t have to be particularly pious to use religious rhetoric to sway voters. And that’s the thing about a dog whistle. It lets different people read into it what they want to read. 

Despite comparisons, I don’t think she is a leftist Trump. My instinct is that she will fizzle out, as niche candidates with a, shall we say, politically tangential set of talking points, tend to do. I suspect that she may not even want the job of President, so much as she wants to push her ideas and image. Alongside comparisons to Trump, I’ve also heard comparisons to perennial election-loser Ron Paul, which I think will turn out to be more true. I just can’t imagine a large mass of people taking her seriously. But then again… fool me once, and all that. 

The Fly Painting Debate

Often in my travels, I am introduced to interesting people, who ask interesting questions. One such person recently was a lady who was, I am told, raised on a commune as a flower child, and who now works in developing educational materials for schools. Her main work consists of trying to convey philosophical and moral questions to young children in ways that allow them to have meaningful discussions.

One such question, which she related to me, focused on a man she knew tangentially who made pieces of microscopic art. Apparently this man makes paintings roughly the width of a human hair, using tools like insect appendages as paintbrushes. These microscopic paintings are sold to rich collectors to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars. Because of their size, they are not viewable without special equipment, and broadly speaking, cannot be put on display.

There is obviously a lot to unpack here. The first question is: Is what this man does art, especially if it cannot be enjoyed? My feeling is yes, for two reasons. First, there is artistic expression taking place on the part of the artist, and more importantly, the artwork itself does have an impact on its consumers, even if the impact is more from the knowledge of the existence of the piece than any direct observation. Secondly, the piecesare by their very existence intellectually stimulating and challenging, in a way that can provoke further questions and discussion.

Certainly they challenge the limits of size as a constraint of artistic medium. And these kinds of challenges, while often motivated by pride and hubris, do often push the boundaries of human progress as a whole, by generating interest and demand for scientific advancement. This criteria of challenging the status quo is what separates my bathroom toilet from Marcel Duchamp’s “Fountain”. Admittedly, these are fairly subjective criteria, but going any further inevitably turns into a more general debate on what constitutes art; a question which is almost definitionally paradoxical to answer.

The second, and to me, far more interesting question is: is this man’s job, and the amount he makes justifiable? Although few would argue that he is not within his rights to express himself as he pleases, what of the resulting price tag? Is it moral to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on such items that are objectively luxuries, that provide no tangible public good? How should we regard the booming business of this man’s trade: as a quirky niche market enabled by a highly specialized economy and generous patrons willing to indulge ambitious projects, or as wasteful decadence that steals scarce resources to feed the hubris of a disconnected elite?

This points at a question that I keep coming back to in my philosophical analyses, specifically in my efforts to help other people. Is it better to focus resources on smaller incremental projects that affect a wider number of people, or larger, more targeted projects that have a disproportionate impact on a small group?

To illustrate, suppose you have five thousand dollars, and want to do the moral utilitarian thing, and use it to improve overall happiness. There are literally countless ways to do this, but let’s suppose that you want to focus on your community specifically. Let’s also suppose that your community, like my community, is located in a developed country with a generally good standard of living. Life may not always be glamorous for everyone, but everyone has a roof over their head and food on the table, if nothing else.

You have two main options for spending your five thousand dollars.

Option 1: You could choose to give five hundred people each ten dollars. All of these people will enjoy their money as a pleasant gift, though it probably isn’t going to turn anyone’s life around.

Option 2: You could choose to give a single person five thousand dollars all at once.

I’m genuinely torn on this question. The first option is the ostensibly fairer answer, but the actual quality of life increase is marginal. More people benefit, but people probably don’t take away the same stories and memories as the one person would from the payout. The increase in happiness here is basically equivocal, making them a wash from a utilitarian perspective.

This is amplified by two quirks of human psychology. The first is a propensity to remember large events over small events, which makes some sense as a strategy, but has a tendency to distort trends. This is especially true of good things, which tend to be minimized, while bad things tend to be more easily remembered. This is why, for example, Americans readily believe that crime is getting worse, even though statistically, the exact opposite is true.

The second amplifier is the human tendency to judge things in relative terms. Ten dollars, while certainly not nothing, does not make a huge difference relative to an annual salary of $55,000, while $5,000 is a decent chunk of change. Moreover, people will judge based relative to each other, meaning that some perceived happiness may well be lost in giving the same amount of money to more people.

This question comes up in charity all the time. Just think about the Make a Wish Foundation. For the same amount of money, their resources could easily reach far more people through research and more broad quality of life improvements. Yet they chose to focus on achieving individual wishes. Arguably they achieve greater happiness because they focus their resources on a handful of life-changing projects rather than a broader course of universal improvement.

Now, to be clear, this does not negate the impact of inequality, particularly at the levels faced in the modern world. Indeed, such problems only really appear in stable, developed societies where the the value of small gifts is marginal. In reality, while ten dollars may not mean a great deal to myself or my neighbor, it would mean the difference between riches and poverty in a village facing extreme poverty in a developing nation. Also, in reality, we are seldom faced with carefully balanced binary options between two extremes.

The question of the microscopic artist falls into a grey area between the two extremes. As a piece of art, such pieces invariably contribute, even if only incrementally, to the greater corpus of human work, and their creation and existence contributes in meaningful and measurable ways to overall human progress.

There is, of course, the subjective, and probably unanswerable question of to what degree the wealthy collector buyers of these pieces are derive their enjoyment from the artistic piece itself, or from the commodity; that is, whether they own it for artistic sake, or for the sake of owning it. This question is relevant, as it does have some bearing on what can be said to be the overall utilitarian happiness derived from the work, compared to the utilitarian happiness derived from the same sum of resources spent otherwise. Of course, this is unknowable and unprovable.

What, then, can be made of this question? The answer is probably not much, unless one favors punitively interventionist economic policy, or totalitarian restrictions on artistic expression. For my part, I am as unable to conclusively answer this question as I can answer the question of how best to focus charitable efforts. Yet I do think it is worthwhile to always bear in mind the trade offs which are being made.