Henry

Following Michael’s pointer, I read William Deresiewicz’s piece with some interest – while I’m as happy as the next person to read good take-downs of dodgy ev-psych arguments, I found some of the claims a little … sweeping. Take, for example, the suggestion that:

Having colonized the social sciences—where it has begun to displace the view, predominant throughout the twentieth century, that the mind is a highly malleable product of culture—[Darwinian evolutionary thinking] has now set its sights on the humanities, the last area of resistance.

I’m sure that ev-psych types would like this to be true¹, but as a card-carrying social scientist, I have yet to be informed of the successful colonization of sociology, political science, economics and anthropology by explanations based on Darwinian theory. Nor, for that matter, did I know that economists ever believed the mind to be a highly malleable product of culture.
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Felix Salmon quotes Economist American business editor (and former CT guest-blogger), Matthew Bishop.

This columnist once heard Mr Welch tell a chief executives’ boot-camp that the key was to have the compensation committee chaired by someone older and richer than you, who would not be threatened by the idea of your getting rich too. Under no circumstances, he said (the very thought clearly evoking feelings of disgust), should the committee be chaired by “anyone from the public sector or a professor”.

But it is more or less along the same lines. Inside Higher Ed reports

Elsevier officials said Monday that it was a mistake for the publishing giant’s marketing division to offer $25 Amazon gift cards to anyone who would give a new textbook five stars in a review posted on Amazon or Barnes & Noble. … Here’s what the e-mail—sent to contributors to the textbook—said:

“Congratulations and thank you for your contribution to Clinical Psychology. Now that the book is published, we need your help to get some 5 star reviews posted to both Amazon and Barnes & Noble to help support and promote it. As you know, these online reviews are extremely persuasive when customers are considering a purchase. For your time, we would like to compensate you with a copy of the book under review as well as a $25 Amazon gift card. If you have colleagues or students who would be willing to post positive reviews, please feel free to forward this e-mail to them to participate. We share the common goal of wanting Clinical Psychology to sell and succeed. The tactics defined above have proven to dramatically increase exposure and boost sales. I hope we can work together to make a strong and profitable impact through our online bookselling channels.”

.. Cindy Minor, marketing manager for science and technology at Elsevier … called the request for five star reviews “a poorly written e-mail” by “an overzealous employee.”

Fabio Rojas is annoyed at how economists are not only the unwitting slaves of the ideas of defunct sociologists, but are in denial about it. On the one hand, I think that this is unobjectionably true (and I note in passing that Fabio is notably friendlier than many sociologists to economic theory). I was at a meeting of the International Society of the New Institutional Economics some years ago (which you would think should be as sociology-friendly as an economics gathering could get), where Avner Greif gave a keynote address telling those gathered that game theory really was a subset of sociological inquiry, and that everyone should be reading Durkheim and Weber. The collective response to this claim could not readily have been described as enthusiastic.

But on the other, I find myself equally peeved by the ways in which sociologists react to economics and rational choice theory. [click to continue…]

Via Arthur Goldhammer, this is a very interesting post.

The French military tortured systematically from the beginning to the end of the war, most spectacularly during the “Battle of Algiers” in 1957. They used all the classic methods: electricity, simulated drowning, beatings, sexual torture and rape. …The FLN’s use of terrorism—in particular their targeting of European civilians at popular clubs, bars, and so on in urban bombing campaigns—served as the rationale for this “exhaustive interrogation” of “suspects.” … The Algerian War was a war of independence, a war of decolonization. In that sense, it cannot and should not be understood as analogous to, or a direct precursor to, the United States’ “war on terror.”

As an American today, what I find really significant about the use of torture in the Algerian War is what it did to France, which underwent a profound crisis of democracy as it attempted to hold on to Algeria. … what torture did do was poison the public sphere: to conceal the fact that the military was torturing, French governments turned to censorship, seizure of publications deemed deleterious to the honor and reputation of the Army, paralyzing control over the movements of journalists, and prosecution of those who nevertheless continued to publish evidence that torture was going on. … The reason all the government censorship was necessary was that a small but incredibly passionate, intellectually high-powered anti-torture movement developed in France from late 1956. … historical comparison can function as illuminating intellectual practice. … cell phone cameras really changed the world. Because the main reason the French torture-defenders didn’t argue that stuff like simulated drowning was no big deal was because they didn’t have to: they didn’t have to admit simulated drowning was happening AT ALL. In the absence of certain forms of highly-circulated, red-handed visual evidence, like the Abu Ghraib photos in Bush-era America, “deny, deny, deny” (even if massive, overwhelming proof actually does exist) remains a plausible public-relations strategy. … Denial that these things happened at all, which will always be the first line of defense, is no longer possible. And that is encouraging, despite everything.

I’ve got a long post in the works touching on some of the same issues as John’s recent piece, which began as a response to Larry Lessig’s recent silliness on socialism (which he has qualified in the meantime) but has since metastasized into something much shaggier and alarming. In the meantime, some speculation regarding a smaller question – is the Pirate Party’s presence in the European Parliament going to change anything? This is something that I wanted to talk about in a bloggingheads debate with Judah Grunstein yesterday, but we got stuck into more general questions of copyright good or bad. Anyway – my answer to the question is yes, plausibly – but around the margins, and depending on what alliances it strikes.
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Marc Ambinder offers this general meditation on the changing politics of smoking.

That process has accelerated dramatically since 2004 when New York City essentially banned smoking in bars and restaurants. It seemed so wild at the time. Chris Hitchens wrote a hysterical Vanity Fair piece on his attempts to defy the ban. It seemed radical, the odd teetotaling of a mayor who also pursued trans fats with a vengeance. Now, of course, smoking bans are everywhere and while the libertarian in me finds them irksome, the fact is that the public has not revolted and tossed out politicians who impose them. Trans fats are under siege, too.

Consider it part of the beauty of federalism. The small ideas that incubate in laboratories of democracy, as the former Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis famously called the states, have grown wildly. Causality is the hardest thing to trace. But I suspect without the heavy-duty smoking bans begun in earnest after 2004 in Mike Bloomberg’s New York, you wouldn’t have seen the conditions change so dramatically that the passage of FDA regulation of tobacco is a relatively minor story.

The Financial Times isn’t the leftiest of newspapers, but it is hard to argue with their verdict on the European Parliament elections:

The centre-right held its ground or advanced, both where it is in power and where it is in opposition. The mainstream left was decimated. This election shows that the social democratic parties have lost the will to govern. At a time when “the end of capitalism” is raised as a serious prospect, the parties whose historical mission was to replace capitalism with socialism offer no governing philosophy. Their anti-crisis policies are barely distinguishable from those of their rivals. The leadership crisis in several European socialist parties suggests their outdated ideas are matched by oversized egos.

Greens triumphed where the traditional left failed. Daniel Cohn-Bendit, who knows a thing or two about critiques of capitalism, appealed to voters willing to consider fundamental social change. As one of few groups to fight on pan-European issues, the Greens also proved that not all voters are deaf to Europe-wide politics. But the crisis has most benefited the strand of the European right that was never against regulating the market economy. By arguing that the crisis is a result of excessive “Anglo-Saxon” policies, centre-right parties have presented themselves as the most trustworthy stewards of a safer, European-style capitalism. Voters agreed.

My own take on the failures of European social democracy a few months ago was more or less identical. I’d love to be convinced that I was wrong though. Or, in the absence of a compelling counter-claim, at least get a better sense of why European social democratic parties have become empty shells. One first-approximation guess is that this had to do with the largely successful efforts by social democrat ‘reformers’ to replace the old anti-capitalist ideas and language with more market-friendly stuff, which succeeded just in time to leave these parties completely unprepared to deal with the demise of actually existing capitalism. A second is that current day social democrats are much less able than their 1930s-1950s predecessors to meld nationalism and market constraints. Other possible explanations?

I’m glad to see that Ed Whelan has apologized, for having outed Publius. Bad that he did what he did – good that he apologized for it, and very straightforwardly too. Good also that so many conservatives came out swinging on the right side of this issue. But I actually think that Michael Krauss, professor at GMU’s law school and sometime blogger, was arguably worse behaved than Whelan over this. Whelan perhaps didn’t think through the possible consequences of outing an untenured legal academic. Krauss very clearly did think it through – and apparently wanted the worst to happen. At least, this seems to me to be the most reasonable reading of his expressed hope that “the South Texas tenure committee is watching and taking note.” To hope that a tenure committee will take note of a behaviour you are condemning is to hope that they will deny the responsible individual tenure for doing this (if there is a plausible alternative reading, I am not seeing it). Given that Krauss is himself a senior legal academic, whose opinion of aspiring professors may genuinely affect their chances of doing well, this is nasty and vindictive bullying, which has (to use his own words against him) “no redeeming argument.” Krauss should think through what he has said, take it back and publicly apologize.

Update: I see that Brian Leiter, whose many contributions to intellectual life include his occasional interventions in this blog’s comment section, is still disinclined to apologize for his aborted effort to out ‘Juan non-Volokh’ a few years back. The comparison is instructive.

That our group blog is named “Crooked Timber” is sometimes taken to suggest that we are all devotees of Isaiah Berlin, who popularized the phrase about the ‘crooked timber of humanity’ that our title riffs on. As it happens, we are no more all fans of Isaiah Berlin than we are fans of Therapy? (I haven’t listened to them since Teethgrinder meself), but it probably behoves us to acknowledge that today is Berlin’s hundredth birthday (or rather would be, if he were still alive). Princeton University Press has The Crooked Timber of Humanity and various other titles for sale here for thems that are interested.

This FT article is the best piece I’ve seen on the intra-Europe battles over ECB policy, but it could go deeper still.

When Angela Merkel ended a long and otherwise unremarkable speech about economic policy this week with a vitriolic attack on the world’s three mightiest central banks, the German chancellor was writing a minor chapter of her country’s political history. No previous chancellor had dared attack their, and others’, central banks so frontally – saying the US Federal Reserve, Bank of England and European Central Bank should all row back on their unconventional recent ways of propping up economies. …

Matthew Yglesias does Martin Feldstein a serious injustice.

Feldstein’s characterization of the bill isn’t really correct and some of his economic analysis is debatable. But beyond that, the key point on which Feldstein’s argument turns actually has nothing whatsoever to do with economics. … Feldstein’s hypothesis … is clearly a proposition about international relations … Presumably the reason the Post is interested in Feldstein is his expertise in economics. So there’s no reason for them to be running an op-ed whose key contention has nothing to do with economics.

Matt is clearly unaware of Feldstein’s distinguished record as a theorist of international relations (this may not be as distinguished as his research record on the relationship between Social Security and savings, but you can only do what you can do). Feldstein is particularly famous (well, famous is one way of putting it), for his suggestion in a 1997 Foreign Affairs article that the introduction of the euro might lead to a civil war that would tear Europe apart.

War within Europe itself would be abhorrent but not impossible. The conflicts over economic policies and interference with national sovereignty could reinforce long-standing animosities based on history, nationality, and religion. Germany’s assertion that it needs to be contained in a larger European political entity is itself a warning. Would such a structure contain Germany, or tempt it to exercise hegemonic leadership?

A critical feature of the EU in general and EMU in particular is that there is no legitimate way for a member to withdraw. This is a marriage made in heaven that must last forever. But if countries discover that the shift to a single currency is hurting their economies and that the new political arrangements also are not to their liking, some of them will want to leave. The majority may not look kindly on secession, either out of economic self-interest or a more general concern about the stability of the entire union. The American experience with the secession of the South may contain some lessons about the danger of a treaty or constitution that has no exits.

The carpers and the hurlers on the ditch might complain that Jean-Yves Reb hasn’t reached for his rifle in the intervening ten years, and doesn’t look like he’s going to anytime in the foreseeable future. But that would be to miss the point that Feldstein’s contribution spurred much spirited discussion among international relations scholars, and specialists on the European Union (most of it not very complimentary to Professor Feldstein, but again, you can only do what you can do).

This common trope (this particular example is taken from Marc Ambinder) in discussions over the auto industry seems to me to be based on faulty logic.

Bondholders are kicking and screaming, but it appears as if General Motors Corp. is headed for an orderly bankruptcy, and the Obama administration is about to be handed the keys to a venerable corporate institution. Again. And again, the administration seems to be rewriting the rules of capitalism to fashion a deal to its liking. Purists—and virtually every academic economist one happens to encounter—wonder what happened to the once inviolate principle of rewarding risk-takers. Unsecured creditors will get less of a stake in the new GM than its employees, and you can forget about poor unadorned stockholders.

As I understand it (commenters may have different rationales), the idea that people should be rewarded for taking risk is that people making risky investments should receive higher returns on those investments in order to compensate for those risks. In capitalist systems, you often see the argument being made that the owners of capital should receive high returns on their capital to compensate them for the risk that the companies they have invested in go bust. But this does not mean that capital owners should have first bite at the cherry if the company does go bust. The risk that the company goes bust – and that capital owners lose their shirts in the process – is precisely the risk that they are supposedly already been compensated for. In other words, you can’t have it both ways – getting special compensation for the risk that you will lose your money if the firm goes bust implies that you shouldn’t get special compensation in the event that the company does go bust. Or you wouldn’t have been taking any risks in the first place.

So I simply don’t see that this cod-Schumpeterian argument makes any sense. A real Schumpeterian, I suspect, would be saying that no-one should get compensated at all, either capitalists or workers, and that the companies should be allowed to go bust (but that of course is a quite different argument). You could perhaps make a case on normative grounds that people who took a higher risk should get a bigger share of whatever is left. But you would have to take account of the fact that it isn’t only owners of capitalists who take these risks. Workers in GM have made risky investments themselves – in specialized skills that are difficult to sell on the market – and these risks were arguably greater than the ones taken by capitalists (bankers and investors, for all their travails, are surely doing better than unemployed auto workers).

Three Quarks Daily has an announcement.

we have decided to start awarding four prizes every year in the respective areas of Science, Arts & Literature, Politics, and Philosophy for the best blog post in those fields. Here’s how it’s going to work: Starting next month, the prizes will be awarded every year on the two solstices and the two equinoxes. So, we will announce the winner of the science prize on June 21, the arts and literature prize on September 22, the politics prize on December 21, and the philosophy prize on March 20, 2010. … Just for fun, the first place award will be called the “Top Quark,” and will include a cash prize of one thousand dollars; the second place prize, the “Charm Quark,” will include a cash prize of three hundred dollars; and the third place winner will get the honor of winning the “Strange Quark,” along with two hundred dollars.

Voting rules etc explained at the post in question. Just to be clear, I personally don’t think you should be voting for a CT post in any of these categories. The value of competitions like this is in highlighting bloggers who people would be unlikely to come across otherwise, and we’re high profile enough that we really aren’t a deserving case. But I am very happy that 3QD is taking this initiatve increase the profile of the more intellectual side of the blogosphere (which doesn’t usually do well in larger competitions), and strongly recommend that you nominate good posts, read other nominees, and vote for whoever seems best.