by John Holbo on November 23, 2010
In the course of concocting a bad argument against Peter Singer, Zizek says something … well, you tell me:
Jacques-Alain Miller, the main pupil of Jacques Lacan, once described an uncanny laboratory experiment with rats. In a labyrinthine setup, a desired object (a piece of good food or a sexual partner) is first made easily accessible to a rat; then, the setup is changed in such a way that the rat sees and thereby knows where the desired object is, but cannot gain access to it. In exchange for it, as a kind of consolation prize, a series of similar objects of inferior value is made easily accessible. How does the rat react to it? For some time, it tries to find its way to the “true” object; then, upon ascertaining that this object is definitely out of reach, the rat will renounce it and put up with some of the inferior substitute objects. In short, it will act as a “rational” subject of utilitarianism. It is only now, however, that the true experiment begins: the scientists performed a surgical operation on the rat, messing about with its brain, doing things to it with laser beams about which, as Miller put it delicately, it is better to know nothing. So what happened when the altered rat was again let loose in the labyrinth, the one in which the “true” object is inaccessible? The rat insisted; it never became fully reconciled to the loss of the “true” object and resigned itself to one of the inferior substitutes, but repeatedly returned to it, attempted to reach it. In short, the rat was in a sense humanized; it assumed the tragic “human” relationship toward the unattainable absolute object that, on account of its very inaccessibility, forever captivates our desire.
Zizek provides a footnote for the rat experiment: “See Jacques-Alain Miller, Ce quifait insigne, unpublished seminar 1984-85; lecture given 3 Dec. 1984.” Unfortunately, since it is unpublished, I cannot. It doesn’t sound impossible. But the whole ‘doing things with laser beams’ aspect is suspiciously approximate. Has any rat experimenter, to your knowledge – oh, CT commentariat – devised a method of consistently laser-inducing utopianism in rats, I suppose you might call it. Rats that just won’t settle for second best, jouissance-wise? Or is Zizek peddling some Lacanian urban myth?
The Zizek passage is from “A Plea For Leninist Intolerance” Critical Inquiry, Vol. 28, No. 2 (Winter, 2002), p. 549-50.

by John Holbo on May 28, 2010
by John Holbo on March 29, 2010
Suppose you have a two-party system.
One of these parties enjoys/enforces total party discipline, the other, not: members of the latter party side with their own, or cross the aisle, on individual issues/votes, as conscience or self-interest dictate. Let’s call the completely disciplined party the Partisan Party. The completely undisciplined, the Bipartisan Party (to reflect its principled commitment to always keeping the door open to the higher value of bipartisanship!)
Over time, both parties will push positive proposals/ legislation. Quite obviously, the Bipartisan Party will be at a tactical disadvantage, due to its lax discipline. Less obviously, it will have an ongoing optics problem. All the proposals of the Partisan Party will be bipartisan. That is, a few members of the other party will, predictably, peel off and cross the aisle to stands with the Partisans. None of the proposals of the Bipartisan Party, on the other hand, will ever be bipartisan. No Partisan will ever support a Bipartisan measure. In fact, all proposals of the Bipartisan party will face bipartisan opposition – as a few Bipartisans trudge across the aisle (there are always a few!) to stand with the Partisans. Result: the Partisan party, thanks to its unremitting opposition to bipartisanship, will be able to present itself as the party of bipartisanship, and be able to critique the Bipartisan Party, with considerable force and conviction, as the hypocritically hyperpartisan party of pure partisanship.
Conclusion: two measures of partisanship/bipartisanship that you might think make good heuristic sense – 1) being able to get bipartisan support for your proposals; 2) being opposed to those who can’t get any bipartisan support for their proposals – in fact aren’t good heuristics.
(Obviously it’s misleading to hint that the Democrats have no party discipline whatsoever, but the point still stands if modulated to match actually existing actuality.)
by John Holbo on March 26, 2010
Apparently David Frum got fired from AEI. Bruce Bartlett sees it as a further sign of the closing of the conservative mind. But maybe there are two sides to the story. Or maybe just one side – a totally different side. At any rate, we shouldn’t just drink the kool-aid. Over at the Corner, Daniel Foster reveals that, apparently, Frum was offered a chance to keep his job at no pay, and declined. So I guess he wasn’t fired for what he wrote! (Why don’t more employers offer employees this sort of option, rather than firing them?) Nothing to see here. Next post up the page: K-Lo suggests Israel should change it’s name to ‘Iran’. “No pressure, no impolite diplomatic language, no pushing it to give up land.” Yes, it’s hard to see the downside, isn’t it? It’s not as though Israel receives U.S. aid – material or otherwise – in any way, shape or form that Iran currently does not. Thank goodness the conservative mind is still open and thinking things through in an altogether sensible sort of way.
by John Holbo on March 25, 2010
No, I don’t mean: arguing fair. I think it should be ab homine. A moving (irrationally) away from the man. It’s a fallacy.
Here’s the context. Matthew Yglesias and Jonathan Chait have a diavlog in the course of which Chait takes the scrupulous high-road position that, when it comes to charges of racism, you really have to be slow to accuse. He rolls out the standard fair-play-in-debate considerations: if the person is saying something wrong, but not explicitly racist, you can just point out the wrongness, without speculating, additionally, that they said the wrong thing out of racism. There is, he implies, no real loss in not being able to delve into dark motive.
But here’s the problem with that. In an environment in which creative and speculative accusations of bad motives are, otherwise, flying back and forth in free and easy style, a social norm against accusing people of one sin in particular is actively misleading. It inevitably generates the strong impression that this bad motive – out of the whole colorful range of diseases and infirmities of the mind and spirit – is an especially unlikely motive. Which, in the sorts of cases Chait and Yglesias happened to be discussing, is not true. So, contra Chait, an inconsistent semi-norm against ad hominem arguments encourages an ab homine error that may be less angry (that’s not nothing) but is significantly more confused that what excessive – but even-handedly excessive! – hermeneutics of suspicion would produce.
Yglesias makes this point, mostly by saying that you have to ‘tell narratives’, and the narratives have to attribute motives. But I think ab homine is snappier.
UPDATE: On reflection, ab homuncule might be still better. The aversion of the gaze from one possibly semi-autonomous, agent-like module of the overall man, conjoined with cheerful willingness to shed light on every other part of the man, motive-wise.
by John Holbo on March 22, 2010
Good job, House Dems!
K. Lo’s reaction. “Congratulations, Democrats. Beginning now, you own the health-care system in America. Every hiccup. Every complaint. Every long line. All yours.”
I think this does serve as a nice expression of the Republican case against health care reform. Hic! Damn you, Nancy Pelosi! Hic! Damn you, Nancy Pelosi!
In other health care reform news, I have been enjoying Awesome Hospital rather muchly. “Back off, Dr. Space Baby!” On the other hand, our girls have been getting sick at a rate of 1.2 medical emergencies a day, for a week. And Belle is traveling, so I’m a bit worn to a frazzle of a nubbin of myself. I think we should have a Frequent Faller card from our local hospital. Get 2 tests and the 3rd is free! Get 20 stitches and the next 5 are free! Baffle the diagnostician 3 times and the 4th bafflement comes at no extra charge! (Thankfully, we haven’t had to get stitches this week.)
by John Holbo on February 20, 2010
Following up on Henry’s post …
I have just been reading Robert Louis Stevenson’s Moral Emblems (history of comics is everywhere, you know), and I think he pegs this ‘Harvard Mentality’ with a simple but elegant woodcut and associated poem.
Mark, printed on the opposing page,
The unfortunate effects of rage.
A man (who might be you or me)
Hurls another into the sea.
Poor soul, his unreflecting act
His future joys will much contract,
And he will spoil his evening toddy
By dwelling on that mangled body.
Or, as Michael Bérubé puts it: “I’ll show YOU what’s liberal about the liberal arts!”
by John Holbo on February 17, 2010
Matthew Yglesias says the necessary to talk people down from the ledge.
(Me? Last week I taught my students everything’s made of monads; mere universal holograms seem fairly ho-hum.)
But there is one point that should be made in these connections that almost never is: deception is a very different concept than error. Deception is a game for two: one to fool, one to be fooled. Whereas you can be wrong all by yourself. You can smudge the distinction with favorite epistemologist phrases like ‘if it turns out I am massively deceived about the way the world is …’ But if you dramatize the possibility of systematic/fundamental error by imagining deceiving demons, Evil Gods, Agent Smith, mad scientists with brain vats, caves equipped with the latest in projection technology, or giant holograms, you confuse people’s intuitions. Specifically, you confuse them into thinking that error is more conceivable (or differently conceivable) than it may really be. Telling people the universe is a hologram makes it sound as though the universe actually intends to pull the wool over their eyes. Reality itself is the ultimate Long Con! But if you just tell them matter is made of atoms, or water is really H20, that doesn’t make it sound as though the micro entities think all the macro-types with minds are marks and suckers. [click to continue…]
by John Holbo on December 23, 2009
Kevin Drum is amused, and rightly so, by this bit from the Corner’s Mike Potemra:
I have over the past couple of months been watching DVDs of Star Trek: The Next Generation, a show I missed completely in its run of 1987 to 1994; and I confess myself amazed that so many conservatives are fond of it. Its messages are unabashedly liberal ones of the early post-Cold War era – peace, tolerance, due process, progress (as opposed to skepticism about human perfectibility).
Kevin notes it is not every day you get conservatives to admit they oppose (or at least dislike) peace, tolerance, due process and progress. But the hole Potemra digs is deeper, and I think there’s actually a (semi) serious point to make here. Poterma forges on: “I asked an NR colleague about it, and he speculated that the show’s appeal for conservatives lay largely in the toughness of the main character: Jean-Luc Picard was a moral hardass where the Captain Kirk of the earlier show was more of an easygoing, cheerful swashbuckler. I think there’s something to that: Patrick Stewart did indeed create, in that character, a believable and compelling portrait of ethical uprightness.”
But surely the proper conclusion to be drawn, then, is that being an ethically upright and generally virtuous person is, however surprising this result may be, consistent with being tolerant, peace-loving, even with upholding due process. And there is no particular difficulty to the trick of being in favor of progress while being skeptical about human perfectibility. I say this is a semi-serious point because I think, for some conservatives, the main objection to a somewhat vaguely conceived set of liberal values really is a strong sense that they are inconsistent with a certain sort of hardassery in the virtue ethics department. End of story. But then Star Trek TNG ought, by rights, to be the ultimate anti-conservative series. At least for the likes of Potemra.
Potemra then pens a sort of Hail Mary follow-up post in which he asserts, if I have understood him aright, that basically Burkeanism is equal to a kind of (Spinozist?) view sub specie aeternitatis, all of which again redounds to the credit of conservatism and the good captain. And they all lived happily ever after in an old village in France. (I remember that episode.)
by John Holbo on December 11, 2009
‘Tis the season, so I have been finishing up a few projects. First, I made book on Squid and Owl. That’s right! it’s perfect for the person on your list who wants a copy of Squid and Owl! But here’s the thing. I haven’t actually seen it yet myself, so if that person on your list is you, you might want to hold off until I give a final quality check. Couple weeks. Otherwise, caveat emptor and your chestnuts roasting on an open fire.
In other news, my Haeckel X-Mas cards went over well last year – post got four whole comments! Lots of folks apparently hadn’t known about Haeckel’s early career, which just goes to show. This year I have done considerably more research – ‘delving’ is the word – and the results are … well, exciting – a bit forbidding; minatory, even. I was invited to publish a notice of my findings here, after being turned down by more ‘reputable’ scholarly outlets. (But I am not bitter.) I’ve assembled the documentary evidence that is the basis for my conclusions here. Judge for yourselves! A lot of people are courageous enough to ask whether Santa really exists, but how many people are willing to ask where he comes from?
by John Holbo on October 20, 2009
by John Holbo on October 5, 2009
I’m an undisciplined note-taker. I like to read a lot, putting post-its or other suitable markers in the pages as I go, and planning with the best of wills to take notes later. (I type very quickly, after all. I should be able to take notes even though I use so many post-its.) But then I just never get around to the sloggy, typing-it-all-in part. Recently I’ve tried to change things up. I sit down with a stack of books full of post-its and scan in just the post-it’ed bits, plucking the fluttering yellow feathers from these literary birds as I go, until I could stuff a whole pillow with used post-its by the time the night is over. I turn all the scans from any given book or article into one PDF, and I use Acrobat’s OCR capacity to make it semi-searchable. I can do something else while I work, like listen to an audiobook or podcast. I find this semi-mindless tidying of the aftermath of my reading mind’s life to be relatively pleasant activity. Now I want to take it to the next level, making the most of all my PDF’s (and docs in other formats, too, of course): does anyone here use, for example, DEVONthink, which some people have told me is good and useful. (But I am suspicious that these people are more obsessive than I about this sort of thing. I’m not a database-devotee by nature. I’m not going to go scripting stuff for DEVONthink. I know I won’t.) DEVONthink seems like a good deal because it has OCR based on ABBYYFineReader. And DEVONthink doesn’t even cost more than FineReader. Acrobat’s OCR, although adequate for basic purposes, is not great, and FineReader is supposed to be pretty good. So even if that was all I used it for …
Tell me of your time-saving note-taking methods, but don’t tell me to type it all in. What are good scanning products and OCR software suites and notetaking software. I’ve been using Zotero and I like it just fine. But maybe DEVONthink is better enough to be worth paying for, especially with the OCR?
by John Holbo on September 19, 2009
Some thoughts, related to Michael’s ‘going pro’ post and Kieran’s recent post on impact factor. To what extent is the whole internet afflicted with the Matthew Effect? “For to all those who have, more will be given, and they will have an abundance; but from those who have nothing, even what they have will be taken away.” If you want to be a bit more specific, to what degree are search results afflicted by it?
Let me illustrate with a couple cases I’ve personally noted, which I suspect are representative. [click to continue…]
by John Holbo on September 10, 2009
Now why did my previous post garner scarcely a comment?
The Plain People of the Internet: It hadn’t any McArdle in it!
I: Surely, my good man, we have not come to such a pretty pass as that.
The Plain People of the Internet: But here we are, and here you are.
I: I prefer to think it was due to modesty. False modesty, perhaps. But if it weren’t for false modesty, some people would have no modesty at all. Or so I like to flatter myself.
The Plain People of the Internet: What are you babbling about, you great baby, and bottomless bag of blog posts!
I: In my post, I quoted John Kricfalusi on the baneful influence of cool. “Why do young artists say they like UPA? Because it makes ‘em cool. Hipster Emo time. (It’s also easy to fake) It’s like when teenagers discover communism. They think it’s real cool to go against common sense and experience. But then when they meet the real world head on later, they realize it was youthful folly. You’re supposed to grow out of it. I too fell under the UPA spell for the 3 weeks I wanted to be cool.” But what is it, of which he speaks? A contrarian herd instinct, thus a bleating contradition in terms? An emo knee-jerk? What is the common denominator of Gerald McBoingBoing and the dream of One World Government? In short, what’s cool? Or if you prefer, what does ‘cool’ mean? Compared to this question, the trouble with McArdle’s opposition to health care is but a bagatelle.
The Plain People of the Internet: Blast your eyes!
I: I have been doing some research on the subject. Here is a passage from Charles Dickens, Great Expectations. Joe Gargery – honest soul, who wears his heart on his rolled up sleeve, as he works an honest day at the open flame of the forge – reports on what has become of Miss Havisham’s fortune: [click to continue…]
by John Holbo on May 13, 2009
[amazon], which is an out-of-print minor classic, if you ask me.