From Aeon: Many of my best friends think that some of my deeply held beliefs about important issues are obviously false or even nonsense. Sometimes, they tell me so to my face. How can we still be friends? Part of the answer is that these friends and I are philosophers, and philosophers learn how to deal with positions on the edge of sanity. In addition, I explain and give arguments for my claims, and they patiently listen and reply with arguments of their own against my – and for their – stances. By exchanging reasons in the form of arguments, we show each other respect and come to understand each other better.
Philosophers are weird, so this kind of civil disagreement still might seem impossible among ordinary folk. However, some stories give hope and show how to overcome high barriers.
One famous example involved Ann Atwater and C P Ellis in my home town of Durham, North Carolina; it is described in Osha Gray Davidson’s book The Best of Enemies (1996) and a forthcoming movie. Atwater was a single, poor, black parent who led Operation Breakthrough, which tried to improve local black neighbourhoods. Ellis was an equally poor but white parent who was proud to be Exalted Cyclops of the local Ku Klux Klan. They could not have started further apart. At first, Ellis brought a gun and henchmen to town meetings in black neighbourhoods. Atwater once lurched toward Ellis with a knife and had to be held back by her friends.
An incredible man of our times – thanks Ann M for this reminder
In the nineteen-thirties, in Leicester, England, a future knight of the realm named David Attenborough developed an obsession with finding fossils. He would ride his bicycle to old iron quarries and knock on rocks with a little hammer—some would fall apart and reveal an ammonite shell, perfectly preserved, unseen for a hundred and fifty million years. “That mine were the first human eyes to fall on it? Well, that’s thrilling!” he told The New Yorker, in an interview. Sir Attenborough, who is now ninety-three and going strong, never lost his deep well of wonder, his drive to find the unseen, or his electric sense that the world out there contains magic. Luckily for the rest of us, he wanted to share this joy, and had the style, command, wit, and voice—the voice!—to do so incomparably. “I don’t make these programs out of some kind of proselytizing view that people ought to be interested in them,” he has said. “I do it because I’m interested in them and it gives me huge pleasure.”
From the NYT by Tobin Smith. Mr. Smith is the author of “Foxocracy: Inside the Network’s Playbook of Tribal Warfare.”. As a former talk-show host on the channel, I can explain the art and purpose behind attacking Colonel Vindman.
In anticipation of Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman’s recent public testimony in the House’s impeachment inquiry, the Fox News host Laura Ingraham and a guest concocted an insulting fantasy on her show: the idea that Colonel Vindman might be a Ukrainian spy.
It may have shocked a lot of Americans that Fox News televangelists and establishment conservatives like John Yoo are spinning the “narrative” of the courageous Colonel Vindman — a man who put his country’s interests ahead of his own — into one that suggests, as an immigrant, he wasn’t loyal to the United States. But as a former Fox News opinion talk-show host for 14 years, it didn’t shock me.
No one at the Lander St Home Depot store knew anything about the buckets that might be adapted for sanitation. When we got home, I looked online and discovered that REI sells the “Luggable Loo” in the snapshot for $20, along with packs of the disposable liner bags and other supplies. We also bought a three-day supply of preserved food there. Incidentally, REI is having a end-of-camping season sale now (I don’t know how long it lasts), which gave us 20% off the $70 price of the box of food.
This notice can now be found inmanyFrench churches: En entrant dans cette église, il est possible que vous entendiez l’appel de Dieu. Par contre, il n’est pas susceptible de vous contacter par téléphone. Merci d’avoir éteint votre téléphone. Si vous souhaitez parler à Dieu, entrez, choisissez un endroit tranquille et parle lui. Si vous souhaitez le voir, envoyez-lui un SMS en conduisant.
Translation: It is possible that on entering this church, you may hear the Call of God. On the other hand, it is not likely that he will contact you by phone. Thank you for turning off your phone. If you would like to talk to God, come in, choose a quiet place, and talk to him. If you would like to see him, send him a text while driving
Posted inHumor, Religion|Comments Off on Talking to God
Sometimes a new species is hiding in plain sight. The Vogelkop Superb Bird-of-Paradise has songs, dances and courtship appearances that are very distinct from its relative the Greater Superb Bird-of-Paradise.
From Aeon: Beginning in 2004, the evolutionary biologist Ed Scholes of Cornell University in New York and the US nature photographer Tim Laman embarked on an ambitious project to find and film the 39 then-known members of the birds-of-paradise family that live in remote regions of New Guinea, Australia and nearby islands. Living in largely predator-free habitats have allowed male birds-of-paradise to develop some of the world’s most colourful plumage and elaborate mating displays, making them the favourites of many a David Attenborough nature documentary.
During a 2016 trek to west New Guinea, Laman and Scholes did one better than simply capturing new images of these birds – they discovered a new species. Now known as the Vogelkop superb bird-of-paradise (Lophorina niedda), it was previously considered a subspecies of the Greater superb bird-of-paradise. However, Laman and Scholes’s documentation of the male’s mating dance revealed enough difference in its song, movement and feather display for the Vogelkop superb to be recognised as a distinct species. With its first documented observation dating back to 1930, this video marks the first known time that the male Vogelkop superb has been caught on camera in all its shimmying, brilliant black-and-blue glory.
Posted inAnimals, Nature|Comments Off on Do the Volgelkop bop: how a newly discovered bird-of-paradise dazzles his mate
Let me tell you a secret. The public buildings of Washington are filled with very good people working hard for low pay and the public good. There are thousands of them and they are very much like the Foreign Service officers that we’ve seen or are expected to see testifying at the impeachment hearings: William Taylor, George Kent, Marie Yovanovitch and Fiona Hill.
These public servants tend to be self-effacing and deeply knowledgeable about some small realm of public policy. They’re generally not all that interested in partisan politics but are deeply committed to the process and substance of good government. Whenever I get to sit in on off-the-record meetings at this or that federal agency, I’m impressed by the quality, professionalism and basic goodness of the people there.
We don’t celebrate these people. Trumpian conservatives say that Washington insiders are unelected bureaucrats, denizens of the swamp, the cesspool or a snake pit. Some progressives call Washington insiders the establishment, the power elite, the privileged structures of the status quo.
Everybody who runs for office wants to be seen as an outsider and condemns the insiders. That is, until weeks like this one when we realize how much we need them.
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At this week’s hearings, the civil servant witnesses answering questions inspired a lot more confidence than the elected officials who were asking them. Why are they so impressive? It’s precisely because they are Washington insiders. The witnesses have worked in a long line of institutions — the State Department, the World Bank, the Brookings Institution, the National Security Council.
For all their flaws, these institutions possess what the political scientist Hugh Heclo called “sedimented deposits” of inherited knowledge. If you are a Foreign service officer long enough, you learn to think like a Foreign Service officer. You absorb the skills, practices and moral codes you need to do the work well. When someone breaks the code, you know immediately, and if you are brave enough, like the whistle-blower, you move to defend the code.
When public servants enter government, they shed their private interests to serve a public role. A great question of the Trump years is whether our institutions can survive a president who is incapable of thinking outside his own private interest. Donald Trump uses public office as a gold mine to extract personal advantage.
As Yuval Levin writes in his profound forthcoming book, “A Time to Build,” Trump is an example of a person who wasn’t formed by an institution. He is self-created and self-enclosed. He governs as a perpetual outsider, tweeting insults to members of his own cabinet. At its best, the impeachment process is an attempt to protect our institutions from his inability to obey the rules.
The wider disease here is “outsiderism” itself. For a half-century our culture has celebrated the rebel, not the organization man; the free individual, not the institutionalist. That’s fine and in many cases good, but over the decades this outsider pose has hardened into an immature cynicism: Everybody’s corrupt. No one is to be trusted.
“The populism of this moment in our politics is fundamentally antinomian, mistrustful of authority, and cynical about all claims to integrity,” Levin writes in “A Time to Build.” “Our age combines a populism that insists all of our institutions are rigged against the people with an identity politics that rejects institutional commitments and a celebrity culture that chafes against all structure and constraint.”
All around the world voters are electing comedians, celebrities and outsider performers to high office. All around the world people are responding to demagogues who tell them that our problems are easy to solve if we just get rid of the bad people. Everywhere rule-breakers like Trump, Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Nicolás Maduro are in power and corruption is in the air.
People have messed-up theories of how you do social change. On the right many think that you need to elect some authoritarian strongman who will whip everybody into shape. On the left many put their faith in social movements, without explaining how social movements are going to write and pass legislation.
In reality, institutions are the only vehicles for legislative change. That’s because they are the way to wield power safely. They have rules and structures and norms precisely because power is so dangerous when it is wielded by a lone strongman or by a mob.
People have lost faith in institutions for some very good reasons, and the need to reform them is urgent. But the disenchantment is overblown and self-destructive. We don’t pay enough attention to all the planes that take off and land safely. We underestimate the value of experience. As Heclo writes in “On Thinking Institutionally,” “It is when you deal with someone who does not perform in a ‘professional’ manner that you learn to appreciate those who do.”
Watching Taylor and Kent, I had a feeling of going back in time. Why did it feel so strange? It was because I was looking at people who are not self-centered. They’ve dedicated themselves to the organization that formed them, and which they serve.
Posted inEssays|Comments Off on In praise of Washington insiders by David Brooks
Ed note: Unfortunately the government continues to allow the sale of an addictive drug with no known medical benefits: nicotine. Juul has managed to expose 25% of our youth to this drug by means of enticing them to flavored vaping nicotine laced products. When will we ever learn?
From the NYT: Juul Labs, the nation’s largest seller of e-cigarettes, said on Thursday that it would stop selling mint-flavored pods, which have become especially popular among teenagers.
The move precedes an anticipated federal flavor ban that is to be announced soon, one that the Food and Drug Administration initially had said would include mint as well as menthol. In recent weeks, intense lobbying by the vaping and tobacco industries against a menthol ban has heightened speculation that menthol would be exempt from any prohibitions against flavors.
Juul said on Thursday that it would continue to sell menthol pods and its two tobacco products.
The company’s decision also followed the release earlier this week of two major surveys showing another year-over-year spike in teenage vaping of e-cigarettes, and the rising popularity of mint-flavored nicotine pods as other youth-friendly flavors like unicorn milk were pulled from retail shelves. Public health experts have urged the federal government and lawmakers to impose strict limits on the variety of e-cigarettes, which remain on the market despite little evidence that they are safe.
Besides the surveys showing about 27 percent of high school students reporting that they had vaped e-cigarettes recently, hospitals and doctors have been startled in recent months by an alarming outbreak of lung injuries largely related to vaping products containing THC, the high-inducing ingredient in marijuana. Some patients, however, have reported vaping both THC and nicotine products, leaving researchers to suggest there may be more than one culprit behind the respiratory illnesses.
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Juul, which is the target of several investigations, including a criminal inquiry in Northern California and two into its marketing practices by the Federal Trade Commission and the F.D.A., has been blamed for much of the increase in teenage vaping and the risk its products carry for nicotine addiction.
In response to the backlash from parents, schools and lawmakers, the troubled company had already stopped selling an array of fruit- and dessert-flavored pods, like mango and crème brûlée, to retailers, and just recently stopped selling them online as well. The company said recently that mint-flavored pods made up about 70 percent of its latest sales.
A study released on Tuesday by the National Institute on Drug Abuse found that teenagers surveyed in 2019 preferred mint and mango Juul flavors. One-third of the roughly 43,000 students in eighth, 10th and 12th grade who took the survey were selected at random and asked about their preferences. Of those students, 18 percent reported recent e-cigarette use, with nearly 13 percent using Juul. Eighth graders were most likely to use mango, mint and fruit. Tenth and 12th graders preferred mint, followed by mango.
Menthol was the least popular flavor, the study showed, although several public health advocates warned that with other options gone, teenagers would most likely move to menthol.
The final results of the National Youth Tobacco Survey, conducted by the Food and Drug Administration with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, were also published this week and documented a continued rise in the number of teenagers vaping nicotine.
“These results are unacceptable and that is why we must reset the vapor category in the U.S. and earn the trust of society by working cooperatively with regulators, attorneys general, public health officials and other stakeholders to combat underage use,” said K.C. Crosthwaite, who became chief executive of Juul in September, after leaving Altria. The tobacco giant now owns a 35 percent stake in Juul.
The survey showed that more than five million minors reported recent use of e-cigarettes this year, compared with 3.6 million in 2018. About one-quarter of high school students reported vaping within 30 days of the survey, up from 20 percent last year.
The study was published on Tuesday in JAMA, The Journal of the American Medical Association. It noted that nicotine exposure during adolescence can harm the developing brain, which continues to form until about age 25. The study found that more than 10 percent of middle school students reported current use of e-cigarettes.
For the first time, at the insistence of the F.D.A., the survey asked students what brand of e-cigarettes they generally used. Juul was the overwhelming favorite. Fifty-nine percent of high school e-cigarette users said they usually used Juul, as did 54 percent of middle school users. The majority of e-cigarette users reported using flavored varieties, with fruit flavors being the most popular, followed by mint or menthol.
The timing of the F.D.A.’s announcement on a proposed flavor ban remained unclear. Intensive lobbying by the tobacco and vaping industries, as well as retailers, may have influenced the Trump administration to exempt menthol from any flavor ban, especially since traditional menthol cigarettes are still available for sale.
On Wednesday, Kellyanne Conway, a senior administration aide, indicated that an announcement would be made soon but also said the White House was concerned about the effect such a ban would have on businesses like vape shops.
She also noted the latest survey data and the vaping trends among teenagers.
The study in JAMA, she said, made clear that “kids report they use mint and other flavors like mango, bubble gum, tutti frutti, unicorn milk, pretty remarkable, and that they don’t care for menthol, which of course many smokers — I’m not one — say tastes like tobacco.”
Posted inBusiness, Health|Comments Off on Juul Ends E-Cigarette Sales of Mint-Flavored Pods
From Aeon: We all know people who have suffered by trusting too much: scammed customers, jilted lovers, shunned friends. Indeed, most of us have been burned by misplaced trust. These personal and vicarious experiences lead us to believe that people are too trusting, often verging on gullibility.
In fact, we don’t trust enough.
Take data about trust in the United States (the same would be true in most wealthy democratic countries at least). Interpersonal trust, a measure of whether people think others are in general trustworthy, is at its lowest in nearly 50 years. Yet it is unlikely that people are any less trustworthy than before: the massive drop in crime over the past decades suggests the opposite. Trust in the media is also at bottom levels, even though mainstream media outlets have an impressive (if not unblemished) record of accuracy.
Meanwhile, trust in science has held up comparatively well, with most people trusting scientists most of the time; still, in some areas at least, from climate change to vaccination, a share of the population doesn’t trust science enough – with devastating consequences.
Social scientists have a variety of tools to study how trusting, and how trustworthy, people are. The most popular is the trust game, in which two participants play, usually anonymously. The first participant is given a small amount of money, $10 say, and asked to decide how much to transfer to the other participant. The amount transferred is then tripled, and the second participant chooses how much to give back to the first. In Western countries at least, trust is rewarded: the more money the first participant transfers, the more money the second participant sends back, and thus the more money the first participant ends up with. In spite of this, first participants on average transfer only half the money they have received. In somestudies, a variant was introduced whereby participants knew each other’s ethnicity. Prejudice led participants to mistrust certain groups – Israeli men of Eastern origin (Asian and African immigrants and their Israeli-born offspring), or black students in South Africa – transferring them less money, even though these groups proved just as trustworthy as more esteemed groups.
If people and institutions are more trustworthy than we give them credit for, why don’t we get it right? Why don’t we trust more?
In 2017, the social scientist Toshio Yamagishi was kind enough to invite me to his flat in Machida, a city in the Tokyo metropolitan area. The cancer that would take his life a few months later had weakened him, yet he retained a youthful enthusiasm for research, and a sharp mind. On this occasion, we discussed an idea of his with deep consequences for the question at hand: the informational asymmetry between trusting and not trusting.
When you trust someone, you end up figuring out whether your trust was justified or not. An acquaintance asks if he can crash at your place for a few days. If you accept, you will find out whether or not he’s a good guest. A colleague advises you to adopt a new software application. If you follow her advice, you will find out whether the new software works better than the one you were used to.
By contrast, when you don’t trust someone, more often than not you never find out whether you should have trusted them. If you don’t invite your acquaintance over, you won’t know whether he would have made a good guest or not. If you don’t follow your colleague’s advice, you won’t know if the new software application is in fact superior, and thus whether your colleague gives good advice in this domain.
This informational asymmetry means that we learn more by trusting than by not trusting. Moreover, when we trust, we learn not only about specific individuals, we learn more generally about the type of situations in which we should or shouldn’t trust. We get better at trusting.
Yamagishi and his colleagues demonstrated the learning advantages of being trusting. Their experiments were similar to trust games, but the participants could interact with each other before making the decision to transfer money (or not) to the other. The most trusting participants were better at figuring out who would be trustworthy, or to whom they should transfer money.
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