John G. Messerly's Blog, page 138

True and False Beliefs

Pursuant to our recent posts concerning differentiating truth from falsity, especially in science, I happened upon a piece in the New York Times titled “When Belief and Facts Collide.” The author is Brendan Nyhan, PhD in political science from Duke and currently Assistant Professor of Government at Dartmouth. (Nyhan has been described as a “liberal to moderate” political blogger, although in 2006 “he came under attack from the editors [of The American Prospect] for unwarranted criticism of liberal pundits.”1)

Nyhan begins by asking “Do Americans understand the scientific consensus about issues like climate change and evolution?” The answer, Nyhan found, is no. Moreover, “… beliefs on both topics are divided along religious and partisan lines. For instance, 46 percent of Republicans said there is not solid evidence of global warming, compared with 11 percent of Democrats.” This suggests that people may not be aware of the scientific consensus on such issues and need to be better informed. They many not know that evolution is as certain in science as gravity or that 97% of climate scientists believe human activities are causing global warming.

However some studies have found that knowing about the science makes little difference in people’s beliefs. They may know the science but be unwilling to believe it when it contradicts cherished political or religious views. “This finding helps us understand why my colleagues and I have found that factual and scientific evidence is often ineffective at reducing misperceptions and can even backfire on issues like weapons of mass destruction, health-care reform, and vaccines. With science as with politics, identity often trumps the facts.”

What should we do? Nyhan suggests we might “try to break the association between identity and factual beliefs on high-profile issues–for instance, by making clear that you can believe in human-induced climate change and still be a conservative Republican … or an evangelical Christian …” He also argues we “need to reduce the incentives for elites to spread misinformation to their followers in the first place. Once people’s cultural and political views get tied up in their factual beliefs, it’s very difficult to undo regardless of the messaging that is used.” To dissuade purveyors of misinformation we might increase “the reputational costs for dishonest elites might be a more effective approach to improving democratic discourse.” (Or let factcheck.org or similar groups play a bigger role in informing the public. Whether this will work is another matter.)

And, as Nyhan notes,

The deeper problem is that citizens participate in public life precisely because they believe the issues at stake relate to their values and ideals, especially when political parties and other identity-based groups get involved … Those groups can help to mobilize the public and represent their interests, but they also help to produce the factual divisions that are one of the most toxic byproducts of our polarized era. Unfortunately, knowing what scientists think is ultimately no substitute for actually believing it.

In the end, I find myself at an impasse. As I argued in my last post,“When Should We Argue?, some arguments are futile because, as E. O. Wilson said, people don’t want to know, they want to believe. I find this all so depressing. Still I will conclude as I did in my previous post.

… as I age I find myself, as Thornton Wilder said, being weaned away from life. During this process we should try to better the world, while sustaining the hope that new generations will continue the endless fight for truth and the justice. (In a future post I hope to address two of the greatest ideas in the history of human culture–truth and justice.)

And in my next post I will discuss these two great, great ideas. 

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brendan_Nyhan

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When Should We Argue?

I have touched on this topic before, but advancing age and the the finitude of life has caused me to think about this again. A few months ago my post “On Belief and Skepticism,” elicited this response from a reader:

… I too am a dedicated skeptic, but find it difficult sometimes to “disagree without being disagreeable.” Many people I disagree with most fundamentally are the ones I love most profoundly. Do you maintain close relationships with people holding drastically different beliefs? It’s hard to separate the person from the ideas they hold especially when there is so much vested emotionally in those ideas. I hate the idea of “agreeing to disagree.” I’m not going to dance around the issue; We are adults and honesty is important. How do yo approach these relationships?

That comment elicited another post, “How Far Should We Go in Agreeing with Others.” There I distinguished between insidious and trivial beliefs, the former worth arguing about and fighting against, while the latter should usually be ignored. Next I considered disputes about relatively settled scientific issues. Here is an excerpt:

Now suppose I encounter a gravitational, germ, or evolutionary theory denier. In such cases I should be willing to enter into a polemic because any educated person knows these are well-established scientific ideas. Furthermore rejecting these ideas might entail someone’s jumping off a building and thinking they’ll fly; not washing their hands before handling food, or counting on last years flu shot to work this year … Of course you probably won’t change their minds since so many persons are willfully ignorant.

Now suppose you encounter a climate change denier. You can tell them that the intergovernmental panel of climate scientists now claim with 97% certainty that humans are the main cause of global climate change. But you probably have to leave it at that. The fact that they are mistaken when they don’t believe in it, (and arrogant to think they know more about the subject then the world’s experts), probably doesn’t matter that much. True you might convince them not to vote for a climate change denier, but one vote isn’t that significant anyway and their mistaken view is unlikely to change anyway. And again that’s because you rarely change people’s minds because of the emotional attachment they have to those ideas as you mentioned earlier.

In retrospect I’m not sure why I thought you should let some false beliefs about a scientific consensus slide and not others. In fact, denying climate change has more potentially catastrophic consequences for the species than denying more abstract theories. At any rate the main point was that it is important for the species to have well-founded beliefs inasmuch as they often determine our actions. (In a future post I hope to address the source of many false beliefs–cognitive bias.)

Conclusion – Still I find that disagreement about abstract issues, including scientific truths, less important as I age. I often resign myself to the world’s fate, as well as to human ignorance, including my own. On the other hand, important truths seem worthy of a polemic. Thus we arrive at a paradox of life. If we engage in it, if we are active, we fight a seemingly unwinnable fight, frustrating ourselves in the process. If we disengage, if we are passive, we give up the fight and our lives become seemingly irrelevant. I don’t know what we should do or whether it matters what we do.

I do know that as I age I find myself, as Thornton Wilder said, being weaned away from life. During this process we should try to better the world, while sustaining the hope that new generations will continue the endless fight for truth and the justice. (In a future post I hope to address two of the greatest ideas in the history of human culture–truth and justice.)

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What is Worth Arguing About?

I have touched on this topic before, but advancing age and the the finitude of life has caused me to think about this again. A few months ago my post “On Belief and Skepticism,” elicited this response from a reader:

… I too am a dedicated skeptic, but find it difficult sometimes to “disagree without being disagreeable.” Many people I disagree with most fundamentally are the ones I love most profoundly. Do you maintain close relationships with people holding drastically different beliefs? It’s hard to separate the person from the ideas they hold especially when there is so much vested emotionally in those ideas. I hate the idea of “agreeing to disagree.” I’m not going to dance around the issue; We are adults and honesty is important. How do yo approach these relationships?

That comment elicited another post from me, “How Far Should We Go in Agreeing with Others.” There I distinguished between insidious and trivial beliefs. We should argue with those who would kill all those of a certain group because of that group’s supposed inferiority. As for beliefs about who won last year’s Super Bowl, that is trivial. Next I considered disputes about relatively settled scientific issues. Here is an excerpt:

Now suppose I encounter a gravitational, germ, or evolutionary theory denier. In such cases I should be willing to enter into a polemic because any educated person knows these are well-established scientific ideas. Furthermore to deny them might entail someone’s jumping off a building and thinking they’ll fly; not washing their hands before handling food, or counting on last years flu shot to work this year. (Yes viruses evolve quickly.) Of course you probably won’t change their minds since so many persons are willfully ignorant.

Now suppose you encounter a climate change denier. You can tell them that the intergovernmental panel of climate scientists now claim with 97% certainty that humans are the main cause of global climate change. But you probably have to leave it at that. The fact that they are mistaken when they don’t believe in it, (and arrogant to think they know more about the subject then the world’s experts), probably doesn’t matter that much. True you might convince them not to vote for a climate change denier, but one vote isn’t that significant anyway and their mistaken view is unlikely to change anyway. And again that’s because you rarely change people’s minds because of the emotional attachment they have to those ideas as you mentioned earlier.

In retrospect I’m not sure why I thought you should let some false beliefs about a scientific consensus slide and not others. Like many things it probably depends on the circumstances. My deceased mother believed that lighting candles in a church influenced events miles away. Such beliefs one lets slide. But when I teaching I felt obligated to correct students if they were uninformed about basic scientific ideas. (In a future post I hope to address the source of many false beliefs–cognitive bias.)

Conclusion – I find that disagreement about abstract issues less important as I age. Perhaps we should just be resigned to the world’s fate, inasmuch as there is little we can do about it. But then who are we, if we are not willing to enter into a polemic when we feel the truth is being distorted? This is in large part the paradox of life. If we engage in it, if we are active, we fight a seemingly unwinnable fight. If we disengage, if we are passive, we  might as well not exist at all. I just don’t know the best course.

I do know that as I age I find myself, as Thornton Wilder said, being weaned away from life. If is implies ought then perhaps this is for the best. And while we do our best until the end, new generations must sustain the endless fight for truth and the justice.

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Worse Off Alive

Yesterday’s post promised a few thoughts on death with dignity. Having taught medical ethics for more than a decade, I have spent some time reading, thinking and writing about the subject. In 1994 I published a piece called, “Worse Off Alive: Reply to Garcia” in the American Philosophical Association’s Newsletter On Philosophy and Medicine. The newsletter is still published but a twenty year old hard copy is hard to find and no soft copy of it exists. Here is the original version based on my hard copy.

“Worse Off Alive: Reply to Garcia” (from the American Philosophical Association’s Newsletter On Philosophy and Medicine, 1994.)

The goal of J.L.A Garcia’s article, “Better Off Dead,”(Volume 92, No. 1, pp. 82-85) “is to cast doubt on the doctrines that someone’s dying can be a good thing for that person, that some lives are not worth living, and that there can be a right to die.” Thus, he argues, we are never “better off dead” and that nearly all human lives are worth living. He also implies–but never specifically argues–that there is no right to die. I argue that, though we are not “better off dead,” we may be “worse off alive” when enduring extraordinary suffering. I also argue that lives deprived of certain goods are not worth living. Let us examine Garcia’s arguments in turn.

According to Garcia, euthanasia proponents deem death an instrumental good because it relieves a patient’s suffering. But instrumental goods, he argues, are good only when they “make our lives go better,” and being free from anxiety, or physical pain “is good inasmuch as it yields a less troubled life.” Since causing or allowing someone to die does not make their lives go better, it is not an instrumental good. In short, dying brings about no good for a person–since dead persons don’t exist–and thus, one cannot be “better off dead.”

Garcia is partly correct. It is never better to be dead in the sense that one’s life benefits or improves by dying, and therefore, if death is non-existence as he seems to suppose, no good or bad comes from being dead. The problem with this argument is twofold: 1) it reduces to the self-evident and trivial assertion that non-existent persons cannot experience good; and 2) it misconstrues the issue. Few persons who desire to be relieved from excruciating suffering believe they will gain from their death by experiencing some benefit, except possibly in an afterlife. What they obviously do believe is that, in their present condition, they are “worse off alive,” and this justifies euthanasia for them. In their condition they prefer death to life because life offers so little, not because death offers some gain or benefit. In certain cases Garcia seems to agree: “When we permissibly withhold or terminate treatment in such cases, it is because we judge that the kind of life that aggressive treatment could secure the patient is not so great a good as to require us to secure it at staggering cost to the patient herself or to others.” Presumably, the cases to which he refers are those that employ extraordinary means, though he does not explain why this rationale applies only to these cases. Nonetheless, if life is not the only good, as he admits, and the kinds of life secured by certain treatments are not good enough to be preferred to death, then we are sometimes “worse off alive.”

Next Garcia turns to the claim that some lives are not “worthwhile.” This claim, he argues, results from the disparity between healthy, highly educated, refined, and economically advantaged bioethicists, and the dying. These professionals judge the quality of life of the dying to be quite minimal, overlooking many similarities between themselves and the dying, particularly their shared existential despair.  Such considerations [should] caution us against hasty generalizations about the value of human lives. Who is to say that our lives, projects, and goals are valuable? And if we cannot be certain about the value of our own lives, how can we be so sure about the value of the lives of others? This argument is problematic for at least two reasons: 1) it applies only to those advocating non-voluntary active euthanasia; and 2) what follows from it is that we [should] reject proxy judgments of the value of individual lives, not that it is never better to die or that all lives are worth living. What he has shown is that by resisting generalizations and proxy judgments we respect human autonomy, a fundamental value according to Garcia, “even if the choices we make are often disastrous.” Thus … has failed to show that all lives are worth living.

Garcia concludes by “rejecting the suggestions that it might be better for someone to die and that her life might be improved by her death.” He correctly assumes that our lives do not improve when we die because then, obviously, we no longer [have] experience[s]. And if life is a good so great that no possible agony, suffering, evil, pain, or torment negate its value, then life is always preferable to death.

However, most ordinary individuals disagree. They applaud the advanced directives for health care, sign their living wills, and ask their spouses, friends, sons or daughters to act as their surrogates. They choose to forgo the remainder of lives deprived of those things that make life valuable–the ability to love, think, touch, reflect, and remember–for the uncertainty of death. They prefer not to debase human life or glorify suffering but to exercise human autonomy. For those who believe there is meaning in the most excruciating forms of physical pain and dementia–let them go their way. But for those of us who believe that, at least sometimes, we are “worse off alive”–let us to our way.

Note – I still agree with the sentiment of this paper from twenty years ago. Ideally we will use our science and technology to overcome death and suffering.

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Better Off Dead

Yesterday’s post promised a few thoughts on death with dignity. Having taught medical ethics for more than a decade, I have spent some time reading, thinking and writing about the subject. In 1994 I published a piece called, “Worse Off Alive: Reply to Garcia” in the American Philosophical Association’s Newsletter On Philosophy and Medicine. The newsletter is still published but a twenty year old hard copy is hard to find and no soft copy of it exists. Here is the original version based on my hard copy.

“Worse Off Alive: Reply to Garcia” (from the American Philosophical Association’s Newsletter On Philosophy and Medicine, 1994.)

The goal of J.L.A Garcia’s article, “Better Off Dead,”(Volume 92, No. 1, pp. 82-85) “is to cast doubt on the doctrines that someone’s dying can be a good thing for that person, that some lives are not worth living, and that there can be a right to die.” Thus, he argues, we are never “better off dead” and that nearly all human lives are worth living. He also implies–but never specifically argues–that there is no right to die. I argue that, though we are not “better off dead,” we may be “worse off alive” when enduring extraordinary suffering. I also argue that lives deprived of certain goods are not worth living. Let us examine Garcia’s arguments in turn.

According to Garcia, euthanasia proponents deem death an instrumental good because it relieves a patient’s suffering. But instrumental goods, he argues, are good only when they “make our lives go better,” and being free from anxiety, or physical pain “is good inasmuch as it yields a less troubled life.” Since causing or allowing someone to die does not make their lives go better, it is not an instrumental good. In short, dying brings about no good for a person–since dead persons don’t exist–and thus, one cannot be “better off dead.”

Garcia is partly correct. It is never better to be dead in the sense that one’s life benefits or improves by dying, and therefore, if death is non-existence as he seems to suppose, no good or bad comes from being dead. The problem with this argument is twofold: 1) it reduces to the self-evident and trivial assertion that non-existent persons cannot experience good; and 2) it misconstrues the issue. Few persons who desire to be relieved from excruciating suffering believe they will gain from their death by experiencing some benefit, except possibly in an afterlife. What they obviously do believe is that, in their present condition, they are “worse off alive,” and this justifies euthanasia for them. In their condition they prefer death to life because life offers so little, not because death offers some gain or benefit. In certain cases Garcia seems to agree: “When we permissibly withhold or terminate treatment in such cases, it is because we judge that the kind of life that aggressive treatment could secure the patient is not so great a good as to require us to secure it at staggering cost to the patient herself or to others.” Presumably, the cases to which he refers are those that employ extraordinary means, though he does not explain why this rationale applies only to these cases. Nonetheless, if life is not the only good, as he admits, and the kinds of life secured by certain treatments are not good enough to be preferred to death, then we are sometimes “worse off alive.”

Next Garcia turns to the claim that some lives are not “worthwhile.” This claim, he argues, results from the disparity between healthy, highly educated, refined, and economically advantaged bioethicists, and the dying. These professionals judge the quality of life of the dying to be quite minimal, overlooking many similarities between themselves and the dying, particularly their shared existential despair.  Such considerations [should] caution us against hasty generalizations about the value of human lives. Who is to say that our lives, projects, and goals are valuable? And if we cannot be certain about the value of our own lives, how can we be so sure about the value of the lives of others? This argument is problematic for at least two reasons: 1) it applies only to those advocating non-voluntary active euthanasia; and 2) what follows from it is that we [should] reject proxy judgments of the value of individual lives, not that it is never better to die or that all lives are worth living. What he has shown is that by resisting generalizations and proxy judgments we respect human autonomy, a fundamental value according to Garcia, “even if the choices we make are often disastrous.” Thus … has failed to show that all lives are worth living.

Garcia concludes by “rejecting the suggestions that it might be better for someone to die and that her life might be improved by her death.” He correctly assumes that our lives do not improve when we die because then, obviously, we no longer [have] experience[s]. And if life is a good so great that no possible agony, suffering, evil, pain, or torment negate its value, then life is always preferable to death.

However, most ordinary individuals disagree. They applaud the advanced directives for health care, sign their living wills, and ask their spouses, friends, sons or daughters to act as their surrogates. They choose to forgo the remainder of lives deprived of those things that make life valuable–the ability to love, think, touch, reflect, and remember–for the uncertainty of death. They prefer not to debase human life or glorify suffering but to exercise human autonomy. For those who believe there is meaning in the most excruciating forms of physical pain and dementia–let them go their way. But for those of us who believe that, at least sometimes, we are “worse off alive”–let us to our way.

Note – I still agree with the sentiment of this paper from twenty years ago. Ideally we will use our science and technology to overcome death and suffering.

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A Reader’s Comments on the Process of Dying

A recent post of mine entitled: “The Case Against Hope,” elicited some thoughtful comments from a reader. My piece argued that it is best to give up hope in hopeless situations. The reader, who is an attorney working in a major urban hospital, basically agreed. She argues that false hope is counterproductive, that grieving is not a disease, patients should be respected as autonomous agents. The full comments can be found in the comments section of that post but here is a sampling of her thoughts.

I don’t know exactly why, but there seems to be a very thin line between being hopeful in grim circumstances and being realistic and accepting that our power is sometimes limited. For example, I used to work very closely with very sick cancer patients. Some of them I got to know pretty well, over a long time. I also lost my best friend to cancer, and walked with him through that journey. What struck me over and over is the strong-arming that occurs with patients who are terminally ill/in the very late stages of disease–strong-arming them into projecting this perfect portrayal of hope for survival. Do not misunderstand me—I am not saying that positive outlook and motivation and openness is not important when one is facing a serious illness …I am talking about the cases where the patients involved were in a dire situation, and had certainly maintained hope and effort up until the point the situation became so dire.

It was not uncommon to see this happen: Doctor tells patient that their illness has progressed, that their prognosis was not good, that their estimated time remaining was X. Then the very next thing they would do is say that they were writing a prescription for antidepressants, since patients “have a hard time dealing with this”… I still remember when my dear friend was in this situation–he said to the physician, “I am not depressed. I am upset. Am I not allowed to be upset?”

many times these patients who expressed a wish to cease further treatment were offered major surgeries, really radical treatments that were held out as a “last ditch effort.” … Some of them consented to radical surgeries that did not extend their lives at all, and they ended up expressing regret afterwards. It was unsettling to see this play out again and again … And what I saw was people who were being sold so much hope that they never got to move on to acceptance, and that was very unfortunate.

In my next post I would like to expand on the idea of death with dignity.

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Did a God Use Evolution to Design the Species?

I read a recent article which critiqued the idea that classical theism and evolution are compatible. The author provides 4 reasons why “god made evolution” arguments make no sense. Here is a brief summary of each.

1) According to theistic evolution god uses genetic mutations and natural selection to direct evolution into forms like humanity. The problem is that a central idea of evolution is that it has no direction, no teleology.  There is no direction for god to be guiding it to. If there were a divine tinkerer, the theory of biological evolution would have to change radically.

2) There is no evidence for a divine tinkerer–no evidence whatsoever for outside intervention in the process. Perhaps then god is not a tinkerer, but one who sets the process in motion and then leaves it alone. But there is no evidence for this either. And if a god doesn’t intervene, what evidence could there be for him/her/it?

3) Moreover, there is so much evidence against a divine tinkerer/intelligent designer. The human and non-human animal bodies are a hodgepodge of seemingly ill-designed and non-designed parts. Such bad designs are easily reconciled with evolution, but they are seemingly impossible to reconcile with the design of an omnipotent god.  If a god could bring about existence easily, why did he/she/it do it so clumsily?

4) God must therefore be either incompetent or malicious. Incompetent because the process was extraordinarily slow, messy and inefficient; malicious because the process was brutal, painful, and sadistic. What reason could there be for an omnipotent being to create in this way? (Makes more sense to create an imaginary garden and talking snake.)

Reflections – As a professional philosopher I understand there is a lot more to be said here. Still allow me to make a few brief comments.

The article conflates at least 2 different issues: 1) theistic-directed evolution; 2) the design/intelligent design arguments.

Regarding the first, we can say that reconciling evolution with classical theism is extraordinarily difficult. (The French Catholic philosopher Teilhard de Chardin made a noteworthy attempt to do this, but his philosophy is so unorthodox that it was condemned by the Catholic Church at the time. One might effect such a reconciliation, but it strikes me as a desperate attempt to hold on to previous beliefs with ad hoc arguments. Why not just give up belief in gods? Still it is tempting, once one realizes that evolution is true beyond any reasonable doubt, to want to reconcile that truth with the beliefs of an indoctrinated childhood. But it really makes little sense to think a god would create like this. Instead intellectual honesty demands that we either: 1)accept a creation myth, even though it not literally true; 2) create an esoteric, unorthodox theology to account for why a god would take 13.8 billion years to create a poor design that was “red in tooth and claw;” or 3) accept that there are no gods.

As for the second issue, we can’t discuss all the nuances of the design argument–the idea that the design of the universe provides evidence for a god–although philosophers almost unanimously reject it. Usually the design argument is offered as an alternative to biological evolution, but evolution dealt the death blow to the traditional design argument. (Paley’s watchmaker.) We can now explain our bodies and their features without positing gods. The idea called intelligent design (ID) is the design argument in fancy language. But it is not science as courts have unanimously ruled. Many IDers accept evolution–they are typically not young-earth creationists–but they believe that evolution needs a little “god juice” to keep it going. The four points above outline some simple ways of seeing the futility of this view.

Of course one can’t prove a negative. I can’t show that gods, gremlins or ghosts don’t intervene in the process. But then there is absolutely no reason to think this is the case, there is no evidence for it. And there are lots of reasons to think this is not the case– supernatural explanations have never been valuable in explaining anything. In fact they have always impeded knowledge. Biological evolution has revealed in extraordinary detail  how the species was created through eons of time with the algorithm of natural selection. Thus it dispensed with one reason for believing in gods.

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Nerds, Science, Politics, and the Future

I came across a recent, disturbing National Review cover-story by Charles C.W. Cooke: “Smarter Than Thou.” It begins by attacking Neil DeGrasse Tyson as the “the fetish and totem of the extraordinarily puffed-up ‘nerd’ culture that has of late started to bloom across the United States.” Other members of the nerd menace–all of whom don’t share the politics of the National Review–include:

MSNBC’s Melissa Harris-Perry, Rachel Maddow, Steve Kornacki, and Chris Hayes; Vox’s Ezra Klein, Dylan Matthews, and Matt Yglesias; the sabermetrician Nate Silver; the economist Paul Krugman; the atheist Richard Dawkins; former vice president Al Gore; celebrity scientist Bill Nye; and, really, anybody who conforms to the Left’s social and moral precepts while wearing glasses and babbling about statistics.

Cooke later says that “the nerds of MSNBC and beyond are not actually nerds — with scientific training and all that it entails — but the popular kids indulging in a fad.” First of all some of the people on this list do have serious scientific training. Krugman is a Nobel prize-winning economist and Dawkins is one of the most important living evolutionary biologists. But even if one isn’t a professional scientist there is nothing wrong and much right about accepting what the scientific experts say about their disciplines. We should generally defer to experts regarding scientific subjects about which we have little expertise. Why? Because they know a lot more about their subject matter than we do.

I generally defer like this. I have no formal scientific training but I am scientifically literate enough to know that gravitational, evolutionary, relativity, quantum, and atomic theories are true beyond a reasonable doubt. (Still even the best scientific ideas are not dogmatic but provisional; they will change if enough contrary evidence appears.) When I go to medical doctors I generally trust their advice because they know more about medicine than I do. It is possible that they are deceiving me, and if the Mayo Clinic website says something vastly different from what my physician tells me, then I have reason to be skeptical. But I won’t trust some internet thread about medical advice from non-experts. In science we do much better if we trust the experts.

Surprisingly, as Andrew Leonard noted in his Salon article, “National Review declares war against the nerds, Cooke never mentions Silicon Valley, a bastion of left-wing progressive politics, and the quintessential nerd neighborhood. (Yes there are libertarian nerds, but they generally believe in science, even if they are politically misguided.) Leonard theorizes that Cooke omits this group for a reason.

Acknowledging that nerds — you know, the guys and gals who invented the microchip and the PC and the smartphone — actually do have a grasp of scientific fact, which leads them to take seriously the problem of historically unprecedented carbon dioxide emissions and the idiocy of rewriting school science textbooks to include dogma about creationism and intelligent design, is a disastrous dead end for conservatives.

If Cooke honestly wanted to grapple with the cultural cachet of nerd-dom, he’d have to answer questions such as why a poll by the Pew Research Service found that in 2009 that only six percent of scientists identify as Republican … He’d have to face up to the sobering reality that the majority of people who understand how the world works in terms of biology and physics and mathematics also think that our overheating globe is a serious problem.

I think Leonard is right on the mark. But rather than answer these tough questions, Cooke argues that progressives embrace the nerd worldview in order to tell the world not who they are, but who they are not: “… which is southern, politically conservative, culturally traditional, religious in some sense, patriotic, driven by principle rather than the pivot tables of Microsoft Excel, and in any way attached to the past.”

I guess this is true for some progressives. Group identity is in large part what we are. But it is hardly the fault of progressives that the Republican party as become largely a southern party in the US, or that Ken Hamm’s Creation Museum  is in the American south, or that many Republican politicians in the US have rejected the scientific consensus about evolution and climate change to court their disproportionately conservative, anti-science, religious constituencies.

Interestingly though, neither of the two intellectual opponents to the scientific consensus on anthropogenic climate change that Cooke offers are scientists. Both Bjorn Lomborg and Roger Pielke Jr are political scientists. But Lomborg accepts man-made climate change. He recently summarized his position thus:“Global warming is real – it is man-made and it is an important problem. But it is not the end of the world.” And Pielke has stated: “The IPCC has concluded that greenhouse gas emissions resulting from human activity are an important driver of changes in climate. And on this basis alone I am personally convinced that it makes sense to take action to limit greenhouse gas emissions.” It is telling that Cooke uses these two political scientists as his best examples of real nerds that oppose climate change. And that’s because there aren’t any informed climate change deniers. One may dislike Al Gore for whatever reason, but the evidence for anthropogenic climate change is still overwhelming. 

But I will accept one thing Cooke says about progressives–we are not generally “attached to the past.” When I look at the past I see the torture, war, genocide, disease, superstition, barbarism, child labor, infant mortality, and the lack of dental or medical care, I see the Dark Ages, the Plague and the Inquisition. I don’t want to go back. I want to go forward. I want to progress.

For if the future isn’t going to better than the past, then there isn’t much point in living.

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Romantic Love and the Idea of “Settling”

A problem for many, especially the young, is that when they seek long-term partners they are moved by sexual passion and physical desire. They often fail to seek substantive people with whom they can experience a lasting, mature love based on compromise, tolerance, stability, and commitment. I realize this is a trite advice, but it is surprising how many disregard it. Here is an example. 

Before a class about twenty years ago two young female students were discussing the movie “Sense and Sensibility” which was based on Jane Austen’s wonderful novel of the same name. In the movie the character of the beautiful Marianne Dashwood believes she is madly in love with the dashing John Willoughby. Here is the scene as they first meet. Marianne has hurt her ankle and dashing Willoughby has carried her home. She is immediately smitten.

As for the wealthy, stable, but older and less dashing Colonel Brandon, who dearly loves Marianne, she has no use. Marianne has mistaken her passionate enthusiasm for love, and shortly thereafter, Willoughby leaves her for a more wealthy patron.

Finally she realize that Willoughby loves money more than he loves her. She eventually marries the Colonel and by all accounts they have a happy, stable marriage built on mutual love and respect. (The character David Copperfield comes to a similar conclusion in the Dicken’s novel.)

My two young female students found this outcome disappointing if not downright depressing. Marianne shouldn’t have “settled” for the Colonel. She should have waited for a better man. The Colonel was only rich, kind, wise, stable, honest, moral, and good but not great looking. (What a terrible husband he will make!) But why couldn’t the beautiful Marianne find all that in a man as handsome and passionate as Willoughby? By contrast, I doubted if a man as good as the Colonel existed. I concluded that these young women had an immature and naive view of romantic love. Somehow the Colonel fell short of their ideal mate–a mate doesn’t exist. My young students wanted to marry a chimera.

I wonder how many people, especially young ones, foolishly reject potentially wonderful mates for that which appears wonderful, as Willoughby appeared to Marianne. This is partly why the Greeks thought erotic passion was dangerous and irrational. It clouds our judgment; it misleads us.  We are naturally drawn to external beauty and passion, often missing a deeper beauty right in front of us. Our senses sense external beauty, but our good sense, our sensibility, determines if a person is truly beautiful. It is true beauty we should seek. That was Jane Austen’s message.

In the end, Marianne comes to her senses. She recognizes the serenity of love.

“For whatsoever from one place doth fall,

Is with the tide unto an other brought:

For there is nothing lost, that may be found, if sought.”

― Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene

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34th Wedding Anniversary

My wife and I on August 9, 1980

I was married 34 years ago today. My wife and I were both 25 years old. We believed we had unending time and joy in front of us. It turned out we had neither. Time is finite; joy real but impermanent, oftentimes quickly morphing into its opposite. My father used to say that “life was a series of joys and sorrows.” I have found this to be true.

We began naive in the ways of love. At our wedding we dance to a popular song which captured the feelings of both young and mature love with its beautiful melody and romantics lyrics:

Through the years as the fire starts to mellow

Burning lines in the book of our lives

Though the binding cracks and the pages start to yellow

I’ll be in love with you, I’ll be in love with you

Years later another simple song still moves me when I think about my wife:

Music adds much to lyrics, but words sometimes say more. Here are the words penned by Will Durant, when thinking about Ariel, his wife of almost 70 years.

Do not be so ungrateful about love … to the attachment of friends and mates who have gone hand in hand through much hell, some purgatory, and a little heaven, and have been soldered into unity by being burned together in the flame of life. I know such mates or comrades quarrel regularly, and get upon each other’s nerves; but there is ample recompense for that in the unconscious consciousness that someone is interested in you, depends upon you, exaggerates you, and is waiting to meet you at the station.[i]

Yet there is something beyond both words and music … action. Loving is doing things you sometimes don’t want to do, because that’s what your beloved wants. I hope I can do that, because I know my wife can. Thank you Jane for all these wonderful years.

Oh, and here’s a final, silly one for you:

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[i] Durant, On the meaning of life, 125-26.

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