Singularity is China

From The Economist:

But the organisation is involved in even more controversial projects. It is about to embark on a search for the genetic underpinning of intelligence. Two thousand Chinese schoolchildren will have 2,000 of their protein-coding genes sampled, and the results correlated with their test scores at school. Though it will cover less than a tenth of the total number of protein-coding genes, it will be the largest-scale examination to date of the idea that differences between individuals’ intelligence scores are partly due to differences in their DNA.

Two points. First, why is searching for the genetic underpinning of intelligence "controversial?" We know intelligence is partly hereditary (more precisely, we know that some non-trivial fraction of interpersonal variance in IQ scores is due to interpersonal variance in genotypes). We don't know exactly what the genetic mechanism behind this is, but what's wrong with trying to find out? Second, I can't get rid of the feeling that the Chinese authorities are thinking about eugenics. I have no idea what they want or what is feasible, so I can't speculate about anything. On the other hand, I can't help not to. Imagine future China in which, say, 25% of population are people with IQs of 180 or higher.

If it's illegal, it doesn't exist

Eurostat plans on harmonizing the way in which all 27 EU member countries calculate their GDP estimates, by requiring all of them to include estimates of contributions from the so-called "shadow economy," i.e. the value of economic transactions that are off the books. This is to include not just transactions that are unregistered but legal (like off the books employment, barter of goods in order to avoid taxes etc.) but also the illegal ones (prostitution, illicit drugs and weapons trade, distribution of fake merchandise etc.)

That's a good idea, but hard to execute. It's a good idea because voluntary economic transactions generate wealth regardless of their legal status, so those activities contribute to GDP whether we like it or not; it doesn't make sense that they wouldn't contribute to our measure of GDP. It's hard to execute for obvious reasons.

I thought some of the reaction of the press and blogosphere to this decision were interesting in that they often revealed profound confusion about measurements and reality and/or about what GDP is supposed to measure. For example, you see headlines like "Prostitution, drugs give a 1.3 billion euro GNP boost" or similar. That's completely ridiculous; sizing up drugs and prostitution boosts the estimate of GDP, not GDP itself. It may seem like semantics but it's not. Whether we account for them or not, drugs and prostitution are part of our economies. If those activities were to suddenly disappear, most countries in the world would suddenly become poorer (some very noticeably so; think Thailand or Vietnam). What the headlines are saying is akin to claiming that your car will go faster if you put a speedometer in it. Then, a lot of bloggers complain that the decision was made so that European governments can "spout propaganda by trying to impress voters with artificially inflated GDP numbers." First, GDP figures won't be artificially inflated. Once again, semi-legal and illegal transactions are part of the economy and any GDP estimate that does not include them is an underestimate. Second, for voters it is reality that matters, not measurements. People care about their standard of living, not about official GDP numbers. If someone is unemployed and desperately poor, they aren't very likely to think "Well, but the government is doing a good job overall because annualized GDP growth was 4% last quarter." Government statistics usually have near zero propaganda effect. Another strange reaction was a complaint that illegal activities are violent and destructive, and therefore how can anyone think they increase wealth (as one blogger put it, "What about all those people killed in drug-related violence, how do they increase GDP?") Well, what about those people? GDP is the market value of all goods and services produced within a country. Nothing less, nothing more. Construction workers sometimes die in job-related accidents. Does this mean that construction industry isn't contributing to GDP?

Superficially very stupid

Here are excerpts from an article about a New Mexico University survey study concerning personalities and sexual habits of men:

A study has found that men with the "dark triad" of traits – narcissism, thrill- seeking and deceitfulness – are likely to have a larger number of sexual affairs.

(...)

The study subjected 200 college students to personality tests designed to rank them in terms of the dark triad. They were also asked about their sexual relationships, including their attitude towards brief affairs.

In other words, narcissistic, deceitful men report that they get laid more often.

Now I admit I haven't read the actual study so perhaps this glaring problem is addressed there somehow. If it is, then it's just the summary press article that's stupid. If it's not, both the study and the summary are.

From the "I wish I'd said this" file

From the blog of Zeno:

The October 2010 issue of Acts & Facts from the Institute for Creation Research is emblazoned on its cover with a colorful display of astronomical images, including the planet Saturn. Text is laid over the cover art, spelling out the question, “Why does the universe look so old?”

I think I know the answer to this one:

Because it's old.

Monstrous arguments

Here are some excerpts from a TV interview in which one of Polish Roman Catholic bishops Tadeusz Pieronek talks about the ethics of in vitro fertilization:

The development of in vitro fertilization methods may lead to (...) parents choosing their baby's sex, eye color, hair color, height, whether to endow it with genes of a genius or a serial killer. They will be just like the creator of the Frankenstein's monster. What is the Frankenstein's monster, a literary description of a creature brought into existence against nature, if not a premonition of in vitro? (...) Life created by in vitro fertilization is a result of artificial manipulation as opposed to forces of nature.

There's nothing about this particular quote that made me want to write about it; I've chosen it as a simple example of something larger. I'm quite convinced that future generations will be viewing such quotes with utter horror and disbelief, not so much at the ethical proposition that the speaker is defending, but at the pathetically low quality of arguments he's using in its defense. It's almost as if Pieronek thought that there's no place for reasoning in ethics and so there's no need for a logically coherent argument.

Let me count the ways in which Pieronek's arguments are too dumb to even be a start of a productive discussion. First, the part in which he compares in vitro fertilization to creating the Frankenstein's monster is not even an argument. It's a base appeal to emotions, namely to the primal emotion of disgust. That's no coincidence, because the fact is that a lot of what people consider universal moral intuitions is triggered by simple disgust that is then rationalized into a moral norm. For example, a lot of people feel disgusted at the thought of homosexual sex, and that disgust drives them to invent reasons why homosexuals are morally inferior to heterosexuals. Rationalization of disgust is a very well-know and well-studied phenomenon. There even are brain imaging experiments that vividly show the process taking place. The problem is that the disgust reflex is a very bad basis for moral judgments. For one thing, different people are disgusted by different things. For another, there exist aesthetically disgusting things that nevertheless are an unquestionable moral good, for example surgeries. Someone with a degree in ethics, such as Pieronek, should be responsible to know all this and be extra careful not to make ethical appeals to disgust.

Moving on to the parts of his interview that do contain some semblance of reasoning, by my count Pieronek manages to commit three logical fallacies in just a handful of lines of text. First, he commits the naturalistic fallacy by arguing that in vitro fertilization is morally wrong because it's unnatural. Take a minute to think about what it would mean to society if we were to apply this rule consistently. Our entire medicine, for example, is unnatural, so by Pieronek's logic we should never help anyone who's sick or injured because that would be against the will of nature. Second, there's fallacious use of the slippery slope argument when he says that the possibility of parents' choosing their baby's sex will lead to some parents wanting to endow their kids with the "genes of a serial killer" (whatever those may be). And third, there's classic cherry picking: he says that allowing parents to choose their kids' genes would lead to bad outcomes but says nothing of the fact that it could lead to good ones as well, because nature can be incredibly cruel in her own gene-picking; genetically inherited disorders cause an immense amount of suffering in the world.

People do what's expected of them. The fact that a respected public figure with an ethical authority in the eyes of many people feels completely comfortable saying things so blatantly stupid indicates that most consumers of public debate do not demand logic and reason from ethicists. That's a horrendous though, but it's obviously true, and there's much more evidence of it that than intellectually lazy rantings of a priest.

Homelessness is a housing issue

What causes homelessness? There are many well-known superficial answers to the question. For example: poverty causes homelessness. A moment's reflection will tell you this cannot be right, though: while almost all homeless people are poor, an overwhelming majority of poor people are not homeless, so poverty can be a necessary condition, but it can't be sufficient. Another answer: mental illness/drug problems/domestic violence cause homelessness. However, it turns out this answer is wrong, too; research has shown that (aggregate) changes in rates of substance abuse or mental health hospitalizations are not correlated with changes in homelessness. In other words: if substance abuse causes homelessness, then an increase in the number of alcoholics should cause an increase in the number of homeless people. But it does not. So what is the cause?

Research conclusions here are probably as clear as they ever get in social science: homelessness is caused by a conjunction of three factors, namely poverty, housing market conditions and housing policies. More precisely, people will face a high risk of becoming homeless if 1) They are very poor; 2) They live in a place where lowest available market rent is very high and 3) They live in a place where government subsidies towards rent are hard to come by. (For sources, see here, here and here.) Poverty can make you homeless only if the housing market and government policy conspire against you as well. Substance abuse, mental illness and domestic violence have mostly an indirect impact, in that they cause poverty.

All of the above is summed up nicely by a homelessness researcher, psychologist Dennis P. Culhane in a short press piece "Five Myths about America's Homeless." If you don't feel like reading it, the myths are 1) That homelessness is a chronic condition; 2) That most homeless people have mental health problems; 3) That most homeless people don't work; 4) That homeless shelters are a good policy response and 5) That government rent vouchers do not improve the situation by much.

Quote of the day

"Ideas are tested by experiment." That is the core of science. Everything else is bookkeeping.

Source: Zombie Feynman. Hat tip to RolfAndreassen.

Non-self-enforcing

Megan McArdle asks:

(...) why can't this vast media conspiracy I keep hearing about get it together on Phelps and his rotten little band of merry madmen? Their shameful protests at funerals are condemned by, to a first approximation, every single other person in the United States of America. So why do they keep doing it? Presumably because it gets them on the teevee.

So why won't the Liberal Media^TM take away their fun? Refuse to broadcast any footage that contains their message; refuse to write about them.

The reason is, this wouldn't be self-enforcing. Assuming that news about Fred Phelps and his demented posse sells, a conspiracy of silence would create a Prisoner's Dilemma. If you're a news outlet, and all your competitors are silent about the Westboro Baptist Church, you have an incentive to talk about them. Therefore, everybody talks about them.

Where'd my social status go?

In Western societies, social status of an individual is determined mainly by her job. Naturally, the perceived status of a job is correlated with income and education it requires, though not perfectly: college professors are better educated than corporate CEOs and New York City waste collectors make about the same as New York City firefighters, for example. What's interesting to me is that some jobs change their social status over time, sometimes dramatically. For example, over the past few decades, the jobs of a high school teacher, postal worker, flight attendant or airline pilot lost a great deal of their (initially very high) status. The job of a film actor, on the other hand, moved from extremely low to extremely high status over the first fifty years of its existence. I don't know what causes these shifts or if the causes are uniform. Just pointing out the obvious.

Mourning our dead

Question: Is the fact that religious people weep at funerals evidence of their covert atheism? If they truly and wholeheartedly believe that their loved ones simply moved on to a better life, why are they crying?

The standard answer is that they mourn a heartbreaking loss--their loved ones might still exist somewhere, but they'll never see them again, at least not in familiar circumstances.

For my own subjective feelings, there's a difference. I would feel a lot better than I actually do if I were deeply convinced that my grandmother and my uncle have simply gone on a trip somewhere, even if they were never coming back. And it does seem to me that believers mourn their dead the same way that unbelievers do: as if the dead were no longer present, here or anywhere else. But maybe it's just me.