To the Better End: How the Middle Can Improve the End

18 Feb

Neil deGrasse Tyson: “…[generational spaceships produce] interesting ethical questions … to bring an entire generation of humans into the world whose only mission is to bring another generation into the world with a goal that they will never see.”

Chuck Nice: “In a way, Neil, that is [the] kind of the spaceship that we’re on right now.”

Neil: “So you’re saying we already have a generation that we birth … and we train them to try to figure stuff out, and then we die off, and we will never know where that ends.”

Chuck: “…Absolutely! And we are all just doing that on a giant rock that’s floating through space on a destination to who knows where.”

Neil: “Actually, it’s not even …. [it is] just going around…”

Chuck: “…just going around in circles. We are the NASCAR of space travel right now!”

From a StarTalk episode on generational spaceships

Chuck nails it. We are the middle generations on a “spaceship.” We likely won’t get to answer the deepest questions like how something came from nothing. Our value lies in how well we provide three things to the next generation. 1. Nurturing a deeper inclination and greater ability to explore the deepest questions. 2. Leaving the next generation with better tools and more time to explore. 3. Giving them better skills to improve the world on all those fronts for the generation that comes after them.  

Based on the criteria above, we haven’t made enough progress. We have given people leisure time but also addictions to fill their leisure and not enough tools to choose wisely. We have also probably failed to instill a greater appreciation of the pleasures of answering the deepest questions. And we continue to leave the next generation with the burden of solving complex problems like climate change. We must rectify these failures if our lives must matter, if we are to be more than the NASCAR going around and around the track. 

Amartya Sen on Keynes, Robinson, Smith, and the Bengal Famine

17 Aug

Sen in conversation with Angus Deaton and Tim Besleypdf and video.

Excepts:

On Joan Robinson

“She took a position—which has actually become very popular in India
now, not coming from the left these days, but from the right—that what you have to concentrate on is simply maximizing economic growth. Once you have grown and become rich, then you can do health care, education, and all this other stuff. Which I think is one of the more profound errors that you can make in development planning. Somehow Joan had a lot of sympathy for that position. In fact, she strongly criticized Sri Lanka for offering highly subsidized food to everyone on nutritional grounds. I remember the phrase she used: “Sri Lanka is trying to taste the fruit of
the tree without growing it.”

Amartya Sen

On Keynes:

“On the unemployment issue I may well be, but if I compare an economist
like Keynes, who never took a serious interest in inequality, in poverty, in the environment, with Pigou, who took an interest in all of them, I don’t think I would be able to say exactly what you are asking me to say.”

Amartya Sen

On the 1943 Bengal Famine, the last big famine in India in which ~ 3M people perished:

“Basically I had figured out on the basis of the little information I had (that indeed
everyone had) that the problem was not that the British had the wrong data, but that their theory of famine was completely wrong. The government was claiming that there was so much food in Bengal that there couldn’t be a famine. Bengal, as a whole, did indeed have a lot of food—that’s true. But that’s supply; there’s also demand, which was going up and up rapidly, pushing prices sky-high. Those left behind in a boom economy—a boom generated by the war—lost out in the competition for buying food.”

“I learned also—which I knew as a child—that you could have a famine with a lot of food around. And how the country is governed made a difference. The British did not want rebellion in Calcutta. I believe no one of Calcutta died in the famine. People died in Calcutta, but they were not of Calcutta. They came from elsewhere, because what little charity there was came from Indian businessmen based in Calcutta. The starving people
kept coming into Calcutta in search of free food, but there was really not much of that. The Calcutta people were entirely protected by the Raj to prevent discontent of established people during the war. Three million people in Calcutta had ration cards, which entailed that at least six million people were being fed at a very subsidized price of food. What the government did was to buy rice at whatever price necessary to purchase it in the rural areas, making the rural prices shoot up. The price of rationed food in Calcutta for established residents was very low and highly subsidized, though the market price in Calcutta—outside the rationing network—rose with the rural price increase.”

Amartya Sen

On John Smith

“He discussed why you have to think pragmatically about the different institutions to be combined together, paying close attention to how they respectively work. There’s a passage where he’s asking himself the question, Why do we strongly want a good political economy? Why is it important? One answer—not the only one—is that it will lead to high economic growth (this is my language, not Smith’s). I’m not quoting his words, but he talks about the importance of high growth, high rate of progress. But why is that important? He says it’s important for two distinct reasons. First, it gives the individual more income, which in turn helps people to do what they would value doing. Smith is talking here about people having more capability. He doesn’t use the word capability, but that’s what he is talking about here. More income helps you to choose the kind of life that you’d like to lead. Second, it gives the state (which he greatly valued as an institution when properly used) more revenue, allowing it to do those things which only the state can do well. As an example, he talks about the state being able to provide free school education.”

Amartya Sen

Disgusting

7 Feb

Vegetarians turn at the thought of eating the meat of a cow that has died from a heart attack. The disgust that vegetarians experience is not principled. Nor is the greater opposition to homosexuality that people espouse when they are exposed to foul smell. Haidt uses similar such provocative examples to expose chinks in how we think about what is moral and what is not.

Knowing that what we find disgusting may not always be “disgusting,” that our moral reasoning can be flawed, is a superpower. Because thinking that you are in the right makes you self-righteous. It makes you think that you know all the facts, that you are somehow better. Often, we are not. If we stop conflating disgust with being in the right or indeed, with being right, we shall all get along a lot better.

The Best We Can Do is Responsibly Answer the Questions that Life Asks of Us

5 Feb

Faced with mass murder, it is hard to escape the conclusion that life has no meaning. For how could it be that life has meaning when lives matter so little? As a German Jew in a concentration camp, Victor Frankl had to confront that question.

In Man’s Search for Meaning, Frankl gives two answers to the question. His first answer is a reflexive rejection of the meaninglessness of life. Frankl claims that life is “unconditional[ly] meaningful.” There is something to that, but not enough to hang on to for too long. It is also not his big point.

Instead, Frankl has a more nuanced point: “If there is … meaning in life …, then there must be … meaning in suffering.” (Because suffering is an inescapable part of life.) The meaning of suffering, according to him, lies in how we respond to it. Do we suffer with dignity? Or do we let suffering degrade us? The broader, deeper point that underpins the claim is that we cannot always choose our conditions, but we can choose the “stand [we take] toward the conditions.” And life’s meaning is stored in the stand we take, in how we respond to the questions that “life asks of us.”

Not only that, the extent of human achievement is: responsibly answering the questions that life asks of us. This means two things. First, that questions about human achievement can only be answered within the context of one’s life. And second, in responsibly answering questions that life asks of us, we attain what humans can ever attain. In a limited life, circumscribed by unavoidable suffering, for instance, the peak of human achievement is keeping dignity. If your life offers you more, then, by all means, do more—derive meaning from action, from beauty, and from love. But also take solace in the fact that we can achieve the greatest heights a human can achieve in how we respond to unavoidable suffering.

Firmly Against Posing Firmly

31 May

“What is crucial for you as the writer is to express your opinion firmly,” writes William Zinsser in “On Writing Well: An Informal Guide to Writing Nonfiction.” To emphasize the point, Bill repeats the point at the end of the paragraph, ending with, “Take your stand with conviction.”

This advice is not for all writers—Bill particularly wants editorial writers to write with a clear point of view.

When Bill was an editorial writer for the New York Herald Tribune, he attended a daily editorial meeting to “discuss what editorials … to write for the next day and what position …[to] take.” Bill recollects,

“Frequently [they] weren’t quite sure, especially the writer who was an expert on Latin America.

“What about that coup in Uruguay?” the editor would ask. “It could represent progress for the economy,” the writer would reply, “or then again it might destabilize the whole political situation. I suppose I could mention the possible benefits and then—”

The editor would admonish such uncertainty with a curt “let’s not go peeing down both legs.”

Bill approves of taking a side. He likes what the editor is saying if not the language. He calls it the best advice he has received on writing columns. I don’t. Certainty should only come from one source: conviction born from thoughtful consideration of facts and arguments. Don’t feign certainty. Don’t discuss concerns in a perfunctory manner. And don’t discuss concerns at the end.

Surprisingly, Bill agrees with the last bit about not discussing concerns in a perfunctory manner at the end. But for a different reason. He thinks that “last-minute evasions and escapes [cancel strength].”

Don’t be a mug. If there are serious concerns, don’t wait until the end to note them. Note them as they come up.

How Do We Know?

17 Aug

How can fallible creatures like us know something? The scientific method is about answering that question well. To answer the question well, we have made at least three big innovations:

1. Empiricism. But no privileged observer. What you observe should be reproducible by all others.

2. Open to criticism: If you are not convinced about the method of observation, the claims being made, criticize. Offer reason or proof.

3. Mathematical Foundations: Reliance on math or formal logic to deduce what claims can be made if certain conditions are met.

These innovations along with two more innovations have allowed us to ‘scale.’ Foremost among the innovations that allow us to scale is our ability to work together. And our ability to preserve information on stone, paper, electrons, allows us to collaborate with and build on the work done by people who are now dead. The same principle that allows us to build as gargantuan a structure as the Hoover Dam and entire cities allows us to learn about complex phenomenon. And that takes us to the final principle of science.

(Numb)ers

7 Jan

Limited Time Only

Lifespan ~ 80 years*52 weeks/year ~ 4k weeks

If you are 40: 2k weeks to go.

If you are 70: another 500 weeks.

Well-read

If you read a book a week for 50 years, you will read ~ 2500 books.

Approximately 130M books have been published.

Poor

In 2013, India’s PPP adjusted median per capita income was ~$1,500. So ~ 400M people < $1500/yr.

  • Since it is PPP wage, think about living on $1500/year in the US
  • Another way to think about it:
    The wage of median American working for a year (~ $27,000) > wage of 18 Indians working for a year
  • Yet another way to think about it:
    Avg. career ~ 35 years (30–65)
    What median American will earn in 2 yrs = lifetime earning of an Indian earning the median income

The Guilded Age

“How many hours are needed to qualify to take the State Board examinations?
Cosmetologist = 1600 hours, Barber = 1500 hours, Esthetician = 600 hours, Electrologist = 600 hours, Manicurist = 400 hours.” From https://www.barbercosmo.ca.gov/forms_pubs/publications/faqs.shtml

“California EMT programs are at least 160 hours and include at least 136 hours of didactic training and at least 24 hours of clinical training.”

https://www.healthcarepathway.com/become-an-emt/california-emt/

Chicken

There are ~ 25B chickens in the world. More here.

Earth

US from coast to coast is ~ 3k miles. The earth’s diameter is ~ 8k miles. Earth is puny. US is large.

Capuchin Monkeys and Fairness: I Want At Least As Much As The Other

1 Dec

In a much heralded experiment, we see that a Capuchin monkey rejects a reward (food) for doing a task after seeing another monkey being rewarded with something more appetizing for doing the same task. It has been interpreted as evidence for our ‘instinct for fairness’. But there is more to the evidence. The fact that the monkey that gets the heftier reward doesn’t protest the more meager reward for the other monkey is not commented upon though highly informative. Ideally, any weakly reasoned deviation from equality should provoke a negative reaction. Monkeys who get the longer end of the stick, even when aware that others are getting the shorter end of the stick, don’t complain. Primates are peeved only when they are made aware that they are getting the short end of the stick. Not so much if someone else gets it. My sense is that it is true for most humans as well – people care far more about them holding the short end of the stick than others. It is thus incorrect to attribute such behavior to an ‘instinct for fairness’. A better attribution may be to the following rule: I want at least as much as the others are getting.

Fairly Random

15 Mar

The lottery is a way to assign disproportionate rewards (or punishments) fairly. Procedural fairness—equal chance of selection—provides legitimacy to this system of disproportionate allocation.

Given the purpose of a lottery is unequal allocation, it is essential that we seek informed consent from the participants, and that we only use a lottery in important areas when necessary.

Fairness over the longer term
One particular use of lottery is in the fair assignment of scarce indivisible resources. For example, think of a good school with only a hundred open seats that receives a thousand applications from candidates who are indistinguishable (or only weakly distinguishable)—given limitations of the data —from each other in matters of ability. One fair way of assigning seats would be to do it randomly.

One may choose to consider the matter closed at this point. However, this means making peace with disproportional outcomes. Alternatives to this option exist. For example, one may ask the winners of the lottery to give back to those who didn’t win, say by sharing the portion of their income attributable to going to a good school, or by producing public goods, or by some other mutually agreed mechanism.

Fair Selection
Random selection is a fair method of selection over objects where we have no or little reason to prefer one over the other. When objects are observably—as much as the data can tell us—the same, or similar, same within some margin, random selection can be seen as fair.

One may extend it to objects that are different but for no discretionary action of theirs, say people with physical or mental disabilities. However, competing concerns, such as lower efficiency, etc., exist. More generally, selection based on some commonly agreed metric, for instance, maximal increase in the public good, may also be considered fair.

As is clear, those who aren’t selected don’t deserve less, and indeed adequate compensation ought to be the formal basis of selection, unless of course rewards once earned cannot be transferred (say lottery to get a liver transplant, which leaves others dead, and hence unable to receive any compensation, though one can imagine rewards being transferred to relatives, etc.).

Structural Inequality

27 Nov

Nick Clegg, leader of the Liberal Democrats, recently spoke about social mobility. He said,

My particular focus is on inter-generational social mobility – the extent to which a person’s income or social class is influenced by the income or social class of their parents. Social mobility is a measure of the degree to which the patterns of advantage and disadvantage in one generation are passed on to the next. How far, if you like, the sins of the father are visited on the son.

There is, of course, plenty of argument within the social science community about precise measures, international comparisons, and preferred metrics. But I think intergenerational social mobility speaks to most people’s definition of fairness.

Fairness means everyone having the chance to do well, irrespective of their beginnings. Fairness means that no one is held back by the circumstances of their birth. Fairness demands that what counts is not the school you went to or the jobs your parents did, but your ability and your ambition.

In other words, fairness means social mobility.

Social mobility is only half-imagined — as movement from lower rungs to upper rungs, not vice versa. Society, currently constructed, offers a relatively fixed (likely declining) number of upper shelf jobs, and it thus reasons that for every n transitioning to the upper echelon, a similar ought to transition to the lower rungs. Now a politician wouldn’t sell his idea — that he wants a certain number of rich people to make way for the poor and in turn, take their place — but then we all expect such diplomacy from politicians.

Fairness as a level playing field or a fair lottery is widely accepted as an ideal. Wide acceptance is no insurance against fundamental problems. To help illustrate the problems, here’s an example.

Imagine a fair marriage in which at the beginning husband and wife flip a coin — heads the wife does all chores for the entire tenure of the marriage, tails the wife never has to do chores. Of course, marriages based on this fair coin toss don’t seem fair to us — we would ideally want all couples to share the unpleasant chores equally or by some such equitable arrangement arrived at by mutual agreement.

Carrying over the analogy to society — we would want everyone to take part in unpleasant chores and everyone to take part in more pleasant activities equally. Of course, such a lack of specialization makes for a very inefficient system. So perhaps one can prorate the wage to the unpleasantness of work, with people stuck doing unpleasant work being provided wages at higher rates, greater leisure time, etc. exactly opposite to the system we have in place now.

In summary, the current society is unfair not only because not everyone has a similar chance of success but also because there are only a few good opportunities — mandating that there be a large set of losers and a small set of winners.

p.s. I discuss the relationship between education and economic equality here.

The Democratic Idea of Knowledge

3 Jul

In their misguided battle against ‘global warming’, the phrase, “science is not a democracy” has become a favorite with conservative pundits.

Well, I am co-opting their slogan to initiate discussion about something else—the future of knowledge.

Let us imagine that Google’s model of site ranking trumps all others. The Google model relies on the fact that if an information source is reliable, people will “vote” for it with a link. So more the number of links to the site, higher the ranking.

There are serious issues with this “democratic” model of ranking information. One falsehood linked again and again can give it the same credence as a fact. This theory is just an extension of the corner-shop gossip analogy with one substantive difference – in a linked online world, the effects are not localized but global. The model is troubling especially given that more acerbic, vituperative articles very likely get linked more than the dry, measured pieces. To drive home the point, let me etch out a particularly troublesome outcome – a world where all the knowledge is hijacked by zealots of either persuasion.

The democratic idea of knowledge rests upon the twin facts that information choices are diverse enough on the Internet to allow people to choice of source that has the most accurate information and that people who see the source with “right information” will know it is the “right information” and will be involved enough to “vote” with their links to the site. The paradigm just ignores one key thing -Internet, counterintuitively, doesn’t allow many choices. Ahem…

Hegemony is not only a problem with the mass-communication world but also with the Internet model. We are right now emerging from decades of a communication model dominated by mass-media where only a few outlets controlled the majority of the information. From this relatively oligarchical model, we are moving to a “distributed” model. The key problem with this distributed model is firstly that it is not really distributed. It is, in fact, narrower – a vast majority of the people look for information using just three tools – Google, Yahoo, and MSN. While these search engines spit out millions of results to our queries, studies show that most people never get beyond the first page. In this media market, the information hierarchy is in fact even more entrenched.

The other key issue that is at the heart of the problem of determining the veracity of information on the Internet is the relative anonymity of the Internet. The pedigree of knowledge is an important part in establishing the veracity of a piece of information and the relative anonymity of the Internet has raised concerns about the veracity of the information on it.

So, in all the Internet poses unique challenges for the existence and acceptance of “real” knowledge.

Need for Epistemic Standards for Evidence and Arguments in Governance

2 Jul

Claim:
Explicit standards for evidence and argument are critical in a competitive system where competing groups have palpable incentives to withhold information, monger stilted information, use irrelevant information, or use any tactic to win.

Argument:

Different branches of the US government use different epistemic standards.

The US judicial system uses the adversarial system in which each of the parties presents its case to a neutral party (judge or jury). Each side is supposed to furnish evidence in support of its argument, and an ‘impartial’ judge decides on what evidence is better in terms of its applicability and strength.

The adversarial system is a competitive system that relies on the sparring parties to furnish evidence. Like any competitive system, the sparring parties have incentives to withhold information from each other and misrepresent information. The system relies on the ‘other’ party to excavate any such violations, and sometimes on the neutral party. There are some other formal procedures to limit the kind of evidence that can be presented (though some are rooted in alternate theories) and procedures for sharing corroborative evidence. There are also formal procedures as to what kind of arguments can be presented.

The adversarial judicial process inarguably uses the strictest standards of evidence amongst any branch of government.

While the legislative process is largely a ‘competitive’ system, it has no formal epistemic standards limiting the kind of evidence or arguments that can be presented. The strength of the evidence presented, its applicability, etc. are either ‘judged’ by ‘citizens’ (substantially mediated by media) or by members of the other competing party.

The problem with legislative branch is not only that it is a competitive system, but that is a corrupt, special interest driven competitive system. The system provides little incentive to the members to judge the evidence impartially with the nation’s best interests in mind.

There are no epistemic standards that hold back the executive branch except for some loose constraints that tie those standards to the marketability of a particular policy decision.

Congress also uses the ‘Inquisitorial system’ when it conducts ‘Congressional Hearings’ to ‘investigate’ a particular issue. Of course, due to partisanship pressures, the inquisitorial system often uncomfortably borders on ‘inquisition’.

Solution:

One way to correct the problem would be to create governance structures that explicitly involve independent bodies that judge the strength and applicability of evidence presented.

Why Not to Think Like a Lawyer

30 Jan

The following article is by Chaste. The article was written as a response to the following two reviews in the New York Review of Books:

Note
I respond to two articles by Ronald Dworkin to illustrate the pitfalls of using lawyerly thinking in our role as citizens. Lawyerly thinking focuses on the controversy as presented, it relies on opinion rather than facts, and it misunderstands the nature of contemporary government and market actions. NYRB published the first a year ago at the time of the Danish cartoons controversy (March); in September, it published a second, which discussed the issue of same-sex marriages among others.

Why not to think like a lawyer

As we remember the Danish cartoons controversy that erupted a year ago, and as the issue of same-sex marriages takes its course, I offer this reflection on the way we often approach marginalization of minorities by markets and by governments. I will frame my reflection as a response to two of Professor Ronald Dworkin’s pieces published in the New York Review of Books. In his March article on the Danish cartoons, he approved the discretion of Anglo-American media, defended the European press’ right to ridicule, and urged an acceptance of the right to ridicule even when constrained by holocaust related exceptions. In the second article published in September, he argues in favor of the legalizing of gay marriages on dignitary and cultural grounds. He declares that these grounds make the issue different from say religious prayer, and make civil unions an inadequate alternative.

I am disturbed by several aspects of Dworkin’s reasoning, which I will characterize as ‘lawyerly’:

  • Dworkin, as in his Danish cartoons piece, is more interested in addressing the problem as offered to him than in framing the problem adequately. This is analogous to the role of an adjudicator who tries to settle only the controversy presented before him. Yet the needs of a fuller understanding and of justice often demand the examination of additional parties and issues.
  • Dworkin at times relies more on opinion than on fact. This tends to produce principled rather than well-informed pragmatic choices. Judges and by corollary, lawyers rely on legal principle and opinion. Even common law judges seldom see themselves as making laws to address the facts. Yet making pragmatic choices informed by facts is precisely the function of citizens. Unfortunately, most of Dworkin’s stands are principled rather than pragmatic; even his pragmatic stand on religion in the pledge of allegiances couched as an exception to principled choices. Principled stands are particularly unfortunate in humanitarian matters: given the scale of injustice in the world and our tacit acceptance of those injustices, principled choices are likely to project hypocrisy rather than conviction.
  • Dworkin’s solutions are sometimes mal-formed because of an unfortunate understanding of markets and of the government as expressions of common intent. With notable exceptions like antitrust, markets appear before the legal system largely as a series of contracts between consenting parties for securing mutual advantages. The government, on the other hand, appears as an instrument of the majority that is capable of imposing constraints on any and all. Such a view prompts a heightened legal scrutiny of government regulations relative to market practices. Yet the consequences of market constraints are no less serious from the market unavailability of abortion facilities to the effects of inane media on the information level of Americans. Therefore, we need to focus on the nature and effect of the constraints themselves, and not overemphasize their source.

Danish Cartoons of the Prophet

Dworkin’s piece on the Danish cartoons shows up the pitfalls of such ‘lawyerly’ thinking. I will begin by laying out the main free speech issues in the order of their priority to the Danish press and government:

  • Holocaust sensitivities: Jyllands-Posten’s cultural editor who commissioned the prophet cartoons was sent on immediate indefinite leave after saying that he might, after review, print Iranian cartoons of the Holocaust. The editor-in-chief said that the paper would in no circumstances publish the holocaust cartoons, and the cultural editor recanted with “I am 100% with the newspaper’s line.”
  • Christian / market sensitivities: The editor of the Sunday edition of Jyllands-Posten turned down cartoons about Jesus’ resurrection, saying that readers would not enjoy the drawings because they would “provoke an outcry.”
  • Danish dairy exports: Within five days of the dramatically successful boycott of Danish dairy exports, Jyllands-Posten apologized. The apology preceded most of the violent protests and was not a response to them.
  • Freedom of expression: Speech affecting the three preceding drew from Jyllands-Posten, suppression and retaliation, suppression, and an apology respectively. Speech affecting the last proved to be no such encumbrance.
  • Muslim sensitivities: Jyllands-Posten made no apology for 3-4 months after Danish Muslims and Muslim nations protested the publication.

Dworkin allows the parties before him to frame the issue rather than framing it himself. The consequence is that he focuses primarily on Muslim sensitivities as a threat to free speech even though it was the only one of the four to be no encumbrance. As for the three that did trump freedom of speech, Dworkin mentions only the one specifically raised by one of the parties, namely, holocaust related sensitivities. This inattention to facts leads Dworkin to the misleading framing of the problem and to the inappropriate principled solution mentioned above.

A fuller attention to facts reveals the problem to be not whether there should be a right to ridicule; rather it is the extent to which large commercial entities can ridicule marginalized groups to seek commercial gain. Recall that Jyllands-Posten was the largest selling Danish newspaper at the time, and had experienced sharper circulation drops in recent years than its competitors. This is not speech that can claim freedom from regulation that it may speak truth to power; such speech is itself an exercise of power. For the minority that constitutes an insignificant market segment, it does not help to know that it is the market and not the government, which has generated the demeaning images swirling around them. There is no good reason why the law should not limit such an exercise of power, much as it limits the actions of other players like the government or of large commercial players in other markets. Such limits on speech would naturally be narrow, and limited to large commercial players. The size requirement will ensure that expression which is not a major exercise of power would stay regulated; the commercial purpose requirement will ensure that such expression is not effectively suppressed by limiting it to minor fringe players. It will safeguard against the abuse of free speech as a commodity to generate profit: a commodity that can evade the usual social cost-benefit analysis based regulations. Dworkin’s tired adherence to a principled position on free speech mixed with calls to marginalized groups to endure unequal legal limits on free speech is as inadequate a solution as his articulation of the problem is misleading. Indeed the only context for which Dworkin’s analysis is appropriate is that of the publication of the cartoons in Muslim countries, a context that he fails to mention.

Same Sex Marriages

Dworkin’s reasoning about same-sex marriages in “Three Questions for America” is similarly unfortunate. After a brilliant discussion of the teaching of evolution controversy, he argues on dignitary grounds for a principled position in favor of marriage rights for same-sex couples, and for an understanding (not a justification) of the exception of including religion in the pledge of allegiance on materiality grounds.

I will assume civil unions with full rights as the pragmatic alternative to same-sex marriages. They are politically viable in several states, yet proponents of same-sex marriages like Dworkin dismiss them as inadequate. The assumption also clarifies that Dworkin and other advocates of same-sex marriages object to the law’s embodiment of a cultural detriment even when there is no corresponding legal detriment. This is both startling and impractical. It is startling because the law is not the best arena for renegotiating cultural detriment or privilege. It is impractical because cultural inequities are generally too embedded even in law for such an effort to be little more than picking favorites. Consider the example of July 4th. Americans undertake legally favored celebrations for an event that was to perpetuate slavery for 30 years after the mother country abolished it. Blacks can justly view such legally favored celebrations as a cultural detriment, but there are few moves afoot to replace July 4th with the day that civil rights became effective.

Dworkin’s habits of view regarding the government and the market prevent him from realizing that in the absence of legal detriment, the different unions on offer resemble cultural products on a market, and hence are more akin to a market rather than government constraints. His refusal to view a fuller picture makes him appear oblivious to the fact that his principled position constitutes picking favorites. Indeed civil unions may become a new and more inclusive cultural product: one without the historical advantages/baggage of marriage, but /one capable of adequately competing with it in due course.

Any regulation for mitigating the market constraints imposed by a cultural product should follow the usual social cost-benefit analysis. Unlike the inclusion of religion in the pledge, which mandates expression that may be antithetical to a group’s beliefs, marriage laws only deny a cultural product to particular groups. Whereas an unregulated media may inflict countless fresh detriments on insignificant market segments (minorities), marriage laws only preserve an existing cultural detriment. Therefore, it is not clear to me that same-sex marriages have a compelling case in the current divided and polarized environment.

Dworkin may argue with some justification that principled positions can be useful in the pedagogical framework that his piece invokes. It is not clear to me that an American high school environment and the stage of maturation it represents is the best arena for forming self-defining opinions. Further, it is likely to exacerbate the American habit of forming opinions without much regard to evidence. When based on evidence of the effect of government recognition of same-sex relationships on religious beliefs and practices and on lifestyle choices, there may be some merit to such an experiment since high school is the last structured educational environment for many. Yet neither of Dworkin’s suggested readings, for all their eloquence and careful thinking, contain any evidence that addresses the real or imagined fears of same-sex marriage opponents.