Video: Tenacity in Pursuit of Goals

In Sunday's Philosophy in Action Webcast, I discussed tenacity in pursuit of goals. The question was:

How can I become more tenacious in pursuit of my goals? I find that I give up too easily on some of my goals, particularly when success is far away and much effort is required now. What can I do to make myself more tenacious?

My answer, in brief:

Tenacity is an important quality of character to cultivate, but it must be used selectively. If tenacity is a problem for you, don't wallow in guilt: find creative ways to motivate yourself.

Here's the video of my full answer:

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All posted webcast videos can be found in the Webcast Archives and on my YouTube channel.

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Video: Rationality in Face of Overwhelming Emotions

In Sunday's Philosophy in Action Webcast, I discussed rationality in face of overwhelming emotions. The question was:

How can a person regain his rationality in the face of overwhelming emotions? On occasion, I find my rational judgment swamped by strong emotions like anger and anxiety. In such cases, my thinking seems distorted by my emotions. While in the grip of such emotions, what can I do to re-establish my powers of rational thought? Also, how can I prevent myself from saying or doing things that I'll later regret?

My answer, in brief:

You need not be at the mercy of your emotions: you can take charge of own mind in friendly way. So when your emotions rage out of control, you should (1) notice them, (2) analyze them, (3) work to defuse them, and (4) later, prevent the same from happening again.

Here's the video of my full answer:

If you enjoy the video, please "like" it on YouTube and share it with friends in e-mail and social media! You can also throw a bit of extra love in our tip jar.

All posted webcast videos can be found in the Webcast Archives and on my YouTube channel.

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Video: Feeling Guilty for Emotions

In Sunday's Rationally Selfish Webcast, I discussed guilt over emotions. The question was:

Should a person feel guilty about his emotions? Sometimes I feel emotions that I know are misplaced, such as envy at a co-worker's promotion or anger at a friend's mistake. What should my response be to these emotions? Should I feel guilty about them? Should I change them -- and if so, how?

Here's the video of my answer:

If you like it, please share it! Also, all my webcast and other videos can be found on my YouTube channel.

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Video: The What, How, and Why of Introspection

In Sunday's Rationally Selfish Webcast, I discussed introspection -- particularly focused on these questions:

• What is introspection?
  
• Why should a person introspect?
  
• What should a person introspect about -- or not?
  
• How can a person introspect effectively?

Here's the 20-minute video, now posted to YouTube:

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Police Interrogations

In preparation for Sunday's Rationally Selfish Webcast question on whether police should be allowed to lie to suspects in the course of a criminal investigation, I've been researching the standard practices and legal limits of police interrogation. I've found that extremely interesting, so I thought I'd share some links before the webcast itself.

First, How Police Interrogation Works from "How Stuff Works." Basically, police interrogations are designed to exert as much psychological pressure on the victim as the courts allow. This article explains those techniques.

Second, What can the police lie about while conducting an interrogation? from "The Straight Dope." This article is a fascinating summary of what kind of facts the police are permitted to misrepresent in dealings with suspects -- because some and only some kinds of lies violate the suspect's rights. The basic distinction is between "intrinsic" and "extrinsic" falsehoods. The article says:

Attempting to reconcile [various] rulings [by the Supreme Court], state courts and lower federal courts have come to draw a distinction between two kinds of lying to suspects: intrinsic misrepresentations, or those lies that relate to a suspect's connection to the crime; and extrinsic misrepresentations, or those that have nothing to do with the suspect's connection to the crime but attempt to distort his ability to make a rational choice about confessing.

That's the critical issue here, I think. Police should be able to lie to suspects, but some kinds of lies -- such as "you don't have the right to an attorney" or "we can hold you indefinitely" constitute a kind of fraud, whereas others like "your fingerprints were found at the scene of the murder" and "a witness saw you enter the store" don't. However, I'm not yet fully clear on the distinction, and I need to do more reading, this time from genuine law sources.

Third, "Don't Talk to the Police" by Professor James Duane:



Greg blogged about this video back in 2008, but I didn't watch it at the time. Now that I have, I can agree with Greg's summary and conclusions:

[James Duane] is speaking to law students, explaining why he uniformly advises his clients (and everyone) that they should they never, ever, under any circumstances, talk with the police -- guilty or innocent, a suspect or not, even if they are smarter than Aristotle and Newton combined, articulate as all get out, an expert in the law, and pure as the wind-driven snow. Never. ...

He explains how talking to the police can't ever help, and will in all likelihood hurt even innocents. This last is the part that really stood out: even the most innocuous statements by the most innocent of people could put them in jeopardy -- it depends on context they don't control. An officer misremembering an answer could bring a conviction; so could misremembering the question. Taping interviews is no guarantee, either: even some fuzziness in the contextual information that floated by before the interview could be disastrous!

Fourth, "Don't Talk to the Police" by Officer George Bruch



In this follow-up lecture, George Bruch completely agreed with James Duane: a person should not speak to the police without his lawyer present.

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The Mind of the Plagiarist

Here's a fascinating article on the psychology of plagiarism, particularly how the plagiarist's ignorance of his own ignorance is often his undoing: The Mind of the Plagiarist:

It never occurs to the plagiarist, therefore, whether panic-stricken or calculating, that submitting someone else's prose under his own name might alert a wary reader that shenanigans are in play. It never occurs to him that a vapid three-sentence paragraph of his prose, with simplistic sentences, bad grammar, and misspellings, when followed by a paragraph in a competent writer's professional prose will create a sense of disjunction in the very party whom the gesture aims at defrauding.

...

If there were such a thing as an intelligent or well-educated plagiarist, the idea of a careful patchwork of paragraphs, culled from various websites and rewritten to make the style homogeneous and framed within original prose that endowed on the whole something like a convincing structure -- that, I say, might occur to him. But if the plagiarist were intelligent and well educated, if he were that capable, he would probably not be a plagiarist; he would be an honest student who acquits himself in courses.

Go read the whole thing!

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NoodleCast #86: Interview with Ari Armstrong about Harry Potter

Yesterday, I sat down with Ari Armstrong to discuss the Harry Potter novels, given that the final movie will be released this week. As you might already know, Ari is the author of the excellent (and recently expanded) book Values of Harry Potter.

Here are the questions that we discussed:

• How good can we expect the final movie to be, given the franchise's history?
  
• Why do so many people love Harry Potter?
  
• What are the basic values promoted by the novels?
  
• Are the Potter books religious?
  
• What are the psychological themes of the Potter books?
  
• What are the political themes?

Then, on a more personal note:

• What character do you most identify with? Why?
  
• What characters do you most admire? Why?
  
• What scene from the books most captures your imagination? Why?
  
• What do you say to someone reluctant to read the books?

Beware: The interview contains some major spoilers, so don't listen to it unless you've read all the books.

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40:37 minutes

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What's Your CrossFit Style?

This post by Kelly and Jenn on the very different things they enjoy about CrossFit -- CrossFit Is Fun For All Personality Types -- nearly killed me with its sheer funny awesomeness.

As many of you know, I've been training at CIA FIT Gym in south Denver since mid-May. My appoach to training seems to be somewhere between Jenn and Kelly on many of the dimensions that they list, although definitely tilting toward Kelly. (I have a sneaking suspicion that they might have exaggerated a wee bit for dramatic effect!) So... what do I do?

I keep some records, but very few. I like to know my limits for a power snatch, for example, so I try to write down those weights. It's motivating to see my progress in objective terms. Plus, it's convenient to know about what weight to rack on any given day. I keep track of the medicine ball I use for wall balls, what bands I use for pull-ups, etc. -- but only in my head.

That's as much as I track my workouts. I often like good records of my doings, but sheesh, the workouts seem dang hard enough to do on their own! I don't need the added task of trying to remember or write down what I did, as that would only distract me from the workout itself. Seriously, I often have trouble counting to ten or twenty while doing burpees or ball slams. So the idea of trying to rigorously track everything about my workouts seems like more than I could manage.

For my overall strength, my standard measure comes outside the gym: it's my time for a one-mile sprint on our home rower. I do that about three times per week, so I can see the trends clearly. And I've been doing it for years, so it's a good long-range benchmark. Recently, I did an 8:00 mile for the first time ever, shaving about 45 seconds off my time in just a few weeks. That was pretty damn awesome, I must admit. Those gains are mostly due to the fact that we're doing more strength training at the gym. (Yay o-lifts!)

Also, I love the never knowing what we'll be doing in class. Usually, I don't know what we're doing until owner/trainer Kelli gives us our instructions. The workouts on the board are often so abbreviated that we can't do more than guess beforehand. (We don't follow the CrossFit WOD because Kelli trains us more broadly than just CrossFit. We do more kettlebells, more core work, less rushing for sheer time, etc.)

As for my goals in the gym, I must admit that I'm pretty lax about those too. I've got some goals, but not too many. Right now, I'm very consciously working on my form: with certain movements, I'm pulling up from my shoulders rather than using the upward thrust from my hips. So we're deliberately tweaking my movements to try to get the right effect. For example, I'm not doing kettlebell swings to vertical, but rather only as high as my hips will take me (now, to about 135 degrees), so that I use and feel my hips without pulling from my shoulders at all.

With a few movements, I have clear goals. I can do 27" box jumps, but I want to get up to the seemingly impossibly high 30" box. I was downright horrible at box jumps when I started, so I really like that. I like the fact that I'm scared to jump that high, but then I do them anyway and I don't crash! Yay me! Also, I want to be able to do unassisted pullups, but that's merely a wish right now, since I'm not doing anything special to work on them.

Of course, I have my global goal of being capable of doing all the things required for my life (e.g. farm chores) and happiness (e.g. crazy vacations like this snowshoeing hut trek). And for that, my time in the gym is exactly what I need.

For the other CrossFitters, what's your approach? Are you more like Kelly or Jenn?

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Rationally Selfish Q&A: Sexual Jobs

Is it immoral to have a sexually-oriented job, such as stripper or pornography actress/actor? Is it wrong of me to enjoy having a sexually-oriented job?

Imagine giving a person the key to your home because you found him/her pretty interesting after an evening of casual chat.

Imagine allowing your co-workers to read you personal journal, including your doubts about your upcoming wedding, if willing to pay a few dollars.

Imagine posting your financial records on the internet for anyone to see -- or exploit.

Imagine asking perfect strangers on the subway to inspect the infected wound on your shoulder.

Should that seem like revealing too much of yourself? Yes!

Would that invite nasty people to abuse and exploit you? Yes!

Would that be a massive failure to recognize that different relationships warrant different degrees and kinds of intimacy? Yes!

Unfortunately, many people don't apply these basic lessons about intimacy to their sex lives.

By its very nature, sex is an intimate act, not merely physically but spiritually too. It requires exposing one's most delicate parts to handling by another person, in pursuit of the most exquisite pleasure the human body has to offer. Sex can be an exaltation and celebration of life.

Yet sex can also be deeply degrading too, precisely due to its inherent intimacy. For example, the intimacy of sex is degrading when done with an unworthy person, e.g. someone abusive, callous, brutish, or even just dreary. It's not enough for a sexual partner to be merely tolerable, however. The inherent intimacy of sex demands a serious bond and well-earned trust between two people. It requires a deep and mutual interest in the well-being of the other person. Without that foundation for intimacy, you might as well stay home and play with your own sex toys.

Obviously, such selectivity is precisely what sex workers -- strippers, prostitutes, pornographers, etc -- cannot exercise. Even if able to refuse the worst of the lot as clients, he/she engages in the most intimate of acts with merely tolerable partners. And to do that well enough to earn money, he/she must create the illusion of intimacy -- meaning the pretense of concern for and trust in the other.

In so doing, the sex worker is deeply warping his/her own view of sexuality -- such that the reality of sex is smutty and bestial, and the spiritual meaning of sex is mere pretense. A person who develops that view of sex closes off his/her capacity for truly deep and meaningful sexual relationships. Given the value of such relationships, I can't but regard that as self-destructive.

That being said, I don't condemn all sexual commerce. Instead, I celebrate what aims to enhance the experience of people seeking genuine pleasure and intimacy in sex, such as sex toys, lingerie, and erotica.

I'm sure that makes me a prude by some people's standards, and a libertine by others. So be it!

Update: I'm now answering questions on practical ethics and the principles of living well in my weekly Rationally Selfish Webcast. It happens every Sunday morning at 8 am PT / 9 am MT / 10 am CT / 11 am ET. Each week, I select the most popular and interesting questions from the ongoing queue of questions. Please submit your questions, as well as vote and comment on questions that you find interesting!

If you're unable to attend the live webcast, you can listen to these webcasts later as NoodleCast podcasts by subscribing in iTunes to either the enhanced M4A format or the standard MP3 format.

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Three Questions: Meditation and Religion

For a while now, I've been wanting to make my many FormSpring Questions and Answers into blog posts. You'll be seeing them over the next few weeks. They're a bit less formal than my ordinary blogging, but still interesting, I hope! I've answered 138 questions so far, so that will make quite a few posts.

Here's one on meditation, then two on religion.

Have you ever practiced meditation? Supposedly, it makes it easier for your mind to concentrate. It also supposed to make it easier to relax, which would be useful for falling asleep.

Yes, my friend Joshua Zader introduced me to the basics of meditation many years ago. The practice helped him a great deal, and I was curious.

Meditation didn't do much for my capacity to concentrate beyond what a deep breath and asking "Diana, what the heck are you doing?" does though. Nor does it help me much with sleep, although some of the techniques I use are similar to meditation techniques.

Overall though, I'd say that a person needs to know how to sit quietly with himself and allow his mind to be still -- rather than frantically racing from one thought to the next or being swamped with overwhelming emotion. A person needs to be able to quiet and direct his mind according to his own will, even when difficult. Some forms of meditation offer practice in creating that state of rational mental calm.

Without that kind of control over his own mind, a person will be unable to cope with overwhelming situations -- particularly emotionally stressful ones -- in a rational and purposeful way. He'll melt down in an emergency rather than acting as needed to overcome it. He'll be unable to think through a conflict in a relationship due to raw feelings. He'll not want to confront some unpleasant facts because he knows he'll be unhinged by them. And so on. His life will be worse -- perhaps far worse -- for being unable to quiet and direct his mind.

Of course, a person doesn't need to engage in formal meditation to achieve that kind of rational control over his mind. However, the techniques of meditation are highly effective for learning and practicing that control. So they're be a good place to start, at least.

There does not seem to be a "bridge" between reason and faith, so if someone was religious for their whole life, how does one ditch the supernatural and become an atheist?

Adopt and practice two rules:

Steadfastly refuse to think about what does not exist.

Think lots about what does exist.

It's no small task to overhaul one's mental habits, but it can be done, if a person is willing to exert the mental effort to direct his thinking according to what he knows to be right.

As for why someone rejects the supernatural after a lifetime of faith, that's a different matter. That's exceedingly rare, I think. Most atheists become atheists while they're young, while they're questioning and forming their personal philosophy. If an older person rejects his faith, that's usually due to some personal crisis, e.g. How could a loving, benevolent God give my sweet daughter this awful terminal disease? However, such crises seem just as likely to strengthen faith. That's often deeply illogical, but the person of faith is not committed to logic.

Why do so many people have a problem with argumentum ad ignorantiam? I've noticed this with the God concept, aliens, ghosts, Bigfoot, Santa Claus, you name it.

You could say that about most fallacies. The reason that they're identified as fallacies is that people accept them as if they're good arguments.

Still, appeal to ignorance is particularly common... probably due to the fact that our educational system doesn't teach our young'uns what constitutes proof.

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How to Find a Good Therapist

I'm a philosopher, not a psychologist. Yet often the moral advice I offer touches on matters of psychology. My policy is that I'll offer advice based on common sense psychology, albeit only in general terms. I don't wish to act as anyone's therapist; I'm neither qualified for nor interested in that.

Often, a person needs only moral advice, with a dash of common sense psychology. That's what I can offer. Yet sometimes, a person has deeper psychological problems: to live well, he needs therapy.

That raises a question: How can a person find a good therapist? That's a tricky question. A less-than-good therapist can be a waste of time and money, if not positively damaging.

Happily, psychologist Ellen Kenner offers some helpful on choosing a therapist in this article on her web site. If you're looking for a therapist, I recommend reading the whole article. Here, I'd just like to comment on some highlights.

Dr. Kenner recommends asking three preliminary questions:

1. What is your background and experience with my problem?
   
   
2. What are your credentials?
   
   
3. What type of therapy do you offer?

That's just the initial evaluation. Dr. Kenner emphasizes that the patient must continue to judge the therapist and his advice. She writes:

In the early stages of therapy, observe the following: Is your therapist goal oriented? Do you work on specific goals? Does your therapist focus on solving problems? Is he or she a careful listener... rather then jumping hastily in with an agenda that seems off base? In therapy, do you look back at your past purposefully... or do you spend oodles of time rehashing your past with very little application to present or to the future[?]

And:

Again, as you start therapy with the person you choose... ask yourself -- "Does the therapist's advice make sense to me?" Are you becoming more hopeful that your life can improve -- not based on floating wishes, but based on facts and skills you are learning that help you cope better with your world? Do you regularly experience "ah-ha -- now I see the picture more clearly"? Or do you shake your head and wonder where therapy is headed? Always give yourself permission to ask your therapist his or her reasoning for any advice you are given. You want to grasp first hand why you should follow any advice.

That's very good advice! The critical point is not to lose your basic confidence in yourself as a rational, thinking person, just because you happen to be in therapy.

If you're seeking psychological help, you might feel very confused and burdened and uncertain due to your psychological problems. You're seeking help from a stranger. Your mind isn't working right, and you don't know how to fix the problem yourself. That's not going to bolster your confidence in your own judgment!

So you might be tempted to cede your authority to any half-way decent therapist you can find, on the assumption that he/she must know better than you. Or you might be reluctant to seek therapy at all, thinking that you'd have to cede your authority to that therapist.

That's a mistake. Unless you're delusional, you can judge whether your therapist seeks to help you live more rationally, more purposefully, more honestly, more independently, and so on. If not, then you need to seek a better therapist, using Dr. Kenner's advice. You can do that -- and you should do that.

In short, you should think of your therapist as you would think of a plumber, mechanic, or doctor. You're hiring the person because he/she has expertise that you lack -- not because you're a moron. You need to be sure to choose the person wisely, based on reasonable criteria. Then you need to judge the quality of their work, seeking someone better if you're not satisfied. If you do that, you can find yourself a good therapist.

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What you WON'T Know Can Kill You

There's something I don't quite understand about the claim in certain studies that much of the healthcare Americans receive "provides little or no real benefit." What I don't understand is -- what do people expect to observe under a regulatory scheme the aim of which is to encourage more doctor's visits?

Isn't true that, since the advent of laws and regulations establishing tax-free health insurance benefits from employers, Medicare, and Medicaid, people have simply made more visits to doctors? Isn't it one of things being touted in Massachusetts, at least in the early days after its coverage mandate, that people were getting to see doctors more? Isn't the goal of "universal coverage" to give people money to go see the doctor -- so that they'll go more often?

And isn't it the case that things that are cheap or free tend to get consumed in higher quantities?

So if policymakers make healthcare cheap or free -- or seemingly so -- wouldn't you think that the resulting extra doctors' visits are made when there really isn't too much for a doctor to fix? Wouldn't that tend to make healthcare under such a system less likely provide any real benefit? I mean, if you're running to the doctor every time you have a runny nose, how much benefit can such visits to the doctor provide?

Plus, how are you supposed to measure the "real benefit" of preventative care visits?

I'm not saying that the studies aren't valid. I'm not a statistician. I'm saying that these studies are trivial. You don't need a study to conclude that when something is free, people will tend to consume it even when they can't get very much "real benefit" out of it. All people have to do is take a brief and honest look at how their spending changes whenever the price of something goes down. But such elementary self-knowledge is apparently evaded en masse.

The real aim of such studies isn't to learn anything, it's to score political points. For though the studies may be trivial, they're being touted to pernicious effect. In response to such studies we observe no critical mass of policymakers making the sensible suggestion, which is to establish a free market in healthcare. In a free-market healthcare system, healthcare professionals would have to compete on price and healthcare consumers would have to do comparison shopping instead of mindlessly consuming healthcare products and services. Policymakers aren't finally admitting they need to deregulate healthcare. The "lesson" policymakers are taking from this "growing body of research" is: healthcare providers have to be regulated even more. They think we need more laws telling physicians what kinds of care will provide "real benefits," and that physicians and patients can't be allowed to decide, based on the facts of a given patient's case, what the appropriate treatment should be.

In other words, today's policymakers act as if the solution to low-benefit healthcare products and services is through strangling regulation to make those products and services even less beneficial. They are at once clamoring that people need to be given money to spend on a product -- and then taking that product off the market.

When private parties decide to forego a certain treatment, that's exercising their right to make decisions in their own lives. When the goverment decides someone should forego a certain treatment, even if they want it and someone else is willing to provide it -- that's mandatory rationing.

But you don't need studies to demonstrate the truth of this, either. Look north to Canada. Look back to the Soviet Union, and the queues of people lining up to buy worthless things because it was either buy those things or paper their walls with useless rubles. When you outlaw buying decisions based on price you end up with government rationing. All the proof needed is right in front of everyone's eyes, it's just as impossible to miss as a "church by daylight." (Thank you, Shakespeare.)

I guess what I'm failing to understand is what I've never understood -- why people are willing to evade facts even when such evasion is literally life-threatening.

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Two Funny Bits

Will Wilkinson on a comparison of self-reported happiness by state. His comments on the "culture-driven upward inflation" of reported happiness by Mormons are damn funny.

Wow, I'm glad that I don't live in this world: I'm Glad I'm a Boy! I'm Glad I'm a Girl! is a children's book on what boys do versus girls do in life, published in 1970. It's astonishing... and funny. (Someone told me that it's a satire, but I couldn't find anything suggesting that.)

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The Tweenbot Principle

Here's another example of what I'll call "the Tweenbot principle" in action:



The onlookers are downright thrilled to witness this unexpected, engaging, and benevolent performance -- and rightly so. As I said about the Tweenbots:

... many people are eager for some fresh novelty in their lives. They want to experience interesting things outside the ordinary humdrum of their daily tasks. To a benevolent person, such experiences brighten the mood. They make a day particularly memorable and pleasant. They highlight the simple joys of being a human creature living in a hospitable world.

I need to encapsulate the basic idea here into a single, brief sentence. Any suggestions?

(Via Richard Bramwell.)

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Tweenbots

Via Flibbertigibbet and The Crucible, I recently discovered the fabulous little experiment of the the tweenbots. Here's the basic idea, as described by its creator, Kacie Kinzer:

Tweenbots are human-dependent robots that navigate the city with the help of pedestrians they encounter. Rolling at a constant speed, in a straight line, Tweenbots have a destination displayed on a flag, and rely on people they meet to read this flag and to aim them in the right direction to reach their goal.

Given their extreme vulnerability, the vastness of city space, the dangers posed by traffic, suspicion of terrorism, and the possibility that no one would be interested in helping a lost little robot, I initially conceived the Tweenbots as disposable creatures which were more likely to struggle and die in the city than to reach their destination. Because I built them with minimal technology, I had no way of tracking the Tweenbot's progress, and so I set out on the first test with a video camera hidden in my purse. I placed the Tweenbot down on the sidewalk, and walked far enough away that I would not be observed as the Tweenbot--a smiling 10-inch tall cardboard missionary--bumped along towards his inevitable fate.

The results were unexpected. Over the course of the following months, throughout numerous missions, the Tweenbots were successful in rolling from their start point to their far-away destination assisted only by strangers. Every time the robot got caught under a park bench, ground futilely against a curb, or became trapped in a pothole, some passerby would always rescue it and send it toward its goal. Never once was a Tweenbot lost or damaged. Often, people would ignore the instructions to aim the Tweenbot in the "right" direction, if that direction meant sending the robot into a perilous situation. One man turned the robot back in the direction from which it had just come, saying out loud to the Tweenbot, "You can't go that way, it's toward the road."

The actual robots are quite adorable, so I definitely recommend checking out the pictures on the web site.

Regarding the significance of the experiment, Kendall writes:

There is an idea that I've heard repeated at various times in my life, that there is not enough charitable feeling in naturally "self-centered" man to be of meaningful help to those in need. When I respond that there is ample benevolence in man, and in a capitalist society, ample surplus of productive resource (time, money, etc) that we should not make it a forced duty to be charitable, but rather allow man's natural benevolence to take its course, most people tell me that resources have to be aggregated and centrally directed to be effective.

Kendall then observes that the tweenbot experiment shows the dismal view of man to be false. He's right.

I'd say something in addition, however. As Flibby's own hope to see a tweenbot illustrates, many people are eager for some fresh novelty in their lives. They want to experience interesting things outside the ordinary humdrum of their daily tasks. To a benevolent person, such experiences brighten the mood. They make a day particularly memorable and pleasant. They highlight the simple joys of being a human creature living in a hospitable world.

Many such experiences are mere happenstance -- yet a person can also seek them out for himself. He can visit places he's never seen, attend to the small features of his surroundings, and pause to consider bright spots therein. The happy little tweenbots offer much reward to people who do that. So to offer the tweenbots a little help in return seems like a very reasonable trade.

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How and Why Athletes Go Broke

The March 23, 2009 issue of Sports Illustrated features this interesting article entitled, "How (and Why) Athletes Go Broke".

One astonishing tidbit:

By the time they have been retired for two years, 78% of former NFL players have gone bankrupt or are under financial stress because of joblessness or divorce.

Within five years of retirement, an estimated 60% of former NBA players are broke

The article analyzes the psychology behind the bad decision-making and puts them into four main categories:

1. The Lure of the Tangible
2. Misplaced Trust
3. Family Matters
4. Great Expectations

As the article notes, many professional athletes are very similar to lottery winners in that they suddenly gain a great deal of money out of proportion to their life skills. Either they raise their life skills to match their money, or they lose money until their bank accounts are again proportionate to their life skills.

These athletes' stories also illustrate the following truth from Francisco D'Anconia's "money speech" in Atlas Shrugged:

...Money will not buy intelligence for the fool, or admiration for the coward, or respect for the incompetent. The man who attempts to purchase the brains of his superiors to serve him, with his money replacing his judgment, ends up by becoming the victim of his inferiors. The men of intelligence desert him, but the cheats and the frauds come flocking to him, drawn by a law which he has not discovered: that no man may be smaller than his money.

...Only the man who does not need it, is fit to inherit wealth -- the man who would make his own fortune no matter where he started. If an heir is equal to his money, it serves him; if not, it destroys him.

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Joss Wedon's Dollhouse

Joss Whedon really got my attention with his wonderful but sadly shortlived TV series Firefly and its related movie Serenity. So when I found the premiere episode of his Dollhouse series on Hulu last night, I was eager to check it out.



Quick review: I'm intrigued. Excellent production, solid acting, short skirts. And most important, a sci-fi premise that will make you think about the nature of personal identity. What if you could copy aspects of people from a library of personas to create an amalgam in a host, tailored for some particular application? Need someone who flies helicopters and has a doctorate in neurobiology? Coming right up -- but you'd better hope that the amalgam is stable and that none of the donors' psychological quirks mess things up before the mission is completed and the host is wiped clean again.

Which brings us to the hosts, the agents used in these missions. What would be their motivation for undertaking such a lifestyle? Who would volunteer to become a vessel forever filled and emptied by someone else? Sure, whatever horrible memories they've accumulated in life would be erased, which sounds appealing. And they would get to be and do an amazing variety of things -- presumably bringing about happiness and justice and so on. That's pretty cool, too.

But who are you, if not the sum of your choices and actions and experiences? And what is any of it worth to you if you have no knowledge of what "you" did?

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Post Mortem

I followed this political season more closely than I've followed any other. There's the narrative that this just wasn't the Republicans' year, the brand is too tarnished. There's the narrative that Obama is a cool customer, and the narrative that McCain squandered his honorable "maverick" brand. There's the it's-the-economy-stupid-redux narrative. There's the Obama's-shady-associations narrative.

What to make of these narratives? Which one is true?

None, I think. It's all euphemism. I think that every four years, but perhaps in this presidential election cycle in particular given Obama's historic candidacy, the American electorate trots out its metaphysical angst for all to see. And there's a big rush to put the just-so stories out there to cover it up.

The angst to which I refer? It's your garden variety can-I-cope-with-reality angst. American voters get the opportunity to choose which story they prefer to tell themselves about why the problem isn't within, but in the world they never made.

Some people tell themselves that someone is trying to take what they have, some "other." That other might be after their money, or after the spiritual values that they claim make them feel good about themselves. When they seek an answer to why their self-image is threatened, they look down at the threat from "below," from the people they consider beneath them in moral stature. These people run Right with the Republicans.

Some people tell themselves that others got unfair advantages, that those others have forced inequitable bargains on everyone else. When they seek an answer to why their life seems harder than they feel they deserve, they see the threat as coming from "above," from people who get to enjoy the high life because of the luck of the draw. These people run Left with the Democrats.

Both today's Left and Right are really two sides of the same coin. (Yes, I know, depressingly unoriginal observation, there.) They're both asking for the same thing -- they want the government to steal from someone and give to them what they feel themselves incapable of producing on their own. Those on the Right are looking for unearned moral status. Those on the Left are looking for unearned material wealth. Neither those on the Left nor on the Right realize that asking for the unearned is always a single problem, and that there's no real difference between them.

The Right needs to wash out its soul with soap and water. The Left needs to recognize the crook that looks back at them when they look in the mirror.

I sometimes despair of either side accepting that theirs alone is the responsibility for living and enjoying the good life.

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The Psychological Effects of Prostitution

Ari Armstrong recently published a defense of legal (but not moral) prostitution in the Rocky Mountain News: Should prostitution be legal?. It's a good analysis: I recommend reading it.

As a followup on the OBloggers mailing list, Paul posted the following commentary on prostitution from a former booking agent for a high-end escort service describing the destructive effects of prostitution on the women and the clients. It's fascinating, so I thought I'd repost it here:

"I've Seen My Share of Spitzers: The View From an Escort Service"

[About the men:]

.....But why would a rich, powerful and handsome man pay for extra-marital sex? Aren't there tons of women waiting to throw themselves at him for free? Yes, there are. But those women always want something: they want attention, intimacy and romance. They want to enjoy the high of sleeping with a powerful man. Escorts don't want or care about any of those things. At least one of the articles about the 22 year-old escort who slept with Spitzer implied that she didn't even know who he was. Based on my experience, I think it's highly unlikely that she knew or cared. She was in it for the money, and she had as much to hide as he did.

One high-powered New York attorney explained it to me like this: "Of course I love my wife. Escorts have nothing to do with that. She comes to my hotel room and I don't have to know her name, because they all use fake names like Amber and Kimberly. I don't have to worry about how she feels or what she wants. It's a simple exchange: I give her a thousand bucks, we have a good time for a couple of hours, she goes away and we never have to see each other again."

A thousand dollars is nothing for these men. Money has little value; because no matter how hard they try they will never be able to spend their hundreds of millions. And if you are about to say that for a thousand bucks those girls must supply the best sex in history, then you really do not understand this world. Because it is not about sex; it is about power. And the simple act of ordering up an anonymously pretty 22 year-old girl to do your bidding in the salubrious confines of a luxury hotel suite is an act of power.

[About the women:]

.....None of these girls was coerced into selling her body for money. Most of them came from middle-class backgrounds, and many had been accepted to universities. But they dropped out as soon as they discovered that they could make $20-30,000 a month as an escort.

Then they got addicted to the money and the lifestyle. And then one day, usually between the ages of 25 and 28, once they'd developed that knowing, experienced look that clients instinctively disliked, they found that themselves in a classic bind: they were addicted to high living but could no longer pay for it; they had no marketable skills; and years of late nights and lazy days had left them with no self-discipline. What to do? The really smart ones pulled themselves together and, with the help of a sympathetic client, started some kind of a business. Others married rich, cynical, older men in a sort of paid-wife arrangement. Those were the most common stories. I did not inquire into the fate of the girls who sort of faded away. I did not want to hear about their loneliness and poverty.

You can read the full essay here.

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IQ by Profession

I have no definite opinion of IQ tests. The simple bubble-type tests are too narrow in scope to be of much value, I suspect. Some years ago, I was given an individually-administered WAIS-III test. I was impressed with the wide range of cognitive skills that it tested. I've never made any serious study of the subject though.

So with that proviso, I offer the following fascinating graphs of IQ distributions of various professions. (Click to view the full-size version.)

Figure 11. Wisconsin Women's Henmon-Nelson IQ Distributions for 1992-94 Occupation Groups with 30 Cases or More

Figure 12. Wisconsin Men's Henmon-Nelson IQ Distributions for 1992-94 Occupation Groups with 30 Cases or More

(I originally found that on Neatorama, but it's actually from Hauser, Robert M. 2002. "Meritocracy, cognitive ability, and the sources of occupational success." CDE Working Paper 98-07 (rev). Center for Demography and Ecology, The University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, Wisconsin. The PDF from which the graphs are taken is available here.)

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