This Orange

While posting on the great seduction I had an insight. I was eating an orange. Now does it matter more whether I like the orange or whether it is generally acknowledged that oranges of such quality are delicious. What would Kant say?

WIP - The historical morphology of small urban settlements

The historical morphology of small urban settlements.

Are there parallells between the morphology of the 5-10,000 person first-cities of the neolithic period and the 10,000 person rural city of the 1950 or 1960's? The early americas?

Do Shepherds/Farmers live in either location? If so, how do they access the land? How are their domiciles distributed around the center of the settlement. How does this pattern of distribution differ from other specialists.



inspiration:

http://viking.som.yale.edu/will/finciv/chapter1.htm

other sources:

Early colonial records, laws of the indies

Counting backwards makes my face melt.

Murray is at it again. Quick synopsis - Black people can't count backwards so America should enact apartheid laws. (Come on, that was fair!)

My basic beef is that people need to come to terms with the difference between what is true and what is germaine. For example it is perhaps true that recent research has identified clustres of genetic variables that corellate closely with traditional concepts of race (I understand one of these is skin color, SHOCKING!). On the other hand it is germaine that Charles Murray has been waiting for about a decade on research trends to rehabilitate his reputation as a serious social scientist. Oh to be right as often as a clock that has stopped running!

I'm not a geneticist and I won't pretend to be. My interest in genetics is very much of the arm chair variety. The comfortable sleep-inducing arm-chair variety. Pschometrics likewise. I won't argue that perhaps as a Black man it can be demonstrated I am less proficient than counting backwards than Mr. Ed the brown horse that 'acts white'. How we get from any of this to the idea that any efforts to improve my situation are either a waste of time -or worse- the downfall of western civilization is a bit of a puzzle still.

A few thoughts:

1) If Charles Murray pops off about race and I take the bait doesn't that technically make Mr. Murray a race-baiter?

The part played by racism in creating different outcomes in black and white poverty, crime and illegitimacy is not the raw disparity we observe but what remains after controlling for group characteristics. For some outcomes, sex or race differences nearly disappear after a proper analysis is done. For others, a large residual difference remains. In either case, open discussion of group differences would give us a better grasp on where to look for causes and solutions.

Umm... so once we get past sterile tests like counting backwards how do we define a large residual? How well does counting backwards correlate with social acheivement anyway? Do poor White Barbadians really count backwards better than Rich Black ones? I for one refuse to believe it!


2) If black people were prevented from major league professional baseball in 1947 and as a result only of a special preference conferred on Jackie Robinson by Branch Ricky we dicovered that infact black people can compete at baseball along with white people is fair to say that the part played by racism in creating different outcomes in black and white baseball was not the raw disparity we observe but what remains after controlling for group characteristics.

3) As social taboos go I would rank suggesting Black people aren't as smart as White People slighly less acceptable than putting ones elbows on the dinner table. I've heard that certain White men were made very frustrated by the outrage of politically correct hordes. Two or three nearly shed a tear in self-pity. The observation that a good career can be made of breaking this taboo is surely small compensation, call the Red-Cross dammit!

4) What could it possibly mean to say that Italians are more vivacious than Scottish people. That statement is an intellectual void. Its only possible justification is as a weak palliative to coax down the central idea that Black People and their lying patrons should accept that White Men are the smartest.

5) Is the capacity to opine that the overrepresentation of Black people in governement may explain government inefficiency or that Arabs may not be wired for democracy more positively correlated with g-loading or with bs-loading? Is it likely in any universe more complex than a game of checkers that these factors have any thing but an infinitesimal effect on socio-political trends? Is it likely in any context except a game of checkers that this pathbreaking research will not be employed to reinforce sterotypes and social barriers?

6) Charles Murray is correct to observe that taboo's have consequences. For example assumption that black men should be given an equal opportunity with everyone else may be have inadvertently caused their unemployment rate to be only about double that of the average. Certainly the taboo against child exploitation has actually increased the childhood unemployment rate. What is it with all of these taboos anyway?

7) It would be nice if there was no taboo agaist Mr. Murray just getting to his point: Instead of dumbing down the workforce by giving inferior races civil service jobs - wouldn't America be much better off by enforcing strict misegination laws to avoid further polluting the White Race? I think we should start by outlawing all these abominable intermarriages between Scots and Italians.

8) If your so smart could you devote some of your immense frontal lobe capacity to curing some disease instead of pissing me off?

Charles Murray
Bell Curve

Where are the denounciations from Republicans?

Of all the things that afflict young Black men in America the one that is most damaging is the inability to trust anyone. Many lives go down the tubes simply becasue youngsters cant help but pick the devil they know when given the alternative of putting faith in someone they can't idntify with, particularly with an authority. Anyone can be the target of this mistrust but it is mostly directed towards Caucasian men. Why? Afterall aren't all of our problems in the past. Why can't these young people, who have it way better than their counterparts 50-years ago just get with the program? Why?

Well, as long as the political party that produces people like Bill Bennett is in power we're not getting far on this one.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/29/AR2005092902126.html

Would it have killed a national Republican to get out on front on this one? The silence speaks volumes.

Ms. Wax Wants You to Behave Yourself

Although Ms. Wax is quite certain that the problem in the poor neighborhoods is irresponsible behavior she doesn't seem to have any idea what to actually do about it. If her conclusion is not to let them rot, she should do a better job of explaining it. If government programs are inadequate solutions hand waving is no solution at all.

It seems to have escaped Ms. Wax's consciousness that the correlation between the antisocial behavior in a neighborhood and the economic prospects in that neighborhood is very much a two way street.

Bourgeois values as Ms. Wax calls them don't just appear out of thin air. They are taught by example just as antisocial behavior is taught by example. Unfortunately, the economic glue that once bound middle class families to what have become blighted areas eroded decades ago. Now that many neighborhoods have been long abandoned by the middle class, the positive examples are absent. As long as the better-off take every opportunity to put run, gate off, or privatize away their interaction with poorer Americans, complaints that there is a disconnect in social values are hypocritical. In the absence of an upper class that is broadly willing to do do more than moralize, a social safety net is essential.

Obviously generational dependence on the safety net is deplorable. At the same time its absence has dire public consequences. Witness Iraq. Witness New Orleans. The safety net may rub conservatives the wrong way but take it away and you have chaos.

The conservatively minded hand-wringing about the attitudes of elites, the media, and opinion leaders the is the right wing equivalent of sitting around a tree and singing "Kumbaya." In reality, the urban poor pay virtually no attention to any off these groups. That is an example that the conservative intellectual might follow.

Incompetence

I am sure honest people are making honest mistakes but there is no other word to describe the delays in helping the people in new orleans. Check out Brad De Long's numerous posts.

Making America Stupid Part IV : Eureka!

I had a Eureka moment about an experiment that could go along way in the intelligent desing debate.

It would be a model of evolution based on some kind of genetic algorithm. Kind of a simulated genome project in reverse.

1. There would be a 2D world with a third dimension for time
2. Y=0 is the floor although the floor may have random contours.
3. most interaction based on some subset of Newtonian Physics.
4. No two objects can occupy the same space (No Ghosts).
5. The world would be divided into four regions with short windows for movement between regions.
6. There would be one starter organism that would exist in all of the regions at time=zero. This would be a cell (a circle).
7. The circle can sub divide to reproduce (assuming there is enough area.)
8. The circle can roll to move.
9. Both these take energy.
9b There is a fixed probability an organism will move or reproduce.
10. All cells have identical mass density.
11. Energy comes from the sun.
12. Sunlight would radiate from Y=infinity to Y = zero.
13. It would be on for 12 hours and off for 12 hours.
14. The starter organism would get energy proportional to the amount of its circumference exposed to the sun.
15. Another way to get energy is to eat something
16. Eating is simple subtraction, the cell with more energy is the winner.
17. Energy can then be absorbed up to constant * E=mc^2.
18. The energy is transfered cell to cell the food cell then dies.
19 Any cell/organism that uses more energy than it is takingin or has stored dies. (cells can kill them selves by reproducing or moving.


19. During reproduction/cell growth there is a base .1 percent chance that a mutation occurs. There are a limited number of mutations allowed. For example:

A subdivided organism stays attached to the parent (cellular growth no eating)
A reproduced organism/cell can convert energy into mass at constant*E=mc^2
A subdivided cell retains identity relationship without attachment (bodily fluid)
A reproduced organism/cell stores energy
A reproduced cell can pass its energy to adjacent cells
A reproduced organism/cell can expand (a loss of energy, loss of momentum)
A reproduced organism/cell can contract (a gain of energy, absorbs momentum)
A reproduced organism/cell can become slighty eliptical (expansion/contraction on one diameter).
A reproduced cell remembers sequences of its parents actions (roll, expand, contract, store energy, pass energy, suck energy, reproduce, and the time intervals between them).
This memory can be mixed up or turned off.
The rate of mutation can change.

All multi cell organisms have basic memory so that they reproduce one cell then that cells grows new cells in the same order as the parent.

Any cell that uses more energy than it is taking in from the sun or has stored dies. Dead cells fall to the floor. Every time all life dies we get a new starter organism.

Dead cells store energy at E=mc^2. The mass has a "half-life" of one day.

This would take some kind of state engine and then a tool to take snap shots of the state of the world so it can be presented graphically.


There are a few eveloutionary benchmarks to look out for.

1. viable movement (moving without dying)
2. reproduction of a multicelled organism
3. movement of a multi celled organism.