Month: August 2009

by Robert Wright

My contention that religious impulses are unlikely to be biological “adaptations” has failed to overawe some readers. I had said that religion in hunter-gatherer societies tends not to focus on moral behavior—there’s not much discouragement of theft, lying, etc.—so it’s not clear how religion in the hunter-gatherer era would have had the socially cohesive effect that “adapationist” arguments tend to presuppose.

One reader wrote: 

It seems to me that there is a pretty deep chasm between hunter-gatherer social patterns and incentives, and those of sedentary, agriculturally-based societies. 

There is indeed. Agrarian societies are bigger and more complex and so have a bigger challenge maintaining social order. And religion in such societies does often address this challenge. Just look at these examples from the chiefdoms of Polynesia. 

The trouble is that the context of the biological evolution of human nature seems to have been hunter-gatherer societies. And certainly all the anthropological evidence suggests that religion had emerged in hunter-gatherer times, before the invention of agriculture. So I attribute the moral character of agrarian religion to cultural evolution, not biological evolution. 

Another reader wrote that my view 

presupposes that the cohesive effect religion has on society comes from its content. That is insufficiently imaginative. The behavioral evidence suggests that human moral impulses are largely tribal. Those in my tribe get special forms of treatment and consideration that those outside my tribe do not. Expand my definition of who is in my tribe, and you expand the number of persons I give that special treatment to, treatment that makes highly adaptive practices like cooperation and commerce easier.  Early religions, even early religions without moral content, may have facilitated the expansion of what counted as one’s tribe.  A narrow definition of tribe meaning (crudely) “those who grew up in my village” gives way to an expanded version of tribe meaning “those who live as I do”, which gives way to a further expanded definition meaning “those who worship the god(s) I do”. If we are already roughly disposed to be nicer to people in our tribe, a religion doesn’t have to instruct us to do so.  It only has to facilitate viewing more and more people as qualifying for the preferential treatment.  In that way, the spread of even an amoral religion would also spread cooperation, commerce, and mutual alliances against outsiders, with all the adaptive benefits those things bring to early societies.

This reader has something in common with the other reader! Again, this posited function of religion wouldn’t seem to apply to hunter-gatherer societies. And the reason isn’t just that “tribe,” as a technical anthropological term, generally implies an agrarian level of social organization. It’s that most observed hunter-gatherer peoples haven’t attained cohesive large-scale social organization. The exceptions—such as the Native Americans of Northwestern North America—seem (judging by archaeological evidence) to represent a fairly recent cultural development, too recent to have played a big role in human evolution.  

by Chris Bodenner

“I don’t believe terrorists are super human. They are no more dangerous than the Crips and the Bloods," – Michigan state Rep. Jeff Mayes (D).

"If anybody did escape, they'd have a surprise. We're a community of hunters. Just about everybody has guns," – Standish City Manager Mike Moran.

A reader writes:

I just spent the day at the VA Hospital in Palo Alto, CA, with my father in-law.  He went to file his change of address since he just moved into its service area, and he hoped, while he was there, to get his monthly vitamin B-12 shot. The facility is new and beautiful, the staff, for the most part courteous and professional (there was one lady in the Urgent Care department who, my father in-law said, "Had the personality of dried dog shit"). His registration took about 45 minutes, and he was able to get an appointment that afternoon to get his shot. His appointment was for 1:20; his name was called at 1:33. He was done by 1:50, and we were out of there by 2:00.

There were two sides to the waiting room, both with huge LCD tvs. On one they showed General Hospital. On the other was Fox News, and the two major stories were the plane crash in New York, and the Health Care debate, centering on both the Pelosi/Hoyer calling the protestors "Un-American," and then Neil Cavuto's guests railing against "government-run health care" and "death Panels." The text on the screen kept referring to "Governor Palin," as if she'd never resigned, and quoted her at length on the "evils" of government-run healthcare. The juxtoposition could not be more stark, and I found myself wondering if the staff there kept it on Fox News to purposely create cognitive dissonance as some sort of research project.

Also, there were informational pamphlets available, including one titled "About Advance Medical Directives." Presumably, this is the "death panel" we've been warned about. Members of this panel apparently include "Family and Friends, your physician, clergy, your lawyer."

by Chris Bodenner

A reader writes:

I found myself shocked by several things this morning when I read Chris’ post on detainee transfer to Ft. Leavenworth, Kansas. First was the reference to “heartland”. “Heart of America” and “Heartland” have been regularly used by Kansas Citians to describe their metropolitan area. I was surprised that Chris, being from Tonganoxie, was unaware of that. Having grown up in the Kansas City area, I have a difficult time believing that when Parkinson says “Heartland” that he is speaking in GOP code of “real America” vs. the other America. Clearly Governor Parkinson should have chosen his language much more carefully because he used insider language, but it sounds unintentional to me.

He is, however, correct that Kansas has a national image problem. Kansas City has long been known as one of the best kept secrets in the country, and a wonderfully cosmopolitan city, but half of the city lies in a state in which the state school board has gone back and forth about whether or not to allow evolution to be taught in public schools. Having lived across the country in adulthood, Kansas is mostly an unknown commodity known for the Wizard of Oz, Cowboys and Indians, for the bestseller “What’s the Matter with Kansas” and for the state school board’s decisions.

If the “Heartland” comment had been in a Tongie town-hall meeting and not a national press release, I think the reader would have a stronger point. I don’t think Parkinson was deliberately using “Real America” code, but invoking state loyalties on issues of national security – he admits Gitmo harms the US, after all – just sounds unseemly.

I can understand why Parkinson – whose foremost responsibility is to his state – wants to play it safe on the detainee issue. Perhaps he should. And to his credit, he hasn’t used the fearful rhetoric of his Republican counterparts. But I don’t understand how crying NIMBY puts Kansas in a positive light, or how taking on detainees would be a stigma. To me, and many Kansans, it would be a point of pride, and a key role in the war on terrorism. Leavenworth has been a prison town for 150 years, and its four major prisons have held some of the country’s worst criminals (including Islamic terrorists convicted of killing Americans). The 705 MP Battalion stationed at Fort Leavenworth is the Army’s elite detention unit.  So to say that Leavenworth can’t handle these detainees strikes me as condescending.

by Patrick Appel

DiA pulls tells pot smokers to stop toking up to help end the drug war in Mexico:

I'm not a smoker, but this isn't a very convincing argument. I'm with this Economist reader:

Economics is as much the study of incentives as scarcity. Why propose a solution that comes with no incentive (except the avoidance of moral guilt — because that works so well)? We know a voluntary relinquishing of bongs will not be forthcoming, and most reasonable people have already happened upon a straight-forward, if not perfect, solution: legalization.

I tried to find how much American marijuana comes from Mexico and came up empty. Here are the most recent statistics on international pot production I could find (If anyone has better numbers, e-mail and I'll update the post):

Worldwide production for 2006, the latest year for which figures are available, was around 41,400 metric tons, said the U.N.'s World Drug Report 2008. A metric ton equals 2,205 pounds. Mexico produced 7,400 metric tons, while the United States cultivated 4,700 metric tons, the U.N. report said.

We grow an awful lot of pot ourselves, so I'm not convinced that the "odds are you are helping to finance a particularly vicious and rapacious industry." DrugScience.org rounds up the data on annual marijuana consumption in America:

If the 14,000 metric tons number is correct, then most pot smoked in America does come from abroad, but that doesn't prove that over half of our marijuana comes from Mexico. Almost 100 percent of their crop would have to come here for that to be true.

by Chris Bodenner

Patrick covered Frum's "crunchy con" take on Pollan, but I think this excerpt of Frum's is also worth highlighting:

[O]besity – and especially child obesity – is at least as proper a subject of government concern from a conservative point of view as single parenthood. Conservatives correctly realize that a society with a lot of single parents will require a bigger welfare state. Since conservatives prefer a smaller welfare state, conservatives have a stake in sustainable family patterns. Yet obesity also creates a demand for government programs, even more directly and expensive than the costs of single parenthood. Here’s a paper from the Texas Department of Human Services that estimates that Type 2 diabetes accounts for 9% of the state’s Medicaid budget, about $192 million per year. If diabetes continues to increase at the current trend line, by 2030 the disease will consume somewhere between 13% and 20% of the state’s Medicaid budget.

The policy response to this crisis is not obvious. And yet there are some immediate steps that make sense. State governments should ban soda machines from schools. Local governments should adopt zoning ordinances that prevent the siting of fast-food restaurants within 1000 yards of schools. (Research suggests that the near presence of a fast-food restaurant causes a 5% increase in student obesity.) Impose a steep excise tax on high-fructose corn syrup.

His words remind me of an excellent point that Matt Steinglass made recently:

The deeper point is that Megan’s argument is broadly that obesity is one’s own personal business and no one else has any business interfering in it. There is, however, a class of relationships in which everyone, even libertarians, understands that “it’s none of your business” does not apply, and that is the relationship of a society towards its children. This is true at the personal level — it is my business if the rest of society is doing things that will tend to make my children fat — and at the collective level — it is all of our business if we are doing things that make our children fat, because we are responsible for them.

by Patrick Appel

This morning's damning profile of psychologists Jim Mitchell and Bruce Jessen tells us much that we already knew about the practice of learned helplessness in CIA interrogation. But this disclosure is new and disturbing:

[Dr. Mitchell and Dr. Jessen] were paid $1,000 to $2,000 a day apiece, one official said…The company’s C.I.A. contracts are classified, but their total was well into the millions of dollars. In 2007 in a suburb of Tampa, Fla., Dr. Mitchell built a house with a swimming pool, now valued at $800,000.

by Robert Wright

OK, I finally broke down and got an iPhone. After 3.5 years, my Treo 650 was approaching eligibility for the Smithsonian, and, as an AT&T customer, I can’t easily try Sprint’s Palm Pre (the latest aspiring iPhone killer) for another five months. 

The iPhone is great in a million ways, and its functional power is unrivaled, but, speaking of function: Steve Jobs does have a tendency to occasionally subordinate functional elegance to visual elegance. 

The iPhone is really sleek, and one reason is that those buttons on the side are almost invisibly tiny. Which is also the reason you fumble awkwardly for them—e.g., for the all-important volume control—when you’re taking a walk at night. Another source of sleekness is the phone’s thinness—which also makes the phone feel less secure in your hand, and presumably leaves less room for batteries. 

What’s frustrating  about all this is that Jobs is so clearly a master of functionality; unlike lapses in functional design committed by a company that shall remain nameless, Apple’s lapses seem invariably intentional—sacrifices consciously made for the sake of aesthetic coolness. And, hey, this approach seems to work commercially; apparently beauty matters. But if all consumers were like me—just about numb to aesthetics, unless liking chocolate counts as aesthetic appreciation—things would be different. What a beautiful world that would be…    

by Chris Bodenner

Physician George Lundberg outlines several ways the US can cut healthcare costs "RIGHT NOW."

4. Screening mammography in women under 50 who have no clinical indication should be stopped and for those over 50 sharply curtailed, since it now seems to lead to at least as much harm as good. More billions saved.

5. CAT scans and MRIs are impressive art forms and can be useful clinically. However, their use is unnecessary much of the time to guide correct therapeutic decisions. Such expensive diagnostic tests should not be paid for on a case by case basis but grouped along with other diagnostic tests, by some capitated or packaged method that is use-neutral. More billions saved.

(Hat tip: KHN's Kate Steadman)