Month: July 2010

Christopher Ryan and Cacilda Jethá continue to plug their book on the evolution of human sexuality. On infidelity:

With the caveat that every situation is different, one factor we think deserves more attention is the role of testosterone (T) in middle-aged men’s eroticism. In their twenties, men’s T levels begin a long decline, often experienced as diminished passion and appetite for life. Suppressed T levels are associated with depression, heart attacks, dementia, and overall mortality rates from 88 to 250 percent higher. One of the few things that can reliably and immediately revive a man’s sagging testosterone is exposure to a new woman. One researcher found that even a brief chat with an attractive woman raised men’s testosterone levels by fourteen percent within minutes. In Sex at Dawn, we suggest that many men may be confusing the hormonal changes triggered by an affair with actual “love,” thus leading them to make ill-advised decisions catastrophic to their families, their marriages, and eventually themselves.

Clay Shirky explains it:

It's biologically ingrained:

The tendency to believe vague statements designed to appeal to just about anyone is called the Forer Effect, and psychologists point to this phenomenon to explain why people fall for pseudoscience like biorhythms, iridology and phrenology or mysticism like astrology, numerology and tarot cards.

The Forer Effect is part of larger phenomenon psychologists refer to as subjective validation, which is a fancy way of saying you are far more vulnerable to suggestion when the subject of the conversation is you.

Rory Sutherland is mostly on point:

 If Homelessness Were Genetic

by Sean Spence.

If homelessness were genetic,
Institutes would be constructed
With tall white walls,
And ‘driven’ people (with thick glasses)
Would congregate
In libraries

And mumble.

If homelessness were genetic
Bright young things
Would draft manifestos
‘To crack the problem’,

Girls with braces on their teeth
Would stoop to kiss
Boys with dandruff
At Unit discos

While dancing (slowly)
To ‘Careless Whisper’.

Meanwhile, upstairs, in the offices
Secretaries in long white coats
And horn-rimmed spectacles,
Carrying clipboards,
Would cross their legs
And take dictation:

  ‘Miss Brown, a memo please,
  To the eminent Professor Levchenko,
  “Many thanks indeed
  For all those sachets you sent to me,
  Of homeless toddlers’ teeth.”’

If homelessness were genetic
Rats from broken homes
Would sleep in cardboard shoeboxes
Evading violent fathers,
Who broke their bones,
While small white mice
With cocaine habits
Would huddle in fear,
Sleeping in doorways,
Receiving calibrated kicks from gangs of passers-by

(A ‘geneenvironment interaction’).

If homelessness were genetic
Then the limping man, with swollen feet,
A fever,
And the voices crying out within his brain
Would not traipse
Between surgery and casualty
Being turned away
For being roofless

Because, of course,
Homelessness would be genetic

And, therefore,
‘Interesting’.

(Photo: Spencer Platt/Getty.)

Scott Adams coins a new one:

Suppose we define a creature to have consciousness and free will if it demonstrates the ability to use the external world to reprogram its own brain toward specific ends. By this definition, reading a book in order to change one's mood or gain data would be an example of both consciousness and free will. But a monkey using a stick as a tool to get bugs would be nothing more than eating. The monkey is not trying to become a smarter or happier monkey; he's just feeding his body.

The Dish is actually going to take a brief breather this holiday weekend. But one small program note on this day, given the media debates of the last few weeks.

I believe the blogosphere first truly gained traction in America for a good reason. There is something about blogging's freedom from the constraints of conventional journalism that captures an American ideal: civic engagement totally free of anyone else's influence. It is an ideal of a fourth estate hostile to authorities public and private, suspicious of conventional wisdom, and, above all, confident, even when confidence seems absurd, in the power of the word and the argument to make a difference … in the end. The rise of this type of citizen journalism has, in my view, increasingly exposed some of the laziness and corruption in the professional version – even as there is still a huge amount to treasure and value in the legacy media, and a huge amount of partisan, mendacious claptrap on the blogs.

But what distinguishes the best of the new media is what could still be recaptured by the old: the mischievous spirit of journalism and free, unfettered inquiry. Journalism has gotten too pompous, too affluent, too self-loving, and too entwined with the establishment of both wings of American politics to be what we need it to be.

We need it to be fearless and obnoxious, out of a conviction that more speech, however much vulgarity and nonsense it creates, is always better than less speech. In America, this is a liberal spirit in the grandest sense of that word – but also a conservative one, since retaining that rebelliousness is tending to an ancient American tradition, from the Founders onward. 

And so, if this is not too tea-partyish, some words of inspiration and admonition on today of all days:

"The most effectual engines for [pacifying a nation] are the public papers… [A despotic] government always [keeps] a kind of standing army of newswriters who, without any regard to truth or to what should be like truth, [invent] and put into the papers whatever might serve the ministers. This suffices with the mass of the people who have no means of distinguishing the false from the true paragraphs of a newspaper," — Thomas Jefferson to G. K. van Hogendorp, Oct. 13, 1785.

"No experiment can be more interesting than that we are now trying, and which we trust will end in establishing the fact, that man may be governed by reason and truth. Our first object should therefore be, to leave open to him all the avenues to truth. The most effectual hitherto found, is the freedom of the press. It is, therefore, the first shut up by those who fear the investigation of their actions." – Thomas Jefferson to John Tyler, 1804.

"I think an editor should be independent, that is, of personal influence, and not be moved from his opinions on the mere authority of any individual. But, with respect to the general opinion of the political section with which he habitually accords, his duty seems very like that of a member of Congress. Some of these indeed think that independence requires them to follow always their own opinion, without respect for that of others. This has never been my opinion, nor my practice, when I have been of that or any other body. Differing on a particular question from those whom I knew to be of the same political principles with myself, and with whom I generally thought and acted, a consciousness of the fallibility of the human mind, and of my own in particular, with a respect for the accumulated judgment of my friends, has induced me to suspect erroneous impressions in myself, to suppose my own opinion wrong, and to act with them on theirs." –Thomas Jefferson to William Duane, 1811.

Here at the Dish, we try and we fail at this every day. But we have never for a second doubted the imperative of this complicated, difficult and exhilarating task.

The American imperative.

Morgan Meis re-reads the Declaration of Independence.

Texas In Africa keeps up the drumbeat against "good intentions are enough" bills:

Why on earth do advocates think that passing legislation in the United States will end violence in Africa?

In the case of the conflict minerals legislation, the idea is that violence in the [Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC)] can be mitigated by creating an auditing and certification system for the mineral supply chains. I've already explained at length why I think this won't work; the complexity of the mineral trade in the eastern DRC and the lack of accountable political institutions that can enforce auditing and certification systems make it an exercise in futility. In addition, as we've discussed ad nauseum, ad infinitum, the mineral trade is not the root cause of violence in the eastern DRC. What's happening there is not a resource war, and it never has been. Regulating the supply chains and pressuring electronics companies not to use DRC minerals will not solve the disputes over land and citizenship that predate the wars and the Rwandan genocide and that continue to drive violence today.

A guide:

Weight is linked to importance, so that people carrying heavy objects deem interview candidates as more serious and social problems as more pressing. Texture is linked to difficulty and harshness. Touching rough sandpaper makes social interactions seem more adversarial, while smooth wood makes them seem friendlier. Finally, hardness is associated with rigidity and stability. When sitting on a hard chair, negotiators take tougher stances but if they sit on a soft one instead, they become more flexible.

These influences are not trivial – they can sway how people react in important ways, including how much money they part with, how cooperative they are with strangers, or how they judge an interview candidate.