PAULA KRUGER: When it comes to taking care of forests devastated by flood or fire, Australia's land policies are decades ahead of the rest of the world.
But according to a major international study on the effects of natural disasters on the world's forests, there is still room for improvement.
Professor David Lindenmayer from the Centre of Resource and Environmental Studies at the ANU is one of the co-authors of the report.
DAVID LINDENMAYER: Humans tend to treat these massive natural disturbance events as something that needs to be cleaned up, whereas in fact what often happens is that the ecosystem is designed to be able to recover naturally from these sorts of things and what people don't realise is that in many cases these natural disturbance recovery processes are really badly impaired by our attempts to clean them up. We can actually put the system back up to 200 years by doing these things.
... Research in the wake of Kahneman and Tversky has unearthed a number of conundrums around choice. For one thing, choice can be ?de-motivating.? In a study conducted several years ago, shoppers who were offered free samples of six different jams were more likely to buy one than shoppers who were offered free samples of twenty-four.
... A central problem of choice is what Wilson and Gilbert call ?miswanting.? Wanting, in their definition, is ?a prediction of liking.? Predictions are often biased, and predictions of one?s feelings are more biased than most. Current preferences ?contaminate? future plans?so that, on weekly trips to the supermarket, customers who have just eaten tend to buy too little food, and hungry ones too much. You might try to draw on experience to help you choose, but your memories aren?t to be trusted. As Kahneman has shown, our minds focus on the peak and the final moments of a past experience while crowding out memories of its duration.
... What about the other approach?trying to choose less? In some measure, we all do this, using a strategy that the Columbia social theorist Jon Elster calls "self-binding." Like Ulysses lashing himself to the mast of his ship in order to prevent himself from succumbing to the Sirens? song, people make the choice of limiting their choices.
One important strain of human-environment geography in the middle of the last century was what my advisor calls "cultural ecology 2." Focusing on traditional third-world subsistence systems, CE2 researchers took a behavioralistic or decision-making approach. Their goal was to show how decisions by farmers, such as to practice slash-and-burn agriculture instead of building irrigation canals, were not due to a backward culture (as popularly believed), or due to a lack of knowledge of modern options (as argued by earlier social scientists), or dictated by the functional requirements of the human ecosystem (as suggested by cultural ecology 1). Instead, they were rational responses to conditions such as population pressure and the drudgery of labor. While the utility-maximizing assumptions of neoclassical economics don't hold for peasant societies, the general theme that rationality is paramount did.
Most CE2 research focused more on showing that the final decisions made by farmers conformed to the outcomes that would be dictated by a fully rational decision process than on explicating the actual reasoning used by the farmers. Undoubtedly the farmers would present their decision in a rational way. But does that mean that they actually carried out a proper decision procedure, fairly weighing all the options? The article quoted above suggests a modified viewpoint.
The role of tradition may be to preserve rational outcomes without requiring an unfeasibly rational decision process. Unlike self-binding, which is rationally chosen by an individual worried about her own ability to keep up her rationality, tradition is not deliberately chosen and operates at a social level. Traditional culture codifies certain outcomes as appropriate to certain circumstances, and provides a rationale for the decision maker to affirm. It tells you where to go and how to justify it, leaving you satisfied with your decision.
The problem is that tradition need not be fully rational to work. It can codify a suboptimal strategy so long as that strategy is not suicidal. In such a case, the acceptance of the traditional justification acts as a barrier to rationality, cutting off decision anxiety that would actually be useful in motivating a reconsideration of the chosen alternative.
Stentor Danielson, 14:13,
On The Other Hand ...
Kerry seems to be finally taking the right approach to the national security issue. It's not about who's a patriot. It's not about who did what during Vietnam. It's not about trying to "me too" the president's policies. It's about forcefully making the case that Bush is soft on defense, that his policies are not making Americans safer. Hopefully his focus groups stand firm.
Stentor Danielson, 13:15,
John F. Bush
More and more, I'm feeling like John Kerry is the Democrats' George W. Bush. For all the crying about this administration being run by right-wing ideologues, Bush is not particularly conservative. Neither has he capitulated to liberalism, as his conservative critics charge. Both arguments suffer from the assumption (perhaps inevitable in a two-party system) that if a policy runs counter to my ideology, it must conform to the other side's ideology. In reality, Bush's main ideology is to get and hold power.
In John Kerry there are echoes of the same philosophy. He's yet to meet a principle he wouldn't jettison if his focus groups told him the public wanted to hear something different. The parallel was really brought home to me by Terry M. Neal's summary of Bush's relations with the Log Cabin Republicans in 2000:
During the 2000 primary battle, Bush refused to meet with leaders of the Log Cabin Republicans, a gay political group, in Austin.
After effectively wrapping up the nomination, however, Bush's refusal to meet with gay leaders threatened to undermine his campaign theme of being a "uniter not a divider" and a "compassionate conservative."
By April 2000, the Bush campaign was shifting gears and knew there was more to gain than lose by meeting with gay leaders. After all, what were the social conservatives going to do, vote for Al Gore?
... Pragmatism -- the desire to take back the White House at all cost -- muted the discontent among the party faithful. The Bush campaign touted the meeting as a sign that he was a "new kind of Republican," even though he never wavered from positions such as opposition to same-sex marriage.
The meeting was summed up succinctly by Human Rights Campaign spokesman David Smith, whom I quoted afterward saying: "Politically, obviously, it's a win-win for him. He gets to look tolerant and moderate, and, at the same time, he can say to his ultraconservative followers that he has not changed any of his policy positions."
Compare this to Kerry's decision to attack Bush on his support for the Federal Marriage Amendment (which Bush, contrary to the explicit text of the FMA, claims wouldn't bar states from creating civil unions), then turn around and support an amendment to the Massachusetts constitution provided it allows for civil unions. Before we go on, you may want to check out Skeptical Notion for the background story and some outrage.
Let's plug Kerry in 2004 into Neal's storyline: Initial stance taking a firm position against the other side's views, in order to rev up the base? Check. Later position designed to reassure centrists that he's not an ideologue, trusting that the base has nowhere else to go? Check. "Win the White House at all costs" as a motivating philosophy? Check. Technically not ever changing his policy position (for Kerry, no to marriage and yes to civil unions)? Check.
Stentor Danielson, 13:00,
My latest post on Open Source Politics, discussing the Pennsylvania Senate race, is ready for your enjoyment.
Having talked mostly about the Republican candidates in the post, I thought I'd look around and see where the Democratic candidate, Joe Hoeffel, stands. On his website, he describes himself as a "deficit hawk on the budget" who wants to "eliminate corporate welfare" and says:
Joe works hard to promote fiscal restraint, balance the federal budget, pay down our national debt, reform education, improve international relations, protect the environment and expand health care.
So far, so good. He seems to be taking a Toomey-esque perspective on wise and responsible use of our nation's finances, without Toomey's commitment to shrinking government. Then I read a little further:
And Joe works hard to bring millions of federal dollars back to Pennsylvania. He’s secured new economic development projects; established a new public health center in his district; brought home millions of dollars in public transportation and public school teacher funding; established a new center for land use planning and sustainable growth at Temple University; and restored critical education funding to schools in his district.
For all his nice words, he's not above promising a big slab of pork. At least he'd have a tougher time getting it, being a rookie Senator and probably in the minority party.
On another topic, the League of Conservation Voters gives Hoeffel a 95% rating for 2003 (consistent with his past performance), with Specter clocking in at 32% (a little better than average for PA's congressional Republicans, and down substantially from past years when he hovered around 50% -- perhaps due to a desire to stand with President Bush last year in preparation for the election). Toomey gets an impressive 0%, though in past years he broke into the double digits.
Stentor Danielson, 12:33,
25.2.04
Upstate PA
I always thought of Pennsylvania as being more geographically balanced than the other states I've lived in. Wereas New York and Massachusetts are dominated by their major city with the rest of the state acting as a sort of hinterland, it seemed like Pennsylvania had important cities arranged around the perimeter -- Philly, Pittsburgh, Erie, Scranton-Wilkes-Barre, and the Lehigh Valley. But it appears that from a Philadelphian perspective the rest of PA is in fact "upstate."
A Google search shows about a third as many results for "upstate Pennsylvania" as for "upstate New York" -- quite a bit more than I would have expected after living in both places.
Stentor Danielson, 19:10,
Hopefully No Clarkies Read TAPPED
It seems that Nick Confessore has swiped the argument that I will made in the commentary to be published in tomorrow's Scarlet (and written it better than I did).
Maybe I can rationalize it like this: adhering too strongly to the demand for originality can send a genre (whether it be political commentary or a branch of academic research) off into the pursuit of edification rather than of knowledge -- finding interesting and brain-stretching ways of looking at things rather than building solid information. In some cases, such as the creative side of the humanities, that's entirely appropriate. But in other cases, there's something to be said for independent invention of a similar idea as being a test of its validity if something's true, it's more likely to occur to multiple people than any particular falsehood (consider for example the parallel achievements of Chayanov and Boserup). It's also more efficacious. If I came up with a totally original and insightful argument, perhaps a few dozen people would ever read it. Confessore is in a better position, writing for one of the top blogs and political magazines, but even so the readership of TAP and TAPPED are small potatoes in the grand scheme of things. But Confressore and I together reach more people. And so on for anyone else who comes to a similar conclusion.
Stentor Danielson, 11:18,
24.2.04
Yet Another Howard Dean Post-Mortem
A while back I wrote an article contrasting "Dean" -- the candidate -- with "Deanism" -- the movement -- suggesting that the candidate failed because he got too wrapped up in the movement. I made a mistake in drawing too sharp a distinction between the two, making the movement out to be something new and exogenous that caught the candidate.
One of the things I listed as attracting me (and others) to Dean was his stance on civil unions. In my article I described that as part of "Dean." But I think the history of Dean's involvement with the civil union battle in some ways foreshadowed his involvement with the movement over the past couple years. It was a proto-Deanism, if you will.
Dean didn't start out as a crusader for gay rights. The issue was largely off his radar screen until it was thrust upon him by the Vermont Supreme Court's ruling. At the time, Dean's own opinions about same-sex marriage were ambivalent. But after talking with people and thinking about the ramifications, he decided to take a chance and jump headfirst into the pro-union struggle. It was a risk -- to his career and even his life -- since many Vermonters were strongly against gay rights (and started a campaign to "take back" the state). As time went on, he identified more and more with the issue, to the point that today he never misses an opportunity to point to the civil unions bill as evidence that he believes in "equal rights for all."
Now think about his presidential campaign. Dean didn't start out as a populist. The possibility of leading a grassroots movement was largely off his radar screen, as well as Joe Trippi's, until it was thrust upon them by the interest of independent bloggers. After talking with people and thinking about the ramifications, he decided to take a chance and bank it all on the movement. It was a risk, since the netroots strategy had never been tried before and he lacked the usual party organization. As time went on, he identified more and more with the issue, until his campaign became a campaign about itself.
In both instances, something unexpected came along, and Dean took the risk of hitching his wagon to it. The civil unions gamble paid off, as he won reelection after signing the bill. The movement gamble didn't, as he tanked and screamed in Iowa and never recovered. I suspect my original analysis -- too much Deanism, not enough Dean -- remains accurate for the presidential campaign. He won the gubernatorial race by being about more than just civil unions, just as he might have had a shot at the presidency if he hadn't made the netroots the whole of his message.
Stentor Danielson, 20:25,
Much of the U.S. supply of ordinary crop seeds has become contaminated with strands of engineered DNA, suggesting that current methods for segregating gene-altered seed plants from traditional varieties are failing, according to a pilot study released yesterday.
More than two-thirds of 36 conventional corn, soy and canola seed batches contained traces of DNA from genetically engineered crop varieties in lab tests commissioned by the Union of Concerned Scientists, a Washington-based advocacy group.
... "We were not surprised by this report . . . knowing that pollen travels and commodity grains might commingle at various places and you may have some mixing in transport or storage," said Lisa Dry, communications director for the Biotechnology Industry Association.
Rather than pursue the unrealistic goal of trying to keep seeds completely free of genetic contaminants, she and other industry representatives said, the United States should work harder to get European and other nations -- many of which have balked at engineered crops and foods -- to be more accepting of the technology.
The industry response fails to address the issue. Whether or not Europeans accept GM food has nothing to do with how well we can keep track of where elements of our food supply come from. Heck, whether Americans accept GM food has nothing to do with it -- I personally have no qualms about eating GM food (particularly at the low level of "contamination" found in this study), but I'd like to know what it is I'm eating and that its origin can be traced.
I think Europeans, as well as skeptical Americans, would be more accepting of GM food if the GM industry seemed to be making active efforts to support a traceable food supply and access to food information, rather than obfuscating and blaming skeptics for caring. We could compare the situation to Iraq's WMD. We now know that Saddam had no WMDs, but the fact that he wasn't actively helpful in the search to verify that fact understandably raised suspicions among even doves like myself. Similarly, I think there would be more confidence in the claimed harmlessness of GM food if the GM companies were willing to let consumers make a clear and informed choice rather than telling us to stop worrying and eat whatever we're given.
Stentor Danielson, 13:45,
23.2.04
Bad Arguments For A Good Cause
I'm a staunch proponent of same-sex marriage, and I've made numerous posts arguing for it or demolishing arguments against it. However, there are some arguments made by my fellow proponents of same-sex marriage that I think are invalid. Perhaps they're efficacious in changing actual people's minds, but on a logical level I don't think they work, and I'd prefer if we stuck to our better arguments.
1. "The sanctity of marriage is already tarnished," or, "the Britney Spears argument." Since one of the main (and invalid) claims made by opponents of same-sex marriage is that it will damage the institution of marriage (both its structural strength and its sanctity), it's appealing to point out that marriage is not so strong and sacred even without homosexual couples. It's true that marriage today has deep problems. But that doesn't mean that if same-sex marriage is detrimental to marriage as a whole, there's no point in stopping it. Marriage is not a lost cause -- if it was, homosexuals wouldn't be so keen on getting in on it. It's theoretically possible that allowing same-sex marriage will make the situation worse, and if so there's nothing illogial about wanting to oppose that further deterioration. There are many intellectually consistent social conservatives who also oppose all the factors -- divorce, teen pregnancy, abusive relationships, and so forth -- that have weakened heterosexual marriage (and even if they didn't, the very existence of that possible stance is a rebuttal to the Britney Spears argument). They may not be so vocal about those other evils only because they're engaging in some triage and focusing for now on the battle they have a good shot at winning. Indeed, the very weakness of heterosexual marriage may be a reason to oppose homosexual marriage -- the latter could be shrugged off by a strong institution, but it could be the straw that breaks the camel's back today. The proper response to the sanctity of marriage argument is to take either my position that same-sex marriage will not damage marriage regardless of the state of that institution, or possibly the Volokh position that same-sex marriage will damage marriage but that it's a price we should be willing to pay.
2. "We'll regret this later," or, "the verdict of history argument." People claim that same-sex marriage will go the way of slavery or the divine right of kings -- an issue that, while heatedly debated in its day, is now a foregone conclusion. Opponents are asked whether they'd like to be remembered as the southern aristocrats trying to excuse an obvious injustice, or as the valiant abolitionists. This argument is appealing because it feeds the progressive notion that society is on a bumpy but long-term road to the left. I agree that chances are in 100 years society will accept homosexuality as a matter of course. However, I don't think that necessarily says anything about the rightness or wrongness of the practice. Why should we assume that society is becoming more morally astute as the years go by? I have no doubt that slavery is wrong, but for most of us our acceptance of that fact is out of cultural habit, just like acceptance of the reverse was cultural habit in the antebellum south. Also, on the empirical question, think about what happened when slavery was first instituted. The earliest societies had no slaves. At some point, the practice started up -- say 500 years ago for race-based slavery. At that time, proponents of slavery could made a verdict-of-history argument if they thought a few centuries into the future. Opponents could, if they were psychic, look to the turn of the millennium and make a verdict-of-history argument for their side. Perhaps proponents could see some time in our future when slavery becomes acceptable yet again. It's dangerous to assume that history will close any question for good.
Stentor Danielson, 14:11,
"We're worried for our children and grandchildren," said Rea, a Kayabi Indian woman. "Our Xingu is an island, and if the white man enters with his machines, he'll break it all down in no time."
Xingu is Brazil's oldest and probably its most successful Indian reservation, a 10,800-square-mile sprawl of pristine rainforest where 14 Indian tribes live.
Kuiussi, the Suya Indians' chief, wearing a skimpy swimsuit, warned visitors not to take pictures of Indians wearing Western clothes.
"If people see the pictures, they'll say we're not Indians -- that we're mixed [race] -- and that's not true," he said. "We are all Indians here."
Kuiussi's concern illustrates an interesting point about the rhetoric that's used to bolster the claims of indigenous people. An element of the argument for indigenous rights often rests on a claim of the superiority of indigenous culture -- that it's more attuned to the environment and people's welfare, unlike the cold and greedy modern western culture. Furthermore, indigenous culture is framed as primal, unchanging (like their claim to the land) since time immemorial and rooted in tradition. This is a powerful claim in the ears of many non-indigenous people. But it creates a vulnerability when it manifestly conflicts with reality. It gives a political tinge to factual disputes over scientific findings such as migration histories and megafaunal extinction. And it also arises when traditional ways change -- Kuiussi wearing a swimsuit, US tribes jumping into the capitalist system through casinos and tax-free shops. If they're going to act like us, the thinking goes, why should they get special privileges? I'll admit to thinking this way some years ago (though not any longer) -- that the purpose of Indian reservations was to allow Indians to continue their traditional way of life, and that if they didn't do that, then they could enter mainstream society as regular Americans, without any claim to land or sovereignty. The issue is reinforced by traditionalists within the indigenous community, who talk of youth as in some way selling out their heritage and identity by adopting Western ways.
There are a host of endogenous concerns about cultural change for a less powerful culture -- about the value of difference and heritage and about the intrinsic value of the particular cultures and political-economic systems in question. Kuiussi's comment illustrates an exogenous concern, about the way that cultural change could alter a group's ability to claim its rights against more powerful groups.
Stentor Danielson, 13:59,
The Legalize Ralph Nader Party
I was always suspicious of the sincerity of Ralph Nader's argument in 2000 that we should vote for him in order to boost the standing of the Green Party. After all, he wasn't even a member of the party (though that didn't change the actual efficacy of a Nader-for-the-sake-of-the-Greens vote). But apparently he didn't get the memo that this year he's running as an independent, i.e., without the backing of any party:
"Let me say, this is going to be difficult," said Nader, who planned a round of interviews after his announcement. "This isn’t just our fight. This is a fight for all third parties ... They want to have a chance to compete. This is not a democracy that can be controlled by two parties in the grip of corporate interests."
Third party candidacies have been a greater part of presidential politics in recent years; businessman Ross Perot twice ran for president, winning 19 percent of the vote in his first try in 1988 against George Herbert Walker Bush and Michael Dukakis.
The reporter makes the same mistake. The facts about Perot could easily be related under the rubric of "non-major party candidates."
Stentor Danielson, 10:35,
debitage 
After The Fire
