Puzzles In Choice Judgmentalism: The "Consistency" Model Versus The "Budget" Model

There was a commentroversy in the NYT recently over whether it matters that decaf coffee may have small amounts of carcinogens. The article explained that some chemicals used to make decaf coffee may be dangerous in large quantities, but that the small amounts left in decaf coffee are believed to be safe. But some commenters were angry. They said the article was ridiculous: we're constantly ingesting toxic chemicals, so what kind of dope is worried about this trivial level of exposure?  

For me, it was a new manifestation of a cultural trope that since 2020 I have come to think of in terms of the "consistency" versus "budget" problem. In some mid-range phases of COVID, advice included strategies for doing some things you want to do while still decreasing the risk of getting sick: wear your mask on transit; socialize but avoid larger gatherings; go to the gym but try to stay further apart, etc. etc.

Some of this advice pissed people off. Obviously there were several dimensions, but the one I'm interested in here is the idea that somehow combining high-risk things and low-risk things is irrational and inconsistent. "Why wear your mask on transit if you're going to socialize with a bunch of people anyway?" people asked. There was special rage about the idea someone might wear their mask to go out to a restaurant, and then take it off to eat. What, did they think COVID would magically stay away while they were eating? How stupid.

At some point, I read something illuminating about the concept of a risk-budget and how the framing of "budget" versus "consistency" made sense of these strategies. With something like risk, consistency is irrelevant. Instead, what you want to do is think about apportioning your total exposure. So you might go out for drinks, but stay away from the gym, or you might go to the gym, but avoid going out for drinks -- both good ways of constraining your total risk while doing something you want to do.

The budget model illuminates wearing a mask to go to a restaurant and taking if off to eat. Wearing your mask on the subway? Easy and requires low sacrifice of something you wanted to do. Wearing your mask while eating? Impossible. So -- you can reduce your risk by wearing your mask while you're not actually eating, and still get to go out for dinner.

For some reason I don't understand, even though the budget model obviously makes sense, the consistency model is hard to let go of. I fall into it myself, despite consciously trying to avoid it. Even these days, if I'm weighing wearing my mask on transit, I find myself thinking: but that would be pointless and stupid, given the number of other high-exposure activities I am doing. The budget model shows that's not right, but it always comes into my mind.

Evidently I am not the only one, and there's a surprising kind of negative judgement of personal choices people perceive to be inconsistent -- even when those inconsistencies affect only the person in question. It just makes people mad that someone is worried about chemicals in their decaf, if they're also eating foods like Dortitos.

Why this angry judgment? I don't know. One guess I have is that it's misplaced moralizing: we know moral consistency is important, and we don't like hypocrisy; when we implicitly moralize the choices in question, we trip the "consistency" model wire and our brain goes into hyperdrive along that route. Another guess I have is that we don't like the way others are budgeting, and we wish they had other priorities, but it's easier to accuse someone of "inconsistency." But the matter is mostly opaque to me.

Since this is a full-service blog, I will end by telling you that if you want to avoid carcinogens in decaf coffee, you can buy coffee that is decaffeinated using a "Swiss Water Process" (SWP) instead of other methods that use methylene chloride or ethyl acetate. As other commenters pointed out, the article was all about safety for consumers and did not touch on the question of safety for workers in the coffee production industry, who are presumably in contact with larger amounts of toxins -- a good reminder that sometimes we don't need a consistency model or a budget model to figure out a better thing to do.

How Goal-Oriented Thinking Almost F***ed Me Up

In the most recent phase of my life, a constant source of unhappiness for me has been about accomplishment: what am I doing, and why am I not getting more of it done? I fuss about my work accomplishments like publishing academic papers, but I also fuss about my extracurricular ones. Why can't I learn Italian more seriously, or read more books? Why can't I be an accomplished amateur musician, or someone who knows how to cook amazing food?

At some level I know this fussing is silly and pointless, because ultimately who cares what boxes you're checking? When I was young, I had a chaotic life, but I also had a healthy sense of just living -- being alive and experiencing things. Plus, as longtime readers know, I've always thought life is essentially a mutual aid association, where connecting with other people is the thing, and connecting with people is not a box-checking activity. So how did I get into this loop of relentless self-evaluation?

One thing I've noticed is that spending more time on the internet seems to make the loop harder to get out of and the sense of pressure more intense. I've always assumed the mechanism for this was obvious: that other people on the internet are accomplishing things. If I go on Twitter, I see a stream of posts like "So humbled to be awarded the X prize!" and "Just ran a personal best for my 10-mile run!" and "check out my new paper on X topic!" Even perusing the news, I see people reflecting on how they became internationally known ballroom dance stars or amateur astronomers or whatever in their spare time.

But since I wrote about the age before the internet last week, I came to think the connection is more subtle. Because the post was about recapturing a sense of mild boredom, I tried a tiny experiment: forcing myself to engage in activities like "looking out the window" during a work-break,"staring at the ceiling" while at home, and "checking out the scene" while on a transit ride -- all instead of "looking at the internet."

It's been good. And I came to think the mechanism of the connection between internet and the accomplishments self-evaluation was not quite the "obvious" one and had more to do with my relationship to my life activities. At some point, I got jolted into a realization: things that are actually just life I have been treating as "accessories to goal accomplishment."

That is, at the risk of stating the obvious, I came to think that activities like going from place to place, putting away clean laundry, eating, etc. are not just "things I have to do to meet my goals" but are actually life. It doesn't even matter if you "enjoy" them or they're a pain; either way, you're experiencing them and that's what's up.

Conceptually, the problem was I thought "X is what I am trying to do" and "A, B, C are what I have to do to get to X." No wonder my obsessions with X got me into self-destructive loops where A, B, and C had to be as efficient as possible and where not getting to X led to a chorus of self-criticism. I was shaping everything into goal-oriented thinking and downgrading all the things that are just, I don't know, being a person.

Our entire culture has adopted a goal-oriented structure for life so it's not a surprising mistake to fall into. If an activity isn't perfectly pleasant, there's an assumption you're doing it to get something else or because you have some "project" you are working on. You can't get a gym membership without being asked to state your goals. My running app, which I use just to remind myself what I did when, is constantly nudging me to frame my activities as accomplishments. Even e-reading apps are set by default to help you keep moving toward your "reading goals." WTF?

The goal-oriented approach is so pervasive, it's part of the standard theory of how people make decisions. In rational choice theory, there are things you want, and there are things you're will to do or giving up to get the things you want, and that's just how it is. From a theoretical perspective, it's always bothered me that the "things you want" category has to be so unambiguous: are we saying that, say, cooking has to be either a "want" -- a pleasure, and a goal -- or a "do not want" -- a payment, a cost you're willing to bear? Couldn't it be a bit in-between? Or neither? And now I'm wondering, does everything even need an evaluation that fits it into a set of ordered preferences? Can I just stop evaluating?

Don't worry, my plan isn't to give up on goals. As we've discussed, when I lived a much less structured life, I got into habits like eating cake for lunch everyday, so this post is not leading up to some radical anti-planning manifesto. I'm just hoping to dial it back, to where living my life is living my life, and not something I do in order to achieve something else.

The Textural Experience Of Life Before The Internet. What Was It Like?

Life before the internet: what was it like? I'm often surprised by how difficult it is for me to recall the textural experience.

I don't mean the small things we used to do, like reading paper maps and calling people. Those things I remember pretty well. I have a vivid memory of driving with my then-boyfriend from Buffalo, where his family was, to New Orleans, where I was in graduate school -- a nineteen-hour drive. We went to AAA and got a TripTik -- a series of paper maps showing the entire route. We didn't have credit cards, so his mom made us a hotel reservation for a place about half way through and we paid in cash when we got there.

What I have trouble remembering is more just what it was like just being at home and not having anything to do and not having the internet for on-demand connection and entertainment. Specific memories tell me this was a big part of life, but it's hard for me to recollect what it felt like. Obviously it sometimes felt boring or dull, but of course it didn't feel strange or surprisingly dull, because it was totally normal.

I remember one evening being home alone before dinner in the 90s and feeling totally like "uhh, now what"?  I had probably just finished rereading all the Jane Austen books or something, and didn't have another novel I was into, and I had probably exhausted the interesting news in the newspapers -- which I typically bought two of everyday (one NYT and one local wherever I was). Then I realized I hadn't read that week's New Yorker, which was sitting on a table. And I was like "Oh my god, The New Yorker! Thank god for The New Yorker."

Obviously it's impossible to recreate or recapture the experience, because if we try to life disconnected from the internet now, that is life disconnected from the internet, which bears no relation to life in a world where the internet just never existed.

It's easy to fall into subtraction: to try to picture what it's like by taking what it's like now, and taking things away. No social media, no email, no watching and downloading content because you feel like it. But subtraction just leaves things out, it doesn't tell you what it was like. What was it like to live without the itchy feeling that you could be -- or should be -- checking what is going on on the internet? That things are happening there, even if you're not engaging it?

I'd especially like to know what it was like to feel the mild boredom of having "nothing to do" for a while. What was it like to feel that kind of mild boredom, but to be so accustomed to it that it felt like regular life rather than an aberration?  

I'm especially interested in that because even though I complained quite a bit about boredom in my younger days, I wish I could recapture this feeling, because I feel like my whole motivational set-up was different. My internal bar for an activity being "engaging" or "interesting" seemed so much lower. Reading books that were pretty good but maybe not very stimulating, listening to people talk about slightly dull subjects, writing a letter to a friend -- I did those things all the time, easily, and it was good to do those things.

For me, there is no way to regain that textural experience, because even if I wanted to cut myself off from the internet -- which I don't -- staying away from the internet, and thinking about that choice, and thinking about what is going on there would still use up half my mental energy.

Maybe some of you remember the textural experience of life before the internet better than I do. Maybe some of you are too young to have experienced life before the internet. If you're too young to have experienced it, all I can say is that if you picture being at home now but with your router destroyed and your phone disconnected -- that is really not what it was like. I can't really remember what it was like, just that it wasn't like that.

Complicity, Moral Ambiguity, and The Hunger Games Prequel (Spoilers!)

When the Hunger Games prequel opened with a narrator from the Capitol, I was like -- "genius!" Finally some literature engaging moral ambiguity and complicity.

If you read the original trilogy, you may remember the basic set up: a bleak future country where the US used to be; a wealthy Capitol and twelve poor districts; to punish the districts for previous acts of war, the capitol carries out the annual Hunger Games. Two adolescents from each district are selected at random to participate in a televised battle to the death. The point is to punish the districts, remind them who is in power, and entertain the Capitol.

And if you read the original trilogy, you may remember that it was narrated by Katniss Everdeen, a teenager from one of the districts selected to be in the Games. She is crafty and intelligent and has a developed moral sensibility whose contours emerge through the books.

This is in no way a criticism of the original trilogy -- which I liked a lot -- but I feel like telling the story from Katniss's point of view is telling a story more on easy-mode. It is just more straightforward to tell a dystopian story of violence and oppression from the point of view of the oppressed than from the point of view of the oppressor. You get to reel your reader in on the side of the sufferer and the injustices done to them. The reader's sympathies all line up: we like the narrator, we like her cause, we want her to win.

But what if your narrator is on the other side?  

One of the good things about the original trilogy is that in addition to just being good as books, the novels force the reader to engage with moral ambiguity. Katniss is a heroine, but she must perpetrate violence herself as well. Katniss is trapped in situations where all her options are bad.

For me, that ambiguity is such a relief from the modern deluge of entertainment with Good People and Bad People. If you were an alien engaging with US cultural products these days, you'd think humans lived in a world where the Team of Sweet Kindness battles the Forces of Darkness and Pain, and where victory for Team Kindness would lead to a peaceful, verdant utopia.

To me, that bears no resemblance to our world. In our world, almost everything you do in life enmeshes you in dysfunctional global systems with someone on the losing end. If you buy a phone, you're supporting violence where conflict minerals are mined, often by desperate children. If you eat meat, forget it, but even if you eat almonds, or avocados, you're screwing up the ecosystem; and in the US and Canada, even local produce is picked by migrant agricultural workers often forced into situations with no rights and very low pay.

All that is to say that we people in wealth countries are complicit in a range of menacing and even murderous systems.

So -- when I saw the narrator of the prequel was in the Capitol, I was excited, because I thought the book would engage a reflection on wealth and complicity. It does start off in that direction: the narrator Coriolanus is a sympathetic character, an eighteen year-old from a wealthy family reduced to materially poor circumstances. His parents are both dead, and he needs to get into a good university to earn enough to survive and to provide a bit of security to his aging grandmother and hard-working cousin. It's been so long since I read the original trilogy, I didn't even notice, but Coriolanus is Coriolanus Snow, the president from the original books, and this is his backstory. So it's the prehistory of a guy you know will be a central to carrying out the future Games.

I found Coriolanus a sympathetic character at the start -- by which I mean partly that when he was put in bad situations with no good options, I thought those choices were ones I could imagine making or at least understand. I thought centering on a complicit and sympathetic figure was interesting, and something you don't see in literature all that often. We know Coriolanus will end up socially evil, but he starts off personally pretty typical.  

As the plot develops, though, Coriolanus starts acting less like a relatable person in difficult circumstances and more like a familiar old Bad Guy. In the final scenes of the book, he not only throws over his love interest, he tries to hunt her down to kill her, changing his whole mind and plan in a span of a few hours, which doesn't feel like a relatable person facing difficult circumstances but more like an old-fashioned bad guy. I don't know, because I'm not an author, but it seems like it would have been easy to make his story more complex and subtle. Was it more engaging to make him a bad guy? Was it more likely to make for a popular story? I don't know.

In some ways the more interesting subplot in the prequel is that of Sejanus Plinth, who opposes the existence of the games and seems almost like a Good Guy, but whose choices keep leading to terrible outcomes and whose efforts to do good constantly backfire. Now there's a relatable hero for our modern times.

I know there's a fifth book coming. Here's to hoping it centers the moral ambiguity of the trilogy and forces the reader into a bit of discomfort with respect to social evil and the many ways people can be complicit in it.

Terrestrial Radio FTW: Are Data Centers The Grimmest of the Grim Climate Issues?

One of the great cognitive dissonances of modern life is the clash between the metaphors of "the Cloud" and the reality of material infrastructure for the internet. The metaphors suggest that the internet is frictionless: no need to put a book or CD on your shelf, or even download any actual data to a place in your actual home; no need to deal with paper or printers or vinyl or cash or AM/FM antennas.

I can't remember when I first learned that far from being frictionless, data centers actually use a huge amount of energy and create a ton of carbon emissions. This article I read recently says that "the Cloud now has a greater carbon footprint than the airline industry." It also describes vividly how data centers create massive amounts of heat, use a ton of air conditioning and water, emit massive noise pollution, and rely on minerals that are unethically sourced and impossible to dispose of properly.

Unlike flying or eating meat, data use gets almost no attention as an ecological issue. Is that because each person's contribution is so small? Is it because we can't imagine life with less internet? Is it because the Cloud metaphors of non-materiality are so embedded in our culture? Is it because tech companies have invested in our ignorance about this topic?

I came face to face with the breadth of non-acquaintance with the issues of data centers recently, when I tried to buy a "terrestrial radio." To explain, first let me back up. When I was young, I used to listen to the radio -- like, regular AM/FM radio. It was a format I loved. I loved the sense that, unlike with records, what I would hear might surprise me. I loved that when something was on the radio, it was shared -- a lot of people would be having the same experience at the same time. I loved that radio had local personalities talking about music and also about other things happening in the specific place where the station was located -- because old school radio was, of course, definitively local.

I thought I would try to reconnect with that textural experience so I went to audio stores looking for good ways to listen to the radio. I quickly learned "radio" now means not the old AM/FM system but rather a thing where data goes from a data centre through an app and into your speakers. I learned that the concept of my youth -- where a local signal goes through the air into an antenna -- is now called "terrestrial radio."

I also learned that no one listens to terrestrial radio and that to be a woman in an audio store interested in "terrestrial radio" is to invite scorn and condescension. Sales guys assumed that I didn't understand technology, that I didn't like apps, or that I thought old fashioned radio was better. They slowly and patiently explained to me that listening to the radio through the internet was better in every way: the sound quality is better, you can listen to any station in the world, there's no fussing about antennas and signal strength. Their message was clear: 'Please stop being ridiculous."

It was too difficult to explain my inchoate sense of the charm of a signal going through the air -- bypassing the internet with all its ridiculous surveillance -- and the strange attraction of being able to choose from among a handful of local stations rather than any station on the planet. So instead of talking about that, I moved straight on to the environment. "But it's more eco-friendly," I said. "The data centers," I said. "Sustainability."

Total blank stare. No one seemed to know about that or have thought about it at all, and their gut reaction was that I was some kind of conspiracy theorist. 

I'm not blaming them -- it isn't even something you would know about if you didn't go out of your way to know about it. I just say this to emphasize what an outlier view it seems to be to care about this issue.
 

Anyway, on a personal emotional level, I find the climate impact of data centers extra grim -- even beyond the extremely high bar of grimness for any climate topic, which is really saying something. I think part of the reason is that so much of what we are getting out of data centers seems relatively pointless.

When food, heating, and transportation contribute to climate change, that is alarming, but the visceral importance of these things is obvious to me. Eating, staying warm, traveling to see people or to see the world -- these are human activities we need and want. 

But when I think about data centers I think about email and bitcoin and Google's new ridiculous AI replacement for search. I grew up in the 80s so I know about things that pre-date data centres -- like writing letters, using a card catalogue, and going to the bank. I guess those things were a bit inconvenient, but overall it was fine. As we know, along many metrics, like housing affordability, it was way better.

Radio-wise, I just had a flirtation with Sirius XM. My friend recommended BPM, for dance music, which is, in fact, great. Like old-school radio, it has stations with people talking and playing music. 

But then I remembered the data centers heating up the landscape, stealing all the water, and driving the people away. All that so I could be occasionally surprised by a fun new dance track? I dunno, but it doesn't seem worth it.

I Learned About Self-Discrepancy Theory, But I Didn't Like It Very Much

I was at a conference last week where I encountered the idea of self-discrepancy theory, which somehow I had never heard of before. In the version I heard about, there were three items which might fail to be in harmony: the person you are (actual), the person you would  like to be (ideal), and the person you feel a responsibility to be (ought). Roughly speaking, the idea is that if you harmonize among these, it improves your well-being.

Like a lot of well-being frameworks that focus on coherence, it gave me pause. My textural experience of life has always been more a managed conflict one than a harmony one. Things that are good in the long run are often not the things I feel like doing at a given moment. Even for things I enjoy I often have to fight through some inertia to get into it.

When I was in my twenties I did a lot more of what I felt like doing in a given moment, and there was a lot of skipping class, extreme drinking, and cake for lunch. It wasn't good. And even though I actually love exercise once I am doing it, it's been years of habit forming to get past the feeling of ugh, this time I don't feel like getting started, maybe I'll just lie down.

I don't think of these as deficiencies or as mental ill-health. It just feels normal to me to engage in a lot of keeping-myself-on-track as a way of doing a) the things I want to do and b) the things I should be doing. Do I really need harmony to be well? 

Also, when I started trying to slot my preferences, attitudes, and actions into the three categories, I was struck to find an almost empty second category of "the person you would like to be."

Those conflicts I just mentioned like cake for lunch versus feeling like a healthy person all seem in the "actual" category. And I have a very full third category of "the person you feel a responsibility to be," with varying interpretations of responsibility. There are commitments to honor, ethical values to uphold, political causes to support, solidarity activities to engage in. Like a lot of people, I feel disharmony between myself as an actual person and the person I feel a responsibility to be. Even in a decent and gentle world, it's not always easy to be a good person, and god knows we do not live in a decent and gentle world.

So while disharmony between "actual" and "ought" is obvious to me, I actually found myself a bit unclear on the concept of the person I would like to be when that ideal is separated from responsibility. What kind of ideal is that?  

I see both an optimistic and a pessimistic interpretation of my empty second category. An optimistic interpretation is that I like myself the way I am. Self-acceptance for the win!

A pessimistic interpretation is that I've taken all the items normally in the second category and moved them into the third -- essentially moralizing all my ideals. Instead of just aspiring to be a certain kind of person, I have put a responsibility spin on it. For example, I don't like cooking, and I often think it would be so nice to be the kind of person who likes to cook, and who does cook. But I tend think of that in highly moralized terms -- of nurturing/caring for others, and not being wasteful, and saving resources.  

Well, as we say around our household, "the one doesn't exclude the other." It can be self-acceptance and moralizing all at the same time.

In any case, while I can see the appeal of some harmony between the person you are and the person you feel a responsibility to be, I'm not sure I want to just be the person I feel a responsibility to be. And from a practical perspective, it doesn't really matter, because I don't know how to increase that harmony anyway. So I guess I'll just keep muddling along with my inner conflict management strategies, and forget about harmony altogether. 

Like Google Search, But For Faces: Clearview AI And The Dreams of Facial Recognition

I was at a talk recently by a computer scientist, and the speaker ended on an ominous note, explaining that she does everything she can to keep pictures of herself off the internet. On her slide was an image: a book called Your Face Belongs To Us.

Your Face Belongs to Us is a non-fiction book by NYT reporter Kashmir Hill about Clearview AI -- a facial recognition company -- which I decided to read immediately. I figured I would learn that facial recognition is possible, widespread, and creepy, and I did. It's no secret that Clearview's algorithm matches faces to a database of more than 20 billion images collected from the Internet -- including from Facebook et al. Upload a picture of a face, and it'll not only tell you info about that person and who they are, it will find other pictures of that person -- including pictures where that person is in the background, or much younger, or wearing a mask.

But a few things surprised me. It surprised me -- though it shouldn't have -- that some of the players in facial recognition have beliefs rooted in eugenics. The background dream is not just about recognizing faces, but also about the phrenological predictive possibilities: that the face will reveal the character, so we can prevent crime, and improve the human race, by identifying "degenerates" through their features and eliminating those people from existence. 


Chapter 2 of the book gives a short overview of the history of this idea in western culture -- which we know appeared not only in Nazi ideology but also in the work of "progressive" political thinkers since at least the Victorian era, and has persisted. If you want to read more about what Hill describes as "racism masquerading as scientific rigor" and its connections to AI, check out "The TESCREAL bundle: Eugenics and the Promise of Utopia through Artificial General Intelligence. 

I was also interested to learn that while Clearview is currently used mostly by law enforcement agencies in the US to identify people from surveillance footage or in crowds and protests, a central aim of its creators has been to market the product to private users -- especially business titans and large companies. Not only could you efficiently determine, for example, who should be allowed into a building, based on their face, the marketing possibilities are extraordinary: every time someone walks by, an ad could appear tailored specifically to them, based on their identify through recognizing their face.

That hasn't happened, but it's not because it can't. There have been lawsuits, and strategic restraint, and social pressure from privacy activists making that not happen. But the world in which a billboard is tailored to your Instagram is closer than you think.

Surprisingly often, people bring up a dream of having a pair of glasses that will tell you people's names to avoid embarrassment or seem suave. A Facebook guy describes the "universal experience" of being at a dinner party and seeing someone you know and forgetting their name. They could fix that, Facebook could! If they put their own facial recognition into virtually reality glasses.

It kind of blew my mind that people want to harness a vast, unpredictable, and potentially unethical technology to avoid a moment of awkwardness. I guess that shows what we've all known all along: that innovation happens where money can be made, which means solving the small problems of wealthy people. The tech has not been made available in that way yet, partly for the obvious reason that having people be able to identify strangers in any context is creepy and terrifying: imagine you're a woman in a bar and a guy can look up everything about you, even your address, just from your face. 

Overall, while I knew people -- and especially police -- were identifying faces, and while I knew that was a troubling, potentially evil thing, I hadn't thought of all the ways people might think identifying a face might be useful. Once I saw them, the world of more facial recognition seemed even bleaker and more dystopian than I thought.

I'll just leave you with one final random item. In terms of faces, the biggest surprise to me was about gender and hair: " if two ears are showing," one expert says, "there is an 85 percent chance that the person is male."  As a woman with long hair, who always wears my hair up, so my ears are always visible, I just found that interesting along various dimensions.

NYU Ethos Integrity Series: WTF?

Gothamist reported on Wednesday that some student protesters as NYU were being required complete "modules in a 49-page Ethos Integrity Series' that seeks to teach them about 'moral reasoning' and 'ethical decision-making.'" 

The story calls attention to the most egregious aspect of the whole thing, which is that the activity as a whole has a "forced confession" aspect. They also point out that to complete the exercises, students must "rank a list of 42 values, including patriotism, family, and security and safety, in order of importance to them," and that they have to watch and analyze a Simpsons episode.   

I wanted to check it out so I clicked the linked document. It is true that even though each section says "We are not looking for any particular answers to the following questions," the structure of the exercise assumes that the person has done something wrong and that this wrongness is why reflection is required.

To me, this becomes most concrete and obvious in the sections toward the end about "neutralization" techniques, which they say people use to “explain away” their unethical behaviors with excuses like "Well, I didn’t think it was bad because..." These "excuses," the document says, are masking a root problem or a lack of experience and knowledge with regard to ethical decision-making." Their use indicates that a person has "not yet fully committed to always acting with integrity."

The document's discussion of this topic is somewhat confusing, because they go on to "combine" "neutralizations," "justifications," and "rationalizations" in one list of eighteen items. But each of these "18 types of neutralization techniques," they say, "is used as way to explain unethical behavior without having to view oneself as being unethical."

One of those eighteen "neutralization" techniques is:

11. It is Necessary; The Ends Justify the Means; It is for a Good Cause (admits act and takes responsibility – does not see act as bad, conversely see act as good).

This seems to be saying that if you do what you think is best in a circumstance, and it violates a rule, then you are unethical.

But isn't breaking a rule in service to a higher good often seen as a component of admirable moral behavior? Isn't there a whole ethical theory, consequentialism, based on the idea that ethical actions are ones that promote the best overall outcomes -- so if the ends are good enough, the ends always justify the means? Aren't endless wars and things justified by saying things like "You can't make an omelette without breaking a few eggs"?

There are other absurdities. Of course it is silly to have to rank 42 vague items in an ordered list, but more importantly, ethical values just don't work that way. No one puts patriotism over family all the time or vice versa, or puts security or anything else over every other consideration all the time. If you value honesty, you might think it's OK to tell a trivial lie for an important purpose and not OK to tell a lie about something important for a trivial purpose. If you value security, you might lock your door when you go to bed, but are you really going to build a safe room with locks that you never leave? Anyone who prioritized one value over 41 others all the time would be thought to have lost the plot.

I also object to their idea that "'Unexamined values are 'bad' values" because "If you do not know how you got your values or why you (still) have them, how do you actually know that these are your values?" Most people get their values from family, culture, and peer group. The idea that thinking and reflecting somehow elevates you into a higher plane of being is unjustified. Plus, what do you reflect on, exactly? If you were raised to be honest, and you are honest, what is the reflection question? Is it "Do I really value honesty"? Or -- "Is honestly really valuable"? Neither is a recipe for being a better person.

Some of the sources for the document seem to be institutes designed to help organizations improve compliance from their members, which I guess is not surprising under the circumstances, but you'd think a university could do better.

One of their linked sources -- and the one they cite for the inspiration that "the ends justifies the means" is a "neutralization" -- is an institute whose linked website lists five "reasons to be ethical." Those five reasons are: inner benefit, personal advantage, approval, religion, habit. I'll just leave those here for you all to ponder.

What Can A Person Wear?

I wear a lot of athleisure-wear -- because I like the way it look and fits, because it lasts forever, and because I do, in fact, engage in a lot of athletic activities. The main problem with most athleisure-wear is that it's made of plastic, and we now know that plastic clothes are causing tiny plastic fibers to pollute everything from oceans to breast milk.

A few weeks ago I had a minor freak-out about my plastic clothes and the plastic microfibers. There are so many horrible things happening, but I think my brain fastened on this one because the causal link between me and the outcome is so direct: I wear the clothes, I wash the clothes, the tiny fibers fly out into the world and ruin everything. I could stop doing that.

If you follow this issue at all, you know it is not simple. Producing cotton uses a ton of natural resources and energy; raising sheep for wool is an eco-disaster as well as often cruel to the sheep. I looked up silk and OK, how did I not know that making silk requires dissolving massive numbers of silkworms in boiling water?  

Of course, you can get around production problem by buying used items. I could go to thrift stores and consignment shops and try to find the few things with all natural fibers, and just wear those, and I could learn how to mend and patch them so they don't have to be tossed as they start to wear out, as natural fibers so easily do.

I could do that, but I have not done that. Why not? I could say I've been busy, a stock answer that is also true, but I think the real reason goes deeper. The truth is that I avoid natural fabrics because I think they won't look good on me.

Natural fibers are mostly non-stretchy. I'm not super curvy, but I am moderately curvy. My experience with natural fabric clothing is that it either hangs like a giant pillowcase over my body or it bunches and binds in the ugliest way around my breasts, hips, and stomach.

Now, I know the answer to this as well: tailoring. You read any serious piece about fashion and fit and they will tell you that to look good, you have to get your clothes tailored to fit your body by someone who knows what they are doing.

I can imagine a world in which that is a standard activity that I could engage in, but our world is not that world. Last time I wanted pants made shorter, most places I went wanted me to have pinned them up myself beforehand. I found a place that would do the fitting part, and it took weeks, a couple of follow-up nudge calls, and several trips there to get it all done. Plus, what if I gain or lose a few pounds? Am I going to get things perfectly fitted around my torso then be unable to wear them a month later? Ugh.

Put in starkest terms, where we end up with this is that I could dress more sustainably by buying and wearing used, shapeless items, and just not looking good.

If you put it that way, my choices seem ridiculous and monstrous. Am I seriously choosing to contribute to the destruction of the natural environment because I want to look cuter?

But I am obviously not alone in making these choices. Almost all clothes now have plastic in them. This morning I dug an old denim jacket out of my closet -- genius, I thought, not even requiring a purchase! And not only did it not look good -- it turned out to be part cotton and part elastane.  

In the short term, I decided to buy a couple of Guppyfriend bags -- bags you can wash your plastic clothing in. You put the clothes in the bag in the washing machine, the fibers get caught in the bag, like little pieces of lint, and then you can collect them and put them in the garbage so they won't go into the wastewater. At least, that is the idea. The bags are taking forever to ship, so I don't know how they will work.

It's a lame solution, like so many modern solutions. The plastic fibers will still be out there -- they'll just be in the marginally more appropriate place of a landfill rather than our drinking water.

The Dream of Predictability and Control: I Don't Like It

It took me a long time to realize that there are people who not only believe that human social life is determined by a few, simple, underlying principles, but actually want that to be true. Paul Krugman, for example, told The New Yorker years ago that he was influenced as a young person by reading Asimov's Foundations series. I haven't read those books, but my friend described them as centering on a set of heroic historians "armed with math skills and big computers" who can see where their society is heading centuries ahead of time. Not surprisingly, when Krugman took up a history major at school, he was disappointed. So many details, no grand narrative.

Leaving aside the philosophical question of whether it is true or useful to think that way, let me speak from the crudest most basic emotive perspective. On a gut level, I don't like it. It seems boring and dull. Who wants to live out a life watching predictable people do predictable things you've already predicted? But it also it seems vaguely frightening. If it's other people who have the knowledge, their control over you is vast. Forget being the wily underdog in a fight: your wiles count for nothing against these people.

So gut-instinct-wise, I've always been on the side of unpredictability and complexity. One of my early feelings in this regard was in reaction to Gödel's Incompleteness Theorems. The Second Theorem says "no consistent system of axioms whose theorems can be listed by an effective procedure (i.e., an algorithm) is capable of proving all truths about the arithmetic of natural numbers. For any such consistent formal system, there will always be statements about natural numbers that are true, but that are unprovable within the system."

In other words: if you try to write down the basic assumptions of math, no matter how you choose them, there will always be statements that are not provable or disprovable from those basic assumptions.

It took me a long time to realize that there are people who find this result disappointing and even "nihilistic": that "because there were truths that weren’t provable, nothing mathematical was truly knowable." Because I have always found it not only beautiful but also inspiring and even comforting. So did Gödel, evidently. This biography review says he "drew optimistic inferences ... choosing to emphasize that there would always be new mathematical truths to discover."  

Admittedly, since Gödel probably thought the mathematical objects were "out there" waiting to be discovered, and I don't, our joy probably takes on a different tinge. Rather than "building new paths to the truths ... out there, waiting to be found," I'm more likely to think that when you're choosing fundamental axioms and none of them is more obvious than any other, you're getting into real human judgment and culture territory. And I love that sense that you go far enough into math, what you get is people being like "wait, do the cardinal infinities and the ordinal infinities relate to each other this way? or that other way?"

The past few years, there is a new version of the things I don't like: instead of "a few, simple, underlying principles," it's Big Data. Get enough data points, the thinking goes, and you're going to finally figure stuff out. Predictability, prediction, control. No longer will we have the forces of chaos and who-knows-what's-going-to-happen.

Leaving aside the philosophical question of whether it is true or useful to think that way, let me  let me speak from the crudest most basic emotive perspective. On a gut level, I don't like it. Like the "few, simple principles," thing, it seems boring but also frightening. But unlike the "few, simple principles" thing, it feels like a con: like a thing people will try to get you to believe, even when it isn't true.

Obviously I am pro-using data to solve problems. And I'm sure we will solve problems -- like how to treat cancer patients more effectively. Yes, bring it on, please.

But the weird excitement and optimism about how everything is going to change because now we've got a real handle on things -- that is what freaks me out. We don't, and thinking we do feels not only annoying and creepy, but also disturbing and menacing.

Anne of Green Gables, Genocide in Gaza, and the Crushing of Dissent

When I first moved to Canada from the US around 2004, I learned a lot about Canadian history by reading the Anne of Green Gables books by Lucy Maud Montgomery, especially the eighth and final book Rilla of Ingleside. Rilla takes place during World War I when Anne has grown up and had a family of her own.

When the story begins, Anne's youngest daughter Rilla is fifteen and she starts off characteristically obsessed with clothes, gossip, and having a good time. But one day while Rilla is going door to door for donations for the war effort, she comes upon a two-week old infant whose mother has died and whose father is away fighting. With everyone else already overwhelmed, Rilla wrestles morally with herself about whether she must commit to taking care of this baby herself. She decides the answer is yes, even though it's the last thing in the world she wants to do.

The novel is about a teenager, but it's also about war and its social and political aspects. One plot line centers on Josiah Pryor, a vocal pacifist who opposes Canada's involvement in the war for many of the same reasons pacifists oppose war in general. People will kill and be killed for what he judges to be no good reason.

Naively, I was a bit stunned at the way Pryor is condemned and ostracized for his views and the way the novel endorses those responses. Pryor is considered a traitor, someone giving aid and comfort to the enemy; no one in their small town will associate with him. During a prayer meeting, Pryor prays for an end to the war. Describing the scene, Montgomery writes:

"In a sonorous voice that penetrated to every corner every corner of the crowded building Mr. Pryor poured forth a flood of fluent words, and was well on in his prayer before his dazed and horrified audience awakened to the fact that they were listening to a pacifist appeal of the rankest sort."

People go nuts. One man shouts epithets at Pryor, grabs him by the collar, shakes him, and physically throws him out of the meeting.

It's no secret that Montgomery deeply supported Canada's involvement in the war and her support shines through the narration of Rilla. The story-telling tends toward gleeful when Pryor gets abused and the most sympathetic characters are the ones who hate him the most. Toward the end, Pryor suffers a "paralytic stroke," and the novel's point of view is summed up by Anne's helper Susan who says: "I am not saying it is a judgment on him, because I am not in the counsels of the Almighty, but one can have one's own thoughts about it."

No one will be surprised to hear that Rilla and its depiction of the crushing of dissent was on my mind these past few weeks. Israel is carrying out an unconscionable genocide in Gaza; people are saying it is wrong, and those saying it is wrong are being suppressed, threatened, and thrown in jail.

Naively, I have been a bit stunned at the misguided and wildly disproportionate response to people expressing criticism of Israel or even just care and concern for the people of Palestine.

Often I don't write about current events on this blog -- not because I think they're unimportant! -- but mostly because other people are usually better informed and have more interesting things to say on the relevant topics.

But if it's becoming impossible to say publicly that what is happening is wrong, then that seems mistaken.

So let me add my voice to that of the others. Israel is carrying out an unconscionable genocide in Gaza, and it is wrong, and obviously we should be able to say that it is wrong without fear of arrest or persecution.

Art, Context, Prestige Hierarchies, And The Struggle To Pay Attention

I saw a work of art in a museum. Content-wise, it could have been a YouTube video, or even just a blog post. And if it had been, I wouldn't have watched/read/clicked on it. But it wasn't; it was in a museum. I stood still and spellbound for about fifteen minutes engaging reflectively with its content.  

This happened at MOMA in NYC, where I am visiting as part of a trip to see family and old friends. It is a high-prestige context. The art was a multimedia work about "the unspoken labour force that digitises books for Google" created by Andrew Norman Wilson. Essentially, it was a voice-over narrative about Wilson trying to engage with the people in this labor force during his time as a contractor working for a company working for Google, and how he got in trouble for it. Alongside the voice-over there were large, simple, projected images of the Google complex where it all happened.

The work drew me in and I stayed to hear the whole story about what he was trying to do, and how Google responded, and how Google Legal got involved. It was interesting, and in the museum it was situated with other works of art engaging AI, systems of control, and 21st century capitalism. Very effective. I thought to myself "I am so glad I came to MOMA and had this cool and informative art experience."

Then I thought about context. The voice-over was a simple narrative. The images were recorded and projected onto a screen. The content did not need a museum at all. But if I had seen a link about this, it would have looked to me like a million other links about a million other similar topics and I probably wouldn't have clicked. Even if I had clicked, I wouldn't have sat quietly, listening, paying the kind of attention you pay in a museum.

For better and for worse, for me the museum context makes the work into a different kind of thing, involving a different kind of attention.

It is "for better" because the kind of attention the museum facilitates is so important. I am not knowledgeable about the theory of this topic, which I'm sure is out there, but from a personal point of view, there are a lot of art things I just can't engage unless I slow way down and pay "art attention." But slowing down mental attention is hard, and paying art attention is hard. I can't just turn that on and off. Sometimes art is novel, challenging, or disturbing. Sometimes art seems boring, and you're wondering what you should be getting out of it. For me, museums -- like opera performances and things like that -- create the context I need in order to get into the frame of mind to engage a thing in an art-mode, and not merely an entertainment-mode. So Yay MOMA.

But it is "for worse" because not only is the infrastructure for something like MOMA massively expensive, its expense and prestige reinforce the worst hierarchies about whose voices get heard and who we're paying attention to. Think of what a small percentage of artists get into a gallery at all, never mind a big New York museum. Think how wealth, class, etc. create the kinds of conditions you need to make art and to make it in the kind of way that it will be selected for a museum.

In this case, the art was a story about Google's hidden workforce -- as the artist explains, this workforce is largely made up of people of color, and unlike all the other workers at Google, these workers get no perks: they can't ride the shuttle, or eat in the free cafeteria, or go hear famous authors and get signed copies of their books -- perks the artist is eligible for, even though he is not even a Google employee. While the artist initially tries to involve the workers in the art by engaging them in conversation, that gets shut down immediately.

In this case, the artist is a well-educated guy, tech savvy enough to have a job with the Google perks. I found myself thinking that there are probably podcasts and blog posts where I could learn more about Google's "hidden workforce," and from people closer to what is happening -- like workers themselves, or labor activists, rather than artists in MOMA. 

But I will struggle to pay the right kind of attention in the absence of the context that creates art attention.

Of course, it's not news about museums being filled with art by white men, and you can tell MOMA is trying to change that. And this isn't a criticism of the artist, whose work I certainly appreciated. It's just a personal perspective on the well-known dilemmas arising from the fact that what you want to pay attention to and what you ought to pay attention to are often not the same things.

Philosophical Melancholy and the Title of this Blog

People ask me, what's up with the title of this blog? It's a good question. I used to have a sidebar link to a post explaining the title, but then I changed the subtitle, and didn't like the layout look, and I lacked the mental energy to do something else. 


The title of this blog comes from a little known and under-appreciated novel co-authored by Don DeLillo called Amazons: An Intimate Memoir by the First Woman to Play in the National Hockey League. DeLillo is the author of a bunch of "serious" novels like White Noise, Mao II, and Underworld. My favorite of those is White Noise, because it is both funny and apocalyptic, because it centers on a professor pioneering the field of "Hitler Studies," and because the plot concerns pharmaceutical treatments for the fear of death.

Amazons is not a "serious" novel in that sense people mean when they deal in culture hierarchies. It is told from the point of view of a fictional narrator Cleo Birdwell and the subtitle really says it all: it is an "intimate memoir" of "the first woman" in "the NHL"-- Cleo has lots of sex with lots of different guys, because she wants to, and because she enjoys it, and she spends a lot of time deflecting the ridiculousness that often arises when a woman does a thing.

Amazons was written in the 80s and maybe it would be cancellable now. There is some racial stereotyping when a bunch of wealthy Saudi businessmen buy up her team, and Cleo is not above the occasional lie or other bad behavior in doing what she wants to do.

However, there are many reasons I love Amazons and one of them is this: how often does a novel depict a woman doing what she wants to do, and having a great time, and not getting in trouble for it? Like, never?  

At one point in the novel, Cleo's boyfriend Shaver gets ill and his treatment is to be placed in a "Kramer cube" -- a new innovative treatment that involves 24-hour sleeping, coma-like but at home, in a clear glass box, for a few months. This is convenient for Cleo, who dresses Shaver in some cute pyjamas then gets to run around playing hockey and having adventures while still feeling there is someone there for her at home.

At one point a magazine does a feature on Cleo and a nosy reporter comes to do a photo-shoot-and-interview. The reporter is, of course, excited by the whole Kramer-Cube-With-Shaver-In-It, especially because of the cute pyjamas. In the way of lifestyle magazine reporters, she wants details. "What's next for you two?" she asks. And Cleo says, "I don't know. I haven't thought beyond the Kramer. The Kramer is now."

I often say that studying philosophy can be bad for my mental well-being. One reason is that it gets me in the habit of asking questions about everything, especially "why" or "what next" questions. Once I'm in that habit, I apply it to everything. That is bad, because for a lot of things in life, you just have to do the thing, and feel the feelings, and find a way to get into it. Too much analyzing always leads me to a rational dead end and then to the emotional dead ends that come along for the ride. It's a special melancholy induced by doing philosophy.

Hume knew all about philosophical melancholy and described it perfectly in 1748: "Where am I, or what? From what causes do I derive my existence, and to what condition shall I return? ... I am confounded with all these questions, and begin to fancy myself in the most deplorable condition imaginable, environed with the deepest darkness, and utterly deprived of the use of every member and faculty. Most fortunately it happens, that since Reason is incapable of dispelling these clouds, Nature herself suffices to that purpose, and cures me of this philosophical melancholy and delirium, either by relaxing this bent of mind, or by some avocation, and lively impression of my senses, which obliterate all these chimeras. I dine, I play a game of backgammon, I converse, and am merry with my friends. And when, after three or four hours' amusement, I would return to these speculations, they appear so cold, and strained, and ridiculous, that I cannot find in my heart to enter into them any farther."

That is to say: thinking is depressing, and you can't get out of it by thinking. I love Hume's description of the antidote for philosophical melancholy: "I dine, I play a game of backgammon, I converse, and am merry with my friends." For me, one difficulty of philosophical melancholy is that when you're in it, you may not feel like doing any of those things. But you have to do them anyway. Then sometimes they make you feel better.

When Cleo says, "I haven't thought beyond the Kramer. The Kramer is now" -- for me that sums up the opposite of philosophical melancholy. Stop asking questions and analyzing everything. Just enjoy your cute Shaver in his cute pyjamas in his Kramer cube while you can.

Fear, Dread, And Vulnerability: I Loved The Shards Until I Didn't (With Spoilers)

Bret Easton Ellis's new book The Shards is simultaneously an ode to the 80s, a reflection on closeted gay teen-dom, a psycho-cultural exploration of fear and dread, and a horror story with imagery you'll wish you never encountered. It has been described as a "fever dream" which is just what it is: a gripping but squirm-inducing ride through the L.A. of what Ellis considers the last days of "empire" -- when he and his rich Wayfare-wearing friends could plausibly feel on top of the world.

If you know Ellis's work, some of that will sound familiar. He is the author of Less Than Zero and American Psycho -- violent stories set against backdrops of high capitalism where you're intentionally left wondering: what even happened there?  

The Shards is auto-fiction, so the narrator is Bret Easton Ellis as a student at Buckley -- an expensive private high school. On the surface, high school Bret is a regular cool guy: he hangs out with the quarterback of the football team and the homecoming queen -- the two most popular kids. He is dating a pretty, rich girl who is into horses. They party, spend money, and take a lot of drugs.

Under the surface, Bret is alone and living a lie. He is secretly having sex with two guys in his class and terrified people will find out. His parents are on an extended trip to Europe trying to repair their marriage, and a perverse serial killer is loose in LA, mutilating animals as part of some horrific death ritual. A guy Bret is having sex with dies -- was he actually murdered? As time goes on, Bret desperately clings to the imagined security of his friend group, even as that group is falling apart. Below the surface, he is consumed with fear and dread.

About half way through, I was like "This books is genius." Partly, I found the contrast between surface-Bret and fear-and-dread-Bret so vivid, real and relatable. Not that I am living in fear of a serial killer, obviously, but who hasn't experienced that sense of going through the acceptable social motions even while things are crumbling, enraging, or horrifying?

At one point, desperation-Bret decides he will conquer his fear and dread, and avoid becoming numb, by recommitting to playing the social game, becoming, as he calls it, the "tangible participant" -- the high-schooler who shows up to help with homecoming, who reassures and has sex with his nervous girlfriend, who adopts a surface attitude of entertainment and fun.

When I read that, I happened to be on a trip to an academic conference, to talk about philosophy, while Israel is killing and starving Palestinians, microplastics are in everyone's wombs, and even everyday food is made possible only by a system of exploitation and violation. I thought: will I try to be the "tangible participant"? Introducing myself, asking friendly questions, complaining about the local public transit?

As I made my way through the story, I thought to myself that The Shards is unlike Ellis's other books. While those other books also involve drugs and capitalism and a narrator's numbness in the face of horrific situations, The Shards also shows its narrator's vulnerability. High school Bret is a bit insufferable in his wealthy comfort: the "Nicaraguan maid, Rosa" makes his lunch and he often considers whether to drive the family Mercedes or the family Jaguar. But while he describes himself as "numb" to the outside world, the narrative also shows a high school kid on his own, socially terrified, and not taken seriously. To me, the numbness of Ellis's earlier book narrators lacks Bret's essential vulnerability.

However, these reactions to the first part of the book were incompatible with the plot lines as the story moved toward its inevitable violent conclusions. Maybe you remember how American Psycho leaves the reader unsure whether Bateman committed the murders, someone else committed the murders, or maybe the murders never really even happened. Late in the game, Ellis tries to make that happen here, too -- suddenly casting doubt on the story Bret is telling.

Doubt is fine and I love an unreliable narrator, but to me the way it's done in The Shards doesn't fit with the rest of the book, because the alternative story line requires the "other Bret" to react in completely different ways from the Bret we know from first part. It would work if Bret were only numb. But he's not. He's fear-and-dread Bret. That's what makes the book so good. But fear-and-dread Bret just doesn't fit with the Bret of the alternative narrative final dénouement.

I found that disappointing, but if there is a next Ellis book I will definitely read it. I know that he is a guy with problematic opinions and that his novels can be read as misogynistic and gross. But I keep coming back -- not because I love excess and blood, but because non-moralizing observation of our social situation is so unusual and he does it so well. Are the stories romps through drug-filled excess? Are they indictments of consumerist society? Are they indictments of us for wanting violence as entertainment? Are they about the author's experience? They don't really answer any of those questions. You have to figure it out yourself.

Storytelling As Seductive Indoctrination: I Am Right In Narrative’s Crosshairs

Recently at the dentist I opted to watch a Netflix show about animal babies in the wild. Usually I avoid TV, as it makes me antsy and unsettled, and that’s the last thing I need when people are putting things in my mouth. But when I saw “Wild Babies” on the menu, I thought it might be cute and disctracting.


I guess I expected the nature show format of my youth but with fewer killing and eating scenes. The format of my youth was hushed, long-ish scenes with nothing much happening punctuated by violent death; the title “Wild Babies” made me think it might be for kids, and therefore on the gentler side.

It was not the nature show format of my youth. While I didn’t see any death, the show was crudely narrativized in the grossest, dumbest way through careful editing and a constant voice-over. We encountered a cautious baby girl lion had to decide whether to follow her daring and rambunctious older brother lions away from the safety of the den while their mom was away. An outcast baby seal had to struggle to integrate into the in-crowd of other baby seals, or risk being someone’s next easy meal. It was like the ridiculous story construction of reality TV but with “wild baby” animals.

You don’t have to take my word for it. The website for the show says “since cliff-hangers are through lines in the series, you’ll be desperate to learn what these adorable creatures get into next.”

I was disturbed and even a bit appalled. The narrative seemed to me not only anthropomorphic and structured to meet our “cliff-hanger” needs, but also culturally forced into a 1950s sit-com version of what a “story” is. I grew up watching The Flintstones and The Jetsons, only vaguely aware these were all re-packaged Honeymooners. I never thought that in 2024 I’d have to watch those same stories imposed on pangolins.

The experience reminded me of this excellent New Yorker article from last year about how everything is now a story and how weird that is. To change hearts and minds, we need stories — not data and logic, but narrative. To be effective in the marketplace, a brand needs a story. To get elected, politicians need a good story. Stories are seductive: you follow effortlessly, and you get swept up. But narrative imposes its own structures. The New Yorker article asks, “What is it that story does not allow us to see”?

The problem of narrative has bothered me for a while. I am a fan of Murakami’s writing, but the lack of a satisfying narrative grates on me. Things just happen and then they stop happening. I feel annoyed, but I feel stupid for feeling annoyed. Life is things happening and then they stop happening. Patricia, why do you need the book to be about something?  

On the flip side, the form requirements of story in contemporary western culture also piss me off. If you take a writing course, you may be taught that there has to be something unresolved, and that it should get resolved, and that a character should grow and change. And so many stories are like that, even though life is almost never like that. It verges on indoctrination. Whose purposes are being served by this relentless hidden messaging about the relationship of meaning to narrative closure?

One of the most striking domains where story now runs rampant is in statistics. In the lockdowns I used some online tools for learning baby data analysis, and right at the start was a lesson about how data is about story telling. First thing to do is figure out what story you want your data to tell. Then you can figure out how to tell it.

I realize I’m being naive, but: really? We’re all just fine with statistics telling the stories that the storyteller wants to tell? I often think about how in the 80s everyone used to talk about how there were “lies,” “damned lies,” and “statistics” — which I took to mean that quantitative information is slippery and can be used in various ways. That used to be cause for skepticism and cynicism, but now it seems treated more like a feature, not a bug.

All this is to say that I feel right in storytelling’s crosshairs. I am seduced by story — I seek out narrative and I sink myself into it like it’s a warm bath. On the other hand, I am suspicious and skeptical about its covert impacts. With those wild animal babies plot lines, I feel inoculated: childhood viewing of sitcom after sitcom rendered me impervious. But what about newer strains? What am I unconsciously absorbing about the nature of triumph, regret, and what it means for things to work out in the end?

The Personal Perspective And The Complex Dysfunctional Global Systems Perspective

For personal decisions engaging complex dysfunctional global systems, I lack a frame of reference. Doing nothing seems wrong. But given how many consumer choices are embedded in violent, murderous, polluting systems, what would disengaging completely even look like? In 2024, it’s not even clear what “off the grid” means, never mind whether it would accomplish anything.


The obvious answer is that it has to be somewhere in the middle. But where? My most recent confrontation with this question occurs in a choice about travel and the problems of flying and climate change. I have family in the Hartford, CT area I want to visit them in April. I won’t be driving -- because I don’t have a car, because I find driving stressful and exhausting, and because I don’t want to.

A non-flying transit trip between Toronto and Hartford is about a 15-hour trip if you wanted to go straight through (about twice as long as by car). I am too old to travel for 15 hours on transit straight through, so I would have to break it up and stay over. For example, to come home, I could take two connecting buses to get from Hartford to Albany one day (via Greyhound and Peter Pan), stay over in Albany, and take a train the next day. I would incur the cost of a hotel, but I’d be saving on airfare, so that part evens out.

Lest you imagine this is totally hypothetical, in 2022 that is exactly what I did. In some ways, it was OK. Yes, I had to walk through an abandoned warehouse area in Albany to get from my hotel to a dinner place, and yes, for some reason the Albany bus station and the Albany train station are a non-trivial taxi ride apart, and yes, for various reasons the trip lacked the surprise and human interest of the much longer 400-mile transit trip I took in 2019. But hey, I got to see Albany, NY.  

In other ways, it was not quite OK. For reasons to do with scheduling and traffic, my bus ride on the way down was about ten hours. It is a long bus ride. I realize people take much longer flights to go to far away places, but I also know I’m not alone in thinking a ten hour bus ride is not easy: on my visit, I met a guy who was vegan for climate change reasons, and even he was like “Whoa! A ten hour bus ride?!”

And of course, since the flight is like one hour, you’re essentially adding at least two travel days into your trip. Instead of a long weekend, it’s almost a week. I am lucky to have the kind of job where my time is often a bit flexible, and I can work on other weekend days to make up for it, but obviously there are things I’d rather be doing with those two days.

All this to say: from a personal perspective, flying would be vastly more convenient and pleasant, and not even really more expensive.

However, from a complex dysfunctional global systems perspective, flying is one of the main activities exacerbating climate change. When climate protesters say “This is an emergency! No business as usual!” I agree with them. While we obviously can’t address climate change on an individual basis, our individual activities will have to change somehow -- especially in the short term while we lack technological fixes.

Also, if governmental regulation, effective leadership, and collective action are lacking, isn’t it more responsible to step up? Even if we’re “doomed,” as some people say, the details matter. If the kids who are five today have slightly less hellish world when they’re fifty than they would otherwise, isn’t that an important goal? If Greta Thunberg’s mother can give up flying thus ending her career as an opera singer, presumably I can put up with a ten hour bus ride or two.

When I try to reason this out, I feel like I have no frame for thinking it through. I expect I am not alone in this. It’s a judgment call, but based on what? If thousands of ghost flights — empty flights airlines use to retain their take-off and landing spots — are taking off all the time, it makes no sense to consider the impact of a specific action and try to calculate consequences. Individualistic rules like “don’t harm others” don’t really help. What does the recommendation to be a virtuous person entail in such circumstances?

It feels like the transit choice is necessary and vital from one point of view, and pointlessly painful from another. Where is my third perspective to figure this out?

The Fragile Connection Between Liking And Wanting Is Crucial To Our Survival

The most interesting thing I learned this week is that animals whose dopamine system has been rendered inactive will fail to seek food, and will starve to death if left to themselves," but will eat and swallow with pleasure if food is placed in their mouths.

I'm not always an animal-lover type person, but I found it a bit crushing to picture an animal whose life force had been so sapped that food was something they just couldn't be bothered with. Something about the poor little critter chomping gratefully if someone took the trouble, but unable to rouse itself for action struck me as the bleakest metaphor for existence ever.

I found that fact on Wikipedia when I went down a looking-up-dopamine rabbit-hole. I looked up dopamine because I was reflecting on how my motivation or mood seems to change in the evenings, even when I'm not feeling especially fatigued. Why would the sunset cause a mood change? Posing that question made me think of "sundowning," where people with dementia become agitated at sunset. Looking up "sundowning," I learned that one hypothesis is about hormone changes, and that hormones standardly change in accordance with circadian rhythms. One of those changes is that dopamine goes down in the evening.

If I understand correctly, the standard dopamine scheme is that pleasure causes a release of dopamine, which then reinforces the motivation to seek the behavior. In the framework, the “wanting” and the "liking" systems are distinct: pleasure is one thing, and motivation is another, and dopamine is the contingently existing link between the two. Pleasure from a reward and the motivation to seek it thus emerge from separate biological pathways.

I don’t know about you, but I feel like this explains a lot. A lot of our cultural "common sense" encodes a set-up in which the reason you seek out a thing is because you anticipate the thing will bring you pleasure. If it’s true about how dopamine works, things aren’t quite so simple. You can anticipate the pleasure and not have the drive, or you can have the drive without anticipating the pleasure. And the concept of a "reason" barely fits in there at all.

I was surprised to learn that drugs like meth and cocaine mainly hit the "wanting" while opiates activate both wanting and liking. Not surprisingly, addiction can mean elevated "wanting" alongside decreased "liking," if you’ve built up a tolerance for the thing you’re addicted to. So they really are distinct systems.

Distinct systems fits my experience better than the common sense/pleasure anticipation theory does. It’s often opaque to me why I have or lack the motivations that I do. I enjoy running outside once I get going, but frequently I have to push and drag myself out there. I’ve always wondered: shouldn’t my mind update via a feedback mechanism, where liking would cause motivation? Why wouldn’t it? Well — I still don’t know, but it’s a bit less mysterious now.

Obviously the next question is how you might improve your dopamine function so you can enjoy the resulting motivation and Life Force. A person doesn’t live by pleasure alone. Obviously, if you want to increase your pleasure/liking, you can do things you enjoy. But if you want to increase your dopamine/wanting you can … ?

Weirdly, official advice on the internet about increasing your dopamine is that if you want to increase your dopamine, you should — do things you enjoy. The thinking seems to be that since pleasure experiences release dopamine, a way to increase your dopamine is to do the things you enjoy. I get it, but like a lot of official advice, it doesn’t quite add up. If your dopamine system isn’t working well, all the pleasure in the world won’t help you, because it won’t create the motivation.

Other things you can do to increase your dopamine include exercising, eating healthy food, and getting enough sleep and sunshine. So I guess where all this ends up is that while you might think the reasons you do things have to do with your thoughts, plans, and intentions, a lot of it also comes down to animal nature. 

We humans and that starving critter are all in the same boat, just praying that our fragile dopamine connection between liking and wanting isn't wantonly destroyed, rudely hijacked, or just left to desiccate and decay.

I Think A Lot About The Marshmallow Test. Why?

A thing about me is that I often think about the marshmallow test. The marshmallow test is a test of delayed gratification abilities in which little kids are given a small treat, like a marshmallow, and told that if they wait a bit, they can have extra. One marshmallow now, or two later.

The test is famous because researchers said there were correlations between choosing “two marshmallows later” and, years after, getting the good things of modern capitalism like career success, academic achievement, and better SAT scores. Endless variations on the main study have been undertaken since the 1930s; the standard conclusion is that having the self-control to delay gratification is a useful and virtuous.

I’ve always been a skeptic about the marshmallow test. I was a shy, somewhat nervous kid, eager to please the adults around me. If I’d been given the test, I expect I would have been more motivated by social pressure than actual marshmallows. As I wrote on this blog in 2009, the original test set up was that kids who wanted the first marshmallow right away would have to ring a bell to summon a researcher. Are you kidding?! There is no way at four years old I would have rung a bell to summon a strange adult, even if 50 marshmallows had been on the line.

Also, is it even obvious that more later is better than less now? The thing about now is that it’s now: if you have your treat immediately, you are virtually guaranteed satisfaction: you’re having it at the moment that it looks delicious, there’s no risk of some diabolical behavior or random obstacles blocking your treat, and you can move on with your life rather than sitting there in the painful condition of "waiting for a treat."

Color me unsurprised, therefore, that as the years went on, studies showed the marshmallow test was more complicated than it may have appeared. As with the young Patricia, researchers found that children engage in “reputation management,” and were more likely to delay if a teacher knew their choices.

Furthermore, kids from wealthier socio-economic backgrounds were found to do better on the test. It was pointed out that one reason for that could be that if you’re from a richer family, the likelihood of “more later” was more likely to actually materialize. If the adults around you have more resources, they are more able to provide in a stable and predictable way, and to prevent unexpected diabolical behavior or random obstacles from interrupting your treat.

The socio-economic explanation obviously leads to a hypothesis almost diametrically opposed to the original one: that it’s not your inner character that matters, it’s your environment. The potential significance is huge. A few years ago the New Yorker had an article about the test, including how whole schools were being designed to promote learning self-control and delaying gratification. If it’s more the external environment than that intervention is a major investment in a completely wrong direction.

Since this is a blog post and not a philosophy article I will leave aside correlation versus causation and how-do-we-really-know-anything, and get straight to the personal: Patricia, why do you think so often about the marshmallow test?

I think one reason is that I am often amazed by the contrast class between things I can do and things I cannot get myself to do, which makes me wonder: if self-control makes me able to do the first things, why can’t I do the second things?

I do a fair number of things that appear to require self-control: I work by myself on large unstructured research projects with no deadlines; I go to the gym even when it’s freezing outside and cozy at home; in the course of my life, I have quit smoking, Diet Coke, and a range of other things we won’t get into here.

On the other hand, the things I cannot get myself to do is mystifying. I have never been able to prepare lunch at home to eat later during the day — now I can afford to buy lunch, but even when I had no money, I would eat like one donut or just skip lunch. I am trying to learn Italian, and I found this great site with Easy Italian News for practice: listening to it is reasonably fun, but am I doing it? No. I’ve been trying to form a new habit of bringing my own silverware from my office to the lunch place on campus, so I can avoid using all that plastic. Easy, but my success rate? Just reaching toward 20 percent.

I’m forced into the conclusion that for me, it's less like there is a self-control part that I direct at one activity or another and more like some habits take and some don't. It’s a confusing mix why. Partly, some things are engaging despite being difficult and some things are just boring and annoying. Partly, a habit is different from self-control. Partly, behavior is social not individual, which is why nagging the people you love is actually an important thing to do.

So I guess that’s why I think about the marshmallow test so often. It seems to test for a quality I feel I don’t really have. I don’t know if y’all have a similar experience, but that’s what’s going on with me.

The Tyranny of the Majority in Advanced Consumer Economies

In 2017 I went down the ethical cell phone rabbit hole. I didn’t do anything like buy a phone — mostly I just reacquainted myself with the ways the elements of a phone are embedded in dysfunctional, oppressive, and murderous global systems.

I learned there is a phone called a Fairphone that considers itself an “ethical cellphone.” I guessed immediately it wouldn’t be available in my area, and I was correct. The main reason is obvious: insufficient local demand.

“Tyranny of the majority” is a phrase in political philosophy usually meant to indicate the possibility that in contexts of majority-rule, minority interests will get steamrolled.

Conceptually, advanced consumer economies should be consumer paradises where it’s the opposite of majority rule. Everything we might need or want would be for sale, because the existence of people wanting and needing is what causes the market to provide.

So I’m always a bit surprised to crash into the obstacles created by the fact that I often want what other people do not want, and do not want what other people want, which tends to lead to my things being simply unavailable.

The fairphone is a sanctimonious example — mostly I’m talking about garden variety things people spend money on. I would like a portable way to listen to high quality terrestrial radio — surprisingly difficult to access beyond the context of a car. I would like to hail a taxi on the street — in my city, this used to work great, and now it doesn’t, because obviously. I would like clothes that have a bit of stretchy fabric for my body shape but aren’t athleisure-wear — not easy to find. I would like to go out dancing at like 6:30pm, not midnight, but that is evidently not something enough other people want to do.

In the 90s, I noticed that there were TVs available for under $100 and I thought OK great, when my mom’s TV gets old that won’t be a problem. But by the time her TV got old, capitalism had moved on: now the only TVs available had some new and better tech than the old “cathode ray” and now they all cost hundreds of dollars.

It’s always striking to me when the law of supply and demand is held up as one of the more fundamental, universal, or well-established laws of economics and human behavior, because we are surrounded by things — especially in technology — that get less expensive the more people want them. If everyone wants a laptop, laptop prices will go down.

Note that I do not mean that examples falsity the law of supply and demand. It’s the presence of what Mill called “disturbing causes”: the more people want a thing, the more money the producers of the thing can invest in new methods and technologies and the more affordable the thing can be. Except - as with the TVs — when “the thing” becomes a different thing altogether, and everyone buys that, so that is what’s available.

Anyway, I’m not saying there is any problem to be fixed, and I’m not complaining. I’m just saying that from an abstract point of view, it’s striking that a system based on the idea that each person should be able to choose what they want for themselves is also a system where “what everyone else is doing” determines a lot of the texture of your experience.

Directing Your Attention Versus Experiencing Whatever Happens to be Happening

 Like a lot of people, I often feel like my mind is running in the wrong gear. There’s too much whirring and burbling in situations where that isn’t needed. I usually self-medicate with exercise, alcohol, novels, and plenty of down time — all of which work great for me, so please, no advice in the comments.

We all know the Psychiatric Help: Five Cents answer to this problem: meditation. In putting it that way, I don’t mean to imply that meditation wouldn’t help me. It probably would. I am, however, implying that where we are in the culture is a rare moment when gurus of science, wellness, therapy and fitness all agree: really, you should meditate.

My experience with mediation is limited. I go to yoga classes, but they’re usually at the gym, so while we’re “meditating” at the end, there’s often like one person bustling around leaving early, wrecking the vibe, and weirdly sad music on the playlist, making me ponder whether I’m the only one thinking “wait, isn’t music distracting?” and then wondering if I’m missing the point.

To learn more about meditation, I recently downloaded one of the mediation apps and selected a “beginner” series. During the second instalment, I was surprised to hear the narrator make a case for the importance of directing your attention. He said that concentration — being able to direct your attention — is like a muscle, and strengthening that muscle gives you the power to choose what to pay attention to. And nothing is more important than the fundamental ability to pay attention, he said — because what you pay attention to becomes your life.

I realize I’m engaging in the kind of overthinking philosophers are trained and socialized into, but I couldn’t stop myself from being weirded out by the idea that you can always choose what to pay attention to. Because it does seem true, in a way, that what you pay attention to becomes your life. But in that case the idea that you are choosing and directing it seems disturbing. It seems like then you would have to constantly decide what to pay attention to, which is dangerously close to constantly deciding what is worth your attention, which seems overwhelming, overly rationalistic, and in some way just wrong.

I don’t really know anything about eastern philosophy and the general traditions in which meditation is a central activity. So I’m sure there are people who know more than I do about how attention and meditation and focus all fit together and how I may by misinterpreting the fundamentals.

What I want to discuss instead is how the idea of choosing what to pay attention to got me thinking of the cultural expansion of the category “things we control and determine” and the shrivelling of the category “experiencing of whatever happens to be happening.”

I actively enjoy experiencing whatever happens to be happening for its happening part, even when the thing itself is not my fave. For example, I used to love listening to the radio. Part of what I loved about it was listening to “what’s on.” What’s on the radio is on now, and we’re all listening to it. We didn’t choose it, but we’re all out here experiencing it. Because it’s what’s on. I have the same feeling about the NYT crossword. I like to do today’s puzzle. Because it’s today’s puzzle. I don’t want to go into the archive and find a puzzle on a theme I might prefer. I want to do today’s, because today’s puzzle is what’s on now, and we’re all doing it.

Obviously it’s still possible to enjoy experiencing whatever happens to be happening, but I feel like it’s become culturally more challenging — like there’s more friction to it, and it’s harder to opt into, because everyone else is opting out of it — people are crafting their playlists, following their followees, editing their photos, etc. etc. Even friendship has been infiltrated by the power of control: what are you adding to my life, or should I just drop you?

Recently I was in an audio store, and I tried to explain that I wanted a stereo component where I could listen to the radio. No — not through the internet, where I can choose any of a million feeds, just in the regular way of listening to whatever happened to be happening in the area where I can get a radio signal.

I learned this is called “terrestrial radio.” I also learned someone asking for terrestrial radio will be treated as ignorant. The salespeople kept explaining to me again and again that over the internet is better: better sound quality, you can choose any station, it’s the same, only better, was I really so stupid and stubborn as to want the technology of the 1950s?

The good news is I got my terrestrial radio stereo component. The bad news is, my favorite station folded — because no one is listening to terrestrial radio, because don’t you know it’s better over the internet?

Anyway, I’ll have to stick with it meditation-wise, so I can better understand the relationship between directing your attention and still being open to experiencing whatever happens to be happening. Because experiencing whatever happens to be happening is great, and sometimes feels more like relinquishing control than it does like an active choice.