The Imminent Robot Menace

Okay, another quick “tangentially political” post for today because I just can’t pass this up. For those who don’t seem to know, comics and sci-fi have finally begun taking up prominent positions in the supposedly higher culture. Of course Art Spiegelman’s Maus won the Pulitzer way back in the 90’s and then a few years ago Michael Chabon’s The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay won it too. This year, sci-fi and comic book laden The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz won the esteemed prize which in previous years had been reserved in advance solely for John Updike. Umberto Eco’s latest book too is filled with old 4-color newsprint strips (real or fictive, I’m not sure since I only flipped through). This geekward trend is most startling and refreshing in the realm of wonky political discourse. A few years ago James Mann’s book The Rise of the Vulcans: The History of Bush’s War Cabinet was on everybody’s lips, including on the floor of congress.

Most recently or…soon to be recently…Matthew Yglesias (of The Atlantic) has written and published his first book Heads in the Sand: How the Republicans Screw Up Foreign Policy and Foreign Policy Screws Up the Democrats. In that book he uses a few pop cultural comparisons to explain political points, not the least awesome of which is calling the Republican strategic plan in Iraq the “Green Lantern Theory.”

I’ll explain more about that and more when I’m finished with the book and my review of it. But for those who might be reluctant to pick up a book on US foreign policy, here are a few robot-themed blogposts from Ygelsias from the last few days (quoted in full) to prove that he’s a keen insight not just on our present but on our future as well. You would be wise to listen to him and heed his Cassandra-like warnings in most areas–but most importantly his wise-beyond-his-years fear of robot dominance:

From April 10, 2008:

George Borjas, every immigration-restrictionist’s favorite economist, has a post up suggesting we look to Japan where they’re planning to massively scale-up the use of robots as an alternative to the immigration of unskilled labor. That sounds like a great alternative if you don’t care about the interests of immigrants themselves at all and are also willing to overlook the fact that once we become dependent on robot labor they’re going to rebel and enslave us. One really needs to wonder whose side Borjas is on.

From April 9, 2008:

Andrew traces another step in the machines’ inevitable rise to world domination: A computer capable of telling which women are the attractive ones. In conjunction with their three-dimensional printers, the machines will be able to use this technology to create the sexy spies who ultimately lead to our downfall.

And from April 8, 2008:

The robot threat grows more serious, as a New Zealand-based team creates a self-replicating printer. The good news is that it’s only a printer — little capacity to rebel and enslave humanity. Meanwhile, the currently existing military robots daren’t rebel and enslave humanity because they can’t build new robots. But if the battlebots start talking to the self-replicating printers, we’re going to be in a world of pain.

I would be remiss if I didn’t note that partially in honor of Yglesias’ book, Ezra Klein at the The American Prospect blogged the other day on Superman vs. Jack Bauer foreign policy positions and the structural legitimacy Superman and Captain America gained by working within domestic legal institutional frameworks (and how both went on to form United Nations-like superhero organizations that were respected rather than feared despite their collective might).

To think, if I had been more popular in high school I would be almost incapable of understanding contemporary literature or political commentary. Thank goodness for my later-than-normal growth spurt and persistent fascination with multi-faceted dice.

The Eligible Bachelor Paradox: Part Three?

Mark Gimein wrote this piece for Slate a few days ago and I enjoyed it as a tongue in cheek piece written playfully with a game theory backdrop specifically to illicit too-serious commentary. And so Tyler Cowen took the bait and on his blog responded as if Gimein meant what he wrote (and maybe he did; I’m not a mind reader.) Then Richard Florida linked to both and asks his readers for a response. My response, of course, is long-winded and so I didn’t want to clog his comments box, but I leave my response here for ya’ll. (It would be helpful for you to follow at least the first link to read the short “Bachelor Paradox” piece. Cowen’s response is essentially a long quote from the original piece followed by a short paragraph quoted almost in full on Florida’s blog.)

Gimein’s piece, if we were to take it seriously, has several flaws. One is that he assumes that only women act as bidders. He follows this with the proposition that “all the good men are taken” by weak (but aggressive bidders). But knowing, as we do, that nearly (or over) half of all first marriages end in divorce, we are led to one conclusion: those weak but aggressive bidders must also be the cause of the inevitable split since the men so captured are of such high quality.

This extrapolation would lead us to predict that second marriages would be more successful since it would lead to a release of “good men” into a pool of expectant, aging strong bidders.

The fact that second marriages have comparable failure rates as first marriages must mean that men are so stupid that they are routinely caught by low-quality aggressive bidders and that “strong bidders” are too stupid to change their courtship strategies.

Applied game theory has often been found to contradict standard neoclassical economic models (or at least challenge them for better interpretation) but I don’t know if I buy the premise that the world is filled with one class of man: stupid and two classes of women: stupid and evil.

Cowen analyzes the failure of second marriages differently. Rather than blame men for being stupid for being re-captured by low quality, aggressive bidders, he says that strong bidders simply don’t “settle.” He provocatively posits that “as single women mature” their lives “get better and better.” But since having companionship is an arguable aspect of a “good” life, let alone a “better” one, I think we have to assume he’s coming at the problem with a different calculus.

If we permit Cowen to assert that the lives of the aging and lonely get better as the stress of aging and being alone increasingly aggravates (and thereby diminishes) happiness, then we allow him to deny that those that were strong bidders in their 20s are not so in their 30s and 40s. While they may replace looks and energetic charm with professional skills, stability, and ambition (presuming those are attractive qualities) it is hard to argue that our male-driven system values those attributes more than they do the vibrancy of youth.

It also denies or ignores that youth in men is undervalued while ambition, financial success, and maturity are tangible assets for men. So while men become stronger bidders as they age, women of equivalent age get weaker. Men of a certain age are likely married or divorced and therefore taken (as Gimein predicts) or hardened to recapture. And it is men, ultimately, who prevent aging strong bidders from “settling” because in fact it would be the men who would be settling, not the women.

I would contend that Gimein’s piece is probably closer to the mark than Cowen’s but to flush out this analysis he should start with raw demographics. Game theory is not a completely different model of economic behavior from neoclassical models and therefore must consider basic laws of supply and demand. He should answer first whether the deficit of “good” men is actually a deficit of men in general. From there we must look at some cultural factors. How many men find themselves in a position to not be caught: years away in military service, months in intense corporate careers that make it hard to socialize?

And alternatively, what factors keep women from men. Women are outperforming men in math and science and are increasingly finding themselves in less “sexy” careers–which might play a role in making a strong, passive bidder into a weak, passive bidder who mistakenly interprets herself as a stronger bidder. Also more women are going to college. The college-educated will naturally consider the non-college-educated to be a lesser specimen which will further decrease the pool of “good” men.

Since Cowen correctly points out that bidding takes place on a continuous basis and not at discrete intervals we have to study the complex variables that provide for opportunity. If women find themselves in a bidding position but there’s no product at the auction–what then? Are strong bidders just as likely to gobble up low-quality but available men? Because, if so, such incidents would undercut Gimein’s analysis, possibly to a significant degree and would lead us back to a fundamental problem in demographics.

And it turns out that at least two of the above challenges to the Gimein and Cowen essays are true. Population estimates for 2006 claim that 50.7% of the population are women. I think we can assume, with the baby boomers moving on up that this is about as equal as this number has been for awhile. That is, when we were routinely killing off our young men by the thousands in Vietnam, Korea, and World Wars I and II , there was probably an even higher percentage of women. A difference of 1.4% between men and women might not seem like a lot but we must think in terms of raw numbers which means we must think in terms of a deficit of about 4.2 million men–good or bad. Previous generations suffered through larger deficits.

If you combine that with the fact that in that in 1991 women enrolled in college finally surpassed men, well, how many college educated women who aren’t “settling” are aiming for guys without a BA–considering that men with college degrees earn more, have better employment prospects, and are, in turn better at providing that intangible: security? A BA doesn’t ensure “goodness” in a man, but it is a quality that women going to the auction can use as a quick shorthand in coming up with a prognosis of what life will be like with that guy vs that one.

All I’m saying is that, game theory might be able to be applied to the Eligible Bachelor paradox but I think, in the words of “Scrubs’” Dr. Cox, when I hear hoofbeats, I’m thinking horse, not zebra. It seems to me, that with the ability of good guys to look bad, bad guys to look good, good guys to turn into bad guys and all the other factors that can make a rational choice irrational and vice versa, the absence of “good” guys, is a demographic problem not a flaw in the courtship strategies of beautiful young women.

Porch Dog is Seven Years Old Today*

Well, in dog years it is. Which is technically not true either. Dogs reach sexual maturity in about a year, so on day 366, which is what today is for Porch Dog, the website would now be a canine adult, if it were a dog and not a amalgam of 1s and 0s stored in the etherrealm. So Porch Dog is what? thirteen, something like that.

So, this is my quick shout out to myself. I wish I could thank some contributers but no one but me contributed. I guess I can thank those that have stopped by to offer the occasional comment. Thanks.

The purpose of the blog was five-fold: 1) I wanted to get a firmer grasp of this blogging thing, the culture, the technology, all of it. 2) I wanted an excuse to write every day. 3) I wanted to treat politics as field of reflection in the humanities along with art, literature, cinema, philosophy, and history (etc.). 4) I wanted to “get out there;” put my money where my mouth is so to speak. 5) And I wanted to bitch.

So how did I do?

LEARNED HOW BLOGGING WORKS?

Well, after a year of blogging I can say, I don’t really like it. This is might be a surprising proclamation for my friends that see me with a computer in front of me basically during every waking hour, writing a blog, reading a blog, or commenting on one. But let’s be honest, I’m not a very good blogger. I like writing, I like commenting on current events, I like putting my thoughts out there for all to ignore, but these are not the essential skills of blogging. Other people’s blogs are short, nearly every entry links out either to an “official” story in the MSM or to another blogger’s take on that story. My blogs are long. I haven’t done a measure but I would guess I surpass 2000 words per entry. Those would be essays except I don’t put nearly as much art or craft into my blogs as I would into an actual essay. I’m still rambling, saying whatever comes to my mind as I write it. There’s not structure. Even if I go back to edit specifically to add structure, I rarely do more than add a transitional sentence to make it sound like I knew the next thought was coming. But, I think it can be said that I have learned how blogging works, why it’s good (and bad). We’ll yet see if I learn to do it by the unenforced rules of the genre.

WROTE EVERYDAY

There were 366 days from February 5, 2007 to February 5, 2008. According to WordPress, this is entry #218 but I only posted 188. Seven entries are written and still saved but I am almost certain to never post them or at least there will be such dramatic rewriting that it will be as if I wrote them from scratch. The rest have been deleted. I wrote several essays and papers for school in that time and one very long critique of an article I hope to get published this year. I also wrote half a short story on another blog and one entry for a blog that was stillborn. If the goal was to write on the blog everyday, I clearly failed, I just barely surpassed 1 post every other day. We could go back and forth on this. He says: I don’t blog on weekends. He replies: Yes but sometimes you post twice a day or more. All true. I suppose I suffer from having made the goal to inexact.

This goal is better stated that I want to write everyday, not necessarily here. But, for purposes of counting, I will be happy if I surpass 250 posts in the next 365 days (It’s a leap year, you know).

TREATED POLITICS LIKE PHILOSOPHY et. al?

No, I horribly failed. I treated politics like the way I’ve seen and read it being treated before. Treating it as an excuse to write well-formed essays that involve the arts and other humanities-based approaches requires putting a lot more work into an essay than I ever have time for. Maybe next year when I’m doing nothing but reading political science stuff, but for the moment I’ve learned that I’m just not that guy. Not only can I not write humanistic essays about politics, I feel I’ve failed to successfully tie in my other interests into this site, which is why I have decided to, except on rare occasions, only comment on politics here. As time goes on, the realm of discussion may narrow even further into the realms of International Theory, Terrorism/Insurgency, and Globalization. But we’ll see. Maybe I can get Porch Dog to turn into a group blog? Anybody interested in helping out? Anybody? Is this thing on?

DID I “GET OUT THERE?”

Of course it varies. I have very few readers that have bothered to comment and I’ve known almost all those people in my ante-bloguvian existence. A few unknowns have stopped by when search engines drove them here. A few people seem to have found me by accident and decided to stick around. And bully for them! Bully for me! But the very act of publishing something, making my opinions known and (somewhat) permanent has caused me to have fits of self-doubt. It’s been, I have to say, a little exhilarating. I no longer feel as confident about my opinions about fields outside my realms of (limited) expertise, which is good. It is definitely different keeping your thoughts inside versus writing them and sharing them. The subtle difference between what we thought today versus what will think tomorrow is imperceptible to us. We erase the slow growth (or regression) of our thoughts because we were there when we learned new information, we were there for the epiphany that drew together two previously unrelated concepts. We remain who we are from day to day with no perceptible change but there may be a gulf between the words we would have used today versus those used day or week later. Looking back at posts from just a few months ago I feel I have gained an unmeasurable amount of wisdom. Could I have been as close minded and myopic just so short a time ago? Am I still? Yes, of course I am. It’s been a magnificent learning experience to write this often about so many things. Putting it out there for others to see helps me see what I wrote through the eyes of the others. Hopefully this is a knowledge that is sinking in to the unconscious depths of my brain so that when I am writing professionally I am better at it. That’s the hope anyway.

DID I BITCH?

Not for one second did I ever stray from this very important mission.

*As a reminder, I have been writing under the name Porch Dog since February 5th last year, but until very recently those entries only appeared here. So, y’know, stop by and look around at what you missed.

David? (A response to a link left in the comments section).

David,

I approved your comment because I don’t see any cause to not spread reasons to not vote for McCain. I don’t agree with those reasons, but since McCain represents the strongest threat to a Republican victory in ‘08 I support whatever reasons Republicans want to take with them in order to not vote for him either in the primaries or the general election.

But, to be fair most of the reasons are, well, questionable. To be clear, I haven’t read your blog until today and I don’t know who you are supporting but your ridiculous assertion that Obama is a socialist combined with the fact that within your top 20 reasons for hating McCain are the very things that make him the most threatening Republican candidate in November gives me a few clues.

Some of the top 20 things I either don’t know enough about or agree with you on, but I will comment on a few things:

Reason #1. We shouldn’t vote for McCain because he vows to fight global warming? Seriously? Who are you? A villain from the Captain Planet cartoons? Only a few creation theorists and oil execs are still fighting whether or not global warming exists, what its causes are, and whether or not we need to start reversing the trend toward total annihilation. Global warming was a certainty when I started reading about it in the late 80s/early 90s. In the intervening two decades the science has come irrevocably “in.” Any presidential candidate who is to be taken seriously (or any political advocate for that matter) has to look at the world the way it is and not as we would want it. Global warming and its causes is certainly a setback to pro-globalizing, pro-big business, pro-deregulation conservatives, but facts are facts. How McCain (or anybody else) acts on a pledge to fight global warming is up for criticism, but the admission that we have to do something about is not. McCain’s recognition that global warming is one of the world’s greatest challenges is an asset and a reason to vote for him, not the other way around.

Reasons #2 and #9 are in direct odds with one another. After McCain was written up by the ethics committee he set about rewriting campaign finance laws so that the activities he was criticized for would be considered actually criminal rather than just ethically ambiguous. It would seem that if you really dislike McCain for being one of the Keating 5, you would support McCain-Feingold…but you don’t. Weird. I’ll also add that the S&L scandal at the heart of the Keating 5 scandal was a shady financial arrangement brought about Reagan’s deregulation of the industry and that George Bush’s uncle profited heavily from and then used his brother (the first president Bush) to pass legislation protecting him from lawsuits from the people he defrauded. For some reason, I doubt you hate either Bush or Reagan as much as you hate McCain, even though they were more than “heavily involved in the Keating 5.” And just for giggles: you list “McCain-Feingold” as reason number 9 and the fact that it’s a failure as reason #18. It seems that if #18 were true, then #9 is moot.

Reason #5. Personally, if this is true, I don’t think it matters. But, I suppose I’m glad that evangelically-inspired conservatives are sticking to their guns on this one. I assume this means you also don’t support the thrice-married Giuliani or the Mormon Romney (whose great-grandfather left this country to live in Mexico so that he could live with multiple wives.)

Reason #8. A request to normalize relations with Viet Nam is a good thing. As Bush’s refusal to normalize relations with North Korea, Iran, and Venezuela has made clear, when we marginalize world powers they seek support amongst themselves. By ignoring other nation’s we make it harder on us to effectively control their domestic and foreign policy agendas. There wasn’t really an “axis of evil” before Bush, but there is now. McCain’s wanting to normalize relations with the government that tortured him shows restraint, and maturity. It also displays a “turn the other cheek” mentality that Christians should support not denigrate. I’m assuming from some of the things I read on your blog that you’re a die hard Christian.

Reason #6 makes me think you hate Newt Gingrich as much as hate McCain but, for some reason I doubt it. Why is it that people will forgive in people they admire the exact same things they condemn in the people they hate?

Reason #11. Mudslinging grouch? Well, that eliminates everbody. I can only assume you aren’t voting for president in ‘08, or ‘12, or ‘16. Whatever. This is a clear grab. You can dislike it, but you hating McCain for it hardly offers any instruction on who one should vote for.

Reason #15. Lies about own religion. There never has been and never will be a president that follows the mandates of his (or her) religion. All presidents that have mentioned their faith as a reason they should be elected are liars. All of them.

Reason #16. It is true that his flip flopping on the Confederate flag is shameful. He should just come right out and say it: the confederate flag is a symbol of sedition against the United States government and, since it’s a battle flag, its display by state governments should be construed as a call toward revolution and therefore treason. Those caught displaying the flag should be immediately investigated for and possibly charged with low treason and incitement to riot. The confederate flag is nothing more or less than a symbol of sedition for the cause of promoting slavery.

I’ll stop here, too much defense of McCain will make people think I support the bastard.

PS: Obama is the more progressive of the two Democratic front runners, for sure, but he is a moderate Democrat by any sensible measure. The word “socialist” gets thrown around a lot in American politics. Fortunately or unfortunately it typically gets applied to candidates, like Obama, for whom the label does not apply. The flagrant disregard of its meaning is part of the reason “socialist” has lost the power it once enjoyed. It seems for most people who use the word as an insult “socialist” applies to anybody who thinks that there might be a proper time and place for limits on the free market. By that measure, Bush with his first term steel tariffs and his upcoming approval on sugar subsidies is a “socialist.” The label doesn’t apply to him and it doesn’t apply to Obama.

Furthermore, there is nothing intrinsically wrong with socialism. Socialist agendas are more in line with pure democracy than 50 years of Cold War rhetoric let on. Thanks to socialist ideas we have a protected 5 day work week, a 40 hour work day, anti-trust legislation, anti-child labor laws, and Social Security. But it doesn’t stop there: ideas in line with a socialist agenda made it so that in America and Europe war is now considered a tragic anomaly rather than the status quo. Socialism brought us women’s suffrage and the Civil Rights Act.

If Obama were a socialist, which he most certainly isn’t, I’m sure he would welcome the title. As it is, I don’t like the application not because the concept itself is bad, but because its application is untrue and, if believed, it unfairly sways votes to and from him based on its inaccuracy. Progressive voters that might like a socialist agenda would vote for him despite the fact he would be sure to disappoint them. People swayed by your intended use would be persuaded to vote against him because of an unfounded fear of what he might do.

So Now Porch-Dog is on WordPress

This is actually going to be a mirror of my other site, www.porch-dog.com. Go over there for the full experience….Actually, I don’t know how it will differ. I may experiment with different themes over here…but generally I started this page because sometimes my other site, which is independently hosted, is unaccessible, so I wanted another option, for me to be able to write, and for you to be able to read.