I Got a Googlewhack! Unintentionally!

For those who don't know, a googlewhack is what happens when you only get one entry in your search. It used to be fairly easy but these days I've wondered if they are even possible.

Anyways, I just got an unintentional googlewhack for the first time in my life. And it was with a pretty cool search term: +"median productivity" ezra klein. The background is that I've been browsing the responses on the Chait-Manzi debate and since Ezra Klein was involved at one point, I wanted to see if he came in with arguments about median productivity. Or failing that, if he'd ever weighed in on median productivity comparisons between the United States and Europe. (Actually I was going through for a whole bunch of people; I only got the googlewhack with Ezra).

The upshot is that I think progressives are not forcefully advancing one of their best possible pro-Europe arguments: Sure, hourly productivity is higher in the US, but it is pulled up by rich people. Europe might have a higher median hourly productivity. If true that would be a good argument that needs to be made vigorously. My take: I think it may be true, or at least, a lot closer. But the US has a larger minority population between blacks and higher rates of immigration. That goes back to the social norms argument that Manzi made quite forcefully in his original piece, and which went, as far as I know, unchallenged by the left. The necessary bourgeois values are not being broadly instilled by our current generation of (progressive) cultural gate-keepers.

The Myth of Liberal Neutrality

One of the cherished ideals of the secular progressive movement is called liberal neutrality. That basically means that the government gives people a certain amount of freedom and wealth and then people are free to choose their own version of the good life. That may mean carving marble statues of pelicans. It may mean joining a lesbian commune. It may mean joining a strict religious subculture. Whatever. Whatever you want to do, you should be able to do it. There is only one rule: don't force your ideals on someone else.

The problem is that liberals do not even make a good faith effort to actually support liberal neutrality. Instead they fall into the communitarian camp, which promotes a progressive view of what it means to lead the good life. Now, that may sound a little tyrannical and oppressive but it is necessary. For example:

1. Are people allowed to choose for themselves who has moral status and who can be freely oppressed? Are they allowed to draw their own lines for their circle of moral consciousness? If so then liberal neutrality collapses into nihilism. Racists will exclude members of ethnic minority groups and so on. This is obviously crucial because Planned Parenthood v. Casey, the decision that reaffirmed Roe v. Wade, based its support in part on the idea that "At the heart of liberty is the right to define one's own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life."
   
2. What about school choice? People are free to send their children to private school, but they still pay taxes to public schools. The government penalizes and rewards people for the choices they make. Now, progressives can defend the public schools on various grounds (badly, I think, but that's another debate), but this is no longer liberal neutrality. It is communitarianism. Let's have a debate and everyone goes along with the winner.
   
3. Are people allowed to own a gun? If the answer is no then this is a flagrant violation of liberal neutrality. Now, progressives can argue that gun ownership is bad society (again, badly I think) but this is communitarian. Let's have the debate and force everyone to along with the winner.
   
4. Are people allowed to eat fatty foods and ride a motorcycle without a helmet? I would find it ironic if liberals (1) set up universal health care on the grounds that liberal neutrality demands giving people the means to lead the good life and of course, health care is a large part of that, then (2) began telling people how to live their lives in order to keep health care down, and then (3) continued to champion liberal neutrality.
   
5. Are Muslim women allowed to wear veils? The French said no.
   
6. Islam is full of interesting challenges to liberal neutrality. My favorite is the recent Swiss ban on minarets (towers on top of mosques) because they were often deliberately built taller than church steeples. Liberal neutrality says that Muslims should have this freedom, but it allows me to reverse a common egalitarian argument. Liberal neutrality claims to make no decisions about our lives and communities, but it itself necessarily makes a choice. It a chooses a world with unplanned communities and an ungainly hodgepodge of architectural styles, often driven by social status and one-upsmanship. Preserving charming villages with historical character is not allowed with liberal neutrality except in the off chance that everyone who lives there has 'preserve the charming character of the village' as part of their vision of the good life.
   
7. Are men free to have many wives? If so then what about that pesky problem about the fact that for every man with ten wives, nine men must go wifeless. Islam has a nifty solution: send them to holy war. If they die they'll have a harem in heaven. If they live some others would probably die and there will be more women. And besides, as a military veteran they'll probably be higher in status and able to attract more wives. But for some reason I don't think that is something that people who subscribe to liberal neutrality would accept.
   

Question to the Left: More Abortions or More Health Care?

I'm not the policy wonk type who gets into the finer points of how the inner workings of government are structured, but it seems to me that only thing holding up universal health care is the progressive's desire to have federally funded abortions. The major paths seem to be:

Reconciliation. This lets the Senate get around the filibuster. The reconciliation process cannot be filibustered. The problem is that both the House and Senate need to sign off on any changes. And the House does not have a filibuster. It only passed its version of ObamaCare with a slim majority because of the Stupak ammednment which prohibited federal funding of abortions. So if the reconciliation process removes the abortion language it will surely pass the Senate - but not the House.

House passes the Senate version. There is no filibuster in the House so the bills could be reconciled simply by having the House pass the Senate version of the bill. But the Senate version allows federal funding of abortions, so it will not pass.

I think this exposes some hypocrisy on the part of the left. All the talk about "let's worry about babies before and after they have been born" is revealed to be empty rhetoric. Given the choice the between more abortions and better care for babies that have been born, they'll chose more abortions. (On the record, I favor some form of universal health care, but one which leverages the free market. Perhaps universal health care vouchers which would replace Medicare, Medicaid, and S-Chip).

Ezra Klein champions a fairly typical progressive argument that Stupak Ammendment actually reveals hypocrisy on the right:

the Stupak amendment is as much about class as it is about choice. Imagine if Stupak attempted to expand his campaign to the coverage employed women receive. It would, after all, be the same principle: Federal policy should not subsidize insurance that offers abortion coverage. But it wouldn't have a chance. That group is too large and too affluent and too politically powerful for Congress to dare to touch its access to reproductive services. But the poorer women who will be using subsidies on the exchange are a much easier target.

That doesn't make sense. Individuals have an intellectual duty to hold consistent beliefs, but politics is about a mixture of compromise and pushing battle lines. In the realm of politics you never get to be a Founding Father who implements his perfect political philosophy. Even the actual Founding Fathers had to compromise. So the question is: are social conservatives being hypocritical in pushing the battle lines this way? Are they revealing that their professed worldview of protecting the innocent is actually a patriarchal method of oppressing women?

If so the Stupak Ammendment does not provide any ammunition for honest critics. The professed beliefs of people who are pro-life is that (1) killing (fetuses) is worse than (poor women) being denied health care, and (2) intentionally killing is worse than unintentionally letting die. If the pro-life position is based on false consciousness then progressives have a lot more work to do.

Atheism is False Consciousness Even if True

Atheists have many false beliefs if naturalism is true. False consciousness is the rule, not the exception. The overarching argument is evolution. Atheists may believe a lot of things about their own worldviews and behaviors, but in reality they only exist for instrumental reasons. They are aimed at maximizing reproductive fitness. Atheists believe in moral values such as 'murder is wrong' but those are the result of the group side of evolution. The truth is 'not committing murder maximizes my reproductive fitness'. If an atheist wanders into this blog to criticize me then he may think that he is concerned with the truth, but in reality he is signaling intelligence (or developing the skills he needs to credibly signal intelligence). If he were 6'4" and could run a 40 yard dash in 4.5 seconds he's probably be signaling big muscles instead. You dance with the girl ya brung - you signal your comparative advantage.

Atheists may think that they care for their family because they love them, but the real belief is 'caring for my family maximizes my reproductive fitness.' Atheists may think that they aren't racist but in reality they are signaling their membership in the high status group of enlightened and sophisticated people. Atheists may think that they care about the poor but they are really just signaling that they are a good cooperator who is unlikely to free ride upon others.

Desirism is Antiquated Social Contract Theory

The best way to understand derirism is that it is old-fashioned social contract theory before Rawls and Harsanyi came along. Classical social contract theory is simply morality based on self-interest. There are no morals. The only thing like a moral duty is the duty to pursue your self-interest in a rational manner. If it is in your self-interest to be rich then you "should" get an education and work hard. So forget morality.

Now imagine yourself in what philosophers call a state of nature. That means a world with no governments and no laws. Might makes right. If you wanted to you could kill all the men you meet and take their stuff. You could rape all the women you meet. Of course, someone who is bigger and stronger than you are may kill you and take your stuff! Then he might rape your wife, sister and daughters. No one wants to live in a state of nature. So people come together and form a government. Philosophers call this the social contract. The terms of the social contract will include laws against murder, theft, and rape. See? Atheists have morality without God. The pursuit of rational self-interest provides an objective set of moral laws. Christians ask, "Why is murder wrong without God?" and the answer is "because I don't want to be murdered - and neither does anyone else."

The problem is that the social contract assumes that everyone has equal negotiation power. In reality that is not true. Men are stronger than women so it is in their self-interest to make a social contract that oppresses women. Members of a warrior caste are stronger than farmers and laborers so it is in their self-interest to form a social contract that turns laborers into second-class citizens. Rich people can afford to hire warriors so it is in their self-interest to create a class-based society in which they are at the top. And members of a majority ethnic group can oppress members of a minority group so it is in their self-interest to form a social contract in which they enslave or oppress the minority group.

This objection is fatal. Modern social contract theorists like John Rawls created a Veil of Ignorance to get around the problem (John Harsanyi created a similar idea before Rawls). Behind the Veil of Ignorance we do not know the particulars of our lives. We do not know if we are male or female so we would not choose a social contract that oppresses women. We do not know if we are rich or poor so we would not create a class-based society. We do not know which ethnic group we belong to so we would not create a society that allows ethnic oppression (according to Rawls' version, people behind the Veil do know that they are not an unborn fetus, so they would choose to create laws that allow abortion).

Desire utilitarianism is simply social contract theory without a Veil of Ignorance. Thus it is in the rational self-interest for people to create unjust social contracts. How do desirists get around this? Magical reasoning called the turn the knobs technique. The gist of this technique is to consider a desire to enslave others. If we "turn the knobs" on this desire up in strength and prevalence then society as a whole will be worse off. People will be enslaved, fighting wars over slavery, and so on. But we "turn the knobs down" on the desire for slavery then people will be more peaceful and everyone will be better off.

The fatal flaw is that it take the perspective of society as a whole. Why should members of an oppressor group (the men, the warrior caste, the rich, the ethnic majority) count the desires of of the victim group in their calculation? They just want to have "the most and strongest" of their own desires fulfilled.

So what you tend to see is a bunch of arguments that don't even need desirism or any type of atheistic ethics. You see arguments that it always against your self-interest to be oppressive. You see arguments that the only way to justify oppression is with false beliefs such as 'God said to kill the infidels'. See here for a more detailed discussion.


The Prisoner's Dilemma

The number of atheists that refuse to accept the logic behind the prisoner's dilemma is large. The gist of the prisoner's dilemma is that it is good for society if everyone behaves morally (cooperatively), but it is in the self-interest of each person to act immorally (to defect). Thus people are inexorably driven to immoral behavior. One well-known and misguided way to solve the prisoner's dilemma is with the strategy of tit-for-tat, or something similar. More generally, people often point to the Folk Theorem for Repeated Games. In intuitive terms it holds that people can reach cooperative outcomes in repeated games. But that is not quite right. It actually holds that there are many different outcomes, and that cooperative outcomes are only likely with a small number of players and with information conditions much stronger than we get in the real problem. In other words, in the real world people have ample opportunity to be anonymous free riders.

Desirism cannot give a rational reason to not be a free rider. At most it only succeeds in establishing laws, social norms, and cultural values (see here). What you do when nobody is watching is still up to you. So sure, desirist founding fathers can create a world with the social norm of "let's praise people who don't free ride on society." But since we don't know who is free riding and who isn't, the social norm is empty. If in this atheistic Utopia people have rational beliefs aimed at the truth then they will also have the belief 'free ride whenever you feel like it if you have the chance'.

Openmindedness Test

Andrew Brown asks:

Name three people, preferably contemporaries, whom you honestly believe are smarter, better educated, and more honest than you are, but who disagree with you about God. So atheists must name believers, and vice versa.

My first two choices are easy: Herb Gintis and Tyler Cowen. I had to think a bit for a third by I have a good choice: David Sloan Wilson.

They are objectively better educated. They all have PhD's but I am just a college-educated blogger. They are definitely smarter. How about honesty? I think Tyler scores very high. He freely admits that atheists do not take the argument from fine-tuning seriously enough (even though he ultimately rejects it) and admits that simulation argument is a problem for atheists who believe that they have a more common-sense understanding of the universe. See his bloggingheadz with Robert Wright here (the last three are the most relevant).

Herb Gintis used to be dogmatic, but now that he has shed his Marxism he is very openminded and centrist. He finds various arguments for the existence of God plausible, but AFAIK, does not ultimately accept them.

I have a soft spot for D.S. Wilson for two reasons. First, I never really understood multilevel selection until reading some of his work. Second, unlike many atheists who are evolutionary biologists, he thinks that Christianity has overall been a positive force for the development of Western Civilization (he thinks the New Athests are dogmatists).

One final point. There are some Christian philosophers who are frighteningly intelligent, like Alexander Pruss. Overall I think that many Christian philosophers have reached epistemic equality with the best secular philosophers. But it is a relatively small niche group. So I'm more forgiving of atheists who can't name three Christians than I am of Christians who can't name three atheists.

Prima Facie Justification

An interesting point has come up in the comments of the thread about the The Umbrella Fallacy. It is the difference between prima facie and an in-depth analysis (is there a Latin phrase for second, third and later looks?).

Prima Facie Justification

I do not think that rationality is the privileged domain of philosophers and scientists. I think that most people are prima facie justified (rational) in most of their beliefs. Atheists are prima facie justified in their moral beliefs and Christians are prima facie justified in their faith. I take what epistemologists call an externalist view of justification. That means that a foundational principle (which often goes unexamined) is that we are well-adapted to our environment. That could be because God designed us to know Him and that he wrote His law on our hearts. Or it could be because evolution adapted us to our environment and in doing so, gave us instinctive beliefs that are aimed at the truth.

I am a Christian who rejects secular arguments for moral realism, but I am a friendly Christian. I think that atheists and Christians both have a prima facie justification for their beliefs. Atheists are not typically friendly. Most atheists think that faith in God is irrational without evidence. But the umbrella fallacy strikes. They do not think that they are unjustified in their moral beliefs, even though they do not have evidence for them. One possible objection is that atheists may point to tit-for-tat or evolution "for the good of the group." Atheists may claim that they have evidence. But Christians can mouth a few sentences about "who created the universe?" or "what about the empty tome?" The vast majority of both atheists and Christians are not philosophically sophisticated and have not moved beyond the prima facie level. Arguments need to rest on a deep study and understanding. So I repeat: atheists have fallen prey to the umbrella fallacy. They have a double-standard of evidence. A strict standard for Christians and a lose standard for themselves.


In-depth Analysis

Now let's move to the in-depth level. I find secular arguments for moral realism to be weak and strained. By contrast, arguments for the existence of God are quite strong. Thus we see the umbrella fallacy in atheistic philosophy: philosophically sophisticated atheists still have a double-standard of proof. They have a very strict standard for Christians and a lax standard for atheists. Of course, this assertion is massively question-begging. Most atheists would say that it is the other way around. So atheists do not think they are committing the umbrella fallacy, but I think they are.