It amazes me every now and then that the conservation movement is not far more popular in the US than it is. There is a large and powerful Christian fundamentalist powerbase, and it is very strongly Creationist. These people believe that every single species on the planet was specially created by God.
Now, an evilutionist might regard individual species as random productions of an uncaring universe, to be cast aside on a whim; or as unique and very likely irreplaceable adaptations, to be preserved. Or more likely, origin theories might be just one part of a complex picture of how the world should be treated; and that could well include Christianity, fundamentalist protestations notwithstanding.
But if I were a committed Christian, I would be thinking very hard about how I was going to explain to God that yes, he had carefully created a group of living things; and no, I did not know what his purposes had been in doing that; but that I felt comfortable in destroying their habitat, flogging the wood for toilet paper, and grazing cows on the land to feed burgers to already-obsese Americans.
True, in Genesis 1:28 God commands the newly created humans to "Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth". But He says "replenish", not "consume"; "subdue", not "destroy". It behooves someone who has "dominion" over something on behalf of another, to think about how they will explain their actions.
There certainly are people out there who think this way; I'm surprised there are not more of them. It concerns me that one reason there are not is a widespread belief that the Earth is to be destroyed - or at least laid waste - in the very near future. This may turn out to be a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Friday, March 23, 2007
Friday, March 16, 2007
The Perils of Prosperity
Assuming human civilization survives the next few decades, finds a solution to the energy crisis, and settles down into something approximating the affluence that the West has come to enjoy and expect, we are going to run into a problem of genetic degeneracy.
I am not talking here about lesser races interbreeding with us and polluting the gene pool (whatever that means, given the human race's distinct lack of genetic variety). Nor am I talking about the lower classes and the stupid out-breeding the smart folks like you and me. Stupid people will always find ways to remove themselves from the gene pool, and I'll start worrying about class when I figure out which group are worth keeping.
No, I'm talking about bona-fide genetic mishaps, the kind that you can nail down to some specific gene, the ones that just cause trouble. Hemophilia. Cystic Fibrosis. Fatal Familial Insomnia. Huntingdon's. Sickle-cell anemia, if we can wipe out malaria as we should.
When humans get prosperous, and death rates drop, they like all their children to survive to adulthood. So far, I don't know of a single person from my school year who has died, and only a few from the years around me. I like it that way.
But if all children grow up and reproduce, we have no genetic selection. Errors accumulate. Some will prove too drastic to result in a viable baby; a miscarriage is the result. But others result in a need for extra medical services, inconvenience, expense, danger. When society becomes prosperous and safe enough for these errors to persist, they will accumulate. Eventually, everyone will have them, and no-one will enjoy that. Worse, there is a limit to how many such conditions one person can tolerate. So the problem will reach equilibrium when it gets bad enough to kill off genetic errors as fast as they appear - that is, infant and child mortality will head back up.
The Catholic Church has one solution - outlaw effective birth control, have enough children to strain the limits of the earth's capacity, and reach the point where we can't afford to keep some of the perfectly healthy alive, never mind the genetically defective. Natural selection will take care of the rest. Who says religion and evolution can't mix?
The eugenics movement had another solution - kill off the unfit. Unfortunately this starts off by killing or sterilizing people, and I for one have relatives with hemophilia who I am fond of and would like to keep. And it also has a habit of going futher into the elimination of people "not like us", which is frankly genetically unhealthy. Eugenics is crude and dangerous, like treating a scratch with amputation. It's the best nature can do, but humans are a great deal smarter.
I prefer to look for a better way, and I think that in the future we will have one - genetic surgery. We will have the technology to identify the genes bearing these errors, and fix them in the germ line. To be sure, some of them are treatable with genetic surgery in each generation, to simply fix the symptoms. And as an experimental start, that may be all we are prepared to do. But one day we will be able to fix them permanently; and some of these problems cause developmental abnormalities that simply cannot be fixed in retrospect.
Look forward to a lot of objections about playing God, and tampering with Nature, and meddling with things we don't understand. Some of these concerns will be well-founded; this kind of technology is incredibly powerful and amazingly dangerous. We should proceed with great caution, because the mistakes will be with us for a long time and they will be human beings. But we should proceed, because not doing so will also have human consequences that will be with us for a very long time.
Look forward also to people using this technology for "improvements". The Olympics will become a strange battleground here, as it has become with drugs - only worse. People will look for ways to make their children stronger, fitter, smarter, more attractive. We'll probably try to outlaw that sort of thing. People will do it anyway, because the incentives will be huge. There will be an "arms race" between illegal alterations and ways to detect them.
None of this should stop us using this technology to prevent people living miserable lives with preventable condiditions. The downside will happen anyway; we can ride the wave and control it, or we can let it dump us.
Thursday, March 08, 2007
Spelling Reform
I am a pretty good speller. By that I mean that if you ask me to spell a word, I will almost always get it correct, and if I don't get it I will know that I haven't. (The catch is that I have to write it down to see if it's correct, because I learned all my spelling by reading things). My spelling errors are almost exclusively typos.
So when I say that English is in dire need of spelling reform, it's not because I suffer terribly from mistakes; it's because I can see that it causes problems.
Correct spelling has become a badge of education. English has all sorts of bizarre spellings resulting from historical accidents, like all the different pronunciations of -ough, and the various extraneous 'k's on the fronts of words. If you use words a lot, these odd spellings become second nature, and the phonetic spelling looks bad.
Try it. Rite down yore next sentense in fonetic spelling, and see how it looks to yoo. You have become apparently illiterate and probably stupid. This is why these spellings persist, because almost anyone who knows them will use them to claim status (or avoid looking illiterate, which is much the same thing). And that is much more likely to be true of someone who writes for wide distribution.
But the whole point of using an alphabet the way English does is that you can write down what you hear, and someone else can read it and know what you heard (although you may need to specify the accent of the speaker and/or the hearer; a problem for another day). If we wanted non-phonetic writing, we'd use Chinese, or Hieroglyphics.
So what needs fixing? Well, the letter c should be limited to the 'ch' sound. In other words, it's either an 's' or a 'k' and these letters should be used. Similarly, 'z' should be used instead of 's' in words like, well, used. Silent letters, like the 'k' in "knife", and the 'u' in "guide" or "guard", should be removed. We should use 'j' instead of 'g' where appropriate. I'm sure you can think of more.
Whenever someone brings this up, someone else will chime in with Mark Twain's piece on spelling reform. This is a very funny piece, but it's a deliberate exaggeration for effect. Re-using the old letters for new sounds is guaranteed to make the result unreadable. But also, it illustrates my point about status badging - once the piece starts to use proper phonetic spelling, the writer sounds uneducated, and the reader immediately shies away.
Phonetic spelling is how it should work. There's still room for disagreement, as English tends be rather fluid in what it does with vowels - for example, why do "speak" and "speech" have a different vowel pairing? Also, in some cases, the variant spelling is useful to disambiguate words - "to", "too" and "two" is a classic example. I propose to keep "two" for this reason (or some appropriate variant), because the point of this is to make life easier for English users, not to purge the unholy.
Unlike French, no-one pretends to have a central authority on English, which is good because it would be taken over by prissy conservatives who would try to set the current insanity in stone. So the changes will have to be made by... everyone, acting one by one. Already the US spells organize with a 'z' and meter with the 'er' the right way around. And "lite" and "nite" are creeping into the language.
I call on yoo to help. Wen yoo reed, cut some slak for those hoo spell things the way they sound. Wen yoo rite, always chooze the simpler spelling of the wunz available to yoo. It won't be incomprehensible, even if it duz look a little unfamiliar to start with. And imajine how much easier it will be for children to lern to spell.
We will eliminate the spelling contest, but really, hoo carez?
So when I say that English is in dire need of spelling reform, it's not because I suffer terribly from mistakes; it's because I can see that it causes problems.
Correct spelling has become a badge of education. English has all sorts of bizarre spellings resulting from historical accidents, like all the different pronunciations of -ough, and the various extraneous 'k's on the fronts of words. If you use words a lot, these odd spellings become second nature, and the phonetic spelling looks bad.
Try it. Rite down yore next sentense in fonetic spelling, and see how it looks to yoo. You have become apparently illiterate and probably stupid. This is why these spellings persist, because almost anyone who knows them will use them to claim status (or avoid looking illiterate, which is much the same thing). And that is much more likely to be true of someone who writes for wide distribution.
But the whole point of using an alphabet the way English does is that you can write down what you hear, and someone else can read it and know what you heard (although you may need to specify the accent of the speaker and/or the hearer; a problem for another day). If we wanted non-phonetic writing, we'd use Chinese, or Hieroglyphics.
So what needs fixing? Well, the letter c should be limited to the 'ch' sound. In other words, it's either an 's' or a 'k' and these letters should be used. Similarly, 'z' should be used instead of 's' in words like, well, used. Silent letters, like the 'k' in "knife", and the 'u' in "guide" or "guard", should be removed. We should use 'j' instead of 'g' where appropriate. I'm sure you can think of more.
Whenever someone brings this up, someone else will chime in with Mark Twain's piece on spelling reform. This is a very funny piece, but it's a deliberate exaggeration for effect. Re-using the old letters for new sounds is guaranteed to make the result unreadable. But also, it illustrates my point about status badging - once the piece starts to use proper phonetic spelling, the writer sounds uneducated, and the reader immediately shies away.
Phonetic spelling is how it should work. There's still room for disagreement, as English tends be rather fluid in what it does with vowels - for example, why do "speak" and "speech" have a different vowel pairing? Also, in some cases, the variant spelling is useful to disambiguate words - "to", "too" and "two" is a classic example. I propose to keep "two" for this reason (or some appropriate variant), because the point of this is to make life easier for English users, not to purge the unholy.
Unlike French, no-one pretends to have a central authority on English, which is good because it would be taken over by prissy conservatives who would try to set the current insanity in stone. So the changes will have to be made by... everyone, acting one by one. Already the US spells organize with a 'z' and meter with the 'er' the right way around. And "lite" and "nite" are creeping into the language.
I call on yoo to help. Wen yoo reed, cut some slak for those hoo spell things the way they sound. Wen yoo rite, always chooze the simpler spelling of the wunz available to yoo. It won't be incomprehensible, even if it duz look a little unfamiliar to start with. And imajine how much easier it will be for children to lern to spell.
We will eliminate the spelling contest, but really, hoo carez?
Thursday, March 01, 2007
Hard to see this ending well
I was wrong about WMD; I thought the case for war was better. It turns out that I was wrong about the aftermath as well, and again I thought the case for war was better.
I thought the aftermath would be largely a period of rebuilding by ordinary Iraqis, hopefully assisted by the US government, with occasional resistance by the remnants of the old Iraqi regime. I figured there would be some terrorism carried out by Al Qaeda, assisted by sympathizers inside Iraq. Whether that died away or built up would depend on how good a job the US could do of convincing the bulk of the population that its intentions were benign, how angry the muslim world was to start with, and how effective Al Qaeda were at stirring things up.
I wasn't expecting a civil war. Apparently, neither was the Bush administration. As far as I can tell from the analysis, the US government really did expect its troops to be greeted as liberators and everything to go just peachy. At least, that's as much as they appear to have planned for.
We keep hearing rhetoric from the administration and its supporters about how crucial it is to stay in and fight the terrorists, and what a huge victory Al Qaeda will have if we leave. But the intelligence assessments seem to be saying that Al Qaeda is a marginal player now, and the real fighting is between Sunnis and Shias trying their best to dominate each other or avoid being dominated.
This has an upside and a downside. The upside is that the US clearly sees the occupation as going badly, despite having achieved whatever control of oil, money, and land it was after; and despite the fact the most of the casualties are Iraqi civilians rather than US or even Iraqi soldiers. Its reaction will hopefully tend to dampen down Muslim anger at it; the fact that a purely Muslim conflict is causing large numbers of Muslim civilian casualties will hopefully damage the image of religious extremists everywhere.
The downside is that the most likely reason Al Qaeda is staying out is that chaos and destruction are happening without the need for them to do anything. So chances are that if the situation improves they will step in to keep it going. That in turn means that their goals are currently being achieved - a huge drain on the US treasury, and the distraction of the bulk of the US armed forces - without costing them anything.
Will the troop surge work? Not likely. The Bush administration is trying to use combat forces in policing work, and they are not trained or suited for it. This has been the problem ever since the Shia/Sunni fight started. We do not use the army to take on the Mafia, especially not when the "protection" they offer is from a genuine enemy (Sunnis or Shias, depending on who you are). This is a problem that can only be solved by the two sides finding some common cause.
What it does do is prevent either side from openly appearing in the streets and terrorizing their opponents. But this only lasts while the troop surge lasts; unless something is done to reconcile the two sides in the meantime, it will achieve nothing by itself. Efforts at reconciliation appear to be limited to pressuring the government to stop supporting one of the sides, and get its act together. Unfortunately the only real leverage over the government appears to be the threat of troop withdrawals.
I expect the US will stay in for a while, and eventually give up, declare victory, and leave. If they're lucky Iraq will settle down to something roughly stable, controlled by the Shia majority; probably with some continued violence around the edges, and the Sunnis oppressed in varying degrees. If they're not, there will be a real Yugoslav-style civil war, with uncounted casualties and a fractured mess at the end. Surrounding countries with Kurdish minorities will be tempted to step in, lest a proper Kurdish homeland movement get the takeoff resulting from Kurdish Iraq declaring independence.
Either way Iran will help its Shia cousins from simple solidarity, and also in the hope of gaining influence. The loss of a great regional rival will be a huge bonus for them.
How long will the US stay? Longer if they're silly enough to reward the Republicans with another term; shorter if the Democrats get in. The intervening time seems increasingly less likely to accomplish anything for the Iraqis, and it is hard to see what the extra time will accomplish for the US. They will not be inflicting pain on actual enemies of the US, as was the case with Vietnam; Iran is not silly enough to send its own soldiers in and the US is not silly enough to start a real war with them. Perhaps some international respect for an ability to tough it out and take casualties, for whatever that's worth.
I have said in the past that the US had to stay and see it out, but it is increasing clear that they are not actually capable of achieving any sort of peacekeeping there. If there is to be a real genocidal fight as we have seen elsewhere, the best they can do is get the combatants apart and give them viable states of their own - and the US is unlikely try that until things are so bad that it is no longer possible without at least a great many casualties. For one thing, there is an enormous risk of Iran virtually controlling the Shia state, and the Kurdish one destabilizing the region.
As I say above, the best thing about all this is that what the US is trying and failing to achieve is a viable state in Iraq. The worst thing is that after all the resources devoted to it, chances are they will not get one.
I thought the aftermath would be largely a period of rebuilding by ordinary Iraqis, hopefully assisted by the US government, with occasional resistance by the remnants of the old Iraqi regime. I figured there would be some terrorism carried out by Al Qaeda, assisted by sympathizers inside Iraq. Whether that died away or built up would depend on how good a job the US could do of convincing the bulk of the population that its intentions were benign, how angry the muslim world was to start with, and how effective Al Qaeda were at stirring things up.
I wasn't expecting a civil war. Apparently, neither was the Bush administration. As far as I can tell from the analysis, the US government really did expect its troops to be greeted as liberators and everything to go just peachy. At least, that's as much as they appear to have planned for.
We keep hearing rhetoric from the administration and its supporters about how crucial it is to stay in and fight the terrorists, and what a huge victory Al Qaeda will have if we leave. But the intelligence assessments seem to be saying that Al Qaeda is a marginal player now, and the real fighting is between Sunnis and Shias trying their best to dominate each other or avoid being dominated.
This has an upside and a downside. The upside is that the US clearly sees the occupation as going badly, despite having achieved whatever control of oil, money, and land it was after; and despite the fact the most of the casualties are Iraqi civilians rather than US or even Iraqi soldiers. Its reaction will hopefully tend to dampen down Muslim anger at it; the fact that a purely Muslim conflict is causing large numbers of Muslim civilian casualties will hopefully damage the image of religious extremists everywhere.
The downside is that the most likely reason Al Qaeda is staying out is that chaos and destruction are happening without the need for them to do anything. So chances are that if the situation improves they will step in to keep it going. That in turn means that their goals are currently being achieved - a huge drain on the US treasury, and the distraction of the bulk of the US armed forces - without costing them anything.
Will the troop surge work? Not likely. The Bush administration is trying to use combat forces in policing work, and they are not trained or suited for it. This has been the problem ever since the Shia/Sunni fight started. We do not use the army to take on the Mafia, especially not when the "protection" they offer is from a genuine enemy (Sunnis or Shias, depending on who you are). This is a problem that can only be solved by the two sides finding some common cause.
What it does do is prevent either side from openly appearing in the streets and terrorizing their opponents. But this only lasts while the troop surge lasts; unless something is done to reconcile the two sides in the meantime, it will achieve nothing by itself. Efforts at reconciliation appear to be limited to pressuring the government to stop supporting one of the sides, and get its act together. Unfortunately the only real leverage over the government appears to be the threat of troop withdrawals.
I expect the US will stay in for a while, and eventually give up, declare victory, and leave. If they're lucky Iraq will settle down to something roughly stable, controlled by the Shia majority; probably with some continued violence around the edges, and the Sunnis oppressed in varying degrees. If they're not, there will be a real Yugoslav-style civil war, with uncounted casualties and a fractured mess at the end. Surrounding countries with Kurdish minorities will be tempted to step in, lest a proper Kurdish homeland movement get the takeoff resulting from Kurdish Iraq declaring independence.
Either way Iran will help its Shia cousins from simple solidarity, and also in the hope of gaining influence. The loss of a great regional rival will be a huge bonus for them.
How long will the US stay? Longer if they're silly enough to reward the Republicans with another term; shorter if the Democrats get in. The intervening time seems increasingly less likely to accomplish anything for the Iraqis, and it is hard to see what the extra time will accomplish for the US. They will not be inflicting pain on actual enemies of the US, as was the case with Vietnam; Iran is not silly enough to send its own soldiers in and the US is not silly enough to start a real war with them. Perhaps some international respect for an ability to tough it out and take casualties, for whatever that's worth.
I have said in the past that the US had to stay and see it out, but it is increasing clear that they are not actually capable of achieving any sort of peacekeeping there. If there is to be a real genocidal fight as we have seen elsewhere, the best they can do is get the combatants apart and give them viable states of their own - and the US is unlikely try that until things are so bad that it is no longer possible without at least a great many casualties. For one thing, there is an enormous risk of Iran virtually controlling the Shia state, and the Kurdish one destabilizing the region.
As I say above, the best thing about all this is that what the US is trying and failing to achieve is a viable state in Iraq. The worst thing is that after all the resources devoted to it, chances are they will not get one.
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